Stanislavski in Practice

Exercises for Students

Nick O'Brien

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351985956
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Acting & Auditioning

Stanislavski in Practice is an unparalleled step-by-step guide to Stanislavski's system.

Author Nick O'Brien makes this cornerstone of acting accessible to teachers and students alike through the use of practical exercises that allow students to develop their skills. This second edition offers more exercises for the actor, and also new sections on directing and devising productions. Each element of the system is covered practically through studio exercises and jargon-free discussion. Exercises are designed to support syllabi from Edexcel, Eduqas, OCR and AQA to the practice-based requirements of BTEC and IB Theatre.

This is the perfect exercise book for students and a lesson planner for teachers at post-16 and first year undergraduate level.

New to this edition:

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• Thoroughly reorganized sections, including 'Work on the Actor', 'Work on a Role' and 'Developing your Practice';

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• A new chapter on using Stanislavski when devising with a series of exercises that will allow students to structure and create characters within the devising process;

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• A new chapter, Directing Exercise Programme, which will be a series of exercises that allows the student to develop their skills as a director;

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• New glossary with US and UK terms;

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• New exercises developed since the publication of the first edition;
• A new chapter going beyond Stanislavski, exploring exercises from Michael Chekhov, Maria Knebel and Katie Mitchell.

Part I
Work on the actor

1
Imagination

As Stanislavski said, ‘not a single scene, not one single step onstage must be performed mechanically, without an inner reason, that is without the imagination’.¹

Imagination is the oil of the system; without our imaginations, everything would soon grind to a halt. You as students will use your imagination at every stage of the rehearsal process. If you were a gymnast, you would work on your strength, agility and flexibility daily to ready yourself for competition. As a student of drama, you do the same with your imagination. Through the exercises in this chapter, you will start to harness the power of your imagination to create a logical world for the characters you are to play.

imagination

The ability to treat fictional circumstances as if they were real.

Actors today need to use their imaginations more than ever. As you start to work in TV and film, you will find yourself in a wide variety of locations, often having to imagine that you are somewhere completely different. With blue screen technology, you may be standing in a studio surrounded by crew, playing a character who is about to be overwhelmed by an oncoming tidal wave.

This chapter will take you through a series of exercises to help you train your imagination, starting you on the path of using your imagination freely and actively.

1 The Magic if²

Student individual exercise

Aim

To use the magic if in a variety of circumstances.

• Find a space in the studio and sit down. Whatever the actual time is when you are about to start this exercise, imagine that you are a full 12 hours ahead, and that you have been in class for all that time. So, if you are sitting in class and it’s 2 p.m. now, imagine it is 2 a.m. and you have been in class for an additional 12 hours. Say to yourself, ‘What if I had been here for 12 hours, what would I be thinking and feeling?’
• Start to imagine your new circumstances using the magic if. If I was still in the drama studio, what would my surroundings now look like? If I was still here, what about my family – what would they be thinking? How will I get home?
  magic if

  The question, ‘what if’, that the actor asks themselves to trigger the imagination within a given set of circumstances.
• Using if, question yourself, so that you start to imagine you are in the different circumstance and the effect this change is having on you.
• Imagine that you are still in class, but now in a completely different part of the country. If you live in London, imagine you are now in Brighton, by the sea. Now that you live by the sea, imagine what you would do after the class has finished. Imagine your walk home with your changed location.
• Now ask yourself, what if I was in New York? Imagine you are now on a trip to New York to watch a number of Broadway plays and take part in actor workshops. Imagine the change in temperature, the flight over and the anticipation of the workshops you are going to take part in.

Remember to allow your imagination to work freely, without forcing anything.

• We will now change the circumstances: the year is 2042, and the world is a very different place. You are still in a class, but the threat of terrorist attacks permanently hangs over society. This year, there have been eleven attacks on schools and colleges by fundamentalist groups. You all have gas masks in case of attack. All public places now have a gas attack alarm.
• Imagine you were halfway through the lesson. What if the gas alarm went off: what would you do?
• Improvise the alarm going off and start to ask yourselves questions to trigger your imagination. Imagine how you would feel within the circumstances and allow your imagination to feed into your actions.

Notes for the student

Using the imagination should always start off at a gentle speed; don’t try to rush your thoughts, but gently build on them. If you relax when using your imagination, your mind will start to help you out. If you force too much, the mind finds it much harder to work. When the gas alarm goes off, don’t ‘overreact’. Remember, this is an exercise to practise using your imagination and not a performance.

Notes for the teacher

This exercise starts students off on the path to using their imagination actively; by starting slowly, they can build up pictures of their surroundings and recent events. Watch for students who are forcing their imagination and ask them to relax. Stanislavski advised his students to coax their imaginations rather than to force them³. Suggest that students ‘let go’ and allow their imaginations to be free; remind them there is no right or wrong. With the group gas attack improvisation, it may be a good idea to do it a couple of times. If students start to ‘show’ as opposed to ‘imagine’, just remind them that this is not about telling the audience what they are thinking about, but about them practising using their imaginations truthfully within a set of given circumstances.

Student follow-on exercise: within a circumstance

• In Table 1.1, there are five situations to imagine you are in.
• Ask yourself – if I was in this situation what would I be thinking and doing? Then just let your imagination do the rest.

This follow-on exercise is for you to practise using your imagination to create pictures and impressions. By imagining yourself in different circumstances, you are flexing your ability to use your imagination. Don’t sit down and say, ‘now I’m going to imagine’, but do bits here and there, slowly building as you go. While you are brushing your teeth think, ‘what if I was in the Amazon basin right now, how would I be brushing my teeth’, or, when eating lunch, imagine you are the mountaineer at base camp before the last big push to the summit.

Table 1.1 Imagination situations

Working on an oil rig in the North Sea

Professional trekker taking tour parties along the Amazon River

A fire fighter attacking an out-of-control blaze

A mountaineer on his third attempt to climb Everest

A 100-metre runner warming up for the Olympic final

2 Visualization of an Object⁴

Student individual exercise

Aim

To focus your imagination actively, and to develop an ability to use the senses to guide the imagination.

• Find a space in the studio and stand in a relaxed position.
• Imagine you are a tree: decide on what type of tree you are (oak, horse chestnut, silver birch) and how old you are. Have an impression of how long you have stood in this place for – are you an oak tree dating back 400 years, or a young tree still growing strong?
• Where are you? Are you in a forest surrounded by other trees, on the side of a mountain with a view of all the surrounding countryside or in a park looking down on a cricket pitch? What can you see? Imagine the view and how it has changed over the years.
• What can you hear? Can you hear birds singing or aeroplanes flying over? Can you hear the noise of squirrels jumping through your branches?
• What can you smell? The sweet smell of lavender from the meadow, or the rich smell of the sea on the wind?
• What can you feel? Your roots spread evenly beneath you, the nesting of birds in your branches, the swaying of your branches in the wind?
• Now imagine your past and the events you have seen over the course of your life. Seeing a battle rage before you, a storm bringing trees around you crashing down, a family picnicking in the shade of your branches. Or you could visuali...