Michael Chekhov

He was born in 1891 in Russia. 28 years after Stanislavsky was born. He was an academy award nominated Russian American actor. He was a director, author and theatre practitioner. His acting technique has been used by actors including: Clint Eastwood and Marilyn Monroe. He was the nephew of the playwright Antonio Chekhov. He worked with Stanislavsky from 1912 at the Moscow arts theatre. In 1928 he was forced to leave Russia. As his teaching of theatre was viewed as radical and experimental and threatening to Stalin. He lived in Berlin and all over Europe. 

In 1953 he wrote the book 'to the actor'. No other practitioner had written a workbook for the actor. An actor prepares was a fictional story which showed his method through narrative. At the start he asks the reader to do the exercises in order to learn about them. 

The themes in his work were atmosphere , actors creativity, and physicalisation of inner experience. He believe actors were creative artists creating characters distinct from himself. He believed actors should understand the composition of the play in a way we may have thought only the director needed to. They should be objective not subjective in creative in their roles. This meant they needed to be open. Subjective would mean using your own experiences and memory, this is something Stanislavsky encouraged but Chekhov disagreed. He believed in using your imagination to create a character. 

In Simon Callow's forward to the book he says 'we must overcome our fear of the theatre theatrical when it comes to acting'. This means the fear of this flamboyant theatrical world. He likened theatre to a dream like world and called it a 'poetic medium' and theatre actors are 'actor poets'. He believed the significance of Chekhov's work was to create a new breed of 'actor poets'. 

He wanted characters to develop from the actors imagination. He wouldn't ask his actors to research it but to picture it. He felt the dreams and imaginations of he actors was much more useful as a source for character development then biographies and research. The actor lets the body and the imagination create the play. 

The differences between me and my character:

- she's married I'm not 

- she's Christian I'm atheist

- she has a child I don't

- she's American I'm English 

- she kills someone I haven't done that yet

- she eats meat I don't 

- she lives in London I live in the countryside

- she runs a charity I'm a student 

- she seems to believe she is always right I am frequently wrong and I will admit it

-she has a cook my mum cooks for me

-she's probably a lot older than me

- she goes to prison I haven't been yet 

-she has links to the US and UK government I'm not even old enough to vote 

Declan Donnellan

Donnellan is a theatre practitioner who developed on from Stanislavsky's ideas of 'objectives' and actions in theatre. Alongside Nick Ormerod, he formed a company called Cheek by Jowl in 1981. A lot of their work is performed at the Barbican Theatre. In 1989 he worked as the associate director for the royal national theatre. There he was involved in productions of Sweeney Todd and Angels in America. He also worked with the English national opera, the royal Shakespeare company and the Bolshoi ballet. He is able to work in both the Russian and English language. He wrote the book 'the actor and the target' which explores his theories and practices for acting.

He identified that there are internal blocks which can stop the actor from being able to progress in rehearsals. Some of these blocks are:

• I don't know what I'm saying
• I don't know what I want
• I don't know who I am
• I don't know where I am
• I don't know how I should move
• I don't know how I should feel
• I don't know what I'm playing 

These blocks are internal. Donnellan believed they should then create 'targets' which identify an external objective, because you also identify who or what you are doing your objective to. I thought about how I could apply external targets to my lines in 13, here are some examples:

'Ruby, you should be careful' -  I warn Ruby
'What are you' - I question Ruby
'Do you want one of these' - I offer John
'It's your bedtime' - I instruct Ruby

The idea of using targets as opposed to objectives is that it externalizes your objective. Whatever you do or saying you are doing to someone or something else. In order for this to work you must be able to visualize it. Donnellan developed the idea of seeing what you say.  This is because it is what we as humans naturally do. If you start telling someone a story about your day you are likely to visualize it. This is because we emotionally connect with it and that is also how we remember it. By creating a target it helps you to visualize everything you are doing or saying onstage.
 

Laban Efforts

Today we started off by standing in an imaginary glass box. We were told to mark out the size and shape of this glass box. This was to start us off learning about the Laban efforts. This is the exploration of different ways of moving and speaking. All the ways combined make up all the different ways in which we as humans may function.

The ways of functioning are based on different weights, spaces and times. Within the glass box we were told to move with various different weights, spaces and times:

 Weight
 This refers to the intensity of movement. How much effort it appears to be needing to move. For example: strong movement would require more effort and the movement would appear heavier and more weighted. Light would appear easier and would move through the space smoothly and relaxed.

Space
This means how much or little focus and precision the movement has. If it needs to get to a certain point and neatly, it would be a direct movement. Or the movement could be flexible which means the movement has less purpose to it. It may not have an exact destination it just flows through the space.

Time 
This refers to to the consistency of the movement. A sustained movement would be very smooth, and would glide through the space, flowing from one movement to the next. A broken movement would be very disjointed. It would change direction sharply in the space. 

When you combine the different versions of these you have the laban efforts. These are meant to be able to cover all ways in which humans may move. 

Light+Flexible+Sustained= FLOATING

Light+Flexible+Broken= FLICKING

Light+Direct+Sustained=GLIDING

Light+Direct+Broken= DABBING

Strong+Flexbile+Sustained=WRINGING

Strong+Flexible+Broken= SLASHING

Strong+Direct+Sustained=PRESSING

Strong+Direct+Broken= THRUSTING/PUNCH

We worked through these combinations in our 'glass boxes'. This exercise worked really well as a warm up but also as a way of opening up the possibilities of movement. It was tiring but it helped me to start thinking about how I could apply some of those combinations to my character in 13 and any other character I may play in the future.

We then applied this to our 13 text. We got into scene partners. I worked with the actor playing my daughter. It was interesting to see what happened to our scene when we had dabbing qualities to it or gliding. Our characters conflict a lot onstage so it was good to bring out that conflict by trying it with a pressing and slashing quality. We showed our scene and listened to others. We had to identify what effort people were applying to their lines. I think this is an interesting way of approaching a speech. However, I think it needs to be combined with objectives and other techniques so you aren't just playing an emotional state onstage.

Mike Alfreds Improvisation

In today's workshop we studied Mike Alfreds and his approach to acting. He bases a lot of his acting theories on the work of Stanislavsky and naturalism. Naturalism in theatre, is the idea of creating theatre which has a grounded in normal human behavior and honest human reactions.  A naturalistic play is unlikely to have supernatural elements to it. It is likely to discuss every day, political or social issues. The style of acting is often seen as minimalist and internal. This is because we do not always see so explicitly every emotion a character is going through onstage. It is often implied.

One of the ways to create a naturalistic performance is by using improvisation. This is because improvisation stops the actor from thinking so much about what they are doing and allows them to react instinctively to the stimulus they are given or to the given circumstances. Alfreds used a lot of improvisation with his actors for this exact reason. He believed performances should be different every time. By improvising a scene it opens up the possibilities for what is doable within the scene.

The first activity we did involved improvising a scene with given circumstances. We started off in pairs, sitting on the floor. We were told our two characters were step siblings, and we were waiting at the train station for a train to a family party. This gave us some basis to begin improvising. My scene was easy to start but the relationship was slightly mundane. However, it was interesting to me how little I felt I was acting, I was just working off of what my partner was doing.

We then developed on from this and instead of having given circumstances to improvise from, we simply changed position and began a new scene from scratch. We altered positions 3 times and created 3 different scenes. This was more challenging as we had to work out what our relationship was and what characters we were as we went a long. The second scene we made up was the most successful. I think this is because me and my partner we talking the morning after a party and about everything that had happened. It was interesting because it felt like a conversation we might normally have. The characters were similar to ourselves.

The next exercise we did partner A left the room whilst partner B stayed in the room. I was A. We were instructed to enter the room and go to our partner and go along with whatever they said and whatever happened. To work out what our given circumstances were by improvising. B on the other hand had created a situation and a character for us and themselves. When I entered the room by partner was pretending to be a small child who like pretending to a cat a lot. It became clear to me her emotional state was unstable and that I was someone who regularly visited. I found myself taking on a nurturing role of this child but I felt like I wasn't the mother. In the end I worked out that I was the sister of this child who was in foster care and there were some issues with our mother. This exercise made me realise that you do not always need to rely solely on what is written in a script or what is given to you, through improvisation alone you can develop a character with depth and a back story.