Performers in our production of Sue Townsend's play WOMBERANG! (2003)
had to use focus to stay in character throughout our tour of this hospital-set comedy.
FOCUS is an important skill to develop. Have you ever seen someone who is so intently focused on what they're doing that you almost have to go over and see what's going on? Their focus on what they're doing is total and intense.
So, if you're working on a scene, for example, in which you're trying to convince another character to believe you - speak and act as if your life depended on your convincing them.
Every objective or intention you create for your character should have that much intensity attached to it. Go after your objectives with every ounce of your focus and every fibre of your being, as if your life depended on it. This will help you develop stage presence.
Remember: Don't tense up in your efforts, but simply direct all of your will and energy to whatever you're doing onstage.
CONCENTRATION & EMOTIONS
You cannot "will" emotions. In life, emotions are produced of their own accord as a result of certain stimuli which affect you. It is the stimuli upon which you work to recreate when the audience are not there to "pressure" you to "perform".
Actors require at least a basic understanding of Relaxation, Sense Memory and Concentration.
To begin - pick up your script, read it once, form certain ideas, read it again and clarify more for yourself. Then ask yourself, "Where do I start with this?"
First you start with a relaxation exercise.
"THE MAGIC IF"
A good starting point for creating inspiration is a concept Stanislavski (the famed Russian theatre theorist) described as the "magic if". The "magic if" asks the actor to begin his work by asking, "What would I do if I were in these circumstances?"
The answer to this simple question can be a springboard to creativity and inspiration, because it allows the actor to realize the fact that, after all, they are living out a fictional life, a figment of the author's imagination, a character living with sets and prop's in the unreal fantasy world of the theatre or movie set.
It is the actor's job to make the props and set real to themself. By using the "magic if" the actor is granting themself permission to "believe" in these imaginary objects, in the same way a young child believes an imaginary friend is real, or a teddy bear is real, or that they are really a space traveller, secret agent or a monster or that the broomstick they are playing with can really fly or is really a gun or… whatever their imagination allows!
It's magic of the kind that children possess, and few adults retain. Play is for children… But why then are the stories we perform on stage called "Plays"? Because they are just that. Playful, make-believe fantasies.
Play is for children. At Christmas, children are excited about Santa's visit… Whereas the adults are worried just how much the Christmas presents are costing them!
Honest expression is for kids: "I hate you! I hate you! I wish you were dead!" Diplomacy is for adults: "I'd like to visit John in the hospital, but I just can't find the time right now."
If you haven't discovered this yet, here's the BIG NEWS:
Actors are still children!
They have to be. And it's a constant struggle trying to come to terms with the rest of society, which demands that 'grown-ups' control the mind and body of anyone younger! But you may have noticed that adults often have inhibitions and worry about what people think of them - and this self-consciousness usually kicks in around early teenage. Younger children are usually not self-conscious and so not inhibited or shy - so they make great actors! They really go for it when they PLAY and BECOME the character of the astronaut, monster, sports or action hero they're pretending to be.
So think about this. RETAIN YOUR IMMATURITY.
It allows you to be unselfconscious and to act naturally. Because if you're not worried about what people think of you - you can RELAX!
Relaxation exercises and Sense Memory exercises help develop the actor's powers of concentration. After a period of practice, you will become proficient with relaxation and the creation of sensory objects on the stage. Now how do you get to those difficult moments in the scene where it becomes obvious that who you are representing in the story is going through an extremely difficult emotional experience?
There are many ways to achieve true expression of emotion onstage. For example, you might choose an object that has a personal association for you, which you know that by concentrating on the sensory elements of this object, will produce a desired emotional response in you, then you can commit your full attention to the object without concern that the emotion we desire will appear.
This is the most difficult part of using objects to produce emotions. You've tried it in the workshop and at home. It works consistently. But in the performance of the scene, it fails.
Why?
Because you wanted it to work, so it didn't work. The lesson here is that you must never go for the emotion, only for the associated stimuli that have in the past helped produce the emotion. In other words, make the effort to create the sensory stimuli associated with the object of your attention without being at all concerned with the results of this effort.
Compiled by Adam Fresco (2006)
|
