Acting Technique Workshop Plan

Acting Technique Workshop Plan

Stanislavsky: relaxation                                                          20 mins

Michael Chekhov: imagination

First Ten Minuets: Relaxation

·         Turned off lights and get the group to lie in semi-supine with their eyes shut
·         Then tense each part of their body, first isolating their feet then relaxing, continue up the body
·         Then the breathing exercise: get the group to breathe in through their nose for four and then out through their mouths for eight, then twelve and then sixteen, while lying on their backs in semi-supine
·         Shake off their body so their muscles were relaxed and open
·         Stanislavsky believed that being tense on stage affected the actors performance, and part of this reason was being too tight and not in the moment. We will then do a concentration exercise which the group could use before they go on stage to focus themselves: the finger and thumb exercise. This is where you alternate your thumb and little finger on each hand, so for example, you would have your right thumb out and your left little finger out and then switch. This focuses you and gets you out of your head
·         Plosive sounds exercise to warm up your lips and tongue ‘the tip of the tongue, the teeth and the lips’. This exercise warms up the lips and helps with articulation and breathe control.  

He taught that an actor’s voice could only be free if they were completely warmed up and had relaxed vocal chords. If not your voice can become wooden and strained, with no emotion. Stanislavsky believed an actor should be relaxed during rehearsals and before performing because it frees your imagination and enables you to except and embody your character with more ease.

Last Ten Minuets: Imagination

·         Circle of Concentration exercise. This helps open your objectives into a physical action and focus your attention to detail within a scene. Spilt the group into half, one half are the observers, the others the performers. The observers chose one performer to focus their attention on while the performers all stand at a ‘’bus stop’’ as themselves. We then add in one circle of attention:  a piece of gum. The performers have to think about the flavour and chewiness of the gum. Next we will ask them to add in another circle of attention: a backpack. Again they have to decide the weight of the bag, the style and position of the bag. They shouldn’t be focusing too much on either one of these circles. The observers then have to notice how their physicality changes and see which one they focus on more. Feedback time. Ask the observers who they were focusing on and which circle they thought the performer was paying more attention to. For example, if they were focusing more on the gum, hat would be their small circle of concentration and the backpack would be the large circle. Translate this over to Stanislavsky terms, the small circle is your objective for the scene and the large circle is your objective for the play.
·         The Fear exercise. This will be the last exercise before feedback from the workshop. Get the group to lie down and close their eyes imagining something they dislike or are afraid of for example a spider. Get them to think about how it makes them feel and think specifically about what it is which they don’t like. They then have to think how to describe this thing to the rest of the group without naming the main features and what it is, for example if it were a spider, they couldn’t say spins a web. This opens up the imagination and gets you thinking about the hidden details in more depth, deeply expressing how you feel about something and how an emotion affects you. Get a few people to say theirs and the others guess.

End of Workshop.