What is Bad Acting?
Stanislavsky doesn’t call it bad acting, but the meaning is clear. He uses the metaphor of a rubber stamp to convey the sense of sameness which destroys the illusion of individuality.
“A rubber stamp piece of acting is conventional, false and lifeless. It has its origin in theatrical routine. It conveys neither feelings, thoughts nor any images characteristic of human beings.”
Acting as a Work of Engineering
The Stanislavsky Technique is a school of acting in which the actor works to integrate conscious decision-making with subconscious motivations. The consequence of successful integration results in something metaphorically akin to a work of precision engineering:
“The use of steam, electricity, wind, water and other involuntary forces in nature is dependent on the intelligence of an engineer. Our subconscious power cannot function without its own engineer — our conscious technique.”
Physicality
Much of the Stanislavsky Technique requires intense physical exercises to which many new students react with ambivalence. These physical exercises seem to have little to do with any actual processes normally related to studying acting. Only after the student in the narrative has been committed significant time to these physical lessons does the teacher finally reveal through metaphor their connection to the more conventional aspects of creating a role:
“You find it easy not only to invent fictions but to live them, to feel their reality. Why has that change taken place? Because at first you planted the seeds of your imagination in barren ground. External contortions, physical tenseness and incorrect physical life are bad soil in which to grow truth and feeling.”
The Predatory Nature of Acting
Acting is about emotions, but reproducing the emotion is never easy. The teacher creates an extended metaphor for the student in which tapping into the appropriate emotion is like hunting or fishing; it is a predatory pursuit.
“Our artistic emotions are, at first, as shy as wild animals and they hide in the depths of our souls. If they do not come to the surface spontaneously you cannot go after them and find them. All you can do is to concentrate your attention on the most effective kind of lure for them.”
The Birth of a Performance
Stanislavsky puts the process of a performance taking place on stage within the metaphor of a birth, revealing the parental lineage that leads to the character walking onto the stage:
“In the creative process there is the father, the author of the play; the mother, the actor pregnant with the part; and the child, the role to be born”
