An Actor Prepares
by Constantin Stanislavski

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Book Reviews of An Actor Prepares

Book Review: A Must Avoid!
Summary: 3 Stars

Personally, whenever I feel it would have been a happier world if Stanislavski had never been born I realize I've been spending too much time with film actors and so I go out and see bad theater.

( Not out of masochism it's just that if you see enough theater you're bound to run into some turkeys)

Usually the reason it's bad is because of some sin Constantin ranted against.

Ranting is actually an appropiate word to describe the style of his writings. He's not theorizing, he's discovered The Organic Truth Of The Uiverse, etc. All this dogmatizing is forgivable when one realizes it's the oupouring of a Slavic soul, but it does tend to eclipse the fact that his system is--stripped of all the hyperbole--based upon, of all things, logic.

What's the objective? Ok, play that.

Or if you wish amore detailed dissertation: To [...] with what you're feeling. Play the objective.

Otherwise you may weep and rave about but fail to find the brooch pinned to the curtain, like the student actress in this book.

Now does it work? Well, if you have faith in it. . .

The progression (some would say the degeneration) of Stanislavski in the US goes something like this: Charles Conrad (who taught for Meisner and never wrote anything, his is the Zen-style of Stanislavski) to Sandford Meisner (who taught for Strasberg and wrote an unintelligible book but who is much admired for getting method actors off their introspective derrieres and on their feet) Lee Strasberg who, unlike Stella Adler never met The Master himself, so felt free to um.. theorize even further, and Michael Checkhov, (the only great actor of the bunch who Stan considered his best student even though he rejected the system) whose mystical ideas are floating somewhere in the stratosphere.

Strasberg, by far the most influential, founded Method Acting (not to be confused with the Stanislavski System or 'The Method of Physical Action ' a short treatise in Creating a Role ) which emphasized remembered mamory a.k.a. emotional memory which at times superseded the objective by demanding a pavlovian type of identification/ conection which would ensure real tears.

In away he set theater back to before 'finding the brooch'

Later, Stanislavski himelf rejected the emotional memory/pavlovian experiment after many of his actors started freaking out..

The main moral of an Actor Prepares is that if you're going to write a world changing treatise on acting, it helps if you've got a genius playwright like Michael's uncle whose palys you can produce.

The second is to play the--oops said that already.

May I also humbly recommend Mike Green's 'The Art of Coarse Acting' Shurtleff's 'Audition' Keith Johnstone's 'Impro' and Klaus Kinski's bio, for a sense of, if not sanity, at least a healthy dose of skeptical heresy?

Summary of An Actor Prepares

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