Lesson 1

Mike Alfred’s

The first practitioner/director that we are looking at is Mike Alfred’s. He works in a Stanislavski manner, looking at and exploring naturalism in his pieces of theatre, because of this he focuses on the actors and their connection with the characters and being naturalistic in the performance. Consequently he uses given circumstances and objects to make the performances more realistic and believable.

In today’s lesson we focused on improvisation and how that can be used to develop a character and explore them in different circumstances so that we can understand how that they think and their mentality. The first exercise that we did was a quick improvisation game where in pairs we have to instantly come up with a relationship, place and activity and then improvise them and change to another improvisation when we heard a clap. This was a really useful game to play because it got us into the world of improvisation as we had to work with any situation and play it straight away with hesitation. Also because of the quick fire nature of the game it meant that we had to start to work on our instincts when improvising and become reliant on our natural reactions and not over think ideas or choices. This is really important for when acting in a naturalistic style as it helps you to tap into the characters instincts and to be able to act naturally as them and not other think every different choice.

We then extended this exercise by having a circle and one pair at a time going in and doing the same exercise and as an audience we were able to see if we were able to believe these situations and the characters. I think that this was really helpful because it stopped you from faking a connection on stage and actually allowed you to get into the characters so that you could work to find truth on stage. It was interesting to watch because as an audience you could feel the difference in atmosphere when it felt like the actors were not investing in their own given circumstances. As an actor this made me think about how exposing it is on stage, resulting in you having to be fully indulged and invested in the character and situation so that the audience is as well as they can feel when it isn’t right on stage. After doing some genetic situations we started to go into some that were related to “Our Country’s Good”. This allowed us to get into the zone of the play and to get to understand and know the characters, context and setting more and being more comfortable in a time that is so far from us. I think that improvisations are really helpful to get us more connected to the time so that when we are acting on stage we are natural and not uncomfortable in that time period.

Another improvisation exercise that we did is where one person in the pair decided the given circumstances, such as the relationship, setting and something that had happened. The person who doesn’t know the given circumstances has to go along with the improvisation trying to discover what has happened and who they are. For the person who doesn’t know what’s happened they have to balance trying to work out what is going on but acting along in the character that they are discovering more and more about. They have to be able to adapt and change naturally into the qualities that are being discovered and revealed about them. The key of the person who doesn’t know what they are doing is listening and understanding the “clues” that are being given. I think that this is really useful as acting is about really listening to the other characters and what they are offering you rather than simply saying your lines without any understanding of the relationship between the characters and the sub-plots that are being developed. For the person that has decided what the given circumstances are I think that it’s really important to act and be natural with the improvisation without constantly wanting to give clues and be really obvious with what is happening. I think that it was quite hard to be instinctual and natural while trying to communicate to another; however it was really helpful because on stage a lot of the time you have to do more than one thing and be in character but also think about staging and lines. On top of this on stage you may be saying one thing but communicating another with your body or your voice so it was helpful to get used to being concentrated on more than one thing but trying to be in the moment at the same time.