Reflect on Presentation

These days, Ms.Guarino let us choose important dramatist from a list of theatres. At first, I was ruminating about Stanislavski because I have done his acting techniques before, and it will be much easier for me to research about him than any other people on the list. However, I realize maybe I should choose another one since I had had him before, so I think I will choose a harder one. That leads me to do Michael Chekhov. Through the presentation of each of one, I have learned different techniques that each of them describes. Nevertheless, I learned more about my actor. In 1912, he studied under Stanislavski method, While, when he practiced in theatre, he had faced a nervous breakdown, so he thinks this method is not safe for everyone to take it. On the other hand, with the help of his doctor, he thought of a way in which don’t have to confront the difficulties. He then created the Psychological gesture and imagination: a way of combining the physical movement and imagination through understanding the information from the script. He believed that actors should imagine the circumstances that they are in. He thinks actors can acknowledge the basic information of a character through rough reading, so if an actor read deeply, they then going to know the center of the character such as the personality of the character. I think I can put this in our scene as well. In the first time, through brief reading, we can see that Amanda is a talkative character when she first appears in the scene, she talks to Laura about her funniest experience in Church, and when Tom comes, sitting down on the chair. She then nags Tom to use his fork properly, and also educate him about his eating style on the table. From this, we can see that she is so annoying that she wants to complain little things about Tom. However, as we read more, we can see that she has definitely different tones to Laura and Tom. In the first place, she is just saying things to Laura about the recent news, but then when it turns to Tom, she is suppressing him as the man of the house, teaching him what should do or not. Also, through words, I can see that she is an old lady because she already had two kids between 20 years old. Moreover, she can be a little fat because she talks a lot, and that needs a lot of air inside of her lungs. As she is coming in and out from the kitchen and also Laura sticks on her little world, so she is unable to go out, I assume that she is the ‘housewife’ of the family; she might be the person who goes out and buy food for the family supply, her ‘go out’ cloth might be dirty because of the fact that she goes out too much. Probably that she has another cloth for home since she has the imagination of gentlemen callers surrounding her.
Also, I have learned a lot from other presentation. For example, in Lee method, he thinks that people should be that character by portraying the characters in the script. However, this method totally against Chekhov because Lee wants to use past events to stimulate the feelings of a character, yet sometimes I think this work well because it is hard for us to have an imagination to a situation, so sometimes, we can utilize this method to help us so we can feel ourselves in the moment. For example, I can use the feeling of againsting my older brother. Although he is older than I am, I still like an older sister in the family because sometimes I am the one who will act maturely, controlling him from dangers and using logical ideas to analyze. However, in the acting, I may going to add more annoying when I am talking to Tom because Amanda thinks he is responsible to the family. Sometimes, When my brother is going great in his job, I will ruminate about myself because there is already a successful person in our family, so should I work hard or not. I think that is Amanda’s stereotype that she thinks Tom can be the only one who did the entire thing. The only thing that Amanda and Laura are going to do is to enjoy their life because there is Tom for them or maybe the gentleman caller will arrive and pay for them for everything.
Moreover, I also learned from Stella method, in her view, actors should be act also in the reactions of partners. It indicates that the actor’s emotion will provoke another actor’s emotion. I think we used that a lot in the previous acting. One time, when we are doing the Romeo and Juliet scene in the class, I didn’t express my full emotion into it, so it leads everybody else in the part didn’t do well. And Ms.Guarino analyzes that maybe I didn’t understand the character, so I am not able to act the scene. As a result, anybody else didn’t see the provocation of my character, and this means they then couldn’t act to it. Also, since I am the person who is talking every time, I need to have the provocation to either Tom or Laura, so they can response to my feeling. For example, when we are arguing, I can do more annoying things to stimulate his feeling such as when I say to Tom that he must chew his food, I can imitate the chewing actions and deliberately slow my motion and words, so this could represents how annoying I am. Furthermore, I still remember Meyerhold about his method of exposing small details about the political and social issues in the society. Then as a family issue and the stereotype in the society, we can use several symbols to display such as breaking glass in the table or breaking chairs that repsented the relationship between Tom and Amanda.
There are a lot of methods that can be put in our acting, so I am expecting what will happen.