Considered as the 'father of method acting', Lee Strasberg was a pioneer to theatre. Influenced by the practitioner Stanislavsky, Strasberg career spans occupations such as Actor, Director, Teacher and writer. He was first mesmerized by the works of Stanislavsky and his Moscow Theatre Company. Intrigued at the fact that all actors on stage put all their effort in, regardless of the importance of their character, Strasberg went on to study with the The American Laboratory theate in 1925.
His first performance as a professional actor occurred in 1924 where he played the role of '1st solider' in 'Processional'. He went on to be the stage manager for 'Guardsmen'. He co founded Group Theatre in 1931 which aimed to create socially conscious plays using the techniques of Stanislavsky whilst creating a secure system of acting technique. After the group disbanded, Strasberg lectured at many universities accross America and in 1949, he joined the Actors studio and soon after became the Creative director where he remained so for the next thirty years.
Although this briefly summarised the life of Strasberg, his technique into method acting is often associated with TV and Film. In his own words, it is described as 'what all actors have always done whenever they have acted well'. It includes the use of a persons own personal experiences where certain emotions will have arisen. They are then put into the relevant performance to consolidate a realistic and capturing performance. In other words, '[the] creative play of the affective memory in the actors imagination is the foundation for experiencing in acting'. There are five elements needed to be considered when using method acting
- 1.) RELAXATION: An actor must be relaxed on stage for best performance possible.
2.) CONCENTRATION: An actor must always concentrate in order to be
'in the moment'
3.) AFFECTIVE MEMORY: The recollection of personal emotions applied into
a performance to achieve naturalism and realistic performance.
4.)SENSE MEMORY: The use of the human senses to achieve realistic recollection and
effective use of relevant senses.
5.) IMPROVISATION: Influences the actor to think like the character and will prepare
them for any possible problems that may happen on-stage such as lines or
technical mistakes.
These techniques are both affective on stage and on screen. But when we are looking at the techniques for stage we see how Strasberg looks at how the internal emotions and feelings matter a lot more than the physical. The camera will capture the most tender of facial expressions to which the viewers can instantly interpret whereas on stage actions tend to have slight exaggeration for the audience to follow. Every day actions are done realistically as though it were real and expressions can be analysed from the eyes to the mouth.
Actors such as Marlon Brando use method acting. Marlon Brando is considered as one of the most inspirational actors of the 20th century, If we look at one of his performances, say 'A Streetcar Named Desire' we can see how he adapts method acting into his legendary performance.
From this selection of scenes, we can see how Marlon uses method acting. He plays the character known as Stanley, a brutal man who mistreats his wife and manipulate her sister, Blanche into madness out of suspicion that she is taking advantage of Stella, his wife. The way he plays the character is effective for he doesn't pace about playing some form of demoniacal mad man, instead he is calm and has an almost poker face which creates an ominous and tense atmosphere, particularly between Blanche and Stanley, He is in character all the way through each of those clips from the vocals to the physical stance of a working class man in 1940's America. It is from performances such as this that we can see how actors such as Brando were influenced by the works of Strasberg.
So, in all, we can see how method acting creates a convincing and thought provoked performance and how it is effective for TV and Film as it shows how internal feelings and thoughts can be interpreted through the smallest of gestures unlike on stage where acting is sometimes more exaggerated in naturalistic pieces, the screen creates an environment where it almost seems that the performances are real.
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Acknowledgements
- http://www.cothespians.com/leestrasberg.htm
- http://www.methodactingstrasberg.com/legacymission
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_acting
- http://www.methodactingstrasberg.com/history
- http://www.jbactors.com/actingreading/actingteacherbiographies/leestrasberg.html
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Strasberg
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Art_Theatre
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