Research on Naturalistic theatre

A strong user of Naturalism and improvisation...
MIKE LEIGH

Mike Leigh is an English writer and director of film and theatre.

He has had huge success in making low budget films based on the concept of "Naturalism"

He attended the Camberwell School of Art, and then applied to London Film School.

Mike Leigh uses improvisation and naturalistic acting techniques in the majority of his films and theatre productions.
What "Naturalism" theatre is..

•  Acting which is very similar to real life
• offers a photographic reproduction of reality to portray to an audience
• rejects un natural dramatic styles
• Can be based on real life facts
• Naturalism theatre reached its high point between 1880-1890
• Neutralism and realism are other terms that apply to Naturalism, usually used as synonyms
• 
  

Naturalism is a style of theatre that remains very true to life - Stanislavski used a range of techniques that he used to help him achieve 'naturalistic' results on stage including Given Circumstances, Throughline of Action, Circles of Attention etc.
It's meant to be as true to real life as possible - the audience make the "fourth wall" of a room so it's almost like they're a fly on the wall, watching a slice of life happening before them.



Constantin Stanislavski developed his own "method" when it came to acting, he used Naturalism frequently and was a strong believer of method acting, in which came the term "the Stanislavski method"

• Stanislavski was born in 1863 in Moscow, Russia
• He worked as an actor in his early teens and later became a director of stage productions
• Stanislavski co-founded the MOSCOW ART THEATRE in 1897, this is when "METHOD ACTING" was created
• Method acting allowed actors to include and portray their own real life histories in order to create well rounded characters

Evaluation of La Mer devised piece

Evaluation of La Mer Devised Piece

B0471 Acting 2

Sophia Hinchliff

My group’s devised performance was based on the theme, “La Mer” which included a range of stimuli, the stimuli included poems, songs, a painting, our individual characters we chose and naturalism techniques.  Our performance required a lot of research on our real life characters, situations they were in and naturalistic acting techniques.

On the whole I feel my group and I delivered a very strong, moving and naturalistic piece. I feel our energy as a group helped us vastly throughout rehearsals and our performance, and it inspired us to become more detailed and emotionally connected to the performance. Our group energy I feel showed throughout our performance and there was never a moment in the piece were the energy levels changed, I feel we maintained it very well throughout, which is certainly something that worked for our piece.

During director’s notes after our rehearsals, we received great feedback about our projection and volume. We were always projecting to high standards, and were always clear throughout the whole performance, this a largely important factor to drama performances, as the audience has to be able to hear and understand what is going on at all times.

I personally feel I have naturally quite a loud and clear voice, which is a clear benefit in acting as projection is key, especially in theatre.

I feel the energy is linked to the projection, as we all felt confident with each other as performers and confident in our ability to produce a strong piece, which enabled us to have great projection and clear speech at all times.

We also received great feedback about our articulation and pace during rehearsals from our voice tutor. These factors worked extremely well during our performance as our dialogue was easy to adapt to from the audiences perspective and we were audible and understandable throughout our piece.

I feel on the whole our performance concepts and idea’s worked really well as they were realistic and easy for the audience to relate to in some ways, particularly about our characters having lost their fathers, this is something the audience can relate to, and we conveyed empathy for each other throughout, in which the audience were able to empathise with the characters too.

During rehearsal time, my group and I were always trying out new ideas and seeing what would work and what wouldn’t work, I feel compared to my song lyric devised group, we tried out so many more concepts and ideas this time around, as I feel we have all become much more confident and versatile as we know have more experience of devising. As a group we showed consideration to one another at all times and we were always researching together about Naturalism, storms, real life facts about boats that have sank during storms and images of storms so we could visualise as a group how it would feel for us to be in that situation together.

We worked very well as a team and there was never any bad feeling or competitiveness within our group.

I feel working together as a team and sharing ideas during every session enabled us to make our performance work as we were constantly experimenting and changing little details, and developing relationships with each other as actors.

If someone individually in the group had an idea, we would all discuss that idea and interpret it into how we would all visualise it within our performance.

We of course, studied our chosen real life characters individually and together, making links between all characters and acknowledging the unique personality traits each one had, this really helped us in creating our performance as we all became so absorbed in our characters, and I felt at some points, I had turned into my character, especially during the performance, as I was seeing things through her eyes and not mine and I became totally in the zone with my characters emotions and opinions. I feel everyone in my group felt this way too.

Naturally, during our devising and in our performance there were some aspects that did not work quite as well. During devising, we came up with various ideas that we later realised would not work in our performance, one the ideas we came up with which we decided to let go of was to have Sophie’s character, Kelly die tragically from her heart condition, and all the other characters frantically screaming and becoming slightly mad that they were stuck on a boat with somebody they hardly knew, dead on the floor.

We tried out a few improvisations for this idea, but in the end we all came to the conclusion that this idea seemed a little too “cliché” as her character had a life threatening illness, and it almost seemed too obvious that this would happen to her character. So as a group we decided it would be much more effective for the characters to drown and die together, rather than having just one character dying. We wanted all the characters to feel the same pain and empathy for each other, they started on the boat together, so the idea that they leave the boat together was a dynamic idea which I felt worked very well, especially as we used the voice recording of our characters just before they drowned at the end of our performance, which we learned was very haunting and chilling from feedback.

In our final performance, there were little details I feel did not work and things we could of improved on, for example; I feel we could of dived even deeper into the father link all the characters had, and maybe could of portrayed even more emotions about the situation, it could have been mentioned more, now that I have watched the performance.

Another little detail I noticed we should have used more was physical contact with one another. My character used physical contact with Izzy’s character towards the end of the piece by linking her arm and leaning on her shoulder. But I feel all the characters could have used more physical contact with each other as it could of made our performance appear more naturalistic, because if I was in that real life situation and was sharing my personal emotions with people who I empathised with, I more than likely would have hugged them or held their hands during the storm and the confessions.

In rehearsals and during devising sessions my group could have discussed in more detail what they would do in this situation and how they would react, then we would have been able to portray an even more naturalistic piece, and more importantly, discussed what our real life characters would have done, we did discuss it, but I feel we could have discussed in more detail and adapted this to our piece. We should of spent more time on our spacing around the stage, but as it was naturalistic the spacing did not matter too much as it was mainly focused on our acting abilities, and the audience were in Arena, which meant no body was ever masked, but I still feel we could of mapped it out more clearly with each other, for example, having the black blocks more into the centre of the stage and having our characters more close together at times.

I feel overall our performance was very strong and I am pleased and proud of my group and myself for putting together our piece and the effort and energy we all bought into our performance, however we could have made a few little changes to improve our performance to make it even more stronger.

I feel we definitely should have spent an extra few minutes towards the end of our piece when we all open up about our characters Father’s, in order to establish the situations more and to create more dramatic effect and empathy for the audience and for our characters. It felt ever so slightly rushed, but it has improved massively from when we first started devising. I also feel to improve our performance we could have spent a little bit more time creating stronger relationships between the characters, even though I do feel the relationships were there and the audience could see them forming, particularly my character and Izzy’s character, I feel all four characters should have been more linked and could have bonded much more during the storm and just before their death came.

In conclusion, my groups performance was strong, emotional and haunting, I feel as a group we worked extremely well together and always maintained a great attitude towards devising, and were never stuck for ideas. It seemed rather difficult at first, but after we all shared ideas and began improvising it flowed extremely well and enabled us to create our piece together. I am happy to have worked with my group and am delighted at the outcome of our hard work, which came from devising and rehearsing together.

LA MER STIMULUS: POEMS

These poems are the first stimulus we all had to LA MER, they helped me visualise and interpret LA MER in my own way and gave me ideas for my current performance…

Sea Fever

BY JOHN MASEFIELD

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;

And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,

And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking,

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;

And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,

And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,

To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;

And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,

And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over

Brighton beach.

It was always a special treat
Off to the seaside
A long ride, tempered by the fact
That a great treat was in store.

Entering the town of Brighton
So busy! the hundreds of tourists
Buying all novelty items made of candy
Visiting the chamber of horrors and other sensations.

Looking down the streets you could see the sea
Sparkling and glinting
The smell of ozone, strong and exciting
Combining with the greasy fish and chip bars
That made the seaside what it was.

The beach of pebbles - no sand here
Always crowded with screaming children
Others wedged into rental deck chairs
Elderly men with a knotted handkerchiefs
Covering their bald spots.

The exciting cold water, a joy to splash in
Fun to be in as well as out
The long afternoons
Stayed until the sun went in
And time to leave
Salty and very tired, too tired for supper
But with a happiness always remembered.

These poems have a positive feel to them, especially "Brighton Beach" it feels very nostalgic and it is as if someone is reminiscing about a time in their childhood they used to love, a happy time they would share with family and friends at Brighton Beach. 

The ending line is a lovely end to this poem, and it almost feels as if this poem is a metaphor for someone the writer is in love with, or was in love with once.

"SEA FEVER" has a different feel it to,it is positive but at the same time I feel it is haunting and quite spooky. Its as if the poet is drawn to the sea, and he emphases MUST in every line, like he is addicted to the sea and the life it brings him. 

Some people have a lifetime living by the sea because it is seen as a different way of life and it is different from living somewhere like London or New york, were there is no sea side and everything is quite enclosed. I feel living by the sea is a feeling of freedom and purity, as you can always go to the beach and sit by the sea and it does not make you feel trapped or stuck, whereas living somewhere without a beach or a sea could be quite suffocating.

Friday the 8th November

Status exercise...
I was not in college on Friday the 8th but I have discussed with my class mates about what we did in the lesson and how the status exercise helps us learn how to express and project status as actors...
The exercise involved using a small script and it was based in a work environment. It included a manager and employees.
The status was shown through body language, for example how the manager held themselves and how they portrayed their power through the way they stand and the way they treat the room.
Employees and people who had a "lower" status than the manager projected this through their body languages as well, for example- they might not have stood up as straight as the manager or they may not have made eye contact as much. 
The status exercise has taught me how to portray power and different statuses through the way you move as an actor and they way you treat the stage. If I was playing a character with a high status I would use up as much of the stage as possible and almost show that I am in charge of the stage and I can go wherever I want, and in contrast if I were to play a character with a low status I would stick to my own part of the stage and not really move around the stage, as I would want to portray weakness and show the audience I do not have the confidence to pace around the stage and let myself be exposed to the audience and the other characters.

The discussion about "La Mer"
The whole class had a discussion about the sea theme and how they interpreted it. Everyone gave an input to their idea's and concepts they had thought about with their groups and individually. 
The discussion allowed each person to talk about how they feel about the sea theme and what emotions it portrays to them and how the sea can have a powerful impact on the audience, the plot lines and the characterisation.
The class brainstormed on the board about the different emotions and feelings the sea made them feel and think about. This allowed the group to discover how everybody else felt about the theme and what idea's they could explore.
The emotions and feelings "La Mer" makes me feel are;

• Sadness
• Lost
• Hopelessness
• Feeling free
• Calm
• Love
• Power
• Distance

This is a brainstorm the class did on Friday about what LA MER makes them think about and ideas and concepts for our performance

Performance night 28th November

Rehearsals and performance at Pelham Tower Theatre…

Today was the day of our final rehearsals and performance for La Mer, the class was at Pelham tower for 11 hours, rehearsing, having directors notes, helping each other and performing in front of friends and family, and having support from the second year actors and level 2 actors!

My groups final performance I feel went really well, we felt it was the best we have ever performed it, I am proud of my group and myself for the hard work we put in to create our devised piece. I received great feedback from my friends and family after they watched the show and I feel very pleased with how it went, and the performance as a whole.
My group's performance was last out of the four devised pieces, and we feel it was a strong ending to the performance, as we used movement and a voice recording at the end of our piece, this I feel created emotions between our characters and I feel the audience definitely felt the emotion we were portraying.

I felt the movement pieces all went extremely well and I received good feedback for both pieces. My groups devised movement piece we performed before our drama piece began was a lot better and flowed very well, it was the best we had ever performed the piece, it flowed like the sea and every movement was sharp and on time. 
The final movement piece went really well, we were all in time with each other, some points it went slightly out of time, but we went with it and overall it went extremely well and I am happy with how the whole performance went.
I have enjoyed working with my group so much and we have always had complicity with one another and always listened to each others ideas and tried the ideas out, and interpreted them in our own individual ways. Our characters works so well with each other and they were all unique and had their own characteristics. 
There was never any tension or bad feeling at any point in our devising, and we all have mutual respect for each other as actors, and friends. 

What we could have improved…

• We used all of the stage during our performance, but we could have performed more at the sides of the stage, rather than performing to the front. We did perform to all sides, but we could have done this in more detail
• Our movement piece could have flowed EVEN more!
• Used even more body language to establish our characters, but I feel the body language we did use was very good
• Made the transition from movement to drama piece more flowing and natural
• Used more physical contact between characters; when Summer and Chrissy have a heart to heart about their fathers, my character links Chrissy's arm to show support and affection. I feel all the characters could have done this, to show to the audience that they care for one another a little bit more…

What we did well…

• Our projection was very loud and clear for the audience, we used volume extremely well
• Our group energy was one of our massive strengths, the whole piece had so much energy and excitement to it
• We used humour really well, it was never "Gag" humour, it was naturalistic humour that people use every day
• We engaged the audience throughout 
• Our piece flowed really well and there were never any quiet parts or parts that did not make sense
• Team work and portrayal of characters

Overall, I feel our piece was very good and I am extremely proud of myself and my group for our strong and meaningful performance.

Rehearsals at Pelham tower theatre 27th Novemeber

Rehearsals today.... 

Today we were all at Pelham tower rehearsing our pieces, particularly focusing on our movement pieces and the sound and lighting. 

We learned how to use the space provided and know just how close the audience are going to be to us when we are performing! 

My group and I made a few changes within the sound and lighting effects used in our piece, instead of having water sound effects after we all realise the water is rising in the boat, we are just goin to keep the storm and rain sound effects throughout the whole piece, and just having it becoming louder as the panic rises between our characters. 

In our ending scene we originally wanted blue lighting for when the water was rising, just before we all drown, but now we are keeping the blue lighting throughout our piece, as it signifies a dark and cold mood, which is what we are aiming towards and the lighting creates a more dramatic effect rather than having white lights up until the water scene. 

The last technical change we all decided would look best is to have the lights black out when we rock back and forth on the stage when the boat starts to rock , as opposed to having flickering lights. It looks better and much more effective and less literal, as we want the audience to believe that the lights on the boat have turned off as the storm has hit the boat SO hard! 

We made a lot of decisions today for our sound and lighting and I feel it looks much more dramatic and almost quite eerie, particularly the ending scene of our piece when we are all standing on black blocks swaying in a circle, the lighting is a green colour, which signifies we are under the water, drowning and also the floorboards creak naturally in Pelham theatre which adds to the distress and horror of our ending scene....

We perfected our movement emsemble to the best of our ability today and it flows so well and looks really naturalistic and we are always in contact with each other at all times, instead of holding hands like we did when we first put it together, we now lean on each other and are always physically joined in some way. We emphasise sea movements in our piece which contrasts very well with the whole theme of our performance, and we also portay our characters, not too much but the characteristics are there. For example, at the beginning and ending of our piece we are all in a line and lean on each other to the right and left four times and then slowly let our heads drop to the floor and hang lifeless in between our legs. To me, this symbolises our characters after they have all found empathy and common ground with each other, and genuinely begin to bond and have feelings for each other so they lean on each other and support one another. But this bond is short lived as all the characters drown together, and slowly dropping our heads to the floor symbolises death and hopelessness for all the characters. They support each other and bond, and then they drown and die together. This I feel is shown in our movement piece and establishes our relationships and the fatal ending to our piece. 

Chorus, Commitment and Complicity: 25th Novemeber

Todays exercises...

Today's lesson is 3 days before our performance night! And we mainly worked on how we are going to link all four devised groups together in the performance, we also worked on our movement pieces and came up with creative and flowing movements which relate to the sea.

We studied two pieces of text taken from Shakespeare's "The Tempest" performed by Ariel as a song.

These pieces of text were..

Come unto these yellow sands,

And then take hands:

Curtsied when you have, and kiss'd

The wild waves whist,

Foot it featly here and there;

And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear.

Hark, hark!

Bow-wow.

The watch-dogs bark.



Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:

Ding-dong.

Hark! now I hear them—Ding-dong, bell

As a group we all came into a circle and read the text together each having 1 or 2 words each, after this we split in half and studied the text in groups of 7 and performed it to the class, using rhythm and movement.

We all decided that this should be the opening text to our performance La Mer on Thursday evening, we will say the first half of this poem, beginning with "Come unto these yellow sands" and this will be projected in chorus; all together and will establish the sea theme to our audience right from the beginning of our performance. Our setting will be in our four separate groups, sitting together on a beach or by a lake and everyone in unison will perform the first piece of text.

The other exercises we took part in today were movement based, and we in our devised groups, firstly starting off with pairs from each group and then merged into the full group of four.

In my pair I was with Bella, and we worked on our movement piece using three words as a stimulus; BY.THROUGH.ROUND

Throughout our piece we used contact with each other which included, lifts, holding hands, turning in unison and canon and leaning on each other in which I leaned on Bella and she took my weight and I lifted into the air slightly. We had to use six different movements which interpret by,through and round movements and gestures.

The idea of the movement piece was to be connected at all times and always doing things together rather than separately  After we performed our piece, we got into our devised group by joining Izzy and Sophie and both pairs shared their movement pieces an we merged the two pieces together to form one performance which featured all the gestures and movements from both pairs combined. We always stayed in contact with eachother and created movements to flow like water, matching our theme La Mer. 

We decided as a class that each group is going to perform their movement piece before the devised drama piece begins, in order to transition from one piece to another in an alternative way, rather than one group finishing,applause, then another group on stage! When working to such a specific theme I feel transitioning from one piece to another using movement forms which flow nicely and match the theme is so much more interesting and creative than just having one devised after another. The sea theme is such a strong theme and it needs to be expressed in ways other than drama.

Another exercise we learned today within the group was a singing exercise, we were divided into four groups and sang the song…
Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose
Shall I ever see the red?
I marry that thou shalt
When thou art dead…
This song at first I felt was a sad and hard hitting song, but when I actually listen to it and sang the words, I realised it actually means that there is a happy life after somebodies life has ended, death is not such a bad thing as the song writer is portraying how they will love someone and marry someone after their life has ended. It is a powerful and meaningful song, even though it only has four lines.
This exercise is about chorus and working together as a team to create complicity and harmony between one another. Each group started singing ROSE ROSE ROSE ROSE at different beats, so the song was performed in canon between all four groups.
I enjoyed this exercise, as it was different and a nice change, as we have not ever sang in an acting class before.

In today's class, the focus was getting the performance as a whole more structured and creating movement pieces to transition into our own devised drama pieces, slightly in character but more focusing on the movement and the meaning of the movement. I really enjoyed today's lesson as it was different and really creative, it gave me even more ideas and interpretations for my groups devised piece.