Sitrep 2: Feb. 2, 2025: Oh, Method Acting…

The detractors of Stanislavski based acting approaches have been passionately and thoroughly effective at evangelizing their distaste for the pedagogy, particularly the adversaries of Lee Strasburg’s brand of training that he immodestly called the Method. Some of this might be sour grapes, as former students of Strasburg and the many teachers who have tried to emulate him are legion, and the relationship between a developing thespian and their acting teacher is not only extremely personal, but fraught with opportunity for negative power transactions that can leave deep scars. However, many theatre students and film watchers of all stripes have an association with Method Acting that has formed without any lived experience or participation in a single acting exercise that comprises the technique. Their formed opinions primarily originate from two places.  First, media representation of the latest movie star cum extremist whose exploits on set and off make titillating material for the casual and interested cultural consumer. OR. There is the burgeoning theatre student who has been subjected to the powerful canon-forming opinions of the academy, in which an expert or experts whose validation they require for entry and/or advancement in the field have told them something about the Method, ranging from dismissal to disgust to a stern warning that the Method is dangerous. Should the enterprising student choose to explore this opinion further, they can then find a myriad of scholarly resources to support the negative assertions. As an actor who has trained in Method techniques, and as an acting teacher who has taught Method acting, I’ve heard most of the disparaging claims.

In many ways, I’m no apologist for any one acting methodology over another. I’ve never met Lee Strasburg or worked with him directly, so I can neither corroborate nor deny any conversation concerning his character or actions as a pedagogue. What I think I have learned, and hope that I’m successful at in practice, is how to empower acting students to utilize the tools of Stanislavski-based training (including the Method) in ways they can safely control and be equipped to choose when, how, and if they might apply these tools in rehearsal and performance. The reason I think it is important for North American acting students to understand the descendant Stanislavski-based pedagogies is because these students are living and attempting to work in the historical era of realistic acting and its offshoots. Stanislavski and his ideas emerged at a historical theatrical moment in playwriting and performance that captured the modern sensibility, and so far, nothing has legitimately unseated this acting style in contemporary performance. Yes, there are other kinds of non-realistic theatre. I enjoy and am challenged by many of them. Yes, certain forms of realistic performance have become tiresome, cloying even, and yet…the imaginations and expectations of the contemporary theatre audience are still largely in the grasp of realistic theatre, and the powers that control western theatre programming have not moved on from the style of plays and actor performance that Stanislavski and his descendant pedagogues helped to canonize. Until a viable, epoch-making alternative emerges in the historical sense, it is almost unethical not to offer the training tools of Stanislavski’s practitioners to today’s students. The gurus from the Group Theatre painstakingly and with trial and error created these techniques to develop and inhabit contemporary realistic performance. That includes the sense memory, relaxation exercises, affective memory, private moments, animal work, etc. developed by Strasburg to capitalize on an actor’s personal lived experience, and the more imagination-based techniques for achieving emotional realities proffered by Adler and Meisner. The majority of other ‘alternative’ techniques on offer are derived from these forms and are equally subject to the same accusations and temptations of ‘guru-ship’ as their forebears were, even as they seek to and sometimes very successfully redress the named flaws of their originators. There are few true alternatives to these canon-forming techniques. Highly successful pedagogies developed by Uta Hagan, Michael Chekhov, and Boleslavski, along with methodologies espoused by later pedagogues such as Declan Donellan, Harold Guskin, Mamet/Macy’s Practical Aesthetics or even Sonya Cooke, are generally additions to realistic actor training. They are developments of Stanislavski’s ideas and methodologies, not wholly unique approaches. I have no critique with those who personalize acting training in the ways these teachers and their students have done, but I do find it misleading to call them ‘new’ approaches. Perhaps improvisational innovators like Viola Spolin or Keith Johnstone might train a different kind of performer from the emotion-based realism sought by Stanislavski and his developers, but even students of improv will spend their careers creating theatricalized forms of performances within a largely realistic cannon. They may bend realist forms, but they probably won’t break out of them entirely. In my opinion (and experience), acting training that includes the Method and other Stanislavski-based techniques still offer effective tools to the contemporary realistic actor, largely because they are systematic, teachable techniques that beginning and experienced performers can grasp and incorporate into their personal acting process. If taught with a priority on student agency and student welfare, (the specifics of which are another whole blog post and more), the egoistic manipulations of the self-promoting instructor can be minimized. While students are right to be discerning and should certainly be made aware of the history of abuses and imperfections of past theatre titans, those abuses do not necessarily equate to the ineffectiveness of the tools being taught. Tools are simply that: an aid that may be utilized. Each actor will find their preferences, which is best done by learning the purpose of the tool and experimenting with it in practice.