hello welcome to organic acting I'm Chris Conway and this is Stanislavski linking the
external to the internal so this video is kind of a follow-on to a previous video I
did called Stanislavski exercises if you want the link to that I will put it down below and
it's really about exploring the next stage of stanislavski's process more about the external
qualities of a character the way they look the way they move most notably referenced from building
a character if you haven't read his books and actor prepares building the character creating
a role I suggest you read them there's a lot of great information in there so in this video I'm
going to break down some of the key moments from building a character bring them all together and
then right at the end of the video I'm gonna give you one of my own personal resources that
I use for text and character work I'm gonna give you a link to it let you download it have a look
at it and then next week in part 2 of this video I'm gonna bring it all together and give you some
actual practical exercises so you can implement these ideas and start to bring the character to
life using the internal and the external stay - to the end of the video where I'll give you
the link to that resource so to begin with son of stanislavski's main points from building a
character it's almost like a list of things that you should have in place and some things that you
definitely should not do before you start working on the physicality of a character or the external
so at number one we have plasticity of motion here Stanislavski said that an actor should be
kind of like an athlete his body is a tool so he should be fit healthy flexible able to use
this wonderful tool that we're given to the best of its ability so we recommended dance any kind
of exercise which is cardiovascular anything this athletic yoga anything that's going to help with
this city of motion because if you have a stiff uncooperative body it's not gonna aid you in to
really stepping inside this character's shoes he said that an actor's apparatus needed to be
flexible mobile sensitive and expressive next he spoke about the voice so Stanislavski said
that an actor needs to have command of his or her own voice and again all the apparatus so he
put emphasis on diction the way words actually chewed and tasted and produced from the mouth
all the work with the tongue and the teeth and the lips he spoke about pace he spoke about projection
he spoke about breathing being able to breathe into your diaphragm and then to carry on speaking
to the end of the line to the end of the next full stop maybe to the end of the next full stop and to
keep going to the end of the paragraph and you're not struggling for breath and then eventually you
can stop and take another breath so you're not constantly fighting yourself a breath or losing
breath in the middle of a line so for all of this he said actor needed to know how to warm up his
body with tongue twisters with vocal warm-ups with breathing exercises again with things like yoga
which are really gonna help with diaphragmatic breathing and what about projection being able
to breathe in and to use the diaphragm to project to the other side of the room or to the back of
the theater so everyone can hear you that's linked to diction as well the next one is gestures this
is one of those ones which is more about what not to do so anything such as fidgeting onstage
fidgeting with your arms or your hands you'll see this in a lot of novice actors it's almost
as if they are nervous and they think they have to be doing something to keep themselves busy to
show that they're acting another one is the good old-fashioned stepping forward and then stepping
back and then going forward again and going back something that you see with a lot of novice actors
is very distracting or what I call grab my legs where you have an actor who puts their way or all
on one side of their body then swaps to the other leg and brings it to the other side and back and
back like they're rocking and what about the am DRAM hands you know the hands that go up to the
side of an actor's face to show how much they're feeling the emotion oh woe is me Stanislavski
said all those things are the stock trade of amateur dramatics they're posing exhibitionism
they're not connected to the real living life of the character the root of the character
Stanislavski said the movements and action of a character being portrayed gained immeasurably
insignificance and attraction when they are not clouded over with superfluous irrelevant purely
theatrical gesticulation so don't do it okay the next one is archetypes and stereotypes so we all
know these the archetypal character is like the hero the hero with the big muscles who stands in
the heroic pose or the soldier the soldiers are always marches with a with a straight back and
with swinging legs those are archetypes in all the types of theater and storytelling archetypes are a
valid source of character work not in Stanislavski a stereotype would be the idea that all old people
walk around with with a bent back and or when that they struggle to move in they're aching
all the time Stanislavski gives an example in building a character that he once knew an old
lady that yes did take a while to move it took her a while to get out of a chair for example but
once she got a speed up she could zip around the room like nobody's business Stanislavski
said that archetypes and stereotypes are cliches they don't contain the essence of a character and
they're not individualized they're not individual real people the next one is you love yourself so
this one is another direct quote very similar to this one over my left shoulder and that's you love
yourself in the pot more than the part in yourself well that means is you're more concerned with
getting up there on the stage you're on the set and using the character as a kind of a delivery
service to show how good you are as an actor and to show yourself off rather than actually caring
about this character learning about them building them from the ground up internally and externally
and finally we have the resource so this is a resource which I have used since I first went
to drama school it's a full list for character and text work and as I said at the beginning of
the video it really ties a lot of this stuff together from a previous video in this video
the internal and the external I'm gonna leave you the link down below so you can download it
and give it a read-through next week I will go through the sheet in detail and give you some
exercises so you can really implement some of these things and put them into practice thank
you so much for watching this video if you'd like to leave me a comment down below perhaps
tell me who you are or give me a suggestion for another video and other topic that would be much
appreciated please like subscribe hit the bell icon I will see you next week for part two goodbye