Realism and Stanislavski

Context includes the circumstances that surround or frame words, situations or ideas and influence their meaning.

Realism was a reaction to and against the acting style of melodrama and was influenced by the social changes of the late 1800s and early 1900s. It explored the human condition, impacted by the theories of Freud and Darwin in a world of social upheaval and rapid progress in science and technology.

Stanislavski recognised that popular theatre lacked any relation to who people really were. Playwrights, such as Anton Chekhov, George Bernard Shaw, Nikola Gogol, August Strindberg, Henrik Ibsen, all strove to create characters based on real life, three dimensional human beings. But there was no acting style that would do justice to their plays, no lifelike vocal delivery, settings, costumes, or staging. Stanislavski emerged as one of the first directors of theatre and created a system that allowed for truth and belief to be a fundamental skill of acting.

Subtext refers to the meaning and intention behind a word and is an actor's best friend. It's a discovery of meaning that allows you to reveal the character's thoughts and feelings without having to directly tell the audience or other characters what you're thinking or feeling, like they did in melodrama.

Realistic acting involves a physical and vocal response attached to intentions and meanings that requires you to immerse yourself in the delivery of dialogue, rather than just reciting words.

Watch the video 'Subtext and intentions' and complete the activities included, as outlined below.

In his book, 'An Actor Prepares,' Stanislavski says the actor must feel the challenge to action physically as well as intellectually. They must look at one's part as a series of units and discover the fundamental objective in each scene. Each objective must carry the germ of action, so use verbs to define objectives, not nouns.

The objective is what your character wants in the scene. And your intention is conveying that objective through the meaning of your words, the subtext.

The throughline is the journey your character takes to achieve all the objectives on their way to the super objective, their big overall goal. A throughline is like a road map. Each objective is a town you reach along the way to your final destination, super objective city.

Tactics are the methods you use, as the character, to achieve your objective.

A character's responses to situations are connected to their history, needs, environment, wants, personality traits, or self-image. How your character reacts to people, places, and things can be determined by asking yourself, as an actor, 7 fundamental questions as developed by Stanislavski.

1. Who am I? Think of who you are physically as well as emotionally. What life history and backstory do you have? All of your history and previous experiences have shaped who you are.

2. Where am I? What's your location and what is that place like? Is it indoors, outdoors, what country? What's the geography and climate, the conditions? What's the space like?

3. When is it? What time of day or night, what time of year, what time in history?

4. What do I want? What is my character's want, desire, or need, and what's my super objective? What's my scene objective?

5. Why do I want it? So what's my motivation for my objective?

6. How will I get it? These are your actions and your tactics. It is the psychological and emotional means of influencing and affecting other characters, it is the way you achieve my objective.

7. What must I overcome? My obstacles, what obstacles are in my way? Are those obstacles physical, like a person or set of circumstances, or a conflict that's making it really hard to achieve what I want like an internal conflict?