Konstantin Stanislavski

Who is this
mysterious man ?
Konstantin Stanislavsky was a Russian
actor, producer, director, and founder of
the Moscow Art Theatre. He was born in
1863 to affluent parents who named him
Konstantin Sergeyevich Alekseyev. The
name Stanislavsky was a stage name that
he gave himself in 1885, when he was 23
years old and entering his prime as an
actor on the Russian stage.
Stanislavsky began acting at the age of 14 in his family-founded dramatic
company, the Alekseyev Circle. Compared to other actors, the young
Stanislavsky felt that his body was awkward and his voice was weak. So he
decided to fix his body, voice, and acting style. He was an analytical,
philosophical young man and a prolific writer. He was also captivated by the
patterns of human life. He documented his observations of human behavior,
created theatrical experiments based on them, and used the rehearsal room as
his laboratory for exploring the nature of acting.
 Stanislavski subjected his acting and direction to a
rigorous process of artistic self-analysis and
re ection… leading us to …
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The Stanislavsky Method of
Acting
Stanislavsky is the father of modern acting. His desire to “live” a role rather
than “perform” a role has in uenced every acting technique we know today.
Stanislavsky wrote detailed notes as he developed his acting system. These
notes became a series of books—“An Actor Prepares,” “Building a Character,”
and “Creating a Role”—that became the foundational text for training actors in
Russia and the United States.
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Stanislavsky worked on his acting
techniques from 1888 until he died in
1938.Many of his earliest followers
learned Stanislavsky’s method from other
actors who studied at his Moscow Art
Theatre. Because Stanislavsky was
continually experimenting with new ideas
—and because many of his students took
his ideas and developed their own
interpretations of his teachings—it can be
challenging to pin down precisely what
techniques are part of the System.
Stanislavsky’s theories don’t fit on a checklist because he never stopped developing new ideas.
He constantly pushed his actors to explore new techniques, and students who studied under him
in the 1890s performed different exercises than his students in the 1920s.Because he changed his
mind frequently, we look at his theories in two waves: early Stanislavsky and late Stanislavsky:
• In his early work, he was most concerned with creating living characters on
stage. His techniques at the time focused almost entirely on psychological
exercises. These included detailed table readings and encouraging his
actors to personally experience the actions they were trying to portray.
• Near the end of his life, Stanislavsky argued for finding harmony between
internal and external acting preparation. Ultimately, he believed that the
best acting connected an actor’s inner world with specific, performable
actions on the stage. American actors can see the difference between early
and late Stanislavsky in the acting techniques of Lee Strasberg ,whose
work is based on early Stanislavsky and Stella Adler , who studied one-on-
one with Stanislavsky later in his life.
Stanislavsky’s principles of acting
The Magic “If”: This is probably the best-known
Stanislavsky concept. He did not believe it was
beneficial or even possible for an actor to truly
believe that staged events were reality. Instead,
he taught actors to put themselves in the
characters' shoes and consider what they
would do if they were in the character’s
situation. The magic if makes the character’s
motivations the same as the actor’s.
Given Circumstances: These are all the specifics
of the character, any facts you can glean from
the script. Given circumstances include
everything from the character’s background to
the time and place of the story and the structure
of the staged world. Given circumstances are
essential because they determine what actions
are possible for a character to perform.
Super-Objective: The super-objective is the
character’s primary motivation in the play.
This is the backbone of the character, the
thing they want more than anything in the
world. All of the actor’s objectives and
actions on the stage should connect to this
super-objective.
Objective: Essentially, the objective is the
answer to the question, “What does the
character want?” The best answer to that
question involves a playable action. As
Stanislavsky writes, “Every objective must
carry in itself the germ of an action.”
Physical Action: Stanislavsky taught that
actors must build a character’s behavior
through specific, concrete, performable
actions. The best actions are achievable on
the stage, within the world of the play.
Communion: Believable action in the play
must be directed to the other actors on
stage, not the audience. When the actors
communicate with one another through
their actions, the performance captures
more human truth than playing actions to
the audience.
Emotional Memory: Stanislavsky
encouraged actors to develop their ability to
observe emotional reactions in their daily
lives. The emotional memories developed
off-stage provide the actor with strong
feelings to draw from when their character
experiences a similar emotion on stage.
Subtext: Subtext is the meaning behind the
words on the page. To determine subtext,
actors must have a rich imagination to
determine why their character says or does
something in the play. Subtext drives the
performance of a play. “Spectators come to
the theatre to hear the subtext,” Stanislavsky
explains. “They can read the text at home.”
Lee Strasberg’s Method developed from
Stanislavsky’s System, and the major difference
between the two is how much emphasis they
place on personal, affecting memories to build
performances. Method acting focuses almost
exclusively on an actor’s interior experiences to
drive a performance, whereas Stanislavsky’s
System emphasizes a balance between interior
thought and physical action.
Stanislavski Technique stems from his theatre practice and is still used by
actors all around the world today. The method is an actor training system made
up of various di erent techniques designed to allow actors to create believable
characters and help them to really put themselves in the place of a
character.some actors who have used his methods are Marlon Brando, Dilip
Kumar, James Dean, Heath Ledger, Joaquin Phoenix, Jeremy Strong, Christian
Bale, Dustin Ho man, Daniel Day-Lewis, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.
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