Emotion Memory

Emotion memory is a technique Stanislavsky developed that pertains to using ones own past experiences that are compatible with the situations of the character you are playing.  As I have touched in my glossary of terms it is a complex system of using imagination, senses and your emotion centre located in the stomach to fill you entire being with analogous feelings. In class we did an exercise that began to employ this technique by using a past experience of great happiness.

We laid on the floor with our eyes closed and we were talked through various steps in how we connect with this past emotion. I remembered watching the sun rise with my best friends after pulling an all nighter of just talking and feeling absolutely at one with the world.  I found it slightly hard to recall this memory as I didn't want to remember a time of such happiness because equally it makes me sad that I am not longer in that mind frame. I also found it hard to radiate this glowing sensation within my stomach. I could visualise it emanating from my centre but I only felt slight tingles which means I wasn't feeling the full effect of the emotion memory. It was also hard to share this with the rest of the room. I wanted to keep this feeling for myself and only myself. However I did feel happier and I could have managed to put it into my performance somehow. I found this exercise useful as it gave me insights into how difficult emotion memory is but it also made me realise that in order to hone this skill it is going to take practice.

We were taught that emotion memory has certain rules that we need to follow so that we get the best results from it:

• Learn the character biography. This entails all the detective work and character research we do and making sure we know our interpretation of the character like the back of our hands. If we don't do this we won't be able to target the specific emotions we need to access. 
• We must identify the exact emotion we need. If we are looking for sadness but we find the memory and it turns out to actually be anger then it's futile. We won't be using the correct emotion memory and it won't match up with the playwrights intentions. 
• Think about the subtext; what is our character really trying to say? What's bubbling under the surface? We can't just think about what's going on in the first dimensional plane. 
• We must also find the appropriate action that will arise the emotion. If we want to actually utilise emotion memory then it is key we can find the action that will activate it in a performance scenario. 
• We must control the emotion; We are the masters of our emotions - not the slaves. We were given a wonderful anecdote about playing Claudio from Measure for Measure and how putting yourself in that mind frame can be dangerous and how you have to be able to bring yourself out of the frame of mind. 

I find emotion memory difficult and I know I need to work on it more before I can replicate it on the stage. This technique is experimental and is an ongoing process in the rehearsal room and should be treated as such.