What To Do When You Hate All Your Friends

Chapter 1 - Konstantin Stanislavski

 

Stanislavski was a Russian practitioner who made a great impact on acting. He was widely recognised for being a great actor and he directed a ton of productions that made him famous throughout his career. He aimed to understand the worlds of characters to create a believable performance. He would propose questions like “Who am I, Where am I, What am I trying to achieve, What do i do to get it, What would I do (as the actor) if I were in this situation?” (Ltd, B.C.U.K., 2016) that the actors would use to analyse their characters more in depth and gain more insight into their characters’ world and relationships. He also had his actors think of the characters as just as human as they are themselves.

 

This analysis can be called the Magic If, which allows the actors to understand the character well enough to know what the character would do in any given situation. This helps to find the objectives of the character, which is also an important part of the Stanislavski method; finding the character’s objectives, tactics and obstacles. The objectives, tactics and obstacles are the character’s mini goals that add up to build the character’s main objectives of the play. (Anon, 2021) This is an integral part of their personality. Along with beats, which are changes in tactic, environment or conversation and are the way that scenes are divided up more, the objectives of characters and the magic if is the way that students using the method created by Stanislavski will perform. (Cullen, W.by P. et al., 2020.) Another aspect to Stanislavski’s method is emotional memory; where the actor calls on a memory that relates to the current situation of the character. He states that it is an exhausting method, but it is a way to gain an even deeper understanding of the character and their situation. We made the unanimous decision to choose Stanislavski’s method because it was a good foundation for our first BTEC performance. His method was understandable yet intricate.

 

Chapter 2 - The Play 

 

The play that we are performing is called What To Do When You Hate All Your Friends, written by Larry Kunofsky, a New York based playwright. Our play is an antisocial comedy that criticises the petty behaviour that is often seen between friends by exacerbating it and using it to create five different characters. There are more characters who appear later in the play but the five in our excerpt are all very different.

 

Celia, played by Rainbow, is one of the main characters in the play and she represents the well known trope of a “popular girl”, as she is the one who has many friends. She is very kind and likeable, but she has slip-ups sometimes that reveal another side of her. For instance, at the end of our extract, she blurts out that she likes Matt, implying that she wants to be “more than friends” with him. She did not mean to say that so directly and she addresses it immediately after, questioning whether she really said that. Matt, played by Eduward, is the polar opposite of Celia. He is the other main character, who hates all of his friends and punches tables and walls when people even lightly touch him. This represents a kind of anger that people can sometimes have with their friends if they have an argument or just if they’re tired of people in general. He has an attraction to Celia and they find this out at the end of Celia’s party. However, they have very different personalities and somehow have to reconcile this. Garrett, played by Kaylie, is one of the friends that many people have or at least know of. Someone who just does not know when to stop talking, and does not have the idea of “a place and a time”. He says things that no one wants to hear and is insensitive to others’ situations. He interrupts Matt and Celia’s conversation without any shame whatsoever and just keeps talking and talking. Harold, also played by Kaylie, is a lawyer who is friends with Celia, but he is sleazy and tries to hit on Enid for a brief moment, before she makes it clear with her body language that she is not interested.

 

Enid is the character that I played for the performance. She is one of Celia’s friends; she is clingy, possessive, and very jealous. She is invasive, talkative and says things without regard to what is really going on or the situation at hand. One of the main things about her is that she narrates the current happenings as a way of coping with the stress of life. This embarrasses and annoys her friends but she does it anyway. I used Stanislavski’s method to interpret her character by coming up with reasons for why she is so stressed out. During the hot seating, I mention that Enid is always dealing with her nephew and her baby cousins. This is one of the main things that stresses her out, because she doesn’t like being around children. She loves them but it’s a lot for her. She also volunteers at an aquarium and she loves it but it does not pay too well and sometimes it gets hectic, for instance when there is a school trip there. In the past, Enid had many expectations put onto her by her parents and peers, for example she was expected to have a large social circle whilst also maintaining very high grades. One of her childhood friends recently posted bad things about her onto the internet. This was one way that I used Stanislavski’s method in this production; by using the Magic If technique to interpret Enid, give her a background and apply it to the play, thus understanding how she would act at all times.

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Chapter 3 - Preparation and Process

 

We first found the play when our teacher was giving us recommendations. We did not want to do the first play that we had chosen because we were not comfortable with the scenes and it was just not working for us. We thus had about a week of blank space where we were just looking for a new play to perform, and our teacher showed us a play that he was planning to show some of the other drama students in other year groups. This play resonated with all of us because it was funny and had a lot more relevance to us. 

 

We used a variety of exercises suggested by our teacher. One of the most helpful ones was a ball exercise. We would all sit in a circle and throw a ball to the next person who speaks. This exercise helped us remember our lines, cues, and the order of the play. It helped me specifically because I had areas where I consistently slipped up my memory and messed up my lines. I knew the lines, but not the order of the lines. We also did a few table reads without our scripts. This helped us with our timing and remembering our lines.

 

The last week of our rehearsals was chaotic. Monday was a hands-on rehearsal where we ran through the play with guidance from our teacher. We felt about 80% prepared afterwards. Tuesday was our final in-class rehearsal. Our teacher watched us and took notes. He did not stop us if we made a mistake or used our knowledge of Stanislavski incorrectly. Afterwards, we were told what was written down, and how we should improve for the performance day. It took us a while to get off script; it actually took me until the day before the performance itself before I was able to memorise all of my lines. One of the ways that I managed to perfect it in the very last stretch of our rehearsal time was that I found a free time slot where me and Rainbow, the person who played Celia, could find a place to go and rehearse. We used the basketball court on the sixth floor because it was an open space. We ran through all of our lines without our script and every time we ran through, we stepped further away from each other. This helped us with our voice projection.

 

Chapter 4 - Props and Wardrobe

 

On the day of the performance, there was a moment of panic when Rainbow and I realised`that we were missing a prop for the party scene. We were missing a bottle of soda that we planned to use as a substitute for alcohol. None of us are 18, and even if we were, it is still a school environment, so alcohol was completely out of the question. A bottle of soda was the perfect substitute, even if it was just used for show in the actual performance. I paid for it with my own money, but I got to keep it afterwards so I didn’t mind at all. We put a table in the middle of the stage, with two adjacent chairs facing generally towards the audience, but angled so that Matt and Garrett don’t break the fourth wall and can talk to each other. Garrett’s seating position was very informal and improper, which was very fitting because Garrett’s character was reflected through the way the actor, Kaylie, sat. We also used blocks, placed either side of the table, with one downstage and one upstage, which conveyed a more chaotic scene whilst also supplying the perfect seating arrangement for Celia in the first scene, and Matt in the second. Enid did not use any of the chairs, but she did interact with the wine glasses whilst trying to make a conversation with Matt: she organises them which brings out her obsessive personality.

 

Wardrobe was something that could have been a disaster, if not for Rainbow’s diligent work. To sum up, she (Celia) had to put on an elaborate dress whilst Enid says a medium-length monologue. The line lasted about 22 seconds, which was just the right length of time for Celia to run as fast as she could and rush to put on her dress. Usually, there would be ample time because there is a mini scene between Bob and Nancy, but we decided to cut this out due to a lack of actors. Kaylie and I also had places in the play where we had to change our costume. During the first scene, Enid wears a casual outdoor outfit, but she changes into a more formal one for the party scene. Kaylie played two characters, so she had to change from a casual outfit for Garrett into a formal outfit for Harold. Matt also changed his shirt for Celia’s party.

 

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References

Anon, 2021. What is Stanislavski technique?: City Academy Guides. City Academy. Available at: https://www.city-academy.com/news/what-is-stanislavski-technique/#:~:text=Stanislavski%20Technique%20stems%20from%20his,the%20place%20of%20a%20character. [Accessed September 30, 2022]. 

Cullen, W.by P. et al., 2020. What are 'beats'?: Stagemilk acting dictionary. StageMilk. Available at: https://www.stagemilk.com/what-are-beats/ [Accessed September 30, 2022]. 

The Stanislavski method of acting | backstage (2022). Available at: https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/the-definitive-guide-to-the-stanislavsky-acting-technique-65716/ (Accessed: November 4, 2022). 

Ltd, B.C.U.K., 2016. The Stanislavski method |. Dramaclasses.biz - Drama School Directory. Available at: https://www.dramaclasses.biz/the-stanislavski-system [Accessed September 30, 2022].