Stanislavski's system

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Constantin Stanislavski
Stanislavski's system is an approach to acting developed by Constantin Stanislavski
(1863–1938), a Russian actor, director, and theatre administrator at the Moscow Art
Theatre (founded 1897).[1] The system is the result of Stanislavski's many years of
efforts to determine how someone can control in performance the most intangible
and uncontrollable aspects of human behavior, such as emotions and art inspiration.
The most influential acting teachers, including Ryszard Bolesławski, Vsevolod
Meyerhold, Michael Chekhov, Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, Harold Clurman, Robert
Lewis, Sanford Meisner, Uta Hagen, Ion Cojar and Ivana Chubbuck all traced their
pedigrees to Stanislavski, his theories and/or his disciples.
Contents [hide]
1 Description
2 Approaching acting
3 The system versus the Method
4 Progression of the system
5 The Method of Physical Action
6 Notes
7 Bibliography
[edit]Description

Techniques involve a "Round the table analysis" - a process in which the actor/s and
director literally sit around a table and put forward their thoughts on the script and
the characters until a clear understanding is formed. His "homework" involved
breaking the script into sections of different "objectives." This would be different for
each actor involved. The structure of the entire script would be roughly as follows :
Objective : the final goal a character wants to achieve. (Often worded as "What do I
want?") Note: Does not have to be achieved and can be as simple as you wish.
E.g. : To pour a mug of tea.
Obstacle : aspects that will stop or hinder that character achieving his or her
objective.
E.g. : There are no teabags in the tin.
Tools/Method (has many different names) : the different techniques that a character
is going to use to achieve his objective.
E.g. : Search around the kitchen, walk to the shops, call on the neighbour.
Units/bits/beats : the division of the script into smaller objectives or methods.
E.g. : The entire section during which the character searches for a tea bag would be a
unit. When he decides to call on a neighbour is called a bit.
Actions : how he is going to say or do something. Think of it as an objective for each
line. Normally used with a verb.
E.g. : The line may be (whilst on the phone) "Hello, Sally. It's Bill from next door. You
wouldn't happen to have any spare tea bags, would you? I know how well-organized
you are." The objective for this line may be "to flatter." This will be different for every
single actor.
Stanislavski believed that if one completes this homework, the desired emotion
should be created and experienced.
Stanislavski began developing a grammar of acting in 1906; his initial choice to call it
his System struck him as too dogmatic, so he preferred to write it as his ‘system’
(without the capital letter and in quotation marks), in order to indicate the provisional
nature of the results of his investigations.[2] The system arose as a result of the
questions Stanislavski had in regard to great actors he admired, such as the
tragedians Maria Yermolova and Tommaso Salvini. These actors seemed to operate
under different rules from other actors, but their performances were still susceptible
on some nights to flashes of inspiration, of completely 'being a role,' while on some
nights their performances were good or merely accurate.

Stanislavski regarded Maria Yermolova's acting as the pinnacle of artistic success.

In essence, his constant goal in life was to formulate some codified, systematic
approach that might impart to any given actor with some grip on his 'instrument',
that is, himself.
[edit]Approaching acting

Constantin Stanislavski had a dictum that he probably believed throughout his life:
that one should always approach a role as directly as possible, and then see if it
"lives." If the actor and the role connect, and the role comes to life, why apply a
technique, a system? Such a success may only happen once or twice in one's life—or
never—so the remainder of one's performances require technique.
However, each individual actor must decide whether or not an approach 'works' for
him.
While Stanislavski was not the first to codify some system of acting (see, for instance,
any number of Victorian gesture-books for actors) he was the first to take questions
and problems of psychological significance directly. In fact, Stanislavski started
attempting to create a system before psychology was widely understood and
formalized as a discipline. When it finally was formalized, psychology influenced
Stanislavski's system tremendously. Though his approach changed greatly
throughout his life, he never lost sight of his ideals: truth in performance and love of
art.
Stanislavski's system is a complex method for producing realistic characters; most of
today's actors on stage, television, and film owe much to it. Using system, an actor is
required to deeply analyze his or her character's motivations. The actor must
discover the character's objective in each scene, and a 'super-objective' for the entire
play, which can direct and connect an actor's choice of objectives from scene to
scene.
One of Stanislavski's methods for achieving the truthful pursuit of a character's
objective was his 'magic if.' Actors were required to ask many questions of their
characters and themselves. One of the first questions they had to ask was, "What if I
were in the same situation as my character?" The "magic if" allowed actors to
transcend the confinements of realism by asking them what would occur "if"
circumstances were different, or "if" the circumstances were to happen to them.
[edit]The system versus the Method

Stanislavski and his system are frequently misunderstood. For example, often the
system is confused with the Method acting. The latter is an outgrowth of the
American (mainly New York) theatre scene in the 1930s and 40s, when actors and
directors like Elia Kazan, Robert Lewis, Lee Strasberg, etc., first in the Group Theatre
and later in the Actors Studio, applied Stanislavski's system as it was taught to
Strasberg at the American Laboratory Theatre in the 1920s to the particular
psychological needs of the American actor of their time. It has been suggested that
Strasberg had access at that time only to An Actor Prepares; had he perhaps waited
until he'd also read Building A Character (published much later), he might not have
developed such an extreme 'method'.
Stanislavski's emphasis on life within moments, on psychological realism, and on
emotional authenticity, seemed to attract these actors and thinkers. While much
work was done with the works of playwrights like Clifford Odets, Arthur Miller, and
Tennessee Williams, the Method was eventually applied to older works like those of
William Shakespeare. Indeed, controversy remains contesting the appropriateness of
a Method approach to pre-Modernist plays, for while the system and Method share
many characteristics, they differ immensely.
The 'system' is often confused with the Method because of its close ties to the New
York theaters, and again because of American figures like Stella Adler — who visited
and was taught by Stanislavski himself. Also, perceptions of the 'system' are
frequently confused, because Stanislavski had, throughout his life, no single focused
project; rather he thought of his system as a table of contents from which the
working actor could constantly draw, depending on what problems might occur from
play to play.
[edit]Progression of the system

There is a story that an actress who had once been in a play directed by Stanislavski
came to him years later and informed him that she had taken very copious notes on
him and on his technical approach during rehearsals; she wanted to know what to do
with these notes. He replied, 'Burn them all.'
The anecdote, whether true or not, is illustrative of Stanislavski and his approach.
The Stanislavski of later life is not the same as the Stanislavski who championed
emotion and sense memory. At times, Stanislavski's methodological rigor bordered
on opacity: see, for instance, the chart of the Stanislavski 'system' included as a fold-
out in editions of Robert Lewis' book "Method or Madness," a series of lectures. The
chart, made by Adler, is very complicated, listing all aspects of the actor and of
performance that Stanislavski thought pertinent at the time. His dedication to
completeness and accuracy often conflicted with his goal of creating a workable
system that actors would actually like to use.
See also his description of the correct way of walking on stage, in his book translated
into English as "Building a Character." His interest in deeply analyzing the qualities of
a given phenomenon were meant to give the actor an awareness of the complexities
of human behavior, and how easily falsehoods—aspects of behaviour that an
audience can detect without knowing it—are assumed by an untrained or
inexperienced actor in performance. All actions that a person must enact—walk, talk,
even sit on stage—must be broken down and re-learned, Stanislavski once insisted.
Such rigors of re-learning were probably constant throughout his life. Stanislavski, a
man of institution, his own Moscow Art Theatre and its associated studios, was a
great believer in formal (and rigorous) training for the actor.
[edit]The Method of Physical Action

Internal experiences and their physical expression are unbreakably united. Whether
it is through a facial expression or the tapping of a foot, everything a human
experiences psychologically is displayed through physical means. This is termed a
psycho-physical union.
On stage, if an actor experiences only internal feelings or only physical actions, then
the performance is dead. The reasoning behind this goes back to the union of the
psychological and physical—the two go hand-in-hand. For an actor to portray a
character employing one aspect of the union without the other is to perform
incompletely.
Stanislavski developed a technique he called "the method of physical actions" to
solve the dilemma of spontaneity in a created environment (stage or film set). In this
technique, the actor would perform a physical motion to create the desired emotional
response. For instance, if an actor needed to weep, he could sigh and hold his head
in his hands, a physical action that many who are crying instinctively do.
The correct physical action does not come automatically for any psychological
response. Many times, actors need to experiment until they determine what best
works for them and for the character they are trying to portray. The best way to
experiment in this many is through improvisation, and the best improvisers are those
who can intuitively act and behave as though in a real situation.
Through his work, Stanislavski reversed the human reaction system in which an
emotion allocates an action. Method actors use actions to control their emotions. The
best actors are those who "live" in silences and not only in words. Reacting is
essentially emoting and includes allowing the body to outwardly express what the
mind is inwardly experiencing.
[edit]Notes

^ Brockett, Oscar. History of the Theatre. [S.l.]: Allyn & Bacon, 2002. Print.
^ See Benedetti (1999, 169).
[edit]Bibliography

Stanislavski, Constantin. 1936. An Actor Prepares. London: Methuen, 1988. ISBN

0413
---. 1999. Stanislavski: His Life and Art. Revised edition. Original edition published in
1988. London: Methuen. ISBN 0413525201.
Carnicke, Sharon M. 1998. Stanislavsky in Focus. Russian Theatre Archive Ser.
London: Harwood Academic Publishers. ISBN 9057550709.
Meisner, Sanford. 1987. On Acting. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0394750594.
Hagen, Uta. 1973. Respect for Acting. New York: Macmillan. ISBN 0025473905.
Innes, Christopher, ed. 2000. A Sourcebook on Naturalist Theatre. London and New
York: Routledge. ISBN 0415152291.
Merlin, Bella. 2007. The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit. London: Nick Hern. ISBN
9781854597939.
Roach, Joseph R. 1985. The Player's Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting.
Theater:Theory/Text/Performance Ser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN
0472082442.
Benedetti, Jean. 1998. Stanislavski and the Actor. London: Methuen. ISBN
0413711609.