Stanislavski’s theories
This section presents Stanislavski’s theories of developing a role and a range of exercises used by actors working with the Stanislavski system.
Introduction
The ways in which actors play given roles has continued to evolve since the birth of performance. Different cultures and societies, writers, directors, and performers have experimented with ways to present a character to an audience. The key ideas of Konstantin Stanislavski are outlined below. (The next section outlines the contrasting theories of Bertolt Brecht.)
Konstantin Stanislavski
Konstantin Stanislavski was born in Moscow in January 1863. From an early age, he acted in contemporary plays in the melodramatic, stylised manner popular in Russia and Europe at the time. He became dissatisfied with the exaggerated gestures and speech of this declamatory style and wanted to perform in a way that was realistic and truthful.
Development of realistic drama
Over the same period (the second half of the nineteenth century), a form of drama was developing that focused on the real lives and concerns of ordinary people. This form of drama, known as realism, might show family domestic life, such as the relationship between husbands and wives, and the lives of working people. In realistic plays, dialogue sounded like everyday speech rather than emotional declamation and authentic (not stylised) props, costumes, and sets were used.
Actors in realistic drama play to each other rather than to the audience. The audience watch the events unfold in front of them as if one wall of a house has been removed to let them look in. (This is where the idea of the “fourth wall” originated.) The audience look into the performance space through the invisible wall that separates them from the actors. The actors in that space perform without acknowledging the audience, as if they are unaware of them.
Playwrights who developed realistic dramas at that time include Henrik Ibsen (Norway), George Bernard Shaw (England), and Anton Chekhov (Russia).
The Moscow Art Theatre
In 1898, Stanislavski founded the Moscow Art Theatre. His intention was to produce realistic plays, which showed a truthful picture of human lives. His first production was Chekhov’s The Seagull. He went on to produce many of Chekhov’s plays (among others) in the new form of realism.
The method
Drawing on his experience as an actor and his work as a director, Stanislavski developed a system (sometimes called “the method”) for training actors. Although other actors and directors had worked towards realism in their performances, no one before him had developed a training system. Stanislavski wrote three books describing his method (the last of which was published after his death in 1938): An Actor Prepares, Building a Character, and Creating a Role.
In Stanislavski’s opinion, actors need to believe in the character they are playing and the situations the characters find themselves in. His system aimed to teach actors the physical and vocal skills, discipline, and creativity necessary to feel and show the range of emotions required to play a role convincingly. In the Stanislavski system, the actor aims to:
- make the character’s actions seem natural and convincing
- show the character’s inner motivations, that is, his or her goals and objectives
- create the character convincingly, not only at moments of great tension or heightened action but also when the character is not the focus of the scene
- work co-operatively with the other actors in a scene.
Exercises
Actors working with the Stanislavski system engage in a range of exercises.
Relaxation
These exercises help the performer to release unwanted tension and to use their bodies and voice freely and effortlessly.
Concentration
These exercises develop the performers’ ability to focus on an object, person, or event on stage. Stanislavski called specific points of focus “circles of attention”. Actors concentrate on a particular object or place, giving it their full attention and blocking out everything else.
Observation
Performers are asked to watch people of all backgrounds and ages closely and to note how they perform everyday actions, in order to incorporate such details into their performances.
Voice
Voice exercises in diction, projection, and expression develop the range and flexibility of the actor’s voice, allowing them to express a greater range of emotion.
Physical exercises
Physical exercises, such as mime and dance, keep actors supple and strong.
Emotional memory
Stanislavski believed that if an actor could recall a memory similar to the situation that the character was to experience, the actor would be able to play truthfully what the character was going through. While Stanislavski believed an actor should feel the character’s emotion, he also made it clear that the actor should be in control of that emotion and be able to turn it off at the end of a performance.
Ensemble playing
Actors need to co-operate fully with other actors and not let ego or ambition dominate the work of the whole group. To achieve ensemble playing, Stanislavski had actors alternately play key and minor roles. He worked to have actors make eye and physical contact with each other and develop a sense of familiarity. One of Stanislavski’s famous sayings is that there are no small parts, only small actors.
Analysis
Stanislavski asked actors to analyse roles and text from the following perspectives:
The character’s objective
Stanislavski asked actors to identify what their character is trying to achieve in the course of the play. By discovering this objective, the actor can understand why the character behaves as he or she does.
Division of the script or scene into beats
A beat is a unit of action in the script, during which each character has a single objective or focus point. Different characters may have different objectives within each beat.
The “What?”, “Why?”, and “How?” of actions to be performed
These questions establish a purpose for all onstage actions. The actor must decide what will be done, why it is being done, and how the action should be performed. A character’s through line is a traceable sequence of actions throughout the play, undertaken to achieve that character’s objective. Recognising the character’s through line develops continuity of purpose and action in a performance.
The magic “if”
Stanislavski asked actors to imagine the character’s situation by asking “What if …?” and to visualise how they might react or feel if they were in the character’s position.
Further resources
A Stanislavski-type exercise is included in the section suggested activities for poster 2. For a useful resource on Stanislavski, see the Internal Assessment Resource Drama 3/5_A3: From Russia with Love (Word 107KB).