Mini-tppp (presentation)

Mini-tppp on Prezi

The laramie project - after all

We performed the play twice: on the night of Thursday and on the night of Friday. The first night, the play did not go as expected. We skip three scenes of the play, but after asking the audience afterwards, I didn't hear anybody saying that they actually noticed something was wrong with the play.

The night of Friday was much better. I, myself, could feel that there was more energy on-stage. All the ensemble was feeling the mood of the scenes and following the rhythm.

After the performance, we received very good comments from the audience. I heard somebody say they liked this play even more than the movie! Somebody else said that they were really impressed that, regardless the large size of the ensemble, the play could keep their attention, somebody else, a teacher who has been on campus a long time, said that it was one of the best productions she had seen on school. We were all very happy with the compliments, and we managed to do this in 10 days! It was really a combination of the big motivation of the ensemble and excellent leadership skills of our teacher.

However, every time they said all these good things about the play, the very first thing is to feel very very motivated and eager to make the next production even better; but after it feels like all these compliments are going to something they do no longer exists. It's like, we produced the play but, that's it. It's done. I didn't feel this kind of attachment to commedia dell'arte but it gives me a little bit of nostalgia knowing that the whole thing is done and... it's not like an essay, that you have it there and you can look back at it if you want to. It's difficult to describe why but it makes you feel a little bit of nostalgia.

Because of this, I realize how an actor can develop a personal relationship with the character, and it is something that a professional actor should take care of, to learn how to make a clear separation one's own personality from the character.

Here are some pictures from the performance:

I actor - after laramie project

I 'actor'

Stanislavski/Meisner techniques/processes used effectively.

1. Emotional memory --- I used the emotional memory technique in both of my characters.

• One of my characters is Doug Laws, a Mormon leader. In the lines I say, he says what it is right and wrong according to God. He also says it to somebody who is relatively new to them. I tried to think in a situation where I felt similarly, where I was with somebody relatively new to me and I tried to explain to them what was right or wrong. I found out that I could use the start of this academic year to create that emotional memory: so many people with different views where here that subconsciously I tried to express to them what was right or wrong.
• The other character is Matt Galloway. He is a very young, outgoing and extroverted character, a character that will want people to pay attention to him. He thinks he is very important in this whole thing, and, in my opinion, he thinks he is going to be famous for this. So for that, I tried to recall a moment where I did something I thought was important and I though I was going to be famous for this: this was when I won a departmental competition when I was about 13 years old; I was young and naive, I thought what I had done will be known by everybody which is how I think, Matt Galloway felt. I used this emotional memory for the first lines of Matt Galloway.

2. Repetition --- I tried to use this technique for both characters too. I performed repetition before the performance but I would also repeat this phrases in my mind while I was sitting

• With Doug Laws I did repetition with the phrase "they need to know what it's right." This phrase is also kind of my objective, so it definitely helped me to coordinate my body language with the things I was saying and the pase and tone in which I was saying them.
• For Matt Galloway, I repeated the phrase "I am going to be in Wikipedia" before going into stage. This helped me get into the mindset that I was going famous, that everybody will know about me.

3. Before time --- I also used this technique with both characters, although stronger with Matt Galloway.

• For the very first line that Matt Galloway says, what I thought as my before time was that I was in the back of the bar, somewhere where I was not visible, washing the dishes or cleaning, something mechanical that did not require a lot of mental concentration. Suddenly, they called me and they told me I was about to testify for Matthew Shepard. My first thought was that I got very excited, but then I realized that I had to be careful of what I said to them because I wanted to impress them. --- For all the other scenes I tried to think of my before time as having been talking with these people who want to interview me a long time; because basically that's what Matt Galloway does during the whole play.
• For Doug Laws, in his only scene, I thought of my before time as having been reading the bible, making about it, something that required a lot of my concentration... and then having been knocked on my door so that we could start the interview.

What kind of actor have I become?

The techniques I found most effective where emotional memory and repetition. I didn't feel like before time made a great impact in my way of acting and I couldn't figure out how to apply magic if in any of my scenes. Taking into account the Stanislavsky exercise that we have performed, I think I have become the kind of actor who likes to feel the environment of the scene. I found that very effective, and I think it achieves a high degree of realism on stage. However, to correctly apply the emotional memory technique into acting, lines should be learned very well; but this is something I had trouble with every rehearsal, knowing my lines very well. I think I have become the kind of actor who likes to play with emotions, I found it very fun to explore emotions while saying my lines.

Homework next thursday:
prepare a micro-tppp 8-10 minute oral presentation on your Theater journey in Year 1 Focus on 2 productions you have been involved in. Include 5 images (pictures/photos) in your presentation.

The Laramie project

To end our Year 1 Theater course, We were not sure of which play to perform. However, after careful thought and discussion we agreed on doing the Laramie Project, a play about the crime committed against Matthew Shepard, a homosexual murdered in Laramie, Wyoming. We are going to perform only 2/3 of the play, as we have little time (less than two weeks) to perform the play and performing the whole play would be insanity. Our teacher had the kindness of taking his time to choose which scenes to perform and assign characters to the whole group.

The play is from the verbatim theater genre, it is not realistic theater, which is the genre for which Stanislavsky's techniques were developed for. Verbatim theater is a very wordy kind of theater, so we will have to memorize a lot of lines. My two characters are Doug Laws and Matt Galloway.

Doug laws is the leader of the Mormon Church; I picture him as a man of authority, a man who wants to make sure everybody else knows the word of God. I haven't had a lot of interaction with Mormons, I just remember seeing a lot of "missionary's" back home on the streets who are very well dressed people that go to different places to spread the word of the lord. The fact that they are very well dressed makes me think that the leader of this church may think of himself as somebody who always says the truth, somebody in authority. That makes everything possible to sound as convincing as he can be (I presume this is why missionaries dress very well, to be convincing when they are talking to other people about God).

Matt Galloway is a barman of the last bar Matt Galloway was seen in. I always think of barman as very friendly people, they are always friendly people to make their customers keep coming. I tried to find information about Matt but the only information I could find about him is on this blog: http://laramieblog.blogspot.com/ where it says:

"There was Matt Galloway, who runs his father's bar up in Casper, and who still feels the sting of guilt for not having stopped Matthew from leaving with Russell and Aaron that night, and who (repeatedly) made the point of telling me how proud he is that his bar is a place where his gay friends can come in and feel comfortable being who they are.  This from a former small-town frat boy who didn't even know that he knew gay people before Matt was killed.  He remains a funny, talkative, thoughtful and huge-hearted person. "

This blog seems to be run by "Tectonic Theater Project" so I think it may be the blog of the producers of the play with entries of while they were conducting the interviews and preparing the play in general. 

The guilt that Matt Galloway feels towards not having stopped Aaron and Russell is genuine according to this journal entry. In the line where he says:

"Ultimately, no matter how you dice it, I did have an opportunity.... If I had - amazing hindsight 20/20 to have stopped.. what ocurred... and I keep thinkin' to myself "I should have noticed. This guys shouldn't be talking to this guy. If I hadn't put my head down for 20 seconds while I was washing the dishes. This I could've done.. what was I thinking?"

I thought of interpreting this line in a funny way, like he was just trying to lie to the interviewers of how much he cared because he wanted attention. But this piece of information tells me that he seems genuinely sorry he couldn't do anything. I think this goes in align with the fact that he is a "huge-hearted person." With a big ego, as Steve told me, but huge-hearted. He is a person who likes this attention, a person who is very excited that he will be interviewed by this group who wants to take his opinion and make it famous.

The guilt that Matt Galloway feels towards not having stopped Aaron and Russell is genuine according to this journal entry. In the line where he says:

"Ultimately, no matter how you dice it, I did have an opportunity.... If I had - amazing hindsight 20/20 to have stopped.. what ocurred... and I keep thinkin' to myself "I should have noticed. This guys shouldn't be talking to this guy. If I hadn't put my head down for 20 seconds while I was washing the dishes. This I could've done.. what was I thinking?"

I thought of interpreting this line in a funny way, like he was just trying to lie to the interviewers of how much he cared because he wanted attention. But reading the piece of information above tells me that Matt Galloway seems genuinely sorry he couldn't do anything. I think this goes in align with the fact that he is a "huge-hearted person." With a big ego, as Steve told me, but huge-hearted. He is a person who likes this attention, a person who is very excited that he will be interviewed by this group who wants to take his opinion and make it famous.

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The first few rehearsals were with script; mostly to get used to the way the stage will be organized and how the organization will change in different scenes. The first few rehearsals didn't have any focus in the way we were going to say our lines itself. An important thing that we did during this first few rehearsals was organizing the things that actors who were not talking were going to do and at which cues like pretending to be reporters, pretending to be protesters, the church, etc. All those things that add on to the play while other people are performing their lines and monologues.

We also focused on staying neutral while other actors where talking.

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This Sunday, we performed an exercise that would let us get more involved in our characters. Our teacher asked us to divide in groups of three. We separated in different groups and, in character, we asked questions about each other's characters. The point of this exercise was to make us feel into character, to make sure each one of us could handle each of our characters and had things like before time, objectives, and different things clear. Speaking in character gets you used to the state in which you should be while saying your lines, it lets you invoke your character in different situations and, as you know how to invoke your character in different situations, you get a more holistic view of the character which you can then apply when saying your lines.

I felt that, during the exercise, not only my body language and tone of voice changed but also the vocabulary and the structure of my sentences. Each character on stage has a distinct personality that the actor should represent; and this personality includes a whole range of things. An actor has to be able to incorporate all these things to himself.

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The play takes place in Laramie, Wyoming, a place in the United States. For this reason, it is most likely that all of the characters will have an American accent. I tried mimicking an American accent and in fact I did some rehearsals trying to speak in that accent but then I got feedback from some of the other members in the ensemble; I can't really mimic it :P The fact that I have been living in an English environment for less than a year I think limits me a little bit from learning the lines fluently and being able to speak them without focusing thoughts on them.
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During the rehearsals, we kept on doing the "putzika" exercise. This exercise focuses on different sounds that are important while announciating. I have taken a video of myself doing the exercise below: (apologies for the poor sound/video quality)

The point of this exercise is focusing on these three sounds, and make sure to emphasize them while on stage. This I found that focusing on those specific three sounds, I could make myself much more clear while speaking, not only on stage but also while carrying out conversations every day! I found it really helpful because I started applying it to every day conversations and I think it makes other people understand me clearer as a non-native English speaker.

The other exercise that we did for voice was the "maaa" exercise, which focuses on projection. For this exercise, we have to open our mouth and start creating a "maaa" sound and projecting it to the farthest point possible. You can watch me doing this exercise in the following video:

This exercise was not as useful personally, given that I think I don't have any problems with voice projection (sometimes my overly loud voice has got me into trouble in the past xD)

God (a play)

A group of people in our campus, most of them theater students, prepared a play written by Woody Allen called "God." The play was comedy; it started with two philosophers talking about the existence of God and those common "philosophy topics." However, as the play progresses, the audience is brought into stage and hilarity comes from the fact that the audience are 21st century high school students and the other characters are some sort of Greek philosophers.

The play was adapted for our campus audience. The play included some references to the things we do in school and our academics. It also included direct references to the audience, which made it funny because they were references to something we knew and are used to it. Commedy is very effective when it involves something that you can relate to, and this play had a lot of those things you could relate to. I had a good laugh.

Another reason why it was a very funny play is because there were a lot of unexpected things. One of the characters was the "writer of the play" and he claimed to even have written the audience! Then another character was God, and was doing silly things. A lot of unexpected things. Very good acting too.

Applying Stanislavsky's techniques to playback

For the this term, I have been doing playback theater as an extracurricular activity. Playback is about interpreting the audience emotions, is about celebrating the audience's stories. The actors are responsible of representing this stories and emotions into different forms.

The actors need to make this representations of emotions and stories very quickly, right after the person tells the story or the emotion. It is useful to think about different ways of representing emotions before, but at the moment of the performance it is completely improvised as it depends on what the person shares.

I have tried to use repetition and I think it works to represent the emotion as clearly as possible. Emotional memory is not very effective in this case because there is a very short period of time for the improvisation. However, repeating the emotion that is about to be represented or a phrase that relates to that emotion can let the actor feel more identified with it and come up with more creative representations of what this person has just said.

Repetition Exercises

Aim of Task:
To practice "repetition," a very important technique developed by Meisner.

Description of Task:
Meisner was the person who, in the 20th century, developed method acting in the United States. Although he based his techniques on Stanislavsky, his techniques did not require a lot of psychological involvement from the actor like Stanislavsky's techniques do.

So what we did to practice Meisner's repetition exercises is first, find a partner. Now, once we had a partner, Steve showed us what the dynamic of the exercise was going to be. We chose a phrase both of us would take turns to repeat. So partner would say the phrase, then partner B would repeat the same phrase, then partner A would repeat the same phrase and so on and so forth until our teacher told us to stop. We did it for about 2 minutes. The exercise seems very simple, but it can become hard! Repeating the same phrase over and over again can confuse you and make my your tongue tangled. It can also become a little bit annoying to listen to your partner say the same exact phrase over and over again. It seems simple but it's complex once you do it!

Then, Steve told us that each one of us would pick an specific phrase. Partner A and Partner B will choose an specific phrase, like an observation about the environment, and repeat over an over again; Partner A will say his phrase then Partner B will say his phrase and so on and so forth. We repeated our phrases for about 2 minutes. This one was less annoying than the other exercise, perhaps because phrases were alternated between each other.

Now, our teacher told us to change the dynamic a little bit. We would keep on saying things repeatedly but now, we would not repeat the same phrase but we would change the phrase as we felt it was appropriate. Impulse is the word Steve used for this, he told us to keep on saying things repeatedly but only change the phrase if we felt an impulse to do so. We did this for another 2 minutes, approximately. I basically only changed my phrase when I noticed something different in my partner, most of my phrases were like an observation I was making about my partner, like "your hair is black" or "you are short." At some point though, I started saying "you are annoying" and "I want this to end" because I was becoming desperate of hearing my partner talk to me repeatedly.

Other classmates went to the point where they started shouting at their partners things like "leave me alone" because they were so annoyed by them. Another interesting comment that one of my classmates made is that it was hard for him to change phrase because most of the time he would feel an impulse to change his phrase only halfway while he was pronouncing his phrase, so he ended up not changing his phrase because by the time it was his turn to talk again, he had lost the impulse. Our teacher told us that, in that case, we shouldn't say anything because the impulse was already gone. I felt a little bit like this sometimes, but I changed my phrase anyway.

Now, after doing this, we changed the dynamic a little bit. My partner and I established a relationship and a role each one of us would use. We decided we would be co-workers. Our teacher told us that one partner had to go outside, I went outside. The other partner had to stay inside and perform a task that requires mental focus, like doing homework. Now, the ones who were outside, our teacher told us to imagine a before time, something that had just happened referring to the relationship we had agreed on. After we thought about our before time, we went in and did the repetition exercise again.

The before time I thought about was that I had been talking to our boss and he was not very happy about the performance of the company and he would have to fire one of us. So when I came in, I started saying "the boss" to which he replied "what." As I felt like he was not paying, I had an impulse to change my phrase to something he would pay more attention to like "one of us, danger." I felt a little bit of frustration as I couldn't capture his attention. My partner also changed his impulses as the exercise continued.

Now, after approximately three minutes, our teacher stopped us. He told us that the same partner that had gone outside of the classroom should go out again. Now, he told us that we should think about an objective, something we should convince our partner about.

The objective I thought about was that I wanted to convince him that we should go and talk to our boss about what had happened, so that none of us had to leave.

I went inside and I started my phrases pretty much the same. I felt more involved though, because I now had an objective. My facial expression changed as I saw that my partner did not pay attention to me, it was a face of kind of being worried and frustration - worried because one of us might have to leave his job and frustrated because I didn't feel like my partner was paying me attention.

I felt like the exercise I did with my partner was good but perhaps not as involved as the exercise other people did. I could see other people standing up and shouting and each other. Their rhythms, tone of voice, changed. I didn't feel a lot of change for our couple, though.

Reflection:

I think this is a good exercise to get into the emotional state of the scene because it really forces you to focus on what you want to do. In "real life," most of your actions are motivated by an objective, things are normally done for a reason. By doing these exercise, you get used to that, to remember that since this is realistic acting you should also have an objective on stage. Objectives are also useful on stage when you may forget your lines: if you know your objective, you can still communicate the same message. Focusing on the objective also makes your body language go according to your words. It can be as powerful as Stanyslavski's emotional memory but not as hard, psychologically.

Conclusion:

I think something that Meisner and Stanislavsky have in common is that they both try to get you fully focused on the current moment, they both try to coordinate your physical actions and what you say with what is happening at the moment; and that definitely helps making the scene more realistic because in real life, as things happen naturally, you are always in the moment.

Emotional memory exercise

Aim of task: To experiment with what Stanislavsky called emotional memory.

Description of task: Stanislavsky developed a technique in that he used when training actors which is called "Emotional memory." Emotional memory consists on recalling event's in the actor's life that are similar to the events performed by the character. So for example, if the character just found out that his friend had been lying to him, the actor would have to recall an specific event in his life where he felt betrayed, and recall the emotions the actor was experiencing to use them when impersonating the character. Stanislavsky thought that actors should rehearse all these emotions so that they could later re-create them, on stage.

So what our teacher, Steve, told us to do is to organize ourselves in groups of four or three, and prepare a small scene that included a lot of emotional involvement. Prodhi, Shari, Naswa and I made a scene where Nashwa was my wife, I was her husband and Prodhi and Shari were our children. For our scene, we chose to do it related to an issue that is very problematic in Guatemala and many conservative societies: domestic violence. The scene would focus on me shouting and hitting Nashwa. However, to make it as emotional as possible, Prodhi and Shari, who were supposed to be Naswa's children, were going to be seated, with Prodhi and Shari fixing Nashwa's hair while she told them a story. A very calm and warm, family environment. Then I would come in shouting and Nashwa and asking her about "my bottle." Nashwa would try to defend herself, while the children would show expressions of angst because they weren't sure of what was happening. The children would start to cry after a while, and try to stop me. It's a very emotional scene; I think family scenes can easily become very emotional because of the strong bond that there is naturally between family members.

So we prepared this scene and practice it by ourselves a couple of times. After that, Steve called us to go inside. He told us to spread around the classroom and lay down. Then he started giving us several messages that would relax us: "feel each part of your body sink into the floor, feel how your whole body sinks into the floor..." and "imagine you are in a beach, the wind is blowing..." several messages to make us relax a lot, for about 5 minutes (it was so relaxing that I could even hear people snoring!). After all that relaxation, we were very deep in our subconscious. At this point, Steve told us to think about the main emotion that we where going to represent, and then he told us to recall a moment in our lives where we really experienced this emotion fully. I, being the abusing man in the family, would feel very angry. I would feel irrationally angry. I guess it is very personal, the specific event I recalled, but I could recall an event where I was specifically angry towards a woman, which is the same emotion I would have in this scene.

After we recalled the emotion, Steve told us to go to our groups and do the scene again, with the emotion we were currently feeling.

I could keep the emotion inside myself. This emotion of anger changed my facial expression, the way I was walking, my posture... everything. And I had it very vividly, I could keep it in myself.

And... even though other people where crying, they were in the bathroom crying alone because the emotion they had recalled was too strong. Even though that was happening, I would normally empathize with that and feel their sorrow.... but I couldn't at that moment. I was just... full of anger.

Now that I think about it... the exercise was extremely effective to recall sad emotions on people, a lot of people where crying in the bathroom.

After a few minutes, when people where more calmed down. Our teacher told us to come into the classroom again. He told us that this the fact that so many people where crying in the bathroom is an example of one of the disadvantages of using emotional memory; the psychological process which you enter is so intense that could cause you problems if used continuously.

He asked three groups if they could perform in front of the class, including our group, to show the whole class their scene. Initially we said we couldn't perform, because the emotion of one of us was too intense that she wasn't sure if she could perform. However, after a few minutes she calmed down and we performed for the whole class.

The first group that performed performed an emotion of happiness. They had music on and they were just jumping around, drawing in the board. They had three members, two of them seemed really happy but the third one was not really happy -- apparently because she had recall a bad memory while doing the exercise.

The next group was about the death of a person, it was like the death of the daughter of a couple because there was somebody laying down, then a man and a woman standing up, crying, and then somebody else kneeling down beside them, crying too, like if she was the sibling of the person laying down. It was kind of impressing the way I could empathize with them. I almost forgot of my emotion when I was watching this performance, their crying seemed so genuine that I immediately started empathizing. I could feel the sadness of loosing something important that will not come back.

Then, we performed. I had almost forgot my feeling of anger by this time but I took a couple of minutes to recall it. Once I could recall it, we started. We did it, it came almost naturally, I didn't really have to think a lot of what I was doing, it was almost entirely emotionally driven.

After that, the whole class sit on a circle. We gave feedback on each other's scenes. They really liked our scene, apparently. Somebody in the class said that they liked the contrast that we did between a very innocent frame with the mother and her daughters and then an angry man coming in. It felt good that they actually liked it, that we could make a performance that could engage the audience and make them feel something; because I think that's quality entertainment.

I enjoyed the exercise in general. For some reason, it is easier for me to act out anger than any other feeling. After the lesson, I was still feeling a little bit angry, which kept through the whole afternoon.

Reflection: These method of emotional memory can be very effective for actors; the performance was so much natural and easy after I got into the emotion. However, it took a long time and it can be psychologically dangerous if done repeatedly.

Conclusion: The fact that you can recall an experience in your life to reproduce an emotion that you can use while acting, gives us the impression that there is a limited set of emotions that repeat themselves in different situations. I think this is very interesting, although I think it would be very difficult to give names to each one of these specific emotions.

Before time - analysing a picture

Aim of task: To discuss before time in a picture.

Description of task: Our teacher showed us a picture we had in our handouts. It was the picture of a woman holding a sign that said “Stop the seal slaughter.” She is very well dressed, carrying a purse. She seems like a high class woman, her appearance is very neat. There is also some bushes behind. The sign that says “Stop seal slaughter” has a “peta” sign at the bottom. It seems like a sign protesters would use to stand outside the office of a company that profits our of seal slaughter.

What Steve told us to do is to try to guess where she was coming from and why she was doing what she was doing, holding the sign. We started brainstorming, perhaps she was walking by, coming from work and she had been asked to hold the sign so that they could take a picture of her. Or she was looking for a family member and she was holding the sign so that she could make it into the crowd. A lot of ideas were given, we did not think she was part of the protesting crowd given that she was dressing very nicely, probably not a good outfit to spend the whole day standing up with a sign on her hand. She was probably coming for work, probably she is a woman who works regularly during the weekend and has a family.

Reflection: This is exactly what you need to think about when doing before times. In this case, it wasn't very clear what the lady was doing before, but it gave us an idea of what she might be doing, and we started to draw conclusions about what kind of person she was. This is what we have to do in realistic theater on-stage, we need to make our before time give the audience an idea of where were we, what were we doing.

Conclusion: In real life, each person experiences his life in a set of continues events, that go one after another. However, in theater, only certain events are show, with gaps that are not shown on stage. This is why before time is important, to give an idea to the audience on what happened on that "gap" of events.

Rhythm exercises (pretend there is somebody we hate)

Aim of Task: To know be introduced to the concept of internal and external rhythms.

Description of Task: Our teacher explained to us that there is two type of rhythms: external and internal rhythms. Internal rhythms are the inside pace of the actor, the pace of his emotions. On the other hand, the external rhythm is the pace of the physical actions of the actor. So for example, a situation where there is a lot of tension would have a very fast internal rhythm, but if the tension is created by the waiting of some important news, there wont be a lot of physical movement so it would be a slow external rhythm. In a running competition, for example, there would be a fast rhythm, both external and internal because of the excitement and the quickness of physical actions.

So, to put this into practice, we experimented with an exercise that would require us to have a very slow external rhythm but a very fast internal rhythm. We grouped into partners. Partner A would pretend to be a person Partner B really dislikes, however, Partner B will try to be as condescending and "nice" as possible to Partner A. Nashwa was Partner A and I was Partner B. I pretended I was on the canteen table and then Nashwa came to ask me some questions and ask me if I wanted to go out to get bubble tea. My internal rhythm increased a lot because, inside, my emotions where bursting, I didn't really like this person. However, I couldn't show this because I was trying to be nice, so my external rhythm had to remain calm, slow.

Even though I really tried to remain with a slow external rhythm, my external rhythm started to increase slowly, as Naswha kept on insisting. I also started to look for ways to get rid of her, which kinda increase my external rhythm too.

Reflection: As an actor, I think having fast external and internal rhythm, or slow internal and external rhythm, is not that difficult to do, one comes with the other normally. However, a combination of slow/fast internal/external rhythms comes only in some very specific situations. It's rather uncommon, and this might be the reason why it is the most difficult one to imitate.

Conlcusion: External and internal rhythms normally have a same pace, because our bodies express their emotions naturally. However, sometimes because of societal norms, we shouldn't really express this emotions. But as we are more and more pressured, these expressions will start to show, regardless of how much we try to oppress them. Stanislavsky focuses greatly on emotions, and with this exercise, we can pay attention to how the rhythm of our internal emotions affect the rhythm of our external actions.

Given circumstance - cooking and burning...

Aim of task: To experiment more with given circumstances.

Description of task: Today, our teacher asked us to spread out in the classroom so that we could find our own space, where we would pretend cooking a meal. To do this, I imagined a stove in front of me, with one cabinet on each side. I started by miming taking a couple of vegetables, putting them on the cabinet, chopping them and putting them on a pot placed on the stove to cook them. Just a simple cooking process, like I would imagine it in my mother's kitchen.

After that, Steve gave us a given circumstance. He told us that now, we should imagine that our parents had told us to make dinner, although we didn't really want to, and repeat the miming again. While doing this miming, my movements where a little bit bigger and stronger, as if I was trying to show some anger because of being forced to do something I did not want to do. My facial expression also changed, my eyebrows remained frowned. My movements weren't as careful as precise as in the original miming.

After being done with this miming, Steve gave us another given circumstance: imagine a very close friend had just died and you had to prepare dinner for everybody to came to his funeral. With this given circumstance, it was really difficult to even do anything. I was really slow, my head tilted down, and my whole body felt heavier; my shoulders where lower. I stopped at times, I didn't even really want to continue, I just wanted to lay on the cabinet with my head down. I had no reason to keep on cooking when such a bad thing had happened.

After this one, Steve told us a new given circumstance. Now, we should imagine that we were preparing dinner for somebody we really liked and that was going to come over. For this given circumstance, the rhythm increased a lot. Unlike the last given circumstance, now I felt a lot more eager to prepare dinner. I was also trying to be really careful with whatever I did, I even pretended to call somebody for advice on the cooking. The pattern of my movements because faster, and there was a smile on my face.

Now, Steve gave us a different scenario, we had some papers we wanted to burn. For this scenario, I imagined a several big piles of paper on the floor. I took a bunch of paper and put it on a separate part, took out some gasoline, pour it over the paper, took out a lighter and lit the paper on fire. Then I started taking bunches of paper by chunks and putting them on the fire.

After completing the scene “neutrally,” Steve gave us a given circumstance, that the paper we were burning was a lot of waste paper. My actions didn't change that much for this given circumstance, I just took the paper and put it in the fire, like before. I tried to pick bigger chunks this time though, given that I knew all of this was waste.

The next given circumstance Stave gave us was that the paper we were burning were letters of an ex-partner and we were burning them to forget about that ex-partner. For this given circumstance, I wasn't very sure whether I wanted to burn the paper or not. I tried to pick up a letter and read it, but I couldn't do it because I knew I had to get over this. So I started burning, rather slowly, with a slow rhythm and then, after I had put all the letters in the fire, I sit down just watching at the fire and with one hand on my face, trying to cover my eyes.

The last given circumstance to this scenario was that the paper we were burning were very confidential documents of the FBI or a very cautious organization. In this given circumstance, my rhythm increased a lot. I started looking around because I knew this documents were highly confidential and they couldn't catch me. I had to get this done as soon as possible without anybody I noticing. I sit down, so that nobody else could see me from far away. I tried to make this as fast as possible.

Reflection: I found out that for each given circumstance, my rhythm increased. I think it is true, in real life, that the rhythm at which you do things is different for different situations. And this rhythm can change with a very sudden circumstance like receiving a phone call with bad news or experiencing something unexpected. It can be difficult to imagine a given circumstance if it is too far away from something that could really happen to you. For example, when I was burning the confidential documents, I felt that this was a situation that I could never be in. However, I tried to imagine how this situation would be and I tried to combine different situations I had been in: doing something I did not want other people to take notice of and doing something quickly. I realize it is very important to do a lot of given circumstance exercises because that is what realistic theater is all about, pretending a given circumstance on stage.

Conclusion: I realize it is very important to do a lot of given circumstance exercises because that is what realistic theater is all about, pretending a given circumstance on stage. All of realistic theater is a very TOK-ish topic. Can we really, fully, pretend like if something is happening and do it the same way as if it actually happened? What if, what we are pretending to do, had life-long consequences?