Constantine Stanislavski:

  • Born in Moscow, Russia in 1863
  • An actor and moved on to become a director and teacher
  • parents did not indulge in his passion for theatre, so he changed his name
  • he developed a new approach to acting
  • it took years of experimenting to get to what is known as the Stanislavski System

The work that Stan “the man” did help to create what we recognize as ‘good acting’ today. We even give awards to actors who can create the best characters.

Five elements:

  1. Relaxation: learning to relax the muscles and eliminate physical tension while performing
  2. Concentration: learning to think like an actor and to respond to one’s own imagination
  3. Observation: discovering the sensory base of the work: learning to memorize and recall sensations, often called “sense memory” and/or “affective memory”; learning to work from a small sensation and expand it, a technique Stanislavski called “spheres if attention”
  4. Communication: developing the ability to interact with other performers spontaneously, and with an audience, without violating the world of the play.
  5. Imagination: – the more fertile the actor’s imagination, the more interesting would be the choices made in terms of objectives, physical action, and creating the given circumstances around the character. – There is no such thing as “actually” on the stage. Art is a product of the imagination, as the work of a dramatist should be to use his technique to turning the play into a theatrical reality. In this process, the imagination plays by for the greatest part.