We perform the plays that you choose:

  • The scene of your favourite movie (series, feature films, short movies, what you like more.)
  • A scene of a play (classic, contemporary, again, what you like more.)
  • An invented scene by yourselves.
  • A scene of a documentary.
  • Any other scene.

FIRST PART

  1. I explain what we are going to do and what is about the acting method techniques for rehearsals (it is the Actor´s Studio one)
  2. We cast the play and talk about each character in order to know how to work on them (if the character is shy or agressive, or a seducer, or a seller, or whoever.)
  3. After this meeting we will start by putting on some music and dancing around to warm up. 
  4. The free and flexible movement of the body is essential for an actor since it allows spontaneous movements in order to work on the characters he/she will perform.

SECOND PART

Once we have already warmed up, we start with what properly the "Method Acting", which is the method used in first stage by Konstantín Stanislavski in Moscú, and, later Lee Strasberg took for the American teather.

A PARENTHESIS - A LITTLE OF HISTORY

When Stanislavski brought his Moscow Art Theatre to the United States in 1923, Strasberg had his life-shaping revelation. He had seen good acting before, of course, but never an ensemble like this with actors completely surrendering their egos to the work... He observed, first of all, that all the actors, whether they were playing leads or small parts, worked with the same commitment and intensity. No actors idled about posing and preening (or thinking about where they might dine after the performance). More important, every actor seemed to project some sort of unspoken, yet palpable, inner life for his or her character. This was acting of a sort that one rarely saw on the American stage ... where there was little stress on the psychology of the characters or their interactions.... Strasberg was galvanized. He knew that his own future as an actor – he was a slight and unhandsome man – was limited. But he soon perceived that as a theoretician and teacher of this new 'system' it might become a major force in American theater.

  1. Seated in chairs, you keep your backs straight and we start to get relaxed (RELAXATION).
  2. During breathing we will pay attention at belly area. We will bring our bellys down while we exhale the air through our noses; we inspire slowly also through our nose while making our diaphragm down; this way we will the abdominal wall goes up while the lower part of lungs gets full of air. While exhaling, the abdominal wall goes inside. So, we will be relaxing each part of the body. The goal of this phase is to make disappear all possible tensions. 
  3. After relaxation, we will do a Sense Memory Exercise. We will start by the well known "cup of coffe". This one is the first to do at the Lee Strasberg Institute. I guide the process of "catching, touching, smelling, seeing and tasting" an imaginary cup of coffee.
  4. And, finally, we will make an Affective Memory Exercise in which we will get concentrated to take up again a personal experience of our own past similar to the character we are going to perform to bring to the stage these same feelings but with the words of our scene.

Lee Strasberg said: "just LIVING real emotions." That is why he took up acting way Stanislavsky again. Strasberg thought the actors could not "act" in the sense of posing or preening since, in this way, they would not bring to the stage real emotions and it would be very obvious they were "acting".

Actors used to call it "mental substitutions" and it comes about substituting own personal images and places to bring them to stage.

     

WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO BRING?

You have to:

  • Tell me the scene of the play that you want to perform. I might not have read it, so the sooner you tell me, the better.
  • You must bring suitable clothes for your characters (atrezzo). It does not required too much complication. If you can not bring anything, we will improvise here.
  • A camera and tape. But, if not, we will record with mine.

WHO CAN BE BENEFIT FROM THIS EXPERIENCE?

  • Everybody can be benefit from this experience since you gain in body flexibility. Also Affective Memory Exercices can help to heal past problems since you bring hidden experiences from your subconscious mind. It can be a real therapy to improve life.
  • All of us we wish to be protagonists: protagonists of our lifes, essentially. There is a real popular passion in the USA to do certain things before dying: swim with dolphins or make love in the beach; take a shower under a cascade; work at Disney; or anything else that someone would not have thought of it before as a feasible idea. I don´t think it is necessary to be training years and years to catch and learn concepts and ideas. Ted Zurkowsky  said about me that "I had taken in the method like a sponge". I think one must be avalaible and, if something really interests you and you are skilled, don´t hesitate, you will catch it first time. The own Dr. Lair Ribeiro states the same idea in his book about success.

You can practice acting, learn a method and attend an audition. The only fact to do it is just satisfactory.

Please, ask me all you might need about this workshops. They can last a morning or an afternoon. There is no established timetable since it can become longer or shorter. 

I hope these paragraphs have given to you a new vision and have enriched you in some way.

María José Celemín