A Concise Introduction to

Konstantin Stanislavsky
TABLE OF CONTENTS
● Introduction
● Konstantin Stanislavsky by Rose Whyman, University of
Birmingham
● Konstantin Stanislavsky in Theory & Practice
● Discussion Questions

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INTRODUCTION
This is a comprehensive introduction to the work of Konstantin
Stanislavsky. This guide:

• Offers a biography of the practitioner Konstantin Stanislavsky and

an analysis of some of his aims and working methods in an essay,
followed by a list of further reading, written by Rose Whyman.
• Includes guidance on other useful related resources on Digital
Theatre+ such as interviews and workshops with creatives inspired
by Stanislavsky’s work.
• Provides key materials useful for individual student-led research
and in-classroom discussions.

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KONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKY
Rose Whyman, University of Birmingham

INTRODUCTION

Konstantin Sergeyevich Alekseyev, who took the stage name

‘Stanislavsky’, was a Russian actor and director who lived from 1863-
1938. He is famous throughout the world today for the development of a
method of training actors called the ‘System’ and because of the
standards of performance established at the theatre he founded in 1897
with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (1858-1943), which became known
as the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT). His work remains of great significance
for the contemporary actor: the System is widely used, and continues to
provoke debate and explorations in contemporary practice.

HISTORY

Stanislavsky was the first person to explore acting in a methodical and

scientific way. He also redefined theatre’s place in Russian society.
Before, Russian theatre consisted largely of European classics in
translation, plays by great Russian writers Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837)
and Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852), romantic and historical drama,
melodrama, operettas and comedy. As a child of a wealthy merchant
family, he was brought up visiting ballet, opera and the theatre.
Moscow’s Imperial Maly theatre influenced him most: the ‘natural’ acting
of Mikhail Shchepkin and other outstanding actors whom he saw there.
His family formed an amateur theatre company, the Alekseyev Circle,
with their own theatre and he had the desire to become a great actor
himself.

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In 1888, Stanislavsky and others founded The Moscow Society of Art and
Literature. He married a co-actor, Maria Perevoshchikova (1866-1943),
who took the stage name ‘Lilina’. His new approaches to direction and
his own performances gained much critical comment. In his experiments,
he learned from productions of the theatre company of the Duke of
Saxe-Meiningen, which toured classical plays with striking crowd scenes
and meticulous historical accuracy in set, costume and properties, as
opposed to the stock sets and costume normally used.

In the formation of the MAT, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko

engaged with the traditional aesthetic of the Russian intelligentsia,
seeing the importance of art in bringing about social and spiritual
change in Russia’s corrupt, feudalistic society. They wanted it to be an
affordable, popular theatre that educated audiences. Stanislavsky also
encountered new ideas emerging in the period from the 1890s to the
Russian revolution in 1917, when Russian performing arts, literature, and
fine art were celebrated in Europe and America and when scientific and
psychological ideas influenced emerging ideas of realism and
naturalism in theatre. In his explorations, the plays of the great writer
Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) were important. The Seagull (1898), Uncle
Vanya (1899), Three Sisters (1901), The Cherry Orchard (1904), were all
produced at MAT, the last three as premières, making Stanislavsky’s
name as an actor and director. Other founder members of the MAT
included Olga Knipper (1868-1959) who married Anton Chekhov in 1901,
and Vsevolod Meyerhold, who was to become the leading avant-garde
director of the revolutionary period in Russia after leaving the MAT in
1902. Contemporary plays by writers such as Henrik Ibsen, Gerhardt
Hauptmann, Russian writers such as Alexei Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky as
well as Shakespeare and Molière, Gogol and Pushkin, were also the
main repertoire over MAT’s first period of existence. Despite the existing
censorship, many of these plays had a resonance for the times,
depicting the stagnancy of Russian society.

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In 1905, there was an abortive attempt at political revolution while
naturalism was being challenged by avant-garde movements such as
symbolism and Stanislavsky began to work on plays such as those by
Belgian symbolist writer Maurice Maeterlinck.

Stanislavsky began to formulate the System from 1906. It met resistance

from MAT actors and his relationship with Nemirovich-Danchenko had
deteriorated as they had artistic differences, so in 1912, Stanislavsky and
his trusted assistant Leopold Sulerzhitsky (1872-1916) opened the First
Studio, (first of several) where artists Evgenii Vakhtangov (1883-1922) and
Michael Chekhov (1891-1955) gained valuable experience as actors and
directors.

After the major 1917 revolution, Stanislavsky, like others, was stripped of
his fortune. In 1922-24, MAT toured in Europe and the USA, making a
great impression and inspiring many, including Lee Strasberg, who was
to develop ‘Method acting’. Back in Russia, Stanislavsky worked on new
Soviet plays and operas, also working at the Bolshoi Opera Studio.
Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Days of the Turbins, about a liberal family in the
Civil War was a huge success, but Stanislavsky’s work was under attack.
The Russian Association of Proletarian Writers found that Stanislavski’s
System was not materialist enough for Soviet times, in its emphasis on
spirituality and emotion.

Josef Stalin eventually gained power, turning the ideals of the early
communists into the harsh reality of a dictatorship where millions of
people were put to death, but in 1932, it was revealed that Stalin’s
favourite play was The Days of the Turbins. Stanislavsky was invited to
work with the Soviet government and his concepts of truth and realism in
art became equated with socialist realism, the doctrine that defined the
official form for Soviet art, though this involved distorting aspects of what
Stanislavsky actually taught. This promoted socialism and aimed to
communicate with the uneducated masses.

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In 1935, after various crises at the MAT, Stanislavsky began a new
OperaDramatic studio, with his sister Zinaida. In 1938, he invited
Meyerhold to work at the Stanislavski Opera Theatre. Stanislavsky died
acclaimed as a leading figure in the Soviet Union, and the System
became the official training method for actors. The Soviet interpretation
of it was to cause confusion in understanding the System at first in the
west, but much has become clearer in recent years.

AIMS

As a young actor, Stanislavsky had studied great actors and what it was
that made their acting stand out. He refused to believe that this was
simply talent and thought that artistic creativity could be developed in
acting: his quest was therefore to discover practical methods to train
himself and others to act at the highest standard possible. He aimed to
establish a company that worked as an ensemble, rather than one
based on a star system.

He attempted to solve problems of acting: how the actor can overcome

stage fright and tension. In his experiments in the psychology and
physiology of acting he drew from observations of himself and others,
taking examples from real life, as Shchepkin had taught. He drew from
Associationist Psychology, which helped him see how memories of
emotions were interlinked with memories of sensory experiences,
important in his ideas of how actors experience the emotions of a role.
He experimented with forms of relaxation, exercise and movement
training including dance, gymnastics, Jaques-Dalcroze eurhythmics, and
various ways of training the singing and speaking voice. He made use of
aspects of yoga which helped the actor develop skills in paying
attention and communication. His aim was to discover a way for the
actor to learn to truly experience and embody a role, and to control
performance so that there was no aspect of the actor pretending or
repeating clichés.

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The approach he took was based on his beliefs about the particular
relationship between artist and society in Russia, in which he relied on
the aesthetic theory of great writer Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910). Stanislavsky
believed that art is about communication between people and that this is
of spiritual importance in helping people to develop themselves, to
become better people. Art should enable understanding of and
sympathy with other people. Actors must gain an understanding of life
and what makes human beings behave as they do. He believed that art
does not represent or imitate nature, theatre should create human life
experience, natural truth on stage. The actor invests his or her
experience from life in order to create this truth, “the life of the human
spirit of the role”, as he put it. He rooted his work, he said, in
observations of the realities of human nature. One of Stanislavsky’s
maxims, adopted early on in his career was “When you play a bad man,
look for the good in him”, that is, characters should be fully rounded,
even possessing contradictory characteristics as human beings do.

This humanist view, that as human beings we share experience, and this
is all-important in art, means that truthful characters are based on the
actor’s actual experience. The actor has a mission as an artist, rather
than a skill. Stanislavsky drew a distinction between the actor’s art of
‘experiencing’ and ‘representation’, where the actor has skills in
representing a role, but this is done with external mannerisms of
movement and voice, without true inner experience. He also rejected
‘stock-in-trade’ acting, where the actor reproduces clichés or tricks,
focussing on external expression.

Stanislavsky performed as an actor until 1928, developed the System

throughout his life, and was one of the main initiators of the development
of role of the director, as we know it today. His early productions,
influenced by Kronegk, the director of the Saxe-Meiningen Court theatre,
prioritized historical accuracy. The system began to develop as a way of
teaching actors, rather than instructing them how to achieve what the

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director, wanted, in a dictatorial way. When he began to develop the
system in 1906, he focussed more on the individual actor’s process.

The beginning of rehearsals for many years focussed on round-the-table

work, where an in-depth analysis of the play took place through
discussion, with the company seated around a table, before beginning
practical work. The problem with this was that the actor’s process could
become overly intellectual and the work that had been done was of little
use practically, when the actors began to rehearse. He developed ways
of encouraging the actor to work on his feet, using improvisation as a
way into a text, methods called ‘Active Analysis’. In 1936, he wrote about
a rehearsal method which has been termed ‘The Method of Physical
Actions’. There are varying accounts from the oral tradition of
Stanislavsky’s work of the differences between the two terms but
essentially both methods enable the actor to get to know and analyse
the role practically, improvising a scene based on a basic knowledge of
the plot, finding the situations, events or experiences, playing the actions
of the scene and using his or her own words. The director then gives
some input and the scene may be repeated, deepening the
understanding and clarifying the tasks and actions.

He attempted to explain his work in publications in America and Russia

in his lifetime. New translations have been published recently: My Life in
Art (2008), An Actor’s Work (2008) and An Actor’s Work on a Role (2010),
which explain what he wanted to achieve and form a manual for the
System.

PRACTICE

Stanislavsky’s System combines basic training in voice, movement and

other skills with training in how to undergo the processes of research,
analysis, rehearsal and performance of a role in a way that is true to life.
He held that it was based on laws of nature, which apply to everyone.

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Great artists might work intuitively, without the need for such a system,
but in fact go through the same processes according to both laws of
physiology, how the human body works, to move and vocalise and laws
of creativity, the processes of imagination and expression.

The ‘Three Bases of the System’, which underpin these laws are ‘action’,
‘emotion’ and the ‘subconscious’. In performance, the actor should be
involved in internal and external action, which means that all action must
be purposeful and committed; the actor is paying full attention to what
he or she is doing. Everything the actor does on stage is meaningful and
there must be nothing superfluous.

If the actor is ‘active’ in this way, truthful emotional expression is

possible. This may be achieved indirectly, by memory of experiences
involving emotions, where the actor recalls a situation from life where he
or she experienced the desire for revenge, for example, and uses this to
inform a role such as that of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. This may be difficult
to achieve and instead, playing the actions truthfully, as he or she would
if they were in the circumstances of the play will bring about the required
emotion. The main point is that the actor should not attempt to act an
emotional state directly, trying to “be vengeful”, for example. This is
called ‘acting in general’. Instead, the actor should “play the action”
where the desire for revenge is apparent because it is clear from what
they do and say that they want to see justice done, to expose the
actions of Claudius, who has killed Hamlet’s father, and see him
punished. The term for what the characters wants or wants to do in the
circumstances of the scene or part of the scene is ‘task’ or ‘objective’.
What the character wants to achieve as a whole is called the ‘supertask’
or ‘superobjective’.

The third base is the subconscious. When the actor applies the system,
the subconscious will produce material for the role from memory of

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emotions and sensory experiences without having to try, to make an
effort, which results in muscular tension.

The System includes exercises aiming to develop the ability to pay

attention and to be fully alive on stage. By focussing on the task he or
she has on stage, the actor develops and practises the sense of truthful
action. He or she works at freeing the muscles, which enables him or her
not to react to the audience not to stiffen in fear or to play to the
audience. Using the techniques of ‘the magic if’, where the actor asks as
a starting point “what would I do if I were in the circumstances my
character is in?” all actions are internally justified, believable, not carried
out externally, going through the motions. Crucial to this is the task: the
right task will evoke the right inner experience. This is the path to the
unconscious through the conscious, to experiencing. Working on tasks
for sections (bits or units) of the play eventually builds up so that the
actor establishes the through-line of their character for the play.

This is most important lesson an actor can learn, the difference between
mechanical acting and inner experiencing. Working at approaching each
performance afresh, with truth and belief in the tasks and actions,
ensures that acting can always seem spontaneous. The actor who can
control their performance so that their bodily apparatus remains free
and there is no excess muscular tension even at moments of highest
emotional intensity (Stanislavsky, 2008, p.79) will embody the role
expressively. Stanislavsky noted in great actors this quality of “bodily
relaxation, the absence of muscular tension and the total obedience of
the physical apparatus” (2008, pp.257-8), a sense of ease on stage and
the aim of the System remains to enable the beginning actor to learn to
achieve this.

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FURTHER READING

Art.theatre.ru. (2017). History. [online] Available at:

<http://art.theatre.ru/english/history/> [Accessed 16 Jun. 2017].

Benedetti, J. (1999). Stanislavski- His Life and Art. London: Methuen

Drama.

En.wikipedia.org. (2017). Konstantin Stanislavski. [online] Available at:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Stanislavsky> [Accessed 16
Jun. 2017].

Stanislavsky, K. (2008). An Actor's Work. Translated by J. Benedetti.

London: Routledge.

Whyman, R. (2013). Stanislavski – The Basics. London: Routledge.

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KONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKY IN THEORY &
PRACTICE
Below is a list of key interviews, lectures and other materials available
on Digital Theatre+ which explore Stanislavsky and his practice.
Quotations from the essay are included to facilitate connections
between the content and the critical writing.

From the essay:

“He developed ways of encouraging the actor to work on his

feet, using improvisation as a way into a text, methods called
‘Active Analysis’. In 1936, he wrote about a rehearsal method
which has been termed ‘The Method of Physical Actions’. There
are varying accounts from the oral tradition of Stanislavsky’s
work of the differences between the two terms but essentially
both methods enable the actor to get to know and analyse the
role practically, improvising a scene based on a basic
knowledge of the plot, finding the situations, events or
experiences, playing the actions of the scene and using his or
her own words. The director then gives some input and the
scene may be repeated, deepening the understanding and
clarifying the tasks and actions.” (Whyman, p.9)

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Active Analysis for Twenty-First Century Actors

● Lecture by: Sharon Marie Carnicke, University of Southern

California, Los Angeles.
● Run time: 00:48:56

A lecture from one of the world’s foremost experts in the Stanislavsky

System, delving into key 21st century debates (both academic and
practical) around Stanislavsky’s methods and arguing for their continued
usefulness. In particular, she considers how the System’s techniques can
be applied even to contemporary performance texts and styles – such
as the postdramatic – which Stanislavsky could not have conceived of in
his lifetime.

Active Analysis in Rehearsal: A Documentary Learning Resource

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 “Like a gardener who is weaving ivy round a trellis, I train the ivy of
the actors round the trellis of the play.”

● Run time: 1:22:51

Actor-trainer Bella Merlin uses Stanislavsky’s method of Active Analysis

to lead a rehearsal of a scene from the play Mrs Packard by Emily Mann.
Watching her guide actors through the steps of the technique – including
reading, discussion and improvisation – allows for a detailed
understanding of how Active Analysis can work in practice.

A Guide to Active Analysis in Rehearsal

Bella Merlin’s written guide to contextualise the documentary showing

how active analysis works in practice.

From the essay:

Stanislavsky’s System combines basic training in voice,

movement and other skills with training in how to undergo the
processes of research, analysis, rehearsal and performance of
a role in a way that is true to life. He held that it was based on
laws of nature, which apply to everyone. Great artists might
work intuitively, without the need for such a system, but in fact
go through the same processes according to both laws of
physiology, how the human body works, to move and vocalise
and laws of creativity, the processes of imagination and
expression. (Whyman, p.9)

DramaWorks: Stanislavsky Through Practice

● Written by: Jeni Whittaker

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A detailed guide to Stanislavsky’s work, intended to thoroughly explore
his ideas and methods. Focusing first on the general training of actors
and then on the specifics of preparing for a role, the guide offers
adaptations of a variety of Stanislavsky’s own exercises, in order that
theoretical understanding of his work be supported with practical
experience.

FURTHER CONCISE INTRODUCTIONS

Below are links to other concise introductions on the platform which

relate to key concepts and practitioners mentioned in this guide. They
provide more in-depth biographical and critical information, as well as
links to key productions and further resources available on Digital
Theatre+ where possible.

A Concise Introduction to Melodrama

Robert Leach, Former Reader in Drama and Theatre at the University of

Birmingham provides insight to how Melodrama was the dominant
dramatic form of the 19th century, c. 1810-1860, having grown out of
Gothic drama. The French revolution’s iconic moment – the storming of
the Bastille (1789) – provided Gothic drama with its most potent image:
the castle as prison to be broken open. Melodrama repudiated literature:
it was a genre of performance.

A Concise Introduction to Comedy

The Associate Professor of Dramatic Literature at the University of

California in Santa Cruz, Michael M. Chemers, explores the development
and importance of comedy in various social contexts. From the comedies
of ancient Greece to the Renaissance period, Chemers considers how
comedy is essential for psychological health and can be defined in
relation to tragedy.

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A Concise Introduction to Audience

Associate Professor of Theatre and Dance at Texas Tech University,

Dorothy Chansky, provides an introduction to the role of the audience in
relation to theatre and performance. Chansky examines how the
perception of audience has changed throughout history and considers
the way different forms of theatre offer further exploration into the
audience as a performing phenomenon.

A Concise Introduction to Realism

Aleks Sierz, theatre critic and Senior Research Fellow at Rose Bruford
College, provides an introduction to realism. Referring to key works by
Henrik Ibsen and Anton Chekhov, amongst others, Sierz explores how
credible characters, a plausible plot, and recognisably everyday
language and settings are essential for representing reality on stage
and compares the differences between realism and naturalism.

A Concise Introduction to Naturalism

The Senior Research Fellow at Rose Bruford College, Aleks Sierz,

outlines the key aspects of Naturalism in theatre and performance. Sierz
details how French writer Émile Zola pioneered the genre of Naturalism
in the context of the Industrial Revolution and explains how Naturalism is
a specific kind of realism that focuses on the way social, economic and
personal environment affects the individual.

A Concise Introduction to Anton Chekhov

Rhonda Blair, Professor in the Division of Theatre at the Southern

Methodist University in Dallas, provides an overview of the life of
Russian playwright and short story writer Anton Chekhov. Blair considers
how Chekhov’s plays capture the complexity and richness of human

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experience, affirming his place as one of the most influential writers of
European theatre.

A Concise Introduction to Vsevolod Meyerhold

Rose Whyman, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Drama and Theatre

Arts at the University of Birmingham, provides an introduction to the
pioneering Russian avant-garde theatre director Vsevolod Emilyevich
Meyerhold (1874-1940). Whyman considers how Meyerhold opposed the
realism of Konstantin Stanislavsky’s theatre, preferring a stylised theatre
which used conventions or devices to convey meaning to an audience.

A Concise Introduction to Henrik Ibsen

Michael M. Chemers, Associate Professor of Dramatic Literature at the

University of California, Santa Cruz, provides an overview of the life and
works of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Chemers considers how
Ibsen’s social-realist dramas defy conventional morality and compel
audiences to psychological introspection, making him one of the most
influential dramatists of modern realism.

A Concise Introduction to Russian Theatre

Robert Leach, Former Reader in Drama and Theatre at the University of

Birmingham, provides an overview of Russian theatre. Covering history,
theory and practice, Leach explores the various methods by some of
Russia’s leading theatrical practitioners, such as Konstantin Stanislavsky
and Vsevolod Meyerhold, and examines the development of realism and
anti-realism theatre during the 20th century.

A Concise Introduction to Lee Strasberg

Lola Cohen at the Lee Strasberg Film and Theater Institute outlines the
history, aims and practice of the ‘Father of Method Acting’ in America,

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Lee Strasberg. Cohen explores Strasberg’s successful approach to actor
training which seeks to stimulate creativity and provide actors with a
unique language to explore life’s complexities through the senses.

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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1) How relevant are Stanislavsky’s methods for 21st century actors?

2) Do you think there are any circumstances in which Stanislavsky’s

methods would be particularly useful? Conversely, do you think
there are any in which his approach would not be helpful?

3) Using a text of your choosing, try to apply some of Stanislavsky’s

practical methods. Does it enhance your understanding of
character? In what ways does it make you feel more prepared as a
performer?

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