Chekov comedy shorts
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Stanislavskyi
Stanislavski was a theatre practitioner who focused on realism and experimentation. For realism there usually a fourth wall that which helps the actors perform the piece realistically along with a realistic play set in an everyday setting with ordinary people.
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Stanislavski's technique focuses on helping an actor recall the emotions for a role. He used the given circumstances which was the information given about the characters and setting in the script which give actors the starting points to develop the character. Emotion memory is when an actor finds an experience they had where they felt the emotion that the character they're portraying is feeling. The "magic if "is when the actor puts themselves in the characters shoes and what there reaction to the situation would be. The objective and super objective was the characters goal for the performance and the reason for their actions.
His technique is still used to this day with some film actors and directors still using it and a lot of other practitioners base there techniques on his with some alterations to developing characters and scenes.
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With our performances I think we got the realism to the pieces done really well and with rehearsals we also got a lot of the characterisation from the given circumstances and emotion memory.
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Stanislavski's style really fit our performances as our scripts were all realistic situations that his style of acting would amplify the performance of and help with actors characterisation.
Character improv
Run throughs
Developing our sketch was quite difficult as my character was mainly reaction type character while the other character was an all over the top acting which gave my character a lot of cues. We switched our casted characters as I didn't feel like I could do the over the top acting required for the big speaking role and I wanted to do a role which I have never really done before which was a character who was very reaction based which I felt could help develop my performing skills.
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Since my character reacted to a lot of the loud actions of the other character we looked at what lines I should have big reactions to with the biggest one to react to being the line 'Mosquitoes!!' where I suddenly wake up and jump in surprise after the line.
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For characterising we looked at a we did some improvised scenes to see how our characters would react in different situations which definitely helped me turn my character into a calm business man.
For each piece we each helped as a group with looking at each others character as well as helping with each others set and giving the directors of each piece opinions on the sketches that were being performed as well as helping each other with character emotions.
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Over the course of the rehearsals we experimented with different actions and how we were pronouncing certain lines like with the parcel props we had and what was happening with them during the performance. For the parcels they were either whacked of the table during one characters fit of rage or being thrown from the characters hand onto the floor. I also experimented with different reactions like with my character popping up from behind a newspaper or just looking up from staring at the parcels in front of my seat.
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