Meisner Master class

Today we did a Meisner Master class.

We started it off by each saying two facts about Meisner. My facts were:

1. It’s designed to help you get into your characters. Meisner described it as an “unconscious release of character”
2. The goal of the Meisner method is to eliminate the actor on stage, leaving a character than exists completely on stage.

We then performed Act 1, Scene 4 normally. After this we Meisnered the same scene.

When we asked the audience if they had noticed any changes or developments they all had a lot to say. It flowed more and felt more urgent, the relationships between everyone in the scene was more prominent and the atmosphere was realised. This was good as it showed that the audience understood what Meisner was trying to do.

Creating this master class was very helpful as it reminded us of what the practitioners thought and wanted from their methods. It also gave us the opportunity to apply it directly to our relevant text which was extremely helpful as, after doing this, I was a lot more confident in the scene and my character.

Michael Chekhov

We started off with an exercise where we imagined we were watching our character do a simple, mundane task, as if they were another person completely. We would then pose questions to them, like “what are you doing?”  Or “how are you feeling?”

The first time I did this exercise I found it hard to see the face of my character and what their surroundings were. But as we did the exercise more the surroundings became clearer to me, she was in a kitchen making a cup of coffee, and her face was more defined but still not clear enough for me to make out any features.

This was helpful for me to understand my characters physicality, and her feelings towards her family and her work but it didn't give me any revelations.

We then wrote down:

1. The importance of our character within the play
2. If our character wasn't in the play what would happen

I came up with:

1. She is the representative of the underdog or the nomad in the play; the audience want to see themselves within my character
2. If I wasn't in the play Ruth wouldn't be able to do her job and the dynamics of the government scenes would not work as well

Doing this was useful as it gave me the bigger picture of my character within the play and reminded me of why she is there.

The next exercise we did was to create the atmosphere of a library. When we started it worked and it did feel as if we were in the library, but as time went on the focus started to slip and the atmosphere was broken. It was useful in that reminded me of atmosphere and how important it is but the exercise did not benefit me a great deal.

This session was interesting and reminded me of elements of theatre I had forgotten but it was not very challenging.

Michael Chekhov

He was born in 1821 and was an academy award nominated Russian/American actor, a director, an author and a theatre practitioner. His technique has been used by actors such as Clint Eastwood and Marilyn Monroe. He is the nephew of Anton Chekhov and he worked with Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1912 as an actor. He was forced to leave Russia in 1928 as his teachings were seen as threatening and radical. He exiled to Berlin and continues his practices around Europe.

He wrote his book “To the Actor” in 1953, it was written as a workshop book. There was no other written book for an actor. The themes that most dominant his works were:

• Atmosphere
• Actor’s creativity
• Physicalisation of inner experience

Unlike Anton Chekhov Michael believed that actors were “creative artists, creating characters distinct from themselves”, that they should understand the composition of the play in a directorial way and should be objective (open) in creating roles rather than subjective (biased). The actors should have the ability to work with atmosphere, be able to become a concept of the piece, using imagination to create a character. Michael believed that actors should have a “higher ego”, meaning they are a different self to the everyday self.

Actors should seek characters in imaginative worlds, to not intectualise it and for it not to be based on concrete life stories. Michael wanted to “develop the means of which such images can be created as a shape on stage”. He believed in the actor letting the body and the imagination reveal the character in the play.

“Extraordinary things happen in theatre akin to dreams”

“Profound importance of Chekhov’s work is that its aim is to breed such a race of Actor Poets”

We noted down the differences between our character in the play 13 and ourselves. This was a good starting point as it helped us to realise that our character is not us, and that we are creating someone else to portray.

Michael Chekhov

Declan Donnellan

We went through our 13 scripts and worked out our targets throughout the play.

Targets for the actor are what you are doing and seeing. They should be:

• Changing
• Specific
• Moving
• Outside/external
• Active
• Waiting to be discovered
• Needing to be changed

Declan says of the targets that:

"The stakes open to offer the best escape from the block, the actor must see the target, and before it vanishes, the target must be split in two" - Donnellan

This means that there must be 2 possible outcomes off the situation and in every situations there is a something to be lost and setting to be won.

Declan Donnellan

Declan Donnellan and his partner Nick Ormerod founded the company Cheek By Jowl. They tend to productions at the Barbican. He has directed ballet, musicals and straight theatre, he works in Russian and English.

In pairs we discussed what we thought the blocks are within a rehearsal process. We thought possible options were:

• Lack of confidence, with yourself and your character decisions
• Lines, "I don’t know what I'm saying"
• Lack of knowledge of your character, "I don’t know who I'm meant to be"

Declan's actors blocks:

• I don’t know what I'm doing
• I don’t know what I want
• I don’t know who I am
• I don’t know where I am
• I don’t know how I should move
• I don’t know what I should feel
• I don’t know what I'm saying
• I don’t know what I'm playing

These blocks help the actors to realise the problems

In partners we had to explain in detail our journeys to school yesterday. We all noticed that when our partner was describing something that had happened, eg what they had for breakfast, they looked away. The eye is looking for that memory, you're looking for the target. Declan believed that the actor can never know what they are doing until they know what they're relating it to.

Targets are like more detailed objectives. Some examples of targets are:

• I search for the moon
• I reassure myself
• I open the window
• I step onto the balcony
• I remember my family

Targets need to be clear to make the moment realistic, you have to believe in the target to make it realistic. You need to externalize what you're saying and take it out of yourself. The targets are what your character wants to achieve from the scene, what they have set out to do.

In partners we had devised a scene including a double take. Doing this made the targets clearer. The audience can see your targets changing, doing the scene your target changes, what you think you see changes throughout the scene.

This would be very useful to get deeper into my character and how they think.

Declan

Efforts

We explored the 8 efforts. This is the idea that these efforts "together make up the complete human potential of ways in which we function", so these 8 efforts describe how each human moves or functions.

We started off by drawing out a box with our hands. We explored this box with our hands. We added to this the 8 efforts. So we explored the box with Light/Flexible/Sustained movements, using not only our hands but our whole bodies. We moved through the 8 efforts and exploring the difference in weight.

The eight efforts are:

1. Flicking: Flexible, Sudden, Light

2. Wringing: Flexible, Sustained, Strong

3. Dabbing: Direct, Sudden, Light

4. Punching: Direct, Sudden, Strong

5. Floating: Flexible, Sustained, Light

6. Slashing: Sudden, Strong, Flexible

7. Gliding: Sustained, Light, Direct

8. Pressing: Direct, Sustained, Strong

It was interesting to see how each effort felt so different from each other. Pressing and Slashing I found had the most memorable weight. I found myself becoming exhausted whilst doing this as you spent a lot of energy focusing on the strong feel of both pressing and slashing. In comparison Gliding and Floating were light and easy. I found it interesting to link these efforts with how a character may talk, it's a useful skill to use and can help you to understand your character deeper and can make it easier to get into your characters head. It helps the actor to keep an eye on the performance element.

Laban Efforts graph

Mike Alfreds

Doing a few exercises from Mike Alfreds book, Different Every Night, was interesting as it got me thinking about how I can use exercises from different practitioners to help me during the rehearsal process of a play or a monologue

Some of the exercises we did that were useful to me were:

Late Train:

• The given circumstances we were given were that we were step-siblings who were waiting for a late train
• I found that the relationship between us developed as the improvisation progressed
• It was easy to carry the improvisation on because we knew the given circumstances and so we could explore a lot more things

Position on chair and had to start an improvisation using those positions:

First improvisation:

• I found this hard to carry on because we were not playing people our age, I played a daughter and Emily played a mum, and I was being told off
• I felt that the situation was resolved quickly and we found ourselves feeling awkward because we had ran out of things to explore

Second improvisation:

• The positions we were in created a scene where we were friends, Emily had been dumped and I had been going out with her ex
• This was easier to carry on as we were playing people our age and it seemed to flow better and we could explore a lot more 
• The emotional journey was exciting, we went from sad to angry to sad to sorry all in one improvisation
• We got information from each other and listened to each other more in this improvisation

This exercise was useful as it gave freedom to the actor and helped them make fast decisions. 

I had to go out the room and Emily had to come up with the situation (where we were and what was happening):

• I found myself becoming quite me nervous going into the room because I didn't know what was happening but I was also excited to see what would happen
• Having to follow Emily's lead was exciting and I found that I had to open myself up completely for the improvisation to work
• Finding out things about my character as we went along was interesting and I had to listen a lot more than I usually would have to, it was exciting to do this as going into an improvisation you usually know you're given circumstances so it was fun to explore this idea of not know in anything

Improvisation is a useful skill to use during a rehearsal process, as it challenges your knowledge of the character and helps you to understand your character in more depth. I can see myself using these exercises in the future

Mike Alfreds