Mike Alfreds

Alfreds, an English theatre director born in 1934, founded the story-telling company Shared Experience and uses actioning and improvisation as his primary methods of direction for naturalistic work. This quote that I found in an article about him establishes some of his method and technique.

...he and his actors create a complete infrastructure and framework, breaking texts down into simple actions and then connecting the actors back to it once they have made all sorts of discoveries about character and motivation. "They do an awful lot of work on the environment and space, their relationships, style and what the play's actually about, hopefully embodied in a very organic way through the very long and elaborate rehearsal process. Then, whatever they choose to play will be right, because it's true to that particular moment. They have to give up getting, say, a laugh on a specific line. You must be absolutely in the moment, playing whatever the moment demands."

The whole article can be found at:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/alfreds-way-more-method-less-madness-1349648.html

In lesson, we focused on the aspect of improvisation and responding actively to the situation and given circumstances, as well as leading with the body and physicality. First of all we were put in to pairs and then given the following circumstances:

 

Relationship: step-siblings

Setting: train platform

Obstacle: the train is delayed

Using only these, we began to improvise a scene. Through accepting what other actors offer to you, detail about character and objective begin to arise. For example, when Nina and I were sat on the ‘train platform’ we began discussing a family barbeque, and although the energy felt quite awkward (which in itself suggested that we had not been step-siblings for very long) our relationship seemed friendly and civil, if not a little reserved. Thus, this demonstrated to me how lots of detail can come out of rather basic given circumstances and how all of the material we created came out of spontaneity of the moment, making it truthful and raw. However, the downside to this is that sometimes I felt myself forcing me or Nina to come up with something to say or do. Often we were sat in silence, which is perfectly acceptable except after some time it suggests that the improvisation has died and the energy is lost and we disengage.

The second improvisation exercise we tried was difficult despite its simplicity. The main instruction was: change position in your partners whenever you hear a click and, once instructed, begin a scene from this new image. I found this technique awkward and uncomfortable. I was not relaxed enough to find natural positions and I kept worrying and controlling my potential ideas for scenes; therefore manipulating the process. Although it is true that we created scenes from just a visual position – one of which consisted of my character laid on the floor with a supposedly broken leg and Nina’s character mocking me – I didn’t feel they had much substance, and it was a lot more challenging to present a scene without humour embedded within it. I can see why Alfreds might work with this exercise, but it wasn’t for me.

Following this, we partook in an interesting exercise in which I had to drip feed Nina aspects of a situation and character through improvisation and immersion in the scene. This meant that I had to work particularly delicately to keep the energy of the scene moving as well as give away little parts of information. I established the setting by saying something along the lines of “Thanks for meeting me today; I am really looking forward to this little interview. Would you like a coffee? It’s on me, well, it’s on TeenMag actually!” Through this, I suggested that it was an interview situation and I was an overexcited journalist talking to someone of interest in a coffee shop. This exercise was useful to a point, however I can imagine it was more tricky and rewarding for Nina, as she had to fine tune her performance in order to discover aspects of her character and given circumstances. I was reasonably successful because Nina managed to guess most of the facts, however if I had maybe developed the scene in a clearer way, then I may have got more information over to her more concisely.

Finally, we developed our skills of creating character and place through silent mime and belief in a simple action. Individually, with our partners observing, we had to act out the action of doing something for them. For example, this could be something along the lines of wrapping a present, making sandwiches or writing a song. Through precision and display of true intention, our partners had to guess our character, our relationship to them and the situation of the mime. I was successful in this process as Nina guessed completely that I was lovingly making her a smoothie (with lots of bananas in). What made this exercise particularly useful from a general directing and acting point of view was how extra information scanned to the audience other than the initial intentions. This showed how just a repetitive movement is enough to convey a character’s finely detailed personality and their relationships with others.

Overall, it was interesting to see how improvisation is used by directors such as Alfreds in order to create natural, human performance. The spontaneity and energy required to be successful is extremely great; however it helps the actor learn to think in a more instinctual way. The main problem I experienced with these exercises was that initially they do involve a lot of thought which is not in the context of a specific play, character or scene that has been previously studied, such as 13. This meant that although I understood how the exercises are useful in a general sense, I struggled to see how they might be adapted to fit individual rehearsal processes.