Stanislavsky's techniques revolutionised characterisation and still effect how we approach drama today, he devised 5 techniques that are used around the magic if. The magic if is when you add a piece of information to a character in order to make them more realistic, for example what if I did this with the character? Another technique is the given circumstance this is when a emotional or physical thing effects your performance, for example the kid has a slight itch, this is good because it can help you make your character more detailed, however it may distract from the performance, the circumstances I used for Ton were a terrible cold and the craving for a fag, Another technique is visualisation, this is when the actor imagines the scene and it's contents, I did not find this to useful because I find it easy to create scenarios in my mind because these days we have a plethora of scenarios to choose from thanks to the media, were as 100+ years ago actors did not have this advantage.Another technique was emotion memory, this is when an actor remembers a real event in order to replicate the emotion experienced, this was really helpful because it makes the performance more authentic and the emotion gets across to the audience better, however this technique is not useful when trying to be subtle or minimalistic. Despite helping me understand all the characters better these techniques were not very useful for Ton because it is clear how he is feeling through out the text, however I think these techniques would help characterise the headmaster because he could be played in a multitude of ways.
