Shakespeare Meets Stanislavsky Given Circumstances

Get your journals/logs and a writing utensil, grab your script and homework notes, and put your personal belongings up against the wall, and find an open space in the front of the room where you can see the suitcase clearly. Sit down. Put your journal and writing utensil nearby. Be ready to come up to the suitcase as directed, pick something out of it and interact with it. Don’t think how you want to do this – just follow your impulses when you get there.

Actors have to ‘let go’ of their homework – they should ‘forget’ their preparation at the point when it has served its purpose.

“If our preparatory work is right, the results will take care of themselves.”

Stanislavsky asked actors to think and behave as their characters would logically do in the circumstances of the play.

Given Circumstances Who – relationship between your character and all the other characters important in the scene (whether physically present or not; a general and a specific relationship with each person) Where – two main aspects; physical environment and social environment When – facts plus the implications of manners, values, beliefs, etc. What – start with the antecedent (or “pre”) action: things that happened in the past that affect the present situation and then move into the main event of the scene.