Stanislavski
Presentation Notes
Born 5th
January 1863 as Konstatin Sergeyevich Alekseyev in Moscow – father was a
wealthy merchant, mother had an appeal for acting on stage
First experience of
“What is good acting?” was when he was told to mime putting a stick into a
fire. He actually put it into the fire and started a new one
At age 14 his father
turned a wing of their country home into a theatre (This was his first time on
the stage and he thought that he was great but the audience didn’t agree too
much with him. They thought he went too fast)
His family started
their own theatre group “The Alekseyev Circle”
He kept a journal of
all his performances and was very self-critical
He discovered the
importance of restraint and control “a feeling of true measure”
The audience always
had criticisms about the speed, clarity and volume of their performances and
after spending so much time trying to make these various things perfect,
Stanislavski felt as though there was no life in the performance.
In their free time,
The Alekseyev circle dressed up as beggars, drunkards or gyspies and acted as
them in the train stations. They were told to leave numerous times so they
must’ve been believable.
A Practical Man 1883 – The company
decided to live their roles throughout the day (during meals, walking around,
etc.)
His performance was
perfect but a few women were saying how it was a shame he wasn’t good looking,
so he became obsessed with his looks.
After his obsession
he discovered that this vanity was leading him away from true art: “Love the
art in yourself, not yourself in art.”
He started to study
acting at a drama school in 1885 but left after 3 weeks because he thought that
students were shown what they should aim for but not taught how to get there
After the break up of
the Alekseyev Circle he started to participate in a few amateur acting
companies. This made him concerned about his position in society (as an amateur
actor by night) so he made the stage name “Stanislavski” and kept his acting
life a secret
His parents turned up
to one of his performances and afterwards his dad told him to “start a good
company instead of taking part in filth”
He started The
Society of Art and Literature (1888)
He had his own ideas
on how to play different characters and how they would look but he got laughed
at for his ideas
The director showed
him how to play his role but he found it very different seeing something done
and doing it yourself
For one of his roles,
he spent a night locked in the cellar of a medieval castle to try and find the
true feeling of his role. He ended up just getting a bad cold
In 1897 he started
his first professional theatre company with Nemirovich-Danchenko: The Moscow
Art Theatre (in which they wanted to rebel against the old manner of acting)
He died on August 7th,
1938 in Russia
Before the Alekseyev
circle started, as a child, Stanislavski started own circus troupe “Konstanzo
Alekseyev Circus” with his family and friends. He was the director and liked to
take the best parts for himself. His oldest brother didn’t take it seriously.
For Stanislavsky
(even at a young age) reality was the most important thing
He gave up his circus
and started a puppet show where he loved creating realistic dramatic stage
effects
He was very clumsy
and used a mirror to practice his actions. A practice which he later condemned
because it encouraged him to look at his outer self than inner self. He also
tried imitating other actors but he realised this only created an external
method
Stanislavski saw
Tomasso Salvini playing Othello in 1882 which he thought was the model of
truthful acting. He asked himself: What was the secret of great acting?
Mikhail Shchepkin
(1788-1863 the year Stanislavski was born) said– “Take your models from life.”
This quote really stuck a chord with Stanislavski and because of it he
researched and read everything on Shchepkin and based a lot of his believes off
of his.
Ernesto Rossi told
him that all he needed in his plays was art and that had to come from himself.
Not a teacher.
Stanislavski realized
that he had to abandon the old and conventional tricks of the stage (something
he calls “stencils”). He knew he had to live the role instead of just playing
it and showing its emotions. He thought the hardest thing of all is standing on
the stage and really take seriously everything that happens around him. He said
“When you play a whiner, look for where he is happy. When you play a good man,
look for when he is evil, and in an evil man where he is good.”
He also found that
when he controlled himself and didn’t surrender completely to the role it was
better. The more he tried to stay calm, the more the emotion was able to build
up inside him. This allowed him to release all his emotion in the climatic
scenes and is an Important technique for a sense of progression; by building by
degrees to the climax of a role
He loved dramatic
effects and was happy when he succeeded in finding a trick which deceived the
audience.
In 1898 he stages
Hauptemann’s The Sunken Bell and the set was mad up of hill, hollows and trees.
He wanted the actors to not be able to walk on the set but to climb, sit, leap,
balance, and crawl all over the stage.
Stanislavsky moved
away from copying actors but to find his models in real life. He slowly learned
to become an “actor of feeling”
In 1900 he played
Doctor Stockman in Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People who understood
immediately and he began to live him. He became
Doctor Stockman, his transformation was complete. Other people who came in
contact with him were convinced they were in the presence of another person.
There had been a student demonstration the day of his performance and some of
the students had come to see the show afterwards. At the end of the play,
Doctor Stockman says “When you fight for freedom and truth, you shouldn’t put
on a new pair of trousers.” And the audience went wild turning the play into
another demonstration turning the production into a major political event. All
Stanislavski was trying to do was creating the character and living the role.
Opinion: I think
that, out of the few practitioners that I’ve studied so far, Stanislavski’s
method makes the most sense and is the most straight forward. His history,
particularly childhood, was so interesting for me to research about because of
his constantly being exposed to theatre through his family. I mean who’s father
builds a family theatre?! The idea of finding the logical actions of a
character and the life within them is something that I’ve witnessed happen and
not happen on stage, so I know what kind of difference these things can make in
a performance.
