STANISLAVSKI
“The System”
I know you don’t want to…
but you should probably take
some notes now.
Just a few notes. No big deal.
You’ll be glad you did.
Trust me…would I lie to you?
Take notes anyway.
Constantin Stanislavski
(1863 – 1938)
“Whatever thread one takes up in the history of
twentieth-century drama leads back to Stanislavsky”
Constantin Stanislavski
• Creator of “The System” – basis for
modern-day “method acting”
• "An Actor Prepares", "Building a
Character" and "Creating a Role”
• Cofounder of the Moscow Art Theater
(MAT) with Vladimir Danchenko (1897)
• Actor, Director, Playwright, Teacher
• Created phrases such as “stage direction”
Constantin Stanislavski
All of our acts, even the simplest, which
are so familiar to us in everyday life,
become strained when we appear
behind the footlights before a public of
a thousand people. That is why it is
necessary to correct ourselves and
learn again how to walk, sit, or lie
down. It is essential to re-educate
ourselves to look and see, on the stage,
to listen and to hear.
Stanislavski’s
Visualization
of his
System
English
Recreation
of his
Drawing
RELAXATION
Learning to relax the muscles
and eliminate physical
tension while performing.
CONCENTRATION
Learning to think like an
actor and to respond to
one’s own imagination.
WORK WITH SENSES
Discovering the sensory base of
the work: learning to memorize
and recall sensations, often
called “sense memory” and /or
“affective memory”; learning to
work from a small sensation
and expand it, a technique
Stanislavski called “spheres of
attention”.
SENSE OF TRUTH
Learning to tell the difference
between the organic and the
artificial. Stanislavski
believed that there were
natural laws of acting, which
were to be obeyed.
GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCES
Developing the ability to use
previous four skills to create
the world of the play (the
circumstances given in the
text) through true and
organic means
CONTACT &
COMMUNICATION
Developing the ability to
interact with other
performers spontaneously,
and with an audience,
without violating the world
of the play.
UNITS & OBJECTIVE
Learning to divide the role
into sensible units that can
be worked on individually,
and developing the ability to
define each unit of the role
by an active goal desired by
the character rather than as
an entirely literary idea.
LOGIC & BELIEVABILITY
Discovering how to be certain
that the sum of the
combined objectives are
consistent and coherent
and that they are in line
with the play as a whole.
WORK WITH TEXT
Developing the ability to
uncover the social,
political, and artistic
meaning of the text, and
seeing that these ideas are
contained within the
performance.
CREATIVE STATE
An automatic culmination of
all the previous steps.