"In the circle of light on the state in the midst of darkness, you have the sensation of being entirely alone. . . This is called solitude in public. . . During a performance, before an audience of thousands, you can always enclose yourself in this circle, like a snail in its shell. . . You can carry it wherever you go."
As the Director teaches, he tries to encourage his students to fully embrace their roles onstage. He intimates that an actor in a performance is never more alone or more truly themselves. By allowing yourself to slip into a circle of personal intimacy, you can focus in the midst of an overwhelming audience. He instructs his students to think this way constantly, to maintain this connection with self throughout everyday life.
"Every person who is really an artist desires to create inside of himself another, deeper, more interesting life than the one that actually surrounds him."
The Director here speaks of desire. He claims that artists want their experience to transcend the present reality, as if through art they could create an experience that is more profound than anything previously known. It's a form of escape for the artist to invent something new, a way to transform their circumstances into ones which they control and can imagine.
"Everyone at every minute of his life must feel something. Only the dead have no sensations."
To the Director, acting is the means of expressing the human experience. Since no human is ever not feeling something, he insists that his actors reflect this in their performance. There is no acceptable moment when they should be concentrating on anything less than the feelings of their respective characters. If people wanted to watch a stoic actor, they would visit a cemetery.
"Today the Director opened his remakrs by telling us what we must always do when the author, the director, and the others who are working on a production, leave out things we need to know. We must have, first of all, an unbroken series of supposed circumstances in the midst of which our exercise is played. Secondly we must have a solid line of inner visions bound up with those circumstances, so that they will be illustrated for us. During every moment we are on the stage, during every moment of the development of the action of the play, we must be aware either of the external circumstances which surround us (the whole material setting of the production), or of an inner chain of circumstances which we ourselves have imagined in order to illustrate our parts. Out of these moments will be formed an unbroken series of images, something like a moving picture. As long as we are acting creatively, this film will unroll and be thrown on the screen of our inner vision, making vivid the circumstances among which we are moving. Moreover, these inner images create a corresponding mood, and arouse emotions, while holding us within the limits of the play."
Kostya is amazed by all the facets of theater of which he had previously no knowledge. At the Director's advice, he has learned that an actor is always playing his character. Even when there is no clear direction, he must have in mind a series of supposed thoughts and reactions which correspond to his character so as to fill any empty space in the production. This is not solely to ensure the quality of the play from an audience's perspective but also to maintain the integrity of the actor's performance. If Kostya can truly adopt a role, then he will respond to every circumstance as the character which he is playing, regardless of written direction or not.
