Method Acting 2

1863-1938, Russian theatrical director, teacher, and actor, whose original name was Constantin Sergeyevich Alekseyev. He was cofounder with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko of the Moscow Art Theater in 1898, which he would remain associated with for remainder of life. He also achieved renown as a director of opera. As a director, he stressed ensemble acting as well as complete coordination of all phases of production. His outstanding productions included many of the plays of Chekhov, in which he tried to strip away rhetorical clichés to enter the emotional core and complex psychology of the characters. Stanislavsky stressed the importance of the actor's inner identification with the character and the actor's natural use of body and voice. His training, now termed the Stanislavsky method, or "method" acting, had a vast influence on modern schools of acting. In New York City the Actors' Studio adapted many of his ideas to their use. Konstantin Stanislavski unequivocally challenged traditional notions of the dramatic process, establishing himself as one of the most pioneering thinkers in modern theatre. Stanislavski coined phrases such as "stage direction", laid the foundations of modern opera and gave instant renown to the works of such talented writers and playwrights as Maksim Gorki and Anton Chekhov. His process of character development, the "Stanislavski Method", was the catalyst for method acting- arguably the most influential acting system on the modern stage and screen. Such renowned schools of acting and directing as the Group Theatre (1931- 1941) and The Actors Studio (1947-) are a legacy of Stanislavski's pioneering vision. Like all pioneering thinkers however, Stanislavski stood on the shoulders of giants. Much of the thought and philosophy Stanislavsky applied to the theatre derives from his predecessors. Pushkin, Russia's original literary hero and the father of the native realist tradition, wrote that the goal of the artist is to supply truthful feelings under given circumstances, which Stanislavski adopted as his lifelong artistic motto. - Polyakova, Elena; Stanislavsky . Stanislavsky was born Konstantin Sergeyevich Alexeyev in Moscow on January 5, 1863, amidst the transition from the feudal serfdom of Czarist Russia under the rule of Peter the Great, to the free enterprise of the Industrial Revolution. More than one hundred years prior, Konstantin's ancestor Alexei Petrov had broken the chains of serfdom that bound the family and gained immediate status and wealth as a merchant. By the time Konstantin was born, the Alexeyev business of gold and silver thread production had made the family name well known throughout the world. Silver and gold were not the only interests of the Alexeyev family. While Konstantin was still very young, the family organized a theatre group called the Alexeyev Circle. Throughout his ascent to a major role on the stage, Konstantin maintained obligations to his family business, organizing shareholder meetings and keeping the accounts in order. However, his preoccupation with all aspects of theatrical production eventually made him a leading member of his family's theatre group. Reared by a wealthy and generous father, Konstantin was never short of funding in his early stage performances. Ultimately, in order to escape the stereotype of the prodigal son and to be mindful of the reputation of his family, at the age of 25, Konstantin took the stage name Stanislavski. In the same year he established the Society of Art and Literature as an amateaur company at the Maly Theatre, where he gained experience in ethics, aesthetics and stagecraft. As he progressed independently, Stanislavsky began to further challenge the traditional stage approach. In 1898, in cooperation with Vladimir NemirovichDanchenko, Stanislavski founded the Moscow Art Theatre, Russia's first ensemble theatre. "The program for our undertaking was revolutionary. We protested against the old manner of acting and against theatricality, against artificial pathos and declamation, and against affectation on the stage, and inferior conventional productions and decoration, against the star system which had been a bad affect on the cast, against the whole arrangement of plays and against the poor repertoire of the theatres." Stanislavski Using the Moscow Art Theatre as his conduit, Stanislavski developed his own unique system of training wherein actors would research the situation created by the script, break down the text according to their character's motivations and recall their own experiences, thereby causing actions and reactions according to these motivations. The actor would ideally make his motivations for acting identical to those of the character in the script. He could then replay these emotions and experiences in the role of the character in order to achieve a more genuine performance. The 17th Century melodrama Tsar Fyodor was the first

production in which these techniques were showcased. Using this system, Stanislavski succeeded like no producer or director before him in translating the works of such renowned playwrights as Chekov and Gorki, whose writings were aptly suited to his method. With their social consciousness and emphasis on the importance of imagery and theme rather than plot, they were blank canvasses on which Stanislavski could exercise his artful hand. Stanislavski clearly could not separate the theatre from its social context. He viewed theatre as a medium with great social and educational significance. During the civil unrest leading up to the first Russian revolution in 1905, Stanislavski courageously reflected social issues on the stage. Twelve years later, during the Red October of 1917, Bolshevism had swept through Russia and the Soviet Union was established. In the violence of revolution, Lenin's personal protection saved Stanislavski from being eliminated along with the Czardom. The USSR maintained allegiance to Stanislavski and his socially conscious method of production and his theatre began to produce plays containing Soviet propoganda. In 1918 Stanislakski established the First Studio as a school for young actors and in his later years wrote two books, My Life in Art and The Actor and His Work. Both have been translated into over 20 languages. Through his earnest professional and educational leadership, Stanislavksi spread his knowledge to numerous understudies, leaving a legacy that cannot be overstated. The most fundamental principle of Stanislavski's teaching is that the actor must live the life of the character that he is portraying, he must learn to think like the character and behave as the character would, therefore the portrayal is not confined to the performance but will, to some degree, begin to overlap into the actor's own life. This, he asserts, is the only way to achieve total realism and, to reinforce this, the actor must also extend this exercise of imagination to encompass the costumes that he wears, the articles that comprise the set and the props that are used. If there is a mirror on the wall, he must invent a history of where it was bought, by whom and how it has come to be in this particular location, thus completing the elaborate imaginary world which will lend conviction to his performance. It is therefore necessary for the actor to approach the role from two levels, the external level being the more obvious. The actor should draw on his own experiences, wherever possible, to understand and interpret the emotions and events that the character will experience, and the wider the actor's experience of life then the greater his insight and comprehension will be. Stanislavski's teachings are best defined in the following quotes: The more an actor has observed and known, the greater his experience the clearer his perception of the inner and outer circumstances of the life in his play and in his part This work is not done by the intellect alone but by all your creative forces, all the elements of your inner creative state on the stage together with your real life in the sense of the play Therefore, to follow the teachings of Stanislavski it is necessary for the actor to totally immerse himself, body, soul and mind, in the part that he is playing. A cofounder of the Moscow Art Theater in Russia and the director of Anton Chekhov's most important plays, Stanislavski was also an actor. He was involved in both traditional theater (using stylized, nonrealistic techniques) and the emergence of the modern realistic approach. By closely observing the work of great performers of his day, and by drawing on his on acting experience, Stanislavski identified and described what these gifted performers did naturally and intuitively. From his observations he compiled a series of principles and techniques which today are regarded as fundamental to both the training and the performance of actors and actresses who want to create believable characters on stage. We might assume that believable acting is simply a matter of being natural; but Stanislavski discovered first of all that acting realistically onstage is extremely artificial and difficult. He wrote: All of our acts, even the simplest, which are so familiar to us in everyday life, become strained when we appear behind the footlights before a public of a thousand people. That is why it is necessary to correct ourselves and learn again how to walk, sit, or lie down. It is essential to re-educate ourselves to look and see, on the stage, to listen and to hear. By observing himself as an actor as well as the other actors with whom he worked, and more especially by studying the great dramatic artists in Russia and abroad, Stanislavski developed an approach to the teaching of acting that became known as the Stanislavski system. The effects of his teaching were felt in America in the 1920 s when Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya, both alumni of the Moscow Art Theater school, emigrated to America and established The American Laboratory Theater. Stanislavski investigated and charted the acting process that good actors used intuitively. He systematized that process so that it could be studied and developed consciously. He was interested in how to maintain a consistent performance and how to be a conscious human being on stage. The Method is a pragmatic way of working to create both

the interior life and the logical behavior of a character, a way that can be taught, practiced, monitored, and corrected.