Lee Strasberg exercises

Lee Strasberg exercises

1. Relaxation:

   • Stress inteferes with and confines expression.
     • Relax; start with mental tension. e.g. Relax brows. Then learn where to carry tension.
   • The basic habitual behaviour leads to habitual behaviour of actor.
     • Habits get in the way of impulses.

2. Concentration

   • Focus on objects, place and sense of touch.
     • Concentrate on an object you know well; the weight, the warmth, how it feels, what you see.
     • "I don't teach you how to act, I teach you how to live.". Its the truthfulness of living that needs concentration.
     • First year of drama school, Lee taught how to reconnect with senses. No emotional work.

3. Affective memory

   • Stanislavsky said that "emotional memory" didn't work. Strasberg agreed.
     • In order to reach emotions, we have to do so indirectly throuigh sensory memory.
     • Emotions cannot be turned on.
   • Lee discovered when anybody creates they are using memories of senses and emtoioans. The emotional memory exercise provides a technique for doing so.
     • "Describe where you are, what you see, hear and touch. Relive the sensations. Experience kinetically. What is the shape, size, form, texture, legnth, colour of the object? Do you see light in the room? Do you see a reflection? Is it hot or cold?
       • Is it the smell in the room? Where do you smell it? .
         • Now control it clearly. Define it. Force your attention onto the detail.Make everything precise and definite.

4. Private exercise

   • Really a concentration exercise.
   • Examples include: Juliet in the balcony scene (Romeo and Juliet