READ AFTER READING PART 1
The single secret to the entire ‘system’ ( The Single Secret to the Entire ‘Method’ of Strasberg the one things he got right — Meisner tried to get there via “independent activity” i.e distraction of attention but as we know that’s just a trick discovered by Stanislavsky, note : please look up Stanislavski’s experience with the nails on the floor from his first book) for the training, crafting and creating of acting that Stanislavsky articulated out of his life long empirical study of the innate nature of the functioning of human psychobiology reality in artistic creativity is this:
Zon: “How does one achieve full freedom of the muscles [relaxation in acting]?”
Stanislavsky: “By coming out from nature in everything and forgetting ‘theatre’ to the maximum.” […] An attempt to get closer to nature, to a maximum degree, makes up the concern of my whole life. […] On stage […] out of poor taste, we deform our nature.”
If one understands that in the psychobiology of any actor’s creativity “freeing the muscles” or relaxation is the starting point for the entire process of truthful rather than indicated or “performy” ham acting, then one gets this statement of Stan the Man’s. Relaxation leads to organic sensory based concentration, which then leads to the start of the affective memory fed creative imagination, which then leads to the (re)experiential activation of the play/text’s given circumstances, which then leads to the scenic event which then leads to one’s objective, which then leads to the psycho-physiological-physical in nature organic actions one takes to reach one’s objective, which then leads to conflict when it meets the other character/actor’s’ objectives/actions which then leads to acting and thus theatre.
In every step of this creative process one starts/comes from nature – not theatre, not performance, not style, not genre, not theatrical convention, not the audience, not the words, not the blocking, not the type, not the cliche, not the “character” and on and on and on, blah, blah, blah. One comes from nature and creates and then fashions LIFE/LIVING/(RE)LIVING/(RE)EXPERIENCING into artistic – not conventions – but artistic form. Acting and thus theatre is LIFE in a consciously created form not form in a form, not theatre made out of or into more theatre. That is quite simply formalism – i.e. crap.
IN OTHER WORDS THE SINGLE SECRET IS WHAT DEMIDOV FORMULATED IN THE MOST SIMPLE WAY TOSSING AWAY (forgetting) EMPTYING AND THEN ALLOWING (not inhibiting)
KF
