The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit

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As long as they’re listening to each other, connecting with the images, following their impulses and not hurting each other, themselves or the furniture, whatever happens while they’re ‘working the play on its feet’ constitutes valuable raw material.

To which Michael Chekhov just stepped out of the improvisation and said, “He hasn’t died; he’s alive and kicking. These thoughts can come from anywhere: there’s no need to censor anything, as there’s no right or wrong response.

Stanislavsky devoted his life to finding ways of harnessing the ephemeral muse of inspiration so that actors could reliably deliver true-seeming performances every night. The actual act of sitting at a table with their pencils in their hands and their scripts in front of them was a comparatively calm procedure. It means we have students in our acting classes who may be (a) addicted to their devices for communicating; (b) disembodied from their language; (c) so vulnerable to the way in which their online words are received that they’re very averse to any situation that might make them feel unsafe; ergo (d) they’re socially shy. And on the outbreath they utter the word, infused with whatever resonances are provoked for them by the dropper-in’s question.

As I’ve said, we have to be prepared with film and television to throw out all our preparatory work once we’re on the set.It’s a shame, because Stanislavski couldn’t talk about spirit under the Soviet regime because it was forbidden. In rebellion against the old ‘star system’ of acting – whereby any authentic storytelling was subordinated to the flashy performances of celebrity actors – Stanislavsky foregrounded ensemble interaction.

That crazy darkness also comes from the fact that young people are communicating through their thumbs. When the Method of Physical Actions became formalized by state, he evolved his practice into what became known as Active Analysis.How can we convince our audience that what we’re saying as actor/characters is the spontaneous expression of feelings provoked by the chain of fictional events? What if they found that enacting unsettling situations – within the safe structure of a script – enables them to become richer contributors to their broader society?