Minor Research: Stanislavsky- Systematic Acting

Systematic acting

Stanislavsky’s systematic acting is essentially the basis of the modern day system of method acting and concerns its self with getting into the head and mindset of the character.

It is not concerned with the external performance, this is why when following this you don’t allow actors to look in mirror because then they focus on the visuals of their acting when in actual fact the internal psyche is what matters, Stanislavky studied Pavlov and as such believes emotion is a result of a psychological response an actor needs to put in themselves, they need to create and live the personality of their character by drawing upon their own emotions to supply the building blocks of their characters personality and emotion. This works similarly to pavlov’s dogs, he rings the bell they drool, actors need to embed emotion into themselves so that when the bell (the trigger for said emotion) occurs, they live out that emotion instead of consciously having to pretend they’re feeling that emotion, instead they actually are feeling it because they are at this point their character.

The issue with this system is that it creates an archetype of performance which isn’t always what we would want, the main issue is that this is reliant upon someone being able to understand and implement social norms and conventions regarding things like power in discourse, if someone doesn’t understand these rules then they may struggle to create their character in a specific scenario, and in contrast to this, if they do then their character may become a little, almost robotic and not struggle with some of the issues that arise in a regular unequal encounter.

One way I can implement this into my own work is to have the actors be introduced to this by using Stanislavsky's tree technique where he has the actor be a tree. In doing this they have to infer the type of tree and the surroundings of the tree, this allows them a small insight into the technique they must use in their acting but on a smaller scale. You see, they have to use their own experiences and knowledge of what the scenario entails and then apply that to the scenario so that they can become their tree.

Another way of implementing this is through exercises which get the actor to think about and feel the emotion of their character so that the building blocks for their character creation are put into place and they can from here build and consolidate their character.

This a look at my first research into Stanislavsky and how I may implement it, there will be more to follow shortly.