On Acting, Authenticity and Imitation

When Stanislavsky and The Moscow Art Theatre came to the US for the first time, the world of performance was forever changed. Acting had to that point been a presentational process. Finishing schools were what actors had as spaces to hone talent. The notion of authenticity, though today hashed out in endless directions, was new. No one thought audiences wanted to see real life, so no one tried to give it to them until Stanislavsky fell in love with and obsessively tried to duplicate the spontaneous creative process and brought it to the stage.

When members of the Moscow Art Theatre stayed in New York and began teaching, young actors flocked to them, many of whom would go on to become some of the most influential performers and teachers in the history of American acting.

These Russian instructors must have been fascinating figures. Maria Ousspenskaya, for example, was a small, intense old woman who drank heavily and chain-smoked cigars. For any young woman trying to find herself in pre-WWII America, this surely was a thrill to behold.

I've said before that I think that these young actors, in trying to learn an entirely new process, mistook the teachers for the work itself. There has always been an emphasis on severity in "authentic" acting in the US. Method acting is often associated with unexplainable misery and twitchy suffering. How is it that "reality" includes so little humor?

The people who brought the notion of authenticity to the US were from a very foreign land, a land who's culture, politics and topography were radically different from our own. They had also come from a land that had just gone through a violent shift and was settling itself into a dark and secretive regime. How was it then that what constituted authenticity for them was so similar to what constituted authenticity for American actors? One could argue the overall unifying power of the human condition, and to a certain extent, I would agree with that, but I'm convinced that we are far too affected by our material realities for that to be a sufficient explanation. I think it was simply that, like many young actors, those original students felt insecure with what they had to offer. The Russian version of authenticity was so much more interesting, and it made them feel more interesting, even if for them it was not actually authentic. I wonder to what extent actors are still trying to imitate those first teachers instead of engaging in the process that was actually being taught - learning to relax enough to tap into what is truly you - all the colors in you - so that you can use it on the stage and be real. So many years and so many words for something so simple.

Acting is imitation only to a certain extent. Stanislavsky had epiphanies that inspired him to seek out more. In furiously trying to duplicate or re-create he sometimes traded the moment-to-moment for studiousness and stumbled often in the process. He was the first, and he was in love with the search, so I hold nothing against him. The young American actors who studied with members of Stanislavsky's troupe saw people embracing life on a level they had never seen and tried to imitate it in an effort to lead bigger lives themselves. Actors today see successful actors they admire and they try to duplicate the spark, but it doesn't work because it isn't their spark. Are we seeing the running flaw here?

In life we sometimes have moments of being utterly connected. For a fleeting moment, we get how it all works and see the universe and its components functoning effortlessly, and we become effortless with it. When it goes, it makes perfect sense that we want it back. Unfortunately, far too often, we attempt to get it back by trying to imitate the original experience instead of trying to connect again. We become rigid instead of relaxed, and rigidity does not lead to epiphany.

We are supposed to experience life on a moment-to-moment basis, always allowing for spontaneous growth and change. Few of us manage this a fraction of the time, but it is the point. In trying to authentically imitate life, actors learn to experience the stage moment to moment. If they do it right, they can successfully bring in all the shades of human experience with all its mystery and buffoonery alike. As livers of life, we must at the very least do this. Knowing that we are fascinating enough and complicated enough and funny enough, we must at every possible moment bring our authentic selves to the forefront and live life from there. That way actors will have more to live up to.

Life is never meant to be an imitation.

-ady