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Stanislavski, Creativity, and the Unconscious

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Natalie Crohn Schmitt
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Abstract

As Alice Reyner's paper on Stanislavski and Bradley in NTQ 4 illustrated, Stanislavski remained very much a man of his own time, however enduring his approach to acting has proved. Here, Natalie Crohn Schmitt examines one of the concepts most crucial to ‘the system’ – a concept which is in its essentials, however, derived from nineteenth-century ideas, now being challenged, about the relationship between creativity and the unconscious. Pointing out that Stanislavski himself believed that his ‘system’ was simply the application of natural laws to acting technique, the author shows Stanislavski's indebtedness to the psychological theories of Théodule Armand Ribot, which interpreted all human behaviour in terms of ‘an aim towards fixed ends’. One of the reasons for the decline in influence of Stanislavski's system thus reflects, she argues, the growing belief that creativity is ‘process’, its ends ‘continually redefined by the actions, and vice-versa’ – and the author suggests examples of such a non-Stanislavskian approach among contemporary theatre companies. Natalie Crohn Schmitt is associate professor of theatre in the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her earlier essays have appeared in a wide range of journals, and she has just completed a full-length study, Actors on the Stage of Life. The present paper was written under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 2 , Issue 8 , November 1986 , pp. 345 - 351
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

Notes and References

1. Lewis, Robert, Method – or Madness? (New York: Samuel French, 1958), p. 7Google ScholarPubMed.

2. See Wiles, Timothy J., The Theater Event (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1980)Google Scholar.

3. Moore, Sonia, The Stanislavski System (New York: Viking Press, 1965), p. 23Google Scholar.

4. Stanislavski, Constantin, Building a Character, trans. Hapgood, Elizabeth Reynolds (New York: Theatre Arts Book, 1949), p. 289Google Scholar.

5. Introduction to the first Russian edition of An Actor Prepares (1938), as quoted in Stanislavski, Constantin, Stanislavski's Legacy, ed. and trans. Hapgood, Elizabeth Reynolds (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1958), p. 30Google Scholar. The book appeared in Hapgood's translation two years before it appeared in Russian.

6. See Sullivan, John J., ‘Stanislavski and Freud’, Stanislavski in America, ed. Munk, Erika (New York: Hill and Wang, 1966), p. 88–109Google Scholar, and Freed, Donald, Freud and Stanislavski (New York: Vantage, 1964)Google Scholar. Freud's first independent work. The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), marks the beginning of twentieth-century psychology. Although Stanislavski's first book on acting did not appear until 1936, he had been at work on his system of acting since 1906.

7. Constantin Stanislavski, Stanislavski's Legacy, p. 172.

8. See Whyte, Lancelot Law, The Unconscious before Freud (New York: Basic Books, 1960), p. 163–4Google Scholar.

9. By 1882 von Hartmann's book had gone into nine editions in Germany; it was translated into French in 1877 and into English in 1884. (Whyte, The Unconscious before Freud, p. 163.) Perhaps it is von Hartmann's work Stanislavski has in mind when he denies thinking of the ‘subconscious’ in any ‘philosophical’ sense.

10. Damoi, Dennis N. Kenedy, The Unconscious and Eduard von Hartmann (The Hague: Martinus Nyhoff, 1967)Google Scholar.

11. Stanislavski, Constantin, Building a Character, ed. and trans. Hapgood, Elizabeth Reynolds (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1972), p. 289Google Scholar; Stanislavski, Constantin, My Life in Art, trans. Robbins, J. J. (New York: Meridian Books, 1956), p. 566–7Google Scholar; Stanislavski, Constantin, An Actor Prepares, trans. Hapgood, Elizabeth Reynolds (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1963), p. 87Google Scholar.

12. See, for instance, Magarshack, David, Stanislavski: a Life (New York: Chanticleer Press, 1951), p. 304Google Scholar.

13. Les Maladies de la mémoire (1881); Les Maladies de la volonté (1883); Psychologie de l'attention (1889); La Logique des sentiments (1896); L'Evolution des idées générales (1897); Problèmes de psychologie affective (1910); Benedetti, Jean, Stanislavski: an Introduction (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1982), p. 31Google Scholar.

14. Ribot, Théodule Armand (1839–1916), Essay on the Creative Imagination (New York: Amo Press, 1973), p. 10Google Scholar; Stanislavski, Constantin, Stanislavski on the Art of the Stage, trans. Magarshack, David (London: Faber, 1967), p. 157Google Scholar; Stanislavski, Creating a Role, p. 51; Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, p. 282. There is no indication that Stanislavski's idea about the importance of action came from Aristotle. His writing about the idea provides the excitement of a sense of discovery – the discovery apparently having arisen from his work on the plays of Chekhov, which seemingly have no action.

15. Ribot, Essay on the Creative Imagination, p. 157.

16. Quotation from Maudsley, Henry in , Théodule Armand Ribot, The Psychology of Attention (Chicago: Open Court, 1911), p. 2Google Scholar; Stanislavski, Building a Character. p. 38.

17. Quotation from the psychologist Ivan Setchenoff in Théodule Armand Ribot, The Psychology of Attention, p. 12; Ribot, Théodule Armand, The Diseases of the Will (Chicago: Open Court, 1896), p. 3Google Scholar; Stanislavski, Constantin, Creating a Role, trans. Hapgood, Elizabeth Reynolds, ed. Popper, Hermine I. (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1961), p. 55, 49Google Scholar.

18. See Simonov, P. V., ‘The Method of K. S. Stanislavski and the Physiology of Emotions’, Stanislavski Today, ed. and trans. Moore, Sonia (New York: American Center for Stanislavski Art, 1973), p. 34–43Google Scholar.

19. Ribot, Essay on the Creative Imagination, p. 32–3; Stanislavski, Building a Character, p. 266.

20. Ribot, Essay on the Creative Imagination, p. 56; Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, p. 62; Ribot, Essay on the Creative Imagination, p. 56; Stanislavski, Building a Character, p. 27.

21. Quote from Franz Grillparzer in Ribot, Essay on the Creative Imagination, p. 336; Stanislavski, Stanislavski on the Art of the Stage, p. 20.

22. Ribot, Essay on the Creative Imagination, p. 56; Stanislavski, Building a Character, p. 19.

23. See Amheim, Rudolf, ‘Notes on Creativity’, Essays on Creativity, ed. Rosner, Stanley and Abt, Lawrence Edwin (Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.: North River Press, 1974), p. 9–10Google Scholar.

24. Amheim, ‘Notes on Creativity’, p. 9.

25. Ribot, Essay on the Creative Imagination, p. 57–8; Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, p. 22, 267, 266.

26. ‘The earlier man becomes aware that there exists a craft, an art that can help him toward a controlled heightening of his natural abilities, the happier he is. … Here begin the manifold relations between the conscious and the unconscious. Take for instance a talented musician, composing an important score; consciousness and unconsciousness will be like warp and weft, a simile I am fond of using.’ (Goethe, quoted in Whyte, The Unconscious before Freud, p. 128–9.)

27. Barba, Eugenio, ‘The Dilated Body: on the Energies of Acting’, New Theatre Quarterly, I, 4 (11 1985), p. 378Google Scholar.

28. Schechner, Richard, Environmental Theatre (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1973), p. 145Google Scholar.

29. Eugenio Barba, ‘The Dilated Body’, p. 373.

30. Chaikin, Joseph, The Presence of the Actor (New York, Atheneum, 1972), p. 15Google Scholar.

31. Perkins, D. N., The Mind's Best Work (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 4Google Scholar.

32. Moore, Sonia, letter to The Drama Review, No. 58 (06 1973), p. 138Google Scholar. A history of the ideas of creativity to date has yet to be written.