Method acting

Method acting is an acting technique in which actors try to replicate in real life the emotional conditions under which the character operates, in an effort to create a life-like, realistic performance. "The Method" typically refers to the generic practice of actors drawing on their own emotions, memories, and experiences to influence their portrayals of characters.

Origins

Mainly an American school, "The Method" was popularized by Lee Strasberg at The Actors Studio and the Group Theatre, in New York City in the 1940s and 50s. It was derived from "the Stanislavski System", after Konstantin Stanislavski, who pioneered similar ideas in his quest for "theatrical truth." This was done through friendships with Russia's leading actors, as well as his teachings, writings, and acting at the Moscow Art Theater (founded in 1897).

Strasberg's students included many of America's most famous actors of the 20th century, including Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Al Pacino, James Dean, Dustin Hoffman, Marilyn Monroe, Robert De Niro, and many others.

Method acting is apparented to and was influenced by the Stanislavski System, an acting technique introduced by Konstantin Stanislavski in which the actor analyses deeply the motivations and emotions of the character in order to personify him with psychological realism and emotional authenticity. However, using the Method, an actor will recall emotions or reactions from his or her own life and uses them to identify with the character being portrayed.

There are some misconceptions, I think, being promulgated in the above encapsulation of Method Acting.

Yes, it was brought to the fore of theatrical awareness by the the Actors Studio, it was utterly indebted to the groundbreaking thinking of Konstantin Stanislavski in his seminal work "An Actor Prepares". He was the first to really analize what a performer must do technically to prepare to step on stage. It is far more complex than simply understanding "motivations and emotions". It is about how to prepare oneself to step before an audience.

The act of standing up in front of other people to do anything, give a speech, lead a meeting, let alone to try and draw an audience into a completely different reality; is an un-natural act.

The person choosing to do this is beset by tension.

And it is the ability to develop a set of techniques that can reduce tension below the level where it will inhibit one's ablility to be creative in front of an audience; that is at the core of the exercises surrounding "The Method."

Tension is the enemy of creation.

The artist -- in whatever medium -- must be able to reduce tension to a level below which it will allow creativity, impulse, and imagination to flow freely. In the moment to moment circumstance of the a living stage performance this is life or death in terms of a successful performance.

From a stage performers point of view, which is all I know, technical mastery of tools to control and reduce tension are the first step in building a "method" which will allow one to act - characterization can only begin after tension has been managed through technique.

Technique

Some consider method acting difficult to teach. Partially this is because of a common misconception that there is a single "method." "The Method" (versus "the method" with a lowercase m) usually refers to Lee Strasberg's teachings, but really no one method has been laid down. Stanislavski himself changed his System constantly and dramatically over the course of his career. This plurality and ambiguity can make it hard to teach a single method. It is also partially because sometimes method acting is characterized by outsiders as lacking in any specific or technical approach to acting, while the abundance of training schools, syllabi, and years spent learning contradict this. In general, however, method acting combines a careful consideration of the psychological motives of the character, and some sort of personal identification with, and possibly the reproduction of the character's emotional state in a realistic way. It usually forms an antithesis to clichéd, unrealistic, so-called "rubber stamp" or indicated acting. Mostly, however, the surmising done about the character and the elusive, capricious or sensitive nature of emotions combine to make method acting difficult to teach.

Depending on the exact version taught by the numerous directors and teachers who claim to propagate the fundamentals of this technique, the process can include various ideologies and practices such as "as if", "substitution", "emotional memory in acting", and "preparation."

Sanford Meisner, another Group Theatre pioneer, championed a separate, though closely related school of acting, which came to be called the Meisner technique. Meisner broke from Strasberg on the subject of "sense memory" or "emotional memory", one of the basic tenets of the American Method at the time. Those trained by Strasberg often used personal experience on stage to identify with the emotional life of the character and portray it. Meisner found that too cerebral, and advocated fully immersing oneself in the moment of a character and gaining spontaneity through an understanding of the scene's circumstances, and through exercises he designed to help the actor gain emotional investment in the scene and then free him or her to react as the character.

Stella Adler, the coach whose fame was cemented by the success of her students Marlon Brando and Robert DeNiro, as well as the only teacher from the Group Theatre to have studied Acting Technique with Stanislavski himself, also broke with Strasberg and developed yet another form of acting. Her technique is founded in the idea that one must not use memories from their own past to conjure up emotion, but rather using the Given Circumstances. Stella Adler's technique relies on the carrying through of tasks, wants, needs, and objectives. It also seeks to stimulate the actor's imagination with the use of as-if's. As she often preached, "We are what we do, not what we say."

Teachers

Stanislavski's work, including the autobiography My Life in Art, and his trilogy of books set in a fictionalized acting-school as a pretense for his own teachings: An Actor Prepares, Building a Character, and Creating a Role, inspired many others who have followed the example of Stanislavski as prominent Method teachers. They include:

• Stella Adler, actress.
• Herbert Berghof, founder of HB Studios.
• Richard Boleslawski, actor and film director.
• Michael Chekhov, actor, director, author. (His method, largely an outside-in approach and somewhat more "metaphysical," diverged from and converged back to Stanislavski's over the course of his career.)
• Harold Clurman, director and critic.
• Jack Garfein, director, actor.
• Uta Hagen, actress, the author of Respect for Acting and Challenge for the Actor. (She emphasized "identity" and "substitution.")
• Robert Lewis, cofounder of The Actors Studio and author of Method — or Madness?
• Sanford Meisner, actor.
• Lee Strasberg, director, actor, producer.
• Eugeny Vakhtangov, a Stanislavski student and protegé as well as an actor and director.

The technique continues to be taught at schools around the world, including the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York and Los Angeles, the Actors Studio Drama School in New York, as well as in Europe in Le Studio Jack Garfein in Paris.

Method actors

These actors have acknowledged using Method Acting as part of their technique:

• Marlon Brando
• Ellen Burstyn
• Robert De Niro
• Lee Grant
• Dustin Hoffman
• Aamir Khan
• Marilyn Monroe
• Paul Newman
• Al Pacino
• George Peppard
• Rod Steiger
• Gene Wilder
• Shelley Winters

Major books on the Method

• Respect for Acting by Uta Hagen
• An Actor Prepares by Constantin Stanislavski
• To the Actor by Michael Chekhov
• A Dream of Passion by Lee Strasberg
• Sanford Meisner on Acting by Sanford Meisner
• Method or Madness by Robert Lewis
• Advice to the Players by Robert Lewis
• The Method Manual for teachers and actors by Ed Kovens
• The Actor's Studio: A Player's Place by David Garfield