KONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKY:CREATIVE WORK WITH THE ACTOR; A DISCUSSION ON DIRECTING

KONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKY

Creative Work with the Actor; A Discussion on Directing

From: "Directors on Directing" by Toby Cole, Helen Krich Chinoy; Bobbs-Merrill, 1963. ( .pdf version)

K. S. STANISLAVSKY: . . . I am told that we must create directors, but I must say that this question has never been clear to me. My experience tells me that you cannot create a director--a director is born. It is possible to create a favorable atmosphere in which he can grow. But to take Ivan Ivanovich and make a director out of him is hardly feasible. The true director comprises within his own person a director-teacher, a director-artist, a director-writer, a director-administrator. What can we do if one has these qualifications while another has not?

If the director realizes that "I possess certain elements and lack others, but I shall try to acquire more, and in the meantime give the theater all I have"; if he does this with discernment and helps create a collective of directors--this might, to a certain extent, compensate for the absence of all those elements in one man. . . .

One thing is clear to me: there are directors of the result and directors of the root. We must distinguish one from the other. We need directors of the root. This is one of the most important requisites for the Art Theater.

The first seeks immediate results. . . . He often takes two--three-five substances, mixes them in the retort to see what will happen. Sometimes what happens is not what is required. "How can I, the director, fix it? I can add to these elements the inorganic substance opopanax . . . I can say to the actor 'Make a good try in this passage . . . otherwise they'll blame me as director.'"

This method of work I consider a crime. If you drop opopanax into a retort containing organic substances everything will begin to boil, hiss, stink.

Hence, one or the other--result or root.

Another thing: "I, as director, produce a play and that's all." Or "I produce a play and in the process create an actor." There is a difference. The director might make a play without worrying about the actor. He can get the actor full-fledged. However, one must first create an actor's company--the plays and the theater will follow as a matter of course.

It is possible to "make" a play, to "model" a play to prove yourself a director. The actor can pass muster by a certain cleverness . . . but nothing significant will come of it so long as the actor is oblivious of the word "organic." Many have forgotten the difference between the organic and the inorganic, theatrical truth and organic truth. . . .

The question is whether you can prepare an actor with whom I can talk about his role so that, like a piece of clay, he could feel the pressure of my fingers. Not every kind of clay is fit for sculpture and it is not every actor you can talk to about art. But if we set aside this first moment, we start everything by compulsion. If a director foists upon an actor his own, the director's thoughts, derived from his own personal emotional memories, if he tells him "You must act precisely so," he does violence to the actor's nature. Does he need my emotional memories? He has his own. I must cling to his soul like a magnet and see what it contains. Then cast another magnet. I want to see the material side of him. Aha! Now I understand of what living emotional material he is constituted. There can be no other. . . .

But there is still the sequence and logic of the emotions--what about them? How can we speak of the logic and sequence of the emotions? I do not even know to what university I should turn to learn about the inner logic and sequence of the emotions. How to understand them? How to record them? I say this is not necessary. The business of an actor is to act. You play Romeo. If you were in love what would you do? Take your notebook and write "Met her at some spot, she did not look at me, I turned away offended." In this way you can fill a whole volume. You recall your life, you transfer your emotions to your role. This passion, love, you analyze into its component moments of logical action. All of them together constitute love. . . . To all the stages in the unfolding of the emotions there will be corresponding logical sequences. Along these stages you will step into your role, because you took from your own life everything that concerns love and you transfer it to your role. These are not merely bits of Romeo, they are bits of yourself. . . .

N. N. LITOVTZEVA: And when do you give the actors the necessary words?

STANISLAVSKY: That is the most difficult moment. I try at first not to give any words at all--all I need is the plan of the action. When the actor has mastered that, a certain line of action has matured within him which he begins to feel with his body, his muscles. When this happens the actor realizes where he is going and why. He reaches a moment when he must act for the sake of something. That is a very agitating moment. . . . I give them the words when they have to act with words. At first they can act only with thoughts. And when I see that they understand these thoughts and that they also grasp the inner logic and sequence of these thoughts, I say: "Now take the words." Then they will have a different relation to the words. They need the words not in order to memorize them by rote but to act them out. They put the words not on the muscles of their tongue, not even in the brain, but into the very soul whence the actor strives toward the super-objective. 1 Then the words will become super-effective.

The correct actions and the correct thoughts have been established.

Now you are nearer to the essence of the role. You have a base on which to stand.

But can you succeed without through action? Definitely not. This is achieved gradually, not in a formal but in an absolutely correct sense. . . .

V. G. SAKHNOVSKY: . . . Supposing that a favorable combination of circumstances makes it possible to organize an ensemble. Is it enough to train the group technically and professionally or would you make other demands on it, as for example, that the actors should be capable of analyzing the phenomena of life, that they should be broadly cultured, that they should be abreast of their age?

STANISLAVSKY: I am surprised that such a question is put to me at all. Can there be any doubt about whether we need an actor with a wide or a narrow horizon, an actor who is intelligent or one who is stupid--by all means, the broadest outlook, the most cultured. . . .

E. S. TELESHEVA: Must you explain the super-objective to the actor? Do you yourself define it before work begins?

STANISLAVSKY: I am afraid to make a definitive decision prematurely. There must be something of a hint first. I know where I am going-to the right or to the left. But I am looking for a device whose logic itself will lead us by the nose to the point where we must say: this is definitely the super-objective, there can be no other.

Suppose you play a certain scene. What is your objective? I want to know what you are driving at. I say to the actor: "Start playing and proceed." The first objective has been dissolved in the new--it is no longer needed. Let us take the next fragment. I discover a new circumstance. Now the foregoing objective is no longer useful. It has been dissolved by a more powerful solvent. My attention is already drawn to the fourth fragment.

Thus you go through the entire play till you reach the super-objective. If you found an actor who was so thoroughly steeped in the super-objective, who understood it so profoundly and completely that this objective swallowed all the fragments and all the subordinate objectives of the play, a most powerful through action would result and the entire role would be created largely unconsciously. Every great objective destroys and absorbs in itself all the preceding smaller objectives which recede into the subconscious. They no longer burden your mind. You take the super-objective and everything only serves to bring you to it.

LITOVTZEVA: Then the path is from the minor objective to the super-objective?

STANISLAVSKY: . . . Every important objective commands your attention completely. You do not have enough concentration to perform consciously every step of the way. Your own creative nature does it. That is true creativity. Organic nature itself, with which you cannot meddle, is the creator. But not every super-objective is capable of awakening our nature to creativeness. Suppose that my super-objective in Hamlet is to show the profligate mother in conflict with her son who deeply loves his father. Can such a super-objective satisfy? No, because I brought it down to a trivial level. I reduced it to a philistine idea. If I base the super-objective on a profound conception of life, that is a different thing altogether.

Imagine that I have the following objective. I am convinced that I, Hamlet, must cleanse the entire court, the entire world of evil and I must involve in this objective all the people around me in order to save my martyred father. I have undertaken an unequalled objective, but I fulfill it. You understand what torture, to be unable to fulfill an objective which could save my father. This overpowering objective facing a man who struggles and tosses about trying to accomplish it will of course move you more strongly than the other. . . .

I say to the actor: "Give me what is in the play, but give it to me so that it is true to the very end." Let him go over it ten times. He can don his costume only when he is one with the role and the role is one with him. But heaven forbid that the image be molded when the actor is not yet warm, not yet pliable. This is harmful to the role. The role is not yet one with him and he is not yet one with the role. That is a moment which we often miss. If, however, you want to achieve a full blending of the actor with his role, then sit him down with you at the table. He will appeal to you himself. "I have a line on the role--I would not like to spoil it--what given circumstances do I still lack to breathe more life into the role?"

I. Y. SUDAKOV: To be ready to mount the stage how many of these given circumstances does he need?

STANISLAVSKY: He will not enter the room until it is made alive by the given circumstances. The actor will beg you for it because he must place himself within the role. He will think: "They say I entered the wrong way. But how should I enter? What should I do? I don't know yet to whom I am going and where I came from."

"Let us talk about where you came from."

"And where did I come to?"

You tell him: "Play so that I can believe you," and he will have to go through the same process all over again.

SUDAKOV: And if he had buried his father that day, he would enter differently.

STANISLAVSKY: If he buried his father--that is one thing. If he returned drunk from a tavern-that's another. If he came from his bride--that is still a third.

He will not know how to drink a glass of tea unless he knows where he came from and why.

SUDAKOV: Then the life of the image will result from the evaluation of the given circumstances.

STANISLAVSKY: The result will be the life of the human body. But that is a trap. The question is not in the life of the human body. In order to create the life of the human body we must create the life of the human soul. From it you create the logic of action, you create the inner line, but give it form externally. If you go through three-four acts in a given sequence the appropriate mood will come naturally.

A moment arrives when from the fusion of the actor's personal inner truth with the truth of the role, something transpires. His head swims in the literal sense. "Where am I? Where is the role?" And right there is the beginning of the amalgamation of the actor and his role. The mood is yours but it also flows from the role. The logic of the mood is inherent in the role. The given circumstances are from the role. You cannot tell where you are and where the role is. There is complete amalgamation. And that is the moment of unity. . . .

SUDAKOV: You follow the line of the play.

STANISLAVSKY: I follow the facts of the play. I take the actor as such. He places himself in the given circumstances of the role. He has to create a characteristic image. But he remains himself. Whenever he withdraws from himself, he kills the role. You live with your emotions. Remove the emotions and the role is dead. You must remain yourself in the image. If I walk around with a sick leg am I a different man? Am I different if bitten by a bee? These are external circumstances. . . .

We are analyzing all the procedures, all the possibilities which take us to the threshold of the subconscious, which generate the subconscious reactions. The most powerful are through action and the super-objective. What is our present objective? Take two-three-four-five cues. You say: "I want to attract attention" and someone else will say "I try to understand what I am told." The first objective has here been swallowed by the second, and the third will swallow the second, and all of them will be swallowed in the end by the superobjective.

If now you find an actor who adheres fast to the super-objective and follows through action all the subordinate objectives will be resolved subconsciously.

LITOVITZEVA: It is not clear to me how each preliminary objective is swallowed by the subsequent one.

STANISLAVSKY: For example:

"What dost thou say?"

"Nothing, my lord: or if--I know not what."

What is Iago's objective?

LITOVTZEVA: To arouse suspicion.

STANISLAVSKY: And Othello's?

LITOVTZEVA: To understand Iago's hint.

STANISLAVSKY: And what is the next objective? Othello laughs at

Iago's words "Nothing, my lord." What then happened to the first objective? It was swallowed up by the second. Let us go further. You have a powerful objective:"to sacrifice life for the ideal woman." If your every sentence supports this objective you will realize how ridiculous it is to permit suspicion to fall on Desdemona. How you will laugh! But if you come upon some plausible circumstance cunningly contrived by Iago you will become perplexed. Everything will appear self-evident precisely because I cleave strongly to the superobjective and the through action. . . .

SAKHNOVSKY: The director read the play as attentively as the actor. Then the director and the actor met and followed the organic line of action which you speak about. What next? Do you go through act after act, scene after scene? What will this lead to? When does the question of the super-objective and through action arise?

STANISLAVSKY: You indicate approximately some kind of an objective. But the super-objective will not be found in a long time. Perhaps only at the twentieth performance. However, you do suggest to the actor a temporary super-objective. He will make use of it. This objective is not final. It indicates for the moment the necessary direction, not far from the truth, yet not the truth itself which will emerge from the study of the role in one's self and one's self in the role.

SAKHNOVSKY: And when will through action appear?

STANISLAVSKY: All the actors in a body will suggest it to you. If you plan it alone it may be right formally yet wrong as living experience. The actors themselves will prompt you: "Here it is, the objective, this is about where we must look for it." Let us look for it together with the actors. . . .

L. M. LEONIDOV: You deduce the super-objective from indications by the author. But if we both play the Bailiff must we both have the same super-objective?

STANISLAVSKY: The same one but it is somewhat different in your case. Yours is pinkish blue, mine is pinkish green.

LEONIDOV: We walk along different corridors but we arrive at the same spot.

STANISLAVSKY: That spot is in your imagination and mine. The difference is there because each is the result of the difference in our entire lives, in our emotional memories.

LEONIDOV: In the life of the Bailiff?

STANISLAVSKY: It has become your life. In your reflection it will be somewhat different from mine.

LITOVTZEVA: How then can we go on if we do not immediately know where to go? We can lose our way.

STANISLAVSKY (passing a finger around the rim of a tea glass): Here is a circle. In the center is the super-objective. It is the circle of your life--the role. Life begins here and death. You take this section of life (indicating part of the circle). You know the past, you have prospects for the future. You must find your way to the super-objective. You know it is somewhere around here (points to the center of the glass). You proceed from here, from your simple action. You know that the super-objective is somewhere up there in the airless space. Presently you pass around the circle and determine the center. In the final analysis you must explore what constitutes the center, the essence, the soul of your role. . . .

LEONIDOV: Can an actor concentrate the entire length of four acts? Or are there still other factors?

STANISLAVSKY: Great actors like Salvini or Yermolayeva can. YerU00AD molayeva requires no other factors. From beginning to end her attention is concentrated both on the stage and behind the wings.

LEONIDOV: The most important thing is that on the stage no word is to be mumbled. Every sentence must be pregnant with thought. But to what extent is this possible through the length of four acts?

STANISLAVSKY: You may live with the super-objective but that need not prevent you from talking to someone between the acts about an unrelated subject. You do not thereby depart from your line. The line of physical action has a staying power; you may return to it very easily. Of course, if such a line is lacking, there will be trouble.

I have in my studio only God knows what talents--but they know how to pay attention to their work. When I said to them: "I give you just three problems: you meet, you look each other over, you get married," they told me this lightened their task so much, they had no trouble playing their parts. I found new adjustments, new situations. They made excellent actors.

LITOVTZEVA: Did you give them the mise en scène?

STANISLAVSKY: The worst mise en scène is the one given by the director. I watched them standing with their back to me doing something. I heard everything and understood everything. I could not invent another mise en scène like it.

I want to create a performance without any mises en scène. Today this wall is open and when the actor comes tomorrow he will not know which wall might be open. He might come to the theater and find that a pavilion is differently placed than it was yesterday, and all the mises en scène are changed. The fact that he has to improvise a mise en scène adds much that is unexpected and interesting. No director can invent such mises en scène.

Translated by Louis Lozowick

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"The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."