Stanislavski and the Parlour Games
(Stanislavski was essential to the development of acting, he is known as the Father of Modern Acting.
His insistence on a move to truthful acting, as opposed to the mechanical gestures indicating emotion involved in the melodrama of his age changed the face of modern acting forever.
We owe him a huge debt, he is an inspiration to all in the theatre, he devoted his life to the pursuit of better acting.
) The prevalence and pertinence to our craft of Stanislavski and his ideas on the technique of the actor are unquestioned.
David Mamet has asserted that Stanislavski was both innovator and amateur in the strictest form of the words.
His amateur status was a direct result of his economic status.
Financial necessity was not the mother of his invention.
He had no need to be there to earn a living, so instead, theatre was a 'worthy' leisure time activity to the wealthy merchant's son.
The wealthy amateur has no need to entertain the crowd, the busker needs to eat lunch.
And so, Stanislavski's rehearsals could take weeks, months or even years because it did not matter whether he pleased the audience or not, he still got to eat lunch.
His exercises therefore do not have a sense of urgency about them, as often our rehearsals do in the UK.
As the film director Hertzog complains 'what starts with aesthetics ends with athletics'.
Is it possible that is behemoth, this gargantuan of acting may have mistakenly created exercises that develop the wrong skills for the actor? I suggest that he may.
Much of Stanislavski's work on 'character' consists of sweet little parlour games, suitable for the entertainment and amusement of children on a wet Sunday afternoon, but little use to the actor whose problem is how to play the scene.
The intention of the parlour game is is to evoke joy, to divert and amuse.
We're meant to enjoy it, to be distracted, to wile away the idle hour.
The problem comes when performing a parlour game as a form of honest work and trying to attribute a greater meaning to its outcome.
The outcome of the parlour game cum acting exercise is that the poor actor does indeed enjoy it, because it's fun to play, yet when the time comes to apply it to their job of work, they will feel like a dreadful failure.
They attribute this to themselves as a weak actor.
They feel this sense of failure because the game has no higher meaning and all meaning derived from the game is nonsense or subjective bullshit.
Parlour games are to learning to act the scene what bass fishing is to learning to score a goal in football.
Bass fishing is a worthwhile and fun sport, it will help you wile away an hour and certainly feels productive.
You may develop a certain arm strength, you will learn patience and certainly relax, but it by no means prepares you to take the field and put the ball in the back of the net.
Character History, Character Research and other 'work on the role' is also a form of Parlour Game.
It's aim is to amuse and divert and stand in for real work.
You are an acting student in a conservatory.
The task set for you is to identify what mood, colour, painting or piece of music is associated with your character.
It sounds like fun, because it is a fun task, for it allows one to escape from employment (which of us doesn't love a holiday) and indulge in a little self amusement.
It does not however, have anything to do with your job, which is to understand and play the scene.
Your teacher will insist there is a right answer, you will feel idiotic and comply, leaving your common sense at the door.
If by Character History, you mean collecting together all of the external circumstantial details from the play, the given circumstances, then of course that's essential, it's when we take upon ourselves the mantle of the writer, creating imaginary lives that we begin to go down the wrong, and might I say entirely unnecessary track.
You may enjoy the creative imaginary task, it makes you feel good, but you will be strangely frustrated by it when it is used as a work task.
You can't quite put your finger on the right mood, the right painting, the right colour, or if you do, you somehow felt that it was a rather arbitrary task.
You feel that you should be able to do it, because there must be a right answer, but it doesn't quite make sense.
You feel guilty, so you go along, despite this sense of frustration.
But character isn't a colour, it isn't a mood, or a piece of music or anything at all.
For character exists in the mind of the reader or audience member, it is a literary place marker.
But wouldn't a sensitivity to colour, mood and art improve one's sensitivity to the role, or the play? What sensitivity does one require beyond a rudimentary understanding of what it is to be done in the scene? A sensitivity to other actors, to the text of the play, to the epoch perhaps? To which no colour, mood or painting can supply answer.
Instead, this so-called 'work' is a diversion from the true job of the actor which is to bring to life the playwright's words in plastic form through living truthfully under the imaginary context of the play.
So why are these exercises so popular? The answer is simple.
Other people told us it worked and we think it might work too.
It seems like work.
It panders to the actor's need to think of themselves as a creative individual, an artist.
One can say at the end of the long day 'Didn't we do well?' and 'Weren't we creative today' or 'Didn't we work hard?'.
But the scene is yet to be staged and the actor knows nothing more tangibly employable about their task than they did before the parlour games began.
When the actor has to step on stage, out into the terrifying unknown, the character's colour, music or taste in socks will not help the actor to perform the scene.
They need something solid and real to do.
If they do not have that, they will flounder.
But aren't these games, these exercises and this technique responsible for a hundred years of beautiful, subtle, nuanced acting? Has this not caused these wonderful performances? Has it not stimulated and engendered the Oscar winning glory? Yes, I suppose it might, it's possible.
The more likely explanation is something else though.
Is it possible that the great footballer also go bass fishing on their off days? Does the bass fishing help them score goals? They score goals because they are organically gifted as an athlete, intuitive, spontaneous, with high stamina, fast reflexes and beautiful foot-eye coordination.
I posit that actors have given those performances in spite of the ridiculous and degrading exercises that they are forced to endure in the name of 'acting'.
Stanislavski and the work of his students and colleagues has much to offer us, if we do not leave our common sense at the door.
One of the frustrating factors of trying to glean from Stanislavski what we can comes in translation.
One word has lead so many to misunderstand his ideas.
The word perezhivanie which means to live through or undergo an experience.
This word has been mistranslated as 'emotional identification'.
Jean Benedetti, the UK's leading authority on Stanislavski states that he never uses the word 'identification' in this context.
This misunderstanding is widespread and has lead to many people believing that Stanislavski believed the actor should immerse themselves fully in the role, which is not at all what Stanislavski was suggesting.
Stanislavski is on record as saying that people who believe that they ARE the character are INSANE.
Stanislavski's work has become unfortunately maligned by its association with The Method, the American derivation of his work.
The actor Ian Richardson makes the distinction: "they are poles apart, because unlike the Method, Stanislavski is never overindulgent, which the Method is.
Stanislavski is never incoherent, which the Method is.
Stanislavski is controlled and technically polished, which the Method could never be.
" The technique of Practical Aesthetics, if it is a technique at all requires only that we do not leave our common sense behind.
It uses the most pertinent parts of Stanislavski's later work on physical action and combines it with philosophy and a knowledge of dramatic construction given to us by Aristotles Poetics.
His insistence on a move to truthful acting, as opposed to the mechanical gestures indicating emotion involved in the melodrama of his age changed the face of modern acting forever.
We owe him a huge debt, he is an inspiration to all in the theatre, he devoted his life to the pursuit of better acting.
) The prevalence and pertinence to our craft of Stanislavski and his ideas on the technique of the actor are unquestioned.
David Mamet has asserted that Stanislavski was both innovator and amateur in the strictest form of the words.
His amateur status was a direct result of his economic status.
Financial necessity was not the mother of his invention.
He had no need to be there to earn a living, so instead, theatre was a 'worthy' leisure time activity to the wealthy merchant's son.
The wealthy amateur has no need to entertain the crowd, the busker needs to eat lunch.
And so, Stanislavski's rehearsals could take weeks, months or even years because it did not matter whether he pleased the audience or not, he still got to eat lunch.
His exercises therefore do not have a sense of urgency about them, as often our rehearsals do in the UK.
As the film director Hertzog complains 'what starts with aesthetics ends with athletics'.
Is it possible that is behemoth, this gargantuan of acting may have mistakenly created exercises that develop the wrong skills for the actor? I suggest that he may.
Much of Stanislavski's work on 'character' consists of sweet little parlour games, suitable for the entertainment and amusement of children on a wet Sunday afternoon, but little use to the actor whose problem is how to play the scene.
The intention of the parlour game is is to evoke joy, to divert and amuse.
We're meant to enjoy it, to be distracted, to wile away the idle hour.
The problem comes when performing a parlour game as a form of honest work and trying to attribute a greater meaning to its outcome.
The outcome of the parlour game cum acting exercise is that the poor actor does indeed enjoy it, because it's fun to play, yet when the time comes to apply it to their job of work, they will feel like a dreadful failure.
They attribute this to themselves as a weak actor.
They feel this sense of failure because the game has no higher meaning and all meaning derived from the game is nonsense or subjective bullshit.
Parlour games are to learning to act the scene what bass fishing is to learning to score a goal in football.
Bass fishing is a worthwhile and fun sport, it will help you wile away an hour and certainly feels productive.
You may develop a certain arm strength, you will learn patience and certainly relax, but it by no means prepares you to take the field and put the ball in the back of the net.
Character History, Character Research and other 'work on the role' is also a form of Parlour Game.
It's aim is to amuse and divert and stand in for real work.
You are an acting student in a conservatory.
The task set for you is to identify what mood, colour, painting or piece of music is associated with your character.
It sounds like fun, because it is a fun task, for it allows one to escape from employment (which of us doesn't love a holiday) and indulge in a little self amusement.
It does not however, have anything to do with your job, which is to understand and play the scene.
Your teacher will insist there is a right answer, you will feel idiotic and comply, leaving your common sense at the door.
If by Character History, you mean collecting together all of the external circumstantial details from the play, the given circumstances, then of course that's essential, it's when we take upon ourselves the mantle of the writer, creating imaginary lives that we begin to go down the wrong, and might I say entirely unnecessary track.
You may enjoy the creative imaginary task, it makes you feel good, but you will be strangely frustrated by it when it is used as a work task.
You can't quite put your finger on the right mood, the right painting, the right colour, or if you do, you somehow felt that it was a rather arbitrary task.
You feel that you should be able to do it, because there must be a right answer, but it doesn't quite make sense.
You feel guilty, so you go along, despite this sense of frustration.
But character isn't a colour, it isn't a mood, or a piece of music or anything at all.
For character exists in the mind of the reader or audience member, it is a literary place marker.
But wouldn't a sensitivity to colour, mood and art improve one's sensitivity to the role, or the play? What sensitivity does one require beyond a rudimentary understanding of what it is to be done in the scene? A sensitivity to other actors, to the text of the play, to the epoch perhaps? To which no colour, mood or painting can supply answer.
Instead, this so-called 'work' is a diversion from the true job of the actor which is to bring to life the playwright's words in plastic form through living truthfully under the imaginary context of the play.
So why are these exercises so popular? The answer is simple.
Other people told us it worked and we think it might work too.
It seems like work.
It panders to the actor's need to think of themselves as a creative individual, an artist.
One can say at the end of the long day 'Didn't we do well?' and 'Weren't we creative today' or 'Didn't we work hard?'.
But the scene is yet to be staged and the actor knows nothing more tangibly employable about their task than they did before the parlour games began.
When the actor has to step on stage, out into the terrifying unknown, the character's colour, music or taste in socks will not help the actor to perform the scene.
They need something solid and real to do.
If they do not have that, they will flounder.
But aren't these games, these exercises and this technique responsible for a hundred years of beautiful, subtle, nuanced acting? Has this not caused these wonderful performances? Has it not stimulated and engendered the Oscar winning glory? Yes, I suppose it might, it's possible.
The more likely explanation is something else though.
Is it possible that the great footballer also go bass fishing on their off days? Does the bass fishing help them score goals? They score goals because they are organically gifted as an athlete, intuitive, spontaneous, with high stamina, fast reflexes and beautiful foot-eye coordination.
I posit that actors have given those performances in spite of the ridiculous and degrading exercises that they are forced to endure in the name of 'acting'.
Stanislavski and the work of his students and colleagues has much to offer us, if we do not leave our common sense at the door.
One of the frustrating factors of trying to glean from Stanislavski what we can comes in translation.
One word has lead so many to misunderstand his ideas.
The word perezhivanie which means to live through or undergo an experience.
This word has been mistranslated as 'emotional identification'.
Jean Benedetti, the UK's leading authority on Stanislavski states that he never uses the word 'identification' in this context.
This misunderstanding is widespread and has lead to many people believing that Stanislavski believed the actor should immerse themselves fully in the role, which is not at all what Stanislavski was suggesting.
Stanislavski is on record as saying that people who believe that they ARE the character are INSANE.
Stanislavski's work has become unfortunately maligned by its association with The Method, the American derivation of his work.
The actor Ian Richardson makes the distinction: "they are poles apart, because unlike the Method, Stanislavski is never overindulgent, which the Method is.
Stanislavski is never incoherent, which the Method is.
Stanislavski is controlled and technically polished, which the Method could never be.
" The technique of Practical Aesthetics, if it is a technique at all requires only that we do not leave our common sense behind.
It uses the most pertinent parts of Stanislavski's later work on physical action and combines it with philosophy and a knowledge of dramatic construction given to us by Aristotles Poetics.