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.