Carta de despedida

Hey people! I didn't bring this text to the rehearsal the other day. But both Vera and I (and also Niva!) think it is amazing. It may be useful!


If for a while God forgot that I’m a puppet and gave me a piece of life, probably I wouldn’t say everything that I think, but definitivelly I would think everything that I say. I would give more value to things not because of what they cost but because of what they mean.
I would sleep less and dream more. I understand that for each minute that we close our eyes, we lose sixty seconds of light. I would walk when the others stopped, I would wake up when the others slept, I would listen when the others spoke, and how much I would enjoy a chocolate ice-cream!
If God gave me a piece of life I would dress simply, I would lie on the sun, “showing” not only my body but my soul. My God, if I had a heart, I would write my hate on the ice and I would wait for the sun to rise.
My God, if I had a piece of light... I wont let a single day pass without saying people I love how much I love them. I would convince every single women and men that they are my favourites and I would live in love with love
I would prove people how wrong they are to think that they stop falling in love when they get older, without knowing that they get older when they stop falling in love! To a kid... I would give him wings, but I let him alone to learn how to fly. To the elder I would teach them that death does not arrive with being old but with forgetting.
There are so many things I have learned from you, people... I have learned that everybody wants to live in the pick of the mountain without knowing that the true happiness lays in the way “you get into it”. I have learned that when a new born grasp his father’s fist for the first time, he caught him forever.
I have learned that a man has only the right to look down to another when he has to help him to stand up. There are so many things I have been able to learn from you, but actually they won’t be that worth, because when they keep me into this suitcase, unhappily I will be dying.
Always say what you feel and do what you think.
If I knew today as the last time I’m gonn see you sleep, I would hug you so strong and I would pray the lord to be able to be the guardian of your soul. If I knew this is the last time I’m gonna see you going out through that door, I would give you a hug, a kiss and I would call you again to give you more. If I knew this was the last time I am gonna hear your voice, I would record each one of your words to be able to hear them forever. If I knew these were the last moments I see you I would tell you “I love you” and I wouldn’t assume, stupidly, that you already know it.
There is always a tomorrow and life gives us the opportunity to do things right, but in case I’m wrong and today is the only thing we have left, I would like to tell you how much I love you, and that I’m never going to forget you.
Nobody has for sure a tomorrow, young or old. Today can be the last time you see the ones you love. So... don’t wait more, do it today, because if tomorrow never comes, you will for sure regret the day you didn’t take time for a smile, a hug, a kiss, and that you were so occupied to give them their last wish. Keep the ones you love near you, tell them in their ear how much you need them. Love them and trate them good. Take time to tell them “I’m sorry”, “forgive me”, “please”, “thank you”, and all the love words you know.
Nobody will remember you for your secret thoughts. Ask God for the strength and the wisdom to express them. Show your friend how important they are for you.

It is not a bad dream - Alberto

In the middle of nowhere, but in my nowhere. In the middle of a valley, an unknown valley surrounded by unknown mountains. I see myself in this environment, this apparently faraway environment which is not so because I am part of it and it is also part of me.

I see myself next to “the old grandad”. A really old tree that has been there since ever. It has been part of the village since the village was not even a villge. Once, all the men in the village tried to embrace “the old grandad” all the way around putting all their arms together but they couldn't. It was too big for them. “The old grandad” was their protector ad they had respect towards it.

I used to live next to “the old grandad”. It used to be my protection from the heavy wind. In the hot summer afternoons, its uncountable branches used to cover my house, keeping it apart form the extreme heat and the dryness.

Everyone knew “the old grandad”. It was part of people's lives. Everyday it was surrounded by several people who used to come to relieve their thoughts, to tell the tree their most sincere secrets. They used to come to listen to the advice that “the old grandad” wanted to share with them through the branches, through the sound of the leaves and the birds that used to live within it. They used to come to feel happy.

But everything changed when “the others” came. “The old grandad” was embraced. Actually, embrace is not the appropriate word. It was apprehended, but it was not so by human arms, but by iron chains. “The others” wanted to take “the old grandad” out of the ground. “The others” said that where the tree was situated was, in fact, the best place to set “the baby”: an enormous building which would become the centre of communication for the whole area. Some of those who used to come to tell the “the old grandad” their secrets helped “the others” to get rid of the tree. “It is part of progress”, they said. To get rid of the tree was not an easy task. They managed to take it out of the ground. They even burn it, but they could not pull out all the roots, those antique roots. Those roots that were part of their hearts and those roots that would be inside themselves forever.

Now everything is different. Nothing protect us. My house is where it used to be, but actually it it not that place anymore because that place is a completely different one now. The wind comes through all the doors and windows. The sun's radiation is reflected off the walls of “the baby” so in the summer, staying in my house is like staying in the middle of the sun.

People keep on coming to the place they used to come, although it is a completely different place. They do not come happy anymore. They come to work in the communication centre but they do not communicate anything at all. They are all sad. They do not feel comfortable sharing their thought as they used to do.

I don't know why “the others” behave like that, why they do those sort of things... I cannot understand... I don't know what is happening...

--He is waking up!

The doctors told me that I had been in the hospital for five years in a deep dream but that now I was awake again and I could meet my family. I was lost but I kind of undertood the situation. I had had an accident and had lost consciousness for five years. It was all a nightmare.

At that moment, my only thought was to go outside the hospital and see my dear village, with its nature and all its people.. but I couldn't find it. What I saw was not the place where I used to live. It was full of buildings, cars, full of people. People who were all together but everyone on their own...

I realised that everything I saw in that long nightmare was what had actually happened. It was not a nightmare but the reality. I felt sorry. I felt angry at “the others” for having done what they done. I felt angry at myself because I was part of “the others” because I did nothing to change the situation.


27 March 2008. Environmental Day, UWC in Mostar

Circus characters

For those who still didn't find their characters, I just found an interesting page which may be helpful for you.

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2008/04/24/circus-characters-history-symbolism-archetypes/


=)

CARTA DE DESPEDIDA – GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

If for a while God forgot that I’m a puppet and gave me a piece of life, probably I wouldn’t say everything that I think, but definitivelly I would think everything that I say. I would give more value to things not because of what they cost but because of what they mean.
I would sleep less and dream more. I understand that for each minute that we close our eyes, we lose sixty seconds of light. I would walk when the others stopped, I would wake up when the others slept, I would listen when the others spoke, and how much I would enjoy a chocolate ice-cream!
If God gave me a piece of life I would dress simply, I would lie on the sun, “showing” not only my body but my soul. My God, if I had a heart, I would write my hate on the ice and I would wait for the sun to rise.
My God, if I had a piece of light... I wont let a single day pass without saying people I love how much I love them. I would convince every single women and men that they are my favourites and I would live in love with love
I would prove people how wrong they are to think that they stop falling in love when they get older, without knowing that they get older when they stop falling in love! To a kid... I would give him wings, but I let him alone to learn how to fly. To the elder I would teach them that death does not arrive with being old but with forgetting.
There are so many things I have learned from you, people... I have learned that everybody wants to live in the pick of the mountain without knowing that the true happiness lays in the way “you get into it”. I have learned that when a new born grasp his father’s fist for the first time, he caught him forever.
I have learned that a man has only the right to look down to another when he has to help him to stand up. There are so many things I have been able to learn from you, but actually they won’t be that worth, because when they keep me into this suitcase, unhappily I will be dying.
Always say what you feel and do what you think.
If I knew today as the last time I’m gonn see you sleep, I would hug you so strong and I would pray the lord to be able to be the guardian of your soul. If I knew this is the last time I’m gonna see you going out through that door, I would give you a hug, a kiss and I would call you again to give you more. If I knew this was the last time I am gonna hear your voice, I would record each one of your words to be able to hear them forever. If I knew these were the last moments I see you I would tell you “I love you” and I wouldn’t assume, stupidly, that you already know it.
There is always a tomorrow and life gives us the opportunity to do things right, but in case I’m wrong and today is the only thing we have left, I would like to tell you how much I love you, and that I’m never going to forget you.
Nobody has for sure a tomorrow, young or old. Today can be the last time you see the ones you love. So... don’t wait more, do it today, because if tomorrow never comes, you will for sure regret the day you didn’t take time for a smile, a hug, a kiss, and that you were so occupied to give them their last wish. Keep the ones you love near you, tell them in their ear how much you need them. Love them and trate them good. Take time to tell them “I’m sorry”, “forgive me”, “please”, “thank you”, and all the love words you know.
Nobody will remember you for your secret thoughts. Ask God for the strength and the wisdom to express them. Show your friend how important they are for you.

Extract from “Rise and Shine”

‘Don’t touch me!’ ‘Let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about it first, and then if you still want to leave, well OK but let’s talk first! We’ve got to discuss it, haven’t we? For God’s sake, we’ve got to discuss it!’ So he was nudging me towards the ‘discussion’. (Points to the bed.) And he makes me sit down, and he says yes, I was right… but he was used to being spoilt by his MOTHER… and he treated me like his MOTHER… but he was wrong, he was going to change… in fact he was well into the famous so-called SELF-CRITICISM… and he did it so well… he was so sweet… that I started to cry!
[I didn’t read what follows, but I think it can be interesting]
And the more self-criticism he did the harder I cried, and the harder I cried, the more self-criticism he did! I had a really good cry last night! What about the key? (She suddenly remembers.)

[Don’t you think that mentioning the key can be such a good link to whatever we put next? Comment on the post also if you have some thoughts about it now! You don’t need to be registered]

The Dancing Mistress: On the Assembly Line

Warning! It seems longer than it really is. I encourage you to read it (I hope so! It took me a while to type it!!) because it has such a good sense of humor and irony. I can imagine the woman maybe on those walls Alberto used to jump to the roof. Or also inside the bars that are like half a meter high. Or anywhere! I just love the space.
So yeah, read it (cause this afternoon I only read the first speaker's lines) and comment below what do you think about it!



SPEAKER: (offstage voice) Today rhythm and harmony are at the root of production specially in modern firms. As we have seen in Japan for some time, qualified dancing instructors have been called in to train and teach workers on the shop floor.

Enter the dance teacher. The stage is completely empty.

TEACHER: (towards the wings) Come on you three we chose yesterday.

Enter the young women workers, rather hesitantly, and line up downstage beside the teacher. They carry out the movements under her direction.

Come on darlings, please. It’s not good putting you straight on the assembly line if you haven’t learned the twenty-four simple precise movements you have to make, keeping exact time to the music. It’s simple, not tiring; you’ll find it’s elegant even, and enjoyable… But you’ll have to pay close attention! Our motto is ‘Work with joy!’ Let’s imagine that the high conveyor belt passes along at this height, and the lower belt moves at this level. You’ll find the screws spaced out ten centimetres apart on the higher belt; each one of you, with both hands, must pick up two of them and insert them, first one hand then the other, in the holes in this structure on the lower belt. Now let’s try… that’s right, like that, slowly… don’t go too fast… slowly does it… good, well done!

That wasn’t difficult, was it? … One two… one, two… Now listen carefully: you’ll see a kind of metallic cigar moving along on the higher belt, which you must pick up in your teeth… like this… ahmm… watch out it’s coming… ahmm… well done! Now, without stopping what you are doing with your hands, insert the fuse into the hole in the other end of the piece which will come along on your left at that precise moment. There’ll be two more fuses to thread on… ahmm… one threaded… so now with two sharp blows with your forehead you tap home the fuses… ohpp! Ohpp! … start again with the basic movement… one, two… steady does it… you mustn’t get tired… Isn’t it fun? Simplicity itself and great fun! Now, the third movement: using your nostrils on the lower belt… breathe in, come on breathe quickly… go! … Well done. Now you will see some tugs to straighten them out… and then you wrap them around the sprockets on the left-hand engine section. Three turns is all they need. Right, go… one, two, three… that’ll do.

Now you... [I skipped around 7 lines] … be careful to pull back your hands, or else zac… a quick blow… and trac… you’ll cut off your fingers and we’ll have them all over the floor… the boss doesn’t want that! It makes such a mess! Off we go… well done… that’s perfect! Now you stop the rive belt with a sharp blow with the right thigh on the left piston… good… and now two blows with your hip on the right-hand piston like when you do a saucy walk! Another with your left… zam! Bend the knees… pelvis forward… until the tummy touches the rubber sucker on the drill handle… push it… there! Gyrate the pelvis… yes, that’s right, just like the belly dance… great… again! Now pull back the pelvis with a jerk… strike the level just behind with the buttocks (Reacting to the mystified air on the faces of the women.)… yes, I mean stick on your arse, and the cycle comes to an end so a new one can begin. Come on stick it out!! Ohpp!

See how easy it is? And you’ve got the additional advantage of toning up the pectorals and fighting the flab. Goodness knows how many women would pay to be in your position! Right now, off we go again: […]

[I skipped around on page of the book]

They continue with a fanatic rhythm, while the voice from the loud speaker says.

SPEAKER: In the Siemens factory in Milan, the assembly line workers achieve four thousand five hundred movements in a single day, three thousand of which are made with the hips to work the shearing machine pedal. The violent blows to which the pelvis is subjected have caused most of the women to suffer from gynaecological and pelvic disorders; some have had undergo operations which have left them unable to have children.

Lorca research

BIOGRAPHY

Lorca was born on June 5th 1898 in Fuente Vaqueros, a small village near Granada. Although they were quite a common family, his father (Mr. Federico García) was a respected and prosperous landowner, who decided to move the family into the main city, Granada, in 1909. However, Federico García Lorca wanted people to call him Lorca, which is her mother’s surname.

In 1919 he moved to the famous Residencia de estudiantes in Madrid, to continue his university work. There he met all kind of artists, including Salvador Dalí, with whom he had a relationship. He went to United States in 1929-1930 after a depressive period. He spent his time mostly in New York, where he wrote surrealistic poems and plays.

He went back to Spain, where the re-establishment of the Spanish Republic in 1931 allowed him to fully participate in the cultural life. He became director of La Barraca, a touring theatre company with the aim of bringing classical plays to rural audiences, which otherwise would have been so far away of being able to see this type of theatre. It was with La Barraca that he wrote his three most famous plays: Bodas de sangre (Blood Wedding), Yerma and La casa de Bernarda Alba (The house of Bernarda Alba). It was also with this company that he produced first his “rural” triology plays.

When the civil war started in 1936, he went back to Granada, although he knew it was one of the less secure places he could go: first of all, because of its conservative elite (almost the bigger in the whole Andalucia) and second of all, because he was already quite known.

On 16th August, 1936 he was arrested by the nationalists, tortured and, on 19th August he was shot because of his homosexuality and left-wing position and contacts. Lorca was thrown into an unknown grave somewhere between Víznar and Alfacar, near Granada.

______________

The society of its time, at least in the countryside of Andalucia, was so rural (practically all the economy was based on agriculture) and, in a way, basic. It was far away from the rationalism of the rest of western Europe, and there were still some magic beliefs going on there.

Lorca was really aware of this, and he wanted to preserve it. In fact, lots of people call him as a land poet and land playwriter, confirmed by what he said once: "I love the land. All my emotions tie me to it. The first memories I have are of the earth." And from here we can understand his attempts, during all his life, to keep the culture connected with its roots. These attempts were not only in theatre, as we can perfectly see with the two plays we are studying, but also with music (creating first amateur festival of Andalusian "Cante jundo", in order to protect Andalusian music from commercialization) and poetry (Romancero Gitano [Gipsy Ballads], with the same purpose).

However, he was not the only one who wanted to shake the current conventions of his time. Actually, he was a member of what is called the “Generation of 27”: a group of authors that started their course with firm connections to land and, later on, also used surrealistic techniques. His surrealistic works can be seen with “El Público” (attack to commercial theatre and the social order) and also “Así que pasen cinco años”. Apart from trying to criticize the rationalism in theatre, he also challenged audiences introducing controversial topics such as: homosexuality, class system and role of the women in society.

Due to this kind of rebellion we can perfectly see that he broke the conventions and, furthermore, he did it in two ways. The first one comes, as we commented before, from moving away from the rationalist tendency that provoked the decadence of tragedy, that provoked a high amount of empty comedies that just wanted to please middle class audience. At this point it’s important to note the completely failure of Blood Wedding in New York because, as Lorca similarly said, New York it’s only about money and oneself; how was that society going to understand the blood, mystery, speaking moons and old traditions from our still rural countryside?

The second convention he ignored was the theoretical problems that ancient Greeks set up for tragedies, and that European dramaturges tried to follow. He just wrote, wrote from and for the land, from and for the common people.

There are so many things that can be said about Lorca, but the last important one I want to comment is the double character he had towards the end of his life, due to the celebrity he started to become, that made him keep inside his real character. Perhaps from here we can understand better how the worries about what the others will say, are reflected in most of the characters of his plays.

To sum up, I wanted to quote three things Lorca said that, at the end, are the best material we have to understand him:

http://uwcimtheatreclass.blogspot.com/2008/02/lorca-quotes.html (I already posted them some days ago)

Neus.

Dramaturgy on Lorca's plays

“Art, like religion, has many places of worship.” ¹ Worshiping in the case of Lorca’s plays is in several centres, which are connected with environment in which he worked. As Spain's most deeply appreciated and highly revered poet and dramatist he found his inspiration in surrounding, Spain’s civil war, women’s rights, and tradition.
All of these subjects were not easy to write about; especially if you consider the fact that he was homosexual. There is opinion that one of the reasons he was murdered is homophobia. But, even without this circumstance he was under a lot of pressure, from one side he was telling the truth in his work, from other side this truth was not acceptable for Spain society at that time. This period, in which his, the most known plays were written (Blood Weddings, Yerma, House of Bernando Alba) 1933-1935 was period before Civil War (1936-1939). Therefore his plays are directly influenced by these historical circumstances, as well as by his life and searching for the freedom. Like many of his characters he is divided between what world sees (successful play writer) and what he really is, but he hides it (homosexuality). His stories, especially the one I am going to focus on, Blood Wedding and Yerma, talk about many themes, but they mostly emphasise women’s suppressed position in the society. This is period in Spain when women were paid the half amount of money that men were paid for the same job. This is period when women started searching for their rights. In the same time Lorca had opportunity to make distance of all these moments in his country, he left to America. In my opinion this gave him other perception of reality in the world and comparison this with situation in his country. That is where I find the reason why his plays are named as “folk’s trilogy”, because they were made for “folk” (people), after he saw the world he had desire to write about his own country, in the way it is. He wrote in different way, in way that everyone will understand, in the way how life goes, but also in the way he knew to express himself the best; in poetry. Many roles in Yerma, but also in Blood Wedding, say their roles in form similar to song, poem. Poetry was another love of Lorca’s, besides plays he also wrote poetry, which can be frequently found in these plays. This emotional expression we can observe as something more than simple Lorca’s satisfaction through writing both (poem and drama) in one whole; we can recognize deeper feelings inside of this mixture. Poem is light and melancholic, just like Yerma’s desire for a child, but also romantic, emotional and expression of courage, like characters in Blood Wedding. It all depends on the way how one reads and interprets these lines, through using all three centres (emotion, thought, action), but also from the way how actor asks himself 6 questions. These questions can be answered in totally different way than Lorca may imagined in his play, but this is approvable as long as essential thing which he wanted to say is said, because he used a lot of symbolism to say certain thing, that is how he made it internal, so we can adapt it to any time, any place. This is what makes art from any creation. Because, if you look at his plays you will see that they can be seen as the story tells, but you also can see at Yerma as Spain trying to reach freedom, or Bride from Blood Wedding as Lorca’s temptation to say what he think or just to revel his other side, which nobody has idea that it exists and it is against everything that society wants him to say or to be, not only from him but from everyone.



__________________
¹Lan Silver, An introduction to the Art of Stage Directing, Stormville Art Press, New York


It is not only in theatre, you can take Pablo Picasso as an example and you will see that in his art he tried to aware people that nothing is as you see it in reality, it is how you feel it, because perfection is a word which represents something that every person can experience in different way, just like Lorca’s characters and Lorca himself see the world differently than society in which they live.
Only job that in this position any actor has is to be an artist who will make art alive, because art is life, Lorca doesn’t talk about anything but life.
Therefore his plays are so real, even cruel, but again it all depends on actor’s choice how will interpret this message.
From these facts it is obvious that his plays are perfect combination of modernity and tradition, truth and covered lies.
Whoever plays these roles his/her mission is to represent this struggle, inner and outer. In these plays heroic tension is very important component of character. It is fight between desire for freedom and learnt helplessness (term in psychology which means that one after many times of trying learn to not try any more, no matter will he, or will not succeed, he cannot change anything anymore – based on previous experience), between what everyone see and what character really feel, between life and death and more important; between what is more important and with what we loose and with what we gain something good. And the question, what is more important?
Lorca’s idea was to make plays about people, for people and by that to make change in society. His plays talk about Spanish people, but in the same time they talk about every person in the world, person who stands up and lays down every day and night, and without any knowledge about Lorca every person ask himself where is his place of worship. These plays are not answer on this question, they are only proof that this person is not alone in this confusion and that answer is somewhere between your centres of worship.

Lorca quotes.

Hey people! I thought it will be interesting for all of you to read some Lorca quotes. I took them from the introduction of the spanish edition of Blood Wedding that Alberto and I have.

Here you are!

"Theatre is poetry that rises from the book ..."

“There are new ways to give to theatre. Everything’s in daring to walk on them”

“-Do you refuse bourgeois audience?
-That one that delights itself with scenes in which the protagonist ties his tie whistling and suddenly calls his servant:… “Listen, Pepe, bring me…” That’s not theatre, nor is nothing. People from pits and boxes do the same every single day and therefore are pleased to see it. I would pull out the pits and boxes from theatres and would bring down the gods. In the theatre you have to let enter the espadrille audience. “¿Are you wearing, madam, a beautiful silk dress? Well then, go out!” The audience with esparto t-shirt, in front of Hamlet, in front of Aeschylus’s works, in front of all what is grand. The bourgeois is being the end of the dramatic in Spanish theatre.”

“Above all, it is necessary to understand why the theatre is in decadence. Theatre, in order to acquire again his strength, has to go back to common people, from who it has moved away. Theatre is, as well, a matter of poets. Without tragic sense there’s no theatre, and tragic sense is absent from today’s theatre. Common people know a lot about that.”

Stanislavski: An Introduction by Jean Benedetti

FOUNDATIONS

Had Stanislavski been a 'natural', had his talent - some would say his genius - as an actor found an immediate, spontaneous outlet, there would be no System. As it was it took years of persistent, unremitting effort to remove the blocks and barriers which inhibited the free expression of his great gifts. His search for the 'laws' of acting was the result of that struggle.

Stanislavski’s career might be described as the painful evolution of a stage-struck child into a mature and responsible artist and teacher. He remained stage-struck to the end, adoring the smell of spirit-gum and grease-paint. His infatuation with theatre, with play-acting kept his mind fresh and open to new ideas to the very end. At the same time theatre was, for him, a matter of the highest seriousness, both artistic and moral. It was a disciplined activity which required dedication and training. What we receive as the System originated from his attempt to analyse and monitor his own progress as an artist and his attempts to achieve his ideas as an actor and meet his own developing standards, and it is all the more valuable for being born of concrete activity since the solutions he found were lived and not the result of speculation or abstract theory. The System is his practice examined, tested and verified. Although he received help along the way from actors and directors the System is essentially Stanislavski's own creation. For, while others could define for him the results that were required, they could not define the process by which those results might be achieved. This he had to do for himself. My Life in Art is the story (not always accurate) of his failures; false starts and successes.

Stanislavski was born in 1863, the second son of a family devoted to the theatre. He made his first stage appearance at the age of seven in a series of tableaux vivants organised by his governess to celebrate his mother's name day. When he was fourteen his father transformed an out-building on his country estate at Liubimovka into a well-equipped theatre. Later, a second theatre was constructed in the town house in Moscow. Stanislavski’s real début as an actor was made at Liubimovka in September 1877, when four one-act plays, directed by his tutor, were staged to inaugurate the new theatre. As a result of that evening an amateur group, the Alexeyev Circle, * was formed, consisting of Stanislavski's brothers and sisters, cousins and one or two friends.

It is at this date that Stanislavski's conscious, artistic career can be said to begin. During the period 1877 to 1906, which he describes as his Childhood and Adolescence, he encountered the fundamental problems of acting and directing which he resolved as best he could.

He spent the day of that 5 September, according to his own account, in a state of extreme excitement, trembling all over in his eagerness to get on stage. In the event the performance was to produce more perplexity than satisfaction. He appeared in two of the plays, A Cup of Tea and The Old Mathematician. In the first he felt completely at ease. He was able to copy the performance of a famous actor he had seen, down to the last detail. When the curtain fell he was convinced he had given a splendid performance. He was soon disabused. He had been inaudible. He had gabbled and his hands had been in such a constant state of motion that no one could follow what he was saying. In the second play, which had given him so much more trouble in rehearsals, he was, by contrast, much better. He was at a loss to resolve the contradiction between what he felt and what the audience had experienced. How could he feel so good and act so badly? Feel so ill at ease and be so effective?

His response to the problem was crucial. He began to keep a notebook, in which he recorded his impressions, analysed his difficulties and sketched out solutions. He continued this practice throughout his life, so that the Notebooks span some sixty-one years of activity. * It is characteristic of Stanislavski that he never shied away from contradictions or refused the paradoxical. He worked through them.

His frequent visits to the theatre provided him with models and examples. At the Maly Theatre - his 'university' - as he called it - there were still the survivors of a once great company. He was also able to see foreign artists such as Salvini and Duse, who appeared in Moscow during Lent, when Russian actors were forbidden by the church to perform. The contrast between the ease, naturalness and flow of the actor of genius and his own desperate efforts, either gabbling inaudibly or shouting, either rigid with tension or all flailing arms, made a profound effect on him. They created, he could only imitate more or less well what others had done before. The attempt to discover in what the 'naturalness' of the great actor consisted is the seed from which the System grew.

Drama school

In 1885, at the age of twenty-two Stanislavski entered a drama school. The experience lasted three weeks. His rapid departure was caused partly by the fact that he could not attend full-time. He had finished his studies early and gone into the family textile business. He could not always get away from the office. More important, however, was his swift recognition of the fact that the school could not give him what he was looking for - a properly thought-out method of working, a means of harnessing his own natural creativity. Not only did the school fail to provide such a method, it could not even conceive that such a method existed. All his teachers could do was indicate the results they wanted, not the means to achieve them. At best, they could pass on the technical tricks which they themselves had acquired.

The young Stanislavski needed guidance and discipline badly. The greater barrier to his development as an artist was his image of himself as an actor. He saw himself continuously in dashing 'romantic' roles. It was what he himself defined as his 'Spanish boots' problem. Thigh boots, a sword and a cloak were fatal to him. Any progress he might have made towards truth and naturalness was immediately wiped out. He became a musical-comedy stereotype - all swagger and bombast. The only teacher at drama school who might have been some help to him, Glikeria Fedotova, left about the same time he did. He was fortunate enough to meet her again later, as well as her husband, at a critical moment in his career.

A theatre in decline

Russian theatre in the last quarter of the nineteenth century was in a poor state. There were the great stars of the Maly Theatre whom Stanislavski describes in terms of such admiration and affection, but they were mainly of the older generation and they were surrounded by mediocrity. The monopoly of the imperial theatres had been abolished in 1882. Thereafter commercial managements threw on plays to make quick profits. As Stanislavski remarked, the theatre was controlled by barmen on one hand and bureaucrats on the other. A few brilliant individuals shone here and there.

On the whole, observation of professional practice could only show Stanislavski what to avoid. In an unpublished manuscript he describes a typical rehearsal period. First came the reading and the casting of the various roles. Some discussion of the play's meaning was supposed to take place but generally there was insufficient time. The actors were left to find their own way. Then came the first rehearsal.

It took place on stage with a few old tables and chairs as a set. The director explained the decor: a door centre, two doors on each side etc.

At the first rehearsal the actors read their parts book in hand and the prompter was silent. The director sat on the forestage and gave his instructions to the cast. 'What should I do here?' asked one actor. 'Sit on the sofa, ' the director answers. 'And what should I be doing?' asks another. 'You are nervous, wring your hands and walk up and down, ' the director orders. 'Can't I sit down?' the actor persists. 'How can you possibly sit down when you are nervous?' replies the bewildered director. So the first and second acts are set. On the next day, that is to say the second rehearsal, work continues in like manner with the third and fourth acts. The third and sometimes the fourth rehearsal consist of going through the whole thing again; the actors move about the stage, memorizing the director's instructions, reading their lines in half-voice i.e., a whisper, gesticulating strongly in an attempt to arouse some feeling.

At the next rehearsal the lines must be known. In theatres with money this may last one or two days, and another rehearsal is arranged where the actors play without script but still at half voice. The prompter, however, works at full voice.

At the next rehearsal the actors are expected to play at full voice. Then dress rehearsals begin with makeup, costumes and the set. Finally there is the performance. *

This seems to have been a comparatively disciplined affair. More often than not the actors simply took over, ignoring the director, settling for what they knew best. An actress would move to the window or the fireplace for no better reason than that was what she always did. The script meant less than nothing. Sometimes the cast did not even bother to learn their lines. Leading actors would simply plant themselves downstage centre, by the prompter's box, wait to be fed the lines and then deliver them straight at the audience in a ringing voice, giving a fine display of passion and 'temperament'. Everyone, in fact, spoke their lines out front. Direct communication with other actors was minimal. Furniture was so arranged as to allow the actors to face front.

Sets were as stereotyped as the acting: wings, back-drops taken from stock, doors conventionally placed, standing isolated in space with no surrounding wall. The costumes were also 'typical'. When Stanislavski attempted to have costumes made to specific designs he was told, with some asperity, that there were standard designs for character types and would continue to be. There was no sense of a need for change or renewal. The amateur theatre reflected the practice of the professional, only worse.

If Stanislavski wanted models or guidance he would have to look back a generation or so earlier, to the great days of the Maly Theatre when artistic standards had been set and discipline imposed by two men of genius, the actor Mikhail Shchepkin and the writer Nikolai Gogol. The actors Stanislavski so admired were impressive not merely because they had talent but because they had been trained at this school, where the first steps had been taken towards a genuinely Russian theatre and the creation of a genuinely Russian style - Realism.

Shchepkin

Mikhail Shchepkin (1788-1863) was born a serf on the estate of Count Wolkenstein. It was common practice among members of the Russian aristocracy in the eighteenth century to create companies of actors composed of their more talented serfs. These serfs not infrequently received an education at the same level as the children of their masters.

The prevailing acting style was even more conventionalised than during Stanislavski's youth. Actors sang their lines in a high declamatory tone. According to Shchepkin's Memoirs, the actors' playing was considered good when none of them spoke in his natural voice, but in a totally artificial tone, when the words were delivered in a loud voice and when each of them was accompanied by a gesture. The words 'love', 'passion', 'treachery' were shouted as loudly as possible but the facial expression did not add to the effect since it remained invariably tense and unnatural. *

On making an exit it was obligatory to raise the right hand. Moreover, it was considered impolite for an actor to turn his back on the audience so that all exits had to be made facing front. Members of the cast spent a great deal of time, effort and ingenuity in devising methods of getting off stage without infringing this rule. Conventions of staging were equally rigid.

An accident came to the rescue. One day Shchepkin was rehearsing Sganarelle in Molière's School for Husbands. He was tired and running out of energy and began 'just saying' the lines. The result was a revelation.

‘I realised that I had said a few words in a perfectly simple manner, so simple that had I said them in life and not in a play I would not have said them otherwise. *

The way was open to a new style of acting - Realism. It was the genius of Shchepkin to have taken what he initially, in common with his fellow actors, considered incompetence and turned it into a new and positive method of work.

Schepkin's reputation grew. His admirers planned to buy his freedom and, after some difficulties, succeeded in 1822. The following year he joined the Imperial Theatre in Moscow and in 1824 appeared in the opening performance, on 14 October, of the Maly Theatre.

Shchepkin provided Stanislavski with a model, both in his ideas and in his approach to performance. He defined what was to become the central problem for Stanislavski: does an actor feel his role or does he imitate its externals? Can the audience tell the difference? Shchepkin does not minimise the difficulties or evade the contradictions every actor experiences when approaching a role with any degree of seriousness. He points up the difference between what Stanislavski came to call the personality actor, who is always and only himself, and the character actor, who attempts to get into the skin of the character. He also establishes the essential link between the social and the personal, between the actor's capacity to be open to the world around him and to create particular human beings. He outlined his views in a letter to the actress Aleksandra Schubert in March 1848:

… one actor does not cry on stage but by giving, so to speak, a semblance of tears, makes the audience cry, another actor is bathed in bitter tears but the audience does not share his feelings. Might one then conclude that real feelings are not needed in the theatre, merely cold artifice, the actor's craft? I may be wrong but no! How can I express my thoughts more clearly? For instance, one person has been endowed by nature with a soul that has a natural affinity with everything that is beautiful and good; all that is human is dear to him, he does not stand apart. No matter who he is with, whatever their station in life, he feels their joys and woes, he is passionate in his understanding as though he himself were concerned and so he will weep and laugh with them. Another man, much more bound up with himself, more self-centred, lives in the world, encountering sorrow and laughter at every step but will only participate in either insofar as he is linked socially to the people concerned, or because it is useful to express his sympathy […]; he will commiserate with someone who has been robbed of a thousand roubles but it would never enter his head how costly it is for a beggar to lose his last rouble; he will commiserate with some nobleman whose wife has been seduced but he will not raise an eyebrow if he is told that this nobleman has had his way with his coachman's wife. These people judge everything coldly but so as not to reveal themselves as the egoists they are, they make a show of concern as though it were real concern, and since they are always calm and collected express themselves with great clarity. It is the same in the theatre: it is much easier to convey everything mechanically, for that all you need is reason and, little by little, your reason will approximate to joy and sorrow to the extent that an imitation can approximate to the genuine article. But an open-hearted actor, that's another matter; indescribable labours await him: he must first begin by blotting himself, his own personality, his own individuality, out and become the character the author has given him; he must walk, talk, think, feel, weep, laugh in the way the author wants him - and you cannot do that if you have not blotted yourself out. You see how much more meaningful this kind of actor is! The first kind merely fakes, the second is the real thing.

Shchepkin also pinpointed a problem that was to concern Stanislavski throughout his career: why is it that the actor who fakes can win an audience's sympathy while an actor who has worked hard and is 'sincere' leaves them cold? The problem may well be that when he laughs or cries he is doing so as himself, not as the character.

[ … ] You may say that the perfection I seek is impossible; no, it is just difficult! You ask me why we should strive for some sort of perfection when there are easier ways of pleasing an audience? We might equally well ask: why have art? So, my dear friend, study it as something precise and exact, not as a fake. *

Shchepkin imposed strict discipline on himself. In a career spanning fifty years he never missed a rehearsal and was never late. He expected no less dedication from others.

We have not yet achieved a proper idea of real application to work, so we must watch ourselves otherwise we shall fall into the typical Russian attitude of perhaps and maybe, which, in art, produces nothing.

For Shchepkin the actor's individuality, his own particular way of doing and saying things, was of paramount importance. At the same time all the actor's gifts and talents had to be subordinated to the central theme of the play.

Gogol

He found a natural ally in Gogol (1809-52). Indeed such was the identity of their views that it is a matter of scholarly dispute as to who influenced whom the most. Gogol himself was an extremely gifted actor. Significantly he failed an audition for the Imperial Theatre because his performance was too simple, too 'real'.

Gogol expressed his ideas in the Petersburg Notes of 1836, his Advice to Those Who Would Play 'The Government Inspector' as It Ought to be Played (c. 1846) and in his letters.

Of the contemporary repertoire he said:
The strange has become the subject of contemporary drama … murders, fires, the wildest passions which have no place in contemporary society! … Hangmen, poisons - a constant straining for effect; not a single character inspires any sympathy whatsoever! No spectator ever leaves the theatre touched, in tears; on the contrary, he clambers into his carriage hurriedly, in an anxious state and is unable to collect his thoughts for a long time.

Of the effect on the actor:
The situation of the Russian actor is pitiful. All about him a young nation pulsates and seethes and they give him characters he has never set eyes upon. What can he do with these strange heroes, who are neither Frenchmen nor Germans but bizarre people totally devoid of definite passions and distinct features? Where can he display his art? On what can he develop his talent? For heaven's sake give us Russian characters, give us ourselves - our scoundrels, our eccentrics. … Truly it is high time we learned that only a faithful rendering of characters - not in general stereotyped features but in national forms so striking in their vitality that we are compelled to exclaim: 'Yes, that person seems familiar to me' - only such a rendering can be of genuine service….

We have turned the theatre into a plaything … something like a rattle used to entice children, forgetting that it is a rostrum from which a living lesson is spoken to an entire multitude….

More specifically he advised actors:
Above all beware of falling into caricature. Nothing ought to be exaggerated or hackneyed, not even the minor roles. … The less an actor thinks about being funny or making the audience laugh, the more the comic elements of his part will come through. The ridiculous will emerge spontaneously through the very seriousness with which each character is occupied with his own affairs. They are all caught up in their own interests, bustling and fussing, even fervent, as if faced with the most important task of their lives. Only the audience, from its detached position, can perceive the vanity of their concerns. But they themselves do not joke at all, and have no inkling that anybody is laughing at them. The intelligent actor, before seizing upon the petty oddities and superficial peculiarities of his part, must strive to capture those aspects that are common to all mankind. He ought to consider the purpose of his role, the major and predominant concern of each character, what it is that consumes his life and constitutes the perpetual object of his thoughts, his idée fixe. Having grasped this major concern, the actor must assimilate it so thoroughly that the thoughts and yearnings of his character seem to be his own and remain constantly in his mind over the course of the performance…. So, one should first grasp the soul of a part not its dress.

Writing to Shchepkin on 16 December 1846, he said:
It is essential that you replay each role, if only in your mind; that you feel the unity of the play and read it through to the actors several times, so that they might involuntarily assimilate the true meaning of every phrase …, introduce … the actors to the proper essence of their roles, to a dignified and correct measure in their speech - do you understand? - a false note must not be heard…. Root out caricature entirely and lead them to understand that an actor must not presentbut transmit. He must, first of all, transmit ideas, forgetting about a person's oddities and peculiarities. *

Stanislavski came to regard himself as the natural successor to Shchepkin. Symbolically, perhaps, he was born on the day Shchepkin died, 18 January 1863.

Realism

Stanislavski does not provide any ordered account of the manner in which he became familiar with Shchepkin's teachings. Shchepkin is there in My Life in Art as an all-pervading presence. On pages 85-6 there is a substantial quotation from a letter to the actor Shumsky which Stanislavski describes as being of 'tremendous, practical importance'. In the Stanislavski Archives a copiously annotated edition of Shchepkin's Letters is to be found. In 1908, on the tenth anniversary of the Moscow Art Theatre, Stanislavski publicly reaffirmed his intention of continuing in the path laid down by Shchepkin. In so doing he placed himself firmly side by side with Gogol, Ostrovski and the Realist tradition.

Stanislavski's mature activity can only be understood if it is seen as rooted in the conviction that the theatre is a moral instrument whose function is to civilise, to increase sensitivity, to heighten perception and, in terms perhaps now unfashionable to us, to ennoble the mind and uplift the spirit. The best method of achieving this end was adherence to the principles of Realism. This was more than a question of aesthetic preference or a predilection for one 'style' over other 'styles'. It was a question of asserting the primacy of the human content of theatre over other considerations, of content over form. Stanislavski was implaccably opposed to meaningless conventions, to 'Theatre' in the theatre, which he hated. He was no less opposed, later in life, to the experiments of the avant-garde, which he considered reduced the actor to a mechanical object. Dehumanised actors lead to dehumanised perceptions.

It is important to define what Stanislavski understood by the term Realism and to distinguish it from Naturalism, a word which he normally employed in a purely pejorative sense. Naturalism, for him, implied the indiscriminate reproduction of the surface of life. Realism, on the other hand, while taking its material from the real world and from direct observation, selected only those elements which revealed the relationships and tendencies lying under the surface. The rest was discarded. Speaking to the cast of Woe from Wit in 1924, in terms which closely echo Gogol, Stanislavski said:

We have often been and still are accused of falling into a Naturalistic expression of detail in our pursuit of the Realism of life and truth in our stage actions. Wherever we have done this we were wrong. … Realism in art is the method which helps to select only the typical from life. If at times we are Naturalistic in our stage work, it only shows that we don't yet know enough to be able to penetrate into the historical and social essence of events and characters. We do not know how to separate the main from the secondary, and thus we bury the idea with details of the mode of life. That is my understanding of Naturalism.

Speaking to Nikolai M. Gorchakov, then a young director in 1926, he said:
I want you to remember this fundamental theatrical rule: establish truly and precisely details that are typical and the audience will have a sense of the whole, because of their special ability to imagine and complete in imagination what you have suggested.

But the detail must be characteristic and typical of whatever you want the audience to see. That is why Naturalism is poisonous to the theatre. Naturalism cheats the audience of its main pleasure and its most important satisfaction, that of creating with the actor and completing in its imagination what the actor, the director and the designer suggest with their techniques.

In insisting on the social function of the theatre Stanislavski placed himself within a tradition that went back far beyond Gogol. Peter the Great created theatres expressly to further his campaign for the westernisation of his kingdom. His successor, Catherine the Great, went one step further, writing plays, which were performed, anonymously, with the overt intention of educating her people.

The theatre is the school of the people and must be under my control. I am the head teacher and must answer to God for my people's conduct.

Towards the end of his life Stanislavski told a story to Vasily Toporkov, which illustrates the strength of his conviction. He was on tour in Petersburg. Rehearsals had gone on into the early hours of the morning. Coming out of the theatre he saw a crowd of people. It was a frosty night and bonfires had been lit in the square:

Some were warming themselves at the bonfires, rubbing their hands, legs, ears; others were standing in groups, arguing spiritedly. Smoke from the bonfires arose, the crowd murmured in a thousand voices. What was this? 'These people are waiting for tickets for your production, ' I thought. 'My God, what a responsibility we have to satisfy the spiritual needs of these people who have been standing here freezing all night; what great ideas and thoughts we must bring to them.'

So, consider well, whether we have the right to settle accounts with them by merely telling them a funny anecdote. … I felt that the people whom I had seen in the square deserved much more than we had prepared for them. *

Stanislavski remained, however, consistently opposed to 'political' theatre. If the theatre was in Gogol's words a 'pulpit from which it is one's duty to educate the audience', the actor was not to preach directly. It was not his function to tell the spectator what to think. The message of the play must be implicit; it must become apparent through the careful process of selection which takes place during rehearsals and the truthful presentation of the material agreed upon. It was not enough to persuade the intellect or convince the intelligence; the theatre had to give a total human experience which the audience could feel with its whole being. This experience would have longer, deeper resonances than the mere acknowledgement of the truth of a concept. Stanislavski’s experience both before and after the Revolution convinced him of this. In 1901 he was playing Dr Stockmann in Ibsen's An Enemy of the People in Petersburg. On 4 March a demonstration took place on Kazan Square. A number of people were killed. When Stanislavski, in Act Five delivered the line, 'You should never put on a new pair of trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth', the audience erupted.

Spontaneously the audience connected the line with the massacre in Kazan Square, where, without a doubt many a new suit had been ripped apart in the name of liberty and truth. These words provoked such a storm of applause that we had to stop the performance. The audience stood up and rushed towards the footlights, holding out their arms to me. That day I learned, through my own personal experience, the great power which real, authentic theatre can have on people. *

He asked, For a social and political play to have an effect on the audience, isn't the secret for the actor to think as little as possible of the social and political intentions of the play so as to be perfectly sincere and perfectly honest?

When, four years later, he came to direct Gorki's The Lower Depths he adopted the opposite approach. The result was, in his view, a failure. He was too aware of the political and social importance of the play and nothing got over the footlights. Thus he concluded that the actor's task was to present a fully rounded character; it was the audience's job to find the political meaning. This they would derive from the total production. As he matured and developed Stanislavski became convinced of the need for an ideological analysis of the script and for an awareness of the audience for which the performance was intended but, in production terms, this analysis had to express itself in terms of concrete action - moves, gestures, words - not overt comment. The meaning of the events presented on stage must be transparent. The audience must be able to see and understand the behaviour of the characters, the reasons for their actions and decisions and at the same time participate in the process, living the action with them.

A theatre, conceived not as a histrionic showcase but as a place in which to promote understanding, demanded that the actor see himself and his particular creative contribution as part of an ensemble.

The Moscow Art Theatre (MXAT)

Stanislavski came to intellectual and artistic maturity in the fourteen years between 1883, when he was twenty and 1897, when he was thirty-four. This was in no small measure due to the work he accomplished with the Society of Art and Literature, which he founded with a group of friends in 1888. * The ideas which he developed during that period were finally enshrined in the policy of the Moscow Art Theatre (MXAT).

In June 1897 Stanislavski received two letters from Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko suggesting a meeting. He replied by telegram: 'Will be glad to meet you June 21 at 2 o'clock at Slavyanski Bazaar. * The discussion lasted eighteen hours ending at Stanislavski 's villa at eight the next morning, by which time the policy of MXAT had broadly been worked out.

Nemirovich has left a much more detailed account of the eighteen-hour-meeting than Stanislavski himself. In it he describes not only the decisions they took but the abuses against which they were reacting. Stanislavski himself later compared the scope of their discussions to the Treaty of Versailles. Nemirovich speaks of his pleasure in discovering that they shared a common working method - detailed discussions and reading followed by slow meticulous rehearsal, section by section.

MXAT was more than the culmination of two men's aspirations; it was the embodiment of the reforms which Pushkin, Gogol, Ostrovski and Shchepkin had advocated over three-quarters of a century. It brought to fruition the dreams and ideals of the past and broke, finally, with the tired routine and the outworn clichés which stifled any creative impulse.

The first concern was to create a genuine ensemble, with no star players - 'Today Hamlet, tomorrow an extra'. Self-centred, false, histrionic actors were rigorously excluded. All productions were to be created from scratch, with their own sets and costumes. Working conditions were to be decent and comfortable. Discipline was to be strict, both for the cast - no talking in the corridors during a performance - and for the audience. No one was to be allowed back-stage during the performance and spectators were to be encouraged to take their seats before the curtain went up. With the passage of time late-comers were made to wait until the interval before being admitted. The orchestra, which was a regular feature in most theatres, was abolished as an unnecessary distraction.

When the original theatre was built, the auditorium was stripped of all decoration so that the audience's full concentration could be directed towards the stage. Everything, including the administration, was subordinated to the process of creation. Nemirovich had too many unpleasant memories of the bureaucracy of the imperial theatres.

Finally there was the question of the kind of public they wanted to attract. Neither of them had much time for the fashionable Moscow audiences. Both wanted a popular theatre which would fulfil its mission to enlighten and educate the people. Originally they planned to call their new theatre the Moscow Art Theatre Open to All. They hoped by not using the word 'popular' to avoid problems with the censor. But their dreams of presenting free performances to working-class audiences soon came to grief. There was a special censor for all plays presented to workers. This would have meant clearing scripts with no fewer than four separate censors. The scheme was abandoned and the name shortened simply to the Moscow Art Theatre. The importance of the new theatre's policy lay not in the originality of any of its elements, but in its organic unity. The achievement of MXAT was to bring all elements of the theatre together, consciously and deliberately, and ultimately to create a style of acting in which the dominant element was human truth.