Method acting

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For the song, see Method Acting (song).

Marlon Brando's performance in Elia Kazan's film of A Streetcar Named Desire exemplifies the power of Stanislavski-based
acting in cinema.[1]

Method acting, informally known as The Method, is a range of training and rehearsal
techniques, as formulated by a number of different theatre practitioners, that seeks to
encourage sincere and expressive performances through identifying with,
understanding, and experiencing a character's inner motivation and emotions.  These [2][3]

techniques are built on Stanislavski's system, developed by the Russian actor and
director Konstantin Stanislavski and captured in his books An Actor Prepares, Building a
Character, and Creating a Role. [4]

Among those who have contributed to the development of the Method, three teachers
are associated with "having set the standard of its success", each emphasizing different
aspects of the approach: Lee Strasberg (the psychological aspects), Stella Adler (the
sociological aspects), and Sanford Meisner (the behavioral aspects).  The approach [5]

was first developed when they worked together at the Group Theatre in New York and
later at the Actors Studio. [4]

Contents

 1History and development

o 1.1United States
o 1.2India
 2Techniques
 3Psychological effects
 4List of method actors
 5See also
 6Notes
 7Sources
o 7.1Primary sources
o 7.2Secondary sources

History and development[edit]

Main article: Stanislavski's system
"The Method" is an elaboration of the "system" of acting developed by the
Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski. In the first three decades of
the 20th century, Stanislavski organized his training, preparation, and rehearsal
techniques into a coherent, systematic methodology. The "method" brought together
and built on: (1) the director-centred, unified aesthetic and
disciplined, ensemble approach of the Meiningen company; (2) the actor-
centred realism of the Maly; (3) and the naturalistic staging of Antoine and the
independent theatre movement. [6]

A diagram of Stanislavski's "system", based on his "Plan of Experiencing" (1935)

The "system" cultivates what Stanislavski calls the "art of experiencing", to which he
contrasts the "art of representation".  It mobilizes the actor's conscious thought and will,
[7]

in order to activate other, less-controllable psychological processes, like emotional

experience and subconscious behavior, both sympathetically and indirectly.  In [8]

rehearsal, the actor searches for inner motives to justify action and the definition of what
the character seeks to achieve at any given moment (a "task").  Later, Stanislavski[9]

further elaborated the "system" with a more physically grounded rehearsal process,
which is known as the "Method of Physical Action".  Minimizing at-the-table
[10]

discussions, he now encouraged an "active analysis", in which the sequence of

dramatic situations are improvised.  "The best analysis of a play", Stanislavski argued,
[11]

"is to take action in the given circumstances." [12]

As well as Stanislavski's early work, the ideas and techniques of Yevgeny
Vakhtangov (a Russian-Armenian student who had died in 1922 at age 39) were also
an important influence on the development of the Method. Vakhtangov's "object
exercises" were developed further by Uta Hagen as a means for actor training and the
maintenance of skills. Strasberg attributed to Vakhtangov the distinction between
Stanislavski's process of "justifying" behavior with the inner motivational forces that
prompt that behavior in the character and the "motivating" behavior with imagined or
recalled experiences relating to the actor and substituted for those relating to the
character. Following this distinction, actors ask themselves "What would motivate me,
the actor, to behave in the way the character does?" The contrast is the Stanislavskian
question, "Given the particular circumstances of the play, how would I behave, what
would I do, how would I feel, how would I react?" [13]

United States[edit]
The neutrality of this article is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk
page. Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met. (January
2019) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

In the United States, the transmission of the earliest phase of Stanislavski's work via the
students of the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT) revolutionized acting in
the West.  When the MAT toured the US in the early 1920s, Richard Boleslawski, one
[14]

of Stanislavski's students from the First Studio, presented a series of lectures on the
"system" that were eventually published as Acting: The First Six Lessons (1933). The
interest generated led to a decision by Boleslawski and Maria Ouspenskaya (another
student at the First Studio who later became an acting teacher)  to emigrate to the US
[15]

and to establish the American Laboratory Theatre. [16]

However, the version of Stanislavski's practice these students took to the US with them
was that developed in the 1910s, rather than the more fully elaborated version of the
"system" detailed in Stanislavski's acting manuals from the 1930s, An Actor's
Work and An Actor's Work on a Role. The first half of An Actor's Work, which treated
the psychological elements of training, was published in a heavily abridged and
misleadingly translated version in the US as An Actor Prepares in 1936. English-
language readers often confused the first volume on psychological processes with the
"system" as a whole.  Many of the American practitioners who came to be identified
[17]

with the Method were taught by Boleslawski and Ouspenskaya at the American
Laboratory Theatre.  The approaches to acting subsequently developed by their
[18]

students—including Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, and Sanford Meisner—are often

confused with Stanislavski's "system".
Stella Adler, an actress and acting teacher whose students included Marlon
Brando, Warren Beatty, and Robert De Niro, also broke with Strasberg after she studied
with Stanislavski. Her version of the method is based on the idea that actors should
stimulate emotional experience by imagining the scene's "given circumstances", rather
than recalling experiences from their own lives. Adler's approach also seeks to stimulate
the actor's imagination through the use of "as ifs", which substitute more personally
affecting imagined situations for the circumstances experienced by the character.
Alfred Hitchcock described his work with Montgomery Clift in I Confess as difficult
"because you know, he was a method actor". He recalled similar problems with Paul
Newman in Torn Curtain.  Lillian Gish quipped: "It's ridiculous. How would you portray
[19]

death if you had to experience it first?"  Charles Laughton, who worked closely for a
[20]

time with Bertolt Brecht, argued that "Method actors give you a photograph", while "real
actors give you an oil painting." [21]

During the filming of Marathon Man (1976), Laurence Olivier, who had lost patience with
Method acting two decades earlier while filming The Prince and the Showgirl (1957),
was said to have quipped to Dustin Hoffman, after Hoffman stayed up all night to match
his character's situation, that Hoffman should "try acting ... It's so much easier."  In an
[22]

interview on Inside the Actors Studio, Hoffman said that this story had been distorted:
he had been up all night at the Studio 54 nightclub for personal rather than professional
reasons and Olivier, who understood this, was joking. [23]

Strasberg's students included many prominent American actors of the latter half of the
20th century, including Paul Newman, Al Pacino, George Peppard, Dustin
Hoffman, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Jane Fonda, Jack Nicholson, and Mickey
Rourke. [24]

India[edit]
In Indian cinema, a form of Method acting was developed independently from American
cinema. Dilip Kumar, a Hindi cinema actor who debuted in the 1940s and eventually
became one of the biggest Indian movie stars of the 1950s and 1960s, was a pioneer of
this technique, predating Hollywood Method actors such as Marlon Brando. Kumar
inspired many future Indian actors, including Amitabh Bachchan, Naseeruddin Shah,
and Nawazuddin Siddiqui.  Kumar, who pioneered his own form of method acting
[25][26]

without any acting school experience,  was described as "the ultimate method actor" by
[27]

filmmaker Satyajit Ray.[28]

Method acting is being discussed more in India with the rise of OTT streaming
platforms that feature several popular web series exploring genres seldom featured in
Indian cinema. The increasing viewership of these platforms has given space to the
next generation of method actors in India,  including Rajkumar Rao, Amit Sadh, and Ali
[29]

Fazal and Vicky Kaushal.

Techniques[edit]
Among the concepts and techniques of Method acting are substitution, "as if", sense
memory, affective memory, and animal work (all of which were first developed by
Stanislavski). Contemporary Method actors sometimes seek help from psychologists in
the development of their roles. [30]

In Strasberg's approach, actors make use of experiences from their own lives to bring
them closer to the experience of their characters. This technique, which Stanislavski
came to call emotion memory (Strasberg tends to use the alternative formulation,
"affective memory"), involves the recall of sensations involved in experiences that made
a significant emotional impact on the actor. Without faking or forcing, actors allow those
sensations to stimulate a response and try not to inhibit themselves.
Stanislavski's approach rejected emotion memory except as a last resort and prioritized
physical action as an indirect pathway to emotional expression.  This can be seen in
[31]

Stanislavki's notes for Leonidov in the production plan for Othello and in Benedetti's

discussion of his training of actors at home and later abroad.  Stanislavski confirmed
[31]

this emphasis in his discussions with Harold Clurman in late 1935. [31]

In training, as distinct from rehearsal process, the recall of sensations to provoke

emotional experience and the development of a vividly imagined fictional experience
remained a central part both of Stanislavski's and the various Method-based
approaches that developed out of it.
A widespread misconception about Method acting—particularly in the popular media—
equates Method actors with actors who choose to remain in character even offstage or
off-camera for the duration of a project.  In his book A Dream of Passion, Strasberg
[32]

wrote that Stanislavski, early in his directing career, "require[d] his actors to live 'in
character' off stage", but that "the results were never fully satisfactory".  Stanislavski did[33]

experiment with this approach in his own acting before he became a professional actor
and founded the Moscow Art Theatre, though he soon abandoned it.  Some Method [34]

actors employ this technique, such as Daniel Day-Lewis, but Strasberg did not include it
as part of his teachings and it "is not part of the Method approach". [35]

While Strasberg focused on the memory-recall aspect of the method, Adler's approach
centered on the idea that actors should find truth in the script, inner emotions,
experiences, and circumstances of the character.  Her teachings have been carried on
[36]

through Larry Moss, a successor and student of Adler. Moss is the author of the acting
textbook The Intent to Live, in which he maintains the basic training of Adler's
techniques.  The book introduces "given circumstances", which are the facts about the
[37]

character given in the script, and "interpretation", which is the truths about the character
not given in the script. This constitutes the actor's assumptions about the character they
are playing. [37]

According to Moss, there are three things that an actor needs to know about their
character to find truth in their performance. These things are objectives, obstacles, and
intentions.  The "objective" is what a character needs to fulfill in a given scene. The
[37]

"super objective" is the character's wishes or dreams throughout the entire story.
 "Obstacle" is what stands in the way of the character's objectives.  "Intention"
[37] [37]

comprises the actions a character takes to overcome obstacles and achieve objectives.
 Moss advocates the position that if an actor understands these facts about their
[37]

character, they will be able to find truth in their performance, creating a realistic
presentation.  Moss emphasizes this by claiming that the actor does not want to
[37]

become the character, rather, the character lives through the actor's justification of the
character's truths within themselves. [37]

Psychological effects[edit]
Main article: Psychological effects of method acting
When the felt emotions of a played character are not compartmentalized, they can
encroach on other facets of life, often seeming to disrupt the actor's psyche. This occurs
as the actor delves into previous emotional experiences, be they joyful or traumatic.
  The psychological effects, like emotional fatigue, come when suppressed or
[38]

unresolved raw emotions are dredged up to add to the character,  not just from
[39]

employing personal emotions in performance.

Fatigue, or emotional fatigue, comes mainly when actors "create dissonance between
their actions and their actual feelings".  A mode of acting referred to as "surface acting"
[39]

involves only changing one's actions without altering the deeper thought processes.
Method acting, when employed correctly, is mainly deep acting, or changing thoughts
as well as actions, proven to generally avoid excessive fatigue. Surface acting is
statistically "positively associated with a negative mood and this explains some of the
association of surface acting with increased emotional exhaustion".  This negative
[40]

mood that is created leads to fear, anxiety, feelings of shame and sleep deprivation.
Raw emotion (unresolved emotions conjured up for acting) may result in sleep
deprivation and the cyclical nature of the ensuing side effects. Sleep deprivation alone
can lead to impaired function, causing some individuals to have "acute episodes
of psychosis". Sleep deprivation initiates chemical changes in the brain that can lead to
behavior similar to psychotic individuals.  These episodes can lead to more lasting
[38]

psychological damage. In cases where raw emotion that has not been resolved, or
traumas have been evoked before closure has been reached by the individual, the
emotion can result in greater emotional instability and an increased sense of anxiety,
fear or shame. [41]