Anna Lewis Mann Old People's Home

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This FilmmakerIQ lesson is proudly sponsored by RØDE Microphones. Premium Microphones and Audio Accessories for Studio, Live and Location Recording. Hi, John Hess from FilmmakerIQ.com and today we'll take an abridged look at the history of Western theater leading us ultimately to what's now called Method Acting. We could start our story much closer to home but I think it's worth it to jump far back into history - to the very beginning of acting - all the way back to Ancient Greece. The ancient Greek culture and it's rich mythology of gods was not based on a holy text. Instead, their mythology were told through word of mouth. Like a long game of telephone, each generation of Greeks would retell the myths with a different interpretation reflecting the contemporary issues of their time - this process of handing down stories became theater - from the original Greek theasthai which means "to behold" Theater was central to ancient Greeks - The communal sharing of stories was centered around the annual celebrations of the god Dionysus - the god of Grape Harvest, Winemaking, Wine, Ritual Madness, Religious Ecstasy, Fertility and eventually Theater. The earliest celebrations involved participants from the community - men and women - gathering at the base of a hill singing what was called Dithyramb in honor of Dionysus. In the 6th Century BC, these celebrations became more formalized. Theater became a men-only affair. Another change came with the Greek Poet Arion who started writing down the Dithyramb introducing the written word to the oral tradition. Around the same time, a singer named Thespis would become theater's first star by creating an act where he as solo actor accompanied by the Greek Chorus would interpret the Dithyramb using different masks with exaggerated facial features and expressions to perform different characters. Greek Theater continued to advance in the 5th century with the introduction of the skene: a background building to which the platform stage was connected which could be painted to represent locations and act as a changing area for actors as more people became part of the theater production. Format wise, theater developed into three categories: Satyr Plays, Comedies and Tragedies. Satyr Plays were the oldest drawing from rituals to Dionysus and featured a lot of slapstick. Comedies were topical light hearted lampoons of the people and events of the time - in fact we get the word Lampoon from Lampon - a Greek statesman made fun of by the Athenian performer Aristophanes. Tragedies were more serious works which featured a flawed mythic hero and Greek chorus which acted as the play's moral compass. At the end of each tragedy the hero manages to find himself in a catastrophe caused usually by his own hubris. Now because these theaters were open air events often in front of thousands of people, the acting was much more declamatory - that is it emphasized on vocal projection and grand body gestures so everyone could see what was happening. When Rome took over the world - they also took to Greek theater - changing it to their favor adding in more spectacle and variety. Roman drama adapted Greek works but did away with the Greek chorus in favor of dialogue and even began to underscore their shows with music. Theater was the popular entertainment of the time - sometimes even lewd and offensive. The actors morals even challenged the decadence of Roman society leading to some brush ups against Roman authorities. Still, massive theaters were constructed in virtually every corner of the Roman Empire. But then Rome fell and theater would pretty much grind to a halt during the Dark Ages with only amateur productions of religious morality plays being staged by the church. It would take a millennia before Acting would become a professional art form once again. It wasn't until the Italian Renaissance that we begin see a new form of professional theater - Commedia dell'arte in the 16th century in Venice. With one foot in the world of court royalty and one foot in the street performer tradition, Commedia dell'arte was a populist form of theater - representing all people from aristocracies down to common peasants. The first notable acting troupe was I Gelosi working from 1569-1604. Sponsored by nobility, I Gelosi toured Europe travelling all fom Italy to France, Poland, Spain, Germany and England. With a strong emphasis on improvisation, the actor in Commedia was also the author and editor of their own material. And for the first time women began to share the stage with men. Because Commedia dell'Arte relied heavily on improvisation, the form centered around a few key stock characters and situations. Actor roles in a Commedia dell'Arte troupes fell into three broad categories: servants (zanni), the masters or elders (usually old men hence their Italian name, the vecchi) and the lovers (innamorati, also known as the amorosi). Among these stock characters the most familiar to modern audiences may be the Harlequin, a slightly higher up zanni, an amoral, mischievous but playful and narcissistic servant character. The tradition of masks carried through into Commedia dell'Arte worn by both the lower and higher up characters, but some of the characters, especially the amorosi, performed unmasked. Commedia evolved into different forms as it spread across Europe as each culture took from it to adapt to local customs. The French were particularly fond of the Harlequin character and developed it further - in England you can see many Commedia's influence on the bard himself, William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream features many elements of Commedia dell'Arte Even though Commedia was incredibly influential it would have the same moral opponents as their Roman counterparts a millenia ago. The church saw the work as vulgar and heretical, perhaps competition for their own morality plays. But actors found political enemies as well. Napoleon Bonaparte would outlaw Commedia in 1797 during his occupation of Italy because political dissidents hid behind masks to hurl insults as mocked their new emperor. Still, Commedia dell'arte influence persisted through the years, informing stage tradition and ultimately making it into film from the pantomime schtick of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton and even into the sound era which brought in vaudeville influences as seen in this clip from the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup: Jumping ahead to late 19th century, theater, though perhaps not seen as the most noble of pursuits, was a generally accepted tradition that had ancient roots in Greece, Italian Renaissance influences and strong literary backing from great writers like William Shakespeare. But acting on stage across Europe and the United States still focused on the grand declamatory style and in the era before stage mics you kind of had to be. But the style wasn't just born out of necessity, it was the prevailing theory that theater had to be exaggerated to be real. Actor and theater theorist Benoit-Constant Coquelin, who was hailed as the greatest actor alive by his contemporaries, said: In my opinion, nothing can be perfect, nothing can be great without nature, but I must reiterate once again that Theater - the art and, consequently, nature can be reproduced in it only with some kind of idealization or stress, without which there is no art. I will say more: stark nature produces in the theater only a very weak impression. Coquelin was firmly against naturalism in acting. Acting for the stage meant simulated emotion - a French musician and teacher François Delsarte would even publish a book of poses and hand gestures for every emotion. Though his intent was to connect the inner emotional experience of the actor with a systematic set of gestures and movements, it was taught as a shorthand way of acting - when the script calls for this emotion - make this pose. Well this type of acting bored a young actor by the name of Constantin Stanislavski. Born in 1863 as Konstantin Sergeyevich Alexeyev to one of the richest families in Russia, Stanislavski was a stage name adopted to keep his acting pursuits hidden from his parents. But Stanislavski wasn't interested in poses or grandiose gestures. Instead Stanislavski was interested in "living the part" - he would disguise himself as a tramp or a gypsy and go to public areas and try to stay in character. On June 22, 1897, Stanislawski, now quite established as an actor in Russian theater circles, and playwright/director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko met for a lunch meeting that would go down in theater history. After an extraordinary 18 hour meeting which ended over breakfast at Stanislavski's estate the following morning, the two men outlined the details and practices of what would become the Moscow Art Theater. The emphasis of the Moscow Art Theater was to bring naturalism to popular theater - gone were the bombastic playing toward the crowd - in was an emphasis on realistic performances. In rehearsing the troupe of actors Stanislavsky spent hours and hours asking questions of the script and actors - looking for what he called the "empirical truth" Over time a system began to emerge. In 1909, he began crafting the first draft of his system. Though the science of psychology was just beginning to develop, Stanislavski's system took what we would now call a very psychological approach to acting. But ultimately it was all about getting actors into the moment. To reach this level an actor must train the body, the voice and the mind in the preparation stage. Then the actual role must be studied looking for motivations and deeper understanding of how the role integrates with the rest of the piece. Finally truth would emerge in the role as the actor would feel as the events that were in the play were really happening. To create realism Stanislavski experimented with emotional memory or sense memory - that is to bring up a past experience in your mind that would match the similar feeling in the scene, sometimes these would traumatic experiences, to create the reality of very dark emotional scene - but he later abandoned this technique after it made his fellow actors crazy. To Stanislavski, emotion can also come from the action. Let say we put an actor in a small room with no windows with a single door. We give that actor a motivation - there's a bomb in that room it will go off in exactly one minute. If the actor can deeply believe that objective, the bomb is about to blow, the only logical solution is to get out of that room. And if the door is locked, panic will naturally set in. That emotion will be real without having to recall a real life experience of being stuck in a room with a ticking bomb - which hopefully not many of you have. This is only one of the ideas that Stanislavski developed in his system. But even before he had fully developed his ideas, the Moscow Art Theater and it's natural style of acting became a hit and began to tour the world. On January 2, 1923, the Moscow Art Theater began it's first run in the United States, opening in New York City with Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich at the Jolson Theater for a 5 month run. Those performances would set the ball rolling for a new American interpretation of Stanislavski's ideas which would ultimately be folded into the term "Method acting" After Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theater toured the United States, two members decided to stay behind and open a drama school called The American Laboratory Theater in New York City in 1923. Among the first students were Lee Strasberg, Harold Clurman and Stella Adler who would in turn start their own theater with Cheryl Crawford called The Group Theater in 1931. The Group Theater was a collective of actors, directors and playwrights, eschewing star driven theater and emphasizing the group and dedicated to naturalistic but highly disciplined acting focusing on the Stanislavski's system but also trying to see how far they could push his ideas. Founding member Lee Strasberg became extremely focused on developing the Emotional Memory aspect of Stanislavski's system. This didn't sit well with fellow Group founder Stella Adler. Strasberg directed Adler in the 1934 play Gentlewoman, driving Adler nuts with forcing her to constantly revisit a painful past experience. So much so that Adler decided to take the summer off and visit Paris with her then husband and fellow Group Theater member Harold Clurman. In Paris, Adler discovers quite by accident that Stanislavski was doing a theater run. Adler arranges a meeting and asks legendary actor "Why did you ruin my life?" Well Stanislavski was taken back by what the Americans were doing with his system. He had abandoned emotional memory as a primary technique years earlier instead focusing on imagination guided by emotional memory. Instead of revisiting a painful past memory, the actor should use the entire life of experience to imagine what the emotions that this particular scene requires. To ask the magic "what if" question. So for every afternoon for five weeks, Adler and Stanislavski would work together workshopping her scenes from Gentlewoman. When Adler returned the States, she brought a new take Stanislavski's system that broke away from Strasberg's emotional memory method. Strasberg retired from the Group Theater on Adler's return and acting technique in the United States began to separate and develop into two parallel camps - the Strasberg Method which focused heavily on looking inward to find emotion and the Adler Technique which was a bit more congruent with Stanislavski's current thinking on physical action and objective augmented with imagination. These Method techniques would start to gain serious influence after World War II. Elia Kazan, Cheryl Crawford, Robert Lewis and Anna Sokolow started the Actor's Studio in New York in October of 1947. The Actor's Studio was an place for professionals and amateurs alike to work and experiment with their craft. Members would be required to try out and it was by invitation only. It quickly became an exclusive and highly regarded place to be in New York acting circles. By 1949 several teachers began running classes at the studio, among them Sanford Meisner, Daniel Mann and Elia Kazan. Lee Strasberg was also brought on to teach theater history but by 1951, when Elia Kazan had left for Hollywood, Strasberg became artistic director and de facto head of the Actor's Studio and began to fashion it according to his own interpretation of the method. But method acting would no longer be contained inside New York Theater circles for long. Also 1951 method acting exploded on the screen in a big way with Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski in Elia Kazan's movie adaption of Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire" Stanley: Is this before or after you got the telegram? Blanch: Telegram? Telegram. Oh as a matter of fact my wire... Brando: As a matter of fact there wasn't no wire at all And there is no millionaire. And Mitch didn't come in here with roses 'cause I know where he is. There isn't a damn thing but imagination, and lies and deceit, and tricks! And look at yourself. Take a look at yourself here in a worn out Mardi Gras outfit rented for fifty cents from some rag-picker . And with that crazy crown on! What kind of queen do you think you are? You know I've been on to you from the start and not once did you pull the wool over this boy's eyes. You come in here and you sprinkle the place with powder and you spray perfume and you stick a paper latern over the light bulb and lo and behold the place is turned to Egypt and you are the queen of the Nile sitting on your throne swilling down my liquor and you know what I say? HA HA You hear me? HA HA HA. Here was a product of the New York elite theater giving raw and powerful performance on screen. Method acting - with its naturalistic style was the perfect for partner for cinema's unblinking eye which could capture every nuance of the performance. Strasberg took credit for teaching Brando his techniques. But Brando denied it completely - instead owing his success to Stella Adler who had started her own teacher school and director Elia Kazan. Strasberg does take credit, perhaps more authentically, for other famous 50s method icons like James Dean Officer: That's cute, that's cute... It's too bad you didn't connect. You could have gone to Juvenile Hall. That's what you want isn't it? Sure it is. You want to bug us until we have to lock you up. Why? Jim: Leave me alone. Officer: No. Jim: I don't know why. Officer: Go on don't give me that. Jim: Please lock me up, I'm gonna hit somebody. I'm going to do something... Officer: Try the desk. Go ahead. and the incomparable Marilyn Monroe The Regent: Well my dear. Elsie: Well.... The Regent: My dear, wouldn't you be more comfortable on the sofa? You could put your feet up there and rest. Elsie: Oh no thank you, I think I'll stay right where I am. The Regent: Just as you please. The Regent: My dear, it was so good of you to come and see me here tonight. Elsie: You said that before. The Regent: Did I? That is a beautiful dress. Elsie: You said that before too. The Regent: What does it matter? What are words where deeds can say so much more! Elsie: That's just terrible! The Regent: What is terrible? Elsie: That Performance of yours. The Regent: Dear I do not all together understand you. Elsie: Oh now pull grand duke with me. You made a pass and I turned it down - that's all that happened. We can still be friendly. The Regent: Excuse me. Both Dean and Monroe are product of the Actor's Studio and of the Strasberg method - thus cementing "method acting" as the way an actor prepares for the screen. There is a considerable heated debate over which technique is right - Strasberg or Adler. There are strong proponents on both sides but in truth they both just different approaches to achieving the same thing - a truthful performance. Lee Strasberg: If you have picked an incident that has in itself some motivation it may suggest to you something to do otherwise frankly you're going to stand there on the stage. You will not know what to do and the only thing that you will know is to remember the lines And that is not the way we become actors. The very word acting has nothing to do with memory in that sense. It has to do with what we do, how we behave on the stage, how we make whatever we're doing real. When we sleep, we not only have to lie there, we have to create sleep - which is a sensory reality. When we wake up, we don't really know. It's dark in that place and so on. All these things you have to create because the stage is going to be pretty light so you're not going to get it from the stage itself. You're going to get it only from the way in which we commonly say your imagination creates it but the imagination is nothing more than all these real things taking place unconsciously. When they don't happen the imagination doesn't work, the inspiration doesn't work and the actor is left only with the lines. Stella Adler: The soul of the people that are playing has to... I say, the only thing it is is that you act with your SOUL. You do not act words and you do not act this... you act with your SOUL. And you don't have that soul yet. - and that's why you want to be actor, I don't blame you. I told you in the beginning that no matter what I said you wouldn't listen. You would go to the words. You are drunk with words. You are infected, you are diseased with words. Instead of what words come from. You must contribute to the words. The words are not your privilege. The words are somebody else's - you must do something with them. You must give them life. They are on the page. Shakespeare is dead as doornails on the page. The play has nothing to do with words. Nothing at all to do with words. It has to do with ideas. That's what plays are about. Plays where you don't dance and you don't amuse the audience and you don't wiggle and you don't shake and it's not right there. It's not absolutely comprehensible - not even to you. Those and the parts - that's what you call the big theater. Other acting teachers would add their own techniques including fellow Actor Studio teacher Sanford Meisner who went on teach at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre and Uta Hagen who taught at Herbert Berghof Studio. But what has ultimately emerged from the 20th century is the approach to acting that seeks to understand and identify with the character and story as the preparation for a performance. And for the most part when we say method acting we mean this process which an actor goes through to emotionally identify his character. How an actor accomplishes that whether that's through emotional memory, through observation, through asking the big "what if" - that process - that method - is different from actor to actor, from teacher to teacher and even from role to role. Even Stanislavski had this to say about the method: As filmmakers I think we put too much emphasis on the technical aspects of filmmaking - the picture and sound. What drives people to the movies, is the same thing that drove the ancient Greeks to their amphitheaters - not just the love of story but the need for story. The screenwriter creates the play, the director visualizes it, the cinematographer captures it, the sound recordists capture the audio, the editor pieces it all together and polishes it up, but it is only the actor that can breathe the life into the character and the story. And it is the character who the audience identifies with - it is through character that we undertake the journey of the plot. Everything else is in service to this. Now some genres may rely more heavily on one filmmaking aspect or another, you can craft performances and plotlines through careful editing - but it all still begins with the actor. When it comes to performance, it is essential to train and practice. It's not different for filmmakers. Look at your story, study the themes, ask questions, and develop your own method to make something great. I'm John Hess and I'll see you at FilmmakerIQ.com