Imagination Exercise Recap
We began this lesson by talking about the imagination exercise in which we had performed the previous week. We spoke about how we, in this exercise, should 'Imagine life, observe life, experience life'.
By 'Imagine life', we mean to properly think yourself into the situation so that your thoughts could completely change (eg. feeling empathy for people you wouldn't typically empathise for, such as killers, paedophiles, etc) to match the mindset of your character's.
By 'Observe life', we simply mean taking in the surroundings in our piece and observing what it is like to see and live in thee enviroments.
Lastly, by 'Experience life', we mean to live and be a part of it because, as actors, we are doers and we should just throw ourselves into whatever we are doing.
Emotion Memory
The first rule when performing emotion memory exercises is to trust your senses (What do you see/smell/touch/taste/hear?) in order to fully grasp the character's life and how they experience it through their senses.
Another important thing to think about is that you shouldn't just think it but you should start to feel it with your body. This is important so that you do not get caught up in your head but you begin to feel it with your whole entire body. If you just think it, you could get caught up in your head and your character delivery will not be very effective as you will mostly be focusing on how you are delivering your lines and how you are appearing on stage.
Using emotional memory involves you bringing up memories from your past and transferring your previous feelings into your body for your character, however you don't have to have experienced the exact feelings as the character (eg. leaving your husband and stepchildren for a new life with a recovering alcoholic) but there are correlatives in your life (such as, dumping your boyfriend for a new life).
An important thing to remember is that this is an experiment for the rehearsal room to see if it works for you. It may not be very effective for auditions (etc) unless you learn how to turn it on and off on command.
Rules
1) Learn your character biography - This is crutial because you need to know your character inside out before you play them so that you can properly communicate your character to the audience.
2) Identify the exact emotion in the scenes - This is so that you can use the 'Emotion Memory' exercise effectively and use it to correlate your memories to suit the emotion needed by your character.
3) Think about the subtext - Think about what the emotion is really about, trying not to get caught up on the surface emotion as you should 'dig deep'.
4) Find the action that will arouse that emotion - By this, I mean find the action/gesture that will properly capture and compliment the emotion you are trying to deliver.
5) You need to be able to control the emotion - Master the emotion instead of becoming it's slave.
Subtext
This simply means playing what is underneath the line. Stanislavsky said only 10% of what's going on in our heads is only ever expressed in words, meaning only 10% of what is going on in the characters' heads is only expressed in the words in the script therefore to fully capture your character when playing them, you should learn who the character is by learning the subtext.
Body language can show emotion; a character could sound very excited and happy, but if their back is hunched over and closed in, it could show that the character is just putting a front on and that they are secretly very shy and sad. Other than body language, silence is just as important as the words; if silence is done well, it can build tension and show relationships and emotions better than the words being spoken - What's unsaid can be more important than what is said.
Subtext is the key to making the character your own because it's your biew in what the character is thinking or feeling so if you interpret the subtext successfully, you will offer a window to the soul.
There is always an objective and there is always a motivation - To show these, movement should be involved. Moving away or closer to something can easily show what objective you wish to fulfil. Also, the impulses behind what we say and what we do can also be very effective in showing character.
By 'Imagine life', we mean to properly think yourself into the situation so that your thoughts could completely change (eg. feeling empathy for people you wouldn't typically empathise for, such as killers, paedophiles, etc) to match the mindset of your character's.
By 'Observe life', we simply mean taking in the surroundings in our piece and observing what it is like to see and live in thee enviroments.
Lastly, by 'Experience life', we mean to live and be a part of it because, as actors, we are doers and we should just throw ourselves into whatever we are doing.
Emotion Memory
The first rule when performing emotion memory exercises is to trust your senses (What do you see/smell/touch/taste/hear?) in order to fully grasp the character's life and how they experience it through their senses.
Another important thing to think about is that you shouldn't just think it but you should start to feel it with your body. This is important so that you do not get caught up in your head but you begin to feel it with your whole entire body. If you just think it, you could get caught up in your head and your character delivery will not be very effective as you will mostly be focusing on how you are delivering your lines and how you are appearing on stage.
Using emotional memory involves you bringing up memories from your past and transferring your previous feelings into your body for your character, however you don't have to have experienced the exact feelings as the character (eg. leaving your husband and stepchildren for a new life with a recovering alcoholic) but there are correlatives in your life (such as, dumping your boyfriend for a new life).
An important thing to remember is that this is an experiment for the rehearsal room to see if it works for you. It may not be very effective for auditions (etc) unless you learn how to turn it on and off on command.
Rules
1) Learn your character biography - This is crutial because you need to know your character inside out before you play them so that you can properly communicate your character to the audience.
2) Identify the exact emotion in the scenes - This is so that you can use the 'Emotion Memory' exercise effectively and use it to correlate your memories to suit the emotion needed by your character.
3) Think about the subtext - Think about what the emotion is really about, trying not to get caught up on the surface emotion as you should 'dig deep'.
4) Find the action that will arouse that emotion - By this, I mean find the action/gesture that will properly capture and compliment the emotion you are trying to deliver.
5) You need to be able to control the emotion - Master the emotion instead of becoming it's slave.
Subtext
This simply means playing what is underneath the line. Stanislavsky said only 10% of what's going on in our heads is only ever expressed in words, meaning only 10% of what is going on in the characters' heads is only expressed in the words in the script therefore to fully capture your character when playing them, you should learn who the character is by learning the subtext.
Body language can show emotion; a character could sound very excited and happy, but if their back is hunched over and closed in, it could show that the character is just putting a front on and that they are secretly very shy and sad. Other than body language, silence is just as important as the words; if silence is done well, it can build tension and show relationships and emotions better than the words being spoken - What's unsaid can be more important than what is said.
Subtext is the key to making the character your own because it's your biew in what the character is thinking or feeling so if you interpret the subtext successfully, you will offer a window to the soul.
There is always an objective and there is always a motivation - To show these, movement should be involved. Moving away or closer to something can easily show what objective you wish to fulfil. Also, the impulses behind what we say and what we do can also be very effective in showing character.
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