BY EVAN CAIN
VICE-PRESIDENT/ CO-EDITOR IN CHIEF/ ARTS AND CULTURE HEAD
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THE ROLE OF THE ARTIST DURING QUARANTINE
As an actress and theatre/film lover, my life has been centered around and shaped by art. Now that society is faced with this unbelievable and confusing reality of the Coronavirus quarantine, artists all around the world are struggling to find their voice and keep in touch with their artistic processes. While it is extremely difficult to predict when this will all end and how the transition back into “real life” will proceed, the artists of the world have a choice. We can sit idly by and wait for our chance to jump back on the stage, or we can do what artists always do: reflect, collaborate, and create. The majority of the world’s population has never experienced this kind of mandatory isolation, which makes it a more interesting study for the future. People existing in this very moment will be interrogated and calculated by future generations in the hopes of understanding human connection and how it was severed during this time. Artists now have the chance to mirror how society is feeling/ reacting as well as work to connect people in this powerful movement of disconnect. A vital element of the creative process is the method or technique in which the art is created. This article will explore a number of acting methods that are most famously used in modern drama and theatre studies.
THE STANISLAVSKI SYSTEM
Constantin Stanislavski was a Russian actor and director who is famously known for his naturalistic performance technique, known as the “Stanislavski System.” He had a hypersensitive observation of the world, leading to his curiosity and study of human behaviour. Stanislavski was obsessed with the creation of real human experience through fictional circumstances, meaning he wanted to find a way to create true human interaction and feelings while on stage with an audience watching his every move. Stanislavki understood that it is absolutely vital to know every circumstance and aspect of your character in order to perform a believable act. He called these the Given Circumstances, which is the first step in truly mastering your character. This can be done by going through the script and asking yourself questions such as:
Who am I talking to? Where am I? Why am I here? What relationships do I have? Etc.
Another vital aspect of Stanislavki’s method is The Magic If, which is being able to understand what your character might be feeling in a certain moment by putting yourself, as the actor, in their shoes. By being able to imagine your personal reaction to your character’s given circumstances, it will create a more believable and genuine performance.
The “Stanislavski System” also allows actors to question a character’s circumstance in every line, creating a rigour to the acting. The basic circumstance questions are:
TASK: What is your character doing at this moment?
TACTIC: What action does your character take to complete this task?
OBJECTIVE: Why is your character doing this task at this very moment?
OBSTACLE: What is in the way of your character completing this task?
“THE MAGIC IF”: What would you (as the actor) do if you were in your character’s circumstances?
Stanislavski training has been utilized by actors all around the world for centuries, and it is a fabulous way to improve your truthful acting skills and hyper-focus on your character.
THE MEISNER TECHNIQUE
Sanford Meisner was an actor and theatre teacher in America who focused on “the reality of doing” and developed a technique that would be useful to actors everywhere. His mission was to promote the idea that “Acting is living truthfully under imaginary circumstances,” which directly relates to the Stanislavski System. Meisner was able to put a unique spin on the approach of understanding a character’s given circumstances through creating a series of routines that are meant to discover genuine reactions and feelings provoked by one’s scene partner. The three major components of this technique are:
Emotional Preparation: This is the process in which actors allow themselves to create deep emotional connections to their own personal experiences and channel them through their character while being fully available to their scene partner. The power of observation and intense inspirations between both scene partners is extremely important. This creates genuine feelings, which the audience picks up on, on stage: rather than “acting” excited to see their partner, one simply is excited.
Repetition: The foundation of Meisner’s entire technique is based on the organic reactions of each actor and the tool of repetition that is used to get an actor out of their head so that they are fully observant. Actors also learn to rely on the relationship and connection with their partner rather than the dialogue, which steers them further away from pretending and further towards authenticity.
Improvisation: Through Meisner’s teachings, the idea of remaining in the moment on stage, rather than just thinking about your next line/movement, was promoted. By using improvisational tools to demonstrate authentic emotions, actors begin to lose their self-consciousness and self-judgement.
While the Meisner technique is very taxing and difficult to understand at times, it allows actors to expand their truthful acting skills as well as reach a very personal level of understanding of their characters and relationships with others.
THE LABAN METHOD
Rudolf Laban was an Austrian dancer and choreographer who studied human movement and its impact on the mind. The Laban Method was primarily used for dancers/ choreographers, but in the 80s and 90s, it began to prove useful to the creative process of actors. This method focuses on the exploration of a character through the body and helps actors understand internal impulse/ natural reactions that their body is able to portray. Laban categorized human movement as:
Direction: direct or indirect
Weight: heavy or light
Speed: quick or sustained
Flow: bound of free
These four components serve as the foundation to The Eight Efforts that Laban is famously known for. These efforts create ideas of movement that could be used in certain situations:
Wring: indirect, sustained, heavy, bound
Press: direct, sustained, heavy, bound
Flick: indirect, quick, light, free
Dab: direct, quick, light, bound
Glide: direct, sustained, light, free
Float: indirect, sustained, light, free
Punch: direct, quick, heavy, bound
Slash: indirect, quick, heavy, free
Actors often begin with a breathing exercise, letting go of all emotions they may have felt that day, and then slowly begin to think of one of the efforts. The effort will first begin at the tip of their fingertips, slowly guiding them to a standing position and soon moving consistently through their entire body. The Laban Technique includes many exhausting yet exhilarating exercises that allows actors to fully engage and understand the movement while offering an opportunity to employ these efforts into their work.
UTA HAGEN
Uta Hagen was an actress and acting teacher who created a method of acting based on the Stanislavski System. Her method was primarily based on the idea of realism and the transfer of an actor’s personal experiences into their character, building truthful connections based on their own realities. The major elements of the Uta Hagen technique are substitution, transference, specificity, authenticity, and preparation.
While other theatre majors promoted the mentally re-creations of an actor’s own personal experiences while thinking about their given circumstances, Uta’s method taught the technique of substitution. She believed that it was dangerous to become too connected to a certain scene or feeling while acting because an actor had the potential to get lost in the role. Instead, she taught the idea of an actor associating their own real life experiences and transferring those into the show, rather than giving themselves completely to the given circumstances in which they would provide organic feelings to.
By using the method of substitution, one can start to make definitive choices as their character through the technique of “transference,” which is finding their own relationship to the character based on personal connections. However, Uta Hagen stresses that an actor should never substitute an experience they are uncomfortable sharing on stage. Something my theatre teacher always reminds me of is: theatre is not therapy. The element of “specificity” explains that one should fully understand the circumstances of their character, which are evident through Stanislavski's given circumstances questions above. The last two components are authenticity and preparation, which both play off of the Stanislavski system, once again. It is vital to be completely observant and available to your scene partner, which will allow for authentic and inspired reactions. By focusing on the objectives of the character, it further conveys the overarching idea that an actor’s energy on stage is completely reliant on the actor having a task to complete and the means in which they complete it.
OTHER ACTING TECHNIQUES
Viola Spolin is another notable American theatre academic, who created a series of “theatre games” that inspire students to respond to other actors in a fast paced and in the moment fashion. She is one of the founders of improv as we know it and she changed the very nature of modern theatre by creating spontaneous circumstances of acting.
Stella Adler was also a well known actress and acting teacher who developed a method on the basis of Stanislavski. Her techniques were unique, however, because they focused on the emphasis of imagination, rather than emotional recollections. Adler promoted the idea that imagination was purely based on the natural occurrences one experiences such as textures, aesthetics and sounds of everyday life. From these inspirations, she believed an actor was able to create vivid, detailed images and use these in their creative processes.
Lastly, Lee Strasberg’s method acting was created to intensify an actor's emotions by implementing their character’s experiences into their own life. This method trains an actor to fully submit to a role and behave realistically under false pretenses. For example, Jim Carrey’s Moon Man. Now, Jim Carrey is not usually what comes to mind when someone mentions method acting, however, during the filming of this movie, he insisted on being called his character’s name on and off the set as well as pranked people every day on the set. A simpler example of this is implementing your character’s “isms” and body language into your everyday life.
Now that we have explored numerous methods of acting, go try them out! Explore a few of these deeper and implement them in your next monologue, song, scene, or show.
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