Styles of Theater

This week we have been learning about the different styles of theater, specifically Theater of the Oppressed, the Stanislavski System, and Epic Theater. The class was divided into 3 groups, and each group was given a style of theater to research and perform a scene from. I was put into a group with Rema and Rayyan and we decided to study the Stanislavski System. After doing some research, we found out that this style of theater deals with realism and a method known as “emotional recall,” in which actors draw on personal memories to portray various emotions. After we taught this style of acting to the class, each of us tried to draw on an experience to portray an emotion, and the rest of us tried to guess what the portrayed emotion was. When it was my turn, I tried to remember how I felt when my grandfather passed away a few years ago, and I used this memory to portray sadness and grief. Jonathan portrayed frustration with work by recalling how he felt when his history teacher assigned him tons of homework. Talah portrayed the feeling of rejection by recalling how once the boy who she had a crush on rejected her. After practicing emotional recall various times and learning about this method, I’m actually starting to incorporate it into each of my performances now and it’s greatly helping me improve my acting. For example, just recently I auditioned for the spring production and we had to improvise a monologue on the spot that related to the theme of World War 2. I decided to play the role of a persecuted Jew, and I knew in order to do this I had to use emotional recall to draw from a personal memory of sadness and grief. I used a recent memory of a time I was let down by a close friend, and I by remembering this memory I started to feel grief. When my monologue started, my arms were shaking and tears were pouring out of my eyes. Never before have I been able to cry on the spot, and after this try-out and several times after in which I practiced this skill, I have realized that this technique is very powerful and helpful during a performance.

Back to our unit, the other two groups taught us what the other two styles of theater were about after we were done. Alia and JC did the Theater of the Oppressed, and as the name says, this style of theater deals with highlighting the issues and problems various types of oppressed people go through, such as a wife who is constantly shouted at by her husband, or a worker who receives less pay than he should be receiving, which were both scenes this group acted out. During this style of performance, it is also acceptable to pause the scene and ask the audience for advice and ways the oppressed person can be helped. The last group consisted of Jonathan and Westin, and they taught us about Epic Theater. This style of theater is the most dramatic and is opposite to realism, because the characters exaggerate emotions and constantly break the fourth wall between the audience and the performers by referring to themselves in third person or randomly changing the mood by starting to sing/dance/laugh etc. A

After we were done learning about the various styles of theater and practicing these styles through improvisations, each group was assigned to carry out a performance in the style they had been assigned. Our group decided to perform a scene from the play A Doll’s House, and I directed the scene. My directorial concept was as follows, and it justified my directions for our group’s performance: A Doll’s House is a play that focuses mainly on the theme of the disregard of women in a male dominant society. This theme is still prevalent in today’s society as inequality between men and women continues to exist in different ways. In A Doll’s House, such as one would play with a doll and control its actions, Nora’s husband Helmer and her father have controlled Nora all her life and she has existed merely to “perform tricks” for them for amusement, as Nora realizes in this ending scene from the play. Nora finally realizes how poorly she has been treated and how she barely knows who she is because she has been caught up in the duties of being a wife, a mother, and a daughter, as expected from this Victorian society. Therefore, the genre of this play is realism because it depicts actual societal issues such as sexism and marital problems rather than depicting idealistic scenarios In these scene, I chose to set the scene in darkness with only one candle burning to create a dark, gloomy mood. Similarly, the characters wear dull, dark colors to also contribute to this mood. A long, narrow table is where Nora and Helmer sit as Nora confronts her husband about the injustices she has been through because of him, and this huge gap between the two characters symbolizes the emotional gap they have in their marriage due to Helmer’s disregard of Nora’s emotions. Therefore, Nora’s decision to leave Helmer in this scene is a stand for feminism: she is breaking free from the chains of a male dominated marriage and is planning on going against typical societal norms by leaving her kids and husband for the sake of her own happiness. Helmer’s shock and disapproval of this reveals his ignorant, sexist character because instead of trying understand Nora’s actions he decides to try to forbid her. Nora’s coldhearted yet courageous reaction of ignoring Helmer and leaving him shows the strength she contains as a woman of her time, and so she is an inspiration for all oppressed women.

After finishing our performance, we also watched the other groups’ performance, and they all did a fantastic job directing and acting. This unit has definitely helped me understand the different ways a performance can be carried out and what the effects of each type of performance are on an audience, but I especially liked learning about the Stanislavski method as I can have been able to effectively use emotional recall after learning about it and it has greatly helped me improve my acting, and I’m sure it will continue help me to improve as I perfect this method.