method acting one @ virtual theatre *
DRAMA -- A situation or succession of events in real life having the dramatic progression or emotional effect characteristic of a play. [Late Latin dr¨ˇma, dr¨ˇmat-, from Greek, from dr¨ˇn, to do, perform.]

Method Acting for Directors I.1

2005: It's not enough to understand Method, you have to belive in it.
In Theatre Theology I wrote about the spiritual basis of acting, but if you read the pages on Butoh and Yoga and other (new) pages, you know that the limits of Stanislavsky' System come into a picture, unless we change the attitude to acting. The Book of Spectator and Vitual Theatre are probably the web-projects you must read to follow the advanced Method...

You noticed that I zam moving away from the original goal of writing "textbook" on Method Acting. I tried to save it by the ain "Method Acting for Directors," which gave me greater freedom not to talk about the basics, but what's the hell -- enough textbooks about Method already exist! Read -- I placed the Amazon links.

Well, it's natural -- theatre after the end of history should resemble its beginings, it should be metaphysical...

Method (System) was born at the times of the triumph of Marxism, which was replacing all religious references (Bakhtin, for one) and many Christian fundamentals were hidden within the new scientific approaches. Search for truth in emotion (experience vs. representation -- ritual), serach for your own true self (God is inside you), emersion into your character (resurrection), existential "Private in Public" (solitute and communual), studying mind and soul... everything that the church (any church) did for centuries became a property of the mother of arts -- Theatre.

I understand that Stanislavsky could not mention it to Comrade Stalin, even if he indeed understood what he was writing about, but the communist are gone and we can speak freely without a fear to be purge.

So, the attitude must be changed.

Stanislavsky himself wrote that actor must live theatre and live through theatre! Director must "die" in his actors and etc.

Fasten your belts, we have to take a ride through the holy land of the past research of the divine!

Method
The Theory of Incarnation: "Human beings are angels who incarnate as a normal step in their process of inner development and growth. The Godhead is emanating spiritual entities continually. Once they "come out" of the Godhead these entities start a never ending process of growth. Eventually they'll rejoin the Godhead becoming God once more." Or something like that. The Creation Cycle: "The Godhead is eternal, but it is not static. Out of the Godhead the creation is continually emanating, in a continuous and eternal cycle. Eventually the creation returns to the Creator. Even Galaxies and universes dissolve back into God. Intelligent beings, however, do not dissolve back but grow back into God; become God. For individuals this rarely happens during the physical phase of existence. Life is too short, as they used say for so much growth."

Mankind is one such entity, bound to become God sooner or later...

Method
In short, arts is the IT of this process. Theatre is central component of the "God Creation" technologies, because it's "live" and communial...
Oh, yes, friends, we do have them, the angels -- Hamlet, Lear, Don Juan. Even the arch-angels like Shakespeare and Chekhov! Instead of talking again about ACTOR -- CHARACTER -- ROLE, I will use the old reasoning:

The subsistence of Christ's humanity in the Son. The Incarnation can be considered from two points of view: as an action that produces a result and as the result produced by the action: quasi in fieri and quasi in facto esse. (154) (Cf. St. Thomas, Summa, IIIa, q.2, a.8: "Assumption implies becoming (sicut in fieri), whereas union implies having become (sicut in facto esse).") In other words, we may regard it in its principle and in its term. This term, furthermore, can be the integral, total term, that is, the God-man as assuming the human nature, or else it can be the human nature as assumed and as intrinsically elevated by the assumption. This distinction between the action and the result will govern the exposition. (155) (Cf. F. M. Catherinet, "La Sainte Trinit§Ű et notre filiation adoptive," Vie spirituelle, XXXIX (1934), 113.) http://www.innerexplorations.com/chtheomortext/mersch357.htm

PS

Method vs. Epic Theatre: "The truth is that He is God because He is the Son, not that He is the Son because He is God. And this too is essential to Christian faith; otherwise we should have to say that the Incarnation was accomplished in the divine nature rather than in a divine person, and consequently that all three persons became incarnate. Accordingly the God-man is truly and exclusively the Son. But the Son exists only in that relation to the Father which is the eternal, passive generation, and in that relation to the Spirit, which is active co-spiration. He exists only in the Trinity and with the Trinity. Therefore the God-man is God and is Himself only in the Trinity." [ From Emile Mersch's The Theology of the Mystical Body ] Here is a definition of PUBLIC (dramatic act):

The union of the sacred humanity with the person of the Son is neither the Son Himself nor the Godhead. As St. Thomas says, it is something pertaining to the humanity which is united to the Son. "The union implies a relation between the divine nature and the human nature, according as they come together in one person; but every relation that begins in time is caused by some change." (159) (Summa, IIIa, q.2, a.8.) Either this change (mutatio) has no meaning, or else it is relative to the Son alone and is "filial." [ actor and audience ] Acting Process: "But the point to be stressed here is that, if the human nature possesses these relations because they are possessed by the Word, which is its person, it must be made subsistent in the Word and therefore must be subsistent in these relations. To possess these relations, the human nature must undergo a change; and this change is the effect wrought in the human nature by the hypostatic union and the adaptation of the human nature to this union." ... If we contemplate the Incarnation, we can dimly perceive that a "filial" character of this sort is not impossible in a creature; anything that would remove impossibility from the one would remove impossibility from the other. What removes impossibility in the creature's case is, as we said above, the fact that creatures are only derived beings, whereas God is pure Being and the archetype of all being; consequently nothing is found in creatures that opposes or can oppose God's action, and therefore union with God can but perfect them according to their nature. What removes impossibility in the case of the Incarnation is the fact that the Son, even as Son, is also pure Being and the Creator and archetype of all being; indeed, God has created everything through Him, and the transcendent archetype of all things is found in Him. "Since God understands Himself and all things in one act, His one Word is expressive not only of the Father but also of creatures." (164) (St. Thomas, Summa, Ia, q.34, a.3; q.37, a.2 ad 3.)

NB

"It exists only in the union, through the union, for the union; it is in truth an "entity of union." (acheaved performance) Virtual Theatre w/Anatoly
Next : lesson 2
-- This is exactly what St. Cyril of Alexandria says in the text quoted and emphasized in the preceding section. "In Him and through Him we are made sons of God both by nature and by grace: by nature, in Him alone; by participation and grace, through Him in the Spirit." (171) (De recta fide ad Theodosium, 30 (PG, LXXVI, 1177); see the preceding section, p. 348.) "Creation of Character": "The Incarnation essentially consists in a union between a person ad intra and a nature ad extra. Hence the new order it establishes cannot be defined simply by the opposition between ad intra and ad extra. Regarded in itself, the sacred humanity in which the Word becomes incarnate is wholly ad extra. But the Incarnation causes it to subsist exclusively in the Word who is ad intra. Through its subsistence, therefore, the humanity ceases to be something ad extra.

In this respect the Incarnation differs radically from creation, with a difference that amounts to contrast. This is true unless, to be sure, we envisage creation as being, in God's designs, the first step in the preparation of a human nature for the Word and hence as the remote inception of the Incarnation. In itself, creation is the production of the order ad extra. By creation God produces the creature in its own subsistence, outside of Himself, and gives existence to a being that is not Himself. The Incarnation, on the contrary, is the taking up of a creature into the Word ad intra, so that it may subsist not in itself but in Him, and that through His subsistence it may be the human nature of God. As regards the distinction between ad intra and ad extra, the direction of the two works is diametrically opposed. The first has an external terminus, the second has an internal terminus; the first causes the order ad extra, the second causes, not the order ad intra, which would be an absurd conception, but the order of that which is "interiorized," if we may use the expression; that is, the order of what, left to itself, would undoubtedly be ad extra but which God causes to subsist in His Word ad intra, and which in this sense is ad intra.

This order is inaugurated and summed up in the human nature assumed by the Son of God, and has its full meaning only in the assumption of that human nature. But it includes all that is contained in the assumed humanity.

The "filial" perfection found in the assumed nature, this same perfection that is extended through adoption to the members of the sacred humanity, would be wholly ad extra if it constituted a complete and isolated being, such as is human nature in itself. But if it is no more than an "entity of union," an entity that exists in a nature ad extra only when the latter subsists in a person ad intra, we should be guilty of defining it by a mere part of it were we to define it from the standpoint of ad extra. By its very essence, it exists only by taking root in the order ad intra through the personality of which it is the effect. How else can we conceive it except in the union of the two, in the order of the Incarnation, as belonging to the order of the "interiorized"?"

I have to come back for "creation v. incarnation"...

DangerousLiaisons
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