In our first term at LCON we have been gaining lots of various tools and techniques that we can draw upon when breaking down a scene. the majority of these new methods were delivered by Claire Eden and Tyrrell Jones in our actor and text classes.
Paradise Lost
The first text we studied was Belial’s speech from Paradise Lost by John Milton. I had previously read an adaptation of this play by Kae Tempest but this original text translation was extremely difficult to interpret and understand at first glance. We began by breaking apart the text, picking out words to help piece together the narrative of the speech. I found it helpful to highlight the positive and negative words and the celestial words. This immediately told me that the piece was based around heaven and hell just by the amount of times I picked up my highlighter.
Ethos, Pathos and Logos
After this class, I was interested in different ways to tackle this kind of speech so I came across Aristotle’s ‘Ethos, Pathos and Logos’ idea, these are persuasive strategies that actors and politicians use when doing a speech that is intended to influence or convince the recipient. You can use any 3 of these tactics, ethos which relies on ethics, ‘Ethos persuades by qualities in the speaker’, making the audience believe you have credibility, that they can put their trust in you based on your character, pathos which is the passionate tactic, ‘Pathos seeks to persuade by emotional force’, making your audience like you through use of heart warming tales and personal touches and finally, logos which is the logistics, ‘Logos seeks to persuade by reason‘, using factual information and truth that the audience can’t argue with. I sectioned the text into units and labelled them with one of the 3 tactics that was the most prominent and useful for each section. It was very time consuming and made me think specifically why each word had been chosen but I found it very useful. I think my performance of the speech was majorly enhanced after discovering this technique. It helped me to gain clarity in my character’s aim and added a variation to my speech pattern and emotion that I had previously been struggling to find.
The Bear- Chekhov
(referenced pages)
Units, Objectives and Super Objectives
We started reading the ‘The Bear’ by Anton Chekhov in full and discussing our initial thoughts of the characters and the plot. We were then introduced to Stanislavski’s ‘Units and Objectives’. Firstly, units are a device actors use to divide a play into sections, a new section will begin where there is a change in event. Stanislavski teaches this in his book ‘An Actor Prepares’ in which the director he was working with describes units as an easy way to mark important details in the plot. ‘So an actor must proceed, not by a multitude of details, but by those important units which, like signals, mark his channel and keep him in the right creative line.’ We began applying this approach to The Bear, as you can see from my annotated script, many new ‘units’ come from characters entering or exiting the stage, this is due to a new dynamic shift, either a new personality is introduced to the conversation, or one is being taken away and the atmosphere changes accordingly. A new unit can also be identified when a character is altered/ they alter a different character. We learned about this in Alex Palmer’s Improv classes, this is the idea that what you say or what someone says to you changes you, sending the story down a different path. ‘Engage in responsive listening and to be altered by what you hear’ (Dudeck 2021). For example, the first time Smirnov says ‘I’ve taken a liking to her! A positive liking!’: this is going to change Popova and their relationship.
‘Objectives’ are the reason behind each unit, they are the ‘I want…”s that a character has. For example, as Smirnov, in unit 11, ‘I want Popova to see me differently, I want to show my love’. ‘The mistake most actors make is that they think about the result instead of about the action that must prepare it.’ (Stanislavski 1936). Despite learning Stanislavskian techniques in the past, reading ‘An actor prepares’ has allowed me to combine the practical teaching with the theory and has made his work understandable and useful in practise. As well as objectives, Stanislavski also teaches the importance of having a Super Objective, the objective of a character in the whole play, not just an isolated part. This objective should inform every decision a character makes. I think Smirnov’s super objective is ‘to get his own way’, this informs his want for his money, his want to fight and his want for Popova. If Smirnov is driven by this, it makes his character shallow and narcistic so when he suddenly shifts to infatuation, the audience will understand why because of his self-absorbed drive. These techniques should be decided by the actor and their scene partners, there is no right or wrong to these techniques which makes it a very thoughtful process. I really value these methods, I think that taking the time to really decide what your character wants is so important because that’s how they choose what they’re going to say next. Without knowing why they’re speaking, the acting becomes two dimensional and boring. I will definitely use these methods in the future.
Tactics
‘Tactics’ were the next technique we began applying to The Bear, tactics are what you do to someone to make them change so that you can achieve your objective. “I want (objective) so I am going to use (tactic) to make it happen”. With “I want Popova to see me differently”, my tactic could be “by letting her win and conceding”. If this tactic doesn’t work to achieve my objective then I change it, “… by making her feel protected and submissive”. Each different tactic allows a different outcome. Although the lines in the script never change, the result of the scene can depending on how the characters strive to accomplish their goal. I decided to apply this method to a monologue I’m working on to identify any dramatic difference in delivery. I have attached both versions of Katherine’s monologue from Henry VIII, on one, my tactic was to ‘make me seem fragile and needy so he pities me’ and the other was to ‘show him I am strong and he cannot break me’. Although I can’t tell which version I prefer, I found it really useful to explore Katherine’s feelings towards Henry using tactics.
https://leedsconservatoire.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=f4587ef6-febb-48c9-949b-b25f00efbff4 https://leedsconservatoire.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=098d64d0-1119-4cb3-a925-b25f00efbfdbActioning
Finally, we applied ‘actioning’ to The Bear, this involves adding a transitive verb to a line directed at your scene partner in this format “I (verb) you”. Transitive verbs need a target, they need something else for the word to make sense, for example, “she (kicked) the ball” or for actioning “I (belittle) you”, these words can be found in ‘The Actors thesaurus’ (Caldarone, Lloyd Williams 2004). ‘You need something that efficiently describes all the ways you and your partner’s actions might manifest themselves.’ (Illingworth 2020). We each chose a short section from page 33 to which I attached ‘Condescend, captivate and impress’, there were many combinations in the room which resulted in a wide variety of performances. ‘The test of their success or failure is in your partner’ (Illingworth 2020), if your partner’s performance stayed the same throughout various actions, then those were not the correct ones to use. We also tried using the actioning words as spells and commanding them to our partner before delivering the line which allowed us to embody the action. When we did this in class with Tyrell, I found it really intriguing but I won’t be using this outside of class because of how long it took to action each individual thought. I think my time would be better spent applying one of the earlier techniques I have mentioned.
Love and Information- Caryl Churchill
After our half term, we had Claire Eden who began working on contemporary text with us. Caryl Churchill’s ‘love and information’ is a series of duologues with unspecified characters, they have no names, gender or any other details about themselves. This made for the perfect play to learn how to build a character.
Back Story
In Claire’s lessons, we discovered there were many different ways to reveal a character’s personality and their context. The first was ‘given circumstances’. “Acting is the ability to behave absolutely truthfully under the imaginary circumstances.” (Meisner). But what do you do when we know nothing about the character? We have to use imaginary circumstances. “Imaginary circumstances are then the personal imaginative connections the actor makes to be able to live truthfully under the given circumstances of the text.” (Gonsalves, Irish 2021). So rather than ‘instead of’, these two ideas work together. In the scene ‘secret’, I was character 1, myself and Naima came up with extremely detailed characters and the relationship they share, these were our imaginary circumstances however we were able to pull a few given circumstances from the text, they aren’t ‘close anymore’ an they have a ‘big secret’ so with both sets of facts combined we began to ‘hot seat’ our characters. This is an improvisation game where one person asks the other questions about themselves and they answer in character. This game really helps me to get out of my head when trying to create a character and allows the ideas to flow in naturally.
Eigengrau- Penelope Skinner
In our final lesson of Actor and text, we chose our own duologue to apply our new tools to. Priya and I chose an extract from the play ‘Eigengrau’ by Penelope Skinner, this play had been a favourite of mine but I had never had the chance to ‘put it on it’s feet’ before. We began tackling the scene by discussing our characters’ given and imaginary circumstances and then hot-seating each other to delve deeper. We then mapped out the kitchen where our scene was set, so we could both imagine exactly where everything was. I think this helped a lot, knowing we only had a very small kitchen that was quite messy allowed both characters something different to play with. We also weaved in another device that Claire had taught us, attaching small physical gestures to our characters, Priya’s character is very self righteous and level headed but in this part of the play, she starts to lose her sensible side and begins acting more reckless than usual, Priya embodied this by holding and stroking her own hands, trying to comfort herself for her recent decisions, making her look more anxious than she would have done previously in the play. My character is delusional and excitable so her trait was that she couldn’t stand still. Having something like this to focus on really helps as an actor, you can embody an inner thought or personality trait into an outward gesture, allowing the audience to subtly have a glimpse inside their mind.
Conclusion
To conclude, I have learned lots in our actor and text classes, most of which I will use in the future to enhance my characters and embellish their stories. Each lesson felt like a perfect continuation from the last and I truly understood why every technique existed as they all taught you something new about the narrative you are telling. However, I did find it very time consuming to go into so much detail with every sentence so next time, I am going to prioritise tactics and objectives and see what the scene needs after that. Lots of the time I rush into scenes, I forget that learning lines isn’t the only job of an actor, these lessons have reminded me that you have to take care of your character and make sure you are doing the words justice with exterior research and imagination.
Bibliography
Brandreth, B. (2021). The Modes of Persuasion. In Shakespearean Rhetoric: A Practical Guide for Actors, Directors, Students and Teachers (pp. 36–53). London: The Arden Shakespeare. Retrieved January 2, 2025, from http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350087996.ch-006
Caldarone, M. and Lloyd-Williams, M. (2004a) The actors’ thesaurus. London: Nick Hern.
Dudeck, T.R. , & McClure, C. (2021). Introduction. In T.R. Dudeck & C. McClure (Ed.). The Applied Improvisation Mindset: Tools for Transforming Organizations and Communities (pp. 1–20). London: Methuen Drama. Retrieved January 4, 2025, from http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350143647.ch-I
Gonsalves, A. and Irish, T. (2021) Shakespeare and Meisner: A practical guide for actors, directors, students and teachers. London England: The Arden Shakespeare.
Harvey, G. (2024) What are what rhetorical appeals? ethos, pathos, & logos in film & advertising, FilmDaft. Available at: https://filmdaft.com/how-to-use-ethos-logos-and-pathos-in-film-with-examples/#:~:text=Ethos%2C%20Pathos%2C%20and%20Logos%20are%20modes%20of%20persuasion,emotions%2C%20and%20Logos%20appeals%20to%20logic%20and%20reason. (Accessed: 08 January 2025).
Illingworth, S. (2020). Translating Physical Language. In Exercises for Embodied Actors: Tools for Physical Actioning (pp. 15–22). New York: Focal Press. Retrieved January 8, 2025, from https://www.dramaonlinelibrary.com/encyclopedia-chapter?docid=b-9781000037630&tocid=b-9781000037630-chapter3
Meisner technique (2019) The Meisner Technique Studio. Available at: https://themeisnertechniquestudio.com/meisner-technique/ (Accessed: 08 January 2025).
