Session Four

Week 5 – Tuesday 27th September

Key Terms

• Circles of Attention
• Emotion Memory
• Subtext

Bus Stop exercise

Combining imagination, Given Circumstances and What if,

A narration is given of scene in which you are standing at a bus stop, early in the morning on the way to a job interview.

You are chewing gum – what flavour is it?

You have a bag on your shoulder – how heavy is it?

You see a newspaper by your feet

You see a car on the other side of the road

You see a bus coming in the distance

What was your smallest circle of attention?  What was your largest?  What was in between?

Circles of attention or concentration provides the actor a means of maintaining and regaining focus as necessary and also to help provide the area to give attention when on stage.

“Solitude in public; using different circles of attention on stage to focus the attention on the stage: re-focus up on an object if attention is lost and create circles emanating around that object”

Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares

Neutral Text exercise – the W questions, subtext