Today I was given a new character who I would be portraying in the show. This character, similar to the previous one, is a father, and we will also be showing his story as a part of the “Have A Family” section. This character, as I gathered from the text I was provided with, is coming into a family consisting of a mother and her three children, and is understandably nervous about it. He talks almost entirely about the relationship he had and worked hard to form with each of the children, so we know that he is a particularly paternal man. He is loving, hard working and dedicated, as shown by his spending six months trying to get his new girlfriends children to like him and never giving up on them.
As for how to portray him, we (the director and I) agreed that we needed to make him as different from the man in the Bosnia story as possible, as I was playing both. The diction and grammar are different as his first language is English, in comparison to the Bosnia story’s verbatim, in which his native language was not English. The director commented that the language almost seemed quite nervous throughout, and so this was something I added to my performance.
I mostly used Stanislavsky’s methods in creating my characters. There were four main parts to his methods. The first is emotional memory: because I, as an actor, must use my own emotional memory to portray the character’s feelings at any given moment. This particular character as I have said, seemed nervous so I used my own experiences of being nervous to influence my portrayal of this character. The second thing you need to consider with Stanislavsky’s method is the given circumstances. These are: ‘the plot, the facts, the incidents, the period, the time and place of the action, the way of life, how we as actors and directors understand the play, the contributions we ourselves make, the mise-en-scène, the sets and costumes, the props, the stage dressing, the sound effects etc., etc., everything that is a given for the actors as they rehearse’ (Stanislavsky, 2008, 52-53). The given circumstances for this character would be being interviewed, as this is why he said those things, but who is he being interviewed by? We decided that I should act as though the audience have asked me about my time coming into this family and use that as the given circumstances. The third thing is the “Magic If”. Stanislavsky says that ‘stage action must be inwardly well founded, in proper, logical sequence, and possible in the real world’ (Stanislavsky, 2008, 48) and it was the “Magic If” that helped create this.
These allow the actor to create truth in their acting, and it is this that Stanislavsky wanted in his actor’s performances. I used these methods on my own portrayal of the verbatim in order to act it the best way possible.
Ollie
Stanislavski, K. & Benedetti, J.,(2008). An Actor’s Work: A Student’s Diary, New York: Taylor & Francis, Inc