BRECHT and STANISLAVSKI
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright and theatre director born 10th February 1898.
His view of acting is that, instead of impersonating other people, actors should act as narrators, quoting facial expressions and movements. He wanted the audience to think for themselves, and not focus too much on emotions. He also believed strongly in promoting epic styles and simplicity.
Brecht wished his audience to successfully identify with his characters, and recognise the plot as realistic, with similarities to real life circumstances, so his viewers themselves can help change their own lives to become better people. Although Brecht himself was middle class, he believed that everyone should be equal in society, and faked a lower class life/ studied one.
He believed that actors should be far from their characters, and developed a type of drama known as “epic theatre”, where large placards emphasised the character’s obvious emotions. Brecht also wasn’t a massive fan of props, and used minimal scenery, or the use of one item as different objects, encouraging the audience to use their imagination.
He hated the idea of acting exercise, where painful, old memories are recollected, and loved ideas such as after show workshops and audience participation.
He tried to shatter the emotional involvement of the audience with various visual techniques, including expressionless and emotionless acting.
Konstantin Sergeyevich Alexeyev Stanislavski is rather different to Brecht, mainly because he prefers a more natural style of acting, which involves character development techniques including a sense of reality and the merger between both the actor and the character he/she is playing.
His parents were very rich, and he even had his own private theatre, which only furthered his interests in that aspect. Stanislavski used techniques, which enabled actors to completely transform themselves into character. He believed in attention to detail and invented his own methods of teaching actors to perform naturally on stage.
Stanislavski viewed professional acting as non educational to apprentices, as it mainly consisted of the apprentices watching actors on stage, and so he tried to improve this by inventing greater educational methods. Unlike Brecht, Stanislavski wished to focus on actor’s emotions, and so invented “the system”, which consisted of a variety of exercises to revive emotions. These include:
Fourth Wall- creates the illusion of natural activities (eg in a home).
The Magic If- uses imagination to create realism on stage.
Circles of Attention- achieves solitude.
Method Acting- when an actor experiences the personality of the character he/ she is playing.
Emotion Memory- when past thoughts/ emotions resurface.
Subtext- supplies to the actor by inner vision through action and imagination.
Super Objective- the main plot/ objective, which continues throughout the play.
Given Circumstance- actor is given a situation to abide by to create a certain scene.
Method acting was one of Stanislavski’s most famous techniques in which actors attempted to portray their character’s roles as they would actually have been in real life. Natural or non- acting was considered a breakthrough in the acting world. Stanislavski created a formal guide line an actor should follow in order to successfully become their chosen role.
He became known as the father of modern theatre, and particularly paid attention to detail and the way audiences were enthralled by true to life acting on stage. He is famous for instructing actors to “live the part” during performances.
Stanislavski’s methods and theories still play a massive part in theatre, acting education and television even today.
My Own Opinion
I personally think that both methods of acting are inventive, ingenious and have equally compelling positive aspects. I very much enjoy acting out in both styles, as Brecht’s may seem rather pointless and silly, but is equally enjoyable as Stanislavski’s.
Using your imagination is a wonderful thing, and Brecht captures that uniquely by using simple objects to portray more than one thing. The actors are very natural and realistic, but convey these techniques with emotionless actions.
Stanislavski, on the other hand, encourages emotional acting as if the actor is actually in the shoes of the character he/ she has been assigned. This truly is very life like and realistic and interesting to know that the actors on stage have made an outstanding effort to base themselves upon real life people.
Patrick Johnson 10S1
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