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.