Stanislavski Essay, Research Paper

Stanislavski Constantin Stanislavski was born on January 17th 1863, in Moscow.Stanislavski evolved his own system of preparing plays which resultedin remarkable ensemble acting. After he finished school, Stanislavski did not like the melodramaticstyle of acting which was popular in Russia, and throughout the restof the world. Stanislavski met with a successful playwright and teacherof theatre, called Vladimir Nemitovich – Danchenko to discuss ways ofchanging Russian theatre. They met on 22 June 1897. After thismeeting they formed the Moscow Art Theatre, which was establishedwith the aim of finding new truth and realism in theatre. In 1906 he began to develop a system for training actors. He was also working as an actor and a director at this time. In 1913 he setup an experimental theatre designed to develop acting techniques, called First Studio. On 29th October 1928 Stanislavski had a heart attack. This forced him to give up acting, but he was able to concentrate on directing, teaching and writing for the rest of his life. This method had a scientific approach and was developed over many years of trial and error. It requires an actor to experience the feeling of living the life of another person. The basis of his approach was that actors must believe everything that was happening on stage.

Stanislavski made this possible by teaching actors to recall their ownfeelings and experiences. It aims first at getting the actor to arouse theemotions they have felt in the past. This can then be transformed intothe character they are portraying. Observation was another important aspect of Stanislavski’s teaching. Hethought it helped actors to learn more about people and theirbehaviour. He believed the more an actor observed, the more theylearnt. Another very important part of Stanislavski’s teachings is a simplequestion. ‘What if?’. Stanislavski called this the ‘magic if’. This technique was designed to make the actor ask ‘what if I was in thissituation’. If the actor feels this is real, it automatically becomesrealistic for the audience, and this was Stanislavski’s aim. Stanislavski aimed to produce dramatic characterisations of great realism and psycological truth. He demanded a lot from his students,such as intelligence, complete self discipline, perfect control over voice,diction, physical movement and the ability to experience a whole rangeof human emotions from his actors. He expected actors to analysecompletely their characters so they could understand why they behavedthe way they did. He instructed all his actors to analyse themselves aswell as the characters. Stanislavski developed a style of realism which still influences playsand actors all over the world.