This week, we studied Stanislavski who was an actor and theatre director from Russia.
We learnt that Stanislavski believed in bringing an actors experience into the roles they play and to expand an actors imagination.
This is interesting because last week, we studied Bertolt Brecht who's theory is in some ways, the exact opposite of Stanislavski's.
To practise Stanislavski's idea of placing yourself into the role emotionally through experience, we did an excersice whhere we were given an envelope with some unknown letter inside it.
Our task was to think about what's inside it, feel it, etc. but NOT open it. We also had to think about how we would open it, and whether we wanted to open it or not.
When I recieved my mystery letter, I looked confused as if I didn't want to open it. This was because I was trying to express a married woman recieving a letter from a secret lover.
When our classmate Maria did this excerise, she looked very confident before opening it, however after opening it, she had a shocked expression in her look, and quickly hid it away looking around to see if anyone was watching.
We guessed what her situation was and guessed right. She had just recieved her report card.
We also did an excersice where we were given a crumpled piece of paper by our theatre director, and had to imagine it was a Robin bird. While each individual student took turns to hold the bird in their hands, our theatre director would describe the bird to us and describe the emotion we were feeling towards the situation he was describing.
From this excersice, we learned that:
The more facts you are given, the more believable it is.
So in the end, our theatre director suddently smushed the bird and we felt many emotions as he supposedly "killed" the bird. This was because due to all the facts he was giving us about the Robin, we believed more and more that it was an actual Robin. Which is exactly what Stanislavski wanted his actors to do; become emotionally attached to their roles through experience.
This is ofcourse very unlike Brecht because Brecht believed that the audience should be fully aware of the fact that the actors playing the roles were simply actors playing the roles. He did not want his audience to become emotionally attatched to his characters. This is why he sometimes but akward bits of humour in not so humourous scenes.
Also last weekend, on Saturday, our drama class went to watch a performance of Romeo and Juliet by St.Maur International School.
Below, is the performance analysis I wrote based on their performance of Romeo and Juliet.
St.Maurs: Romeo and Juliet Performance Analysis
By: Sofia Fujiwara
Romeo and Juliet by St.Maur international school starred Nozomi de Lencquesaing as Romeo and Zsofia Szendrei as Juliet. It is the classic tale of the two star-crossed lovers but with a slightly different adaption. St.Maur brought in a mix of Bollywood, Buddhism, and J-pop into this classic. The play still had the basic plot, with Romeo being from the house of Montague and Juliet being from the house of Capulets. The two houses were rivals as they are in the original however in this adaption, the Montagues are Japanese and the Capulets are Indian. This unique adaption of Romeo and Juliet was directed by Nicolas Gregoriades.
The play began with a quarrel between Gregory, Sampson, Abraham is represented as a high-school scene. With four girls dressed in uniforms and the prince, representing by what seemed to be a head-mistress, breaking them apart. Instantly, the audience was aware that this is not the cliched Romeo and Juliet you would expect. The play goes specifically showing the ethnicity of the Capulets as well as the Montagues particularily during the ball dance scene where the girls in this production performed an impressive Indian dance, all dressed in Sari's.
Both Nozomi, playing Romeo, and Zsofia playing Juliet, worked very well together, and seemed to be very comfortable around eachother. However, a few other actors in minor roles seemed to stand out. Those being Juliet's nurse, played by Indu Ancha and Petra playing a servent played by Mary Gilstad and Mercutio played by Taihei Hara managed to keep the audience frequently laughing. Another actor, Alex Alexandre playing Friar Lawrence had a very strong performance playing a Buddhist monk.
The stage was split into two. The main stage, and a small set off the stage on the right side of the audience. This posed a few complications for the audience since the audience sitting on the left sides had to occasionally sit up on their seats to see over everyone's heads. The small set was only used for the Capulet's small scenes for example, breakfast scenes. The actors certaintly took advantage of the large stage they had, performing dances around the entire stage, and walking or running around in their monologues. Occasionally, the actors would come from the back doors of the theatre, and walk past the audience, to the stage while performing. This was quite effective since the audience wondered where the voices were coming from and could be seen straining their heads to find the source of the sound. A huge shrine was placed in the center of the stage for the Friar Lawrence's scenes and lights were placed on the walls to represent stars.
The costume design was amazing in this production with various actors sporting the beautiful intriquate Indian Sari's. However, the lighting was a bit off. In scenes were the lighting should have dimmed off, it simply turned off or switched to a different lamp very abruptly. The same applied to the music. Music was played whenever the lights went down to change the stage however, this sometimes lasted for only a few seconds and the music was turned off suddently as well instead of gradually getting softer. These technical aspects could have been improved slightly however due to the time limit that St.Maur had to put together this production, it is understandable that the technical aspect could not be perfected before the performance.
The first act, with the ball dance scene was definetly one of the strongest. The dances were carefully put together and synchronized. There were also some beautiful fabrics coming down from the ceiling, and while the two main characters were infront of the fabrics, you could see the shadows of the girls dancing indian-style behind the fabric which was a very pretty sight. The second art is mostly centered around the family disputes and Romeo and Juliet's unrequited love for eachother. The third act is then based around their attempt to stay together forever without Juliet having to be married of to Paris, which later leads to their suicides. I thought the suicide scene, which is a very crucial scene to the original script, could have been done more effectively. It seemed that this scene was some-what rushed.
The message in the original script of the play, and in this unique version of the classic is essentially that love is not based around lust. The two star-crossed lovers got married almost as soon as they set eyes on eachother without forming a deep intimate relationship. They thought that what they had was true love since they were too young and naiive to understand the true meaning of love and so they rushed into matrimony. Another possibly message could be that love has no boundaries. No matter what family feuds were going on between the Capulet's and the Montague's, Romeo and Juliet were still "in love", ignoring their family background.
This play had some very interesting and unique elements however the play overall could be improved. Due to the limited time that St.Maur had to put this performance together, many things had to be rushed into action. All the actors had a lot of potential and the whole cast worked very well together as an ensemble. It is certaintly one of the first times that the original Romeo and Juliet has been twisted to present a cultural experience for everyone. Even just to see the girls dressed up in their Sari's is enough of a reason to want to see this unique adaption. Not to mention the bonus that the play was free of charge!
