An Actor Prepares

by Constantin Stanislavsky

  Unfortunately the Director had to postpone further discussion of the subject until the next lesson.

  3

  Today Tortsov continued to sum up the results of our last lesson. He began:

  ‘Kostya gave you a practical demonstration of the way conscious psycho-technique arouses the subconscious creativeness of nature. At first you might think that we had not accomplished anything new. Work was begun, as it should be, with the freeing of muscles. Kostya’s attention was concentrated on his body. But he transferred it skilfully to the supposed circumstances of the exercise. Fresh inner complications justified his sitting there, motionless, on the stage. In him, that basis for his immobility completely freed his muscles. Then he created all sorts of new conditions for his make-believe life. They enhanced the atmosphere of the whole exercise and sharpened the situation with possible tragic implications. This was a source of real emotion.

  ‘Now you ask: What is new in all this? The “difference” is infinitesimal, and lies in my having obliged him to carry out each creative act to its fullest limit. That’s all.’

  ‘How can that be all?’ Vanya blurted.

  ‘Very simply. Carry all of the elements of the inner creative state, your inner motive forces, and your through line of action to the limit of human (not theatrical) activity, and you will inevitably feel the reality of your inner life. Moreover you will not be able to resist believing in it.

  ‘Have you noticed that each time this truth and your belief in it is born, involuntarily, the subconscious steps in and nature begins to function? So when your conscious psycho-technique is carried to its fullest extent the ground is prepared for nature’s subconscious process.

  ‘If you only knew how important this new addition is!

  ‘It is all very pleasant to think that every bit of creativeness is full of importance, exaltation, and complexities. As a matter of actual fact we find that even the smallest action or sensation, the slightest technical means, can acquire a deep significance on the stage only if it is pushed to its limit of possibility, to the boundary of human truth, faith and the sense of “I am”. When this point is reached, your whole spiritual and physical make-up will function normally, just as it does in real life and without regard to the special condition of your having to do your creative work in public.

  ‘In bringing beginners like you to the “threshold of the subconscious” I take a diametrically opposite view from many teachers. I believe that you should have this experience and use it when you are working on your inner “elements” and “inner creative state”, in all your drills and exercises.

  ‘I want you to feel right from the start, if only for short periods, that blissful sensation which actors have when their creative faculties are functioning truly, and subconsciously. Moreover, this is something you must learn through your own emotions and not in any theoretical way. You will learn to love this state and constantly strive to achieve it.’

  ‘I can readily see the importance of what you have just told us,’ I said. ‘But you have not gone far enough. Please give us now the technical means by which we can push any one element to its very limit.’

  ‘Gladly. On the one hand you must first discover what the obstacles are, and learn to deal with them. On the other hand, you must search out whatever will facilitate the process. I shall discuss the difficulties first.

  ‘The most important one, as you know, is the abnormal circumstance of an actor’s creative work—it must be done in public. The methods of wrestling with this problem are familiar to you. You must achieve a proper “creative state”. Do that first of all and when you feel that your inner faculties are ready, give your inner nature the slight stimulus it needs to begin functioning.’

  ‘That is just what I don’t understand. How do you do it?’ Vanya exclaimed.

  ‘By introducing some unexpected, spontaneous incident, a touch of reality. It makes no difference whether it is physical or spiritual in origin. The one condition is that it must be germane to the super-objective and the through line of action. The unexpectedness of the incident will excite you and your nature will rush forward.’

  ‘But where do I find that slight touch of truth?’ insisted Vanya.

  ‘Everywhere: in what you dream, or think, or suppose or feel, in your emotions, your desires, your little actions, internal or external, in your mood, the intonations of your voice, in some imperceptible detail of the production, pattern of movements.’

  ‘And then what will happen?’

  ‘Your head will swim from the excitement of the sudden and complete fusion of your life with your part. It may not last long but while it does last you will be incapable of distinguishing between yourself and the person you are portraying.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then, as I have already told you, truth and faith will lead you into the region of the subconscious and hand you over to the power of nature.’

  After a short pause the Director continued:

  ‘There are other obstacles in your way. One of them is vagueness. The creative theme of the play may be vague, or the plan of the production may not be clear-cut. A part may be worked out wrong, or its objectives may be indefinite. The actor may be uncertain about the means of expression he has chosen. If you only knew how doubt and indecision can weigh you down! The only way of dealing with that situation is by clearing up all that is lacking in precision.

  ‘Here is another menace: some actors do not fully realize the limitations placed on them by nature. They undertake problems beyond their powers to solve. The comedian wants to play tragedy, the old man to be a jeune premier, the simple type longs for heroic parts and the soubrette for the dramatic. This can only result in forcing, impotence, stereotyped, mechanical action. These are also shackles and your only means of getting out of them is to study your art and yourself in relation to it.

  ‘Another frequent difficulty arises from too conscientious work, too great an effort. The actor puffs; he forces himself to give an external expression to something he does not actually feel. All one can do here is to advise the actor not to try so hard.

  ‘All these are obstacles that you must learn to recognize. The constructive side, the discussion of what helps you to reach the “threshold of the subconscious”, is a complicated question for which we have not sufficient time today.’

  4

  ‘Now we come to the positive side,’ said the Director at the beginning of our lesson today. ‘To the conditions and means which help an actor in his creative work and lead him to the promised land of the subconscious. It is difficult to speak of this realm. It is not always subject to reasoning. What can we do? We can change to a discussion of the super-objective and through line of action.’

  ‘Why to them? Why do you choose these two? What is the connection?’ came from various perplexed students.

  ‘Principally because they are predominantly conscious in their make-up and subject to reason. Other grounds for this choice will appear in our lesson today.’

  He called on Paul and me to play the opening lines of the first scene between Iago and Othello.

  We prepared ourselves and played it with concentration and right inner feelings.

  ‘What are you intent on just now?’ Tortsov asked.

  ‘My first object is to attract Kostya’s attention,’ answered Paul.

  ‘I was concentrated on understanding what Paul was saying, and trying to visualize his remarks inwardly,’ I explained.

  ‘Consequently, one of you was drawing the attention of the other in order to attract his notice, and the other was trying to penetrate and visualize the remarks being made to him in order to penetrate and visualize those remarks.’

  ‘No, indeed!’ we protested vigorously.

  ‘But that is all that could happen in the absence of a super-objective and the through line of action for the whole play. There can be nothing but individual, unrelated actions, undertaken each for his own sake.

  ‘Now repeat what you have ju
st done and add the next scene in which Othello jokes with Iago.’

  When we had finished Tortsov again asked us what our objective had been.

  ‘Dolce far niente,’ was my answer.

  ‘What had become of your previous objective, of understanding your colleague?’

  ‘It was absorbed in the next and more important step.’

  ‘Now repeat everything up to this point and add still another bit, the first intimations of jealousy.’

  We did as directed and awkwardly defined our objective as ‘poking fun at the absurdity of Iago’s vow.’

  ‘And now where are your former objectives?’ probed the Director.

  I was going to say that they too had been swallowed up in a succeeding and more important aim, but I thought better of my answer and remained silent.

  ‘What’s the matter? What is troubling you?’

  ‘The fact that at this point in the play the theme of happiness is broken off and the new theme of jealousy begins.’

  ‘It does not break off,’ corrected Tortsov. ‘It changes with the changing circumstances of the play. First the line passes through a short period of bliss for the newly married Othello, he jokes with Iago, then come amazement, dismay, doubt. He repels the onrushing tragedy, calms his jealousy, and returns to his happy state.

  ‘We are familiar with such changes of moods in reality. Life runs along smoothly, then suddenly doubt, disillusion, grief are injected and still later they blow over and everything is bright once more.

  ‘You have nothing to fear from such changes; on the contrary, learn to make the most of them, to intensify them. In the present instance that is easy to do. You have only to recall the early stages of Othello’s romance with Desdemona, the recent blissful past, and then contrast all this with the horror and torture Iago is preparing for the Moor.’

  ‘I don’t see. What should we recall out of their past?’ asked Vanya.

  ‘Think of those wonderful first meetings in the house of Brabantio, the tales of Othello, the secret meetings, the abduction of the bride and the marriage, the separation on the wedding night, the meeting again in Cyprus under the southern sun, the unforgettable honeymoon, and then, in the future—all the result of Iago’s hellish intrigue, the fifth act.

  ‘Now go on——!’

  We went through the whole scene up to Iago’s famous vow, by the sky and by the stars, to consecrate his mind, will and feelings, his all, to the service of the abused Othello.

  ‘If you work your way through the whole play in this way, your familiar objectives will naturally be absorbed in larger and fewer aims, which will stand like guide posts along the through line of action. This larger objective gathers up all the smaller ones subconsciously and eventually forms the through line of action for the whole tragedy.’

  The discussion turned next on the right name for the first large objective. No one, not even the Director himself, could decide the question. That was, of course, not surprising, as a real, live, engaging objective cannot be found immediately and by a purely intellectual process. However, for lack of a better one, we did decide on an awkward name for it—‘I wish to idealize Desdemona, to give up my whole life to her service.’

  As I reflected about this larger objective, I found that it helped me to intensify the whole scene as well as other parts of my role. I felt this whenever I began to shape any action toward the ultimate goal—the idealization of Desdemona. All the other inner objectives lost their significance. For example, take the first one: to try to understand what Iago is saying. What was the point of that? No one knows. Why try when it is perfectly clear that Othello is in love, is thinking of no one but her, and will speak of no one else. Therefore, all enquiries and thoughts of her are necessary and pleasing to him.

  Then take our second objective—dolce far niente. That is no longer necessary or right. In talking about her the Moor is engaged in something important and vital to him, and again for the reason that he wishes to idealize her.

  After Iago’s first vow I imagine that Othello laughed. It was pleasant for him to think that no stain could touch his crystal-pure divinity. This conviction put him into a joyful state of mind and intensified his worship for her. Why? For the same reason as before. I understood better than ever how gradually jealousy took hold of him, how imperceptibly his faith in his ideal weakened and the realization grew and strengthened that wickedness, depravity, snake-like cunning, could be contained in such an angelic form.

  ‘Now where are your former objectives?’ queried the Director.

  ‘They have all been swallowed up in our concern over a lost ideal.’

  ‘What conclusion can you draw from this work today?’ he asked, and then he went on to answer his own question.

  ‘I made the actors playing that scene between Othello and Iago feel for themselves, in actual practice, the process by which the larger objectives absorb the smaller ones. Now Kostya and Paul also know that the more distant goal draws you away from the nearer one. Left to themselves, these smaller objectives naturally pass under the guidance of nature and the subconscious.

  ‘Such a process is easy to understand. When an actor gives himself up to the pursuit of a larger objective, he does it completely. At such times nature is free to function in accordance with her own needs and desires. In other words Kostya and Paul now know through their own experience that an actor’s creative work, while on the stage, is really, either in whole or in part, an expression of his creative subconscious.’

  The Director reflected for a while and then added:

  ‘You will see these larger objectives undergo a transformation, similar to that of the smaller ones, when the super-objective supersedes them all. They fall into place as steps leading to a final, all-embracing goal—steps that will, to a large extent, be taken subconsciously.

  ‘The through line of action is made up, as you know, of a series of large objectives. If you realize how many, many smaller objectives, transformed into subconscious actions, they contain, then consider the extent of the subconscious activities that flow into the through line of action as it goes across the whole play, giving it a stimulating power to influence our subconscious indirectly.’

  5

  ‘The creative force of the through line of action is in direct proportion to the power of attraction of the super-objective. This not only gives the super-objective a place of primary importance in our work; it also obliges us to devote particular attention to its quality.

  ‘There are many “experienced directors” who can define a super-objective offhand, became they “know the game” and are “old hands” at it. But they are of no use to us.

  ‘There are other directors and playwrights who dig out a purely intellectual main theme. It will be intelligent and right but it will lack charm for the actor. It can serve as a guide but not as a creative force.

  ‘In order to determine the kind of stimulating super-objective we do need to arouse our inner natures, I shall put a number of questions and answer them.

  ‘Can we use a super-objective that is not right from the author’s point of view, and yet is fascinating to us actors

  ‘No. It is not only useless but dangerous. It can only draw the actors away from their parts and the play.

  ‘Can we use a main theme which is merely intellectual? No, not a dry product of pure reason. And yet a conscious super-objective, that derives from interesting, creative thinking, is essential.

  ‘What about an emotional objective? It is absolutely necessary to us, necessary as air and sunlight.

  ‘And an objective based on will that involves our whole physical and spiritual being? It is necessary.

  ‘What can be said of a super-objective that appeals to your creative imagination, which absorbs your whole attention, satisfies your sense of truth, and faith, and all the elements of your inner mood? Any such theme that puts your inner motive forces to work is food and drink for you as an artist.

  ‘Consequently, what we need is a supe
r-objective which is in harmony with the intentions of the playwright and at the same time arouses a response in the soul of the actors. That means that we must search for it not only in the play but in the actors themselves.

  ‘Moreover, the same theme, in the same part, set for all the actors who play it, will bring a different expression from each of them. Take some perfectly simple, realistic objective, such as: I wish to grow rich! Think of the variety of subtle motives, methods and conceptions you can put into the idea of wealth and its attainment. There is so much, too, that is individual in such a problem and cannot be subject to conscious analysis. Then take a more complicated super-objective, such as lies at the root of a symbolic play by Ibsen or an impressionistic play by Maeterlinck, and you will find that the subconscious element in it is incomparably more profound, complex and individual.

  ‘All these individual reactions are of great significance. They give life and colour to a play. Without them the main theme would be dry and inanimate. What gives that intangible charm to a theme so that it infects all the actors playing one and the same part? Largely it is something we cannot dissect, rising from the subconscious with which it must be in close association.’

  Vanya was again distressed and asked, ‘Then how do we get at it?’

  ‘In the same way you deal with the various “elements”. You push it to the extreme limit of truthfulness and sincere belief in it, to the point where the subconscious comes in of its own accord.

  ‘Here again you must make that small but extraordinarily important little “addition”, just as you did when we discussed the extreme development of the functions of the “elements”, and again when we had up the question of the through line of action.’