Well? What are some other acting styles?
Yes. To answer more fully you would have to define what you mean by method acting. If you mean “The Method” as created by Lee Strausberg and the actors studio of old, it is less common but exists. If you mean acting based in the work of Stanaslavski I would say that almost every acting school in America uses it to some degree.
As far as acting styles, there are as many styles of acting as there are acting teachers, or some would say as many styles as there are actors. Most acting training these days draws on the works of several others rather than teaching a single comprehensive style. So you end up with actors using Suzuki and Stanaslavski with a bit of Stella Adler (to pull random names out of a hat).
In reality the majority of actors I have worked with recently seem to have had no real training to speak of, but that’s a topic for the pit. :rolleyes:
Recent acting school grad here. My school doesn’t directly teach “The Method” or the techniques of any famous acting teachers. Instead, the teachers teach what works for them. Each of them had several acting teachers; they use (and therefore teach) only the techniques that work well for them. I, in turn, use some but not all of what I was taught (some techniques just don’t resonate well with me). If I were to eventually teach a scene study class, I would teach the techniques that work for me, not what worked for Stella Adler. Of course, one of my teachers was (at least briefly) taught by an actor who was directly taught by Stella Adler, so a lot of her techniques are bound to have reached me, regardless of whether they are identified as such. It’s my understanding that Stanislavsky didn’t want his techniques to be ensconced at the “correct” way to act; that would eventually make them as inflexible as the system he overthrew. Overall, though, the acting training I had can be summed up as eighteen experienced actors telling eighteen inexperienced actors, “This is what works for me.”, and not “This is what works.”.
This is as it should be. In fact, The Method is in many ways outdated. While I don’t actually know specifically what Stanislavsky taught, I know this much: The Method takes a lot of time to apply to a role. The television industry simply does not give actors adequate time use The Method. Today, in an audition situation, a good actor can be expected to come up with something interesting within ten minutes of getting a script (and be able to keep it off the page). The Method alone isn’t enough to do this.
Max, this is in no way your fault, and you could be a wonderful actor, but I can’t restrain myself:
What in the heck were they teaching you for four years if you don’t know the techniques of Adler or Stanislovsky - at least a few of them - by name? 
Was there no theory or history in all of your schooling? shudder
I only have a handful of acting classes at community college and I know those two!
Here’s a really, really basic primer for those interested*: Pre-Stanislavsky, acting was viewed as portraying a series of emotions while speaking a set of words. The only thing that mattered was what the audience saw. So often, actors would be blank-faced when not facing the audience (which would never happen today - you’d piss off your fellow actors no end if you gave them a blank face to work off of!) and, when off-stage, would not remain “in character”, but would be themselves - totally removed from anything going on onstage. They weren’t interested in BEING angry, but in APPEARING angry.
Stanislavsky was a director who believed that one should actually put real, honest emotion into a performance. It’s not enough to know what muscles you move on your face and body to portray “anger”, you must find actual anger at the time of performance. In addition, he encouraged the idea of “subtext”: that the actor should always maintain a running monologue of the character’s thoughts in his head when he wasn’t speaking, even though it wasn’t in the script. He developed the idea of being “in character,” and encouraged students to improvise scenes as their character that were not written in the script to better understand their characters during the show.
One of his followers, a fellow by the name of Lee Strasberg, took this even further, encouraging what was nearly acting-as-therapy as training for young actors. He thought that all these emotions should come almost exclusively from within the actor’s experiences in life. So if you had to do a scene with crying, you should think about your dog dying when you were 10 and REALLY feel sad and cry for real. His program became known as The Method. Like Stanislavky, he emphasized improvisation as a teaching tool.
One of Strasberg’s collegues and co-teachers was a woman named Stella Adler. She emphasized getting to know your character through research: reading the script, reading historical books about the time period, learning how to use the tools, wear the clothes and speak the language of your character. She had her students write long papers, providing “backstories”: biographies of their character which included childhood memories not in the script. Unlike Strasberg, Adler thought that nearly all the emotion would come from knowing your character very, very well. She also emphasized in-character improv as another way to get to know your character. Some of her most well-known students were Robert DeNiro, Marlon Brando, Harvey Keitel and Warren Beatty. Over time, her work also become known as The Method, and was sort of rolled in with Strasberg’s.
All of these are still taught today, though not, at **Max **reveals, always by name.
And, as he points out, not all of these are appropriate for the quick pace of television acting. I see more Method trained actors in movies and theater than I do in TV. Strasberg’s techniques are probably more usuable on short notice than Adler’s. I used a blend myself, back in the day. Sometimes it helps to know what a character could be thinking, other times I had to think of my impending break-up to cry. Sometimes, I just had to know how to move and gesture, which is very, very not Method!
But I’ve never, ever felt the need to remain “in-character” while offstage, which is probably what most people associate with Method Acting.
*All of this is based on education I received more than 10 years ago and have long since lost the notes for, so if I’m wrong, please forgive me and offer corrections.
No offense taken, Whynot. I went through an Acting for Film and Television intensive program. They didn’t teach us theatre history or how to apply stage makeup because they were busy teaching us things like audition technique, voice-over technique and protocol, and on-camera technique.
Based on your summary, Stanislavsky’s and Adler’s techniques were indeed taught, just not by name. My school’s faculty is composed entirely of working actors. They teach what they teach because it works, not because it was groundbreaking several generations ago. I learned the techniques of Marchant, Bates, Anderson, McDowell, Thorne, Grant, Robinson, and quite a few others. These people are fine actors and great teachers, and they don’t need to teach from a textbook. Most of them went through theatre school and know better than to become the kind of theare school teachers that they have horror stories of.
I can’t say there was much of a focus on what you say Strasberg’s techniques are. If I have the preparation time, I find it more useful and accessible to work with in-character memories than with my own personal traumas.
We had a strong emphasis on actions and objectives; after all, we were studying “acting” not “feeling”. YMMV, but when I see an actor having an emotional response to something that doesn’t have anything to do with the scene (like losing his grandma at age seven), it’s untruthful and boring. When an actor/character takes strong actions in pursuit of his objective, and conflict arises with the other actors/characters, the scene is compelling and the emotions of the actors will be created without any effort on their part. Actions generate emotions, emotions generate impulses, and impulses generate actions. In other words, it’s not about appearing angry, nor is it about being angry: It’s about the rampage. I don’t know who originally devised this approach to acting, but that’s ultimately irrelevant; all that matters is that it works well and I can to it.
3 things:
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For those who *would *like to know, the technique you are using was initially developed by Stanislavski. Focus on action etc… all Stanislavski in origin. (Michael Chekov too, but lets not get too bogged down in details) Everyone else built on this fundamental principle, the idea of “emotional memory” (sometimes incorrectly referred to as sense memory) is also from one of his techniques, but it is intended as a rehearsal technique not a performance technique. What Strasburg did (to greatly oversimplify) was to say “well in the movies and on Broadway these days we don’t have the luxury of lots of rehearsal so lets cut to the chase and put the emotional memory on stage” (as I said this is grossly oversimplifying, but is in essence what happened). The idea behind the emotional memory exorcize was that you can’t actually play with your characters memory because you aren’t your character, you don’t actually know how they feel, so you substitute the closest thing, a memory from your own life that would produce a similar reaction. What you are then supposed to do is apply the physicality of that reaction to the objectives of your scene and the combination creates a more genuine performance. This technique is widely misunderstood and misused however.
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It actually shouldn’t be about the rampage either, that leads you back into the trap of being disconnected from the other character, it should be about what you are trying to get from the other character and how the rampage helps you get it. It sounds a bit nit picky in the description, but in performance the difference is night and day. “Rampage” isn’t actable anymore than “angry” is, “my character wants to frighten the other character so I am going to throw a lamp at them” on the other hand is actable, and is different from “my character wants to kill the other character so I am going to throw a lamp at them”. I am sure this is what you meant, but for anyone who might be reading the thread that isn’t involved in acting I figured the clarification might be necessary.
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All of the above is only 1/4 of a good performance, without proper control of the body and voice, and a clear understanding of the material even the most inwardly engaged performance will be flat. Stanislavski actually taught all 4 parts (though the inner life prep as chronicled in his book “An Actor Prepares” is all anyone really remembers in the US due to translation and publishing issues with his other books). “The Method” really only deals with the characters inner life and figures the rest will take care of itself. This is a large part of the reason why “The Method” isn’t really taught as an acting style anymore even though components of it are still in use in most acting classes in America (in Europe and Asia it is a totally different ball game)
(Sorry for the long winded post, as a theater director this is a bit of a pet topic of mine. What the average actor doesn’t know about their craft could fill a book, but those books all say the same thing leaving all the actors education incomplete. It’s frustrating but at least it is predictable. Thank Og we still have the rehearsal process in the theatre, I don’t know how you film and TV types do it.)
So who wants to hear my thoughts on Meyterlink, Grotowski, Suzuki, and acting in the post absurdist environment?
Anyone?
No?
Ok I will go.