Summary: Common Theatre Practices Happening Before Anne Bogart

“Contents of a Dead Man’s Pocket”, “Ambush”, and “Sniper” are three short stories that all seem to be different but also have similarities. Each story describes a short period of time in the main characters live that make a significant impact on them. Taking a close look at the literary elements of setting, theme, conflict, and characters show the similarities and differences between the three stories.

It was Stanislavski’s and Strasberg's intent to make method the staple of acting. The method has single handedly elevated some of the greatest performances in history. It helped actors go from superb to immense. Robert De Nero is a method actor. Many will say De Nero had the greatest acting performance of all time in the movie “Raging Bull” in 1981. His performance changed his career and also won him an academy award that year. De Nero would go on to have a hall of fame type career and in many ways the method had a big part to play in it. As much upside there is to method acting there is a dark side to it as well. There is a danger in that emotional connection that many actors feared could be catastrophic. A prime example was an actor by the

Although the history of theatre has been characterized by many great directors, none should be considered as influential as Constantin Stanislavski. At a time when society frowned upon members of a high social class pursuing careers in theatre, Stanislavski maintained the courage to follow his dreams. This paper will begin with a discussion of the early years of Stanislavski’s life, followed by a review of Stanislavski’s career in theatre. Finally, the paper will discuss Stanislavski’s impact on modern theatre direction and why he is viewed as one of the most influential directors in the history of theatrical performance.

Did you know that when the first Globe burned down, a man had to put out a fire on another man’s breeches using his bottle of beer? It may seem crazy, but that shows how extreme plays can get at this popular historic building. From the interesting origin of the theatre, wonderful structure, to how it reached glory, the Globe Theatre surely had a memorable history.

Bouncing off that idea, I am curious as to why Stanislavski believes the physical tension of the body impedes the creative process. The reason as to why is that

Those feelings, drawn from our actual experience, and transferred to our part, are what give life to the play”. Also, by using emotional memory for the characterization, the actor will be able to understand what ‘Miss Julie’ is going through and the emotions she is required to display. However, Emotional memory recall proved to be too exhausting for actors and produced negative results like tension and hysteria. Stanislavski also realized that unconscious feelings needed to be coaxed, ‘lured’ and ‘enticed’ gently, rather than forced out.

While writing and narrative (poetic or otherwise) were considered as means of survival, theatre remains outside the circle of literary survivalism. Indeed, according to Anne Ubersfield, “performance is a perishable thing.” (xxii) It is usually considered as an event that is bound by the present. The belief in the historicity of the theatrical event still dominates the critical approaches to theatre. Many contemporary critics maintain that on the stage, “drama takes place and takes time too.” (Worthen xi) They believe that it is “an historical event.” (Styan 6) that is limited in terms of space and duration. It cannot last beyond the performative moment.

In his book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman (1959) focuses on the self as a staged production in which people actively present themselves to different audiences one encounters. To bolster his conceptualization, Goffman used an interesting metaphor of “all the world’s a stage” (1959, 254). This, he terms as a “dramaturgical approach” (Goffman 1959, 240) in which an actor puts on a show for others; drawing analogies between human behaviors and the theater. Goffman (1959) likens the individual to an actor on stage performing for and with other individuals involved in the situation. Three types of space exist for the actor to perform on, to enact the self, and to interact with others: the front stage, the backstage, the outer region. Goffman (1959) utilizes specific dramaturgical terms such as performance, teams, front and back regions, sign-vehicles, and highlights the process of dramatic realization. These terms will be discussed in the following sections.

Stanislavski has dominated theories of acting over the past 100 years, as noted by Billington (2009), and of his most well-known elements of his system is Emotion Memory. Stanislavsky would watch other actors and the ones he most appreciated he said had a kind of aura around them on stage, they were involved in the theatrical moment which gave the role a special charge (Gordon, 1987). The practice of Emotion Memory was developed to ensure actors could perform like this every time they were on stage. It relies on the fact that feelings we experience are similar to ones we have experienced before and that we rarely have a completely new emotion. Because of this, it is possible for an actor to go back into their memory and relive an emotion they can connect with the character they are playing. One of Stanislavski’s methods of

In England, the theater continued to flourish even after the death of William Shakespeare. John Webster, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, Thomas Middleton, John Ford, and James Shirley were some of the key figures that helped the new age of drama bloom but due to the growing religious tension and rise of Puritans closed theaters for twenty years. Puritans believed that the theater was for aristocracy and the detestable. The puritan also believed that the theater was the same as wasting time and promoting immoral behavior.

Constantin Stanislavski believed that it was essential for actors to inhabit authentic emotion on stage so the actors could draw upon feelings one may have experienced in their own lives, thus making the performance more real and truthful. Stanislavski then created the technique, method acting, to do exactly that. Not only can method acting be rewarding, there are psychological consequences as well. It is important to study method acting so actors can know the dangers and psychological effects it can create. It can also help scientists understand theory of mind; the ability to gain the mindset of another person. Another subject method acting can help with is emotional recall and the emotion regulation it takes to use

Created by Konstantin Stanislavsky, this technique requires that the actor or actress embrace his emotions in order to better his character portrayal. Helfand eventually came to realize that this

Therefor he believed it was important that all of the actors involved in the production to know and agree on the superobjective. The method of physical actions, This idea grew from Stanislavski's feeling that his actors were being overwhelmed by too much character and plot detail at an early stage of the rehearsal process. He believed this led them to try to hard, which resulted in physical and mental tension. In the last five years of his life Stanislavski explored a different approach to working on a production, in which the company began by telling the story of a play's plot through its main physical actions.

His system, introduced in the late 1890s and early 1900s, relied on emotional memory and a search for inner truth to create great performances. Stanislavski’s original system “require[d] that an actor recreate an event from the distant past in order to regenerate the ‘feelings’ experienced at that time. These feelings thus regenerated are then used in the current acting situation in order to fill out the role with ‘human depth and personal involvement’. The necessity of the event being from the distant rather than recent past is because Stanislavski felt (at the time) that time distilled events and feelings, acting as a ‘splendid filter for remembered feelings.’” (Sawoski 19.) Interestingly, Stanislavski later changed his teachings to have a focus on physical actions, revolving around the idea that internal experiences manifest in physical expression. But, before he changed his tune, two of his students from his First Studio, Ri chard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya, immigrated to the United States and began teaching the Stanislavski “Method” to American students at the American Laboratory Theatre in 1925. One of their students, Lee Strasberg, later used Stanislavski’s theory of Emotional Memory to teach Affective Memory at the Actor’s Studio, even though Stanislavski himself had long since rejected those original ideas.

Method acting is often misinterpreted as an acting exercise where the actor “becomes” the character, and keeps the persona of that character until they have completed their work. This misguided thinking has been promoted by pop culture and even sometimes by actors themselves. The Lee Strasberg Film & Theatre Institute defines the Method as when “actors use their imagination, sense and emotion to conceive characters with unique and original behavior, creating performances grounded in the human truth of the moment.” This definition focuses more on the relationship between the actor and their character, rather than both being one and the same. Method acting is not a new idea. It is thought to have been considered an acting exercise for