This is paper is about two interesting actors, directors, and teachers, both well known for acting techniques. The two gentlemen are Konstantin Stanislavski and Lee Strasberg they are responsible for two acting techniques as the system and the method. Many famous actors were very successful by using one or both techniques. Stanislavski spoke of a story about a dog of one of his actors that came to all rehearsals, being rather lazy the dog slept in the corner all day. When the actors were finish working, the dog would go stand at the door without being instructed, waiting for his owner to take him home. What amazed Stanislavski was how the dog would know the rehearsal was over. “ The dog could hear when the actors started talking like normal human beings again” (Stanislavsky and Benedetti X). The dog was able to distinguish the fake from the living, a goal Stanislavski strived for his students (Stanislavsky and Benedetti X). Strasberg was a student of the system Stanislavski taught. If you follow both acting and teaching techniques you will be bale to identify that there are a few differences in the system of Stanislavski and the …show more content…
method of Strasberg. Konstantin Stanislavski was a Russian stage actor and director who developed the naturalistic performance technique known as the Stanislavski method. He was born in 1863 in Moscow, Russia Konstantin Stanislavski started working in the theater as a teen, going on to become an acclaimed thespian and director od stage productions. He cofounded the Moscow art theater in 1897. He was from a wealthy family who loved the theater. Stanislavski was his stage name; his family’s name was Konstantin Sergeyevich Alekseyen. He was married to Maria Perevoshchikova; she joined her husband in serious study and purist of acting. The Moscow art theatre was acclaimed both domestic and international, it excludes it reputation for works such as An Enemy of the people and the bluebird. During a performance to commemorate the Moscow art theater 30th anniversary Stanislavski had a heart attack. Stanislavski spent his later years writing, directing, and teaching. He died on august 7th 1938 in the city of his birth (Constantin Stanislavski). Stanislavski system was based on a series of techniques of his beliefs, used to train actors. The method was based on the fact of emotional memory for witch an actor focuses internally to project a characters emotions on stage. The process of experiencing the role is crucial in the art of acting. These processes brings the inner life of the character and there own individual feelings in the role, and making part of it our own personality (Stanislavsky and Benedetti 19). “That is why a role based on natural forms flourishes while one based on play acting and armature / ham acting soon becomes lifeless and mechanical” (Stanislavsky and Benedetti 33). The role of action is a belief that anything that happens on stage must occur for a reason (Stanislavsky and Benedetti 39). You can be motionless and can be physically and mentally active, physical stillness is the result of intense interaction that allows for creativity. From this principle comes the word drama. A precursor to the beginning of the drama is the word if “The secret of if as a stimulus lies in the fact that, it doesn’t speak about actual facts, of what is, but of what might be”( Stanislavsky and Benedetti 51). This word is a question to be answered by the actor playing the role. This word is a introduction of a hypothesis of weather the action reformed by the actor is correct of how the role would be played out (Stanislavsky and Benedetti 51). For example, if such and such happened in a relationship what would happen as the result of such? This would be a director’s request of actor to be brought to role. The system is a process we are all born with, its our need to be creative it is a natural need. One loses this natural ability the minute we walk onto the stage. “Instead of creating we posture, counterfeit, play act, and represent”(Stanislavsky and Benedetti 611). The system is a culture one must work on for many years to achieve , the actor must make it part of his body. The art of acting becomes second nature and they become one and are transformed for the stage. “The system has to be studied in its spate parts and then grasped as a whole”(Stanislavsky and Benedetti 612). There are many components to the art of acting, to start one must relieve ones self of any tension and be in a state of relaxation (Stanislavsky and Benedetti 29). Concentration should be places on what is happening on stage. Success is determined by placing complete thought in purpose on stage (Stanislavsky and Benedetti 31). You must have imaginations, “whatever character you play does no truly exists until you create it”(Brestoff 35). Circumstances is a vital component of the play, it depends on the flow, sets the mood and how the actors play there roles (Brestoff 37). This goes along with the magic if together with imagination this completes situations and makes an actor anything; person, object, or anima to fulfill emotions being acted out (Brestoff 37). All of these components are a recipe for acting, relaxation, concentration, imagination, magic if and circumstances. They are all called upon to bring together the plan and actors in communion, lastly fitting the component objective. Strasberg was born on December 17th 1901 in Budeanow, Poland, Austria-Hungrey. Lee Strasberg came to the United States when he was 7 years old. He was married three time and had four children. He became an actor and stage manger with the theatre guild. Strasberg cofounded the group theatre in 1931 a directed experimental plays such as man in white. Strasberg had a life changing experience in 1923 when he attend a performance directed by Stanislavski. “The production was part of the Moscow art theatres American tour, and Stanislavski work influenced Strasberg’s entire career path” (Lee Strasberg). In 1948 Strasberg joined the actors studio as a teacher. Strasberg became famous for his acting technique which he imitated Stanislavski’s method. Strasberg became the artistic director of the actor’s studio where he spent 30 years teaching his creative skills to great actors such as James Dean, Jane Fonda, Joanne Woodward. Strasberg established the lee Strasberg theatre and film institution. In his later years he returned to acting, his first film was the Godfather 2, which he received, and academy award nomination for a supporting role in the movie. He remained committed to actor’s studio until his death from a heart attack on February 17th 1982. A memorial service was held in his honor at New York Shubert heater. Numerous starts filled the audience to say goodbye to their acting instructor who inspired them (Lee Strasberg). It is hard to speak of Strasberg’s acting belief system without being repetitive of Stanislavski techniques. Strasberg believed that there were four components to achieve a normal living state for an actor on stage. The first quality was he must be physically free and in control of his muscles, the second was he must be alert the third quality was he must be able to listen and observe as he would in everyday life and last the fourth quality was he must believe everything happening on the stage related to the play (Stanislavski Studies). Strasberg believed if you worked with imaginary objects you could still achieve in developing acting qualities as long as you practice relaxation in the beginning. His core beliefs were relaxation, Concentration, imagination and faith. One major difference in understands Stanislavski’s teaching was confusion the system and the methods of Lee Strasberg. Strasberg knew exactly what the difference his teaching consisted of from Stanislavski. “ In the system, it is centered on emotional memory and emphasis is places on action, interaction, and the dramatic situation which results in feeling with a emotion memory as a secondary technique” (Stanislavsky and Benedetti XX). “In the method emotional memory is at the center also but the actor concisely invokes personal feelings that correspond to the character” (Stanislavsky and Benedetti XXX). In the system a part of the play, there was something the actor actively had to do.in the method there was something the actor had to feel, Strasberg wanted his actors to unblock there emotion and travel deep within the psychy. Stanislavski was totally against this technique. Many of Strasberg’s collages studied under Stanislavski, the method of physical action and adopted the system for the actor studio in New York City. The method angered Strasberg but later on his the method achieved global fame. However the system and the method are often confessed with one another. It is up to the professors of theatre to affirm and not lose the teachings of both Stanislavski and Strasberg (Stanislavsky and Benedetti XXI). We give a large round of applause a standing ovations for two amazing actors, directors and theatre teachers Konstantin Stanislavski an Lee Strasberg.
They are both timeless and remembered for their contributions to the theater and actors. They are still mentors to many actors and university students today through the legacy they have left. “The discoveries of Stanislavsky and their significance together with the perspective and experience provided by the method, seem to me o provide for the first time a concrete foundation for the understanding of the actors creativity, and thus provide the basis for the training of the actor”(Strasberg and Morphos 198-199). After completing my research on acting and teaching techniques I have been able to identify that there area few differences in the system of Stanislavski and the method of
Strasberg.
Theater, in our culture, have grown rapidly over the years that it has been occupied. In 17th and 18th centuries, dances were written as record. As our cultural evolved, in 19th and 20th century, dancing became a dance notation. Each era has a different type of dance that related to that period of time. In able for dancers to be organized and taught the moves, they needed some type of teacher, which in our modern we call them a choreographer. A choreographer have the role to design dances, which can also refer to the design itself. A choreographer is one who designs dances, which can also be called dance composition. Mats Ek is a ballet and Swedish choreographer that creates new elements of movement and expression of dances throughout his life
Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith's Baloney (HENRY P.) and Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas illustrations encourage us to see the world through a distorted lens. I would like to compare how similar but yet how different the two illustrators are in the way they show their work in a distorted view.
In the play “Circle Mirror Transformation” by Annie Baker took place at an acting workshop in small town Vermont. Annie Baker presented the characters to the audiences by them getting to know each other in the almost uncomfortably intimate way. In the play, the characters underwent the emotional growth and the knowledge about each other personal issues. Although theater is only pretending yet the play suggested that it is the best way to get to the truth.
In The Complete Maus, by Art Spiegelman, a son of the Holocaust survivor, Art Spiegelman, learns the story of his father, Vladek Spiegelman. Art Spiegelman learns the causes of why his father acts the way he does and the reason for the eccentric nature he has. Although Vladek Spiegelman physically survives the Holocaust, his actions show that he is psychologically affected by his experience in the camps.
Harold Clurman was born in New York to Jewish immigrant parents in 1901. At six years old, he attended a production at the Yiddish Theatre. Though he neither spoke nor understood Yiddish, the experience had a transformative effect on him. He immediately had a passion for the theatre. At age twenty, Clurman was living and studying theatre in France. It was there he saw the Moscow Art Theatre and learned of Stanislavski’s teachings on realism. Clurman came back to New York in 1924, and began work as an actor, but he was disappointed in the kind of theatre produced.
In understanding the art form of expression in various ways like music and play writes, it brings together this sense of self identity that the artist wants to fulfill. Having this understanding about the life behind the scene, screen, and/or stage. My paper will present two art forms music by 50 cent “Many Men” and William Shakespeare play “Macbeth” in which I will describe similarities among the characters. My four categories for 50 cent and Macbeth are as follow Greed, Savage, Survivor and Success.
Li’s passion for ballet shows on and off stage through his arabesques, flexibility, fouettés, grande jeté and pirouettes that were nothing less than perfection. I understood that becoming a dancer requires commitment, passion and having a great memory as there’s many moves, routines and ballet terms that you need to learn. When I was performing on stage, I felt free and that I could own the stage as it felt like it was my second home. I also felt complete within myself just as Li felt. To perform on stage, you need to be light and graceful along with connecting to the music using precise steps, poses and formal gestures. The film used dance, music, scenery, and costumes to portray a story characterised by Li’s dance. Classical ballet dancers require the utmost grace and I’ve found that you also need a tremendous level of concentration and memory. This portrays when his choreographer Ben Stevenson asked Li Cunxin to replace the main male role due to an injury on the day of the performance to memorise new dances and perform them in front of an enormous crowd. Many of my performances have been in a group where we all need to be in sync and work together. This film highlighted that in order to become a professional ballet dancer, you have to prepare to work extremely hard no matter how gruelling the schedule is in order to
The first question is why use "commedia dell' arte" as a training tool for modern actors at all, since drama and the business of acting has hopefully moved on since the Italian Comedians finally left Paris. The fact remains, however, that the dominant form of acting today that both exists as the aspiring young actor's performance role model and as a category of performance in itself is T.V. naturalism. We are lucky in that something both inspirational and technical has survived from those heady times. When contemporary acting technique does not provide all the answers that actors may be looking for, it is not surprising that they look towards the past for inspiration. It is in this grey area between researching historical certainties and reconstructing guessed at acting technique that we must look. These Martinellis and Andreinis were the superstars of their day and the question that most often gets asked is "how did they do it?"(Oliver Crick).
Berger and Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality and Irving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life analyze human interaction in the context of actions we perform and the meanings that such actions take in social environments. I will analyze Goffman’s account of modification of the “self” through performance within the context of Berger and Luckmann’s hypothesis. The theatrical performance metaphor looks at how socialization and experience affect the use of fronts, expressions, and expressions given off.
For this paper, I will be focusing on Erving Goffman’s concept of dramaturgy. Erving Goffman was a sociologist who studied social interaction, and is well known for his work on ‘the self.’ His book, Presentation of Self, continues to be an important and relevant book in sociology since it explains by social interaction within humans is important. In his theory, Goffman explains that people are like actors performing on a stage because of how they live their lives. Drama is used as a metaphor for how an individual presents their self to society. In his work, Goffman explains that ‘the self’ is the result of the dramatic interaction between the actor and the audience he or she performs to. There are many aspects of how an individual performs his or her ‘self’.
According to Erving Goffman’s performances theory, the way we interpret ourselves is similar to a theater in which we are all actors on a stage playing a variety of roles. The way in which we act in front of a group of observers or audience is our performance. Goffman introduces the idea that we are always performing for our observers like actors performing on a stage. The impression that we give off to an audience in a scenario is the actor’s front. You can compare an actor’s front to a script. Certain scenarios have scripts that suggest the actor how he or she should behave in every situation. The setting for the performances includes the location and scenery in which the acing takes place.
Many actors have studied Stanislavsky innovative technique for actors, emphasizing emotional truth and inner motivation and known today as the Stanislavsky Method, revolutionized modern acting. This method has taught actors several techniques that have improved their style. Actor, Al Pacino is one of the greatest actors of all time. He studied at The Actors Studio, in New York and it has been the main source and inspiration for a naturalistic acting technique known in America as "the Method." Under its artistic director, Lee Strasberg, the Studio adapted many of the techniques developed by Russian director Konstantin Stanisalvsky for training actors to feel and realistically portray the emotions of their characters. The intense emotional realism achieved by workshop students—who have included Marlon Brando, James Dean, Geraldine Page, Rod Steiger, Robert De Niro, and Jane Fonda—has influenced actors worldwide. (Actors Studio," Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 2000)
Vaslav Nijinsky was a famous Russian ballet dancer born around 1889, and died in 1950 whose career ended because of his recurrent psychological problems. Nijinsky started early on his career and sustained homosexual relationships to his benefit in various occasions, but later married Romola in a to South America, with whom he had two children, Kyra and Tamara (Acoella 1999; Fearne, 2009). The onset of Nijinsky’s illness is not clear, and may have been a contribution of specific environmental factors, his need to perform for an audience (Järvinen, 2014), and genetic factors, his brother was institutionalized (Acoella, 1999), although it would be risky to assume the latter. Nevertheless, because of Nijinsky’s thoughts captured in a diary he started on 1919, one can clearly perceive he had delusional thoughts of grandeur (Nijinsky, 1999, p. 126) and persecution (Fearne, 2009), reflecting racing ideas flowing in the paper. In addition, it could be pointed out that he had difficulties communicating with others and some to perceive him as shy and hard to approach (Järvinen, 2014). The progressive development of his illness was emphasized when he institutionalized; at this point, other symptoms appeared, seemly with the help of the drugs he was taking (Ostwald, 1991, p. 235).
In conclusion to this essay we can say that Stanislavski’s system in the training of the actor and the rehearsal process is effective. The system helps actors to break down their characters gradually and really know the role. Some may even the say that the system helps them to almost become the character. The system has played a significant part in theatre training for many years. It has been used, adapted and interpreted by several practitioners, actors and tutors. For many years to come Stanislavski’s system will still be used in theatre training. Not only is it an effective system it is the past, present and future of theatre training and the rehearsal process.
After I began to learn to dance ballet, I found out that these elegant movements actually require a lot of strength, flexibility of the bodies and brain’s participation to make it looked elegant. The dancers’ movements in the performance were so fluent and elegant and it is not hard to imagine how hard they had practiced, stretched and use the strengths to do all the ballet poses with their bodies look longer and longer. Their expressions also impressed me a lot. By looking at their expressions, the audience can easily understand the scenes and blend into the story. The performers actually not only are required to have good dancing skills but also are required to have some talents to be actors. Moreover, they also have to be good at expressing their feelings on the