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The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit

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Stanislavsky, K. S. (2000), Creating A Role, trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood, London: Methuen, p. 262. between our own words and those of another, the distance is of most immeasurable size. Our own words are the direct expression of our [present-tense] feelings, whereas the words of another are alien until we have made them our own, are the sign of future emotions which have not yet come to life inside us. [6] This in itself urges new imperatives for those of us teaching acting. And I find myself asking: ‘How can I make my classroom increasingly safe so that my iGen students can explore their connections to their own self, as much as to each other? Not least because there seems to be an increasing alienation from ‘the self’. Yet the self is the psychophysical instrument, which serve the actor throughout their professional careers. A guitarist can’t play the guitar if they don’t know how to strum the strings. Shakespeare’s world was as big as the cosmos. He was born into a world that had just discovered it was round, not flat. He was born into the Renaissance of medicine and philosophy, as humanity transitioned out of the Dark Ages. Heritage: How did Stanislavsky’s practice-based research bring him to ‘the creation of the living word’?

This rehearsal process – that shifted from discussion to immediate, active embodiment – became known as the Method of Physical Actions, and at its heart lay improvisation. Stanislavsky had come to realize in his practice-based research that to ‘create the living word’: In preparing for the role, I applied the same Stanislavsky-based text analysis that I would to a play: In the work on the self, I can offer strategies for my students to dip their toes in the oceans of emotional complexity. Through that experience they may find more balance within themselves and, therefore, a broader range of emotional intelligence with which to handle the world. All this work has to be done with a sense of playfulness, or – as Michael Chekhov called it – a ‘quality of ease’.The so-called iGeneration (a term coined by sociologist Jean Twenge) is uniquely placed in the history of civilization, in that they’ve been born into technology. The most intimate relationship they often have is with their electronic devices, and their world can shrink to the size of a cellphone. While there’s no denying that cellphone leads them to a wealth of information, they might not raise their heads and see the real clouds rather than the iClouds. Shakespeare & Company’s Month-Long Intensive Training uses a very clear structure (crafted and honed over forty years) to take all its participants on immensely deep, personally therapeutic and artistically expansive journeys of risk, joy and playfulness. (They run a similar course for undergraduates and young professionals called the Summer Training Institute).

What do we even mean by truth? In this session, we’ll explore how we define and experience a ‘believable’ performance, and what might that mean beyond psychological realism. We’ll also look at the role of the imagination for actors and how to develop imagination through observation and even daydreaming. Stanislavsky, K. S. (2000), Creating A Role, trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood, London: Methuen. (Original year of English publication 1961) We’re then given a very precise score of physical actions in the film directions (reminiscent of Stanislavsky’s Method of Physical Actions). On the one hand as the actor, I feel it’s part of my job to have a sense in my body of this specific score of actions (almost like a choreography): after all, the writer wouldn’t have written these physical moves if they weren’t meant to be embodied in some way. At the same time, I know that the art of film acting is all about spontaneity, catching impulses as they happen, being prepared to live in the moment so that the camera can capture those moments of truth. So in my preparation I write out the score of actions like a piece of dance, and at the same time I’m prepared to ditch the specific sequence on the day of filming and go with the flow if the director wants me to. But to be that free, I need to uncover the psychophysical information contained in that score.As we train young actors, we can mindfully use specific methods to bring structure to the inner and outer chaos that is the world of the iGeneration. As Twenge concludes in her book, ‘iGen’ers are scared, maybe even terrified. Growing up slowly, raised to value safety, and frightened by the implications of income inequality, they have come to adolescence in a time when their primary social activity is staring at a small rectangular screen that can like them or reject them. The devices they hold in their hands have both extended their childhoods and isolated them from true human interaction […] they are both the physically safest generation and the most mentally fragile.’ [39] And these are the students in our midst. And we are their teachers. We’re experiencing these seismic shifts together. And the emergency kit at hand is the art of acting. The third phase of Stanislavsky’s practice-based research came towards the end of his life. By now he understood that we can only ‘create the living word’ when we’re navigating the plays’ given circumstances through our bodies and with our partners. This caused him to analyze deeply his whole rehearsal process. With his newly grasped insight, he disbanded the long discussions and instead he directed his actors like so: Until we’ve made a deep organic connection to the script – until those words actually cost us something emotionally, physically, spiritually – they’re nothing but the two-dimensional blueprint of feelings we may possibly experience at some point in the future. You can test this out for yourself right now. Take Hamlet’s words, ‘To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub’… How much imaginative and psychological focus does it take to really consider the words ‘die’, ‘sleep’, ‘dream’, ‘rub’? ‘Sleep’ and ‘dream’ might be reasonably easy as most of us do them on a nightly basis. ‘Rub’ becomes harder, as we might not know exactly what it means? In this context, it could mean ‘issue’, ‘challenge’, ‘nub of the matter’, or ‘friction’. (After all, when we rub something, we create friction.) When it comes to the word ‘die’, that’s even harder. Death is the eternal mystery that few can fathom. So for us to ‘create the living word’ of ‘die’, we have to invest some serious time, imagination and openhearted vulnerability. I’ve come to realize these questions are both a technological issue and a generational issue and, therefore, warrant some serious consideration. This book is a practical, hands-on guide to Stanislavsky's famous "system" and to his later rehearsal processes for actors, directors, teachers and students. The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit collects together for the first time the terms and ideas developed by Stanislavsky throughout his career. It is organized into three sections: Actor-Training, Rehearsal Processes and Performance Practices. Key terms are explained and defined as they naturally occur in this process. They are illustrated with examples from both his own work and that of other practitioners. Each stage of the process is then explored with sequences of practical exercises designed to help today's actors and students become thoroughly familiar with the tools in Stanislavsky's toolkit. - Publisher

BM: Stanislavski had an interest in this. This aspect of his work is often played down, particularly in the latest translation of An Actor’s Work. It is the one big gripe I have with this brilliant tome. Jean Benedetti and Katya Kamotskaia (who was one of my teachers and a language adviser for this translation) sidestep the references that are in An Actor Prepares to spirit. It is talked about all the time in An Actor Prepares but you won’t find it much in Benedetti’s translation – An Actor’s Work. It’s a shame, because Stanislavski couldn’t talk about spirit under the Soviet regime because it was forbidden. He was exploring Eastern philosophies, yoga, prana and the chakras but he couldn’t talk about it very much.

The Complete Stanslavsky Toolkit

Lanier, J. (2018), Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, New York: Henry Holt & Company. Knebel, M. (2002), On the Active Analysis of Plays and Roles, Maria Knebel, in unpublished translation by Mike Pushkin with Bella Merlin.

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