BUILDING A CHARACTER CONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKI TRANSLATED BY ELIZABETH REYNOLDS HAPGOOD CHAPTER 1: TOWARD A PHYSICAL CHARACTERIZATION If you do not use your body, your voice, a manner of speaking, walking, moving, if you do not find a form of characterization which corresponds to the image, you probably cannot convey to others its inner, living spirit…. Without an external form neither your inner characterization nor spirit of your image will reach the public. The external characterization explains and illustrates and thereby conveys to your spectators the inner pattern of your part. (5) Each person evolves an external characterization out of himself, from others, takes it from real or imaginary life, according to his intuition, his observation of himself and others. He draws it from his own experience of life or that of his friends, from pictures, engravings, drawings, books, stories, novels, or from some simple incident—it makes no difference. The only proviso is that while he is making this external research he must not lose his inner self. (9-10) CHAPTER 2: DRESSING A CHARACTER Kostya’s development of the Critic—internal monologue of process. I had realized how to live another persons’ life, what it meant to immerse myself in a characterization. This is a most important asset for an actor. As I was taking my bath I recalled the fact that while I was playing the part of the Critic I still did not lose the sense of being myself. The reason, I concluded, was that while I was acting I felt exceptionally pleased as I followed my own transformation. Actually, I was my own observer at the same time that another part of me was being a fault-finding, critical creature. Yet can I really say that that creature is not a part of me? I derived him from my own nature. I divided myself, as it were, into two personalities. One continued as an actor, the other was an observer. Strangely enough this duality not only did not impede, it actually promoted my creative work. It encouraged and lent impetus to it. (21) CHAPTER 3: CHARACTERS AND TYPES Section 3.1 There is a great difference between searching for and choosing in oneself emotions related to a part and altering the part to suit one’s more facile resources. (22) You really love yourself in the part more than you love the part in yourself. That is a mistake. (22) Learn to love you role in yourself. (23) There are a variety of false actors: There are actors and especially actresses who do not feel the need of preparing characterizations or transforming themselves into other characters because they adapt all roles to their personal appeal. (22) There are many actors who believe in and rely on their charm. (22) There are also actors [who] hold the public though their original ways, their finely wrought special variety of acting clichés. They appear on the stage for the sole purpose of exhibiting them to their spectators. (23) Page 1 of 20 A third category of false actors are the ones who are strong in technique and clichés but who did not work these out for themselves, they merely have acquired them from other actors of other times and countries. These characterizations are based in a highly conventional ritual. (23) The human being that you are is far more interesting and talented than the actor. (24) Your method of overacting only brought you yourself more powerfully into evidence; it belongs only to you and at no point did it reflect the old man you wished to portray. Such a characterization is not a true mutation! It only betrays you and offers an opportunity for contortions. Section 3.2 It is possible to portray on the stage a character in general terms…but they do not contain the essence of a character and they are not individualized. Other actors, who posses more acute powers of observation are able to choose sub-divisions in the general categories of stock figures…. They endow the representatives of these various groups with features which are characteristic of them. (27-28) One can use one’s own emotions, sensations, instincts, even when one is inside another character. (29) A characterization is the mask which hides the actor-individual. Protected by it, he can lay bare his soul down to the last intimate detail. (30) All actors who are artists, the creator of images, should make use of characterizations which enable them to become ‘incarnate’ in their parts. (30-31) Section 3.3 If a youthful impersonator of an elderly role will put his mind on how to absorb and handle the component phases of difficult and more extensive action, if he will begin to act conscientiously, honestly, consistently, without over-emphasis, while keeping himself within the confines of the character, of the play, of the ‘given circumstances’ which surround an old person, then the actor will succeed in putting himself into analogous circumstances, will assimilate the external features, the rhythm and pace of an old person—all of which plays a great and indeed preponderating part in presenting such a portrayal on the stage. (35) CHAPTER 4: MAKING THE BODY EXPRESSIVE Section 4.2 People generally do not know how to make use of the physical apparatus with which nature has endowed us. (37) When we step on stage many lesser shortcomings attract immediate attention…. [The actor] must have a healthy body in good working order, capable of extraordinary control. (38) Without exercise all muscles wither away, and by reviving their functions, toning them up, we have come to make new movements, to experience new sensations, to create subtle possibilities for action and expression. The exercises contribute toward making your physical apparatus more mobile, flexible, expressive and even more sensitive. (38) The acquisition of such overdevelopment is ordinarily unacceptable in the theatre. We need strong, powerful bodies, developed in good proportions, well set up, but without unnatural excess. Page 2 of 20 Section 4.3 When you have developed will-power in your bodily movements and actions it will be easier for you to carry it over into living the role and you will learn how, without thinking, to surrender yourself instantly and utterly into the power if intuition and inspiration. (40) Acrobatics will help you to become more agile, more physically efficient on the stage…and will teach you to act in a quick rhythm and tempo impossible for an untrained body. (40) Section 4.4 Dancing not only serves to make the body more erect but it also opens up motions, broadens them, gives them a definiteness and finish, which is very important, because a sawed-off, choppy gesture is not appropriate for the stage. It is an excellent corrective for the position of arms, legs, backs. (41) Of equal importance for plasticity and expressiveness of the body is the development of the extremities of the arms and legs, the wrists fingers, ankles. (43) In the matter of wrists and fingers I am not sure that ballet methods are to be strongly recommended. (43) Ballet discipline…is useful for the further development of your physical apparatus for the plastic use of your body, for general posture and carriage. (43) Whereas gymnastics develops motions that are clear cut to the point of abruptness, marking the rhythm with a strong, almost military accent, dancing tends to produce fluency, breadth, cadence in gesture. Together they unfold a gesture, give it line, form, direction, airiness. (44) In acting no gesture must be made merely for the gesture’s sake. Your movements must always have a purpose and be connected with the content of your part. Purposeful and productive action will automatically exclude affectation, posturing and other such dangerous results. (45) CHAPTER 5: PLASTICITY OF MOTION Section 5.1 Energy, heated by emotion, charged with will, directed by the intellect, moves with confidence and pride, like an ambassador on an important mission. It manifests itself in conscious action, full of feeling, content and purpose, which cannot be carried out in any slipshod, mechanical way, but must be fulfilled in accordance with its spiritual impulses. (50) Description of how the legs, pelvis, hips work physically and exercises in gait. Section 5.3 Movement and action, which take their source in the recesses of the soul and follow an inner pattern, are essential to real artists in drama, ballet, and other theatre and plastic arts. They are the only kind of movement fit for our use when we are building the physical form of a character. (61) It is important that your attention move in constant company with the current of your energy, because this helps to create an endless, unbroken line which is so essential to our art. (64) Art itself originates in the moment when that unbroken line is established, be it in that of sound, voice, drawing or movement. As long as there exist only separate sounds, ejaculations, notes, exclamations instead Page 3 of 20 of music, or separate lines, dots instead of a design, or separate spasmodic jerks instead of coordinated movement—there can be no question of music, singing, design, or painting, dancing, architecture, sculpture nor, finally, of dramatic art. (64) …Energy traveled in stately progress along an unbroken line…that is the motion which creates fluency, the plasticity of body movement which is so necessary to us. This inner line comes from the deepest recesses of our being, the energy it engenders is saturated with stimuli of emotions, will and intellect. (67) A solid, uninterrupted line of movement in our art is the raw material out of which we mould the plastic form.