Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Week 9- Emotion Memory Exercises-Rehearsal
Instead of scene presentations this week, we worked on emotion memory exercises. Many of you had important breakthroughs in your ability to identify, create and use existing and fabricated memories to inform your performances. When you write this week about what you experienced and/or witnessed, think about what you can do as a performer to make yourself more malleable. How can you begin to look at your practice as a technique that is used to shape your talent? Can you take the "personal" out of the technical approach, to use the personal to inform how your technique serves you?
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It was really neat to see the technique work for someone! The emotional rawness that julie displayed and the way she was able to come in and out of it was inspirational. I look forward to the day when I can do this. I don't know what is holding me back from experiencing this. I try to keep an open mind when doing the exercises but have yet to experience personally what I saw on Tuesday. I look forward however, to trying again and again until it works.
ReplyDeleteThis is something that I’ve thought a lot about but is something I’m honestly not sure about as far as my working goes. I haven’t had the chance to go up and see if I can cry or laugh or anything like that. I feel as though I have a grip on the simple emotional memory, meeting someone for the first time and feeling nervous. Being annoyed with someone whom you aren’t really fond of. But I think that when it comes to the bigger emotions I’m a little bit lost as far as making them tools. I haven’t had the chance to go up yet so. I know that I could cry if I sit with myself and think about something sad. I could use that for a scene, but when you get up in front of people it often changes your emotional place. The time is takes you to get to the same sort of place emotionally will be different. I think the only way to really get a feel for yourself in this way is to do what we are doing in class now. Experience it. I think there is a sort of homework you can do as far as preparing for your work in class. Try to think of some situations you might use to elicit the emotional response you’re looking for. Maybe try and do the exercise by yourself when you practice your scene or even just to get the emotion, minus the scene. If you work it enough in this way, become more comfortable with it, then it will become more businesslike instead of personal and private. I’m a little bit foggy as far as this whole thing is going and I’ll have a better idea of what I personally need to work on, or how I want to look at it after I’ve gone in class. I have some ideas of what can elicit my emotions and I can use them with myself, but I want to do a test run soon and work with the specifics of it. It is rehearsal that this blog is about, so I’m excited to try and rehearse it.
ReplyDeleteI have a really hard time allowing myself to become fully committed emotionally to a scene. I can always get myself to a place of sadness for tears or a place of anger for yelling but as soon as I am about to reach the true emotion I shut off. I have been working more and more at trying to stop this but it is a roadblock which keeps coming back to me. I do like watching the others in class because it's a chance for me to really see how others get through the same type of roadblocks. I still have a lot of work left in order to be able to take my personal experiences and truly insert them in my acting. I'm hoping that practice and practice and some more practice will allow to me to breakthrough and finally feel comfortable enough to bring my personal experiences out to the audience. I'm not completely sure why this keeps happening either which is something I need to work on. I'm ready to really dig deep and figure it out and make my emotions real instead of just "acting."
ReplyDeleteI have been thrilled to get a chance to work on emotion memory. Although I have not as of yet had a chance to work myself watching and experiencing with my classmates has been very beneficial. I realize there are other emotions to focus on but has been the main focus so far, and I have found it very helpful. I have always admired people that were able to actually cry in a performance, and have wanted to be able to myself. Watching other people work and sharing in their emotion has helped me to reach this goal. I have also been able to draw from my own memories and knowledge of my future losses. I have found that thinking about losing my loved ones and what that would be like has worked the best. No I do not think it is possible to take the "personal" out of the technical approach. How else can we possible create a person in our characters if we don't draw from a person? And what person do we know and understand better than ourselves?
ReplyDeleteI am so excited to get the chance to work on emotion memory. I feel that everyone thinks that I am just happy all the time and that’s the emotion I display. However, this is not the case. Yes, I am most comfortable showing joyful and exciting emotions; there are many days when I feel sad and I just do not like to show it. Working on emotion memory is very helpful in hopes that I can have a break-through towards anger and sadness. Julie and Rachel did awesome jobs showing there emotion. I think they gave some people confidence to just get up there and pour your heart out. I am really hoping one day that I can push through these obstacles and portray any emotion I want to on demand. This exercise is so helpful I really think it Is benefitting not only me, but my classmates as well.
ReplyDeleteIn the last class, I had the opportunity to go up with Rachel and sit with my back towards the class for about 10 minutes to collect emotional memory feelings that would make me cry. I thought about many events in my life that would bring out many tears for me, but I felt that some were too personal to talk about when we had to act out our crying scene together. The thought came to my mind of saying that my little sister had passed away. This would be very emotional for me because she is only 2, and I’ve been away at school while she has been growing up. It was convenient that Rachel chose to think of her husband’s death, because whenever we talked to each other, we could almost relate to one another on the emotions of loved ones dying. It helped me become more emotional to react to Rachel crying. That really perked any sad feeling I was having and brought them to the scene. I feel that I broke my crying when I looked at the class and we were told to stop. I instantly saw familiar faces and my first instinct was to smile because what had just happened wasn’t real. I felt bad that I made the audience laugh because I know that Rachel was still pretty emotional from the given circumstances. I remember when I was younger and taking acting classes, we did an exercise where everyone had to take turns and cry in 10 minutes. It was one after the other, and the pressure was intense. I like the way we were taught to bring out emotion memory because it brought out more of my personal emotions.
ReplyDeleteI feel like I am teetering on understanding how to make emotion my characters not me as Celsie. As I watched others experience things such as crying it was amazing to watch it like it is a switch and I have tried outside of class to prepare to have things ready for the crying exercise. I think I finally understand a few things very solidly, one, what prepare means, and two practicing for acting is different for every single person. I worked on being angry with Megan and that was very interesting because even our first few attempts showed me what crutches I use and how I avoid it, verse just going in and doing it. Finally, when we got it figured out without giggling it felt so good because through all of the “make believe” of how this should feel I had a moment of clarity as a character with Megan not as Megan either. I also had this feeling with each of my scenes; I just hope I can get that feeling for longer while performing.
ReplyDeleteBefore we did the crying exercise I had no idea whether I could cry or not. The last time I cried was when my grandfather died, so I had really no idea if I could do it on stage on cue. I personally don't believe in emotion memory in this case. It is to distracting to put yourself into an emotional state of deep grief. It can't be turned of easily and the actor has to deal with the actual emotional pressure. If you are not used to being whiny you would have to choose a very strong tragedy to be able to cry. This would be a tough thing to do and would affect me longer then necessary. So what I did instead was that I pretended to be a character who would whine more easily. I didn't think of something personal, I just endowed the character trades a crying person would have. I basically tricked myself and pretended that I'm not myself anymore and I could cry just like that. It was a very weird and unbelievable powerful feeling. I was experiencing something I didn't do for years. It almost felt as though I was outside of my body and I was watching myself crying, but of course much more intense then seeing someone else crying. I thought: “Oh, so that's what its like to cry. I forgot about that.” I'm not quiet certain if it was believable but I think it was. It was very intense... A psychological experience not just a theatrical one. Amazing and thrilling.
ReplyDeleteI have realized that these exercises make people realize which areas they should work on, what they would like to improve on and what they need no real direction in. And I really admire that, just because for me I really cant find the emotion or the area that I need to bring out and work on. It is great to see other people make breakthroughs, but I am also very envious that others and pin out exactly what they want to work on. But for me I feel I am sitting back not participating because I haven't found my lack of improvement.. Maybe it will take a little bit more research and depth to figure everything out so that later on i can make that break through.
ReplyDeleteOften in my approach, I remove the personal completely. I try simply be someone new. In some ways, this helps me break free of who David is, and adapt to a new set of given circumstances. However in many other ways, its a block. Without any personal recollection, I can't tap into my bank of memories, feelings, or emotions of the past. I can't bring David to the character at all. This is a block that I've been working on for much of the semester and hopefully more exercises will help to correct. I've noticed that when I'm improving or doing a scene, I'm just there. I'm present onstage but not necessarily in my mind. It's a psychological block that I'm still hammering out.
ReplyDeleteEmotional memory came easier to me than I thought. It could be because I'm used to expressing my emotions without fear most days. I think the part where I knew I could do it is when I was in the back row and I would cry every single time to myself while watching the person on stage in class. However, admittedly it is a different feeling and pressure when you are up there and everyone is watching. I also think whatever you choose to use for your emotional memory could also be damaging - only if you are not comfortable bringing up those feelings again. It is something to think about. As I am okay and fully passed my cat's death, I still remember what it was like and how awful that day was.
ReplyDeleteThe emotion memory exercise was probably the most difficult thing I’ve had to do in this class all semester. I’ve cried very few times in my life. It has always taken some big tragedy to get me to that point. Not only that, but I’ve never been one to show my emotions openly, especially not intense ones. I would certainly love to cry more in life. I’ve always had trouble doing it even when it has happened. For my exercise, I had to work with Julie. We were parents who had just lost their son. For some reason I could not connect with it at all. Everything I did or said felt artificial and wrong. When Julie burst into tears and displayed raw emotion, it sort of put more pressure on me and became even more difficult. I kept trying to substitute our son with one of my younger friends who I was like a big brother to in high school. Nothing worked. It’s like my brain knew I was lying to myself.
ReplyDeleteDespite my failure that particular day, I have done a little bit of practice since then. I’ve brainstormed different ways to approach emotion memory. There have been times where I basically fabricate a giant what if scenario in my head. It’s always, “What if my dad/mom/brother/best friend/etc. died?” I stop and truly think about what my immediate reaction would be and what the consequences would be. I’ve been able to form at least some tears. It’s definitely a work in progress. I think I couldn’t do it the first day because I had no time to stop and think about it. I needed to focus more and take the time to convince myself that someone had died. I just need to keep working on it so that it can come quickly and easily.