Little by little I try to rework the webpages into WORKBOOKS, so you can really use it. You see the "Homework" section at the bottom of each page? I mean it, I want you to do your work at home!
Search & Research: Besides your journals, you should have a "scrap book" for each role you play. Collect in it everything your character would like. Painting, photos, quotations... It doesn't have to be this "character's diary" Stanislavsky talks about, but it will help you to get "into your character."
"Acting is one of the most exciting, enjoyable, and creative art forms in existence. It can also be one of the most daunting, challenging, and humbling experience anyone can face. Cultural anthropologists tell us that acting, at least in ritual form, is as old as the first humans sitting around the prehistoric campfire playing out for the gathered community the roles of demons, hunted animals, or even rain spirits." (Susan Pate, Randy Wonzong, Donna Breed, 1996, A Beginning Actor's Companion, 3rd edition, page 1)
"The military world is characterized by the absence of freedom--in other words, a rigorous discipline--enforced inactivity, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery, and drunkenness." (Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi [1828-1910], War And Peace (1865-1869), Book 3, Chapter 2, 25.
BARON. What trifles, what little things suddenly à propos of nothing acquire importance in life! You laugh at them as before, think them nonsense, but still you go on and feel that you don't have the power to stop. Let's don't talk about it! I'm happy. I feel as though I were seeing these firs, these maples, these birch trees for the first time in my life, and they all seem to be looking at me with curiosity and waiting. What beautiful trees, and, really, how beautiful life ought to be under them! [A shout of "Halloo! Aa-oo!"] I must be off; it's time.... See, that tree is dead, but it waves in the wind with the others. And so it seems to me that if I die I'll still be part of life, one way or another. Farewell, my darling... [kisses her hands]. Those papers of yours you gave me are lying under the calendar on my table.
After we're dead, people will fly in balloons, fashions will change, the sixth sense will be discovered, and for all I know, even be developed and used. . .But life itself won't be very different; it will still be mysterious, always difficult, yet filled with happiness. And in a thousand years people will still sight and complain 'How hard life is!'--and yet they'll still be afraid of death and unwilling to dies, just as they are now ...
[--Tusenbach, Act 2 when the sisters and the various players in the drama are assembled. Vershinin has announced his desire for tea, adding "Well, if we can't have any tea,let's philosophize a bit, anyway"--and it is in the course of this "philosophizing" that the baron who repeatedly announces his desire to experience real work, makes the above statement. While the advances we now anticipate are different, the essence of what he says remains true.]
If you read the pages on directing, you know that I believe in "Director's Theatre" and I have a reputation of being aggresive (twisting and even rewriting the text, doing the crossgender casting, against the type-casting and etc.)
With "3 Sisters" I wanted the type casting, because the play is very postmodern (in my view) and I thought that the Virtual Theatre environment is enough to confuse the public.
So, I casted a very young actor for the Baron's part. I wanted the youth in him, to make him a light shadow of Vershinin, the young Vershinin, when Vershinin was the prince of light, who became the devil.
Yes, the simple plot starts with the arrival of Vershinin and ends with him leaving... when all lives are destroyed. Baron leaves the army and gets killed by the fellow officer Solyony.
The death of Baron (with the German name and the later-day romantism) is
the demonstration of Vershinin being dead. How much Baron himself understands what takes place? It's good, when character doesn't know much, but the actor KNOWS!
From the Forum:
From: fsrcb1@uaf.edu
Date: Mon Sep 27, 1999 5:35 am
Subject: [3sis] Russian History
I was looking for some background Russian history and I found this
really nice site. It has Russian history back to about the 7th century
all laid out in a really nice timeline format, with a ton of links to
other resources also. So if anyone's interested in some background
history relevant to this time period, check this out. Talk to y'all
later...
Chip
http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/chrono.html
"Make thyself a craftsman in speech, for thereby thou shalt gain the upper hand." From an inscription found in a 3,000 year old tomb in Egypt.
"There is only one way to put an end to evil, and that is to do good for evil." (Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi [1828-1910], What I Believe (1884).
He dies, because like the rest he has no future.
Summary
Meyerhold played the first Tusenbach, Baron. Interesting
exchange of letters between him and Chekhov.
Questions
What is Baron's favorite color? (Talk to the costume
designer!) What is his favorite composer? The paitings he likes?
"Our type of creativeness is the conception and birth of a new being--the person in the part. It is a natural act, similar to the birth of a human being." (Konstantin Sergeevich Alekseev Stanislavski [1863-1938]), An Actor Prepares, 1936, Chapter 16.
"There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness and truth are absent." (Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi [1828-1910], War And Peace (1865-1869), Book 4, Chapter 3, 18.
Tuzenbach: And tomorrow: I'll take you away. To be mine. To be with me.
How can that be? That happiness? All my dreams. Can that be?
Everything but the one thing: that you don't love me.
Irina: How can I? I cannot "feel" it…My soul is a jewelry box. And they've
lost the key.
"That last image is all Mamet," Pileggi explained. "In the original, Irina says 'my heart is like a glorious grand piano, and the lid is closed and the key is thrown away.' Mamet's phrase is more delicate and poetic, yet it still captures the essence of Chekhov's tragicomic style." * + David Mamet Web page
theatre theory 
