Stanislavski'S Theory Of Physical Action
Moore describes Konstantin Stanislavski’s life, which was from “. . . January. . . 1863. . . - August 7, 1938”, and how he was an actor who started to act during his teenhood because his mother’s side of the family had a history in theatre. He worked hard to perfect all the skills a good actor would need in order to be successful, and his hard work eventually led him to becoming famous enough to where he could cooperatively operate two very important theatre troupes, The Society of Art and Literature, and more impactful, The Moscow Art Theatre.
While this seems to be quite a few accomplishments for an actor his age at the time, this was only the beginning of his journey to reform theatre like never before. While Stanislavski was perfecting his skills in order to become the actor that would impact theatre’s future, theatre had a very specific theme in every aspect of production: pretense. Everything, from one’s body’s movements to the costumes, was overly dramatic and pretentious, according to the University of Washington. This type of theatre, melodrama, was disliked by Stanislavski because he felt that “. . . there must be living characters on stage, and the mere external behaviour of the actors is insufficient to create a character’s unique inner world” (Moore). Moore then adds on that from there, he started to base the training of his actors on psychology and the actors’ true reactions and feelings within a scene. His training made his productions successful, so therefore, he continued to improve his ideas on theatre by adding on the idea of individualism in theatre. He believed that while there is a director for each production, the actor should make a balance of the director’s vision and their own vision. He also had the same idea for how the actor should interpret the character on stage.
Britannica defines the collection of Stanislavski’s ideas throughout many years in order to fulfill his realistic ideas for theatre as the Stanislavski method. BBC explains his emphasis on realism on multiple aspects of theatre and acting by organizing it into eight aspects: “. . . given circumstances,. . . emotional memory,. . . method of physical actions,. . . subtext,. . . if,. . . objective,. . . super-objective,. . . [and the] through line. . . ”. This report will specifically focus on the method of physical actions. The method of physical actions is where the actor focuses on the character’s motivation for a physical action in order to produce the appropriate physical action on stage, according to Sawoski. An example of physical action in theatre is when a director tells an actor to walk while having anxiety of a monster attacking them. The actor places himself in the situation of the character, understanding why the character has anxiety of a monster attacking them, and then living the character’s reality while portraying his individual traits in the way he walks.
By formulating a logical response of the character, and adding the individual traits of the actor, the acting becomes very realistic, which qualifies to be in the realism category of plays. More than likely, the reason why Stanislavski encourages the actor to focus on the character’s motivation is because Moore reminds people in “The Method of Physical Actions” that according to scientific research, the physical and psychological aspects of a human are connected by many nerves throughout the body. Moore also describes in “Konstantin Stanislavsky” how Stanislavski relied extensively on scientific research to defend his theories for his method. Stanislavski believed that individualism would help lead to realism in the method of physical actions because he thought that “. . . we must, as actors and directors,. . . ‘. . . create the physical actions reinforced by truth and conviction’” (Kelly). While I was in class, we did a class activity that consisted of intentionally tensing up and relaxing our bodies in order to pinpoint where our bodies show our emotions and reactions through physical action.
This class activity then helped me focus even more on the exact ways and reasons those areas of my body tense up and relax, and how they would be like in real life situations. I then decided to use your handout with suggestions for activities of practicing Stanislavski’s theories, and try the activity for physical action where I physically prepare my body for acting by intentionally tensing up and relaxing my body, but rather to practice switching between the two and keeping control of my tensity rather than pinpointing areas of the body. After doing this and rehearing for our scene, I felt that I stayed too tense most of the scene, and even in parts where being tense would be an inappropriate action of Mrs. Linde. I also felt that it was very time-constrained to prepare myself in the way that the handout described to, keeping in mind that our class is only fifty minutes long each day.
So therefore, I decided to try doing research online in order to find a technique that would work much better for me. This is when I came across Kelly’s blog, where she describes that having the character’s motivation to be tense or relaxed is an essential aspect when practicing the method of physical action. She also mentions that while it is good to try out the suggested methods, Stanislavski also once said himself to “. . . ‘Create your own method. Don’t depend slavishly on mine. Make up something that works for you’. . . ”. Stanislavski’s quote then inspired me to start thinking of a way to practice being relaxed and tensed that works for me while focusing on Mrs. Linde’s motivations throughout the scene. I read through the scene again, pinpointing that Mrs. Linde probably felt nervous seeing someone she has not seen in ten years, feeling indifferent about a tragic event, nostalgic, and shocked.
After reading the scene, I created my own method, where I mentally create the types of scenes that the character goes through in my head, but with my personal circumstances, in order to see how I would exactly react to the situation. This then made me think about how my pinpointed areas from earlier are like, so therefore, I know exactly how to be myself on stage. And in order to be able to do this while on stage, I imagine my personal circumstances in lieu of the actual events and character’s circumstances while actually acting in order to have as realistic of a physical action as a response as possible. After multiple class rehearsals, and perfecting and adding on to this exercise of the method of physical action, I finally was able to portray the realistic physical action that I believe Stanislavski would have approved of. Overall, this made my scene with Laila come much more naturally to me, rather than in an artificial way. This also helped make our performance seem more like a real life even occurring rather than just acting on stage. While all this research and a long process of trial and error may have seemed tedious to go through (and for only one small detail), I realize that all this emphasis on learning about yourself and other character’s feelings is what adds the ‘real’ in realism, and makes it stand out from other types of theatre.
