A Theatrical Life
In My Life in Art, Stanislavsky describes an idyllic, privileged childhood full of a large extended family, good-natured pranks, hunting and all night slumber parties (15-16). “Stanislavsky was born in 1863, the second son of a family devoted to the theatre” (Benedetti, Introduction 2). His brothers and sisters put on theatricals inspired by weekend carriage rides going to the circus, opera or a play (42-43). He recalls their circus productions: “So far as the free passes were concerned, there existed a special little book of numbered tickets with the words, “Constanzo Alexeiev’s Circus” written on every ticket (46). Constanzo Alexeiev was a play on Stanislavsky’s given name, Constantin Alexeyev (Magarshack, Life 1). He elaborates: “[From] the memories of my childish emotions and experiences those that have remained with me longest have to do with the need of spectacle and satisfaction” (Benedetti, Introduction 39).
Although his ancestors were peasants and Stanislavsky was not part of the aristocracy, his father’s business (manufacturing gold and silver thread for the military) made them wealthy (Magarshack, Life 1). He assigns a special word to his ancestors; they came from the “glebe”, i.e., the soil, the land or earth (Stanislavsky, Art 3). He locates himself in time like this:
- In such wise [sic], from the lard candle to the electric projector from the tarantas to the aeroplane, from the sailboat to the submarine, from the pony express to the radio, from the flintlock to the big Bertha, from serfdom to communism and Bolshevism, I have lived a variegated life, during the course of which I have been forced more than once to change my most fundamental ideas. (3)
Stanislavsky’s first stage appearance was in early childhood. The family created a series of tableaux vivants, stage pictures with scenery and costumed actors frozen in place. This was for his mother’s name day, September 5th (Benedetti 5-6). He claims he was three years old at the time (Stanislavsky, Art 23). Jean Benedetti in Stanislavsky: An Introduction marks his age closer to seven years old (2).
A building on his father’s estate at Liubimovka was transformed into a theater. Stanislavsky performed plays in the theatre with his brothers and sisters, some cousins, and a professor. The group eventually became a small theatre company called the Alexeyev Circle (Benedetti, Life 2). The name was taken from Constantin Stanislavsky’s actual surname, Alexeyev (Magarshack 2). His stage name was assumed to come from his favorite ballerina as a child whose name was Stanislavskaya (Benedetti, Life 10).
A performance of four one-act plays at his father’s estate was Stanislavsky’s actual debut on the stage. The occasion was again his mother’s name day. The Old Mathematician and A Cup of Tea were the plays in which he debuted (21). His confusion over being criticized in A Cup of Tea and praised in The Old Mathematician was the genesis of his “Artistic Notes” where he would write about his shortcomings and successes on the stage.
At this time Stanislavsky was in the habit of copying the performances of other actors. In The Old Mathematician he did not know of another actor’s performance for his part. There was no actor to copy, yet he was praised for his performance. In A Cup of Tea, he copied a well-known actor’s portrayal of the role, but his work was criticized. The criticism of the role he copied and praise for the role in which he did not copy confused the young Stanislavsky. He expected greater success when copying great performers. Instead, he got the opposite response. He recorded his perplexity. Keeping a journal became a life long habit of criticism about his own acting. After a lifetime of reflection and refinement they would eventually become his “system” (22).
David Magarshack, the noted Stanislavsky historian, commented on Stanislavsky’s debut: “The performance brought to light that constant dissatisfaction with his artistic attainments which was in the end to make Stanislavsky into one of the greatest reformers of the art of acting” (21-22).
In 1885, he tried academic study in a drama school but left after three weeks. He felt the professors could not provide him a sequence of actor training steps but only “indicate the results they wanted” (Benedetti 4). Around this period Stanislavsky was also acting in opera and musical comedies (Magarshack, Life 40). In fact, the final performance of his first “acting company,” The Alexeyev Circle, was the light comedy Lili (48).
He failed in his attempts to act in opera, and the Alexeyev Circle was starting its demise (Magarshack 50). At this time, “Several famous actresses from the Maly Theater took part in a charitable performance at his home” (Magarshack 50). He participated with them in the play. “The Moscow Maly Theater was universally recognized as the leading dramatic theater of the century…” (Hardison and Berthold 307).
One of the Maly actresses was Glikeria Fedetova who was trained directly by Mikhail Shchepkin (Stanislavsky, Life 81). Stanislavsky said of Shchepkin: “[He is the] pride of our national art, the man who re-created in himself all that the West could give and created the foundations of true Russian dramatic art and its traditions, our great lawgiver and artist …” (80). Fedetova was a student of Shchepkin and she shared stories of her famous teacher. Shchepkin’s ideas about realism introduced Stanislavsky to the concept (Benedetti 7).
Shchepkin discovered the possibilities of realistic acting. His break with the declamatory acting style of the day began when he witnessed a performance by Prince Meshcherski in the play, The Supposed Dowry. Shchepkin remarked in his memoirs, “This was not ‘acting’. This was too much like real life” (Benedetti 8). Shchepkin was confronted by realism again, this time in one of his own performances. “One day he was rehearsing Sganarelle in Moliere’s School for Husbands. He was tired and began ‘just saying’ the lines’. The result was a revelation. I realized that I had said a few words in a perfectly simple manner, so simple that had I said them in life and not in a play as I would not have said them otherwise.’ The way was open to a new style of acting – Realism” (9). Shchepkin was freed from serfdom in 1822, joined the Imperial Theatre in Moscow and appeared in the first performance at the Maly. He remained there for 40 years. The theater became known as the House of Shchepkin (10).
That charity performance at Stanislavsky’s estate furthered his relationship with Fedetova. Stanislavsky was excited to work side by side with a “true to goodness artist, who always seemed to be full of something” (Stanislavsky, Life 136). He contrasted her professional playing with his own performance, which was, “far from completely made” (137). Fedotova offered generalities about her training with Shchepkin to Stanislavsky and an admonition about his acting: “[There] is no training, no restraint, no discipline” (137). So, she affirmed two principles of acting that would find their way into Stanislavsky’s “system”. They were training and discipline. Fedetova would also teach him, “Look your partner straight in the eyes, read his thoughts in his eyes, and reply to him in accordance with the expression of his eyes and face” (Magarshack, Life 52). Stanislavsky later developed her instruction into one of the elements of his “system”, which he called Communication.
His relationship with Glikeria Fedetova deepened in 1888 when Stanislavsky was asked to act in her husband’s plays (Benedetti 29). Her husband Fedotov was Stanislavsky’s partner in the formation of the Society of Art and Literature. This Society was a group that Stanislavsky founded in 1888 with Fedotov and a few friends. The Society of Art and Literature was a training ground for Stanislavsky. The concepts he developed there would come to fruition in his later work (Benedetti 22). In fact, it was Glikeria Fedetova who warned Stanislavsky against the over-large grandiose scheme behind the Society. He chalked her warnings up to bitterness over her divorce from Fedotov (Magarshack, Life 56).
The Society of Arts and Literature was more than just Stanislavsky’s brainchild. He provided 25,000 rubles (a windfall from his father’s business) to renovate the club’s premises in 1888 (56). (The approximate U.S. dollar amount of 25,000 rubles today would be18,900 dollars.) Benedetti sums up Stanislavsky’s time at the Society in this way:
- During the ten years of the Society’s existence, Stanislavsky was faced with a repertoire of much greater substance than he had encountered hitherto – Pushkin, Moliere, Ostrovski, Shakespeare. Up till then his experience had mainly been in lighter forms. He had been successively fascinated by the circus, French farce, operetta, vaudeville and ballet. The new material revealed his lack of method and technique all the more clearly (29).
At this time in his career Stanislavsky performed Othello. He felt that he failed in the role. The production had him lamenting, “I’m losing weight as though I were suffering from some wasting disease.[…] Why did I choose Othello? No, playing in a tragedy is certainly not as pleasant as I imagined” (Magarshack, Life 111)!
From his self proclaimed failure in the role of Othello came a welcome consolation. “The famous Italian tragic actor, Earnesto Rossi, whom Stanislavsky had worshipped as a boy was present at one of Stanislavski’s performances of Othello” (112). Rossi soothed his wounded ego and felt he would one day rise to the challenge Othello. He instructed, “What you want is art and I daresay it will come” (112). Stanislavsky completed the conversation in My Life In Art; “‘[But] where and how and from whom am I to learn this art’ […]? ‘M-ma! If there is no great master near you whom you can trust, I can recommend you only one teacher.’ […] ‘Who is he’ […]? ‘You yourself.’” (286). This advice had deep meaning for Stanislavsky since he recorded it in his notebook. As Rossi advised, through his notebooks, Stanislavsky taught himself and many others (Benedetti Life, 113).
Stanislavsky’s tenure with the Society of Art and Literature ended with a production of “The Sunken Bell, first performed on January 27th 1898, [It] was a great popular success […]” (135). Around six months before the production, Stanislavsky “received a note from Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, inviting [him] to a conference in the restaurant “The Slavic Bazaar.[…]” [Danchenko] explained to [Stanislavsky] the purpose of [their] meeting … [to] lay in the foundation of a new theater” (Stanislavsky, Life 294). This note and the meeting with Danchenko would change Stanislavsky’s world and the history of world Theater (136).
The Moscow Art Theatre
Stanislavsky characterized his relationship with Danchenko and their meeting in this way: “Here Fate helped me again, making me meet the man whom I had sought for a long time. I met Vladimir Ivanonvich Nemirovich-Danchenko, who, like me, was poisoned by the same dream […] the theatre, which performs a cultural mission.[…] It seems that Nemirovich-Danchenko had also dreamed of such a theatre as I imagined and sought a man such as he imagined me to be” (Stanislavsky, Life 292-293). Stanislavsky explained their previous distant but useful relationship;
- Nemirovich visited all the performances of our Society [of Art and Literature] and after each one spoke with me and criticized them with complete sincerity.[…] He spoke in turn to every actor, put questions to them that were necessary for him for the explanation of the individual nature of each actor. On my side, I was a constant attendant at all the performances of the Philharmonic Society, and in my way did the same thing with his pupils” (294).
Stanislavsky and Danchenko’s marathon meeting at the Slavic Bazaar lasted for fifteen hours, beginning at the restaurant and ending at Stanislavsky’s villa. During their conference they mapped out ideas as varied as the proper ethics for the theater to how to design the dressing rooms and green rooms. Stanislavsky characterized the meeting in this way: “[An] international conference does not discuss questions affecting the welfare of States with such thoroughness as we discussed the fundamental principles of our future enterprise…artistic ideals, questions of pure art, stage ethics and technique, plans of organization, our future repertoire and our mutual relationship” (Magarshack, Life 153). The two men also decided the nature of their working relationship at their theatre. That association can be understood by who controlled veto power. “The literary veto belongs to Nemirovich-Danchenko, the artistic veto to Stanislavsky” (Stanislavsky, Life 295). Issues of Administration and Organization were the territory of Danchenko as well (297). “But in the region of the actor, the stage director and the producer I was far from being so yielding”, claimed Stanislavsky (295). Stanislavsky summed up the importance of the veto power agreement: “During all the following years we held closely to this point of our agreement. One of us would only have to pronounce the magic word veto, and our debate would end in the middle of a sentence.[… ] Each of us who was acknowledged to be a specialist in his particular branch had the opportunity to begin and finish his work without any interference” (296). Their agreement and their relationship would be tested severely in the years to come.
The first season of the Moscow Public-Accessible Art began rehearsals in July 14th 1898. In three years time the Moscow Public-Accessible Art would later change its name to the Moscow Art Theatre (henceforth referred to as MAT). A barn in Pushkino was adapted to suit their purposes (Magarshack, Life 156). The initial notice of their season was announced as a historical play, Czar Fyodor Ioannovich, along with the previously seen at the Society of Art and Literature, The Sunken Bell and Hannele (having previously been performed at the Society of Art and Literature). Rounding out the bill were Uriel Acosta, Men Above the Law, Greta’s Happiness, The Merchant of Venice, Antigone and, significantly, Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull (158).
The season brought up a struggle between Stanislavsky and Danchenko that was worked out amenably. Stanislavsky wrote a letter praising the classical plays but questioning the wisdom of staging the modern plays. Danchenko replied in his letter, “[A] good theatre must therefore present either such classical plays as reflect the noblest modern ideas or such modern play as expresses our contemporary life in an artistic form” (159). Danchenko concluded the letter by praising Stanislavsky as “an artist par excellence” and declaring this final affirmation of their partnership: “I think the best work we could do together would be in plays which I esteem highly for their subject matter and which will give your creative imagination the fullest freedom it needs” (160).
Perhaps Joshua Logan best summed up Danchenko and Stanislavsky’s relationship:
- I saw the great company (MAT) when it was still in its golden age of creativity. There is no doubt that Stanislavsky contributed greatly to the acting technique and the “form” of the theatre. But the man who was most responsible for the “content,” the acquisition of the Chekhov plays and later those of Gorky and Tolstoy, was the man who introduced himself to me all those years ago … Nemirovich-Danchenko (Nemirovich-Danchenko, Life xi).
Whatever their differences, these two iconoclasts were united on one thing: “We declared war on every convention of the theatre under whatever form it appears: in acting, scenery, costumes, interpretation of the play, and so on” (Magarshack, Life 163). Stanislavsky asserted, “Nemirovich-Danchenko and I wanted [… ] to destroy the ancient hokum of the theatre” (Stanislavsky, Life 306). Their shared fight against the excesses of Russian theatre, as they saw them, was also a movement towards realism in theatre that had been coming through the likes of Shchepkin for a long time (Benedetti, Life 24).
In the next eight years, Stanislavsky and Danchenko had their greatest successes in the plays of Anton Chekhov. Chekhov’s The Seagull was one of only two ventures that succeeded in their first season. Without it, their theatre might well have failed (161).
Chekhov was a master of the psychological drama (Wickham 199). He wrote “deliberately naturalistic dialogue” (217). He called himself a realistic writer, one who writes about “life as it actually is […]. Its aim is the truth, unconditional and honest” (Whyman 37). Chekhov’s writing also bore marks of another literary style, naturalism, which is intensified realism (Stromberg xx); that embraced such subject matter as “[…] struggles for equality such as the emancipation of the serfs and the women’s movement […] ordinary people, rather than romantic heroes [as] the protagonists” (Whyman 37).
Chekhov’s realistic plays called for actors who had broken with all the theatrical traditions that Stanislavsky and Danchenko were warring against. To direct Chekhov successfully Stanislavsky was preoccupied “by the external details of [the] production” (Magarshack 173). At that time, Stanislavsky used his talent to make all the realistic details of Chekhov’s plays correct. He paid less attention to the psychology of the Chekhov characters and more attention to the details of the set, costumes and the blocking of his actors (Magarshack 174).
Chekhov baffled Stanislavsky. He asked about The Seagull, “[Are] you sure it can be performed at all” (168)? It was Danchenko who patiently tried to interest Stanislavsky in the play but his explanations were mostly literary and escaped Stanislavsky (168). The consummate showman came out in Stanislavsky. To direct The Seagull,
- [He] developed a technique which was purely external. He had to work from the outside in the hope that by establishing truthfully the external characteristics of the role he could provoke some intuitive response in himself which led him to the psychological aspects of the part. His approach as a director was identical. He attempted to induce creative mood in his actors by surrounding them with real objects sound and lighting effects. He imposed his interpretation on every role, working endlessly, and at times ruthlessly, to get every detail exact (Benedetti, Introduction 33).
His “outside in” technique created a triumph. At the end of the first act, the audience demanded five curtain calls. The actors had never “heard such ecstatic clapping before” (Magarshack, Life 179).
Stanislavsky became a “producer-autocrat […] who suppressed the creative initiative of the actor and transformed them into a ‘mannequins’ who spoke and acted as he thought fit” (174). The way he directed Chekhov had its price, which could be described in this way. His actors were not creating; they were manipulated. Yet, this exacting process served Stanislavsky well in a string of successes in plays from outstanding playwrights like Chekhov, Ibsen and Gorky (Benedetti 34). His period of success came to a full stop with the death of Anton Chekhov on July 15th, 1904. Stanislavsky wrote to his wife, “[Our] whole future appears to me now in the blackest colours: it may not have been noticed but Chekhov’s authority preserved our theatre from many things” (Magarshack 259).
The Development of the “system”
In reality, his work at the Moscow Art Theatre was merely a continuation of his work with Fedotov at the Society of Art and Literature. What he had accomplished at the MAT was a way of working that depended heavily on the whims of inspiration. An example of this dependence on inspiration taking place, even though he had no systematic way of bringing it forth, occurred when he directed Chekhov’s Three Sisters:
- I felt that our position was hopeless. My heart was beating fast. Someone began scratching the bench on which he was sitting with his nail and the sound of it was like the scratching of a mouse. For some reason it made me think of a family hearth; I felt a warm glow over me.[…] I suddenly felt the scene we were rehearsing. I felt at home on the stage. The Chekhov characters came to life. (221)
The scratching of the mouse is similar to the stroke of a make up brush that opened up his role in Moliere’s Georges Dandin at The Society of Arts and Literature mentioned earlier. But these instances of luck were not dependable, and he new it (Stanislavsky, Life 161). The longing for a “system” to reach inspiration consistently pricked his heart. How could one’s artistry depend on the whim of a mouse scratch or the stroke of a brush (Magarshack, 260 – 261)? “[Such] lucky chances occurred only by accident, and accident, Stanislavsky said, ‘[It] cannot of course serve as a basis for art’” (212).
Then came a production of Julius Caesar in 1903. Stanislavsky played the part of Brutus under Danchenko’s direction. He adopted Stanislavsky’s style of using rich detailed historical accuracy of set and costuming. Danchenko, “subordinated everything to his historical overview” (Benedetti, Introduction 36). Stanislavsky felt stifled by Danchenko’s “director autocrat” style that he himself had originated.
In 1905, Stanislavsky founded the First Studio “where young actors could experiment with new ideas” (38). When the work of that Studio finally went into production, the acting fell apart. The actors could not execute the director’s vision because they had no technique. Stanislavsky hid the flaws of actors in his earlier productions, but without Stanislavsky to pull the strings, his actors were not up to the challenge. He began to see that “the ultimate responsibility for an actor’s artistic development lay not with his teachers, not with his directors, but with himself” (40).
In 1906, Stanislavsky experienced “complete artistic satisfaction” (35), in the role of Stockmann in Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. However, his triumph was undercut when he began to feel cold and dead in the role (35). The experience of his own “director autocrat” style in Julius Caeser and the way inspiration deserted him in one of his greatest roles in An Enemy of the People raised doubts. He was also troubled that the young actors of the MAT could not perform up to his standards without a director who could control their performances completely. These experiences raised doubts about the efficacy of how he and the MAT had chosen to work. From these seeming dead ends, a nagging doubt hit home for Stanislavsky,
- I had acquired through my experience as an actor a rag-bag of material on theatrical technique. Everything had been thrown in, willy-nilly, no “system”… There was a need to create some order, to sort out the material, examine it, assess it and, so to speak, place it on mental shelves. Rough matter had to be worked and polished and laid as the foundation stones of our art. (41)
In 1906, on a hiatus in Finland he would finally begin to lay those “foundation stones” in earnest.
Stanislavsky’s Writings about the “system”
Stanislavsky began to write extensively about his developing ideas. It resulted in three volumes in what came to be called An Actor’s Work on Himself in the Creative Process of Experience (now known as An Actor Prepares), (An Actor’s Work on Himself in the Creative Process of Physical Characterization (now known as Building a Character), and Creating a Role. It is important to understand how these books came to be.
Stanislavsky’s ideas evolved slowly and were not published in his lifetime. In fact when he died, “all that was left of his grand design was his autobiography, My Life in Art (1926), one volume on acting still being revised, a series of drafts and some titles. Much of the material was not published until the 1950’s” (Benedetti, Actor xi). Additionally, “when he sat down to write about his methods, in his effort to be absolutely clear he relentlessly crossed all the ‘t’s and dotted all the ‘i’s, thus achieving the very opposite of what he intended.[…] There are passages which almost defy comprehension, let alone translation.[…] You can see what he means but words get in the way” (viii).
A form that he thought would bring life to his concepts also obscures Stanislavsky’s ideas. The books are presented as a dialogue between a master teacher Tortsov and a class full of students. In the class is Tortsov’s star pupil and narrator, Kostya Nazvanov (Stanislavsky, Prepares 12). “Many specialists felt that by using the fictional form of an imaginary student’s diary and by disguising himself as Tortsov, Stanislavsky had merely added to his problems – and ours” (Benedetti, Actor viii). Despite the challenges of these books they are still essential reading for those who want to understand Stanislavsky’s “system’’(xi).
Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood, a translator of Stanislavsky’s work, expressed Stanislavsky’s purpose for his writings. “[Friends] of Stanislavsky have long known that he wished to leave a record of the methods by which the Moscow Art Company was built.[…] The first time he mentioned this wish to me he spoke of the projected work as a grammar of acting” (Stanislavsky, Actor 1). Hapgood brings Stanislavsky’s purposes for the books back to inspiration: “The author [Stanislavsky] is most ready to point out that a genius like [Tomasso] Salvini or [Eleanora] Duse may use without theory the right emotions and expressions that to the less inspired but intelligent student needs to be taught (Stanislavsky, Actor Note by the Translator).
Because of these things, what follows is not an examination of the rudimentary ideas that Stanislavsky focused on when he took his hiatus in Finland; rather, it is an account of the “system” as presented in books that “are fragments of a grand design which Stanislavsky outlined in a letter to his secretary at the end of 1930. He envisaged a sequence of seven books” (x). When he left for Finland, he was focused on the actors’ creative energy and making that energy the focus of a production (Benedetti, Introduction 41). He struggled with some fundamental issues of his “system” in Finland. Its details were things he would struggle to formulate for the rest of his life (Benedetti, Actor xx).
Here is a summary of his thoughts about acting techniques as found in his books. Bella Merlin, in The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit, took each technique mentioned in An Actor Prepares and the other two books and separated them. She called them tools and gave each a specific section. I will use her book as a model and will refer to and define a number of Stanislavsky’s techniques. For certain techniques that are controversial or have important alternate interpretations from other teacher practitioners, I will add further references from those teacher practitioners I will include additional commentary by them. This will provide for an historical context as it pertains to acting theory from Stanislavski onward. I will examine other techniques with material taken directly from Stanislavsky’s three books in the interest of showing his original intent. A basic definition of some of Stanislavsky’s techniques will allow me to clearly define terms that I will use throughout the paper.
Essence of Stanislavsky’s “system”
(N.B. In the following section for clarity I will underline a technique the first time it is listed. Thereafter, I will capitalize the first letter of each of them throughout this treatise unless they are within a quotation.)
To examine Stanislavsky’s “system” we begin with an overall division between the body and the mind, or, as Stanislavsky stated, “[…] like us, a role has two natures, physical and spiritual” (Stanislavsky, Handbook 9). One way that Stanislavsky bridged the gap between the body and the mind was through the Method of Physical Action. Jean Benedetti in Stanislavski and the Actor writes in the voice of a student as he states, “I cannot use the Method of Physical Action effectively unless I am in full control of my art, my technique. For that I must master the Stanislavski “system” which provides the technical means by which to create and communicate the Dramatic ‘I’” (Benedetti, Actor 13). Benedetti explains the Dramatic “I” as distinct from the Real “I”. The Real “I” is who in fact I am in real life. To go from the Real “I” to Dramatic ‘I’, the actor must utilize Stanislavsky’s Method of Physical Action.
When Stanislavsky planned how to write down his “system”, he separated the actor (Real “I”) from the role (Dramatic “I”). But he broke the division down further to the internal, external work on the actor and the role. He said, “[My] “system” is divided into two basic parts: 1. The internal and external work of an actor on himself; 2. The internal and external work of a role” (Benedetti, Introduction 74). He added detail to this inner and outer work:
- The inner work of an actor consists in perfecting a psychological technique which will enable him to put himself, when the need arises, in the creative state, which invites the coming of inspiration. The external work of an actor on himself consists in preparing his bodily apparatus to express the role physically and to translate his inner life into stage terms. (74 – 75)
In light of the thesis for this paper: that inspired, emotion filled acting was the goal of Stanislavsky and the teacher practitioners, it is interesting to note how Stanislavsky summed up the purpose of his “system” where he, “invites the coming of inspiration”.
Bella Merlin in The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit uses a phrase to unite this effort of control over body and mind. She calls it Psycho-Physicality. In relation to Stanislavsky’s Method Of Physical action she states,
- PSYCHO – PHYSICALITY basically alludes to the fact that your body and your psyche are trained together to achieve a sense of inner-outer co-ordination. This means that what you experience internally is immediately translated into an outer expression and (conversely) what your body manifests physically has a direct and acknowledged affect on your psychological landscape. So, I bury my head in my hands: before long, my muscular memory and my imagination kick in and I start to feel despair. (18)
Stanislavsky broke his complex “system” down into Elements or techniques that were meant to train the actor. “The Elements have to be separated out, studied and mastered individually and then put back together again in a coherent technique” (Benedetti, Actor 14).
The ‘“system”’ demanded a responsive body that could readily express what the imagination, thoughts and feelings of the actor wanted to express (Benedetti, Actor 13). A body that is capable of Relaxation and free of tension is the first step to the end of expressing Action. “Stanislavsky placed RELAXATION at the foundation of his ‘system’” (Merlin, Toolkit 32). He stated that through Relaxation the actor could more capably “reflect the life of the play in which [you’re] appearing” (Stanislavsky, Stage 98).
When Stanislavsky directed Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, he wrote extensive director’s notes before he began the production. Many of his notes were concerned with Action (Merlin, Toolkit 133). Stanislavski stated, “Action is the chief element of our art – genuine, organic, productive, expedient action” (133). Stanislavsky found that his work was often invigorated by a small Action,
- I could quote innumerable instances which have occurred in my own experience.[…] Something unexpected [is] injected into the stale, routine acting of a play. A chair falls over, an actress drops her handkerchief and it must be picked up, or the business is suddenly altered. These things necessarily call for a small but real actions because they are intrusions emanating from real life. (Stanislavsky, Actor 141)
Merlin states succinctly, “ACTION is both internal/psychological (i.e. a decision or a reaction) and external / physical i.e. a deed or an activity) (137).
Another Element is Justification. There is a reason for every Action on stage, from removing a piece of lint from a gown to strangling a mortal enemy. Finding the reason behind one’s actions are one’s Justifications. Benedetti provides a stark contrast between two characters to define Justification, “Merely copying someone’s external characteristics is not acting. The characteristics must have a reason, a basis in the total life of the person, they must be justified. Richard III and Quasimodo were both hunchbacks but they were different hunchbacks” (Benedetti, Actor 97).
Concentration is not only critical for the actor as he works to focus on the reality on stage while he stands in front of a live audience; Concentration is also invaluable for directing the audiences attention to issues critical to the play (32). It is riveted to things that interest a person. Stanislavsky stated, “In order to get away from the auditorium you must be interested in something on the stage” (Stanislavsky, Actor 75).
Another Element that deepens life on stage is Imagination. Stanislavsky states, “[There] is no such thing as actuality on the stage. Art is a product of the imagination.[…] The aim of the actor should be to use his technique to turn the play into a theatrical reality. In this process Imagination plays by far the greatest part” (54). In stating this, Stanislavsky conveniently defines what we understand acting to be. In acting we use our imagination to assign reality to, conditions, situations and states which are not real to lend an imagined reality to what is not literally true. Related to Imagination is another Element in his “system”, i.e., the power of If or as some have called it, The Magic If. Stanislavsky links the Imagination and If in this way, “You know now that our work on a play begins with the use of if as a lever to lift us out of everyday life on to the plane of imagination” (54).
If takes the words of the author off the page and places them in a personal context for the actor. For example, If I were a legless man in the wheel chair underneath an overpass, what would I do? Stanislavsky shows how If bridges the gap between the actor and the text: “The circumstances which are predicted on ‘if’ are taken form sources near to our own feelings, and they have a powerful influence on [your] inner life. […] Once you have established this contract between your life and your part, you will find the inner push or stimulus (Stanislavsky, Actor 49). If allows us to take the Given Circumstances from the play and ask, what if those Given Circumstances were a reality for me?
Merlin provides a succinct definition for Given Circumstances, “GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCES consist of all the data you can glean from the script plus the physical conditions of the actual production as determined by the director and the medium (stage, screen, radio, etc.)” (67). She cites Stanislavsky in regard to Given Circumstances and Action, “[We] artists must realize the truth that even small physical movements, when injected into given circumstances, acquire great significance through the influence of emotion” (Stanislavski, Actor 49). The actor’s ability to bring emotion out in his part is aided by Emotion Memory. This is a key term for future sections of the paper. Emotion Memory will have great significance when I analyze the work of Lee Strasberg and the rest of the teacher practitioners.
Before I move to Emotion Memory, I will cover the cues to Given Circumstances. We understand Given Circumstances through Six Fundamental Questions. According to Merlin, these six questions were underplayed in the English translation of An Actor Prepares. During her acting training in Russia, they were emphasized. In The Actor’s Toolkit, she lists the basic questions that Stanislavsky encourages an actor to ask about his or her character: Who, When, Where, Why, For What Reason and How (101).
In An Actor Prepares, Tortsov instructs his actors that, “[We] must have, first of all, an unbroken series of supposed circumstances […]. Either of the external circumstances which surround us […] or of an inner chain of circumstances which we ourselves have imagined in order to illustrate our parts” [sic] (64). This “chain of circumstances” is the answer to the Six Fundamental Questions. Benedetti lists the Six Fundamental Questions in this way: “Whence: Where have I just come from? Where: Where am I? What: What am I doing? When: When is this happening? What time of day, month, year? In which period? Whither: Where am I going to now” (Benedetti, Actor 7 – 8). From these Six Fundamental Questions one can go deep into the Given Circumstances of the character. By fully understanding the character’s Given Circumstances the actor can empathize with his character more fully. The actor, in the Stanislavsky ‘“system”’ also makes a bridge between themselves and the character through Emotion Memory.
Emotion Memory goes by different names. It has been called affective memory, emotion recall and sense memory (Merlin, Toolkit 142). This Element in Stanislavsky’s “system” became a source of tension between Stanislavsky and Strasberg. It also created a rift between Strasberg and the two other teacher practitioners, Adler and Meisner (Benedetti, Introduction 99).
Stanislavsky first came across the term Affective Memory in the work of the psychologist Theodule Ribot in his, Problemes de Psychologie Affective (Benedetti, Introduction 46). Benedetti relates the psychological theory behind the term,
- According to his theories, the nervous system bears the traces of all previous experiences. They are recorded in the mind although not always available. An immediate stimulus – a touch, a sound, a smell – can trigger off the memory. It is possible to recreate past events, to relive past emotions, vividly. Not only that; similar experiences tend to merge. The memory of a particular incident can evoke memories of similar incidents, similar feelings. Experiences of love, hate, envy, fear, come together, they are distilled so that an individual can experience an overwhelming emotion apparently unrelated to any particular event. (46)
Using the trigger mentioned above, Stanislavsky found a pathway to the subconscious or superconcious as he called it (Stanislavski, Life 168). If the sensory input (heat, cold, noise) that surrounded a moment of great emotion could be recalled, then the sensations could trigger the intense emotion to occur in the actor (Benedetti, Introduction 46). Through Emotion Memory Stanislavsky found a way to reach into an area of the mind that could not be controlled directly, the subconscious, and encourage it to hold forth emotions and, therefore, inspired acting as he defined it (Stanislavski, Life 166).
In An Actor Prepares Stanislavsky’s professor character, Tortsov introduces Emotion Memory by way of contrast. He invites the students to perform an exercise they’ve done many times before. They are to imagine there is a lunatic at the door trying to get in. When they first performed the exercise, their reaction was strong and “real”. The students attempted to repeat the exercise with as much energy and dismay as they did the first time they performed it. But they didn’t have the same vigorous response as when they first did the exercise. Tortsov then scolds his students for abandoning their natural responses to the lunatic at the door and adopting an external form that only represents their original response, “[A] ready-made external form is a terrible temptation to an actor. It is not surprising that novices like you should have felt it and at the same time that you should have proved that you have a good memory for external action. As for emotion memory: there was no sign of it today” (Stanislavski, Prepares 166).
In a passage from An Actor Prepares Tortsov “checks” Kostya’s Emotion Memory by asking him to recall a performance of a great actor that he once saw. Tortsov wonders if Kostya can regain the initial excitement and flush of emotions he had over the actor’s performance. Then the teacher moves on to the death of a close friend whom Kostya lost, “What do you feel either spiritually or physically, when you recall the tragic death of the intimate friend you told me about” (Stanislavsky, Prepares 167).
Tortsov then clarifies the difference between Sense Memory and Emotion Memory. Sense Memory is recalling the sensations around the Emotional Memory, not the original emotional moment itself (168). He also lays out the potential that Emotion Memory has to access nature, or one could say, the nature that is present fully in our subconscious. He contrasts those actors dependent on nature to those who use technique to merely reproduce nature,
- Yet the most perfectly developed technique cannot be compared with the art of nature. I have seen many famous technical actors of many schools and many lands, in my day, and none of them could reach the height to which artistic intuition, under the guidance of nature, is capable of ascending. We must not overlook the fact that many important sides of our complex nature are neither known to us nor subject to our conscious direction. Only nature has access to them. Unless we enlist her aid we must be content with only a partial rule over our complicated creative apparatus. (169 – 170)
From these episodes in his writings came the controversy about Emotion Memory. I will examine later how Stanislavsky’s Method of Physical Action, potentially takes emphasis away from Emotional Memory. I will also investigate in the Strasberg section how Emotion Memory dominated his version of Stanislavsky’s “system”. Strasberg called that version The Method.
In 1906, Stanislavsky wrote to his friend, Vera Kotlyaresvskaya. He listed for her the three Elements in his “system” that he thought were most important, “[What] fascinates me most is the rhythm of feelings, the development of the emotion memory and the psycho-physiology of the creative process” (Merlin, Toolkit 138). Merlin defines Tempo Rhythm, “At its most simple, ‘tempo’ is the speed at which you carry out an action, and ‘rhythm is the intensity with which you carry it out” (Merlin 139). Said another way, Tempo Rhythm is the degree of agitation that an emotional state creates. For example, one could be racing against a clock to disarm a bomb; that is one Tempo Rhythm. Another Tempo Rhythm is sitting on a porch in a rocking chair drinking tea and reading a soothing novel. Stanislavsky puts it this way, “To stand and watch for a mouse – that is one rhythm; to watch a tiger that is creeping up on you is quite another (Merlin 140).
In his “system”, Stanislavsky wove all these things together within this Element the Super Objective. Benedetti in Stanislavsky & The Actor states, “[At] the root of a play is a theme, or subject, what the play is about, the reason it was written, the goal to which all the individual tasks which actors perform are directed” (98). Related to the Super Objective in the play is the Through Action of each individual character. (Some call it the Through Line of Action.) All the Actions that an actor performs as a character add up to the character’s Through Action. Another character in the play will have a Counter Action (Benedetti, Actor 98 – 99). The opposing Through Actions and Counter Actions create the conflict of the play.
The concepts behind the Method of Physical Action were solidified in the last five years of Stanislavsky’s life (Merlin 185). Stanislavsky defined the principal behind this element through an example from Macbeth.
- With what is Lady Macbeth occupied at the culminating point of her tragedy? The simple physical act of washing a spot of blood off her hand.[…] In real life also many of the great moments of emotion are signalized by some ordinary, small, natural movement.[…] The significance of physical acts in highly tragic or dramatic moments is […] that the simpler they are, the easier it is to grasp them.[…] By approaching emotion in this way, you avoid all forcing and your result is natural, intuitive, and complete. (Stanislavski, Handbook 8)
For her definition of Method of Physical Actions, Bella Merlin states simply, “Physical ACTIONS affect EMOTIONS, and EMOTIONS provoke physical ACTIONS. The inner and the outer are entirely coordinated” (185). Benedetti in Stanislavski & The Actor details the fundamentals of The Method of Physical Action with two principles. First ‘I’ as the actor must know the Given Circumstances of the play and what they mean to my character. Secondly, when the actor is secure in the Given Circumstances, he goes through a deliberate thought process by deciding what I as the Real “I” would do about the situations in the play that the Dramatic “I” experiences. It is As If, the Real “I” (myself) were the character. What Actions would I take in light of the Given Circumstances in the play? By making those decisions, “and believing in the truth of my decided upon Actions, I release my creative energies and my natural emotional responses organically, without forcing, without falling into familiar acting clichés. In Stanislavsky’s words I go through the conscious to the subconscious” (Benedetti, Actor 4 – 5).
The Method of Physical Action is considered by some to be the culmination of Stanislavsky’s work. Others see it as a part of his earlier ‘“system”’ that was more heavily based in psychological considerations. Merlin offers an explanation for his focus on physical actions and the body as “[…] something of a survival tactic, as well as an artistic belief. Under the Soviet regime, anything psychological was considered to be dangerously idealist and decadent. So the Socialist Realist artists sought to illustrate in their work that human beings were proactive, ‘doing’ creatures […]” (186).
“Stanislavsky’s greatness lay in the constant growth of his artistic sensibilities. He never hesitated to throw over the outworn enthusiasms of his past. At the age of sixty-three he could still astonish the world by his youthfulness. But it was a different kind of youthfulness; it was steeped in wisdom and experience and drew its inspiration from the living well of the human heart” (Benedetti, Life 370).
As Stanislavsky neared the end of his life, the idea of the Through Line of Action of a play was more and more on his mind. He stated,
- Creative work […] not linked by common action, are like pearls thrown haphazardly on a table. Thread them and put a rich clasp at the end and you will get a string of pearls.[…] We must link all the elements (the pearls) together into one whole, thread them on the general line (the string), which in our stage parlance we call ‘through-action […]” (373).
He defined this element specifically as “[The] main theme […]. It gave birth to the writing of the play. It should also be the fountainhead of the actor’s artistic creation” (Stanislavsky, Handbook 145). In fact, Stanislavsky regretted not examining the Through Line of Action earlier. Before he wrote his book on the “system”, The Actor’s Work on Himself, he said,
- When you read my book […] you must keep in mind that at the time I wrote it I was not able to start at once with the ruling idea and through action […]. In a play, you are given an extract of life, and the through-action passes through it like a fairway. Everything that goes along that fairway is important. Everything must lead to it and through it to the ruling idea.[…] The smallest detail, if it is not related to the ruling idea, becomes superfluous and harmful and is liable to divert the attention from the essential point of the play. (Magarshack, Life 372)
Stanislavsky’s focus on the Through Line of Action changed him as a director, too. He came to believe it was the playwright’s ruling idea that governed the production as a whole. Stanislavsky said,
- Just as a plant grows out of a seed, so too in exactly the same way do the writer’s work grow out of his independent thoughts and feeling. The thoughts, feelings and dreams of the writer, with which his life is filled and which agitate his heart, put him onto the path of creativity. They become the basis of the play. It is for them that the writer writes his literary work. All of his life experience, his joys, his griefs, which he himself has borne and observed in his life, become the basis of the dramatic work. It is for the sake of them that he takes up his pen. (Merlin 220)
This insight into the literary mind was a departure from a man who was not considered to have an understanding of literature. As emphasized earlier, he had purposefully given the right of veto over literary matters to Danchenko when they formed the Moscow Art Theatre (Benedetti, Life 153). Benedetti characterized Stanislavsky’s early literary limitations in this way; “[The] trouble was that Stanislavsky’s ‘primitive literary conceptions’ prevented him from discovering the inner meaning of a play […]” (Magarshack, Life 174).
His new emphasis on the playwright’s Through Line of Action was also a departure from his early days at the Society of Art and Literature. At the Society he and his mentor Fedotov worked as producers. The producer of Stanislavsky’s time executed many duties more closely aligned to the present day director (Magarshack, Life 56 – 57). Benedetti describes how Fedotov and Stanislavsky worked at the Society of Art and Literature;
- If an idea that gave great scope to the producer did not agree with the intentions of the author then the play was forcibly cast into another mold. The producer in such case became not only the co-author of the play but the adapter of it.[…] Stanislavsky often found the text a great hindrance to his own conception of the plays plot and characters. But by judicious cutting the play was eventually strait-jacketed into what the producer thought to be its right shape. (57)
In his early days as a director, Stanislavsky remade a playwright’s work to his own taste and he treated an actor more like a puppet than a creative individual in his own right (174). Benedetti explained, “For if […] the producer’s imagination is to be given pre-eminence, then quite naturally the producer has to impose his own conception of the characters on the actors who […] sacrifice their own creative conception and force themselves to play the producer’s characters” (57). This style of treating the actors like mannequins earned many Russian producers the title of “producer-autocrat” (71). “In 1890 and during the first dozen or so years of the Moscow Art Theatre, it was […] the type of discipline that Stanislavsky admired and insisted on” (71). Stanislavsky admits, “[…] I became a producer-autocrat myself and many Russian producers began imitating me.[…] Theatrical managers who treated the actors as if they were props as mere pawns to be moved about as they liked […] (71). Stanislavski explained further that the producer-autocrat would develop “the whole plan of the production, he indicated the general outlines of the parts, taking into consideration, of course, the participating actors, and he showed them all the ‘business’” (Stanislavsky, Handbook 98).
In his final days he rejected the producer-autocrat who imposed his “ready made mise-en-scene on the actor” (373). The mise-en-scene was a producer-autocrat’s schematic for the play. He stated, “[The] old method of mise-en-scene belongs to the producer-autocrat against whom I am fighting now” (374).
Stanislavsky’s break with his producer-autocrat style, was firmly in evidence when the First Studio was established in January of 1913 (Magarshack, Life 330). This was the Studio that practiced the type of improvisation that he and Maxim Gorky had dreamed about in Capri. Stanislavsky posted a sign in the theatre, “Anyone wishing to read something, to appear in a scene from a play, to submit scale models of sets, to demonstrate the results of his researches in stage technique, or to offer some literary material for the stage, should put down his name in a special book kept for that purpose in the hall of the studio” (333). He was no longer the manipulator dictating the actors’ performances. He was open to suggestions.
Stanislavsky’s Through Line of Action emphasis also led him to a deeper definition of inspiration. “He spent the summer of 1935 at a sanatorium near Moscow, completing his program for the new Dramatic and Operatic Studio” (388). He had received permission to open this studio in 1934 (387). He spoke to some of the Studio members who visited him at the sanatorium. He laid out his system to them like a building with four stories or “four planes of perception” (388). Those who could use all of his many elements had reached the first story. If the actor can create a through action he has reached the second story. The third story was the “ruling-ruling idea of the actor-man himself” (388). He gave an example of Tolstoy’s own personal ruling idea, which was “self-betterment and self-purification” (388). And finally,
- The fourth storey [sic] of our art is the sphere of the subconscious. It can only be reached when the actor has become the master of his technique to such an extent that he need no longer think of it and can give himself up entirely to inspiration and intuition. The wave from the ocean of the subconscious reaches us only occasionally, rolling up to us in moments of the highest creative enthusiasm, but the actor of the future, having mastered the technique of his art, will be able to bathe in this ocean freely. (388)
In 1936, Stanislavsky asked, “What does it signify, to write down what is past and done. The “system” lived in me but it has no shape or form. The “system” is created in the very act of writing it down. That is why I have to keep changing what I have already written (Benedetti, Actor 1). He died two years later, August 7, 1938 (Benedetti, Introduction 96).
I will now examine the path Strasberg took to formulate his Method from his knowledge of Stanislavsky’s “system”. Strasberg is considered to be the teacher practitioner who had the most influence on how the American actor received the ideas of Stanislavsky.
mwbeckham 