Describe, consider and account for the ways in which Stanislavski approached

the selecti on, interpretati on and treatment of playscript and/or text.

Stanislavski’s approach to the selection, interpretation and treatment of the playscript is

distinct in its method as he sought to create deep and realistic emotions on stage. By

selecting plays that were highly realistic and unpretentious in style, Stanislavski was able to

develop a unique system of constructing profoundly truthful theatre. His development of

the ‘round table analysis’ in the early 1900s allowed him to explore the text in great detail in

collaboration with the actors to understand the script and uncover the objectives of the

characters in order to produce the realism his style required 1. His approach also included

applying the personal experiences of the actors to the scenes to produce a highly realistic

experience for both the actor and audience.

Stanislavski’s method, focused on creating realistic, emotional theatre, requires the careful

selection of naturalistic and simple plays. In selecting plays, he gravitated towards realistic

texts in order to display life as it is lived, on stage. In his book, My Life in Art, he states that

when founding the Moscow Art Theatre he:

‘protested against the customary manner of acting, against theatricality, against

bathos, against declamation, against overacting, against the bad manner of

production, against the habitual scenery, against the star system which was being

cultivated on the Russian stage at that time’2.

1
B. Merlin, Konstantin Stanislavsky, Routledge, London, 2003, p.15.
2
K. Stanislavski, trans. J J Robbins, My Life in Art, Geoffrey Bles, USA, 1962, p330.

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In short, he saw a significant amount of what he considered bad and artificial acting and

wished to create real theatre on stage which conveyed real emotions and experiences. To

do this, he had to select realistic plays which could convey ‘a real, artistic, scenic truth’ 3. It is

evident that he did this in his selection of Chekov’s 1895 play The Seagull, which Stanislavski

directed in 1898. The play itself, is very claustrophobic as it centres on the shifting

relationships between the characters. Stanislavski himself describes it as ‘the plot and the

subject can be summed up in a few words’4. It is clear why Stanislavski accepted the role to

direct this play as it allowed him to deploy his system of deeply analysing the playscript to

produce emotional truth. In his book, My Life in Art, Stanislavski describes his struggle in

directing the play as he ‘did not understand it’5. However, he notes that an ‘evolution’ took

place within him without him noticing6. It is evident through his writing about directing The

Seagull, how significant the selection of this play was as he describes the shifting

relationships between the characters and the importance of the expression of real emotions

would be in his production. In My Life in Art, Stanislavski spends much time explaining the

journey which the character of Nina goes on and the struggles and pain she faces, even

describing her as ‘Poor Nina’7. It is through his descriptions that the reader can see the

importance of his system in selecting the playscript to be able to convey the emotions which

Stanislavski wished to produce on stage.

Furthermore, Stanislavski’s approach to the interpretation of the playscript was highly

detailed in analysing and breaking down the text to uncover the motivations of each

3
ibid, p330.
4
K. Stanislavski & O Korneva, Konstantin Stanislavsky Selected Works, Raduga Publishers, USSR, 1984, p.82.
5
Stanislavski, 1962, op. cit. p.352.
6
ibid, p.352.
7
Ibid, p.355.

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individual character. As part of his ‘round table analysis’, Stanislavski would work with his

actors to:

‘re-tell the content of the play, make lists of facts and events, given circumstances

proposed by the author…divide the play up into pieces–dissect it and divide it into

layers, think up questions and provide the answers, read the text with exactly

proportioned words and pauses and glance into the past and future of the

characters, organise general discussions, arguments and debates…keep close track

of the appearance and merging of areas of light, weigh and estimate all facts, find

names for units and objectives, and so forth’8.

This extremely detailed analysis allowed Stanislavski to find the central motivations and

intended interpretations of the characters in the play and in doing so could create realistic

emotions in the actors. The purpose of the time dedicated to interpreting the text is for ‘the

emotional deepening of the soul of a part in order to comprehend the component elements

of this soul, its external and internal nature, and indeed its whole life as a human spirit’ 9.

Essentially, by dissecting the text so deeply, the director and actors, in collaboration, could

understand the characters themselves as human beings and appreciate their motivations

and objectives in their actions. It was, however, purposeful that this analysis and

interpretation was completed by all those involved, and not just the director as another aim

was for the company to feel that they ‘owned’ the production and had responsibility for the

creation of the characters and atmosphere10. Nonetheless, these discussions ‘weren’t head-

8
K. Stanislavski, trans. E R Hapgood, ed. H I Popper, Creating a Role, Methuen, London, 1988, p.155.
9
ibid, p.151.
10
Merlin, op. cit. p.16.

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bound and intellectual, but imaginative and even emotional’11. In being this way, the actors

could then grow to understand the characters on a spiritual level and perform the

characters’ experiences as their own.

The most recognisable part of Stanislavski’s method is how he treats the text, breaking it

into units to uncover the objectives and super objectives of the characters. Units are ‘bite-

size chunks’ of the script, which are driven by the objectives, or goals of the characters in

those sections12. According to Stanislavski:

‘the technique of division is comparatively simple. You ask yourself: ‘What is the core

of the play–the thing without which it cannot exist?’ Then you go over the main

points without entering into detail’13.

Inside these units, the actor must uncover the character’s objectives or goals. Merlin

summarises Stanislavski stating that the quickest way to discover a character’s objective is

to ask:

‘What do I want? But the answer can’t be too general…Only active questions will

produce exciting and magnetic objectives, and expressing the objective through a

verb ensures that it is forward-moving and attractive to the actor doing it’ 14.

11
ibid, p.16.
12
ibid, p.53.
13
K. Stanislavski, trans. E R Hapgood, An Actor Prepares, Lewis Reprints, Great Britain, 1973, pp.115-16.
14
Merlin, op. cit. p.54.

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However, Stanislavski emphasises that the fundamental task in his system is to analyse the

text to uncover the character’s super objective, in other words, their main goal which

encompasses all of their minor objectives. These objectives ‘form the back-bone of the

play’s dramatic action’ and thus, need to be ‘active’ and ‘forward-moving’ 15. All this, is done

through Stanislavski’s analytical treatment of the text. According to him:

‘Analysis dissects, discovers, examines, studies, weighs, recognises, rejects, confirms;

it uncovers the basic direction and thought of a play and part, the super objective

and the through line of action. This is the material it feeds to imagination, feelings,

thoughts and will.16’

Thus, in Stanislavski’s approach to the playscript, it is intensely important that the actor

analyses the text to find the motivations. In his book An Actor Prepares, he describes the

performance of a peer who attempted to act without a purpose. Her melodramatic,

exaggerated acting had no emotion or sincerity to it and ultimately failed to resonate with

the audience, despite the effort she put in. But once she was given an objective and a

motivation which she followed, it became realistic and believable for the audience. It was

from this scenario which Stanislavski himself watched happen, that he learned an important

lesson which he applied to his system – ‘On the stage do not run for the sake of running, or

suffer for the sake of suffering. Don’t act “in general”, for the sake of action; always act with

a purpose.17’ This is the central concept of Stanislavski’s work. All action that takes place on

stage must have a purpose, that is what makes the performance realistic.

15
ibid, p.55.
16
Stanislavski, 1988, op. cit. p.152.
17
Stanislavski, 1973, op. cit. pp.39-40.

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Moreover, Merlin states that states ‘the combination of imagination, emotional recollection

and textual analysis certainly fuelled Stanislavsky’s rehearsal practices in the early 1900s’ 18.

This is certainly extremely evident in his direction of The Seagull as he was developing his

system. In collaboration with Nemirovich, the first rehearsal of this play was a four hour

discussion about the first two acts. This extensive period of time would have cemented their

company’s understanding of the play and the characters they were playing. Stanislavski

thought extremely highly of Chekov and his work and said that ‘actors engaged in Chekov’s

plays are wrong in trying to play, to perform. In his plays they must be, i.e. live, exist,

proceeding along the deep inner line of spiritual development’19. These first four hours of

Stanislavski and Nemirovich’s rehearsals would have been dedicated for this purpose, so

that the actors would not merely act and perform, but instead be and experience what the

characters live out and experience.

Moreover, Stanislavski rounded out his approach to the playscript with a very specific

treatment of the text by encouraging actors to apply their own personal experiences to the

text and characters, to create realistic emotions and experiences. Through Stanislavski’s

approach to the script, actors can find and produce truth. Part of Stanislavski’s method is to

create truth on stage, including emotional truth, spiritual truth and intellectual truth. For

the actor, this is only found through Stanislavski’s deep analytical approach to the playscript.

In his book Makers of Modern Theatre, Leach states that ‘Stanislavsky recalled Shchepkin’s

dictum: ‘It is not important that you play well or ill; it is important that you play truthfully’ 20.

18
Merlin, op. cit. p.16.
19
Stanislavski & Korneva, op. cit. p.83.
20
R Leach, Makers of Modern Theatre, Routledge, London, 2004, p.23

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To play characters with truth, Stanislavski moulded his system to involve the memory of the

actor – both the physical or sensory and emotional. Sensation memory involves a process of

‘consciously recalling the sights and sounds from the original experience to excite sensations

here and now’21. This includes taste, touch and smell. Whereas, emotion memory is

significantly more psychological and intangible by which an actor recalls past experiences

and the feelings associated with that experiences are conjured up and felt deeply 22. By

deploying these memories in acting, performers do not simply sympathise with characters

and attempt to show their experiences on stage, but instead completely empathise with

them and experience the same things they do. In An Actor Prepares, Stanislavski states that:

‘You can understand a part, sympathise with the person portrayed, and put yourself

in his place, so that you will act as he would. That will arouse feelings in the actor

that are analogous to those required for the part. But those feelings will belong, not

to the person created by the author of the play, but to the actor himself’ 23.

In this way, the emotional and sensory memory allow actors to create truthful and realistic

performance, which in itself, is no longer performance, but instead a re-experience for the

actor. The actor will and must ‘when you are on the stage, play yourself’ 24.

In his production of The Seagull, Stanislavski further developed this idea in his

encouragement of the actors to seek and find emotional truth and reality. The actress

playing Nina would not likely have had a bird shot and placed in front of them, but instead

21
Merlin, op. cit. p.61.
22
ibid. p.61.
23
Stanislavski, 1973, op. cit. p.177.
24
ibid, p.177.

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she could have drawn upon a personal experience of shock, pain and disgust. In this way,

she would bring her own emotions to the experience and truthfully portray the emotions of

Nina in that moment. As Stanislavski states:

‘I shall not venture to describe the stage productions of Chekov’s plays. Their charm

does not lie in the dialogue; it lies in the meaning behind this dialogue, in the pauses,

in the looks of the actors, in the way they display emotions’25.

It is in this raw and realistic display of emotions that Stanislavski thrived in. In treating the

playscript in this way of breaking it down and filling it with the actors’ personal experiences,

the performance became real life on stage.

In conclusion, Stanislavski developed a distinct approach to the selection, interpretation and

treatment of the playscript which allowed the actors, in collaboration with the director, to

create characters which were realistic and expressed truthful emotions on stage. His process

has been described as tedious by some actors, but as Stanislavski states, it is through these

various steps which form ‘the single process of analysis, or coming to know the play and

your parts’26. The breaking down of the script is an essential part of Stanislavski’s approach

as it allows the actors to understand the characters, their motivations and emotions and

portray this in light of their own personal experiences, making it an extremely realistic

performance.

Word Count: 2033

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Bibliography

B. Merlin, Konstantin Stanislavsky, Routledge, London, 2003.

K. Stanislavski, trans. E R Hapgood, An Actor Prepares, Lewis Reprints, Great Britain, 1973.

K. Stanislavski, trans. E R Hapgood, ed. H I Popper, Creating a Role, Methuen, London, 1988.

K. Stanislavski, trans. J J Robbins, My Life in Art, Geoffrey Bles, USA, 1962.

K. Stanislavski & O Korneva, Konstantin Stanislavsky Selected Works, Raduga Publishers,

USSR, 1984.

R Leach, Makers of Modern Theatre, Routledge, London, 2004.

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