Charles Erich Conrad: The Evolution of Meisner BY CONRAD and the Almost Arrival at Demidov
In the history of acting, very few teachers have managed to challenge and significantly improve upon the teachings of their predecessors. One of them is Charles Erich Conrad, who, despite being a direct student of Sanford Meisner, ultimately rejected and reshaped key aspects of Meisner’s technique. His approach corrected several weaknesses of Meisner’s system, particularly […]
How Did Stanislavski React to All These New Ideas?
At first, a “war” broke out. It began when he was confronted with the idea that the real cause of failures in teaching at the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT) studios and school was neither haste nor a lack of professionalism or talent among the students. When he was invited to experiment with a completely new […]
[…] Art is always in search of the eternal questions: “why?”, “who?”, and “how?”.
Sometimes people say:— There are no rules or laws in art!They quote Mayakovsky:— All poetry is a journey into the unknown! Such conclusions are sometimes considered necessary to pass on not only to young poets but also to young actors, painters, and musicians. And in saying this, they refer to Salieri, who “devoured music like […]
“In the Beginning Was the Word”
On July 21, 1938, shortly before Stanislavski’s death, a manuscript of An Actor Prepares was brought to him at Leontyevsky for his approval before printing. Lying on a couch in his spacious office—divided by Swedish bookshelves, behind which the “medical department” monitoring his health was concealed—he was handed unbound pages of the future book. “When […]
Judy Dench describing perfectly how her work is actually 100% demidovian
She is letting her subconsciously work !
It kind of reminds me of a certain philosophy…
Actor’s imagination is PHYSICAL
The actor’s imagination is not intellectual, it is physical, the director can be intellectual, the writer can be intellectual, but the actor’s imagination is always physical. Actors are always trying to avoid the inevitable — getting up — so we talk…then the director talks…then the actors talk back and now we are all chatting about it. Don’t […]
For thought:
Actor’s freedom Our ability to yield—without restrictions and without inhibitions—to the reflexive reactions that arise from our interaction and perception of the environment (both internal and external), with the imaginary (imagination/memory), and with language/thought.
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, […]
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 […]
