Professor David Peimer
Konstantin Stanislavski, Part 1: His Method
Summary
An appreciation of Stanislavsky, founder of the Moscow Art Theatre and the first person to formalize training for actors.
Professor David Peimer
David Peimer is a professor of theatre and performance studies in the UK. He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and New York University (Global Division), and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing. He has written eleven plays and directed forty in places like South Africa, New York, Brussels, London, Berlin, Zulu Kingdom, Athens, and more. His writing has been published widely and he is the editor of Armed Response: Plays from South Africa (2009) and the interactive digital book Theatre in the Camps (2012). He is on the board of the Pinter Centre in London.
Yep. I would say all directors know about it. If they don’t use it necessarily, but actors all know it and they’ll all be trained in it or versions of it and they will bring it before day one of rehearsal, they’ll come prepared. You know, Brando used to come to rehearsals. The character proposition worked out, all these nuances, every intention, every objective, all worked out before day one of rehearsal. And Kazan, in his diaries said what he used to do with Brando, he’d go for walks in Central Park ‘cause he’d already worked it all out. So all he had to do was tweak and add and take it a bit further and so on. With Jessica Tandy, he had to go through line by line, every objective, every intention, every obstacle to getting what the character wants, you know? So of course Brando starts up there, she starts here, and at the end he rises. Here she comes up. So, you know, because of all the extraordinary amount of work done before. Meryl Streep as well, you know, many of these do the same.
Well, according to Kazan’s diaries, Brando mostly came up with his own ideas. And he would just take him for walks in the park. And what Kazan tried to do mostly was give him a social awareness of character. That he’s a Polish immigrant, he’s working class, he doesn’t have any status really in the society. I mean, he’s really the outside of the outsiders. He’s, you know, he’s a worker, but that’s his outer life. His inner life is very high confidence or in contemporary acting language, very high status. So inside is very high status. The external image he’s looked at by other people, including Blanche’s character, is the social image, is low status, Polish, immigrant, working class, you know, factory worker. So the external image that others see of that social class and image is low status, but inside, you know, he’s high status. And that combination gives often a brilliant way of acting, especially in, in serious drama. Comedy, you flip it the other way around. Or you play with it, even. Woody Allen, you know, all these characters the neurosis, internal status is very, very high. He believes he’s highly intelligent, highly knowledgeable. The character, not Woody Allen, the character believes very high status inside, but the external image, the physical look of the character is not exactly handsome and all those things, nerdy and so on. So you play with the external perception and the internal belief, and you play with it with status, and you can do it in life. It’s very powerful.
Yes. Many, many directors will use this in theatre and in film, of course, if there’s the time and money to do it. But improvise it first. Use your own words and improvise to find what Stanislavski used to call the subtext and find your inner intention. Find your inner objective for that scene. What does my character want, and what’s the obstacle to getting what he or she wants? The two fundamental questions for all acting. What’s my character’s intention and the obstacle to achieving my intention in the scene? You know, the Charley character. My intention is to convince Terry, my brother Brando, no matter what, you’re going to throw the fight and you’re going to go with what I tell you. And then of course, the obstacle is his brother. And how’s he going to, he has to resort to pulling out a gun, but he plays it in a more conventional expected way. Whereas Brando, as I’ve tried to show, has the response in a different way. Okay, so with Woody Allen, it would be and, and many others. Let’s just improvise it. Use your own words. Discover the intention, discover the wants and the obstacle. Discover the social aspects, play with physicality. And then we make the choices of what will go into it, you know, in the actual performance, the filming or on stage.