Emotions

We had a very emotional lesson on Saturday

When we are children and learn to play make believe, one of the first things we do is explore emotions. It is an important part of a child's development; not only do they become more aware of their own feelings, they are learn to empathise with the feelings of others. Even if your child doesn't pursue a career in performing, drama lessons are a great way to help them understand their emotions.

I asked the children to name some emotions, really considering more specific words rather than just sad or happy. For the pupils who are doing the Graded pieces, I asked them to consider all the different emotions.

In our older class we continued to look at the work of Konstantin Stanislavski and his thoughts on Emotion Memory. In Stanislavski’s younger years, he encouraged his students to use Emotion Memory.

If you are playing Lady Macbeth, there is a strong chance you have not conspired with your husband to murder a king. How then can you play it truthfully?

Stanislavski proposed using your personal memories to evoke similar feelings of extreme guilt and so on. However, as Stanislavski’s method grew he turned away from Emotion Memory. Lee Strasburg developed it into Method Acting (which often wrongly gets attributed to Stanislavski) and it continues to be controversial. While actors who don’t use this method can hang up their Hamlet hat at the end of the day and move, actors who do can find themselves traumatised by past events they can’t settle. Heath Ledger famously used this method preparing for his role in The Dark Knight.

Emotion Memory can still be an effective tool. If you’re onstage it can be hard to feel like you’re actually in a field with the rain pouring down. Here is a good time to use Emotion Memory to fill in those gaps, by focusing on our senses.

We did an exercise which would focus on one of the senses to evoke a memory in the pupil. The thoughts that come to the performer are personal and they can use these in their performances to evoke a truthful response to the imagined circumstance on stage. If you want to give it a go, close your eyes and think of the following:

Feeling the warmth of an open fire Tasting the crunch of some buttered toast Smelling the bouquet of roses Each of these senses may have given you a memory, from which some emotion may stir. Step 1. Stimulus - Using your senses, what is something you can use to help you? Step 2. Memory - What emotions come about from your sensory experience?

Step 3. Response - Use these feelings in your performance.

Our final session for the term is on the 4th of April. Pupils have been asked to learn their monologue (as best as they can) and we'll do a mini mock. There is still much to do, but feedback will be great for them to work on over the Easter Holidays! Many thanks to the pupils who have adjusted so well to our online lessons. I will continue to follow government advice and will let you know as and when anything changes. See you on Saturday!