Stanislavski For Beginners

ISBN-13: 9781939994356

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: For Beginners

Publication Date: 04-15-2015

Pages: 192

Product Dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

Series: For Beginners (For Beginners)

David Allen is a retired lecturer in drama at the University of Wolverhampton. He has written numerous articles on Chekhov. Jeff Fallow is a graphic designer and illustrator. He lives and works in Fife with his wife and son. His hobbies include taxidermy and creating steampunk sculpture. He has had a number of historical comic books published, and a children's book called Scotland the Grave.

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Stanislavski

For Beginners LLC

ACT I: Youth

Stanislavski revolutionised our ideas about acting.

His discoveries still form the basis of actor training in the Western theatre. But they have often been misinterpreted, and some important aspects of his work remain little known.

The Stanislavski "system" emerged from his own practice and struggles as an actor and a director. He never saw it as a rigid set of rules for an actor to follow; indeed, his ideas and methods were continually changing and developing. He wrote,

My system is the result of lifelong searches ... I have tried o find a method of work for actors to enable them to create the image of a character, breath into it the inner life of a human spirit, and, through natural means, embody it on stage in a beautiful, artistic form. The foundations for this method were my inquiries into the nature of an actor.

Stanislavski's "lifelong searches" into the nature of acting began when he was some seven years old and he was playing Winter in a family entertainment about the Four Seasons. The boy felt acutely self-conscious: he did not know where to look, or what he had to do.

What's my motivation in this scene?

It seemed a completely natural and logical action to me.

He had been given a stick and told to mime putting it into the flame of a candle. "Remember, it is only make-believe," the others told him. Stanislavski decided to do it for real.

Of course, it started a real fire ...

Looking back, Stanislavski said that the experience taught him the importance of having a purpose and a meaning in all your actions on the stage, and how awkward you feel when these are missing.

But it can surely only have been with the benefit of hindsight that Stanislavski could see so much significance in this episode. Either that or he was a very bright seven-year-old ...

Stanislavski was born in Moscow, on January 5, 1863, the son of a rich textile manufacturer. He was baptised Konstantin Sergeyevich Alekseyev; "Stanislavski" was a stage-name he adopted later. The theatre, the circus and the opera fascinated him from an early age. At home, he created his own little circus troupe, calling it "Konstanzo Alekseyev's Circus." Brothers, sisters and friends performed as acrobats, clowns, and even horses. Stanislavski was the director, and grabbed the best parts. His eldest brother, Vladimir, who played the music, did not take it seriously. In the middle of a performance, he would stop everything, and lie on the floor.

I don't want to play any more!

The performance was spoiled; all its "reality" was lost. "And that was the most important thing for us," Stanislavski said.

It was necessary to believe it was all serious and real - or it wasn't interesting.

He gave up his circus, and started a puppet theatre, complete with trap door and stage lights. He recreated dramatic scenes and spectacular effects from plays he had seen, as realistically as the cardboard scenery would allow. In one production the fire was so real, the scenery burned down ... This was becoming a habit! The love of creating realistic and dramatic stage effects never quite left Stanislavski ...

When Stanislavski was 14, his father turned a wing of their country house into a theatre. The first production was an evening of one-act plays. For his part in a piece called A Cup of Tea, Stanislavski simply copied the work of an actor he admired - reproducing his moves and gestures and even his voice. The day of the performance arrived.

At last, I was on the stage, where I felt wonderful. Something exciting and inspiring inside me seemed to be driving me on, and I flew through the whole play ... I thought I was a great artist, putting on a show for the admiration of the crowd.

Unfortunately, the audience didn't agree. He acted at such speed that no one understood a word he said ...

Stanislavski's family formed its own amateur theatre group, the "Alekseyev Circle." Over the next few years, he played many roles, mostly in vaudevilles and skits and light operettas. He kept a journal about his performances and was relentlessly self-critical. It seemed as if the harder he tried, the more the audience criticised him for overacting.

He concluded that excitement was not enough - he must learn the value of restraint and control, what he called "a feeling of true measure."

In 1881, he spent the summer preparing two one-act comedies, trying to find this "feeling of true measure." Visitors, invited to watch rehearsals, fell asleep from boredom.

It's good, but rather - quiet.

So, the actors spoke louder. Then spectators complained they were shouting. One visitor said that speed was important in a light comedy. Stanislavski decided to cut the running time.

The act takes forty minutes ... when it takes twenty minutes, it will be perfect.

At last, it seemed they were playing at the right speed and volume. But then the same visitor told them,

I don't understand anything you've saying, or anything you've doing. You've running about like a group of madmen.

So they tried again ...

The work was painful, but it produced results. The actors "began to speak more distinctly and to act more definitely." But looking back, years later, Stanislavski saw that there was no "inner life" to the performances. It was speed for the sake of speed; technique for the sake of technique.

And when that's the case, there can be no feeling of truth.

When not acting in plays, members of the Alekseyev Circle enjoyed dressing up as beggars, drunkards, or gypsies, and going down to the train station, where they would frighten people. They had to be as convincing as possible.

In real life, it was necessary to perform with more truthfulness than one stage - or we could get into trouble. We must have played our parts well, since we were chased away.

Whilst rehearsing a play called A Practical Man (1883), the company decided to live their roles throughout the day. Whether they were walking in the garden or taking a meal, they had to stay in character, and act according to the play's given circumstances.It was a significant development. Stanislavski began to feel he was really "living" the role, rather than simply showing off.

But he was upset when some young ladies told him, after the performance,

It's such a pity you're so ugly!

The young Stanislavski became driven by a passion to seem dashing and handsome on the stage. He loved to appear in thigh-length boots, with a sword and a cloak.

Vanity, he later said, was leading him away from the path of true art.

It became one of Stanislavski's basic principles: "Love the art in yourself, not yourself in art."

He was tall -over six foot - and notoriously clumsy. When he walked into a room, people hurried to remove anything breakable in case he knocked it over. Stanislavski worked tirelessly, almost obsessively, to improve his voice, his movement and gestures, watching himself in a mirror - a practice he later condemned.

It is dangerous to use a mirror. It teaches the actor to look at himself from the outside, rather than looking inside.

He continued to copy other actors he had seen. This was a common practice; indeed many drama teachers actively encouraged it.

He felt acutely the absence of any system or method to his acting. In 1885, he began to study acting at a drama school, but left after three weeks. The teachers, he complained, were very good at showing students the results they should aim for ...

But the imitation of a favourite actor can only create an external method, and not the inner soul.

But nothing was said about how to do it, what method and means to use to achieve the desired result.

There was no system.

Stanislavski claimed he learnt most by watching great actors. He saw the Italian tragedian Tomaeso Salvini play Othello in 1882. On his first entrance, Salvini did not look impressive: he wore a very obvious wig, and his costume made him look fat. Nevertheless, he soon held the audience transfixed. For Stanislavski, the performance was a model of powerful, clear, and truthful acting. All great actors like Salvini seemed to have something in common. Stanislavski sensed this, but he could not explain it. What was it? What was the secret of great acting?

I racked my brains, but I could not find the answer.

The famous Russian actor, Mikhail Shchepkin (1788 - 1863), had died the year Stanislavski was born, but his influence on the theatre remained. He introduced a new, realistic style of acting. He declared: "Take your models from life" - not from the stage. Stanislavski tried to read everything Shchepkin had written ...

"Always have nature before your eyes. Get under the skin of your character ..."

"You might sometimes act badly, sometimes only satisfactorily (it often depends on your inner mood), but you should always act truthfully."

"It is much easier to play everything mechanically, for nothing is required except reason ... But an actor of feeling - that's something else again."

Perhaps influenced by Shchepkin, Stanislavski moved away from copying other actors, to find his models in real life. In a French operetta, Hervé's Lili, for example, he felt he found the movement, speech, and tempo of a typical Frenchman. This was a "success in a way, for if I did imitate, it was not a ready-made, empty stage model, but something living, something I myself had observed in real life." He was still concentrating on the externals of the role, however - working from the outside in.

It is possible to arrive at the internal by way of the external. This, of course, is not the best, but nevertheless it is one possible way-in to creative work. And it helpedme now and again to live my part.

He was slowly learning to become an "actor of feeling".

The Alekseyev Circle was one of the best amateur groups in Moscow. Months of preparation went in to every production. In 1887, Stanislavski produced The Mikado. The production demonstrated his growing skill as a master of theatrical spectacle. It included some dazzling effects, especially in the crowd scenes.

There was a kaleidoscope of continually changing and moving groups, and fans of every size, colour and description swept rhythmically through the air, in time to the music. It was the Alekseyev Circle's crowning achievement; after that the company began to break up. Stanislavski's sisters, brothers and friends had grown up and were going their separate ways.

In 1888, the group performed for the last time. Stanislavski continued to perform, appearing in amateur productions wherever and whenever he could. The performances were thrown together hastily, and most of the actors seemed more interested in gossiping, flirting and drinking, than in serious work.

Stanislavski was not deterred.

What could I do? There were no other places to act, and I was absolutely dying to act.

However, he was concerned about his position in society so he decided to take a stage name. By day, he was Konstantin Alekseyev, working for the family firm. At night, he became "Stanislavski," appearing in amateur theatres throughout Moscow. He kept his double life a secret, even from his parents. But one night they surprised him by turning up at a performance of a risque French farce. The next day his father scolded him.

If you are determined to act in your free time, start a proper drama circle wit a decent repertoire, but don't appear in filth like that with God know who.

In 1888, The Society of Art and Literature was born.

Act II: The Society of Art and Literature

Joining Stanislavski to create the new Society were ... the opera singer, Fyodor Komissarzhevski

... and the professional theatre director, Aleksandr Fedotov

They planned to form a club to bring together artists of all kinds. Stanislavski invested his own money to obtain the premises, and restore them to a fit state.

The first play performed (on 8 December 1888) was Pushkin's The Miserly Knight - with Stanislavski as the knight. In the play, a medieval baron descends at night into the cellar of a tower where his riches are hidden. He gloats over his money and power but then remembers that death will take everything away. He howls with despair. Fedotov saw the character as a pitiful old man, dressed like a beggar.

But Stanislavski had different ideas ...

When he told the director and designer how he wanted to play the part, they just laughed.

I was already beginning to see myself as a copy of a well-known Italina baritone, with this well-shped legs in black tights ... and most improtantly, a sword!

They began performing a necessary operation - an amputation, a disembowelling, a leeching of all the theratrical rottenness that was still buried within me.

It was a painful operation for Stanislavski.

Something in me gave way. All that was old was useless, and there was nothing new.

In rehearsal, Fedotov showed him how to play the role.

But there's a big difference between seeing something done, and doing it yourself.

Live it through, feel it stronger, deeper, live it!" they say. Or, "You are not living it through! You must live it through! Try to feel it!" And you try, and exert all your strength, and tie yourself in knots, and squeeze your voice until it is hoarse, you eyes pop out of their sockets, and the blood rushes to your head till you feel giddy.

At one point, in an attempt to find the true feeling for the role, Stanislavski went to a medieval castle and asked to be locked in a cellar overnight.

It was terrifying and lonely, dark, there were rats, it was damp - and all these inconveniences stopped me concentrating on the role. And when in the darkness I began to repeat the text that had become so hateful to me - it all just seemed to stupid.

He hammered on the door. But as he had told the caretaker not to let him out on any account, the door stayed locked. The only result was a bad cold. Something else, it seems, was necessary ...

But what? It seemed one had to raise oneself to a higher plane. But how to get there - no one would tell me.

On the same bill with The Miserly Knight, he played Sotanville in Molière's Georges Dandin.

There were fixed ways of playing Molière. On holiday in Paris, Stanislavski had seen the Comédie-Française, and loved all the theatrical hokum - the plumed hats, the courtly bows and flourishes - that constituted the Molière "style." In rehearsal, he began copying everything he'd seen, and felt "completely at home." Once again, Fedotov just laughed. And again, Stanislavski realised that he had to abandon the "old," the conventional tricks of the stage, and look for something new. He could not simply copy somebody else's performance - however good. He had to create something himself. Stanislavski knew he had to live the role, not simply play at living it.

The harderst thing of all is to stand on the boards, and really believe and take seriously everything that happens on the stage. But without belief and seriousness, it is impossible to play comedy or satire ... especially Moliere.

He found the "life" in the part by accident. Something in his make-up gave a living and comic expression to his face. It was a moment of great joy. He began to live the role, rather than copy somebody else.

Something, somewhere, turned within me. All that was dim became clear; all that was groundless suddenly had ground under it; and everything I didn't believe in - now I could believe it.

It's strange: when you feel right - the impression on the audience is worse: when you control youself and don't surrender completely to the role - it is better.

I had mistaken simple stage emotion, which is a kind of hysteria, for real inspiration.

In his notes after the performance, Stanislavski observed a curious paradox about acting.

In the past, when he felt "inspired" on stage, he had lost all self-control. Now he realised it is not possible to act like that.

For the next play, A Bitter Fate by Pisemski, Stanislavski set himself a new problem: to achieve greater self-control and restraint. He tried to eliminate every unnecessary gesture and movement. He taught himself to stand motionless like a wooden Indian. However, he achieved this only at cost of great physical strain, so he tried to focus all the strain in one area - digging his fingernails into the palms of his hand, for example, until he drew blood ...

This seemed to free the rest of his body, even if only temporarily. At times, he felt he achieved something of the relaxation on stage he so admired in actors like Salvini. The audience was amazed at the calm and truthfulness of his acting.

He tried not only to cut out movement, but also to hide his feelings. He found that the more he tried to appear calm, the more the emotion boiled inside him. Then, in the play's climactic mob scene, he gave himself up, against his will, to the atmosphere of excitement. He could no longer control his gestures and feared he would be reprimanded for loss of control. Instead, he was praised for showing the emotion simmering inside him, until it could be held in no longer. He had shown a development from piano to forte.

It was an important technical lesson, demonstrating the need for a sense of progression - building by degrees to the climax of a role.

Working with Fedotov had changed Stanislavski's acting forever. He was now determined to wage war against the clichés and routine "lies" of the stage. He declared:

I began to hate the "theatre" in the theatre ...

The professional Russian theatre at the time was in a poor state. It was dominated by the star system; there was little sense of an "ensemble." Plays were staged with only a few rehearsals. Directors didn't really exist; a stage manager gave the moves. Design was virtually non-existent. Furniture and settings, costumes and props, were simply taken from stock - with no concern for period style or historical accuracy.

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Excerpted from Stanislavski by David Allen, Jeff Fallow. Copyright © 1999 David Allen. Excerpted by permission of For Beginners LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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