Transcript Introduction to Acting - TACIT

Introduction to Acting
Brian Brophy
Konstantin Sergeyevich
Stanislavsky—1863-1938
•“We must love the
art in ourselves,
not ourselves in
the art.”
Bertolt Brecht
1898-1956
•“Art is not a mirror
held up to reality,
but a hammer with
which to shape it.”
Early Questions
• In the early phase of his career (1880s),
the notebooks of “Kostya” are filled with
deep questions:
• “What is the physiological aspect of the
role?
• The psychic aspect of the role?
• What were the differences between
‘character’ acting and ‘personality’ acting?
•
Questions
How could actors
stimulate their
imagination and
therefore their
‘creative will?” And
how did actors ‘get
inside’ the directors
ideas?”
How to Stimulate the Imagination?
• At the age of 25, Kostya locked himself
in the cellar of a castle to help him
visualize the role of the old Miserly
Knight. He was determined to find the
missing component to his character, by
somehow re-creating the “cellar”
memory in his performance. Reportedly,
he caught a deathly cold, but the
experience began to lay the groundwork
for his theory of affective memory .
Affective Memory (1909)
• “Also known as ‘emotion memory’ or
‘sense memory’. The term describes the
process of recalling situations from your
own experience (including events that
you’ve read about, heard about, or
seen, as well as directly experienced)
that are analogous to the character’s
situation…
Affective Memory Cont…
• It involves the collaborative work of the
imagination and all your senses (taste,
touch, sight, smell and hearing) in
recalling incidents. Finding an
appropriate affective memory is a
means of empathizing with the contents
of the play so that you can invest them
with something from your personal
landscape…
Affective Memory Cont…
• This process of empathy should
prevent your characterizations
becoming cliched and formal.”
• Bella Marlin
Biography in Social and
Artistic Context
• 1.The Amateur years: 1863-1898
• 2. The Director Dictator: 1891-1906
• 3. Round the Table Analysis: 1906-early
30s
• 4. The Final legacies: 1930s-1938 and
beyond.
1863-1938
• Born two years after the abolition of
serfdom, Stan came from a wealthy
family that made gold and silver
braiding for military decorations and
uniforms, while the Sergeyev clan was
directly descended from serfs
themselves.
Kostya’s Childhood
• Raised by a peasant nanny and
educated by a university trained
governess, the Alexeyev household
along with their nine children “mingled
superstition with modern liberal
thinking…(and) an obsessive fear of
sickness…”
Childhood
• On many Russian estates the serfs
were trained by amateur directors for
comic and musical performances. Once
serfdom was abolished, the practice
died out, but the Alexeyev household
began to mount their own spectacles.
One significant performance to the six
year old Kostya was as Father Winter.
Father Winter
• The Alexeyev clan produced an
elaborate fairy tale for their mother’s
birthday party. Kostya, dressed in a
sheet of white cotton and wool, holding
a branch made of rolled cotton, told to
stay away from the flames of the
candles on the stage, yet, feeling selfconscious and anxious of “not being told
or knowing where to look,” set himself
on fire…
At the Circus
• Kostya’s mother exposed him and his
siblings to all the performing arts
including the ballet, opera and circus. At
eight years of age, overcome by the
pink-leotarded equstrienne in the circus
ring, riding round on her horse, Kostya
broke free from his mother and ran into
the ring and kissed her, much to the
embarrassment of his siblings.
Active Imagination
• Kostya constructed his own puppets
with miniature stage designs and staged
French comedies and musicals with his
sisters playing parts most opposite to
their innate personality. The introverted
sister chose to play coquettes or
flirtatious women, whereas the
extroverted sister loved to play nuns:
actors have tendency to play their
opposites.
Alexeyev Circle
• The family creates its own amateur
theater company and achieves renown
as the best non-professional theater
company in Moscow. However, once he
turns 18 Kostya is ready to move on…
Maly Theater
• Desperate to be in front of an audience,
he moves to Moscow and studies at
Maly where he is tackles the idea of
inspiration. Where does it come from if
an audience is unresponsive? He finds
inspiration from his fellow actor on stage
and in their eyes…
Alexeyev becomes
Stanislavsky
After watching the great Italian
tragedian Tommaso Salvini
perform Othello, Kostya says
Salvini’s passion was so powerful
that it was as if “burning lava was
pouring into his heart” when he
performed. He shaves his goatee
and changes his name.
• Beginning to act more frequently with his
trimmed goatee in the Italian style and new
name at night, he works by day as a manager
in his father’s business. One night his parents
come watch him perform in a risque French
melodrama; they are embarrassed and his
father scolds him the next day, yet seeing his
son’s commitment offers him funding for a
new theater company.
The Society of Art and
Literature
In 1888,professional director and
playwright Alexander Fedotov is
hired to work with Kostya and
immediately makes his mark upon
the enthusiastic actor.
Hungry to Act
• Fedotov tells kostya to find his character
models from living people and not from
imitating other actors’ interpretations.
He begins to understand the necessity
of a relaxed body and using opposite
character traits to portray more fully
rounded and interesting characters.
Ahhh…Love…
• He falls in love with Masha
Perevoshchikova and realizes when he
is in love, and in every role he plays, he
improves markedly. Lightness and
subtlety. Kostya marries ‘Lillina’,
Masha’s stage name, in 1889 and the
two are inseparable until the end.
• Between 1890-1896 Kostya is regarded as
Moscow’s “most interesting and modern
stage director” (Gordon). The Society has
many hits including Othello with Kostya as
director and star, but eventually the company
loses inspiration and several shows fail, and
Kostya is invited to start a new company with
critic and dramturg Vladimir NemirovichDanchencko
Moscow Art Theater
•
•
•
•
•
•
18 hour meeting with Danchencko.
Treating all actors with respect
Dressing rooms
Democratic ensemble
“Today Hamlet, tomorrow an extra…”
Although actor based, lights, music, set,
costumes, direction and mise en scene would
serve the play’s thesis.
• Summer training in Pushkino
• Opens in 1898, the year of Brecht’s birth…
MAT
• First Season:
• Czar Fyodor: The court intrigues of
boyars around a powerless czar,
banned by Russian censors for three
decades.
• Merchant of Venice
• The Seagull by Anton Chekhov
The House of Chekhov
• From 1898 to 1903 Kostya directs Chekhov’s
Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya and Three
Sisters Seagull and Maxim Gorky’s Lower
Depths (1902), to name just a few.
• The Russian audiences are overwhelmed by
these new plays and tickets for a MAT show
are sold out every performance.
MAT’s Reputation Grows
• Due to Kostya’s detailed realism, “he would
create a great spectacle of the ordinary and
banal. The smallest activity and interaction in
the text could be filled with dozens of scenic
detail and unspoken communications.
Everyday life could be made totally exotic
and, in so doing, a deeper psychological truth
between the characters could be mined.”
• Gordon (20)
MAT Tours
• Three hundred performers and backstage
workers, including a Board of Directors,
stockholders and loyal patrons make up the
universe of MAT.
• As the 1905 Russian Revolution rumbles
throughout the land, and the Japanese defeat
the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War, the
MAT travels to Germany and Central Europe.
Images of Kostya
• Dr. Astrov in Uncle
Vanya 1899
Images
• Vershinin from
Three Sisters (1901)
Images
• As Rakitin in A
Month in the
Country (1909)
The Creative State of Mind
• The oldest features of Kostya’s
“System,” the building blocks for the
actor’s working on him/herself include:
• 1. Relaxation
• 2. Concentration
• 3. Naivete
Relaxation (1906)
• One of Kostya’s first discoveries was
that muscular tension limits the actor’s
capacity to feel as well as move. Free
from tension is essential for stage
creativity.
Concentration (1906)
• The development of the actor’s ability to
focus or concentrate on a single
sensation or object is the first step
necessary in producing the CREATIVE
STATE OF MIND. By concentrating on
an object, the actor learns to make
himself interested in it. This in turn takes
his/her attention away from the
audience, leading him/her directly and
unerringly into the on-stage reality.
• Gordon (234)
Naivete
1. The state or quality of being
inexperienced or unsophisticated,
especially in being artless, credulous, or
uncritical.
Free Dictionary
2. To enter into a play’s imaginary
circumstances, the actor must relearn
and develop his childlikepowers to
completely believe in invisible stimuli
Gordon (239)
Naivete
Lower Depths
Akira Kurosawa adapted Maxim Gorky’s
masterpiece, first presented by MAT with
Stanislavsky in 1902.
His film version made in 1958 titled
Donzoko, is set in mid-1800s Japan
chronicling the desperate lives of the poor
and downtrodden urban masses.
The Director Dictator: 18911906
• Where the ideas came from:
• 1. Production plan; create myriad details
on movement, acting, voices, body
positions on stage( blocking, or mise en
scene),etc.
• 2. German Saxe-Meiningen
productions. Director Ludwig Chronegk
directed with absolute military discipline.
Impressed with scenography.
•
The Seagull
• First production a disaster (1896).
• Play called for an ‘inner activity’, but
actors’ emploi (type) was useless.
• Kostya directs it in 1898.
• His production plan works brilliantly.
• His careful devotion to detail and mise
en scene creates something never seen
before in Russia.
Two Revolutions
• Theater production: attention to stage
detail
• Acting styles: ‘truthful’ portrayal of life of
the human spirit OR psychological
realism
Autocratic Director
• Kostya directs all of Chekhov’s plays
with the iron will, and externally
imposing actions upon the actors and
exactly guiding them in how to play the
scenes.
• Even Chekhov’s wife complains as the
creative freedom of the ensemble was
shackled to the director’s designs.
Kostya Gets Straightjacketed
• Nemirovich-Danchencko direction of
Julius Caesar and Lower Depths, gives
Kostya a taste of his own medicine.
18-19th c Acting Styles--Pre
Stanislavsky
• Classical Acting--Copying statues and
with decorum and balance…
• Romantic Acting--windy, wild
exuberance of inner impulses…
Inner Justification
• If the director forces the actors to
behave according to his production plan
and mise en scene, s/he is in danger of
not allowing the actors to investigate
their own inner justification.
Exercises
Affective Memory,Communication
(1906) and Rhythm (1906)
Although practiced in the
classroom exercises, these were
frequently associated with the
private and individual process of
“creating a role.”
Affective Memory (1909)
• “Also known as ‘emotion memory’ or
‘sense memory’. The term describes the
process of recalling situations from your
own experience (including events that
you’ve read about, heard about, or
seen, as well as directly experienced)
that are analogous to the character’s
situation…
Communciation (1906)
• Acting is a special form of
communication. To go beyond the
playwright’s words, an actor must learn
to deliver a deeper, living message to
the audience…the actor communicates
or radiates a subtext of thoughts and
feelings to his partners, which then, in
turn, affects the audience.”
• Gordon (232)
What time is it?
•
•
•
•
•
• Communicate to your partner the
following thoughts:
Am I late?
Why are you late?
Why don’t you leave?
My God this is boring!
Please tell me the time!
Rhythm (1906)
All human activity follows some
rhythmic pattern. Each actor must
find the proper rhythm fo his/her
character and all his/her stage
activities.
Round the Table Analysis:
1906-1930s
• Detective work with actors and
playscript around the table yielded great
insights:
• 1.Given circumstances
• 2. Pauses
• 3. Bits
• 4. Objectives
• 5. Action
Given Circumstances
• All the pieces of information needed by
actors to make the appropriate
decisions when interpreting their
characters. They include the story of the
play, its facts, events, epoch, time and
place of action, conditions of life, the
actors’ and regisseurs’ interpreta- tion,
the mise en scene, the production, the
sets, costumes, properities, lighting and
sound effects.
• Merlin 158
Pauses
• A pause is full of inner action and
emotional intensity. It is the silent, inner
continuation of one action and the
preparation for a new action.
Two types of Pauses
• 1. The logic pause comes at the end of
a line and a stanza, giving literary sense
and intelligibility to a text.
• 2. Psychological pause can appear
anywhere, as long as it is necessary
and breathes life into the text..
• Merlin 160-161
Bits
• Beats? Beads? Borscht?
• A section of text in which the characters
are clearly pursuing a particular
objective. At the point at which one
character’s objective is thwarted or
achieved, a new dynamic usually begins
and so a new bit starts…
• Merlin 158
Objective
• An objective (task) is the main desire
motivating a character’s behavior in a
scene or in a particular bit, and is
directed towards the on-stage partner.
Action
• Every moment that the actor is on stage
and every line of text consists of an
action. It is directed towards the other
characters in the scene, and is usually
expressed as a transitive verb (I
persuade you’, I threaten you’, ‘I
enchant you’, etc.).
Action!!
• Each action is like a bead: if you string
the beads together, you have your
character’s through line of action, which
then propels and guides you through
the entire play.
• Merlin 156
What Stands in Your Way of
Achieving your Objectives?
• OBSTACLES!
Hedda Gabler (1891)
• Hedda, the independent daughter of
General Gabler, recently deceased,
marries George Tesman, a dull but well
meaning research scholar. On her
honeymoon she realizes that her
marriage is a mistake and by staying
with George she condemns herself to a
living death as trophy wife in a middle
class home…
Hedda Gabler
• The challenge of the actor is to make
the dullness of the bourgeoisie such an
obstacle to a fulfilled life that Hedda kills
herself to escape it.
• Kaplan 38
Prana (1906)
• Derived from Indic-culture, a Sanskrit
word referring to waves of the universal
life force. Kostya and Suler believed
that invisible rays of Prana could be
produced in the hands, fingers tips, and
eyes of the performer. Powerful means
of COMMUNICATION between actors
and their audience.
• Gordon (240)
Legacy
• Stanislavski's work was as important to the
development of socialist realism in the USSR
as it was to that of psychological realism in
the United States.[3] Many actors routinely
identify his 'system' with the American
Method, although the latter's exclusively
psychological techniques contrast sharply
with Stanislavski's multivariant, holistic and
psychophysical approach, which explores
character and action both from the 'inside out'
and the 'outside in'.[4]
Influences on Stanislavsky
• Stanislavski's work draws on a wide range of
influences and ideas, including his study of
the modernist and avant-garde developments
of his time (naturalism, symbolism and
Meyerhold's constructivism), Russian
formalism, Yoga, Pavlovian behaviourist
psychology, James-Lange (via Ribot)
psychophysiology and the aesthetics of
Pushkin, Gogol, and Tolstoy. He described
his approach as 'spiritual Realism'.
“Whoever empathizes with
someone, and does so completely,
relinquishes criticism both of the
object of their empathy and of
themselves. Instead of awakening,
they sleepwalk. Instead of doing
something, they let something be
done with them.”
Bertolt Brecht
• In 1955, Brecht read Toporkov’s book and
changed his antipathy towards the System as
the Method of Physical Action corresponded
very much with his own approach. Brecht
thought the American adaptation of the
System, indulged the actor, leading to great
emotional excess. To his surprise,
Stanislavski in Rehearsal fully dissuaded him
form his assumptions.