Much current acting training in the US is or claims to be based on Stanislavski's famous "Method." In schools and studios the "if," "given circumstances," "feeling for truth," and other fundamentals continue to be taught. Generations of acting teachers, some even with connections to the Moscow Art Theater of Stanslavski's era have added their own exercises, emphases, and interpretations. Stanislavski's teachings probably persist because of their effectiveness, their congruence with psychology (a much younger science at the time Stanislavski was formulating his teachings than it is now), and their applicability (practicality). The naturalistic style of acting in which Stanislavski's system seems most at home has had an effect on writers and producers of theater, as well, particularly in schools or programs where writers and actors work in close collaboration.
Another reason for the prevalence of Stanislavski-based scenic training for actors may be that there aren't many alternatives (at least in western culture) that are as internally consistent (i.e. hang together as well) and are at the same time as practical. Bertolt Brecht's instructions to actors, scattered through his writings on the theater are fairly systematic, and based in practical experiments. While they form a part of the training for actors in some schools in the U.S., they are not widely known or taught.
Brecht and Stanislavski's lives overlapped in time. Brecht commented directly on Stanislavski and the Moscow Art Theater that was his legacy. Stanislavski, chronologically a predecessor of Brecht, nonetheless had some things to say about political theater.
Both men were systematizers, and both insisted that their systems were not static entities but processes rooted in observation and practical experience. Stanislavski says "... let us not talk of a system, but of the nature of creative art." For his part, although Brecht was intensely interested in theoretical aspects of the theater and its role in society, he was first and foremost a practitioner.
In a conversation with his colleague Peter Palitzsch, Brecht contrasted his and Stanislavski’s relationship to the actor.
… as a point of departure, Stanislavski directs primarily as an actor. I direct primarily as a playwright…. He begins with the actor…. [You] can hear me say that everything depends on the actor, but I nevertheless begin completely with the play, it’s requirements and demands.
Possibly because of misunderstandings surrounding the “alienation effect,” Brecht is often assumed to have opposed acting technique directed at fostering personal truth. John Rouse has proposed “defamiliarization” as a more accurate rendering into English of Brecht’s used of Verfremdung. Brecht’s definition was actually fairly straightforward: “A defamiliarized illustration is one that, while allowing the object to be recognized, at the same time makes appear unfamiliar.”
According to Angelika Hurwicz, the first actress to play Grusha in The Caucasian Chalk Circle, not only was Brecht not “hostile to drama exercises aimed at ensuring the truth to life and the warmth of the presentation of the role; in fact, he regards them as a pre-requisite.” Brecht accepted the importance of Stanislavski’s superobjective, as well, according to Hurwicz, and then wanted actors to add a socio-critical dimension. Brecht’s infamous rejoinder to actors not to possess their part, said Hurwicz, was “aimed at actors who forget about their super-task, who only see their own parts, and who offend against the content of the play as a whole, even when they give their parts interesting detail and great acting ability.”
In the fragmentary theoretical and critical writings that Brecht grouped under the title “Der Messingkauf” (Buying Brass), he wrote specifically about emotion and empathy:
ACTOR: Does getting rid of empathy mean getting rid of every emotional element?
PHILOSOPHER: No, no. Neither the public nor the actor must be stopped from taking part emotionally; the representation of emotion must not be hampered, nor must the actor’s use of emotions be frustrated. Only one out of many possible sources of emotion needs to be left unused, or at least treated as a subsidiary source – empathy.
John Rouse has suggested that the interdependence of the director’s textual interpretation and the actors’ actions and behavior in rehearsal meant that an actor could expect to be called upon to utilize a full range of techniques, including physical and vocal flexibility. Brecht’s rehearsal process encouraged actors to bring a range of techniques to bear on the interpretive task. Brecht actor Manfred Wekwerth wrote “There is no technique that cannot be used in Brecht- theater so long as it serves to expose the conradictions in processes in such a way that they can be pleasurably recognized by the spectator and lead to his own transformation.”
We’ll use some of Brecht’s comments on Stanislavski as the basis for the rest of our investigation, but it’s useful to note that Brecht also commented on Stanislavski’s students Meyerhold and Vakhtangov. He described Vakhtangov’s theater as something of a synthesis of Stanislavski – whose theater he described as “an imitation of real life” – and Meyerhold – whose theater he described as “an abstraction.” Vakhtangov may have influenced Brecht, as well; the Soviet critic Singermann compared the crowd scenes in Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle to Vakhtangov’s production of The Dybbuk.
In an essay on the psychology of acting, Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky described a rehearsal technique of Vakhtangov, comparing him to Stanislavski. While rehearsing Turandot, Vakhtangov had his actors not play the roles indicated in the text, but rather Italian actors playing those roles. He also added additional circumstances, e.g. the actress playing Adelma was the director’s wife, and his mistress was in the audience; the actress playing Zelima wanted to sleep rather than act, etc. Vygotsky observed that Vakhtangov’s work was dependent on Stanislavski’s “truth of feelings on stage [as] an internal justification of stage behavior,” but that Vakhtangov changed the content of the play.
We see how the internal technique of Stanislavski and his mental naturalism come to serve completely different stylistic tasks, opposite in a certain sense to the one that they served at the very beginning of development. We see how certain content dictates a new theatrical form, how a system proves to be much broader than the concrete application it is given.
For Stanislavski the goal of the actor's art was nothing less than the representation of the human spirit. His techniques tried to incorporate new (at the time) insights from the field of psychology. For Brecht, the goal was to foster a critical attitude in the spectator. His work incorporated the philosophical outlook of Karl Marx (political and economic). John Rouse has suggested that from Brecht’s general perspective a play can be viewed as a “structuring together in time of all the individual occurrences that take place between the play’s characters.” “[F]rom what happens between them, people get everything that can be discussed, criticized, changed,” Brecht wrote.
In bringing together the insights of these two theatrical innovators, we will enlist the help of a discipline that sits somewhere between their two points of view: sociology. From social psychology we can discover how we might extend psychological insights to interpersonal and social contexts. In acting terms, this means that as we do our character work and script work we will look to interactions with our fellow characters (and players) to inform our performance. From the study of the sociology of institutions we can find models of critical thinking that are not necessarily dependent on a particular political belief.
© H. Clark Kee, 2009