An Actor Prepares

by Constantin Stanislavsky

  ‘If you adhere strictly to this rule in all your exercises, no matter to what part of our programme they belong, you will find your imagination developing and growing in power.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CONCENTRATION OF ATTENTION

  1

  We were working on exercises today when suddenly some of the chairs along one of the walls toppled over. At first we were puzzled and then we realized that somebody was raising the curtain. As long as we were in Maria’s ‘drawing-room’ we never had any sense of there being a right or wrong side to the room. Wherever we stood was right. But opening that fourth wall with its big black proscenium arch made you feel that you must constantly adjust yourself. You think of the people looking at you; you seek to be seen and heard by them and not by those who are in the room with you. Only a moment ago the Director and his assistant seemed a natural element here in the drawing-room, but now, transported into the orchestra, they became something quite different; we were all affected by the change. For my part I felt that until we learned how to overcome the effect of that black hole we should never go an inch forward in our work. Paul, however, was confident that we could do better with a new and exciting exercise. The Director’s answer to this was:

  ‘Very well. We can try it. Here is a tragedy, which I hope will take your minds off the audience.

  ‘It takes place here in this apartment. Maria has married Kostya, who is treasurer of some public organization. They have a charming new-born baby, that is being bathed by its mother in a room off the dining-room. The husband is going through some papers and counting money. It is not his money, but property in his care, just brought from the bank. A stack of packets of bank bills has been thrown on the table. In front of Kostya stand Maria’s younger brother, Vanya, a low type of moron, who watches him tear the coloured bindings off the packets, and throw them in the fire, where they blaze up and make a lovely glow.

  ‘All the money is counted. As she judges her husband has finished his work Maria calls him in to admire the baby in his bath. The half-witted brother, in imitation of what he has seen, throws some papers into the fire, and whole packets, he finds, make the best blaze, so that in a frenzy of delight he throws in all—the public funds, just drawn from the bank by the treasurer! At this moment Kostya returns, and sees the last packet flaring up. Beside himself, he rushes to the fireplace and knocks down the moron, who falls with a groan, and, with a cry, pulls the last half-burned packet out of the fire.

  ‘His frightened wife runs into the room and sees her brother stretched out on the floor. She tries to raise him, but cannot. Seeing blood on her hands she cries to her husband to bring some water, but he is in a daze and pays no heed, so she runs after it herself. From the other room a heart-rending scream is heard. The darling baby is dead—drowned in its bath.

  ‘Is this enough of a tragedy to keep your minds off the audience?’

  This new exercise stirred us with its melodrama and unexpectedness, and yet we accomplished nothing.

  ‘Evidently’, exclaimed the Director, ‘the magnet of the audience is more powerful than the tragedy happening right there on the stage. Since that is so, let us try it again, this time with the curtain down.’ He and his assistant came back out of the audience into our drawing-room, which once more became friendly and hospitable.

  We began to act. The quiet parts, in the beginning of the exercise, we did well; but when we came to the dramatic places, it seemed to me that what I gave out was not at all adequate, and I wanted to do far more than I had feelings for.

  This judgment of mine was confirmed when the Director spoke. ‘In the beginning’, he said, ‘you acted correctly, but at the end you were pretending to act. You were squeezing feelings out of yourself, so you cannot blame everything on the black hole. It is not the only thing in the way of your living properly on the stage, since with the curtain down the result is the same.’

  On the excuse of being bothered by any onlookers we were ostensibly left alone to act the exercise again. Actually we were watched through a hole in the scenery and were told that this time we had been both bad and self-assured. ‘The main fault’, said the Director, ‘seems to lie in your lack of power to concentrate your attention, which is not yet prepared for creative work.’

  2

  The lesson today took place on the school stage, but the curtain was up, and the chairs that stand against it were taken away. Our little living-room was now open to the whole auditorium, which took away all its atmosphere of intimacy and turned it into an ordinary theatrical set. Electric cables were hung on the wall, running in various directions, with bulbs on them, as if for an illumination. We were settled in a row, close to the footlights. Silence fell.

  ‘Which of the girls has lost a heel off her shoe?’ asked the Director suddenly.

  The students busily examined each other’s footgear and were completely absorbed when the Director interrupted.

  ‘What’, he asked us, ‘has just happened in the hall?’

  We had no idea. ‘Do you mean to say you did not notice that my secretary has just brought in some papers for me to sign?’ No one had seen him. ‘And with the curtain up too! The secret seems to be simple enough: In order to get away from the auditorium you must be interested in something on the stage.’

  That impressed me at once, because I realized that from the very moment I concentrated on something behind the footlights, I cease to think about what was going on in front of them.

  I remembered helping a man to pick up nails that had fallen on the stage, when I was rehearsing for my scenes from Othello. Then I was absorbed by the simple act of picking them up, and chatting with the man, and I entirely forgot the black hole beyond the footlights.

  ‘Now you will realize that an actor must have a point of attention, and this point of attention must not be in the auditorium. The more attractive the object the more it will concentrate the attention. In real life there are always plenty of objects that fix our attention, but conditions in the theatre are different, and interfere with an actor’s living normally, so that an effort to fix attention becomes necessary. It becomes requisite to learn anew to look at things on the stage, and to see them. Instead of lecturing you further on this subject I will give you some examples.

  ‘Let the points of light, which you will see in a moment, illustrate to you certain aspects of objects, familiar to you in ordinary life, and consequently needed on the stage as well.’

  There was complete darkness, both in the hall and on the stage. In a few seconds a light appeared, on the table near which we were sitting. In the surrounding gloom this light was noticeable and bright.

  ‘This little lamp,’ explained the Director, ‘shining in the darkness, is an example of the Nearest Object. We make use of it in moments of greatest concentration, when it is necessary to gather in our whole attention, to keep it from dissipating itself on distant things.’

  After the lights were all turned on again, he continued:

  ‘To concentrate on a point of light in surrounding darkness is comparatively easy. Let us repeat the exercise in the light.’

  He requested one of the students to examine the back of an armchair. I was to study the imitation enamel on a table top. To a third was given some piece of bric-a-brac, a fourth had a pencil, a fifth a piece of string, a sixth a match, and so on.

  Paul started to untangle his piece of string, and I stopped him because I said the purpose of the exercise was concentration of attention and not action, that we should only examine the objects given us and think about them. As Paul disagreed with me, we took our difference of opinion to the Director, who said:

  ‘Intensive observation of an object naturally arouses a desire to do something with it. To do something with it in turn intensifies your observation of it. This mutual inter-reaction establishes a stronger contact with the object of your attention.’

  When I turned back to study the enamel design on the table top I felt a desire to pick it out with some sharp i
nstrument. This obliged me to look at the pattern more closely. Meantime Paul was enthusiastically rapt in the job of unknotting his string. And all the others were busy doing things or attentively observing their various objects.

  Finally the Director said:

  ‘I see that you are all able to concentrate on the nearest object in the light as well as in the dark.’

  After that he demonstrated, first without lights and then with them, objects at a moderate distance and objects at a far distance. We were to build some imaginary story around them and hold them in the centre of our attention as long as we could. This we were able to do when the main lights were turned off.

  As soon as they were put on again he said:

  ‘Now look around you very carefully and choose some one thing, either moderately near or farther off, and concentrate on it.’

  There were so many things all around us that at first my eyes kept running from one to the other. Finally I settled on a little statuette over on the mantelpiece. But I could not keep my eyes fixed on it for long. They were drawn away to other things about the room.

  ‘Evidently before you can establish medium and far distant points of attention you will have to learn how to look at and see things on the stage,’ said the Director. ‘It is a difficult thing to do in front of people, and the dark proscenium arch.

  ‘In ordinary life you walk and sit and talk and look, but on the stage you lose all these faculties. You feel the closeness of the public and you say to yourself, “Why are they looking at me?” And you have to be taught all over again how to do all these things in public.

  ‘Remember this: all of our acts, even the simplest, which are so familiar to us in everyday life, become strained when we appear behind the footlights before a public of a thousand people. That is why it is necessary to correct ourselves and learn again how to walk, move about, sit, or lie down. It is essential to re-educate ourselves to look and see, on the stage, to listen and to hear.’

  3

  ‘Choose some one object,’ said the Director to us today, after we had been seated on the open stage. ‘Suppose you take that embroidered cloth over there, since it has a striking design.’

  We began to look at it very carefully, but he interrupted.

  ‘That is not looking. It is staring.’

  We tried to relax our gaze, but we did not convince him that we were seeing what we were looking at.

  ‘More attentively,’ he ordered.

  We all bent forward.

  ‘Still a lot of mechanical gazing,’ he insisted, ‘and little attention.’

  We knit our brows and seemed to me to be most attentive.

  ‘To be attentive and to appear to be attentive are two different things,’ he said. ‘Make the test for yourselves, and see which way of looking is real, and which is imitative.’

  After a great deal of adjusting we finally settled down quietly, trying not to strain our eyes, and looked at the embroidered cloth.

  Suddenly he burst out laughing, and turning to me he said:

  ‘If only I could photograph you just as you are! You wouldn’t believe that any human being could contort himself into such an absurd attitude. Why, your eyes are almost bursting from their sockets. Is it necessary for you to put so much effort into merely looking at something? Less, less! Much less effort! Relax! More——! Are you so drawn to this object that you have to bend forwards to it? Throw yourself back! A great deal more!’

  He was able, finally, to reduce a little of my tenseness. The little he did accomplish made an enormous difference to me. No one can have any idea of this relief unless he has stood on the open stage, crippled with strained muscles.

  ‘A chattering tongue or mechanically moving hands and feet cannot take the place of the comprehending eye. The eye of an actor which looks at and sees an object attracts the attention of the spectator, and by the same token points out to him what he should look at. Conversely, a blank eye lets the attention of the spectator wander away from the stage.’

  Here he went back to his demonstration with electric lights: ‘I have shown you a series of objects such as we all have in life. You have seen the objects in the way that an actor should feel them on the stage. Now I shall show you how they never should be looked at but nevertheless almost always are. I shall show you the objects with which an actor’s attention is nearly always busied while he is on the boards.’

  All the lights went out again, and in the dark we saw little bulbs flashing all around. They dashed about the stage and then all through the audience. Suddenly they disappeared, and a strong light appeared above one of the seats in the orchestra.

  ‘What is that?’ asked a voice in the dark.

  ‘That is the Severe Dramatic Critic,’ said the Director. ‘He comes in for a lot of attention at the opening.’

  The little lights began to flash again, then they stopped and again a strong light appeared, this time over the orchestra seat of the regisseur.

  Scarcely had this gone out when a dim, weak, and tiny bulb appeared on the stage. ‘That’, said he ironically, ‘is the poor partner of an actor who pays little attention to her.’

  After this the little lights flashed all around again, and the big lights came on and off, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes separately,—an orgy of lights. It reminded me of the exhibition performance of Othello, when my attention was scattered all over the theatre, and when only accidentally, and at certain moments, was I able to concentrate on a nearby object.

  ‘Is it now clear’, the Director asked, ‘that an actor should choose the object of his attention on the stage, in the play, the role, and the setting? This is the difficult problem you must solve.’

  4

  Today the Assistant Director, Rakhmanov, appeared and announced that he had been asked by the Director to take his place for a class in drill.

  ‘Collect all of your attention,’ he said in a crisp, confident tone. ‘Your exercise will be as follows. I shall select an object for each of you to look at. You will notice its form, lines, colours, detail, characteristics. All this must be done while I count thirty. Then the lights will go out, so that you cannot see the object, and I shall call upon you to describe it. In the dark you will tell me everything that your visual memory has retained. I shall check up with the lights on, and compare what you have told me with the actual object. Listen closely. I am beginning. Maria—the mirror.’

  ‘O good gracious! Is this the one?’

  ‘No unnecessary questions. There is one mirror in the room, and only one. An actor should be a good guesser.

  ‘Leo—the picture, Grisha—the chandelier, Sonya—the scrapbook.’

  ‘The leather one?’ she asked, in her honeyed voice.

  ‘I have already pointed it out. I do not repeat. An actor should catch things on the fly. Kostya—the rug.’

  ‘There are a number of them,’ I said.

  ‘In case of uncertainty, decide for yourself. You may be wrong, but do not hesitate. An actor must have presence of mind. Do not stop to enquire. Vanya—the vase. Nicholas—the window, Dasha—the pillow. Vassili—the piano. One, two, three, four, five . . .’ He counted slowly up to thirty. ‘Lights out.’ He called on me first.

  ‘You told me to look at a rug, and I could not decide at once, so I lost some time——’

  ‘Be shorter, and stick to the point.’

  ‘The rug is Persian. The general background is reddish brown. A big border frames the edges——’ I went on describing it until the Assistant Director called out ‘Lights’.

  ‘You remembered it all wrong. You didn’t carry the impression. You scattered it. Leo!’

  ‘I could not make out the subject of the painting, because it is so far away, and I am short-sighted. All I saw was a yellow tone on a red background.’

  ‘Lights. There is neither red nor yellow in the painting. Grisha.’

  ‘The chandelier is gilt. A cheap product. With glass pendants.’

  ‘Lights on. The chandelier i
s a museum piece, a real piece of Empire. You were asleep at the switch.

  ‘Lights out. Kostya, describe your rug again.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know that I would be required to do it again.’

  ‘Never sit there for one instant doing nothing. I warn you all now that I shall examine you twice, or more times, until I get an exact idea of your impressions. Leo!’

  He made a startled exclamation and said: ‘I wasn’t noticing.’

  In the end we were forced to study our objects down to the last detail, and to describe them. In my case, I was called on five times before I succeeded. This work at high pressure lasted half an hour. Our eyes were tired and our attention strained. It would have been impossible to continue any longer with such intensity. So the lesson was divided into two parts, of a half-hour each. After the first part we took a lesson in dancing. Then we went back and did exactly what we did before, except that the time of observation was cut down from thirty seconds to twenty. The Assistant Director remarked that the allowance for observation would eventually be reduced to two seconds.

  5

  The Director continued his demonstration with electric lights today.

  ‘Up to now’, he said, ‘we have been dealing with objects in the form of points of light. Now I am going to show you a circle of attention. It will consist of a whole section, large or small in dimension, and will include a series of independent points of objects. The eye may pass from one to another of these points, but it must not go beyond the indicated limit of the circle of attention.’