Playhouse Creatures 1

Naturalism

We looked a bit at Naturalism in the theatre and at Stanislavski, a Russian actor and practitioner. Before Stanislvski's time, acting was very one dimensional. Actors used "Stock" acting - very simplistic, over-the-top movements and expressions - to portray their work. Acting is not thought to have shown very real or truthful emotions or messages. Towards the end of the 19th century Stanislavski, an actor at the time, began to question why the theatre that he was watching entertained him but didn't make him feel anything. He developed his own style of acting, Naturalism, and also introduced the concept of method acting and emotional memory. He considered acting to be a highly stylised craft and was constantly subjecting himself to self reflection and analysis. The only problem with his new concept was the fact that non of the actors of the time knew how to act like that, so by the begining of the 1900's Stanislavski had set up the Moscow Art Theatre, in which he trained new actors in the form of Naturalism.

Naturalistic acting intends to portray a perfect illusion of reality, using three-dimensional sets and normal speech instead of prose, which was what had been used in theatre up until that time. The plays focus on every day, ordinary lives of working and middle class people, instead of upper class characters, royalty and other people of note that theatre had fixated on previously (such as Antony and Cleopatra [royalty], Romeo and Juliet [upper class] etc.). 

Exercises

In the first exercise we did, I had to pretend I had lost my earrings. I started out quietly, however soon Andy had stopped the entire class and got everyone looking for them. Andy and I were the only ones who knew the truth, and the class was looking for a good 5 minutes before Andy finally told the rest of the group what happened. He then had us all try and repeat the exercise and act and work in exactly the same was we had before. The first time we did the exercise people instantly started to help me and actively looked for the earrings, due to the fact that they were genuinely concerned. Some people tried to stay out of the way and others were logical and started to clear the room and open the curtains to make looking easier. The second time the class was looking, after Andy had told everyone the truth, I was interested to see how things changed. Some people threw themselves into the exercise and tried to mimic exactly what they had done the first time, some people I noticed tried to be more helpful than previously, perhaps because they were acting how they would have liked others to act if they had lost their possessions, and others - having learnt that it was all a stitch up - simply cracked jokes and acted less helpful than when they had first thought I genuinely lost my earrings. It was interesting doing the exercise from my point of view, being the person who knew that it was an exercise and not real life, since I was more of an observer. Both times I was pretending, so I didn't change too much. I enjoyed observing how people changed and reacted, and I'll admit that it was quite fun being the only person who knew that I hadn't really lost my earrings!

Next, we did an exercise about Given Circumstances. We were all, one by one, given a situation for ourselves, someone waiting for a phone call, a girl waiting for a pregancy test etc. We all had to go and sit in the middle of the room in front of the class and act it. I was given a girl waiting at the doctors to hear the results of a pregnancy test. At first I enjoyed the exercise, I simply tried to feel the emotions of someone in that situation and forget the audience. I felt like the more I got into the emotions and forgot about everything else, the more real it got. However towards the end I got distracted or pulled out of the state by something and I lost it. I started to "Show" the situation instead of just feeling it and lost the truth. I feel like that's a recurring problem of mine when I'm onstage, sometimes I can start to over think my acting. I don't immerse myself in it and concentrate only on feeling the emotions of my character and suddenly my acting becomes far more wooden and much less effective. I really want to work on training myself not to over think. It's good to analyse my work at times and to have thought through it, however I need to be able to just feel and be the character.