Who are you? Konstantin Stanislavski

"Remember: there are no small parts, only small actors" 

The man we will all get to know as growing actors and actresses is Konstantin Stanislavski, he was born in 1863 and later changed his last name from: Konstantin Sergeyevich Alexeyev to Konstantin Stanislavski. Sadly, Konstantin died aged 73 in the year of 1938. Stanislavski was known as great Russian theatre practitioner who felt as though acting needed to feel "natural and real" this was employed in his many teachings and techniques we have/or will come to learn. He believed that as an actor you were to get ahold of your character and strip it down to find out everything and anything about her or him, whether it be their favourite colour to their motivation behind an action; Stanislavski wanted the performers to know everything about their part.  Due to his seriousness within his work field he made sure to thourougly assess his work and this later helped him develop his skils into writing various pieces of texts listing from

1. My Life in Art
2. An Actor Prepares
3. Building a Character
4. Creating a Role

These were immensely helpful in as they allowed other actors and actresses to flourish upon reading his texts.

There was a theatre called the Moscow Art Theatre which was founded by both Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich Danchenko who himself was a Russian director, playwright and producer for the arts. His wealthy stature wasn't something he was proud of nor did he care about it enough, his father was disappointed with Konstantin and frowned upon his work. However, to his father's dismay Stanislavski kept at his theatrical works and pushed further and further up until the point where he decided to open the: Moscow Art Theatre. During this time at the theatre he had gone on to create many masterpieces of his time namely:

1. An Enemy of the People
2. The Blue Bird

When Stalin controlled Russia, Stanislavski was keen to appease him to ensure the survival of the theatre. During this time the company’s work reflected the political voice of the USSR, as represented by Socialist realism. Stanislavski was able to remain a follower of realism but the theatre company’s plays promoted socialist political beliefs. This remained the case until 1970 when there was a movement back towards the essence of Stanislavski’s method.

 "Our demands are simple, normal, and therefore they are difficult to satisfy. All we ask is that an actor on the stage live in accordance with natural laws"

As an avid follower of realism he thrust that teaching into every one of his plays/techniques etc, in theatre work he had begun experimenting so to speak with his own ideas on how things could or would work. And when it came down to how real his pieces were or how he had viewed them, they were displayed as the fourth wall. Everyday typical conversations with one another. Ordinary folk (by that I mean in most if not all of his plays there were pretty run of the mill kind of characters i.e working/middle class people). Careful and concise rehearsals as well as having realistic settings for the actors.
When it came down to his techniques and what he wanted to give out to upcoming actors and actresses, it became known as his system 'The Stanislavski System' in the sense that the things lsited were what you would need in order to conjure up a natural experience for the audience. There were in fact eight different divisions that were forged.

• Emotional Memory/Recall - Where an actor would go back in their own memory and relieve an emotion they had that was similar to the character they were portraying
• Method of Physical Actions - From doing something so simple like eating breakfast then doing something where your eating breakfast yet there is something on your mind keeping you from eating. Something simple like this can release actions relatable to the emotional state of a character
• Subtext - What is known as the meaning behind the words/lines spoken by a character
• Given Circumstances - Seen as the current circumstances of the character, from his or her age, wealth status, job etc
• "What if?" Scenarios - Putting themselves in the characters shoes and exploring the what if side. What would you do if you was in that predicament?
• Your Objective - To put simply the reason for your actions and why you're doing them
• Your SUPER-Objective - This is slightly harder as this is seen as the overall objective for your character which is linked by smaller objectives leading up to this one
• Thorough Line - Using objectives of a character to steer straight into the path of a super-objective

A lasting point was that Stanislavski wanted actors to prioritise the use of improvisation in order to dig deeper into creating that unique character, moving the improv in their own way. This relates to his teaching of 'Circles of Attention' in which he believed that to properly form a character you needed to isolate yourself to create that characterisation, to concentrate on themselves you would do exercises where for example you were going on holiday and you needed to pack, your circle of attention would just be you and the bag and your focus on what you were going to wear on holiday. What would you bring? This technique avoided all the unnecessary attention as your entire focus would be your own task at hand.