Initial response to the play

As I have now read the Playhouse Creatures, written by April De Angelis, I feel that it might be a good idea for me to write a simple reaction to the play, discuss some things that I might not have completely understood and things that I especially liked.

To write a short synopsis of the play, it shows the lives of women aspiring to become actresses in the 1660's. It is a very feminist play, since it purposely focuses on the female characters, only having a couple of men shown in the scenes. What I especially like about reading this play, and am excited to start working on, is that all of the characters are well-rounded with complex emotions throughout the play, something that is very hard to find for such female-dominated plays still these days.
   I really enjoyed Mrs. Farley's character, since she had a large range of emotions in each of her scenes and she seemed like a complex person to play. She was an especially ambitious character, doing anything to get further with her career. Also Mrs. Marhsall's character caught my eye, but I am not sure why. Perhaps her contrast to Nell Gwyn and Mrs. Farley, two young whimsical women, as to Mrs. Marshall being more poised and mature.
  The beginning of the play was a bit hard to understand, since it kept jumping from flash-forward(?) back to the story. I think I need to read the play again, and really focus on figuring out what does the rapid change in set mean. It might be, that the parts with this character Doll Common are from after life, or something else that sort.

   This play definitely needs a lot of research done, about the time era and the characters, since pretty much all of them are based on real life characters. I can't wait to start working on a character, thought, since the play seemed to have loads of interesting bits to analyze!

18.12.2013

   Following with Stanislavski, the next area we explored during our classes would be objective. Objective, simply put, is a goal that a character wants to achieve, giving the characters every action purpose. Different objectives are divided with units, one unit containing one objective for the character. As the goal changes, so does the unit. There is also the super objective, which is the basically what the play is about, you might also be talking about themes with the super objective. It is about what we want communicate with the play and is the main driving force.

   We started to explore objectives during class by doing this exercise, where we had to stop our pair from leaving the room. The trick was, that we weren't allowed to touch our pairs, but we had to convince them by making excuses why the other one should stay, or in case you were on the counter side, why they should let you leave. This was really to let us dabble with objective, and how we used it to get what we wanted. It was quite common for people to make up the most exaggerated excuses, like I was dying or having a baby at one point, to get what we wanted. 
    In the second exercise, two people were picked at a time to improvise a simple scene on stage, with both been given a secret objective. Both of the people were supposed to try and get what they wanted, without showing their objective to their counter partner. For example, when I was doing my scene with Yunusa, our scene was about a couple who were about to go to dinner party with my friends. Both of our characters did not want to go to that dinner, so we shared the same objective, but for different reasons.  It was interesting to try to do this in a way that it wouldn't show, with staying true to our theme of naturalism. You couldn't just go and say "I don't want to go" because that would have been against the whole idea of the exercise, and so I tried to make up excuses for my character, why they shouldn't go. 
   Both of these exercises were really discovering how to use objective, and how to get something you sometimes need to take a little detour, or settle on the next best thing. 

   This little picture gives an example, how objectives work and how to use it. A verb is always used to talk about an objective. Then comes the obstacle to get over, which leads to amendment, which is the result we get, perhaps with minor changes to what we were first wanting.

17.12.2013

As our current theme for our classes is Stanislavski and naturalism, today we started out with exercises doing with given circumstances, which is information about setting or character, ergo the situation the actor can work on whilst creating the scene and character. Given circumstances can be found e.g. from research(about the play, playwright, set time etc), script(how the character talks/reacts, stage directions, how other characters talk/react, subtext) or the director.

The first exercise we did started out with us walking in neutral around the space. We were then given different kind of situations to be in, starting out with us being in a church. It wasn't said, what we were doing there, but started out by just saying that we were in a church. We had to think about, how we would walk and act in the church, if we would actually be in one. My initial reaction to this was some sort of fear. Taking in consideration the situation I was at the time with my personal life, I automatically connected the church-scenario with death and judgement. I showed this in my movement by trying to walk slowly, yet keeping a certain cautiousness and stiffness in it as well.
   Then, bit by bit we were given more information about the situation, we were at a wedding. It felt like a huge weight had been lifted of my shoulders, and my movement changed into more relaxed and calm than before. It was now that I could imagine the beauty of the architecture, with all the mosaic pictures, and the music echoing up the towers. This really showed, that even the littlest information can change how we personally view certain situations, showing the importance of research about the given circumstance.
     After the church the scenario, the situation was changed into a busy city street. Everyone rushing around, going on about with their own business, some even running. Somewhere, where there is a lot of people around, I could feel the pressure to look presentable, but still try get on with my business as fast as possible. I was imagining myself going to an important job interview or an audition, somewhere where I was supposed to impress people with my shining personality, and so I would have to be ready to present my best features. Then we were given more inside to the situation; it was our mother that we were all going to meet with. For some, this situation turned out be even a bit comical, as you saw people actually slowing down to annoy their mothers even further. My movement changed in the fact, that before I still tried to keep some of my dignity by not rushing around too much, but trying to keep my focus, but as the scenario changed, my running around changed into something a bit more chaotic, not being sure where I was actually heading to, just trying to get there as fast as possible.

Another aspect of naturalism that we touched upon was exploring the magical 'What if'. What if, is basically imagining yourself in the given circumstance or situation, asking the question "What if I was in this characters place? What would I do? How would I react?". This largely to help with conveying a naturalistic response and range of emotions. It helps to transfer the characters aim into the actor's.

The second exercise was much more to do with Stanislavski's 'what if'. The scene was that the whole class was at a cottage celebrating the new years eve together. At this point, nothing else was revealed to us yet. People started to get on with different things, some starting to drink and sing songs together, and some gathered around the fireplace to warm up and play games. Difficulty in this was, that we were not given any characters, but the idea was to react as yourself. Things started to stir-up a bit when it was announced on the radio, that a mad man from a near by prison has escaped. For me this situation seemed unbelievable, so I reacted I would probably react in real life, by denying the whole situation and staying optimistic "Nothing is going to happen, it is unlikely that a murderer will come to a cottage full of people".  Some people started panicking or getting frustrated. As the power went out, the panicking just grew bigger and by the time the loud bangs came to be, there was no reasonable person in the cottage. Okay, perhaps there a couple who tried to make sense of it, or do something to help, but all the help was muffled by the helpless cries of scared people. I even tried get people notice that one of us was missing, but it was very soon forgotten about.
   I am not sure if this truly was how people would react, if they were actually in this situation. Of course, because we did not have actual alcohol to affect our way of thinking, some things might have gone completely different.


 

9.12.2013

Today we looked more detailed into naturalism and its creator, Konstantin Stanislavski. Stanislavski was a actor, director and a teacher born in the middle of the rise of the middle class in Russia. He was born into wealthy family, which is how he could finance his 'hobby' of being a amateur actor right up to his mid-twenties. The theatre at that time was one dimensional acting, with over the top gestures used to convey varying emotions. Actors were typecast  and writers were only  there to write plays for the starts to show their acting. Still, there was a new movement rising in theatre, naturalism. Nemirovich-Danchenko(theatre critic/teacher/director) and Anton Chekhov(writer), would be a big part of this new kind of theatre with Stanislavski. This movement in art literature and theatre was Naturalism, which came from realism, meaning something that seeks to represent human experience and society close to true life. It also adds to this the ideas of Darwin about heredity and environment influence determining human motivation and behaviour. In theatre, naturalism was used to create a perfect illusion of reality, using 3 dimensional sets, everyday speech and telling stories about today's middle and working class in a secular world. Naturalistic acting was a lot about bringing the artistic truth to the stage and being able to tidy up reality, but still remaining true. It was a lot about becoming the character, starting from the internal psychology and then moving to external expression. One of the most important things was that everything you do has a purpose.

The two exercises we did today, were both heavily to do with naturalism, and giving us the chance to have our first experience at it. The first exercise of the two actually started way before most of us knew about it. Lucy had lost her earrings, and so as she drew more and more attention to it, asking our tutor even to have a break in the class to search for them, people started to look for the jewellery, not knowing that this was actually planned out. After sometime of searching, we were told the true nature of this situation, and asked to repeat what did exactly the same way. So, we started searching again, but it wasn't exactly same as it was the first time. Before we were told about this exercise, I truly felt sorry for Lucy, but at the same time, I didn't really know what to do. Handful of people were looking from every corner, and I honestly just felt like I would be in the way if I would go and join them, and that is why I found myself either standing clueless or comforting Lucy on and off. I noticed other people the same thing, not really knowing what to do, but on the second time, most went searching right away and there a lot more actual searching going, Of course now, people knew that the earrings weren't actually lost, and so the atmosphere was a lot more relaxed and people were cracking jokes about it, but this wasn't really true to naturalism and to the exercise, which purpose was to mimic what we did first time, trying to be as close reality as possible. I noticed this in myself as well at first. I was far more involved with the search, until I realized, this wasn't exactly what I did. I think why more people searching was because now people were rather doing what they would have wanted themselves to do, be useful.

The second exercise was about given circumstances. Each of us were given a circumstance our character was in, and from that we had to decide ourselves what we were going to be doing with it, what emotions we wanted to portray and how we reacted to the space around us, and then present it to others. This exercise was a lot about knowing how to control your actions, not to show too much, but be as realistic as possible in the situation you were given. For example, I was given the circumstance of being at the doctors office, waiting for my pregnancy tests results. What I did to act this out, I showed a bit of nervousness, because doctor's office isn't the most relaxed space and waiting for a test result can be quite nerve-wrecking. But I still wanted there to be a hint of happiness in there, not to have my character be completely freaking out about the fact that she might be having a child.