André Teixeira

The belief that imagination’s engagement and emotional connection with what I play enhance my performance propelled me to do this research. However, these are not systematically integrated in instrumental practice. Thus, it seemed to me that the twentieth century theatre director Konstantin Stanislavski’s ‘system’ would be the perfect basis for such a quest. The starting point were acting techniques from his first book "An Actor Prepares": the "given circumstances", imagination-related ("supposed circumstances", “inner visions”, "magic if”) – and emotion-related ("emotion memory", "sensation memory", "surroundings"). Partly supported by existing literature, these techniques were linked with the instrumentalists' work and tested out in a self-case study through three interventions. The process consisted of making video recordings of the 'before' and the actual interventions, which were guided by the filling out of intervention forms designed by me. The techniques were applied on three distinct piano passages of Richard Strauss’ melodrama for narrator and piano "Enoch Arden". Furthermore, I did interventions’ reports to provide more palpable insights about the experience, namely the effects of each technique on the performer. The outcome was evaluated through a questionnaire filled in by a group of listeners, comprising musicians and non-musicians, and by me. The responses generally show that the techniques were effective. However, the recordings were perceived as very similar. Also, the listeners’ perception sometimes differed from mine. Nevertheless, the reports allow us to conclude that these techniques might affect the performer’s focus, creativity, self-confidence, knowledge about the works and also self-knowledge.

3.1. STANISLAVSKI: Biography

Konstantin Stanislavski was a Russian theatre actor, director and teacher, best known for his stage performances and productions, for co-founding the Moscow Art Theatre (MXAT) and, above all, for the acting system that influenced subsequent generations of actors.

Stanislavski was born Kontantin Sergeyevich Alexeyev in Moscow on January 5th, 1863, to the wealthy merchant Russian family, Alexeyev (Bishop & Jones, 1999). His interest in acting, most likely, started within his own family, which formed a theatre group called the Alexeyev Circle in 1877 (Benedetti, 2005, p. 2).

Funded by his father, Konstantin went on to perform as an amateur actor in his youth, creating the Society of Art and Literature in 1888, and attending the Maly Theatre, by which time he had taken the stage name Stanislavski to distance his life working in the family business from his life in the theatre (Bishop & Jones, 1999).

However, these two lives were not incompatible. Indeed, in 1894, Stanislavski established a choir and a reading room for the workers at his factory and there, in 1895, he sponsored an amateur theatre which later had to be moved to a different building because of its popularity among the workers (The official portal of the Moscow Mayor and Moscow Government, 2020)

Throughout these early years, he became ever more involved with a realistic approach to theatre, drawing his material from the real world and from direct observation, (…) [selecting] only those elements which revealed the relationships and tendencies lying under the surface rather than from convention, which he found artificial and meaningless. (Benedetti, 2005, pp. 16-17).

In 1898, together with the playwright and stage director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, Stanislavsky founded the MXAT, a company comprised of amateur actors from the Society of Art and Literature and from the the Moscow Philharmonic Society. (Moore, 2022) Through the MXAT, Stanislavski further developed his own system of training (creating the First Studio, dedicated to his research) and gave renown to several contemporary writers and playwrights like Anton Chekhov, Maxim Gorki and Mikhail Bulgakov, who also opposed the romanticism that prevailed at the time.

In the wake of the October Revolution in 1917, despite Alexeyev family business being nationalised, thus losing his main source of income, Stanislavski, as well as the MXAT, received special praise from Vladimir Lenin and Anatoly Lunacharsky (the first Soviet People’s Commissar responsible for Ministry of Education), who were instrumental in subsidising the company in the few years that followed (Moore, 2022). In fact, much later, in the 1930s, Stanislavski’s system became an exemplary model for Soviet realism when it was established (Carnicke, 1998, p. 33). During the early 1920s, the company toured across the main artistic centres of Europe and of the United States. (Johnson, 2019, pp. 103-104)

Following a heart attack on stage in 1928, Stanislavski’s retired from acting and focused on writing, teaching and directing rehearsals, completing the two volumes of An Actor’s Work and An Actor’s Work on a Role — the Russian versions of An Actor Prepares (1936), Building a Character (1948) and Creating a Role (1957), respectively. The last two were published after his death and were actually not finished by that time. (Johnson, 2019, p. 109) The whole set was written in the form of a diary and follows the acting classes of Kostya and his fellow students. An Actor Prepares is the keystone of this research’s theoretical framework and will be further explored in the next subchapter.

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Image 1: Konstantin Sergejewitsch Stanislawski 1

Image 2: Konstantin Stanislavski in 1938 2

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