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The Method. Step 1. Relaxation. Relaxation is the foundation upon which rests the "house of method". Without this foundation, the house sinks into the quicksand of chaotic convention.
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Step 1. Relaxation • Relaxation is the foundation upon which rests the "house of method". Without this foundation, the house sinks into the quicksand of chaotic convention. • Stanislavski referred to tension as the "occupational disease" of the actor. Strasberg believed that tension is the actor's greatest enemy. "Tension" for the actor, is the use of those muscles, thoughts and energies not necessary to accomplish the actor's specific task on the stage, this task being the actor's object of attention, or "object" , upon which the actor has chosen to concentrate. • Strasberg's Relaxation Exercise was developed to help the actor learn to identify unwanted tension in the muscles of the body, including the neck (the final resting place of hidden tension) and the face (where mental tension manifests itself). • By systematic and deliberate exploration of these muscles, the actor will identify the tension in each of them, and release that tension through an act of will.
Sense Memory • If Relaxation is the foundation upon which rests the "house of method", then Sense Memory is the structure of the house. Without it, the house is a transparent frame sitting on a solid foundation. • Simply stated, "sense memory" is the remembering by the five senses of the sensory impressions experienced by the individual organism in everyday life. These impressions are stored in the subconscious. • The actor can learn to recall these sensory impressions from the subconscious by concentrating on the stimuli associated with them. • If you have ever been hungry enough, and thought about your favorite food, chances are your mouth "watered". This is an example of your senses remembering the taste of the food, and responding accordingly by activating your salivary glands. • Ever reach into a dark closet and pick out the clothing you want to wear just by touching it? Your senses "remember" the touch of the specific material of that particular article of clothing.
Sense Memory Exercise: How To • The sense memory exercise trains our senses to respond on the stage as they do in life. By concentrating on the stimuli associated with a sensory experience, a corresponding response should follow. And that response will be "real", not just a conventional "indication" of the response. • If the actor believes that what he is doing on the stage is real, the audience will also believe that what the actor is doing is real. And creating "real" life is part of what the "method" approach is all about. • Since the author of the script has created the circumstances of his story from his imagination, the actor must know how to make those imaginary circumstances real to himself. The Sense Memory Exercise is a key to unlocking the door of imagined reality.
Sense Memory Scenario • Imagine for a moment you are an actor in a movie that takes place at the North Pole, but the actual scene you are doing is filming inside the studio. You are involved in a scene in which you have been stranded miles from civilization, and have little in the way of protective clothing. You find a small shelter between some rocks. The director wants a couple of shots of you huddled between the rocks to show how miserably cold you are. One of the shots is a close-up. The conventional actor can "play" this scene by indicating the cold in the usual way; shivering, wrapping his arms around himself, blowing his breath into his freezing hands to warm them up, etc. But you want to create the reality of the cold in stark detail. To complicate your work, the studio lights are hot. The makeup artist visits you frequently to wipe the perspiration from your face, and touch up your melting makeup, and powder you. But even before the director calls "Action!", you have already begun creating the cold. You are sensorally recalling how the freezing cold affects you, because you have done this work as an exercise. You know that the cold affects the tip of your nose, and edges of your ears first. You know that your lips get numb quickly, and your fingers get stiff, and hard to move. You know that if you place your hands under your armpits, or down your pants and between your legs at the crotch, it will warm them up. You can feel your toes numbing. You warm your hands under your armpits, and place them momentarily over your ears, then back under your arms.By doing the sensory exploration of how cold affects you, you have created for the director your own unique response to the cold. No other actor can imitate you. It's your reality, and we, the spectator, believe you.
Sense Memory: An Actor’s Confession • When the actor does a sensory exercise, he may find emotional responses occurring that he may not have anticipated. One of my favorite sensory exercises is creating a "place" my parents took me to when I was a young child. It's a stream in the country, where my dad liked to fish. When I start sensorally creating a particular visual aspect of the stream, "seeing" the cliffs that rise above it, and the "dragon flies" swarming about, and the water spiders darting to and fro, and the tadpoles and birds and clearness of the water, and cornfields and woods above the cliffs, and dozens of other details my sense of sight can remember when I am relaxed in a chair, something emotional happens to me.Or when I "feel" the hot summer air on my young skin, and "smell" the stream and the vegetation, or "hear" the wind and the horseflies buzzing past my ear, or "taste" the water of the stream on my lips while dipping into it and the fresh fish Dad caught and Mom cooked over the open fire, I am totally transported to that place, which usually results in an emotional response: melancholy, or sadness. I do not anticipate this response from that exercise. In fact, I was never melancholy or sad when I was actually at that place. I was usually very happy, unless I saw a snake or was stung by a bee. But sensorally creating that particular place at this time in my life produces a quite different emotional experience from that of the original experience. Why? I can only guess. Since that time, Mom and Dad divorced, and much later Mom died. Maybe going back to that place triggers sadness that the perfect world of the nine year old boy that was me then is missed, and longed for now. Does it matter why? No. What matters is that by creating that particular place sensorally, I have an honest emotional response, and I can use that exercise to produce the same emotional response on stage or in front of a camera. And that makes me happy!
Sense Memory Exercise • This is a quiet, independent activity • Think of an event in your life that brought up strong emotions for you. • Think of how each of the five senses reacted to that emotion. • Take a few minutes to “sense” the memory. • Write a 2-3 sentence response to how you felt or what you experienced and give it to me.
Concentration • If Relaxation is the foundation and Sense Memory is the structure of the "house of method", then Concentration is the mortar that fuses the structure to the foundation. Without extremely developed powers of concentration, nothing you do as an actor will have much substance.
Stage Fright/Nervousness INSTANT REMEDY FOR STAGEFRIGHT • "Stage fright" properly should be termed "Audience fright", because that's what it is. When the actor becomes aware that he is being observed by "them", "out there", tension finds its way into the actor's life on the stage. The key word here is "aware". The actor must first become aware of being observed before the observers can cause the actor to suffer that state of self-consciousness known as stage fright. • So the "trick" here is not allowing oneself to become aware of the audience. For the actor, that means concentrating on a specific object. If you are concentrated fully on a specific object, it is impossible to be concentrated on the audience. • On what does the actor concentrate? The actor concentrates on an object. On which object does an actor concentrate? Ideally, the actor concentrates on an object that is suggested from the logic of the play. But this is not always the case, nor is it always necessary.
Stage Fright… • Two actors are having difficulty overcoming a problem in a scene. The problem is usually one resulting from the actors' lack of concentration on a specific object. As an exercise, you can separate the actors, and give each something upon which to concentrate, without letting the other know what this "object of attention" is. Maybe tell Actor A to multiply the numbers 35 and 29 in his head while working the scene, and give an answer by the end of the scene. Actor B, will simply concentrate on his partner, and try to make sure his partner is really listening to him. • The result of this simple, common exercise can be startling. • The actor doing the multiplication is suddenly very concentrated, seemingly involved in deep thought -- and here's the catch -- even though he is not concentrating on something that has anything to do with the play, he nevertheless appears as though he is involved in the life of the play. He seems very real. And he is really thinking on the stage. Not just saying his lines on cue. • Now, faced with Actor A in a concentrated state, Actor B finds his work in the scene has taken a quite different turn. Now he has something to do, and depending upon the amount of concentration Actor A is able to command to achieve his task onstage, Actor B will have no choice other than making a sincere effort to communicate with Actor A. • When this happens, neither actor is aware of the audience, but what the audience perceives at this point is two real people trying to accomplish whatever it is that concerns them in their life on the stage.
The Magic If • A good starting point for creating inspiration is a concept Stanislavski described as the "magic if". The "magic if" asks the actor to begin his work by asking, "What would I do if I were in these circumstances?" • The answer to this simple question can be a springboard to creativity and inspiration, because it allows the actor to realize the fact that, after all, he is living out a fictional life, a figment of the author's imagination, with sets and props that are actually just sets and props -- not real trees or real windows, or real guns. • It is the actor's job to make the props and set real to himself. By using the "magic if" the actor is granting himself permission to "believe" in these imaginary objects, in the same way a young girl believes her doll is real, or a young boy believes he is really "Tarzan ", or "Konan", or that the broomstick he is using is really a gun.
Magic If Scenario: A Director’s Confession • An actor in my workshop was questioning the use of the "magic if" in a scene he was working on. In the scene, he plays a detective who has to take a murderer to justice. This young actor, who is very talented, is a mild mannered person, who is not a " tough guy" type. The actor playing the murderer is a professional boxer in life. Actually, he is very intimidating. I'll call the actor playing the detective "Hal" because that's his name, and the murderer I'll call "Jerry", because that's his name. Hal came to me and said that the "magic if" was not working for him, because "if" he found himself in the author's circumstances in real life, he would be afraid, and probably run from the situation. I told Hal that the author does not give him that advantage, and that he has to live out the apprehension of this dangerous person. I asked Hal to sensorally create having a gun in his jacket pocket to see if that would help. "What if" you had a gun, Hal?He tried it, and it helped some, but Hal still could not make himself believe he could actually take the murderer in, by force if necessary. I wouldn't give Hal an easy way out. I suggested he search hard to find the "real" answer to the question: "What would you do if you were in these circumstances - knowing the author is not going to let you run away?" Hal: "I'd be afraid". Instructor: "So, be afraid. You don't have to be Mike Hammer, or Philip Marlowe. You can be real." Hal: "I'd try to use psychology on him." Instructor: "Good. So use it the way you, Hal, would use it. " Finally, I gave Hal what has become known as Eugene Vakhtangov's formulation of Stanislavski's "Magic If". Vakhtangov, Stanislavski's greatest student, asked, "What would I have to do in order to do what the character does in these circumstances?" So Hal finally decided that having a prop pistol in his jacket pocket gave him enough belief to carry himself through the scene. When we observed the scene done this way, it was obvious that it was working for Hal. He was totally believable as someone not to mess with. It was a departure from the Hal everyone in the workshop has come to know and love. A quite different "character", but really just good old Hal underneath it all. What Hal did affected Jerry's work as well. Jerry wasn't as confident as he had previously seemed "in character". Of critical importance in using the "magic if" in the actor's work is exploring with absolute honesty what the actor would actually do in the often unusual circumstances the author has given. What would you really do if you were robbed at gunpoint? Is there a hero in there or a coward?
Objects • Objects For Actors Lee Strasberg believed that the object, and the resulting concentration from attention to it is the basic building block with which the actor works. By concentrating on an object, the actor establishes a sense of belief and faith, becoming involved in what he is doing. This in turn leads to unconscious experience and behavior. • DEFINITION: An object can be anything, imaginary, physical or fantasy, upon which the actor has chosen to concentrate.It can be a remembered sensory object, such as heat, cold, pain or a particular sound. Or it can be a relationship, past, present or " hoped" for. It can be your scene partner(s). The quality of the air you breathe can be an object of concentration. Objects can include anything offered in the script by the playwright, a shoe, a photograph, a dream you once had, a place you once visited, or something as simple as multiplying, adding, subtracting or dividing numbers mentally (or on paper, or with a calculator). An object, then, is anything on which the actor can concentrate.
Substitution • Let's say the play demands that you are in love with another person in the story. In life, it is an unfortunate coincidence that you actually have no warm feelings at all for your fellow actor. Maybe you have the opposite feelings. What do you do? Fake it? No. You could, as one example, look into the eyes of your scene partner, and sensorally create the eyes of someone you actually do love (or the hair, lips, or nose, etc.). If your powers of concentration are strong when doing this, you will forget who you are working with, and magically believe it is whomever you have "substituted" for that person. Using a substitution to create another person has also been called by some who use this work a "personalization".The reason for this, is because it involves substituting a person, rather than another physical object.
Song and Dance • Strasberg described the result of this exercise as an "X-ray into the problem of the actor's "will" actually carrying through what it is the actor is trying to perform.
Song • The actor first relaxes in a chair before performing the exercise. Then he is asked to choose a simple song, one that requires no effort remembering the tune and words, such as "Happy Birthday", which he will use in the exercise.While maintaining the relaxed state, the actor stands facing the "audience", and is asked to sing the song one syllable and note at a time, filling his lungs fully before releasing each note. So the first syllable, "Hap", would require the actor 's full volume of breath, the next syllable, "py", is repeated in the same manner, and so on throughout the entire song. While performing the song, the actor should maintain eye contact with the individuals who are observing the exercise, and be aware at each individual moment what feelings he experiences as the exercise progresses. Sounds easy, so far, right? But what often happens, is that the actor is unable to carry out the exercise as directed. The "will" to do the exercise is there, but the carrying through of the will is inhibited by problems of expression within the actor. For instance, the actor may be unconsciously expressing the song with the hands, or facial muscles. Or the actor may rock back-and-forth, although having been asked to remain relaxed and motionless on the spot. We see tension manifesting itself in the actor, although the actor is not aware of the tension. The instructor stops the exercise to point out to the actor that he is moving his hands, or moving his eyebrows up and down, or rocking back and forth, and then asks the actor to resume.
Song • It is no surprise to the instructor, but a valuable learning experience for others watching, that the actor performing the exercise usually returns to the same patterns of "habitual behavior" he had before the exercise was stopped. So the instructor again stops the actor. This process may continue throughout, while often the actor cannot seem to "will" himself to be motionless while performing the exercise. Occasionally, actors doing this exercise begin to feel a variety of emotions bubbling up. They may suddenly begin laughing, or start to cry, or become angry. When this happens relax and continue singing through the emotions. It is noted that many actors have difficulty maintaining eye contact with those watching. The exercise is stopped to remind the actor to keep eye contact. But often, after a moment or two after resuming, we see the actor avoiding the eyes of those watching. • Time to try it
Justification • Justification is an actor explaining why they are doing what they are doing. Unnecessary movement should be avoided. If a person walks to a certain place, why are they going there or doing it? • The Justification Exercise requires the actor to jump and move around the stage in "abandonment", and when the instructor says, "Freeze!", the actor is asked to justify what he is doing in the position in which he has found himself.
Affective Memory • Shelley Winters, one of the world's great actors, had said that the actor must be willing to "act with your scars". Simply translated, it means that when it is time for the actor to reveal those deepest, most frightening or painful experiences written by the author for the character he has created, the actor using our approach to the work has to find similar experiences in his own life, and be first willing, and then able to relive those experiences onstage as the "character". • As a general example, let's assume in a scene, you have just discovered your mother has been brutally murdered, and she was the only friend you had left in the world. The actor using this work will find an event or parallel situation from his own life's experiences, and set about to recreate that experience using an Affective Memory. • Most of us, fortunately, have never had a loved one murdered. But everyone has experienced emotions in life that could parallel that situation. As an example, the trauma that some children undergo when parents decide to divorce might leave an everlasting scar in the memory of the child.
Affective Memory • Lee Strasberg recommended that the actor use memories that are at least seven years old, to avoid risking psychological trauma. • So the actor searches his memory for the parallel event, and finally decides to try to create its reliving.
Given Circumstances • The actor picks up the script, reads it, forms first impressions about the story, and "character" he is to play, and is eager to start "acting" using these first impressions as a blueprint for his work on the role. With this approach, the actor's work seldom progresses past a superficial understanding of the life of the character in the author's Given Circumstances. • The actor using this approach may pick out parts of the script which seem to "indicate" certain emotions the "character" feels at that point in the story, and try to duplicate in his own way these emotions. The results from working this way are usually mechanical in nature. Because the actor has "figured it all out" after reading the play once or twice, the more experienced artist will observe the actor and conclude he is "in his head", or "too intellectual".
Given Circumstances • We learn to relax. We learn to use sense memory. We develop our powers of concentration. We learn to choose objects upon which to concentrate. Then we make choices, deciding upon which objects we will concentrate at various moments of the story. Ideally, the "blueprint" for our work will be a string of objects, tied logically together to support the "spine", or "theme" or "main objective" or "concept" of the author's play. • One or more choices can be made for each scene in the play, but all choices should tie in to the spine of the play, as do all scenes. At times, one choice may be enough to carry the actor through several scenes.
Given Circumstances • Things outside of the actors control, written by the author or added by the director that the actor must contend with to achieve authenticity.
Buried Treasure • The Given Circumstances of the play can include anything the author has supplied with his story. Some examples include: • Place (where the scene takes place) • Sensory Elements (heat, cold, looking out a window, physical handicaps, etc.) • Relationships (to the other characters and to the "event" of the scene, what others in the play say about you, etc.) • Knowledge of Events(When in character)
Place • Place: Let's suppose the scene takes place in the living room of an apartment. You "live" there. Now, the set may look nothing at all like your own living room. It may be quite different in all respects. You need to make a choice that will make that "imaginary" living room your living room. We need to believe that you believe that you live there, and that the "set" is in reality your own living room. Simply accepting that condition as a fact may not be enough to make it personal for you. • If you have the opportunity to spend some private time on the set, you can begin to behave "as if" it were your apartment. How do you behave when you are alone in your living room? How is this behavior changed when you are not alone in your living room?
Sensory Elements • If the author indicates it is extremely hot in your apartment, your "choice" to create the heat must be very specific. Extreme heat can have unpredictable effects on people. If you simply "indicate" the heat with conventional gestures, you will miss subtle changes in behavior that take place in you when you are truly hot. Sensory creation of heat will help create that behavior. Just making the effort to concentrate on the sensory elements of the heat will strengthen your concentration onstage, which in turn makes you more believable to the observer.
Relationships • Think of stage relationships in two ways. 1) You have been given a relationship to the other actors on the stage by the author. 2) You have a relationship to the other actors on the stage as fellow artists involved in the same production. Obvious, right? • But one of the author's Given Circumstances tells you that "Actor A", who is your worst enemy in real life, is your beloved wife in the story. How can you convince the audience that you truly love this bitter foe playing opposite you? • You make a choice to do a Substitution, which involves sensorally creating a person you really love in place of the actor you are working with. If you employ your full powers of concentration to this task, it will work for you.
Knowledge of Character • Real people don’t always know everything that every person in their life is thinking or feeling. • Therefore the way we act towards people is not always right; especially if we are ignorant of facts. • Johnny makes joke about someone’s mother being fat, not knowing that Sally’s mother is. • In a play the actors know everything about each character since they have read the script many times. • Does this knowledge influence the way people act? • Imagine if, as an actor, you genuinely didn’t know what your acting partner was going to say, how would your reactions change? • Does knowing what’s coming affect the way we act? • Let’s see!
