Faith and a Sense of Truth – An Actor Prepares – Constantin Stanislavski

Faith and a Sense of Truth | An Actor Prepares | Constantin Stanislavski: “FAITH AND A SENSE OF TRUTH” was inscribed on a large placard on the wall at school today.

Before our work began we were up on the stage, engaged in one of our periodic searches for Maria’s lost purse. Suddenly we heard the voice of the Director who, without our knowing it, had been watching us from the orchestra.

“What an excellent frame, for anything you want to present, is provided by the stage and the footlights,” said he. “You were entirely sincere in what you were doing. There was a sense of truthfulness about it all, and a feeling of believing in all physical objectives which you set yourselves.

They were well defined and clear, and your attention was sharply concentrated. All these necessary elements were operating properly and harmoniously to create—can we say art? No! That was not art. It was actuality. Therefore repeat what you have just been doing.”

We put the purse back where it had been and we began to hunt it. Only this time we did not have to search because the object had already been found once. As a result, we accomplished nothing.

“No. I saw neither objectives, activity nor truth, in what you did,” was Tortsov’s criticism. “And why? If what you were doing the first time was actual fact, why were you not able to repeat it? One might suppose that to do that much you would not need to be an actor, but just an ordinary human being.”

Faith and a Sense of Truth – An Actor Prepares – Constantin Stanislavski

We tried to explain to Tortsov that the first time it was necessary to find the lost purse, whereas the second time we knew there was no need for it. As a result, we had reality at first and a false imitation of it the second time.

“Well then, go ahead and play the scene with truth instead of falseness,” he suggested.

We objected and said it was not as simple as all that. We insisted that we should prepare, rehearse, live the scene . . .

“Live it?” the Director exclaimed. “But you just did live it!”

Step by step, with the aid of questions and explanation, Tortsov led us to the conclusion that there are two kinds of truth and a sense of belief in what you are doing. First, there is the one that is created automatically and on the plane of actual fact (as in the case of our search for Maloletkova’s purse when Tortsov first watched us), and second, there is the scenic type, which is equally truthful but which originates on the plane of imaginative and artistic fiction.

“To achieve this latter sense of truth, and to reproduce it in the scene of searching for the purse, you must use a lever to lift you onto the plane of imaginary life,” the Director explained. “There you will prepare a fiction, analogous to what you have just done in reality. Properly envisaged ‘given circumstances’ will help you to feel and to create a scenic truth that you can believe while you are on the stage.

Consequently, in ordinary life, truth is what really exists, what a person really knows. Whereas on the stage it consists of something that is not actually in existence but which could happen.”

“Excuse me,” argued Grisha, “but I don’t see how there can be any question of truth in the theatre since everything about it is fictitious, beginning with the very plays of Shakespeare and ending with the paper maˆche´ dagger with which Othello stabs himself.”

“Do not worry too much about that dagger being made of cardboard instead of steel,” said Tortsov, in a conciliatory tone. “You have a perfect right to call it an impostor. But if you go beyond that, and brand all art as a lie, and all life in the theatre as unworthy of faith, then you will have to change your point of view. What counts in the theatre is not the material out of which Othello’s dagger is made, be it steel or cardboard, but the inner feeling of the actor who can justify his suicide.

What is important is how the actor, a human being, would have acted if the circumstances and conditions which surrounded Othello were real and the dagger with which he stabbed himself were metal.

“Of significance to us is: the reality of the inner life of a human spirit in a part and a belief in that reality. We are not concerned with the actual naturalistic existence of what surrounds us on the stage, the reality of the material world! This is of use to us only in so far as it supplies a general background for our feelings.

“What we mean by truth in the theatre is the scenic truth which an actor must make use of in his moments of creativeness. Try always to begin by working from the inside, both on the factual and imaginary parts of a play and its setting. Put life into all the imagined circumstances and actions until you have completely satisfied your sense of truth, and until you have awakened a sense of faith in the reality of your sensations. This process is what we call justification of a part.”

As I wished to be absolutely sure of his meaning, I asked Tortsov to sum up in a few words what he had said. His answer was:

“Truth on the stage is whatever we can believe in with sincerity, whether in ourselves or in our colleagues. Truth cannot be separated from belief, nor belief from the truth. They cannot exist without each other and without both of them, it is impossible to live your part, or to create anything. Everything that happens on the stage must be convincing to the actor himself, his associates, and to the spectators.

It must inspire belief in the possibility, in real life, of emotions analogous to those being experienced on the stage by the actor. Each and every moment must be saturated with a belief in the truthfulness of the emotion felt, and in the activities carried out, by the actor.”

The Director began our lesson today by saying: “I have explained to you, in general terms, the part that truth plays in the creative process. Let us now talk about its opposite.

“A sense of truth contains within itself a sense of what is untrue as well. You must have both. But it will be in varying proportions. Some have, let us say, seventy-five percent. sense of truth, and only twenty-five percent. of sense of falseness; or these proportions reversed; or fifty percent. of each. Are you surprised that I differentiate and contrast these two senses? This is why I do it,” he added, and then, turning to Nicholas, he said:

“There are actors who, like you, are so strict with themselves in adhering to truth that they often carry that attitude, without being conscious of it, to extremes that amount to falseness. You should not exaggerate your preference for truth and your abhorrence of lies, because it tends to make you overplay truth for its own sake, and that, in itself, is the worst of lies. Therefore try to be cool and impartial. You need truth, in the theatre, to the extent to which you can believe in it.

“You can even get some use from falseness if you are reasonable in your approach to it. It sets the pitch for you and shows you what you should not do. Under such conditions, a slight error can be used by an actor to determine the line beyond which he may not transgress.

“This method of checking up on yourself is absolutely essential whenever you are engaged in creative activity. Because of the presence of a large audience an actor feels bound, whether he wishes to or not, to give out an unnecessary amount of effort and motions that are supposed to represent feelings. Yet no matter what he does, as long as he stands before the footlights, it seems to him that it is not enough. Consequently, we see an excess of acting amounting to as much as ninety percent.

That is why, during my rehearsals, you will often hear me say, ‘Cut out ninety percent.’

“If you only knew how important is the process of self-study! It should continue ceaselessly, without the actor even being aware of it, and it should test every step he takes. When you point out to him the palpable absurdity of some false action he has taken he is more than willing to cut it. But what can he do if his own feelings are not able to convince him? Who will guarantee that, having rid himself of one lie, another will not immediately take its place? No, the approach must be different.

A grain of truth must be planted under the falsehood, eventually to supplant it, as a child’s second set of teeth pushes out the first.”

Here the Director was called away, on some business connected with the theatre, so the students were turned over to the assistant for a period of the drill.

When Tortsov returned a short time later, he told us about an artist who possessed an extraordinarily fine sense of truth in criticizing the work of other actors. Yet when he himself acts, he completely loses that sense. “It is difficult to believe,” said he, “that it is the same person who at one moment shows such a keen sense of discrimination between what is true and what is false in the acting of his colleagues, and at the next will go on the stage and himself perpetrate worse mistakes.

“In his case, his sensitiveness to truth and falseness as a spectator and as an actor is entirely divorced. This phenomenon is wide-spread.”

We thought of a new game today: we decided to check falseness in each other’s actions both on the stage and in ordinary life.

It so happened that we were delayed in a corridor because the school stage was not ready. While we were standing around Maria suddenly raised a hue and cried because she had lost her key. We all precipitated ourselves into the search for it.

Grisha began to criticize her.

“You are leaning over,” said he, “and I don’t believe there is the basis for it. You are doing it for us, not to find the key.”

His carpings were duplicated by remarks of Leo, Vassili, Paul, and by some of mine, and soon the whole search was at a stand-still.

“You silly children! How dare you!” the Director cried out.

His appearance, catching us unaware in the middle of our game, left us in dismay.

“Now you sit down on the benches along the wall, and you two,” said he brusquely to Maria and Sonya, “walk up and down the hall.

“No, not like that. Can you imagine anyone walking that way? Put your heels in and turn your toes out! Why don’t you bend your knees? Why don’t you put more swing into your hips? Pay attention! Look out for your centers of balance. Don’t you know how to walk? Why do you stagger? Look where you’re going!”

The longer they went on the more he scolded them. The more he scolded the less control they had over themselves. He finally reduced them to a state where they could not tell their heads from their heels and came to a standstill in the middle of the hall.

When I looked at the Director I was amazed to find that he was smothering his laughter behind a handkerchief.

Then it dawned on us what he had been doing.

“Are you convinced now,” he asked the two girls, “that a nagging critic can drive an actor mad and reduce him to a state of helplessness? Search for falseness only so far as it helps you to find the truth. Don’t forget that the carping critic can create more falsehood on the stage than anyone else because the actor whom he is criticizing involuntarily ceases to pursue his right course and exaggerates truth itself to the point of its becoming false.

“What you should develop is a sane, calm, wise, and understanding critic, who is the artist’s best friend. He will not nag you over trifles but will have his eye on the substance of your work.

“Another word of counsel about watching the creative work of others. Begin to exercise your sense of truth by looking, first of all, for the good points. In studying another’s word limit yourself to the role of a mirror and say honestly whether or not you believe in what you have seen and heard, and point out, particularly the moments that were most convincing to you.

“If the theatre-going public were as strict about truthfulness on the stage as you were here today in real life we poor actors would never dare show our faces.”

“But isn’t the audience severe?” someone asked.

“No, indeed. They are not carping, as you were. On the contrary, an audience wishes, above all, to believe everything that happens on the stage.”

“We have had enough of theory,” said the Director when he began work today. “Let us put some of it into practice.” Whereupon he called on me and on Vanya to go up on the stage and play the exercise of burning the money. “You do not get hold of this exercise because, in the first place, you are anxious to believe all of the terrible things I put into the plot. But do not try to do it all at once; proceed bit by bit, helping yourselves along by small truths. Found your actions on the simplest possible physical bases.

“I shall give you neither real nor property money. Working with air will compel you to bring back more details, and build a better sequence. If every little auxiliary act is executed truthfully, then the whole action will unfold rightly.”

I began to count the non-existent bank notes.

“I don’t believe it,” said Tortsov, stopping me as I was just reaching for the money.

“What don’t you believe?”

“You did not even look at the thing you were touching.”

I had looked over to the make-believe piles of bills, and seen nothing; merely stretched out my arm and brought it back.

“If only for the sake of appearance you might press your fingers together so that the packet won’t fall from them. Don’t throw it down. Put it down. And who would undo a package that way? First, find the end of the string. No, not like that. It cannot be done so suddenly. The ends are tucked in carefully so that they do not come loose. It is not easy to untangle them.

That’s right,” said he approvingly at last. “Now count the hundreds first, there are usually ten of them to a packet. Oh, dear! How quickly you did all that! Not even the most expert cashier could have counted those crumpled, dirty old banknotes at such a rate!

“Now do you see to what extent of realistic detail you must go in order to convince our physical natures of the truth of what you are doing on the stage?”

He then proceeded to direct my physical actions, movement after movement, second by second, until a coherent sequence was achieved.

While I was counting the make-believe money I recalled the exact method and order in which this is done in real life. Then all the logical details suggested to me by the Director developed an entirely different attitude on my part toward the air I was handling as money. It is one thing to move your fingers around in the empty air. It is quite another to handle dirty, crumpled notes which you see distinctly in your mind’s eye.

The moment I was convinced of the truth of my physical actions, I felt perfectly at ease on the stage.

Then, too, I found little additional improvisations cropping out. I rolled up the string carefully and laid it beside the pile of notes on the table. That little bit encouraged me, and it led to many more.

For example, before I undertook to count the packets I tapped them for some time on the table in order to make neat piles.

“That is what we mean by completely, fully justified physical action. It is what an artist can place his whole organic faith in,” Tortsov summed up, and with that, he intended to conclude the work of the day. But Grisha wished to argue.

“How can you call activity based on thin air physical or organic?”

Paul agreed. He maintained that actions concerned with material, and those concerned with imaginary objects, were necessary of two differing types.

“Take the drinking of water,” said he. “It develops a whole process of really physical and organic activity: the taking of the liquid into the mouth, the sensation of taste, letting the water flow back on the tongue and then swallowing it.”

“Exactly,” interrupted the Director, “all these fine details must be repeated even when you have no water because otherwise, you will never swallow.”

“But how can you repeat them,” insisted Grisha, “when you have nothing in your mouth?”

“Swallow your saliva or air! Does it make any difference?” asked Tortsov. “You will maintain that it is not the same thing as swallowing water or wine. Agreed. There is a difference. Even so, there is a sufficient amount of physical truth in what we do, for our purposes.”

“Today we shall go on to the second part of the exercise we did yesterday, and work on it in the same way as we did in the first,” said the Director at the beginning of our lesson.

“This is a much more complicated problem.”

“I dare say we shall not be able to solve it,” I remarked as I joined Maria and Vanya to go up to the stage.

“No harm will be done,” said Tortsov, comfortingly. “I did not give you this exercise because I thought you could play it. It was rather because by taking something beyond your powers you would be able better to understand what your shortcomings are, and what you need to work on. For the present, attempt only what is within your reach. Create for me the sequence of external, physical action. Let me feel the truth in it.

“To start with, are you able to leave your work for a while and, in response to your wife’s call, go into the other room and watch her give the baby his bath?”

“That’s not difficult,” said I, getting up and going toward the next room.

“Oh, no, indeed,” said the Director as he stopped me. “It seems to me that it is the very thing you cannot properly do. Moreover, you say that to come on to the stage, into a room, and go out again, is an easy thing to do. If so it is only because you have just admitted a mass of incoherence and lack of logical sequence into your action.

“Check up for yourself how many small, almost imperceptible, but essential physical movements and truths you have just omitted. As an example: before leaving the room you were not occupied with matters of small consequence. You were doing work of great importance: sorting community accounts and checking funds. How could you drop that so suddenly and rush out of the room as though you thought the ceiling was about to fall? Nothing terrible has occurred. It was only your wife calling.

Moreover, would you, in real life, have dreamed of going in to see a newborn baby with a lighted cigarette in your mouth? And is it likely that the baby’s mother would even think of letting a man with a cigarette into the room where she is bathing him? Therefore you must, first of all, find a place to put your cigarette, leave it here in this room, and then you may go. Each one of these little auxiliary acts is easy to do by itself.”

I did as he said, laid down my cigarette in the living room, and went off the stage into the wings to wait for my next entrance.

“There now,” said the Director, “you have executed each little act in detail and built them all together into one large action: that of going into the next room.”

After that my return into the living room was subjected to innumerable corrections. This time, however, it was because I lacked simplicity and tended to string out every little thing. Such overemphasis is also false.

Finally, we approached the most interesting and dramatic part. As I came into the room and started towards my work, I saw that Vanya had burned the money to amuse himself, taking a stupid half-witted pleasure in what he had done.

Sensing a tragic possibility I rushed forward, and, giving free rein to my temperament, wallowed in overacting.

“Stop! You have taken the wrong turning,” cried Tortsov. “While the trail is still hot, go over what you have just done.”

All that it was necessary for me to do was simply to run to the fireplace and snatch out a burning packet of money. To do it, however, I had to plan and push my moron brother-in-law aside. The Director was not satisfied that such a wild thrust could result in death and a catastrophe.

I was puzzled to know how to produce and justify such a harsh act.

“Do you see this slip of paper?” he asked. “I am going to set fire

to it and throw it into this large ash tray. You go over there and as soon as you see the flame, run and try to save some of the paper from burning.”

As soon as he lighted the paper I rushed forward with such violence that I nearly broke Vanya’s arm on the way.

“Now can you see whether there is any resemblance between what you have just done and your performance before? Just now we might actually have had a catastrophe. But before it was a mere exaggeration.

“You must not conclude that I recommend breaking arms and mutilating one another on the stage. What I do wish you to realize is that you overlooked a most important circumstance: which is that money burns instantaneously. Consequently, if you are to save it you must act instantaneously. This you did not do. Naturally, there was no truth in your actions.”

After a short pause, he said: “Now let us go on.”

“Do you mean that we are to do nothing more in this part?” I exclaimed.

“What more do you wish to do?” asked Tortsov. “You saved all that you could and the rest was burnt up.” “But the killing?”

“There was no murder,” he said.

“Do you mean there was no one killed?” I asked.

“Well, of course, there was. But for the person whose part you were playing, no murder exists. You are so depressed by the loss of the money that you are not even aware that you knocked the half-witted brother down. If you realized that, you would probably not be rooted to the spot, but would be rushing help to the dying man.”

Now we came to the most difficult point for me. I was to stand as though turned to stone, in a state of “tragic inaction.” I went all cold inside, and even I realized that I was overacting.

“Yes, there they all are, the old, old, familiar cliche´s that date back to our ancestors,” said Tortsov.

“How can you recognize them?” I asked.

“Eyes starting with horror. The tragic mopping of the brow. Holding the head in both hands. Running all five fingers through the hair. Pressing the hand to the heart. Any one of them is at least three hundred years old.

“Let us clear away all of that rubbish. Clean out all of that and play with your forehead, your heart, and your hair. Give me, even if it is very slight, some action that has belief in it.”

“How can I give you movement when I am supposed to be in a state of dramatic inaction?” I asked.

“What do you think?” he countered. “Can there be activity in dramatic or any other inaction? If there is, of what does it consist?”

That question made me dig into my memory and try to recall what a person would be doing during a period of dramatic inaction. Tortsov reminded me of some passages in My Life in Art and added an incident of which he had personal knowledge.

“It was necessary,” he countered, “to break the news of her husband’s death to a woman. After a long and careful preparation, I finally pronounced the fateful words. The poor woman was stunned. Yet on her face, there was none of that tragic expression that actors like to show on the stage.

The complete absence of expression on her face, almost deathly in its extreme immobility, was what was so impressive. It was necessary to stand completely motionless beside her for more than ten minutes in order not to interrupt the process going on within her. At last, I made a movement that brought her out of her stupor. Whereupon she fainted dead away.

“A long time afterward, when it became possible to speak to her about the past, she was asked what went through her mind in those minutes of tragic immobility. It seems that a few moments before receiving the news of his death she was preparing to go out to do some shopping for him. . . . But since he was dead she must do something else.

What should it be? In thinking about her occupations, past, and present, her mind ran over the memories of her life up to the impasse of the actual moment, with its great question mark. She became unconscious from a sense of complete helplessness.

“I think you will agree that those ten minutes of tragic inaction were full enough of activity. Just think of compressing all of your past life into ten short minutes. Isn’t that action?”

“Of course, it is,” I agreed, “but it is not physical.”

“Very well,” said Tortsov. “Perhaps it isn’t physical. We need not think too deeply about labels or try to be too concise. In every physical activity there is a psychological element and a physical one in every psychological act.”

The later scenes where I am roused from my stupor and try to revive my brother-in-law proved to be infinitely easier for me to play than that immobility with its psychological activity.

“Now we should go over what we have learned in our last two lessons,” said the Director. “Because young people are so impatient, they seek to grab the whole inner truth of a play or a role at once and believe in it.

“Since it is impossible to take control of the whole at once, we must break it up and absorb each piece separately. To arrive at the essential truth of each bit and to be able to believe in it, we must follow the same procedure we used in choosing our units and objectives. When you cannot believe in the larger action you must reduce it to smaller and smaller proportions until you can believe in it. Don’t think that this is a mean accomplishment. It is tremendous.

You have not been wasting the time you have spent, both in my classes and in Rakhmanov’s drills, in centering attention on small physical actions. Perhaps you do not even yet realize that from believing in the truth of one small action an actor can come to feel himself in his part and have faith in the reality of a whole play.

“I could quote innumerable instances which have occurred in my own experience, where there has been something unexpected injected into the stale, routine acting of a play. A chair falls over, an actress drops her handkerchief and it must be picked up, or the business is suddenly altered. These things necessarily call for small but real actions because they are intrusions emanating from real life.

Just as a breath of fresh air will clear the atmosphere in a stuffy room these real actions can put life into stereotyped acting. It can remind an actor of the true pitch that he has lost. It has the power to produce an inner impetus and it can turn a whole scene down a more creative path.

“On the other hand, we cannot leave things to chance. It is important for an actor to know how to proceed under ordinary circumstances. When a whole act is too large to handle, break it up. If one detail is not sufficient to convince you of the truth of what you are doing, add others to it until you have achieved the greater sphere of action which does convince you.

“A sense of measure will also help you here.

“It is to these simple but important truths that we have dedicated our work in recent lessons.”

“This last summer,” said the Director, “I went back, for the first time in a number of years, to a place in the country where I used to spend my vacations. The house where I boarded was some distance from the railway station. A shortcut to it led through a ravine, past some beehives and a wood. In the old days, I came and went so often by this shorter route that I made a beaten track. Later this was all overgrown with tall grass. This summer I went through it again.

At first, it was not so easy to find the path. I often lost my direction and came out onto a main high road, which was full of ruts and holes, because of heavy traffic. Incidentally, it would have led me in the opposite direction from the station. So I was obliged to retrace my steps and hunt for the shortcut. I was guided by old memories of familiar landmarks, trees, stumps, little rises, and falls in the path. These recollections took shape and directed my search.

Finally, I worked out the right line and was able to go and come to the station along it. As I had to go to town frequently I made use of the shortcut almost daily and it soon became a distinct path again.

“During our last few lessons, we have been blocking out a line of physical actions in the exercise of the burned money. It is somewhat analogous to my path in the country. We recognize it in real life but we have to tread it down all over again on the stage.

“The straight line for you is also overgrown with bad habits which threaten to turn you aside at every step and mislead you onto the rutted and worn highway of stereotyped mechanical acting. To avoid this you must do as I did and establish the right direction by laying down a series of physical actions. These you must tread down until you have permanently fixed the true path of your role. Now go up onto the stage and repeat, several times, the detailed physical actions that we worked out last time.

“Mind you, only physical actions, physical truths, and physical belief in them! Nothing more!”

We played the exercise through.

“Did you notice any new sensations as a result of executing a whole sequence of physical acts without an interruption?” asked Tortsov. “If you did, the separate moments are flowing, as they should, into larger periods and creating a continuous current of truth.

“Test it by playing the whole exercise from beginning to end, several times, using just the physical actions.”

We followed his instructions and really did feel that the detailed bits dovetailed into one continuous whole. This sequence was strengthened by each repetition and the action had the feeling of pushing forward, with increasing momentum.

As we repeated the exercise I kept making one mistake which I feel I ought to describe in detail. Each time I left the scene and went off stage I ceased to play. The consequence was that the logical line of my physical action was interrupted. And it should not have been interrupted. Neither on the stage nor even in the wings should an actor admit such breaks in the continuity of the life of his part. It causes blanks. These in turn become filled with thoughts and feelings which are extraneous to the role.

“If you are unaccustomed to playing for yourself while off stage,” said the Director, “at least confine your thoughts to what the person you are portraying would be doing if he were placed in analogous circumstances. This will help to keep you in the part.”

After making certain corrections, and after we had gone over the exercise several more times, he asked me: “Do you realize that you have succeeded in establishing, in a solid and permanent manner, the long sequence of individual moments of the true physical action of this exercise?

“This continuous sequence we call, in our theatre jargon, ‘the life of a human body.’ It is made up, as you have seen, of living physical actions, motivated by an inner sense of truth, and a belief in what the actor is doing. This life of the human body in a role is no small matter. It is one half of the image to be created, although not the more important half.”

After we had gone over the same exercise once more the Director said:

“Now that you have created the body of the role we can begin to think about the next, even more important, step, which is the creation of the human soul in the part.

“Actually this has already happened inside of you, without your knowing it. The proof is that when you executed all the physical actions in the scene just now you did not do it in a dry, formal way, but with inner conviction.”

“How was this change brought about?”

“In a natural way: because the bond between body and soul is indivisible. The life of the one gives life to the other. Every physical act, except simply mechanical ones, has an inner source of feeling. Consequently, we have both an inner and outer plane in every role, inter-laced. A common objective makes them akin to one another and strengthens their bonds.”

The Director had me go over the scene with the money. As I was counting it I happened to look at Vanya, my wife’s hunchback brother, and for the first time, I asked myself: why is he forever hanging around me? At this point, I felt I could not go on until I had clarified my relations with this brother-in-law of mine.

This is what I, with the Director’s help, concocted as a basis for the relationship: the beauty and health of my wife had been bought at the price of the deformity of this, her twin brother. At their birth, an emergency operation had to be performed and the boy’s life was jeopardized to save the mother and her baby girl. They all survived, but the boy became a half-wit and hunchback. This shadow has always lain on the family and made itself felt.

This invention quite changed my attitude towards the unfortunate moron. I was filled with a sincere feeling of tenderness for him and even some remorse for the past.

This gave life at once to the scene of the unhappy creature getting some joy out of the burning of the bank notes. Out of pity for him, I did silly things to amuse him. I tapped the packets on the table and made comic gestures and faces as I threw the colored wrappers off them into the fire. Vanya responded to these improvisations and reacted well to them. His sensitiveness instigated me to go on with more of the same type of inventions. A wholly new scene was created; it was lively, warm, and gay.

There was an instant response to it from the audience. This was encouraging and drove us on. Then came the moment to go into the next room. To whom? To my wife? Who is she? And there was another question to be solved. I could not go on until I knew all about this person to whom I am supposed to be married. My story about her was extremely sentimental. Nevertheless, I really felt that if the circumstances had been what I imagined them to be, then this wife and child would have been infinitely dear to me.

In all this new life imagined for an exercise, our old methods of playing it seemed unworthy.

How easy and pleasant it was for me to watch the baby in his bath! Now I did not need to be reminded about the lighted cigarette.

I took great care to put it out before I left the living room.

My return to the table with the money is now both clear and necessary. This is work that I am doing for my wife, my child, and the unfortunate hunchback.

The burning of the money acquired a totally different aspect. All I needed to say to myself was: what should I do if this really happened? I am horror-stricken at the prospect of my future; public opinion will brand me not only as a thief, but also as the murderer of my own brother-in-law. Moreover, I shall be looked upon as an infanticide! No one can restore me in the eyes of the public. Nor do I even know what my wife will think of me after my having killed her brother.

All during these conjectures it was absolutely necessary for me to remain motionless, but my immobility was full of action.

The next scene, the attempt to revive the dead boy, went off quite by itself. This was natural, in view of my new attitude towards him.

Now the exercise, which had become rather a bore to me, aroused lively sensations. The method of creating both the physical and the spiritual life of a part seemed remarkable. I did feel, however, that the whole basis of the success of this method lay in the magic ifs and given circumstances. It was they that produced the inner impulse in me, not the creation of physical details. Why would it not be simpler to work straight from them, instead of putting so much time on physical objectives?

I asked the Director about this, and he agreed.

“Of course,” he said, “and that is what I proposed that you should do over a month ago when you first played this exercise.”

“But then it was difficult for me to arouse my imagination and make it active,” I remarked.

“Yes, and now it is wide awake. You find it easy not only to invent fiction but to live them, to feel its reality. Why has that change taken place? Because at first, you planted the seeds of your imagination in barren ground. External contortions, physical tenseness, and incorrect physical life are bad soil in which to grow truth and feeling. Now you have a correct physical life. Your belief in it is based on the feelings of your own nature. You no longer do your imagining in the air or in space, or in general.

It is no longer abstract. We gladly turn to real physical actions and our belief in them because they are within reach of our call.

“We use the conscious technique of creating the physical body of a role and by its aid achieve the creation of the subconscious life of the spirit of a role.”

In continuing the description of his method the Director illustrated his remarks today by an analogy between acting and traveling.

“Have you ever made a long journey?” he began. “If so, you will recall the many successive changes that take place both in what you feel and what you see. It is just the same on the stage. By moving forward along physical lines we find ourselves constantly in new and different situations, moods, imaginative surroundings, and the externals of production. The actor comes into contact with new people and shares their life.

“All the while his line of physical actions is leading him through the ins and outs of the play. His path is so well built that he cannot be led astray. Yet it is not the path itself that appeals to the artist in him. His interest lies in the inner circumstances and conditions of life to which the play has led him. He loves the beautiful and imaginative surroundings in his part, and the feelings which they arouse in him.

“Actors, like travelers, find many different ways of going to their destination: there are those who really, physically, experience their part, those who reproduce its external form, those who deck themselves with stock tricks and do their acting as though it were a trade, some who make a literary, dry lecture of a part, and those who use the part to show themselves off to advantage before their admirers.

“How can you prevent yourself from going in the wrong direction? At every junction, you should have a well-trained, attentive, disciplined signalman. He is your sense of truth that co-operates with your sense of faith in what you are doing, to keep you on the right track.

“The next question is: what material do we use for building our track?

“At first it would seem that we could not do better than to use real emotions. Yet things of the spirit are not sufficiently substantial. That is why we have recourse to physical action.

“However, what is more, important than the actions themselves is their truth and our belief in them. The reason is: Wherever you have truth and belief, you have feeling and experience. You can test this by executing even the smallest act in which you really believe and you will find that instantly, intuitively, and naturally, an emotion will arise.

“These moments, no matter how short they may be, are much to be appreciated. They are of greater significance on the stage, both in the quieter parts of a play and in places where you live through high tragedy and drama.

You have not far to go to find an example of this: what were you occupied with when you were playing the second half of that exercise? You rushed to the fireplace and pulled out a packet of bank notes: you tried to revive the moron, you ran to save the drowning child. That is the framework of your simple physical actions, inside of which you naturally and logically constructed the physical life of your part.

“Here is another example:

“With what was Lady Macbeth occupied at the culminating point of her tragedy? The simple physical act of washing a spot of blood off her hand.”

Here Grisha broke in because he was not willing to believe “that a great writer like Shakespeare would create a masterpiece in order to have his heroine wash her hands or perform some similar natural act.”

“What a disillusion indeed,” said the Director ironically. “Not to have thought about tragedy! How could he have passed up all of an actor’s tenseness, exertion, ‘pathos,’ and ‘inspiration’! How hard to give up all the marvelous bag of tricks and limit oneself to little physical movements, small truths, and a sincere belief in their reality!

“In time you will learn that such a concentration is necessary if you are to possess real feelings. You will come to know that in real life also many of the great moments of emotion are signalized by some ordinary, small, natural movement. Does that astonish you? Let me remind you of the sad moments attendant on the illness and approaching death of someone dear to you.

With what is the close friend or wife of the dying man occupied? Preserving quiet in the room, carrying out the doctor’s orders, taking the temperature, applying compresses. All these small actions take on critical importance in a struggle with death.

“We artists must realize the truth that even small physical movements, when injected into ‘given circumstances’, acquire great significance through their influence on emotion. The actual wiping off of the blood had helped Lady Macbeth to execute her ambitious designs. It is not by chance that all through her monologue you find in her memory the spot of blood recalled in connection with the murder of Duncan. A small, physical act acquires an enormous inner meaning; the great inner struggle seeks an outlet in such an external act.

“Why is this mutual bond all-important to us in our artistic technique? Why do I lay such exceptional stress on this elementary method of affecting our feelings?

“If you tell an actor that his role is full of psychological action, tragic depths, he will immediately begin to contort himself, exaggerate his passion, ‘tear it to tatters,’ dig around in his soul and do violence to his feelings. But if you give him some simple physical problem to solve and wrap it up in interesting, affecting conditions, he will set about carrying it out without alarming himself or even thinking too deeply about whether what he is doing will result in psychology, tragedy, or drama.

“By approaching emotion in this way you avoid all violence and your result is natural, intuitive, and complete. In the writings of great poets even the simplest acts are surrounded by important attendant conditions and in them lie hidden all manner of baits to excite our feelings.

“There is another simple and practical reason for approaching delicate emotional experiences and strong tragic moments through the truth of physical actions. To reach the great tragic heights an actor must stretch his creative power to the utmost. That is difficult in the extreme. How can he reach the needed state if he lacks a natural summons to his will? This state is brought about only by creative fervour, and that you cannot easily force.

If you use unnatural means you are apt to go off in some false direction and indulge in theatrical instead of in genuine emotion. The easy way is familiar, habitual and mechanical. It is the line of least resistance.

“To avoid that error you must have hold of something substantial, tangible. The significance of physical acts in highly tragic or dramatic moments is emphasized by the fact that the simpler they are, the easier it is to grasp them, the easier to allow them to lead you to your true objective, away from the temptation of mechanical acting.

“Come to the tragic part of a role without any nervous twinges, without breathlessness and violence, and above all, not suddenly. Arrive gradually, and logically, by carrying out correctly your sequence of external physical actions, and by believing in them. When you will have perfected this technique of approach to your feelings, your attitude towards the tragic moments will change entirely, and you will cease to be alarmed by them.

“The approach to drama and tragedy, or to comedy and vaudeville, differs only in the given circumstances which surround the actions of the person you are portraying. In the circumstances lie the main power and meaning of these actions. Consequently, when you are called upon to experience a tragedy do not think about your emotions at all. Think about what you have to do.”

When Tortsov had finished speaking there was silence for a few moments until Grisha, ready as always to argue, broke in:

“But I think that artists do not ride around on the earth. In my opinion, they fly around above the clouds.”

“I like your comparison,” said Tortsov with a slight smile. “We shall go into that a little later.”

In today’s lesson, I was thoroughly convinced of the effectiveness of our method of psycho-technique. Moreover, I was deeply moved by seeing it in operation. One of our classmates, Dasha, played a scene from Brand, the one with the abandoned child. The gist of it is that a girl comes home to find that someone has left a child on her doorstep. At first, she is upset, but in a moment or two, she decides to adopt it. But the sickly little creature expires in her arms.

The reason why Dasha is so drawn to scenes of this sort, with children, is that not long ago she lost a child, born out of wed-lock. This was told to me in confidence, as a rumor. But after seeing her play the scene today no doubt remains in my mind about the truth of the story. All during her acting the tears were coursing down her cheeks and her tenderness completely transformed for us the stick of wood she was holding into a living baby. We could feel it inside the cloth that swaddled it.

When we reached the moment of the infant’s death the Director called a halt for fear of the consequences of Dasha’s too deeply stirred emotions.

We all had tears in our eyes.

Why go into an examination of lives, objectives, and physical actions when we could see life itself in her face?

“There you see what inspiration can create,” said Tortsov with delight. “It needs no technique; it operates strictly according to the laws of our art because they were laid down by Nature herself. But you cannot count on such a phenomenon every day. On some other occasion they might not work and then . . .”

“Oh, yes, indeed they would,” said Dasha.

Whereupon, as though she were afraid that her inspiration would wane she began to repeat the scene she had just played. At first, Tortsov was inclined to protect her young nervous system by stopping her, but it was not long before she stopped herself, as she was quite unable to do anything.

“What are you going to do about it?” asked Tortsov. “You know that the manager who engages you for his company is going to insist that you play not only the first but all the succeeding performances equally well. Otherwise the play will have a successful opening and then fail.”

“No. All I have to do is to feel and then I can play well,” said Dasha.

“I can understand that you want to get straight to your emotions. Of course, that’s fine. It would be wonderful if we could achieve a permanent method of repeating successful emotional experiences. But feelings cannot be fixed. They run through your fingers like water. That is why, whether you like it or not, it is necessary to find more substantial means of affecting and establishing your emotions.”

But our Ibsen enthusiast brushed aside any suggestion that she used physical means in creative work. She went over all the possible approaches: small units, inner objectives, and imaginative inventions. None of them was sufficiently attractive to her. No matter where she turned, or how hard she tried to avoid it, in the end, she was driven to accept the physical basis and Tortsov helped to direct her.

He did not try to find new physical actions for her. His efforts were to lead her back to her own actions, which she had used intuitively and brilliantly.

This time she played well, and there was both truth and belief in her acting. Yet it could not be compared to her first performance. The Director then said to her:

“You played beautifully, but not the same scene. You changed your objective. I asked you to play the scene with a real live baby, and you have given me one with an inert stick of wood wrapped in a tablecloth. All of your actions were adjusted to that. You handled the stick of wood skilfully, but a living child would necessitate a wealth of detailed movements which you quite omitted this time.

The first time, before you swaddled the make-believe baby, you spread out its little arms and legs, you really felt them, you kissed them lovingly, you murmured tender words to it, you smiled at it through your tears. It was truly touching. But just now you left out all these important details. Naturally, a stick of wood has neither arms nor legs.

“The other time, when you wrapped the cloth around its head you were very careful not to let it press on the baby’s cheeks. After he was all bundled up you watched over him, with pride and joy.

“Now try to correct your mistake. Repeat the scene with a baby, not a stick.”

After a great deal of effort, Dasha was finally able to recall consciously what she had felt unconscious the first time she played the scene. Once she believed in the child her tears came freely. When she had finished playing the Director praised her work as an effective example of what he had just been teaching. But I was still disillusioned and insisted that Dasha had not succeeded in moving us after that first burst of feeling.

“Never mind,” said he, “once the ground is prepared and an actor’s feelings begin to rise he will stir his audience as soon as he finds an appropriate outlet for them in some imaginative suggestion.

“I do not want to wound Dasha’s young nerves but suppose that she had had a lovely baby of her own. She was passionately devoted to him, and suddenly, when only a few months old, he died. Nothing in the world can give her any solace, until suddenly fate takes pity on her and she finds, on her doorstep, a baby even more lovely than her own.”

The shot went home. He had barely finished speaking when Dasha began to sob over the stick of wood with twice as much feeling as even the very first time.

I hurried to Tortsov to explain to him that he had accidentally hit upon her own tragic story. He was horrified and started towards the stage to stop the scene, but he was spell-bound by her playing and could not bring himself to interrupt her.

Afterward, I went over to speak to him. “Isn’t it true,” I said, “that this time Dasha was experiencing her own actual personal tragedy? In that case, you cannot ascribe her success to any technique, or creative art. It was just an accidental coincidence.”

“Now you tell me whether what she did the first time was art?” countered Tortsov.

“Of course, it was,” I admitted.

“Why?”

“Because she intuitively recalled her personal tragedy and was moved by it,” I explained.

“Then the trouble seems to lie in the fact that I suggested a new if to her instead of her finding it herself? I cannot see any real difference,” he went on, “between an actor’s reliving his own memories by himself and he’s doing it with the aid of another person. What is important is that the memory should retain these feelings, and, given a certain stimulus, bring them back! Then you cannot help believing in them with your whole body and soul.”

“I agree to that,” I argued, “yet I still think that Dasha was not moved by any scheme of physical actions but by the suggestion that you made to her.”

“I do not for a moment deny that,” broke in the Director. “Everything depends on imaginative suggestion. But you must know just when to introduce it.

Suppose you go to Dasha and ask her whether she would have been touched by my suggestion if I had made it sooner than I did, when she was playing the scene the second time, wrapping up the stick of wood without any display of feeling at all, before she felt the foundling’s little arms and legs, and kissed them before the transformation had taken place in her own mind and the stick had been replaced by a lovely, living child.

I am convinced that at that point the suggestion that that stick with a grimy rag around it was her little boy would only have wounded her sensibilities. To be sure she might have wept over the coincidence between my suggestion and the tragedy in her own life. But that weeping for one who is gone is not the weeping called for in this particular scene where sorrow for what is lost is replaced by joy in what is found.

“Moreover, I believe that Dasha would have been repelled by the wooden stick and tried to get away from it. Her tears would have flowed freely, but quite away from the property baby, and they would have been prompted by her memories of her dead child, which is not what we needed nor what she gave us the first time she played the scene. It was only after she made the mental picture of the child that she could weep over it again as she had at first.

“I was able to guess the right moment and throw in the suggestion that happened to coincide with her most touching memories. The result was deeply moving.”

There was, however, one more point I wanted to press, so I asked:

“Wasn’t Dasha really in a state of hallucination while she was acting?”

“Certainly not,” said the Director emphatically. “What happened was not that she believed in the actual transformation of a wooden stick into a living child, but in the possibility of the occurrence of the play, which, if it happened to her in real life, would be her salvation. She believed in her own maternal actions, love, and all the circumstances surrounding her.

“So you realize that this method of approach to emotions is valuable not only when you create a role but when you wish to relive a part already created. It gives you the means to recall sensations previously experienced. If it were not for them the inspired moments of an actor’s playing would flash before us once and then disappear forever.”

Our lesson today was taken up by testing the sense of the truth of various students. The first to be called on was Grisha. He was asked to play anything at all he liked. So he chose his usual partner, Sonya, and when they had finished the Director said: “What you have just done was correct and admirable from your own point of view, which is that of exceedingly clever technicians, interested only in the external perfection of performance.

“But my feelings could not go along with you, because what I look for in art is something natural, something organically creative, that can put human life into an inert role.

“Your make-believe truth helps you to represent images and passions. My kind of truth helps to create the images themselves and to stir real passions. The difference between your art and mine is the same as between the two words seem and be. I must have the real truth. You are satisfied with its appearance. I must have a true belief. You are willing to be limited to the confidence your public has in you. As they look at you they are sure that you will execute all the established forms with perfection.

They rely on your skill as they do on that of an expert acrobat. From your standpoint, the spectator is merely an onlooker. For me he involuntarily becomes a witness of, and a party to, my creative work; he is drawn into the very thick of the life that he sees on the stage, and he believes in it.”

Instead of making any argument in reply, Grisha caustically quoted the poet Pushkin as having a different point of view about truth in art:

“A host of lowly truths is dearer

Then fictions which lift us higher than ourselves.”

“I agree with you and with Pushkin as well,” said Tortsov, “because he is talking about fictions in which we can believe. It is our faith in them that lifts us. This is a strong confirmation of the point of view that on the stage everything must be real in the imaginary life of the actor. This I did not feel in your performance.”

Whereupon he began to go over the scene in detail and correct it just as he had done with me in the exercise of the burnt money. Then something happened which resulted in a long and most instructive harangue. Grisha suddenly stopped playing. His face was dark with anger, and his lips and hands trembled. After wrestling with his emotions for some time, finally, he blurted out:

“For months we have been moving chairs around, shutting doors, lighting fires. That’s not art; the theatre is not a circus. Their physical actions are in order. It is extremely important to be able to catch your trapeze or jump on a horse. Your life depends on your physical skill. But you cannot tell me that the great writers of the world produced their masterpieces so that their heroes would indulge in exercises of physical actions. Art is free! It needs space and not your little physical truths.

We must be free for great fights instead of crawling on the ground like beetles.”

When he had finished the Director said:

“Your protest astonishes me. Up to now, I have always considered you an actor distinguished for your external technique. Today we find suddenly, that your longings are all in the direction of the clouds. External conventions and lies—that is what clips your wings. What soars is: imagination, feeling, and thought. Yet your feelings and imagination seem to be chained right down here in the auditorium.

“Unless you are caught up in a cloud of inspiration and whirled upwards by it you, more than any other here, will feel the need of all the groundwork we have been doing. Yet you seem to fear that very thing and look upon exercises as degrading to an artist.

“A ballerina puff blows, and sweats, as she goes through her necessary daily exercises before she can make her graceful flights in the evening’s performance. A singer has to spend his mornings bellowing, intoning through his nose, holding notes, developing his diaphragm, and searching for new resonance in his head tones if, in the evening, he is to pour out his soul in song. No artists are above keeping their physical apparatus in order by means of necessary technical exercises.

“Why do you set yourself up as an exception? While we are trying to form the closest kind of direct bond between our physical and spiritual natures, why do you try to get rid of the physical side altogether? But nature has refused to give you the very thing you long for: exalted feelings and experiences. Instead, she has endowed you with the physical technique to show off your gifts.

“The people who talk most about exalted things are the very ones, for the most part, who have no attributes to raise them to high levels. They talk about art and creation with false emotions, in an indistinct and involved way. True artists, on the contrary, speak in simple and comprehensible terms. Think about this and also about the fact that, in certain roles, you could become a fine actor and a useful contributor to art.”

After Grisha, Sonya was tested. I was surprised to see that she did all the simple exercises extremely well. The Director praised her and then he handed her a paper-cutter and suggested that she stab herself with it. As soon as she smelled tragedy in the air she got up on her stilts and at the climax, she brought out such a tremendous amount of noise that we laughed.

The Director said to her:

“In the comedy part you wove a delightful pattern and I believed in you. But in the strong, dramatic places you struck a false note. Evidently, your sense of truth is one-sided. It is sensitive to comedy and unformed on the dramatic side. Both you and Grisha should find your real place in the theatre. It is extremely important, in our art, for each actor to find his particular type.”

Today it was Vanya’s turn to be tested. He played the exercise of the burnt money with Maria and me. I felt that he had never done the first half as well as this time. He amazed me by his sense of proportion and convinced me again of his very real talent.

The Director praised him, but he went on:

“Why,” said he, “do you exaggerate the truth to such an undesirable degree in the death scene? You have cramps, nausea, groans, horrible grimaces, and gradual paralysis. You seem, at this point, to be indulging in naturalism for its own sake. You were more interested in external, visual memories of the dissolution of a human body.

“Now in Hauptmann’s play of Hannele, naturalism has its place. It is used for the purpose of throwing the fundamental spiritual theme of the play into high relief. As a means to an end, we can accept that. Otherwise, there is no need of dragging things out of real life onto the stage which had much better be discarded. “From this, we can conclude that not every type of truth can be transferred to the stage. What we use there is truly transformed into a poetical equivalent by creative imagination.”

“Exactly how do you define this?” asked Grisha, somewhat bitterly.

“I shall not undertake to formulate a definition for it,” said the Director. “I’ll leave that to scholars. All I can do is to help you feel what it is. Even to do that requires great patience, for I shall devote our whole course to it. Or, to be more exact, it will appear by itself after you have studied our whole system of acting and after you yourselves have made the experiment of initiating, clarifying, and transforming simple everyday human realities into crystals of artistic truth.

This does not happen all in a minute. You absorb what is essential and discard whatever is superfluous. You find a beautiful form and expression, appropriate to the theatre. By doing this with the aid of your intuition, talent, and taste you will achieve a simple, comprehensible result.”

The next student to be tested was Maria. She played the scene that Dasha did with the baby. She did it both beautifully and quite differently.

At first she showed an extraordinary amount of sincerity in her joy at finding the child. It was like having a real live doll to play with. She danced around with it, wrapped it up, unwrapped it, kissed it, caressed it, forgetting entirely that all she held was a stick of wood. Then suddenly the baby ceased to respond.

At first, she looked at him, fixedly, for a long time, trying to understand the reason for it. The expression on her face changed. As surprise was gradually replaced by terror, she became more concentrated and moved farther and farther away from the child. When she had gone a certain distance she turned to stone, a figure of tragic suspense.

That was all. Yet how much there was in it of faith, youth, womanliness, true drama! How delicately sensitive was her first encounter with death!

“Every bit of that was artistically true,” exclaimed the Director with feeling. “You could believe in it all because it was based on carefully selected elements taken from real life. She took nothing wholesale. She took just what was necessary. No more, no less. Maria knows how to see what is fine and she has a sense of proportion. Both of these are important qualities.”

When we asked him how it was that a young, inexperienced actress could give such a perfect performance his reply was:

“It comes mostly from natural talent but especially from an exceptionally keen sense of truth.”

At the end of the lesson, he summed up:

“I have told you all that I can, at present, about the sense of truth, falseness, and faith on the stage. Now we come to the question of how to develop and regulate this important gift of nature.

“There will be many opportunities, because it will accompany us at every step and phase of our work whether it be at home, on the stage, at rehearsal, or in public. This sense must penetrate and check everything that the actor does and that the spectator sees. Every little exercise, whether internal or external, must be done under its supervision and approval.

“Our only concern is that all we do should be in the direction of developing and strengthening this sense. It is a difficult task because it is so much easier to lie when you are on the stage than to speak and act the truth. You will need a great deal of attention and concentration to aid the proper growth of your sense of truth and to fortify it.

“Avoid falseness, avoid everything that is beyond your powers as yet and especially avoid everything that runs counter to nature, logic, and common sense! That engenders deformity, violence, exaggeration, and lies. The more often they get innings, the more demoralizing it is for your sense of truth. Therefore avoid the habit of falsifying. Do not let the reeds choke the tender flow of truth. Be merciless in rooting out of yourself all tendency to exaggerated, mechanical acting: dispense with throes.

“A constant elimination of these superfluities will establish a special process which is what I shall mean when you hear me cry: Cut ninety per cent.!”