The future of the character

I've said before how important it is to use Stanislavsky's methods of using your emotional memory to become the character but this is in terms of being in the moment. As well as knowing your character's past and present, you must know what they want for the future. Don't get mistaken for knowing what is going to happen to your character, but more about what your character's goals are, what they want in life, who they want to see etc.

Here's a quick, fun exercise you can do to help you think about your characters future:

Make up a character; give it some given circumstances, who are you, what have you done before now, who is your family, who means the most to you, what have you done recently?

Now place yourself in a prison. You have committed a crime. What is the crime?

You have fifteen minutes of time in the exercise yard. What will you do? How physically fit are you? Do you like the time in the yard? You cannot speak to anyone.

With the last five minutes of the time, you can do what ever you want. What is the first thing you want to do? You cannot speak to anyone during this time or you will be shot by an armed guard.

You find out that some letters have arrived at the prison. Is one for you? How will you react if you have a letter? What does it say? Who is it from? Who did you want it to be from? How do you feel? What if you didn't get a letter? What is your reaction? 

You are allowed to write to your loved one. Take 3 minutes to write everything down what you want to say to this person. How are you feeling? What is on your chest? Are you sorry? 

You hear that half of the prison are going to be freed. How do you feel? What will you feel like if you are freed? How will you feel if you have to stay in the prison? Who do you want to see the most?

Doing this makes you realised how much you look into the future without realising. You need to know your goals for the character to blossom. Do this for other characters that you are playing. Find out what they want from the events or people in the play. What is there ultimate goal? Do they reach their goal?

Sorry again that this is a short one! But it is really effective! I love this which is why I've posted it! If you have any comments on the exercise or want more information, please comment below, or email me at sophiimaria@gmail.com or tweet me at @SophiiMaria

Voice of an Angel

The voice is the primary tool for the human being; it allows us to communicate to let others know how we are feeling and to give commands etc. It is essential for us in day to day life but we are able to extend the voice to beyond its natural boundaries for entertainment purposes, whether it's singing or vocal techniques in acting. The voice includes the whole body! So make sure you warm up your body as well as your voice before you try any speech!

To be able to be good at acting, or singing, or being a good public speaker, you need to have a good vocal range. This means you must be able to work through all the different scales in your voice, and try to extend them if you feel you are quite monotone. If you constantly talk on one level, it becomes boring, and it's not entertaining for anyone watching you. The voice should be fluid and interesting, so changing pitch naturally is a good way to keep people interested in what you are saying. And the chances are that if you are interesting to listen to and sound fluid in what you are saying, you are more likely to be believable and the character and the text show through rather than your process.


You also need to have good resonance in your voice. This is the volume of what you are saying. A lot of inexperienced actors fall into the trap of shouting their lines rather than projecting them. Sometimes you need to say something quietly, but loud enough so the audience can hear; using resonance exercises can help you with this. There are a lot of exercises out there to try, so have a look at a few that deal with resonance. If you have problems with being too loud, however, you may frighten or annoy people in the audience because, although they can hear what you are saying, the way you say it won't be very natural and will start to look amateurist. It's good to be loud sometimes, but if there is no change in your voice, the piece will become very boring.


You also need to be able to breathe. Sounds stupid, but there's a reason for this. If you learn to breathe between the thoughts of the text you are performing, you will be more believable because unfortunately, a lot of the time we breathe at the end of a line (especially in Shakespeare) rather than at the end of a thought. You breathe between the thoughts in real life without even thinking. Try to break down the thoughts, and keep reading through the text slowly. Eventually, piece together everything that you are saying so it is fluid, is believable and the audience is more likely to see the character, not you.


Always take care with any exercises you find on the internet to do with your voice. Only do what you are comfortable doing and make sure you drink LOTS of water when you do. If you find your voice is getting sore, drink hot honey and lemonade, it tastes gorgeous and is very helpful for sore throats! Also, it is known that pineapple juice is good for the voice (I forget why). Avoid drinks like tea and coffee when practising your voice and don't eat a lot of chocolate either (but you can as a reward afterwards ;D). 


Sorry this is a short post but I have been very busy today! :( Bad times... But I will do more on the voice at a later date! Put comments below with any sort of exercises you know or any tips and tricks you could tell us all! Thanks for reading 


:D

The importance of knowing your script!

Now I know a lot of drama students (and professional actors) hate performing Shakespearean texts because of the flowery, poetic language that is sometimes difficult to understand, but for the few of us that adore Shakespeare (like myself!), the language is just something to get our teeth stuck into. 

I have just come back from a mini rehearsal with my duologue partner and I could not rave about the importance of knowing your text more than what I'm about to! We are doing Act 3 Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet (where the Nurse tells Juliet of Romeo's banishment and Tybalt's death) and we didn't know what the hell Shakespeare was on about when we read through it a couple of times. Then we thought, right, let's go through it, line by line, and try and decode Shakespeare's language. 

You would not believe how much you do actually understand of Shakespeare's texts! If you go through each line - make sure you are not reading the lines as they appear, but as sentences (so forget about the line break and just take notice of commas, full stops etc.) - you will actually be able to get a jist of what he's saying. For example, "What devil art thou that dost torment me thus?" simply means, "Why are you tormenting me and not telling me the truth?" 

Yes, it takes up a lot of time, but understanding what Shakespeare is saying helps you discover what the characters thoughts and feelings, helping you understand how you should play the scene. 

The next thing you should think about is where there are shifts in thought/emotions/goals. Where are the cues that tell you when to change emotions and physical memories? Go through the lines again and mark where these are! All the time you should be reading this over and over, making sure you make sense of what is being said and what your emotive memory should be picking up on so you can successfully portray the emotions needed for the piece! 

Even when you've done this for one scene, or only your scenes in the play, you MUST go through the rest of the play and create character profiles. Character profiles are a collaboration of every single detail about your character. Go through the play and write down all the things that have been said about your character, all the things that your character has said about themselves, and all the things that your character says about other people. 

Once this is done, collect all the given circumstances. These are all the details that are given to you in the text about the scenes, the places, the staging, the characters etc. Everything that is written is a detail about something. Character profiles help with this, but still, go through the text grabbing every single detail about the play, whether it's in the dialogue or the stage directions (obviously there are limited stage directions in Shakespeare but this works for any play too). Shakespeare gives a lot of information about the play in the dialogue so pick through EVERYTHING.

I know it's a lot of hard work but STOP BEING LAZY! If you want to successfully play Shakespearean text you have to put the work in! Work out what is being said, interpret the emotions involved (there may be several ways of going around this too so try them all!) and produce your own interpretation of the text. 

If you have any more tips and tricks on playing Shakespeare, please share them in the comments section or email me at the information at the top of the page! Also, let me know of your experiences with Shakespeare or anything else you find interesting in the world of theatre, film and TV.

:D

P.S. If you find on YouTube clips of the BBC's version of Romeo and Juliet, don't watch it, it's not as good as you might think! (I thought it was absolute rubbish because Juliet is a wimp!)

Drama Snobs

I don't know about you but I get really annoyed by those overly confident types that are instantly classed as the "Drama Snob". No, this is not a hate speech about these kinds of actors, but more of a critique of their style of acting.

Like all stereotypes, there is a general list of common behaviours of this kind of person, including: an overconfident personality, the ability to throw themselves in any sort of acting situation, a smiley attitude, ability to take criticism, a good posture and a generalised British accent to name but a few. 

The thing that annoys me most about this sort of person is their acting style. Don't get me wrong, I am so jealous of how much confidence these people have! To be able to be confident in yourself and throw yourself into any situation is fantastic! I wish I could do it! But I'm sorry, to me the way these people act is not realistic enough. In my opinion, theatre and film should be as realistic as possible (unless you're acting in a genre that doesn't require a lot of realistic acting, i.e. comedy or presenting), but this sort of person has only one or two acting styles that crop up every single time they act. Sometimes, you get the odd person that is just naturally talented and can mould to anything, but this is once every now and again! 

I think this type of actor needs to break out of their habits of being "generally good" at acting. These are the types of people that would benefit hugely from Stanislavskian theory and methodology. If you have the potential for being an amazing actor, why just stick with what you've had since GCSE/A Level Drama? Please boost yourself! Make yourself more realistic because that's what's annoying, the fact that these people are really good, but not realistic enough!

I think it is more important to be realistic in your acting than to be confident. There's nothing worse than watching a performance, whether its TV or film, and cringing at how unrealistic and amaturist the acting is. Again, this is not a hate speech, I'm just stating my opinion. I'll say it again, I am jealous of these people, I just think their acting style could do with a little tweaking! 

If you agree or disagree please leave a comment. I know this will offend a few people but don't take it to heart, I just think some people can do loads better. Let me know what you think!

:D

Pause for Thought

My workshop today informed me that we must take time to pause after each thought. So when we started this I thought, well, yes, it's common sense to pause after each thought. We were given this extract from Electra - Sophocles:

ELECTRA: Sometimes she would let me stay while she undressed. Sometimes she would sit here while I brushed her hair. My mother. She would let me open jars and bottles, sniff and touch, she would let me uncover close things from drawers, treasures, and tell me where they came from. 

Tell me stories of a life before. Sometimes she would hold out her hands for me and I would rub them with oil, taking the rings off, one by one, feeling the deep lines on her knuckles, shifting her skin, gently, over veins and bone. I wanted to climb back inside her, always, and settle down behind her heart. 

As we started reading through the dialogue, our tutor started shouting out more things to think about. 

• What can we gather from the words we have just spoken?
• How do I feel after saying this phrase?
• What is my relationship with the person I have just spoken about?
• How would I react to this memory?

Now when I started getting into this, I completely conjured up a situation that I hadn't ever been in, but still I was feeling emotions towards this situation. After every thought, I revelled in what I had just said, thinking out every possibility. It was quite nice to be forced into thinking about the text in hand, finding out every way you could interpret it. 

Once we had thought about our own little story, we performed them to the whole class. What was interesting about this was that no two stories were the same! Because of the gift of imagination, we were able to think of so many possibilities for this extract that we didn't repeat ourselves. This is why I believe it is important to use your imagination when interpreting a text. 

Normally, when reading a play you look into the given circumstances, which tell you the facts about the characters and their histories, but we were given a lot of freedom in this extract, and we were not expected to know the back story of Electra. If you are ever privileged enough to be able to do this please try what I have just done! 

1. Separate the thoughts in the dialogue
2. Really think about the possibilities of each thought in terms of emotion and physical movement
3. How would you react to these thoughts?
4. Revel in a moment of thought after you say the phrase
5. Stay in these moments throughout the dialogue
6. Repeat this over and over until you have your own story, whether made up or coming from your own experiences.

You may find that you have shifts in thought throughout your dialogue. THIS IS GOOD! Real emotional memories contain shifts in thought and this is the key to keeping the audience engaged and touched by what you are saying. 

All these techniques revolve around Stanislavksy's methods, using absorption, concentration and focus; engaging your imagination and separating your thoughts. Use your own emotional memory and use the words to engage with your own emotions, rather than manufacturing them. Be honest to the text and keep present in the moment rather than thinking ahead. Whilst using your emotional thoughts, find the impulse that makes you want to say the words you're about to say. 

I hope you find this useful! I did which is why I wanted to share this with you all! If you have any comments or questions about this, please comment below! Also if you have any other methods or exercises which you would like to share, again, comment below! If you don't understand any of the words or phrases I will be adding a Glossary to my site in due course which I hope you find helpful too! 

:D