A session I'll probably never forget: entering the space we joked, 'is he going to get us to lie on these mats and make us think of our worst memory?' basically, yeah.
With dark lighting and odd music in the background, we began the session in semi-supine, and did some breathing exercises to focus our minds. This was so that we could focus on a memory of strong emotion. Trying to recall a memory that strong was hard for me, but I found one where I remember just experiencing a harsh, ache in my chest from the pain of missing loved ones. It was painful recalling this memory, even more so trying to immerse ourselves in it to feel the strength of the emotion again, as the feeling I had chosen is one I always remembered as one I never, ever wanted to experience again. Remaining focused, we then had to try and imagine writing our emotion on a blank, white sheet of paper placed in front of us. Another hard, and painful task as I had no words really to describe my emotions, (if I had written physically, I'm pretty certain no-one would have understood what I meant).
I had no idea walking into this lesson, that within half an hour I would be in floods of tears. I think this feeling was probably amplified by the amount of emotion through the room as you could feel the atmosphere and hear the sobs of other students.
The hardest part, for me at least, was yet to come. Individually, we were taken to the centre of the room, into a spotlight. Then another student would walk up and do something with the white piece of paper. It was hard, not only to be a part of the interaction, but also to listen and be aware of the others, who were having their paper torn up,or laughed at and the sobs were at time heart-breaking.
In my case, I felt extraordinarily self-conscious entering the spotlight in the centre of the room, with tears and snot streaming down my face, (lovely, I know) and I just felt fear at what would happen to my piece of paper. Caitlin came up, and took my piece of paper, read it, and laughed mockingly at me. Feeling more embarrassed and self-conscious than angry at the way she looked at my piece of paper, I didn't react strongly but rather tried to hide my face and half move towards the paper, then half move back.
Thankfully, when it was my turn to take someone's paper, I was given the far-less harsh job of looking at the paper compassionately, then giving a comforting hug. This was a relief after my experience as I knew how painful it was to be in the middle and actually comforted me as well as Emily.
To be honest, the Stanislavski workshop was extremely emotional and slightly harrowing, but it also gave me a sense of relief afterwards as I felt that I'd released a lot of pent up emotion, and it also gave me a stronger insight into the methods some actors take and to what extent you can go to express the emotion of a character. However, I don't think I could use this method as it took me at least 20 minutes to access the emotion and after that, it was almost emotionally exhausting and doing that in a performance could be ultimately scarring.
Yet more...
(sorry: there's a lot to say)
After the hour long workshop from hell, we had a quick break to emotionally recover, and were then plunged back into another dark, tragic setting as we began to explore the play we will be performing as a class for our BTEC: Antigone (a contemporary version).
First of all, we were asked to imagine that a box was the image of our dead brother who we had admired and respected throughout our lives, and that inside would be revealed the true, despicable nature of our brother. Using this, if we felt able/ready, we were to approach the box as if we were grieving then to find the truth inside and react. It took me a while before I felt able to express this, and truthfully, even when I attempted it I'm not sure I really had the right state of mind on. I believe if I had focussed more on the emotion rather than thinking about how I would go up and then react, I may have been able to offer a more convincing performance. However, I felt that the silent mourner, then shocked reaction worked well, though I could have been more daring.
Using these emotions and movements, we then had to react as Antigone and Creon (Mr Chipp) came in and revealed our brother to us. It was extremely shocking when he came in and almost stunned me with the violence and harshness with which revealed the truth of our brother, reacting violently to students who reacted as Antigone. I was in denial and tried to put the dirt back into the box which he had ruined, but he came up again and chucked the mud all over me. This exercise was extraordinarily dramatic and slightly shocking, and gave me a huge insight into what sort of situation and emotions Antigone must have gone through.
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