Acting Training Exercises for Developing Attention

Acting training exercises for developing attention include:
• Examining various objects (a watch, a pencil, a book),
finding distinctive features in them.
• Writing a piece of text in beautiful handwriting.
• Performing actions under various kinds of interference: reading
a book in the presence of strangers, listening to a radio broadcast while experiencing
some physical pain, becoming absorbed in one's thoughts on public
transport.
• Retelling material that has been read while simultaneously answering
questions. Attention is divided between the retelling and the answers.
• Fixing one's gaze on a shiny object or a candle during a meditation session.
• Concentrating attention on one's breathing, heartbeat rhythm,
and taste and smell sensations.
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Techniques for training attention in musicians, proposed
by L. Barenboim:
• Close your eyes and for a certain time concentrate
solely on auditory perceptions that are not musical.
• Listen to a piano tone struck in the middle or low register until it fades away completely.
• Imagine that same tone with your inner ear and likewise
«listen it out» to the point of its imagined fading.
• While playing (or merely imagining) a slow melody with the utmost concentration, follow the transition
of one tone into another.
In addition to these exercises one can also recommend such things as performing a piece of music with the radio on, in bright light shining into the eyes, while sitting on an uncomfortable chair. However
debatable these techniques may be, they force one to concentrate attention better, which creates a stronger focus of excitation in the cerebral cortex and
a more stable formation of performance reflexes.
K.S. Stanislavski noted that an actor's attention can be trained even without special exercises, provided that in his everyday
work he is extremely focused and disciplined, and treats his professional business consciously and responsibly. This is possible, as
was mentioned above, given a clear formulation of tasks concerning both
each specific fragment and the work as a whole. Here
is how the principle of activating attention was put into practice by L. Barenboim. Having suggested that one of his students be guided while playing
by Stanislavski's formula «I strive for and I want», he asked her to perform a Mozart fantasia. «So, what will you strive for in this passage?
• With these opening bars I want to set the mood for the listeners,
to arouse in them an anticipation of what follows.
• Let it be so. But let's leave this large, general psychological task
for the end of the work. Let's begin with simpler, narrower and more concrete
tasks.
• In that case: first of all I want to achieve a soft legato and evenness of sound.
• Excellent. Get to work, and don't forget your task for a single moment».
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However, accomplishing this seemingly simple task turned out at once to be
not so easy – the student's attention wandered from the performance several times. Then a
series of narrower, and later broader, tasks was formulated:
• I want to hear the suspensions and their resolutions in the
introduction.
• I want to achieve a truly gradual increase in volume by the seventh bar.
• I want to carry out the fading in the following bars.
• I want to combine all these tasks and play the introduction evenly,
legato, listening to the suspensions, carrying out the gradual increase and gradual decrease in loudness.
• I want to give the introduction a free and improvisatory
character.
• Carrying out these tasks successfully solved the problem of performance
attention.
Besides overall concentration, the quality of a performance is also affected by
the ability to divide one's attention. In the process of playing, a musician is forced to direct attention both to the accuracy of the playing, to the overall artistic
image, and to the freedom of his movements. During a performance, attention seems to move simultaneously both horizontally and vertically... The performer's horizontal attention is focused on the immediate moment of performance, on the fragment that immediately follows it, while at the same time encompassing the unified image of the work. The vertical layer
of attention encompasses the coordination of the hands, the texture, the voice leading, and the conductor's gesture.