An Actor Prepares

by Constantin Stanislavsky

  ‘Take the word “power” as an example. Put “I wish” in front of it and you have “I wish power”. But that is too general. If you introduce something more definitely active, state a question so that it requires an answer, it will push you to some fruitful activity to carry out that purpose. Consequently you say: “wish to do so and so, to obtain power.” Or you can put it this way: “What must I wish to do to obtain power?” When you answer that you will know what action you must take.’

  ‘I wish to be powerful,’ suggested Vanya.

  ‘The verb “to be” is static. It does not contain the active germ necessary to an objective.’

  ‘I wish to obtain power,’ ventured Sonya.

  ‘That is closer to action,’ said the Director. ‘Unfortunately it is too general and cannot be executed at once. Try sitting on this chair and wishing for power, in general. You must have something more concrete, real, nearer, more possible to do. As you see, not any verb will do, not any word can give an impetus to full action.’

  ‘I wish to obtain power in order to bring happiness to all humanity,’ suggested someone.

  ‘That is a lovely phrase,’ remarked the Director. ‘But it is hard to believe in the possibility of its realization.’

  ‘I wish to obtain power to enjoy life, to be gay, to be distinguished, to indulge my desires, to satisfy my ambition,’ Grisha said.

  ‘That is more realistic and easier to carry out but to do it you must take a series of preparatory steps. You cannot reach such an ultimate goal at once. You will approach it gradually. Go over those steps and enumerate them.’

  ‘I wish to appear successful and wise in business, to create confidence. I wish to earn the affection of the public, to be accounted powerful. I wish to distinguish myself, to rise in rank, to cause myself to be noticed.’

  The Director went back to the scene from Brand and had each of us do a similar exercise. He suggested:

  ‘Suppose all the men put themselves in the position of Brand. They will appreciate more readily the psychology of a crusader for an idea. Let the women take the part of Agnes. The delicacy of feminine and maternal love is closer to them.

  ‘One, two, three! Let the tournament between the men and the women begin!’

  ‘I wish to obtain power over Agnes in order to persuade her to make a sacrifice, to save her, to direct her in the right path.’ These words were hardly out of my mouth before the women came forward with:

  ‘I wish to remember my dead child.’

  ‘I wish to be near him, to communicate with him.’

  ‘I wish to care for, to caress, to tend him.’

  ‘I wish to bring him back! I wish to follow him! I wish to feel him near me! I wish to see him with his toys! I wish to call him back from the grave! I wish to bring back the past! I wish to forget the present, to drown my sorrow.’

  Louder than anyone I heard Maria cry: ‘I wish to be so close to him that we can never be separated!’

  ‘In that case,’ the men broke in, ‘we shall fight! I wish to make Agnes love me! I wish to draw her to me! I wish to make her feel that I understand her suffering! I wish to paint for her the great joy that will come from a duty performed. I wish her to understand man’s larger destiny.’

  ‘Then,’ came from the women, ‘I wish to move my husband through my grief! I wish him to see my tears.’

  And Maria cried: ‘I wish to take hold of my child more firmly than ever and never let him go!’

  The men retorted: ‘I wish to instil in her a sense of responsibility towards humanity! I wish to threaten her with punishment and separation! I wish to express despair at the impossibility of our understanding each other!’

  All during this exchange the verbs provoked thoughts and feelings which were, in turn, inner challenges to action.

  ‘Every one of the objectives you have chosen is, in a way, true, and calls for some degree of action,’ said the Director. ‘Those of you who are of a lively temperament might find little to appeal to your emotions in “I wish to remember my dead child”. You would prefer “I wish to take hold of him and never let go”. Of what? Of the things, memories, thoughts of the dead child. Others would be unmoved by that. So it is important that an objective have the power to attract and to excite the actor.

  ‘It seems to me that you have given the answer to your own question why it is necessary to use a verb instead of a noun in choosing an objective.

  ‘That is all for the present about units and objectives. You will learn more about psychological technique later, when you have a play and parts which we can actually divide into units and objectives.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  FAITH AND A SENSE OF TRUTH

  1

  ‘FAITH AND A SENSE OF TRUTH’ was inscribed on a large placard on the wall at school today.

  Before our work began we were up on the stage, engaged in one of our periodic searches for Maria’s lost purse. Suddenly we heard the voice of the Director who, without our knowing it, had been watching us from the orchestra.

  ‘What an excellent frame, for anything you want to present, is provided by the stage and the footlights,’ said he. ‘You were entirely sincere in what you were doing. There was a sense of truthfulness about it all, and a feeling of believing in all physical objectives which you set yourselves. They were well defined and clear, and your attention was sharply concentrated. All these necessary elements were operating properly and harmoniously to create—can we say art? No! That was not art. It was actuality. Therefore repeat what you have just been doing.’

  We put the purse back where it had been and we began to hunt it. Only this time we did not have to search because the object had already been found once. As a result we accomplished nothing.

  ‘No. I saw neither objectives, activity nor truth, in what you did,’ was Tortsov’s criticism. ‘And why? If what you were doing the first time was actual fact, why were you not able to repeat it? One might suppose that to do that much you would not need to be an actor, but just an ordinary human being.’

  We tried to explain to Tortsov that the first time it was necessary to find the lost purse, whereas the second time we knew there was no need for it. As a result we had reality at first and a false imitation of it the second time.

  ‘Well then, go ahead and play the scene with truth instead of falseness,’ he suggested.

  We objected, and said it was not as simple as all that. We insisted that we should prepare, rehearse, live the scene. . . .

  ‘Live it?’ the Director exclaimed. ‘But you just did live it!’

  Step by step, with the aid of questions and explanation, Tortsov led us to the conclusion that there are two kinds of truth and sense of belief in what you are doing. First, there is the one that is created automatically and on the plane of actual fact (as in the case of our search for Maloletkova’s purse when Tortsov first watched us), and second, there is the scenic type, which is equally truthful but which originates on the plane of imaginative and artistic fiction.

  ‘To achieve this latter sense of truth, and to reproduce it in the scene of searching for the purse, you must use a lever to lift you on to the plane of imaginary life,’ the Director explained. ‘There you will prepare a fiction, analogous to what you have just done in reality. Properly envisaged “given circumstances” will help you to feel and to create a scenic truth in which you can believe while you are on the stage. Consequently, in ordinary life, truth is what really exists, what a person really knows. Whereas on the stage it consists of something that is not actually in existence but which could happen.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ argued Grisha, ‘but I don’t see how there can be any question of truth in the theatre since everything about it is fictitious, beginning with the very plays of Shakespeare and ending with the papier mâché dagger with which Othello stabs himself.’

  ‘Do not worry too much about that dagger being made of cardboard instead of steel,’ said Tortsov, in a conciliatory tone. ‘You have a perfect right to call it
an impostor. But if you go beyond that; and brand all art as a lie, and all life in the theatre as unworthy of faith, then you will have to change your point of view. What counts in the theatre is not the material out of which Othello’s dagger is made, be it steel or cardboard, but the inner feeling of the actor who can justify his suicide. What is important is how the actor, a human being, would have acted if the circumstances and conditions which surrounded Othello were real and the dagger with which he stabbed himself were metal.

  ‘Of significance to us is: the reality of the inner life of a human spirit in a part and a belief in that reality. We are not concerned with the actual naturalistic existence of what surrounds us on the stage, the reality of the material world! This is of use to us only in so far as it supplies a general background for our feelings.

  ‘What we mean by truth in the theatre is the scenic truth which an actor must make use of in his moments of creativeness. Try always to begin by working from the inside, both on the factual and imaginary parts of a play and its setting. Put life into all the imagined circumstances and actions until you have completely satisfied your sense of truth, and until you have awakened a sense of faith in the reality of your sensations. This process is what we call justification of a part.’

  As I wished to be absolutely sure of his meaning, I asked Tortsov to sum up in a few words what he had said. His answer was:

  ‘Truth on the stage is whatever we can believe in with sincerity, whether in ourselves or in our colleagues. Truth cannot be separated from belief, nor belief from truth. They cannot exist without each other and without both of them it is impossible to live your part, or to create anything. Everything that happens on the stage must be convincing to the actor himself, to his associates and to the spectators. It must inspire belief in the possibility, in real life, of emotions analogous to those being experienced on the stage by the actor. Each and every moment must be saturated with a belief in the truthfulness of the emotion felt, and in the action carried out, by the actor.’

  2

  The Director began our lesson today by saying: ‘I have explained to you, in general terms, the part that truth plays in the creative process. Let us now talk about its opposite.

  ‘A sense of truth contains within itself a sense of what is untrue as well. You must have both. But it will be in varying proportions. Some have, let us say, seventy-five per cent. sense of truth, and only twenty-five per cent. of sense of falseness; or these proportions reversed; or fifty per cent. of each. Are you surprised that I differentiate and contrast these two senses? This is why I do it,’ he added, and then, turning to Nicholas, he said:

  ‘There are actors who, like you, are so strict with themselves in adhering to truth that they often carry that attitude, without being conscious of it, to extremes that amount to falseness. You should not exaggerate your preference for truth and your abhorrence of lies, because it tends to make you overplay truth for its own sake, and that, in itself, is the worst of lies. Therefore try to be cool and impartial. You need truth, in the theatre, to the extent to which you can believe in it.

  ‘You can even get some use from falseness if you are reasonable in your approach to it. It sets the pitch for you and shows you what you should not do. Under such conditions a slight error can be used by an actor to determine the line beyond which he may not transgress.

  ‘This method of checking up on yourself is absolutely essential whenever you are engaged in creative activity. Because of the presence of a large audience an actor feels bound, whether he wishes to or not, to give out an unnecessary amount of effort and motions that are supposed to represent feelings. Yet no matter what he does, as long as he stands before the footlights, it seems to him that it is not enough. Consequently we see an excess of acting amounting to as much as ninety per cent. That is why, during my rehearsals, you will often hear me say, “Cut out ninety per cent.”

  ‘If you only knew how important is the process of self-study! It should continue ceaselessly, without the actor even being aware of it, and it should test every step he takes. When you point out to him the palpable absurdity of some false action he has taken he is more than willing to cut it. But what can he do if his own feelings are not able to convince him? Who will guarantee that, having rid himself of one lie, another will not immediately take its place? No, the approach must be different. A grain of truth must be planted under the falsehood, eventually to supplant it, as a child’s second set of teeth pushes out the first.’

  Here the Director was called away, on some business connected with the theatre, so the students were turned over to the assistant for a period of drill.

  When Tortsov returned a short time later, he told us about an artist who possessed an extraordinarily fine sense of truth in criticizing the work of other actors. Yet when he himself acts, he completely loses that sense. ‘It is difficult to believe’, said he, ‘that it is the same person who at one moment shows such a keen sense of discrimination between what is true and what is false in the acting of his colleagues, and at the next will go on the stage and himself perpetrate worse mistakes.

  ‘In his case his sensitiveness to truth and falseness as a spectator and as an actor are entirely divorced. This phenomenon is widespread.’

  3

  We thought of a new game today: we decided to check falseness in each other’s actions both on the stage and in ordinary life.

  It so happened that we were delayed in a corridor because the school stage was not ready. While we were standing around Maria suddenly raised a hue and cry because she had lost her key. We all precipitated ourselves into the search for it.

  Grisha began to criticize her.

  ‘You are leaning over,’ said he, ‘and I don’t believe there is basis for it. You are doing it for us, not to find the key.’

  His carpings were duplicated by remarks of Leo, Vassili, Paul and by some of mine, and soon the whole search was at a standstill.

  ‘You silly children! How dare you!’ the Director cried out.

  His appearance, catching us unaware in the middle of our game, left us in dismay.

  ‘Now you sit down on the benches along the wall, and you two’, said he brusquely to Maria and Sonya, ‘walk up and down the hall.

  ‘No, not like that. Can you imagine anyone walking that way? Put your heels in and turn your toes out! Why don’t you bend your knees? Why don’t you put more swing into your hips? Pay attention! Look out for your centres of balance. Don’t you know how to walk? Why do you stagger? Look where you’re going!’

  The longer they went on the more he scolded them. The more he scolded the less control they had over themselves. He finally reduced them to a state where they could not tell their heads from their heels, and came to a standstill in the middle of the hall.

  When I looked at the Director I was amazed to find that he was smothering his laughter behind a handkerchief.

  Then it dawned on us what he had been doing.

  ‘Are you convinced now’, he asked the two girls, ‘that a nagging critic can drive an actor mad and reduce him to a state of helplessness? Search for falseness only so far as it helps you to find truth. Don’t forget that the carping critic can create more falsehood on the stage than anyone else because the actor whom he is criticizing involuntarily ceases to pursue his right course and exaggerates truth itself to the point of its becoming false.

  ‘What you should develop is a sane, calm, wise, and understanding critic, who is the artist’s best friend. He will not nag you over trifles, but will have his eye on the substance of your work.

  ‘Another word of counsel about watching the creative work of others. Begin to exercise your sense of truth by looking, first of all, for the good points. In studying another’s work limit yourself to the role of a mirror and say honestly whether or not you believe in what you have seen and heard, and point out particularly the moments that were most convincing to you.

  ‘If the theatre-going public were as strict about truthfulness on the stage as you
were here today in real life we poor actors would never dare show our faces.’

  ‘But isn’t the audience severe?’ someone asked.

  ‘No, indeed. They are not carping, as you were. On the contrary, an audience wishes, above all, to believe everything that happens on the stage.’

  4

  ‘We have had enough of theory,’ said the Director when he began work today. ‘Let us put some of it into practice.’ Whereupon he called on me and on Vanya to go up on the stage and play the exercise of burning the money. ‘You do not get hold of this exercise because, in the first place, you are anxious to believe all of the terrible things I put into the plot. But do not try to do it all at once; proceed bit by bit, helping yourselves along by small truths. Found your actions on the simplest possible physical bases.

  ‘I shall give you neither real nor property money. Working with air will compel you to bring back more details, and build a better sequence. If every little auxiliary act is executed truthfully, then the whole action will unfold rightly.’

  I began to count the non-existent bank notes.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Tortsov, stopping me as I was just reaching for the money.

  ‘What don’t you believe?’

  ‘You did not even look at the thing you were touching.’

  I had looked over to the make-believe piles of bills, seen nothing; merely stretched out my arm and brought it back.

  ‘If only for the sake of appearance you might press your fingers together so that the packet won’t fall from them. Don’t throw it down. Put it down. And who would undo a package that way? First find the end of the string. No, not like that. It cannot be done so suddenly. The ends are tucked in carefully, so that they do not come loose. It is not easy to untangle them. That’s right,’ said he approvingly at last. ‘Now count the hundreds first, there are usually ten of them to a packet. Oh, dear! How quickly you did all that! Not even the most expert cashier could have counted those crumpled, dirty old bank notes at such a rate!