Practitioners

Constantin Stanislavski

It’s very easy to over-simplify the method of Konstantin Stanislavski, one of the greatest and most influential of modern theatre practitioners. The main thing to remember is that he takes the approach that the actors should really inhabit the role that they are playing. So the actor shouldn’t only know what lines he needs to say and the motivation for those lines, but also every detail of that character’s life offstage as well as onstage. In this way we can establish Stanislavski as a director and practitioner whose productions are naturalistic.

Stanislavski’s background

Stanislavski’s real name was Konstantin Sergeyevich Alexeyev but he adopted the stage name of Stanislavski in 1884. Born in 1863 to a life of considerable comfort as a member of one of the most affluent families in Russia, he died in 1938 at the age of 75. His family loved the theatre and he was able to indulge in amateur theatricals as a boy. But when he took a stage name it was to conceal his theatrical work from his family. However, in 1887 he had his father’s approval and eventually became an established figure.

As a serious theatrical practitioner, he made careful notes and evaluated his work, a habit he followed from the first steps in his career. Later he was to write major texts on the art of performance:

Stanislavski’s techniques

The System

This term refers to the methods used by Stanislavski to foster a good performance in his actors. It focuses mainly on helping an actor recall the emotions needed for a role. Don’t confuse ‘method acting’ with the System. Method acting is how Stanislavksi’s work was interpreted by others, in particular, actors and directors in the film industry.

Given circumstances

The given circumstances are the information about the character that you start off with and the play as a whole. How old is the character? What’s their situation in the play and in relation to the other characters? Are there any notes provided about the play and its characters? Such notes and stage directions may not tell you everything you need to build a character but they are the starting point from which you’ll work to examine the other questions.

Bertolt Brecht

The playwright Bertolt Brecht was born in 1898 in the German town of Augsburg. After the First World War he went to Munich and then to Berlin in pursuit of a career in the theatre. That period of his life came to an end in 1933 when the Nazis came to power in Germany. Brecht fled.

As an artist, Brecht was influenced by a diverse range of writers and practitioners including Chinese theatre and Karl Marx. The turmoil of the times through which Brecht lived gave him a strong political voice.

His most acclaimed work is Mother Courage and Her Children. Although it’s set in the 1600s, the play is relevant to contemporary society and is often regarded as one of the finest anti-war plays.

Brecht's ideas

He believed that while the audience believed in the action onstage and became emotionally involved they lost the ability to think and to judge. He wanted his audiences to remain objective and distant from emotional involvement so that they could make considered and rational judgements about any social comment or issues in his work. To do this he used a range of theatrical devices or techniques so that the audience were reminded throughout that they were watching theatre; a presentation of life, not real life itself. His kind of theatre was called Epic theatre. He called the act of distancing the audience from emotional involvement the verfremdungseffekt.

Many people speak of alienating the audience (making them separate from the action) but verfremdungseffekt actually translates more closely to ‘distancing.’ However, it’s still often called the alienation effect or is shortened to the ‘v’ effect and there are many ways of using it.

Brecht definitely wanted his audience to remain interested and engaged by the drama otherwise his message would be lost. It was emotional investment in the characters he aimed to avoid.

Devices using the 'v' effect

A theatrical device is a method or technique used onstage which has an aim or purpose. The aim when using the 'v' effect is to ensure that the audience are constantly reminded that they’re watching a piece of theatre.

Narration

Narration is used to remind the audience that what they’re watching is a presentation of a story. Sometimes the narrator will tell us what happens in the story before it has happened. This is a good way of making sure that we don’t become emotionally involved in the action to come as we already know the outcome.

Coming out of role / third person narration

Commenting upon a character as an actor is a clear way of reminding the audience of theatricality. For example, midway through a heightened scene the action might break for the actor to comment upon their character in the third person, ‘Darius felt his anger rise. He wasn’t being listened to and wanted revenge’, before returning to the scene.

Speaking the stage directions

This device was used by Brecht more frequently in rehearsal than performance. It helps distance the actor from the character they’re playing. It also reminds the audience that they’re watching a play and forces them to study the actions of a character in objective detail.

Direct address

Speaking directly to the audience breaks the fourth wall and destroys any illusion of reality. An example would be the moment where Grusha pleads to save baby Michael in The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Brecht: I brought him up, shall I also tear him to bits? I can’t.

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