Etude in teaching of the first-year students the acting prowess
Authors: Virchenko O.M. 
Published: June 2019

Background. Each new generation of students brings with them its own themes and subjects, and the continuous flow of life opens up new artistic horizons. In addition, each team of teachers and students is unique, and the necessity to look repeatedly for ways to uncover the individualities of future actors arises. Therefore, the work on the etudes, being aimed at the development of the creative abilities of the young actors, occupies almost the main place in the learning process. For a student, an etude is a means to build up self-own effective scenic behavior in the conditions of zones of silence. Etude has its own principles of construction and embodiment. The concept of the etude, its themes and components are the subjects of research in this article. The etude method of the actor’s work on the role was rather thoroughly and deeply examined by such authors as M. O. Knebel [4], S. V. Gippius [2], N. M. Gorchakov [3]. K. S. Stanislavsky [6, 7] reveals the versatile properties of the elements of scenic well-being, the laws of creativity and psycho-techniques with exhaustive completeness. E. B. Vakhtangov considered theatrical training not only from the point of view of mastering acting prowess, but mainly as formation the artist’s worldview: the up-brining of desire to serve high ideals and devote his art to them, an acute sense of modernity, the ability to see life creatively, guess its requirements [1]. The purpose of this study is to describe the practical exercises used in the work on etudes with first-year students. We offer our-own methodical developments, give the examples of exercises and etudes for the development of memory of physical actions, fantasy and imagination, the ability to build a truthful line of stage behavior in specific proposed circumstances, according to the system of K. S. Stanislavsky [6, 7]. The main material of the research. Scenic etude is the initial and basic component in the organization of stage action, an exercise with a certain psychological load. This is acting training in a variety of scenic situations and proposed external circumstances. Each of the students, called on the scene for the first time, experiences excitement, which appears in one or another form. Therefore, we warn the students that they do not need “to play” anything, but to behave as in life, in a word, we try in every way to do everything so that the transition to the stage does not disrupt normal human well-being. For a group of students, we suggest listening to and remembering the sounds that were heard in the room from the moment the exercise began to its end. In fact, those students who are on the stage and those who look to them in the auditorium, participate in this exercise. Then all the students take turns talking about the sounds, which they heard, complementing their comrades. This exercise helps to instill in students an understanding that the mental work and the activity of the sense organs on the stage are the same as in real life. The attention of the student is focused on some subject, sound, thought or action of the partner. Such an object, action, thought, sound is perceived particularly clearly and is called the “object of attention”. These exercises make it possible: 1) to focus your attention on a given object; 2) to keep this attention for some time, that is, to make the proposed action exciting, important for yourself. After these exercises, we introduce students to the “circles of attention”. “Small circle of attention” – it is when attention is directed to the inner world, to my sensations and experiences; the “medium circle” – to all that surrounds me within this room, where I am at the moment (things, sounds, smells, etc.); the “big circle of attention” – to all that surrounds me outside the room (hall), where I am at the moment. The focused attention distracts the student from the auditorium, hence the action that he performs in his etude on stage become the most important for him. It is very important for us, the teachers who works with the first-year students, to attain that the student concentrates on the stage action. It is also important that the students at the initial period of their training during the performance of etudes would not experience muscle strain, which, for the most part, arises from their efforts to appear in public better and smarter, more nimble and graceful than they usually are. K. S. Stanislavsky found a way to get rid of the tightness and education of muscle freedom by the way of creating a “muscular controller” – the ability to quickly find out in which muscle group the tension and remove it, leading oneself to a state of muscle freedom. Exercises for relax of muscles we begin with the fourth or fifth lessons and apply in parallel with the exercises on attention, combining them in the future. Then we give students to touch some subjects and tell about the chain of associations they cause. These exercises, freeing the thought, lead students to the beginning of work on the development of imagination. The next cycle of exercises we devote to the development of the imagination to create “proposed circumstances” (“magic if”, following K. Stanislavsky). “Proposed circumstances” arise when we ask the students questions: “Who?”, “When?”, “Where?”, “Why?”, “How?”, which excite their imagination, enticing them to substantiate their actions in a logical and consistent manner. We offer the students also etudes developing the memory about physical actions: having no objects in their hands, feeling them only with the help of their imagination, the students do certain physical actions. It is very important to instill in the first year students a feeling of proper physical well-being in the exercises; it is that need in future work on a role. The next stage of the work is the etudes, in which there is already a plot. Etudes are structured in such a way that an event or a surprise takes place in them that changes the course of life in the etude and makes it necessary to evaluate a new state of affairs. The next stage in the work with first-year students is the plot etudes. They are built in such a way that an event takes place in them or a surprise happens, which changes the course of a character’s life and makes it necessary to evaluate a new state of affairs. The construction of an etude contains a small introduction, exposure, the event itself and the outcome. We try to choice the plot based on events that could happen in reality with students and that correlate with the area of their life experience. We remind of the need for action from myself: what would I do in real life if it happened to me? The next section is the relationship to the partners in the etude. When two or more students act on the stage, interaction and mutual interest between them occurs. We act on our partner with the power of our “I”, not only with words and appearance, but with our whole being. This influence of my “I” on the “I” of my partner and contrary is the essence of the process of “communication”. We cultivate in a student the ability to concern seriously his course mate, same as his brother, sister, bride and so on, depending on their relationship in the etude. Conclusions. In a result of the beginning exercises and etudes, the students of the first year of study should come to an understanding of what the “inner well-being” status constitutes in practice. That is, to find a natural state in the context of scenic playing on public; to master the stage attention that is, being on the stage learn to concentrate on any one impression. This state should be connected with the activity of the senses (hearing, sight, smell, touch, taste), but, at the same time, the student should not lose the ability to think and act. In the process of working on etudes, students should answer the questions: wherefore are we going to play this etude, what shall we say to those who will watch us in this etude? Answers to these questions help us, the teachers, to lead students to a clear comprehension of the tasks of their stage work and understanding the role of the collective as a creative unit, nurturing in them a feeling of partnership, “a feeling of elbow”, camaraderie, the ability to perceive criticism and self-criticism correctly, since the theater is the collective art; to develop the artistic taste of students; ultimately – to cultivate in them the love of their future profession.