Stanislavski and Realism

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Stanislavski and Realism

• Ms Leah Stewart
• MSC

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Constantin Stanislavski

• Constantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski (Russian
  ?????????? ????????? ?????????????) (17 January
  O.S. 5 January 1863 7 August, 1938), was a
  Russian actor and theatre director. (Wikipedia)

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Constantin Stanislavski

• Stanislavski treated theatre very seriously.
• Actors working with him needed to be dedicated
  and ready for very trying rehearsals
• Stanislavski developed a method for
  characterising realistic characters, known as The
  Method or The System.

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Constantin Stanislavski

• This system starts with breaking up the text into
  units and beats
• Unit a section of text that has one uniting
  objective
• Beat an individual thought or moment in the
  unit
• This will enable the actor to understand what
  drives the action and how best to create dramatic
  tension.

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Fundamental Questions

• Who am I? Think about your characters
  personality, age, appearance, family background,
  beliefs, prejudices, interests and so on.
• What time is it? Consider the age, century,
  month, week, day, hour in which the action takes
  place.
• Where am I? Consider the setting of the play.
  Country or city? Kind of house the characters
  live in? What room and what part of the room
  does the action take place in?

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Fundamental Questions

• What surrounds me? Consider the environment.
  Are there people around? What furniture,
  colours, smells, textures, sounds etc.
• What are the given circumstances? Details of
  your recent past, how are your feeling now, what
  is about to happen to you, and these can change
  from moment to moment.
• What are my relationships? to those around you
  and the events that are happening.

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Fundamental Questions

• What is my objective? Know what you want to get
  or achieve in each scene.
• What is the obstacle? What is stopping you from
  achieving this?
• What is the action? What are you doing to get
  what you want?
• What is my superobjective? What is your main
  goal in the overall play?
• What is my through-line of action? This is the
  current connecting all the characters together
  and directing them to the superobjective, linking
  all the units in the play.

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Fundamental Questions

• The Magic If If I were in this situation, what
  would I do?????

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Memories

• Emotional Memory The memory of an emotion
  emotional memory can be used to create feeling on
  stage.
• Muscular Memory using the memory of a physical
  sensation to re-create a sensation onstage.

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Use of the System

• Ultimately very useful in creating realistic
  characters as it focuses on creating believable
  characters.
• Can use previous memories of the actors to create
  real reactions to others on stage.
• Why else??

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Representational styles

• Realism Potentially real situations, plausible
  and realistic characters, working props on stage
  etc
• Naturalism heightened form of realism eg. if
  a character is cooking in the text they would be
  cooking on stage with kitchen smells.

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Homework

• Find 10 facts about Realism and make sure they
  are in your Drama file. You will need these for
  your exam.