Emotional Memory

Stanislavski believed that rather than simply acting out an emotion, there was a way of drawing on a memory that is similar in detail or feeling to their characters situation. By doing this, the actor has a better connection to their role and therefore it seems more real.

The first thing to do in trying to recall an emotion is to strip away all your current feelings, which could affect your emotional memory and alter the moment that you are trying to recall. To do this we first began to walk around the space, focussing on each other so that we could find a way of slowing down all at the time. This moved our concentration away from our own thoughts and towards simple actions, helping to make our minds blank.

The next step was to relax our bodies. We lay on the floor in order to remove movement so that we could focus on getting rid of the tension in our bodies, breathing in a controlled way as we did so in order to continue to slow our thoughts. The aim of this was to put ourselves in a zone where we could be completely focused on the memory we would be recalling.

We were told to pick a memory with a strong emotion, but to first only recall the details of that memory; what were we wearing that day, was it warm or cold, morning or night? This is called sense memory, it’s a way of easing into the practice of emotional memory by first recalling the event through the five senses. Some modern Stanislavski academics suggest that this can help someone completely relax into the memory.

Finally, we called on the emotion and spent some time focussing on the memory of it and how it affected our body through breath, facial expressions and body language. When we felt that we were completely fixed on the emotion we pretended to write a letter based on the way we felt.

In order to test the effectiveness of the emotional memory theory, the letters were then “read” by someone who would chose to react to it in a particular way.  Some reactions were consoling and others mocking, but the aim of this was to encourage us to react in turn. A strong reaction would suggest that we had been successful in connecting to our emotion.

I felt that for me it was perhaps not a completely successful way of creating realistic emotion. At some points I felt that I was accurately recalling my emotion but I found it very difficult to allow it to affect my body. During the reading of the letter, I felt bothered by someone seeing it but, rather than that producing a strong reaction, it cut off any reaction at all. I think that while it can be useful to draw on emotions in order to remember how you breathed, stood, moved I don’t believe that it would work to recall specific moments in order to act as a character. I think it would be better to try and understand your character in greater detail and feel their emotions instead of linking them to your own.

The theory is exhausting and could even be unhealthy if the actor must continually draw on negative emotions. There has been considered by some a risk of going to ‘a dark place’ – Heath Ledger has been rumoured to have done this. Stanislavski suggests that it would be better to choose a past memory, as a present one could become uncontrollable.