Method and Structure

The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act by Isaac Butler (Bloomsbury, 2022)

It is one thing to ask how an acting philosophy or paradigm has affected the aesthetics of an art form such as theatre or film.  It is something entirely different question to ask how that philosophy has shaped artistic organizations.  Yet, organizations hold and transmit ideas, so such questions are valid.  In American Theatre, few ideas have had the artistic impact of 

Stanislavski’s approach to acting, commonly known “The Method.”  Hence it is reasonable to ask how it has shaped the structure of the theatres that employ method actors.

In The Method, Isaac Butler explores a more conventional set of questions that look at how method acting developed, how it was influenced by major cultural trends of the 20^th century, and how it shaped the aesthetics of world drama.  His conclusions are enlightening, though perhaps a little conventional.  He traces the foundation of Method Acting back to pre-Revolutionary Russia and Moscow Art Theatre.  He discusses how it came to the United States and how it was part of the global competition between the U.S. and Russia that dominated the twentieth century.  

In developing his approach to acting, Konstantin Stanislavski, was attacking the formalism of 19^th century theatre and attempting to replace a discipline that relied on known postures and motions to convey.  Traditional European acting was not as rigid as the classical dancing of “Les Ballets Russe” but both forms existed in the same cultural milieu and reflected common ideas.  

 Stanislavski worked to develop a story of acting that was somehow more natural, more closely aligned to ways that people communicated in daily life.  His idea was to build acting one the foundation of experience, to take the memories of daily life and use them to shape the actions of individual performers on stage.    These ideas rose in parallel with the expansion of scientific psychology and popularization of Freudian psychoanalysis.    They suggested that acting might be approached on a scientific basis.  As a result, method acting became associated with the liberalism of the New Deal and the Federal Theatre Project.   

If Stanislavsky was the Moses of The Method, then Marlon Brando and Jessica Tandy were its prophets, and “A Streetcar Named Desire” was the story that spread the word.  “Streetcar” is, of course, a lyrical work.  The canonical lines in the script – the bellowed “Stella” or the awkward admission of relying on the “kindness of strangers” – do not necessarily express common actions of daily life.  We came to see the work as expressing some of the tensions of twentieth century life. 

Not everyone would accept the notion that bellowing “Stella” was natural or that confessing that one “relied on the kindness of strangers was an act of everyday life, but all agreed that the production was powerful and that the actors make a profound impact upon audiences.  By approaching the work with the Stanislavski Method, Brando and Tandy made us feel those tensions.  

The Method was the most prominent in the last 1960s and early 1970s.  The breadth of its impact can be judged by the that fact that the comic actor Walter Matthau was trained in the Stanislavski Method, even though he is best remembered for playing comic schlubs rather than oppressed members of the working class.  At the same time, its limits of its influence can be marked by simple observation that Meryl Streep, one of the major actors in the last quarter of the 20^thcentury, claimed that she did not use the Method.  

Butler does the careful scholarship of tracing the artistic impact of the Stanislavsky method and treats its organizational impact only lightly.  It’s connections with organizations such as the Group Theatre.  The Group not only embraced The Method, they also advocated repertory structure for its members.  In this structure, the actors would be paid for an entire year, whether they were acting or not.  Each would take major roles in some plays, minor roles in other and have adequate time to practice their craft and develop the techniques of the method.  

The repertory structure is what economists would call “economically inefficient.”  Managers would call it expensive.  Still, it was adopted by many a regional theatre in the 1950s and was retained as long as artistic directors could find a way to support it.  The Arean Stage in Washington, DC, one of the pioneering institutions of the regional theatre movement, kept a repertory company of actors on its payroll through the 1990s.  Others, such as Steppenwolf in Chicago, practiced a variant of it through much of the century.  

It is possible to argue that the connection between the Method and organizational structure is coincidental.  Afterall, Shakespeare’s Kings Men used a repertory model as did William Hallam’s pioneering 18^th century company that toured the American Colonies.  Yet, the fact remains that Stanislavsky created a repertory theatre with a stable group of actors and that his model was consciously copied by other theatres.  

An actor friend once commented that she recognized the limitations of the repertory model, even though she was grateful to be paid throughout the year.  Though she would have major roles in plays that had dominant female leads, she found herself playing a lot of minor parts when the plays lacked such roles.  While she argued that the theatre needed more plays female leads, she also felt that she didn’t want to restrict the artistic choices of organization.  She didn’t want to exclude the possibility of producing a play with all male or all female parts simply because it didn’t match the genders of the players in the company.

The Method has its critics and is far from being the only way that an actor can prepare for the stage.  The writer/director David Mamet is particularly scathing in his criticism and many leading lights on the stage approach their parts with disciplines that have little to do the Method.  Yet it reminds us that artistic ideas can affect the structure of artistic organizations in profound ways.  If our goal is to have an effective theatre, we need to be clear about what we mean by the concept of “effective” and what artistic results we expect to see.  

Advocates of Stanislavski’s Method have long argued that it promotes natural acting, though in the process they continue to quarrel over what “natural acting” might be.  The supporters of artistic organizations equally claim that they are promoting quality work and have common consensus of what “quality” might mean. 

Isaac Butler’s The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act is published by Bloomsbury and is available from Amazon.

The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act by Isaac Butler (Bloomsbury, 2022)

It is one thing to ask how an acting philosophy or paradigm has affected the aesthetics of an art form such as theatre or film.  It is something entirely different question to ask how that philosophy has shaped artistic organizations.  Yet, organizations hold and transmit ideas, so such questions are valid.  In American Theatre, few ideas have had the artistic impact of 

Stanislavski’s approach to acting, commonly known “The Method.”  Hence it is reasonable to ask how it has shaped the structure of the theatres that employ method actors.

In The Method, Isaac Butler explores a more conventional set of questions that look at how method acting developed, how it was influenced by major cultural trends of the 20^th century, and how it shaped the aesthetics of world drama.  His conclusions are enlightening, though perhaps a little conventional.  He traces the foundation of Method Acting back to pre-Revolutionary Russia and Moscow Art Theatre.  He discusses how it came to the United States and how it was part of the global competition between the U.S. and Russia that dominated the twentieth century.  

In developing his approach to acting, Konstantin Stanislavski, was attacking the formalism of 19^th century theatre and attempting to replace a discipline that relied on known postures and motions to convey.  Traditional European acting was not as rigid as the classical dancing of “Les Ballets Russe” but both forms existed in the same cultural milieu and reflected common ideas.  

 Stanislavski worked to develop a story of acting that was somehow more natural, more closely aligned to ways that people communicated in daily life.  His idea was to build acting one the foundation of experience, to take the memories of daily life and use them to shape the actions of individual performers on stage.    These ideas rose in parallel with the expansion of scientific psychology and popularization of Freudian psychoanalysis.    They suggested that acting might be approached on a scientific basis.  As a result, method acting became associated with the liberalism of the New Deal and the Federal Theatre Project.   

If Stanislavsky was the Moses of The Method, then Marlon Brando and Jessica Tandy were its prophets, and “A Streetcar Named Desire” was the story that spread the word.  “Streetcar” is, of course, a lyrical work.  The canonical lines in the script – the bellowed “Stella” or the awkward admission of relying on the “kindness of strangers” – do not necessarily express common actions of daily life.  We came to see the work as expressing some of the tensions of twentieth century life. 

Not everyone would accept the notion that bellowing “Stella” was natural or that confessing that one “relied on the kindness of strangers was an act of everyday life, but all agreed that the production was powerful and that the actors make a profound impact upon audiences.  By approaching the work with the Stanislavski Method, Brando and Tandy made us feel those tensions.  

The Method was the most prominent in the last 1960s and early 1970s.  The breadth of its impact can be judged by the that fact that the comic actor Walter Matthau was trained in the Stanislavski Method, even though he is best remembered for playing comic schlubs rather than oppressed members of the working class.  At the same time, its limits of its influence can be marked by simple observation that Meryl Streep, one of the major actors in the last quarter of the 20^thcentury, claimed that she did not use the Method.  

Butler does the careful scholarship of tracing the artistic impact of the Stanislavsky method and treats its organizational impact only lightly.  It’s connections with organizations such as the Group Theatre.  The Group not only embraced The Method, they also advocated repertory structure for its members.  In this structure, the actors would be paid for an entire year, whether they were acting or not.  Each would take major roles in some plays, minor roles in other and have adequate time to practice their craft and develop the techniques of the method.  

The repertory structure is what economists would call “economically inefficient.”  Managers would call it expensive.  Still, it was adopted by many a regional theatre in the 1950s and was retained as long as artistic directors could find a way to support it.  The Arean Stage in Washington, DC, one of the pioneering institutions of the regional theatre movement, kept a repertory company of actors on its payroll through the 1990s.  Others, such as Steppenwolf in Chicago, practiced a variant of it through much of the century.  

It is possible to argue that the connection between the Method and organizational structure is coincidental.  Afterall, Shakespeare’s Kings Men used a repertory model as did William Hallam’s pioneering 18^th century company that toured the American Colonies.  Yet, the fact remains that Stanislavsky created a repertory theatre with a stable group of actors and that his model was consciously copied by other theatres.  

An actor friend once commented that she recognized the limitations of the repertory model, even though she was grateful to be paid throughout the year.  Though she would have major roles in plays that had dominant female leads, she found herself playing a lot of minor parts when the plays lacked such roles.  While she argued that the theatre needed more plays female leads, she also felt that she didn’t want to restrict the artistic choices of organization.  She didn’t want to exclude the possibility of producing a play with all male or all female parts simply because it didn’t match the genders of the players in the company.

The Method has its critics and is far from being the only way that an actor can prepare for the stage.  The writer/director David Mamet is particularly scathing in his criticism and many leading lights on the stage approach their parts with disciplines that have little to do the Method.  Yet it reminds us that artistic ideas can affect the structure of artistic organizations in profound ways.  If our goal is to have an effective theatre, we need to be clear about what we mean by the concept of “effective” and what artistic results we expect to see.  

Advocates of Stanislavski’s Method have long argued that it promotes natural acting, though in the process they continue to quarrel over what “natural acting” might be.  The supporters of artistic organizations equally claim that they are promoting quality work and have common consensus of what “quality” might mean. 

Isaac Butler's The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act is published by Bloomsbury and is available from Amazon.