Practitioners

Practitioners: when discussing the show with other students and the tutors I can to the conclusion that the play was being done in a Brecht style but the characters had huge amount of Stanislavski style to them to get the audience to connect where as the Brecht style came in much more during the large movement pieces and symbolic chorus work which accompanied some of the scenes.

Stanislavski: for me I used Stanislavski techniques for my characters Rodger and the Duty sergeant. I went into great detail with Rodger and trying to understand how he would react in the situations he is put into and how he will react differently with the other character he meets throughout the play. I found it very interesting to explore how his relationship with Judy falls apart after the appearance of Christopher and I spent a long time figuring out why Rodger says what he does and broke all of my text up into motives and used them to influence my movement and vocals. For the Duty sergeant I wanted to play him in a Stanislavski way instead of in a Brecht style as I felt the subtle humor of the part would be much more affective if it was less over the top but much more realistic and just let the script do its work and adding in comic timing. I looked into how a policeman stands differently compared to a normal member of the public and tried correcting my posture to match and also focuses on my movement and reactions to Christopher.

Brecht: I used a lot of Brecht’s style of performing throughout the performance some examples are the way I played my cameo roles like Mr. wise for example with Mr. wise I used some repetitive gestus to make my character stand out and make him symbolic of the creepy weirdo/druggy without having to go into great detail. I focused much more on the movement and representing the character than going into a Stanislavski style as the role was quite small and it wouldn’t have been a big enough to develop the character but was still big enough to make the role unique and stand out and become a symbolic part of the performance.

Chorus work: the chorus work was done in a very Brecht style as it was there to be symbolic of Christopher’s feelings and thoughts there was no thinking about characters for us personally but instead trying to morph ourselves into feelings and thoughts. The chorus was very much needed to enhance the scenes they were supporting we did this through stylistic movement which was designed not to take attention away from the scenes but add to it.  

I found it very interesting combining two different practitioners for one show and found it interesting how we managed to integrate the two very different style together to make the performance and felt both were needed to help enhance each other and I felt building up character from different styles helped me understand the differences between practitioners more and allowed me to explore different techniques much more than usual.