h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hello, still a new researcher and I was thinking of writing something along these lines as Drama and Theatre is a huge interest to me!

Huge error though on this - Stanislavski DID NOT come up with method acting!!!!! In fact, he renouced it as being an inferior way of finding the character to his System.

Method acting was a spin off of Stanislavkian ideas as done by an American - Lee Straussburg (sp?). He met with a couple of Stanislavskian trained actors when they visted the US while Stanislavski was going through a phase where he concentrated on the psychological make up of a character. Straussburg thought that this concertration was all that Stanislavski was interested in. As a result, he went off and formed 'The Actor's Studio' in New York.

In terms of differences between them, Method acting states that you can only play a character if you have experienced what the character in the play experiences (one of the problems with this though is that Hamlet becomes unplayable...). The System (Stanislavski's System) states that an actor has to go off and think up a back story, uestioning the intent of the characters and then the emotion will come from that.

In short, Method Acting and The System are very different concepts and approaches to characterisation.

Hope that I haven't sounded too over-the-top excited about this!

I would like to suggest maybe, that the author of the article may have confused Method Acting (which was not Stanislavski) with the Method of Physical Action (which was developed by Stanislavski). The Method of Physical Action was the way in which Stanislavski put together all his ideas so they can be used effectively in the rehearsal process. I have been studying Stanislavski for the past year in theatre studies, so I belive this is correct. If it is not, accept my apologies and feel free to correct me

can anyone help me i need to do a project on him