Stanislavsky System
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The Stanislavsky System is an approach to acting developed by Konstantin Stanislavsky, a Russian actor, director, and theatre administrator at the Moscow Art Theatre (founded 1897). The System is the result of Stanislavsky's many years of efforts to determine how a human being can control in performance the most intangible and uncontrollable aspects of human behavior: such as emotions, and artistic inspiration.
The System arose as a result of the questions a young Stanislavsky had in regards to great actors he admired; such as the tragedians Maria Yermolova and Tommaso Salvini. These actors seemed to operate under different rules than 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.
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.
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[edit] Approaching acting
Konstantin Stanislavsky 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 Stanislavsky 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, Stanislavsky started attempting to create a system before psychology was widely understood and formalized as a discipline. When it finally was formalized, psychology influenced Stanislavsky'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.
Stanislavsky'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 "The 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 Stanislavsky'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 confines 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
Stanislavsky and his System are frequently misunderstood. For example, often the System is confused with the Method. 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, discovered Stanislavsky's system. Stanislavsky'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 chracteristics, they differ immensely. Method places a heavy emphasis on Affective Memory, that is, recalling experienced emotions for use in performance (which Stanislavsky found to be ineffective in his later years).
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 Stanislavsky himself. Also, perceptions of the System are frequently confused, because Stanislavsky had, throughout his life, no single focused project.
[edit] Progression of the System
There is a story that an actress who had once been in a play directed by Stanislavsky came to him years later and informed him that she had taken very copious notes of him and of 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 Stanislavsky and his approach. The Stanislavsky of later life is not the same as the Stanislavsky who championed emotion and sense memory. At times, Stanislavsky's methodological rigor bordered on opacity: see, for instance, the chart of the 'Stanislavsky 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 Stanislavsky thought pertinent at the time. His dedication to completeness and accuracy often contended with his goal to create a workable system that actors would actually 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, Stanislavsky once insisted.
Such rigors of re-learning were probably constant throughout his life. Stanislavsky, 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
Training was highly physical and demanding, and it is Stanislavsky's never-failing respect for physical action that brought his system to a point of apotheosis, a way of reaching emotional truth and psychological realism while maintaining a grip on control of the physical. Further: freeing oneself up for performing anything, be it Modern theater or Greek.
Late in his life Stanislavsky put much faith in an approach he called the Method of Physical Action. (The use of the word Method, again, causes confusion with Strasberg's Method.) This approach, Stanislavsky surmised, finally dealt completely with the instrument of the actor and with a universality of performance.
The Method of Physical Action (hereafter, MPA) is complex. It requires an understanding of the significance of physical action, and in the performance of physical action. The idea behind the MPA is fairly simple, but its implications are profound. It is based on the idea that the only thing an actor will ever have control of in his life is his body. There is never a direct line to emotions in performance, only to the body. Emotions may be remembered and brought up via emotional memory, but Stanislavsky generally considered this a rehearsal tool or technique of research, at best. There is, in the end, only the body.
Therefore the actor and the director must work hard to use the body, that is, the body's performance of physical action, as the primary material of creation. That is the subject of the rehearsal process: how to come to physical actions that affect the actor and bring the scene to life at the same time. So in one pass both emotional and aesthetic considerations of a scene are dealt with. The actor can work with an enormity (indeed, infinity) of options; he senses the entire landscape of possibilities of performance.
The MPA is so simple that it is almost a default technique, to a kind of techniqueless technique (figure out what to do: where is the technique in that?). Two necessities are required: first, that thorough physical training is always required, and second, an understanding of what a truly good physical action is comprised of. Both can take years of experience and reflection until an actor is fully equipped to handle a role. The art of performance cannot be learned from literature, only from action: from performance, and observation, Stanislavsky thought late in life.
This late stage unfortunately receives little notice or appreciation in most summations of Stanislavsky's life and technique. Most authors are satisfied to identify Stanislavsky with his System and with the contributions that such an approach has made towards the film and theatre in the 20th Century. This is due in part to the limited literature on the subject; and many of the authors (author-actors and author-directors) that have come in Russia since Stanislavsky remain untranslated, despite the value of their work. Some books are available, such as Vasiliy Toporkov's "Stanislavsky in Rehearsal," and Jean Benedetti's "Stanislavsky and the Actor."
[edit] Other approaches
A number of acting theories exist today, some but not all of them derive from the System. They are thought of as different entities largely because they have different names. Their genealogy is complex and will not be examined here, nor will their merits, nor their essential differences.
The most fully-formed systems are often practiced with much more rigor in training than in paid, professional performance. In reality, most actors use an amalgam of approaches, or a 'personal approach' of some kind, or 'no system' (they learn the lines and perform them).
There exist, besides the System, the Method, and the MPA, several other notable techniques. The Meisner technique, associated with Sanford Meisner and the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York (exists today), focuses an actor on his scene partner to concentrate his objective. The Atlantic Theater Company, also in New York, teaches a technique that prides itself on straightforwardness and plain talk; this technique has much promoted by David Mamet and a close circle of actors. Further, there exists the Viewpoints Technique, espoused by director Anne Bogart, which emphasizes six different categories of performance on which an actor must focus. Also there is the Suzuki Method of Actor Training, developed by Tadashi Suzuki, a strenuously physical approach. Finally some creative personalities are associated with distinctive approaches to theatre: Vsevolod Meyerhold, sometime friend of Stanislavsky, spent many years trying to expand the possibilities of performance. Jerzy Grotowski is credited with taking Stanislavsky's work to radical new heights (there is something called the 'Grotowsky system', a term somewhat in contention). Antonin Artaud developed a theatrical concept all his own, as did Bertolt Brecht. Viola Spolin popularized the concept of the game, and the importance of (and technique behind) improvisation, both for rehearsal and performance. Augusto Boal has gone further than anyone towards developing a complete system of theater: Theatre of the Oppressed transforms acting into a social 'action' rather than the vehicle of emotional catharsis, as Bertolt Brecht advocated.
