Flattery or Criticism: Which Do Men Truly Want?

Criticism, Stanislavsky, and the Art of Acting

I am going to discuss briefly two passages from the book My Life in Art by the great 19th century Russian director and theoretician of acting, Konstantin Stanislavsky. He developed what came to be known as "The Method," an approach that encourages an actor to get within the inner life of the character he is portraying, using his own life experiences to do so.

The Method was an important new point in theatre and a criticism of the more formal, declamatory style of acting that had been fashionable.

When I went to Syracuse University as an acting major, I had four years of training based strictly on Stanislavsky's Method, and I loved it.

In the book, Stanislavsky tells one criticism after another he heard as a young actor—and he does it with such relish, depth and delight. I believe it is because he wanted to criticize himself so trenchantly and with pleasure that he was able to come to something new and more honest in acting technique. Mr. Siegel said in his lecture "Aesthetic Realism as Beauty: Acting" that the Stanislavsky way "puts together opposites again and again," and is in behalf of liking the world.

I give two examples from My Life in Art, both of which illustrate this Aesthetic Realism principle: "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves."

1) The first is called "dropping tone," which is like what my teacher, Sue Hammill, had criticized me for. A technical matter in acting is how to maintain a volume loud enough so you can be heard throughout the theatre, while not screaming or seeming unnatural. Stanislavsky tells about acting in a play called The Lucky Man by Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko:

I would flame up and then suddenly die down. This made my speech and action become energetic and then my voice could be heard, the words sounded clearly and reached the audience—or all would grow dull and I wilted, my voice would begin to murmur, my words could not be heard, and the spectators would cry "Louder! Louder!"

In actors' parlance this is called "dropping tone." Of course I could force myself to speak loudly, to act energetically, but when you force yourself to be loud for the sake of loudness...without any inner meaning and inspiration, you feel ashamed on the stage...And side by side with me were real true-to-goodness artists...Something seemed to hold them at the same temperature of heightened energy and prevented them from sinking.

Here, Stanislavsky admirably criticizes himself for a bad relation of loud and soft, and this has ethical meaning for men in our lives, too—in our marriages, at work. We want to meet the world with energy and also be thoughtful; we want to affect and to be affected. But a man can either be pompously assertive with his wife, or, feeling he's too good for the world, retreat and be aloof from her. Both arise from contempt, and in order for a man to change as he hopes to, he needs criticism, not flattery.

2) Stanislavsky also speaks about how he would, as Hamlet warns the actors not do to, "tear a passion to tatters." Sometimes, he says, "I made as much noise as an unconnected belting in a factory while the machine which it is supposed to run is stationary. The belting works, but there are no results." For instance, in a comedy he played a man who leaves the room and comes back more drunk each time. He writes:

I learned...to copy drunkards to perfection, and I felt myself to be so good...on the stage that I could not restrain the inner joy and palpitation which I mistook for inspiration...With each of my entrances I tried to give stronger and stronger expression to what boiled within me. But the audience criticized me.

The more excited [I was], the more the audience criticized my rapid patter, my incoherent diction, my hoarse voice...my strained and exaggerated efforts.

At a third performance I was reproached...for grimacing and the absence of a feeling of true measure, without which everything I did seemed inartistic and unnatural.

This is about the opposites of passion and then control—which is what I believe Stanislavsky means by "a feeling of true measure." And these, too, are opposites every man wants to do better with in his life. We all want to be able to let go, be unrestrained, and also have a sense of reason, control. Being told we're wonderful will never get us there.

In one passage, as Stanislavsky writes about actors, I believe he is talking about the deepest hope of every man. He says:

The actor is caught in the quicksand of flattery and praise. That which is pleasant is always victorious, because one wants to believe it. One listens to the compliments of charming admirers and not to the...truth. Young actors, fear your admirers! You may pay them attentions, but...learn in time, from your very first steps, to hear, understand and love the...truth about yourselves. Find out who can tell you that truth.

The education of Aesthetic Realism does just that for a man, making his life happy, educated, rich and strong. It has done for me. That is happening, too, to Gary Bauer in his consultations, and I close with something he said recently: "I feel very grateful for my consultations. Every time I come, I feel 50 minutes—every minute is valuable to me. I know I am in the right place."

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