An Actor's Work by Stanislavsky Konstantin Benedetti Jean

Author:Stanislavsky, Konstantin,Benedetti, Jean.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2011-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

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‘So, today we are going to talk about the way to stimulate our natural, biological, subconscious creative powers through a conscious psychotechnique.

‘Kostya can tell you about that. He experienced the process in the class before last when he did the “burning money” again.’

‘All I can say is all of a sudden I had a kind of inspiration. I have no idea what I did.’

‘You’re not drawing the right conclusions. Something much more important happened than you allow. The coming of “inspiration” on which you always count was a mere accident. You can’t depend on it. We are talking about something on which we can rely. Inspiration came not by chance, but because you awakened it and prepared the ground for it. That’s a much more important result for us as actors, for our psychotechnique, our practical work.’

‘I didn’t prepare the ground at all and don’t know how to do it,’ I said, rejecting the idea.

‘That means it was I who prepared the ground without your knowing it.’

‘How? When? Everything went as it should, as always. My muscles were free, the Given Circumstances had been studied, a series of Tasks had been set up and fulfilled, etc.’

‘Absolutely right. In that respect there was nothing new. But you have forgotten one extremely important detail, a new element of great importance. It was just a tiny addition—I made you perform every creative action right through to the end, down to the last drop. That was all.’

‘How do you do that?’ Vanya asked.

‘Very simple. Bring all the Elements, the psychological inner drives, the Throughaction, to the point where they become normal, human—not convention-bound and actorish—activity. Then you will come to know the truth of your own mind and nature. You will come to know the truth of the character. You cannot but believe the truth. And where there is truth and belief the state of “I am being” arises of itself.

‘Have you noticed how each time they appear, spontaneously, independent of the actor’s will, nature and the subconscious join in?

‘That was what happened to Kostya, remember, in the “burning money” and also in the class before last.

‘So, it is the actor’s conscious psychotechnique pushed to its very limits which creates the ground in which our natural subconscious, creative process can come to life.

‘Pushing to the limit, the perfect use of our psychotechnique, constitutes an extremely important addition to what you already know about creative acting

‘If you only knew how very important this new addition is!

‘The general opinion is that every moment in our acting should unfailingly be grand, complex, exciting. But you know from your previous work that the smallest action or feeling, the smallest aspect of our technique acquires enormous significance if onstage they are pushed to the very limit. There it ends and living, human truth, belief and the “I am being” begin. When that happens, then the actor’s mental and physical apparatus starts to work according to the laws of human nature, exactly as it does in life, notwithstanding the artificial situation we find ourselves in, having to be creative in public.

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