Building A Character
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Building A Character
''Building a Character'' (russian: Работа актера над собой) is the second of stage actor/director Constantin Stanislavski's three books on his method for learning the art of acting. It was first published in Russian in 1948; Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood's seminal English translation was published by Theatre Art Books of New York the following year. In Stanislavski's most widely read work, '' An Actor Prepares'', he describes a process by which an actor imagines the character he will become. In ''Building a Character'', he explains that the outward expressions of character must flow from that character's inner life: his memories, beliefs, preoccupations, and so on. He then elaborates ways in which the actor's manner of speech, dress, and movement (gestures, facial expressions, etc.) evidence the character's inner experience. ''Creating a Role'', the final book in the trilogy, followed ''Building a Character'' in 1957. Contents # Toward a Physical Characteriz ...
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Constantin Stanislavski
Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski ( Alekseyev; russian: Константин Сергеевич Станиславский, p=kənstɐnʲˈtʲin sʲɪrˈgʲejɪvʲɪtɕ stənʲɪˈslafskʲɪj; 7 August 1938) was a seminal Soviet Russian theatre practitioner. He was widely recognized as an outstanding character actor and the many productions that he directed garnered him a reputation as one of the leading theatre directors of his generation. His principal fame and influence, however, rests on his "system" of actor training, preparation, and rehearsal technique. Stanislavski (his stage name) performed and directed as an amateur until the age of 33, when he co-founded the world-famous Moscow Art Theatre (MAT) company with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, following a legendary 18-hour discussion. Its influential tours of Europe (1906) and the US (1923–24), and its landmark productions of ''The Seagull'' (1898) and ''Hamlet'' (1911–12), established his reputation and opene ...
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Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national republics; in practice, both its government and its economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the city of Moscow serving as its capital as well as that of its largest and most populous republic: the Russian SFSR. Other major cities included Leningrad (Russian SFSR), Kiev (Ukrainian SSR), Minsk ( Byelorussian SSR), Tashkent (Uzbek SSR), Alma-Ata (Kazakh SSR), and Novosibirsk (Russian SFSR). It was the largest country in the world, covering over and spanning eleven time zones. The country's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government ...
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Acting
Acting is an activity in which a story is told by means of its enactment by an actor or actress who adopts a character—in theatre, television, film, radio, or any other medium that makes use of the mimetic mode. Acting involves a broad range of skills, including a well-developed imagination, emotional facility, physical expressivity, vocal projection, clarity of speech, and the ability to interpret drama. Acting also demands an ability to employ dialects, accents, improvisation, observation and emulation, mime, and stage combat. Many actors train at length in specialist programs or colleges to develop these skills. The vast majority of professional actors have undergone extensive training. Actors and actresses will often have many instructors and teachers for a full range of training involving singing, scene-work, audition techniques, and acting for camera. Most early sources in the West that examine the art of acting ( grc-gre, ὑπόκρισις, ''hypokrisis'') d ...
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An Actor Prepares
''An Actor Prepares'' () is the first of Konstantin Stanislavski's books on acting, followed by ''Building a Character'' and ''Creating a Role''. Stanislavski intended to publish the contents of ''An Actor Prepares'' and ''Building a Character'' as a single volume, and in the Russian language. However, ''An Actor Prepares'' was first published as a single volume in English, and World War II delayed the publication of ''Building a Character'' for more than ten years. Summary ''An Actor Prepares'' is the diary of a fictional student named Kostya during his first year of training in Stanislavski's system. Kostya and his fellow students have little to no experience in acting. As they go through the class, Tortsov, their teacher and theatre director, addresses the many assumptions they have formed that do not coincide with the 'system'. Stanislavski relates his message with examples. He argues that his system is not a particular method, but a systematic analysis of the 'natural' order ...
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Creating A Role
''Creating a Role'' is theatre actor/director Constantin Stanislavski's third and final book on his method for learning the art of acting. It was first published in Russian in 1957; Theatre Art Books published an English-language edition, translated by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood, in 1961. In the two preceding installments, '' An Actor Prepares'' (1936) and '' Building a Character'' (1948), Stanislavski describes ways in which an actor imagines the lived experience of their character, and then expresses that inner life and persona through speech and movement. ''Creating a Role'' applies these principles to rehearsal, in which the actor improves their understanding of the role, and how it fits the script. Contents Part I: Griboyedov's ''Woe from Wit'' Part II: Shakespeare's ''Othello'' Part III: Gogol's ''The Inspector General'' Appendices See also * Stanislavski's system * Method acting Method acting, informally known as The Method, is a range of training and rehears ...
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Stanislavski's System
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" (with which he contrasts the "art of representation").Benedetti (1999a, 201), Carnicke (2000, 17), and Stanislavski (1938, 16—36 "art of representation" corresponds to Mikhail Shchepkin's "actor of reason" and his "art of experiencing" corresponds to Shchepkin's "actor of feeling"; see Benedetti (1999a, 202). 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 (a "task"). Later, Stanislavski further elaborated the system with a more p ...
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Acting
Acting is an activity in which a story is told by means of its enactment by an actor or actress who adopts a character—in theatre, television, film, radio, or any other medium that makes use of the mimetic mode. Acting involves a broad range of skills, including a well-developed imagination, emotional facility, physical expressivity, vocal projection, clarity of speech, and the ability to interpret drama. Acting also demands an ability to employ dialects, accents, improvisation, observation and emulation, mime, and stage combat. Many actors train at length in specialist programs or colleges to develop these skills. The vast majority of professional actors have undergone extensive training. Actors and actresses will often have many instructors and teachers for a full range of training involving singing, scene-work, audition techniques, and acting for camera. Most early sources in the West that examine the art of acting ( grc-gre, ὑπόκρισις, ''hypokrisis'') d ...
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Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood
Elizabeth or Elisabeth may refer to: People * Elizabeth (given name), a female given name (including people with that name) * Elizabeth (biblical figure), mother of John the Baptist Ships * HMS ''Elizabeth'', several ships * ''Elisabeth'' (schooner), several ships * ''Elizabeth'' (freighter), an American freighter that was wrecked off New York harbor in 1850; see Places Australia * City of Elizabeth ** Elizabeth, South Australia * Elizabeth Reef, a coral reef in the Tasman Sea United States * Elizabeth, Arkansas * Elizabeth, Colorado * Elizabeth, Georgia * Elizabeth, Illinois * Elizabeth, Indiana * Hopkinsville, Kentucky, originally known as Elizabeth * Elizabeth, Louisiana * Elizabeth Islands, Massachusetts * Elizabeth, Minnesota * Elizabeth, New Jersey, largest city with the name in the U.S. * Elizabeth City, North Carolina * Elizabeth (Charlotte neighborhood), North Carolina * Elizabeth, Pennsylvania * Elizabeth Township, Pennsylvania (other) * Elizabeth, We ...
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Theatre Art Books
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. The specific place of the performance is also named by the word "theatre" as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, "a place for viewing"), itself from θεάομαι (theáomai, "to see", "to watch", "to observe"). Modern Western theatre comes, in large measure, from the theatre of ancient Greece, from which it borrows technical terminology, classification into genres, and many of its themes, stock characters, and plot elements. Theatre artist Patric ...
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My Life In Art
''My Life in Art'' is the autobiography of the Russian actor and theatre director Konstantin Stanislavski. It was first commissioned while Stanislavski was in the United States on tour with the Moscow Art Theatre, and was first published in Boston, Massachusetts in English in 1924. It was later revised and published in a Russian-language edition in Moscow under the title '. It is divided into 4 sections entitled: 1-Artistic Childhood, 2-Artistic Youth, 3-Artistic Adolescence and 4-Artistic Adulthood. Section One - Artistic Childhood This section, containing 11 chapters, begins with Stanislavski's birth in 1863 and ends in his early twenties. He first describes his family life and upbringing, discussing his early trips to the circus, the Italian opera, the ballet and his introduction to the Russian theatre. He describes the professional Puppet Show, which he and his siblings put on at home, as well as other events that shaped him early on as an artist. He describes his first exp ...
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World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fighting occurring throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific, and parts of Asia. An estimated 9 million soldiers were killed in combat, plus another 23 million wounded, while 5 million civilians died as a result of military action, hunger, and disease. Millions more died in genocides within the Ottoman Empire and in the 1918 influenza pandemic, which was exacerbated by the movement of combatants during the war. Prior to 1914, the European great powers were divided between the Triple Entente (comprising France, Russia, and Britain) and the Triple Alliance (containing Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy). Tensions in the Balkans came to a head on 28 June 1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdin ...
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Method Acting
Method acting, informally known as The Method, is a range of training and rehearsal techniques, as formulated by a number of different theatre practitioners, that seeks to encourage sincere and expressive performances through identifying with, understanding, and experiencing a character's inner motivation and emotions. These techniques are built on Stanislavski's system, developed by the Russian actor and director Konstantin Stanislavski and captured in his books '' An Actor Prepares'', ''Building a Character'', and ''Creating a Role''. Among those who have contributed to the development of the Method*, three teachers are associated with "having set the standard of its success", each emphasizing different aspects of the approach: Lee Strasberg (the psychological aspects), Stella Adler (the sociological aspects), and Sanford Meisner (the behavioral aspects).Krasner (2000b, 129). The approach was first developed when they worked together at the Group Theatre in New York and lat ...
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