Introduction to Acting

Brian Brophy

Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavsky—1863-1938

•“We must love the art in ourselves, not ourselves in

the art.”

Bertolt Brecht 1898-1956

•“Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.”

Early Questions

Questions

How to Stimulate the Imagination?

• At the age of 25, Kostya locked himself in the cellar of a castle to help him visualize the role of the old Miserly Knight. He was determined to find the missing component to his character, by somehow re-creating the “cellar” memory in his performance. Reportedly, he caught a deathly cold, but the experience began to lay the groundwork for his theory of affective memory .

Affective Memory (1909)

• “Also known as ‘emotion memory’ or ‘sense memory’. The term describes the process of recalling situations from your own experience (including events that you’ve read about, heard about, or seen, as well as directly experienced) that are analogous to the character’s situation…

Affective Memory Cont…• It involves the collaborative work of the

imagination and all your senses (taste, touch, sight, smell and hearing) in recalling incidents. Finding an appropriate affective memory is a means of empathizing with the contents of the play so that you can invest them with something from your personal landscape…

Affective Memory Cont…

• This process of empathy should prevent your characterizations becoming cliched and formal.”

• Bella Marlin

Biography in Social and Artistic Context

• 1.The Amateur years: 1863-1898

• 2. The Director Dictator: 1891-1906

• 3. Round the Table Analysis: 1906-early 30s

• 4. The Final legacies: 1930s-1938 and beyond.

1863-1938

• Born two years after the abolition of serfdom, Stan came from a wealthy family that made gold and silver braiding for military decorations and uniforms, while the Sergeyev clan was directly descended from serfs themselves.

Kostya’s Childhood

• Raised by a peasant nanny and educated by a university trained governess, the Alexeyev household along with their nine children “mingled superstition with modern liberal thinking…(and) an obsessive fear of sickness…”

Childhood

• On many Russian estates the serfs were trained by amateur directors for comic and musical performances. Once serfdom was abolished, the practice died out, but the Alexeyev household began to mount their own spectacles. One significant performance to the six year old Kostya was as Father Winter.

Father Winter• The Alexeyev clan produced an

elaborate fairy tale for their mother’s birthday party. Kostya, dressed in a sheet of white cotton and wool, holding a branch made of rolled cotton, told to stay away from the flames of the candles on the stage, yet, feeling self- conscious and anxious of “not being told or knowing where to look,” set himself on fire…

At the Circus• Kostya’s mother exposed him and his

siblings to all the performing arts including the ballet, opera and circus. At eight years of age, overcome by the pink-leotarded equstrienne in the circus ring, riding round on her horse, Kostya broke free from his mother and ran into the ring and kissed her, much to the embarrassment of his siblings.

Active Imagination• Kostya constructed his own puppets

with miniature stage designs and staged French comedies and musicals with his sisters playing parts most opposite to their innate personality. The introverted sister chose to play coquettes or flirtatious women, whereas the extroverted sister loved to play nuns: actors have tendency to play their opposites.

Alexeyev Circle

• The family creates its own amateur theater company and achieves renown as the best non-professional theater company in Moscow. However, once he turns 18 Kostya is ready to move on…

Maly Theater

• Desperate to be in front of an audience, he moves to Moscow and studies at Maly where he is tackles the idea of inspiration. Where does it come from if an audience is unresponsive? He finds inspiration from his fellow actor on stage and in their eyes…

Alexeyev becomes Stanislavsky

After watching the great Italian tragedian Tommaso Salvini

perform Othello, Kostya says Salvini’s passion was so powerful that it was as if “burning lava was pouring into his heart” when he

performed. He shaves his goatee and changes his name.

• Beginning to act more frequently with his trimmed goatee in the Italian style and new name at night, he works by day as a manager in his father’s business. One night his parents come watch him perform in a risque French melodrama; they are embarrassed and his father scolds him the next day, yet seeing his son’s commitment offers him funding for a new theater company.

The Society of Art and Literature

In 1888,professional director and playwright Alexander Fedotov is

hired to work with Kostya and immediately makes his mark upon

the enthusiastic actor.

Hungry to Act

• Fedotov tells kostya to find his character models from living people and not from imitating other actors’ interpretations. He begins to understand the necessity of a relaxed body and using opposite character traits to portray more fully rounded and interesting characters.

Ahhh…Love…

• He falls in love with Masha Perevoshchikova and realizes when he is in love, and in every role he plays, he improves markedly. Lightness and subtlety. Kostya marries ‘Lillina’, Masha’s stage name, in 1889 and the two are inseparable until the end.

• Between 1890-1896 Kostya is regarded as Moscow’s “most interesting and modern stage director” (Gordon). The Society has many hits including Othello with Kostya as director and star, but eventually the company loses inspiration and several shows fail, and Kostya is invited to start a new company with critic and dramturg Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchencko

Moscow Art Theater• 18 hour meeting with Danchencko.• Treating all actors with respect• Dressing rooms• Democratic ensemble• “Today Hamlet, tomorrow an extra…”• Although actor based, lights, music, set,

costumes, direction and mise en scene would serve the play’s thesis.

• Summer training in Pushkino• Opens in 1898, the year of Brecht’s birth…

MAT

• First Season:• Czar Fyodor: The court intrigues of

boyars around a powerless czar, banned by Russian censors for three decades.

• Merchant of Venice• The Seagull by Anton Chekhov

The House of Chekhov

• From 1898 to 1903 Kostya directs Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters Seagull and Maxim Gorky’s Lower Depths (1902), to name just a few.

• The Russian audiences are overwhelmed by these new plays and tickets for a MAT show are sold out every performance.

MAT’s Reputation Grows

• Due to Kostya’s detailed realism, “he would create a great spectacle of the ordinary and banal. The smallest activity and interaction in the text could be filled with dozens of scenic detail and unspoken communications. Everyday life could be made totally exotic and, in so doing, a deeper psychological truth between the characters could be mined.”

• Gordon (20)

MAT Tours

• Three hundred performers and backstage workers, including a Board of Directors, stockholders and loyal patrons make up the universe of MAT.

• As the 1905 Russian Revolution rumbles throughout the land, and the Japanese defeat the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War, the MAT travels to Germany and Central Europe.

Images of Kostya

• Dr. Astrov in Uncle Vanya 1899

Images

• Vershinin from Three Sisters (1901)

Images

• As Rakitin in A Month in the Country (1909)

The Creative State of Mind

• The oldest features of Kostya’s “System,” the building blocks for the actor’s working on him/herself include:

• 1. Relaxation

• 2. Concentration

• 3. Naivete

Relaxation (1906)

• One of Kostya’s first discoveries was that muscular tension limits the actor’s capacity to feel as well as move. Free from tension is essential for stage creativity.

Concentration (1906)• The development of the actor’s ability to

focus or concentrate on a single sensation or object is the first step necessary in producing the CREATIVE STATE OF MIND. By concentrating on an object, the actor learns to make himself interested in it. This in turn takes his/her attention away from the audience, leading him/her directly and unerringly into the on-stage reality.

• Gordon (234)

Naivete

1. The state or quality of being inexperienced or unsophisticated, especially in being artless, credulous, or uncritical.

Free Dictionary

2. To enter into a play’s imaginary circumstances, the actor must relearn and develop his childlikepowers to completely believe in invisible stimuli

Gordon (239)

Naivete

Lower Depths

Akira Kurosawa adapted Maxim Gorky’s masterpiece, first presented by MAT with Stanislavsky in 1902.

His film version made in 1958 titled Donzoko, is set in mid-1800s Japan chronicling the desperate lives of the poor and downtrodden urban masses.

The Director Dictator: 1891-1906

• Where the ideas came from:• 1. Production plan; create myriad details on

movement, acting, voices, body positions on stage( blocking, or mise en scene),etc.

• 2.German Saxe-Meiningen productions. Director Ludwig Chronegk directed with absolute military discipline. Impressed with scenography.

•

The Seagull• First production a disaster (1896).

• Play called for an ‘inner activity’, but actors’ emploi (type) was useless.

• Kostya directs it in 1898.

• His production plan works brilliantly.

• His careful devotion to detail and mise en scene creates something never seen before in Russia.

Two Revolutions

• Theater production: attention to stage detail

• Acting styles: ‘truthful’ portrayal of life of the human spirit OR psychological realism

Autocratic Director

• Kostya directs all of Chekhov’s plays with the iron will, and externally imposing actions upon the actors and exactly guiding them in how to play the scenes.

• Even Chekhov’s wife complains as the creative freedom of the ensemble was shackled to the director’s designs.

Kostya Gets Straightjacketed

• Nemirovich-Danchencko direction of Julius Caesar and Lower Depths, gives Kostya a taste of his own medicine.

18-19th c Acting Styles--Pre Stanislavsky

• Classical Acting--Copying statues and with decorum and balance…

• Romantic Acting--windy, wild exuberance of inner impulses…

Inner Justification

• If the director forces the actors to behave according to his production plan and mise en scene, s/he is in danger of not allowing the actors to investigate their own inner justification.

Exercises

Affective Memory,Communication (1906) and Rhythm (1906)

Although practiced in the classroom exercises, these were

frequently associated with the private and individual process of

“creating a role.”

Affective Memory (1909)

• “Also known as ‘emotion memory’ or ‘sense memory’. The term describes the process of recalling situations from your own experience (including events that you’ve read about, heard about, or seen, as well as directly experienced) that are analogous to the character’s situation…

Communciation (1906)

• Acting is a special form of communication. To go beyond the playwright’s words, an actor must learn to deliver a deeper, living message to the audience…the actor communicates or radiates a subtext of thoughts and feelings to his partners, which then, in turn, affects the audience.”

• Gordon (232)

What time is it?

• Communicate to your partner the following thoughts:

• Am I late?

• Why are you late?

• Why don’t you leave?

• My God this is boring!

• Please tell me the time!

Rhythm (1906)

All human activity follows some rhythmic pattern. Each actor must find the proper rhythm fo his/her character and all his/her stage

activities.

Round the Table Analysis: 1906-1930s

• Detective work with actors and playscript around the table yielded great insights:

• 1.Given circumstances• 2. Pauses• 3. Bits• 4. Objectives• 5. Action

Given Circumstances• All the pieces of information needed by

actors to make the appropriate decisions when interpreting their characters. They include the story of the play, its facts, events, epoch, time and place of action, conditions of life, the actors’ and regisseurs’ interpreta- tion, the mise en scene, the production, the sets, costumes, properities, lighting and sound effects.

• Merlin 158

Pauses

• A pause is full of inner action and emotional intensity. It is the silent, inner continuation of one action and the preparation for a new action.

Two types of Pauses

• 1. The logic pause comes at the end of a line and a stanza, giving literary sense and intelligibility to a text.

• 2. Psychological pause can appear anywhere, as long as it is necessary and breathes life into the text..

• Merlin 160-161

Bits

• Beats? Beads? Borscht?

• A section of text in which the characters are clearly pursuing a particular objective. At the point at which one character’s objective is thwarted or achieved, a new dynamic usually begins and so a new bit starts…

• Merlin 158

Objective

• An objective (task) is the main desire motivating a character’s behavior in a scene or in a particular bit, and is directed towards the on-stage partner.

Action

• Every moment that the actor is on stage and every line of text consists of an action. It is directed towards the other characters in the scene, and is usually expressed as a transitive verb (I persuade you’, I threaten you’, ‘I enchant you’, etc.).

Action!!

• Each action is like a bead: if you string the beads together, you have your character’s through line of action, which then propels and guides you through the entire play.

• Merlin 156

What Stands in Your Way of Achieving your Objectives?

• OBSTACLES!

Hedda Gabler (1891)• Hedda, the independent daughter of

General Gabler, recently deceased, marries George Tesman, a dull but well meaning research scholar. On her honeymoon she realizes that her marriage is a mistake and by staying with George she condemns herself to a living death as trophy wife in a middle class home…

Hedda Gabler

• The challenge of the actor is to make the dullness of the bourgeoisie such an obstacle to a fulfilled life that Hedda kills herself to escape it.

• Kaplan 38

Prana (1906)

• Derived from Indic-culture, a Sanskrit word referring to waves of the universal life force. Kostya and Suler believed that invisible rays of Prana could be produced in the hands, fingers tips, and eyes of the performer. Powerful means of COMMUNICATION between actors and their audience.

• Gordon (240)

Legacy

• Stanislavski's work was as important to the development of socialist realism in the USSR as it was to that of psychological realism in the United States.[3] Many actors routinely identify his 'system' with the American Method, although the latter's exclusively psychological techniques contrast sharply with Stanislavski's multivariant, holistic and psychophysical approach, which explores character and action both from the 'inside out' and the 'outside in'.[4]

Influences on Stanislavsky

• Stanislavski's work draws on a wide range of influences and ideas, including his study of the modernist and avant-garde developments of his time (naturalism, symbolism and Meyerhold's constructivism), Russian formalism, Yoga, Pavlovian behaviourist psychology, James-Lange (via Ribot) psychophysiology and the aesthetics of Pushkin, Gogol, and Tolstoy. He described his approach as 'spiritual Realism'.

“Whoever empathizes with someone, and does so completely,

relinquishes criticism both of the object of their empathy and of

themselves. Instead of awakening, they sleepwalk. Instead of doing

something, they let something be done with them.”

Brecht

Bertolt Brecht

• In 1955, Brecht read Toporkov’s book and changed his antipathy towards the System as the Method of Physical Action corresponded very much with his own approach. Brecht thought the American adaptation of the System, indulged the actor, leading to great emotional excess. To his surprise, Stanislavski in Rehearsal fully dissuaded him form his assumptions.