Konstantin Stanislavsky

 Konstantin Stanislavsky

In the ‘Konstantin Stanislavsky’ biography, you learn the many ways that Konstantin used and tried to get into character, and how he became a well known Theatre practitioner.

One of the techniques Konstantin Stanislavsky tried using to get into character was making the scene into reality. Once he had to play the role of a ‘decrepit old man’, however only being twenty-five years old, Stanislavsky wasn’t sure how to take on the character. Therefore, he adapted an externalised style of character acting that he knew he was lacking something, which gave him the idea how he could stimulate his imagination into finding that ‘something’ that he was lacking. In attempt to find this ‘something’ he spent a night locked in the cellar of a castle. This was his first intuitive understanding of what he was later to call affective memory, whereby actors find a situation from their own life experience which copies the character’s fictional life. Despite the fact, he was only left with a cold from this experience, and his imagination wasn’t affected by this experience.

I believe the ‘affective memory’ isn’t a good way of preparing to get into character because if the actors real life experience is too personal, it may affect their performance or may distract them from acting as the actual character.