Practitioner Research

Staniskvlaski
- His family were very rich
- Being an actor was seen as taboo when he was growing up
- He created a stage name that was named after a famous  dancer to protect his families reputation. 
- He wanted the actors to find a situation from their own experience that they could use to relate to their character. 

Staniskvlaski's work focused on naturalism and using real life scenarios to help the actors get into their character role.

He used a method called emotional memory which is where the actor embodies an emotion they have experienced and implements it to the character they are playing. 

Workshop

The class got given the feeling sadness, our mentor Miss Kerr put some sad music on and got us to sit and think of a time that we were really sad. She told us to think of every detail, why we felt sad, where we were when we felt sad, how did we react when we felt this way. 

Once we had done this, we stood up and walked around the space, still thinking about the time we were truly sad. 

When we had finished walking around the space, we discussed how it changed the way we moved and we came up with the following: 
- You felt like you didn't want to look at anyone 
- Your entire body weight felt really heavy
- You felt like you had to put on a facade and pretend like everything was okay. 

When we had finished this, we used another Staniskvlaski technique which was the relaxation technique. This was a technique that he used to get the actors to 'snap out' of their emotions. We did this by lying on the floor, listening to relaxing music and we tensed and relaxed every muscle in our body to help us come out of feeling sad. This was a technique that Staniskvlaski used so he new that his actors were able to come out of different feelings and change between the different emotions they needed to feel whilst they were performing.

Once this workshop had been completed, we moved onto looking at a different technique that that he used. This was tempo-rhythm. 
We looked at what this meant and the tempo aspect is your external action. It is what everyone can see you doing. The rhythm is the internal emotion behind the response. What caused the external action. 

Exercise 
The exercise that our group did was that we lined up the chairs and stood in front of them. We all got given a number (1-8) and we had to think of a scenario of why it would take us that amount of time to sit down. For example, if you got given number 1, what would make you sit down in 1 second. This exercise taught us that each action has a reason to what you are doing and it showed us that you don't express that action or emotion for the sake of it, there is a purpose to the actions. 

The next activity we did for this workshop was we all got given a piece of paper with an instruction written on it and we had to walk around the space and we had to act out the instruction whilst shaking their hand. For example the instruction that I got given was 'everybody is your ex'. So when I shook their hand, I had to act as if I had just bumped into my ex. 

The effect that this had was that it really gets you into the character that you are playing. 

We then did an improvised scene in smaller groups where we pretended that we were in a café and we had to pick a character to act within this improvised scene.

The final activity we did was take a section of the script 'Road' and in pairs and we developed the characters from this script by using a character profile to learn more about the character and by trying to use a northern accent to help us understand the character more as the characters from the production had/used northern accents.

Beckett

- He didn't believe that there was any meaning to life 
- He was an existentialism - this is a philosophical theory or approach which emphasises the existence of an individual person - there is no heaven or hell. 
- He was a reclusive playwright 

Whilst learning about Beckett's views we decided whether we agree with his views or not and we discussed and disagreed with his views and said that there was a purpose to life and if there isn't any purpose or meaning to life then is there any reason for us to be here?

Not I Notes 

Minimal movement - strapped down so the focus is only on the mouth and the words that are being said 

Disjointed sentences - About the same thing but presented in a disjointed and ambiguous way 

Comes back to certain words/phrases - the buzzing. What? Who? She?  

Almost like she is having a conversation with someone but there's no one else there - the conflict of her mind 

Ohio Impromptu Notes 

Why are the two people? The same person but at different ages? 

One is speaking - the other is reacting through small movement and body percussion 
- banging on the table. 

Play Notes 
They're all speaking their own 'thoughts' and it's disjointed but it's like their all having a conversation with each other 
- it all follows, they're talking about an affair 

Why did they change between focus on the entire face and sometimes only on the mouth? 

They're all there but they way they are speaking (in third person) makes it seem like they don't realise they are with and talking to each other 

- Keep alternating between 1st and 3rd person 

- They're talking about killing themselves but there's no emotion there - the focus is completely on the words 

- Almost like they are reading from an account

Beckett's Attributes 

- Language 
- Aesthetics
- Contrast
- Linear/Circular Structure 
- Description of philosophy
- Sense of time 
- Satire 
- Tragi - comedy 

Reduce the language 
'Dead language' 
Symbolism's - ambiguity 
Characters engage in endless ridiculous nonsense 

Aesthetics - Aware of physical demands - minimal movement 

Contrasts:
- body & mind 
- darkness & light
- success & failure

Satire - Satirical e.g. The Simpsons 

Puzzles, word games, constantly waiting

Artaud

Workshop 

Sitting in a dark room, eyes closed and covered 

Climatic music playing 

Water being dripped on us & hair being moved around 

The above emulates the work of Artaud 

-  He was a French playwright 

-  Spent 12 years in an asylum 

-  Created thought provoking work 

'Actors are like torture victims who are being burned and making signs from the stake' - Artaud 

- His intentions were for the audience to be pushed out of their comfort zone

- His work was known as the 'theatre of cruelty'

- He wanted the audience to release the outrages in the theatre so you won't do anything 'bad' in the 'real' world.

- universal language 

- physicality takes over the spoken word 

- not over acted or melodramatic 

An exercise that we did was we split into two groups and we picked an organ. We then used movement to portray this movement. When first acting it out we had to act as though the organ was healthy and then it became destroyed. We did this working in the style of Artuad.