Up There on the Stage

I think Stanaslavski got the whole drama thing down pat.

See, he invented these categories that together made up his whole idea of ‘The Method’.

I guess a lot of the techniques involve your imagination. Like, the magic “if”. This encourages the actor to ask the question “what if?”. What if your characters mother died? What if they spilt their dinner? What if someone lied to them? How would your character act? It’s funny how the simple things like that make up who someone is. It’s funny how the way someone reacts to something is who that person is.

Or what about the technique of having belief in what you are doing? Stanaslavski said that an actor must believe in what they, what their character is doing. They must believe that that is how their character would react in real life.

And then there’s adaption. The ability to be so in character that if something unexpected happens on stage they can react to it just as their character would react.

I guess Stanaslavski challenged us to not just appear to be the character, but be the character themselves. To utterly believe that you are that character, inside and out. Use your own knowledge of life and your own emotions to become that character and not just convince the audience that you are that character but convince yourself as well.

Life is the same.

You make who you are. You can be whoever you want to be. Perhaps we are slightly limited by where we are which limits what things happen for us to react to but still.. we make who we are. I believe that every person is born as a blank canvas and as you grow older the picture grows. But it is you that has the paintbrush in your hand. And you control every single stroke that is made. We paint the picture according to what we see and what we hear.

You say you have no control over your emotions?

Yes, you do.

You can do whatever you want to if you put your mind to it.

The trick is to be able to see yourself. Inside and out.

And make sure you aren’t painting the picture with your eyes closed.