The Stanislavski System Read online

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  THE STANISLAVSKI SYSTEM

  Sonia Moore (1902–1995) was born in Russia. She attended the universities of Kiev and Moscow, the Studio of the Kiev Solovstov Theater, and the Third Studio of the Moscow Art Theater, and earned degrees from conservatories in Rome. She lived for many years in New York City, where she taught at the Sonia Moore Stu- dio of the Theater and served as Artistic Director of AST of the American Center for Stanislavski Theater Art, which she founded. In addition, she taught and lectured at colleges and universities throughout the country.

  Also by Sonia Moore

  Training an Actor:

  The Stanislavski System in Class

  SECOND

  REVISED

  EDITION

  THE

  STANISLAVSKI

  SYSTEM

  The Professional Training of an Actor

  DIGESTED FROM THE TEACHINGS OF

  Konstantin S. Stanislavski

  BY

  Sonia Moore

  (Originally published as The Stanislavski Method)

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  penguin.com

  First published in the United States of America as The Stanislavski Method by Viking Penguin Inc. 1960

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Published, with revisions, as The Stanislavski System 1965

  The Stanislavski System, New Revised Edition, published in a hardbound and a paperbound edition 1974

  Paperbound edition reprinted 1974, 1975, 1976

  Published in Penguin Books 1976

  Reprinted 1977, 1978, 1979, 1981 (twice), 1982, 1983

  Second revised edition published 1984

  Copyright © 1960, 1965, 1974, 1984 by Sonia Moore

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  Ebook ISBN 9781101562581

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Moore, Sonia.

  The Stanislavski system.

  [A Penguin handbook]

  Bibliography: p.

  Includes index.

  1. Stanislavski method. I. Title.

  PN2062.M61984792'.02884-2855

  ISBN 9780140466607

  Cover design: Christopher Sergio

  Version_2

  CONTENTS

  About the Author

  Also by Sonia Moore

  Author’s Note to the Second Revised Edition

  Preface by Sir John Gielgud

  Foreword by Joshua Logan

  Epigraphs

  Stanislavski and His System

  The Method of Physical Actions

  Elements of an Action

  The “Magic If”

  Given Circumstances

  Imagination

  Concentration of Attention

  Truth and Belief

  Communion

  Adaptation

  Tempo-Rhythm

  Emotional Memory

  Analysis through Events and Actions

  The Super-Objective and the Through Line of Actions

  The Actor’s Physical Apparatus

  Work on the Role: Building a Character

  The Subtext of Behavior

  The Director

  Eugene Vakhtangov: The Disciple

  Bibliography

  Index

  AUTHOR’S NOTE TO THE

  SECOND REVISED EDITION

  It is my conviction that if the only existing systematized acting technique—the results of Stanislavski’s life work—became the uniform method of training for actors in the United States, theater would achieve the high artistic level of the other arts in the United States. With the objective of bringing into this country Stanislavski’s teachings and his ultimate technique, which is the solution to spontaneous behavior on stage, I am continuing to research the writings of Russian theater scholars and scientists who have been studying Stanislavski’s overwhelming discovery.

  This second revised edition includes the data of my latest researches. The emphasis is on intense sensitivity of the actor’s body to make it capable of the immediate expression of inner processes and of what words alone cannot project: the “subtext” of behavior on stage.

  Sonia Moore

  New York City, 1984

  PREFACE

  by Sir John Gielgud

  I have never really believed that acting can be taught. Yet, when I remember what a clumsy beginner I was myself and how greatly I have been influenced, all through my long stage career, by the fine directors and players with whom I have been fortunate enough to be associated, I cannot deny the advantage of teaching, provided it can be followed up by hard personal experience. Let nobody imagine, however, that he can learn to act from reading books, however intelligent or profound they may be, about the art of acting.

  All creative art can be studied, of course. When one is young, one imitates the players one most admires—as artists copy great pictures in the galleries. But, as the theater is an imitation of life, it is as ephemeral and intangible as life itself (in a way that music, painting, and literature are not), and it changes in every decade and generation. One cannot copy acting, or even what seems to be the method of acting. One has to experiment and discover one’s own way of expression for oneself, and one never ceases to be dissatisfied. The quality and development of one’s work changes with the degree of responsiveness and sureness of technique which one has acquired over the years. One is affected, too, by the style and quality of the work in hand, the respect or dissatisfaction one may have with one’s material, and by one’s own personal reactions to directors and fellow players, to the author, to the play itself.

  There are so many lessons in the theater to be learned: application, concentration, self-discipline, the use of the voice and body, imagination, observation, simplification, self-criticism. Often the “tradition” of the theater seems to be at odds with the modern expression of original contemporary acting. I believe that one is as important as the other and that one should study and learn from both. One’s basic technical equipment should be perfected in order to enable one to relax, to simplify, to cut away dead wood.

  Just as one moves, in real life, from one phase to another, experiencing almost imperceptible developments along the road as one gets older and one’s personal and professional experiences lead one to make new discoveries about oneself and life in general, so it is hard to pin down on paper any practical guide to help an individual actor to select the best means of discovering the wellsprings of his art—how he can draw from his own sensitivity the power to command an audience and fascinate them by his interpretation of emotions given him in a particular form by the playwright and presented by him with the guidance of the director. Since he is not the sole creator, but only an instrument working in an uncertain medium (gloriously flexible yet desperately fallible), he needs all the more to have his physical and vocal means under strict control. He must think about his work in the many hours when he is not actually practicing it, about how to cherish his powers of imagination so that he can summon them at will just at the time he needs them. He has to perform before a living audience eight times a week, after achieving a more or less finished performance in the three or four short weeks at his disposal for rehearsal, working perhaps with a director and
actors with whom he may not be in sympathy. Even before this he may have had to convince a director, in a few short minutes, that he is competent to play a role for which many others are also being considered.

  This book is full of good and useful observations on the study and practice of acting. It says, simply and clearly, many wise things about the art of the theater. Stanislavski’s two great books are complicated and sometimes difficult—at any rate for a young actor—to digest in full. Here is an admirable précis of some of his practical wisdom; a still further proof, if one is needed, of the legacy he has left behind to carry on his own example and devotion to the theater which he served so greatly.

  FOREWORD

  by Joshua Logan

  Perhaps Konstantin Stanislavski was a legend before his death in 1938. He is certainly a legend now. All over the world actors, directors, students, and teachers of acting are quoting his writings and following his teachings. Here in America new words have sprung up in theater language. For years the phrase “Stanislavski’s method” was used in theatrical conversations. Now it’s simply “the method.” We hear phrases like “he’s a method actor,” “method writing,” “method directing.” All this, I believe, has stimulated interest in the theater and is producing some great results.

  How did all of this start? Who put the word “method” into our language? Who was Stanislavski? What did he really believe? What did he really teach?

  In the winter of 1930 and 1931, I had the unique opportunity of studying with Stanislavski in his studio home in Moscow and of watching him direct rehearsals. Along with my fellow student the late Charles Leatherbee I had tea with the great man and his lovely wife each day after rehearsals. I also met and talked with Nemirovich-Danchenko, the equally illustrious co-director of the Moscow Art Theater, and the great actors of the day who were then performing got to know were Leonidov, Moskvin, Kachalov, and Mme. Knipper-Chekhova (the widow of the great Anton Chekhov).

  On several afternoons a week we would sit for three or four hours at Stanislavski’s side in his studio home while he conducted rehearsals for the Stanislavski Opera, a project which was occupying most of his time during that winter. At night we attended performances of the Moscow Art Theater, and when we had exhausted that repertory we began visiting the other theaters of the rich Russian theatrical season. We saw the performances and met the artists of the Vakhtangov and Maly Theaters and especially of the startling Vsevolod Meyerhold Theater. Some of these men had been students of Stanislavski previously but were now working out their own systems and directing their own companies.

  On our first night in Moscow we saw a play directed by Stanislavski himself, and it was an extraordinary surprise to us. The play was The Marriage of Figaro by Beaumarchais, and it was done with a racy, intense, farcical spirit which we had not associated with Stanislavski. It was as broad comedy playing and directing as anything we had ever seen. The high-style members of the cast in flashing colored costumes would run, pose, prance, caress, faint, stutter in confusion, and play out all the intricate patterns of the French farce with a kind of controlled frenzy.

  We were stunned. Was this the Stanislavski of the famous method? Was this the work of the great teacher of “affective memory”? It was our first shock at the realization that Stanislavski was a human being—not a distant god—that he was first and foremost the interpreter of the author’s play. Up to that minute we had thought of him as a remote philosopher who had envisioned a mystic method of acting. Now we realized he was also a practical man.

  In the weeks and months that followed, we saw many plays directed by Stanislavski, including The Cherry Orchard with Mme. Chekhova in the leading role and the part originated by Stanislavski now being played by Kachalov. This, of course, was true Stanislavski—moody, thoughtful, and emotional. But it had an underlying earthy humor which was another surprise to us. There were often lusty physical jokes. I can remember Moskvin as Epikhodov watching the departing family talking while he nailed together some crates, his attention so fixed on the touching scene that he was constantly hitting his finger instead of the nail. All through Stanislavski’s work there was a strong sense of humor, and it was boldly stated.

  On the other hand, Czar Fyodor Ióannovich was a pageant. Moskvin played the leading role in a serio-comic way that reminded me often of Chaplin. This pitiful story of the feeble-minded and ineffectual czar even though robed and bejeweled to a dazzling magnificence, was human and tragic, yet always pathetically comic.

  Three Fat Men, a Stanislavski-supervised Soviet piece, was somewhat in the style of our modern cartoon motion pictures. The three fat men were three actors blown up with papier-mâché and stuffing to resemble three gross caricatures. They represented the Church, Capitalism, and the Army, and it was all done with the exaggerated style of a children’s fairy tale.

  Such political plays were forced on Stanislavski at the time by a Soviet director who had been assigned to the Moscow Art Theater, and, in order to function, Stanislavski had to include one Soviet play every so often in the Moscow Art repertoire. Yet each production was produced with the same care and vitality that he gave to the classics.

  An outstanding memory to me is the production of Leo Tolstoi’s Resurrection directed by Nemirovich-Danchenko. Kachalov played the author of the play and walked through the elaborate production speaking the emotions of the actors when they were not speaking themselves. The director took full advantage of the revolving stage at the Moscow Art Theater, and a great deal of the effect of this play was visual. We were impressed by the theatricality of the Moscow Art Theater. We had expected it to be predominantly an actors’ theater; instead we found a theater that was shared by the director, the designer, the musician, and above all the author.

  In watching Stanislavski rehearse, I saw him making experiments in improvisation. He was directing an opera with young students, and he was trying to break down the cliché gestures and grimaces that had been taught them by singing, dancing, and diction teachers. It was a battle of egos, constant complaining by the actors that they could not sing if they were forced to take this or that position, insistent encouragement from Stanislavski—“Go on! You can do it! Make the tone! Sing!” When the effect had been reached, he was quick to praise.

  We asked Stanislavski about the method. “Create your own method,” he said to us. “Don’t depend slavishly on mine. Make up something that will work for you! But keep breaking traditions, I beg you.”

  As you can see from reading Mrs. Moore’s book, Stanislavski was a complete man of the theater. His teachings encompass voice, diction, dancing, voice tone, singing, makeup, costume, wigs—all the various physical things that would change an actor’s shape, form, and size to make him suit his character better.

  Mrs. Moore has made a digest in her own words of many of the things Stanislavski talked about and wrote about. It will help actors and students of drama to understand something of Stanislavski’s teachings.

  Most of all, as Mrs. Moore points out, Stanislavski did not want the method to be an end in itself, but simply a means to an end. It suggests a way of finding personal truth in the creation of a character.

  But to enjoy one’s creativity to excess, to fall in love with one’s inspiration, was furthest from Stanislavski’s belief. When I left him that summer he wrote on the photograph he gave me, “Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art.”

  There is no Stanislavski System. There is only the authentic, incontestable one—the system of nature itself.

  Artists who do not go forward go backward.

  STANISLAVSKI

  The difficult must become habit, habit easy, and the easy beautiful.

  PRINCE SERGEI VOLKONSKI

  The System cannot be learned by heart; it has to be assimilated, absorbed gradually. To know the System means to be able to use it; it must be learned as an unbreakable whole, without dividing its various elements. Isolated study of the elements can fragment the actor’s behavior on stage.

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  AND HIS SYSTEM

  Art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones of our judgment…. I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens.

  PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY

  Address at Amherst College, October 1963

  We have many talented young people who want to be in the theater. The mastery of professional technique can transform them into artists. It is time we thought about our own tradition, and how it will encourage our theater to flourish. President Kennedy’s views about art echoed those of Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski, the great Russian actor, director, and reformer of the theater. For Stanislavski, theater was an institution of cultural and moral education. Theater, he believed, besides being entertainment, should develop people’s taste and raise the level of their culture. To serve such theater should be an actor’s super-super-objective, he said. With this principle Stanislavski expressed the aesthetic and ethical goals of theater art.

  “Theater,” said Stanislavski, “is a pulpit which is the most powerful means of influence.” “With the same power with which theater can ennoble the spectators, it may corrupt them, degrade them, spoil their taste, lower their passions, offend beauty.” “My task is to elevate the family of artists from the ignorant, the half-educated, and the profiteers, and to convey to the younger generation that an actor is the priest of beauty and truth.” “Some actors and actresses love stage and art as fish love water,” he wrote in his notebook. “They revive in the atmosphere of art. Others love not art itself but an actor’s career, success; they revive in the backstage atmosphere. The first are beautiful, the others are abominable.” “The habit of being always in public, of exhibiting oneself and showing off, of receiving applause, good reviews, and so on, is a great temptation; it accustoms an actor to being worshiped; it spoils him. His little ambitious person begins to need constant tickling.” “To be content with such interests, one must be mediocre and vulgar. A serious artist cannot be satisfied for long with such existence, but superficial people are enslaved by the temptations of the stage, and become corrupted. This is why, in our work more than in any other, one must constantly keep oneself in hand. An actor needs a soldier’s discipline.” Without compromise or exception and without mercy, Stanislavski imposed such discipline. “I consider good manners as part of an actor’s creativity,” he said. He also remarked, “If you must spit, learn to do it before you enter the theater.”