page_title: Stanislavski's system
section_title: Method of Physical Action
hierarchical_section_title: Stanislavski's system / Method of Physical Action
caption_attribution_description: English: Sketches by Konstantin Stanislavski in his 1938 production plan for William Shakespeare's Othello.
context_page_description: Stanislavski's system is a systematic approach to training actors that the Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski developed in the first half of the twentieth century. His system cultivates what he calls the "art of experiencing". It mobilises the actor's conscious thought and will in order to activate other, less-controllable psychological processes—such as emotional experience and subconscious behaviour—sympathetically and indirectly. In rehearsal, the actor searches for inner motives to justify action and the definition of what the character seeks to achieve at any given moment.
  Later, Stanislavski further elaborated the system with a more physically grounded rehearsal process that came to be known as the "Method of Physical Action". Minimising at-the-table discussions, he now encouraged an "active representative", in which the sequence of dramatic situations are improvised. "The best analysis of a play", Stanislavski argued, "is to take action in the given circumstances."
context_section_description: Stanislavski further elaborated his system with a more physically grounded rehearsal process that came to be known as the "Method of Physical Action". The term itself was only applied to this rehearsal process after Stanislavski's death. Benedetti indicates that though Stanislavski had developed it since 1916, he first explored it practically in the early 1930s. The roots of the Method of Physical Action stretch back to Stanislavski's earliest work as a director (in which he focused consistently on a play's action) and the techniques he explored with Vsevolod Meyerhold and later with the First Studio of the MAT before the First World War (such as the experiments with improvisation and the practice of anatomising scripts in terms of bits and tasks). 
  Benedetti emphasises the continuity of the Method of Physical Action with Stanislavski's earlier approaches; Whyman argues that "there is no justification in Stanislavsky's [sic] writings for the assertion that the method of physical actions represents a rejection of his previous work". Stanislavski first explored the approach practically in his rehearsals for Three Sisters and Carmen in 1934 and Molière in 1935.
  Minimising at-the-table discussions, he now encouraged an "active analysis", in which the sequence of dramatic situations are improvised. "The best analysis of a play", Stanislavski argued, "is to take action in the given circumstances." He continues:
  For in the process of action the actor gradually obtains the mastery over the inner incentives of the actions of the character he is representing, evoking in himself the emotions and thoughts which resulted in those actions. In such a case, an actor not only understands his part, but also feels it, and that is the most important thing in creative work on the stage.
  Just as the First Studio, led by his assistant and close friend Leopold Sulerzhitsky, had provided the forum in which he developed his initial ideas for his system during the 1910s, he hoped to secure his final legacy by opening another studio in 1935, in which the Method of Physical Action would be taught. The Opera-Dramatic Studio embodied the most complete implementation of the training exercises described in his manuals. Meanwhile, the transmission of his earlier work via the students of the First Studio was revolutionising acting in the West. With the arrival of Socialist realism in the USSR, the MAT and Stanislavski's system were enthroned as exemplary models.
caption: Sketches by Stanislavski in his 1929—1930 production plan for Othello, which offers the first exposition of what came to be known as his Method of Physical Action rehearsal process.
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