Naturalism, Stanislavski and the System
Expository Essay
Constantin Stanislavski was born 17th January 1863 in Moscow, Russian empire and died on the 7th of August 1938 at the age of 75. As a child Constantin Stanislavski’s interest where the circus, the ballet and puppetry. Stanislavski treated theatre-making as a serious attempt, requiring dedication, discipline and integrity. Throughout his life, he subjected his own acting to a process of rigorous artistic self-analysis and reflection. It was Stanislavski's historic meeting with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko on the 22 June 1897, however that would create what was called initially the "Moscow Public-Accessible Theatre" but which came to be known as the Moscow Art Theatre also known as the MAT. Their eighteen hour discussion from lunch at 2pm in a private room in the Slavic Bazaar restaurant to 8am the following morning over breakfast at Stanislavski's family estate at Liubimovka. Moscow Arts Theatre was founded by Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and Constantin Stanislavski in 1898. The policies of the Moscow Arts Theatre where to create a sharp sense of truth and real life on the stage, the truth of organic acting , spiritualized mastery and to comprehend the nature of acting. Some of the plays that have been performed at the Moscow Arts Theatre are The production of Dombey and Son (1949) that was a testament to see how gifted the young trained actors were and another plat performed at the Moscow Arts Theatre is Hamlet. The System was a systematic approach to actors in training areas of this study included, voice, concentration, physical skills, emotion memory, observation, and dramatic analysis. His techniques developed over time by many years of efforts to determine how someone can control in performance the most intangible and uncontrollable aspects of human behavior, such as emotions. Stanislavski developed this systematic approach because so that training actors so that they worked from the inside outward. Stanislavski believed that all actors should be physically fit to have complete control of all physical activity. Stanislavski had high expectations for actors and believed in giving them discipline. Being strict was his only option. His way of applying emotion was that whatever emotion an actor was trying to act, they had to think of a time in their life where they had felt that feeling. Doing this would bring the emotion to life and really give the audience a feel of what the emotion really is. Stanislavski believed that when an actor would do this, they would act not only the emotion well, but also the character. Stanislavski believed that an actor should be someone who can observe, imagine and
