hello welcome to organic acting
what is stanislavski's method of physical action well today we're going to find out
one of stanislavski's early techniques was emotion memory where an actor could use
his or her personal life and experiences and link those to the actor in some way to create
emotion so if an actor had to experience a very difficult time an actor could remember
a difficult time in their own lives by the end of his career stanislavski had realized that emotion
memory had a few flaws first off it put emphasis on emotion a lot of actors using this were going
straight for emotion going for the resort which was the last thing stanislavski wanted
he found that a lot of actors were becoming self-indulgent by using emotion memory
other practitioners such as gratovsky and chekhov thought it was outright dangerous no one should
be using emotion memory because it it could drive an actor crazy it could be harmful to their health
it's quite interesting though that american method acting kept using emotion memory or at least some
of the practitioners through the method wanted to keep hold of it they thought that emotion memory
was a direct line to true emotion so by the end of his career stanislavski had changed his mind
and you'll find with stanislavski he changed his mind throughout his career he was always refining
his system he put emphasis on the method of physical action now this topic can be very
very deep and very technical so i'm gonna try and simplify it as much as possible the method of
physical action basically in layman's terms means rather than sitting there with all your scripts
and talking about the character until the cows come home and just just theorizing everything
you get on the stage you get in this rehearsal space and you do you perform you experiment you
find the character beats you find the character tempo and it's through the doing that you can
begin to experience all of this is based on your character's given circumstances of course but just
as importantly based on what your character wants in that scene and how they are physically going to
go about getting what they want so for example if you want as your character to get someone
to leave the room how are you going to do that physically how are you going to get what you want
there are so many different ways of carrying this objective out you could physically drag
the other character out of the space you could physically forcefully remove them or you could
show them indifference you could turn your back on them you could be cruel to them in that
respect and the method of physical action is about experimenting with objectives and with physicality
um stanislavski said you should experiment with everything from the size of the performance you
go completely extreme over the top while staying safe of course and respectful to your other actors
but um experimenting with the size you performance make it big make it small experiment with
tempo how quickly how slowly you do these things and it really is just it's like a playground
a lot of people a lot of actors are quite um unsure of themselves when they start experimenting
with the method of physical action but that's okay that's the whole point it's like any skill or any
anything you practice you think about learning to play instrument for the first time or learn how
to drive a car you you're gonna feel uncomfortable you you're not sure how to do what you're supposed
to do but through experimentation through repetition through repeating these character
beats you can start to feel more like your character and start to experience real emotion
with time and frequent repetition this score becomes habitual an actor becomes so accustomed
to all his objectives and their sequence that he cannot conceive of approaching his role otherwise
habit plays a great part in creativeness okay so i can hear you all saying that's fine chris but
how do we actually use the method of physical action so let's give you a scenario
or a little exercise you can use let's say you're working on a character and you've built your
character you've looked at the past life of the character you looked at their given circumstances
you've looked at them physically all the things that you would do when you're building a character
i made a video on building a character if you are interested i've linked it up above when
you've finished all of those tasks all of that preparation work you are to put yourself in a
space somewhere whether it's a rehearsal space or your living room and you are not performing
you're not performing for anyone else you're not really performing for yourself again you are
experimenting with the method of physical action but using your characters given circumstances
you are going to give yourself a simple task or set of tasks so your character might be
a single mother who is getting themselves and their young child up in the morning ready to
take them to nursery school and take themselves to work you might be a train driver in a cold country
who's getting up in the morning and making themselves breakfast i don't know give yourself
a scenario which makes sense to your character and their given circumstances and then give yourself
a series of objectives simple objectives i want to make my toast how'd you go about that you're
gonna get the toast out of the bag you're gonna put the toast in the toaster you're gonna push
the button down you're gonna wait you might get the butter out of the fridge and a knife to spread
it and a plate to put the toast on you might be making yourself a cup of tea while you're waiting
for the toast to toast but think about all these actions you can do to achieve a simple objective
and hopefully you give yourself more than one objective what do you do when you're toast ready
do you stand there and eat it do you go and sit down do you put some music on
give yourself a series of objectives and think about how your character goes about
achieving those objectives they might be very different to the way you achieve them
if you've watched my video on building a character your character might have a disability
they might have a different inner tempo to you a different outer tempo how would your character go
about achieving those tasks those objectives and afterwards just reflect on how it felt
if there was any emotion there might have been you might have a lightning strike you
might have felt all these wonderful emotions about playing your character achieving those objectives
you might not have felt anything you might have felt confused and a little bit
silly that's okay as well you're experimenting why did it feel strange why did it did not feel
as natural as making toast would be for yourself in the morning what is it that is different
and it's again this is method of physical action you're experimenting you're learning
how to drive a car you're learning how to play a guitar it's it's it's just experimenting you're
finding beats you're finding rhythm you're finding size of performance big small this is kind of a
entry exercise into the method of physical action a really important tool you have at your disposal
when exploring the method of physical action is psychological actions what are psychological
actions i hear you cry well a psychological action is a word that you can use which is going to
inform your delivery of a line and the physicality that you use in trying to achieve your objective
so psychological actions such as i inform i interrogate i fire i freeze i repel
all of these words they sound a little strange but if you were to put that psychological action
and it is psychological it's something that is is an intention it starts off as an intention
but then becomes physical and if you're using words such as i freeze again we're experimenting
with how we would physically do that so you can go completely over the top at first
you could try and do something out of mortal combat where you freeze someone
you you're not going to stay at that level that that that that size of performance you can bring
it down obviously it's got to stay um relevant for the given circumstances and the objective
but if you all use something something extreme like freeze how would you freeze someone to the
spot maybe maybe your objective is you you can't let them leave the room maybe there's something
dangerous outside and you've got to freeze them to the spot how would you do that physically
without using magic but how would you do that how would you make someone stay on the spot do you
physically hold them and pray in place freeze them do you you know while using your your dialogue to
to freeze them in place maybe you're telling them telling them something that they they just have to
hear and you can't go outside you know how are you gonna get them to freeze and going back to
the idea of experimenting you can try all these different psychological words these psychological
actions they might not work you might put you know one of the the words on the wall and try it
out and then you that's that's terrible get rid of it you're experimenting what psychological action
will work remember we're talking about the method of physical action what word is going to help you
physicalize getting your objective and you might have noticed that these psychological actions
these psychological words that i gave you are all verbs they are all doing words so words like
interrogate freeze fire repel they are all actions they're all verbs they all physicalized
you can get a dictionary and go through them and find all the verbs that you want they're all there
you can use any verb look at some of the ones i gave you you know i i fire how do you fire someone
is it fire them with passion is it to try and burn them again psychologically uh but how would that
turn into physicality all of these verbs you can find make your own verb list when you're working
on a script when you're working on a scene when you're trying to find that character you can use
this verb list as a little as a little a little prompt system as a way to experiment it's almost
it's almost like a a chemistry student uh experimenting with with different vials of
of acids and and acetates you know and adding different things to the vial what's gonna happen
what what what reaction am i gonna get this is the whole point of the method of physical action
experimentation so i filled your heads with a lot of theory there a lot of ideas and exercises
but what does this all mean let's again try to simplify the method of physical action
it is getting away from theorizing and filling your heads up with too much nonsense before
you've even begun to rehearse or block the play and definitely getting away from emotion
memory speaking personally i hate emotion memory i never use emotion memory because it makes the
whole situation more about the actor than the character so my character has lost his job
his wife's left him and there's a meteorite heading for the planet earth
i'll just remember the time that my dog died okay
if you're remembering a time from your past life you are transposing or transplanting
your life onto that character you should be experiencing that character that characters
given circumstances that characters emotions if possible so the method of physical action
is about doing it's about getting on your feet into a rehearsal space it's about experimenting
it's about trying to find the beat and the tempo of the character what works what doesn't work um
in layman's terms it's get off your bum and start rehearsing have you used the method of physical
action before if not are you going to use some of the exercises i've mentioned to you as always like
share subscribe it really helps me out i've been chris and i will see you in the next video bye bye