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STANISLAVSKY
Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863-1938)
is a father
of modern acting techniques. He is a writer
of the most influential acting lessons in modern times. He created the Moscow
Art Theater (MAT) together with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko in 1898. There are two personal traits that helped
Stanislavsky in creating his method style of acting; first, his focus to study
on other actors, and ability to assimilate their styles. Second, his ability to
honestly review his own imperfections and adapt himself.
In
1890, Stanislavsky saw a production by the Meiningen players (a German acting
company). From this experience,
he learned three important things in a theatre performance; which is the power
of crowd scenes, importance of
overall mood, and the value of a rigid acting discipline. Stanislavsky studied
how people acted in everyday life, then found a way to bring this genuineness
on stage . He developed a series of
exercises and techniques for the actor to follow. These are the basic
techniques developed by him - relaxation,
specificity, concentration and observation.
Relaxation
involved removal of all tension; performer must attain a state of physical and
vocal relaxation. Specificity refer to
every concrete details, rather than generalities in acting. So every data in
acting must be specified. Concentration and observation means an actor should be
focus on one object, person or event. Then, this technique was develop by
himself in his latest book.
Stanislavsky
added four new techniques which is the
inner truth, 4W1H, super-objective, and ensemble playing. Inner truth is a way
for characters to express, possibly non-verbally, their inner feelings. This
technique used a word – “Magic If”. Using the “Magic If”, they can imagine how
they would feel in certain situations. Then, they started to believe what they
are doing through their character, not actual self. Through 4W1H, actor must
ask themselves questions through this four – “What? Why? Who? How?”. They have
to think answers of the questions related to their character. Then, actors have
to transform their physical actions that link to all the answer. As example, an
actor who played a postman role must think ‘How’ a postman cycling. Then, he
must transform himself to the correct style how does a postman cycling; not a
style like his common does as himself. Super-objective was shown through line
of a role. It creates continuity of the character. Through this technique, a
scene is divide into beats; the objectives of each beat should link to develop
a through line for a character. In ensemble playing, all cast members should
interact with each other. This is important to make the acting believable and
seems natural.
Stanislavskian
technique always compared to other new technique by other theatre practitioners
such as Meyehold, Boal, Artauld, and Brecht. Mostly Brecht, because there was major
differences between this two and very contradict. Brechtian acting style was go
against well made play shown in Stanislavsky works.
Bertolt Brecht (1898 – 1956) was a famous Germany playwright,
poet & theatre director. In the 1920’s, Brecht created a new form of theatre
called Epic Theatre. Brecht known by his famous works entitle Mother Courage and Her Children. In 1920’s, Brecht
started to develop his Epic Theatre. This came about as he started to reject
idealism in favour for individualism. Epic theatre came about at a time when Melodrama, Realism and Naturalism
were popular as theatre forms. Brecht’s
theory, which he went on to call “Epic Theatre” were directed against the
illusion created by traditional theatre in which the audience witnessed a slice
of life. Instead he encouraged spectators to watch events on stage
dispassionately and to reach their own conclusions.
To prevent spectators from
becoming emotionally involved Brecht used a variety of techniques, among them
was the Verfremdungseffekt (Alienation or estrangement effect). This was
achieved through such devices as; unfamiliar settings, interrupting the action
with songs and announcing the contents of each scene through posters.
Verfremdungseffekt was used
to direct the audience’s attention to something new.
This was done by getting the
scene started, and then doing something unexpected. When the rhythm is
interrupted, the audience stops getting lost in the emotion, story and
characters. They are able to start to think and question. The idea with
Verfremdungseffekt was to constantly remind the audience they were in a
theatre, watching a play. These techniques break the illusion of drama. We do
not get lost in the story or the characters. Instead we are constantly reminded
that these are actors communicating ideas and situations to us.
There are four strategy used by
Brecht to create the Verfremdungseffekt.
The strategy are marking the moment, cross-cutting, narration, and gestus.
Brecht used a number of techniques to ‘Mark the Moment’, for example; an
unfamiliar pause at an important/dramatic moment of the play, playing a dramatic moment in slow motion, using
narration, a song or music. Songs and
music were used to comment on the action, not to move the narrative on and also
to interrupt the action. Cross-cutting means creating a scene or scenes and then reordering the action by ‘cutting’
forwards and backwards to different moments. It also called montage. Montage
connected unrelated scenes to give new meanings by broke down action into
minute details. Narration providing a spoken commentary that accompanies stage
action, or a story being related by a character. Brecht often encouraged his
actors to comment in character (while on stage), on how to play the next part
of the scene or sometimes confront with the narrator. The last strategy said
above is gestus. Gestus means attitude, but it actually refer to how an actor
creating meaning and communicating a message to the audience. Gestus also has
been interpreted in many different ways. It can be related to individual
characters, the whole scene, or the music. Gestus can be shown in individual
characters by the combination of gesture and facial expression; and body
language is deliberately used to emphasise meaning and communicate a message to
the audience. This is influenced by the control and attention to detail of
Charlie Chaplin. Meanwhile, in the whole scene; its refer to the meaning
conveyed by the ‘whole picture’ of a scene. Then, music illustrates an incident
on the stage – comments on the action and reinforces and exemplifies a text’s
meaning.
Brecht believed that
the actor’s job was merely to show what happened. He did not want actors to
identify with the character or to play the role realistically, which was the
opposite of Stanislavsky’s purpose.
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BRECHT
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