Actors Studio

Mixed-methods research is employed to investigate the implementation of the Stanislavski system in the study of Thai court drama. This study investigates the successful application of the Stanislavski method in Thai Court Theater, focusing on its role in enabling actors to portray emotions with accuracy and conviction. Research methods encompass activities including document and literature analysis, comprehensive interviews, observation of Thai Court Theater performances, data assessment, dissemination of academic findings, and clarification of results. The results illustrate that the utilization of Stanislavski’s acting technique amplifies the intensity and genuineness of Thai court dramas learning. Stanislavski enhances the authenticity of a performance. Actors can derive advantages from the act of committing lines and music to memory. Fluid movements and facial gestures. Actors convey emotion by aligning themselves with the tempo and significance of the scene. Understanding character backgrounds and attributes improves performance. It helps to facilitate the process of learning and creating dance choreography. Concentration enables a broad spectrum of focus. The performances take center stage. This method enhances the actors’ gestures, interactions, and relationships with the audience. An individual’s intrinsic motivation lies in comprehending a character’s objectives and employing personal encounters to elicit feelings. “This conveys emotion,” states Stanislavski. Players gain a clearer understanding of their roles when they have a vivid mental image. Vision enhances performance, ethics, and emotional intelligence. Physical activity, procreation, and intentional observation influence individuals’ existence. The Thai court game involves vigorous physical activity while wearing masks and costumes. Consequently, it is crucial to prioritize relaxation and maintain proper breathing. The implementation of Stanislavski’s ideas can aid Thai Court Theater actors in preserving and enhancing their artistic style. These techniques facilitate the discovery of emotional and cultural satisfaction for actors. This study discovered that the utilization of Stanislavski’s techniques enhances the emotional expressiveness of Thai court drama performers.

One hundred years after Marlon Brando’s birth, we would like to remember how his figure
revolutionized the entire Hollywood cinema, which had become rigid in the star system paradigms.
In the different roles he portrayed during his long career, we can find an important utilization of
Stanislavski’s Method, characterized by a particularly realistic technique and a strong emotional
involvement. Brando – an undisputed icon and sex symbol – thus proposes a new way of acting,
embodying characters of authentic humanity, delving into his own emotions and inner turmoil.

The article traces the evolution of actor training in the United States in the first Twentieth Century, presenting the main proposals that arose with Lee Strasberg's Method and that opposed it. An analysis of the principles on which the teachings were structured reveals a strong influence of the systems proposed by leading European masters, such as Delsarte and, especially in Strasberg's case, the derivation from the early Stanislavsky System, the one based on reviviscence and psychological introspection. The essay highlights how the conception of training changed, however, with the first reactions to commercial theater and the staging of the new American dramaturgy and that coming from Europe. The need for greater preparation on the use of voice and body led to the redefinition of actor training, paving the way for the avant-garde, which continued the experimentation.

Fryer, assembled a panel of leading Stanislavski experts and practitioners, several of whom had direct experience of working with Benedetti himself, and many of whom have contributed major publications to the current scholarship. Their discussions, debates and deliberations are published here for the first time,not only as a fascinating exploration of Stanislavski's approaches and the way in which they are taught today, but also as a memorial to Jean Benedetti, whose pioneering work opened up an entirely new level of understanding for English-speaking readers.

Fryer, assembled a panel of leading Stanislavski experts and practitioners, several of whom had direct experience of working with Benedetti himself, and many of whom have contributed major publications to the current scholarship. Their discussions, debates and deliberations are published here for the first time,not only as a fascinating exploration of Stanislavski's approaches and the way in which they are taught today, but also as a memorial to Jean Benedetti, whose pioneering work opened up an entirely new level of understanding for English-speaking readers.

Although better known as a playwright and film-maker, David Mamet started his artistic career as a teacher of acting. In this essay Christophe Collard contextualizes the influences, evaluates the implications, and criticizes some of the implementations of his 'Practical Aesthetics' by bridging the divide between Mamet's aesthetic theory and its concretization in practice. Often mistaken for a disingenuous appropriation of the so-called 'Stanislavsky System', Mamet's derived 'Method' arguably is more functional than original. Nevertheless, Collard argues that his confusion between various interpretations of these precepts is deliberate and serves primarily a reflexive purpose, as illustrated here with an analysis of Mamet's rehearsal play A Life in the Theatre. Christophe Collard works as a research fellow in American theatre and drama at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Free University of Brussels), where he recently completed a doctorate about media and genre crossings in the work of David Mamet.

This thesis is an exploration of movement pedagogy as a continuation of basic acting lessons from Stanislavski. Using the example of an introductory semester of movement instruction, physical acting and movement concepts are explained in terms of their connection to and derivation from universally accepted acting terminology and ideas. This is put forth as a way to facilitate the synthesis of movement instruction with other acting curriculum, as well as providing a new way to view some familiar acting concepts. Several specific examples are explored in more depth as case studies in physical equivalents to the intellectual, visual, or emotional techniques familiar to all with a basic knowledge of Stanislavski based acting principles.

Paula Strasberg demands a Method reading. Wife of Lee Strasberg, coach to Marilyn Monroe, and victim of the Hollywood Blacklist, Paula Strasberg's life is only detectable through the stories of other (more famous) people, epitomizing the historical record's indifference to women's work. Those extant, conflicting traces of Strasberg-as crone, as radical, as overbearing Jewish mother-reveal how conceptions of art, femininity, and ethnicity circulated in the shadow of the postwar culture industries. In response, this speculative account, rooted in theatricality and play, reinstates Paula Strasberg into the history through critical-creative means.

Konstantin Stanislavski points out that emotions are like wild animals that can only be lured rather than approached directly; he urges his students not to try to force emotions to arrive, as feelings are independent of the will and cannot be manipulated. Like a whisperer, the actor should lure emotions, gently invite them in, approach them indirectly, instead of 'going after' them and scaring them away. During his extensive and revolutionary research on the actor's craft, the Russian pioneer discovered various such indirect 'lures' for emotional activation. This article reviews the tangible points of entry to the unruly feelings as identified by Stanislavski, as well as those explored by his pupil, Michael Chekhov. The two practitioners' approach to emotion is examined here, with emphasis on two key publications respectively: Stanislavski's An Actor's Work and Chekhov's To the Actor. The article discusses the lures of concentration, imagination, 'well-founded, apt and productive' actions, emotion memory, temporhythm, empathy (fellow-feeling), external stimuli such as lighting and props, and the actor's focus on that which is specific, tangible, and detailed. The review of Stanislavski's lures is followed by a discussion of Michael Chekhov's insights on artistically-induced emotion and the pathways he identified for stirring the performer's inner life, emphasising the exploration of qualities of movement, objective atmospheres, and the actor's embodied imagination.

uses the term without scare quotes, with the notable exception of her title, at times in specific reference to Strasberg's Method and at others as a purposefully "generic label" [16].) Her study, which focuses resolutely on these teachers' practical pedagogies, pursues two aims: to expose the damaging gender biases endemic to the practices that gather under the name of Method acting, and to investigate the potential for recovering elements of Stanislavsky-derived techniques for feminist practice. Despite her strong regard for the Stanislavsky system from which these techniques proceed, Malague does not shrink from investigating those biases and their implications; in pursuit of recuperable elements, she also does the important work of differentiating among these representative techniques, isolating individual liabilities and strengths in strains of realist practice too often considered a monolithic whole. After exploring the ways in which these pedagogies both assume and produce gender difference, often in ways particularly debilitating-sometimes humiliating-to female subjects, Malague nonetheless suggests their potential utility for feminist praxis (197). Malague accomplishes her analysis largely through a close reading of the four teachers' published texts (most of which recount illustrative classroom experiences), and, in some cases, videos, interviews, and biographies; she occasionally speaks of her own experience teaching or learning various techniques, but her analysis is largely historical. She frames the acting classroom as a particularly compelling (and underinvestigated) site of gender disciplining, a literal Editor's note: We begin this issue's Book Reviews section with two responses to Rosemary Malague's important new book, An Actress Prepares: Women and "the Method." The first is a conventionally written but incisive review of the book by Lindsay Brandon Hunter; the second is a personal reflection on the book by actor, creator, and teacher Deb Margolin.

The dissertation considers the extent to which Stanislavski's 'System' is still useful to performers today, working in a postmodern context. It draws on textual sources and evidence from interviews to explore this question, and also considers Stanislavski's work in relation to four of his contemporaries-Vsevolod Meyerhold, Evgeny Vakhtangov, Mikhail Chekhov and Bertolt Brecht. Philip Auslander's argument, drawing upon the ideas of Jacques Derrida, that Stanislavski's approach is logocentric is considered in detail, looking at questions of the Self, Identity, Memory and Imagination. Hans Theiss Lehmann's argument that contemporary theatre is 'postdramatic' is also explored, as are some of the ideas behind such contemporary practitioners as Willem Dafoe of The Wooster Group and Tim Etchells of Forced Entertainment.

Este trabalho tem como objeto de pesquisa o ofício do ator nos meios audiovisuais sob a ótica da preparação de elenco. Fazemos aqui uma ponte entre a tradição stanislavskiana - que abarca desde a origem do Sistema até sua reinterpretação no Método (Method acting) norte-americano, consolidada como a principal técnica de atuação naturalista para o cinema - e aquilo que de fato é adotado por preparadores de elenco na produção audiovisual brasileira contemporânea. Trazemos um estudo de caso para verificar de que modo o Sistema/Método se faz presente no contexto atual do audiovisual brasileiro, e em que medida ele é reiterado, reinterpretado ou recusado: a preparadora de elenco Estrela Straus, atriz, diretora e professora do Método. Assim, respondemos à seguinte questão norteadora: como as escolas stanislavskianas de atuação podem ajudar a superar os desafios do intérprete no audiovisual brasileiro nos dias de hoje?

This thesis investigates the significance of rhythm to the actor, examining the ways it is approached, understood and embodied within a range of training practices. In what ways does rhythm facilitate and transform the practices of individual performers and ensembles, affecting their use of attention, physical coordination, qualities of connectivity, states of consciousness and emotions? The psychophysical mechanisms through which rhythm informs these key aspects of actor training are analysed here via a range of contemporary and historical psychophysical and cultural frameworks. Drawing on this body of research this thesis argues the case for a greater understanding of the pedagogy of rhythm within actor training, indicating a number of areas for further investigation and potential developments within this field. Beginning with Stanislavski’s use of “Tempo-rhythm” and progressing through the practices of Meyerhold and Grotowski, a number of key rhythmic principles will be discussed...

Theater historians often speak of theories of acting (Carlson, 1983), although the term tends to shift in meaning across much of their commentary. Theories of broader sweep, as instanced in the writings of Grotowski, Brecht, Craig, Artaud, Chaikin, Lecoq, or Copeau involve alternative theatrical directions, and differ in scope from those about processes necessary for actors to achieve stage reality. For example, propounding a theory of alienation (Brecht's Verfremdungseffek) does not involve advancing a hypothesis subject to empirical confirmation. It is more akin to introducing a theatrical tradition as a fresh perspective on acting or play production. Theories in this category I propose to call programmatic theories. They seek to institute the form a theatrical tradition should take, rather than propounding hypotheses subject to confirmation from the standpoint of truth or falsity.On the other hand, there are "theories"-including one advanced by Diderot (1959)-that c...

Method Acting is a short name for a unique acting technique developed by several insightful an talented authors naming just two most influential  such as Constantin Stanislavsky, (The System) and Lee Strasberg (The Method). It is a dynamic mixture of various psycho techniques aiming at helping the actor to  develop the character "from the inside out".  The paper gives an historical overview of the Method development from the start in Russia, crossing over to USA and various influences that shaped it ( Psychoanalysis). It also points out a unique development in Ljubljana, Slovenia by the Actor's Studio in Ljubljana led by brothers Vajevec (Janez and Andrej) established in 1980.
The paper contains the basic information on the Method as developed in Ljubljana and the unique exercise called " Zbranost (Focus)" developed in Ljubljana's Studio. The last part contains the summary of the unpublished paper by the author pointing out the therapeutic modules ingrained in the system (The organic performance and its healing power
by I.Zagajšek, Unpublished paper. Based on the essay at the University Sigmund Freud. April 2018.)

Method acting is a range of training and rehearsal techniques that seek to encourage sincere and emotionally expressive performances, as formulated by several different theatre practitioners including Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, and Sanford Meisner, while the Organic Creative Process is a conscious, intuitive process that goes beyond it.

"People are strange" è un percorso tematico attraverso il cinema americano, in due tappe: la prima è dedicata alla questione dell'emigrazione, dal punto di vista di chi arriva; nella seconda, proveremo a guardare lo stesso oggetto da un altro lato, occupandoci di immigrazione e assumendo, dunque, il punto di vista del cittadino americano che assiste e partecipa alle trasformazioni sociali del proprio territorio.

Introduzione 2 4 conferma del fatto che il campo di ricerca è ancora aperto. In particolare per quanto riguarda la questione del Metodo, la sua complessità si accentua se si vogliono considerare i rapporti che i singoli attori di Kazan hanno avuto con esso, specialmente per quanto riguarda i nomi più comunemente associati ad esso: nelle fonti sembra venirsi a configurare una linea che pone in correlazione tra loro John Garfield, Montgomery Clift,

1 First of all, it is needed to state what Naturalism is in order to start this essay. So that we can say that: "Naturalism, in literature…is the return to nature and to man, direct observation, correct anatomy, the acceptance and the depiction of that which is. […] Hence no more abstract characters in our works, no more history of everyone, the web and woof of daily life. It is a matter of a totally new start, of getting to know man from the very well springs of his being, before reaching conclusions in the manner of the idealists who invent their types." 1 To put it simpler, naturalism is an extension of another movement called realism.

Stanislavski Method Developed in the early 20th century at the Moscow Art Theater by Constantin Stanislavski, the Stanislavski method of acting is a set of techniques meant to create realistic portrayals of characters. The major goal of the Stanislavski method is to have a perfect understanding of the motivations, obstacles, and objectives of a character in each moment. Actors often use this technique for realistic plays, where they try to present an accurate portrayal of normal life.

THE SYSTEM BECOMES THE METHOD: STANISLAVSKY – BOLESLAVSKY – STRASBERG
by Sergei Tcherkasski

This text is prepared by the author on the basis of his official abstract of the dissertation "Directing and Teaching of Richard Boleslavsky and Lee Strasberg of the1920s–1950s as an Experiment in the Development of the Stanislavsky System" submitted for the D.Sc. (Theatre Arts Studies) degree defended in May 2012 at the St. Petersburg Theatre Arts Academy and approved by the Higher Attestation Commission of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation. During the preparation for the publication in the Stanislavski Studies journal the text of the official abstract was partly abridged and rearranged. The following text consists of:
1. Preface to the publication by Prof. Igor Stupnikov
2. Introduction, definition of the subject of the research, its goal, novelty, relevance and topicality, overview of the materials analyzed in the research
3. Structure of the dissertation and overview of its text
4. List of the author’s main publications on the subject of the dissertation
5. Afterword.

Acting is an extension of everyday life. Our daily activities which include having a chat, making a phone call, laughter, and many others are acts which are also expected to be applied by an actor while on stage or screen which makes the art look natural. Some actors are unable to locate the thin line between acting and real life and that characters come from the blues. As such, they are at sea as to how to go about playing a role. For an actor to have a believable performance, he must be able to immerse himself in the character and become one with it through a careful study of the personalities of that character and how it fits into life itself. Findings have shown that actors who are able to observe their environment and the daily activities therein are more equipped with imaginative skills as to how to embrace a character, being fully aware that reactions, gestures and facial expressions are the same as that which we do in our daily lives. The technique developed by Sanford Meisner as a method for training actors to more truthful and spontaneous responses on stage with a process that is centered around his famous repetition exercise, designed to place focus on the actor's partner and increase listening skills is a recommended training tool for a characterization.

Utopia, as a philosophical or artistic experiment, creates the image of an ideal future. On stage, the representation of utopia is restricted since in theater, everything happens in the actors' and audience's "here and now." If theater cannot overcome this space and time restriction, how actors can render "future" on stage through movement, gesture and voice remains one of the essential issues in bringing utopia to life on stage. This article examines utopian performatives in theater and methods used when modeling the notion of "future" through acting. It analyzes Michael Chekhov's vision of an international theater comprehensible for any audience member of any national or linguistic origin as a utopian construct, drawing upon the example of the 1931 Paris production of Le château s'éveille: essai d'un drame rhythmé [The Castle Awakening: An Essay in Rhythmical Drama]. Two problems are addressed: defining "future" in an artistic practice that exists in the "here and now" and the aesthetic norms and functions of the ideal represented. 1

This essay deals with the relationship between improvisation and experimental directing. The paper argues that although both are methods of production preparation, there are some similarities and differences between them. It also stresses that these methods go hand-in-hand in production preparation and that while improvisation constitutes a method for the study of acting and role-playing, experimental directing goes beyond this, sharpening, polishing, adapting and adopting the proceeds of improvisation for a healthy theatrical experiment by infusing life and more specifically defined sense of direction into the whole theatre event. The essay concludes that the study and application of both processes have some legitimacy since they help the theatre practitioner in the acquisition of the step-by-step know-how of the profession.

[THIS PhD THESIS IS IN ITALIAN LANGUAGE. FOR THE ABSTRACT IN ENGLISH SEE BELOW]   
  Il lavoro si colloca entro l’area di ricerca che si occupa dello studio dell’attore cinematografico e si focalizza sullo studio della recitazione di Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino e Robert De Niro nel periodo cronologico che si estende tra l’inizio degli anni Sessanta e la fine degli anni Settanta. I tre attori, infatti, in questo ventennio si affermarono come modelli attoriali, contribuendo al rinnovamento dell’Acting Hollywood Style. Affrontare lo studio della recitazione di questi tre interpreti significa confrontarsi anche con l’affinamento di una metodologia d’analisi dell’attore cinematografico. Si è deciso di orientare lo studio in senso prevalentemente filologico, interrogando soprattutto il testo, l’immagine filmica, che è il luogo dove effettivamente si concretizza la dimensione attoriale e dove essa interagisce per partecipare alla produzione di senso del film. La ricerca si articola su due livelli d’analisi: il primo livello indaga l’oggetto dal punto di vista teorico e prova a creare un metodo sistematico per studiare la performance, ed il secondo livello coincide con l’analisi filologica sul testo, ovvero i film interpretati dagli attori. I due piani si integrano a loro volta in una contestualizzazione storico-cronologica, al fine di stilare una mappa che studia le singole performance degli attori nel corso della loro carriera all’interno del periodo prescelto. Gli aspetti considerati sono molteplici: il corpo e la gestualità, l’uso della voce, l’interazione con gli altri elementi dell’estetica del film e con la poetica del regista, l’interazione tra i diversi interpreti, la tipologia di personaggio interpretato e come il Metodo di Lee Strasberg, con cui tutti e tre gli attori sono entrati in contatto in modi e tempi diversi, si è declinato nel loro recitare. La ricerca si articola in tre sezioni principali che ripercorrono cronologicamente l’intera carriera di Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino e Robert De Niro. Si è deciso di analizzare tutti i film interpretati nel periodo oggetto di studio, con l’obiettivo di cogliere i dettagli performativi di ogni attore in un’ottica evolutiva, approfondendo l’analisi per quei film in cui gli attori hanno sviluppato le proprie peculiarità recitative, grazie alle quali si sono affermati come modelli. La recitazione ed i corpi antieroici di Nicholson, Pacino e De Niro sono stati in grado di congiungere i nuovi orizzonti estetici e narrativi del cinema della New Hollywood, originando un nuovo modello attoriale. Ciò che emerge non è dunque più un attore-tipo, ma un attore-individuo che concede integralmente il proprio corpo a quello dell’antieroe. La motilità del viso e la forza accentratrice di Jack Nicholson, la nevrotizzazione della performance e la tensione gestuale tra reattività e passività di Al Pacino, l’ossessione mimetica espressa nell’incarnazione integrale del personaggio di De Niro, possono sintetizzare un ipotetico modello di attore newhollywoodiano.
This work belongs to the area of research which studies film acting and focuses on the analysis of three actors, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, during the period between the beginning of the 1960s and the end of 1970s. It was in fact during that period that these three actors established themselves as acting models, contributing to the renewal of the Acting Hollywood Style. Analyzing the acting techniques of these three actors also means coming to terms with the refining of the way film acting is analyzed. We decided to aim the research chiefly towards a philological study, mainly analyzing the text, that is the film, which is the place where acting actually takes place, and where it takes part in the creation of the meaning of the film. The study is divided into two levels of analysis: the first level investigates the object from a theoretical approach, trying to create a systematic method of studying the acting performance; the second level coincides with the philological analysis of the films. These two levels are completed by the historical contest, in order to develop a map to study the single performances of the actors during their careers in the given period. We had to consider various aspects: the body language, the use of the voice, the interaction with the other aesthetic elements of the film and with the director’s poetics, the interaction with the other actors, the type of character and how Lee Strasberg’s Method, which all three of the actors have come into contact with at some time, has been used in their performances. The work is divided into three main sections which retrace the entire careers of the three actors. We decided to analyze all the films played by them in the given period, in order to see the performance details of each actor from a progressive point of view, and focusing on those films where the actors developed those distinctive features which turned them into acting models. Thanks to their acting method and antiheroic features, Nicholson, Pacino and De Niro were able to embody the new aesthetic and narrative perspectives of New Hollywood, giving birth to a new acting model. Not a type anymore, but an individual, who completely embodies the antihero. Jack Nicholson’s facial expressions and his ability to both capture and dominate the attention of his audience, Al Pacino’s neurotic performance and gestural tension between action and passivity, Robert De Niro’s mimetic obsession conveyed through the complete identification with the character, can summarize a hypothetical New Hollywood acting model.

This project report consists of a discussion about the benefits that an actor derives from the spiritual and disciplined approaches to their craft. The close integration of conscience in lifestyle and stage practices supports creativity and frees us from egoistic fears that can contaminate actors' work. The philosophies of spirituality, discipline, and attitude put forth by Michael Chekhov, Jerzy Grotowski, and Viktor Frankl complement one another, providing practical tools for life both on and off stage. This paper introduces aspects of the theories of these three men and my practical application of them in the creation of my two roles as The Gipsy man and his daughter in California Repertory Company's production of The Cannibals presented in September, 2006.

Although better known as a playwright and filmmaker, David Mamet started his artistic career as a teacher of acting. This essay contextualizes the influences, evaluates the implications, and criticizes the implementations of his ‘Practical Aesthetics’ by bridging the divide between Mamet’s aesthetic theory and its concretization in practice. Often mistaken for a disingenuous appropriation of the so-called ‘Stanislavski System’ Mamet’s derived ‘Method’ arguably is more functional than original. Nevertheless, I argue that his confusion between various interpretations of these precepts is deliberate and serves foremost a reflexive purpose, as illustrated here with an analysis of Mamet’s rehearsal play A Life in the Theatre