naturalism ˈnatʃ(ə)rəlɪz(ə)mt noun 1. (in art and literature) a style and theory of representation based on the accurate depiction of detail.

After growing tired of seeing the same old over-exaggerated performances, theatre practitioners - largely including Stanislavsky - began to develop a form of theatre that would portray a perfect illusion of reality. This making taking everything melodrama stood for and turning it on it's head; contemporary and realistic situations, large ranges of characters portrayed, a singular world - so no gods, ghosts or spirits intervening and realistic style of acting.

My group developed a piece that was centered around an office, playing the characters as realistic and authentic as possible. We chose to use an office setting as it was such a normal setting that has very few dramatic events, our piece was only around forty seconds in length to place emphasis on making the piece more realistic in the timings. This was quite challenging because we didn't want to be tempted to create characters that are overly dramatic and fall into melodrama rather than naturalism, so it was about making the piece as real as you would expect if you walked into a working office.

I really liked watching how other groups took the challenge of creating a naturalistic piece, they all managed to capture the reality of the situation they were trying to perform effectively and interestingly. It was really captivating to see how situations so dull and so ordinary can be performed in such a way that doesn't become boring to the audience.

We then had to take the pieces we had created and develop them into a piece of realism theatre, this meant we had to focus on the main goal of the piece and almost clip away at the unnecessary parts. The main focus of the piece was the fact one of the office worker's computers wasn't working, so we took out all the irrelevant parts from the beginning and the end, and developed the focus on that one plot point. This was quite a bit of a challenge as it was hard to decipher which parts were relevant and which parts needed to be taken out, but we managed to carry it out.

I've never really had the chance to look at these forms of theatre in great detail so these two exercises helped me develop a deeper understanding of what naturalism and realism stand for in the theatre world and how to carry them out effectively and efficiently as possible. I've developed skills and understandings of these two forms of theatre that I am looking forward to exploring further in my acting development and eventually in my career.