Stanislavski and The Actor The Final Acting Lessons

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements vi

Introduction vii

How to Use this Book xvi

Stanislavski: A Biographical Note xviii


Part One

An Outline of the Method of Physical Action 1


Part Two

The Stanislavski 'system' 13
Physical Action 16
Mental Action 32
Mind and Body 69
Interaction 74
Tempo-rhythm 80
Verbal Action 87
Physical Characterization 95
Total Action 98
Performance Mode 102

Part Three

The Method of Physical Action in Rehearsal 103

Part Four

Stanislavski's Master Classes on Hamlet 131

Conclusion 149

INTRODUCTION

Konstantin Stanislavski is the most significant and most frequently quoted figure in the history of actor training. He is also the most consistently and widely misunderstood. By 1980, after spending ten years devising and teaching acting courses based on the Stanislavski 'system' at Rose Bruford College in England, and seeing work elsewhere, both in the UK and abroad, I had become aware of the confusion that existed as to what precisely the 'system' was. It was often identified either with a primitive kind of 'naturalism' or with Lee Strasberg's Method.

It was then that I started to write Stanislavski: An Introduction (Methuen, 1982), in an attempt to provide students with an account of the origins of the 'system' and a guide to reading Stanislavski's published works. I had to rely at that time on existing English-language translations of these books, unsatisfactory and misleading though they sometimes were because of heavy cuts. An Actor Prepares, for example, is only about half the length of Stanislavski's original. But these were the only texts available for students to buy and there seemed no prospect, for copyright reasons, of producing much-needed new translations. I followed the Introduction with Stanislavski: A Biography (Methuen, 1990) in which I tried to chart the long and often painful path Stanislavski followed in order to understand the nature of the art to which he had devoted his life.

English