by Jessica Smyllie 25101541

INTRODUCTION

This Term we have explored many different methodologies to use as an actor approaching a new text. Working with actor and director Claire Eden, we have engaged with multiple texts across different genres, including abstract realist plays, Victorian era farce comedies, and modern musical theatre scripts. This process has been both engaging and informative, significantly increasing my confidence in my acting approach. In this portfolio, I will analyse how I applied different methodologies to specific texts and how successful I found them to be in practise.

GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCES

When exploring methodologies in this unit we looked at Stanislavski’s Given Circumstances, “The given circumstances are the total set of facts and conditions that influence the actor’s work. They include everything that is known and understood about the character, their environment, and their past, as well as the specific situation they face in the scene” (Stanislavski 1936). This was developed practically into the 5 W’s by Uta Hagen aiming to give clarification, “Answering the basic questions of who, what, when, where, why, and how gives the actor a foundation for truthful behaviour” (Hagen, 1973). These are tools that allow actors to fully inhabit their characters and situations, rather than just reading the lines written in the script. Before this Actor and Text class, I had made sure to go into a certain depth of understanding with my acting roles, like watching videos of different performances or exploring the text’s themes. However, my research was nowhere near as extensive as I have learned it needs to be from these two methodologies.

After reading the play Serious Money by Carol Churchill (2002), I got assigned the role of group director. The plays genre is abstract realism, which results in paced scenes, and at times fragmented dialogue that can lack clarity. As the play is set in London stock exchange, the heavy use of financial Jargon could also be confusing to audience members. This leaves little time for characters to share any personal information making them function as more stylised figures than naturalistic characters. Because of this, our research was grounded it in the play’s real-world context, such as capitalism in the 1980’s, insider trading, the financial market at that time. Due to the stylised characters, as director I had to devise aspects of their given circumstances, using that real world context, to create interesting dynamics for the audience.

Marylou, portrayed by Gracie, is the only female present in this scene, which would have been highly unusual within a corporate office environment of that time. This research served as a key given circumstance in our performance. As a result, I wanted to emphasise her social displacement by having her fall out of rhythm during group actions, such as our typewriting sequence, and by making her have delayed reactions when jokes were made, suggesting a lack of inclusion. These choices highlighted her position as an outsider and reinforced her status as the odd one out within the workplace. This play especially helped me realise the importance of given circumstances, if you have no motive behind your actions or characterisation you do not fully understand your dialogue, therefore how will the audience ever understand? I will now approach every character’s actor process starting with this world building.

VIDEO DROPDOWN: This is a video of our first rehearsal after I choreographed our stylistic movement.

During R&D week, we workshopped a new musical titled Dead Famous, a pop-themed psychological thriller exploring the extremes people will go to achieve fame. This project provided a valuable learning experience for my acting process, as research was limited due to the text still being in development and set in the near future (2026). The story focused on a pop star, with all songs in the musical performed as original pop pieces released by her character, the musical is meant to be done only using 7 people, with a group of 20 they took the opportunity to create full out dance choreography and harmonies.

I played a backup dancer for a performance at an awards night, performing CU Next Time. I wanted to create my own circumstances and give my character some stakes so I could create a truthful performance, so I used the 5 W’s. I decided I had just earned the opportunity to perform on stage. From an acting perspective this meant I performed fully and energetically, and for costume doing my makeup brightly as I want to be noticed, as it represented the climax of my hard work and ambition. This process was a great indication of how confident I was becoming with my process as I used techniques individually without being prompted.

IMAGE DROP DOWN : R&D Script annotations of the scene leading into CU Next Time.

MY POP PLAYLIST

The directors inspired their pop songs off of different modern artists, C U Next Time ‘ssarcastic and playful energy, a revenge song aimed at a cheating ex, was inspired by Sabrina Carpenter. I watched her concert videos but also created a music playlist of her and all inspiring artists. I found this surprisingly helpful as it affected my expression and personality when dancing. I used attitude and exaggerated facial expressions to add my own style to the dance, as well isolation and precision in my movements. I played these songs walking to the workshops which guided me into character, bettering my performance and ideas I brought to the table. I will definitely use this again, as engaging with these songs, despite not usually listening to them, provided me a great understanding of my characters personalities and motivations

IMAGE DROPDOWN: My R&D Pop Playlist with inspiring artists such as Sabrina Carpenter, Taylor swift, Charlie XCX

LABEN EFFORTS

The Laben efforts use four movement factors; Space (direct or indirect) , Weight (heavy or light) , Time (sudden or sustained) and Flow. These create the eight effort factors actors can use. Laben Efforts help actors understand how movement expresses emotion and intention by focusing on the quality of movement. When you experiment with the different actions, such as moving with a light weight or sudden time, you physically experience how certain emotions feel in the body, like anger or calmness. By workshopping these efforts, you can discover character choices you may not have discovered through script analysis alone. This is what me and my partner, Amy, did when working with a scene from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (2015).

After doing our world building, we wanted to workshop the dynamic between Lady Bracknell and Jack, choosing to exaggerate their emotions seeing what fits. We found this hard without tying the emotion to a Laben effort. After experimenting with a few combinations, we found the most successful was when Jack was direct, sudden and light, representing yearning and desperation to fulfil his objective of earning Gwendolyn’s hand in marriage, and Lady Bracknell being direct, heavy, sustained, holding a disgust and boredom from Jack until she learns of his past and becomes hungry for gossip. This was successful in helping us workshop another layer of comedy, I would using this again in the actor process to discover my own unique take on the character but I don’t see it as a necessary part of my acting process  

OBJECTIVES

Before experimenting with Laben efforts it is important we understood our Objectives and Super Objectives so we could keep them central. A characters objective is “what a character wants at any given moment”(Stanislavski, 1936), this will always support their super objective. A character’s super objective is their desired outcome by the end of the play, this motivation is clear and drives all their decisions throughout the play.

IMAGE DROPDOWN: My notes from that class showing the table made and Laben efforts we experimented with

As seen attached, I wrote up a table. Establishing Jack’s objective, to gain Lady Bracknell’s approval for Gwendolen’s hand in marriage, and super objective, to marry her and live an honest life as himself, successfully allowed me to maintain focus when layering Laben efforts to deepen my characterisation. I was familiar with identifying a character’s objective on a scene-by-scene basis but anchoring it to a super objective allowed me to be bolder and more confident with my acting choices as they can be easily justified. It is now a key part of my actor process when approaching a new character, the more I have used it the easier I find it to work out my characters super objective.

WALKING THE TEXT

As highlighted in the introduction, Claire led us through multiple genres as to refine our actor process. Previously, I had never studied Shakespeare, so in the beginning I found it slightly daunting. I didn’t know how to perform Shakespeare whilst giving it true meaning and understanding and how to even begin to prepare. After our classes I can confidently say I know how to approach a Shakespearean text, I would begin by walking the text.

Walking the text is a technique founded by Cecily Berry, in her book Voice and the Actor (1973) her approach for actors involves moving around the space when performing vocally so the actor “feels the movement of the language in their body”. Changing direction and responding physically as a placeholder for punctuation helped me build up pace and relax into the text. It created a more spontaneous human response rather than feeling robotic and rehearsed. For example, as Juliet it differentiated my deliveries of ‘O’, the first was delivered with a chesty resonance to convey awe layered with the feeling of being lovestruck, while the second was lighter and more alert, expressing excited anticipation for nurse’s news. I used this technique on Macbeth’s monologue and found it harder to connect with. I think not fully embodying a stoic, masculine walk created a disconnect with my vocal delivery. In contrast, Juliet’s youthful, excitable energy allowed the physicality to feel truthful and justified. In the future I will practice my physicality and work through it more slowly but use this to gain understanding of a Shakesperean text. I will say, I have only used this approach for monologues, it may not work as well for scene dialogue.  

ACTING THROUGH SONG

The preparation process for both song and monologue share many similarities. We tested this with comparing the process of preparation for Juliets monologue and ‘I dreamed a dream’ from Les Misérables. In both I began analysing text to understand meaning and emotional shifts before making performance choices, using Stanislavski’s method of Given circumstances. Both share themes of a tragic love, both yearning for their lover. I focused on my vocality, such as breath control, tone, pace and dynamics to ensure emotional truth.

I have since used the skills acquired for my actor process and transferred them to work in other classes, in Acting through song I have been working on ‘Falling in love with love’ from The boys from Syracuse. I began by analysing the texts given circumstances, and then annotated the shift in emotion throughout the song, where she emotionally begins and ends. This preparation allowed me to really understand the character Adriana, giving it a truthful account of her passionate outspoken personality, not just accurately singing the notes on the page. This is proof alone of how much more confident I am as performer when applying these methodologies to different modes, and what structure I will follow to prepare in the future.

IMAGE DROPDOWN: Annotations on Falling in love with love

CONCLUTION

To conclude, the work within Actor and text has been invaluable in shaping my actor process, teaching me the importance of a successful approach. Researching the text to gain a deeper understanding is necessary to create an authentic connection with a character, which is something I never used to do. While not every methodology connected with me, exploring different approaches familiarised me with how other actors and directors may interpret work. I now feel more capable as a performer to enter the workspace with intention. I found the most successful process for me begins with annotating the script, then a theoretical exploration of the script, examining the characters objectives and the world of the play before moving to practical experimentation to apply said research. These classes have equipped me with strategies that make my performances more thoughtful, expressive, and grounded in the text, and I feel comfortable adapting my actor process to different formats of text, such as monologues, scripts and even song.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berry, C (1973) Voice and the Actor. New York: Wiley Publishing Inc
Churchill, C (2002) Serious Money. New York: Applause
Hagen, U (2008) Respect for acting. New York: Macmillen
Laben, R and Ullman L (2011) The mastery of movement. Alton: Dance Books
Oscar, W (2015) The Importance of Being Earnest. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Shakespeare, W (2012) Macbeth, London: The Arden Shakespeare
Shakespeare, W (2012) Romeo and Juliet, London: The Arden Shakespeare
Stanislavski, K. (1936) An Actor Prepares. Theatre arts books.
Stanislavski, K (2008) An Introduction. London: Bloomsburg