FOUR THEATRE PRACTITIONERS - #LOVETHEATREDAY
- kellystewart3
- Nov 16, 2016
- 4 min read
Happy Love Theatre Day!
Despite On It Academy being centred around acting for screen, we can all say that we absolutely adore the theatre – for without it we wouldn’t have half of the acting legends we have today! Most of our academy students are currently training in theatre as well as training in screen acting with us, and we all agree that theatre is the backbone of the acting practice.
Therefore, in honour of this fabulous day, we have put together a little ‘Summary of Four Leading Theatre Practitioners Who Revolutionized Acting’ – enjoy!
1) Konstantin Stanislavski
Konstantin Stanislavski is one of the most influential theatre practitioners and theorists; bringing a strong movement of naturalism, and psychological realism to theatre.
Stanislavski strongly believed that the acting of his time was over-dramatized; lacking any sense of realism – Stanislavski saying that ‘acting becomes mechanical and formal when actors don’t invest their performances with their own human responses’.
‘Truthfulness on the stage’ and creating an emotional connection to the character and audience became Stanislavski’s central aim; and in order to achieve this created ‘The System’ to help guide actors to convey to the audience their characters truthful ‘inner, living spirit’. The System focuses on becoming the character internally, as Stanislavski believed ‘externally, it is not difficult to disguise yourself’ using techniques such as ‘Given Circumstances’, ‘Action’, ‘Imagination’ (an element Stanislavski believed ‘play[ed] the greatest part’) ‘Tempo-Rhythm’ and ‘Emotional Memory’ to create a new naturalistic way of acting, giving honest performances through real human complex emotional reactions in order to have an emotional impact and connection with the audience.
2) Bertolt Brecht
Epic Theatre was a reaction to the previous traditional Theatre style of naturalism; wherein the main aim was to make Theatre ‘a more truthful reflection of observable reality’, and therefore make the audience believe in the fictional world being presented. Epic Theatre’s primary aim was for the audience to be aware that what they are watching is fiction, and therefore make Theatre more consciously theatrical.
Many of the techniques used in Epic Theatre already existed for centuries, such as the use of the choric speech, however, Brecht ‘brought [all of the aspects] together into a coherent whole’, leading to his status as ‘the father of Epic Theatre’.
Brecht believed ‘the modern theatre mustn’t be judged by its success in satisfying the audience’s habits but by its success in transforming them’. Brecht’s plays were highly political as, like Hamlet, he wanted his theatre to not only ‘hold the mirror up to nature’ but also insisted it ‘show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure’. In other words, Brecht focused on ‘the relationship between theatrical form and the rapidly changing world beyond’. His concept of ‘verfrumdungseffekt’ was key in achieving this; wherein Brecht aimed to distance the play and the spectator - and thus make his work consciously theatrical. He did this through a range of techniques such as placards, episodic structure, and direct address - all of which allowed him to ‘break the fourth wall’.
2) Meyerhold
Meyerhold was another famous ‘Epic Theatre’ practitioner; his experiments dealing with physical being and symbolism in an unconventional theatre setting made him one of the influential forces in modern international theatre.
"If the tip of the nose works, the whole body works."
Meyerhold’s most famous form of actor training was titled ‘Biomechanics’, and like all of his work, focused intensely on the physical. This approach, which Meyerhold developed over some thirty-five years of experimentation and exploration as a director and as a teacher, provides the acting student with a complete, detailed program for the development of their psycho-physical instrument. Probably the most striking thing about training in Biomechanics is the degree of integration between "purely" physical training and the application of that physical work to acting itself.
The purpose of Meyerhold’s training is to create a connection between mind and body, to "teach the body to think." In Biomechanics, even the simplest exercises that might seem to be traditionally designed to develop physical capacities such as strength, agility, coordination, balance, flexibility and endurance only, become acting exercises – all because of the mental awareness Meyerhold encourages. Therefore, while students run, jump and work every muscle and joint during the initial physical training phase of the work, they are already required to be continually aware of their relationship to the space and to the other actors in their "ensemble", as well as their own "inner movement."
3) Artaud
Artaud created one of the most talked about forms of theatre amongst present day practitioners – Theatre of Cruelty. Originally a member of the surrealist movement, where artists began to explore the ‘subconscious’, particularly through Freud psycho-analysis, Artaud eventually began to develop theatre in the same way. ‘Theatre of Cruelty’ can be regarded as a break with traditional Western theatre; at the time seen as the ‘establishment’, in order to assault the senses of the audience, and allow them to feel the unexpressed emotions of the subconscious that they felt structured society was oppressing. While Artaud was only able to produce one play in his lifetime that reflected the tenets of the Theatre of Cruelty, the works of many theatre artists reflect his theories.
There are so many famous theatre practitioners, that putting this list together was incredibly hard for the On It Team! As any acting teacher will tell you, a knowledge and understanding of these revolutionaries is vital for actors in training – whether you’re focusing on theatre or screen acting – these legends are at the heart of it all! We’d highly recommend that all of our students, and readers, go away and find the in-depth articles about these and many other practitioners in order to widen their knowledge, and their practice.
So, what are you waiting for!?
GET ON IT!
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