[ advertising space : webmaster ] eForum: Subscribe! WWWilde Archives Theatre Terms * T -- W : TALENT Talent is not easy to define or dissect. . . . Talent is often buried deep . . . and difficult to evoke. Talent is the felicitous combination of many creative capacities in a person, governed by his generative will. Technique exists above all for those who possess talent [and] inspiration. . . . It serves consciously to stimulate superconscious creativity. The more talent the actor has the more he cares about his technique. A true creative state while on the stage, and all the elements that go to compose it, were the natural endowment of Shchepkin, Ermolova, Duse, Salvini. Nevertheless, they worked unremittingly on their technique. . . . Inspiration came to them by natural means almost every time they repeated a role, yet all their lives they sought an approach to it. In our art it is very dangerous to mature too rapidly . . . without determined effort. . . . A talent may be no more than a pretty toy rattle. Talent includes physical attributes . . . memory, imagination, sensitiveness, impressionability. . . . A person may be ugly in real life . . . but fascinating on the stage, and that is better than being beautiful. One may have only a modicum of various qualities but make a powerful effect if possessed of stage charm. On the contrary a much larger talent may be utterly ineffective, lacking the power to attract. --Building a Character -- Collected Works, Vol. V TECHNIQUE [ See PSYCHO-TECHNIQUE, TALENT, WHAT IS MY SYSTEM? TEMPO-RHYTHM IN MOVEMENT ] It is . . . more demonstrable to speak of inner tempo-rhythm at the same time as outer tempo-rhythm --when it becomes manifest in physical actions. In collective action and speech on the stage you will have to find out and extract from the general chaos of tempo-rhythms those you need and then regroup them so that you can shape your own independent, individual lines of speed or measures of speech, movements, emotional experience in the roles being played by you. . . . The right measure of syllables, words, speech, movements in actions, together with their clear-cut rhythm is of profound significance to an actor. . . . Tempo-rhythm does possess the magic power to affect your inner mood. . . . [It] excites not only your emotion memory, . . . but it also brings your visual memory and its images to life. That is why it is wrong to take tempo-rhythm to mean only measure and speed. We need it in combination with given circumstances which create a mood, we need it for the sake of its own inner substance. A military march, a stroll, a funeral procession may all be measured in the same temporhythm, yet what a world of difference between them as to their inner content . . . which nourishes our feelings. We . . . think, dream, grieve about things to ourselves in a special tempo-rhythm because each moment is manifest in our lives. Wherever there is life there is action; wherever action, movement; where movement, tempo; and where there is tempo there is rhythm. . . . If an actor is intuitively right in sensing what is being said and done on the stage the correct tempo-rhythm will be created of its own accord. . . . We deal with tempo-rhythm the same way a painter does with colours; we make combinations of all sorts of different speeds and measures. . . . Different rhythms and tempi are to be found in simultaneous action not only among the various actors performing in the same scene at the same time, but also inside one of them. At the point when the hero of the play or some particular person has to take a definite and strong stand there are no contradictions and doubts--one all-embracing tempo-rhythm is not only appropriate, it is even necessary. But when, as in Hamlet's soul, resolution wrestles with doubt, various rhythms in simultaneous conjunction are necessary. In such cases several different temporhythms provoke an internal struggle of contradictory origins. This heightens the actor's experience of his part, reinforces inner activity and excites feelings. The tempo-rhythm of a whole play is the temporhythm of the through line of action and the subtextual content of the play. --Building a Character Unfortunately . . . some of my fellow actors and followers adopted my terminology without testing its meanings; they understood me with their heads but not their feelings. What is even worse is that they were completely satisfied with this. . . . they spread my terminology, and purported to teach my method. . . . Nothing can be more harmful to art than the use of a method for its own sake. . . . The means may not be converted into the end goal. --Collected Works, Vols. I and II --Stanislavski's Legacy See WHAT IS MY SYSTEM? TEXT To become the partner of the playwright, to perform his work on the stage, the actor must not only absorb the theme as a whole, but also its verbal form. He must not only know the words but take them into himself organically until he has transformed . . . them into his very own. [Words] not impregnated with inner feeling, or [spoken] separately without relationship [to others] are so many empty sounds. . . . Yet the simplest words, if they convey complex thoughts can change our whole outlook on life. . . . Words can arouse all our five senses. . . . Words on the stage must never lack feeling . . . ideas . . . action. . . . The creative value of the text of a play is in its inner content, in its subtext. --Building a Character --Creating a Role THEATRE One of a human being's principal feelings is a . . . longing for beauty . . . life-giving beauty. . . . Science, knowledge, bereft of aesthetic quality, is arid, . . . for that quality is what ennobles and enlivens everything it touches. The field of aesthetics is the field of the theatre. The theatre possesses the greatest riches, the most powerful means for affecting thousands of spectators at one time and arousing their artistic emotions. The art of the theatre is so vivid, pictorial, it illustrates a play so fully . . . that it is accessible to all from professor to peasant, from youth to old age. Good theatre will always exist and be the prime goal of the art of the actor. --Collected Works, Vol. VI THEATRE STUDIO This is neither a ready-made theatre nor a school for beginners, but a laboratory for more or less mature actors. A Studio should offer an opportunity to its members for testing their creative powers. It should facilitate the exploratory work of scene designers, directors of plays and all the others who work in the theatre. . . . Before an artist goes to work on a big painting he makes many sketches. If he is not satisfied with one of them he tears it up and makes another. . . . But in the theatre one cannot tear up the scenery, the many costumes, the necessary adjuncts of any enterprise on the stage. And what about the tremendous human forces expended on it? Our art is collective and complex. Even its trial sketches are costly in money and effort. But a Studio, thanks to its modest dimensions, although it does not obviate the difficulties and expenses of trial sketches, nevertheless does offer the possibility of making them. In every theatre there are capable artists who for one reason or another are not thoroughly caught up in their work. . . . Let them and directors of plays go into Studios and put on a series of productions. . . . In order to develop artistic creativeness they must have initiative and that is possible to develop only when there is a free field in which to do so. . . . Each will arrive at the goal of our art in his own way, through his own mistakes and his own achievements. Look to the oldsters in the theatre for experience, wisdom, endurance, and to the youngsters for effective initiative and intense devotion to work. --Collected Works, Vol. VI --My Life in Art THEATRICAL EMOTIONS I took simple theatrical emotions--a kind of hysterical fit--as an outburst of inspiration . . . and I was mistaken. No matter how skilful an actor may be in his choice of stage conventions, because of their inherent mechanical quality he cannot move the spectators by them. He must have some supplementary means of arousing them, so he takes refuge in what we call theatrical emotions. These are a sort of artificial imitation of the periphery of physical feelings. If you clench your fists and stiffen the muscles of your body, or breathe spasmodically, you can bring yourself to a state of great physical intensity. This is often thought by the public to be an expression of a powerful temperament aroused by passion. Actors of a more nervous type can arouse theatrical emotions by artificially screwing up their nerves; this produces theatrical hysteria, an unhealthy ecstasy which is usually just as lacking in inner content as is the artificial physical excitement. In either case we are not dealing with acting art, but with false acting. Here are no true feelings of the actor as a human being as adapted to the role he is playing --what we have is theatrical emotion. Nevertheless this kind of emotion does have its effect, it hints at life, makes something of an impression; because many people are not capable of discriminating in the quality of the impression made, they are satisfied with a coarse imitation of emotions. Even the actors of this type are themselves often convinced that they are serving the ends of true art. Muscular stimulation which derives not from feelings but from sheer mechanical strain, excludes all possibility of thought and true emotional experience. --An Actor Prepares --My Life in Art THROUGH LINE OF ACTION The main theme . . . gave birth to the writing of the play. It should also be the fountainhead of the actor's artistic creation. That inner line of effort that guides the actors from the beginning to the end of the play we call continuity or the through-going action. . . . The main line of action and the main theme are organically part of the play and they cannot be disregarded without detriment to the play itself. The through line of action is a most powerful stimulant . . . and means of affecting the subconscious. That inner line . . . galvanizes all the small units and objectives . . . and directs them toward the superobjective. From then on they all serve the common purpose. . . . Also this impetus. . . . must be continuous. --An Actor Prepares TRUE ACTING One cannot always create subconsciously and with inspiration. No such genius exists in the world. Therefore, our art teaches us first of all to create consciously and truly, because that will best prepare the way for the blossoming of the subconscious, which is inspiration. The more you have of conscious creative moments in your role the more chance you will have of a flow of inspiration. To play truly means to be right, logical, coherent, to think, strive, feel and act in unison with your role. If you take all these internal processes, and adapt them to the spiritual and physical life of the person you are representing, we call that living the part. To play truly, you must follow the course of right objectives, like posts to guide you across a treeless plain. --An Actor Prepares TYPES In the world of dramatic art it has long been customary to divide actors into a number of categories: good, villainous, gay, suffering, bright, stupid, etc. This division of actors into groups is called type-casting. Therefore there are the following types: Tragedians (men and women), dramatic lovers, second-line lovers and dandies, dramatic and comic old men and women, noble fathers, character parts, moralists, comedians and simple-minded creatures, farce comedians, vaudeville lovers, grandes dames, dramatic and comic ing¨¦nues, vaudeville actors who can sing and play second- and third-rate parts. The most ardent partisans of the custom of typecasting are the poorly endowed actors, whose range is not broad but rather one-sided. . . . Anyone who has even the most rudimentary external or inner gifts and experience on the stage can find one or two, even five roles, that he can play reasonably well if the main qualifications of these parts are suited to his own nature. All he has to do is to collect about ten such parts, differentiating them by changing his clothes, beards and wigs, and then he can qualify as an actor of such and such a type. A true artist is of a different opinion: he does not hold with type-casting. . . . To my way of thinking there can be only one type of actor--the character actor. Perhaps this is beyond the powers of those who are not gifted. . . . Then they will be divided into only two categories: good actors and bad actors. . . . This is the best filter, one which will protect the theatre from being flooded with mediocrities. People are always attracted by what they have not, and actors often use the stage to receive there what they cannot get in real life. . . . But the misunderstanding of one's true ability and calling in the art is the strongest obstacle in the further development of an actor. It is a blind alley which he enters for tens of years, and from which he cannot get out until he realizes his mistake and returns to the avenue that leads to the gates of pure art. The roles for which you haven't the appropriate feelings are those you will never play well. . . . They will be excluded from your repertory. Actors are not in the main divided by types. The differences are made by their inner qualities. --An Actor Prepares -- Collected Works, Vol. V --My Life in Art-- Stanislavski's Legacy WHAT IS MY SYSTEM? My system is the result of lifelong searchings. . . . I have groped after a method of work for actors which will enable them to create the image of a character, breathe into it the life of a human spirit and, by natural means, embody it on the stage in a beautiful, artistic form. . . . The foundations for this method were my studies of the nature of an actor. The first [proposition] is this: There are no formulas . . . on how to become a great actor, or how to play this or that part. [It] is made up of steps towards the true creative state of an actor on the stage. When it is true it is the . . . normal state of a person in real life. But to achieve that normal living state . . . an actor . . . has to be: (a) physically free, in control of free muscles; (b) his attention must be infinitely alert; (c) he must be able to listen and observe on the stage as he would in real life, that is to say be in contact with the person playing opposite him; (d) he must believe in everything that is happening on the stage that is related to the play. The second proposition. . . is: A true inner creative state on the stage makes it possible for an actor to execute actions necessary for him to take in accordance with the terms of the play, whether inner psychological actions or external, physical ones. . . . Actually in each physical act there is an inner psychological motive which impels physical action, as in every psychological inner action there is also physical action, which expresses its psychic nature. The union of these two actions results in organic action on the stage. That action then is determined by the subject of the play, its idea, the character of a certain part and the circumstances set up by the playwright. In order to make it easier for you as an actor to take action on the stage, put yourself first of all in the circumstances proposed by the playwright for the character you are playing. Ask yourself: what would I do if the same thing should happen to me as it does in the play to the character I am playing? . . . Find out all the reasons which justify the actions of your character and then act without reflecting about just where your "own" actions end and "his" begin. The third proposition (is): True organic action . . . is bound to give rise to sincere feelings. Therefore the summing up is: On the stage a true inner creative state, action and feeling result in natural life on the stage in the form of one of the characters. It is by this means that you will come closest to what we call "metamorphosis," always providing of course that you have properly understood the play, its idea, its subject and plot, and have shaped inside yourself the character of one of the dramatis personae. The power of this method lies in the fact that it was not . . . invented. . . . it is based on the laws of nature. The system is not a hand-me-down suit you can put on and walk off in. . . . It is a whole way of life; you have to educate yourself in it. . . . You cannot hope to do this all at once. With strong desire, if you work, if you come to know your own nature, and discipline it, then with talent you will become a true artist. With the gradual study of the method . . . you will find it is not as complicated in execution as it may appear to be in theory. My system is for all nations. All peoples possess the same human nature: it manifests itself in varying ways, but my system is no deterrent to that. --An Actor Prepares --Building a Character -- Stanislavski's Legacy dictionary pages : acting directing script ... dictionary/glossary in pix?

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GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCES
This expression means . . . the story of the play, the facts, events, epoch, time and place of action, conditions of life, the actors' and regisseur's (director's) interpretation, the mise-en-scene, the production, the sets, the costumes, properties, lighting and sound effects--all the circumstances that are given to an actor to take into account as he creates his role.
[The Magic ] If is the starting point, the given circumstances, the development. -- An Actor Prepares

HOME-WORK
For an actor, more than for an artist in other fields, work at home is indispensable.

Whereas a singer has to be concerned only with his voice and breathing, a dancer with his physical apparatus, and a pianist with his hands or a wind instrumentalist with his breathing and lip technique-an actor is responsible [at one and the same time] for his arms, his legs, his eyes, his face, the plasticity of his whole body, his rhythm, his motion, and all the programme of our activities here in school. These exercises . . . go on through your whole lives as artists. The great majority of actors are convinced that they need to work only at rehearsals and that at home they can enjoy their leisure. But this is not so. In rehearsals an actor merely clarifies the work he should be doing at home. At home an actor should do work on himself to correct shortcomings which have been pointed out to him by his instructor. --Building a Character * Stanislavsky

"I AM"
In our theatre parlance this means that I have put myself into the very centre of imaginary circumstances, . . . that I exist at the heart of an imaginary life, in a world of imaginary things, . . . and that I am on the point of going into action . . . on my own responsibility.

As a participant . . . you cannot see yourself, but only what surrounds you. . . . You react with your inner nature to what is going on as truly as in real life.

If you sense the truth in a play subconsciously, your faith in it will naturally follow, and the state of "I am." . . . The smallest action or sensation, the slightest technical means, can acquire a deep significance . . . only if it is pushed to its limit of possibility, to the boundary of human truth, faith and the sense of "I am." When this point is reached, your whole spiritual and physical make-up will function normally. -- Collected Works, Vol. II

IDEAL ARTIST
Imagine some ideal artist who has decided to devote himself to a single, large purpose in life; to elevate and entertain the public by a high form of art; to expound the hidden, spiritual beauties in the writings of poetic geniuses. . . . His whole life will be consecrated to this high cultural mission.

Another type of artist may use his personal success to convey his own ideas and feelings to the masses. Great people may have a variety of high purposes.

In their cases the super-objective of any one production will be merely a step in the fulfillment of an important life purpose, . . . a supreme-objective. --An Actor Prepares * Stanislavsky

IMAGINARY OBJECTS
When you reach the point of playing Hamlet, threading a way through his intricate psychology to the moment when he kills the King, will it be important for you to have a life-size sword in your hand? If you lack one, will you be unable to finish your performance? You can kill the King without a sword and you can light a fire without matches. What needs to burn is your imagination.

[In] communion with an imaginary, unreal, nonexistent object, such as an apparition . . . some people try to delude themselves into thinking that they really see it. They exhaust all their energy and attention on such an effort. But an experienced actor knows that the point does not lie in the apparition itself, but in his inner relation to it. Therefore he tries to give an honest answer to his own question: What should I do if a ghost appeared before me? --An Actor Prepares

IMAGINATION
Imagination creates things that can be or can happen. . . . Every movement you make on the stage, every word you speak, is the result of the right life of your imagination.

The creative process starts with the imaginative invention of a poet, a writer, the director of the play, the actor, the scene designer, and others in the production, so the first in order should be imagination.

If imagination plays such an important part in an actor's work, what can he do if he lacks it? He must develop it or else leave the stage. . . . It all depends on what kind of an imagination you have. . . . The kind that has initiative . . . will work . . . untiringly, whether you are awake or asleep. Then there is the kind that lacks initiative, but is easily aroused. . . . Observation of the nature of gifted people does disclose to us a way to control the emotion needed in a part. This way lies through the action of the imagination which to a far greater degree is subject to the effect of conscious will. We cannot directly act on our emotions, but we can prod our creative fantasy and [it] stirs up our emotion or affective memory, calling up from its secret depths, beyond the reach of consciousness, elements of already experienced emotions, and re-groups them to correspond with the images which arise in us. . . . That is why a creative fantasy is a fundamental, absolutely necessary gift for an actor.

There are various aspects of the life of the imagination. . . . We can use our inner eye to see all sorts of visual images, living creatures, human faces, their features, landscapes, the material world of objects, settings and so forth. With our inner ear we can hear all sorts of melodies, voices, intonations and so forth. We can feel things in imagination at the prompting of our sensation and emotion memory.

There are actors of things seen and actors of things heard. The first are gifted with an especially fine inner vision and the second with sensitive inner hearing. For the first type, to which I myself belong, the easiest way to create an imaginary life is with the help of visual images. For the second type it is the image of sound that helps.

We can cherish all these visual, audible, or other images; we can enjoy them passively . . . be the audience of our own dreams. Or we can take an active part in those dreams.

Every invention of the actor's imagination must be thoroughly worked out. . . . It must be able to answer all the questions (when, where, why, how) that he asks himself when he is driving his inventive faculties on to make a more and more definite picture of a make-believe existence.

[The actor] must feel the challenge physically as well as intellectually because the imagination . . . can reflexively affect our physical nature and make it act. . . . Not a step should be taken on the stage without the cooperation of your imagination. --An Actor Prepares
--Building a Character * Stanislavsky

IMITATION
In my . . . admiration for a great actor I attempted to imitate him. . . . This has its good and its bad side: copying a great example can train you in a good pattern, but it also checks your individual creativeness. . . .I was only repeating what the other person had experienced in his emotions. . . . Since my imitation was purely external . . . I strained myself physically to produce feelings. . . . Finally I realized the simple truth that such an approach to a part can never produce the image [of a character]. --My Life in Art * Stanislavsky

IMPROVISATION
When teaching is oriented toward a practical and even interesting objective it is easier to convince and influence students. . . . Our point of departure in training actors is to have them learn by acting [improvisations]. . . . One cannot go on teaching for years in a classroom and only at the end ask a student to act. In that space of time he will have lost all creative faculty. . . . Creativeness must never cease, the only question being the choice of material on which to base it. . . . In our kind of acting we make frequent use of improvisations. . . . This kind of creativeness gives a freshness and an immediacy to a performance.

In the beginning it is best to take subjects which are within your reach, and not too overburdened with complicated psychology . . . but even the most primary kind of exercises must be carried to the point of mastery, of virtuosity in execution. It is not the job of teachers to give instruction in how to create, we should only push students in the right direction, while training their taste, requiring from them the observance of the laws of nature, and the execution of their simplest exercises carried to the point of art, which is to say absolute truthfulness and technical perfection.

Improvisations which they work out themselves are an excellent way to develop the imagination. . . . Student actors who have been trained on improvisations later on find it easy to use their imaginative fancy on a play where this is needed.

In addition to the development of imagination improvisations . . . have another asset: while working on one an actor naturally, without even perceiving it, learns the creative laws of organic nature and the methods of psycho-technique. -- Collected Works, Vol. III Stanislavsky

INNER ARDOUR
Anything you do on the stage with coldness inside you will destroy you because it will encourage in you the habit of automatic, mechanical action, without imagination.

What can be more effective, fan your ardour, excite you inwardly, than an imaginary fiction which has taken possession of you?

A true artist is on fire with what he sees going on all around him, he is ardently interested in life, it becomes for him the object of his study and his passions. . . . He tries to record the impressions he receives from the outside, and as an artist . . . stamp them on his heart. . . . One cannot be cold when working in art. . . . You have to possess a certain degree of inner warmth. Our mind can be set to work at any time. But it is not sufficient. We must have the ardent and direct cooperation of our emotions, desires, and all the other elements of our inner creative state. . . . Just as yeast causes fermentation, so the sensing of the life of his role imparts a kind of inner warmth, the ebullition necessary to the actor.

Artistic enthusiasm is a motive power in creativeness. Excited fascination which accompanies enthusiasm is a subtle critic, an incisive inquirer, and the best guide into the depths of feeling which are unattainable to a conscious approach.

The ability to fire his feelings, his will, and his mind --that is one of the qualities of an actor's talent, one of the principal objectives of his inner technique. --An Actor Prepares
--Creating a Role

INNER CREATIVE STATE ON THE STAGE
When an actor comes out on the stage before an audience he may lose his self-possession from fright, embarrassment . . . [or] a sense of overwhelming responsibility. . . . At that moment he is incapable of speaking, listening . . . thinking, feeling . . . , or even moving in an ordinary human way. He feels a nervous need to gratify the public, to show himself and to hide his own state . . . (which we call a mechanical, theatrical mood).

I clearly realized the harm inherent in the mechanical, theatrical mood, so I began to search for some other spiritual and physical state while on the stage which would be beneficial rather than harmful to the creative process. . . . My observations taught me . . . that in the creative state a large role is played by the absence of all physical tension, the complete subordination of the body to the actor's will. . . . Then I perceived that creativeness is first of all conditioned by the complete concentration of an actor's entire nature.

So an actor turns to his spiritual and physical creative instrument. His mind, will and feelings combine to mobilize all of his inner "elements." . . . Out of this fusion of elements arises an important inner state . . . the inner creative mood. The habit of being daily on the stage and in the right creative state is what produces actors who are masters of their art. --An Actor Prepares
--My Life in Art INNER IMAGES AND HEARING
As long as we are acting creatively this film (an unbroken series of images) will be thrown on the screen of our inner vision, making vivid the circumstances among which we are moving. . . .

As to these inner images. . . . is it correct to say we feel them inside of us? We possess the faculty to see things which are not there by making a mental picture of them. This inner stream of images . . . is a great help to the actor in fixing his attention on the inner life of his part.

The same process occurs when we are dealing with sounds. We hear imaginary noises with an inner ear. --An Actor Prepares

INNER MOTIVE FORCES
The first, and most important master [is] feeling . . . unfortunately it is not tractable. . . . Since you cannot begin your work unless your feelings happen to function of their own accord, it is necessary for you to have recourse to some other master. . . . Who is it? The second master is the mind. . . . Your mind can be a motive power in . . . your creative process. Is there a third? . . . If longings could put your creative apparatus to work and direct it spiritually . . . we have found our third master--will. Consequently we have three impelling movers in our psychic life.

Since these three forces form a triumvirate, inextricably bound up together, what you say of the one necessarily concerns the other two. . . . This combined power is of utmost importance to us actors and we should be gravely mistaken not to use it for our practical ends. . . . Actors whose feelings over-balance their intellects will, naturally, in playing Romeo or Othello, emphasize the emotional side. Actors in whom the will is the most powerful attribute will play Macbeth or Brand and underscore ambition, or fanaticism. The third type will unconsciously stress, more than is necessary, the intellectual shadings of a part like Hamlet or Nathan the Wise.

It is, however, necessary not to allow any one of the three elements to crush out either of the others and thereby upset the balance and necessary harmony. Our art recognizes all three types and in their creative work all three forces play leading parts. --An Actor Prepares

INSPIRATION
The most important [difficulty] is the abnormal circumstance of an actor's creative work. . . . Other [non-performing] artists can create when they are under the influence of inspiration. But an actor himself is obliged to call forth his inspiration at the exact time he is advertised to come out and perform. . . . The very best that can happen is to have the actor completely carried away by the play; then regardless of his own will he lives the part. . . . subconsciously and with inspiration. No such genius exists. . . . Therefore our art teaches us first of all to create consciously . . . because that will best prepare the way for . . . inspiration. Realism, and even naturalism, in the inner preparation of a part is essential, because it causes your subconscious to work and induces outbursts of inspiration. . . . We need a creative . . . subconscious and the place to look for it above all is in a stirring objective. . . . When an actor is completely absorbed by some profoundly moving objective, so that he throws his whole being passionately into its execution, he reaches a state we call inspiration.

If today you are in good form and are blessed with inspiration, forget about technique and abandon yourself to your feelings. But an actor should remember that inspirations appear only on holidays. Therefore there must be some other well-prepared course for him to follow and which he can control. . . . The easiest one for him to establish is the line of physical actions. . . . Let him absorb all the technical means at his disposal until they become second nature. Let him adopt the given circumstances of his part so completely that they become his very own. Only then may his ultrasensitive inspiration decide . . . to emerge, and take into her power and direction his creative initiative.

Give up chasing this phantom, inspiration. Leave it to that miraculous fairy nature. --An Actor Prepares

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LIMITATIONS
Some actors do not fully realize the limitations placed on them by nature. They undertake problems beyond their powers to solve. The comedian wants to play tragedy, the old man to be a jeune premier, the simple type longs for heroic parts and the soubrette for the dramatic. This can only result in forcing, impotence, and stereotyped, mechanical action. These are shackles and your only means of getting out of them is to study your art and yourself in relation to it. --An Actor Prepares

LIVING A PART
The approach we have chosen--the art of living a part--[asserts] that the main factor in any form of creativeness is the life of a human spirit, that of the actor and his part, their joint feelings and subconscious creation. . . . What we hold in highest regard are impressions made on our emotions, which leave a lifelong mark on the spectator and transform actors into real, living beings. . . . Aside from the fact that it opens up avenues for inspiration, living a part helps the artist to carry out one of his main objectives. His job is not to present merely the external life of his character. He must fit his own human qualities to the life of this other person, and pour into it all of his own soul. . . . An artist takes the best that is in him and carries it over on the stage. The form will vary according to the necessities of the play, but the human emotions of the artist will remain alive, and they cannot be replaced by anything else.

Therefore, no matter how much you act, how many parts you take, you should never allow yourself any exception to the rule of using your own feelings. Salvini said: "The great actor . . . should feel the thing he is portraying . . . not only once or twice while he is studying his part, but to a greater or lesser degree every time he plays it, no matter whether it is the first or thousandth time."

Always act in your own person. You can never get away from yourself. The moment you lose yourself on the stage marks the departure from truly living your part and the beginning of exaggerated, false acting. Spiritual realism, truth of artistic feelings . . . these are the most difficult (achievements) of our art, they require long, arduous inner preparation.

The difference between my art and that [practiced by others] is the difference between "seeming" and "being."' --An Actor Prepares
--Building a Character

LIVING IMAGE
Each dramatic and artistic image, created on the stage, is unique and cannot be repeated, just as in nature.

Without an external form neither your inner characterisation, nor the spirit of your image will reach the public. The external characterisation explains and illustrates.

An actor is called upon to create an image while he is on the stage and not just show himself off to the public. . . . All actors who are artists, creators of images, should make use of characterisation.

There are some actors, for whom the image they have created becomes their alter ego, their double. The image never leaves them. . . . They constantly watch the image, not in order to copy it, but because they find themselves under its spell, in its power, and they act thus or thus because they are living the life of their image. --An Actor Prepares
--Building a Character

LOGIC AND CONTINUITY
In every phase of our work . . . we constantly had occasion to speak of logic and continuity. . . . They are of prime importance. . . . Creating must be logical and have continuity. Even illogical and incoherent characters must be represented within the logical plan and framework of a whole play, a whole performance.

. . . How to accomplish this? By means of physical actions . . . because they are easier to establish, materially and visually, and are yet closely tied to all the other elements. . . . It is easier to orient one's self with their aid. . . . Having prepared a logical and coherent line of physical actions, . . . we discover that parallel to it will run a logical and coherent line of emotion. . . . Come to the tragic part of a role . . . gradually and logically, by carrying out correctly your sequence of external physical actions, and by believing in them. . . . Do not think about your emotions. Think about what you have to do. If you do not adhere strictly to an absolute pattern of logic and continuity you are in danger of conveying passions, images, actions in a "generalized" form.

If an actor keeps in constant exercise . . . he will come to know practically all human actions from the point of view of their component parts, their consecutiveness and their logic. But this work must be done daily, constantly, like the vocalizing of a singer, or the exercises of a dancer. . . . systematic and absolutely valid exercises of actions without props. --An Actor Prepares --Building a Character --My Life in Art

MAGIC IF
From the moment of the appearance of [the Magic] If the actor passes from the plane of actual reality into the plane of another life, created and imagined by him. In order to be emotionally involved in the imaginary world which the actor builds on the basis of a play, in order to be caught up in the action on the stage, he must believe in it. . . . This does not mean he should give himself up to anything like hallucination, . . . quite the contrary. . . . He does not forget that he is surrounded by stage scenery and props. . . . He asks himself: "But if this were real, how would I react? What would I do?" . . . And normally, naturally . . . this If acts as a lever to lift him into a world . . . of creativity.

The secret of the effect of If [is] that it does not use fear or force. Another quality: it arouses an inner and real activity. . . . an instantaneous inner stimulus, . . . adds a whole series of contingencies based on your own experience in life, and you will see how easy it will be for you sincerely to believe in the possibility of what you are called upon to do on the stage. --An Actor Prepares
--My Life in Art

MEMORY
At moments of intense creativeness one's memory may fail . . . and break the continuity of the line of transmitting the verbal text of the play. . . . This preoccupation with remembering the words, when an actor is unsure of himself . . . deprives him . . . of the capacity to give himself up freely and . . . wholly to his ardent creative mood. . . . It is all important for an actor to have a good memory. -- Collected Works, Vol. I

MISE EN SCÈNE The responsibility for creating this ensemble, for its artistic integrity, the expressiveness of the over-all performance lies with the director. In the period when the director was a despot . . . he worked out the whole plan of the production, he indicated the general outlines of the parts, taking into consideration, of course, the participating actors, and he showed them all the "business." . . . But now I have arrived at the conviction that the creative work of the director must proceed in unison with that of the actors and not outdistance it nor hold it back. He must facilitate the creativeness of the actors, supervise and integrate it, taking care that it evolves naturally and only from the true artistic kernel of the play. This joint work of the director and the actors, this search for the essential kernel of the plays, begins with analysis and proceeds along the line of through-going action. This applies also to the external shaping of a performance. That should be, in my opinion, the objective of a director nowadays. --An Actor Prepares
-- Stanislavski'sLegacy

OBJECTIVES Life, people, circumstances . . . constantly put up barriers. . . . Each of these barriers presents us with the objective of getting through it. The division of a play into units, to study its structure, has one purpose. . . . There is another, far more important, inner reason. At the heart of every unit lies a creative objective. . . . Every object must carry in itself the germs of action. . . . You should not try to express the meaning of your objective in terms of a noun . . . but . . . always employ a verb. . . . [e.g. "I wish" or "I wish to do--"] This objective engenders outbursts of desires for the purposes of creative aspiration. . . . It is important that an actor's objectives be in accordance with his capacities. . . . At first it is better to choose simple physical but attractive objectives. . . . Every physical objective will contain something of a psychological objective, they are indissolubly bound together. . . . Do not try too hard to define the dividing line, . . . go by your feelings always tipping the scales slightly in favour of the physical. . . . The right execution of a physical objective will help to create a right psychological state.

An actor should know how to distinguish among the qualities of objectives, avoiding the irrelevant ones and establishing those appropriate to his part. Appropriate objectives must be on our side of the footlights: personal yet analogous to those of the character portrayed; truthful so that you yourself, the actors playing with you and your audience, can believe in their clear-cut [purpose]. They must be distinctly woven into the fabric of your part; active . . . [to] push your role ahead and not let it stagnate. Let me warn you against . . . purely motor [objectives] which are prevalent in the theatre and lead to mechanical performance. --An Actor Prepares
--Creating a Role

OBSERVATION An actor should be observant not only on the stage but also in real life. He should concentrate with all is being on whatever attracts his attention. . . . There are people gifted by nature with powers of observation. . . . When you hear such people talk you are struck by the amount that an unobservant person misses. . . . Average people have no conception of how to observe the facial expression, the look of the eye, the tone of the voice, in order to comprehend the state of mind of the persons with whom they talk. . . . If they could do this . . . their creative work would be immeasurably richer, finer and deeper. This . . . calls for a tremendous amount of work, time, desire to succeed, and systematic practice.

How can we teach unobservant people to notice what nature and life are trying to show them? First of all they must be taught to look at, listen to, and to hear what is beautiful. Such habits elevate their minds and arouse feelings which will leave deep traces in their emotion memories. Nothing in life is more beautiful than nature, and it should be the object of constant observation. . . . Take a little flower, or a petal from it, or a spider web, or a design made by frost on the window pane. Try to express in words what it is in these things that gives pleasure. Such an effort causes you to observe the object more closely, more effectively . . . and do not shun the darker side of nature. . . . Disfigurement often . . . sets off beauty. . . . Search out both beauty and its opposite, and define them, learn to know and see them. . . . Next turn to what the human race has produced in art, literature, music. --An Actor Prepares

Performance (Stan)

PERSPECTIVE IN CHARACTER BUILDING Perspective means: the calculated, harmonious inter-relationship and distribution of the parts in a whole play or role. . . . There can be no acting . . . without its appropriate perspective. Only after an actor has thought through, analyzed and felt himself to be a living person inside his whole part there opens up to him the long, beautiful beckoning perspective. . . .

Against this depth of background he can play out whole actions, speak whole thoughts. . . . When we come to the laying on of colour along the lines of artistic perspective, we again are obliged to adhere to qualities of consecutiveness, tone and harmony. As in painting, artistic colouring does a very great deal to make it possible to distinguish planes. . . . The important parts . . . are most highly coloured, whereas those relegated to the background are less vivid.

As a part moves along we have . . . two perspectives in mind. The one is related to the character portrayed, the other to the actor. Actually Hamlet, as a figure in play . . . knows nothing of what the future has in store for him, whereas the actor who plays the part must bear this constantly in mind; he is obliged to keep in perspective.

We must not forget one extremely important quality inherent in perspective. It lends a breadth, a sweep, a momentum to our inner experiences and external actions.

Perspective and the through line of action are not identical but . . . the one is the other's closest aid. --Building a Character

[ method.vtheatre.net ]

PLOT There are plays (inferior comedies, melodramas, vaudeville, revues, farces) where the external plot is the mainspring of the action. The high points are the facts of a murder, a death, a wedding, the dumping of flour or water on one of the characters. . . . In other plays the plot as such has little significance. . . . In such plays it is not the facts but the relationship of the characters to them that constitutes the centre of interest. In such plays facts are needed only to the extent that they provide motivation and opportunity for the actors to express their inner content. Chekhov's plays are in this category. The best thing is when form and content are in complete harmony. There the life of a human spirit in a part is inseparable from the facts of the plot. . . . Let the actor learn by heart and write down the existing facts, their sequence and their external physical connection with one another. . . . With growing experience of the play and its contents this method helps not only to pick out the facts and orient oneself in relation to them but also to get at that inner substance, their interrelationships and interdependence. -- Collected Works, Vol. IV

PRE-PERFORMANCE PREPARATION
Most actors before each performance put on costumes and make-up so that their external appearance will approximate that of the character they are to play. But they forget the most important part, which is the inner preparation. Why do they devote such particular attention to their external appearance? Why do they not put make-up and costume on their souls?

The inner preparation for a part is as follows: instead of rushing into his dressing-room at the last moment, an actor should (especially if he has a big part) arrive there two hours ahead of his entrance and begin to get himself in form. You know that a sculptor kneads his clay before he begins to use it, and a singer warms up his voice before a concert. We need to do something similar to tune our inner strings, to test the keys, the pedals, and the stops.

We must exercise great care, each time we have a creative piece of work to do, to prepare . . . a true inner creative mood. To prepare yourself, go over the fundamental parts of your role. You do not need to develop them fully. What you must do is ask: Am I sure of my attitude toward this or that particular place? Do I really feel this or that action? . . . Think up various suppositions and suggest possible circumstances into which you put yourself. . . . All these preparatory exercises test your expressive apparatus . . . and will tune up your inner creative instrument. --An Actor Prepares

PUBLIC SOLITUDE In a circle of light on the stage in the midst of darkness, you have the sensation of being entirely alone. . . . This is called solitude in public. . . . During a performance, before an audience of thousands, you can always enclose yourself in this circle, like a snail in its shell. . . . You can carry it with you wherever you go. --An Actor Prepares

REALISM Among theatre leaders, actors, spectators, critics, there are many who prefer theatricality and artificiality. . . . They are surfeited with realistic actuality on the stage. . . . "Only not the way it is in real life!" they say. To get away from it they search out the most exaggerated anti-realistic forms.

In contrast to them are those . . . who prefer and accept in the theatre only natural truthfulness, realism. They are not afraid of the catharsis of their souls through powerful impressions. . . . All they want on the stage is a reflection of the real life of human souls.

In both cases there are excesses. . . . In the first the sharpness of the theatricality is carried to the point of the absurd and in the second the simplicity and "naturalness" is pushed to the limits of ultranaturalism. . . . For example: An actor exaggerates truth in a death scene to an undesirable degree . . . with cramps, nausea, groans, horrible grimaces . . . indulging in naturalism for its own sake . . . instead of being pre-occupied with the last moments of a human soul.

Truth on the stage . . . must be real, but rendered poetic through creative imagination. Impressionism, and other "isms" in art are accepted only in so far as they represent realism in a refined, enobled, distilled form. --An Actor Prepares
-- Collected Works, Vols. II and VII REPEATED FEELINGS
Do we, as a matter of fact, ever feel things [on the stage] for the first time? Feelings we have never experienced in real life? . . . These direct, powerful and vivid emotions do not make their appearance on the stage in the way you think. . . . They flash out in short episodes. . . . In that form they are highly welcome. . . . The unfortunate part about them is that we cannot control them. They control us. Therefore we have no choice but to leave it to nature. . . . We will only hope that they will work with the part and not at cross purposes to it.

An infusion of unexpected, unconscious feelings is very tempting. It is what we dream about, and it is a favourite aspect of our art. But you must not . . . minimize the significance of repeated feelings drawn emotion memory--on the contrary, you should be completely devoted to them, because they are the only means by which you can, to any degree, influence inspiration.
--An Actor Prepares

[ exposition in method: how you start before you say you first line ]

ROLE INSIDE THE ACTOR
Among the large number of parts played [by an actor] there are some that seem to have been creating themselves in his inner consciousness for a long time. He has only to touch it and it comes to life without any searching or mechanical preparation. . . . The role and its image have been created within him by nature itself. . . . The actor ceases to act, he begins to live the life of the play. . . . The author's words become his words. . . . This is a . . . miracle. . . for the sake of which we are willing to make any sacrifices, to be patient, suffer and work.

In . . . separate moments, or even throughout whole scenes, you feel yourself inside your role, in the atmosphere of the play, and some of the sensations of the character you portray come very close to your own. . . . This merging with your part we call the achievement of a sense of being inside your part, and its being inside of you.

It is a great piece of good fortune when an actor can instantly grasp the play with his whole being, his mind and his feelings. In such happy but rare circumstances it is better to forget all about laws and methods, and give himself up to the power of creative nature. But these circumstances are so rare that one cannot count on them. They are as rare as the moments when an actor immediately grasps an important line of direction, a basic section of a play. . . . Why is it that some parts of a play come to life . . . while others [leave us] without feeling? . . . That happens because the places which are infused with immediate life are congenial to us, familiar to our emotions. . . . Later on, when we become better acquainted with and feel closer to the play, . . . we shall find that [these] . . . points of light grow . . . until they finally fill out our entire role. --Creating a Role

SCENERY AND PROPERTIES
Scenery and properties, all the externals of a production, are of value only in so far as they enhance the expressiveness of the dramatic action, the acting. . . . Light and sound play an important part in our inner lives: twilight, a mist, or a sunset have an entirely different effect on us from a sunrise. . . . But [on the stage] they are effective only when they are permeated by artistic truth, and are not just everyday, humdrum facts. . . . In other words it is of no matter whether the scenery is conventional, stylized or realistic, . . . we can welcome any setting provided only that it is appropriate. Life is itself so complex and varied that there are not enough kinds of scenic inventiveness to do full justice to all its aspects. . . . The important thing is that the sets and the whole production of a play be convincing . . . to the audience and to the actors. -- Collected Works, Vol. VI

SCORE OF A ROLE
Let us call this long catalogue of minor and major objectives, units, scenes, acts, the score of a role. . . . One can call them natural objectives. There can be no doubt that such a score, based on such objectives, will draw the actor--physically speaking--closer to the real life of his part. [It] . . . stirs the actor to physical action.

The first requirement is that the score have the power to attract. . . . excite the actor not only by its external physical truth but above all by its inner beauty. . . . Let us now add depth to the score. . . . The difference will lie in the inner life . . . inner impulses, psychological intimations . . . that constitute the inner tone. . . . We can experience varying emotions when playing a score with the same objectives but in different keys . . . quiet or joyful . . . sad or . . . disturbed or in an excited key. . . . One's score which is to portray human passions, must be rich, colourful, and varied. . . . An actor must know the nature of a passion . . . how to cull [from the text] the component units, objectives, moments, which in their sum total add up to a human passion. . . . The score saturates every particle of an actor's inner being. . . . In this innermost . . . core . . . all the remaining objectives converge, as it were, into one superobjective . . . the concentration of the entire score. . . . For the actor the through action is the active attainment of the super-objective. --Creating a Role

SENSE OF TRUTH ON THE STAGE
A sense of truth is the best stimulus to emotion, imagination, creativeness. . . .

At the base of every art is a reaching out for artistic truth. The actor must believe in everything that takes place on the stage and most of all . . . in what he himself is doing and one can believe only in the truth. . . .

There is no such thing as actuality on the stage. Art is the product of the imagination, as the work of a dramatist should be. The aim of the actor should be to turn the play into a theatrical reality. . . . Everything must be real in the imaginary life of an actor.

Scenic truth is not like truth in life; it is peculiar to itself. . . . We are not concerned with the actual naturalistic existence of what surrounds us on the stage, the reality of the material world. This is of use to us only in so far as it supplies a general background for our feelings. . . . What counts . . . is not the material out of which Othello's dagger is made, be it steel or cardboard, but the inner feeling of the actor who can justify his suicide . . . [as] if the circumstances and conditions . . . were real. . . . It is necessary for the actor to develop to the highest degree his imagination, a childlike naïveté, . . . an artistic sensitivity to truth . . . in his soul, and body.
--An Actor Prepares --My Life in Art

SPEECH TEMPO-RHYTHM
Letters, syllables, words--these are the musical notes of speech, out of which to fashion measures, arias, whole symphonies. There is good reason to describe beautiful speech as musical.

Words spoken with resonance and sweep are more affecting. In speech as in music there is a great difference between a phrase enunciated in whole, quarter or sixteenth notes, or with triplets or quintuplets thrown in. . . . In the first instance there is calm, in the second nervousness, agitation.

Many actors who are careless of speech, inattentive to words, pronounce them with such thoughtless slipshod speed, without putting any endings on them, that they end up with completely mutilated, half spoken phrases.

In proper and beautiful speech there should not be any of these manifestations, except where a change of tempo-rhythm is called for on purpose for the characterisation of a part.

Our difficulty lies in the fact that many actors lack a well-rounded training in two important elements of speech; on the one side there is smoothness, resonance, fluency, and on the other, rapidity, lightness, clarity, crispness in the pronounciation of words.

To achieve stately, slow speech we need first of all to replace silent pauses with sonorous cadences, the sustained singing tone of the words.

It will help you to read aloud very slowly to the timing of a metronome, if you are careful to preserve the smooth flow of words in rhythmic measures and also if you provide yourselves with the right inner basis for your exercise.

A clear-cut rhythm of speech facilitates rhythmic sensibility and the opposite is also true: the rhythm of sensations experienced helps to produce clear speech. Of course, all this occurs in the cases where the precision of speech is thoroughly based on inner, suggested circumstances and the "magic if."

Poetry arouses different emotions because of its different form from prose. But the converse is also true. Poetry has another form because we sense its subtext in a different way.

One of the main differences between spoken prose and verse forms lies in their having different temporhythms, in the fact that their measures differ in their influence on our sensations, memories, our emotions. . . . Even if we do not understand the meaning of words their sounds affect us through their temporhythms. . . . Think . . . of verses in which temporhythm paints sound pictures, such as the ringing of bells or the clatter of horses' hooves.

There is an indissoluble interdependence, interaction and bond between tempo-rhythm and feeling and, conversely, between feeling and tempo-rhythm. . . . The correctly established tempo-rhythm of a play or a role, can of itself, intuitively (on occasion automatically) take hold of the feelings of an actor and arouse in him a true sense of living his part.

The direct effect on our mind is achieved by the words, the text, the thought, which arouse consideration. Our will is directly affected by the super-objective, by other objectives, by a through line of action. Our feelings are directly worked upon by temporhythm.

Where does this lead us? To the inescapable conclusion offered us by the wide possibility inherent in our psycho-technique, namely that we possess a direct, immediate means to stimulate every one of our inner motive forces.
--Building a Character

SPONTANEITY A constant supply of spontaneity--is the only way to keep a role fresh, on the move. Lacking this it is likely to fade after a few performances. . . . The unexpected is often a most effective lever in creative work.
--An Actor Prepares
--Collected Articles, Speeches, Talks, Letters

STIMULI TO EMOTION MEMORY The usual impression is that a director uses all his material means, such as the set, the lighting, sound effects, and other accessories, for the primary purpose of impressing the public. On the contrary. We use these means more for their effect on the actors, . . . [as] external stimuli . . . calculated to create an illusion of real life and its living moods. . . . Another important source of stimulation of emotion is true physical action and your belief in it. . . . You will become acquainted with many new inner sources of stimulation. The most powerful of them lies in the text of the play, the implications of thought that underlie it and affect the interrelationship of the actors. . . . All these represent your psycho-technical store of riches, which you must learn to use. . . . If your [artistic emotions] do not come to the surface spontaneously. . . . concentrate your attention on the most effective kind of lure for them. . . . The bond between the lure and the feeling is natural and normal and one that should be extensively employed. --An Actor Prepares

SUBCONSCIOUS One of the main objectives pursued in our approach to acting is [the] natural stimulus to the creativeness of organic nature and its subconsciousness. . . . Our technique [is] directed . . . towards putting our subconscious to work (in the creation of artistic truth) and . . . to learning how not to interfere with it once it is in action.

It is fair to say that this technique bears the same relation to subconscious creative nature as grammar does to poetry. . . . We see, hear, understand, and think differently before and after we cross the threshold of the subconscious. . . . Our freedom on this side . . . is limited by reason and conventions; beyond it, our freedom is bold, wilful, active, and always moving forward. . . . Sometimes the tide of the subconscious barely touches an actor and then goes out. At other times it envelops his whole being, carrying him into its depth until, at length, it casts him up again on the shore of consciousness.

It is all very pleasant to think that every bit of creativeness is full of . . . exaltation and complexities. As a matter of actual fact, we find that even the smallest action of sensation, the slightest technical means, can acquire a deep significance on the stage. . . . When this point is reached, your whole spiritual and physical make-up will function normally, just as it does in real life. . . . I want you to feel right from the start, if only for short periods, that blissful sensation which actors have when their creative faculties are functioning truly, and unconsciously. Moreover, this is something you must learn through your own emotions and not in any theoretical way. You will learn to love this state and constantly strive to achieve it.
--An Actor Prepares
--Building a Character

SUBTEXT At the moment of performance the text is supplied by the playwright, and the subtext by the actor. . . . If this were not the case, people would not go to the theatre but sit at home and read the play. We are . . . inclined to forget that the printed play is not a finished piece of work until it is played on the stage by actors and brought to life by genuine human emotions; the same can be said of a musical score, it is not really a symphony until it is executed by an orchestra of musicians in a concert. As soon as people, either actors or musicians, breathe life of their own into the subtext of a piece of writing to be conveyed to an audience, the spiritual wellsprings, the inner essence are released. . . . The whole point of any such creation is the underlying subtext.

The line of a role is taken from the subtext, not from the text itself. But actors are lazy about digging down to the subtext; they prefer to skim along the surface, using the fixed words which they can pronounce mechanically, without wasting any energy in searching out their inner essence. . . . As this is, unfortunately, elusive and difficult to pin down, especially under the exciting and distracting circumstances of public performance, . . . we have to have recourse to inner vision, thought, inner action.

Words to an actor are not mere sounds, they are designs of visual images. . . . The best way to avoid mechanical acting, the mechanical rattling off of the text of a role . . . is to communicate to others what you see on the screen of your inner vision. . . . This will not be a reflection of reality but images created by your imagination to suit the needs of the imaginary character you are playing. It is up to you to convert these images into reality. . . . Each time you repeat the creative process of speaking the lines of your part, review in advance the series of prepared images on the screen of your inner vision.

The most substantial part of a subtext lies in its thought . . . that conveys the line of logic and coherence in a most clear-cut, definite way. . . . One thought gives rise to a second, a third, and all together shape a super-objective. . . . At times the intellectual content of the subtext may predominate, . . . at others the lines of inner vision. It is best when they merge. . . . Then the spoken word is filled with action. Words are . . . part of the external embodiment of an inner essence of a role. . . . When you reach the point when words are necessary to you to execute your objective, to your best purpose . . . you will reach for the author's text as joyfully as a violinist reaches for the Amati instrument offered to him; he knows that it will be the best means to express the feelings he harbours inside the depths of his soul.
--Building a Character
-- Collected Works, Vol. III

SUPER-OBJECTIVE
We use the word super-objective to characterize the essential idea, the core, which provided the impetus for the writing of a play. . . . In a play the whole stream of individual minor objectives, all the imaginative thoughts, feelings and actions of an actor should converge to carry out this super-objective. . . . Also this impetus toward the super-objective must be continuous throughout the whole play.

You cannot reach the super-objective by means of your . . . mind. The super-objective requires complete surrender, passionate desire, unequivocal action.

The most powerful stimuli to subconscious creativeness . . . are the through line of action and the superobjective . . . they are the principal factors in art. --An Actor Prepares
--Creating a Role

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