Stanislavski's Legacy

Constantin Stanislavski

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781135866259
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

Out of the large body of materials -- articles, speeches, notes and memoirs -- left behind by Stanislavski at the time of his death in 1938, Elizabeth Hapgood, his friend and translator, chose items which concentrate on the essence of his work. The result is a volume which supplements the other books he wrote, and re-emphasizes, sometimes in condensed and particulary vivid form, his views about acting, the theatre and life.

1 “In art you do not command, you persuade….”

DOI: 10.4324/9781315059792-1

(Theatre) art creates the life of a human soul. We are called upon to interpret on the stage the life of contemporary man and his ideas. But we must not imitate our spectator, no, we must lead him up the rungs of a great ladder. Art must open his eyes to ideals, ideals created by the people.

(27 October 1928)

The laws of creativeness are immutable, binding on all, and they constitute a bond among artist actors of all nations. We must study these laws together, master them, work out for them a suitable psycho-technique of acting…. Let each nation, each people, reflect in its art its most subtle, national, human traits, and let each art preserve its own national colouring, tones, and distinctive features. And let this be the way to disclose the soul of each and every nation.

The Long-Hoped-for Child

DOI: 10.4324/9781315059792-2

… For me this theatre is a long-hoped-for, long-promised child. It is not for the sake of material gain that we have waited so long for it. No, it is the answer to our prayer for something to bring light and beauty into our humdrum lives. Let us be careful to appreciate what has fallen into our hands lest we shall soon be crying like the child who has broken his favourite toy. If we do not come to this enterprise with clean hands we shall defile it, disgrace ourselves and be scattered to the ends of Russia: some will go back to prosaic duties of everyday life, others, for the sake of keeping the wolf from the door, will profane their art in dirty, ramshackle theatres. Do not forget that if we break up with such a black mark against us we shall deserve to be laughed to scorn, because here we have undertaken something which is not a simple, private matter, but bears a public character.

Do not forget either that our goal is to bring enlightenment into the lives of the poor, to give them some aesthetic enjoyment amid the gloom in which they have been living. We are attempting to create the first thoughtful, high-minded, popular theatre—and to this great goal we are dedicating our lives.

Be careful not to crush this beautiful flower, else it will wilt and its petals fall.

A child is pure by nature. Human faults are grafted on him by his surroundings. Protect him from them and you will see that here among us he will develop into a being more ideal than we are, he will even cleanse us of our own unworthiness.

For the sake of such a purpose let us leave trivial matters at home, let us gather here in a common effort and not engage in petty squabbles and the settling of scores…. Let us be guided by the motto of “common work, friendly work,” and then, believe me, for all of us the day will dawn

When from the marble halls of the temple,

Built by our own hands, the glad tidings

Will resound and rend the heavy darkling clouds

Hanging above our heads all this long wintertime,

And pearls and diamonds from on high

Will shower down on us… ^*

* From Gerhart Hauptmann’s The Sunken Bell

—from speech at first rehearsal of the Art Theatre (14 June 1898)

What Shall We Learn?

DOI: 10.4324/9781315059792-3

Before we begin to study we must reach an agreement about what you wish to learn, otherwise we may run into a misunderstanding.

In the old-time theatres there were elements of the same fine and high-minded things that we too strive for, therefore we shall study the old carefully, conscientiously, so that we may learn to have a better perception of the new.

Let us not say that the theatre is a place of learning. No, the theatre stands for entertainment. We must not lose sight of this important factor. People should always come to the theatre to be entertained but once there, with the doors closed behind them, the lights lowered, we can pour into them anything we wish. For there is entertainment and entertainment.

Here you are, seated in the theatre. In front of you is fine scenery, sometimes a bit garish perhaps, sometimes something in more pleasing tones, depending on the action. Then there are splendid actors with arresting and fluent gestures, brilliant lights that rather dazzle you and leave you stunned, music too—all this is highly exciting, you are wrought up, your nerves are screwed to an ever increasing pitch. At the end you applaud, you cry “bravo!”, dash onto the stage, embracing someone or other, plant a kiss here or there, get jostled about, etc. When you leave the theatre you are so agitated you cannot think of sleep, you must go to a restaurant with all your friends. At supper you review the spectacle and you remark on how good such and such an actress was….

But the next day: what impression remains with you? Almost none, and a few days later you can really not be sure where it was that you applauded so warmly and the actors came out to take a bow….

As for me I adore spectacles. I dote on vaudeville and farce when they are not off-colour.

But there is also another kind of theatre. You have come in and taken your seat as an onlooker, but the director of the play changes you into a participant in the life that is unfolding on the stage. Something has happened to you. You are carried away from your position as a mere onlooker. As soon as the curtain is drawn you say to yourself:

“I know this room, and there’s Ivan Ivanovich, and there’s my friend, Maria Petrovna…. Yes, I recognize all this. Now what happens next?” You are all ears. You look at the stage and you say:

“I believe it all, every bit of it…. That is my mother there…. I can tell…”

When the performance ends you are stirred, but in a different way now. You have no desire to applaud.

“How can I applaud my own mother? It feels rather strange.”

The components of your excitement are such that they force you to concentrate, to turn your eyes inward. When you leave the theatre you do not wish to go to a restaurant. You are more drawn to some home or other, where you sit around the samovar and talk intimately about the problems of life, one’s philosophic outlook, social problems.

And when your impressions have been with you overnight you find that vastly different things have remained in your mind. That other time you thought back and asked yourself with some concern: “Why did I dash onto the stage and kiss the tenor? To be sure he did sing well, but why did I have to kiss him? How silly….”

But in the second instance your overnight impression has sunk much deeper into you: serious questions have been raised, they call for answers, you feel you did not take in all you should have, you must return to the theatre…. The people you saw on the stage there, their lives, sufferings and joys wind themselves around your heart, they become part of you, these characters become your real friends.

“Let’s go see the Prozorovs,” or, “Let’s go see Uncle Vanya.” You are not going to see the Three Sisters or Uncle Vanya as plays, you are really going to call on old friends.

Older actors used to maintain that such close relationships were impossible between a regular stage and the audience, that it can be achieved only in a small compass. The Moscow Art Theatre rediscovered the means of establishing that relationship. It may well be that it does remain impossible in the Bolshoi (Opera) Theatre—there are limits in all things—yet I remember that when we were abroad we played in a Wiesbaden theatre which was really only slightly smaller than the Bolshoi, and that only goes to prove that our kind of art can be conveyed also to a very large crowd of people.

So we have first a theatre which is a spectacle, an entertainment for eye and ear, and that is its ultimate aim.

In the second kind of theatre the effect on your eyes and ears is only a means to penetrate the soul of the audience.

The first theatre is under the necessity of cajoling the eye or else dazzling it and in any case emotions must be torn to tatters. The actor knows this and as a result there are no lengths to which he will not go. If his temperament is insufficient he will scream, he will suddenly race his lines, he will underscore every syllable, he will intone.

Just think what the power is of this institution that we call the theatre! You can raise a crowd to a state of ecstasy, and you can agitate them, wind them around, you can mix them all up together, or on the contrary you can make them sit motionless and accept anything you choose to inculcate, you can appeal to the herd instinct in them, etc.

Painting, music and the other arts which individually exercise an immediate appeal to the human soul, are united in one whole in the theatre and that is what so reinforces its power.

I well remember what Leo Tolstoy, whom I met for the first time at Nikolai Davydov’s (the great actor), said on this subject: “The theatre is the most powerful pulpit of our times.” It is more powerful than school or church. Before you go to school you must have the desire to go instilled in you. Everyone goes voluntarily to the theatre because everyone wishes to be entertained. In school you must learn how to remember what is taught you, but in the theatre what is poured into you remains with you of its own accord.

The theatre is the most powerful weapon of all, but like all weapons it has a double potential: it can bring great good and it may cause great harm.

Now if we ask ourselves: What are our theatres doing for people, what will the reply be? I am speaking now of all theatres, beginning with that of Duse, Chaliapine and other great artists and ending with that of Saburov, the Hermitage Variety Theatre and anything else that goes under the name of theatre.

The evil that a bad book can do is not to be compared with that which the theatre can inflict, neither as to the power of the infection nor as to the ease with which the evil spreads among the masses. And yet the theatre as an institution contains elements of popular education, primarily aesthetic education, for the masses.

This then is the dread power which you contemplate taking into your hands, this is the responsibility which will be laid upon you to handle this power in the right way.

—Speech to students, assistants and actors of the Moscow Art Theatre Second Company (“Filial”) (March 1911)

The Hard Job of Being an Actor

DOI: 10.4324/9781315059792-4

Remember that my objective is to teach you the hard work of an actor and director of plays—it is not to provide you with a pleasant pastime on the stage. There are other theatres, teachers and methods for that. The work of an actor and director, as we understand it here, is a painful process, not merely some abstract “joy of creativeness” that one hears so much empty talk about from the ignoramuses in art. Our work gives us joy when we undertake it. This is the joy of being conscious that we may, that we have the right, that we have been permitted to engage in the work we love—work to which we have dedicated our lives. And our work gives us joy when we see that having fulfilled our task, put on a performance, played a role, we have contributed something worthwhile to our audience, communicated to it something necessary, important to its life, for its development. In short I come back to the ideas of Gogol and Shchepkin about the theatre, words you have already heard many times from me and probably will hear more than once again.

Nevertheless the whole process of an actor’s and director’s work—including his performance—is one that requires enormous self-mastery and often also great physical endurance. This work cannot be replaced by means of general words and moods.

The thing which lies at the base of an actor’s or director’s creativeness is work, and not moods or any other popular slogans such as “flights,” “down beats,” “triumphs.”

To the ordinary man in the street the most “joyous” jobs might be the dance of the prima ballerina in Don Quixote or Swan Lake. He does not know how much physical effort, concentrated attention, sheer work Madame Geltzer had to put into the preparation of her famous “pas de deux” in those ballets, or what she looks like when she is in her dressing room after the dance is over. Perspiration pours from her and in her heart she reproaches herself for any slightest shading she did not perform perfectly.

That is true of dancing. Why should it be easier in drama or comedy? Yes, the “joy of creativeness” exists and it falls to the lot of true artists after they have done a tremendous piece of work in any chosen and beloved field of work in which they reach the goals they have set themselves.

But the artist is not worth his salt who impersonates the “joy of creativeness,” waves his brushes around in front of his easel, pretending he is “painting” with such “ecstasy” (that’s another popular word among the modernists). He is profaning his art at such times. He is not trying to reproduce life on his canvas, life in its infinite manifestations, trying to catch the fleeting feeling or thought on the face of his model. All he is trying to do is become her lover.

The same is true of an actor on the stage. When you act as you did recently the “joy of creativeness” instead of the subject and ideas of the play, you are just flirting with the public like actor-prostitutes. Not that! Never! Leave this to the decadent artist, the futurist, cubist! The great Russian actors, painters and writers did not play fast and loose with life, rather they tried to show its revolting and its inspiring sides in order to educate their public.

Do not be afraid of that word in art.

I have talked at length to you on the general subject of our theatre art because I not only want you to know how to play your parts better but also to learn how to train yourselves to become real artists. Whatever I have achieved has been at the price of tremendous work, of years wasted in mistakes and deviations from the real Une of art. I am turning over to you everything I have learned, all my experience, in order to keep you from making the same mistakes. You will have three times as much opportunity to push our art ahead if you will follow me, choose to follow the path which I point out to you.

You are a new generation, come into the theatre since the revolution. I want you to learn again in practice what is called the “Stanislavski Method.” There is no “method” as yet. There are a number of propositions and exercises which I propose to actors to carry out: they are to work on themselves, train themselves to become master artists. What are the basic propositions of my “method”?

The first is this: There are no formulas in it on how to become a great actor, or how to play this or that part. The “method” is made up of steps towards the true creative state of an actor on the stage. When it is true it is the usual, normal state of a person in real life.

But to achieve that normal living state on stage is very difficult for an ac...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Foreword to the Second Edition
• Editor’s Foreword
• Table of Contents
• Part One “In art you do not command, you persuade….”
• Part Two “The Value of any art is determined by its spiritual content….”
• Part Three “My System is the result of lifelong Searchings….”
• Part Four “There is only one Method—that of organic, creative nature….”
• Part Five “Memories of the Past… Dreams of the Future….”
• Index