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Well, I thought about making it "Part I" -- but I didn't start with the theory of acting to keep you reading.
Comments: I hope you understand that this right side is for YOUR comments! Yes, on your ACTOR's TEXT.
I have to play with this and next (V) parts: how to make use of the production forums and archives (3 Sisters), my students' class notes for the lessons on Chekhov, their submissions of the online papers and etc. (c)2004 -- 2006
Summary
An actor is only merchandise. ~ Chow Yun-Fat [The Stanislavski method] remains largely a matter of instinct though the germ of the Stanislavski method is to help the actor discover the creative mood, to clear the decks for action. [Michael Redgrave]Questions
Stanislavsky: «Stage charm guarantees in advance an actor's hold on the audience, it helps him to carry over to large numbers of people his creative purposes. It enhances his roles and his art. Yet it is of utmost importance that he use this precious gift with prudence, wisdom, and modesty. It is a great shame when he does not realize this and goes on to exploit, to play on his ability to charm». The final phase in the preparatory work on a role was to find what has variously been translated as the seed, the grain, the kernel or the core of the character, to which all the previous considerations are preparatory. This is followed by the 'aim' of the character and when the actor is conscious of this, all else is forgotten, for then the actor, as the character, can answer the question, 'What do I want and why?' [Redgrave]Notes
"The best actors never let the wheels show." -Henry FondaINNER ARDOUR
Anything you do on the stage with coldness inside you will destroy you because it will encourage in you the habit of automatic, mechanical action, without imagination.
What can be more effective, fan your ardour, excite you inwardly, than an imaginary fiction which has taken possession of you?
A true artist is on fire with what he sees going on all around him, he is ardently interested in life, it becomes for him the object of his study and his passions. . . . He tries to record the impressions he receives from the outside, and as an artist . . . stamp them on his heart. . . . One cannot be cold when working in art. . . . You have to possess a certain degree of inner warmth. Our mind can be set to work at any time. But it is not sufficient. We must have the ardent and direct cooperation of our emotions, desires, and all the other elements of our inner creative state. . . . Just as yeast causes fermentation, so the sensing of the life of his role imparts a kind of inner warmth, the ebullition necessary to the actor.
Artistic enthusiasm is a motive power in creativeness. Excited fascination which accompanies enthusiasm is a subtle critic, an incisive inquirer, and the best guide into the depths of feeling which are unattainable to a conscious approach.
The ability to fire his feelings, his will, and his mind --that is one of the qualities of an actor's talent, one of the principal objectives of his inner technique. --An Actor Prepares
--Creating a Role
LOGIC AND CONTINUITY
In every phase of our work . . . we constantly had occasion to speak of logic and continuity. . . . They are of prime importance. . . . Creating must be logical and have continuity. Even illogical and incoherent characters must be represented within the logical plan and framework of a whole play, a whole performance.
. . . How to accomplish this? By means of physical actions . . . because they are easier to establish, materially and visually, and are yet closely tied to all the other elements. . . . It is easier to orient one's self with their aid. . . . Having prepared a logical and coherent line of physical actions, . . . we discover that parallel to it will run a logical and coherent line of emotion. . . . Come to the tragic part of a role . . . gradually and logically, by carrying out correctly your sequence of external physical actions, and by believing in them. . . . Do not think about your emotions. Think about what you have to do. If you do not adhere strictly to an absolute pattern of logic and continuity you are in danger of conveying passions, images, actions in a "generalized" form.
If an actor keeps in constant exercise . . . he will come to know practically all human actions from the point of view of their component parts, their consecutiveness and their logic. But this work must be done daily, constantly, like the vocalizing of a singer, or the exercises of a dancer. . . . systematic and absolutely valid exercises of actions without props. --An Actor Prepares --Building a Character --My Life in Art
SCORE OF A ROLE
Let us call this long catalogue of minor and major objectives, units, scenes, acts, the score of a role. . . . One can call them natural objectives. There can be no doubt that such a score, based on such objectives, will draw the actor--physically speaking--closer to the real life of his part. [It] . . . stirs the actor to physical action.
The first requirement is that the score have the power to attract. . . . excite the actor not only by its external physical truth but above all by its inner beauty. . . . Let us now add depth to the score. . . . The difference will lie in the inner life . . . inner impulses, psychological intimations . . . that constitute the inner tone. . . . We can experience varying emotions when playing a score with the same objectives but in different keys . . . quiet or joyful . . . sad or . . . disturbed or in an excited key. . . . One's score which is to portray human passions, must be rich, colourful, and varied. . . . An actor must know the nature of a passion . . . how to cull [from the text] the component units, objectives, moments, which in their sum total add up to a human passion. . . . The score saturates every particle of an actor's inner being. . . . In this innermost . . . core . . . all the remaining objectives converge, as it were, into one superobjective . . . the concentration of the entire score. . . . For the actor the through action is the active attainment of the super-objective. --Creating a Role