An Actor Prepares

by Constantin Stanislavsky

  ‘Let me remind you of our cardinal principle: Through conscious means we reach the subconscious.

  ‘Another reason why you should cherish those repeated emotions is, that an artist does not build his role out of the first thing at hand. He chooses very carefully from among his memories and culls out of his living experiences the ones that are most enticing. He weaves the soul of the person he is to portray out of emotions that are dearer to him than his everyday sensations. Can you imagine a more fertile field for inspiration? An artist takes the best that is in him and carries it over on the stage. The form will vary, according to the necessities of the play, but the human emotions of the artist will remain alive, and they cannot be replaced by anything else.’

  ‘Do you mean to say’, broke in Grisha, ‘that in every kind of role, from Hamlet to Sugar in The Blue Bird, we have to use our own, same, old feelings?’

  ‘What else can you do?’ said Tortsov. ‘Do you expect an actor to invent all sorts of new sensations, or even a new soul, for every part he plays? How many souls would he be obliged to house? On the other hand, can he tear out his own soul, and replace it by one he has rented, as being more suitable to a certain part? Where can he get one? You can borrow clothing, a watch, things of all sorts, but you cannot take feelings away from another person. My feelings are inalienably mine, and yours belong to you in the same way. You can understand a part, sympathize with the person portrayed, and put yourself in his place, so that you will act as he would. That will arouse feelings in the actor that are analogous to those required for the part. But those feelings will belong, not to the person created by the author of the play, but to the actor himself.

  ‘Never lose yourself on the stage. Always act in your own person, as an artist. You can never get away from yourself. The moment you lose yourself on the stage marks the departure from truly living your part and the beginning of exaggerated false acting. Therefore, no matter how much you act, how many parts you take, you should never allow yourself any exception to the rule of using your own feelings. To break that rule is the equivalent of killing the person you are portraying, because you deprive him of a palpitating, living, human soul, which is the real source of life for a part.’

  Grisha could not bring himself to believe that we must play ourselves always.

  ‘That is the very thing you must do,’ affirmed the Director. ‘Always and for ever, when you are on the stage, you must play yourself. But it will be in an infinite variety of combinations of objectives, and given circumstances which you have prepared for your part, and which have been smelted in the furnace of your emotion memory. This is the best and only true material for inner creativeness. Use it, and do not rely on drawing from any other source.’

  ‘But,’ argued Grisha, ‘I cannot possibly contain all the feelings for all the roles in the world.’

  ‘The roles for which you haven’t the appropriate feelings are those you will never play well,’ explained Tortsov. ‘They will be excluded from your repertory. Actors are not in the main divided by types. The differences are made by their inner qualities.’

  When we asked him how one person could be two widely contrasting personalities he said:

  ‘To begin with the actor is not one or the other. He has, in his own person, either a vividly or indistinctly developed inner and outer individuality. He may not have in his nature either the villainy of one character or the nobility of another. But the seed of those qualities will be there, because we have in us the elements of all human characteristics, good and bad. An actor should use his art and his technique to discover, by natural means, those elements which it is necessary for him to develop for his part. In this way the soul of the person he portrays will be a combination of the living elements of his own being.

  ‘Your first concern should be to find the means of drawing on your emotional material. Your second, that of discovering methods of creating an infinite number of combinations of human souls, characters, feelings, passions for your parts.’

  ‘Where can we find those means and those methods?’

  ‘First of all, learn to use your emotion memory.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By means of a number of inner and outer stimuli. But this is a complicated question, so we shall take it up next time.’

  6

  We had our lesson today on the stage, with the curtain down. It was supposed to be in ‘Maria’s apartment’, but we could not recognize it. The dining-room was where the living-room had been. The former dining-room had been converted into a bedroom. The furniture was all poor and cheap. As soon as the students recovered from their surprise they all clamoured to have the original apartment back, because they said they were depressed by this one, and could not work in it.

  ‘I am sorry nothing can be done about it,’ said the Director. ‘The other furniture was needed for a current play, so they gave us in exchange whatever they could spare, and they arranged things as best they knew how. If you don’t like it the way it is, change anything you wish to make it more comfortable.’

  This started a general moving, and soon the place was torn to pieces.

  ‘Stop!’ cried Tortsov, ‘and tell me what sensation memories all this chaos brings to the surface in you.’

  ‘When there is an earthquake’, said Nicholas, who had been a surveyor, ‘they move furniture around this way.’

  ‘I don’t know how to define it,’ said Sonya, ‘but somehow it makes me think of the time when the floors are being done over.’

  As we continued to push the furniture around, various arguments arose. Some were searching for one mood, others for another, according to the effect produced on their emotion memories by this or that grouping of the things in the room. In the end the arrangement was tolerable. But we asked for more light. Whereupon we were given a demonstration in lighting and sound effects.

  First we had the light of a sunny day, and we felt very cheerful. Off stage there was a symphony of noises, automobile horns, street car bells, factory whistles, and the far-away sound of an engine—all the audible evidence of a day in a city.

  Gradually the lights were dimmed. It was pleasant, calm, but slightly sad. We were inclined to be thoughtful, our lids grew heavy. A strong wind came up, then a storm. The windows rattled in their frames, the gale howled, and whistled. Was it rain or snow beating on the panes? It was a depressing sound. The street noises had died away. A clock ticked loudly in the next room. Somebody began to play the piano, fortissimo at first and then more softly and sadly. The noises in the chimney increased the sense of melancholy. With the coming of evening lights were turned on, the piano playing ceased. At some distance a clock struck twelve. Midnight. Silence reigned. A mouse gnawed the floor. We could hear an occasional automobile horn or railroad whistle. Finally all sounds stopped and the calm and darkness was absolute. In a little while grey shadows heralded the dawn. As the first rays of sunlight fell into the room, I felt a great relief.

  Vanya was the most enthusiastic of all about the effects.

  ‘It was better than in real life,’ he assured us.

  ‘There the changes are so gradual’, added Paul, ‘that you are not aware of the changing mood. But when you compress twenty-four hours into a few minutes you feel the whole power over you of the varying tones of light.’

  ‘As you have noticed,’ said the Director, ‘surroundings have a big influence over your feelings. And this happens on the stage as well as in real life. In the hands of a talented director all these means and effects become creative and artistic media.

  ‘When the external production of a play is inwardly tied up with the spiritual life of the actors it often acquires more significance on the stage than in real life. If it meets the needs of the play and produces the right mood it helps the actor to formulate the inner aspect of his role, it influences his whole psychic state and capacity to feel. Under such conditions the setting is a definite stimulus to our emotions. Therefore if an actress is to play Marguerite, tempted by Meph
istopheles while she is at prayer, the director must give her the means of producing the atmosphere of being in church. It will help her to feel her part.

  ‘For the actor playing Egmont, in prison, he must create a mood suggestive of enforced solitary confinement.’

  ‘What happens’, asked Paul, ‘when a director creates a splendid external production which, however, does not fit the inner needs of a play?’

  ‘Unfortunately that is a rather frequent occurrence,’ answered Tortsov, ‘and the result is always bad, because his mistake leads the actors in the wrong direction and sets up barriers between them and their parts.’

  ‘What if the external production is just plain bad?’ asked someone.

  ‘The result is even worse. The artists who work with the director, behind the scenes, will achieve the diametrically opposite effect from the right one. Instead of attracting the attention of the actors toward the stage they will repel them, and throw them into the power of the audience beyond the footlights. Consequently the external production of a play is a sword in the hands of a director, that cuts both ways. It is equally capable of doing good and harm.

  ‘Now I am going to put a problem to you,’ the Director went on. ‘Does every good set help an actor and appeal to his emotion memory? For example: imagine a beautiful set, designed by some artist highly gifted in the use of colour, line and perspective. You look at the set from the auditorium and it creates a complete illusion. And yet if you come up close to it you are disillusioned, you are ill at ease with it. Why? Because if a set is made from the painter’s point of view, in two and not in three dimensions, it has no value in the theatre. It has width and height but lacks the depth, without which, as far as the stage is concerned, it is lifeless.

  ‘You know from your own experience what a bare, empty stage feels like to an actor; how difficult it is to concentrate attention on it, and how hard it is to play even a short exercise or simple sketch.

  ‘Just try to stand up in such a space and pour out the role of Hamlet, Othello or Macbeth! How difficult it is to do it without the help of a director, a scheme of movements, without properties that you can lean on, sit on, move towards or group yourselves around! Because each situation that is prepared for you helps you to give a plastic outward form to your inner mood. Therefore, we absolutely need that third dimension, a depth of form in which we can move, live, and act.’

  7

  ‘Why are you hiding away in a corner?’ asked the Director of Maria, when he came on to the stage today.

  ‘I . . . want to get away,—I—can’t stand it . . .’ she muttered, as she tried to get farther and farther away from the distracted Vanya.

  ‘Why are you sitting together here so cosily?’ he asked, of a group of students clustered in the sofa near the table.

  ‘We . . . er . . . were listening to some anecdotes,’ stammered Nicholas.

  ‘What are you and Grisha doing over there by the lamp?’ he asked Sonya.

  She was embarrassed and did not know what to say, but finally brought out something about reading a letter together.

  He then turned to Paul and me and asked:

  ‘Why are you two pacing up and down?’

  ‘We were just talking things over,’ I replied.

  ‘In a word,’ he concluded, ‘you have all chosen appropriate ways of responding to the moods you were in. You have produced the right setting and used it for your purpose. Or, is it possible that the setting you found suggested the mood and the action?’

  He sat down by the fireplace and we faced him. Several pulled up their chairs to be nearer him, to hear better. I settled myself at the table to take notes. Grisha and Sonya sat off by themselves, so that they could whisper to each other.

  ‘Now tell me just why each of you is sitting in that particular spot,’ he demanded, and we were again obliged to account for our movements. He was satisfied that each one had made use of the setting in accordance with what he had to do, his mood and his feelings.

  The next step was to scatter us in various parts of the room, with pieces of furniture to help form groups. Then he asked us to note whatever moods, emotion memories, or repeated sensations had been suggested to us by the arrangement. We also had to say under what circumstances we would use such a setting. After that the Director arranged a series of sets, and in each case we were called upon to say: under what emotional circumstances, conditions, or in what mood, we would find it in keeping with our inner requirement to use the sets according to his indications. In other words: whereas we had, at first, chosen our setting to correspond to our mood and object, now he was doing that for us, and our part was to produce the right objective and induce the appropriate feelings.

  The third test was one of responding to an arrangement prepared by some one else. This last problem is one that an actor is frequently called upon to solve; consequently it is necessary for him to be capable of doing it.

  Then he began some exercises in which he put us in positions that were in direct conflict with our purposes and moods. All of which exercises led us to appreciate a good, comfortable, full background arranged for the sake of the sensations it aroused. In summing up what we had accomplished, the Director said that an actor looks for a suitable mise-en-scène to correspond to his mood, his objective and that also those same elements create the setting. They are, in addition, a stimulus to the emotion memory.

  ‘The usual impression is that a director uses all of his material means, such as the set, the lighting, sound effects and other accessories, for the primary purpose of impressing the public. On the contrary. We use these means more for their effect on the actors. We try in every way to facilitate the concentration of their attention on the stage.

  ‘There are still many actors’, he continued, ‘who in defiance of any illusion we can create, by means of light, sounds or colour, still feel their interest more centred in the auditorium than on the stage. Not even the play itself and its essential meaning can bring back their attention to our side of the footlights. So that this may not happen to you, try to learn to look at and see things on the stage, to respond and give yourselves up to what is going on around you. In a word, make use of every thing that will stimulate your feelings.

  ‘Up to this point,’ the Director went on, after a slight pause, ‘we have been working from the stimulus to the feeling. Often, however, the reverse process is necessary. We use it when we wish to fix accidental inner experiences.

  ‘As an example I shall tell you about what happened to me at one of the early performances of Gorki’s Lower Depths. The role of Satin had been comparatively easy for me, with the exception of his soliloquy in the last act. That demanded the impossible of me,—to give a universal significance to the scene, to say the soliloquy with such profound implications of deeper meaning that it became the central point, the denouement of the whole play.

  ‘Each time that I reached this danger spot, I seemed to put brakes on my inner feelings. And that hesitation stopped the free flow of creative joy in my part. After the soliloquy I invariably felt like a singer who has missed his high note.

  ‘To my surprise this difficulty disappeared at either the third or fourth performance. When I tried to find the reason for this, I decided that I must go over in detail everything that happened to me the entire day before my appearance in the evening.

  ‘The first item was that I received a shockingly big bill from my tailor, and was upset. Then I lost the key to my desk. In an ugly mood I sat down to read the review of the play, and found that what was bad had been praised, while the good parts were not appreciated. This depressed me. I spent the whole day mulling over the play—a hundred times I tried to analyse its inner meaning. I recalled every sensation I had at every point of my part, and I was so wrapped up that when evening came, instead of being all wrought up as usual, I was quite unaware of the public and indifferent to any idea of success or failure. I merely pursued my way logically and in the right direction, and found that I had gone past the d
anger spot of the soliloquy without ever noticing it.

  ‘I consulted an experienced actor who is also an excellent psychologist, and asked him to help me clarify what had occurred, so that I could fix the experience of that evening. His attitude was:

  ‘ “You cannot repeat an accidental sensation you may have on the stage, any more than you can revive a dead flower. It is better to try to create something new than to waste your effort on dead things. How to go about it? First of all, don’t worry about the flower, just water the roots, or plant new seeds.

  ‘ “Most actors work in the opposite direction. If they achieve some accidental success in a part they want to repeat it and they go at their feelings directly. But that is like trying to raise flowers without the co-operation of nature, and you cannot do that unless you are willing to be satisfied with artificial blossoms.”

  ‘So then what?

  ‘ “Don’t think about the feeling itself, but set your mind to work on what makes it grow, what the conditions were that brought about the experience.

  ‘ “You do the same,” said this wise actor to me. “Never begin with results. They will appear in time as the logical outcome of what has gone before.”

  ‘I did as he advised. I tried to get down to the roots of that soliloquy, to the fundamental idea of the play. I realized that my version had had no real kinship at all with what Gorki had written. My mistakes had built up an impassable barrier between me and the main idea.

  ‘This experience illustrates the method of working from the aroused emotion back to its original stimulus. By using this method an actor can at will repeat any desired sensation, because he can trace the accidental feeling back to what stimulated it, in order to retrace his path back from the stimulus to the feeling itself.’