Response to 'Konstantin Stanislavsky' by Bella Merlin

 Konstantin Stanislavsky, by Bella Merlin

What I found most interesting after reading 'Konstantin Stanislavsky' by Bella Merlin was the idea of tempo and music playing a huge part in theatre. This concept became most apparent in chapter 3 when Merlin discussed how Stanislavsky interwove tempo and rhythm into his production of The Seagull. It caught my attention straight away as for the most part we only think of theatre as drama and acting, anything else such as dance or music is in its own separate category. Yet Stanislavsky was presenting ideas around how the tempos of scenes and characters can interact with each other and the audience to create an interesting and dynamic play. One of the prime examples Merlin gives is how Stanislavsky creates conflicting outer and inner tempo-rhymes within Kostya, layered with the contradiction created with his contrasting mellow and abrupt actions through the act. Stanislavski talked about the general scene having a tempo, he was a large fan out sound effects such as the iconic awkward ticking of a clock in the background, these sound effects would essential help set the tempo of the scene. For example, the clock ticking already sets the pace as it creates a steady beat through out, this beat is slow and therefore the tempo of the scene is slow. The majority of the characters will respond to the scenes pace and have the same tempo, yet it is not unusual to have a character with a contrasting tempo, creating drama and an interest for the audience on stage. 

The second concept that really resonated with me, was the idea of doing all this character work and preparation for the play and then just forgetting all of it once on stage. This is something that once I read, it made perfect sense as theatre is about living in the moment, something that is impossible to do if your holding on to lots of technical and academic research in your mind as then you are no longer able to connect with the actual feelings.However, Stanislavsky wasn't suggesting that the preparation work wasn't done, things like your characters objective and super objective are still very important to work out you just can't hold on to that, you must be able to let go of your brain and simply become that character. This concept made me realize how important it is to let go of your brain and intellectual side of things withing theatre, not just in traditional theatre but also things like physical theatre. Within physical theatre your mind can often become a barrier to the freedom within your movements, things like embarrassment or fear come and take over and you limit yourself, in order to give the best possible performance you need to be able to let go of these things and connect with the character, your body and other actors on stage. This freedom of mind and body is what will maximize your performance. 

What also interested me about this book was learning about Stanislavsky's creative journey in discovering all of his methods and systems. It shead a lot of light onto how an artist develops and moves through idea and how difficult that process can actually be. To read about how he started with concepts like mise-en-scene and then went on to realize that there were downfalls such as how translation from paper to practice was often very messy and inefficient, then move into different ideas like the round the table analysis, yet he still came to the feelings of despair and as if hes not getting anywhere resulting in his holiday to Finland. How his creative journey panned out and the pitfalls that came with it enabled me to put the process and struggle of working out your ideas around theatre into perspective, relating to how I, as an actor, move through concepts and styles as I try to work out what works best for me. The creative journey of The Seagull was also interesting to read about as this demonstrated the creative process but on an actual play and how his methods and concepts fitted into that play to make it an eventual success, after a very difficult and failing start.