Inkblot: The Undergraduate Journal of Psychology • Vol. 3 • September 2014 | 7

Mindfulness, Flow and Al Pacino: A Look into the Relationship between Cognitive Science and the Stanislavski System Daniel Jubas-Malz

Abstract This paper reconciles the relationship between mindfulness, flow, and the function and methodology of a branch of acting called, ‘The Stanislavski System’. This paper considers a few of the system’s more important techniques such as: the actor’s object of attention, the experience of the actor, and the actor’s investment in their role, examin- ing them within the context of mindfulness and flow. The functionality of parts of Stanislavski’s system, such as the suggestion of how an actor experiences the totality of their performance, can be better understood if defined in conjunction with the principles of mindfulness and flow. Further investigation into the relationship between cognitive science and the performance arts would allow both disciplines to expand into new areas of thought and opportunity.

With the rise of actors such as Daniel Day-Lewis, Rob- processes of mindfulness and flow. Mindfulness is ert De Niro, and Dustin Hoffman we hear a great deal commonly defined as the process of applying complete, about the “method acting” techniques they use that non-judgmental attention to the present moment (Bish- make them so prolific in their field. Method acting is a op et al., 2004; Hirst, 2003; Kabat-Zinn, 1994). This is style of performance art that draws on past experiences similar to how the actor orients and further expresses from the actors’ lives for their portrayal of a character themselves in a role. Similarly flow, a subjective state and is derived from another set of techniques called the one can enter when they are fully focused on an activity Stanislavski System (Stanislavski, 1936).1 and their action and awareness are merged (Csikszent- Russian actor and director Constantin Stan- mihalyi, 1997; Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi, 2002), islavski invented his eponymous system in the early is similar to how the actor maintains their perfor- 1900’s. The Stanislavski System, or just the System, aims mance. Through this paper, I will show how the actor to make an actor’s performance more realistic (Stan- uses sustained attention to direct themselves while on islavski, 1955). The System emphasizes ideas of the stage, how actors use feedback to create and maintain a actor’s object of attention, or what the actor is direct- cohesive performance via flow, the change in perspec- ing their attention towards and how they are doing it tive the actor achieves through re-orientation, and how (Stanislavski, 1955); the actor’s experience, which is the Stanislavski’s later revision to his system is unfeasible state of mind the actor should be in while performing based on the inherit natures of both mindfulness and (Carnicke, 2009); and how the actor should adopt an flow. Thus, the processes of mindfulness and flow help appropriate perspective while performing (Rapoport, explicate the core concepts of the System and provide a 1955). useful framework for its development. The central tenets of the System are akin to the 8 | Inkblot: The Undergraduate Journal of Psychology • Vol. 3 • September 2014

The Actor’s Object of Attention (Jha, Krompinger, & Baime, 2007, Kabat-Zinn, 1994). Should thought begin to wander, the actors would ac- According to Stanislavski, one of the actor’s knowledge and accept whatever they are now focused most important skills is the ability to control and direct on and then attempt to return to their initial thought. their attention on a specific object (Stanislavski, 1955). This ability to redistribute salience and attention would They must be fully attentive to the object, whether it is a enhance actors’ ‘cognitive flexibility’, or their ability to prop or a fellow actor, and completely invest their psy- make and break perspectives (DeYoung, Flanders, & chic energy into this focus (Rapoport, 1955). Russian Peterson, 2008). An actor who is more cognitively flex- actor and director Iosif Rapoport comments that: ible would be better able to redirect their focus of at- tention and would therefore be better able to produce [In the System] [t]he first prerequisite of stage their desired actions effortlessly which would help them presence is the ability to control our own atten- create a more cohesive performance. tion, to use our will-power to focus our atten- We consider both sustained attention and cog- tion on the object we have selected. (Rapoport, nitive flexibility when the actor goes through the pro- 1955, p. 35) cess of expanding their focus of attention on a group of objects and then switches to an entirely different group. Furthermore, the actor must have the ability to The actor must be able to maintain or adjust the focus expand and shift their attention from any one object to they have initially created to keep their performance co- another or, in some cases, to many other objects (Stan- hesive (Stanislavski, 1955). I will further address what islavski, 1955). I mean by a cohesive performance in the following sec- This idea of controlled attention parallels ‘sus- tion when I discuss the phenomenon of flow. tained attention’ in mindfulness. According to Bishop et al. (2004), sustained attention, much the like atten- The Experience of the Actor tion of the actor to the object as outlined in the System, involves the focusing of attention by being persistently Perezhivanie or experience is another one of vigilant of what the attention is currently directed to- the System’s more important components according to wards (Bisop et al., 2004). However, unlike attention Stanislavski. The actor’s experience is the point in the defined by the System, mindful people do not control performance when they have been seized by and are in full the object of their attention in but simply allow completely invested in the role (Carnicke, 2009). When attention to wander and accept whatever it is they be- an actor enters their experience, they are living in the come attentive to (Bishop et al., 2004; Kabat-Zinn, 1994) moment as the character and can no longer report their as long as it exists in the present moment (Hirst, 2003). sensations but simply understand them as the entirety This suggests that we need to reconsider Stanislavski’s of the performance (Carnicke, 2009). During the state idea of the actor’s object of attention and understand it of experience, the actor cannot break down their per- not as something that the actor controls in its entirety, formance into its individual components and only con- but as something they adapt to and eventually control sider it as a totality which is similar to the concept of in part. flow. Actors would be able to gain the ability to re- Akin to the actor’s experience, the flow state direct their attention by practicing techniques akin to creates harmony between thoughts, feelings and ac- mindfulness meditation which would have them switch tions (Lopez & Snyder, 2011). In other words, it cre- their attention from one thought (or object) to another ates a totality in character. Before that can occur—that Inkblot: The Undergraduate Journal of Psychology • Vol. 3 • September 2014 | 9

is, before an individual can enter the flow state—they be conducted on the relationship between the number must be fully focused on the activity, or in this case, the of tasks one is attentive to and achieving a flow state. character (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2002). This The automaticity of the actor’s performance re- relates back to Stanislavski’s teachings of the actor’s ob- fers to the non-reportable nature of the experience of ject of attention; however, instead of focusing on the the actor as well as the idea of ‘living in the moment’, or object, the actor is concentrating on the character they flow. One of the most important parts of the actor’s per- are portraying. Thus, when the actor has put all of their formance is if it is organic and genuine; meaning that psychic energy—or complete bodily investment—into the character’s motives and personality are understood the character, they should begin to engage in flow and by the actor in such a way that they are completely im- then direct their attention accordingly and effortlessly. mersed in their role (Rapoport, 1955). The character’s Once they have entered the flow state, the actor’s atten- lines cannot be memorized, but must be understood at tion will be guided naturally throughout their perfor- both the textual and sub-textual level so that the actor mance with the use of feedback from their environment can deliver a believable performance (Rapoport, 1955). (which I will further explain later on). The textual level can be understood as the information Learning how to focus attention on themselves presented explicitly through their lines, such as their would improve an actor’s ability to enter a flow state and current emotional state (Carnicke, 2009). The sub- exercise the most appropriate amount of sustained at- textual level on the other hand, reveals information tention and cognitive flexibility automatically. It would embedded within the lines and can only be understood be much easier for an actor to enter a flow state if they when the character has moved away from the abstract were to be focused on to a single object-in this case, the and into our existence (Clyde, 2003). This is the point character—by chunking every object of attention to- where the character’s depth and perspective are defined gether. Instead of trying to think of the character as and made apparent to the actor portraying the char- a series of motivations and isms, the character should acter, which they could then use in their performance be conceptualized as a gestalt, or meaningful whole, of (Clyde, 2003). Despite having to go through all of this which the actor can direct their focus onto and then, in preparation for the role, the actor is intended to go turn enter a flow state. For example, instead of focusing through their performance moment by moment (Rapo- on any specific personality trait—such as despondency port, 1955; Carnicke, 2009), only focusing on what is or cynicism—the actor can create a framework of a ‘ste- currently happening and using the current moment as reotypical sad person’ which would have the different feedback for their flow state. individual traits amalgamate. Having such a framework Since the actor is constantly engaging with at their disposal, the actor would not need to come up their environment and objects of attention, we can in- with ways to act in a certain manner and use the frame- fer that they use whatever it is they are interacting with work to guide their performance overall. as feedback for their flow state that they then take into Although one of the criteria of flow is that the consideration when deciding what to do next in their ratio of an individual’s skill and the challenge of the task performance. In other words, a huge part of the char- are of an almost equal proportion (Nakamura & Csik- acter relies on the actor’s ability to enter a flow state and szentmihalyi, 2002), I postulate that simply chunking respond to a series of stimuli accordingly, by making the tasks together should not affect task difficulty; but judgments that will reflect the character’s thoughts in a that is based entirely on the assumption that the ability specific performance. To give a very simplified exam- to enter a flow state is affected by the number of things ple: if actor A is having an argument with actor B, actor being attended to. Further research on this topic should A would use actor B’s angry tone as feedback for how he 10 | Inkblot: The Undergraduate Journal of Psychology • Vol. 3 • September 2014

should deliver his next line; in this case, it would be to self was thirsty because he is not considering his mo- reply with an angry tone. If the argument were to sim- tives—in this case, his thirst–as objects of attention be- mer down and actor B were to suddenly begin speak- cause it is irrelevant to his character. Since this is an act ing in a remorseful or hushed tone, then actor A would of perspective-taking, we can compare its functions to consider this new feedback and respond in a hushed that of mindfulness. tone himself. Although actor A has an idea of what When engaging in meditative mindfulness ex- tone actor B will have in this scene by having rehearsed ercises, our mind wanders on its own volition and when it multiple times, he cannot respond as organically or we realize that our attention is not directed where we appropriately to actor B as when he knows exactly what would like it to be, we attempt to regain control of it and he is responding to in the moment (Stanislavski, 1955). then refocus on the initial thought (Barry & Meisiek, Each performance is different so the actor must be able 2010; Krompinger & Baime, 2007). In mindfulness to respond as precisely as possible to their environment practice, before we refocus attention, we must first be and can only do that when they know exactly what attentive to whatever object we are currently focused on they’re responding to. Being in the flow state would al- by accepting it as it is, free of judgment (Kabat-Zinn, low the actor to take in this information and express 1994). After practicing this for a long period of time, themselves authentically, thus maintaining the cohe- an individual’s cognitive flexibility would significantly siveness of their performance and of the production as improve, allowing them to better take alternative per- a whole. Of course, this would happen in conjunction spectives (DeYoung, Flanders and Peterson, 2008). This with both of the actor’s other physical responses so the second component of mindfulness proposed by Bishop feedback would be much more complex than how I’ve et al. (2004) is called the ‘orientation to experience’ and just described it it can be best understood as the process of de-centering from our own perspectives. The Actor’s Perspective While in Role It can be inferred that for an actor to be able to apply a proper justification for their character’s actions, they would first have to undergo this mindful de-cen- When Stanislavski first started creating his sys- tering of self. By removing themselves from their per- tem, he asserted that the actor must lose themselves in spective, they would be able to open themselves up to a the character, becoming one with the role (Carnicke, new one that would better fit their character. In other 2009). He suggested that the actor only sees things words, mindfulness processes would act as a precur- through the eyes of their character and must therefore sor to justification in a role, where after having become assign a different meaning to every sensation as though separated from their perspective, the actor will now be they were the character (Rapoport, 1955). This is what free to take up the perspective of the character they are Stanislavski called ‘justification’ (Rapoport, 1955). portraying and assign meaning to their objects of atten- Whenever the actor reacts to their object of attention, tion as the character would. The next question would they must justify their reasoning for doing so as well be to consider how this would work in conjunction with as their reasoning for interacting with the object in the the experience of the actor. first place, both in rehearsal and on stage, as the charac- I have defined the experience of the actor as ter. something very similar to the flow state where the actor If actor A were to be carrying out a scene where is completely invested in the character. As mentioned his character picks up a glass of water and takes a sip earlier, when the actor is in this state, their performance from it, he would justify his action by saying that his becomes automatic and organic, and the character’s character was thirsty. It is not important if actor A him- Inkblot: The Undergraduate Journal of Psychology • Vol. 3 • September 2014 | 11

motives and personality are understood in depth. The to mindfulness. According to the definitions provid- character’s justification would, by definition, be consid- ed by Reid (2011), flow involves an individual’s com- ered a part of the character’s personality and/or motiva- plete awareness of their actions without being aware tions and would therefore be automatically understood of their awareness while mindfulness is the process and then applied to any object that the actor interacts of an individual becoming aware of their awareness. with. The justification should be integrated into the These two definitions are contradictory, but I character and then expressed accordingly when the would assert that it is wrong to generalize this to the actor enters the flow state as the character. The use of entire relationship between mindfulness and flow. Say- mindful techniques would therefore be used to help get ing this would completely isolate the two concepts into character before accessing the flow state. I posit when we have evidence that suggests that, at least in that the actor would have to de-center themselves from some situations, being more mindful can actually en- their perspective and then invest their psychic energy, hance one’s ability to enter and maintain a flow state not into the character, but into the perspective of the (Kaufman, Glass & Arnkoff, 2009; Kee and Wang, 2008) character of which they can then enter a flow state and and there is evidence that some forms of mindfulness fully integrate themselves into the role. are actually necessary for the flow state (Diaz, 2013). It is questionable, however, if both the mindful and flow A Change in the Experience of the Actor state can exist simultaneously to the degree of which the actor’s level of mindfulness is required, where they Later on in Stanislavski’s career, he made a would not only have to be aware of their perspective, significant change to how we should consider the ac- but be able to self-narrate and criticize it. Simply put, tor’s experience, saying that the totality of the actor’s it seems although mindfulness requires a high level of performance must be considered within a duality. He awareness that would allow us to look at our current asserts that for successful systematic acting, the actor perspective and affords us a perspective on the former. must perform as both themselves and their character, Flow, on the other hand, seems to only utilize a less in- referring to this as a ‘dual consciousness’ (Carnicke, tense awareness at most and would not give the actor 2009). The processes of the character in dual con- an opportunity to self-narrate and criticize their perfor- sciousness functions the same as described above with mance. This being the case, I would suggest that, with the additional factor of the actor maintaining their regards to Stanislavski’s idea of duality alone, it would identity. The actor is expected to be mindful of the not be possible for an actor to be both engaged in flow way in which the character is acting and comment or and mindful in the way Stanislavski described; there- criticize on it accordingly (Carnicke, 2009). He adds fore, we must consider the actor’s performance, not that having this duality would allow the actor to cre- as a duality, but as Stanislavski initially suggested it, a ate a more believable performance by using their char- totality. Alternating between techniques of mindful- acter as a means of self-expression (Carnicke, 2009). ness and flow would be the most efficient and feasible Looking at this from the perspective of mind- methodology that the System can apply based on our fulness and flow, Stanislavski’s revision to the actor’s current understanding of both mindfulness and flow. experience is questionable in application. In this the- ory, he advocates for both the complete investment Conclusion in the character—flow—and for the actor to be aware of their own awareness and be able to self-narrate While reading through this paper, we may ques- their perspectives and performance—which is akin tion the purpose of attempting to reconcile two in- 12 | Inkblot: The Undergraduate Journal of Psychology • Vol. 3 • September 2014

credibly different disciplines: cognitive science and the tion. Psychology of Music, 41, 42-58. performance arts. My response is that it expands our Hirst, I. S. (2003). Perspectives of mindfulness. Journal understanding of both disciplines, allowing us to draw of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 10, 359-366. connections from thought that seemed to be completely Jha, A. P., Krompinger, J., & Baime, M. J. (2007). Mind- unrelated and consider things from different perspec- fulness training modifies subsystems of atten- tives. With respect to cognitive science and the perfor- tion. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral mance arts, I feel that by furthering our understanding Neuroscience, 7, 109–119. of the affect one has on the other could provide us with Kabat-Zinn, J. (1994). Wherever you go, there you are: Mindfulness meditation in everyday life. wonderful insight on how the Stanislavski System—or New York, NY: Hyperion. any form of acting—worked in depth or of different Kaufman, K. A., Glass, C. R., & Arnkoff, D. B. (2009). methodologies of achieving flow via acting strategies. Evaluation of mindful sport performance en- Considering acting techniques through a cognitive sci- hancement (MSPE): A new approach to ence perspective would allow for a qualitative change in promote flow in athletes. Journal of Clinical Sport Psychology, 4, 334-356. the art, as performances would become more authentic Kee, Y.H., & Wang, C.K.J. (2008). Relationships be- and cohesive. Interdisciplinary research on cognitive tween mindfulness, flow dispositions science and the performance arts are scarce but I think and mental skills adoption: A cluster analytic that future research should be conducted to further our approach. Psychology of Sport and understanding of both disciplines and many others by Exercise, 9, 393–411. Lopez, S. J., & Snyder, C. R. (Eds.). (2011). The Oxford extension. handbook of positive psychology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. References Nakamura, J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2002). The concept of flow. In C. N. Snyder & S. J. Lopez Barry, D. and Meisiek, S. (2010), “Seeing more and (Ed.), Handbook of positive psychology (pp. 89- seeing differently: sensemaking, mindfulness, 105). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. and the workarts”, Organization Studies, 31, Rapoport, I. (1955). The work of the actor. In T. Cole 1315-50. (Ed.), Acting: A handbook of the Stanislavski Bishop, S. R., et al., (2004). Mindfulness: A proposed method. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press. operational definition. Clinical Psychology: Sci- Reid, D. (2011). Mindfulness and flow in occupational ence and Practice, 11, 230-241. engagement: Presence in doing. Canadian Jour- Carnicke, S., M. (2009). Stanisklavsky in focus: An nal of Occupational Therapy, 78, 50-56. acting master for the twenty-first century (2nd Segal, E. (2004). Incubation in insight problem solving. ed,). Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Creativity Research Journal, 16, 141-148. Clyde, J. A. (2003). Stepping inside the story world: Stanislavski, C. (1936). An actor prepares. New York, The subtext strategy-a tool for connecting and NY: Routledge. comprehending. The Reading Teacher, 57, 150- Stanislavski, C. (1955). Direction and acting. In T. Cole 160. (Ed.), Acting: A handbook of the Stanislavski Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Finding flow: The method. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press. psychology of engagement with everyday life. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers Inc. DeYoung, C. G., Flanders, J. L., & Peterson, J. B. (2008). Footnotes Cognitive abilities involved in insight problem solving: An individual differences model. Creativity Research Journal, 20, 278-290. 1 It should be noted that Al Pacino can be considered as Diaz, F. M. (2013). Mindfulness, attention, and flow both a systematic and method actor as the two overlap. during music listening: An empirical investiga-