What is the Stanislawski method of acting?

Developed in the early 20th century at the Moscow Art Theater by Constantin Stanislavski, the Stanislavski method of acting is a set of techniques meant to create realistic portrayals of characters. The major goal of the Stanislavski method is to have a perfect understanding of the motivations, obstacles, and objectives of a character in each moment. Actors often use this technique for realistic plays, where they try to present an accurate portrayal of normal life. It is not the same as "Method Acting," which goes even further into becoming a character. Three Core Elements To begin employing the Stanislavski method, actors generally go over the script very carefully, looking for key identifying factors. A performer discovers what a character wants, what prevents the character from getting it, and what means the character will use to achieve this goal. These concepts are frequently referred to as "objective," "obstacle," and "method." Actors must also determine the given circumstances of every scene, such as where the scene takes place, what is in the room, and what is going on in the outside world.

***

The Method of Physical Action Stanislavski developed the "method of physical actions," to solve the dilemma of spontaneous emotion in a created environment. In this technique, the actor would perform a physical motion or a series of physical activities to create the desired emotional

response for the character. Emotions were considered to be formed from the subconscious, so this technique allowed the actors to consciously target and control their subconscious emotions through movement.[1] For instance, if an actor needed to weep, he could sigh and hold his head in his hands, a physical action that many who are crying instinctively do. On stage, if an actor experiences only internal feelings or only physical actions, then the performance is dead. The reasoning behind this goes back to the union of the psychological and physical. The two go hand-in-hand. If an actor attempts to portray a character by employing one aspect of the union without the other, then they are performing incompletely. Internal experiences and their physical expression are unbreakably united. Whether it is through a facial expression or the tapping of a foot, everything a human experiences psychologically is displayed through physical means. This is termed a psycho-physical union. The correct physical action does not come automatically for every psychological response nor do they stimulate identical responses for every individual. Many times, actors need to experiment until they determine what best works for them and for the character they are trying to portray. The best way to experiment with this is through improvisation. The best improvisers are those who can intuitively act and behave onstage as though they are in a real situation. Through his work, Stanislavski reversed the human reaction system in which an emotion allocates an action. Method actors use actions to control their emotions. This allows actors to "live" in silences or pauses in the dialogue of the script and not only in the words. They are able to remain in character. Reacting is essentially emoting and includes allowing the body to outwardly express what the mind is inwardly experiencing.

Sections of the System Stanislavski believed that if an actor completes the system, the desired emotion should be created and experienced. One earlier technique used for the system involved a "round the table analysis," a process in which the actors and director literally sit around a table and put forward their thoughts on the script and the characters until a clear understanding is formed. This technique involved breaking the script into sections. For the system to work, the structure of the script should be analyzed and sectioned based on the different characters of the play. Later, this technique was changed to instead immediately begin rehearsals after the main idea of the play had been discussed, but the sections are still evolved even through this practice. > Magic if Stanislavski believed that the truth that occurred onstage was different than that of real life, but that a 'scenic truth' could be achieved onstage. A performance should be believable for an audience so that they may appear to the audience as truth. One of Stanislavski's methods for achieving the truthful pursuit of a character's emotion was his 'magic if.' Actors were required to ask many questions of their characters and themselves. Through the 'magic if,' actors were able to satisfy themselves and their characters' positions of the plot. One of the first questions they had to ask was, "What if I were in the same situation as my character?" Another variation on this is "What would I do if I found myself in this (the character's) circumstance?"[6] The "magic if" allowed actors to transcend the confinements of realism by asking them what would occur "if" circumstances were different, or "if" the circumstances were to happen to them. By answering these questions as the character, the theatrical actions of the actors would be believable and therefore 'truthful.'[1]

> Motivation Through the use of system, an actor is required to analyze his or her character's motivations. Stanislavski believed that an actor was influenced by either their mind or their emotion to stimulate their actions and the actor's motivation was their subconscious will to perform those actions. Therefore, motivation has been described as looking to the past actions of the character to determine why they completed physical actions in a script.[1] > Objectives The objective is a goal that a character wants to achieve. This is often worded in a question form as "What do I want?" An objective should be action-oriented, as opposed to an internal goal, in order to encourage character interaction onstage. The objective does not necessarily have to be achieved by the character and can be as simple as the script permits. For example, an objective for a particular character may simply be 'to pour a mug of tea.' For each scene, the actor must discover the character's objective. Every objective is different for each actor involved because they are based on the characters of the script. Units and bits are the division of the script into smaller objectives. For example, the entire section of a scene during which the character searches for a tea bag would be a unit. When he decides to call on a neighbour is called a bit. The purpose of units is that they are used as reference points for the actor because every individual unit should contain a specific motive for the character. A super-objective, in contrast, focuses on the entire play as a whole. A super-objective can direct and connect an actor's choice of objectives from scene to scene. The super-objective serves as the final goal that a character wishes to achieve within the script.

Obstacles are the aspects that will stop or hinder a character from achieving his or her individual objective. For example, while the character searches for tea bags to make the mug of tea, they find that there are no teabags in the tin. Tools or methods are the different techniques that a character uses to surpass obstacles and achieve their objective. For example, the character searches around the kitchen, they walk to the shops, or they call on the neighbour to be able to make the tea to pour. Actions are referred to as how the character is going to say or do something. More specifically, it as an objective for each line. Actions are how a character is going to achieve their objective. For example, a line in the script may read, '(whilst on the phone) "Hello, Sally. It's Bill from next door. You wouldn't happen to have any spare tea bags, would you? I know how well-organized you are." The objective for this line may be 'to flatter' in order to collect the tea bags. Actions will be different for every single actor based on their character choices.

The System vs the Method Often Stanislavski's system is associated with Method acting. The latter is an outgrowth of the American theatre scene, particularly in New York, in the 1930s and 40s. Method acting appeared when actors and directors like Elia Kazan, Robert Lewis, Lee Strasberg, first in the Group Theatre and later in the Actors Studio, applied the Emotional Memory technique from Stanislavski's system. This technique made its way in American theatres because it was taught to Strasberg at the American Laboratory Theatre in the 1920s to the particular psychological needs of the American actor of their time. It has been suggested that Strasberg had access at that time only to An Actor Prepares and that if he had perhaps waited until he had also read Building A Character, which was published much

later, then he might not have developed such an extreme 'method'. Other American actors, however, did not follow Strasberg's Method, like Stella Adler who visited and was taught by Stanislavski himself. The 'system' and the Method are often confused because the Method is similar to and uses Stanislavski's 1911 concept of Emotional Memory in acting. The Method teaches to draw emotions for a character from past experiences and remembrances of the actor. Strasberg renamed Stanislavski's earlier technique to 'Affective Memory' and continued to teach it as a proper acting method long after Stanislavki discredited it as a useful acting method. Possibly the main difference between the Method and the system was that ideas behind the Method did not change as flaws were discovered. To illustrate the difference between the two methods, Stanislavski has the actor ask himself, "What would I do if I were in this circumstance" while Strasberg adopted a modification, "What would motivate me, the actor, to behave in the way the character does?" Strasberg asks the actor to replace the play's circumstances with his/her own, called a "substitution."[6] Stanislavski had, throughout his life, no single focused project. Instead, he thought of his system as a table of contents from which the working actor could constantly draw, depending on what problems might occur from play to play.[1] Stanislavski'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 preModernist plays, for while the system and Method share many characteristics, they differ immensely.