Classical Acting Logbook

In this logbook, I am going to look at different Classical Acting styles, that we studied and practiced on the lessons.

Greek Theatre

In our first lesson, we worked with the extract from the play Antigone by Sophocles (441 BC).

Before we started to work with the text, we did some exercises.

Because we were going to work as a chorus, it was necessary to set the right mood. We should have had all standstill in the first exercise until we were all ready to move together. It did not work the first time, even though we tried to complete the task. The next activity was more comfortable because we started to walk together, and then the job was to increase the speed. After we did it successfully, Sonia told us all to stop at the same time. That exercise showed that some of us were eager to work together, look around, make eye contact, and some of us acted more individually.

After that, we split up into pairs and did mirroring exercises and tableaux images, creating a lion.

Symbolism was an essential technique in Ancient Greek Theatre. For example, to show Agamemnon returning from the war, they put a red carpet on the stage. It represented the blood of his enemies. And in our performance, we used a large bird to describe the dieth of the whole army.

Interestingly, the animals played quite a part in an Ancient Greek Theatre. They would appear in a crucial moment of crisis in a tragedy. Also, animals often were symbols of other events or people's emotions. For example, a lion was a symbol of braveness, victory (a king of animals). However, a bird or a dog was a symbol of death (birds flying around dead bodies), a couple of animals would symbolize a friendship or companionship.

Then, when we back to the script, we spoke briefly about the play. It is about two brothers that fight with each other, and then they killed each other in a duel for a city called Thebes. Their uncle Creon becomes the king of the town. One of the brothers buried with all honors. But the other one who attacked Thebes was ordered to stay unburied. Antigone, a sister of those two brothers, goes to Thebes and asks Creon permission to bury her brother. Creon rejects. Antigone does it secretly. Creon is overwhelmed with fury and decides to kill her due to her insubordination. Surprisingly he wants to do that, even though his son wishes to marry Antigone. In the end, she dies on the rocks, Creon's son commits suicide (same as his wife), and the army is coming to Thebes to murder and destroy the city.

For tragedies, the plot was usually that bloody and cruel.

This scene that we were going to stage was right after the battle. In ancient Greece, the chorus explained to the audience situations that just happened on the stage. Usually, 12 people were representing the chorus.

Firstly we read it through together, as people in Ancient Greece would do. Instead of speaking altogether, we separated the lines between us (the chorus needed to speak or sing together to be heard by the audience due to the theatre's size). Because we have a modern theatre that echoes our voices, we did not need to use that technique throughout the whole piece. Also, we put over the words tableaux images of events that happened in that extract.

As it says on my sheet, we were entering the stage from east to west and exiting from west to east. It was a symbol of the sun that it goes up on the east and goes down on the west.

To perform in Ancient Greek style, I realized that you need to be physically strong. The play lasts up to 3 hours (and there were plays even longer). To be on stage and project the voice or dance and sing ask a lot of stamina from you.

Also, to do all those activities simultaneously as other people ask to be a good team player. Further, actors knew the script and physicality, symbolism, and meaning of different masks.

Additionally, the use of symbolism, speaking together, awareness of the audience that they are watching the performance reminded me of the Brechtian style.

First Performance of Greek Theatre:

After the first performance, we share our opinion on it. We did not use any masks (because we did not have any). Still, we applied symbolism (walking from east to west, big bird representing travels), spoke as a chorus, and built tableaux images of a warrior fighting with opposition.

This is our final performance. We applied physical movement, combat fightingl, tableux images and chorus.

In our final performance, we add combat fighting to exaggerate the tragic effect because there was a lot of blood and killings in Greek theatre. I think it worked well.

https://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/interactives/greece/theater/playersProps.html

http://www.24grammata.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/THUMIGER-24grammata.com_.pdf

Commedia De'la Arte

In another rehearsal, we looked at another genre, Italian Renaissance comedy.

We looked at stock characters and then watched some video examples of physical comedy (Mister Bin).

I have realized that physical comedy and jokes still exist and very popular in the modern world.

After that, we did a series of exercise. In the first video we were trying different stock characters from Magnifico to Zanni. My favourite one was Harlequino.

To perform those characters successfully, an actor should have good physicality and be familiar with particular jests of each character:

• Magnifico looks down on everything; straight spine, confident posture, head

• Zanni, leading with the nose, like a pigeon, feet are leading, elbows are wide, extremely curious and enthusiastic, ready to please, walks on tiptoes.

• Pantalone, an older man, version of Magnifico, lost his teeth, mean, bend back, Scrooged, walks on his tiptoes.

• The Doctor, bend knees like he is weighted down with the knowledge, rumble all the time, placed his hands on his stomach, walks from the belly on the tiptoes, make a flop-flop sound with each step.

• Brighella, brain character, cunning servant, bend knees, closed hips, welcoming the guests with hands, might be seductive to first actor/actress, straight back.

• Harlequin is a body character, mirroring other individuals, acrobatic, plastic, associated with monkey or pig (because always hungry), very playful, open loose hips, walks on his tiptoes.

• Columbina, is a center of those characters above; she could be cheerful and cunning at the same time, smart and cruel.

• First actor/First actress they took a lot of space, and everything they do is grand; Shakespearean characters (like Macbeth and lady Macbeth) walk from the chest, open shoulders.

• Young actors, teenager lovers, children of Pantalone and the Doctor, full of joy, cheerful

• The Witch, a dark, powerful, supernatural element, moves in figures eight, round hands, rumbling all the time.

• The Captain, a soldier, is usually portrayed with a sable, straight posture, knees forward.

The characters with masks act like they do not have masks, and the characters without masks treat actors with masks like they do not have masks.

Masks are only types, but with the right gestures, postures, sounds, they come to life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_0TAXWt8hY&t=117s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJEwuurzDe4

That exercise gave me a chance to try all of stock characters and apply certain physicality.

Another physical exercise that we did on the video below. We split up into two groups with three people each, and one of us should be Zanny, Harlequin, or Captain.

That exercise was a mix of improvisation with the use of stock characters. I have learned how characters behave towards each other with the class system. For example, when I played Zanni, I tried to please the Captain, while I would be annoyed by Harlequins jokes. When I played the Captain, I would demand both servants to listen to me, but also I would try to hide my cowardness by Harlequin, so he could not laugh at me. When I played Harlequin, I tried to be playful and joke at all other characters.

I liked the Commedia De'Larte. I find it fascinating that it could be funny even without using the language. It was not my strong point before, but I could apply some gestures to my other roles after doing those exercises.

Another thing that made me fascinated was that the relationship between a mean boss and servant is still funny and relevant during so many centuries.

Restoration Theatre

First of all, I found a monologue from the play I wanted to perform. The monologue from The Country Wife written by William Wycherley seemed perfect to me.

The plot is about Master Horner, who is addicted to sex and has a goal to seduce married women for fun (even his name characterizes him). The local doctor gives him a false certificate that proves that Horner is impotent. Therefore, other gentlemen do not worry about leaving their wives with him alone. On the other side, there is an old gentleman Jack Pinchwife who just got married to a young and beautiful country girl Margery. Margery, having heard about Master Horner and his reputation, is curious. But Jack Pinchwife is suspicious and makes his wife pretend a man when she goes with him to the theatre. However, Master Horner discovers that Margery is a woman and secretly kisses her behind her husband back. When Jack sees it, he makes his wife write a letter expressing disgust for Master Horner, but Margery does otherwise. They continue their affair, but then suddenly, another lady who was fading of another gentleman sends a letter to Master Horner. He gets uncovered that he is not impotent. In the end, Margery successfully proves to her husband that she has been loyal to him and continuous the affair with Master Horner.

The monologue I have chosen is when Margery is writing a letter to Master Horner. In that scene, when Jack Pinchwife goes out of the room, Margery plans to write to Horner secretly the second letter in which she confesses in love to him, instead of hate.

Description of Margery (given circumstances):

- young

- beautiful

- from the country, just moved to London

- has a jealous older husband

- likes entertainment

- excited by being liked by someone

Video of the recording:

From the actors' perspective, to act those roles, an actor should be aware of etiquette and manners, so later they can make a parody. The costume and make-up show the extravagance of fashion, therefore exaggerated. There is a constant breaking of the fourth wall. Actors interact with the audience.

https://englishsummary.com/country-wife-summary-william-wycherley/#A_Flirtatious_Man

https://englishsummary.com/country-wife-characters/

Shakesperian Theatre

It was the first rehearsal when we tried and decided to go with Twelfth Night. At the start, we watched the modernized version of the play by the National Theatre.

On that day, Sonia gave us an extract from the play Twelfth Night. It was Act 2 Scene 5 - the scene set in the garden where Malvolio (the butler) finds the letter he thinks written by his mistress Olivia. But actually, it was written by the main maid Maria to trick Malvolio.

It was interesting to work on the Shakespearean script for the first time. Even though the language was hard, we quickly staged the scene. We used Brechtian techniques, such as modern props (chairs were bushes and trees) and changing roles.

However, the next time instead of going straight to the staging, I would rather read the script through and talk about the words' subtext. Because in Shakesperean plays, words often have a different context.

That day we all tried different characters and different variations of staging. We all enjoyed that scene, and it was one of the primary reasons we picked Twelfth Night for our Christmas performance.

In the following week, I ran a workshop. The main aim was to look at serious exercises to understand Shakespearean characters' interaction with each other in the play. Also, we were going to look at the process of building the drama.

Plan:

1. Short-story exercise where students separate on couples and tell their story to their opponent and then the opponent present this person to the classroom. This exercise helped me to know our new classmates Jess, Josh, and Ed

2. Full body warm-up

3. Improvisation using seven levels of tension using giving situation. This exercise reminded students of such a powerful tool of how to create an emotion or scene

4. Improvisation exercise where Character A likes character B, Character B likes Character C, and Character C does not like anyone. The purpose of this exercise was to show that usually in Shakespeare, a romance builds in a soap opera way, where one character loves the other one, and the other one does not need to love back

Break

5. Talk about the play, who are the main characters, how old are they, where this play happening, time of the year, look at the characters map

6. Exercise the story in 20 mins (took from RSC workshop) – in this exercise, the group of students separated into small groups and then each given a short dialogue. The goal is to create a series of images (freeze frames) build on the dialogue. This exercise helps to reassure that students know the story and know what comes before and after

7. The last activity is called Who Malvolio (took from RSC workshop) is, and here, the goal is to look deeply at this character. Firstly, we briefly talk about what each of us knows about Malvolio. Then we read the short extract from the scene together. I spoke about what was before and what was after. And then, one group of students was given a task to play Angry Malvolio, and the other a task to play Malvolio so that he is not interested in talking to Viola. We split up into three groups of 2. One person was playing Malvolio, and the other was playing Viola. It was interesting to see how different actors play the same character differently. At the end of the exercise, we watched each other and watched another performance by Globe Theatre. The conclusion was that the actor playing Malvolio could perform differently, and it depends on their vision. For example, in the National Theatre performance, Malvolio was played by a woman.

When I was preparing a workshop, I had in mind other exercises, for example, the Emotional corridor. One person walked through a passageway made by classmates. And while 1st person is walking, the other scream something upsetting about the character. The goal of this exercise is to create a feeling of being criticized and unliked. But for ethical reasons, we decided to postpone this exercise till we know our characters.

The other exercise was going to be improvisation, but actors should act as a different gender. After a conversation with Sonia, we decided not to use it because there is a little difference in behavior between males and females nowadays.

I think for playing a character in a Shakespearean play, an actor should have a strong voice. In the past, actors performed in an open-air theatre without any masks or projectors. And I bet it wasn't easy to act when the theatre was full.

Also, it takes a lot of self-discipline to learn the lines and keep remembering them. Some of the words were new to the English language. So it feels like I went through the same process as some actors in the Shakespearean era. Another important note about the language is that an actor should understand the context of the words for the best performance.

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In brief, our group had a task to perform a classical piece in 2 versions: one using traditional practitioner style and one contemporary style.

For the traditional practitioner, we picked Konstantin Stanislavsky, and for the contemporary, we decided on Bertolt Brecht.

To refresh our knowledge of both practitioners, Sonia held workshops and exercises.

Brechtian Techniques

At the start of November, we had an opportunity to practice Brechtian Techniques. Sonia gave us instruction to perform the story of "Three Pigs," but applying step by step different staging elements used by Bertolt Brecht, such as the use of placards, gestures, narrating the story, speaking directly to the audience, and third-person narration multi-rolling and fracting narrative.

The video below shows the process of rehearsing:

First of all, we make sure that everyone knows the story. It is essential to do this initially, so later there will not be any arguments about it. After that, we decided which part each of us plays. Catherine was playing mother Pig/walls, Adam was door/wolf, Kieran was Pig 1, Jess Pig 2, and I was Pig 3.

To visualize the story, we created a series of tableaux scenes. That technique helps to create big objects/animals/things without props.

After that, we add a technique Narrating a Story. It helped to build a character. With that technique, an actor continually breaks the fourth wall and tells the story to the audience.

The next technique was Third Person narration. This time, we talked about our character's feelings, giving feedback from a character's perspective. I found it very interesting because it is easy to contrast events on the stage and character thoughts.

Then we tried the use of Placards. There could be written characters' emotions or personal characteristics, part of the set, time, place, or prop. For example, my character had a double sign - one side Smart, another side Psycho or Adam had a sign "Door" that tells the audience that he is the door.

Following techniques were Gestus and Music. That time we did not use any words. We picked music from Jaws and re-create a story only with movements.

To conclude, those series of Brechtian exercises explained the possibility of creating a funny short story in little time and with no props. I found it useful for future student projects. From a budget perspective, it is more comfortable. For example, instead of a real door, there could be just a sign "door."

From the actor's perspective, it felt more relaxed to improvise and be creative. Because there is no need to analyze or become a character, it takes away a great work. Also, for the same reason, if you do not need to become a character, then you would not need to put yourself into the box named "oh, I cannot do that, because it says on page 3 that I am kind, not evil". Therefore, the performer has more freedom.

After the break, Sonia told us that we needed to create a news story based on a given situation (bank robbery), using Brechtian techniques.

In our group were Catherine, Jess and me. To begin with, we spoke about the roles and the story. Then we experimented with time and placards. At the end of the exercise, we added some story narration. In our final performance, we applied those techniques and showed them to another group. We received positive feedback from Sonia and the other group.

I liked that workshop. It reminded me about the previous year when our group devised a whole play using the same techniques.

Also, it refreshed my memory and helped me at the moment when we staged Twelfth Night in Brechtian style (the video of the modern version is in the blog Twelfth Night https://ltsbjrbank.wixsite.com/tatianalebedeva/post/twelfth-night-logboock)

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We chose Konstantin Stanislavsky as the primary practitioner. The main reason was that we had a straightforward task to perform a classical piece in a classical acting style. That is why we had a series of exercises to fresh our memory.

Stanislavskiy Techniques

Exercises workshop by Sonia

On one of the rehearsals, Sonia ran a workshop to remind techniques that we learned last year.

We did different activities, such as:

- focus games in pairs (being focused is one of the significant points of Stanislavsky technique, the ability to stay focused and concentrated helps an actor to stay in character and be believable on the stage)

- walking "if" through water, fog, ice then as a character (help an actor to improve imagination and broaden actors ability to become different people)

- pass a line of dialogue in a circle (help me to create a different emotion with the same words)

- inner monologue sub-text say the line then translate into the true meaning (that helps to realize that writers mean something else to build the tension in drama or create a comedy)

- play a scene with exaggerated emotions (sometimes it helps to find a new route for acting in certain scenes)

- a job interview with Malvolio, Olivia, and Feste (that exercise aimed to develop improvisation skill and try new routes with the characters)

The next exercise were new to me. The first, run for the pencil (3,2,1 and relax), one group do it, another one observing, then repeat, but everyone knows that there is no go. It was fascinating to observe. The point of the activity was the realization that it is real for the first time when you do something, but after repeating it even a second time, the moment of reality disappear.

Stanislavsky encouraged actors to act on the stage like they were acting for the first time. However, I realized how challenging it is to save the same emotion time after time.

Another exercise that I like was saying the same line but with a different context. It looked entertaining how different actors could show the same emotion within the same line and how various they look.

Repeating those techniques helped me with developing a character and acting later.

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Comparing those two practitioners, I would say that their aim was similar to each other at the start. Both practitioners tried to create a theatre for working-class people, bring it to the mass. For example, Stanislavsky became a director when Russian nobles tried to encourage the lower class to have an education. He tried to portray everyday people on the stage and, together with Checkov, laugh at upper-class society. Brecht was creating theatre between The First and Second World War. He would write and perform his plays by and for working-class people; he would try to educate and challenge the audience.

The significant difference is that Stanislavsky was aiming for realism on the stage (fourth wall), while Brecht was breaking that illusion.

From an actor's perspective, Stanislavskiy's exercises helped develop actors' skills while Brechtian taught to think out of the box.