Given circumstances is a theory Stanislavski used to determine the nature of his characters he was creating. He believed that a character's given circumstances will say a lot about that person and determine what sort of person they are.
A persons given circumstance is what they have been bought into and how they have been bought up.
- Heredity
- Environment
These two elements were believed by Stanislavski to contribute to how a person becomes.
Heredity is what a person has had passed down to them from their parents, we would call it GENES these days, but back in Stanislavski's days, genes were not yet discovered, and there was no scientific proof of why people are the way they are.
Environment was believed to affect the way a person is, for example; if a person was bought up in a very wealthy, rural and upper class environment, that said person would more than likely turn out to be wealthy and successful. And if a person was bought up in an urban, poor and criminal environment, and especially if their family contained criminals, they would more than likely end up like this too.
EXERCISES;
WHAT IF? : This is a very simple yet enjoyable exercise, what if means an actor has to think as if they were their character, we were put into situations by our tutor and asked to react and think how our character would, or how we would react ourselves.
THE COTTAGE: This exercise was my favourite out of all the naturalistic exercises we have been taught.
We were given a scenario, which was we had all travelled to a christmas cottage in the woods together to have a party for new years eve. We all set up the kitchen and living room, and naturally one group formed in the kitchen and the other in the living room. We all began to socialise, drink, dance and shout as if we were at a party together. Everything was very naturalistic, we were told that we were listening to the radio and we heard an announcement that a serial killer had escaped from a near by prison. After finding this out, most people began to panic and ramble. I naturally did not feel that threatened, and simply locked all the doors and closed the blinds, as this is what I would do in real life, if i lock the doors then no one is going to be able to get in.
Andy turned the lights off and started to make banging noises as if someone were knocking on the door, at this point a lot of people in my class started screaming and hiding. I felt slightly nervous but I always try to be logical and rational about situations, i went over to the door and told whoever it was to go away!
To me it felt so natural and in my mind I was imagining what the cottage looked like, what colour it was, what we were all drinking and what music we were listening to. My imagination allowed me to create the images in my mind.
I really enjoyed this exercise, it allows everybody to identify what role every body plays and how different and similar people can be and how people react to a situation.
EXERCISE WITH GRETA: This exercise, me and Greta were given a scenario, as two friends who were going for the same job. We improvised together and let it flow naturally, and we were both going for a modelling job which pays a lot of money. After a few minutes, Greta's character became jealous of mine saying that I will obviously get the job, and then we started talking about each others boyfriends! It was a very naturalistic scene, as we were portraying two girls who were talking about boys and modelling!
Again, I was using my own imagination throughout and simply reacting to the scenario in my own natural way.
OBJECTIVE, OBSTACLE: In today's lesson we were learning exercises to do with objectives and obstacles.
One of the exercises we had to do in pairs, was not to let the other person leave! I did this once with UNIS and once with JADE. I found it easier to be the one leaving as I came up with more excuses to leave, as apposed to trying to make the other person stay. That might say a lot about my personality!
The second time we had to establish who we were, and me and Jade chose partners, I was playing her boyfriend and she was my girlfriend. She used lots of different reasons for why I shouldn't leave, and lots of people used emotional blackmail, which was interesting!
Another exercise we learned today was in pairs as well, but we were given an objective by Andy and had to improvise with a partner, without the partner knowing our objective and vice versa!
IZYY and I did this exercise together, and we were both given the exact same objective! That we had heard about a really promising promotion that would get us a lot more money, but we did not want to let anyone find out as we really wanted it. It was really interesting because I actually did not catch on that ours were the same during improvisation… I felt that IZYY was hinting to me that I did not need the job anymore and that I have enough money from my "husband", so i thought her objective was to try and get me to leave! And I was very different, as I was trying to find things out from her instead of making her feel like she was "too good" for the job.
I am really enjoying Stanislavski exercises as they are developing my acting skills and ability to improvise. I feel I am so much better and much more confident at improvisation compared to the beginning of the year.
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