Stanislavski: The Image Of Man Symposium

[silence] [silence] [silence] At this time Riverside Radio presents a symposium on Stanislavski, the great Russian theater director and teacher. Stanislavski The Image of Man was recorded December fifth nineteen sixty five at the

Spencer Memorial Church in Brooklyn, New York. The panel included Barbara Bucacova, Elizabeth Hapgood, director Joshua Logan, actor Paul Roebling and actress Blanche YurKa. The reverend William Glenesk minister of the Spencer Memorial Church opened this discussion. I suppose you're wondering what on earth we're doing with a symposium on Stanislavski in the church. When most of this think of his works, An Actor Prepares, Building a Character, My Life in Art, Creating a Role as having to do only and exclusively with the theatre. It so happens that some of us who happened to have our collars on backwards and work in pulpits also consider this a place where Stanislavski's system works. It works for I think anyone who's interested in trying to communicate. This little stage, in the ancient cathedrals, is correctly called

the theatre. Here's where the great happenings took place. Here, before the people and before you entered into the went into the chancel. Here where we are Presbyterians we don't quite have that shape. And so we are going to go around the table and enter into the world of Stanislavski and we are surely privileged to have several persons here who knew him in person and worked with him. Perhaps if one of Stanislavski's objectives was to work for truth, if not his ultimate objective in the theater. Here, this evening, we may perhaps catch a fragment or so of the kind of truth that he pointed to from his life and art. Ms. Yurka? Well, my great pleasure in being here is

partly because it has brought back to me such a beautiful, beautiful memory. I think one of my most cherished memories of an afternoon I spent in the library of Mr. Stanislavski's house in Moscow in nineteen thirty four. Getting to be a long time ago. But I don't have much to say of anything except my intense appreciation of the charm of this man, of the gentleness, of a kind of radiance that he sent out. I was always a little amused at my first impression of this whole interview. I had been given a letter to him by a very distinguished Russian producer and director in this country, Mr. Robert Milton and I had also been given a letter of introduction to our ambassador in Moscow at that. So I sent the

two letters off the same day and asked if it was possible for me to see them. Each of them. And days went by but finally a charming note came from the office of Mr. Stanislavski setting a time which I was to come to his studio in his villa. The letter to the ambassador was replied to very much later. So I felt this was rather an indication of the beginning of a very charming contact. And then when the appointment it was afternoon that I had gone to what they call a matinee which in Moscow is a matinee. They do it in the morning or was at that time. Of a charming dramatic treatment of The Marriage of Figaro. And I was so fascinated by the

beauty and the sophistication and the delicacy of humor that was brought to bare on this play. Which was a play of manners that far antedated anything that most of the people in the audience could have been familiar with because around me sat very sweet looking elderly ladies with babushki on their heads and young people, children of age sixteen and eighteen and they all roared with laughter at that this very sophisticated story of a very sophisticated group of people. And I thought that was quite interesting to see their reaction. Then the time came for me to go, I thought I was to go up to an office. You see I was told that I would be met at the theatre and so I assumed that it would be the usual interview that you have been a busy manager. You know I mean you'd go in and he'd be sitting desk and you'd have a few superficial comments and

then be made very quickly to feel that time was running out and it would be very nice if you would leave. And this is what I was prepared for. But not at all. I was ushered out to a very comfortable car and driven out to the, at that time, the only rarely well kept villa that I had any access to. Most of the houses were in bad condition and I immediately felt that I was in a new world because here were these charming great six foot attendants and people in charge of the house. And very, all very sweet people. And then I went into that library which was packed with books up to the ceiling and there the other guests and I had the pleasure of seeing this glorious looking human being walk in quite quietly, very simply and we sat down and for two and a half hours talked about all

the aspects of the theatre that had interested us all. And so while I have no very great contribution to make to the marvelous work that was done by Stanislavski because of course all of us who have seen his company and read his books realize that he was probably one of the greatest forces for opening up new channels of thinking about the theater that any of us have ever had any contact with but I stress this sense this is human relationship because it was a warm and beautiful thing and l'm sure his audiences must have felt it too. I came across some remarks made about, by him and about him which I think are very revealing of this quality of sweetness and gentleness and understanding which was his, to me, was his characteristic quality. It's very brief and I just want to read it to you because it sheds a small light upon it. "He spoke interestedly, sympathetically of the new public." This is in quotes.

to which they were now playing. His remarks conjured up the extraordinary contrast of which I had been subconsciously aware of at the matinee. Productions in the art theatre repertory which had been designed originally to appeal to the aristocratic, sophisticated audiences were now being presented to audiences largely composed of workers of people familiar with only the most primitive of living conditions for the most part. Some of whom had never been with the sacred we precincts of the art theatre prior to the revolution. I quote from an account Stanislavski himself once gave of the problem which this "new public" again in quotes presented. He said but yesterday our theatre had been filled by the old public which we had educated through many decades. And today we are faced with an altogether new audience which we did not know how to approach. Neither did the audience know how to

approach us. And how to live with us in the theater. We were forced to begin at the very beginning. To teach this new spectator to come into the theater at the proper time, how to sit quietly, how not to talk, not to smoke, not to eat nuts in public, not to bring food into the theater and eat it there. To dress in his best so as to fit in more into the atmosphere of beauty that was being worshipped in the theater. At first this was very hard to do and two or three times, after the end of an act, the atmosphere of which was spoiled by the crowd of still uneducated spectators I was forced to come before the curtain with a plea in the name of the actors who were placed in an impasse. On one occassion, I could not restrain myself and I spoke more sharply than I should have spoken. The crowd was silent and listened to me very attentively and to the present day I can not imagine how these two or three audiences managed to

tell of what had happened to all of the other visitors in our theatre. Nothing was written about it in the papers. No new decrees were issued on the score of what had happened. Why did a complete change in the behavior of the audience take place after what had happened. They came to the theatre fifteen minutes before the curtain, they stopped smoking and cracking nuts. They brought no food with them. And when I, unoccupied with the performance, passed through the corridors of the theatre which were filled with our new spectators, boys would rush to all the corners of the foyer, warning those present, "he is coming". All this he implied to us that afternoon in his conversation about the new public which he obviously learned to love. I think I can make way now for people who know him more intimately. [applause] Mrs. Hapgood? Shall I begin? I can't begin at the beginning but I'll

begin very near the beginning. When Mr. Glenesk told me that the subject of this evenings symposium was the image of man, the first thing that came to my mind was the first image I ever had of the art theatre. When it first came over here, in January in 1923 and I remember that at that time the art editor of a prominent magazine was so entranced by the image of the whole company. He said, you look at these groups of actors on the stage and they are a great painting. I don't think he mentioned any special painter, Rembrandt or any other but a few years ago, I was

asked to speak about Stanislavski to a group of student actors in a school. On my way there, I stopped at an exhibition. A small exhibition and there was a self portrait by Rembrandt there and I stood and studied it for quite awhile. And then finally I said to myself, well now, either Stanislavski studed with Rembrandt or Rembrandt studied with Stanislavski. Because here was a complete three dimensional human being who could just as well have stepped right out of the canvas and except for his clothing, be one of us. Of course you couldn't say that about a modern portrait. I don't know what would happen if any of Picaso's portraits came out of the canvas.

It might be rather embarrassing. But this was the kind of an image that Stanislavski created in every part. He was a complete human being. He was three dimensional. He was not a cardboard lover or a cardboard villan, or a cardboard anybody else. He just came into existence as he stepped on the stage on queue. He was a whole personality. From every point of view. And, for instance, every detail belonged to that personality and only to that personality. Not to any other personality that he would create in another play. I don't know whether any of you have ever seen the photograph or the photographs rather of Stanislavski's hands. There are a number of them. And people look at just the hands and say, oh!

those are the hands of Gayev in the Cherry Orchard! Those are the hands of old general Krutitskiy in the Ostrovsky play Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man. And in his hands, when he played Dr. Stockmann, were practically legendary. They were so well known and this was just one small detail everything else went with it. Every image he made was entirely different in every part. Now, he knew that people coming to the theatre, as in, this is one of the charms of a repertory theatre, came to play after play and came to the same play year after year because they knew all these people who were in the plays. They were all characters, perfect characters. They knew them, they were all friends.

They remembered them from year to year. Now, over here, especially after the appearance of the first book on Stanislavski's acting technique, An Actor Prepares, a great many people were carried away with the psycho technique. All this wonderful way of developing your imagination, your concentration of intention and especially your emotion memory. You notice I say emotion memory and not emotional memory because I don't think it is the memory of emotions. It is not emotional memory anymore than it's sensational memory. It's just a memory of those things. But all of this put much too much emphasis really on the spiritual psycho technique. Whereas Stanislavski always from the very beginning

gave equal emphasis to the physical side because you can have a great imagination. You can have a great emotion but unless you can translate that,... I'm a translator, you see. I translate that into a flesh and blood image, into the personality of a character within the frame work of the play who lives and moves and has his being on the stage. Your psycho technique is valueless just by itself. You have to have the two elements and that what Stanislavski always believed in. For a number of reasons. One of the reasons was of course that in creating the physical image of a character in a play, you have this very subtle interplay all the time. The physical

affects the spiritual, the spiritual affects the physical and between them you get the whole human being. The main thing it seems to me to remember then is that this is not just a human being like any one of us getting up on the stage. It is an image in the sense that a Rembrandt portrait is an image. Because it has to have that extra dimension of being a work of art. And art and beauty, those are the things that Stanislavski cared most about. And it was with very good reason that when he wrote his autobiography he called it, My Life in Art. [applause]

[applause] Mr. Robling. Thank you. We talked a lot about what Stanislavski is and the man himself. Ms. Yorka so beautifully expressed. And his teachings, I hope we can discuss some more. I'd like to, the work of the man has been called The Method has had some wonderful, wonderful treatment in this country and some very bad treatment. But I think it's most important people get the wrong idea about it. They think that it's, it has something to do with possibly Marlon's performance in Street Car started it all because he's a great actor and playing the character as it was written and as it directed in that production. They want you to speak up a little bit. Oh, okay. I'm talking about what The Method is NOT in case you

missed it. It doesn't have anything to do with not being able to hear me. You should be able to hear a method actor, you should be able to see him. He shouldn't have his back turned to audience. It shouldn't have anything to do with mumbling or scratching. I believe this is on your program. That's kind of an idea that's gotten into the mind of people because, I think largely because Marlon gave such a powerful performance in Streetcar and a great many actors have, rather than rediscovering certain parts of that kind, have um, have copied it... very frankly and I think that there's been a whole school that's grown up around Brando's acting and that to my money is the major, major American actor. I don't know if anyone agrees with me but I think he's a great, great actor and he was playing a part. Marlon is an expert dialectician. Now I don't want to get off on Marlon but Marlon can do an english accent, he can do a german accent, everyone has seen him.

And, his acting doesn't have anything to do with standing around in a torn t-shirt. He's a character actor and a major actor and the people who have copied him have made very bad mistakes. The women who have copied Geraldine Page, are taking the original. Or Kim Stanley or any other great actress working in theater today, are taking the original and doing her a disservice. Doing themselves a disservice as actors so that The Method, which is a form of teaching which brings animation to perhaps an unfamiliar role for an actor, is not an excuse for bad behavior on the stage. It's not an excuse for an actor not to be heard. It's not an excuse for an actor not be in the same place on the stage every night where the director tells him to be. He has to be there, he has to find life in that position. He can't go somewhere else on the stage and throw the whole production

as a result of it. So that these little eccentricities that have come into the theater as a result of copying great performances from other actors, I don't think have anything to do with The Method and I think that we should dismiss that immediately and go on to more positive things in this talk. For the positive end of it you certainly have the expert on my right here and to an American actor who hasn't known Stanislavski or worked has intimately with him as you had to in The Translations, I think that the best explanation of The Method is that it brings animation and life to parts which may be unfamiliar to the actor on the first reading, they may be difficult for him to assimilate emotionally, intellectually and he finds, he finds a way through The Method to bring life

to a part. Organic life, life that's part of his being and uses his equipment as an actor, no one elses. Not the equipment of a speech technician or a body expert. Although the actor must be beautifully trained in these things. To use his equipment fully. His own equipment, his personal equipment that no other actor has. In using these things fully from himself he must normally use The Method. You're a method actor if I've ever seen one Ms.Yorka. God forbid Not a bit. [laughter] Not at all. Not at all. [laughter] Not a bit. I learned... The Method is acting, you know. The Method is acting, yes, certainly, certainly. So you shouldn't say god forbid. No I was [word unclear] god forbid. But I have a little something to say about this later. Please do. Well I just think that this is a magnificent putting down

in black and white of things which most of us who have learned it with sweat, blood and tears have evolved without giving it names. The immersion of yourself in a part is something you expect to do, of course. You also expect to equip yourself with a well coordinated body and a well placed voice because this is your instrument. These are your two instruments. Therefore, it's up to you to learn to do what you can with them. I think that this has been an extraordinary record about one great actor was able to articulate about how he arrived at the magnificent use of his gifts which he did arrive at and helped many others too. I don't think that it is essentially required that everyone should follow the same path. That's all... [talking over each other] and he

himself said that. I think Mr. Logan will probably be able to direct and direct and say don't use my method, make your own. I think it is more or less that. And that is what those of us who have arrived at some kind of control of our resources and what gifts god gave us, we're forced to do and did them very successfully. in many instances I think most of the, several of the very prominent and successfully successful arts of our theatre have never gone through this verbalization of what they had learned to do by a process of osmosis more or less. Madam Bogat[?] um well I am ah, I think, that the best for me to do is to speak what it was to work with

Stanislavski in the same play and the same stage as a partner. And this was my great happiness and great luck to have done. Previous speakers said quite rightly all about Stanislavski's magnetism and power of loss is michael keaton and a palette of expression and especially his radiance [unclear what she is saying], he radiated. When he spoke on the subject which is interesting to him and dear to him. But Stanislavski could also be bashful [?] and very much so. He was uncompromising as far as art is concerned. I do use word, art, because to Stanislavski

theater was art first of all, amusement for those who come to the theatre. A result of the art which was attained during the work and give to the audience to participate in. If it's a comedy as Ms. Yurka said before, they laughed, if its tragedy they would cry and of course there were lots of cries. Many very sad plays. As long as you are truthful in your approach, in your attitude to the theatre. If you really want to dedicate yourself to this particular art, if you have been born with what at least you believe you've been born with a talent for it. Or you were advised to go to the theatre and study. You have to devote all

your time, all your practically life to it. Now, it sounds as though its very very very difficult and very uninteresting. It is the most interesting life. When people are capable, given opportunity to live for what they like best, as far as their expression. Their livelihood even. Although, in those days, in my time even, it wasn't, ah, well actors were always well paid, but somehow the stress was, as it is in this country, lots of very very good actors would accept a very interesting work, with an director for very small money. So money never was the, even though I never I mentioned I said livelihood but I didn't mean money. In a big meaning of it. It was your life as I started to say.

uh You come in the morning. You rehearse. Rehearsal is a revelation each time. Especially for young people of course in those days when I was there I was young person. [unclear]...some time ago. um, you, you wait for each new movement, each, I mean, movement of the play. Developing of the play. You hear Stanislavski speak. You know when he likes it and when he doesn't like. When he likes it, he sees there and all of us would watch how he takes it. And uh he smiles with his, he had a marvelous smile. And he's pleased and he looks like a child being pleased. Like a child, all excited inside.

If he doesn't like it. Oh, you would know right away. He's restless in his chair. He looks like a jupiter and so on. So I thought I would touch a little bit different part of that personality of Stanislavski. Stanislavski wasn't a teacher of method or system or whatever. He calls what he put down in writing about what he knew and learned about the theatre and observed. He put it in writing but he never wanted to be a professor of acting or I don't know what else to say. A teacher of acting for classes, for it was always, it was very lively, it was interesting, it was exciting. Even when he

studied with the students. It's excitement, it's looking together for the ways to solve the idea. How to approach the character and as Mrs. Cabot [?] mentioned before about him and hands. And his famous, well known hands and gestures and everything. It goes through his teaching. Physical part of physical education was very important. It was stressed, I don't know, I think its since 1909, he was particularly carried away. It was a little bit when I was in the theatre. uh, we used to hear him say, actor on the stage lives body and soul.

And that's that. Body and soul, body, never just soul. Never just body. Never just voice. No matter how well trained voice might be. Some people have beautiful voices but it has to be the whole person, body and soul. And to attain this image of complete person in each play, in each character the actor creates is aim and purpose of Stanislavski, always was. He wouldn't accept half baked human being, no matter what character in the play. It has to be complete. From inside out and from outside in. Its that person and there is, there was no doubt that when you, I mean when the audiences watch they don't see acting, they see human beings

living their lives. However I want to attach one point. In this country, there is an opinion that Stanislavski is realistic director only. That he wouldn't somehow, they think he wouldn't know anything about stylization or uh, or um stylizing, I don't know how I should have said it. Oh, stylized. Yet he always cared about it because you see here were symbolic plays done and in symbolic plays, the essence is human spirit, stream lined, not stream lined

its, its uh, essential. Essential, yes. It is essential. Almost abstract and if you don't bring your actor to the possibility to speak the way let's say plays of Shakespeare are written, even though there I I don't say about stylization today but I say about big emotions which require big speech, big voices, movement and everything. If your actors only know how to play every day realistic plays they are no actors. Stanislavski would be the last person to insist on only realistic plays. So when I said just how I started when I said that people watched and didn't see acting. They saw human being. That goes on any style of

a play. It is based on the same, living human spirit. In a difficult different situation in a different waves of live in the play. The way the playwright presents it. Well, I don't know what more I can say about Stanislavski. My personal because I think that's what is, there a lot of books written about Stanislavski and everything and I thought that my little part will be just to say that for, of course Stanislavski loved his new audience, old audience and all that. But Stanislavski, I remember many years ago when he was speaking, it is the theatre

belongs to the world. It is different for every nation, its different. Its individual just because of that particular nation is expressed temperaments are different and everything, different playwrights and all that. But the acting, acting is universal. Good acting is no matter in what language, in what playwright, you present, I mean you act or present your people acting. The truth is the truth, the audience knows it. Audience senses it. Have you ever watched for example, in the theater, when something goes on the stage and people see it and you just watch? Somebody on the stage, action goes on and people see it. And then, all of the sudden somebody, I experienced this very often in the American theatre

watching people, all of the sudden, you see back straighted, people lean forward, people attentive and they listen. What is it? A real thing came on the stage. A real trooper performer. I experienced it when Julie Harris played once and many other times. And people are with this because this stops being acting. It is not an actress, its a human being or its not an actor, its a human being. Big being human, vicious human being. Stanislavski played wonderfully, Sahtin in Lower Depths, I played Natasha in those days. Wonderful Sahtin. Gorgeous Sahtin and it is strange to say Sahtin as a person is a huge human being and Stanislavski grasped it and brought it on the stage. He was, I don't know another word but beautiful in this play, in this

part. Yet the man is drunk and everybody knows what Sahtin and the down and out and everything else. [?] what not. I think I've spoke enough. [applause] [applause] [applause] [applause] Mr. Logan, I understand you left Princeton University once upon a time to go to study with Stanislavski. Yes I left, I was twenty two years ago and I believe Stanislavski was seventy seven when I met him. It wasn't quite that old, at least that's what I read last week, I read the letter that I wrote to my mother and father are asking them to give me permission to leave Princeton and go to Russia and study with Stanislavski during the winter of nineteen thirty, thirty one and in that letter it said he was seventy seven but I guess I was inaccurate. At any rate, he was an old man but he didn't seem an old man.

He was certainly eternal and forever. When I left, after having been with him during the winter and watching and watched rehearsals particularly of the Stanislavski opera which he was directing at that time. From a couch where he was an invalid at the time and he had to sit on a sort of madame recamier couch. With one end of it propped up on, his back was propped up by one end of it with pillows and his feet were on the couch and he directed this group of young opera students in this production of Cocdor, the Rimsky-Korsakov opera. But, ah, I was privileged because of the fact that I knew

a young friend of Mrs. Hapgood's, Charles Leatherby, who was the grandson of Charles R. Crane, who had been a friend and I think somewhat of a benefactor of the Masquers Theatre. At any rate, because of Mr. Charles R. Crane, he asked at one time, Stanislavski, if he would allow Charles, his grandson, to study with him when Charles finished college. And because of, and Stanislavski agreed to this and Mr. Crane made it possible for one other person to study with Charles and to go with him and fortunately I was the one that was chosen. And um, I felt so moved at this whole thing because since my early childhood I'd wanted to be on the stage and wanted to be a professional actor and I'd begun to hear about Stanislavski very early in my life.

And so I wrote this very eloquent letter to my parents. Which I read last week and found in some old letters. And I really couldn't have refused it when I read it because it was so passionate and I explain to them how unimportant it was to get a degree from Princeton compared to meeting Stanislavski. And I said how old he was, I think maybe I made him a little older because I was terribly afraid that maybe he might die before I got there. He didn't die for quite a few years after that because Ms. Yurca met him at least three years later. I, uh, when I left Moscow in the late spring. I got a photograph give me by Mr. Stanislavski in which he wrote a

dedication to me. And he wrote another one to Charles, my fellow student. But on mine he wrote in french, he wrote, love the art in your self rather than your self in the art. And it was signed Stanislavski. And I think that I made such a fetish of trying to do exactly that, that I find it very difficult almost now to sit up here in front of you and seem to kind of be a personality or brag or anything. I believe that he, he, I so worshiped everything he said. Except for those rather sharp things that he said that madame Bolgato told us about. He was not a saint, Stanislavski.

He was very wicked and very amusing and very acid and sharp. As well as warm and radiant and fascinating. He was larger than life. He seemed to be larger than the ordinary human being and he had a larger face and a larger mouth and larger lips and larger checks and more hair. And ah he was a fascinating man. I think he could make himself turn into any shape. He could be a hideous as was and the Moliere play which we see the picture of him being with a two fake. The Mela Damajonaire [sp?]. He was in the lower depths. This rascal and drunkard. But he was a magnificent aristocrat as Giaf[sp?] rather

rather weakish one. He seemed I'm sure, I never saw him play the part but I saw Cocolate[sp?] play it many years later in the same production which still playing at the Moscow Art Theatre. I think, I'd like to talk about his looks for one second because we were talking about the image of man. I remember that when I saw him, it was shortly after the Green Pastures had opened in New York and it was a marvelous old man named, I think Harrison, who played the lord in Green Pastures which was the marvelous negro play written by Mark Conoly. It was a play about a negro child in the ignorant part of the south. This child or Sunday school child's idea of what the bible must have been like and was of course all people by negroes because that's all the kind of person that this

child had ever seen. So these great negro actors play this fabulous play and the reverend, he was a preacher before he was an actor, Harrison played the lord. And I remember that when I saw Stanislavski I wondered what I would have cast him as if I were, if I were a director. Course I planned to be a director the moment I looked at him because I wanted to be like him. And I decided he could play anything in any country and in any race, from any race. He could have been Genghis Khan very, just by sitting there on that madamjoier couch he could have been the lord in Green Pastures. And I'm sure every new negro would've believed him to be a negro. He was more than handsome and yet he was, he was not really handsome at all by any of the sort of

movie star canons. But he was certainly a fascinating human being and one that I wanted to be as near like as was humanly possible. Ah I think that one of the reasons that there's so much argument about the method as we have come to know it. And I think he'd be rolling in his grave if he'd hear us talking about it. I think he would whirl because I do think as Madam said a few minutes ago, he was not just a teacher. He was not and I think he sometimes very much regretted that he'd ever mentioned that to anyone. You know, because it got to be so important and talked about so much that people forgot the other things that Stanislavski had done. In the first place, he had created a theater that was

a revolutionary theater at that time. He was, he was, had no use for phoniness. Or pretense, or, or or or, he wanted, he wanted truth in acting. And this does not mean as she very carefully pointed out to us, that he was simply a realistic director because I saw the same play that Masure Gerkasaw[sp?] The Marriage of Figaro the Umashe[sp?] play and it had been directed by Stanislavski. And it was the most, it was the wildest kind of stylized performance I'd ever seen in my life. I'll never forget a young page played in that play. A young, he was, he was the page, and he was a young man I imagine in his very early twenties and I think with a second act this started in the most marvelous way with a laundry yard of ladies underwear. Pantaloons and bloomers and anyway lots of linen. And it was just filled with this, with this

drying linen with great suggestion of feminine excitement to it. And this page was going around through these ladies lingerie looking at them with such excitement. And he ever saw her attractive girl he, even if it were fifty yards away, his mouth would start to pucker into a kiss and he would frozen sort of pointing at her like a dog might point at a bird. And it was the most enchanting funny thing I'd ever seen in my life and this was not what I'd expected from Stanislavski. I'd read about the Stanislavski method and I thought it was terribly serious and had something to do with the inner soul of man and had nothing to do with anyone puckering lips and pointing to a girl and this was a big discovery of mine. That he could do any

form of theater as well as the other types of plays that she mentioned and at that time there were many. I'd love to tell you all about them and talk for hours about them but I'm sure I'm taking up too much time. I'd just like to say this one thing that I meant to say a little earlier and then got off on a tangent. Charles and I were there studying with Stanislavski,meeting Stanislavski after every rehearsal in his private quarters in this home where there were no rehearsals and talking about the theatre and being served by his lovely wife who was like a charming little bird with a high voice and great charm and sweetness. And she, I think, felt very motherly toward us. We were very young and the fact that we'd come this far affected her. And she was particularly nice and of course that was the place where we could get the best food in Moscow because there wasn't very good food in those days. It was during the first

five year plan and it was very difficult to get anything but for some reason Stanislavski was allowed to have a little extra things. And also, well, we won't go into that. I had a lovely time that afternoon. Always after the rehearsals just having tea and talking with the two of them, Charles and I. But while we were, every night we'd go backstage and meet the actors, Cachala [sp?], Flalita [sp?], Mosfine[?]. Nita[?] had just come back from a very bad nervous breakdown and was back into the company. And then there was Madame Canicochekova[sp?] who was playing the lead in the cherry orchard. Chekov widow, who still was playing at that time and incidentally was still alive the last time I was in Moscow but I think its in sti[?] but I met a man

who came up to me and to Charles and he spoke to us in Russian and we of course only understood English and French. Charles spoke some German, I only, Stanislavski spoke to us in French, would direct in Russian and then translate the little things that he wanted to say outside and as a matter of fact some very wicked things too because he knew that the actors couldn't hear what he was thinking but he would let off some steam you know when the actor was particularly frustrating because he could turn to us and we were sort of people that couldn't tell the actor what he was saying and he just said what he felt you know about how awful this actor was because this was a very frustrating time for him because he was working with young people who had never had any experience acting and who'd spent all their time with singing teachers and diction teachers and felt that they had to hold their diaogragm in a certain way and pull their shoulders back in order to make a tone. And he was determined to get a realistic effect and they couldn't all be standing like powder pigeons and

acting, you know, in this very dramatic play and singing at the same time. But this man came up to me and Charles backstage and said I know you have come because it was translated for us by Tuansva[?] Stanislavski's secretary, you have come all the way to meet Stanislavski but I want you to meet me too because I had something to do with the Moscow Art Theatre. My name is Nimorobichdmchko[sp?]. Well, Nimorobichdmchko[?] is a, was a slightly smaller man than Stanislavski in physic only. He was a great man and is just as important to the formation of the Moscow Art Theatre as Stanislavski is. They started it together. But for some reason Stanislavski was such a radiant personality and he was an actor. And he was an actor and therefore he was as a star and they knew him as a personality and saw

pictures of him in front of the theater and in the program. And since directors are, should not be known and should not be recognized Nimorobichdmchko has disappeared from most of the publics knowledge of the Moscow Art Theatre and it seems to have been done alone by Stanislavski. And yet some of the greatest work and works we saw that fall and that winter were directed by Nimorobichdmkanco[?] and I would just like to say that one of the images of man that should be left with all of you is that there was another man as well as Stanislavski in this, at this great time and his name was Nimorobichdmcanko[?] and in Moscow, there is a street called Stanislavski Street but there is

also a street called Nimorobichdmkanco[sp?] Street. [applause] As Mrs. Hapgood said he was the one who brought Chekof into the art theatre. Now that's one thing he did. I first discovered Stanislavski about thirty years ago or so. Seems an awful long time ago when I'd first read Building a Character. I didn't know An Actor Prepares existed. Building a Character is primarily about speaking and walking and projecting and most of the technical things for an actor to know. And fortunately Joshua Logan introduction was there to say something about

the More than the Technical Method. I didn't read An Actor Prepares until several years later after I'd had several years study of classical or well classical or external or what have you, acting. And then suddenly I found myself on a stage in a little theater alone up on a stool. And there was an actress sitting out alone in the audience, telling me that telling me where I was getting stale and going wrong and so on. One of the things that pushed me to go back to studying acting again was that I think for some of us, not just for myself that we preachers are a little like many things in the church, Christianity. It sometimes goes a little stale because its had such a long run. And I don't know what every actor will do when they're on Broadway or

touring in one roll or in one play for a long time. I'm sure they must have some off nights. I'm not going to ask our distinguished guests whether they ever had one. But I sure have had off days in the pulpit and its something we have to do fifty weeks a year. And of course in a sense although we may say different lines, we are ultimately playing the same role. And one of the great discoveries, the most refreshing and startling thing I discovered in Stanislavski that just threw me and turned me inside out was this question of not working for a result. Not working for what you were going to get out there but rather be getting here. And with physical things and real things and then letting what was to come out there happen. It was the opposite to working for a result. And this was to me a revelation. It sort of broke into little pieces my philosophy of speech and speaking. My whole

point of view with regard to communication of all having an objective and letting it happen. And letting a human relationship happen and an encounter with people happen. And that when this can be worked on the stage with technique and with training. The craftsman in the theater, the actor, the actress, the performer. They can repeat this happening almost every night. And this is something I think in this time that and this is part of our reason for having this symposium. Is that I think this is something that you who are not in the theater, if there's anybody here who isn't. Uh, can find and a freedom of emotion, a freedom of speaking, of ideas. Which is tremendous, its a, it'll just shake you inside out. Uh

to a kind of fear and trembling. And this is something to me which gives you a, an openness about life. It doesn't mean that you're walking around like an open book or that you're making a confession of every conversation. Of course you have your private life and your private thoughts and your own medications. But it does mean that when you want to say something that is precisely what you want to say you have the freedom and the emotion of the intellect and means to say it. And I think that this is something that we can use quite honestly wherever we are whether you're in a pulpit or you're arguing a case in court or whether you're perhaps even in politics where we don't always want to mean what we say or say what we mean. And so from my point of view, outside the theatre I think that Stanislavski has much to say to the man in the

street and to anyone who wants to communicate. Apart from a mask or projecting an image. We are all so worried about our images. The kind of image that we're going to have. Fixing it, composing it, putting makeup on it and so on. Rather than, this is working for a result without first asking what it is that we're projecting behind the image. And I think Stanislavski throughout his books is working for this kind of integrity. That the person, the actor, themselves ought to begin working on themselves as the actual substance because that's what they're going to have use when they are on the stage. That's what I have to use when I'm on the pulpit or in any kind of encounter. In which, I think any of us have to to use wherever we are in human relationship. We have gone around the table and each of our guests has made a statement, a comment

from their own insight and their own point of view. And I think it is more exciting and there's more of an encounter if you throw questions up and I recognize you and then, pointed to one of the guests if you wish. So uh, Scott Stutsworth, how are you? ah, yes [applause] Thank you, I'm enthralled. [laughter] I hadn't really realized how absorbing the subject would be. It just so happens however that I came prepared. [laughter] My life [?] Since you mentioned [?] I thought it might be nice to mention to that she uh had plenty of interesting things to say on the subject of The Method. She once succeeded, tied it up it seems to me by saying we must always remember that Stanislavski meant this as a rehearsal procedure. Is that correct? By all means. It makes more sense to an actor that way than it does any other way because it eliminates

the necessity of feeling that you have infinite latitude when you're before an audience. And you really don't. No, uh The Method isn't license. [laughter] That's right. But I thought maybe her way of specifically pointing that out to me seemed to me. Yes, it's not only I'm sure the thing, the point I started to make and then got off on another subject was that The Method was really, he started by trying to break down the, to revolutionize in a sense. To break down all the traditional things. In other words, Stanislavski's whole idea was to tear down and start fresh and never be, never follow any kind of set pattern. And therefore he would never want The Method to become a set pattern. And so The Method was used supposedly, originally to have the actor go inside of themselves, remember some similar tragic event in his

own life or happy event or whatever whatever might bring him into an emotional state. And while he was in emotional state of memory, emotion recall he would then somehow unconsciously color his performance. But this was to be used in the, in rehearsal, back in his home when he's working on his lines. When he was walking on the street trying to think. Not, it didn't mean that he was to bring this kind of thing on to the stage even though he might feel that he must get into the mood before he makes the performance. It didn't give him the license to experiment on the stage after the director and the other actors had set the way the play was to be. But then of course too, they had longer rehearsal periods in those days, didn't they. Two years sometimes. That was very exceptional. But it did happen once. Yes? I've never read either of the books that you mention so I'm in a way coming here very naive. I was impressed by the fact that we're sitting here in this church discussing the theatre and I thought of the length between the beginning of theatre that is certainly came originally from magical, you know, rituals. So that the first church all over the world, Japan, Greece

always thought there was a map. A map of plays. And I thought of that when you speak to the fact that Stanislavski always going inward. And I thought what is the problem today we don't [?] that but then I remembered the greek personality. It comes from the word map persona. Map things speak through. The word persona was the up through the head and out through his voice box. And that's I how we got the word personality so I thought in a sense the problem Stanislavski must have had as you speak and it began about sixty years ago. Was that what he was [?] a force or formal idea of an actors personality on the stage must have dessolved. So that all actors came on thinking they had to be actors and actors were so and so [?] and that was the problem. And acting has gotten more and more stiff. So your revolution was

the stripping off of this map. The map of the personality, and then the great revolution, these spirits emerged. So that what we have today in the great actors, sometimes instinctive, sometimes forced. But I imagine instinctively because it always there to emerge. The emergence of the human spirit. So I wanted to ask, if you found that in play in Moscow. Did the spirit sometimes come out with an electric charge? through the whole audience. Madame B? You see, well uh, during the during my time, it happened. For example, you see most of us came through Moscow eventually had the training and um even forced and continued to be trained in the theatre. Now that was um part that couldn't be somehow several actresses were

tried and they couldn't. And there was a very young woman, she probably was seventeem, I dont remember now who was a student in the studio, first studio of the Moscow Arts Theatre. And she came boldly, directly to Stanislavski and she said I know I can play the part of that girl. And he was startled and he said he was very interested. Because to come to him, unknown young person, and say give me the part in The Moscow Arts Theatre on the stage was unheard of nobody would think, dream about it. So he said yes, you probably could play if you stay longer with us and study. Instead she prepared the part [?] and in the Dosteski[sp?] play

[unintelligible] she prepared the part, she came to his dressing room and she said it was one of the rehearsals that they found there so she said please tell stage manager and all the other actors that you will try me in this part. I've got to do it, even once, she said even if I will never play again but I'm going to rehearse it. I know it all, I watched how you and so on and on and on. She played the part at that rehearsal and immediately received and she was cast in the part. Now, she was a kind of a director who didn't completely trust to the, he knew it was just as you say, inspiration, explosion. Yes, so he

he had immediately sent her to the classes but by the way the classes where of a woman who left a very well known name here as a teacher. Maria Ouspenskaya. So she started to work on the part with her, not on the part, on the general training. Not touching the part at all. She played all the performances and afterwards for two years she wasn't cast in anything, rather, she was cast but couldn't. So she always warned Stanislavski, that when it happens it has to be very carefully, you know, attended to because [unintelligible] [unintelligible] but it happened to be that that particular part was very near nature, her character. And it [?] and others when you have to try and try and try and try and

well eventually she was a very good actress. Our first studio of Moscow Art Theatre. She would have been taken in Hollywood immediately and be a famous person in the end I would say in six months. Yes, she would have been but do you remember what happened. Who played the wild duck? [?] Chandler? Yes. That was an explosion of a talent and nothing afterwards. One of the tragedies of our theatre, I think. I think this is one of the dreadful things that happens in our theatre. People are suddenly create an extraordinary impression because oa a natural gift for the part. And then during during the years that follow when they should be nurtured and taken care of and have training and have and perhaps be kept off the stage for a few years. There's nobody interested in doing that. And this was a girl who I believe had a genius. She was absolutely

unbelievable in that part. She used to be standing in the wings talking and making funny games and then she's go on the stage and I felt as if she were nobody that I Blanch [?] had ever known but Deana [?] knew very well. I had no sense of a personal relationship with her other than that which was happening the stage. It was a very extraordinary experience. She was also very beautiful [?]. She was, I didn't know that. And she was a wonderful comedian too. She played in farces. Helen Chandler. She was enormously gifted. This seems to me part of the reason why Stanislavski verbalized as you say, I mean. Part of his fame rested on the verbalization which was you know given through these wonderful books. And it seems that he... May I say when I made my rather explosive reaction to your question I was not repudiating The Method that

is developed in these books. I was repudiating being more or less categorized in what has been made out of that method. I don't think there's any question that a thoughtful person who wanted to know the mechanics or the subtlety of acting which is enormously enriched by studying these books. I think they are for people who, I would think there greatest effect would be on people who had had a great deal of experience in the theatre rather than on beginners. I don't know if you agree with that. That might be true. Yes. You have to have been exposed to some of the problems to know what he's talking about. May I make one remark about the book? Mrs. Hapgood. The first review that was published about An Actor Prepares was written by Ashton Stevens of Chicago who was a dramatic critic out there. He said, I received this book

I was unable to read it at once so I let my brother-in-law have it who was interested. He was an insurance salesman and he came back in a state of great excitement and said this is the best book on how to sell insurance that I ever read. [laughter] That was An Actor Prepares. The first reaction that I got from anyone about building a character was from a distinguished lawyer who said that part about the psychological pulse is something that every lawyer ought to read. I mean these are so unexpected. They came and there have been all sorts of people. Writers, musicians. Preachers. [laughter] Did you ever find out specifically what the insurance salesman got from the book? No

I never heard anything more than that. But it was what Mr. Gleneski[?] was talking about. He got inspiration. The ability to communicate. And state what he had to state. I mean if an insurance man is going to sell you something, he's got to be convinced about it. He's got to put it over and that's what the actor has to do. This has a great deal to do with belief, doesn't it. This is a word Stanislavski used a lot. What do you mean by belief, Mr. Logan? What would you say? I I don't remember the word belief. Mrs. Hapstack better answer that. Well, its what he called fate, a sense of truth that you had to that that you are able to put yourself so completely in the situation which is prepared for you by the playwright that you are in it. You are it, you are of it and you are in it. You believe in it. There's a terrible thing that happens to any great work. These

books are the writings of Stanislavski. But its like the Bible or the Koran. You know you really are or Aristotle. You can use Stanislavski to prove almost anything. You know, if you really read it right and quote it wrong. You know, it really is, you can spend a lot of time proving that Stanislavski contradicted himself all the way through it. You really have to go on the spirit of it and not on the exactitude. I think that one of the most winning qualities of Stanislavski was his extraordinary modesty. He never thought of himself as, he was never satisfied with anything that he did. And above all he did not have any sense of being able to write but he felt, he always said,

I'm just a beginner. Just a [?] in this. But I feel that I've had a great deal of experience. I've seen a great many actors, I have tried to find out what it is basically that they have which make them great actors. And I feel that its my duty to try to put this down in an intelligible form. And so that that was his modesty was complete. He never pretended. He said, this mustn't be a grammar that you just that you have to take every word at one is by pushing the oil farther we're going to go

you live in the sting to director joshua logan and a panel of other practitioners of the theater discussing son stan osowski the image of man as recorded at the spencer memorial church in brooklyn new york december fifth nineteen sixty five members of the panel where barbara look at all the elizabeth hapgood <unk> logan paul robling bunch of guns and the reverend william glenn ask this program was produced for riverside radio by cyril peters this is the glue on the audio from station of the riverside church in new york city one oh six point seven oh you the