Zoja Buzalkovska

The Creative Conflict between Stanislavski and Meyerhold and a Possible Fusion of Their Systems

1. INTRODUCTION

It has been exactly 120 years since V.E. Meyerhold first left the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT) and

started working on something which was soon to seriously challenge the system of K.S. Stanislavki in regard

to the method of working with actors and an actor’s work on himself and his role. Interestingly enough, to

this day Meyerhold has remained to be seen as avant-garde, mysticism, extreme by theatre theoreticians,

while his approach is taken as something that is good to know, but would better be avoided when working

on a play. This opposition to his system has particularly been evident on the Russian theatre scene, where

‘Stanislavskian’ method of work still prevails in the theatre, while ‘Meyerholdian’ is proclaimed – an

experiment, a sketch which has never been actually implemented in theatrical language and, therefore,

should perhaps remain a museum treasure and set in the past of Russian avant-garde and the great utopia

of the Russia of the 1920’s. Unrelated to this subtle war, in the late 1980’s the academic subject of

Biomechanics was included into the curriculum of the GITIS (the major national theatre academy with a

great international reputation in Moscow, today’s RATI), Valery Fokin opened the Meyerhold Centre in

Moscow, professors and directors such as Pyotr Fomenko and his successors, Ivan Popovski among others,

extended Meyerhold’s thought and implemented it in their work in various ways, while an extensive

literary opus and all the writings and letters associated to Meyerhold’s work have been published in the last

thirty years with a great support of the Meyerhold Museum.

Nevertheless, even 120 years after the first steps Vsevolod Emilevich took away from his teacher

Stanislavski (as he would emphasise regardless of the fact that his formal professor was Nemirovich-

Danchenko) and Stanislavski’s understanding of acting and work with actors, even some 80 or 90 years

after his writings, lectures, recorded instructions and notes during the process of working on the play ‘The

Inspector General’ and on his other plays, and 70 years after his death, the progressive and avant-garde

thought of Meyerhold’s expression still struggles against the deeply rooted, entrenched practice of

psychological realism, the theatre of experiencing, the feeling of truth and belief in the theatre, the play ‘as

in life’. It struggles while working on plays in theatres, it struggles during the acting lessons at faculties of

dramatic arts, it struggles with the nature of every actor who better understands and more easily adopts

the Stanislavski method (in our opinion, a very absurd phenomenon), it struggles with audiences, who are

presented with demand for a more committed engagement by the Meyerhold Theatre, and which they are

not always willing to fulfil.

The practices of Stanislavski and Meyerhold started from the same point, the same source of love

for the theatre and the same absolute dedication, as well as the engaged thinking and conceptualization of

the work in the theatre, only to bifurcate, becoming two antipodes, two polar ends of the scope in the field

of work with an actor, thus becoming perhaps the quintessential contrast between the ‘presence’ and

‘representation’ of an actor. All other approaches and techniques are, one could dare say, (mere) variations

of these theatre system antipodes. Hence, it seems particularly important to try to develop this thesis

based on their example.

Despite all misunderstandings, open criticism, occasional rejoining and collaboration followed by

new departures between Stanislavski and Meyerhold, it seems that the system of Vsevolod Emilievich

would have never been able to develop, had it not been provoked by its own foundation, the system of

Konstantin Sergeyevich. Furthermore, the Stanislavski system, as well as some of his later thoughts and

observations on the theatre, testifies that he revisited his earlier rigid positions, which could be related to

the theory and practice of Vsevolod Meyerhold. The point of serious divergence of these two systems is the

work with actor, or, more accurately, the answer to the questions of where and how an actor’s creation

starts, what it seeks out, and when it reaches the point of its completion in the process of working on a

role.

It seems that despite the fact that the road to the role in Stanislavski’s system leads from the inside

outwards, quite on the contrary from Meyerhold’s system, which is directed from the outside inwards, both

systems have a common goal. That is why something that, perhaps, seems impossible at first sight should

be done - an attempt at a fusion of these two systems into one, new, which would create a true balance of

‘presence’ and ‘representation’, using the strongest positions of both approaches, and jettisoning

everything that many years of practice have proved insufficiently useful, and, moreover, harmful for the

actor, crew, the director’s work and the final result of a play.

However, to reach that point, we first have to look at the question of what constitutes the

opposition in conceptualising the theatre and the actor in these two antipodean systems?

2. ESSENTIAL POSITIONS OF THE STANISLAVSKI SYSTEM

For Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski, an act of the theatre should mirror the reality in the

theatre. Speaking sharply against representation and imitation in the theatre, he bases his system on the

‘art of experiencing’, which he describes in the following way:

Certain aspects of the human psyche obey the conscious mind and the will, which have the

capacity to influence our involuntary processes. True, this demands long, complex creative

work, which only proceeds partially under the direct guidance and influence of the

conscious mind. It is, for the most part, subconscious and involuntary. Only one artist has

the power to do it, the most discriminating, the most ingenious, the most subtle, the most

elusive, the most miraculous of artists – nature. Not even the most refined technique can be

compared to her. She holds the key! This attitude, this relationship to nature absolutely

typifies the art of experiencing.

(Stanislavski, 1982, 158)

This formulation already shows where the hidden danger of this system lies and displays its great

intangibility. The partial control and incomplete influence of the conscious on the unconscious mind open,

at the very beginning, the door to an unguaranteed, always changeable result, where every action of the

actor is a hostage to the incomprehensibleness of his organic nature. On the one hand, his system

undoubtedly brought a breath of fresh air into theatre and stripped it off a layer of artificiality,

pretentiousness, theatricality and overplaying, but on the other, it is a system deeply buried into the

actor’s psychology and challenged or negated for this very fact. That is why we take with caution his

explanation of the conscious ways for affecting the unconscious.

Stanislavski advocates: ‘Subconscious creation through the actor’s conscious psychotechnique. (The

subconscious through the conscious, the involuntary through the voluntary.)’ (Stanislavski, K. S. 1982, 26)

One should create credibly, and ‘that means thinking, wanting, striving, behaving truthfully, in a logical

sequence, in a human way, within the character, and in complete parallel to it. As soon as the actor has

done that, he will come close to the role and will begin to feel as one with it.’ For him, the art of the theatre

is ‘the creation of the life of a human spirit in a role and the communication of that life onstage in an artistic

way’, while, ‘bringing our own individual feelings to it, endowing it with all the features of our own

personality.’ (Stanislavski, K. S. 1982, 27)

By conscious psychotechnique, Stanislavski means and suggests his magic ‘If’, Given Circumstances,

Bits and Tasks and their definition with nouns and verbs, even the formulation of Tasks in order to set will

into motion, with a suggested ‘I am being...’. ‘To offer one’s hand to yesterday’s enemy is not simple by any

means, and needs a lot of forethought and feeling. A Task of that kind can be qualified as psychological, and

is quite complicated,’ (Stanislavski, K. S. 1982,149) – he says, giving an example of psychological torture

which can be imposed on the actor, because when he is given a Task that is ‘psychological’, he must set his

subconscious mind in motion in just a few seconds between an extended hand of his enemy and his own

decision to respond by reaching back, before he starts experiencing double mind, hatred, love, breaking,

conscience, reconciliation, capacity to forgive, dignity, hesitancy, etc.

One of the key positions of Konstantin Sergeyevich’s school is Emotional (Affective) Memory which

helps the actor to fully accomplish his art of experiencing. Stanislavski says that such experiencing should

be achieved at every performance of a play, setting in motion and recalling the same feelings every time it

is repeated. But, the question is how to achieve this? Stanislavski himself, in a later stage of his work, wrote

down in his notes:

What is distasteful in the actor’s self-feeling? The first time you experience the feeling in a

fresh, pure way, intrinsically. By repeating it dozens of times, the pure affective feeling starts

merging with Emotional Memory of the onstage experience of the same feeling. Then, the

feeling is polluted, poisoned and first loses some and later all of its directness and natural

purity and resilience. Finally, what remains is a stage memory.

Notes from Book No. 3319, l.10"

(Станиславский, 1986, II, 10)

Everything done onstage without an inner justification, for Stanislavski is mechanical, since it does

not come as a result of the real life of imagination.

But, on the other hand, and contrary to many who think that Konstantin Stanislavski in his system

absolutely neglects the aspect of work with the body, he emphasises that the delicacy of subconscious life

cannot be expressed without exceptionally responsive and outstandingly well-trained vocal and corporal

apparatus, as voice and body provide a means to convey almost imperceptible inner feelings. (Stanislavski,

K. S. 1982, 29) However, we must emphasise that this by no means implies that the actor should take body

for his starting point in work, but that body will gradually find its form, the accurate gesture will find its true

expression, and voice its most powerful timbre once the inner life of the actor has reached the level of

development which enables him to embody these external manifestations of experiencing. Thus, bodily

expression becomes a symptom of whatever happens in the actor’s soul that he lends to the character he

interprets.

One of the greatest pitfalls of this system in the creative sense is the repetition of the actor in every

subsequent role, regardless of the text he is uttering or character he is developing. Giving the material of

his soul to the character, experiencing instead of representing, seeking always to commit himself and his

emotional memory to his work, the actor starts being recognisable, but later becomes someone who

reappears in every role and who plays Hamlet, Ivanov and Orestes in a very similar way.

3. ESSENTIAL POSITIONS OF MEYERHOLD’S SYSTEM

Quite on the contrary, the system of V.E. Meyerhold, from the very beginning to the tiniest of

details involved in working with actors, is primarily focused on what the stage action looks like. That is, not

WHAT and WHY, but much more – HOW.

Meyerhold advocates pure play, efficiency of movement, bright visual expression, with intonations

and finding a particular tone of voice, the auditory potential of words. For him, the segment of rhythm and

tempo of movement and speech are of utmost importance. He sees a play as a musical score. He insists

that the actor has to develop an awareness of his own self onstage. ‘The actor’s work – it means to be able

to perceive oneself onstage. One should get to know his body, in order that he knows exactly what it looks

like when he takes a certain position,’ (Meйерхольд, 1998, 46) – he says in the first item of his acting

lesson, the lesson consisting of forty-one items and can certainly be named the ACTING MANIFESTO today.

The actor will gain an absolute control over his body if he combines rhythmic and general gymnastics in his

work and if he even succeeds in being able to hear with every part of his body. Vsevolod Emilevich is not

interested in anatomy, but the exploration of body as a material for stage play. In the ninth item of his

‘manifesto’, he emphasises the importance of playing with perspective, that is, the idea of changing the

position of body onstage, playing with what is visible to audience and can be hidden from them at a certain

point.

To prepare an actor for this kind of theatre, Meyerhold suggests and does biomechanic exercises.

They heavily rely on the laws of balance. The actor has to have such a command of his body to be able to

quickly find the point of balance at any given moment. In one of his lectures, given on 12th June 1922, he

defined biomechanics: ‘Biomechanics attempts to, in an experimental way, determine the laws of stage

movement, and create exercises for actors’ training based on the norms of human behaviour.’(Meyerhold,

1976, 169) Through these exercises the actor extends the possibilities of his work with body, which

becomes cultivated, he develops an awareness of how to make his body visually most effective, as well as

an ability to emphasise certain actions so that his body becomes visible in its full accuracy of nuanced

actions. But, at the same time, Meyerhold warns: ‘The technique of an actor, who has not lived through the

spectrum of life, can lead him to the irrelevant circus acrobatics.’ (Meйерхольд, 1998, 47)

Speaking about the actor’s play, Meyerhold opens a question of reflective excitement and

compares the road to reaching or starting such excitement in systems of play with ‘inside’ and

‘experiencing’. In the case of the former, it is achieved ‘through artificial excitement of the previously

weakened feeling’, and/or ‘by systematic narcosis (alcohol, cigarettes, narcotics)’, and in the latter, through

‘enforcing a feeling with hypnotic tension of previously weakened will.’

This leads us to the crucial proposition of his work with the actor. This is how Vsevolod Emilevich

explains his system of work:

"26. Principles of biomechanical perspective upon human nature should be placed at the core

of the acting system. In this sense, cultivation of excitement (an ability to reproduce a given task

in emotions, in movement and in words) in actors is carried out in such a way to enable mental

processes to be a result of physical virtue.

27. Biomechanical system of play is based on the accurate appearance of excitement caused

by the correct position of the actor in space. At the same time, each moment the motion will be

associated with a precise relationship to all the other surrounding characters and objects.

29. The material of the actor’s art is the actor himself. Therefore, we have in one person the

material and its constructor...

30. Each and every element of acting is necessarily (vitally) composed of three invariable

phases:

INTENTION, REALISATION AND REACTION

INTENTION – is the intellectual assimilation of a task prescribed externally (by the dramatist,

the director, or the initiative by the performer).

REALISATION – the cycle of volitional, mimetic reflexes (comprise all movements performed

by the separate parts of the actor’s body and the movements of the entire body in space) and

vocal reflexes;

REFLEX EXCITABILITY – is to reduce to the minimum the process of understanding the task

(simple reaction time)

31. It is the very excitement that makes the difference between an actor and a marionette,

that which enables the actor to infect the spectator and cause his counter-excitement. This

counter-emotion which comes from the spectator at the same time feeds, fuels the continuation

of play (state of ecstasy.)’

(Мейерхольд, 1998, 47-48)

It is important to reemphasise the tendency to reduce means of expression, where the actor uses

only movements and gestures which are sufficient to send a message to the spectator. Moreover,

movements need to be rationalised to reduce the actor’s fatigue, which increases his fitness and expressive

power.

It is clear in the first volume of the book ‘Meyerhold Speaks/Meyerhold Rehearses’ what Vsevolod

Meyerhold is interested in when working with actors. Some of the indications he gives to the actors while

working at the anthological production of ‘The Inspector General’ are:

... If in ‘Rogonosac’ I worked more on rakurses, here in ‘The Inspector General’ we will focus

on the play with hands... For this play, it is very important to observe our hands...

There are no heightened tones. Words pour, pour out – without changes. You’re raising your

voice to no avail. A little higher in baritone register, a little nasal. In one tone, there is almost

no intonation. Monotonous, terribly monotonous...

... Hlestakov, go much slower, much slower...

... Ivan Alexandrovich, you should lower it fast, so that the whole scene is immediately lower

in regard to sound... The play is going, and the tonality is not that.

... It is better that all movements are with body, not hands. When you move on to

gesticulation, the head movement will be lost...

... Our biomechanical laws say: there should be no gesture made, if I don’t stand in the spot.

Stoppage – left leg and right arm. When the leg is bent – rakurs is good, when the leg is

straight – it is not artistic.’

(Ситковецкая и Фельдман, 1993, 101 - 147)

4. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE ANTIPODEAN SYSTEMS

In one of his books of notes from the later period, somewhere around 1912, Stanislavski writes:

My system will be criticised for trying to expel conditionalities, stencils from art, since it

believes that all that is conditional – is not art, but craft. But all other stagecraftsmen will

not acknowledge the beauty of nature, but they acknowledge the beauty of the very ugly

matrix. To devaluate my viewpoints they will surely call me a realist, naturalist, etc. They will

say that I am a photographer, because I am involved in the greatest beauty – nature, and

they are refined men of culture, because they work with the most perfect of nature’s copies

– with actorial conditionality and stencil. No, I reject no schematisations, nor stylisations,

nor many other ‘...ations’ yet unborn, but I will set one condition. Let these ‘...ations’ live in

the soul of the one who does them.

Note from the book no. 981, l.12 "

(Станиславский, 1986, II, 8-9)

This note clearly shows the kind of opposition to his system he faced with and what exactly he had a need

to defend. One of the people he makes an allusion to in this and other notes of similar content is

Meyerhold himself, who, in his public appearances, claims that Stanislavski’s method is harmful to the

psycho-physical health of the actor. The hypnotic triggering of the unconscious in Stanislavski’s System

becomes psychological torture for the actor in search of spontaneity, which, quite contradictorily, often

leads him into spasm, contrary to Meyerhold’s ‘intention-realisation-reaction’, which is essentially, and

quite contradictorily again, much more natural. By calling into question the control of an actor who is

overwhelmed by emotions, Meyerhold explains his position in the following way:

Any psychological state is conditioned by certain physiological processes. By finding the

correct solution for his physical state, the actor enables a situation of excitability which

infects the spectator, involves him into the actor’s play and represents the essence of his

play... With such a system of appearing feelings, the actor always has a solid ground: a

physical precondition.

(Meyerhold, 1976, 168)

Meyerhold’s way is more difficult in regard to adopting the technique, but it is safer for the actor

and the final result. The actor’s orientation from the inside outward certainly does not vouch for

manifestation of the correct gesture, facial expression, particular way of speech and in general, the

construction of a character in the direction of a complete transformation. The actors who use Stanislavski’s

system in its original form or translated to the language of the American theatre in several different

versions (Strasberg, Adler, Luis, Meisner), with emphasis on ‘believing’ or ‘doing’, nevertheless, cannot be

sure that they have always acted what they have intended to, with domination of privacy and repetition of

expressive means. This is so because the system is based on psychology, which, as Meyerhold warns,

‘cannot provide a definite answer to a whole number of questions.’(Ibid.)

An actor who is overwhelmed by panic onstage can be compared to a cyclist who has lost self-

confidence. In a calm state the cyclist probably knows that the instinct of self-preservation will

save him. Yet, when losing balance, it is necessary to turn the handlebars to hold both himself

and the bicycle in vertical position.

But the damned nervousness and fear can unarm the most powerful habit of self-preservation.

In a moment of poor concentration, the cyclist works hard with his legs, but loses the control

over the bicycle, a tree draws him and the cyclist feels that he is sent flying, but cannot avoid it

and crashes into the tree.

This is how an actor feels, that he is not doing what he is supposed to do, but it lessens not his

down spiral, feeling that he is collapsing, but having no way to stop it.

Note from book no. 3319, l. 21-22

(Станиславский, 1986, II, 13)

Therefore, Meyerhold advocates a process quite opposite: from the outside inward. He gives

examples of the intuitive arrival at such an approach by Coquelin, Bernhardt, Chaliapin, among others, who

are characterised by outstanding mastership. But, for Stanislavski, quite on the contrary, they are examples

of craftsmen. Konstantin Sergeyevich wrote a lot about craftsmanship’s harmful effect on the theatre and

the actor:

C r a f t s i m p l i f i e s a t h e a t r i c a l p i e c e a l o t.

For example, Evreinov – performance in the centre of the theatre. He has come up with a

jocular form and staging. Instead a content for this form – a general-actorial ritual, which the

audience takes for a truly abstract art. No one will say anything against such content. The

audience feel good – they worry about nothing, and the actor feels good – the craft is

comfortable. And for the director – bliss. The hardest part of his work – getting an insight into

the soul of the drama, the actor, etc. – has been substituted for a stencil. He has designed

something fascinating (a formula, thesis, etc.) and everyone says – how fantastic!...

Meyerhold, Reinhardt, Evreinov – they are like that. And the Meiningenians are completely

different. They were engaged with the essence, the only difference was that they started

from the outside inward.

Note from book no. 782, l. 11-12

(Станиславский, 1986, II, 34)

These notes by Stanislavski appeared in the later period of his work in the theatre, together with

all kinds of oppositions to him and his system. This coincided with his doubts and dilemmas about his own

system of the actor’s work on himself and his role. ‘It is terrible in our work that in an old role and

monologue, one loses inner essence. In the beginning, you remember the words mechanically or, better to

say, your tongue utters them absolutely unconsciously, and then, only when the entire phrase has already

been spoken out, - you start to understand the inner meaning. The word comes before the feeling, the

tongue – before the soul,’ (1986, II, 11) Stanislavski wrote practically at the same time. These dilemmas of

his, perhaps without his full awareness, pinpoint the main problems of his system: unreliability of creating

in the process of working on oneself and the role, the variable results of performances in the sense of

losing the strand of the role and character over the time, as well as insufficient self-control when the

subconscious takes over the actor and he can no longer restrain his emotions or control his actions, so his

movements and gestures fall out of the arranged structure.

Meyerhold’s system protects the actor and play from these dangers and vouches for invariable

results. His method of creating a frame for the play along with a meticulous design of structure, protects

the actor and the director of having the play fall apart, at the same time providing the actor with huge

creative space to fill the frame and improvise in everyday search for new nuances in the inner action

protected by so tightly fixed external action. The reserves European actors have in regard to Meyerhold’s

biomechanics refer to the inorganic way of working on the gesture, speech, facial expression. For them, this

artificial approach is – a torture. But it only lasts as long as it takes the actor to bring the form to perfection.

It is important to hold on until the appearance of feelings. The Mechanics is a condition for an actor’s

freedom, says Robert Wilson. (Смелянский и Егошина, 1999, 145-146) But if the external action is fixed in

such a way that it seems too artificial, and the movements are visually attractive and display the actor’s

great ability in working with his body, but do not give the activity a chance to become more natural and

enable the development of an internal life of the actor on the way to accomplish his role completely, it will

remain nothing but a perfect technical performance which will never arouse feelings with the actor and will

leave the spectator indifferent.

5. THE POSSIBLE FUSION POINTS

Here, we can mention Barba and Savarese’s vision of the organic unity of body and thought,

through rejection of stereotypes, reflex reactions and superficial and false spontaneity, and acquiring a

quality of true spontaneity. It is, apparently, possible only through the fusion of these two antepodean

systems.

But, in order to achieve this, we need an actor who has mastered not only the technique of

Stanislavski or his American successors, but also the technique of Meyerhold and his biomechanics. An

actor who has gone through the process of work on the role in both directions would indeed be ready to

develop an awareness of the duality of ‘presence’ and ‘representation’ and explore the possibilities offered

by the interspace. The interspace would be impossible to reach through Stanislavski alone (despite the

ideal of reaching the point where a cultivated body would be used to express the inner life in a role), or

through Meyerhold alone (despite the assumption that the strictly defined form, with its biomechanical

rules, yields feelings and thus brings such a form to life and impregnate it). Therefore, the future actor

should be educated in both systems, with a full awareness of all their advantages and disadvantages. I

believe that Meyerhold’s system should be taken as the base for the fusion, and that only an absolute

mastery of his technique can provide grounds for exploring potentials of both systems, whereas we assume

that the actor has already gained the experience of working in Stanislavski’s system, that he has studied his

approach and recognised all problems. By adopting Meyerhold’s technique he would practically learn how

to avoid all weaknesses of Stanislavski’s practice. Education is absolutely necessary for this, since an actor

who has not acquired training in biomechanics will not be able to follow the process nor to work using

Meyerhold’s method.

Such an approach is independent of dramaturgy. It includes analysis and all its stages suggested by

Stanislavski and further work on the text and movement from Meyerhold’s point of view. Thus, the actor

would be given back his position of a creative factor not only in the segment of performance but also in the

creation of the role, through a search for the most expressive form for the content which has already been

defined, subsequently taking the same road back to reach its reawakening inside of him. However, to get to

this point and to bring the entire process of working on the form to its ultimate aim – awakening of

feelings, the actor’s body has to find a fine balance between the economy of movements, acrobatic and

gymnastic skills and master the work with body which stems from the sources of realism, that is, to reduce

the form in order to facilitate an easier and more persuasive return to the content. In this way the extremes

of Meyerhold’s approach could be avoided (Taylor and tailoring of the actor’s movements). Furthermore, in

this way actors would remain on the safe distance from the dangers of marionettisation (Craig), acrobatism

(Tairov), overacting and the bare form of speech, while otkaz (rejection, refusal – key element in

Meyerhold’s work) would be reduced, which would distance it from the other extreme end, ‘to build the

house of the theatre on the foundations of psychology,’ where actor’s play starts with a passion of building

a sand castle and ends in defeat, in the form of the first wind or merciless wave of his nature. The ideal of

such a method of work would be a play which is in its essence made after Meyerhold, but for which

everyone believes it is a pure Stanislavski. In a certain way, Stanislavski himself started feeling and wishing

this at one point, only it seems that he did not know how to reach it. He wrote this down in one of his

books of notes:

The character should be approached from both sides. At the beginning one should develop

internal psychological personality and character, that is, play the role taking one’s own self as

the starting point. Especially, one should develop external personality through visual and

muscle memory. The moment of merger of internal and external personality is very hard and

delicate: when you start to think about the outside – you start breaking. And vice versa, when

you start thinking about the inside – personality collapses. It is a time of desperation and

confusion. It is hard to force a merger in this process. It is necessary to give it time, a period

determined by nature, during which, with the right chemistry, the merger will occur. When

they merge (usually as soon as the twentieth performance), then you stop thinking about the

personality and it spills out as much as it should following the usual association.

Note from Book No.927 l. 4-5

(Станиславский, 1986, II, 22)

The free time determined by nature he speaks about, the chemistry which arrives so late, with this

new method would be programmed or at least more and more easily predictable. The phases in the fusion

of the two systems could be the following:

After an individual analysis of dramaturgical material, which is the base of the play, the director

makes an extensive analysis with his cast, which includes all phases suggested by Stanislavski. Carving the

text and hacking it to Bits and Tasks, defining names of Bits, defining the Tasks using the formulation ‘I’m

being...’, opening the Given Circumstances, developing the relationship with the partner, discussing the

germ of the role and all the other elements of analysis.

The second phase of reading rehearsals takes us back to the form, that is, work on the aspect of

HOW. This requires a development of the intonation of the roles – how it will sound. This is where

embodiment starts, the development of the relationships through form. A sound equivalent is sought for

every mental state defined by the text or its remark, concept or its demand, as well as identified intention

and task. Let us take as an example a monologue in which the character is ‘nervous’. This state of

nervousness can be built with ‘staccato’ speech tempo, baritone voice, fast rhythm, emphasised vowels,

etc. We could look for a key word or a reappearing word. These are no accidents but the author’s givens.

Such a word is almost invariably the very essence of the monologue and then we can think about how to

take it out of the unit of speech and articulate it in such a way as to make it the very centre of the

monologue. The form of speech, the vocal line of the monologue which is well defined will lead to the

sought ‘nervousness’.

Once such a musical score of the play has been built, yet not arbitrarily and as some kind of vocal

exhibitionism, but grounded on a profound understanding of the subject matter, psychology and all the

interpersonal relationships between characters to the most subtle of nuances, mise-en-scene rehearsals

can begin. Here, the actors work on the biomechanical preparations, every day, with dedication and a

laboratory approach. After each training session, they search for the correct form which can best express

the blueprint designed at the table, during the reading rehearsals. However, since the actors together with

the director were involved in building the relationships, defining intentions and tasks, they are able to find

the correct form of acting, the correct expression to ‘build the relationships’. The tendency of every actor

trained in Stanislavski’s technique is to search, on stage, for the material inside his soul rather than in his

body. It is a great struggle of subconscious mechanisms with the conscious technique of acting. It is

important to keep a vigilant eye for any sign of deviation and keep pushing the actor back to the road of

outside, stimulating his attitude towards himself in the outside direction, with an awareness of what his

actions look like. The work on the tempo-rhythm should also be carried out in a ‘musical’ way, precisely and

with a plan, not intuitively. All the while, the actor returns regularly to the Aims and Tasks, the Magic ‘If’,

Given Circumstances, inspiring ‘I’m being...’ motivations, so that the form does not lead him away from the

content, which he should go back to, that is, which is to be reborn through taming, at the beginning of an

artificial articulation of the body and speech.

Well matched movement and sound, tone, tempo-rhythm of speech, rehearsed until we find the

natural in the unnatural, the comfortable in the uncomfortable, balance in unbalance, gives back to the

actor the freedom to create the intimate life of the character he interprets. But the armature of the play is

so firm and unchangeable two weeks before the premiere that the actor cannot ‘widen’ the space of his

acting, but only deepen it. So, the play can have a precise duration (as if it is an opera done after a music

score where extensions or shortening of single scenes are not possible) and the same visual aspect

elaborated to the tiniest detail, with surgical precision, to send to the spectator such a message that is

unambiguous or associative, and each performance can be different in the way the armature is built over,

where relationships are established in a new way, again, with the stability of the result which covers them

and at the same time shows their inspiration. But, a form well matched, always yields contents, well

matched sound always stimulates a spiritual state. This is a regularity which vouches for the result and with

mathematical precision awakens, but also controls, the psychology of the actor.

6. THE PROBLEMS OF THE APPROACH IN REPERTOIRE THEATRES

It would be very difficult to implement this process of work on a play in repertoire theatres,

considering the generation gap, differences between different schools from various periods of thought

about the theatre and methods of work on the role, the level of physical fitness for body expression, as well

as the readiness and desire to use a newly suggested system. Some actors have no knowledge of

Meyerhold’s theatre language, so they need training in biomechanics, which requires time and patience, as

well as a general consent of the whole team to be absolutely dedicated to this approach to work. The

situation could be further aggravated if the cast consists of people who have biomechanical education and

are familiar with working from form to content and those who lack this knowledge. In such a case, they are

disinclined to the director’s educational work with the other members of the company, because they feel

they have some kind of advantage, which discourages them to search expression and can often leave them

at the elementary level of knowledge about this method of work. Thus, such plays can turn into showcasing

a way of thinking about the theatre rather than an authentic result and the latest work of an ensemble or a

director.

However, one thing is certain: an actor who has no previous training in Meyerhold’s system cannot

work on a play like this. Therefore, we suggest an audition to check physical fitness, followed by a training-

workshop which starts several months before the commencement of work with the director on the text,

and extends during the preparation of the play, integrating in this phase the members of the team who

have previous knowledge of biomechanics and experience of using Meyerhold’s method.

7. CONCLUSION

The relationship between Stanislavski and Meyerhold is similar to the relationship between ‘lovers’

who could not live with or without one another. They were constantly fighting and making up. They could

not stand working together for long, but they always followed with great care and interest and often

supported each other’s work. They wrote each other letters that they never replied to, they made

appointments but did not keep them, complained to friends (mostly to Chekhov) about the attitude of the

other one, quarrelled in their own notes with the other one. But they always defended each other in public,

broke the ground for one another, supported each other’s attempts to find something new, came to the

other one’s rescue, protected each other from outside attacks, were careful not to stain their mutual past.

And, Meyerhold never forgot and ceased to mention Stanislavski as his teacher and that without him,

Meyerhold’s further work and exploration would have been impossible.

All the aforementioned seems to show the natural way to the fusion of their antipodean systems,

which seem to have so much in common, a fact that Meyerhold was more aware of than Stanislavski. It is

because Meyerhold went through Stanisalvski’s school/psycho-technique, while Stanislavski never went

through Meyerhold’s biomechanics. Had he done so, he would have known that the answer to some of his

dilemmas was in this very extension, which does not necessarily cancel his system the way Meyerhold did,

but can integrate it and provide it with a new quality.

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