The main style we are looking at in our Chekhov play is naturalism. Chekhov was a Russian play write in the 1800's who focused on the style of naturalism. He based this style on the practitioner Stanislavsky who created the idea of acting realistically on stage. Chekhov is consider as one of the major literary geniuses of his time due to the fact he helped change the style of plays which are still being played in this time period. In order to learn about and use naturalism we did a series of naturalism workshops which allowed us to explore different story areas in naturalism. These included the "system", emotions and the fourth wall.
One of the workshops that I think relates very well to my character was the emotions.
In the workshop we focused on the emotions anger, sadness and happiness. We had to stand out side the room and enter the room trying to portray a different emotion. I was given anger and my story was that I was angry that my younger adopted sister was given a car and I never was given one. I think what made my performance believable was because of the actions. When I talked I had to improvise the text therefore it seemed staged but when I just stood there staring at my sister or when I paced a bit it built an awkward tension that meant the audience anticipated the next line. I think the most effect task was having too wait outside as it allowed me to get into the right mind set so when I walked into the room I was hit by the emotions and I forgot who I was. I felt that this was relevant to my character as Lyuba has been away from her home for 5 years so entering her house for the first time she would feel a rush of emotions. I have therefore decided to use the technique of emotions as soon as I enter the stage to show the whole impact of being away for so long.
Another naturalism technique which we used was taken from Stanislavsky's system. It is when you use objects to help show the back story and character through the interaction between the object. In our workshop we were given a chair and we had to relate the chairs to a memory of our own. I chose my great grandpa's chair that I used to sit behind and try to read his Welsh poetry books. We then had to show our connection by interacting with the chair so I decided to sit behind it and then my head on the back of the chair. I think this was effective as it got me to think about the importance of memories of our characters and also the effect of certain objects as they can inflict different emotions on us. I felt this related to my character as Lyuba has a deep connection to the cherry orchard and I feel that her emotions are based on the destruction of the orchard as it resembles the destruction of her life and memories.
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