Constantin Stanislavski

1863 - 1938
Stanislaviski was a great young actor and he net with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko who was a famous playwright. After talking together for 18 hours the they formed the Moscow Art Theatre. He also met Anton chekov and the theatre perfomed four of his play The Seagul, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard and these made the group famous.

He first believed in psychological realism where the performance should exactly depict real life. The actor should be able to become the character inside and out. The completely know a character you would need to do detailed research on their emotion/ feelings, their circumstances and their relationships. This leads on to use the mothods of given circumstances, emotion memory and character objectives.

Later on he had a change of direction and focused on a psychophsical approach. The general theory is that if an actor moved like the character then they would feel and act like the character. To this effect he brought in the use of tempo rythms. Different rythems made you feel different emotions like a fast one could be panick, excitement or dread. Where as a calm rythem would be peaceful, calm or happy.

On Stanislavski's death bed he named the physical theatre practisiner Meyerhold as his one true heir. Meyerhold studied under Nemirovich at the Philarmonic school in 1896. Stanislaviski also played alongside Meyerhold in MAT's performance of Chekov's The Seagul directed by Stanislaviski.

Because of Beth by Elana Gartner

Plot summary

In the aftermath of Beth's death all those she loved including her feuding daughter, her estranged ex-husband and her overwhelmed fiance seek to mourn her and find closer in their own way. Instead however they are forced to deal with one another and the complicated ties that bind them together because of Beth. The play explores the post-death experiences for the living when secrets are fresh, painful and powerful.
Because of Beth was the recipient of third prize in the Pen and Brush Playwrighting Competition as well as a finalist in the open book 2007 Playwriting Competition.

My Monologue

The monolgue I chose is from Act 1 Scene 3. Cara's mum has just died and left custody of her sister Penny to Cara. Cara enters carrying a six pack of beer and wanders through the tombstones until she gets to the fresh grave of her mum. She sits down next to it and expresses her true feelings about her mum.
I chose this one because it show's Cara's mixed emotions about loosing her mum. In the monologue you see soo many aspects of her personality from her hate and frustration to her extreme vulnerability revealed at the end. But also it is about her mum dying and as I am really close to my mum I was really able to connect with the sorrow of loosing her.

Characters given circumstances

To understand our characters we need to find the given circumstances to their character and  current situation. To get as much information as I could I re-read the whole script and noted down any information about her and what other people think of her.

Through collecting this information I understand that she has this tragic past with her dad which has resulted in her being emotionally unstable. She gives the impression of being quite hard on the outside so she seem's selfish and she may drink and smoke to cope with her unstadable side. When she talks about Stanly (mum's fiance) I know why she is abviously upset and angry with him but she does still love him as he reminds her later one that she was happy that he was with her mum. In the monlgue she complains about how much Penny moans and annoys her but that is just like sisterly banter as she goes on to say that she will fight to have custody of her to look after her. She also just wants to protect Penny from what dad did but she was too young to remember. When Cara mentions her dad in the script she quickly turns angry to show her quickness to temper but also slightly reveal that he hurt her.

Emotion Memory

After finding out information about the character we then had to feel what the character feels. We do this by relating their lives to theirs. You recall your personal memories and try to replicate how we felt and relive it.

My characters mother has just died and luckily I have never lived through that. But My own mum did recently and I held her and cared for her every night when she cried herself to sleep. Which I also used for when Cara is telling the story of when her dad felt. I can replicate mourning a most beloved one as my cousin who was soo much more like a brother to me died last year. I remember the feeling of utter loss, he was soo young and the greatest person I have ever known. The thought of "why" which makes me cry even now as that was never answered. He was found dead on his bathroom floor, he might have mixed up his medication or committed suicide. The worst thought is that in our catholic family if he did commit suicide then he could be in pain in hell. Even though I am not religious every night I say 20 hail Mary's and 5 farther our lord's in the hope that god hears and see's how much and love him so he sends him to heaven. All I remeber about the next day was feeling soo sick in every fibre of my being. So to get into character I thought very hard about this feeling, how it twist and knots in your stomach all the way to your throat till it actually makes you gag. Cara however tries to hide this feeling initially but when faced with her mothers grave she can't contain the wall any longer and her very raw emotions unravel. In the last line of the monolgue she show's her vunerability when she is crying and begging her mum to give her huggies to make it better. Until the moment when she is just fIlled with anger talking about her dad being at the funeral she represses every feeling. This is shown after she talks about saying good bye she pushes it down and say's how she just came to talk.

By using you feelings to show the characters you achieve a much more truthful and realistic result. When talking about the subject matter of someone dying if you over play it you loos your audience. If you make it seem really then the audience will feel empathy for your character.

Character Objectives

A character has objectives for whole play like how Hamlet wants to find closer for his farthers death but in a particular scene it maybe to convice the performers to produce the play "The mouse trap". Especially in Hamlet certain lines has objectives which are carefully thought about by Hamlet and why he can use his double meanings to make the truth come out and confuse others.

Cara has two main objectives for the play the first is to find closer after her mothers death and also to protect Penny from their father. Which is why I think Penny really wants custody so she can check that Penny is safe and doesn't get hurt like Cara did when she was young. In the scene that the monolgue is taken from, she has gone to her mums grave to say goodbye becuse she wasn't woken up to go to the funeral. Though she doesn't actually say goodbye she is trying to let her mum know how she really feels and to numb her guilt about not saying goodbye when she had the chance. Their is a part in the script when she says that Stanley think dad's going to try and take Penny after being worried and hopeing that he can't do that. She takes a pause, puts on a stern face and swears that she would have to be dead for him to get custody. Which shows how determined she is, that she would die to protect Penny.

Tempo rythen

In the lesson we experimented with having one tempo rythem in your head while moving to another. When you had a fast one in your head and a slow one on the out side, it created the feeling of panick but your try to hide it. When you do the reverse you get the feeling of someone really busy rushing around but is happy, calm and at peace about it.

In my monolgue it is mainly about botteling up the emotion and how it then spills out. At the start she has a fast tempo rythem in her head, thinking about everything: Penny, her mum, her dad and Stanley. But on the outside there is this pause button on her emotions. The inside rythem gets faster until in the script it is written as "arrrgh" after she can't think of what to say and she just comes out and says " this fucking sucks mum. At this point the rythem returns to the original fast one but it is the same for inside and out. Both then slow down when she starts to open up to her mum until "now I don't have anyone". Then their is a slight tempo build when she is angry and talking about her dad  but then slows again. Until the breathing is kinda slittered when she crys at the end.