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In about 530bc, Thespis of Icaria stepped
forward from the chorus and presented a story in the first person
for the first time.
2,500 years ago in ancient Greece his actions did not go unnoticed.
Some critics thought Thespis’s actions were deplorable.
Surely standing on a stage pretending to be someone else was no
more than telling lies and certainly not to be encouraged.
This critical opinion was obviously not shared by everyone and the
first person performance survived.
I suppose this proves three things:
1. Doing what feels right even if it means going against what is
considered normal can lead to you getting
a word being created from your name; Thespian.
2. Acting is not about
telling lies, but about telling the truth
3. Critics know nothing.
I suspect you already new that one though.
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During the era of the Roman Empire and through out the Middle Ages
acting was considered to be dangerous profession, aside from the
obvious difficulties an excitable and critical audience could pose,
it was believed that there was a more inherent danger.
The Greeks believe that the body was composed of four basic fluids:
black bile, yellow bile, Red blood, and Phlegm, and it was very
important that these fluids remained in balance. One of the major
symptoms of an imbalance was the display of emotions, which in turn
was believed to be a symptom of some internal problem. Strong emotions
were at this time referred to as Humours.
This meant actors faced a terrible dilemma. If you were to act out
some strong emotion, would this lead to an imbalance of your basic
fluids, and cause some terrible internal problem. If so, this could
mean that acting could be extremely bad for your health.
Fortunately a Roman called Quintilian produced a system that enabled
actors to avoid such problems. Instead of playing emotions for real,
actors could replace them with a series of predetermined gestures,
vocal inflections and body poses. This enabled actors to portray
strong emotions in a way that could be interpreted by the audience
without any danger to themselves.
This method of acting was to be used, refined and adapted for the
next 800 years.
This method now may seem odd and out of place to current lines of
thought concerning the craft of acting. But Quintilian’s work
on oration encompassed much more than these devises for displaying
emotion. His belief in a strong and powerful voice is still as important
today as it was in his time. And even if the modern actor does manage
to portray emotions in a more realistic manner, it will be of little
benefit to the audience if it is unable to hear and understand the
words the actors is using.
To learn more about the work of Quintilian click on the link below.
Quintilian Link
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Aaron Hill an English author, actor, director and critic wrote
an essay in 1753 entitled the Art of Acting.
The essay tells us that there are ten dramatic passions: joy, grief,
anger, pity, scorn, hatred, jealousy, wonder, fear and love, and
each of these passions should be represented by a series of standard
poses and facial expressions.
Although simplistic, in one form or another this way of representing
emotions has lasted up to the present day. Early silent films certainly
used variations of Hills ideas, and it has always been a device
used in slapstick comedy. Mime artist and clowns use little else
to tell their story’s, and I suppose the expression that certain
soap actors are forced to hold as they stare into the camera at
the end of particularly dramatic scenes could fall into this style
of performance as well.
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Born in France Delsarte dreamed of being a singer but after damaging
his voice by faulty training he turned his attention to the teaching
of dramatic expression.
Like Quintilian and Aaron Hill, Desarte believed that emotions should
be expressed by using a series of prescribed poses and vocal inflections.
But Delsarte differed from these predecessors in his belief that
one should also feel the emotions one was trying to express. He
believed that if the correct pose and vocal inflection were used,
they would help create the appropriate emotional reaction as well.
“Motion creates emotion”. What was absolutely essential
to this theory was getting the gesture correct.
Delsarte spent a lot of time studying people, normal people going
about their every day lives, he even studied anatomy. He needed
to see people express their feelings: anger, love, grief and joy.
He wanted to see the real thing, not the sterile representations
that theatre offered.
“You can never show truly more than you are capable of experiencing.
For the expression of noble emotions, one must feel noble emotions.
Imitation will carry you but a short way”.
Delsarte believed that there was a universal formula
that could be applied to all things, “the trinity”,
for man the trinity was: Life, mind and soul, communication had
its own trinity: Voice, gesture and words. For the body, the trinity
consisted of: Head, torso and limbs, and each of these could be
sub divided into three. Using this, he then went on to prescribe
the correct posture and gesture for each part of the body for each
emotion.
Delsarte’s idea’s where taken up by
an American actor called Steele Mackaye, he transported these ideas
across the Atlantic where they were enthusiastically received, although
some of his idea’s would become distorted and changed as time
went on and it was probably this trans Atlantic crossing that has
established the name of Delsarte as a major figure in the history
of teaching the dramatic arts.
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Constantine Stanislavski has been with out doubt
the greatest influence on acting we have known. His system, as laid
out in his three seminal works, An Actor Prepares, Building a Character
and Creating a Role, provides actors with a series of useful aids
and practical methods that help preparing for roles in rehearsals
and during the performances themselves.
Born Constantine Alexeiev in Mocow 1863 to wealthy
parents, he soon developed a love of performing. At this time actors
performed in a very theatrical manner, they didn't speak with their
natural voice, and declaimed their lines in an artificial style,
and accompanied each word with a dramatic gesture. Although this
was the norm not all actors were so melodramatic. An actor called
Shchpkin was renowned for his realistic portrayals of people and
their feelings. Unfortunately Constantine would have only have known
Shchpkin by reputation as he died in the same year as Constantine
was born.
Constantine dreamed of being a great actor, he
studied and experimented continuously, trying to improve his technique.
Nothing seemed to work, he always felt false. Indeed so embarrassed
by one production, he changed his name to Stanislavski so no one
would recognize him. Even when his performances were well received
he never felt satisfied.
It was perhaps his knowledge of Shchpkin and in
particular one of his sayings, "there are no small parts, only
small actors", that he began to see that there was another
way of representing people on stage, in shades other than black
and white.
In 1897 Constantine Stanislavski and a playwright
and teacher Vladimir Namirovich Danchenko formed the Moscow Arts
Theatre with which as an actors and director Constantine could experiment
with some of his new ideas. Over a six-year period the Moscow Arts
Theatre produced twenty plays to great success and achieved international
acclaim with their new naturalistic style.
Constantine was still not happy, particularly
about his own performances, they still felt mechanical, they contained
no inner feeling. In 1906 after a
triumphant tour of Germany he took a break from the company.
He allowed himself time to review and rethink
his whole approach to acting. Drawing on his experience he began
to write down and work out a "system" that would help
create the kind of performances he desired.
Once back with the Moscow Arts Theatre he was
able to try out and develop these new ideas. He worked on relaxation,
concentration, given circumstances, action, the super-objective,
emotion memory, the magic "If" and many others , for the
rest of his life he worked on, and refined his idea's, sometimes
abandoning previously strongly held views, in a search of a way
for actors to get to the truth of a role. His work always was and
continues to be a work in progress.
Stanislavski's system has been the starting point
for virtually every theory that has followed. It is from his ideas
others have gone on to refine and develop there own thoughts. It
has also provided a solid view of the theatre which others have
been able to react against. His work still provides the firm footing
that is required for the study of acting to move forwards.
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Evgeni Vakhtangov was a co-founder of the Moscow
Arts Theatre, and was keenly involved in directing and teaching.
Although he was influenced by Stanislavski’s techniques, Vakhtangov
wanted to experiment and develop a style of his own. He wanted to
take what he had learned from Stanislavski and combine it with what
he called “fantastic realism”.
The idea of performing in a theatre for him was not to recreate
life as it was outside, but to express life in a highly theatrical
way without losing its truth and integrity.
Actor were encourage to use a system called ‘justification’,
this is an idea that says an actor can use motivations unrelated
to the play or character that still produce the necessary emotion
or action that is required. A performance should not be shackled
by realism, but allow to fly by encouraging the use of a performers
imagination.
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As the son of Ellen Terry, It probably surprised no one when Edward Gordon Craig became an actor. He became a member of Sir Henry Irving's Company of which his mother was the leading actress.
The life of an actor though was not sufficient to fulfill all of his creative ambitions.
Craig dreamt of creating a new kind of theatre. He used his skill as an artist to create drawings and models to display his visions.
He started designing scenery and instead of creating realistic reproductions of real life, his designs tried to capture the spirit and mood of a play. For the rest of his life he worked on creating this new and imaginative theatre.
http://bondo.wsc.mass.edu/faculty/cslaughter/craigpage.html
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Within the Moscow Art Theatre Meyerhold led
a revolt against naturalism in the Russian Theater. He was an early
advocate of the theater of the absurd, borrowing elements from pantomimes,
and circus acrobats.
Meyerhold was in love with motion, but wanted his actors to be efficient,
so that they could achieve the maximum effect on their audiences in
the most direct way possible. Instead just reflecting life to audiences
he wanted to excite them and carry them on a ride.
He created a technique called Biomechanics that trained his actors
to be physically capable of carrying out the actions he wanted. |
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Brecht has become one of the most prominent
figures in the 20th-century theatre. His ideas have added a perfect
counter balance to the realism of Stanislavski. Instead of becoming
so deeply involved with the story and characters that audiences were
likely to forget that they were in a theatre at all, he wanted to
make sure his audience were always be aware of where they were and
force them to think rather than just go along with what they see.
"In order to produce A Effects the actor has to discard whatever means
he has learned of persuading the audience to identify itself with
the characters which he plays. Aiming not to put his audience into
a trance, he must not go into a trance himself. His muscles must remain
loose, for a turn of the head, e.g., with tautened neck muscles, will
"magically" lead the spectators' eyes and even their heads to turn
with it, and this can only detract from any speculation or reaction
which the gestures may bring about. His way of speaking has to be
free from ecclesiastical singsong and from all those cadences which
lull the spectator so that the sense gets lost." (From A Short Organum
for the Theatre, 1948)
http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/german/brecht/
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Artaud was an actor, playwright and essayist belonging to the surrealist
movement. His ideas about theatre were extreme and his own practical
experiments with them ended in failure.
His legacy though has been the influence his ideas have had on the
generations of directors that have followed. He labeled his concepts
for a new type of theatre as Theatre of Cruelty.
He wanted to brake down the barriers between his actors and audience.
He wanted to release feelings usually suppressed in the actor's subconscious
and set them free. He also wanted to create a spectacle that would
influence the lives of all who saw it.
" I propose then a theater in which violent physical images crush
and hypnotize the sensibility of the spectator seized by the theater
as by a whirlwind of high forces. A theater which, abandoning psychology,
recounts the extraordinary, stages natural conflicts, natural and
subtle forces, and presents itself first of all as an exceptional
power of redirection. A theater that induces trance, as the dances
of Dervishes induce trance, and that addresses itself to the organism
by precise instruments, by the same means as those of certain tribal
music cures which we admire an records but are incapable of originating
among ourselves". (From Artaud, The Theatre and its double, 1938)
www.antoninartaud.org |
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Michael was the nephew of the great playwright
Anton Chekhov, and became one Constantine Stanislavski best and most
famous actors in Russia. He then went on to develop an innovative
directing and teaching style himself. In 1942 he moved to America
where he acted in many films and taught some of the greatest actors
of the time.
.
http://www.chekhov.net/mic_main.html
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Lee Strasberg 1901 -
The name Lee Strasberg is synonymous with ‘The
Method’ and The Actors Studio, perhaps the most famous school
of acting in the world.
He is also the theatre who has created more controversy
and debate than any other. His interpretation of Stanislavski’s
system has by its advocate been hailed as producing some of the
finest actors of the modern age, it’s critics would argue
the opposite.
The ‘Method’ he created was based
on Stanislavski’s and others work with affective memory, a
controversial way of controlling emotions. This is where the arguments
stem from. Affective memory did indeed form part of Stanislavski’s
early exploration of the art of acting, but he was later to abandon
it in favour of, imagination, concentration and the ‘magic
if’ as ways of reaching an appropriate emotional state.
Like most arguments the there are of course two
sides, and the any short appraisal of the differing positions can
only be considered as simplistic in the extreme. The work of Lee
Strasberg is often misrepresented as producing army’s of mumbling
self absorbed actors, but if a teacher is going to be judged on
the qualities and talents of his students you would have to go a
long way to beat the long list of luminaries that The Actors studio
can present. Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Kim Stanley, Marilyn Monroe,
Jane Fonda, James Dean, Dustin Hoffman, Eli Wallach, Eva Marie Saint,
Robert DeNiro, Jill Clayburgh, Jack Nicholson, and Steve McQueen
are just a few who have studied under the man.
Stasberg himself is a shining example of his technique,
deservedly winning an Academy Award nomination for his performance
in The Godfather: Part II.
QUOTES
"Art is Longer Than Life" -- Lee Strasberg
"If we cannot see the possibility of greatness,
how can we dream it?" -- Lee Strasberg
"An Actors' tribute to me is in his work."
-- Lee Strasberg
"Acting is the most personal of our crafts.
The make-up of a human being - his physical, mental and emotional
habits - influence his acting to a much greater extent than commonly
recognized." -- Lee Strasberg
"A great actor is independent of the poet,
because the supreme essence of feeling does not reside in prose
or in verse, but in the accent with which it is delivered."
-- Lee Strasberg
"Work for the actor lies in two areas: the
ability to consistently create reality and the ability to express
that reality." -- Lee Strasberg
"The actor creates with his own flesh and
blood all those things which all the arts try in some way to describe.
Goethe said that an actor's career develops in public, but the actor's
art only in private. The Studio exists to encourage that private
process of creation." -- Lee Strasberg
"We want you to work easily and soundly
and simply because we know that out of that work done in quietness
comes little by little a greater thing, the art of the actor."
-- Excerpt from a "Dream Of Passion" by Lee Strasberg.
http://www.strasberg.com/
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Born into a theatrical family in New York
in 1902 it wasn't long before she made her first appearance on stage
aged just four in her father's production of Broken Hearts at the
Grand Street Theatre, New York.
Her parents Sarah and Jacob Adler were both successful actors and
ran the Adler Company; in which a total of fifteen family members
performed, part of the strong Yiddish American Theatre movement.
They would put on classical plays, translated into Yiddish, of Shakespeare,
Ibsen, and Tolstoy, as well as other modern and classical playwrights,
with Stella the parts of both boys and girls.
Later despite being an established actress she attended The American
Laboratory Theatre School which had been founded by5 by Richard
Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya, both former members of the famed
Moscow Art Theatre. It was here she was introduced to the work of
Stanislavski.
In 1931 she became one of the original members of The Group theatre,
a company put together by Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford and Lee
Strasberg with the aim of creating an American version of the Moscow
Arts Theatre.
The company achieved great success, but Stella became dissatisfied
with the methods being used by company director Lee Strasburg, especially
his interpretation of Stanislavski's affective memory techniques.
In 1934 Stella met Constantine Stanislavski in Paris, where she
learnt that the man on whom the Group theatre based its work had
himself move on and abandoned his ideas on affective memory. For
six weeks they met every day and worked together for hours. Stanislavsky
taught her that "the source of acting is imagination and that
the key to its problems is truth, truth in the circumstances of
the play."
When she returned she continued acting with the Group Theatre and
also began teaching using the techniques shown her by Stanislavski.
This was not universally welcomed, Lee Strasberg in particular was
dismissive, refusing to let go of the affective memory 'method'
he had been developing.
In 1949 She founded the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting in New
York City. She taught here for a decade, helping to produce some
of the greatest actors of the period. Her most famous students were
Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro and Warren Beatty.
Later became an adjunct professor of acting at the School of Drama
at Yale University.
She wrote a book, "Stella Adler on Acting," which defined
her theories of acting.
"Acting, creating, interpreting, means total involvement; the
totality of heart, mind, and spirit. Acting is the total development
of a human being into the most he or she can be and in as many directions
as you can possibly take."
http://www.stellaadler-la.com/
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Viola Spolin created and developed a series
of theatre games.
She realized that an actor can be held back by being to serious
or by over thinking. She saw that a sense of playfulness and the
act of play was a skill that as adults we easily lose. Yet these
childlike skills can be powerful triggers that can fire the imagination
into creative thought.
It is Voila Spolins work that has given us the tools to develop
the actors skills in the field of improvisation.
www.spolin.com
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Born in New York Sanford Meisner was one of the founder members
of the highly influential Group Theatre. But despite the success
he achieved with here as an actor, he did not always agree with
the methods being used by the group’s director and teacher
Lee Strasberg. He particularly didn’t like the use of affective
memory. He felt that it could distroy the link that actors can create
with each other during a performance.
Following the lead of another of his group theatre contempories
Stella Adler, Sanford Meisner soon began teaching his own theories
and ideas. He defined acting as “…living truthfully
under imaginary circumstances”. Like other American teachers
Miesner has played a major role in carrying forward the work of
Stanislavski.
http://www.themeisnercenter.com/
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| Jerzy Grotowski has been interested
in the bare bones of theatre.
For him there was no necessity for scenery, props, musicians, make-up
or lighting. All that is needed is a space, actors and spectators.
He saw that what made theatre special and different to other mediums
such as TV and Film is the interaction that can be achieved between
performer and audience.
He wanted his performers to get rid of any social mask that a performer
can hide behind and confront the spectator with the truth, no matter
how uncomfortable.
He called this type of work, Poor Theatre.
One of his main influences has been the work of Antonin Artaud.
http://owendaly.com/jeff/grotows2.htm
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Suzuki has brought together styles from east and west. He has created
a Physical style of theatre using the traditions of classical Japanese
theatre, Indian Kathakali dance and some aspects of western ballet.
His aim is to produce actors who, as well as highly trained voices
also achieve a high degree of physical expression.
"…to make it possible for actors to develop their ability of physical
expression and also nourish a tenacity of concentration".
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