Stanislavki
Jeffrey Bevan
finding info on him! the main areas are
* A breif chronology of events in his life
* Influences on their theatre career.
* The key features on their theories and practice.
* How he influenced / changed theatre.
* Followers.
vj
for * The key features on their theories and practice.
> * How he influenced / changed theatre.
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vj
An Actor Prepares (1936) and Building a Character (published posthumously in
1948). Stanislavski created a performance technique that had an enormous
effect on contemporary American acting, and he developed a system of actor
training that became widely accepted throughout the world. Acknowledged as
the most influential personality of Russian theater, Stanislavski cofounded
the Moscow Art Theater (MAT), which was regarded as one of the world's
outstanding theater companies.
Stanislavski was born Konstantin Sergeyevich Alekseyev in Moscow. The son of
a wealthy manufacturer, Stanislavski was granted much financial backing for
his amateur theatrical ventures. In 1897 Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko
joined with Stanislavski to create the MAT, Russia's first completely
ensemble, professional theater. Supported by private patronage and general
subscription, the MAT offered a yearly season of high-quality drama. The
MAT's first project, Czar Fyodor (1898), resembled other historically-based
productions of the time. The MAT's second staging signaled a change in
Stanislavski's approach to directing. Nemirovich-Danchenko secured the
rights to The Sea Gull (produced in 1898), a contemporary play about
Russia's intelligentsia written by Anton Chekhov. Stanislavski transformed
the simple stage directions into a carnival of tiny details and moody
effects. The performance was stretched out with long pauses and gloomy
stares. These concentrated activities drew the audience deeply into
Chekhov's invisible universe of frustration and regret. The secret desires
and monotony of daily life were exposed in the truthful emotions and actions
of the performers. Stanislavski called this effect "psychological realism."
From 1907 until his death, Stanislavski devoted himself to developing a
revolutionary system of actor training. His productions were mostly
experiments in this process. He quickly applied what he learned to mainstage
work. Stanislavski discovered that actors who recalled their own feelings
and experiences and substituted them for those of their characters were able
to achieve a special link with the audience. This difficult mental technique
allowed performers to repeat their scenic work without having to rely on
repeated inspiration. The superficial reality or truthfulness of the script
became immaterial to the emotional reality of the actor.
In the period after the Russian Revolution of 1917, Stanislavski explored
the possibilities of a totally improvised theater. He subsequently attempted
to give performers the artistic means of breaking down a text according to
the motivations of the character and beliefs of the playwright. This was
traditionally under the control of the director. At the end of his life,
however, Stanislavski experimented with a formula that once again gave the
director total intellectual control over the rehearsal process. He called
this "the theory of physical action."
Stanislavski Method, system of acting developed by the celebrated Russian
actor and director Konstantin Stanislavski, intended to produce dramatic
characterizations of great realism and psychological truth. Stanislavski,
who lived from 1863 to 1938, developed this system of acting while a
director of the Moscow Art Theater (MAT), Russia's first ensemble theater.
The method requires the actor to perform exercises and improvisations in
order to stimulate sense and affective memories and to achieve relaxation
and concentration. It aims first at arousing in the actor emotions felt in
the past in specific situations and which can be grafted onto the scene and
character presently being portrayed. This requires that the actor achieve
absolute relaxation while on stage and be totally unaware of the existence
of the audience. The actor must concentrate deeply in order to attain
complete identification-intellectual, emotional, and spiritual-with the
character he or she is embodying.
The system is not rigid, but plastic and variable, since each actor must
draw upon his or her own psychological and emotional equipment. As Lee
Strasberg, a celebrated American teacher of the method and director of the
Actors Studio in New York City explained it: "It does not give the actor
rules, but tools." Leading actors who have been known as "method actors"
include Marlon Brando, James Dean, Geraldine Page, and Robert De Niro.
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