An Actor's Work

A Student's Diary

Konstantin Stanislavski, Jean Benedetti

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9780415422239
• eBook ISBN: 9781134101467
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre History & Criticism

Stanislavski's 'system' has dominated actor-training in the West since his writings were first translated into English in the 1920s and 30s. His systematic attempt to outline a psycho-physical technique for acting single-handedly revolutionized standards of acting in the theatre.

Until now, readers and students have had to contend with inaccurate, misleading and difficult-to-read English-language versions. Some of the mistranslations have resulted in profound distortions in the way his system has been interpreted and taught. At last, Jean Benedetti has succeeded in translating Stanislavski's huge manual into a lively, fascinating and accurate text in English. He has remained faithful to the author's original intentions, putting the two books previously known as An Actor Prepares and Building A Character back together into one volume, and in a colloquial and readable style for today's actors.

The result is a major contribution to the theatre, and a service to one of the great innovators of the twentieth century.

Year One

EXPERIENCING

AN ACTOR’S WORK

INTRODUCTION

… In February 19. . in the town of N,¹ where I was working, a friend and I, who was also, like me, a stenographer, were invited to take down a public lecture given by the well-known actor, director and teacher Arkadi Tortsov. That lecture decided my future and my fate: I felt irresistibly drawn to the stage and have already enrolled at the theatre school and will soon start working with him and his assistant, Ivan Rakhmanov.

I am infinitely happy to have finished with my old life and to have set out in a new direction.

But there is one thing from that past that will come in useful, my shorthand.

What if I were systematically to take down all the classes as far as possible verbatim? In that way I could make a whole textbook! It would help me go over the things we had done. And later, when I had become an actor, these notes would serve as a compass at difficult moments in my work.

I’ve decided. I will keep my notes in the form of a diary.

1

AMATEURISM

. . . . 19. .

Today we waited for our first class with Arkadi Tortsov, not a little scared. But all he did was come in and make an astonishing announcement. He has arranged a showing for us in which we are to present extracts from plays of our own choice. This is to take place on the main stage before an audience consisting of the company and the management. He wants to see us in performance, on stage, in a set, in full make-up, costume and lighting. Only a presentation of this kind, so he said, can give a clear picture of how stageworthy we are.

The students froze, bewildered. Appear on that stage in our theatre? That was artistic sacrilege! I felt like going to Tortsov and asking him to transfer the show to some other less imposing venue, but he was gone before I could get to him.

The class was cancelled and we were given the free time to choose our extracts.

Tortsov’s proposal sparked off a lively discussion. At first only a few were in favour. Particularly warm support came from a well-built young fellow named Grisha Govorkov, who, so I heard, had already played in some minor theatre or other, from a tall, ample, beautiful blonde, Sonya Velyaminova, and from the small, boisterous Vanya Vyuntsov.

But the rest of us gradually came round to the idea. We could see the glare of the footlights in our imagination. Very soon the showing seemed attractive, useful, almost vital. Our hearts beat faster at the thought of it.

At first Paul Shustov, Leo Pushchin and I were very moderate in our ambitions. We thought of short sketches and frothy little comedies. We thought that was all we could handle. But all round us the names of great Russian writers—Gogol, Ostrovski, Chekhov—and then of masters of world literature were being bandied about more and more confidently, so that almost before we knew it, moderation was far behind us. Now we hankered after the Romantics, something in costume and verse. I was tempted by the role of Mozart in Pushkin’s Mozart and Salieri and Leo by Salieri. Pasha thought he might try Schiller’s Don Carlos. Then we started talking about Shakespeare and I opted for Othello.¹ I settled for him because I didn’t have a copy of Pushkin at home, but I did have a Shakespeare. I was gripped with such a fever for work, such a need to get busy right away, I couldn’t waste time looking for a book. Pasha said he would play Iago.

Today we were also told that the first rehearsal had been fixed for tomorrow.

As soon as I got home, I shut myself in my room, settled back on the sofa, opened my book reverentially and began to read. But by page two I felt I just had to start acting. I couldn’t help myself. My legs, my hands, my face began to move of their own accord. I had to declaim the lines. And suddenly, there, in my hands, was a large ivory paper-knife which I stuck in my belt to look like a dagger. A towel was transformed into a turban and the multi-coloured cord from the window-curtains served as a baldric. I fashioned a robe and a mantle out of sheets and a blanket. An umbrella became a scimitar. But I didn’t have a shield. Then I remembered that next door, in the dining room, behind the cupboard there was a large tray that could serve me as a shield. The moment for battle had come.

Thus armed, I felt like a proud, majestic, handsome warrior. But I looked modern, smooth and polished. But Othello is African! There has to be something of the tiger about him. I went through a whole series of exercises to try and discover the characteristic movement of a tiger. I prowled around the room, skilfully with slinking steps, between the gaps in the furniture, hiding behind the cupboard, stalking my prey. In a single bound, I sprang from cover to fall upon my imaginary enemy, represented by a large cushion. I smothered it ‘like a tiger’ and crushed it beneath me. Then the cushion became my Desdemona. I embraced her passionately, kissed her hand, which I had fashioned out of a corner of the cushion, then contemptuously flung her away, embraced her again, then strangled her and wept over her corpse. Some moments weren’t at all bad.

I worked for five hours without noticing. That’s not something you do because you’re forced to! In moments of artistic inspiration, hours seem like minutes. This was clear proof that the mood I had experienced was indeed genuine inspiration!

Before taking off my costume, I took advantage of the fact that everyone in the apartment was asleep and slipped out into the empty hall where there was a large mirror. I switched on the light and took a look at myself. What I saw was not at all what I had expected. The poses and gestures I had worked out didn’t look at all like what I had imagined in my head. The mirror revealed an angularity and an ugliness of line in my body that I never knew I had. I was so disappointed my energy evaporated.

. . . . 19. .

I woke up much later than usual, dressed as fast as I could and ran to school. As I entered the rehearsal room, I found everyone waiting for me. I was so embarrassed that, instead of apologizing, I came out with a stupid, trite phrase:

‘I think I’m a bit late.’

Rakhmanov gave me a long reproving look and finally said:

‘They’ve all been sitting here, waiting, getting nervous and impatient, and you think you’re a bit late! They all came here keyed up for work, but because of you I have lost all interest in teaching you. It is very difficult to rouse the urge to create and extremely easy to kill it. What right do you have to hold up the entire group? I have far too much respect for our work to tolerate such sloppiness, and that is why I feel I have to apply a military kind of discipline when it comes to what we do together. The actor, like the soldier, needs iron discipline. This first time I will let it pass with a simple reprimand, without entering it into the day book. But you must apologize at once to everyone, and in future make it a rule to arrive at rehearsal a quarter of an hour early and not after it has started.’

I stammered my apologies and promised not to be late again. However, Rakhmanov no longer wanted to start work. The first rehearsal, he said, is a special event in an actor’s life, and he should always have happy memories of it. Because of me, today’s rehearsal had been ruined. So, let this, our most important rehearsal, take place tomorrow, and replace today’s fiasco. Rakhmanov then left the room.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Another ‘roasting’ was in store for me from my classmates, led by Grisha. That ‘roasting’ was even hotter than the first. I won’t forget today’s fiasco in a hurry.

I planned to go to bed early, because after today’s commotion and last evening’s disappointment I was afraid to try and work on the role. Then suddenly I caught sight of a bar of chocolate. I started to mix it with some butter. The result was a brown blob. It spread easily on my face and turned me into a Moor. My teeth seemed whiter in contrast to my dark skin. Sitting at the mirror, I spent a long time admiring how white they were, learning to flash them and roll the whites of my eyes.

I needed to try on the costume to see how successful the make-up was, and once it was on I wanted to perform. But I didn’t find anything new, just repeated what I had done the previous evening and that had already had lost its edge. Still I did manage to see what my Othello is going to look like on the outside. That’s important.

. . . . 19. .

Today was our first rehearsal, and I put in an appearance well before the start. Rakhmanov invited us to set up the space and arrange the furniture ourselves. Fortunately Pasha agreed to all my suggestions, as he was not interested in externals. It was especially important to me to arrange the furniture so that I could move through it as I had in my room. Otherwise, inspiration would not come. However, I couldn’t do what I wanted. I tried very hard to believe I was in my own room, but I couldn’t. In fact, it was more of a hindrance to my acting.

Pasha already knew his lines, but I had either to use the book or to convey the rough meaning of whatever I could remember using my own words. To my surprise, rather than helping me, the actual lines got in my way. I would have been happy to do without them, or to have cut them by half. Not only the words but also the author’s thoughts, which were not mine, as well as the actions he indicated, limited the freedom I had enjoyed when studying at home.

Even more unsettling was the fact that I didn’t recognize my own voice. In fact neither the mise-en-scène² nor the idea of the character I had worked out at home had anything to do with Shakespeare’s play at all. How, for example, was I to use the flashing teeth, the rolling eyes, the ‘tigerish’ movements, which were my way into the part, in the comparatively quiet opening scene between Iago and Othello?

Yet I couldn’t get away from my tricks or my mise-en-scène because I had nothing else to put in its place. On the one hand, I spoke the lines in an artificial way and, on the other, I played my own savage in an artificial way with no relation whatsoever between the two. The words got in the way of the acting, and the acting got in the way of the words. A general feeling of discordance all round.

Once again, I found nothing new working at home, I just repeated the old things which I was unhappy with. What does repeating the same feelings, doing the same things mean? Do they belong to me or to my savage Moor? Why is yesterday’s acting like today’s, and why will tomorrow’s acting be like today’s? Has my imagination dried up? Or don’t I have the material I need in my memory for the role? Why did work go so quickly at the start, and why have I come to a dead end?

While I was mulling this over in my mind, my landlord and his wife were sitting down for evening tea next door. I had to go to another part of the room and to say my lines as quietly as possible so as not to draw attention to myself. To my surprise these tiny little changes gave me new life, and made me somehow relate to my work and, indeed, the role itself in a new way.

That was the secret. You mustn’t stick too long to one thing and endlessly repeat something which has gone stale. I have decided. At tomorrow’s rehearsal, I’ll improvise everything—mise-en-scène, interpretation, my whole approach.

.. .. 19..

Today I improvised everything from the start. Instead of moving, I sat. I decided to act without any gestures or movement, or pulling faces. And what happened? I was in trouble from the moment I opened my mouth. I forgot the lines, the proper inflections, and I stopped dead. I had to get back fast to the mises-en-scène I had set. It was obvious I couldn’t play my savage except by using the ways I knew. But I wasn’t in control of them, they were in control of me. What was this? Slavery?

.. .. 19..

On the whole today’s rehearsal felt better. I am getting used to the place where we work and the people we work with. Most of all, opposites are beginning to come together. My previous way of portraying a savage had nothing to do with Shakespeare. In the early rehearsals I felt contrived when I tried to force African features into the role, but now it’s as though I had injected something into what I am doing. At least I feel less at war with the author.

.. .. 19..

We rehearsed on the main stage today. I had counted on magic and inspiration backstage. And what did I find? Instead of the glare of the footlights, a mess. The sets I had expected to see were stacked up in piles. It was all gloom and silence, with not a soul in sight. The vast stage was empty and barren. Down by the footlights there were a few bentwood chairs marking out a new set and, on the right, a stand with three lighted bulbs.

As soon as I stepped onto the acting area I was confronted by the gaping hole of the proscenium arch and beyond it a boundless, deep, dark void. I was seeing the auditorium from the stage for the first time, with the curtain up, empty, with no one present. Somewhere out there—a long way off it seemed to me—a bulb glowed under a lamp-shade. Its light fell on a sheaf of papers on a table. Hands were preparing to note down all our faults ‘with no quarter given’ … I felt as though I was being swallowed by the void.

Then someone called out, ‘Begin.’ I was being asked to go into Othello’s imaginary room, marked out by the chairs, and take my place. I sat down, but not on the chair I was supposed to according to my plan. The designer couldn’t recognize the layout of his own room! Someone else had to explain to me which chair represented what. It was a long time before I could fit into the tiny acting area marked out by the chairs and focus on what was going on around me. It was difficult for me to make myself look at Pasha, who was at my side. At moments my mind was drawn towards the auditorium, then towards the rooms adjoining the stage, technicians’ rooms where life went on despite us. People came and went, carrying this or that, sawing, hammering and arguing.

In spite of all this, I carried on speaking and moving automatically. If all the work I had done at home had not driven my little tricks, the lines, and inflexions into me, I would have come to a stop as soon as I opened my mouth. But that’s what finally happened. It was the prompter’s fault. I realized at once that this ‘gentleman’ was the worst kind of conspirator, and no friend to the actor. In my opinion a good prompter is someone who can keep silent for a whole evening and then, at the critical moment, give you the one word which has slipped your memory. But our prompter kept whispering away the whole time and was a terrible nuisance.³ You don’t know where to stand or how to get away from this over-zealous man who, in his desire to help, seems to worm his way through your ear into your very soul. Finally he won. I was thrown, I stopped, and I asked him to leave me alone.

.. .. 19..

Our second rehearsal was in the main theatre. I arrived very early and decided to do my preparatory work onstage in front of all the others rather than alone in my dressing room. Work was in full swing. They were putting up the set and arranging the props for our rehearsal. I started to get ready.

It would have been absurd, given all the chaos around me, to try and find the cosiness I had known when working at home. The most important thing was for me to fit in to my new surroundings. So I marched downstage and stared at the ominous black hole so as to get used to it and free myself from the draw of the auditorium. But the more I tried to ignore it, the more I thought about it, the greater the draw from the ominous blackness beyond the picture-frame became. At that moment a stagehand who had come up beside me dropped some nails. I started to help him pick them up. And suddenly I felt fine, almost at home on the vast stage. But once the nails had all been picked up, and my good-natured companion had gone, once again I felt threatened by the hole, and once again I felt as though I was being sucked into it. I had felt so wonderful just a moment before! But that was understandable. While I was picking up the nails I wasn’t thinking about the black hole. I hurriedly left the stage and sat in the front rows.

The rehearsal of the other excerpts began, but I didn’t see what was going on. I waited my turn, a bundle of nerves.

There is a positive side to the agony of waiting. It brings you to the point where all you want, whatever they’re afraid of, is to have it over and done with as soon as possible. That was how I felt today.

When the time finally came for my scene, I went up onstage. The set, that had been cobbled together from various bits of flats, wings and rostrums etc., was up. Some of the pieces were placed back to front. The furniture, too, was a jumble. Still, the overall look under the lights was pleasing, and Othello’s room, as they had set it up for us, seemed secure. With a great effort of imagination I should be able to find something that reminded me of my own room.

But as...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Introduction
• Translator’s foreword
• Publisher’s acknowledgements
• An Actor’s Work, original draft preface [extracts]
• YEAR ONE: EXPERIENCING
• YEAR TWO: EMBODIMENT
• APPENDICES
• Endnotes
• Glossary of key terms
• Afterword by Anatoly Smeliansky