The Stanislavski Method

By Rupsha

Throughout his life, Stanislavski developed a variety of techniques, which became known as “The Stanislavski System”, or “The Stanislavski Method”. His books; An Actor Prepares, Building  A Character and Creating a Role are still studied by many actors today. He even has an Autobiography called “My Life in Art”, which is very helpful to
aspiring actors and actresses.  

So what is the Stanislavski Method? Even though it’s quite complex, one of the main goals of his Method was to portray believable, natural people on stage. The major goal of the Stanislavski method is to have a perfect 

understanding of the motivations, objectives and obstacles of a character in each moment. This was a striking
contrast to the thespians in 19th century Russia (as most actors in that era gestured in an over-the-top manner, and spoke in a grandiose tone.) Stanislavski changed that, and in many ways, he’s the ‘father’ of Lee Strasberg's Method Acting (where actors immerse themselves into characters as much as they possibly can, a few steps further than Stanislavski’s method.),  Many Hollywood actors used, and still do use his method. such as Kate Winslet, Robert DeNiro, Johnny Depp, Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, Vanessa Redgrave etc.

Some famous actors who use(d) Stanislavski's method

To use the Stanislavski method, actors usually go over the script very carefully in search of key identifying factors. A performer finds out what a character wants, and what prevents the character from getting it, and what extents the character will go to achieve his or her goal(s). These  concepts are often referred to as “Objective”, “Method” and “obstacle”. Actors have to also determine the circumstances of every single scene, for example– where the scene takes place, what room they are in, what’s going on in the outside world, etc. 

To clearly identify the objective, the actor must break down the scene into “beats”, or “bits” (which are like short sections that end with each change of objective). Here is a basic example-
1)The character sits down to eat
 2)receives a text
3)Bursts into hysteric tears
 4)and then runs out of the house.
This scene has at least 4 separate bits— at the absolute minimum, the objective changes from sitting down to eat, to receiving the text, and then to Bursting into hysteric tears, which leads him/her to run out of the house.
The bits aren’t determined on action alone, and may be passed on a change of emotion/argument.
Actors can define their objectives with individual lines of dialogue, which is based on a concept called Objective Words.  It’s the actor’s job to know and play the character’s objectives not only in the entire film or play, but in each scene, each beat, and importantly, each line. Determining what the key motivation is behind each line is a basic practice in the Stanislavski method.

To help the actors portray the honest objective of the character, Stanislavski pioneered a concept which he called the “Magic If”.  To help themselves connect the character to the actor, performers have to ask themselves this key question— “What if such situation ever happened to me?” Through this, the actors identify with characters as possible aspects of themselves, letting themselves to think like the characters, instead of just impersonating them. Obstacles are things which stop a character from achieving his/her objective, like in the previous scene, if the 

character trips whilst trying to run, this’d be an obstacle to the character trying to exit the house.  Obstacles are dealt with in one of the 3 following methods;
•The character gives up the objective due to the obstacle
•The character finds a way to go around it
• The character goes along with it regardless.
The method which a character chooses in dealing with obstacles gives a great insight into that character; the basis for much of Stanislavski’s method is in defining how & why character chooses a certain response.

If the performer understands the methods and objectives of a character, this allows them to creat an internal

monologue.  Real people have semi-constant thoughts going on in their minds. The Stanislavski method tries to make a similar internal monologue for a character.  This technique helps each action feel as if it comes
spontaneously, rather than because he script says it should happen.  Actors also use this internal monologue to help them stop a certain scene from becoming repetitious or dull even if they’ve performed it many times.

The Stanislavski method is different to Lee Strasberg’s method acting, where the person must completely become the character. Stanislavski believes that the actor must still remain somewhat separate from the character in order to understand the obstacles, motivations and goals properly.