This lesson was a workshop in the method acting style of Stanislavsky.
We started the lesson lying down on our backs with quite angelic instrumental music playing whilst our teacher guided us through a meditation like activity, resulting in a weightless, spacey feeling. There was very little on my mind at this point. Once we were all in this very comfortable, relaxed state we were asked to think of a time in which we felt a very strong emotion, it could have been happy or sad (although, talking from my experience and talking to others afterwards, most people chose an extremely sad/angry experience). Whilst we lay there we were to focus on this time, this experience, this emotion, repeating it in as much detail as we could in our heads. Obviously this already started to evoke very physical reactions within everybody who was in the room, people began to cry uncontrollably as their emotions surfaced and a strange tension in the room was created, everybody focussing so deeply within themselves. The atmosphere was both intimate and uncomfortable. Then we were to imagine that we were describing the way we felt to somebody who experienced this time with you, this made us attempt to organise our thoughts and think in a more in depth and coherent way about what it felt like to experience the emotion.
After, we had thought about the words we would use to describe our strong emotions we were silently handed out pieces of blank paper on which we were to pretend we were writing a letter using the words we had just spent time thinking of. On reflection this task seems quite pointless and slightly ridiculous but at the time, in the states we were in, it seemed so apt. It was a very cathartic process, a lot expression and emotion went into it. After we'd finished writing we folded up the still blank piece of paper and stared at it for a number of minutes.
So at this point everybody had a piece of paper that represented that strong emotion that they had been focusing on for the duration of the lesson so far. We were then, one at a time told to go into a spotlight with your piece of paper whilst another person was asked to go up to the person in the spotlight and interact with them in some way as directed by the teacher. In my case I was asked to go into the spotlight and somebody else came up to me, took the piece of paper from my hand, read the piece of paper, laughed in kind of a pitiful, disgusted way and then handed me back the paper. Now as this piece of paper represented something so personal and meaningful to me, these actions affected really deeply. I felt violated almost because somebody had read my piece of paper without asking and intruded on that privacy and also angry by the way that they acted. Then for the second part I also had to go up to somebody and react with their piece of paper so for this I had to go in to the spotlight and snatch the piece of paper from them abruptly and laugh in a mocking way at the piece of paper and then look disapprovingly at the at the person before taking the piece of paper away with me so they were without it. Doing this, I really felt like I was doing something really disgusting, rude and hurtful. The person I had taken the paper from was already in tears, was already in a really deep amount of emotion and doing this whilst I was laughing at her piece of paper laughing at her paper like a bully, she was, understandably, in streams of tears. And taking the paper away from her as well, taking away this piece of her past as if she didn't even deserve it, that it wasn't even worth anything, that felt like a really detestable action as well. It was in this interaction part that some people really broke down because we had all been in our own worlds, in our own pasts and able to control what we thought and our emotions but when we had to share that with people especially if they weren't respectful to our emotions, some people found that really hard, understandably.
Then once we were all back on our mats, we closed our eyes again and we weren't allowed to open them. We had to find somebody else in the room and as soon as we made contact with them we had to get closer and closer to them, this felt so relieving and comforting as everybody was in such a vulnerable state at this time, we are in such a need human contact and support after finding one person we then had to find other people and doing this the whole group of people found each other when we are in this big group and some people were really in need of support at this time and we were told that those people that needed support to get that support and naturally the people who were crying the most of the group gathered round those people and support those people and comforted. Our eyes were still close this entire time so we only we can only really hate people crying and feel the bodies against one another it was really intimate and then we were told to slowly open our eyes and in that moment we would snap back into the present moment everything became in focus we lost this spacey vulnerable feeling that we had felt for the whole lesson and everything was so clear and real and obviously the emotions were still very present and everyone but the relief in the room was overwhelming and nobody really spoke for a couple of minutes, only the teacher. Also once we had opened our eyes we felt almost awkward because joining together in this big circle of support isn't something that we naturally do the group of people that we work we didn't know each other very well it was quite strange opening arise and realising what we had been doing even though we are just been doing it.
After a much needed short break we came back for the next hour of lesson and holding onto those intense emotions that we had, everybody was still in quite a vulnerable emotional state. We put this method acting style into the context of Antigone we were to imagine that we were Antigone and our brothers had died and we'd found out that they were awful awful people and and they were represented by this sweet box that had mud and petals inside it.
This photo shows the exercise we did following this we sat in a circle facing outwards and if you felt compelled to if you wanted to you went into the circle interacted with the box as if it was your brothers then you put your hand in the box and reacted to it occasionally you might react with other people and their ways of experiencing the grief and nostalgia. Everyone was to believe that they were Antigone and everybody else was another relative or an impostor of some kind. I think this exercise would've had very different results if it hadn't been done after the previous exercise because everybody was still so emotionally vulnerable at this time so everybody's reactions were very honest and pure everybody really got into character and felt very strongly towards thier actions.
This scene then continued as a teacher exited telling us that he was to return back into the room in character as Creon, the uncle of Antigone. As he walked in, there was an incredible amount of tension and fear in the room he was holding a huge axe and stood very tall over everybody as we were all sat on the floor he circled the group and then proceeded to swing at the sweet box, the representation of the innocent childhood bond with the siblings and and destroyed it in one movement. Evoking an almost sickening feeling, a disbelief at the enormous action and disgusted at what he had done to my family: a similar feeling to when my piece of paper had been taken and laughed at, a destruction of something so personal to me. At this point everybody was very absorbed in their character as Antigone, a lot of people came together in the middle and mourned over the brothers, some people went to the sweet box, fixated on this huge hole in it, some people were fixated by the mud that was inside the sweet box trying either to gather together the mud and petals or just touch it. I thought that was really interesting the way different people focused on different aspects of what had happened.
Overall I think this lesson was really interesting, the genuine emotion that was created would often be incredibly useful when acting however some people might lose control of their emotions and be unable to return to reality and it creates a blurred line between the real and the fiction and some people could get to absorbed in emotion to act effectively.
We started the lesson lying down on our backs with quite angelic instrumental music playing whilst our teacher guided us through a meditation like activity, resulting in a weightless, spacey feeling. There was very little on my mind at this point. Once we were all in this very comfortable, relaxed state we were asked to think of a time in which we felt a very strong emotion, it could have been happy or sad (although, talking from my experience and talking to others afterwards, most people chose an extremely sad/angry experience). Whilst we lay there we were to focus on this time, this experience, this emotion, repeating it in as much detail as we could in our heads. Obviously this already started to evoke very physical reactions within everybody who was in the room, people began to cry uncontrollably as their emotions surfaced and a strange tension in the room was created, everybody focussing so deeply within themselves. The atmosphere was both intimate and uncomfortable. Then we were to imagine that we were describing the way we felt to somebody who experienced this time with you, this made us attempt to organise our thoughts and think in a more in depth and coherent way about what it felt like to experience the emotion.
After, we had thought about the words we would use to describe our strong emotions we were silently handed out pieces of blank paper on which we were to pretend we were writing a letter using the words we had just spent time thinking of. On reflection this task seems quite pointless and slightly ridiculous but at the time, in the states we were in, it seemed so apt. It was a very cathartic process, a lot expression and emotion went into it. After we'd finished writing we folded up the still blank piece of paper and stared at it for a number of minutes.
So at this point everybody had a piece of paper that represented that strong emotion that they had been focusing on for the duration of the lesson so far. We were then, one at a time told to go into a spotlight with your piece of paper whilst another person was asked to go up to the person in the spotlight and interact with them in some way as directed by the teacher. In my case I was asked to go into the spotlight and somebody else came up to me, took the piece of paper from my hand, read the piece of paper, laughed in kind of a pitiful, disgusted way and then handed me back the paper. Now as this piece of paper represented something so personal and meaningful to me, these actions affected really deeply. I felt violated almost because somebody had read my piece of paper without asking and intruded on that privacy and also angry by the way that they acted. Then for the second part I also had to go up to somebody and react with their piece of paper so for this I had to go in to the spotlight and snatch the piece of paper from them abruptly and laugh in a mocking way at the piece of paper and then look disapprovingly at the at the person before taking the piece of paper away with me so they were without it. Doing this, I really felt like I was doing something really disgusting, rude and hurtful. The person I had taken the paper from was already in tears, was already in a really deep amount of emotion and doing this whilst I was laughing at her piece of paper laughing at her paper like a bully, she was, understandably, in streams of tears. And taking the paper away from her as well, taking away this piece of her past as if she didn't even deserve it, that it wasn't even worth anything, that felt like a really detestable action as well. It was in this interaction part that some people really broke down because we had all been in our own worlds, in our own pasts and able to control what we thought and our emotions but when we had to share that with people especially if they weren't respectful to our emotions, some people found that really hard, understandably.
Then once we were all back on our mats, we closed our eyes again and we weren't allowed to open them. We had to find somebody else in the room and as soon as we made contact with them we had to get closer and closer to them, this felt so relieving and comforting as everybody was in such a vulnerable state at this time, we are in such a need human contact and support after finding one person we then had to find other people and doing this the whole group of people found each other when we are in this big group and some people were really in need of support at this time and we were told that those people that needed support to get that support and naturally the people who were crying the most of the group gathered round those people and support those people and comforted. Our eyes were still close this entire time so we only we can only really hate people crying and feel the bodies against one another it was really intimate and then we were told to slowly open our eyes and in that moment we would snap back into the present moment everything became in focus we lost this spacey vulnerable feeling that we had felt for the whole lesson and everything was so clear and real and obviously the emotions were still very present and everyone but the relief in the room was overwhelming and nobody really spoke for a couple of minutes, only the teacher. Also once we had opened our eyes we felt almost awkward because joining together in this big circle of support isn't something that we naturally do the group of people that we work we didn't know each other very well it was quite strange opening arise and realising what we had been doing even though we are just been doing it.
After a much needed short break we came back for the next hour of lesson and holding onto those intense emotions that we had, everybody was still in quite a vulnerable emotional state. We put this method acting style into the context of Antigone we were to imagine that we were Antigone and our brothers had died and we'd found out that they were awful awful people and and they were represented by this sweet box that had mud and petals inside it.
This photo shows the exercise we did following this we sat in a circle facing outwards and if you felt compelled to if you wanted to you went into the circle interacted with the box as if it was your brothers then you put your hand in the box and reacted to it occasionally you might react with other people and their ways of experiencing the grief and nostalgia. Everyone was to believe that they were Antigone and everybody else was another relative or an impostor of some kind. I think this exercise would've had very different results if it hadn't been done after the previous exercise because everybody was still so emotionally vulnerable at this time so everybody's reactions were very honest and pure everybody really got into character and felt very strongly towards thier actions.
This scene then continued as a teacher exited telling us that he was to return back into the room in character as Creon, the uncle of Antigone. As he walked in, there was an incredible amount of tension and fear in the room he was holding a huge axe and stood very tall over everybody as we were all sat on the floor he circled the group and then proceeded to swing at the sweet box, the representation of the innocent childhood bond with the siblings and and destroyed it in one movement. Evoking an almost sickening feeling, a disbelief at the enormous action and disgusted at what he had done to my family: a similar feeling to when my piece of paper had been taken and laughed at, a destruction of something so personal to me. At this point everybody was very absorbed in their character as Antigone, a lot of people came together in the middle and mourned over the brothers, some people went to the sweet box, fixated on this huge hole in it, some people were fixated by the mud that was inside the sweet box trying either to gather together the mud and petals or just touch it. I thought that was really interesting the way different people focused on different aspects of what had happened.
Overall I think this lesson was really interesting, the genuine emotion that was created would often be incredibly useful when acting however some people might lose control of their emotions and be unable to return to reality and it creates a blurred line between the real and the fiction and some people could get to absorbed in emotion to act effectively.
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