Following on from my introduction to Stanislavski, I was tasked with performing a short scene relating to a sentence I was given. My sentence was; “I sew, I have just received a letter from my husband who is ill on a business trip.” We were encouraged to use the attributes of Stanislavski’s “System”, particularly the “magic if” (imagination), however I was already pondering over many ideas for what I could conjure as a scenario, story or even set but most significantly; how I could mould my character. I settled on playing a woman from the early 20th century (to coincide with the older style of the sentence and what it connoted to me) who had caused her husband’s illness on his trip, by spiking his bottle of sherry he had taken with him with poison. This idea interested me substantially as otherwise my character and consequential performance would be boring, as appose to if my character was behind it and knew more than the audience. This way I could bring traits to my character to give them a background, such as slyness, a hint of evil and a bitter joy at reading the letter which most likely confirms my character’s husband was falling a victim to the poison. With my character being this villainous I sought to give them a motive – this being my character was tired of her husband’s favour of work, so she cheats on him while he is away, then fears for his return as she may be found out and ultimately, she must go back to practically being celibate, hence her wish to be rid of him once and for all. My character also sustained an uppity-like posture and delicate mannerisms to convey her posh/upper-class status and give a feminine aspect to the character.
My performance went well overall, in my opinion. It was mainly improvised; I had only planned a few actions to display my character, for example slowly curling my mouth into a smile while I read the letter and having a posh and feminine posture to represent the early 20th century female character. I used props also, including a pair of underpants to hint at my character being an adulterer, which I sewed to implement this aspect of my given circumstance (“I sew”). This helped to minimise the use of mime and remain within the naturalistic style of theatre which Stanislavski favoured. To improve, I would have introduced the letter itself in a better manner as I simply picked it up off the floor which did not make any sense for my upper-class, grandiose and tidy character who also is excited to read this letter. I would also relish opening the letter, because in my performance I think I slid out of character slightly while I was opening it (possibly because the task was tedious and I was concentrating too much on actually opening it).
Here is a link to the Onedrive video file:
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