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 First of all, what are the given circumstances? There’s a clear sense of atmosphere in ‘There’s a light coming from the vanity’. Although it’s daytime, the mirror light is on. So how does that piece of information play on our imaginations? To me it suggests the room is dimly lit; there’s something unsettling about the vanity light being on rather than the overhead light, as if something is in mid-action; in my mind’s eye I can see that yellowish glare of a cheap motel mirror light. Even as I read the script, my mind is filled with questions and I want to know more… Three years ago, the Theatre department at the University of California, Riverside, evolved into a department of Theatre, Film and Digital Production. As part of that evolution, I’ve found myself consciously adjusting the lexicon of my acting classes to deliberately embrace both stage and screen. Coming as I do from a graduate program where the world’s oldest film studios sit side by side with classrooms filled with actors working on Shakespeare, Chekhov, musical theatre, opera and myriad contemporary writers, I’d taken for granted that Stanislavsky’s ‘system’ crossed between genres. Indeed, Stanislavsky himself crossed literary genres, though – as I mentioned – he didn’t cross media: he didn’t work in film.

Stanislavsky’s ‘system’ is in many respects a perfect means of navigating the unsafe. It’s clear. It’s structured. It makes absolute sense. It simply takes the laws of nature and applies them to the artifice of a script. And it’s spawned three generations of extremely successful actors. Many Oscar winners are steeped in the psychophysical training of Stanislavsky, which imbues them with the willing vulnerability to take emotional and relational risks in the roles they play. Stanislavsky cited in On the Active Analysis of Plays and Roles, Maria Knebel, in unpublished translation by Mike Pushkin with Bella Merlin, 2002, p. 7. BM: Yes, I was there when Russia was just coming out from under the iron curtain and my tutors welcomed the spiritual, energetic and emotional qualities of active analysis. The method of physical actions was action, action, action, action. Whereas active analysis was much more holistic, “impure” if you like. The murkiness of human mess becomes a tool with which you can create something. So they were very clear: the distinction is that the method of physical action was pragmatic, whilst active analysis much more unexpected, more human. The mechanics of each are very close: read the scene, discuss the scene, improvise the scene, discuss the improvisation. What’s the event? What’s the action? What’s the counteraction? How do the action and the counteraction rub against each other to create the dramatic event? But my tutors, who were as steeped in Michael Chekhov, Jerzy Grotowski and Maria Knebel as they were in Stanislavski, they were much more into the spiritual – that was compatible with active analysis. Spirituality was no longer something that was going to be squashed by the regime.Which means each screen direction also gives us insights into the director’s potential vision. In collaboration with the director of photography, they’ll construct what’s important to the audience’s eyes. What might the camera close up on or pull away from? Will the focus be pulled between two characters in a two-shot, letting the audience know whose thoughts are most important? (Though, bear in mind, we rarely know as actors exactly what the shot contains at the time of filming. Nor is it really what we want to be too absorbed in: we’ve got a story to tell.) As I said, it’s unlikely the screen directions will be adhered to absolutely; yet, it’s vitally important as we prepare for a role that we understand the atmosphere those screen directions create, the emotional state of mind for the character, and what they really want out of the encounter. These are all fundamental aspects of Stanislavsky’s ‘system’. So let’s put it into practice. Through our physical embodiment of a play we can begin to connect to the writer’s text in such a way that it’s vivid and unique to each of us as actors, and will therefore make an energetic impact on our audience.

And in the work on the role, we can provide scripts such as those by Shakespeare and Chekhov, writers who worked intensively with actors; who had a passion and curiosity for human behavior, and a real love for love; and whose work has endured because of their immense insights. Chekhov was a doctor: therefore, he knew he was dying of tuberculosis. He was a surgeon of the soul as much as the body, and his plays reflect his poignant understanding of humanity. Shakespeare paints on a vast canvas including jealousy, rage, vengeance, violence as well as profound and tender love. It behooves us not be put off by the fact that both Shakespeare and Chekhov are dead European males, as they both offer the actor complicated scenarios and violent disagreements (ergo, important training material). I’d argue that it’s vitally important for young actors to experience the articulacy of these extraordinary writers, especially for what Twenge calls ‘a generation that believes someone disagreeing with you constitutes emotional injury.’ [34] While of course we also want to use contemporary texts by writers of all ethnicity, cultures, races and gender identifications, we wouldn’t want to throw out the baby with the bath water. Lanier, J. (2018), Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, New York: Henry Holt & Company, p. 11. This reframing could be particularly useful for them when it comes to handling complex scripts such as Shakespeare’s. As Twenge says, ‘Perhaps because they are so physically safe compared to previous generations, and perhaps because they spend so much time online, iGen sees speech as the venue where danger lies. In their always online lives, words can reach out and do damage even when you’re alone.’ [28] So how would it be, I ask, if we let the ‘venue where danger lies’ be the theatre and the actor-training environment? How would it be if our young students allowed the potent imagistic language, say, of Shakespeare’s huge emotions to give them permission, space and structure to express those fears? [29] In other words, how would it be if as actor trainers we took the social reality that our students may be scared of language, and channeled it towards more mindful behavior and more empathic performances? Then we might even help them develop stronger actor-audience relationships and become more impactful storytellers…I don’t fixate too much on stage directions, though I do consider their content and meaning. George Bernard Shaw writes short essays for his stage directions, which can give us some useful insights into both character and milieu. Chekhov provides a few select stage directions, particular ‘pauses’, which are always worth noting as pauses hold a lot of inner information. Shakespeare writes very few explicit stage directions though lots of implicit ones. And most contemporary playwrights give minimal stage directions, assuming the director and the actors will work out the visuals in rehearsal.

In Part II, we move into a more subjective realm, as I continue pulling into focus my Anglo-Russian-American perspective on psychophysical acting and ‘the creation of the living word’. Barrett, E. & Bolt, B. (eds.) (2010), Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry, New York: I. B. Tauris, p. 4. (My emphasis.)

Abstract

To help actors ‘create the living word’ Stanislavsky went through four major stages on his life’s journey as a practical researcher. [7] Those four stages were as follows: A director arguably needs to know the text far better than the actors do initially. And yet the art is not to prescribe to the actors their journey, but rather to guide them towards choices that serve the writer’s script. In this session, we dive deep into text analysis. As a text analysis junkie, this is one of my favourite tasks as an actor and/or director. I hope to infect you with my enthusiasm! The whole scene is explored like this. And afterwards the actors discuss whatever arose for them during the ‘dropping in’. This paper doesn’t allow for a truly in-depth navigation of this dynamically fruitful process. Suffice it to say it’s an exciting way to research a text and it throws up unexpected and emotional findings. The main points to remember are (a) no one can get anything wrong: the droppers-in are simply free-associating, and the actors are simply harvesting ripe fruits for future rehearsals; (b) the final interpretation of the scene might bear no overt signs of any of the discoveries made during the dropping-in session, yet the residue of them will be in the DNA of the scene somewhere (be it in the relationships, the shared moments, and the often highly-charged emotional journeys); and (c) words hold lots of unexpected information and possibilities, so no one particular interpretation need be fixed like a butterfly on a board. Film acting in many respects is a perfect medium for experiencing intense ‘moments of absorption’ in complex human action within the tightest possible acting structure: the close-up. And the American film and television industries lead the way in such emotional accessibility. While I’ve been acting, I’ve also been teaching undergraduates in the Theatre, Film and Digital Production Department at the University of California, Riverside. In other words, I’ve had the opportunity – in a variety of completely different spheres (i.e. theatre, film and teaching) – to explore through practice-based research the various emotional, personal and subjective questions that I’ve had about the nature of acting. At the heart of those questions is really: What does it mean be an actor in the twenty-first century? What does it mean to devote one’s professional life to using other people’s words to create a living experience? How might I be able to link the various experiences I’ve had – professional and professorial – to begin to answer those questions?

Actor training: What challenges do we face teaching a generation of young actors born into technology – the so-called ‘iGeneration’? [4] I’ve been teaching actors now for twenty years during which time my methodology has galvanized into four guiding principles: (1) ‘dynamic listening’; (2) ‘willing vulnerability’; (3) ‘playfulness’; and (4) ‘psychophysical coordination’. I’ll just focus on one of those principles here: psychophysical coordination. Psychophysical coordination is the natural and intimate dialogue between whatever we’re feeling inside and our outer expression of that feeling. And vice versa: the information coming at us from the outside world affects how we’re feeling within. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-11-08 20:08:56 Boxid IA40281422 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier I’ve come to realize these questions are both a technological issue and a generational issue and, therefore, warrant some serious consideration.By doing this sort of analysis of the script directions, I now have some basic inroads to the three ‘inner psychological drives’ of thoughts, feelings and actions for Jenny. So I can start to feel where she might live in my own psychophysical instrument. 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. Gomez, M. (2018), ‘Giuliani says “Truth Isn’t Truth” in Defense of Trump’s Legal Strategy’, New York Times, 19 August, 2018. First of all, the screen directions in a film script allow us into the mind of the writer. We’re guided to what they bore in their imagination at the time they were envisaging the script. A scene may not be filmed – exactly shot for shot – as the writer lays it out; nonetheless those screen directions will be the first inroad the director has into the inner fabric of the script.