PMD1 Exploring Practicioners: Stanislavsky

When exploring the idea of emotional recall, we were instructed to find our own space in the room, stand still and go through a memory that triggers a particular emotion such as happiness, fear, sadness etc for two minutes, whilst ignoring all else in our surroundings. 
Following this we were asked to walk around, still ignoring everyone and just relieve the memory playing in our minds, whilst taking note of how our bodies held themselves upon feeling this emotion, and how we felt. Throughout this activity, music was played, encouraging the emotions we were asked to recall. 

Walk around the space as (if) walking through fog.
Walk around the space as (if) walking through mud.
Walk around the space as (if) walking on ice.
Walk around the space as (if) walking with a sprained ankle.

In another task, we set out a line of chairs of which we stood infront of. All of us had the same action of sitting down and crossing one leg over the other. Each person was assigned a number 1-10, which would determine how long one had to execute the action. With this timing in mind, students had to execute the action in such a way that would make sense for the action to be performed so fast/slowly, the internal reason. E.g- slow rhythm= fast tempo panicking inside after horrific news, could be fast.

The next activity was one where we explored the notion of Magic If, a range of scenarios to help develop a better understanding of how your character would behave. We were instructed to;

Walk around the space as (if) walking through water.

Then we were each given a scenario, for example, and were asked to shake hands with each other. The person they shake hands with: is their ex, has a gun, is their boss, is a long lost friend, is someone you fancy, someone famous, smells bad, is upset. Only the individual knew their scenario, and so had to portray it well enough to be guessed by their peers. 

In another session, we paired up and studied an extract from "Room". We had to research the Northern idiolect and practice the scene using it in order to perform it as realistically as we could. My researching and practising process included listening to videos of the accent, annotating the way phonetics of each word in the accent and using it when alone to get used to it.