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Theatre Arts for Advanced Secondary Schools

for stage, radio and screen. Performing for stage, for example, entails physical or
verbal presence of a performer enacting a set of actions before the audience. It is
an act that assembles and balances audio-visual impressions to communicate the
intended message. The enactment can evolve from a written script or an improvised
set of events detailing an idea. The medium such as stage, radio and screen need to be
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effectively utilised by performers based on writer’s choice or audience preference.

Performing approaches
Theatre performance is a wide field comprising performance for film, television
and stage. Being divided in the aforesaid fields implies that the approaches to
training actors for performance vary from one field to another. However, there
are other approaches that cut across all fields. Stanislavski’s internal and external
approach is one among approaches that cut across all fields. He developed the
two approaches following the importance he imagined on training actors so that
they effectively manage their roles. Internal and external approaches vary from
each other in the following perspectives.

Internal approaches
The internal approach refers to the creation of the character based on inner-
feelings, emotions, desires and impulses. This approach expects the performer to
stimulate their emotions by remembering the feelings they experienced in real-
life events. The performer should not just perform but tap into their emotions,
memories and sensations as if they were the characters that they impersonate.
Through inner emotions, the performer becomes natural, truthful and emotionally
intense in outer performance. As a result, the performer manages to inspire and
entertain the audience. Konstantin Stanislavsky called the internal approach as
affective memory or emotional memory. To apply this approach, characters are
required to appear in their normal dimensions. They are required to wear clothes
they would normally use in their ordinary situations and they express themselves
naturally through speech, emotions, feelings and movements. All these require
being done in settings that resemble real life situations. Such settings can be
“realistic” or “naturalistic”. To achieve the emotional tone of the character,
there are a number of exercises that performers can do to enable them pull
experiences from past to achieve emotional quality required in any given role.
These exercises include recalling various emotional moments such as sadness,
happiness and grief. Internal approach has several components which include
feeling of truth, relaxation, concentration of attention, emotional memory, the
magic if, imagination and inner motive forces as elaborated below:

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