An Actor Prepares
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AN ACTOR PREPARES
Translated by
ELIZABETH REYNOLDS HAPGOOD
EYRE METHUEN
LONDON
First published in Great Britain in 1917 by Geoffrey Bles Ltd.
'Translated by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood
by Eyre Methuen Ltd.
1 t New Fetter Lane, London E.C.4
Printed in Great Britain by Redwood Burn Limited Trowbridge & Esher
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PACK
Note by the Translator vii
I. The First Test ______ i
II. When Acting Is an Art - - - - - 12
III. Action --------33
IV. Imagination - -- -- --54
V. Concentration of Attention 72
VI. Relaxation of Muscles ----- 95
VII. Units and Objectives - - - - - in
VIII. Faith and a Sense of Truth - - - - 127
IX. Emotion Memory ------ 163
X. Communion - - - - - 193
XI. Adaptation ------- 223
XII. Inner Motive Forces ----- 244
XIII. The Unbroken Line ----- 252
XTV. The Inner Creative State - ~ - - 261
XV. The Super-Objective _____ 271
XVT. On the Threshold of the Subconscious - 281
NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR
Friends of Stanislavski have long known that he wished to leave a record of the methods by which the Moscow Art Company was built up, in such a form that it could be of use to actors and producers after his death. The first time he mentioned this wish to me he spoke of the projected work as a grammar of acting. In his own My Life in Art, and in similar expressions by persons who studied under him, a wholly different contribution has been made, one much easier, and in his opinion of lesser importance. A manual, a handbook, a working textbook has been his dream, and a most difficult one to realize.
Since the modem theatre came into existence, something like three centuries ago, conventions have accumulated, outlived their usefulness, and become hardened, so tuat they stand in the way of fresh art and sincere emotion on the stage. For forty yean the effort of the Moscow Art Company has been to get rid of what has become artificial, and therefore an impediment, and to prepare the actor to present the externals of life and their inner repercussions with convincing psychological truthfulness.
How was this long and difficult process to be put into a book? Stanislavski felt the need of a freedom of speech, especially about the faults that harass acton, that he would not have if he used the names of his actual players, from Moskvin and Kachalov down to the very beginners, and therefore he decided on a semi-fiction form. That he himself appears under the name of Tortsov can scarcely escape the astute reader, nor is it difficult to see that the enthusiastic student who keeps the record of the lessons is the Stanislavski of half a century ago who was feeling
NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR
his way toward the methods best suited to mirror the modem world.
There is no claim made here to actual invention. The author is most ready to point out that a genius like Salvini or Duse may use without theory the right emotions and expressions that to the less inspired but intelligent student need to be taught. What Stanislavski has undertaken is not to discover a truth but to bring the truth in usable form within the reach of those actors and producers who are fairly well equipped by nature and who are willing to undergo the necessary discipline. The book does include, again and again, statements of general principles of art, but the great task set for himself by the author has been the embodiment of those principles in the simplest working examples, to be laboured over day after day and month after month. He has endeavoured to make the examples so simple, so near to the emotions that can be found as well in one country as in another, that they can be adapted to the needs of actors whether they happen to be bom in Russia or Germany, in Italy, France, Poland, or America.
Of the importance of such a working record, in order that the greatest of modem acting :ompanies shall shed its beams as far and as wide as may be, little need be said. What would we not give for detailed notes of how Moli£re rehearsed his own plays, — rehearsals of which echoes, true or outworn, remain in the Com6die Fran^aise? Or could the value be estimated a full picture of Shakespeare in the theatre, drilling his actors in The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, or King Lear ?
E. R. H.