Stanislavski’s Activities

1. Stanislavski’s Activities Advanced Drama Fall 2003

2. Activity One • Plan a sequence of actions that will make it necessary for you to relate to the objects you would find in these situations: 1. You are an archaeologist entering the tomb of an Egyptian king. You are the first person to enter there in more than three thousand years.

3. Activity One Continued 2. You are setting the table for a special dinner. You are using heirloom silver, china and crystal. 3. You are a child holding a funeral for a pet of whom you were very fond. 4. You are unwrapping a present you have long anticipating receiving. You cannot restrain your disappointment.

4. Activity One Continued 5. You are a young ruling performing a ceremony like the one required of the young Catherine of Russia. Before the court, she had to open the coffin of her predecessor, the Empress Elizabeth, who had been dead for six months. She had to remove the imperial crown from the dead woman’s dead and place it on her own. 6. You are hungry and penniless in a strange town. You are in the street looking into the window of a bakery filled with delicious foods.

5. Activity One Continued 7. You are putting together a homemade bomb. The handling of the materials is dangerous and your relation to them will be further colored by your purposes in making the bomb. 8. You are a professional wine taster. You decide which of five wines you will award the Grand Prize. 9. You are counting a large sum of money. 10. You are eating a meal.

6. Activity One concluded 11. You are looking at an album of family photographs. 12. You are on a long expedition in which “water discipline” is essential. You have one canteen that must be your entire water supply for another twenty-four hours. Relate to the canteen during a rest break.

7. Activity Two • Using the given circumstances as a basis, plan and carry out a sequence of actions in which you relate specifically to the object. 1. Two women and a man are exploring some unnamed country at some undetermined time. One of them happens on an old-fashioned egg beater, slightly rusty but in working condition. She has no idea what it is.

8. Activity Two Continued 2. Janie rashly tells her new male friend Marty that she knows how to cook a chicken. He brings one for their dinner. While Marty is out of the room, she unwraps the chicken, holds it up by its wings, and examines it carefully without the slightest idea what to do next. But, as she contemplates a relationship with Marty, she slowly cradles the chicken like a baby. 3. Anna is a school teacher who befriends animals. She is a strict vegetarian and refuses to have about her anything made of fur. When she receives a present of a pair of fur-lined gloves, she vehemently rejects them.

9. Activity Two Continued 4. Johnny Williams has been given a copy of Sweets Crane’s will. Sweets is an old man who befriended Johnny when he was a boy but with whom Johnny no longer wants to have association. Johnny does not read well and has difficulty figuring out that Sweets intends to leave him a good deal of property. In defiance, he throws the will on the floor. 5. Nick is alone, confined to his bed by a bad back that barely allows him to move. He reaches for his book and knocks it onto the floor.

10. Activity Two Continued 6. Vince realizes that his grandfather, Dodge, has quietly died. Eh covers his body with a blanket, smells some roses he is carrying, then places the roses on his grandfather’s chest. 7. Jonsson is one of a group of six soldiers guarding a brokend-own armored carrier in Vietnam. After being on a late-night watch for several hours, he looks through their dwindling case of C-rations for something with fruit cocktail.

11. Activity Two Continued 8. Young Johnny Alexander lives a happy life with his improvident father. Often they have little to eat and he swipes grapes from a nearby vineyard. He eats slowly and appreciatively. 9. The middle-aged Mrs. Gibbs helps her neighbor Mrs. Webb string beans as she talks about her secret dream to sell and antique and travel to Parris. 10. The slobbish petty thief, Lee, tries to write a screenplay on his brother Austin’s typewriter. He pecks with one finger, makes many errors, tries to erase, rubs holes in the paper, gets the ribbon tangled up and yanks it out of the machine in frustration.

12. Activity Two Continued 11. The romantic Raina is in love with a soldier who is reported to have performed great deeds of heroism for his country. Alone and night and thinking of her hero, she takes up his portrait, caresses it, and returns it reverently to its place. 12. Helene is spring-cleaning her books. She loves them—they are her dearest friends. She pauses to touch a special favorite, sorts and rearranges volumes, and occasionally decides to throw one out, dropping it in a box. When she is through, she dumps the box of books in the hallway leading to her apartment.

13. Activity Two Continued 13. The coach cherishes a huge silver trophy that was won by his basketball team some years before. It is a symbol of a glorious achievement. Improvise a situation dramatizing his relationship to the trophy. 14. Katrin is a young mute. Although she follows the army with her mother, she has been kept from any knowledge of men. Having observed the ways of the prostitute Yvette, she steals Yvette’s plummed hat and red boots and practices walking about seductively. When an alarm sounds for an approaching enemy attack, she hides the articles of finery, contemplating further use of them.

14. Activity Two Continued 15. The deranged “knight,” Don Quixote, insists that a frightened barber’s brass shaving basin is the stolen “Golden Helmet of Mambrino.” Improvise a scene in which Don Quixote picks up the basin, adores it, tosses away his old casque, and dons his new “helmet.” 16. Mary is an incompetent mother who is wakened in the morning by the crying of her baby. The baby needs attention because the servant on whom the family is completely dependent has not appeared for work. Mary is sickened in her attempt to change the baby’s diaper, a task she cannot perform.

15. Activity Two Continued 17. Androcles is a meek little man who befriends all stray animals. Walking near the jungle, he is confronted by a lion and that is limping and roaring because it has a thorn in its paw. After an initial fright, he extracts the thorn and earn the great beast’s gratitude. Enlist the aid of a partner and improvise this scene, realizing Androcles’ changing relationship toward the lion. 18. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and betting on the flip of a coin. Each toss comes up heads—an impossibility. Rosencrantz pockets each coin as he wins it, betraying no surprise at all. He feels, however, a bit embarassed in taking so much money from his friend.

16. Activity Two Concluded 19. Don Baker is a good-looking young man who has just moved into an apartment in Greenwich Village. Although Don has been blind from birth, he accepts his blindness as more of an inconvenience than a handicap, and he is fiercely protective of his ability to care for himself. He tells Jill, his next-door neighbor, that part of the reason he does not bump into things around the apartment is because he has memorized his room. To prove it, he walks around the room with grace and confidence, calling off each item as he touches or points to it: bed, bookcase, guitar, cane, books, front door, and tape recorder.