Monologues in the style of different practitioners - Mrs Williams

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These are three videos of the same monologue but performed in different styles from different practitioners.  We had to take inspiration from this and do a monologue that we had memorised in the style of a practitioner.

My monologue was Protecto (Kid Hero) by D. M. Larson.  When I first performed this monolgue, I did lots of direct audience address throughout the piece which could be related to Brecht.  When I changed it to do it in the style of a different practitioner, I chose Stanislavski.  I wanted my piece to be more naturalistic so i used my own experiences from being a child and gave myself units and objectives to follow.  Instead of direct audience address, I spoke to the teddy bear on the bed.  I found this exercise quite interesting because based on the practitioner, the play can be given a whole new meaning.

Practitioners - Mrs Williams

STANISLAVSKI

• Emotion memory - reliving experience (made actors go mad as it was too traumatic)
• Units and objectives - super-objectives (whole play), through-line (smaller objectives)
• Actioning - if there is a line of text that's not coming across as real, add an action to make it real

STRASBERG

• Changed emotion memory to sense memory - thinking about senses rather than actual experience so actors don't go mad

BRECHT

• 1896-1956
• Grew up in Nazi Germany
• Called out propaganda and got exiled
• Berliner Ensemble
• Three Penny Opera
• Caucasian Chalk Circle
• Good Woman
• Didactic theatre - teaching, to change society
• Epic theatre - alienation, V-effect - turn off audience's emotions but turn on their brain
• "What there is shall go to those that are good for it"
• Characters talk in 3rd person and use direct audience address

PUNCHDRUNK

• Theatre group in Britain
• Started in 2000
• Founded by Felix Barrett
• Promenade theatre - walking
• Site specific - the place is the stimulus - graveyard, school, forest

ARTAUD

• Theatre of cruelty
• 1896-1948
• Known work - The Theatre and It's Double
• Went to Paris in 20s and met the Surrealists
• Acted in a couple of films
• Surrealists rejected him
• 1926-1928 - co-ran Theatre Alfred Jarry - producing work by August Strindberg
• 'The Cenci' - incest heavy
• 1938 - The Theatre and It's Double - surrealism, symbolism
• Psychological and human stagnation - restore theatre to its original destiny - fused together dance, song, pantomime in a perspective of hallucination and fear
• Theatre of cruelty - "in which violent physical images crush and hypnotise the sensibility of the spectator seized by the theatre as a whirlwind of higher forces"

BOAL

• Brazilian
• Forum theatre, invisible theatre and image theatre
• Forum - bringing people from audience to fix scene and make it better
• Invisible - scene with actions protagonist would like to try in real life, potential real life situations
• Image - short scenes, 1-2 minutes, strong imagery

BERKOFF

• 1937 East London, Jewish
• Extreme physicality is used to make sense of the poetic language
• Uses iambic pentameter and rhyming couplets etc.
• Flowing poetic but horrible scenes
• Uses experiences

FRANTIC ASSEMBLY

• Founded 1994
• Work reflects contemporary culture
• Non-naturalistic
• Combines movement, design, music and text
• Frantic method - direction through movement and physical awareness can be implemented in moments of stillness - physical theatre

Constantin Stanislavski - Mrs Williams

Constantin Stanislavski

Born: 1863, Moscow, Russia (Konstantin Sergeyevich Alekseyev)

Died: 1938, Moscow, Russia

Occupation: Actor, Theatre director, Theatre theorist

Literary Movement: Naturalism, Symbolism, Psychological realism, Socialist realism






EARLY LIFE AND CAREER

Born 1863 into a wealthy clan who loved theatre.  His father constructed a stage on the family's estate and his grandmother was a French actress.  He started acting at 14 and developed his theatrical skills over time considerably.  He worked in his family's manufacturing business but performed with other acting groups at the same time.  He gave himself the name Stanislavski in 1885, which was the name of a fellow actor he had met.  In 1888, he married Maria Perevoshchikova, who was a teacher, but then joined Stanislavski in the study and pursuit of acting.

OPENING THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE

Stanislavski founded the Society of Art and Literature in 1888, where he performed and directed productions for almost 10 years.  In 1897, Stanislavski co-founded the Moscow Art Theatre with playwright and director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko.  This would be an alternative to standard theatrical aesthetics of the day.

'STANISLAVSKI METHOD'

Stanislavski worked on providing a structure for actors, during the Moscow Art Theatre's early years, to consistently achieve deep, meaningful and disciplined performances.  He believed that actors needed to inhabit authentic emotions while on stage.  To do so, they could draw up feelings they'd experienced in their own lives.  He also made exercises to help actors find their character's motives to give a performance depth and an unassuming realism.  This is named the 'Stanislavski method' or 'the Method'