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Method acting is an acting technique in which actors try to replicate the emotional conditions under which the character operates in real life, in an effort to create a life-like, realistic performance. "The Method" typically refers to the generic practice of actors drawing on their own emotions, memories, and experiences to influence their portrayals of characters.
Origins
Mainly an American school, "The Method" was popularized by Lee Strasberg at The Actors Studio and the Group Theatre, in New York City in the 1940s and 1950s. It was derived from "the Stanislavski System", after Konstantin Stanislavski, who pioneered similar ideas in his teachings, writings, and acting at the Moscow Art Theater (founded 1897).
Strasberg's students included quite a few of America's most famous actors of the 20th century, including Paul Newman, Al Pacino, James Dean and many others.
Technique
Some consider Method acting difficult to teach. It is characterized by the lack of any specific or technical approach to acting; it usually forms an antithesis to clichéd, unrealistic, and so-called rubber-stamp acting.
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" and "emotional memory".
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 "emotion memory", one of the basic tenets of Method. Meisner's theory revolves around fully immersing oneself in the moment of a character, and experiencing all sensations as the character would, while his contemporaries used their own experiences as springboards into the emotional life of the character that he or she plays.
Stella Adler, the coach whose fame was cemented by the success of her students Marlon Brando and Robert DeNiro, as well as the only teacher from the Group Theatre to have studied Acting Technique with Stanislavski himself, 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 use circumstances from their imagination. She also emphasized, like Sanford Meisner, the all-importance of "action" within the theatre. As she often preached, we are what we do, not what we say.
Teachers
Stanislavski's works, 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:
- Michael Chekhov, actor, director, author
- Eugeny Vakhtangov, a Stanislavski student and protegé
- Uta Hagen, the author of Respect for Acting
- Richard Boleslawski, actor and film director
- Stella Adler, actress
- Lee Strasberg, director, actor, producer
- Robert Lewis, cofounder of The Actors Studio and author of Method — or Madness?
- Sanford Meisner, actor
Method Actors
These American actors have acknowledged using Method Acting as part of their technique:
- Al Pacino
- Robert De Niro
- Dustin Hoffman
- Paul Newman "I wanted to be the first animated character on screen to demonstrate method acting," referring to his role in the animated 2006 movie "Cars." *
- George Peppard employed the technique in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" *
External references
Major books on Method:
- Respect for Acting by Uta Hagen
- An Actor Prepares by Constantin Stanislavski
- To the Actor by Michael Chekhov
- Sanford Meisner on Acting by Sanford Meisner
- Method or Madness by Robert Lewis
- Advice to the Players by Robert Lewis
- Slings and Arrows: Theater in My Life by Robert Lewis
- The Actor's Studio: A Player's Place by David Garfield
- Miranda is Beautiul: A Biography by Miranda Vittoria Graham
Method Acting | La Méthode (théâtre) | Method acting | Metodinäytteleminen | 方法演技
"Method acting"