I have said and everybody can say everybody might say that knowledge is what you know. Knowledge is what you know and there is nothing more difficult to say than that that knowledge is what you know.
Gertrude Stein
The topic of my lead post, Let's End the Specious Argument of Beloved Dead Masters, which is also in the drop down menu dated 1/7/16, seems to hold continuing interest from my students as well as the professional actors I work with who have trained extensively elsewhere. Notice that I've also discussed it separately in several posts on the blog. Recently, a friend asked me to read something she'd written, and in it she had inserted the above quotation from Gertrude Stein.
The topic of my lead post, Let's End the Specious Argument of Beloved Dead Masters, which is also in the drop down menu dated 1/7/16, seems to hold continuing interest from my students as well as the professional actors I work with who have trained extensively elsewhere. Notice that I've also discussed it separately in several posts on the blog. Recently, a friend asked me to read something she'd written, and in it she had inserted the above quotation from Gertrude Stein.
Okay, Gertrude Stein made me do it:
Actors who work with me know that I quote freely from Adler, Strasberg, Hagen, Lewis and Meisner and that I continually point out that the members of the Group Theatre and their students learned the basic elements of Stanislavski's system, practiced it, and that their influence continues to this day. However, the popular view that they each developed their own unique method or technique is erroneous and has led to damaging confusion. None of them had separate techniques; they devised divergent exercises in order to achieve the same result. This myth has evolved and been reduced to a definition of the original work as "The Method," attributed solely to Lee Strasberg, and quoted, misquoted, in acting studios, major institutions of higher learning, and throughout the world wherever this acting technique is taught.
In the 1941 film The Lady Eve, the actor William Demarest (Muggsy), upon seeing Barbara Stanwyck (Eve) impersonate a different character from herself, says, throughout the second half of the film, "It's the same dame." It's also the last line of the film. Okay, IT'S THE SAME DAME, and it's the last time it will be addressed here. If you need further clarification, please contact me.
What is most troubling is the dogma that emerges, emanating, sadly, more from egotistical competition than from substantive disagreement. In particular, imagination or affective memory/substitution, when, obviously, they're one and the same thing. Let any one of these masters loose on their non-existent disagreement, and one hears some really silly statements; too bad they're taken so seriously that to this day they confuse actors (see post Do You Use Substitution or Imagination? dated 1/11/19). Stella Adler contradicts herself, says profound, useful things, and can make us laugh; there's lots more of her on YouTube. But for her to tell actors that they must use their imagination instead of their life experience is silly, especially since imagination is derived from one's life experience. Adler, and now her disciples, contend that because she traveled to Paris to study with Stanislavski, her definitions are more accurate than Strasberg's definitions. Yet, Sonia Moore, who, in 1920, studied at MAT's Third Studio under Vakhtangov, told a student, "...you must have your own real images of a party and people that are right for Olga. When you say 'It was cold and snowing,' you must see New York or any other place that means to you what this town means to Olga. Do not try to see Moscow, for it does not mean a thing to you..." (Stanislavsi Revealed, Sonia Moore)
The clip of Strasberg coaching Ellen Burstyn is chosen because it demonstrates that he was cognizant of the need to perform the character's actions. I was unable to find the clip I once saw of him riding roughshod over an actor to get her to relive a painful personal life experience, all needless, unfruitful, as it was painful to watch, as were the emotional recall exercises that I observed at the Strasberg Institute in Los Angeles, upon which hours were spent recalling a teddy bear being snatched and hidden from the student, or some other early childhood trauma. You come to class knowing, remembering these traumas -- or joy, or love, or wonderment -- it's written all over you! Bobby Lewis was correct when he pointed out that you don't need to know it consciously in order to remember it.
In the 1941 film The Lady Eve, the actor William Demarest (Muggsy), upon seeing Barbara Stanwyck (Eve) impersonate a different character from herself, says, throughout the second half of the film, "It's the same dame." It's also the last line of the film. Okay, IT'S THE SAME DAME, and it's the last time it will be addressed here. If you need further clarification, please contact me.
What is most troubling is the dogma that emerges, emanating, sadly, more from egotistical competition than from substantive disagreement. In particular, imagination or affective memory/substitution, when, obviously, they're one and the same thing. Let any one of these masters loose on their non-existent disagreement, and one hears some really silly statements; too bad they're taken so seriously that to this day they confuse actors (see post Do You Use Substitution or Imagination? dated 1/11/19). Stella Adler contradicts herself, says profound, useful things, and can make us laugh; there's lots more of her on YouTube. But for her to tell actors that they must use their imagination instead of their life experience is silly, especially since imagination is derived from one's life experience. Adler, and now her disciples, contend that because she traveled to Paris to study with Stanislavski, her definitions are more accurate than Strasberg's definitions. Yet, Sonia Moore, who, in 1920, studied at MAT's Third Studio under Vakhtangov, told a student, "...you must have your own real images of a party and people that are right for Olga. When you say 'It was cold and snowing,' you must see New York or any other place that means to you what this town means to Olga. Do not try to see Moscow, for it does not mean a thing to you..." (Stanislavsi Revealed, Sonia Moore)
The clip of Strasberg coaching Ellen Burstyn is chosen because it demonstrates that he was cognizant of the need to perform the character's actions. I was unable to find the clip I once saw of him riding roughshod over an actor to get her to relive a painful personal life experience, all needless, unfruitful, as it was painful to watch, as were the emotional recall exercises that I observed at the Strasberg Institute in Los Angeles, upon which hours were spent recalling a teddy bear being snatched and hidden from the student, or some other early childhood trauma. You come to class knowing, remembering these traumas -- or joy, or love, or wonderment -- it's written all over you! Bobby Lewis was correct when he pointed out that you don't need to know it consciously in order to remember it.
IMAGINATION has become an iconic dogma that can dangerously lead to thinking that doesn't even reflect the teachings of a particular master, as for example, the time an Adler teacher disagreed with me when I pointed out that certain ancient carved artifacts, heads with facial features found on the east and west coasts of Mexico, were Asian and African, suggesting that those ancient peoples must have arrived on the continent long before it was assumed: "Oh, no," she said, "Stella said you can imagine anything, so those features could have been imagined by the ancient indigenous people of Mexico."
I revere Stella Adler's insistence on the theme and social context of the drama; she published two books on the topic, and although her ideas emanated from the POV of the Group Theatre, that she insisted on its relevance is, in my opinion perhaps her greatest contribution, regardless if one might disagree with her analysis of a particular play. However, the character is fictitious, emanating from the imagination / life experience of the author. How to access the thoughts of the character that emanated from the images/thoughts of Shakespeare, or Ibsen or Chekhov or Fugard within their social context when you live in 21st Century England, Russia, France, USA, or all the other countries where my readers reside -- ah, that's the challenge! In Jean Benedetti's book Stanislavski and the Actor, in the index of principal terms used, translated from Russian: THE THIRD BEING: The actor/role, the product of the marriage between the actor's personality and the character the author has written.
I revere Stella Adler's insistence on the theme and social context of the drama; she published two books on the topic, and although her ideas emanated from the POV of the Group Theatre, that she insisted on its relevance is, in my opinion perhaps her greatest contribution, regardless if one might disagree with her analysis of a particular play. However, the character is fictitious, emanating from the imagination / life experience of the author. How to access the thoughts of the character that emanated from the images/thoughts of Shakespeare, or Ibsen or Chekhov or Fugard within their social context when you live in 21st Century England, Russia, France, USA, or all the other countries where my readers reside -- ah, that's the challenge! In Jean Benedetti's book Stanislavski and the Actor, in the index of principal terms used, translated from Russian: THE THIRD BEING: The actor/role, the product of the marriage between the actor's personality and the character the author has written.
Finally, if you go to the 7/4/18 post regarding Dianne Wiest's scene from In Treatment, I think it's clear that seeing the image is necessary, not the origin of the image, which neither Adler nor Strasberg nor Moore would have been able to discern.
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