METHOD ACTING

'Method acting' is an acting technique in which actors try to replicate real life emotional conditions under which the character operates, in an effort to create a life-like, realistic performance. This is contrasted with a more abstracted, less involved style of acting in which the actor himself or herself remains an outside observer of the character he or she is portraying.
"The Method" in method acting typically refers to the generic practice of actors drawing on their own emotions, memories, and experiences to influence their portrayals of characters.

Contents

Origins

Technique

Teachers

Method actors

Major books on the Method

References

Origins

"The Method" was popularized by Lee Strasberg at The Actors Studio and the Group Theatre, in New York City in the 1940s and 50s. It was derived from "the Stanislavski System", after Konstantin Stanislavski, who pioneered similar ideas in his quest for "theatrical truth." This was done through friendships with Russia's leading actors, as well as his teachings, writings, and acting at the Moscow Art Theater (founded in 1897).
Strasberg's students included many of America's most famous actors of latter half of the 20th century, including Marlon Brando, Vic Morrow , Paul Newman, Al Pacino, James Dean, Dustin Hoffman, Marilyn Monroe, Robert De Niro, Jane Fonda, Jack Nicholson, and many others.
In the Stanislavski System the actor analyzes deeply the motivations and emotions of the character in order to personify him or her with psychological realism and emotional authenticity. However, using the Method, an actor recalls emotions or reactions from his or her own life and uses them to identify with the character being portrayed.

Technique

Some consider method acting difficult to teach. This is partially because of a common misconception that there is a single "method." "The Method" (versus "the method" with a lowercase ''m'') usually refers to Lee Strasberg's teachings, but really no one method has been laid down. Stanislavski himself changed his System constantly and dramatically over the course of his career. This plurality and ambiguity can make it hard to teach a single method. It is also partially because sometimes method acting is characterized by outsiders as lacking in any specific or technical approach to acting, while the abundance of training schools, syllabi, and years spent learning contradict this. In general, however, method acting combines a careful consideration of the psychological motives of the character, and some sort of personal identification with, and possibly the reproduction of the character's emotional state in a realistic way. It usually forms an antithesis to clichéd, unrealistic, so-called "rubber stamp" or indicated acting. Mostly, however, the surmising done about the character and the elusive, capricious or sensitive nature of emotions combine to make method acting difficult to teach.
Depending on the exact version taught by the numerous directors and teachers who claim to propagate the fundamentals of this technique, the process can include various ideologies and practices such as "as if," "substitution," "emotional memory in acting," and "preparation."
Sanford Meisner, another Group Theatre pioneer, championed a separate, though closely related school of acting, which came to be called the Meisner technique. Meisner broke from Strasberg on the subject of "sense memory" or "emotional memory," one of the basic tenets of the American Method at the time. Those trained by Strasberg often used personal experience on stage to identify with the emotional life of the character and portray it. Meisner found that too cerebral, and advocated fully immersing oneself in the moment of a character and gaining spontaneity through an understanding of the scene's circumstances, and through exercises he designed to help the actor gain emotional investment in the scene and then free him or her to react as the character.
Stella Adler, the coach whose fame was cemented by the success of her students Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, and Robert De Niro, as well as the only teacher from the Group Theatre to have studied Acting Technique with Stanislavski himself, also broke with Strasberg and developed yet another form of acting. Her technique is founded in the idea that one must not use memories from their own past to conjure up emotion, but rather using the Given Circumstances. Stella Adler's technique relies on the carrying through of tasks, wants, needs, and objectives. It also seeks to stimulate the actor's imagination with the use of as-if's. As she often preached, "We are what we do, not what we say."

Teachers

Stanislavski's work, including the autobiography ''My Life in Art,'' and his trilogy of books set in a fictionalized acting-school as a pretense for his own teachings: ''An Actor Prepares,'' ''Building a Character,'' and ''Creating a Role,'' inspired many others who have followed the example of Stanislavski as prominent Method teachers. They include:

★ Stella Adler, actress.

★ Herbert Berghof, founder of HB Studios.

★ Richard Boleslawski, actor and film director.

★ Michael Chekhov, actor, director, author. (His method, largely an outside-in approach and somewhat more "metaphysical," diverged from and converged back to Stanislavski's over the course of his career.)

★ Harold Clurman, director and critic.

★ Jack Garfein, director, actor, former director of the Actor's Studio in Los Angeles, instructing for more than 40 years.

★ Uta Hagen, actress, the author of ''Respect for Acting'' and ''Challenge for the Actor.'' (She emphasized "identity" and "substitution.")

★ Lorrie Hull, former Actor's Studio senior faculty instructor under Lee Strasberg. Author of Strasberg's Method, endorsed by Susan Strasberg.

★ Robert Lewis, cofounder of The Actors Studio and author of ''Method — or Madness?''

★ Sanford Meisner, actor.

★ Jean Shelton, director, actress, worked with Clurman and Strasberg at Group Theatre, founder of Jean Shelton Actors Lab

★ Lee Strasberg, director, actor, producer.
The technique continues to be taught at schools around the world, including the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York and Los Angeles, the Actors Studio Drama School in New York, the The Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York, as well as in Europe in Le Studio Jack Garfein in Paris. Hull Actors Studio in Santa Monica and Santa Barbara, CA.

Method actors

These actors have acknowledged using Method Acting as part of their technique:

★ Brando, Marlon [1] ★ Burstyn, Ellen 1 ★ Clift, Montgomery [2] ★ De Niro, Robert 1 ★ Dean, James 2 ★ Franco, James [3] ★ Grant, Lee 1 ★ Hoffman, Dustin [4] ★ Hunter, Kim 2

★ Khan, Amir [5] ★ Monroe, Marilyn 1 ★ Newman, Paul 1 ★ Pacino, Al [6] ★ Page, Geraldine 2 ★ Peppard, George [7] ★ Stanley, Kim 2 ★ Stapleton, Maureen 2

★ Steiger, Rod 1 ★ Wilder, Gene 1 ★ Winters, Shelley 1

Major books on the Method

★ ''Respect for Acting'' by Uta Hagen

★ ''An Actor Prepares'' by Constantin Stanislavski

★ ''To the Actor'' by Michael Chekhov

★ ''A Dream of Passion'' by Lee Strasberg

★ ''Sanford Meisner on Acting'' by Sanford Meisner

★ ''Method or Madness'' by Robert Lewis

★ ''Advice to the Players'' by Robert Lewis

★ ''The Method Manual'' for teachers and actors by Ed Kovens

★ ''The Actor's Studio: A Player's Place'' by David Garfield

★ ''Strasberg's Method'' by Lorrie Hull

References

1.
How Some Famous Actors Learned to Be Who They Are

2.
50th Anniversary for Actors Studio and Its 'Streetcar' Ride to Renown

3.
Celeb Spotlight: James Franco

4.
20Q: Dustin Hoffman

5.
Character Building: Bollywood's Rebel Leader

6.
Lights, Camera, Action: A post-Oscars reflection on the state of American acting.

7.
Trivia for Breakfast at Tiffany's