Response to The Cherry Orchard- Anton Chekhov

The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov is a play based around the late 1800's about freedom and change both historical and personal . 

The events in the play happen because of the values that Lubov deems important. She likes remembering how things used to be and to holds onto the part of her past when everything was wonderful. Living in her past is her escapism from the pain in her present she refuses to accept change and therefore has no freedom as she is trapped in her old life.This is the whole reason why she refuses to sell the cherry orchard, the sentimental value of the orchard is too strong as she has some of her most happiest childhood memories there and reminds her of a better time of her life. Anya sats to Varya 

“She had already sold her villa at Mentone, she had nothing left…And Mamma wouldn’t understand! When we had dinner...she always ordered the most expensive dishes, and tipped the waiters a whole ruble'

It seems easier for Lubov to keep living like everything is the same as this keeps up the illusion that nothing has changed. That is why she orders food and tips waiters like she usually does even though she does not have any money to spare.

Firs grows up on The estate as a servant and even though the serfs are freed (historical event) he continues to serve the family. He does this because he is afraid of change and this also contributes to the major value in his life, order. He can not live without someone to serve.

Firs: Yes! Me go to bed, and who’s to hand things round? Who’s to see to things? I’m the only one in the whole house.

He is committed to a life of serving and that he, in fact, defines his existence based on this sense of order and prides himself on not changing after the emancipation of the surfs.

Lopakhin’s sole value is money. He is very ambitious as he grew up the son of a peasant and this aspired him to be more than that. His value of money goes beyond just wanting to be wealthy he is embarrassed of his past. He did not want to live and serve on other people’s land like his father resulting in the urge to become something better becoming his weakness. He is so consumed with the conquest of his past that he ignores the person that he admits he loves and breaks theirs and their mothers heart by  buying the estate, something that his father was never able to do, and he brags and makes sure everyone knows it. 

“I bought the estate where my father and grandfather were slaves, where they weren’t even allowed to enter the kitchen.”

Although unable to change his prioritisation of money Lopakhin is the only one who has the courage to overcome his past and the ambition to conquer his future. Being able to move on in the face of tragedy and change. 

Response to An Actor Prepares- Bella Merlin

Stanislavski places importance on acting in a truthful and imaginative way that captures and evokes emotion from the audience. In An Actor Prepares, he targets actors who seek only to entertain and shows that these actors only act through their outward appearance, and never really find inward truth. An actor prepares is a guide on how to get the best out of a character and what excersizes, thought processes and objectives the actor should think about to do this successfully. 

The first things that Stanislavski works against is Melodrama and stereotypes for eg. looking down and holding a hand on your forehead to represent sadness, and making the body destorted and face ugly to represent a villain or un kind person. These actions were all put into performances where they only served as  an outward appearance. This is why one excersize or character building task he teaches is observing the body in a mirror to see whether the physical choices are truthful or not. When an actor focuses on the outward side of acting, the inward side shows emotions that aren’t there, where in fact the the actor should beleive in the character so much that the emotion just comes naturally. 

Stanislavski discredits over-acting, and states that overacting is not feeling emotions too strongly but really overcompensating for lack of real emotion. The main reason actors tend to overact is the attempt to achieve a truthful emotion that will evoke a desired response from the audience, stating that acting cannot begin from outward appearance!

Every action that the character does on stage must have a purpose that has been thoroughly thought out by the actor this will usually result in what is presented outwardly coming from within the character. The actor must know and have thought about why the character does every action, every step, every facial expression this can be helped when asking questions about the character such as: Why am I here? Where have I come from? What do I want? In asking these sort of questions, the actor also starts to understand the character’s life outside of the scene, there background, there thought process. This is called the Unbroken Line. The character’s life isn’t broken up into scenes, only what the audience see is broken up. The actor must create a life for the character that extends beyond the text.

To really have a truthful performance on stage, the actor must be fully comfortable within their character. Stanislavski states that the actor must be able to find a sort of peace or solace on stage, even in front of thousands of people. The successful execution of this technique varies for all actors, but it starts with successful creation of the fourth wall to block out the audience resulting in the actor portraying a performance where the character looks fully comfortable and naturalistic.  

Everything you learn from this book can be used in any form of acting and can transform a good peice of acting into a great peice of acting due to the dissembling of every aspect of a play or script and the peicing back together with thought, understanding and true emotion. 

Evaluation of performance

On the night of the performance I think i performed a successful portrayal of Varya  as I incorporated all the Stanislavski skills I had learnt throughout the term and made sure I focused mainly on the naturalistic style of the play. Writing on my script, the objectives, units and questions helped me to fully engage with the character and create a life for her where she wasn't just in the scenes of the play, but a life outside aswell (the unbroken line), this made her become more real and resulted in a naturalustic character. I beleive I became more relaxed and in turn was able to listen and respond naturally to the other characters that where around me and conversing with me, giving me something real to feed of of leaving me with real and true emotions and responses. 

Things that I would change or work on if we where to perform the play again would be delivery of lines, confidence and aspects of staging. When performing the play many of the actors where not truly embodying their character and had not fully thought about their character choices which gave the sence of the actor just 'reading lines' and a rushed pace that was mainly because of time and nerves. If we where to spend more time on the script the characters would evoke a stronger confidence with lines and physicality's chosen, some of the actors may have also had more time to learn their lines more thoroughly (although I do beleive we where given a sufficient amount of time) as during the performance a few people forgot their lines and had to be prompted. I would also change the set slightly as we began with a mountain of items that make up the stage props such as chairs, coats, trays and table cloths piled on top of eachother and although I liked the idea and think it was very visually effective it wasn't very safe as during the opening the chairs collapsed and nearly injured me and could of injured others. The minimal set I think was effective and I think worked well with our play and the visual aspect of it. 

Overall I beleive that we performed a good show and successfully incorporated the Stamislavski approach to acting and character embodiment. We all as a company became closer during this term and worked well with eachother with help from team bonding excersizes and keenness of working with different people. As a whole I have thoroughly enjoyed this term and beleive that we have all worked hard in pulling of a naturalustic rendition of Anton Chekhovs The Cherry Orchard. 

Script

Things to think about: 

Questions

Who am I? 

When am I here? 

Where am I? 

Why am I here? 

What do I want? 

Where have I come from? 

Where am I going? 

Objectives 

Super objective ( objective for throughout the whole play) 

Mini objectives ( objectives throughout scenes or particular interaction) 

Surroundings 

Visualise the place you are in ( nursery/ doorway) 

How does Varya feel in this space 

3 dimensional space, don't treat the space as a stage treat it how the character feels about it 

Units 

Individual units in a scene portray where the objective changes 

The tital of each unit portrays how the scene should feel 

Week 6- Applying Stanislavski to The Cherry Orchard

After spending 5 weeks looking at Stanislavski methods we can now start using them in our performance of The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov. 

Applying Stanislavski to short scenes- week 5

Key Terms

• Circles of Attention
• Emotion Memory
• Subtext

We did an exercise where we imagined we where at a Bus stop this exercise combined imagination, Given Circumstances and What if. A narration was given of a scene in which we where standing at a bus stop, early in the morning on the way to a job interview. After that we where told various other given circumstances like you are chewing chewing gum and you see a bus coming from a distance and we had to react truthfully to this. With all the given circumstances the thing that made it truthful and successful was the thought process whilst doing them: 

You are chewing gum – what flavour is it?

You have a bag on your shoulder – how heavy is it?

You see a newspaper by your feet- what is the headline, is it interesting to you 

You see a car on the other side of the road- a couple are having an argument are you intregued, shocked or not bothered 

You see a bus coming in the distance- how do you react to this are you happy, relieved? 

We then began to explore circles of attention? This was where or how big your attention was whilst reacting to the given circumstance. I found that when the circumstance was about me eg. Chewing gum my circle of attention was smallest, when I was looking at a newspaper slightly further away my circle of attention was in between and when I was looking at the approaching bus my attention was largest. Circles of attention or concentration provides the actor a means of maintaining and regaining focus as necessary and also to help provide the area to give attention when on stage.

“Solitude in public; using different circles of attention on stage to focus the attention on the stage: re-focus up on an object if attention is lost and create circles emanating around that object”

Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares

We then went on to a neutral text exercise where we where given 6 proves of dialogue between two people and had to interpret the meaning or scenario of it in our pair. 

Me and Jacob interpreted this as a young couple, person A who's purpose is to get B to bed and B who's purpose is to ignore A's seduction and continue to do what ever they were doing in our case watching TV. We then looked at subtext and what the person was thinking inbetween speech my three peices of subtext where 

A: Hello

A: give me a bit of attention 

A: Are you coming 

A: he better switch that telly of and come upstairs 

A: oh, ok. Bye then 

A: fucking men and their fucking football 

Working out the subtext gave us a clearer intention of the character and scene compared to before when we just applied the dialogue to the scenario. We then delved deeper into the character and looked at 7 questions:

Who am I? - a girlfriend 

When am I here?- around 3 on a Saturday afternoon 

Where am I?- at our flat 

Why am I here? -I'm here because I live here 

What do I want? - I want my boyfriend to come to bed 

Where have I come from?- the kitchen 

Where am I going?- I'm going to the sofa to get my boyfriend then upstairs to the bedroom 

After doing this the scene was visually more interesting and made a lot more sence to me and Jacob as it became more naturalistic because we both had a clear purpose and could fully commit to that purpose. From this I learnt that fully working out a character and applying these questions and subtext to their dialogue can make the scene more believable not only for the audience but also for you. 

Objectives- week 3

Super objectives 

The Super objective of a character is the objective they follow throughout the whole play, the most important objective. In Romeo and Juliet the super objective is that the two families come together, this is seen throughout the whole play. 

First objective 

We started an exercise where we had to carry out particular objectives. The super objective was to keep moving and the first objective was to walk around the room picking a particular point in the room wether it be a chair or a crack in the wall and once we got there, to pick another point and move towards it, repeating and following this pattern. 

Second objective 

The second objective was to be aware of the whereabouts of one person: person A while moving around the room and doing the first objective which was picking a point in the room and moving towards it. 

Third objective 

While completing objective 1 & 2 we then had to pick another person to be aware of: person B this could mean that your person one and two could be on completely different sides of the room and you would have to know where they were while completely focusing on your point and moving to it with pace. This became hard as you are trying to focus on so many things, while moving with pace and being aware of surroundings. 

Fourth objective 

The fourth objective was that person A was your enemy and you had to stay away from them. This turned the class into a whirlpool effect as everyone was running around in circles and this meant that you had to be really aware of the people around you and your surroundings. 

Fifth objective 

The fifth objective was that person B was your sheild and the only thing that could protect you from person A. This meant a lot of change is pace as I had to run fast at times to stay with person B but at times I had to walk slowly or pivot slightly as they weren't moving that much. 

Sixth objective 

The last objective was to form an equilateral triangle using person A and B. This was challenging as your person A could constantly be moving to the opposite side of the room and your person B could be hardly moving around at all and vice versa. The fact that the traingle was equilateral was also challenging as the other two people had to be the exact same distance away from you at the right angle and the fact that they were constantly were moving around meant this became almost impossible. 

Stopping and Starting 

This excersize consisted of us all walking around the room together and when we felt the group was ready to stop we all had to stop together at the sametime. When we felt ready to start walking again we had to start altogether without corresponding or anyone leading it. This took a lot of tries to get right as there where leaders but slowly they began to realise how to work together collectively in a group, we also got better as we developed a pace so when we where nearly ready to stop, the pace would slow down and we would bunch in together this meant we could see others more easily and feel others relaxed and  ready to stop. 

We developed this starting and stopping into more complex things like stopping, sitting, lying down, sitting back up, standing back up and then walking again. This was very challenging and complicated as when we all started lying down we couldn't see anyone or feel anyone getting up therefore it took about 15 minutes to get to the stage of sitting up again. Simon told us that we should listen to eachothers breathing and that helped us know when it was time to get up. This exercise was difficult but an amazing way to become aware and used to working in a large group and together. I found that it built our confidence in eachother which is important as we are going to be working with eachother for the next 2 years. 

Stanislavski- week 4

Imagination 

We did an exercise where we had to imagine an object that we disliked and then describe it without using the items name. I picked a spider and when describing it to the rest of the class said it was light, about the size of my hand, it lived in homes mainly, and had eight legs and eyes I also described it's appearance and what it felt moving on my hand and when receiving feedback after my describtion i was told that everyone new it was a spider because of different ways, one was because of how they related to what I was saying and they saw spiders the same way I did and another was because of a particular physical description such as the eight legs and many eyes. Later when we were descussing the exercise we found that the reason we didn't say the name of the object was because everyone has there own ideas of how a particular object looks such as the spider but by describing it you create a personal picture for the audience that is shared with everyone listening. 

Given circumstance 

3 chairs where placed in the centre of the room and we where asked what they could be, after a couple of comments such as a doctors waiting room, airoplane and van we decided that the most realistic answer was the doctors waiting room as in a doctors waiting room there are just ordinary chairs placed together. We then discussed what would be around a doctors waiting room such as a desk, a receptionist and a board reading patients names, we also spoke about what day it would be ( a day in the week not weekend) and what time it would probably be ( the morning ) these were the given circumstances. Ella was then picked to come into the doctors waiting room and just act as she would if she was waiting at the doctors, two other people from my class then joined her and sat in the other chairs and acted as they would at a doctors waiting room. When we had a descussion about it after watching them for around 5 minutes we descovered that what made it so successful was the realistic and genuine approach to the scenario, it was so believable and almost hypnotising to watch as you really felt like you where just peering into a doctors waiting room. In this excersize the 4th wall applied as this was vital to making the peice believable when hearing the 3 class members speak it came apparent that what helped them become so believable was having a back story and after hearing the back stories that they each had we all agreed that it came across. We also annalysed body language such as there leg position or how they were holding their arms this all added to the supposed character they had in their head. 

Relaxation

We did an exercise where we stood in neutral and slowly imagined each part of our body starting from the feet turning to ice/ freezing. This involved us tensing up every part of our body such as locking knees and scrunching the bum. Once we where completely tense and in freeze mode we slowly began to melt from head to toe un tensing each body part. This was a zipping feeling as we felt trapped and restricted when freezing and free and loose when melted. This excersize was designed to completely free the body and to realise the difference between being tence and loose and how this can affect an actor. 

Tempo-Rhythm 

The Tempo or Rhythm of a scene makes you feel a certain way and get a certain feeling from the scene. For instance if there was a murder about to take place the tempo would be going quite slow giving the audience more time to build fear making the audience member feel on edge and tense but if a character was just doing a normal everyday thing the tempo would be quite relaxed and normal making the audience member feel calm. The tempo is used as a dramatic tool it can heighten tension and dissipate it.

Magic if/ What if 

We did an exercise where we walked around the space with a purpose, which was to get to school. As we where walking we where shouted out things such as 'What if there was a £50 note on the floor' and we had to react as we personally would if this where to happen. I found that in this excersize everyone acted completely differently although some may have not been as truthful as expected. I personally found it hard to envisage some of the 'what if' questions but I tried to act as truthfully as I possibly could putting myself in the position of the scenario. This exercise was particularly advantageous to me as it helped me with my improvisational skills and naturalism which are key in the particular area we are studying at the moment. 

Melodrama and Naturalism- week 2

We started the lesson by walking around the space neutrally, Simon and Sarah then began to talk about melodrama and how this type of theatre was popular in Chekhov times and was a key reason why Stanislavsky introduced his form of naturalism. We then where told to freeze and make an image of the particular popular characters used in melodrama; the damsel in distress, the hero, the prince, the villain, the sidekick and the henchman. When doing so we would pause to look at a particular person who embodied the character well and we would explain why we thought their still image was so successful. I found in this exercise that bigger was better and to times my character by at least 3. 

After we had done this exercise we got into groups of 5 and devised our own short piece of melodrama. My group decided to make our piece have a simple story line so that we could really focus on our melodramatic physicality's and voice. Later when we showed our pieces, positive feedback was that we all had identifiable roles, we all faced the audience and kept that interaction strong and that we had a clear storyline all points we tried to incorporate inour piece    so I was happy that the feedback picked up on that and was successful.

We started to look more into Stanislavsky and his theatre form of naturalism. We discussed what we thought naturalism was and decided that it was finding qualities in a character similar to yourself and using that to make your character as truthful as possible. A naturalistic play or performance has to be truthful and believable, after establishing this we got into small groups to create a small piece of naturalistic theatre. My group decided we would set our piece in a lift as it was one of the most simple places we could have picked where no interaction takes place so you can really just focus on people being natural. I found this quite challenging as with naturalistic theatre it is so easy to overreact or do things you wouldn't normally do, I found it quite hard to just relax and feel as if I was just simply standing in a life but I found a way of overcoming this by thinking of a time I'd been a lift and just rein acting that time and putting myself in that mindset. We watched a few different groups performances and then where told to edit it down to around half the time, for my group this wasn't hard at all but other groups found that they would cut out the beginning and the end and just get to the real content, whereas others found that this meant they would cut out more of the pauses or the umms or errs. 

To conclude the lesson we did a short group peice on a synopsis of the cherry orchard. My group picked 4 major points in the story, the arrival, the descussion of selling the house, the announcement of the cherry orchard being sold and the ending. We did this by using freeze frames and physical theatre there was an element of comedy in all the group pieces as they where so quick and a lot of them didn't make much sense. I enjoyed this lesson as we got to improve our understanding of melodrama and naturalism by exploring them through short pieces of theatre made by ourselves. 

Week 1

To start with we introduced ourselves to our new theatre class and began descussing themes in the play The Cherry Orchard in groups. My group came up with themes such as relationships, gender and social class but later on when we shared our ideas with the rest of the class came to the conclusion that there where two main themes that incorporated all the other themes we had all thought of these were Freedom and change. 

We then were told to think personally about the theme change firstly what came to mind when we thought of the word, I thought of choice, to be open, individuality and voice. Secondly we where told to think of where we personally feel the most free, I descovered that to me this was when I was in a large field as I was able to run, skip, lay, observe and just be. Then we had an open discussion about personal finds we descovered that Freedom itself is a very personal thing as it is not only a literal and physical thing but mental and therefore everyone has there own definition. 

We then got into groups of 4 to begin devising a peice on Freedom. We decided to pick a type if person that may feel trapped this would be someone with a gender problem (Tyler played this person) we decided to pick this type of person as we descovered that gender is very entrapping as by being a particular sex certain things are and aren't expected of you. We decided that this peice would be mainly physical theatre as we could really show how caged this particular subject could make people feel. Jacob, Ella and I formed a cage around Tyler by interlocking our arms around him in an almost triangular shape, while we where a around him he struggled to get out and said statements about this particular subject such as ' I can't do certain things that girls can' or ' I am raised differently depending on my gender' after saying this he then said ' but I refuse to be restricted' at that point the cage slowly began to collapse and as Tyler walks away he say I am free. I liked our peice as it was simple yet got the point of a particular kind of freedom and how it was achieved across using minor physical theatre and speech. 

All the different groups showed their pieces and we each got feedback. We then did an exercise focusing on freedom we used a chart of 1 to 10, 1 being completely caged and oppressed and 10 being free. This was a physical theatre exercise and we had to use our bodies to show the change between 1 and 10. To start at 1 I was hunched over and tight by 5 I was completely neutral and at 10 I had my hands in the air and was completely loose. This was very visually interesting as everyone had their own physical view of being oppressed and free and at the end of the exercise we added it to the larger peice we where working on. We also added the improved group work to the peice along with some lines from the play about freedom. Towards the end of our peice we added some audience interaction where we asked them ' when do you feel most free?' And after conversing for a while with the audience stopped to hear Sonia read an extract from the the Play about freedom. 

We performed these class pieces to the different classes in the Theatre strand and then had small descusions about each others pieces. I learned a lot about the theatre skill of physical theatre this week and how powerful it is as you can say so much by just using your body, I also learned a lot about using themes as a basis for theatre work, as by picking just one theme out of the many we came up with from the play The Cherry Orchard created a 15 minute peice incorporating physical and performance theatre.