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From:  "Elizabeth Finkler" <mightymezzo@h...>
Date:  Tue Apr 16, 2002  6:27 pm
Subject:  Re: [vocalist] Acting (and Stanislavski)


>From: "James Miller"
>
>I'm by no means a Stanislavski expert, but i do remember reading somewhere
>that we Americans adopted only part of his method, and as is usual in our
>rush for a product, we neglected the rest. Am I talking out of my rear
>(highly possible), or is there someting to this? Any good books on the
>topic of Stanislavski and method acting?

It might have reflected the Usonian desire for efficiency, but the story I
heard is: At the time that Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler et.al. established
the Group Theater in the 1930s, little of Stanislavsky's writings had
appeared in English except his early book, "An Actor Prepares." Adler has
said that the strict adherence to that "method" took the joy out of acting
for her.

She and some other members of the Group Theater were traveling in Paris, and
spotted ****Stanislavsky Himself****, sitting on a park bench. They
promptly fell all over him as if he were a movie star, gushing that they had
dedicated himself to his philosophies and used sense memory etc.etc.
Stanislavsky replied, "But, we haven't used any of those things in years!"

When Adler returned to tell of Stanislavsky's revised method, Strasberg
promptly declared that the great man must be wrong. Go figure.

Elizabeth Finkler
San Jose, California
mightymezzo@h...
http://home.earthlink.net/~mightymezzo
"This would be a better world for children if the parents had to eat the
spinach." --Groucho Marx


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