Stanislavski System

Stanislavski system is a systematic approach to training actors that the Russian theater practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski developed in the first half of the twentieth century. His system cultivates in what he calls the "art of experiencing" (with which he contrasts the "art of representation"). It mobilizes the actor's conscious thought and will in order to activate other, less-controllable psychological processes (such as emotional experience and subconscious behavior) sympathetically and indirectly. In rehearsal, the actor searches for inner motives to justify action and the definition of what the character seeks to achieve at any given moment (a "task").

Later, Stanislavski further elaborated the system with a more physically grounded rehearsal process that came to be known as the "Method of Physical Action." Minimizing at-the-table discussions, he now encouraged an "active representative," in which the system of dramatic situations are improvised. "The best analysis of a play," Stanislavski argued, "is to take action in the given circumstances." 

Thanks to its promotion and development by acting teachers who were former students and the many translations of Stanislavski's theoretical writings, his system acquired an unprecedented ability to cross cultural boundaries and developed a reach, dominating debates about acting in the West. Stanislavski's ideas have become accepted as common sense so that actors may use them without knowing that they do.

In experiencing the role:

A rediscovery of the "system" must begin with the realization that it is the questions which are important, the logic of their sequence and the consequent logic of their answers. A ritualistic repetition of the exercises contained in the published books, a solemn analysis of a text into bits and tasks will not ensure artistic success, let alone creative vitality. It is the Why? and What for? that matter and the acknowledgment that with every new play and every new role the process begins again.  --Jean Benedetti, acting teacher and Stanislavski's biographer

This principle demands that as an actor, you should "experience feelings analogous" to those that the character experiences "each and every time you do it." Stanislavski approvingly quotes Tommaso Salvini when he insists that actors should really feel what they portray "at every performance, be it the first or the thousandth."

Not all emotional experiences are appropriate, therefore, since the actor's feelings must be relevant and parallel to the character's experience. Stanislavski identified Salvini, whose performance of Othello he had admired in 1882, as the finest representative of the art of experiencing approach. Salvini had disagreed with the French actor Cocquelin over the role emotion ought to play--whether it should be experienced only in rehearsals when preparing the role (Cocquelin's position) or whether it ought to be felt in performance (Salvini's position).

On this basis, Stanislavski contrasts his own "art of experiencing" approach with what he calls the "art of representation" practiced by Cocquelin (in which experiencing forms one of the preparatory stage only) and "hack" acting (in which experiencing plays no part). Stanislavski defines the actor's "experiencing" as playing "credibly," by which he means "thinking, wanting, striving, behaving truthfully, in logical sequence in a human way, within the character, and in complete parallel to it," such that the actor begins to feel "as one with" the role.

Stanislavski's approach seeks to stimulate the will to create afresh and to activate subconscious processes sympathetically and indirectly by means of conscious techniques. In this way, it attempts to recreate in the actor the inner, psychological causes of behavior, rather than to present a simulacrum of their effects. Stanislavski recognized that in practice, a performance is usually a mixture of three trends (experiencing, representation, hack) but felt that experiencing should dominate.

The range of training exercises and rehearsal practices that are designed to encourage and support "experiencing the role" resulted from many years of sustained inquiry and experiment. 

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