3 TEXTS I USED TO READ IN THE FIRST YEAR ACTING CLASS, FIRST DAY (NOT ANYMORE)
To Train or Not to Train (Excerpt from a 1978 text written by an actor) Many people believe that training in a drama school is a waste of time.Acting, they claim, is something you either have or you don’t. How can you teach someone to do something that is either in their nature or not? […]
Stanislavski’s Vision of the Taskbook
Beyond Self-Observation Training: Stanislavski’s Actor Cultivation Apart from self-observation training, Konstantin Stanislavski had two other types of training under the title “cultivation of the actor.”G.V. Kristi describes its content: “The cultivation of the actor, as understood by K.S. Stanislavski, is the daily training of the internal, psychological, and physical qualities that support the actor’s creativity.” […]
WHEN SCIENCE MEETS ART
(Excerpt from a Study) […] Our interest in the psychology of emotions led us to undertake an analysis of the creative legacy of K.S. Stanislavski. The result of this analysis was the essay “The Method of K.S. Stanislavski and the Physiology of Emotions,” written between 1955-1956 and published by the Academy of Sciences of the […]
Mikhail Chekhov vs. Yevgeny Vakhtangov
Topic: Training The first known publication on Stanislavski-based training dates back to 1919. At that time, the magazine Gorn, published by Proletkult (Proletariat and Culture), featured two articles by Mikhail Chekhov about the system, describing some of its exercises. Mikhail Chekhov, then a brilliant actor at the Moscow Art Theatre, was deeply influenced by Nietzsche, […]
The Usefulness of Mistakes
It is not a good sign when a student performs all exercises flawlessly and rarely makes mistakes. This means that they are not giving the green light to many things emerging within them—they are keeping themselves in a moderate, safe valley, where they can walk comfortably with their eyes closed, knowing there are no holes, […]
You can either BE a character or intellectually KNOW who the character is
Andrei Malaev-Babel explains the words by Demidov by saying You can either BE a character, and be in the heat of the moment, or intellectually KNOW who the character is, what the character does or wants – one or the other. I can either be inside a story or be outside of it and “tell a […]
Different signals travel on different wave lengths.
When “in the moment,” I must tune myself in a certain way (achieve a certain psycho-physical state), in order to receive creative signals. These precious signals belong to the realm of subtle, “weak currents.” The voice of intuiting is very faint; to hear it, one must be in a state of deep artistic calm, tranquility […]
We say acting is listening…
We also say that the soul is in the eyes… And we know, we damn well know that Meisner, for instance, is trying to teach you how to listen and how to see (to perceive), especially in the foundation of his technique. Do I agree with the way of implementation? Yes and no, but that’s not the […]
Most of you are probably not Star Wars fans. So be patient…
There is a Star Wars “spin-off” (yeah I know, there are many spin-offs; Star Wars is merchandise, after all). However one of the not-so-crappy ones was “The Mandalorian.” In a sense, it is an American space western that follows Din Djarin aka “Mando”, a lone Mandalorian bounty hunter who resembles Clint Eastwood, in the outer reaches of the […]
Solve et Coagula
“The desperate need for coagulation.” In the world of alchemy, the precursor of science-based thinking, magic, and logic were intertwined. In the “golden bough” a book by anthropologist James George Frazer, one can see the history of magic, reason, religion, and science. It all starts with a need to “control” the environment and fate. A crude example of what […]
