Stanislavski System

The Stanislavski System is an approach to acting developed by Konstantin Stanislavski, a Russian actor, director, and theatre administrator. The System is the result of Stanislavski's many years of efforts to determine how a human being can control, in performance, the most intangible and uncontrollable aspects of human behavior: things such as emotions, and artistic inspiration.

Progression of the System

The System is, through a sort of shorthand, often confused with the Method because of its close ties to New York, and again because of figures like Adler, who visited and was taught by Stanislavski himself. But the System is frequently also confused with itself. For while it may seem that Stanislavski had, throughout his life, one focused project, this is emphatically not the case.

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There is a story that an actress who had once been in a play directed by Stanislavski came to him years later and informed him that she had taken very copious notes of him and his technical approach during rehearsal, and she would like to know what to do with these notes. He replied, 'Burn them all.'

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The anecdote, whether or not true, is instructive of Stanislavski and his approach. The Stanislavski of later life is not the same one as the Stanislavski whom Stella Adler first met. At times, Stanislavski's methodological rigor bordered on opacity: see, for instance, the chart of the 'Stanislavski System' included as a fold-out in editions of Robert Lewis' book Method or Madness, a series of lectures. The chart, made by Adler, is very complicated, listing by various numbers all aspects of performance and of the actor that he thought were pertinent at the time. His dedication to completeness and accuracy often contended with his goal of making a workable system that actors might actually use.

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See also his description of the correct way of walking on stage, in his own book translated into English as Building a Character. His interest in analyzing as far as possible the qualities of a given phenomenon were meant to give an awareness to the actor of the complexities of human behaviour, and how easily falsehoods -- aspects of behaviour that an audience can detect even without being aware -- are assumed by an untrained or inexperienced actor in performance. All things, all actions that a person must do, like walk, talk, and even sit on stage, must be broken down and re-learned, Stanislavski insisted at one point.

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Such rigors of re-learning were probably a constant throughout his life. Stanislavski, a man of institution, namely his own Moscow Art Theatre and its associated studios, was a great believer in formal (and rigorous) training for the actor.

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