Rehearsal 2

Naturalism

• Naturalism is about being completely true to your character. 
• It doesn't mean that you should play your character in a dull and boring way, your character can still be weird and exciting, as long as it is truthful.
• Doing the 'what if' exercise helps to be naturalistic, because it makes you entertain what life is like for your character.
• Part of doing naturalism is making sure that you, as an actor, can observe and experience life, to gain knowledge for characters you may play in the future. 
• Doing a naturalistic performance can only happen if in rehearsal you have tried things out and experimented, working out what thoughts and actions feel the most truthful to your character. 
• You have to work out every element of your character and make sure you now every detail of their life. How do they speak? What opinions do they have? What sort of an upbringing did they have ? etc... 

Emotion Memory

• The most important element of emotion memory is using all your senses because the senses are the direct route to accessing a memory or emotion. 
• It involves tapping into a memory in your life which has similarities to your character, however it is most likely not to be exactly the same situation. For example for my character, Thea, I have never left my husband, but I have experienced losing friends because of conflict, so I could use that memory to understand how Thea feels. 
• The memory doesn't need to be the same as what the character has been through, but it is important that the emotion that was felt is the same and at a similar intensity. 
• You can experiment in the rehearsal room with accessing different memories and different emotions. Emotion memory is for rehearsal, not necessarily for performance, because it helps to develop your character, but when used on stage, actors can sometimes begin to do internal acting, which shuts off the audience. 
• Make sure that you identify the emotion required by the character, before doing the exercise. It has to be the right emotion otherwise  the character goes in the wrong direction. 
• Work out the subtext, otherwise you get caught up with the surface emotion. In order to find out the character's true emotion, you have to dig deeper and look beyond the text on the page. For example, Hedda isn't angry with Tesman, like she appears to be, she is angry with herself for marrying him.
• In order to arouse the emotion during a performance, you must find  an action to go with it. The action will bring it out of your head and onto the stage. 
• Learn how to control the emotion, master it so that it doesn't begin to take over your performance. Make sure you can turn it on and off when you need to. 

Subtext

• Stanislavsky said that only 10% of what is in our head, is said in words, proving that subtext is key to good acting and a lot of acting is internal. 
• Subtext is looking at what is being said underneath the lines, stage directions and been the silences in the play. 
• The internal thoughts found from reading between the lines, mean that there is never a dead moment in the play. even during the silences, your character is constantly thinking and making decisions. Silence is as important as speaking. 
• The characters don't always say what they mean because it adds drama and conflict, but this also means that actors have to study their character in much more detail to work out what they are really feeling. 
• Often, what isn't said is more important than what is said.
• The subtext is the impulse behind every decision and action your character makes, it gives a reason for what is being said. 
• Subtext can be conveyed through body language, eye contact, silence, pause or the disparity between what is being said and what is being thought. 
• Subtext is the key to making the character your own, because you can decide what you think the character is thinking and feeling. It gives you the opportunity to personalise your character.
• When you study the script you can find your own meaning in the words.
• If you can successfully interpret the subtext, you can open a window into the soul and mesmerize the audience.