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HBAAMU001- REN21080057 Acting Technique

by Lily Renwick

the Seagull by Anton Chekhov stupid fucking bird by Aaron Posner

The seagull is a fascinating play which I interpreted as having Stupid Fucking Bird’s jump in the timeline compared to
themes of misplaced love and how of time is not always on Chekov’s original representation really intrigued me and
your side. inspired me to figure out what Masha would be like in this
generation and what she experienced to become who she is.
Masha opens the play with negative energy, which I could feel
from her first few lines: “I’m in mourning for my life, I’m Therefore, I created her world; I took myself on a day trip
unhappy”. It shows her bad outlook on life and how she is which I thought Masha would have. I embodied the character
bored as a lower-class maid in the 1800’s as life is very for a day in my travels, I made my Spotify playlist for her, got
repetitive and quite static. her favourite drink, and appreciated the nature around me.

Reading the first few pages of the play made me confused Masha also opens the play with dialogue that is negative but
with help from the stage directions. A lot of subtexts can be
Masha Dating Profile delved into in this play which gives the character more layers I
b li
creating their world
IMPROVISATION AND DATING PROFILE

Masha has a unique persona and I wanted to indulge further

into the development of her character. Improvising with the
other characters in the seagull was a real eye-opener for me.
Reacting off the other characters gave me impulses that had
not even crossed my mind. It was educational through
practice and watching others. Masha is the type of person to
feel intensely but love deeply and not the type of person to
go speed-dating.

When we did an exercise in class I was thrown off and wasn’t

sure how to react as Masha. Around the room I responded to
people and got some unappealing qualities for my character.
To broaden my knowledge of this side of Masha I went home
and created her a dating profile.

I designed it with my super objective in the back of my head

and it opened some questions for me that I had not thought
of with Masha for example how Masha would present herself
online for social media but also to people she is trying to
impress. I took the inspiration from the deep love she has for
Conrad to pick what I put on the profile. During the process
for these expansions of Masha, my imagination played a big
part. Out of the material I had, I used the ‘magic if’ to explore
and paint a picture in my mind and this technique worked for
me.

BEDROOM AND BAG

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To add to my evaluation of Masha I created her bedroom and

Spotify Playlist

 
 

BAG

Existential Nihilism
Existential nihilism is the theory that life has no pure
meaning. It suggests that the whole human species is
insignificant, and we have no purpose in existence. Masha
feels this and has such strong opinions about this, but as an
atypical woman she reaches for tobacco and alcohol to fill
this void.

In the beginning of act three Masha is day drinking with

Trigorin, she tells him “You don’t have to look at me like that.  BEDROOM
Women drink a lot more than you think.  Some of them are
open about it, like me; most of them do it in secret.” Masha is
the perfect example of a lower-class reckless woman who has
different values to those around her and that makes her a
fascinating individual. This irresponsible lunchtime drinking is
reflected in Kate Transchel’s ‘Under the Influence: Working-
Class Drinking, Temperance and Cultural Revolution in
Russia'.

Russian alcoholism became a concern in the 1800s when 'The

Seagull' was published and a group called the Guardianships
was founded.  It was funded and made up of government
representatives. Their goal was to direct the lower classes
away from drink and improve their morals. Masha would
potentially be involved in the guardianships as she is the
daughter of a working class farmer and has this need to fill

Units, Objectives and Actioning

As an actor, units tell us how our play is divided into different

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elements. Therefore, as an effort to dive deeper into the

study behind this, I started reading ‘An Actor prepares’ by
Stanislavski.

“An actor must proceed, not by a multitude of details but by

those important units which, like signals mark his channel
and keep him in the right creative line”. This quote resonated
Stanislavski's Methods
with me because it bought to light the depth of units, how
they help in preparation of a role, and ultimately create an
overall objective before fusing into larger divisions, which are THE MAGIC IF (GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCES)
thoroughly filled out.
Given Circumstances was one of the first things we annotated
Uniting the script was difficult to start with as there is no onto our plays. Given Circumstances to me is what you create
rulebook, and everyone has different ideologies for it. through studying the script and your imagination. We chose a
Nonetheless, it started to connect once we practically scene and created a ‘who,what,when,where and why?’. This
explored this in class; especially when we added the technique made me feel comfort with the character whilst
actioning. Stanislavski once said “At the heart of every unit lies practically exploring it. The reason for this is having the
a creative objective” which in my case is an action. The information there makes you have purpose in the scene, that
mistake I found myself making in class was aiming for the you’re there for a reason. Once you have material there it’s
overall objective without the actions, making it easier to get just building blocks of other techniques which will create a
forced acting without a deeper connection. Actioning is what marvellous, researched character.

The magic if Technique follows on from this as we have the

Placeholder
information from given circumstances but instead it’s now
putting yourself into the shoes of your character, the
situation and asking yourself what you would do?

Putting this into practice, from what I have learned, I believe

that a Given Circumstance would be that I have decided that
my character of Masha is poor and a negative person, Masha
wants Conrad but he doesn’t want her.

I have then used the magic if to find out how this makes
  Masha behave. Masha being negative has led her to become
disappointed with life pushing her to alcohol and drugs. As
upsetting as this is she decides to settle for a marriage which
she has no interest in. I think Masha has the idea that being a
wife and a mother would give her a purpose in this world.

CIRCLES OF CONCENTRATION
Talking to the self
In class, we acted out an exercise with the circles of
concentration using three circles. I learnt from this exercise
that I like to close my eyes to get fully immersed. The smallest
of the three circles helped me explore my character’s
personal thoughts and feelings. It helped me get the energy
of Masha and although there was minimal movement
happening on the outside, I was engaging with Masha’s inner
opinions and attitudes. This was interesting to me as I later
read that Stanislavski believed that an actor needed a sense
of isolation with small movements in order to produce a
characterisation.

Conversational
The second circle is where I became aware of a character I
was addressing; In my case this would be Medvedenko/Dev.
Developing a conversation with a person where your energy
is focussed on that being engages them, drawing them into
your circle of attention, making them feel special and listened
to. This attention circle is what made me realise even though
Masha doesn’t necessarily respect dev, he is still always in her
circle of attention.

The whole world

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This is the most energy-demanding of all Stanislavski's circles,

as you need to engage the whole world. This took me a
couple of minutes to get fully absorbed into Masha’s world. I
had a vision of Masha talking to a devil in hell and I found out
that actors playing Hamlet will use this ‘whole world’ circle in
many of their long speeches, talking directly to every member
of the audience, to God and the Devil. After reading
Stanislavski’s chapter about the concentration of attention,
the circles made so much more sense.

These circles are important because they establish that it is

not always what you have to say which grabs an audience,
but how you say it, building the drive of your character. In my
eyes, by sending your focus out into the space, you can see
your audience as one and this way you will be more able to
engage with them more as your world.

Reflection on character journey

Through using Stanislavski’s techniques and creating Masha’s
world through my imagination I really enjoyed the process.
The more activities I did, thinking about Masha’s life and the
world that was created for her made me excited to practically
explore the scenes and her relationships with other
characters.

Masha has a lot of layers so at the start I found it difficult to

combine them all into the lines that she would say. However,
taking our time with different blocks and different pieces
such as the circles of concentration and the magic if really
helped me explore and think about a certain quality to then
bring back into portraying Masha. The uniting and actioning
helped my delivery of lines and makes me have a purpose
behind what I’m saying which adds lots of subtext and
underlying layers which was incredibly helpful as an actor.

Reference List

Reference List.docx

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