ALTHOUGH OUR COURSE had come to an end we felt that we were still far from having achieved a practical mastery of the so-called “system” even if we had a theoretical grasp of it. In answer to the doubts we expressed Tortsov gave this answer:
“The method we have been studying is often called the ‘Stanislavski system’. But this is not correct. The very power of this method lies in the fact that it was not concocted or invented by anyone. Both in spirit and in body it is a part of our organic natures. It is based on the laws of nature. The birth of a child, the growth of a tree, the creation of an artistic image are all manifestations of a kindred order. How can we come closer to this nature of creation? That has been the principal concern of my whole life. It is not possible to invent a system. We are born with it inside us, with an innate capacity for creativeness. This last is our natural necessity, therefore it would seem that we could not know how to express it except in accordance with a natural system.
“Yet strangely enough, when we step on to the stage we lose our natural endowment and instead of acting creatively we proceed to perform contortions of pretentious proportions. What drives us to do this? The condition of having to create something in public view. Forced, conventional untruthfulness is implicit in stage presentation, in the foisting on us of the acts and words prescribed by an author, the scenery designed by a painter, the production devised by a director, in our own embarrassment, stage fright, the poor taste and false traditions which cramp our natures. All these impel an actor to exhibitionism, insincere representation. The approach we have chosen—the art of living a part—rebels with all the strength it can muster against those other current ‘principles’ of acting. We assert the contrary principle that the main factor in any form of creativeness is the life of a human spirit, that of the actor and his part, their joint feelings and subconscious creation.
“These cannot be ‘exhibited’; they can only be produced spontaneously or as the result of something that has gone before. One can only feel them. All you can ‘exhibit’ on the stage is the artificial, contrived results of a non-existent experience.
“There is no feeling in that; there is only conventional artificiality, cliché´ acting.”
“But it can also be effective. The public is impressed by it,” remarked one of the students.
“I admit that,” agreed Tortsov, “but what kind of an impression does it make? The quality of one impression must be distinguished from that of another. Our approach to acting in this theatre is extremely clear on this point.
“We are not interested in hit and run impressions, here today and gone tomorrow. We are not satisfied merely with visual and audible effects. What we hold in highest regard are impressions made on the emotions, which leave a lifelong mark on the spectator and transform actors into real, living beings whom one may include in the roster of one’s near and dear friends, whom one may love, feel one’s self akin to, whom one goes to the theatre to visit again and again. Our demands are simple, normal, and therefore they are difficult to satisfy. All we ask is that an actor on the stage live in accordance with natural laws. Yet because of the circumstances amid which an actor has to do his work it is much easier for him to distort his nature than to live as a natural human being. So we have had to find means to struggle against this tendency toward distortion—that is the basis of our so-called ‘system’. Its purpose lies in destroying inevitable distortions and in directing the work of our inner natures to the right path which is carved out by stubborn work and the proper practices and habits.
“This ‘system’ should restore the natural laws, which have been dislocated by the circumstances of an actor’s having to work in public, it should return him to the creative state of a normal human being.
“But you will have to be patient,” Tortsov went on. “It will take several years even if you watch yourself carefully for these things you have been striving for to mature and blossom. By then, when you have the opportunity to go off in a false direction, you will find that you cannot do it, the essentially right way will be so firmly rooted in you.”
“But great artists act by the grace of God and without all these elements of a creative state!” I objected.
“You are mistaken,” countered Tortsov instantly. “Read what it says in My Life In Art. The more talent the actor has the more he cares about his technique, especially with regard to his inner qualities. A true creative state while on the stage, and all the elements that go to compose it, were the natural endowment of Shchepkin, Ermolova, Duse, Salvini. Nevertheless they worked unremittingly on their technique. With them moments of inspiration were almost a natural state. Inspiration came to them by natural means almost every time they repeated a role, yet all their lives they sought an approach to it.
“There is all the more reason why we, of more meagre endowments, should seek it. We ordinary mortals are under the obligation of acquiring, developing, training in ourselves and by ourselves each one of the component elements of a creative state on the stage. It takes us a long time and much hard work. Still we must never forget that the actor who has nothing more than capacity will never be a genius, whereas those whose talents may be more modest, if they will study the nature of their art, the laws of creativeness, may grow into the class of those who are akin to the geniuses. The ‘system’ will facilitate that growth. The preparation it gives an actor is not something to be laughed at: its results are very very great!”
“But, oh, how hard it all is!” I groaned. “How can we ever take it all in!”
“Those are the doubting reactions of impetuous youth,” said Tortsov. “Today you learn something. Tomorrow you think you can already be letter perfect in technique. But the ‘system’ is not a hand me down suit that you can put on and walk off in, or a cook book where all you need is to find the page and there is your recipe. No, it is a whole way of life, you have to grow up in it, educate yourself in it for years. You cannot cram it into yourselves, you can assimilate it, take it into your blood and flesh, until it becomes second nature, becomes so organic a part of your being that you as an actor are transformed by it for the stage and for all time. It is a system that must be studied in parts and then merged into a whole so that it can be understood in all its fundamentals. When you can spread it all out before you like a fan you will obtain a true grasp of its entirety. You cannot hope to do this all at once. It is like going to war: you must conquer the territory bit by bit, consolidate your gains, keep in contact with your rear communications, expand, make further gains before you can speak of final conquest.
“In the same way we go about conquering our ‘system’. In our difficult task the gradual quality and the training in it are of enormous help. They allow us to develop each new means we learn to a point of automatic habit, until it is organically grafted into us. In its initial stages each new factor is an obstacle, it draws off all our attention from other more important matters,” Tortsov continued his description. “This process does not wear away until it is quite assimilated, made our own. Here again the ‘system’ is of great assistance. With each new means once conquered a part of our burden is eased and our attention is freed for concentration on more essential matters.
“Piecemeal the ‘system’ enters into the human being, who is also an actor, until it ceases to be something outside of him and becomes incorporated in his own second nature. To begin with we find this difficult, just as a year old baby finds it difficult to take his first steps, and is appalled by the complicated problem of controlling the muscles in his still wobbly legs. But he no longer thinks of this a year later when he has already learned to run, play and jump.
“A virtuoso on the keyboard also has his moments of difficulty and is aghast at the complexity of a certain passage. A dancer finds it extremely taxing in his early training to distinguish among all the various complicated, involved steps.
“What indeed would happen should he, when he comes to a public performance, still be obliged to be conscious at every movement of hand or foot, of his exact muscular action? If that is the case then the pianist or the dancer has proved he is not capable of doing the required work. It is out of the question to recall each touch of the fingers on the keys during a long piano concerto. Nor can a dancer be consciously aware of the movements of all his muscles throughout a whole ballet.
“S. M. Volonski stated this felicitously when he said: ‘The difficult should become habitual, the habitual, easy, the easy, beautiful.’ To accomplish this requires unrelenting, systematic exercise.
“That is why the virtuoso pianist or dancer will hammer away at a passage or a ‘pas’ until it is fixed forever in his muscles, until it has been converted into a simple, mechanical habit. Thereafter he never needs to give another thought to what in the beginning was so difficult to learn.
“The unfortunate and dangerous part of it, however, is that habits can also be developed in the wrong direction. The more often an actor appears on the stage and acts in a theatrical, untrue way and not according to the true dictates of his nature, the farther he will move away from the goal we seek to achieve.
“It is an even sadder fact that this false state is so much easier to acquire and make a habit of.
“I should like to hazard a guess as to the relative results of this fact. I should say that for every performance an actor gives of the wrong sort it takes him ten performances on the right basis to rid himself of its deleterious effects. Nor should you overlook the fact that public performance has still another effect, it tends to fix a habit. So that I should add: ten times of rehearsing in the wrong creative state equal in their bad influence one public performance.
“Habit is a two-edged sword. It can do great harm when badly used on the stage and be of great value when proper advantage is taken of it.
“It is essential to work on the system step by step when you are learning to establish the right creative state by forming trained habits. This is not so difficult in practice as it seems in theory. You must, however, not be in a hurry.
“There is also something worse which obstructs an actor’s work.”
This brought fresh fears to our minds.
“It is the inflexibility of the prejudices some actors have. Almost as a rule, since there are few exceptions to it, actors do not admit that laws, technique, theories, much less a system, have any part in their work. Actors are overwhelmed by their ‘genius’ in quotation marks,” Tortsov said, not without irony. “The less gifted the actor the greater his ‘genius’ and it does not allow him to make any conscious approach to his art.
“Such actors, in the tradition of the handsome matinee idol Mochalov, gamble on ‘inspiration’. The majority of them believe that any conscious factor in creativeness is only a nuisance. They find it easier to be an actor by the grace of God. I shall not deny that there are times when, for unknown reasons, they are able to have an intuitive emotional hold on their parts and they play reasonably well in a scene or even in a whole performance.
“But an actor cannot gamble his career on a few accidental successes. Because they are lazy or stupid these actors of ‘genius’ convince themselves that all they have to do is ‘feel’ something or other in order to have the rest take care of itself.
“But there are other occasions when for the same inexplicable and capricious reasons ‘inspiration’ does not turn up. Then the actor, who is left on the stage without any technique, without any means of drawing out his own feelings, without any knowledge of his own nature, plays not by the grace of God well, but by the grace of God poorly. And he has absolutely no way of getting back on to the right path.
“The creative state, the subconscious, intuition—these are not automatically at one’s beck and call. If we can succeed in developing the right approaches to them, they can at least protect us from making the old mistakes. It seems obvious where we should start.
“But actors, like most people, are slow to see where their real interests lie. Think how many lives are still lost from sickness, although talented scientists have discovered specific cures, inoculations, vaccines, medicines! There was an old man in Moscow who boasted that he had never ridden in a train or spoken over a telephone. Humanity searches, it undergoes unspeakable trials and tribulations to discover the great truths, to make great discoveries, and people are so reluctant even to stretch out their hands and take what is freely offered them. That is an absolute lack of civilization!
“In the technique of the stage, and above all in the domain of speech, we see the same sort of thing. Peoples, nature itself, the best brains of the scholars, poets who rank as geniuses, have over the centuries contributed to the formation of language. They did not invent it, like Esperanto. It sprang from the very heart of life. It has been studied for generations by scholars, it has been refined, polished by poetic geniuses like Shakespeare and Pushkin—the actor has only to take what is prepared for him. But he will not swallow even a predigested food.
“There are some lucky ones who, without benefit of any study, have an intuitive sense of the nature of their language, and they speak it correctly. But they are the few, the rare cases. The overwhelming majority of people speak with scandalous slovenliness.
“Look at the way musicians study the laws, the theory of their art, the care they take of their instruments, their violins, ’cellos, pianos. Why do dramatic artists not do the same? Why do they not learn the laws of speech, why do they not treat their voices, their speech, their bodies with care and respect? Those are their violins, ’cellos, their most subtle instruments of expression. They were fashioned by the greatest genius of all craftsmen—the magician Nature.
“Most people in the theatre are unwilling to understand that accident is not art, that you cannot build on it. The master performer must have complete control of his instrument, and that of an artist is a complex mechanism. We actors have to deal not just with a voice the way a singer does, not just with hands like a pianist, not just with the body and legs like a dancer. We are obliged to play simultaneously on all the spiritual and physical aspects of a human being. To gain mastery over them requires time and arduous, systematic effort, a programme of work such as we have been pursuing here.
“This ‘system’ is a companion along the way to creative achievement, but it is not a goal in itself. You cannot act the ‘system’: you can work on it at home, but when you step out on to the stage cast it aside, there only nature is your guide. The ‘system’ is a reference book, not a philosophy. Where philosophy begins the ‘system’ ends.
“Reckless use of the ‘system’, work that is done according to it but without sustained concentration, will only drive you away from the goal you seek to reach. This is bad and can be overdone. Unfortunately this is often the case.
“A too emphatic, exaggerated care in the handling of our psycho-technique can be alarming, inhibiting, can lead to an over-critical attitude, or result in a technique used for its own sake.
“To insure yourselves against falling into these undesirable by-paths you should do your initial work only under the constant, careful supervision of a trained eye.
“You are perhaps disturbed that you have not yet learned to make practical use of the ‘system’, yet what basis have you for concluding that what I have said to you in class should be instantly assimilated by you and put into action? I am telling you things that must remain with you all your life. Much that you hear in this school will be fully understood by you only after many years, and as the result of practical experience. It is only then that you will recall that you were told about them long since, but they did not penetrate into your consciousness. When that time comes, compare what experience has taught you with what you were told in school, then every word of your classes will spring to life.
“When you have mastered the creative state necessary to your artistic work you must learn to observe, evaluate your own feelings in a role and criticize the image you naturally portray and live in.
“You should expand your knowledge of art, literature, and other aspects of learning and show that you can improve your natural talents.
“You should develop your bodies, your voices, your faces into the best physical instruments of expression capable of rivalling the simple beauty of nature’s creations.”
“I want to devote our last class together to the praise of the greatest artist we know.
“And who can that be?
“Nature, of course, the creative nature of all artists.
“Where does she live? Where should we address all our laudatory remarks? I do not know.
“She is in all the centres and parts of our physical and spiritual make-up, even those of which we are not aware. We have no direct means of approaching her, but there exist oblique ones which are little known and scarcely practicable as yet.
“We call this thing that fills me with such enthusiasm genius, talent, inspiration, the subconscious, the intuitive. Yet where they are lodged in us, I cannot tell. I feel them in others, sometimes even in myself.
“Some believe that these mysterious and miraculous things are sent from above, that they are gifts from the Muses. But I am not a mystic and do not share this belief, although in moments when I am called on to create, I wish I might. It fires one’s imagination.
“There are others who say that the seat of the thing I am searching for is in our hearts. But I only feel my heart when it pounds or swells or aches, and that is unpleasant. What I am talking about is, on the contrary, extraordinarily agreeable, enthralling to the point of self oblivion.
“A third group asserts that genius or inspiration is lodged in the brain. They compare consciousness with a light thrown on a particular spot in our brains, illuminating the thought on which our attention is concentrated. Meanwhile the remainder of our brain cells remain in darkness, or receive only some reflected light. But there are times when the whole cranial surface is illumined in a flash and then all that was in darkness is, for a brief period reached by the light. Alas, there is no electrical mechanism which would know how to make use of that light, so it continues to be inactive, only flaming out when it happens to wish to. I am ready to concede that this example gives a successful idea of just how things operate in the brain. But does that advance the practical side of the matter at all for us? Has anyone learned how to control this flashing light of our subconscious, our inspiration or intuition?
“There are scientists who find it extraordinarily easy to juggle with the word ‘subconscious’, yet whereas some of them wander off with it into the secret jungles of mysticism and utter beautiful but most unconvincing phrases about it, the others scold at them, laugh them to scorn and proceed, with great self-assurance to analyze the subconscious, set it forth as something quite prosaic, speak of it in the way we describe the functions of our lungs or livers. The explanations are simple enough. It is only too bad that they do not appeal to our heads or hearts.
“But there are still other learned people who offer us certain thoroughly worked out, complex hypotheses, although they admit that their premises are not yet proved or confirmed. Therefore they make no pretence of knowing the exact nature of genius, talent, the subconscious. They merely look to the future to achieve the findings they are still meditating on.
“This admitted lack of knowledge based on deep study, this frankness, is the outgrowth of wisdom. Such confessions arouse my confidence and convey to me a sense of the majesty of the searchings of science. To me it is the urge to attain, with the help of a sensitive heart, the unattained. And it will be attained in time. In the expectation of these new triumphs of science I have felt there was nothing for me to do except to devote my labours and energy almost exclusively to the study of Creative Nature—not to learn to create in her stead, but to seek oblique, roundabout ways to approach her, not to study inspiration as such but only to find some paths leading to it. I have discovered only a few of them, I know that there are a great many more and that they will eventually be discovered by others. Nevertheless I have acquired a sum of experience in the course of long years of work and this is what I have sought to share with you.
“Can we count on anything more since the realm of the subconscious is still beyond our reach? I do not know of anything I can offer you: Feci quod potui—feciant meliore potentes (‘I have done what I could, let him who can do better’).
“The advantage of my counsels to you is that they are realistic, practical, applicable to the work in hand, they have been tested out on the stage over decades of acting experience, and they produce results.
“We have learned certain laws concerning the creativeness of our nature—that is significant and precious—but we shall never be able to replace that creative nature by our stage technique, no matter how perfect it is.
“Technique follows logically, admiringly on the heels of nature. Everything is clear, intelligible and intelligent: the gesture, the pose, the movement. The speech too is adapted to the part; the sounds are well worked out, the pronunciation is a joy to the ear, the phrases beautifully shaped, the inflections musical in form, almost as though they were sung to notes. The whole is warmed and given a basis of glowing truth from the inside. What more can anyone desire? It is a great satisfaction to see and hear such acting. What art, what perfection! Alas, how rare are actors of this kind!
“They and their performances leave behind wonderfully beautiful, aesthetic, harmonious, delicate impressions of forms completely sustained and perfectly finished.
“Do you believe that such great art is to be had for the mere studying of a system of acting, or by learning some external technique? No, this is true creativeness, it comes from within, from human and not theatrical emotions. It is towards this goal that we should strive.
“Even so there is for me still one lack in such acting. I do not find in it that quality of the unexpected which startles, overwhelms, stuns me. Something that lifts the spectator off the ground, sets him in a land where he has never walked, but which he recognizes easily through a sense of foreboding or conjecture. He does, however, see this unexpected thing face to face, and for the first time. It shakes, enthralls, and engulfs him.
“There is no room here for reasoning and analyzing—there can be no doubt about the fact that this unexpected something has surged up from the well springs of organic nature. The actor himself is overwhelmed and enthralled by it. He is carried away to a point beyond his own consciousness. It can happen that such an inner tidal wave will pull an actor away from the main course of his part. That is regrettable, but nevertheless an outburst is an outburst and it stirs the deepest waters. One can never forget it, it is the event of a lifetime.
“And when this storm travels along the main course of a part it enables the actor to reach heights of the ideal. The public is given the living creation it came to the theatre to see.
“It is not just an image, although all images taken together are of the same kind and origin; it is a human passion. Where does the actor get this technique of voice, speech, movement? He may be awkward, but now he is the embodiment of plastic ease. Usually he mumbles and mouths his words, but now he is eloquent, inspired, his voice is vibrant and musical.
“Good as the actor of the preceding type may be, brilliant and fine as his technique is, can he yet be compared with this last? Such acting is stunning in the very audacity with which it brushes aside all ordinary canons of beauty. It is powerful, yet not because of the logic and coherence we admired in the first type of acting. It is magnificent in its bold illogicality, rhythmic in its unrhythmicness, full of psychologic understanding in its very rejection of ordinarily accepted psychology. It breaks through all the usual rules, and that is what is good and powerful about it.
“It cannot be repeated. The next performance will be quite different, yet no less powerful or inspired. One wants to call out to the actor: Remember how you did it! Don’t forget we want to enjoy it again! But the actor is not his own master. It is his nature which creates through him, he is only the instrument.
“There is no estimate that we can put on such works of nature. We cannot say: why is it thus, and not otherwise? It is thus because it is and cannot be anything else. We cannot criticize lightning, a storm at sea, a squall, a tempest, dawn or sunset.
“Nevertheless there are those who think that nature often works poorly, that our dramatic technique can improve on her, give proof of greater taste. To some aesthetically-minded people taste is of more consequence than truth. But in the instant when a crowd of thousands is being moved, when they are all swept by one great feeling of enthusiasm, no matter what the physical shortcomings of the actors or actresses who cause this emotional storm—is it a matter of taste, conscious creation, technique, or is it that unknown something which is possessed by and possesses the genius, who has no power over it?
“At such times even a deformed person becomes beautiful. Then why does he not make himself beautiful more often, as and when he wishes, merely by his technique and without recourse to that unknown power which gives him his beauty? Yet those all knowing aesthetes do not know how to bring this about, they do not even know how to confess their lack of knowledge, and they continue to praise cheap, technical acting.
“The greatest wisdom is to recognize one’s lack of it. I have reached that point and I confess that in the realm of intuition and the subconscious I know nothing, except that these secrets are open to the great artist Nature. That is why my praise is for her. If I did not confess my own powerlessness to achieve the greatness of creative nature I should be feeling my way like a blind man, in paths from which there is no issue, believing that I was surrounded by an endless expanse of space. No, I prefer to stand on the heights and from there look out to the limitless horizon, trying to project myself for a little distance, a few miles, into that vast region still inaccessible to our consciousness, which my mind cannot grasp even in its imagination. Then I shall be like the old king in Pushkin’s poem who
. . . from the heights
could scan with gladdening eye
The valley studded with white tents
And, far beyond, the sea
and scudding sails . . .”