Stanislavski Exercises 3

On Friday, we tested our imaginations to develop ourselves as actors. The exercises and things we discussed were:

• We discussed how when you are younger and at primary school you always use your imagination in the playground. For instance, you might play mummy's and daddy's, might use your coat as a cape or pretend you are pop stars. As you get older, we use our imaginations less and less so may find it harder when it comes to improvisations and acting in general as we are not used to being so creative. Some of the only times we think we may use our imaginations nowadays are when we write stories for English or are on our own and thinking to ourselves.
• The first exercise we did was creating a story as a group. We passed the 'story ball' across the circle and everyone had to come up with a few ideas to add to the story whilst being prompted with questions. I found this way a lot more creative as, when I have previously done this exercise, we only had to come up with one or two words each so it was more a test of grammar rather than creativity. Our story was very random as included a donkey with one human hand, a giant rabbit with a carrot onside him, a seal with breath that the donkey is a allergic to and a princess living inside the rabbit. The idea of this exercise was to let our imaginations run wild and, by using the same creativity when acting, we can make characters believable but also very amusing.
• The other exercise we did was that we all had to go through a museum type place and pass the 'baton' onto each person so that they became the leader. We had to thing of crazy ideas for what we were seeing as a group so this exercise tested being creative in a team. This makes it harder as, although at times you can create your own little ideas, you still have to make them appropriate for the 'exhibition' you are seeing. I found this exercise quite hard as everyone else had come up with such good ideas that I found it hard for mine to live up to it. We were also put on the spot which was quite difficult as I found you didn't have time to think what to do beforehand as you were too busy imagining the 'exhibition' you were 'viewing.'