Sunday, November 28, 2010

Saturday, November 27, 2010

The Genius of Stanislavski

I am still amazed at the genius of Stanislavski. What I wouldn't have
done to study with this god if he was alive around now. I am
continually amazed at what I read when I open up his books and just
like the back of his third book "Creating A Role" says at the back by
a journalist from "The Observer", "A careful reading is worth several
lessons in almost any English acting academy". I beg to differ though.
A careful read of his three books and to a lesser extent "My Life In
Art" (his auto biography) is worth several YEARS in any acting
academy, if the RADA summer school is any glimpse into what you learn
in RADA anyway.

I can't sit and read for too long. For two main reasons. When I read
my mind goes bonkers and all over the place when I read a paragraph. I
immediately take in what I have read and start talking about it in my
own head, so reading becomes a mentally hard-work exercise. And number
two, and more importantly, the books (more specifically, the one I am
reading right now, Creating A Role) is so jammed packed with
quintessential gems of knowledge you can only be amazed and learn so
much that after one hours read I am exhausted and need to step away to
take it all in.

Like I said, a careful read is wroth several years in any english
acting academy.

Creating A Role, P.95. Talking about when an actor works with a play
in his imagination THOROUGHLY and he KNOWS the character like the back
of his hands, like when you live with someone for so long you KNOW how
that person is going to react to this or that, he says;
"When the actor in his creativeness measures up to a remarkable text,
the words of his parts prove the best, the most indispensable, the
easiest form of verbal embodiment with which he can make manifest his
own creative emotions through his inner core."

At the beginning of studying of a part the text on your paper is just
a bunch of words that mean nothing to you. They are as alien to you as
a foreigner whom you don't know exists that breathes and lives on the
other side of the planet. But when you study and study and study, go
through the play with your imagination and your own mind there comes a
point when you, without sounding too cheesy, become the part, and all
of a sudden the text that at the beginning were completely alien, all
of a sudden, in that given circumstance that you find yourself in the
play/role, no other word could fit more perfectly to go from your soul
out through your lips.

Mind = blown.

More of this to come. I've been thinking way too much lately.