Stanislavski’s Birthday Party

Panyatree (Sunny) Kongkwanyuen

That’s me!

My Wonderful and all Inspiring Theorist My theatre theorist is Cicely Berry, a world renown voice and text coach. Obviously to look smart for a birthday party filled with many passionate theorists, I have to get my game on and do some great background research on Berry herself, and her theories and what she does. It was difficult finding information on her overall, but the most difficult information to find was her personal information. In all the many websites I have visited, I only managed to find two sentences summing up her life: all she did when she was young was to read poems and be crazy about it. I was more fortunate with her theories however they were not so detailed. Berry works with Shakespearean text and physical exercises to help train actors to open up their voice, to find their potential so that they can better express their feelings orally. She has worked with all actors who acted in any Shakespearean plays from stage to the silver screens. Which makes sense because she works all over the world! Including prisons where she uses Shakespeare as a vassal to help people be more confident and better express themselves. Being a rare voice and text coach for Shakespeare, Berry has worked with many now famous celebrities in their early times. She has also published many books on how to use voice to unlock potential.

Presentation and Workshop After the research, we presented our theorists in a power point presentation along with a work shop to help my classmates understand what our theorists really do (and of course to show OUR understanding and knowledge of our own theorist) I think my overall presentation and workshop was okay but I could have done better. I’ve only realized that after I finished my workshop. The workshop did focus on talking and the structure of the text and where people think pauses were but I think that I should have focused on physical exercises that let out the voice or maybe I could have gone further with the Shakespeare text exercise. I panicked and rushed the workshop and so it ended faster than it was suppose.

Dear Cicely Berry,

You are cordially invited to attend a birthday celebration for the late and great Konstantin Stanislavski, to honor his memory along with the contributions to the world of Theatre.

Please arrive at the BISS Blackbox on Thursday 10th January at 10:50am for the party. Be prepared for a lively discussion of your theatre beliefs. We look very much forward to your company and your opinions!

Yours faithfully,The Representative of Stanislavski.

Woyzeck Scenes To relate to the play that we are studying, Woyzeck, we are to look at scene three, the fairground or circus, and scene 21, the last and murder scene. We were ask to interpret the scenes in our theorists vision. What we would focus on and how we will present the play. For me, I think Cicely Berry would focus on how the text shows expression and motive. This will then help actors in using their voices and body movements to reflect their objectives in the scene. This should make them be able to play out the scenes without the actual need to use props. The settings for both scenes would be fairly simple because that would bring more focus to the actors. However, I think (in both mine and Berry’s opinion) the murder scene requires more action than words. All the other aspects were not as important to her because it was not in her field. Berry has only worked with Shakespeare after all. Berry would want to have the use of the actors/actresses voice to be very confident and to really show the real emotions and motive of the characters. Though, I think that the script in scene three is quite long and can get the audience confused. I would take out the unnecessary text or shorten them to still have implied meaning (the foreshadowing of later events) but still keep it short and simple. Other aspects such as lighting and other technical things aren’t in her forte so it is not important.

Birthday Party~ From looking at some of the pictures I got, I managed to pull a simple modern Cicely Berry. Since she was born in London, she must have a British accent and after watching her video, it was a heavy accent. I tried to use that at the birthday party, but during our group discussion I seem to have forgotten about it because I was too busy thinking what to say. Fortunately, I oddly speak in a British accent sometimes that habit kept me in character. During the party, I’ve met a few other theorists. For example: Jerzy Growtowski, Stanford Maisner, Tadashi Suzuki, Vsevelod Meyerhold, etc. In these conversations, I had to constantly defend myself when I stated that voice is important in the play because most of the theorists in the room have more a movement theory. Antonin Artaud (By Saad) and Berry had some things in common because he focused on expressing emotions and Berry focused on expressing emotion too but through voice so we had our agreements and disagreements. I honestly felt being ganged up on but I still managed to defend myself because it is always easier to express oneself through oral language. Our group discussion was weird to me. I wanted to speak but I just couldn’t find the right time and when I did say something, all the things that I wanted to say just left my head. I was wondering if what I said made sense at all! Overall I should really improve in public speaking. When I have to talk about something and be smart about it, I begin to mini hyperventilate and all the sentences in my head begins to mix or disappear. That’s when all I find it hard to communicate and end up repeating things because I was sure that the audience didn’t understand.