Lets Review What is the process for creating character? • What is the First Responsibility of an Actor? – He must know each event down to the tiniest detail in proper sequence • Acting is a by-production of what? – Listening • What are the Given Circumstances? – visible physical characteristics he cannot change; height, weight, race, etc • What is the Second Responsibility of an Actor? – To create a Back Story • What is the Back Story? – A complete biography of the character from birth up to the time the story takes place. What are the three ingredients of a Drama? •Plot: answers the question “What happens in the story?” –exposition –inciting incident –rising action –climax –falling action •Theme: answers the question “what is the story about?” –the theme is the moral or meaning of the story, it can be expressed in one sentence. •Characters –Protagonist – your character in the monologue –Antagonist – the person you talk about in the monologue that stood in your way of getting what you wanted. Freytag's Pyramid – graphs the dramatic structure of the plot Rising Action Climax Falling Action Inciting Incident Exposition More Review •What is sense memory? – "sense memory" is the remembering by the five senses experienced by people in everyday life. These memories are stored in our subconscious mind. The actor can learn to recall these sense memories from the subconscious by concentrating on the real-life memory that is associated with them. •What is emotional recall ? –Stanislavski's exercise which helps the performer present realistic emotions. The performer feels a character's emotion by thinking of an event in his or her own life which led to a similar emotion. •Who ‘invented the theory of method acting behind sense memory and emotional recall? –Russian actor and playwright Konstantin Stanislawsky Going it Alone How do I create a monologue Character? • Stanislavsky's Method Acting Some individuals have been so influential that they have changed the whole of theatrical thinking. • The Russian director, Konstantin Stanislavsky, was one of these. • He started to work in the theatre towards the end of the 19th century. At that time, in European theatre, little time was given to rehearsals or directing. • Actors tended to play types, rather than developing individual roles, and their style was exaggerated and melodramatic. The System • Stanislavsky was dissatisfied with the acting styles. In 1898 he set up his own company, The Moscow Arts Theatre. There, he gradually developed an approach to acting that is sometimes called his ‘system’. • His work had a huge influence on the growth of a more natural acting style and the development of the crucial role of the director in the modern theatre. Finding the Truth • Stanislavsky wanted actors to think deeply about their roles, and make them true-to-life. Here are some of the ways he got actors to do this: • Psychological truth - He looked for performances that sprang from an understanding of the inner feelings and motives of a character, or its psychological truth. He believed actors would only know how to move and speak if they understood how a character thought and felt. Stanislavsky’s Given Circumstances • I have taught you that the given circumstances are the visible physical traits about an actor that cannot be changed. • Stanislavsky meant something else when he spoke of given circumstances. As confusing as it is, in the theatre world given circumstances can mean both the visible physical traits and Stanislavsky’s ‘givens’. • For the purpose of this class, when I am referring to visible physical characteristics I will call those given circumstances, when discussing Stanislavsky I will call them givens. Stanislavsky’s Givens • Stanislavsky believed that the actor had to discover the purpose of every speech and action of his character. He looked for clues in the play: everything the character said or did, what was said about him, stage directions describing his home, possessions, habits, or appearance. These were called givens because they are the information given to the actor by the playwright. • For Stanislavsky the givens were only drawn from the text of the play as I have had you do in your script analysis. Emotional Recall • Remember we learned that Emotional Recall was Stanislavsky's exercise which helps the performer present realistic emotions. The performer feels a character's emotion by thinking of an event in his or her own life which led to a similar emotion. • Emotional Recall was one of Stanislavsky’s tools. He believed that an actor had to be in tune with his or her emotional expression in order to fully express those emotions through each character he or she presented. • This brings us to your assignment. • To find out the best way you recall emotions to use them on stage. • You will need to write a eulogy speech for one of your scene characters, written as YOUR character. If you have a monologue, choose one and write about a person the monologue tells us is special to your character. • We are going to take turns presenting our eulogy speech. I am going to assign you a conflict. You are not allowed to cry while presenting this speech no matter how much you want to! Hold back the tears. Magic ‘If’ • Actors could not always have lived through the experiences of characters in a play. Stanislavsky encouraged them to recall if they had felt anything similar and to remember what it was like. He told them to say “If I was the person in the situation, how would I feel and what would I do?” He called this the magic ‘if’. Magic ‘If’ homework • Sense memory and Emotional Recall were two of the tools Stanislavsky used to find the ‘Magic If’. • Your homework is to answer the question: “If I was the person in the situation, how would I feel and what would I do?” • You are answering this question in reference to your monologue character.
