Text and Action

The word text comes to us as a shortened version of texture, meaning, the weave. Those who write plays weave together words, phrases, sentences. Those words, phrases, and sentences of course contain a meaning and a logic. They usually imply situation, and event (or at least some activity). This of course would be a written text, the kind that many or most of our theatrical productions are based on. The actual word itself though in terms of theatre was derived from the weave of actions created by the actor(s). This would be called the performance text. Its what people spend all their rehearsal periods doing - creating or making up the performance text. Often called a score of actions. Stanislavsky said there are many lines, many scores, of actions included in the performance text, there is the line of physical action, the line of emotional action, the line of psychological action, etc. At the beginning of rehearsals, Stanislavsky often started with what might be called the analytical line, a following along of the basic situation, circumstance and activity of the actor. This process was implemented big time in the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre and was perfected improvisationally by Evegeny Vakhtangov. When Richard Boleslavsky came to America and was teaching at the American Laboratory Theatre, he taught this type of analysis to among others, Lee Strasberg. Lee utilized it in rehearsals with the Group Theatre. Later on it became known as Active Analysis and was championed by people like Maria Knebel in the Soviet Union. The commonalities of teaching and directing between Lee and Maria are eery. The Soviets themselves after Stanislavsky's death broke off a version which they held up as the official one and it was proclaimed as The Method of Physical Action - a kind of Pavlov's dog variation which left out the most of the accompanying processes and dried the work of its spiritual and emotional content, and much if not all of its common sense. In 1964, members of the Moscow Art Theatre, the very Soviet style Moscow Art Theatre at that time, came to America for a visit, teaching workshops, observing classes, etc. Vladimir Prokofiev, one of the editors in the Soviet Union of Stanislavsky's complete works (along with Kristi) was vocal and aggressive in his commitment to this version of The Method of Physical Actions. Sonia Moore, another Russian immigrant in the U.S. at the time, picked up on Prokofiev's ideas and began herself teaching this idea of The Method of Physical Actions. Prior to that, she did not teach it. Its noteworthy in Sonia's books, through their various editions that she never reconciles it fully with her earlier ideas. The Method of Physical Action was proclaimed by Prokofiev and subsequently by Moore to be Stanislavsky's final version, the final and most complete way of working. The only odd thing about that is that they left out most of the real substance of Stanislavsky's work. Over the years, various myths, in various forms and forums have sprung up about how Stanislavsky changed his mind about rehearsal methods or training actors, etc. One of the more famous ones we all know of is Stella Adler who worked with Lee Strasberg as a member of the Group Theatre. Stella met up with Stanislavky by chance one summer in Paris and arranged a short series of sessions with him. Stella came back and told the story to everyone that Stanislavsky changed his mind, that he didn't, for example, use the notion of emotional memory any longer, it was all about character action and circumstances. That was Stella's version of what happened in Paris and everyone believed her for a long time - never having heard Stanislavsky's side of the story. According to Stanislavsky, everything Stella had been taught was correct - this included work at the American Lab with Boleslavsky, and work with Strasberg in the Group Theatre. Stanislavsky called her "a completely hysterical woman" and said "everything she had been taught was correct. It was all there." He said he gave her a little lesson in action. Stella took that "little lesson in action" and ran with it. There were notes taken at their meeting. Stella had a secretary take notes. The one person that I know of who has seen them said they mostly talked about their health. Stella never in her lifetime released or published those notes. Wonder why?
Anyway, Stanislavsky, especially toward the end of his life, was attempting to teach actors, and directors, how to weave these actions on stage more intricately. At that time, the Soviet dogma was in full force, the Golden Age of Russian theatre was passing, and actors were being used by directors as kind of idiotic symbolic caricatures. The weave of action on the stage was a general one, dumbed down. Stanislavsky was trying to get actors to think again, to create, and so he chose to ask them hundreds of questions, implying hundreds of actions, big and small, in the analysis.

In America we have been lucky to have long had this tradition and way of working which came to us through the American Lab and others, the Group Theatre and others. We had all these years, the things that others around the world just started waking up to in the last 10 - 15 years. We had Active Analysis, we had the yoga influence, we had the spirituality, we had Affective Memory as the basis, we had work on oneself and work on the role, we had the science. We have had the complete version of the System for a long, long time which allows actors to work imaginitively and personally with the circumstances, events and words of the written text in order to create a dynamic performance text in which everyone, big part and little part, is active and integral.