Earlier this week, we were delighted to welcome professional actor, theatre practitioner and film maker, Nick O’Brien, into school to deliver a specialist workshop on the Stanislavski approach to acting.
Konstantin Stanislavski was a Russian theatre practitioner who developed the Stanislavski system in the first half of the twentieth century. It is called a system because he developed a holistic and psychological approach to acting, where all parts of the conscious and subconscious behaviour, or emotional experience, are considered. In essence, this method helps the actor create a more truthful and naturalistic performance.
The boys, who are working towards their scripted A-Level performances, were put through their acting paces during the workshop, when Nick created scenarios comprising of an objective, a circumstance and an action, for them to act out.
In one of these scenarios, Louis Cooke and Zac Wasterfall were required to depict ‘panic’ and ‘I put him in his place’ with a scene set on an aeroplane.
Zac said afterwards, “I really enjoyed the development of learning new scenes through improvisation. Using a rough idea of what the scene entailed, we were tasked with creating our own version of the scene to try to create the intended effect. Once this was done, we then implemented the scripted words, and it seemed to feel easier to do so as there was a greater understanding of the scene.
“For my first scripted performance, I am taking an extract from Macbeth and so using Stanislavski as my practitioner will be very useful as we focused on acting in Macbeth during the workshop. It also made me understand more of what each character wishes to achieve in the text by stripping down all the characters’ intentions to the simplest state.”
Nick taught the boys that in order to truly act as well as Stanislavski, you should understand those other actors around you and be able to telepathically connect with them. However, this only comes by fully embodying yourself within a character and preventing yourself from holding back.