Stanislavski Method: Acting Guide to the Stanislavski Method

The Stanislavski system or method is an approach to theater and film acting developed by Russian theater practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski. Through preparation and rehearsal, the system aims to create an emotionally expressive and authentic performance. Actors internalize their character’s inner life, including their motivations and emotional states.

Konstantin Stanislavski was a Russian actor and theatre practitioner. In the early twentieth century, he had great success in his early amateur career as an actor and director. In 1898, he founded the Moscow Art Theatre. In addition to his work as a director and actor, Stanislavski focused on rehearsal processes and training and developed the Stanislavski system. Stanislavski’s approach led to international renown and was highly influential on the development of acting techniques and schools worldwide. He wrote an autobiography and the book An Actor Prepares, a classic theater training book.

From his early days as a young actor and director, Stanislavski thought deeply and seriously about the nature of his craft. The method evolved from a rehearsal technique to a global approach to acting:

• Early beginnings: His work on Anton Checkhov’s drama, especially a successful production of The Seagull in 1898, brought out his idea of “subtext,” and his encounters with Symbolist drama, notably the plays of dramatist Maurice Maeterlinck, led to his investigations of inner experience.
• Moscow Art Theatre: After founding the Moscow Art Theatre with director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, Stanislavski began to organize and formulate his ideas, prizing a more realistic or naturalistic approach to acting and emphasizing an extensive, intensive rehearsal process. This was intended to allow time for the actors to fully understand and internalize their characters’ inner emotions and motivations. Stanislavski aimed to bring together one’s inner feelings and external behavior through careful training and preparation.
• Influence: Later, as Stanislavski’s approach spread across continents to theatre companies all over the world, it was re-interpreted and elaborated. Most notably, American theatre practitioners Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, and Sanford Meisner each emphasized different elements of Stanislavski’s system. As time went on, it came to be one of the most well-known and influential approaches to acting.

The Stanislavski method comprises a few core principles to help actors emotionally connect to their character and the material:

1. 1. The Magic If: Foundational to the Stanislavski method are the concepts of “given circumstances” and “the Magic If.” According to Stanislavski, the actor ought to imagine themself in the circumstances as given by the play. This approach can activate the actor’s imagination and intimately connect them to the material, bringing life to the character.
2. 2. Objective: The Stanislavski system focuses on motivation and emphasizes the character’s objective. When rehearsing each scene, the actor should ask themselves about the objective of the character in that moment. Taken altogether, these moments create an emotional throughline over the course of the whole play, which can be thought of as a “super-objective.”
3. 3. Emotional memory: One route to a successful portrayal is through “emotion memory” or “emotional memory.” This involves the actor drawing upon personal experiences to inflect their performance, giving it greater urgency and authenticity. For instance, an actor attempting to depict grief might draw upon their own similar experience, if they had previously lost someone close to them.
4. 4. Tempo-rhythm: Stanislavski’s technique aims to create a rhythm or tempo in the play in congruence with the emotional intensity of the performances.
5. 5. Method of physical action: The method of physical action was a later development of Stanislavski’s. This was a shift, as it led to greater emphasis on physical movement and improvisation over verbal discussions and reflection.
6. 6. Subtext: Stanislavski believed that the overall meaning and emotional thrust of the play was only partly implied by the text, and so part of the role of the actor was to discover and understand this submerged content, which he called the subtext of the play. The actor then expressed this subtext through the details of his or her performance.

Today, theatre practitioners and students use Stanislavski’s method interchangeably with the idea of method acting. This latter approach arose out of Stanislavski’s ideas. In particular, Stanislavski’s approach influenced American theatre practitioners and teachers Uta Hagen, Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, and Sanford Meisner, who all developed their own versions, each focusing on different aspects of the original method:

1. 1. The Group Theatre: In New York, along with Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford, Lee Strasberg founded the Group Theatre. This became a hotbed of artistic development, and its influence eventually reached Hollywood, with notable actors such as Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe being students of this technique.
2. 2. The Actors Studio: This was further elaborated at the Actors Studio, a drama school founded by Strasberg as a means for teaching his version of the Stanislavski technique, which he renamed as Method Acting or simply “the Method.” Strasberg’s variation emphasizes the psychological elements of preparation and performance.
3. 3. The Meisner technique: Another variation is the Meisner technique, founded by Sanford Meisner, which focuses on the physical side of preparation over Strasberg’s emphasis on emotion memory. Exercises focus on how emotions affect an actor’s physical behavior.
4. 4. Stella Adler’s technique: Stella Adler’s contribution is about the sociological aspects of the performance. For this technique, actors learn about the conditions of the character being portrayed: what their life might be like, what their profession entailed, and so forth.

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