S. showed the actors the social meaning of their craft. Art was not an end in itself to him, but he knew that no end is attained in the theatre except through art.— Bertolt Brecht, 1952. 
Both Stanislavski and Brecht saw their art in contrast to what had gone before them. The art he was interested in, Stanislavski wrote, is an art in which one can look "for the master key to life." He imagined an ideal world in which art held the answers to life's questions, although he was quick to add that we are not there, yet. "The actor is the force that reflects all the mysteries of nature, revealing them to the men who are not endowed with the gift of seeing all those spiritual treasures themselves."
This, then, was for Stansislavski the actor's social function.
Stanislavski was particularly critical of the person who regarded their training as way of "getting ahead" of other actors, or whose idea of the function of acting didn't extend beyond the goal of gaining popularity or fame "... Such an approach spells disaster for the man himself, and for art."
He goes on to remind the student that he or she is likely to face suffering and disappointment, that the struggle for recognition is a difficult one, and that the path to inspiration is by way of hard work.
"...It is only when love of art has overcome personal ambition, vanity, and pride that the actor can obtain the fullest possible flexibility."
The question is "Why act?" A psychologist might answer that actors have essentially incomplete personalities, and so obtain a certain comfort level from adopting personalities of their characters. There is an echo of this analysis in Michael Shurtleff's quip that "Acting is only for the seriously diseased," and that if you can do anything else you should. But another more positive answer is what we're discussing here – namely, the social function of acting. An actor has an opportunity to present observations about individuals, society, human relationships, politics, in short – life – in a way that can arouse some kind of response in the audience. That response can be personal, for example getting in touch with feelings from which one is normally cut off, or social, for example beginning a critical examination of attitudes or institutions.
Brecht was not content with theater revealing truths about individual psychology. For him art that did not actively promote socialism was something akin to food service. Whether or not one agrees with Brecht's politics, his focus on the social dimensions of human behavior and human relationships suggest techniques and approaches to acting which incorporate a social dimension, as well. As we will discuss in more detail elsewhere, it is possible to adopt a sociological perspective that is not necessarily Marxist.
Brecht emphasized the importance of showing in the theater what was unusual about otherwise everyday events. He wanted his actors to present events of the play in such a way that conclusions could be drawn about the structure of society at a point in time. One way he suggested his actors try to contribute to this objective was by maintaining a certain distance from their dialogue. "The actress must not make the sentence her own affair, she must hand it over for criticism, she must help us understand its causes and protest." This is the famous "alienation effect," which has been the cause of considerable debate and misunderstanding. Brecht himself wrote that the "alienation" he had in mind did not necessarily mean "stylization" in any traditional sense. "Matter of fact" might be a better term than "stylized," since what Brecht seemed chiefly trying to overcome was what he termed the "mysticism" of theater "from the old days."
Brecht termed the heart of a theatrical presentation the "story." But the story was to be represented by a series of "gests" which portrayed what happened between people. This is the social dimension. It was crucial to Brecht that contradictions and inconsistencies be represented, and that the separate episodes, as well as the gests that comprised them, were distinct so that the audience could exercise judgment about the progress of events. (Should thus and so have happened? What about it should have happened this way?)
Brecht's critics accused him of promoting anti-realistic "inhuman" acting. In a letter to an unidentified actor he strongly disputes this, arguing that this impression was likely due to the polemical nature of his writing. His stated goal was the realistic portrayal of people full of contradictions, passions, "unconsidered utterances and actions," and he believed that his principles would help achieve that end. He saw this in contrast to the kind of naturalistic acting that made a character's actions seem inevitable, and lulled an audience into accepting them uncritically. Brecht wanted to show characters at a point where they seemed capable of being changed by society's intervention.
© 2009 H. Clark Kee