The Stanislavski System Read online

  Stanislavski’s demand for profound truth, simplicity, and naturalness does not mean merely an external presentation of naturalness. Stanislavski fought with determination the new cliché “naturalness,” used by actors who did not understand him. His important demand, “Go from yourself,” which we shall consider in the chapter “Work on the Role,” has been sometimes oversimplified. Good theater is theater of profound thought and profound spiritual experience. In good theater an actor creates the inner experiences of the character, incarnates them, and makes this creative process understandable to the audience. Actors who play only themselves are absurd. A character is a new human being, born of the elements of the actor himself united with those of the character conceived by the playwright.

  The apprehension of some people that the Stanislavski System will bring actors to “a level of uniformity” has no ground. The System, on the contrary, encourages the flourishing of the actor’s individual traits. The laws for the organic behavior of all actors are the same, but each reincarnation will be different, and the personality of each actor will always stamp his stage creations with his own distinctive mark.

  The Stanislavski System, besides presenting laws obligatory for every actor and every director, also offers a concrete method of work on a play and on a role. With it, an actor builds a live and typical character on the basis of the organic nature of a human being.

  The System also prepares the actor for an ensemble—the logical, truthful, purposeful mutual behavior of all characters. Just as human behavior in life depends on relationships with other people, in an ensemble each role is conditioned by all roles. “Collective creativeness, on which our art is based, necessarily demands ensemble,” said Stanislavski. “Those who violate it commit a crime … against the art which they serve.”

  The Stanislavski System is not a series of rules for staging a naturalistic play or any other play. These teachings are beyond the limits of one theatrical direction in their historical significance. Stanislavski believed not in naturalism, which presents the surface of life, but in realism, which is truth of content. The System, by “turning on” the subconscious mechanisms, helps an actor to live the experiences of a character as if they were his own. This is even more important in an unconventional production where sets, props, lights, and sounds do not help to convince the audience of events on stage.

  Emotions are stirred in an actor in order to stir the spectator’s emotions in turn. When an actor’s emotions do not flow, his influence on the spectator weakens. Even the most imaginative directorial invention will be empty of sense if an actor’s behavior on stage does not affect the spectators. There is no contradiction between unconventional staging and an actor who lives the inner experiences of the character. The sets and props do not have to be naturalistic. It is the truth of the actor’s behavior that will keep the audience’s attention. Though the means of expression will be different from those necessary for Chekhov, Gorki, or O’Neill, actors must also use Stanislavski’s laws in tragedies by Shakespeare or Schiller and in plays by Brecht or Genet. If a director respects the dramatist, he will find the style of the play. Stanislavski encouraged any style of staging that a director found necessary to express the play in question. But he was against directors who were interested only in their own inventions, without respect for the author. “I salute every direction in our art,” he said, “if only it helps correctly and artistically to transmit the life of the human spirit.”

  Though Stanislavski used to rehearse a play for several months, his technique, if properly understood and learned, will prove extremely useful in the American theater, where a play is rehearsed for only a few weeks. The System teaches an actor to work independently and therefore to accomplish what the director demands of him. In a theater where the director on occasion has time only to demand results, it is especially valuable to know how to achieve these quickly and effectively.

  It is indisputable that there is a great deal of dilettantism in the theater, and Stanislavski fought it through the System. He considered even an accidental inspiration a form of dilettantism. His System teaches professionalism, and through professionalism theater becomes art. The widespread opinion that the actor’s work is something mysterious which cannot be learned consciously was considered by Stanislavski to be a prejudice and, like all prejudices, harmful to culture and progress. Stanislavski regarded it as an alibi for an actor’s laziness.

  It is wrong to think that gifted actors never work. Biographies of great actors prove the contrary; these artists searched constantly for a conscious technique, and worked on every inner and outer motion, on that mastery of every word which makes theater the strongest expression of the creative arts. All that is valuable in art is achieved through persistent work. The great Italian actress Eleonora Duse was known as a hard worker. Talma, the famous French actor of the eighteenth century, said that an actor needs twenty years to master his profession. And the celebrated nineteenth-century Russian actress Glikeria Fedotova said that actors were wasting their time waiting for the god Apollo to send them inspiration from heaven; Apollo was too busy with his own affairs, she said, and she advised actors to work hard to be able to evoke inspiration.

  In other arts the audience sees the result of a creative process. In theater the audience is present during that process. Thus we cannot overemphasize how important it is for the actor to master his means of expression. Through the Stanislavski System actors learn to make conscious use of the laws of their organic nature; they learn their means of expression and become true professionals. The System teaches them to function on the stage automatically as live human beings. In mastering this technique, actors will not have to depend on chance. For chance, as every artist knows, is the enemy of art.

  THE METHOD OF

  PHYSICAL ACTIONS

  Disappointed in the results of his earlier developments, Stanislavski continued his search for the “conscious means towards the subconscious”—that is, a conscious means which would stir the actor’s emotions.

  It is not clear whether Stanislavski studied the work of the neurophysiologist Ivan Pavlov or whether his final discovery was the logical and natural result of his forty-year study of human behavior. There is proof, however, that Stanislavski studied the work of the neurophysiologist I. M. Sechenov.

  Stanislavski discovered that internal experiences and their physical expression are unbreakably united. “The first fact,” said Stanislavski, “is that the elements of the human soul and the particles of a human body are indivisible.” The thesis of Stanislavski, that human psychological life—moods, desires, feelings, intentions, ambitions—is expressed through simple physical actions, has been confirmed by such scientists as Ivan Pavlov and I. M. Sechenov.

  There is no inner experience without external physical expression; our bodies transmit to others our inner experiences. Science has confirmed that neural pathways connect our physical actions with the inner mechanism of emotions, the innumerable nuances in human experience. The most profound processes of one’s inner life are expressed through physical actions. A shrug of the shoulder, a movement of the spine, a complete immobility express the mental processes. Sechenov said that our bodies express what we are thinking and experiencing before we are aware of it. It is impossible to separate an experience from its physical expression. Stanislavski realized that when an actor on stage executes only physical movements, he violates the psychophysical union and his performance is mechanical, dead. And if the actor does not express his thoughts and feelings physically, he is equally dead. It is impossible to understand a person or a character without comprehending the person’s or the character’s thoughts and emotions.

  It is impossible to build a character only with the body. Thoughts and emotions are essential in building a functioning individual. But we cannot underestimate the importance of training an actor’s body. The body provides a great deal of information through visual transmission.

  Stanislavski realizes that to be natural the acto
r must be capable of grasping every reaction on stage in a psychophysical way. He realizes that there is a break between the intellectual and the physical preparation in the actor’s work on the character. He concludes that from the very beginning the performer must include the physical life—his body—in the psychological process in order to make this break disappear.

  Due to this break between the mental and the physical behavior of the actor and owing to the scientific fact that emotions respond only when there is a real reason, Stanislavski faced great difficulty in stirring the actor’s emotions. There is nothing real on stage. He understood the mutual influence of psychological and physical behavior and began to think about starting the actor’s creativity on stage from the physical side of the psycho-physical process. Stanislavski found his point of departure in a process which without fail leads the actor from the “conscious to the subconscious.” He developed his ultimate technique, “the method of physical actions,” which is the solution to spontaneous behavior on stage. Instead of forcing an emotion before going on stage, the actor fulfills a simple, concrete, purposeful physical action which stirs the psychological side of the psychophysical act, thus achieving psycho-physical involvement.

  It must be clearly understood that Stanislavski does not mean that the actor goes on stage to fulfill any physical movement. Physical movement is a mechanical act. Physical action has a purpose; it has a psychology. Human action—an act of human behavior—is conditioned by the environment. The circumstances created by the playwright add nuance and color to the scenic action. Science established that every nuance of emotion is connected with a particular physical action. Therefore, that action must be carefully selected on the basis of the play’s circumstances. It must be the indispensable physical action connected with the emotion which the actor must bring out. Only when the actor finds the correct physical action will he achieve psychophysical involvement. The building of the character’s logic of physical actions is simultaneously the building of the character’s logic and consecutiveness of emotions. All the elements of the system, which were important in their own right at the time when Stanislavski was developing them, now contribute to the truthful execution of a physical action.

  The process by which an actor finds such physical action is as complex as that by which a composer finds the correct harmonious sound for his chord. It requires a great deal of experimentation through improvisation. But when the actor finds such an action, he achieves psycho-physical involvement. Through a great deal of preparatory work, the actor can achieve spontaneity. Then, during the performance, he is in an improvisational state when none of the preparatory work is seen, because he behaves as in life. With the method of physical actions, Stanislavski reversed a human process: in life, we experience an emotion, and the body expresses it. Stanislavski achieves the experience of an emotion through a physical action. He superseded the system of “expressive movement” formulated by François Delsarte (1811–1871), who suggested that an emotion could be expressed with a “prescribed” gesture established beforehand. A human gesture depends on numerous factors, such as individual traits, the tempo-rhythm in which the individual is acting at the given moment, and other circumstances.

  The only man in the theater world who studied theater through science and who studied the creative work of the great actors of his time, Stanislavski determined laws by means of which an actor restirs in himself at every performance the true emotions of the characters he portrays.

  In life, people often conceal what they experience. In theater, real experiences must be expressed. The great Russian singer Chaliapin was known to have his voice tonality conditioned by the gestures which he found. It “flowed” from the gestures of his body in his roles. The gestures of the actor’s body expressing mental experiences such as thoughts, emotions, evaluations, decisions, are a gift of genius. Stanislavski made them possible for all capable actors. The actor’s body must “speak” where there are no words, projecting in silence the inner monologue and other mental processes and creating an uninterrupted flow of life on stage.

  Obviously, words are very important elements in theater, but equally important are gestures of the body and the mise en scène. Stanislavski said, “Verbal action depends on the physical action.” Words alone cannot project everything. Human relationships are expressed by gestures, poses, glances, silences. Gesture is an integral part of the action and gives the spectator visual information. It expresses, during pauses in the actor’s own lines or while others are speaking, what words cannot express. Every gesture of the actor’s body must be absolutely essential and easily understood. Everything else must be cut as superfluous. Through the art of the actor, the logic of the body reflects the logic of emotions. In theater, there must be a mutual influence of words and pantomime.

  G. A. Tovstonogov, the eminent Russian director, has said, “The method of physical actions is now the only one and there is nothing in the world theater to equal it in the field of the actor’s art.” Most important in the actor’s art is achieving the experience of a true emotion. The method of physical actions gives the actor the possibility of such an achievement.

  Stanislavski’s final conclusions are constantly studied by Russian scientists. Dissertations on creativity are written not only by theater scholars but also by psychologists and physiologists.

  In addition to giving the actor the possibility of achieving lifelike behavior on stage, “the method of physical actions” is the most subtle means of analyzing a play. The period of analysis while sitting around the table has not been entirely abandoned, but it has been shortened. Now actors continue analysis of the play through improvisations on actions. It is impossible to select an action without a thorough analysis of its motivation. To understand the motivation, the actor must study the play and refer to his own associations. The search for the logic and consecutiveness of actions is the most subtle analysis of the role, in which the actor’s mind, his senses, his intuition, the muscles of his body—his whole spiritual and physical nature—participate. Such analysis is invaluable for actors and directors and is vital for theater critics. In other arts, critics in their evaluations rely on the laws of the art they evaluate and on the reputation of the great works of the past. Their evaluations are the result not only of their emotional reactions and intellectual conclusions but of their exposure to the best examples of world art and culture. In theater, great works of the past disappeared and there were no laws for stage creativity. Thus, criteria have not been developed. When we look at a work of art, we may like it or we may not like it. It is a matter of personal taste. But the critical evaluation of a work of art must be substantiated. An authoritative review must include the critic’s expression of his views, aesthetic taste, literary talent, knowledge of the complex world of life, knowledge of theater creativity and of its laws and difficulties. It must include a consecutive analysis which has a scientific basis. Only such analysis is impartial and constructive.

  There is only one way to preserve a great performance for future generations: by means of a knowledgeable review. Even film cannot preserve a stage performance. A filmed performance often differs completely from the stage performance. A film director must use different means to make it effective. Therefore, the drama critic must be able to speak about the actor’s work and about the director’s work. He must be able to tell whether the sets, lighting, and music composed for the performance have contributed to the emotional content of the action on stage. He must know the creative process that goes into the preparation of a performance and be able to tell whether the actor has transformed himself into the character or was pretending, faking. Such reviews will be material for building a history of theater art. Without them, the history and science of theater art cannot exist or develop.

  Stanislavski’s ultimate technique teaches the laws of creativity on stage. It teaches playwrights the construction of the mechanism of the play, and it provides criteria for judgment and appreciation of theater art.

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nbsp; Exercises and Improvisations

  An analogous emotion in your own life should be, as much as possible, the basis for the situation in any improvisation. Before executing an improvisation, concentrate and build in your imagination the circumstances in which the action takes place, why you do it, where it takes place, when. Think of all the possible details in each situation. Be yourself, but in different circumstances. In your imagination, picture people you know in real life. After you have built the situation, find physical behavior that will express what you want to project. Search for the unique physical action which is connected to the emotion you want to stir. The action will trigger the emotion and you will behave in a psycho-physical way.

  Instructions: before and after physical actions, the student must use gestures of the body in order to project mental processes, such as thoughts, feelings, decisions, evaluations, attitudes. The body must “speak” in silences, when there are no words on stage. Resistance of the body must be overcome. The muscles of the actor’s body must become intensely responsive to the inner processes. Students must strive to achieve psycho-physical involvement in every exercise and improvisation. The physical state must be projected.