Relaxation of the Imagination

Today in Jill’s lesson she leaded a workshop on the imagination and relaxation, exploring Stanislavsky's work in realistic and true theatre. We kicked off the lesson with a crumpled up piece of paper, this then became a little bird which was carefully passed around the class. We created a back story for the bird. Tweet was his name and the bird little had fallen from its nest in which he lived in, his mother had died and he didn't know how to fly, he had broken a leg causing him to be in pain... then Jill killed him by squashing the paper!! This exercise was used to show how creating a back story for something and forming an emotional connection can evoke a true and natural reaction to situations it’s in. This can be applied to our characterisation work. We can create back stories for our characters and this will help us connect with them on a deeper and more personal level allowing us to portray them with more detail and in a more concentrated way. After this we took part in a relaxation session of which Jill spoke calmly to us in the presence of calming whale noise music. This was done for the class to experience the feeling of relaxation and how it affects the way we move and feel. Stanislavsky believed that a actor must be relaxed to fully embody a character and be able to live in their life. I personally think that this is an effective way of getting into character as it removes all obstructing issues an actor may be carrying around with them emotionally and allows them to concentrate fully on their work and who they have to become.    Lastly we passed a phone around the class and where asked to improvise a naturalistic conversation which Jill could believe in, primarily everyone went for the comic rout which is the easy way to get a quick laugh and get your bit over with quickly. After breaking through this we all became more emotionally involved and concentrated, this evoked some really emotionally touching performances which were either drawn from real experiences or feelings. Personally I recreated a sad phone conversation in which I had previously been through, this in my opinion helped me connect more with what I was saying rather than if I had just winged it. Over all this session really opened my eyes on how difficult it is to completely get into an emotional state to create a realistic and believable performance.