The Pillowman and Stanislavski's Objectives


The Pillowman- Stanislavski’s Super objectives and Understanding the Characters.

Stanislavski taught his students about the importance of a characters Objectives and Super Objectives, which are the driving forces for all of a characters actions throughout the play.
Objectives: The motivation that propels an actor through each individual unit of a play. These can be feelings, ideas and goals.
Super Objectives: The over- reaching objective. Stanislavski describes it in a document called “An Actor Prepares”. It talks about how any action that you may choose to carry out in the play should be influenced by the super objective, otherwise it will not be true to the character.

“In a play the whole stream of individual, minor objectives, all the imaginative thoughts, feelings and actions of an actor, should converge to carry out the super-objective of the plot. The common bond must be so strong that even the most insignificant detail, if it is not related to the super-objective, will stand out as superfluous or wrong.”
Therefore to help us to represent the characters effectively in our performance, it is important to define the super objectives of our main characters.

ARIEL

He sees himself as a vigilantly, and views his own super objective to be the prevention of other people’s suffering. It could be argued however that his true super objective is to keep himself in a position of power where he is the one doing the hurting and no one is hurting him.

We then created three freeze frames in order to explore the influences on Ariel’s Super Objective.

1.       Ariel is abused by his father- this is taken from Katurian’s line, “first to put you on your knees.” This is important as it is his own suffering that may have encouraged him to take up the job of a detective and to help- and hurt- others. It shows how Ariel was once in an inferior position, and perhaps helps to explain why he enjoys violence, as it makes him feel powerful.

2.       This power is seen in the second freeze frame. It reflects in part Ariel standing up to his father, but also presents all the accused criminals he has hurt. In this Imogen represents the former and Nasifa the people he believes he is helping.

3.       This develops into the final freeze frame, where Ariel is being given sweets by children. He is seen as a hero, the way he wants to see it in his own mind. Notably, the children are not afraid of him, which suggests he is desensitised to the violence.

 KATURIAN

His super objective switches slightly throughout the play but mainly stems round an idea of protection. In the three freeze frames that the other group created, they showed the three forms of protection.

1.       At the start of the play Katurians focus is on his own survival. This is shown through the balance of the chair between the three main characters- Katurian on one side, Ariel and Tupolski on the other. Katurian is attached to the chair, suggesting his need to get away from it and therefore escape the detention centre successfully. In the transition you can also see a sense of his stories importance, as they are take away from him.

2.       The second frame is about protecting his brother. This is seen in Act 2 Scene 1 through his treatment of Michal and the way that Katurians body covers Michal’s in the freeze frame.

3.       At this point Michal is dead and Katurian knows he has committed the murders. He is now focussed on protecting his stories as he believes that he will not escape the centre and the stories are the only thing he has left.  This can suggest something about Katurians need to feel that there is worth to his life and draws on some of his insecurities over his own failed attempts at being an author. It could perhaps also be argued that Katurian can see the value in his case and how it could bring publicity to his writing as well. This shows a much more clinical side to his character that should be presented throughout the whole play.

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