Drama

• Action


  Meaningful and purposeful activity on stage, includes concentrated stillness and inner intensity. Always act with purpose.
• IF (the 'magic if')

  Opens up possibilities for the actor of creating a whole new life for the character and stimulating new emotions. What would happen if...
• Given Circumstance


  The basis for an actress and her role. Created by the playwright, director and designer. Includes the story of the play, facts, events, time and place of action, conditions of life, actor's and director's interpretation, the production, sets, costumes, props, lighting and sound effects.
• Imagination


  The actor must believe in the given circumstances using the imagination. Suspend disbelief, function at a high degree of involvement.
• Circles of Attention


  This leads the actor to relax and focus on stage (called 'solitude in public'). Slowly, like ripples in a pond, it radiates outwards until it embraces the entire stage.
• Units & Objectives


  Units of action, dominated and controlled by the objectives within them. A unit ends with the end of the objective. Likened to buoys in a channel they are guides for an actress on her voyage (helps with learning lines too!).
• Super-Objective and Through-Line of Action


  What is the overarching objective of the play? Through-line: the main current that galvanises (stimulate to action) all the small units and objectives. What is the motivation?
• Emotion Memory


  As your visual memory can reconstruct an inner image of some forgotten thing, place or person, your emotion memory can bring back feelings you have already experienced. This can be triggered by sound, smell or touch.
• Tempo-Rhythm in Movement


  Where there is life there is action; wherever action, movement; where movement, tempo; and where there is tempo there is rhythm. Each character has her own rhythm & tempo according to her circumstances and personality. The inner rhythm may differ from the outer rhythm that conforms to tempo of the overall scene as influenced by the other characters.
• Konstantin Stanislavski


  The art of acting
• The Method of Physical Action

  Towards the end of his life, Stanislavski increasingly placed emphasis on physical expression as a way of training. There was more emphasis on improvisation as a way of unlocking aspects of both the text and the role.
• Konstantin Stanislavski: 'Let someone explain to me why the violinist who plays in the orchestra on the tenth violin must daily perform hour-long exercises or lose his power to play? Why does the dancer work daily over every muscle in his body? Why do the painter, the sculptor, and the writer practice their art each day and count that day lost when they do not work? And why may the dramatic artist do nothing, spend his day in coffee houses and hope for the gift of inspiration in the evening? Enough. Is this an art when its priests speak like amateurs? There is no art that does not demand virtuosity.'
• Building a Character


  • Thinking
  • Feeling
  • Doing
• Intellectualising


  The process of 'becoming' a character and starts with working through and understanding the text
• Internalising


  • Actor is now ready to attempt 'becoming' the character
  • The magic "IF" - if I were in this situation, what or how would I feel, react, behave?
  • Emotional Memory - reliving a similar experience through memory
• Physicalising


  • Taking on the physicality of the character as an ongoing part of the rehearsal process
  • Work on character's gesture, posture, facial expression and movement
  • Create personal mannerisms and a unique body language that conforms to all you have discovered about the character
  • Physical aspects should emerge from feeling and intention and should seem a natural extension of the character
  • Physical aspects should never detract from the psychological truth of the character
• Stanislavski


  Olga Knipper