Certificate

December

Monthly Progressive Method Acting Education:
One month; 9-10 hr/week; 4 days/week
Tuition: CAD $990.00 plus $250 Damage Deposit (refundable)

The purpose of the Monthly Progressive Method Acting Classes is to provide each student with a fully rounded acting training. Assen Gadjalov, the artistic director of Methodica, designed the classes by reviewing all of the exiting courses offered by the institution and creating a balanced Method Acting education that captures all of the essential elements of the courses on offer.

The Monthly Progressive Method Acting classes for Film and Theatre introduce a new Method acting topic every month and include exercises, theoretical discussions and a final play performance. The various topics are not organized within a program over a lengthy period of time, but are unique and original each month. A Certificate will be granted after successful completion of the class at the end of the month.

Methodica's Monthly Progressive Method acting classes are structured to meet the institution's overall purpose and are structured in a way to best equip students with information and techniques. Whether students will continue with their performing arts studies or not, they will be viewed as actors who are capable and successful in their chosen paths. The goal of Methodica is to produce highly trained and respected individuals within the field of Method acting. Students will become not only capable actors, but be hopefully successful in improving the field of performing arts by bringing to the industry the Method approach and style.

The Monthly Progressive Method acting classes are meant to teach students how to best utilize their movement, voice and text interpretation skills allowing them to fully integrate into the performing arts. Methodica's most important and unique method of instruction and evaluation is Self Analysis on the students' part. All forms of accomplishment of the student come from self analysis and understanding of the material provided to them. The whole training process consists of intensive work with texts and is primarily evaluated on practical work based on performing in a showcase.
Showcases are hosted and presented by students to key audiences and primarily consist of short plays and monologues. In this aspect most of what the student learns is assessed in a practical manner. As the classes are in performing arts, the best way to measure student success is to ensure that students are comfortable with audiences who essentially become a part of the student evaluation process.

Applicants to Methodica Acting Studio must be 19 years of age or older or hold a high school diploma or equivalent. Applicants should have a sound financial plan for the time they will be studying at Methodica.

Applicant Specific Procedures/ requirements
Canadian/ Landed Immigrant
US citizen
International Student
Click on links above for specific information

About Methodica Acting Studio: Methodica is an Method Acting School in Vancouver with focus in Film Method Acting, TV Method Acting and Theatre Method Acting. Offers olso Method Acting Classes in Vancouver, Method Acting Classes for directors,Design classes. Methodica Acting Studio also offers method acting classes for theatre and TV and is dedicated to the achievement of highest standards in training of actors and directors for film and theatre drawing upon the traditions established by Stanislavsky. The focus of METHODICA is on the quality of work rather than on the volume of enrollment. Each student receives individual attention and support and is encouraged to strive and discover his/her relationship with acting or directing as a form of self-expression. Method Acting School is on the quality of work than on the volume of enrollment.
Each student receives individual attention and support and is encouraged to strive and discover his/her relationship with acting or directing as a form of self-expression. Attention in the acting courses will be paid to the effective movement within a performance space and working with others. The final Method Acting class of every 3-month period will be in the form of public performance.
Acting School Methodica is an academy of performance art and design founded in Vancouver, Canada in 1998 by Assen Gadjalov. Methodica is a Greek expression that literally means "the methods or organizing principles underlying a particular art, science, or other area of study; in philosophy – the study of organizing principles and underlying rules, the study of methods of research." Acting School Methodica has a social program, the Methodica’s ideals are that the artist must recognize his social responsibility to the community and likewise, the community must accept and support the artist. In the artistic theory, Acting School Methodica strived to produce a new approach to film, theatre acting, directing and design that incorporated artistic design, craftsmanship, and modern performance theories. Our aim is the use the principles of Classical Stanislavski theatre acting approach in its pure form without ornamentation.
Acting School Methodica was founded by combining the Academical theoretical studies and the production based Arts and Crafts professionalism, thus students are trained as both artist and craftsman. The School became one of the best-known progressive institutions for performance art and design instruction in Vancouver, Canada. The major goals of the acting school are to encourage film craftsmen and performance artists to collaborate, to elevate the status of film and stage arts and crafts, and to maintain relations with industry and craft leaders in order to eventually become independent  unique artists.
Proponents of Acting School Methodica wished to articulate contemporary culture through the creation of new forms that are designed for everyday living art. Methodica artists characteristically have sharp eye for observation, smooth and friendly behavior, and deeply rooted professionalism. The performances preferred are psychologically realistic and sociologically provocative.

Method Acting? What is that?
Method Acting acting technique was introduced in America in the 1920s by the Russian theatre director, theorist and actor Konstantin Stanislavski. Stanislavsky's System focused on the development of realistic characters as well as stage worlds. In order to create an ensemble of actors all working together as an artistic unit, he began organizing a series of studios in which young actors were trained in his system. At the First Studio of MAT, actors were instructed to use their own memories in order to naturally portray a character's emotions. In order to do this, actors were required to think of a moment in their own lives when they had felt the desired emotion and then replay the emotion in role in order to achieve a more genuine performance. Stanislavski soon observed that some of the actors using or abusing Emotional Memory were given to "hysteria." Although he never disavowed Emotional Memory as an essential tool in the actor's kit, he began searching for less draining ways of accessing emotion, eventually emphasizing the actor's use of imagination and belief in the given circumstances of the text rather than her/his private and often painful memories. The Stanislavsky Method acting System, is a systematic approach to training actors to work from the inside outward. This system is at some point different from but not a rejection of what he states earlier in Affective Memory. At the beginning, Stanislavsky proposed that actors study and experience subjective emotions and feelings and manifest them to audiences by physical and vocal means - Theatre language. While his System focused on creating truthful emotions and then embodying these, he later worked on The Method of Physical Actions. This was developed at the Opera Dramatic Studio from the early 30s, and worked like Emotion Memory in reverse. The focus was on the physical actions inspiring truthful emotion, and involved improvisation and discussion. The focus remained on reaching the subconscious through the conscious. Stanislavsky survived the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Russian Revolution of 1917, with Lenin apparently intervening to protect him. In 1918, Stanislavsky established the First Studio as a school for young actors and wrote several works: those available in English translation include: An Actor Prepares, Building a Character, Creating a Role, and the autobiography My Life in Art. Stanislavsky always thought of his system as if it were a table of contents for a large book which dealt with all aspects of acting. His final work, now known as The Method of Physical Actions (see Stanislavsky System) , is in no way a rejection of his early interest in sense and affective memory. At no time did he ever reject the notion of emotion memory; he simply found other means of accessing emotion, among them the absolute belief in given circumstances; the exercise of the imagination; and the use of physical action. Konstantin Stanislavsky had a dictum that he probably believed throughout his life: that one should always approach a role as directly as possible, and then see if it "lives." If the actor and the role connect, and the role comes to life, why apply a technique, a system? Such a success may only happen once or twice in one's life -- or never -- so the remainder of one's performances require technique. However, each individual actor must decide whether or not an approach 'works' for him. While Stanislavsky was not the first to codify some system of acting (see, for instance, any number of Victorian gesture-books for actors) he was the first to take questions and problems of psychological significance directly. In fact, Stanislavsky started attempting to create a system before psychology was widely understood and formalized as a discipline. When it finally was formalized, psychology influenced Stanislavsky's system tremendously. Though his approach changed greatly throughout his life, he never lost sight of his ideals: truth in performance and love of art. Stanislavsky's Method acting System is a complex method for producing realistic characters; most of today's actors on stage, television, and film owe much to it. Using "The System", an actor is required to deeply analyze his or her character's motivations. The actor must discover the character's objective in each scene, and a "Super Objective" for the entire play, which can direct and connect an actor's choice of objectives from scene to scene. One of Stanislavsky's methods for achieving the truthful pursuit of a character's objective was his "magic if". Actors were required to ask many questions of their characters and themselves. One of the first questions they had to ask was, "What if I were in the same situation as my character?" The "magic if" allowed actors to transcend the confines of realism by asking them what would occur "if" circumstances were different, or "if" the circumstances were to happen to them.Stanislavsky and his System are frequently misunderstood. For example, often the System is confused with the Method acting. The latter is an outgrowth of the American (mainly New York) theatre scene in the 1930s and 40s, when actors and directors like Elia Kazan, Robert Lewis, Lee Strasberg, etc., first in the Group Theatre and later in the Actors Studio, discovered Stanislavsky's system. Stanislavsky'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 acting was eventually applied to older works like those of William Shakespeare. Indeed, controversy remains contesting the appropriateness of a Method acting approach to pre-Modernist plays; for while the System and Method acting share many characteristics, they differ immensely. Method acting places a heavy emphasis on Emotion Memory, that is, recalling experienced emotions for use in performance (which Stanislavsky found to be ineffective in his later years).
The Stanislavsky Method acting System is often confused with the Method Acting because of its close ties to the New York theaters, and again because of American figures like Stella Adler -- who visited, and was taught by Stanislavsky himself. Also, perceptions of the Stanislavsky Method acting System are frequently confused, because Stanislavsky had, throughout his life, no single focused project. Training was highly physical and demanding, and it is Stanislavsky's never-failing respect for physical action that brought his system to a point of apotheosis, a way of reaching emotional truth and psychological realism while maintaining a grip on control of the physical. Further: freeing oneself up for performing anything, be it Modern theater or Greek. Late in his life Stanislavsky put much faith in an approach he called the Method of Physical Action. (The use of the word Method acting, again, causes confusion with Strasberg's Method acting.) This approach, Stanislavsky surmised, finally dealt completely with the instrument of the actor and with a universality of performance. The Method of Physical Action (hereafter, MPA) is complex. It requires an understanding of the significance of physical action, and in the performance of physical action. The idea behind the MPA is fairly simple, but its implications are profound. It is based on the idea that the only thing an actor will ever have control of in his life is his body. There is never a direct line to emotions in performance, only to the body. Emotions may be remembered and brought up via emotional memory, but Stanislavsky generally considered this a rehearsal tool or technique of research, at best. There is, in the end, only the body. Therefore the actor and the director must work hard to use the body, that is, the body's performance of physical action, as the primary material of creation. That is the subject of the rehearsal process: how to come to physical actions that affect the actor and bring the scene to life at the same time. So in one pass both emotional and aesthetic considerations of a scene are dealt with. The actor can work with an enormity (indeed, infinity) of options; he senses the entire landscape of possibilities of performance. The MPA is so simple that it is almost a default technique, to a kind of techniqueless technique (figure out what to do: where is the technique in that?). Two necessities are required: first, that thorough physical training is always required, and second, an understanding of what a truly good physical action comprises. Both can take years of experience and reflection until an actor is fully equipped to handle a role. The art of performance cannot be learned from literature, only from action: from performance, and observation, Stanislavsky thought late in life. This late stage unfortunately receives little notice or appreciation in most summations of Stanislavsky's life and technique. Most authors are satisfied to identify Stanislavsky with his Method acting System and with the contributions that such an approach has made towards the film and theatre in the 20th Century. This is due in part to the limited literature on the subject; and many of the authors (author-actors and author-directors) that have come in Russia since Stanislavsky remain untranslated, despite the value of their work. Some books are available, such as Vasiliy Toporkov's "Stanislavsky in Rehearsal," and Jean Benedetti's "Stanislavsky and the Actor. "There is a story that an actress who had once been in a play directed by Stanislavsky came to him years later and informed him that she had taken very copious notes of him and of his technical approach during rehearsals; she wanted to know what to do with these notes. He replied, 'Burn them all.' The anecdote, whether true or not, is illustrative of Stanislavsky and his approach.
The Stanislavsky of later life is not the same as the Stanislavsky who championed emotion and sense memory. At times, Stanislavsky's methodological rigor bordered on opacity: see, for instance, the chart of the 'Stanislavsky Method acting System' included as a fold-out in editions of Robert Lewis' book Method or Madness, a series of lectures. The chart, made by Adler, is very complicated, listing all aspects of the actor and of performance that Stanislavsky thought pertinent at the time. His dedication to completeness and accuracy often contended with his goal to create a workable system that actors would actually use. See also his description of the correct way of walking on stage, in his book translated into English as "Building a Character." His interest in deeply analyzing the qualities of a given phenomenon were meant to give the actor an awareness of the complexities of human behavior, and how easily falsehoods -- aspects of behaviour that an audience can detect without knowing it -- are assumed by an untrained or inexperienced actor in performance. All actions that a person must enact, walk, talk, even sit on stage, must be broken down and re-learned, Stanislavsky once insisted. Such rigors of re-learning were probably constant throughout his life. Stanislavsky, a man of institution, his own Moscow Art Theatre and its associated studios, was a great believer in formal (and rigorous) training for the actor.

Who was Konstantin Stanislavsky?
About Stanislavsky system:

The Stanislavski System is not an abstraction; it is an activity and a practice. It is a working method for working actors. It is a system because it is coherent, logical - systematic. Anyone who imagines that the System will yield results through a purely intellectual, detached comprehension of its basic ideas will be disappointed. The System is not a theoretical construct, it is a process. The texts of Stanislavski which we possess are a guide to that process and an invitation to experience it directly, personally and creatively.
The texts, however, are more complicated than they at first seem. Stanislavski only saw two books through the press, My Life in Art (first published in America, 1924) and An Actor Prepares (first published in America, 1936). The other text which we possess, Building A Character and Creating A Role, are editorial reconstructions based on existing drafts and notes. All the books, moreover, with the possible exception of My Life in Art, which was revised twice, in 1926 and 1936, were regarded by Stanislavski as provisional. The Archives contain revisions and new material which were intended for subsequent editions.
The aim of the present book is to provide a framework in which the available texts can be read, to supply supplementary information which will make their meaning clearer and to place them in the context of the sequence of books which Stanislavski planned but did not live to complete.
It is in no sense a biography. Insofar as the System results from Stanislavski's analysis of his own career, biographical elements are used to demonstrate the origin and evolution of his ideas. A complete personal portrait, however, is not attempted. Where necessary, lines of enquiry are pursued out of chronological sequence. When certain basic positions to which Stanislavski adhered all his life are under discussion, readers will, therefore, find quotations drawn from different periods.
Wherever possible quotations are taken from English-language editions. There are, however, substantial differences between the English texts and the eight-volume Soviet edition of the Collected Works. Where a choice has been necessary, the Soviet edition has been preferred. An outline of the major differences is given in the Appendix. I am greatly indebted to the scholarly introductions to the individual volumes of the Collected Works by G. Kristi and V. H. Prokoviev. I have also been greatly helped by two seminars on the Stanislavski System arranged by the Soviet Centre of the International Theatre Institute in October 1979 and April 1981 when it was possible to consult leading Soviet directors, actors and teachers on the later developments and workings of Stanislavski's methods. I would, in addition, like to thank Professor Alexei Bartoshevich, professor of Theatre History at GITIS (State Institute for Theatre Arts) for his generous advice and guidance. Any misunderstandings are, of course, entirely my own.
J.B.

FOUNDATIONS
Had Stanislavski been a 'natural', had his talent - some would say his genius - as an actor found an immediate, spontaneous outlet, there would be no System. As it was it took years of persistent, unremitting effort to remove the blocks and barriers which inhibited the free expression of his great gifts. His search for the 'laws' of acting was the result of that struggle.
Stanislavski's career might be described as the painful evolution of a stage-struck child into a mature and responsible artist and teacher. He remained stage-struck to the end, adoring the smell of spirit-gum and grease-paint. His infatuation with theatre, with play-acting kept his mind fresh and open to new ideas to the very end. At the same time theatre was, for him, a matter of the highest seriousness, both artistic and moral. It was a disciplined activity which required dedication and training. What we receive as the System originated from his attempt to analyse and monitor his own progress as an artist and his attempts to achieve his ideas as an actor and meet his own developing standards, and it is all the more valuable for being born of concrete activity since the solutions he found were lived and not the result of speculation or abstract theory. The System is his practice examined, tested and verified. Although he received help along the way from actors and directors the System is essentially Stanislavski's own creation. For, while others could define for him the results that were required, they could not define the process by which those results might be achieved. This he had to do for himself. My Life in Art is the story (not always accurate) of his failures; false starts and successes.
Stanislavski was born in 1863, the second son of a family devoted to the theatre. He made his first stage appearance at the age of seven in a series of tableaux vivants organised by his governess to celebrate his mother's name day. When he was fourteen his father transformed an out-building on his country estate at Liubimovka into a well-equipped theatre. Later, a second theatre was constructed in the town house in Moscow. Stanislavski's real début as an actor was made at Liubimovka in September 1877, when four one-act plays, directed by his tutor, were staged to inaugurate the new theatre. As a result of that evening an amateur group, the Alexeyev Circle, * was formed, consisting of Stanislavski's brothers and sisters, cousins and one or two friends.
It is at this date that Stanislavski's conscious, artistic career can be said to begin. During the period 1877 to 1906, which he describes as his Childhood and Adolescence, † he encountered the fundamental problems of acting and directing which he resolved as best he could.
He spent the day of that 5 September, according to his own account, in a state of extreme excitement, trembling all over in his eagerness to get on stage. In the event the
* Alexeyev was the family name. Stanislavski was a stage name.
† SS Vol. 1, pp. 53-153.
performance was to produce more perplexity than satisfaction. He appeared in two of the plays, A Cup of Tea and The Old Mathematician. In the first he felt completely at ease. He was able to copy the performance of a famous actor he had seen, down to the last detail. When the curtain fell he was convinced he had given a splendid performance. He was soon disabused. He had been inaudible. He had gabbled and his hands had been in such a constant state of motion that no one could follow what he was saying. In the second play, which had given him so much more trouble in rehearsals, he was, by contrast, much better. He was at a loss to resolve the contradiction between what he felt and what the audience had experienced. How could he feel so good and act so badly? Feel so ill at ease and be so effective?
His response to the problem was crucial. He began to keep a notebook, in which he recorded his impressions, analysed his difficulties and sketched out solutions. He continued this practice throughout his life, so that the Notebooks span some sixty-one years of activity. * It is characteristic of Stanislavski that he never shied away from contradictions or refused the paradoxical. He worked through them.
His frequent visits to the theatre provided him with models and examples. At the Maly Theatre - his 'university' - as he called it - there were still the survivors of a once great company. He was also able to see foreign artists such as Salvini and Duse, who appeared in Moscow during Lent, when Russian actors were forbidden by the church to perform. The contrast between the ease, naturalness and flow of the actor of genius and his own desperate efforts, either gabbling

• Extracts from the Notebooks are printed in Cole and Chinoy (eds), Actors on Acting, pp. 485-90.

inaudibly or shouting, either rigid with tension or all flailing arms, made a profound effect on him. They created, he could only imitate more or less well what others had done before. The attempt to discover in what the 'naturalness' of the great actor consisted is the seed from which the System grew.

Method acting school
In 1885, at the age of twenty-two Stanislavski entered a drama school. The experience lasted three weeks. His rapid departure was caused partly by the fact that he could not attend full-time. He had finished his studies early and gone into the family textile business. He could not always get away from the office. More important, however, was his swift recognition of the fact that the school could not give him what he was looking for - a properly thought-out method of working, a means of harnessing his own natural creativity. Not only did the school fail to provide such a method, it could not even conceive that such a method existed. All his teachers could do was indicate the results they wanted, not the means to achieve them. At best, they could pass on the technical tricks which they themselves had acquired.
The young Stanislavski needed guidance and discipline badly. The greater barrier to his development as an artist was his image of himself as an actor. He saw himself continuously in dashing 'romantic' roles. It was what he himself defined as his 'Spanish boots' problem. Thigh boots, a sword and a cloak were fatal to him. Any progress he might have made towards truth and naturalness was immediately wiped out. He became a musical-comedy stereotype - all swagger and bombast. The only teacher at drama school who might have been some help to him, Glikeria Fedotova, left about the same time he did. He was fortunate enough to meet her again later, as well as her husband, at a critical moment in his career.

A theatre in decline
Russian theatre in the last quarter of the nineteenth century was in a poor state. There were the great stars of the Maly Theatre whom Stanislavski describes in terms of such admiration and affection, but they were mainly of the older generation and they were surrounded by mediocrity. The monopoly of the imperial theatres had been abolished in 1882. Thereafter commercial managements threw on plays to make quick profits. As Stanislavski remarked, the theatre was controlled by barmen on one hand and bureaucrats on the other. A few brilliant individuals shone here and there.
On the whole, observation of professional practice could only show Stanislavski what to avoid. In an unpublished manuscript he describes a typical rehearsal period. First came the reading and the casting of the various roles. Some discussion of the play's meaning was supposed to take place but generally there was insufficient time. The actors were left to find their own way. Then came the first rehearsal.
It took place on stage with a few old tables and chairs as a set. The director explained the decor: a door centre, two doors on each side etc.
At the first rehearsal the actors read their parts book in hand and the prompter was silent. The director sat on the forestage and gave his instructions to the cast. 'What should I do here?' asked one actor. 'Sit on the sofa, ' the director answers. 'And what should I be doing?' asks another. 'You are nervous, wring your hands and walk up and down, ' the director orders. 'Can't I sit down?' the actor persists. 'How can you possibly sit down when you are nervous?' replies the bewildered director. So the first and second acts are set. On the next day, that is to say the second rehearsal, work continues in like manner with the third and fourth acts. The third and sometimes the fourth rehearsal consist of going through the whole thing again; the actors move about the stage, memorizing the director's instructions, reading their lines in half-voice i.e., a whisper, gesticulating strongly in an attempt to arouse some feeling.
At the next rehearsal the lines must be known. In theatres with money this may last one or two days, and another rehearsal is arranged where the actors play without script but still at half voice. The prompter, however, works at full voice.
At the next rehearsal the actors are expected to play at full voice. Then dress rehearsals begin with makeup, costumes and the set. Finally there is the performance. *
This seems to have been a comparatively disciplined affair. More often than not the actors simply took over, ignoring the director, settling for what they knew best. An actress would move to the window or the fireplace for no better reason than that was what she always did. † The script meant less than nothing. Sometimes the cast did not even bother to learn their lines. Leading actors would simply plant themselves downstage centre, by the prompter's box, wait to be fed the lines and then deliver them straight at the audience in a ringing voice, giving a fine display of passion and 'temperament'. Everyone, in fact, spoke their lines out front. Direct
* KSA no. 1353 pp. 1-7. The prompter here speaks the text continuously, as in opera. The box is placed downstage centre on a level with the footlights.
MLIRT pp. 96-8.

communication with other actors was minimal. Furniture was so arranged as to allow the actors to face front.
Sets were as stereotyped as the acting: wings, back-drops taken from stock, doors conventionally placed, standing isolated in space with no surrounding wall. The costumes were also 'typical'. When Stanislavski attempted to have costumes made to specific designs he was told, with some asperity, that there were standard designs for character types and would continue to be. There was no sense of a need for change or renewal. The amateur theatre reflected the practice of the professional, only worse.
If Stanislavski wanted models or guidance he would have to look back a generation or so earlier, to the great days of the Maly Theatre when artistic standards had been set and discipline imposed by two men of genius, the actor Mikhail Shchepkin and the writer Nikolai Gogol. The actors Stanislavski so admired were impressive not merely because they had talent but because they had been trained at this school, where the first steps had been taken towards a genuinely Russian theatre and the creation of a genuinely Russian style - Realism.

'An Actor Prepares' by Konstantin Stanislavsky

What Stanislavski has undertaken is not to discover a truth but to bring the truth in usable form within the reach of those actors and producers who are fairly well equipped by nature and who are willing to undergo the necessary discipline.
1. The First Test
3 First lesson: turn up to rehearsals on time!
5 If rehearsal seems stilted, the same old stuff, change something: setting, privacy, mood, etc.
2. When Acting is an Art
13 Ideally an actor should be carried away in his part, by the subconscious (as long as it carries him in the right direction). But it's impossible to control the subconscious without destroying it.
14 You must “live the part” by “actually experiencing feelings that are analogous to it, each and every time you repeat the process of creating it.”
15 “Plan your role consciously at first then play it truthfully.” “We must assimilate a psychological technique of living a part, and that this will help us to accomplish our main object, which is to create the life of a human spirit. We must then “express [the life of a human spirit] in a beautiful, artistic form.”
16 The body must be up to it.
18-20 Another method: the “art of representation.” The original preparation of a role is good and true but subsequent performances are fixed, cold copies of its external representation without feelings. We prefer that each performance must be fresh and felt.
19 Be careful when rehearsing with a mirror — teaches you to watch the outside, not the inside.
22-23 The school of the art of representation says the stage is too poor in resources to create life, so we must use these conventions. It may delight you but won't move you. Its form is interesting rather than content. “Your astonishment rather than your faith is aroused.”
24-6 Mechanical acting: acting with clichés. Shaking fist for revenge, putting hand over heart to express love. Peasants spitting on floor, military men clicking heels. Tearing hair in despair. Clichés will fill every spot in a role that's not solid with living feeling. But it still takes work to achieve mechanical acting.
27-9 Over-acting: using the first stereotypes, rubber stamps and first impressions that leap to mind, without even sharpening or preparing them for the stage. Common in beginners and can grow into the worst kind of mechanical acting.
29 “Never allow yourself externally to portray anything that you have not inwardly experienced and which is not even interesting to you.” A character built on stereotype cannot grow.
31
“Now remember firmly what I am going to tell you: the theatre, on account of its publicity and spectacular side, attracts many people who merely want to capitalize their beauty or make careers. They take advantage of the ignorance of the public, its perverted taste, favouritism, intrigues, false success, and many other means which have no relation to creative art. These exploiters are the deadliest enemies of art. We have to use the sternest measures with them, and if they cannot be reformed they must be removed from the boards. Therefore … you must make up your mind, once and for all, did you come here to serve art, and to make sacrifices for its sake, or to exploit your own personal ends?”
3. Action
35-7 Whatever happens on stage must be for a purpose, even if you outwardly appear to be doing nothing. You must act either outwardly or inwardly.
40-41 Never simply try to act emotions — emotions are caused by something that has gone before, and it's this that you should think of. The result will produce itself.
46 “If acts as a lever to lift us out of the world of actuality into the realm of imagination.”
4. Imagination
70 The actor must use his imagination to be able to answer all questions (when, where, why, how). Make the make-believer existence more definite.
71 If you do or say anything on stage without fully realising who you are, what you're doing, how you got there, etc, you're not using your imagination. If someone asks “is it cold outside?” you should “remember” what it was like when “you” were last out — the sights, sensations, etc — before answering.
5. Concentration of Attention
75 “An actor must have a point of attention, and this point of attention must not be in the auditorium.”
82 “Solitude in Public”: when you are in public (e.g., on stage) but have a small circle of attention and feel alone within it.
83-5 Your focus of attention can be larger areas, but this is harder to maintain — if it begins to slip, withdraw the attention to a smaller circle or single object/point, then gradually enlarge the circle of attention again.
88 At the end of every day, in bed, you should go over everything that happened in great detail, both appearance and inner emotions. Also try to refresh earlier memories of places, events, people. “That is the only way to develop a strong, sharp, solid power of inner and outer attention.”
89 You should give the objects of your attention on stage an imaginary life (where did it come from, who's used it, etc) so that they're more interesting to you.
93 Observe things in daily life — bestow them with imaginary backgrounds to heighten various emotions. Remember those scenes and draw on them.
93-4 When interacting with people, attempt to comprehend their inner emotional life through their actions, thoughts and impulses. Why did they do that? What did they have in mind?
6. Relaxation of Muscles
95-104 The actor should practice relaxing his muscles; we tend to be too tense.
104-6 If the actor believes in the purpose of an action, the movement will be more believable.
106-110 When performing a single gesture, only the muscles necessary for that gesture should be used.
7. Units and Objectives
111-116 When analysing a play you should look for the overall theme/idea. Then break it up into parts. Then break those up… keep going until you have a series of actions that can be made interesting, but don't forget the overall theme.
116-126 Decide on the objective for each unit. It should be a verb, an action, something you need/want to do.
8. Faith and a Sense of Truth
130-1 Don't try too hard to be truthful (to create a believable part) or you'll over do it.
133 When criticising the work of others look for the good points, because the audience will want to believe what they see, not look for the unconvincing [seems a bit hopeful to me, but justifies why everyone in acting classes is so relentlessly, frustratingly positive about even hopeless performances].
143 When offstage either “play for yourself”[?] or “confine your thoughts to what the person you are portraying would be doing if he were placed in analogous circumstances.”
142-4 Repeat a sequence of physical actions over and over, with belief in their reality, until they become a single sequence: “the life of a human body.”
145-7 Where you have believable actions, it's a better basis on which to “achieve the creation of the subconscious life of the spirit of a role.”
150-1 The difference in approach to, say, comedy and tragedy is only in the circumstances surrounding the actions of the person you're portraying. Don't think about the emotions — think about what you must do.
9. Emotion Memory
163-? You should use memories of emotions to recreate them on stage, sometimes fuelled by memories of sensations (smell, taste, etc).
177 You cannot use everyone else's feelings, or made-up feelings. They always come from you. So you will always be playing yourself, “but it will be in an infinite variety of combinations of objectives, and given circumstances which you have prepared for your part, and which have been smelted in the furnace of your emotion memory.” You can only play parts well that you have the appropriate feelings for.
183-4 Set, lighting etc. set the mood for the actors, and aren't just for impressing the audience.
184-6 To repeat a feeling that occurred accidentally, don't start with the results — look for the original stimulus and use that.
188-90 We can use emotions generated by events we've only witnessed or read about, not just experienced.
192

“Do you realise, now that you know what is required of an actor, why a real artist must lead a full, interesting, beautiful, varied, exacting and inspiring life? He should know, not only what is going on in the big cities, but in the provincial towns, far-away villages, factories, and the big cultural centres of the world as well. He should study the life and psychology of the people who surround him, of various other parts of the population, both at home and abroad.”
10. Communion
198 When doing soliloquies you need to find a subject and object inside yourself. Try to establish communication between brain and solar plexus.
199-202 When communicating with a partner, maintain a constant flow, using eyes, body, emotions when not speaking, every time you act the part.
202-3 If you lack a partner for practice, don't imagine one — find one. Or you get out of the habit of interacting with real people.
205-222 [Stuff about communicating by transmitting and receiving “rays”. Don't get what he's on about.]
11. Adaptation
223-8 On stage and in life we adapt our behaviour, voice, mannerisms, etc in response to the situation, who we're talking to and what we want.
234-9 Many adaptations are unconscious. Also, types of conscious adjustments: rubber stamps / stereotypes / stencils originate from the theatrical routine and are lifeless; adaptations suggested by other people, e.g. director, other actors (but always adapt these to your own needs). Mechanical adjustments can be subconscious or conscious — natural human adaptations that become habitual. [These are good apparently, but I don't understand how they differ from rubber stamps.]
12. Inner Motive Force
245-7 “Three impelling movers in our psychic life”: mind, will and feelings.
249 You can use any of the three to initiate the creative process, and it will in turn prompt the others. [I'm losing him here.]
13. The Unbroken Line
252-7 The life of a character should be an unbroken line of events and emotions, but a play only gives us a few moments on that line — we must create the rest to portray a convincing life.
257-260 The actor's attention must be an unbroken stream attracted by different objects in turn (but not the audience!).
14. The Inner Creative State
261-2 Our “inner motive forces” [what are they?] combine with the “elements” [the techniques, talents, ambitions, etc earlier in the book] “to carry out the purposes of the actor,” with the aim of searching for the common fundamental objective. The “elements” are now called “Elements of the Inner Creative Mood”.
262-3 The creative mood is worse than the normal state because it's involved with theatre and self-exhibition. Better because it includes solitude in public — spectators rouse creative energy.
263-5 Performance may be bad if the actor's creative apparatus isn't functioning or if he has mechanical habits. Or if he hasn't freshened up an old role. Or stage fright. Or if one element in the composition is wrong. One false note destroys the whole truth.
[All the above in this chapter is very woolly and I'm not sure what he's saying other than “do everything well”.]
265-6 An actor should arrive at his dressing room two hours before going on for inner preparation. First, relax muscles.
“Then comes: Choose an object — that picture? What does it represent? How big is it? Colours? Take a distant object! Now a small circle, no further than your own feet! Choose some physical objective! Motivate it, add first one and then other imaginative fictions! Make your action so truthful that you can believe in it! Think up various suppositions and suggest possible circumstances into which you put yourself. Continue this until you have brought all of your 'elements' into play and then choose one of them. It makes no difference which. Take whichever appeals to you at the time. If you succeed in making that one function concretely (no generalities!) it will draw all the others along in its train.”

15. The Super-Objective
271-3 You should work out the super-objective of the play — everything should converge to carry this out. It must be the fundamental driving force. Easier to determine in a good play. It must have a verb.
273-280 The “through line of action” must guide everyone toward the super objective. All the smaller units and objectives must serve this common purpose.
277-8 If you, say, rejuvenate a play with a modern theme, that must be grafted on to the super-objective, not be a distraction from it.
16. On the Threshold of the Subconscious
285-6 If something happens accidentally on stage (e.g., a chair tipping over)… the actor should learn to use this in his part, as this can draw you closer to the subconscious.
294-5 Achieve a “creative state” (relax appropriate to the part) and then introduce an “unexpected spontaneous incident, a touch of reality” germane to the super objective and line of action. Where to find this touch of truth:
Everywhere: in what you dream, or think, or suppose or feel, in your emotions, your desires, your little actions, internal or external, in your mood, the intonations of your voice, in some imperceptible detail of the production, pattern of movements.
While the excitement of this lasts, “you will be incapable of distinguishing between yourself and the person you are portraying.”
300 The through line of action is made up of a number of large objectives. These contain many smaller objectives, which are transformed into subconscious actions.
301 We need a super-objective which is “in harmony with the intentions of the playwright and at the same time arouses a response in the soul of the actors.”
301-2 The same theme will affect different actors differently. [I'm not clear if the “theme” is the same as the super-objective — he seems to switch between the two terms.] If an actor is given a super-objective he must “filter it through his own being until his own emotions are affected by it.” Else, find the super-objective/theme for himself.

AFTERWORD BY ANATOLY SMELIANSKY
A FEW WORDS ABOUT STANISLAVSKI’S ‘MAJOR BOOK’
AND THE MAN HIMSELF
1.
The world of the theatre knows Stanislavski’s book An Actor Prepares very well. It appeared in 1936 and since then has often been published in many languages and many lands. Paradoxically, it is least known in the author’s own country. That requires some explanation. Konstantin Stanislavsky (that was what his friends called him behind his back at the Art Theatre) wrote his book at the behest of an American publisher and gave his translator, Elizabeth Hapgood, a totally free hand. The manuscript was cut and adapted to suit the tastes of the American reader, who wanted a kind of ‘Beginners’ Manual’. The translator accomplished her mission. The book found its place in the English-speaking world. It appeared in Russian two years later, after Konstantin Stanislavsky’s death but not in the form in which Elizabeth Hapgood had presented it. A great deal had been rewritten, expanded, rethought in as much as Konstantin Stanislavsky continued to work on his system in those two final years and many thoroughgoing decisions were taken, yet again. The idea of the Method of Physical Actions emerged. It painted the grammar of acting in a new light. Besides which, Konstantin Stanislavsky was fully aware that his book would come out in the Soviet Union of 1938, and that had to be taken seriously into account.
The Russian version evolved in an atmosphere of extremes. In August 1934 Konstantin Stanislavsky returned from France to Moscow after lengthy treatment, passing through Germany where the Nazis were already in overall control. Hitler in Berlin, Stalin in Moscow: this was the choice, which Konstantin Stanislavsky faced, as did most European artists. Publicly, K.S. preferred Stalin. In reality his choice was not so unambiguous. From the summer of 1934 to the end of his life, i.e. prior to 1938, Konstantin Stanislavsky did not set foot inside the Art Theatre he had founded, the Art Theatre, which now thought of him not in terms of his artistry but of his ‘efficacy’, i.e. as having nothing to do with major questions of art or of the development of that art. He worked at home with young actors and singers in the last of his studios, the Opera-Dramatic Studio. In reply to a question from Elizabeth Hapgood, he answered somewhat enigmatically, ‘There is a rumour that I have quit the Art Theatre. It’s a lie. The rumour stems from the fact that since my illness I have not been to the theatre, that is the reason. In winter, when there is ice and cold I can’t leave the house. I have cardiac spasms (angina pectoris).
In spring when I might be able to go and see my own and other people’s productions, theatres like the Moscow Art Theatre and the opera are on tour. In the autumn, when performances begin again, I have to take a holiday. My work is conducted (for the all the theatres and the studios) only in my home in Leontievski Lane.’ Nature knows no such weather in which he could visit the Art Theatre of which he was head. But, of course, it was not a matter of ice and cold. Stanislavski did not set foot inside the theatre he ran for four years, it was a mark of general opposition, a voluntary rejection of it, which for various reasons served everyone. Condemned to a kind of house arrest, he made good use of it. He took no part in Soviet life, did not sign any group letters supporting the murder and torture of dissidents, did not stage propaganda plays. As far as was possible, he preserved his autonomy. The period in which the Russian version of the book on acting was completed was the transition from ‘vegetarianism’ (as Anna Akhmatova put it) to ‘the age of blood’. It should not be thought that Stanislavski was sheltered from the terror in his home as on a kind of island retreat. As early as June 1930 one of his favourite nephews had been arrested. Neither his status as a ‘sacred cow’ nor his pleas to the head of the secret police Heinrich Yagoda were of any help. Mikhaïl Alekseev died in jail. The only gesture of kindness that was made by the authorities was to hand his dead body over to his relatives. Other close relatives were arrested and Konstanton Stanislavsky took charge of their children. The word ‘concentration camp’ appears for the first time in his letters to mean imminent death. Confined in his comfortable jail house in Leontievski Lane (the name was changed to Stanislavski Street in his lifetime), he decided to complete his ‘great book’, which, in Russian, would be called The Actor’s Work on Himself in the Creative Process of Experiencing. The key word in this title is ‘experiencing’ which, like many of Konstantin Stanislavsky’s terms, defies adequate translation. This actor-teacher’s slang was adopted by Stanislavski’s pupils but was obscure for those unacquainted with the general spirit of his understanding of Method acting. An edited version appeared in America. Konstantin Stanislavsky prepared a book for his contemporaries with its meaning uncut. This book is now being offered to the English-speaking reader. The problem of translation is the problem of a general understanding of the Stanislavski system. And so we must be mindful of the circumstances in which Konstantin Stanislavsky decided on two versions – one for the world at large and one for Russia – and that what we in Russia call the system in the English-speaking world is often called mistakenly the Method.
2.
For many years the system existed in oral form, as a kind of theatrical folklore. It changed according to those who taught it, to those who ‘narrated’ it. Repeated attempts to set forth Stanislavski’s teaching in his place, produced resistance from the author. This was even the case when the system was expounded by as intelligent a pupil as Michael Chekhov. That was the case when, let us say, the Art Theatre director Ilya Sudakov did the same (at the beginning of the 30s). In this last case Konstantin Stanislavsky went into a fury: ‘It is not a matter of an author’s pride,’ he wrote to Tamantsova on 1 February 1934, ‘but the fact that the thing I love most, to which I have dedicated my life, has been cynically violated and given over to the judgement of the crowd in mutilated form.’ We need to understand not only the emotional but, the substantive reason why he was unwilling for so long to start a book on ‘his precious creation’ – the system – and generally pin it down in words. In his letters to Elizabeth Hapgood in 1936 he partially reveals the secret of his actorwriter laboratory. ‘What does it mean, writing a book about the system? It does not mean writing down something that is already cut and dried. The system lives in me but it has no form. It is only when you try to find a form for it that the real system is created and defined. In other words, the system is created in the very process of being written down.’ The book had been written for America but Konstantin Stanislavsky was worried by a possible reaction in Russia. The views of his editor, Lyubov Gurievich, who had been one of the first to read the manuscript, confirmed his worst forebodings. His friend as well as his editor, whom he trusted absolutely, explained clearly and directly to him that his book with all its examples and ideals that stemmed from a pre-revolutionary view of an actor’s life were doomed in the new Russia. She suggested that Konstantin Stanislavsky was completely out of touch with the new historical situation, that his favourite examples about precious jewels would be wide of the mark and even offensive.
‘Dear Konstantin Sergeevich don’t talk to the poor and starving about jewels and investments because it will only provoke bitter irritation in some and a brooding sense of resentment in others,’ she admonished this white-haired child of a prophet on 1 April 1929. Mrs Gurievich was not just speaking for herself but for 95 per cent of the ‘ordinary, underprivileged intellectuals’. She suggested that he bring his book into line with contemporary life and adapt it to the needs of new post-revolutionary generations. She used basic concepts of the system as arguments, ‘ “Contact” with life and “adaptation” to his times – adaptation in the purest, noblest sense of the word, not some tawdry camouflage or compromise, is an artist’s duty if he wishes to be effective. This “adaptation” requires great mental effort, which you, given your way of life, have never had an opportunity to follow through. Almost every page of your book is revelatory in that regard.’ Broken in spirit, this woman soon wrote a special ‘Memo’ in which she presented Stanislavski with a plan for completing the system and ‘adapting’ it to contemporary life, both Soviet and American. The greatest difficulty in completing the manuscript, in the editor’s opinion, was the fact that the tastes, ideas, moods of Russian and foreign society had never been further apart than at the present moment. Two worlds stood opposite each other as though prepared for armed conflict. The life, habits, domestic customs of our own pre-revolutionary life and the present Western way of life were inimical to the ‘Soviet people’ . . . as belonging to the capitalist system. And so, everything in the book that dated from an earlier life, literary descriptions, modes, examples that would draw a Western reader to it would be greeted with hostility by the Soviet people. The demands of home and abroad are irreconcilable.
In her second point, Mrs Gurievich sets out a list of ideological postulates that could not but frighten an author living, as it were, in anotherperiod. She knew his weak spots. The most dangerous offence was his beloved ‘neutrality’, which she reminded him, ‘would be equated by the party as being reactionary or counter-revolutionary’. She warned K.S. that he must be prepared for ‘massive accusations of a similar kind’ and so he had to address the burning questions of a new era. Not to do so wouldhave ‘fateful consequences for the book’.
This was the programme for ‘conforming to the contemporary situation’ of which Konstantin Stanislavsky ticked every point with a Yes. Had he followed all these points through it would undoubtedly have meant the death of his forthcoming book and of his life’s work. The agonising years of ‘work on himself ’ began. But he just could not adapt. His genius would not allow it. Broken in spirit and law-abiding he started to baulk. ‘If I work in even one of the examples you have found for our young contemporaries,’ he wrote in a draft letter to Mrs Gurievich, ‘I can say in all confidence that not only will my book never be published but I will never be allowed into America.’ That was not included in the letter he sent. What was included was much more forthright in its expression.
‘The book . . . speaks of the art of an older era, which was not created under the Bolsheviks. That is why the examples are bourgeois.’ Despite his usual display of political naivety, as he started work he could define absolutely precisely points that could be censored. ‘To my mind, the greatest danger of the book is “the creation of the life of the human spirit” (you are not allowed to speak about the spirit). Another danger: the subconscious, transmission and reception, the word soul. Wouldn’t that be a reason to ban the book.’ Historic change swept through the life of the Art Theatre. It was canonized. It was decided to create an academy alongside it, ‘a forge for a creative workforce’. Model ‘socialist’ textbooks were required. The system took on a new direction. It ceased to be an actor’s personal work and exploits. Konstantin Stanislavsky followed the government’s superedicts. A special committee was set up to verify Stanislavski’s writings from the point of view of the latest scientific advances. Particular alarm was caused by the draft of the final and most difficult chapter, ‘On the Threshold of the Subconscious’, which quintessentially defined his conception of the actor’s art. The correspondence with a party official Aleksei Angarov reveals the direction in which they tried to steer Stanislavski in this matter, in an attempt, in exactly the same spirit as the ‘black séance’ in Bulgakov’s Master and Marguerita, to unmask ‘his mystical terminology’. (The irony of this story is that the official who kindly allowed Konstantin Stanislavsky to use his favourite concepts was very soon arrested and liquidated.)
Lyubov Gurievich stopped work as his editor. She could not endure Konstantin Stanislavsky’s endless corrections, changes, and obstinacy. ‘An old friend was not unfaithful but forced by fate was invalided out like a wounded soldier’ (from one of her valedictory letters to Konstantin Stanislavsky).
In the Russian version he was reaching out to the future. An Actor’s Work on Himself came out a few weeks after Stanislavski’s death. The pressure of the given circumstances can be felt in his last book.
There is not the same freedom with which he wrote My Life in Art. The first book is a book of major questions. The second is a book of answers. My Life in Art is confessional, An Actor’s Work on Himself is professional. The attitude of an omniscient teacher and a genuflecting pupil are the principal ‘psychological gestures’ of the book and unconsciously reflect the dominant ‘gesture’ of the time. The majority of the omissions in the book are concerned with matters that he would not explicitly declare or explain.
But he did not renounce the heart of the system, that is, his own heart. Fundamentally, his ‘grammar’ of acting is full of heroic acts of rejection. Antiquated in its machinery, Stanislavski’s book managed to evoke the spirit ‘not of contemporary but of the old, eternal, immutable art of the actorcraftsman and not of the actor-activist.
He did not allow the actor-activist in his home. Within the confines of his ‘great book’ as in his house in Leontievski Lane, there was not the least hint of the real Soviet world within which it was completed and refined. In both there was an almost museum-like clinical purity. Evidently, as far as possible, the book preserved what Osip Mandelstam described as ‘stolen air’, that is the air of another culture and other beliefs.
3.
And, finally, a few comments relating to the daily life of the Method acting system in contemporary Russian theatre. There the problem is not to translate from Russian into English but the equally complex problem of translating from Russian into Russian. The approach to the system and the way it is interpreted changed endlessly after Konstantin Stanislavskt’s death, countries changed and the understanding of the actor’s art changed. With the rehabilitation and reinstatement of Konstantin Stanislavsky’s major opponents, who had been liquidated by the Soviet regime, it became clear that the system had to be placed within the broad context of Russian and world theatre. Account had to be taken of the changes made by Meyerhold and Brecht, Michael Chekhov, Vakhtangov,
Taïrov and Grotowski. New generations of Russian actors and directors undertook the enormous labour, often unbeknown to those abroad, of talking through the system and its basic terms. They tried to understand the system beyond the barriers to understanding. I will give just a few examples.
A few years ago, the actor Oleg Borisov’s diaries were published posthumously. Borisov was probably one of the most important actors of post-Stalinist Russia. He graduated from the Studio-School of the Moscow Art Theatre, having imbibed the Stanislavski system with his mother’s milk, he worked with Tostonogov, played in Dostoievski’s Krotkii directed by Lev Dodin, spent many years at the Art Theatre. If we are to look for an actor to symbolize the Russian school of acting and what we understand by the system, that man is Oleg Borisov, as in his time was Michael Chekhov, possibly one of the first candidates for that vacancy. In his diaries, the actor recounts how he adapted K.S.’s system to his own ‘immune system’. He started from the fact that much had changed since Konstantin Stanislavsky had died and his system had been introduced into Russian schools ‘blood boiled, overflowed and how they drank it!’ Highly significant ideas underwent revision. The actor knows that the most important element in the system is to discover a conscious path to the unconscious, ‘to switch off the brain entirely, to become a blank sheet of paper and move into the unconscious in a neutral state’. The problem is to know which technique will work. It all begins with the script. The actor removes all the punctuation marks (‘once the first sign of life appears then you can feel a pulse – then you can draw the first line’). He followed Konstantin Stanislavsky in not trusting words, only deeds, but he refused to deal with them according to the system. He, essentially, rejected the ‘through-action’, at least in the way that it was taught in school. ‘First, set up a series of complete actions, then choose the most important of them. A mosaic is formed with no “threads”, no through-action or the usual transitions. These must then be conveyed to the audience . . . Let everything in man’s character be unexpected. The unexpected is the most precious feature in art. But what are we to do in the pauses, in other scenes? Disappear into the shadows. Give a breather. Only shoot at the right moment. Arrhythmia, unpredictability that is what it is for. Of course, even unpredictability has to be structured, to avoid being meaningless. The actor makes friends with the eminent coaches and football-players of his time and he derives the idea of arrhythmia from new unexpected ways of playing football.’ I offer this example so that the reader may understand how the Stanislavski system changed and survived in Russian theatre.
In his book, Valery Galendeev, a well-known teacher of Lev Dodin, comes across, like Dodin, as one of the most powerful of Stanislavski’s successors in contemporary Russian theatre, adapting Konstantin Stanislavsky’s system to himself. He invented his own slang in parallel to Stanislavski’s. Dodin did not use the word ‘concept’ but replaced it with the idea of an agreement, as in to come to an agreement. These cautious words mean a level of mutual understanding between the participants, to counterbalance the director’s own individual ideas as he approaches the other members of the rehearsal with his ‘concept’. Dodin did not use the term throughaction, fearing, like Borisov, to coarsen the very material the actor was using, and to lose the unforeseen in what he did onstage. ‘I use the idea of action and counteraction instead,’ the director said to me, ‘that stops the actor from creating one line for a role out of one through-concept, that oversimplifies the acting.’ Anatoly Efros, another outstanding director and teacher of the post-
Stalinist period, developed the so-called improvisatory method. Efros (following in the footsteps of his teacher, Marya Knebbel, a direct pupil of Stanislavski) tried once more to discover a basis which would enable the actor to use the improvisatory method of rehearsal, i.e. an endless attempt to test out and get into the play. This method has its origins in Stanislavski’s final ideas but places the actor’s improvisations at the centre of a given play. Efros invented his own slang, in which the unwelcome notion of throughaction was close to a cardiogram, in which there was a flat line (indicating death). For Efros the proper way to build a role recalled a ‘curve’, a real cardiogram, with its proper peaks and troughs and arrhythmia, etc. Oleg Efreimov, with whom I was fortunate enough to work for many years at the Art Theatre (he ran it for thirty years), attempted to translate from Russian into Russian Stanislavski’s highly important notion of the term perezhivanie, ‘experiencing’, which we now find highly obscure. In his mouth it almost always seemed to sound like ‘living in’ by which was understood the actor’s ability to penetrate and fill every moment of his life onstage with vibrant material at times to create life, at others to complete an action. Living in means remaining alive in every second of the stage action, which moves ahead as a non-stop, complex process. This living process (experiencing for Konstntin Stanislavsky) is confronted each time by another kind of acting, which Konstantin Stanislavsky called representation and which Grotowski called the art of composition.
I had the occasion to hear another modification to the Stanislavski system from another director and teacher, Piotr Fomenko. The actor, Stanislavski suggested, must first of all understand what the character wants at any given moment, what drives his behaviour. But, Fomenko objects, quite often the actor, like anyone, does not know what he wants and in strict terms his action consists of trying to figure out what it is he really wants (incidentally, this mood is highly characteristic of many of Chekhov’s heroes).
Anatoly Vasiliev, in the 80s, was involved in a sharp polemic with a French Stanislavski scholar (in Paris at a symposium devoted to Stanislavski).
The well-known Russian director was aghast at the primitive interpretation (in fact a straight translation) of Konstantin Stanislavsky’s classroom slang as rigid formulae, a terminology that had lost all living sense. There is a whole section in the system called ‘bits and tasks’. So the word task which Konstantin Stanislavsky used, means in the theatre not so much the process of setting ultimate goals for the actor, as the process of planting a seed, teasing the actor with something emotionally enticing, subtleties that provoke him into action, into the creative act. If you translate the word task literally, the director suggested at this symposium, it means you reduce it to something primitive, you kill the actor’s living soul along with the living soul of the system. I have mentioned one or two modifications to the system by contemporary Russian teachers and directors which stand alongside the classic modifications to it in the course of the last century made to it by Stanislavski’s contemporaries and pupils and his major opponents. We should not forget that even when the Russian version of An Actor’s Work on Himself was completed, Stanislavski asked Meyerhold to teach Biomechanics in the last of his studios. When Meyerhold’s theatre was destroyed, he was unemployed but Konstantin Stanislavsky not only stretched out a helping hand to the condemned man, he set up a meeting between creative minds. He compared their coming together to digging a tunnel from opposite ends so that they should finally meet in the middle. The meeting did not last long. In August 1938 Stanislavski died. Within a year Meyerhold was arrested, tortured in the cellars of the Lubyanka and shot. Discussions on the system were cut short for decades.
This discussion has come alive again at another level. The ‘great book’, its Russian version, remains, in its thinking, a significant and provocative monument in the culture of world theatre. It is fought with, it is modified in all sorts of ways, but no one seriously concerned with teaching theatre across the world can refuse to acknowledge K.S.’s work, just as no one interested in chemistry can refuse to acknowledge the periodic table created by Dmitri Mendeleiev. The comparison may not be entirely appropriate, but it seems to me essentially true.
Anatoly Smeliansky, PhD,
Rector of the Studio-School of the Moscow Art Theatre, editor-in-chief of the new Russian edition of Stanislavski’s Collected Works in ten volumes

Point of View:
Method Acting - or no Method Acting:
Presentational and Representational acting
Method Acting styles also exist on a continuum, with extreme presentational styles at one end and extreme representational styles at the other. The distinction between the two is not clear-cut. Viewers' knowledge, experience, and expectations help to determine whether or not a particular Method acting performance will be seen as presentational or representational. Moreover, the two styles appear in different films made during the same period, and are often found in the same film. Gradations of presentational and representational Method acting styles exist even in the earliest years of film performance. While a presentational Method acting style marks performances in single-scene novelty pieces such as The May Irwin Kiss (1896) and Fatima's Coochee-Coochee Dance (1901) and single-scene trick films such as The Lady Vanishes (1896) and How It Feels to Be Run Over (1901), other types of single-scene films seem to capture the "natural" behavior of individual human beings. For example, many slice-of-life actualités produced by thère Company are staged to suggest scenes of individuals engaged in familiar activities and are crafted so that the Method acting actions of selected individuals disclose discernible personality traits. In actualités such as La Sortie des usines Lumière (Leaving the Lumière Factory, 1895) and Bataille de boules de neige (Snowball Fight, 1896), the men singled out riding a bicycle through the crowd in each film seem to enjoy the opportunity to clown around. In Enfants pêchant des crevettes (Children Digging for Clams, 1896) a young woman in the foreground seems to be a bit anxious about being photographed. While these individuals reveal their awareness of the camera, in contrast to the novelty pieces or trick films, the individuals are not presented as if they are onstage but instead as if they are reenacting scenes from daily life and inadvertently revealing aspects of their individual personalities.
The Method acting style or styles featured in a film reflect the conception of character and the conception of cinema at the heart of that specific film. Put in the simplest terms, presentational Method acting styles are used to present character types or social types, while representational Method acting styles are used to represent characters with ostensibly unique personality traits. For example, the presentational Method acting style found in Making of an American Citizen (Alice Guy Blaché, 1912) illuminates identifiable social types, while the representational style of Lillian Gish's (1893–1993) performance in The Mothering Heart (1913) suggests a character with certain individual qualities. Presentational Method acting styles can also be found in modernist films that are designed according to pictorial or graphic principles. In a film such as Oktyabr (Ten Days that Shook the World and October, 1927), Eisenstein uses the evocative power of the stage picture and the polemical power of the social tableau to make his directorial statement. By comparison, representational Mehod acting styles are often found in mainstream films that are designed according to novelistic principles. In Wuthering Heights (1939), William Wyler uses the cinematic frame to create a window on a verisimilar world that invites audiences to locate occasions for emotional resonance.
Studies of Method acting in early cinema often discuss the presentational performance styles in American and European films produced before 1913. Scholars agree BERTOLT BRECHT b. Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, Augsburg, Germany, 10 February 1898, d. 14 August 1956
Bertolt Brecht is a central figure in twentieth-century theater. A playwright who moved into directing to have an influence in the production of his own work, Brecht's first plays reflected the influence of dadaism and expressionism. He began directing in 1924 and had his first success in 1928 with The Threepenny Opera. Active in German theater until Hitler's rise to power in 1933, Brecht spent the next fifteen years in exile. During this period Brecht wrote the plays for which he is best remembered, but his work was rarely produced until he returned to (East) Germany. In the 1950s touring productions of Brecht's plays had a salient influence on Roland Barthes, Jean-Luc Godard, and others interested in modernist aesthetics and left-leaning politics.
Brecht's writing on theater practice also had a profound influence on theater and film. By the 1970s, Brecht's critique of conventional theater provided a model for politically engaged cinema that featured aesthetic experimentation. Sustained interest in Brecht's call for experimental stage practice still prompts filmmakers and stage practitioners to explore alternative relationships between performer, director, and audience.
Brecht is best known for defining distinctions between epic theater and mainstream Metod acting dramatic theater. According to Brecht, the two types of theater have different objectives—epic theater is designed to illuminate the operations of social and political power, while dramatic Method acting theater accommodates people to existing social realities. Epic theater does not have a fixed style or set of techniques, and the logic for selecting and combining aesthetic elements is different from that used in dramatic theater. In epic theater, dramatic, visual, and aural/musical elements are placed in counterpoint to emphasize the constructed nature of representation itself. By comparison, dramatic Method acting theater orchestrates dramatic, visual, and aural/musical elements to create a coherent and emotionally engaging reflection of the world as it is defined by the traditions and myths that serve the interests of those in power.
In Brecht's productions, actors' gestures and vocal expressions were presented in spatial and/or temporal counterpoint to other performance and staging elements. At any moment, disparities between lighting, scenic, musical, and performance elements called attention to the concrete reality of the elements themselves. Rather than coming together to create a seamless stage picture, the disparate performance and staging elements kept meaning in play and made the entire theater event strange. Building on Russian formalists' concept of "making strange" and the Prague School's theories on the social function of art's "foregrounding effect," Brecht used the term "verfremdungseffekt" (alienation) to describe the effect of visual, aural, and comedic/dramatic collage techniques that keep audiences attentive to connections between social realities and the situations presented onstage.
Throughout his career, collaboration was integral to Brecht's work as a playwright and director. He worked closely with individuals such as director Erwin Piscator, composer Kurt Weill, actress Lotte Lenya, and actress Helene Weigl, with whom he founded the Berliner Ensemble in 1949. The Threepenny Opera (1928), Life of Galileo (1937), Mother Courage and Her Children (1941), The Good Person of Setzuan (1943), and The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1948) are among his best-known plays. After fleeing from German-occupied countries in Europe, Brecht lived in southern California from 1941 to 1947. During that time, he collaborated occasionally with actors, directors, and screenwriters working in Hollywood. He chose to leave the United States in 1947 after turning in a remarkable performance before the House Un-American Activities Committee as the eleventh unfriendly witness in a group that later became known as the Hollywood Ten.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
Kuhle Wampe (1932), You and Me (1938), Hangmen Also Die (1943)
FURTHER READING
Brecht, Bertolt. Brecht on Film and Radio, edited and translated by Marc Silberman. London: Methuen, 2000. Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, edited and translated by John Willett. London: Methuen, 1964.
Esslin, Martin. Brecht: The Man and His Work. New York: Norton, 1974.
Lellis, George. Bertolt Brecht: Cahiers du Cinéma and Contemporary Film Theory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Research Press, 1982.
Walsh, Martin. The Brechtian Aspect of Radical Cinema. London: British Film Institute, 1981.
Cynthia Baron

PLEASE, read the books:

TRANSLATOR’S FOREWORD
Jean Benedetti

This book is neither a literal nor an academic translation but rather an attempt to follow Stanislavski’s original intention: to provide an accessible account of the ‘system’ for actors in training without abstract theorizing. Hence the form he chose: a diary kept by a young student in which he describes the acting classes given by Tortsov (Stanislavski) and his own struggle, alongside his classmates, to master a new method. An Actor’s Work has always presented problems both to Russian- and non-Russian-speaking readers. First it is a work that is only half written. In 1888 when he was in his mid-twenties Stanislavski conceived the idea of a ‘grammar’ of acting. His first attempt, A Draft Manual dates from 1906 when the ‘system’ began. Thereafter he attempted formal exposition in the form of lectures and classes but came to the conclusion that actors did not respond to this kind of approach. He gave a series of talks at the Bolshoi school between 1919 and 1921, which represent the first tentative account of the ‘system’ but he never attempted to publish them. He then experimented with the novel form, The Story of a Role, The Story of Production both of which he abandoned. Finally, in the late 1920s, he decided upon a diary form, a journal kept by a student as he goes through the process of training, An Actor’s Work on Himself.
He began work after his heart attack of 1928, which put an end to his acting career, drawing heavily on earlier incomplete articles and his Notebooks, so that much of the material dates from before the Revolution.
Intended as a single volume, it outlined a two-year course of training in which the student first learns the process by which the inner life of a character is created and then how this is expressed in physical and technical terms. The result is a unified, coherent psycho-physical technique.
The accidents of history, which I have discussed elsewhere, caused the two aspects of training to be separated out. A single volume to become two so that some thirteen years separate the Russian edition of Part One (1938) and Part Two (1953). Thus the unity of the psycho-physical technique was lost. Even Elizabeth Hapgood, Stanislavski’s first translator, thought they were separate books and that Part Two represented a revision of the ideas contained in Part One. From the very beginning, Stanislavski had serious misgivings about dividing the book. He feared that the first volume, dealing with the psychological aspects of acting would be identified as the total ‘system’ itself, which would be identified as a form of ‘ultranaturalism’. His fears were justified. Directors have seen the ‘system’ as purely ‘psychological’. They are unaware of the enormous emphasis Stanislavski placed on physical and vocal technique and on a detailed analysis of the script. I have, therefore, attempted to restore the unity of Stanislavski’s teaching concept by recreating a single volume as was originally intended.
One of the difficulties of presenting a readable account of Stanislavski’s ideas is his style, which is, at considerable variance with his other writings. He was haunted by the possibility that he would be misunderstood, as had so often been the case in the past, even by close associates. In consequence his tendency was to overwrite and over-explain, using several words where one or two would do, and repeating definitions like a mantra. His style all too often obscured his meaning. When his life-long friend and theatre historian, Lyubov Gurievich, saw Stanislavski’s first draft chapters in 1929 she understood the problem. They were repetitive and verbose. She suggested to Stanislavski that he should complete the book and that then the two of them should edit and cut it into readable form. Stanislavski had two other collaborators on the book, Norman and Elizabeth Hapgood. Mrs Hapgood spoke fluent Russian and had been Stanislavski’s interpreter at a White House reception in 1923, while her husband, Norman, was an experienced publisher and editor.
In 1929 Stanislavski renewed his acquaintance with Mrs Hapgood in Nice, where he was convalescing after his heart attacks. They agreed to collaborate on an American translation. The first thing Norman Hapgood did was to take his blue pencil and edit down Stanislavski’s partial draft while Elizabeth Hapgood suggested certain revisions that were then translated back into Russian. When Stanislavski returned to Russia, the book was still unfinished. Mrs Hapgood took the completed chapters back with her to America but did not receive the remaining chapters until 1935.

Stanislavski’s task on his return to Moscow was to prepare the Soviet edition,1 working once again with Mrs Gurievich. It is with this edition that we are now concerned. This edition was to differ substantially from the edition given to Mrs Hapgood; the reasons for this were two-fold. First, Stanislavski would endlessly rewrite, whilst Mrs Gurievich used her ‘blue pencil’. She would carefully edit his drafts and introduce an element of order. Unfortunately he would then revise and rewrite, reintroducing chaos. Finally, in despair, Mrs Gurievich had to give up the unequal struggle so that the final chapters of Part One are Stanislavski’s alone and the deterioration in the writing is all too evident. Even after the proofs had been returned to the printers, he continued to draft sections for a possible second edition. Thus, even the Russian edition of 1938 was, in his mind, ‘provisional’.
Second, he was locked in a bitter battle with pseudo-Marxist Soviet psychology, which was Behaviourist and did not recognize the existence either of the subconscious or of the Mind. Consequently, he substantially rewrote whole passages in an attempt to appease the authorities. Nowhere are the differences between the two editions more marked than in Chapters 14, 15 and 16. The reasons for the difficulties of Stanislavski’s style go deeper than his personal foibles. His was a pioneering effort. He was attempting to define the actor’s processes (mental, physical, intellectual and emotional) in a comprehensive way that had never been undertaken before. His problem was that there was no available language or terminology to which he could turn. Many concepts, which we now take for granted such as nonverbal communication or body language did not exist. Even the notion of comprehensive, systematic training did not exist. Teaching in drama schools consisted mainly in students preparing scenes that were then reworked by the tutor. Sometimes a student would only prepare one or two scenes throughout his entire studies and would merely learn to copy his master’s tricks. He had no coherent process, no ‘grammar’ of his own. Stanislavski wanted to develop the actor-creator. He was driven, therefore, to cobble together a ‘jargon’ that was unknown outside the Art Theatre.
His experience of teaching the ‘system’ in the early years had made him wary of formal lecturing or of using scientific terminology. Actors either shied away from it or bandied technical terms about to give the impression that they understood, when in reality, they did not.
1 For a full account of the writing, translating, editing and publication of the work and on the differences between the American 1936 edition and the Soviet 1938 edition see my Stanislavski his Life and Art, 3rd edition, 1999.

Stanislavski’s ‘jargon’ is made up of disparate elements. Where possible he used ordinary, everyday words, what he called his ‘home-grown’ vocabulary. Thus when analyzing a play he did not talk about dividing it up into its component parts or sections, but of cutting it up into ‘Bits’ or pieces, as you would carve a lump of meat.2 In defining their course of action, actors set themselves ‘goals’, gave themselves simple, practical direct ‘Tasks’, not high-flown philosophical or emotional purposes. For the rest, he took what he could where he could. When he came to discuss non-verbal communication, he drew on concepts drawn from yoga which he had studied in the early 1900s. Where there were technical, scientific definitions such as intellect, feeling and will, he used them. Sometimes he would adapt words to suit his own purpose. This is the case with his decision to use the French word mise-en-scène/mises-en-scène to denote the outer stage action which literally ‘puts on stage’ the inner action of the play either as a whole or at individual moments.3 The most significant example, perhaps, is his use of the key term experiencing (perezhivanie) which denotes the process by which an actor engages actively with the situation in each and every performance. He was sometimes obliged, particularly when dealing with the subconscious to create his own terms and definitions which are often highly convoluted and confusing. The reader has to come to terms with the ‘jargon’ just as the students do in the book.
Indeed that is the book’s purpose: for the reader to experience the students’ learning process. As an aid, I have, as in previous books, given the major terms of ‘system’ initial capital letters to indicate their transformation from everyday words to technical definitions.
THE USA AND RUSSIA: A HISTORY OF PUBLICATION

An Actor Prepares

For commercial reasons, Part One, An Actor Prepares was reduced by Mrs Hapgood and Edith Isaacs, managing editor of Theatre Arts Books, to almost half its length. It loses its essential form as the diary of a first-year student, and becomes a straight narrative. Many of the lively classroom discussions where ideas are hammered out, not to mention the humour, disappeared. There is, in the original, no Director-enunciating principles in the abstract, but a rigorous and sympathetic teacher who guides students through a process of trial and error. Mrs Hapgood also decided not to use Stanislavski’s home-grown terms but to replace them with rather more abstract words. Thus, ‘Bit’ becomes ‘unit’.

Building A Character

Part Two, Building a Character again in the translation by Elizabeth Hapgood, presents much more serious editorial problems. Stanislavski did not live to complete Part Two. At his death in 1938 only one or two chapters, such as that on Speech existed in draft, although the overall contents of the book were clear. There were, in addition, a number of fragments of varying length that would have provided the basis for the completed manuscript.
Three versions of Part Two are available. The first, translated by Elizabeth Hapgood, which appeared in 1950, was based on material supplied by Stanislavski’s son, Igor. Mrs Hapgood believed that this material represented Stanislavski’s final thoughts. In 1955, Part Two appeared as Volume 3 in the 8-volume Soviet edition of Stanislavski’s Collected Works. It included material from the archives unavailable to Mrs Hapgood. It was presented as a reconstruction. In 1990, a further expanded version appeared as
Volume 3 of the new 9-volume edition of the Selected Works and was clearly marked Material for a Book. Although the 1955 and 1990 editions were fully annotated, no editorial work was done on the body of the text. Close examination of the published Russian texts reveals how rough a state the material is in. Much of it is drawn, as internal evidence indicates, from earlier periods of Stanislavski’s life, not from the mid-1930s. Many passages are variant versions of material that had already been used in Part One. Other material is repeated in more than one section. Even in apparently complete chapters there are repetitions. In the chapter on Speech, for example, punctuation, stress and pauses are discussed twice with slightly different examples. Some material
in the section The General Creative State may well have been intended for Chapter 15 of Part One. This is of interest to specialists and scholars, but if an attempt is to be made to produce a book which, in accordance with Stanislavski’s wishes is to be of practical use in actor training, to be used in conjunction with Part One, a degree of editorial work is necessary.
I have removed as far as possible redundant passages or material, which has been used in Part One. I have also removed the sections in the chapter on Speech which discuss the correct pronunciation of Russian consonants and which have little meaning for non-Russian speakers. Technical training in voice and body have advanced considerably in theatre schools and conservatoires since the 1930s so that some of Stanislavski’s ideas, which were pioneering at the time, are now of only historic interest. I have, therefore, edited and conflated two original chapters, Singing and Diction and Speech and its Laws into one, Voice and Speech. In the final chapters, Basics of the System and How to use the System, I have omitted almost entirely since they are fragmentary and largely summarize material from earlier sections. The revisions to Part One, which he intended for a second edition appear as Appendices at the end of the book, as do the practical exercises he suggested.
I have included Stanislavski’s original draft Preface, which has never been translated before. It was reconstructed by the editors of the current 9-volume from entries in Stanislavski’s Notebooks of the early 1930s. The original drafts set out his intentions much more clearly. The Preface to the 1938 Russian edition is essentially a political statement, a defence against criticisms he had received. I have also included in the Appendices the drafts Stanislavski made after the book had gone to the printer for a possible second edition.
THE ‘SYSTEM’ AND THE METHOD
One major obstacle to the proper understanding of Stanislavski’s teaching has been the widespread confusion between the ‘system’ and the Method as defined by Lee Strasberg at the Actors’ Studio in New York. Strasberg was perfectly aware of the differences between his teaching and Stanislavski’s, which centred on the role of Emotion Memory.4 In the ‘system’ the primary emphasis is on action, interaction and the dramatic situation which result in feeling with Emotion Memory as a secondary, ancillary technique. In the Method, Emotion Memory is placed at the very centre; the actor consciously evokes personal feelings that correspond to the character, a technique, which Stanislavski expressly rejected. Whereas in the ‘system’ each section of the play contains something an actor has to do, in the Method it contains something he has to feel. Strasberg’s main concern was to enable the actor to unblock his emotions. There is little or no textual or dramaturgical analysis.
In the early 1950s, Strasberg took charge of the Actors’ Studio. The original founders, Elia Kazan, Robert Lewis and Stella Adler were generally proponents of the ‘system’ in its late form. Adler spent six weeks in Paris in 1934 working with Stanislavski on the Method of Physical Action, which Strasberg categorically and angrily rejected when she explained it to him. A bitter dispute broke out among the teachers at the Studio.
4 See Chapter 9.

Strasberg was initially engaged exclusively as a teacher of theatre history and was not allowed to take acting classes since he was not trusted. It was with the departure of Elia Kazan to Hollywood that an opportunity arose for him to take over. He then refashioned the Studio in his own image. Indeed, he became the Studio; its teachings were his. It was in fact thanks to the impact of the films of Elia Kazan, and a series of commanding performances by actors such as Marlon Brando (taught by Stella Adler not
Strasberg) that the Method achieved worldwide fame and was identified with the ‘system’. This was made possible because most actors and directors, as Stanislavski had feared, thought that An Actor Prepares, a cut version of half a book, was the complete ‘system’. The ‘system’ meant subjectivity and emotion.5 To compound the confusion, the term perezhivanie (experiencing) was commonly translated as ‘emotional identification’.
In the 1950s only one or two schools in the UK taught the ‘system’ as laid down by Stanislavski himself. Again the ‘system’ was identified with the Method, which was generally derided by successful professionals. Only Michael Redgrave, among the leading actors of his time had any real understanding of Stanislavski. It is only in the last thirty years that Stanislavski’s authentic teachings have become known in university drama departments and theatre schools. Yet even comparatively well-informed people still confuse the ‘system’ and the Method, hence the importance of reaffirming the integrity of Stanislavski’s thought.

THE CHARACTERS IN THE BOOK

A note should be added about the names of the characters in the book. Stanislavski followed a tradition by which characters were given names that reflected the essential nature of their personalities. Stanislavski becomes Tortsov, which derives from the word for creator. Tortsov is a combination of the mature Stanislavski and his mentor, the leading tenor of the Bolshoi, Fydor Komissarzhevski. The student keeping the diary is Nazvanov, meaning the chosen one. He is a combination of the young Stanislavski, with the same first name Kostya (Konstantin) and Stanislavski’s favourite pupil, Vakhtangov, who first came to Stanislavski’s attention as a stenographer. Other students are called Brainy, Fatty, Prettyface, Big-mouth, Youngster, Happy, Showy. These linguistic niceties are lost on non-Russian speakers. Indeed, the simple pronunciation of Russian names presents difficulties which can be a barrier to understanding.
5 For a detailed analysis of the problem, see Richard Horby, The End of Acting, Applause Books, 2000.

Mrs Hapgood wisely, and probably with Stanislavski’s agreement, gave each of the students first names and I, like translators into other languages, have followed her example.

The pupils
Darya Dymkova
Grisha Govorkov
Marya Maloletkova
Konstantin (Kostya) Nazvanov
Leo Pushchin
Pavel (Pasha) Shustov
Nikolai Umnovikh
Varya Veliaminova
Igor Veselovski
Ivan (Vanya) Viuntsov

The teachers
Ivan Rakhmanov
Arkady Tortsov

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to express my profound gratitude to Katya Kamotskaia, a professional actress and director, and graduate of the Vakhtangov School in Moscow, for going through the draft translation and making many invaluable suggestions as to meaning and nuance. Our joint study of Stanislavski’s often convoluted and opaque text revealed the difficulties his style presents even for native Russian speakers when attempting to decipher his meaning. The final translation is the result of many hours of detailed discussion.

Jean Benedetti
October 2007

Method acting theory

Bertolt Brecht.

We have to say that presentational styles were dominant in films produced before 1908, and they have used various terms, including "histrionic," "melodramatic," and "romantic," to describe acting in early cinema. The salient point in their studies is that the early years of Anglo-European cinema often featured performances with emphatic and highly expressive postures and gestures. Linked to theatrical traditions in which tableaux were important, early film performances were marked by poses that forcefully embodied the emotional or narrative situation.
Many scholars see a transition in the 1910s from presentational to representational acting styles. The change in Method acting style is linked to the rise of naturalism in late-nineteenth-century theater and to developments in film practice as the movies became an entertainment form for middle-class audiences. Scholars have used terms such as "verisimilar acting," "naturalistic performance," and "realistic acting" to describe the representational styles of Method acting that accompanied the transition to feature-length films and the rise of the star Stanislavsky system. In contrast to the emphatic poses featured in presentational Method acting styles, representational Method Acting acting involves extensive use of props, blocking, and stage business to reveal dramatic conflict and characters' inner experiences.
By the 1920s representational Method acting styles were the norm in Anglo-European filmmaking, and thus an aspect of film practice open to challenge. While mainstream cinema continued to feature representational Method acting styles, filmmakers inspired by Soviet cinema rejected them on the grounds that they were one of the culture industry's more insidious methods for instilling false consciousness in mass audiences. Turning instead to epic theater and documentary forms, leftist filmmakers produced work such as Kuhle Wampe (1932) and Native Land (1942). Creating work that sometimes is compared to surrealist films of the 1920s and 1930s, experimental artists began using presentational Method acting styles to illustrate archetypical figures in dreamlike narratives such as Meshes in the Afternoon (1943).
Impatient with the conventions of commercial film and theater, modernists such as Jean-Luc Godard (b. 1930) found inspiration in stage productions mounted by Bertolt Brecht's (1898–1956) Berliner Ensemble in the 1950s. The influence of Brecht's views on dramatic art is visible in films directed by Godard and in the work of filmmakers such as Danièle Huillet (b. 1936) and Jean-Marie Straub (b. 1933), who were influenced by Godard's contributions to the French New Wave. In this line of modernist cinema, characters are presented as social types or stereotypes. Dispassionate performances obscure access to characters' inner experiences. Functioning as news readers more than characters, actors break the illusion of the fictional world by using direct address; working as cultural or media images more than characters, actors become pieces of the film's graphic design.
In Godard's films, Method acting performance elements are just one part of an audiovisual collage. Performances function independently of or in counterpoint to framing, editing, camera movement, and other cinematic elements. As models of social types, Godard's actors display little or no emotion. They often convey information about their characters' social and narrative situation by reenacting a gesture or assuming a pose drawn from film and media culture. For example, in a scene in Àbout de souffle (Breathless, 1960), Jean-Paul Belmondo (b. 1933) pensively draws his thumb across his lips, emulating a gesture his character has seen on a poster of Humphrey Bogart (1899–1957).
Brecht's writing on epic theater prompted film critics to see the truncated Method acting performance style in modernist films as "Brechtian." The term served to differentiate the minimalist presentation of social types from the more histrionic style used in early cinema. With impassive performances in modernist films identified as Brechtian, expressive performances in a representational Method acting style came to be seen as "Stanislavskian." The connection between representational Method acting performance styles and the Russian actor-director-theorist Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavsky (1863–1938) is not surprising. In 1906 the Moscow Art Theatre's first European tour prompted theater critics to discuss the marvelous details of the actors' stage business. Their reviews called attention to the actors' ability to create the impression of everyday life. During the Moscow Art Theatre's tours in America in 1923 and 1924, which featured productions from the company's 1906 tour (Tsar Fyodor, The Lower Depths, The Cherry Orchard, and The Three Sisters), American critics were MARLON BRANDO b. Omaha, Nebraska, 3 April 1924, d. 1 July 2004

Marlon Brando - the Method Acting actor:

Marlon Brando is often considered by many to be America's greatest actor inMethod acting. He made his stage debut in 1944 and won acclaim for his 1947 performance in A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Elia Kazan. Following his film debut in 1950 Brando quickly became the preeminent Method actor in postwar America. He received Academy Award® nominations for his performances in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Viva Zapata! (1952), and Julius Caesar (1953), and an Oscar® for his performance in On the Waterfront (1954).
Publicity surrounding these films helped to establish the idea that Brando's acclaimed performances represented the arrival of Method acting in Hollywoodand America. To understand Brando's work as a Method actor, however, it is important to recognize that the principles of Method acting and actor training associated with the Method acting were developed by three different individuals: Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, and Sanford Meisner. Each focused on different methods of preparation and character development: Strasberg focused on affective memory, Adler emphasized imagination, and Meisner stressed the importance of actors' connection. Brando took classes at the Actors Studio when it opened in New York in 1947, but he did not study with Strasberg, who joined the Actors Studio in 1948 and became its artistic director in 1951. Instead, beginning in 1942, Brando studied with Adler at the New School in New York. The New School's Dramatic Workshop, established by Erwin Piscator, who established the principles of epic theater that Bertolt Brecht would make famous, gave Brando the chance to perform in Shakespearean and symbolist productions. Studying with Adler, Brando was trained not to use memory and personal history as the basis for developing characterizations, but to enter into a character's fictional world by studying the script and historical accounts that would shed light on the character's given circumstances.
Working with Adler also instilled in Brando the belief that Method actors were not isolated artists, but instead citizens who should have a point of view about society. Brando's decision to protest Hollywood's representations of Native Americans by declining the Academy Award® for his performance in The Godfather (1972) is seen by many critics as a flamboyant gesture of a short-lived political stance. Yet, careful review of the roles Brando selected throughout his career reveal an engaged and long-standing interest in decrying the unchecked exercise of power. Brando's characterizations in Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) and Burn! (1969) are especially rich for their depiction of power's devastating effects. His portrayals in The Ugly American (1963), The Godfather, and Apocalypse Now (1979) are good examples of his ability to craft performances in Method acting that suggest the allure and the ruthlessness of men who operate beyond the boundary of social norms. While he is often associated with the rebel characters he portrayed, Brando is best understood as a gifted Method actor, skilled enough to create performances that also invariably exposed the downside of rogue masculinity.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), The Wild One (1954), On the Waterfront (1954), The Young Lions (1958), Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), Burn! (Queimada!, 1969), The Godfather (1972), Last Tango in Paris (1973), Apocalypse Now (1979), A Dry White Season (1989)
FURTHER READING
Brando, Marlon, with Robert Lindsey. Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me. New York: Random House, 1994.
Hodge, Alison, ed. Twentieth-Century Actor Training. New York: Routledge, 2000.
Krasner, David, ed. Method Acting Reconsidered: Theory, Practice, Future. New York: St. Martin's, 2000.
McCann, Graham. Rebel Males: Clift, Brando, and Dean. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993.
Shipman, David. Brando. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1974.
Cynthia Baron

Portrait of Marlon Brando at the time of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), is equally impressed by the simplicity and naturalness of the actor's Method acting performances.
There is a connection between the multidimensional "The System" Konstantin Stanislavsky developed over the course of his career and representational Method acting performance styles because the Stanislavsky System included new methods that Method actors could use to prepare for and execute Method acting performances suited to the demands of late-nineteenth-century naturalism. For example, in place of studying painting or sculpture to create poses that would reveal characters' emotional states, method actors using Stanislavsky's System learned to use script analysis to understand a character's circumstances and a script's fictional world. Rather than working to create certain images in their performances, Stanislavsky's actors trained in Method acting turned to historical research and observation of everyday life. This research provided the basis for actors training in Method acting imaginative creation of details about their characters' life history and social environment. When combined with exercises that enhanced Method actors' ability to relax on stage and focus their attention on fellow actors in Method acting, the process of script analysis devised by Method of Stanislavsky System made it possible for Method actors to create Method acting performances that seemed to be lifted from everyday life.
From the 1920s forward, most actors in the United States have approached Method acting performance using strategies based on their understanding of the approach to Method actor training, character development, and performance outlined in the Stanislavsky System. In the 1930s dialogue directors, who worked with film Method actors to develop characterizations, and drama coaches, who developed actor-training programs for the studios, became an integral part of Hollywood's industrial production process. At institutions such as the American Academy of Dramatic Art and the Pasadena Playhouse, Method actors working in film learned scientific, modern, and systematic methods for developing characterizations and working in film. Many film Method actors took classes at the Actors Laboratory in Hollywood, which was established in 1941 by Group Theatre actors Morris Carnovsky (1897–1992), Roman Bohnen (1894–1949), J. Edward Bromberg (1903–1951), and Phoebe Brand (1907–2004) (all of whom shared Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner's opposition to Lee Strasberg's interpretation of Stanislavsky). Courses at the Actors Lab and at long-established institutions, and working sessions with drama coaches such as Sophie Rosenstein, were all grounded in Stanislavsky's view that Method actors must ask what the character would do in the given circumstances. In the late 1940s, when studios reduced their investment in contract players and communist-front allegations forced the Actors Lab to close, Robert Lewis (1909–1997), Elia Kazan (1909–2003), and Cheryl Crawford (1902–1986) established the Actors Studio in New York. Soon after, Lee Strasberg (1901–1982) assumed the role of artistic director, and in the decades that followed, Strasberg popularized the American Method acting, which inverts Stanislavsky's System by encouraging the Method actor to ask how he or she would feel in the character's situation.
The distinction scholars seek to describe by referring to Brechtian and Stanislavskian Method acting performance styles is an important one, but it is better understood as a contrast between presentational and representational styles. In a Hollywood studio–era film such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra, 1939), editing and framing choices are subordinate to Method actors' movements and facial expressions. Like the film's musical score and sound design, they serve to enhance audience access to characters' subjective experience and desires. Method actors' performances are designed to disclose the inner lives of their characters. By comparison, in a modernist film such as Godard's Weekend (1967), editing and frame compositions often exclude close-ups. That approach eliminates cathartic or emotion-laden moments from the screen. Weekend's editing, framing, sound design, and camera movement also are often unrelated to Method actors' movements or interactions, serving instead to provide commentary on the film's polemical vignettes. The figures in the film are not defined by their personality traits, but instead represent social types shaped entirely by external forces.
As shorthand, it might make sense to discuss Stanislavskian Method acting performances in films such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Brechtian performances in films such as Weekend, but doing that obscures important information about the multifaceted system Stanislavsky developed. Today, scholars and practitioners alike recognize that Stanislavsky's System can be used to create a range of Method acting performances styles. They see the value of analyzing scripts to understand the problems characters need to solve to reach their goals, the specific actions characters will use to reach their goals, and the structure of scenes that arises from the actions characters take in pursuit of their goals. Many scholars now recognize that Brecht actually used Stanislavsky's System to develop Method acting performances and that Brecht's approach to staging required Method actors to use direct address, truncated performances, and animated Method acting styles imbued with the dynamic energy of circus and music hall performances.
Describing Method acting performances in mainstream Hollywood films as Stanislavskian and performances in modernist European films as Brechtian dissuades observers from seeing that even in largely representational performances, Method actors step outside their characters to comment on their characters and on their Method acting performances. What makes Method acting performances so compelling in Cassavetes's films, for example, is the fact that they not only create memorable characters, but also contain moments when Method actors seem to comment on the narrative and on their participation in the film. The Brechtian potential of Stanislavskian Method acting performances is also disclosed by many of Orson Welles's performances. His portrayals in Jane Eyre (1944), The Third Man (1949), The Long Hot Summer (1958), Touch of Evil (1958), and Campanadas a medianoche (Chimes at Midnight, 1965) do not simply present audiences with a character, or even the star Method acting performance of a character. Instead, Welles's portrayals enlist sympathy for the characters, critique the social and economic conditions the characters exemplify, and comment on Welles as an artist working in a capital-intensive industry.

Method acting theory

Method acting teachers and directors

About Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold - Method acting coach:

Meyerhold's revolutionary Biomechanics technique was first shown publicly in June of 1922. Meyerhold introduced the Method acting technique within the confines of the new sociopolitical structure of the Soviet Union. The Communist revolution moved society into a mechanical age; one who puts the skilled worker at the forefront of citizenry and societal involvement. It is the age of the scientific revolution based heavily on Taylorism, posited by Frederick Taylor, writer of The Principles of Scientific Management. In his book, Frederick Taylor speaks of a system “designed to increase industrial output by rationalizing the production process. Meyerhold said in June 1922:

In the past the Method actor has always conformed to the society for which his art was intended. In future the Method actor must go even further in relating his technique to the industrial situation. For he will be working in a society where labour is no longer regarded as a curse but as a joyful, vital necessity. In these conditions of ideal labour art clearly requires a new foundation […] The Method actor embodies in himself both the organizer and that which is organized (i.e. the artist and his material). The formula for Method acting may be expressed as follows: N = A1 + A2 (where N = the Method actor; A1 = the artist who conceives the idea and issues the instructions necessary for its execution; A2 = the executant who executes the conception of A1). The Method actor must train his material (the body), so that so that it is capable of executing instantaneously those tasks that are dictated externally (by the Method actor, the director…) […] since the art of the Method actor is the art of plastic forms in space, he must study the mechanics of his body.

Meyerhold would go on to underscore that everything in psychology, and therefore emotion is dictated by physiological process; or put more plainly, movement. In this seminal demonstration, Meyerhold’s students exhibited a number of Biomechanical “études.” The études are basically movement scores, or a series of movements that, in a way, tell a short story; comprising a score from the sum of their parts. The études demonstrate what Meyerhold and his pupils called “acting cycles.” The acting cycle has three parts: Intention, realization, and reaction.
The separate movements are comprised of four distinct parts, they are: otkas (literally, refusal), posyl (literally, the sending), stoika (or stance), and tormos (the brake). The otkas is the movement in preparation of the action itself and is manifested in a movement in the opposite direction, like a spring. The posyl is the actual execution of the intended action, set up by the otkas. And the stoika is both the completion of the movement (coming to a halt) as well as the starting block for the next movement in an étude. Tormos is the “brake” or “resistance.” It is that which helps the body to move in a fluid and controlled motion through all stages of a movement. The Method actor not utilizing tormos will be sloppy and unmeasured; without precision in the otkas, posyl, and stoika. Some examples of solo classical études are “Throwing the Stone,” and “Shooting from the Bow.” In addition, each étude begins and ends with the “Daktyl,” a rhythmic movement including all the parts of a Biomechanical movement (otkas, posyl, stoika, tormos). This movement is meant to set the rhythmic and energetic tone for the execution of the etude.
Before an Method actor can begin to work on the études in a truly meaningful way, they must be subject to rigorous physical Method acting training to develop muscle, balance, and flexibility, as well as participating in exercises that develop a sense of their spacial relationship to and awareness of the other Method actors on stage and the environment. Once the Method actor has completed these exercises and has worked on the individual études, they can begin working on études with a partner. In these two-person études, the Method actors share a movement score and must work together through observation and response. Some examples of classical études are “The Slap,” “The Stab with the Dagger,” and “The Leap onto the Chest.”
These exercises in Biomechanics have as their basis, a technique of Method acting which does not exclude psychological or emotional response, but instead, posits a new process for achieving said response, as well as creating expressionistic arrangements of the body in space. In Meyerhold’s Biomechanics the inner is derived from the outer; it is the physiologicalMethod acting work which excites the psychological. The Method actor therefore must internalize the basic principles of Biomechanics as a result of their work. This includes the crucial “Principle of Totality,” which is the idea of the entire body being involved in every single physical movement; and with regards to center of gravity, tension and release, and rhythm of movement.
Advanced work in Biomechanics includes music with the études (including piano pieces Meyerhold originally selected for specific movement scores). Since the outer physiology prescribes the inner emotion, once the Method actors have mastered the études, they are invited to vary the movement score by “structuring it emotionally.” There is most certainly a large element of improvisation that will happen at this point, as the Method actors are able to communicate with each other in profoundly visceral ways and manipulate their bodies to the fullest extent. The Method actors respond to each other as well as to the introduced music, sometimes working with it and sometimes against it.
When one watches a Biomechanical Method acting etude they cannot help but reflect on the seemingly melodramatic and overly emphatic nature of the movement scores (especially one like “the stab with the dagger”; but Meyerhold was battling naturalism, and was heavily influenced by the “over-the-top” style of commedia dell’ arte. He wanted Method actors in his Method acting productions who would not say things like “my character wouldn’t do that,” because if Meyerhold prescribed a physical activity, the Method actor must perform it and derive the inner emotional response from the physical activity he was performing (hence the N = A1 + A2 equation). This way of moving is far removed from any type of natural behavior, and that is exactly what Meyerhold strived for. His “Theatre of the Grotesque” employed a philosophy that art and life were completely different, and should make no attempt to imitate each other. It is no surprise, in many ways, that it is a director and Method acting coach who developed it, based on the sort of productions he wanted to make, and the inability of the Stanislavskian Method actor to meet the challenges therein.
In production, Biomechanics first appeared in Meyerhold’s Method acting production of The Magnanimous Cuckold Meyerhold said of the production, “With this production we hoped to lay the basis for a new form of theatrical presentation with no need for illusionistic settings or complicated props, making due with the simplest objects which came to hand and transforming a spectacle performed by specialists into an improvised performance which could be put on by workers in their leisure time.” Throughout the rehearsal process for the Method acting performance, the Method actors had been training in all sorts of physical technique in everything from tumbling and fencing to mime (and, as we came to learn, Biomechanics as well; in fact, the seminal movement of the étude “The Leap to The Chest” was featured, and it is likely that many others were as well).
Biomechanicstrains the body in a codified way to work from the outside in. To tap into a psychological and emotional life through the outer physical form, and a codification of Method acting training. These Method actors trained in Biomechanics are truly athletes.
The development of Meyerhold’s Biomechanics is a clear product of Meyerhold’s interpolation of experience over time. It combines Japanese movement sensibilities, commedia dell’ arte, plasticity, musical rhythm, and science to the ends of creating a very specific aesthetic for a very specific ideology of what theatre should look like. To quote Anton Chekhov in a conversation with an Method actor during a rehearsal of his play, The Seagull: “The stage is art. There’s a genre painting by Kramskoy in which the faces are portrayed superbly. What would happen if you cut the nose out of one of the paintings and substituted a real one? The nose would be ‘realistic’ but the picture would be ruined.”
The bio-mechanical system of the Method acting Coach Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold can be defined not only as a system for the basic grounding of Method actors and stage articulation, but also (although not quite finalised, is still well enough set out) of a global theatrical system. In connection with this, one should bear in mind the opinion stated by Aleksey Aleksandrovich Gvozdev, who, when speaking about a theatrical system, refers to it as the "relationship between dramaturgy, stage, Method actor’s performance and the spectators." Coming in between the interaction of these four elements: stage area, audience, Method actor’s performance and dramatic substance, followed by the theatre Method acting director with his role as an innovative power to elevate all these elements, one can find the main features of the creative work of Vsevolod Emilevich, and in the same scope, the theory of biomechanics. Among the first theoretical and practical innovations which Meyerhold introduced through his text as a Method acting theatre director, is the re-structuring of the stage, deconstruction of the stage area and the abandonment of the concept of "a box without the fourth wall". His reformation of the stage begins with the approach to Method acting style, published during his period at the Theater-Studio. This stylisation leads Meyerhold - the Method acting coach, to the "arrangement of the stage with flat surfaces", specifically, to eliminate the scenery and present the Method actor, as a pricipal mechanism for theatrical expression, as the "setting". This is the beginning of the deconstruction of the stage space, inherited from the old theatre, the theatre called by Aleksey Gvozdev "a theatre of the Renaissance", which, apart from anything else, encourages the box-stage idea. The de-structuring of the stage made Meyerhold take an interest in theatrical Method acting systems which had abandoned the box-stage, more precisely, in the theater of the pre-Renaissance period, mainly the Spanish theater, commedia dell’arte and, certainly, the ancient theater: "If the Conditional theater prefers the destruction of decorations , despises ramps , isn’t that theater leading to the resurrection of the theater from antiquity? Yes, it is. The ancient theater, judging by its architecture, is a theatre which contains everything necessary to our contemporary theatre: it has no decorations, the space is in three dimensions. The ancient theater with its simplicity, with its auditorium in the shape of a horse-shoe, with its orchestra, is a unique theater which can be used for a varied repertoire: Fairground Booth of Blok, The Life of Man of Andreyev, the tragedies of Maeterlinck..."
The disarrangement of the stage, which in practice began in the Theater-Studio, and which was theoretically explained in the article "To the history and technique of the theater", had its climax in the constructive solution of the The Magnificent Cuckold and The Death of Tarelkin. The stage in these two Method acting performances not only resembles the renaissance box, but is also made as dynamic as possible and put completely to the benefit of the performance itself. It is stripped to the maximum extent, left with only enough elements to enable the Method actor to convey his art. So, in the 20’s, Meyerhold’s dreams from 1912 finally came true, when he published To The History And Technique Of The Theater: the props on stage are not mise en scene any more, but rather a supplement to the actor’s body and movement. Thus, the wings of the windmill in The Magnificent Cuckold rotate in strictly defined moments, actors vigorously pass through the meat-grinding machine in The Death of Tarelkin, the stairs in the Cuckold are a three-dimensional extension of the area used. The lighting is also subservient to the arrangement of the stage area. Meyerhold is one of the first Method acting theatre directors of the 20th century who moved the lighting from the stage to the auditorium. In addition, Meyerhold elevated the role of light and lighting to a level equal to the role of music and rhythm in the Method acting performance. "The light should touch the spectator as does music. Light must have its own rhythm, the score of light can be composed on the same principle as that of the sonata."
Disarrangement of the "box-stage" in the Method acting theatrical system inevitably includes another element, which is very important to Meyerhold – the spectator. An imaginary wall of the room no longer separates the stage from the auditorium. Method Actors do not play "as if they are alone"; and they are supposed to be aware of the audience’s reaction at any moment: "A specific peculiarity of the actor’s creativity (as opposed to the originality of the playwright, the theatre director or the other artists) is that the creative process is being conducted in front of the audience. As a result, the actor and the spectator are interposing a particular mutual relationship, specifically, the actor puts the spectator in the position of a sounding board, which reacts to every action upon his command. And vice versa – sensing his own resonator (the audience), the actor immediately reacts, by improvisation, to all the demands coming from the audience. Following a series of signs (noise, movement, laughter etc.), the actor must define the attitude of the audience towards the performance correctly." Thus, Meyerhold contends, the goal will be achieved – "having control over the audience, arousing even the most indifferent spectator’s emotions." The Method acting theatre director must also think of the structure of spectators and their reactions while creating the play: "A theatre director makes a great mistake if he does not take account of the audience while preparing the play..." In order to fulfil this request, Method acting coach - Meyerhold thinks that "primarily, the spectator should be placed so that the rhythm of the play can reach right down inside him." Therefore the proscenium, as the best way of reaching this goal, is introduced. The proscenium of Vsevolod Emilevich is the bridge between the stage and the auditorium, enabling the audience to infiltrate their emotions into the play. The function of the proscenium, its redesign in fact, offered a new role to the audience, and led to the final destruction of the box-stage. According to Vsevolod Emilevich, the architecture of the Renaissance theater, by its separation from the auditorium seats, balconies and boxes, does not correspond to the essence of theater itself, since the spectator is set apart from the play. Furthermore, such separation is not suitable because of the different angles from which the audience follows the events on the stage. (This attitude, expressed in 1934, corresponds to the systems of a triangle-theater and straight line-theater, mentioned by Vsevolod Emilevich in 1912. In the triangle-theater, the spectator is outside the triangle, while in the straight line-theater, the audience is already involved within the Method acting theatrical structure. Meyerhold chose the straight line-theater, which offers many opportunities to the Method acting theatre director to emphasize the temporary nature, as a natural feature of the scenic art). In order to avoid separation of the audience from the play and at the same time, involving the audience into the Method acting play, Meyerhold suggests, firstly, "disarrangement of the box-stage. The first attack was made by those who extended the proscenium deep inside the auditorium. The new theatre will have no box-stage; there is only the proscenium, where the Method action takes place. In the ancient theatre, that place was called the orchestra. The orchestra can have a circular, quadrangular, trianglular or elliptical shape, it does not matter which. Its shape meets the demands of the composition, as decided by the Method acting theatre director, as the creator of the whole project."
The contemporaries of Vsevolod Emilevich reacted noisily to his interpretation of the dramaturgical material. It is the dramaturgical material, not the dramaturgy! It develops from the material shaped by the Method acting theatre director according to his own needs, depending upon the imaginary structure of the play and upon one’s own theatrical aesthetics. At this point, one can see the serious disagreement between the attitudes Meyerhold - the Method acting coach, held in his early years to those of his mature ones. While in 1912, he considered that "the new theater arises from literature", ten years later Vsevolod Emilevich had no time to wait for the dramaturgy which corresponds to his theater, but "he takes over the initiative himself and uses his own theatrical methods in order to imbue a new spirit into the old body." With Meyerhold, the issue of which element had priority: drama text – theater, simply does not exist. Everything is subordinated to the Method acting theatrical expression as a whole. Therefore, without having any prejudice, in 1924 he dissects the play The Forest by the classicist Ostrovsky into 33 episodes, thus abandoning all the "rules of fine behaviour" and respect to Russian classical dramaturgy. Moscow, as well as the whole of theatrical Russia was scandalized in 1926, finding Gogol’s The Government Inspector, (sometimes titled The Inspector General) completely changed. Meyerhold remodelled the Gogol’s comedy, deleting whole scenes, makes one character out of two. The outcome was: Vsevolod Emilevich created a performance in which there are only traces of Gogol; however, the theatre director Meyerhold is constantly present. Vsevolod Emilevich, while analyzing The Government Inspector in front of his theatre staff, says: "What makes this play difficult is that, like other plays, it is directed towards the Method actor, not towards the Method acting theatre director." Meyerhold is quite certain about who should manage the complex theatrical mechanism Therefore, the Master, should "create (through changes in the text, amongst other things) a situation which would be easiest for the actor, enabling him to put on the performance without any difficulties." Such an approach gives the Method acting theatre director an opportunity to model the text and adjust the dramaturgical material to his own theatrical and aesthetic needs and principles. At the same time, the Method acting theatre director, while selecting the play, is no more limited by the dramaturgic or literary values of the text. Simply, it is possible to take low-quality dramatic material and re-arrange it. The limits, in this case, are set only by the creative powers of the Method acting theatre director and of the Method actors.
Finally, we have reached the fourth basic element in the Method acting theatrical system advocated by Meyerhold: the Method acting coach and actor. Prior to giving a resume of Vsevolod Emilevich’s attitudes about the method actor and actor’s play, we will briefly point to the specific relationship between the Method acting actor and the Method acting theatre director in Meyerhold’s theatrical concept. Very often, at different times and at different places, Meyerhold defines the Method actor as the main, fundamental element of the Method acting theatrical performance. At first sight, such a definition is opposed to his proclaimed attitude that the theater of Vsevolod Emilevich is a director’s theatre, a Method acting system where the Method acting theatre director is the principal creator of the play. But only at first glance. Specifically, since the Method actor is, to Vsevolod Emilevich, the central figure in the theater, he is the only "medium" by which the Method acting theatrical director’s ideas can be transmitted to the audience. Therefore, in one of his appeals, Meyerhold calls the Method actors "living representatives of the theatre director’s idea." Certainly, in order to be successful, the actor should have great natural creativity, in order to convey the Method acting theatre director’s instructions through his own creative filter. According to Vsevolod Emilevich, the task of the Method acting theatre director is "to sublimate certain elements of the play, certain characters, each part, into an organic whole, suitable to his own general idea of the complete play." On the other hand, the actor’s task, while accepting some of the Method acting theatre director’s ideas about his character, is to convey them through his own creative filter and transfer them to the audience. The main issue in this piece of work is to study this transmission, namely, the manner of the Method actor’s performance and the preparations for that Method acting performance.
The biomechanics, conceived by Vsevolod Emilevich, is simultaneously both a particular Method acting system for actor’s training and a way of an actor’s performance, whose purpose is to effect the main request made by Meyerhold on the stage, a request which he had made as early as 1905, in the theater studio, and didn’t give up until his imprisonment in 1939: the flexibility of the Method actor to convey his own creation through his body (consciously controlled!) and his movements. "The creativity of the actor is shown in his movements, which are, through the excitement, enriched by glare, colours and skills in order to stimulate the spectator’s imagination." The biomechanic Method acting system, according to Meyerhold, "is not a theatrical system, nor a specific kind of training; it is a part of the exercises in the area of culture." However, this training is completely integrated within Meyerhold’s theatrial system, requiring the actor to be a perfect machine using the material performed in front of the audience – his body, to the utmost limits: "The material of the actor’s art is the human body, i.e. the torso, the limbs, the head and the voice. While studying his material, the actor should not rely upon the anatomy, but upon the possibilities of his body, as a material for stage performance. "
The biomechanical way of Method acting training the actor’s body starts from the principles of tailoring the movements. The theory of Frederick Winslow Taylor for rejecting all unnecessary movements during the work, in order to reach greater productivity and effectiveness, and reduce the consumption of physical power of the worker, corresponds to Meyerhold’s experiments in the theater and to his searching for an Method actor who will respond to these experiments. "In the work process, it is possible not only to distribute properly the rest period, says Meyerhold in one of his speeches, but it is necessary to find such moments during work, (Meyerhold’s italics – M. P.) which will thus provide the very best use of the whole working time. This refers completely to the Method acting actor of a future theater." The part which Meyerhold stressed in this declaration is, in fact an improvement of Taylor’s theory. However, Vsevolod Emilevich, in his creative demands, cannot be reduced to beeing a mere imitator of the thesis "man-machine", which was very popular in Soviet Russia in the years after the October Revolution. It is quite clear that he recognizes the Method actor as some kind of a machine (one of the principles of biomechanics says: "the body is a machine, the worker is a machinist"), with a very important correction – he lets the actor preserve creativity in his acting. That is the idea of actor’s ambiguity. Specifically, starting from Coquelin senior, saying that the actor is both a creator and a substance to the creativity, Meyerhold says: "It seems that in each actor, when starting to play his role, there are two actors: the first one is himself, the actor who actually exists and is ready to play the role on stage – A1, and the second, who doesn’t yet exist, whom the actor is ready to send on stage – A2. A1 looks upon A2 as material which still needs to be worked upon. Firstly, A1 should consider A2 within the stage area, since it is clear that the actor’s performance depends greatly upon the size of the stage, its shape etc." Such a structured concept of the actor’s technique is linked to the need for "excitement", as a necessary element in the actor’s art. To Meyerhold, "the excitement is the capability to convey an externally received task through feelings, movements and words. The co-ordinated demonstration of reflecting excitement, in fact, represent the Method acting actor’s performance." The actor-creator (A1 – using the terminology of Vsevolod Emilevich), quite consciously, using his previous knowledge, capabilities, physical abilities and, of course, following the theatre director’s own concept, shapes the material which is at his disposal -- primarily his own body. Up until now, the need for biomechanics and its principles, primarily as a method of training for an actor, but also as a principle for stage performance, has only been applied to its fullest extent in a couple of performances (in the Magnificent Cuckold and in the Death of Tarelkin). From this point of view, The Cuckold is, perhaps, the most extreme example of Meyerhold’s work, but, as Vsevolod Emilevich says, "The Generous Cuckold" "was to demonstrate the basis of the new technique of the play in a new artistic situation," particularly, to raise the actors’ performance to the absolute limits of the experiment, to test in practice the theoretical surmises of Meyerhold and his colleagues.
Biomechanics, in a way, raises these theoretical attitudes to their culminating height. Vsevolod Emilevich said, "if the tip of the nose works – so does the whole body". This continues the tradition of stressing the need for an Method acting actor "to observe himself" on the stage, in other words, stressing (once again) the actor as one who synthesises both the creation and the material from which that creation is made. This idea means that an Method acting actor has to be capable of "co-ordinating in the space and on stage, the ability to find himself in the whole course of the play, the ability to adjust and the ability to define visually the distance between actors on the stage." The actor must have these qualities in order to construct the whole performance in the best possible way and to give the theatre director (the final sublimater of the creativity of all participants in the theatre) the means by which to plan the development of the performance to the smallest detail.
One should bear in mind that the whole concept of the actor’s performance, the introduction of biomechanics into the theatre, is, as far as Meyerhold is concerned, only part of a constant effort to define a theater which will go back to the roots of the theater, which will resurrect the inherited dependence of the theatre, as a working principle. Whatever variety there was in his creative work, whatever verbal inconsistencies and contradictions there may have been, Meyerhold’s creative work has, over forty years, been directed towards one unique goal: not to let theater be the same as life.
Translation: Evdokija Zafirovska

Meyerhold's Biomechanics

About Vsevolod Meyerhold http://web.syr.edu/~kjbaum/aboutvsevolodmeyerhold.html
(10. 2. 2008):
Vsevolod Emilovich Meyerhold (1874-1940) was one of two actors fresh out of drama school who were invited to join the newly formed Moscow Art Theatre in the spring of 1898. (The other was Olga Knipper, Chekhov’s future wife.) Meyerhold stayed with the Art Theatre for four years, playing approximately eighteen roles-including Treplev in the Art Theatre’s original production of Chekhov’s Seagull.
Meyerhold became increasingly interested in exploring other theatrical forms in addition to the Realism/ Naturalism of the Art Theatre. His real interest was no longer in a theatre that seeks to "recreate" life and whose laws are those of "nature." Rather, Meyerhold sought a theatre capable of revealing "inner dialogue by means of the music of plastic movement" (Meyerhold on Theatre, Edward Braun). Meyerhold left the Art Theatre and began developing his own aesthetic.
Meyerhold regarded movement, gesture, space, rhythm and "music" as the primary elements of the "language of the theatre." He dreamed of "retheatricalizing" the theatre, of creating a theatre that would give its audience truthful images of life but that wouldn’t seek to imitate or copy life.
A Method acting director should, according to Meyerhold, begin his work in rehearsal with the search for form. And this search begins with the creation of a "movement score" for the production. The director’s task is to create "a pattern of movement on the stage" by means of a "deft mastery of line, grouping and costume color" (V. E. Meyerhold quoted in Braun). Movement on the stage is created not only by "movement in the literal sense, but by the disposition of lines and colours and by the ease and cunning with which these lines and colours are made to cross and vibrate" (V. E. Meyerhold quoted in Braun).
Meyerhold’s directorial experiments led to an invitation from Stanislavsky to head a new experimental Studio at the Art Theatre. While this first Studio was short-lived, Meyerhold’s work there led him to a crucial realization. There was a general consensus among theatre people who had seen dress rehearsals that there were some interesting experiments in suggestive and nonrepresentational design, but that the acting was terrible. The actors were simply not equipped to meet the demands Meyerhold made of them. Meyerhold realized that from now on an exploration of actor training was going to have to run in tandem with his exploration of form in the theatre. Like the American pioneers in modern dance after him, he would have to create a system for training artists that would enable them to give life to the forms he envisioned. For the next thirty-five years, Meyerhold explored a vast array of styles as a director and developed the system of actor training and approach to theatre that would become known as "Biomechanics."

Meyerhold's Biomechanics http://web.syr.edu/~kjbaum/meyerholdsbiomechanics.html
(10. 2. 2008):
"If the tip of the nose works, the whole body works."
V. E. Meyerhold
Biomechanics is an approach to actor training and to theatre developed by Russian Method actor, director and teacher, Vsevolod Meyerhold during the 1920’ and 1930’s. For political reasons, Biomechanics was forced underground after Meyerhold’s execution by the Soviet regime in 1940. During the 1970’s it began to re-emerge semi-secretly.
In 1972 Moscow’s prestigious Theatre of Satire invited the teacher of Biomechanics from Meyerhold’s own school, Nikolai Kustov, to train a group of the Theatre’s young actors. One of these was Gennadi Bogdanov. Mr. Bogdanov has become one of the leading exponents of the living tradition of Meyerhold’s work. Glasnost and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union have brought Mr. Bogdanov invitations to teach in the West-first in Europe, then in the United States. Thus Meyerhold’s legacy has become available for study here.
This approach, which Meyerhold developed over some thirty-five years of experimentation and exploration as a director and as a teacher, provides the acting student with a comprehensive, detailed program for the development of her/ his psycho-physical instrument. Probably the most striking thing about training in Biomechanics is the degree of integration between "purely" physical training and the application of that physical work to concerns specific to acting.
A course in Biomechanics begins with physical training. But the purpose of that training is to forge the connection between mind and body, to "teach the body to think." In Biomechanics, even the simplest exercises that at first glance might seem to be essentially traditional ones designed solely to develop physical capacities such as strength, agility, coordination, balance, flexibility and endurance become-because of the thought process involved-acting exercises. Thus while students run, jump and work every muscle and joint in a dizzying array of exercises during the initial physical training phase of the work, they are already required to be continually aware of their relationship to the space and to the other actors in their "ensemble"-as well as their own "inner movement."
The training is highly systematic and sequential. Thus it begins with fairly simple (although not necessarily easy!) exercises. In time actors are asked to do a great variety of exercises: work with objects such as balls and dowel rods, leaps and rolls over platforms and up and down ramps and stairs, and partner lifts and acrobatics. This phase of the work culminates in the study of the Classical Biomechanical Etudes. These are highly stylized movement pieces which Meyerhold choreographed as exercise material for his students.
The kinesthetic, spatial and relational awarenesses that the student develops through training in Biomechanics may, initially, be primarily in terms of the physical demands posed by the exercises. But as the training progresses, the actor’s moment to moment awareness expands and deepens. As a result, Biomechanics provides the student with a concrete methodology for addressing-physically and through action-issues of acting that are almost universally regarded as fundamental in the Western tradition since Stanislavski. These include: "as if for the first time," "give and take," "listening," "seeing," and "moment before."
All of this develops the actor’s sense of her/ his psycho-physical being as a malleable instrument and an awareness of space and rhythm as variables to be explored in the creation of a role. The actor’s heightened awarenesses and capacities are equally valuable for work that is highly theatrical or absolutely realistic. As Igor Ilynsky, one of Meyerhold’s finest actors, put it: "Technique arms the imagination" (quoted in Meyerhold at Work, Paul Schmidt).

Krátký film s ukázkou http://max.mmlc.northwestern.edu/~mdenner/Drama/directors/stan2.mov
(10. 2. 2008)

http://act.vtheatre.net/biomech.html
(10. 2. 2008)
Meyerhold proposes „1 – 2 – 3“ structure as a composition of action. VOCABULARY OF MOVEMENT in his own words bigins with Excitability.
An Method actor must posses the capacity for Reflex Excitablity. Nobody can become an actor without it.
Excitability
Excitability is the ability to realize in feeling,1 movements and words a task which is prescribed externally.
The manifistation of excitability
The coordinated manifistations of excitability together constitute the actor's performance. Each separate manifistation comprises an acting cycle.2

Each acting cycle comprises three invariable stages:
1. INTENTION
2. REALIZATION
3. REACTION
The intention is the intellectual assimilation of a task prescribed externally by the dramatist, the director, or the initiative of the performer.
The realization is the cycle of volitional, mimetic and vocal reflexes.
The reaction is the attenuation of the volitional reflex as it is realized mimetically and vocally in oreparation for the reception of a new intention (the transition to a new acting cycle)...
[Meyerhold, Bebutov and Aksyonov, Emploi aktera, Moscow, 1922, pp. 3 – 4]4
Basic composition of movement consists (as any other composition) of exposition (intention), middle (realization) and resolution (reaction). [Garin's dedcription of the errow etude.]
Again, acting as reacting. By reacting to imagenary event we creat this event – visualization. (Pantomime is based on this phenomena). By reatcing to space, we creat space. Distance gives ua a tool to contrast the space. The intention (preparation) gives us not only a sense of distance, but a direction as well. That's how space dimention becomes dramatic.

About Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein:

Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (Russian: January 23, 1898 – February 11, 1948) was a revolutionary Soviet Russian film director and film theorist noted in particular for his silent films Strike, Battleship Potemkin and October, as well as historical epics Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible. His work vastly influenced early film makers owing to his innovative use of and writings about montage.
In the autumn of 1928, with October still under fire in many Soviet quarters, Eisenstein left the Soviet Union for a tour of Europe, accompanied by his perennial film collaborator Grigori Aleksandrov and cinematographer Eduard Tisse. Officially, the trip was supposed to allow Eisenstein and company to learn about sound motion pictures and to present the famous Soviet artists, in person, to the capitalist West. For Eisenstein, however, it was also an opportunity to see landscapes and cultures outside those found within the Soviet Union. He spent the next two years touring and lecturing in Berlin, Zurich, London, and Paris. In 1929, in Switzerland, Eisenstein supervised an educational documentary about abortion directed by Edouard Tissé entitled Frauennot - Frauenglück. In late April 1930, Jesse L. Lasky, on behalf of Paramount Pictures, offered him the opportunity to make a film in the United States.[21] He accepted a short-term contract for $100,000 and arrived in Hollywood in May 1930. However, this arrangement failed. Eisenstein's idiosyncratic and artistic approach to cinema was incompatible with the more formulaic and commercial approach of American studios. Eisenstein proposed a biography of munitions tycoon Sir Basil Zaharoff and a film version of Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw, and more fully developed plans for a film of Sutter's Gold by Jack London, but on all accounts failed to impress the studio's producers. Paramount then proposed a movie version of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. This excited Eisenstein, who had read and liked the work, and had met Dreiser at one time in Moscow. Eisenstein completed a script by the start of October 1930, but Paramount disliked it completely and, additionally, found themselves intimidated by Major Frank Pease president of the Hollywood Technical Director's Institute. Pease, an anti-semite and anti-communist, mounted a public campaign against Eisenstein. On October 23, 1930, by "mutual consent," Paramount and Eisenstein declared their contract null and void, and the Eisenstein party were treated to return tickets to Moscow, at Paramount's expense.

Eisenstein holding a skull made of sugar. Skulls and skeletons appeared in ¡Que viva México! depicting the Day of the Dead festival.
Eisenstein was thus faced with returning home a failure. The Soviet film industry was solving the sound-film issue without him and his films, techniques and theories were becoming increasingly attacked as 'ideological failures' and prime examples of formalism. Many of his theoretical articles from this period, such as Eisenstein on Disney have surfaced decades later as seminal scholarly texts used as curriculum in film schools around the world. Eisenstein and his entourage spent considerable time with Charlie Chaplin, who recommended that Eisenstein meet with a sympathetic benefactor in the person of American socialist author Upton Sinclair. Sinclair's works had been accepted by and were widely read in the USSR, and were known to Eisenstein. The two had mutual admiration and between the end of October 1930, and Thanksgiving of that year, Sinclair had secured an extension of Eisenstein's absences from the USSR, and permission for him to travel to Mexico to make a film to be produced by Sinclair and his wife, Mary Craig Kimbrough Sinclair, and three other investors organized as the Mexican Film Trust.
On November 24, Eisenstein signed a contract with the Trust "upon the basis of Eisenstein's desire to be free to direct the making of a picture according to his own ideas of what a Mexican picture should be, and in full faith in Eisenstein's artistic integrity" The contract also stipulated that the film would be "non-political", that immediately available funding came from Mrs. Sinclair in an amount of "not less than Twenty-Five Thousand Dollars", that the shooting schedule amounted to "a period of from three to four months", and most importantly that "Eisenstein furthermore agrees that all pictures made or directed by him in Mexico, all negative film and positive prints, and all story and ideas embodied in said Mexican picture, will be the property of Mrs. Sinclair..." A codicil to the contract, dated December 1, allowed that the "Soviet Government may have the [finished] film free for showing inside the U.S.S.R." Reportedly, it was verbally clarified that the expectation was for a finished film of about an hour's duration.

Eisenstein behind the camera directing ¡Qué viva México! on the Quetzalcoatl pyramid at Teotihuacán.
By December 4, 1930, Eisenstein was en route to Mexico by train, accompanied by Alexandrov and Tisse. Later he produced a brief synopsis of the six-part film which would come, in one form or another, to be the final plan Eisenstein would settle on for his project. The title for the project, ¡Que viva México!, was decided on some time later still. While in Mexico Eisenstein mixed socially with Frida Kahlo, and Diego Rivera. Eisenstein admired these artists as much as Mexican culture in general, they inspired Eisenstein to call his films, "moving frescoes". After a prolonged absence, Stalin sent a telegram expressing the concern that Eisenstein had become a deserter. Under pressure, Eisenstein blamed Mary Sinclair's younger brother, Hunter Kimbrough -- who had been sent along to act as a line producer -- for the film's problems. Eisenstein hoped to pressure the Sinclairs to insinuate themselves between him and Stalin, so Eisenstein could finish the film in his own way. The furious Sinclair shut down production and ordered Kimbrough to return to the U.S. with the remaining film footage and the three Soviets to see what they could do with the film already shot, estimates ranging from 170,000 lineal feet with "Soldadera" unfilmed, to an excess of 250,000 lineal feet. For the unfinished filming of the "novel" of Soldadera, without incurring any cost, Eisenstein had secured 500 soldiers, 10,000 guns, and 50 cannons from the Mexican Army. but this was lost due to Sinclair's canceling of production.
When Eisenstein arrived at the American border, a customs search of his trunk revealed sketches and drawings of Jesus caricatures amongst other material of a lewd pornographic nature. Eisenstein's re-entry visa had expired, and Sinclair's contacts in Washington were unable to secure him an additional extension. Eisenstein, Alexandrov and Tisse were, after a month's stay at the U.S.-Mexico border outside Laredo, Texas, allowed a 30-day "pass" to get from Texas to New York, and thence depart for Moscow, while Kimbrough returned to Los Angeles with the remaining film. Eisenstein toured the American South, on his way to New York. In mid-1932, the Sinclairs were able to secure the services of Sol Lesser, who had just opened his own distribution office in New York, Principal Distributing Corp.. Lesser agreed to supervise post-production work on the miles of negative — at the Sinclairs expense — and distribute any resulting product. Two short feature films and a short subject — Thunder Over Mexico based on the "Maguey" footage Eisenstein in Mexico, and Death Day respectively — were completed and released in the United States between the autumn of 1933 and early 1934.

Late work

Eisenstein directing actor Boris Zakhava in Bezhin Meadow.
Eisenstein never saw any of the Sinclair-Lesser films, nor a later effort by his first biographer, Marie Seton, called Time In The Sun. He would publicly maintain that he had lost all interest in the project. Eisenstein's foray into the west made the now-staunchly Stalinist film industry look upon him with a more suspicious eye, and this suspicion would never be completely erased in the mind of the Stalinist elite. He apparently spent some time in a Soviet mental hospital in Kislovodsk in July 1933, ostensibly a result of depression born of his final acceptance that he would never be allowed to edit the Mexican footage which was turned over by Sinclair to Hollywood editors, who would irreparably alter the negatives. He was subsequently assigned a teaching position with the film school GIK (now Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography) where he had taught earlier and in 1933 and 1934 was in charge of writing curriculum. Eisenstein married filmmaker and writer Pera Atasheva (1900-1965) in 1934 and remained so until his death in 1948. In 1935, he began another project, Bezhin Meadow, but it appears the film was afflicted with many of the same problems as Que Viva Mexico — Eisenstein unilaterally decided to film two versions of the scenario, one for adult viewers and one for children; failed to define a clear shooting schedule; and shot film prodigiously, resulting in cost overruns and missed deadlines. Even though Soviet film executive Boris Shumyatsky encouraged Sinclair in undermining Eisenstein  it was derailed not as much as Bezhin Meadow by the Soviet film industry, but by its American backers.

Nikolai Cherkasov as Ivan the Terrible in Eisenstein's film of the same name.
The thing which appeared to save Eisenstein's career at this point was that Stalin ended up taking the position that the Bezhin Meadow catastrophe, along with several other problems facing the industry at that point, had less to do with Eisenstein's approach to filmmaking as with the executives who were supposed to have been supervising him. Ultimately this came down on the shoulders of Boris Shumyatsky, "executive producer" of Soviet film since 1932, who in early 1938 was denounced, arrested, tried and convicted as a traitor, and shot. (The production executive at Film studio Mosfilm, where Meadow was being made, was also replaced, but without further executions.)
Eisenstein was thence able to ingratiate himself with Stalin for 'one more chance', and he chose, from two offerings, the assignment of a biopic of Alexander Nevsky, with music composed by Sergei Prokofiev. This time, however, he was also assigned a co-scenarist, Pyotr Pavlenko, to bring in a completed script; professional actors to play the roles; and an assistant director, Dmitry Vasiliev, to expedite shooting. The result was a film critically received by both the Soviets and in the West, which won him the Order of Lenin and the Stalin Prize. It was an obvious allegory and stern warning against the massing forces of Nazi Germany, well-played and well-made. This was started, completed, and placed in distribution all within the year 1938, and represented not only Eisenstein's first film in nearly a decade, but also his first sound film. Unfortunately, within months of its release, the mercurial Stalin entered into his infamous pact with Hitler, and Nevsky was promptly pulled from distribution. Thwarted again on the morning of triumph, Eisenstein returned to teaching and was assigned to direct Richard Wagner's Die Walküre at the Bolshoi Theatre. Eisenstein had to wait until Hitler's double-cross sent German troops pouring across the Soviet border in a devastating first strike, to see "his" success receive its just, wide distribution and real international success.
Faina Ranevskaya as Princess Staritskaya in a screen test for Ivan the Terrible, Part I (1942).
With the war approaching Moscow, Eisenstein was one of many filmmakers evacuated to Alma-Ata, where he first considered the idea of making a film about Czar Ivan IV. Eisenstein corresponded with Prokofiev from Alma Ata, and was joined by him there in 1942. Prokofiev composed the score for Eisenstein's film and Eisenstein reciprocated by designing sets for an operatic rendition of War and Peace that Prokofiev was developing. Eisenstein's film, Ivan The Terrible, Part I, presenting Ivan IV of Russia as a national hero, won Stalin's approval (and a Stalin Prize), but the sequel, Ivan The Terrible, Part II was not approved of by the government. All footage from the still incomplete Ivan The Terrible: Part III was confiscated, and most of it was destroyed(though several filmed scenes still exist today). Eisenstein's health was also failing, he was struck by a heart attack during the making of this picture, and soon died of another at the age of 50. He is buried at Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

Theory
Eisenstein was a pioneer in the use of montage, a specific use of film editing. He and his contemporary, Lev Kuleshov, two of the earliest film theorists, argued that montage was the essence of the cinema. His articles and books — particularly Film Form and The Film Sense — explain the significance of montage in detail. His writings and films have continued to have a major impact on subsequent filmmakers. Eisenstein believed that editing could be used for more than just expounding a scene or moment, through a "linkage" of related images. Eisenstein felt the "collision" of shots could be used to manipulate the emotions of the audience and create film metaphors. He believed that an idea should be derived from the juxtaposition of two independent shots, bringing an element of collage into film. He developed what he called "methods of montage":

1. Metric
2. Rhythmic
3. Tonal
4. Overtonal
5. Intellectual

Eisenstein taught film making during his career at GIK where he wrote the curricula for the directors' course, his classroom illustrations are reproduced in Vladimir Nizhni?'s Lessons with Eisenstein. Exercises and examples for students were based on rendering literature such as Honoré de Balzac's Le Père Goriot. Another hypothetical was the staging of the Haitian struggle for independence as depicted in Anatolii Vinogradov's The Black Consul, influenced as well by John Vandercook's Black Majesty. Lessons from this scenario delved into the character of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, replaying his movements, actions and the drama surrounding him. Further to the didactics of literary and dramatic content, Eisenstein taught the technicalities of directing, photography, and editing; while encouraging his students' development of individuality, expressiveness, and creativity. Eisenstein's pedagogy, like his films, were politically charged and contained quotes from Vladimir Lenin interwoven with his teaching.
In his initial films, Eisenstein did not use professional actors. His narratives eschewed individual characters and addressed broad social issues, especially class conflict. He used stock characters, and the roles were filled with untrained people from the appropriate classes, he avoided casting stars. Eisenstein's vision of Communism brought him into conflict with officials in the ruling regime of Joseph Stalin. Like many Bolshevik artists, Eisenstein envisioned a new society which would subsidize artists totally, freeing them from the confines of bosses and budgets, leaving them absolutely free to create, but budgets and producers were as significant to the Soviet film industry as the rest of the world. The fledgling war- and revolution-wracked and isolated new nation did not have the resources to nationalize its film industry at first. When it did, limited resources - both monetary and equipment - required production controls as extensive as in the capitalist world.

About Eugene Vakhtangov, Director (1883-1922)

Vakhtangov created a style he called fantastic realism out of a synthesis of Stanislavsky's emphasis on concentration and exploration of character and subject and Meyerhold's stylized movement and scenic elements. They look a lot like the stuff the expressionists came up with. His Method acting productions always looked unified and finished, if not coherent, because he insisted his actors be able to justify everything they did on stage.
In 1920 Stanislavky put him in charge of the Third Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre where he strove to establish a center for "theatrical realism" as "the tendency in the theatre arts that aspired creatively to establish a special and theatrical life on the stage, a life that would strike the audience as a new reality. This Theatrical life could be called life precisely because it would be presented with the conviction of real life."
He staged the groundbreaking production of The Dybbuk for then fledgeling Habima in Moscow.
His crowning achievement was his production of Carlo Gozzi's Turandot at the Third Studio which was named for him in 1926. Too ill to see the first performance, he heard of its great success and died three months later. It is the model for "theatrical" productions which follow. The actors wore modern evening clothes to which they added in the course of the action pieces of colored cloth. They used set pieces which they arranged in full view of the audience. It has been described as a combination of elegance, commedia dell'arte and charades. It is still in the repertory of the Vakhtangov Theatre.
His influence was passed on by many actors and directors who he had worked with in his brief career including Zavadsky, Simonov, Zakhava, Shchukin, and many others. There is a trend in Russian named for Vakhtangov.

Oleg Mirochnikov
Teaching and Professional Fellowship 2006-2007
The Vakhtangov Technique
Data gathering September - December 2006, Moscow
I started my research at The Vakhtangov State Theatre where I was given the opportunity to work with Vakhtangov’s original notebooks and diaries and with recordings of his lectures. It was soon apparent, that Vakhtangov’s experiments between 1919-1922 require very detailed investigation, for it is during this period that he began his radical re-evaluation of the application of the Stanislavski system and to develop the unique approach to theatre known as “fantastic realism”. Vakhtangov was not a keen theorist and did not leave a full account of his methodology due to his early death at the age of 36 and thus the Vakhtangov archive, quite moderate in volume and relatively fragmentary, did not therefore furnish me with the full picture of his methodology as a director and teacher. I was however particularly keen to get as much information as possible on the way in which he coached actors, conducted rehearsals and analysed plays. The curators of the archive therefore advised me to utilise the material and memories of Vakhtangov’s direct disciples and contemporaries, who might have left themselves  a more detailed account of his work.
To this end I therefore spent most of my time in Moscow at The Russian State Library, The Theatre Library and The Library of The Arts. All these libraries have a vast amount of data on Vakhtangov, most of which I studied carefully. The most important information was discovered in the materials from between 1918-1939, when many of those who wrote about Vakhtangov were not obliged to present him constantly as a devoted disciple of Stanislavski nor as a rigorous interpreter of his system, the attitude which had become and would remain for many decades de rigueur as the establishments’ approach. I also conducted 10 interviews with Vakhtangov scholars, with actors from The Vakhtangov State Theatre, teachers and directors of The Boris Shukin Theatre Institute and with family members descended from Vakhtangov’s original company. Most notable of these were discussions held with Dr V. Ivanov, who has been researching the Vakhtangov legacy for more than twenty years and is a recognised specialist on the unknown Vakhtangov. I attended classes and rehearsal at The Boris Schukin Theatre Institute in order to see how the Vakhtangov method is being taught at the very theatre school, which has been developing it over the last ninety years. My supervisor Dr Vladimir Mirodan spent a week in Moscow during which we discussed the progress of my research and ways in which it could be further developed.

Key findings
Vakhtangov is the first and arguably the only director in the history of the theatre to have achieved a practical synthesis of the methodologies of the two revolutionary masters of the Russian school of acting – Stanislavski and Meyerhold. He considered the combination of these methodologies as the apogee of theatrical synthesis and named it “fantastic realism”.
This concept gave rise to a theatrical paradox: the creation of an acting technique that was outwardly highly stylised and yet internally realistic. To put it another way an actor ought to have real and believable feelings on stage but they have to be presented in a theatrical, “fantastical” way. For Vakhtangov the theatre is not a copy of life but a condensed version of reality or in other words a super-reality.

Fantastic realism
Vakhtangov believed that in the age of cinematography the use of the naturalistic techniques in the theatre is anomaly. Theatre must not simply photograph or recreate reality but deepen our perception and understanding of it. This can only be achieved by revealing truth through lies and the probability in the improbable. In other words the theatre should freely turn the reality inside out in order to reveal it in all its complexity.
To bring a life event or character on stage is to subject it to the rules of the theatre, with its particular notion of space, time, and tempo-rhythm, which has very little in common with real life. In some instances it means selecting just one detail from a situation, or just one trait from a character and then playing imaginatively with or around it. At other times it means generalising or exaggerating facts of an event, establishing masks instead of clearly delineated characters and playing on contradictions and contrasts within the latter. As a result both event and character will gain a complexity, and reveal a psychological depth and unconventional physical manifestation . This is what in Vakhtangov’s view should take place in a “theatrical theatre” and this is what defines its “fantastical” nature.
According to Vakhtangov life events, people and objects undergo double transformation or game in the art of the theatre. The first one is the transformation from reality into play and the second is when the play is subsequently transformed into a stage production. In this double transformation what is real and what is fantastical? Events, people and objects or their theatrical interpretation? To give a clear answer to this was for Vakhtangov to destroy one of the most intriguing mysteries of interplay of real life and theatre.
“Fantastic realism “ is therefore a combination of the reality of life and the “fantastical” nature of theatre. To say it another way “fantastic realism” is theatrical realism i.e. a whole complex of theatrical methods by which one can express real life on stage.

The concept of a dramatic character
Vakhtangov believed that there is no such a thing as an objective character on stage. All characters created by actors are subjective. That is to say that they are a combination of the actor’s personality and what has happened to him so far that day, prior to his entrance on stage, plus his character’s objectives within the play. Therefore Hamlet, for example, will change every night because the actor has undergone different experiences that day before coming on stage. Far from subscribing to Stanislavsky’s principal that the actor should leave his day at the stage door, Vakhtangov strongly encouraged his actors to feed their immediate mood and experiences directly into their acting.
For Vakhtangov the first feeling with which the actor walks on stage or into a rehearsal room is his life state i.e. a chain of incidents that have happened to him and affected him thus far in the day. This state must be preserved, as it will enable the actor to bring to his role a sense of unique immediacy. The first mood of the actor is then followed by the second, or the character mood, which is activated by his actions in the play. The combination of the actor’s personal mood with the character’s states creates a rich colour range in the portrayal of a role. The fact that the actor keeps his personal mood active up to the very moment he walks on stage, renders unnecessary the special and often lengthy pre-performance preparation during which he works sublimating himself in order to become a character. Instead he should be able to take on his character in an instant or, using Vakhtangov’s own words “to jump into the role”.
I have designed an exercise which develops the actor ‘s ability to “jump into character” immediately. I have tested it with my second year students who found it both challenging and highly beneficial to their training.

The concept of “inner justification”

Vakhtangov established the concept of “inner justification” for the actor. Contrary to Stanislavsky, who placed the actor’s identification with the character as deriving from the circumstances of a play,Vakhtangov believed that the performer’s justification of his stage actions could be totally unrelated to the circumstances of either play or character. Justification is the actor’s secret weapon and he could invent his own inner reality for his actions. The strength of the actor’s fantasy, no matter how improbable or ludicrous it might be, could lead him to a more believable sense of reality in his performance. This concept of “inner justification” allows the actor to create his own powerful private reality in productions ranging from the most stylised to the most naturalistic.

The concept of “selected truth” and “theatrical theatre”

Vakhtangov believed in the importance of truth in a theatre production, but he detested theatre productions in which the truth was presented in a shallow, pseudo-real, stale way. In his view life itself offers a theatre practitioner a huge variety of truths to recreate on stage and he should select only those ones, which would impart to the audience something profoundly complex and new about life.
The theatre is only viable when it possesses true theatricality and a joy mood at its core. In theatre such as this the actors are not afraid to live through their characters’ feelings and at the same time to reveal their craft to the audience. Theatre of this type presents an artistic and passionate reflection of life not one drawn by means of precise imitation. Its productions possess both bold form and a style, which allow the audience at the same time to recognizes the reality of life and also to admire the art with which it is being created.

Acting craft.

Characters and their feelings should be both recognisable and believable in the theatre; however actors who create these characters must present them purely by theatrical means. The difference between the naturalistic and the theatrical mode is like that between duck served at home or in a restaurant. The contents of both meals might be the same, but in the restaurant it is served in a “theatrical” way and therefore looks and tastes more appetising.
The Vakhtangov’s actor does not hide the fact that he is performing for the audience. As opposed to the actor of the naturalistic school, trained to live through his character or to perform this character’s inner experience, the actor of the Vakhtangov’s school is trained to live through or experience a performance. Therefore the actor demonstrates not only what he does in the role but also how he does it. The how becomes as important as the what. i.e. the method or style of the actor’s performance has the same value as its content. To this end Vakhtangov trained his actors to manipulate the audience during a performance. At the point where the audience has forgotten that they are in the theatre with actors on stage, the actors should suddenly step out of the character and openly demonstrate their technique or reveal the tricks of the trade. After a few moments they should reconnect the audience with the reality of the play and its characters. Vakhtangov’s actors therefore can destroy a scenic illusion at their will in front of the audience and then restore it in an instant.

The principal of the dramatic grotesque

According to Vakhtangov a naturalistic theatre produces good examples of a naturalistic grotesque i.e. a selection and exaggeration of the external and psychological traits of the stage character. There is also another type of the grotesque, which could be called “the exotic grotesque”. It features not just the psychology of the character and its everyday reality but also uses an unconcealed technique by means of which the character is created. This type of grotesque consist of: hyperbola leaning towards the fantastical, sharp contrast, sudden switching from the tragic to the comic and back again. For Vakhtangov this particular type of grotesque was one of the principal means of developing a stage character.

The concept of “performing a character” as opposed to “living through the character’s feelings”

Stanislavsky always insisted that in the actor’s ability to identify with the character’s feelings lies the peak of creativity. Vakhtangov, however, contradicted this idea. After many years of exploring and testing the Stanislavsky system at his studio he came to the conclusion that “the art of living through your character’s feelings” is merely a foundation for “performing the character”. The latter, however, becomes true art only when the actor is able to present during his performance a clear personal attitude to the character portrayed. Therefore unlike Stanislavsky Vakhtangov was convinced that it is only through the overt display of the actor’s attitude to the character that highest creative achievement in any particular role may be seen. The pure “experience of living through the character’s feelings” as understood by Stanislavsky remained for Vakhtangov only a technical tool, and not an end in itself. Instead of aiming for a complete identification with a character he stood up for the actor’s right to comment on the character and to pursue the freedom of creative subjectivity. Hence the actor, rather than the character becomes the creative basis for a theatre production. This means that instead of the character subjugating and absorbing the actor; it is the actor who is in charge and who through the medium of the character is able to reveal his own essence and truth as a human being. This allows him to justify the illusion of a theatre performance. It also allows him to find a more meaningful existence within his role for now he can simultaneously unite the joy of performing his character with the joy of commentating upon it himself. This does not, however, mean that the actor overwhelms the character, but simply that he interiorises it in order to illuminate it with his own attitude consisting as it may of empathy, trust, irony or ridicule. The emphasis is therefore put on the principal of free and courageous creativity in playing the character, in contradistinction to the principal of what could arguably be an unattainably profound transformation into the character.

The concept of “playing the play”

Vakhtangov insisted that the actor should not actually become a character but only play at being a character. Unlike the Stanislavskian actor, the Vakhtangov’s actor does not fully identify with his character’s feelings, he just plays at having them. This “playing the play” or the “playing at theatre”, however, must be executed with utmost seriousness, humanity and depth, thus turning the play into a form of art profoundly reflecting life.

The principal of the monism of the actor

The basic principal of a naturalistic acting technique lies in the attempt to reconcile the actor’s truth as a human being with that of the character. The followers of this technique seek to overcome the “lie” of the actor’s performance by means of a complete and authentic transformation within the stage character. Instead of acting a character one must become that character exactly as it is drawn in the play and thus fully experience the character’s feeling. However the more the actor strives to achieve this the more detrimental it becomes to his acting as a theatrical game. Starting the artistic portrayal of his character’s essence and feelings, the actor moves towards a mundane imitation. As a result he is not in charge of the character’s feelings but simply submits himself to them. The wealth and freedom of the actor’s inner technique turns into its opposite; the actor is thus burdened by the need to establish shallow everyday traits and sensations of his character and to search for his own affective feelings instead of fulfilling his true mission - to move the audience by means of an artistic and imaginative manifestation of the character.
Vakhtangov looked at this problem from a different perspective. By means of the stage character’s essence he wanted to reach the essence of the personality of the actor playing it. To this end he first established the supremacy of the creative game as forming the foundation of theatre, supported by the actor’s will to participate in it. He also promulgated the monism or unity of the actor as opposed to schizoid split of the naturalistic actor always maintaining the balance between his own persona and the character. This monism allows the actor to construct his character freely from himself through his own active and creative and thus reveal his inner truth as an actor, which may differ from the naturalistic truth of the character. By establishing the importance of the actor-personality, he discovered that the truth of the theatre for the actor is achieved by means of performing and freely controlling the character without hiding this fact from the audience and thus to speak his own truth. If in the past the character prevailed over the actor, now Vakhtangov was permitting the actor to prevail over the character. He was freeing the actor from his traditional craft and from disappearance in the amorphous of psychologism. He inspired the actor to achieve the technical perfection, to control the audience, to exult his power on stage, but above all to be allowed the game of theatre to intoxicate him. In this sense he consciously purged from the Stanislavsky system extraneous features and returned it to its initial purpose- the discovery of “inner justification” for the actor. It would now be possible for the actor to find his own justification of the actions of the character and to justify its essence not through its own truth (as written in the play) but through that of the actor- personality. The perhaps clumsy concept of “living trough your character’s feeling” or identification with the character’s feelings is therefore replaced by the more practical and creative Vakhtangov principal of inner justification through the actor-personality.

The role of intuition, spontaneity, imagination and improvisation in acting.

Vakhtangov believed that spontaneity and intuition are amongst the most important qualities the actor can possess and that training must not destroy them. In his view an actor should not be a theorist whose character’s choices are entirely governed by his intellect or derived from detailed research. The role of the latter is accepted as being helpful tool by which the actor can activate or feed his intuition, but it is intuitive approach, which must be the principal impetus in the process of creating a role.
In Vakhtangov’s view a truly intuitive actor must be able to develop his character even with the most basic amount of information available. As a director he was proud of his ability to establish a specific world of a play through an intuitive and imaginative digestion of just a few historical details. As a director he had developed a completely free approach to all dramatic material and believed that the staging of a play demands that a director search for an original approach that is both organically inspired by and most appropriate to the essence of the play and is not imposed by established theatrical techniques. A director should also be free to combine many approaches and aesthetics within one theatre production. Vakhtangov successfully implemented this principal in his 1921 production of Gozzi’s Turandot.

What defines the Vakhtangov actors

• He (the actor) performs his character in a condensed, “accentuated way” without concentrating too much on detailed psychological detail, and instead presenting his character in what might seem a rather generalised way with a strong emphasis on one or two of its most important features
• His performance is graphically precise. He moves, speaks and interacts musically with a clear sense of tempo-rhythm. One can say that he “dances” the inner essence of his character
• He builds his character on the principal of contrast, i.e. in the tragic essence of his character he reveals the comic and vice versa
• He possesses a profound inner reality for his character but presents it in a totally unexpected, theatrical and physically bold way
• He does not hide the fact that he is performing the character in front of the audience.
• He loves this theatrical game of playing and emphasises it in his performance.
• He experiences his character’s feelings, plays with them and at the same time maintains a distance from them. In his acting he reveals the “inner irony of the heart” of his character.
• He presents his character in a “demonstrative or extrovert way”, i.e. light, skilful, confident and generous
• He can play a whole range of roles from tragedy to farce. He is exceptionally capable of transformation
• He does not looses himself in the character and is not carried away by its feelings. He is aware of every moment of his performance, is able to control the audience and can re-adjust his impact on it according to its reactions.
• He is a skilled at improvisation. Every time he performs he keeps the content of his character’s actions or “the what” unchanged and improvises “the how” or the way he plays these actions. For him an improvisation is not general freedom in performance but a courageous break through, which pushes him beyond his current abilities and becomes an act of profound artistic discovery.
Vakhtangov developed three concepts: “a method of contrasts”, “the dramatic grotesque” and “heightened acting style”. These enable actors to combine two totally contrasting qualities in their performances – profound psychology with extreme expressiveness and the grotesque with the lyrical. As a result the actor creates a powerful and long lasting impact on the audience. Using the memories of some of Vakhtangov’s actors I have rediscovered some of his original exercises, which to the best of my knowledge have not been used in actor training since his death. I also drew from the written records of his acting classes and rehearsals and through that was able to create some new exercises, which I feel, develop the actor’s abilities according to the Vakhtangov principals described above.

Dissemination of my findings

I have taught two of the Vakhtangov exercise to First and Second year BA acting students at DCL over the last two terms. Both of the exercise were presented to the staff and students of the school as well as being filmed for the future references. I have used the Vakhtangov technique while directing an Elizabethan comedy project with the Master of European Classical Acting students and received both oral and written feedback from them. In the Summer term I also directed the Second year students in Bertolt Brecht’“ The Good Person of Szechwan”. This was an important opportunity to test the whole range of the Vakhtangov principals of acting, especially because both Brecht’s and Vakhtangov’s understanding of theatre bear striking similarities. The technique of the latter in fact proved highly beneficial to the students in their work on the Brecht play.
The work with all the year groups showed that they reacted very positively to the Vakhtangov technique. For example, my “Cabaret Project” with the second year demonstrated that many students who mastered some of the Vakhtangov principles, revealed an unexpected creative freedom and an ability to transform, which they had not show in their previous projects. Many of them discovered an alternative acting tool previously unknown to them and acquired self-confidence and the courage to explore the demands of contemporary acting in a much more imaginative way. I felt that my work with the imaginative, extrovert and the physical principals of the Vakhtangov acting training over the last two terms complemented and balanced very well the introspective methodological approach of Drama Centre. I feel that my fellowship has been completely justified and I am enormously encouraged in my future plans for dissemination of the Vakhtangov technique. At the end of the term I will be holding talks with the Director of Drama Centre Dr Vladimir Mirodan and The Course Director of The BA Hons Acting Annie Tyson to discuss future integration of the Vakhtangov technique into the school’s curriculum. It is my intention as a tutor to focus my teaching of the Drama Centre students solely on the Vakhtangov technique. Together with ARTSCOM at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, a10 week workshop on the Vakhtangov technique has been set up, which will run each term of the 2007-08 academic year and which will be open to any University of The Arts London students and staff as well as to general public. I have submitted my proposal of workshop to the Actors Centre in London and to various other drama schools and universities both nationally and internationally. I am currently awaiting their response. Throughout the Summer I am planning to write to various international acting workshop with a proposal for master-classes and workshops on the Vakhtangov technique. Later in the year Dr Vladimir Mirodan and I will be applying for research funds to carry out further research into some areas of the Vakhtangov technique in order to write an article for one of the international journals.

Conclusion

The teaching gave me the most worthwhile opportunity possible to augment and enhance my practical knowledge of the Vakhtangov technique. It has resulted in a coherent system of actor training wholly relevant to the needs of contemporary theatre. This intensive and stimulating method of work places at its heart the exploration of story-telling, character and dramatic relationships through means of imagination, improvisation and movement. It challenges the actor and gives him permission to push his creative boundaries and to develop his imaginative and physical capacity to the full. The Vakhtangov technique contains the answers to many pressing questions facing today’s theatre: the question of reality and artifice; psychology and physical expression; theatricality and behaviour. To a world of performance torn between kitchen-sink naturalism and Hollywood artificiality, Vakhtangov’s work brings a freshness of approach that leads to exciting, innovative and visually bold theatre.
Oleg Mirochnikov 17 June 2007

About Boris Evgenyevich Zakhava

Boris Evgenyevich Zakhava (1896–1976) was a Russian theatre director, actor and acting coach.
Biography
Boris Zakhava was born on May of 1896 in Pavlohrad, Russian Empire. It is unknown his birth date is May 12 or May 24. Evgeni Zakhava, his father, was a graduate of Moscow Imperial Cadet School and was an officer at the Russian Imperial Army. Boris, like his father, graduated the 3rd Moscow Imperial Cadet School (1913). While being a cadet, he was acting in amateur performances. In the meantime he was involved in the centennial celebration of the victory over Napoleon in 1912, in Moscow.
Zakhava studied at the acting class of Vsevolod Meyerhold (1913–1916) and acting at the Moscow Vakhtangov studio under Yevgeny Vakhtangov. Since he was being hired by Vakhtangov as an actor, Zakhava worked at his theatre (Vakhtangov Theatre) for entire life. In 1922 he performed as a Timur in Carlo Gozzi's Turandot. Zakhava was a teaching director at the acting studio (1925) and a leading director of Vakhtangov Theatre Company. He produced and directed Maxim Gorky's dramas, Yegor Bulychev and Others (1932, 1951) and Dostegayev and Others (1933, 1934). Since 1939 he became a director of the Shchukin Theatrical School (f. Vakhtangov acting studio). In 1958 Zakhava directed William Shakespeare's Hamlet starring Mikhail Astangov in the main role. In 1968 he portrayed Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov in Sergei Bondarchuk's War and Peace (original: Vojna i mir), an Academy Award winner film.
He died on November 25, 1976 in Moscow. Buried at Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow, Russia.

Method acting schools in America

Studying the Method at Its Source         

By RICK LYMAN
Published: November 11, 1997
The American Repertory Theater and the Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University have announced a groundbreaking partnership with the Moscow Art Theater School, where the Stanislavsky Method was introduced and evolved, to offer a two-year program in acting, directing and theater management. The program will include a semester of training, working and performing in Moscow.
The partnership is the first between the historic Moscow theater school and an American school, and will include the regular presence of instructors from Russia, administrators said. It will also offer American students, for the first time, the techniques and philosophies that the director and teacher Constantin Stanislavsky developed toward the end of his life.
''The impact of Stanislavsky on American theater has been, of course, famous,'' said Robert Brustein, artistic director of the institute. ''And famously misunderstood.''
The Stanislavsky system and the Method have been at the center of several influential American acting schools from the 1930's onward, sometimes resulting in debates between competing companies about which was offering the purest form. ''Fundamentally, his technique was always evolving,'' said Robert Orchard, managing director of the institute. ''That was why there was such confusion in this country about the so-called authentic Method.''
In the most general terms, the Method is a realistic style of acting in which the actor strives for close personal identification with the role being played.
Recent research into the work Stanislavsky conducted late in his life has revealed some pioneering techniques that, up to now, have only been interpreted and taught in Moscow, Mr. Orchard said.
''This is not to say that our two-year curriculum will teach Stanislavsky and nothing else,'' he said.
Some more recent, post-modernist approaches to acting and staging will also be a large part of the program, as will performances in verse, which were never integral to the Moscow program.
''Our philosophy is not to try to merge two different programs into one and making them drive parallel to one another,'' said Alexander Popov, who was associated with the Moscow theater for many years and will become administrative director of the institute and its new program. ''It is actually about trying to develop a new, solid program. It is not an academic program per se. It is about practitioners teaching practitioners.''
The program will begin with a summer semester in Cambridge, Mass., during which the incoming class will be exposed to the basic Stanislavsky techniques and the Russian language, Mr. Brustein said.
This will be followed by a fall semester in Cambridge; a spring semester in Moscow, where instruction will be in English, and two final semesters in Cambridge. A rotating roster of instructors from the Moscow theater will be in Cambridge during the sessions there, and some of the American instructors will go to Moscow for the spring semester.
At the end of the program, students will receive a certificate from the institute and, if they already possess a bachelor's degree, a master of fine arts from the Moscow Art Theater School. The application deadline for the first semester is Jan. 19. Acting students will be accepted by audition, directors and dramaturgists by interview, and sessions will begin in July.
''Next year is the 100th anniversary of the Moscow Art Theater, where the first production was held on Oct. 17, 1898, so we are very happy that this partnership is beginning during that centenary,'' Mr. Popov said. ''For American students, to be in Moscow for three months, to absorb and participate in theater life in Moscow, perform two of their projects, be exposed to the Russian audience, watch some of the great Russian directors at work, watch from over their shoulders while they are at work, is something that they have not been allowed to do before.''
Mr. Orchard said that giving American students the experience of working in Moscow and performing on Stanislavsky's home stage would be crucial to the success of the partnership.
''With all due respect to New York, I think that Moscow is the theater capital of the world,'' he said. ''There are over 200 theaters within the city limits alone. I think it is very important for our students to have the opportunity to train and perform in a community where theater is at the center of intellectual, cultural and political dialogue.''
Correction: November 22, 1997, Saturday
An article on Nov. 11 about a new educational partnership by the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., the Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University and the Moscow Art Theater School referred incorrectly to its uniqueness. The affiliation is not the Moscow school's first with an American University.
In a letter to The Times, Peter Frisch, head of the School of Drama at Carnegie Mellon University, notes that the Moscow Art Theater has participated in a partnership with his school, including student exchanges and offering a Master of Fine Arts in acting, since 1994. The Moscow theater's new partnership ends that affiliation, said Robert Brustein, artistic director of the American Repertory Theater.

Theatre theoreticians, actors, designers and directors in Europe.

Antonin-Marie-Joseph Artaud

Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) was one of the 20th century's most important theoreticians of the drama. He developed the theory of the Theater of Cruelty, which has influenced playwrights from Beckett to Genet, from Albee to Gelber.

Antonin-Marie-Joseph Artaud was born in Marseilles on September 4, 1896, the son of a wealthy shipfitter and a mother from a Greek background. At age five he suffered a near-fatal attack of meningitis, the results of which remained with him for the rest of his life.
He was educated at the Collège du Sacré Coeur in Marseilles and at 14 founded a literary magazine, which he kept going for almost four years. Still in his teens, he began to have sharp head pains, which continued throughout his life. In 1914 he was the victim of an attack of neurasthenia and was treated in a rest home; the following year he was given opium to alleviate his pain, and he became addicted within a few months.
He was inducted into the army in 1916, but was released in less than a year on grounds of both mental instability and drug addiction. In 1918 he committed himself to a clinic in Switzerland, where he remained until 1920.
On his release, he went immediately to Paris, still under medical supervision, and began to study with Charles Dullin, an actor and director. He soon began to find jobs as a stage and screen actor and as a set and costume designer. Within the next decade, he appeared on film in Fait Divers and Surcourt--le roi des corsairs (1924); Abel Gance's Napoléon Boneparte (1925); La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928); Tarakanowa (1929); G. W. Pabst's Dreigroschenoper, made in Berlin (1930); and Les Croix des Bois, Faubourg Montmartre, and Femme d'une nuit (all 1930). On stage he had roles in He Who Gets Slapped (1923), Six Characters in Search of an Author (1924), and R.U.R. (1924).
At the same time, Artaud became seriously interested in the surrealist movement headed by André Breton and in 1923 published a volume of symbolist verse strongly influenced by Mallarmé, Verlaine, and Rimbaud, Tric trac du ciel (Backgammon of the Sky). Two years later, at the height of his involvement with the surrealists, he published L'Ombilic des limbes (Umbilical Limbo), a collection of letters, poems in prose, and bits of dialogue; it contained one complete work, the five-minute playlet Le Jet de sang (The Jet of Blood), which was finally produced in 1964.
Artaud broke with the organized surrealist movement in 1926, when Breton became a Communist and attempted to take his fellow-members with him into the party. Yet Artaud continued to view himself as a surrealist and in 1927 wrote the filmscript for La Coquille et le clergyman, perhaps the most famous surrealist film, and Les Pèse-nerfs (Nerve Scales), another collection containing various literary forms.

As A Producer
It was also in 1927 that he joined with Roger Vitrac and Robert Aron to found the Théâtre Alfred Jarry, named for the author of the 1896 play Ubu roi, which had so shocked the theatrical establishment of its time. Their theater had no permanent home, so they leased space in established theaters. In their first year they presented two programs, the first an evening of three one-act plays, one contributed by each of the founders, and Léon Poirier's Verdun, visions d'histoire. The following year they produced one evening which combined the film of Maxim Gorky's The Mother and the last act of Paul Claudel's Partage de midi, another of Strindberg's Dream Play, and their final effort, Vitrac's Victor ou les enfants du pouvoir.
Working as a theatrical producer gave Artaud an insight into the exigencies of the practical aspects of theater, with which he was not happy. Then, in 1931, he saw a Balinese drama at the French Colonial Exposition in Paris and found in this work, which stressed spectacle and dance, the ideal for which he had been searching.

As A Theoretician
In 1932-1933 he published his first work of dramatic theory, Manifestes du théâtre de la cruauté (Manifestos of the Theater of Cruelty), and in 1935 staged the first work based on his theories, an adaptation of Les Cenci, heavily dependent on the earlier works on that theme by the British poet Shelley and the French novelist Stendhal. Since one of Artaud's theories involved the breaking of the barrier between actors and audience, Les Cenci may be have been the first play ever staged in the round. In any event, it was a total failure.
Shattered, Artaud went to Mexico in 1930 and stayed there for the better part of a year, spending some time with the sun-worshipping Tarahumara Indians. On his return to France, he became engaged to a Belgian girl and tried to end his drug dependence. In May of 1937, giving a lecture in Brussels, he went completely out of control and began screaming at the audience. In the fall of that same year, on a visit to Ireland, he was declared mentally unfit, put in a straitjacket, and sent back to France. Ironically, it was shortly thereafter that his most important and influential work, Le Théâtre et son double (The Theater and Its Double), was published.
Diagnosed as schizophrenic, Artaud spent the next nine years in mental institutions, returning to Paris in triumph, acclaimed as a genius after his three-hour lecture-reading to an audience which included Nobel laureate Andre Gide, future Nobel laureate Albert Camus, and André Breton. Artaud died of cancer on March 4, 1948, in a rest home near Paris. Unlike his fellow theoretician of the drama, Bertolt Brecht, whose plays have been widely honored and frequently performed, Artaud had no success at all with his endeavors in drama, poetry, or fiction. His reputation rests entirely on his critical work.
In a word, Artaud called for a theater that is anti-intellectual. He believed that the drama of the past 400 years had become sterile and had no future. In the essay "No More Masterpieces" he laid the blame for the psychologically oriented drama on Shakespeare and elsewhere blamed Racine, but, wherever the responsibility lies, he asserted that the attempts "to reduce the unknown to the known, to the quotidian and ordinary" had brought the theater to the sorry state in which he found it.
Besides the psychological concerns, he also objected to the emphasis on the written word, the primacy of spoken poetry. In "The Theater of Cruelty (First Manifesto)" he said that "it is essential to put an end to the subjugation of the theater to the text and to recover the notion of a kind of unique language half-way between gesture and thought."
What Artaud offered as a substitute was the Theater of Cruelty. In the essays "Letters on Cruelty," Artaud said, "This cruelty is a matter of neither sadism nor bloodshed...." He went on, "I do not systematically cultivate horror ... cruelty signifies rigor, implacable intention and decision, irreversible and absolute determination." He added, "It is a mistake to give the word 'cruelty' a meaning of merciless bloodshed and disinterested gratuitous pursuit of physical suffering.... Cruelty is above all lucid, a kind of rigid control and submission to necessity. There is no cruelty without consciousness...."
Yet, at the same time, it must be remembered that in one of his staged works Artaud picked as the theme the Cencis, a tale of rape, incest, and murder; that another of his works concerned the warped and dissolute Roman emperor Heliogabalus, and that one of his favorite British plays was 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, also about incest and murder.
What Artaud's Theater of Cruelty had to offer instead of the conventional was a theater in which spectacle played the main role. Instead of poetic language, there would be a series of sounds and "...these intonations will constitute a kind of harmonic balance, a secondary deformation of speech...."
There will be musical instruments, he said, which will be "treated as objects and as part of the set." The lighting will be calculated to produce "an element of thinness, density, and opaqueness, with a view to producing the sensations of heat, cold, anger, fear, etc." The dress should be "age-old costumes of ritualistic intent," while the stage should be "a single site, without partition or barrier of any kind." He adds: "Manikins, enormous masks, objects of strange proportions will appear." As to the set, "There will not be any set." Finally, there will be no script: "We shall not act a written play, but we shall make attempts at direct staging, around themes, facts, or known works."
While Artaud's theory was not successful in eradicating a theater based on texts, it made play-producers more conscious of elaborate sets, of movement (particularly the dance), and of an attention to myth, another of his concerns. Hence, his influence continued to be strong decades after his death in 1948.

Acting schools in Europe

Acting Schools in Russia

Drama Schools Germany
Aachen
Theaterschule Aachen für Schauspiel und Regie (Theatre School for Drama and
Direction)
Theaterstr. 77, 52064 Aachen
Phone: 0241 / 44 50 645
www.theaterschule-aachen.de
post@theaterschule-aachen.de

Alfter
Alanus Hochschule für Kunst und Gesellschaft (College of Arts and Society –
with a Drama Program)
Johanishof, 53347 Alfter
Phone: 02222 / 932125 / Fax: 02222 / 932121
www.alfanus.edu

Berlin
Universität der Künste Berlin
(University of the Arts Berlin)
Postfach 120544, D-10595 Berlin
Phone: 030 31 85 22 04 / Fax: 030 / 31 85 27 13
www.udk-berlin.de

Hochschule für Schauspielkunst “Ernst Busch” (Drama School)
Schnellerstr. 104, 12439 Berlin
Phone: 030 / 63 99 75 0
www.hfs-berlin.de

Bochum
Studiengang Schauspiel Bochum der Folkwang Hochschule
(Acting Studies at the Folkwang College Bochum)
Lohring 20, 44809 Bochum
Phone: 0234 / 32 50 444 / Fax: 0234 / 32 50 446
www.schauspielausbildung.de/bochum.htm

Constantin Schule Bochum GmbH (Drama School)
Hernerstr. 299, 44809 Bochum
Phone: 0234 / 540 98 42 / Fax: 0234 / 950 82 907
www.constantin-schule.de

Dresden
Dresdener Schauspielforum DSF (Acting Forum Dresden)
Nagelstr. 24, 01279 Dresden
Phone: 0351 / 25 000 86
www.dsf.kulturserver.de

Düsseldorf
Internationales Theater-Studio NRW Düsseldorf (International Theatre Studio)
Jürgensplatz 46, 40219 Düsseldorf
Phone and Fax: 0211 / 39 52 70

Freiburg
Freiburger Schauspielschule (Drama School)
Ferdinand-Weiß-Str. 6A, 79106 Freiburg
Phone: 0761 / 38 11 91

Hamburg
Freie-Schauspielschule-Hamburg (Drama School)
Wandalenweg 28, 20097 Hamburg
Phone: 040 / 23 32 23
www.freie-schauspielschule-hamburg.de

Hochschule für Musik und Theater (College of Music and Theatre)
Harvestehuder Weg 12, 20148 Hamburg
Phone: 040 / 42 84 82 586

Institut für Theater, Musiktheater und Film (Institut of Theatre, Music Theatre and
Cinema)
Hansastraße 35, 20144 Hamburg
Phone: 040 / 44 58 14

Hamburger Schauspielstudio Frese (Drama School)
Harkortstr. 123a, 22765 Hamburg
Phone: 040 46 46 26, 38 61 05 40 / Fax: 040 / 38 61 05 34
www.schauspielstudio.de

Schule für Schauspiel Hamburg (Drama School)
Oelkersallee 33, 22769 Hamburg
Phone: 040 / 430 20 50 / Fax: 040 43 12 63
www.schauspielschule-hamburg.de

Hannover
Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover (College of Music and Theatre)
Expoplaza 12, 30539 Hannover
Phone: 0511 / 31 00 416 / Fax: 0511 / 31 00 440
www.hmt-hannover.de

Hürth
Schauspiel-Institution Hürth (Acting Institution)
Daimlerstr. 11, 50354 Hürth
Phone: 02233 / 20 98 82 / Fax: 02233 / 39 78 849
www.movie-kids.de

Köln
Theaterakademie Köln (Academy of Theatre), Cologne
Sachsenring 73a, 50677 Köln
Phone: 0221 / 55 09 902 / Fax: 0221 / 559 50 69
www.theaterakademie-koeln.de

Leipzig
Hochschule für Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy” (College of
Music and Theatre)
Postfach 10 08 09, 04008 Leipzig
Phone: 0341 / 21 44 55

Theaterfachschule Leipzig (College of Theatre)
Hans-Drieschstr. 54, Franz-Flemming-Str. 16, 04179 Leipzig
Phone: 0341 / 44 24 669 / Fax: 0341 / 44 24 670
www.schauspielschule.info

Mainz
Schauspielschule der Theaterwerkstatt Mainz (Drama School of the Dance
Workshop Mainz)
Alte Ziegelei, 55128 Mainz
Phone: 06131 / 36 43 14

Mannheim
Theaterakademie Mannheim (Academy of Theatre)
Heppenheimer Str. 31-33, 68309 Mannheim
Phone: 0621 / 41 75 30 / Fax: 0621 / 41 76 91
www.theaterakademie-mannheim.de

Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Mannheim
(National College of Music and Performing Arts)
www.muhu-mannheim.de

Munich
Hochschule für Musik und Theater München
(College of Music and Theatre)
Arcisstr. 12, 80333 München
Phone: 089 / 289 03 / Fax: 089 / 28 92 74 19

Bayerische Theaterakademie München (Bavarian Dance Academy)
Prinzregentenplatz 12, 81675 München
Phone: 089 / 21 85 02 / Fax: 089 / 21 85 28 13
www.prinzregententheater.de/theaterakademie

Otto-Falckenberg-Schule (Drama School)
Postfach 22 16 13, 80506 München
Phone: 089 / 23 33 70 82
www.otto-falckenberg-schule.de

Schauspielakademie ARTE (Drama Academy ARTE)
Kastanienstr. 7, 81547 München
Phone: 089 / 69 388 752 / Fax: 089 / 69 388 753
www.schauspielakademie-arte.de

Potsdam
Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen (HFF) “Konrad Wolf”
(College of Cinema and Television)
Marlene-Dietrich-Allee 11, 14482 Potsdam-Babelsberg
Phone: 0331 / 62 02 0
www.hff-potsdam.de

Rostock
Hochschule für Musik und Theater Rostock
(College of Music and Theatre)
Am Bussebart 11, 14482 Rostock
Phone: 0381 / 20 20 621 / Fax: 0381 / 20 20 625

Saarbruck
Hochschule des Saarlandes für Musik und Theater
(Saarland College of Music and Theatre)
Bismarckstr. 1, 66111 Saarbrücken
Phone: 0681 / 96 73 10
www.hfm.saarland.de

Siegen
Stuttgart
Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst
(National College of Music and Performing Arts)
Urbanstr. 25, 70182 Stuttgart
Phone: 0711 / 21 24 620 / Fax: 0711 / 21 24 639
www.mh-stuttgart.de

Live Act / Drama Stuttgart (Drama School)
Wörishofener Str. 54, 70372 Stuttgart
Phone: 0711 / 55 900 48 / Fax: 0711 / 55 30 948
www.liveact-akademie.com

Internationale Schauspielakademie CREARTE
(International Drama Academy)
Alarichstr. 18a, 70469 Stuttgart
Phone: 0711 / 85 60 712

Ulm
Akademie für Darstellende Künste Ulm, AdK Ulm
(Academy of the Performing Arts)
Fort Unterer Kuhbarg 12, 89077 Ulm
Phone: 0731 / 38 75 31 / Fax: 0731 / 38 85 185
www.adk-ulm.de

Wiesbaden
Schauspielschule Genzmer e.V. (Drama School)
Butterblumenweg 5, 65201 Wiesbaden
Phone: 0611 / 30 35 26 / Fax: 0611 / 42 00 373
www.schauspielschule-genzmer.de

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