"...Let me tell you what I have and what I do not. (I have) no notes. When I'll die, they'll get to my closet. (They'll wonder), "where are his little secrets?" (They'll find)--Nothing. Only pieces and hieroglyphics. When I was younger--yes, I was writing it down, but since I've had more and more in craftsmanship--I stopped. Writing?--this is like in the wise Tutchev's1 formula: "Pronounced thought is a lie." If came up with a plan of mise-en-scene and I drew it dawn on paper, this very mise-en-scene becomes too stable and even invisible. This is not to my advantage. Everything that I discovered and forgot is for the better; because usually we forget the rubbish, but the good never gets forgotten." Vsevolod Meyerhold, 1935
"Excitability--this is our term in the theatre. We know that everything we may do on the stage, our actions, walk, attitudes, facial expressions, movement, everything has to convince the audience; the audience must believe the actors even when you're enacting the improbable. And when a grotesque interpretation gets too theatrical, too broad, the audience has to believe it, anyway.... And if what the audience sees on the stage is a fish who has no blood and, moreover, is frozen, can it believe such an actor, can he be convincing at all? (II: 196)"
"You haven't studied it yet. One must know how the character walks, loves, eats or drinks; you don't know him exhaustively yet. Stanislavsky comes to mind again. When he prepares a role, he is constantly immersed in it--whether he receives a letter, or is approached by someone, or has dinner--he always is in character, he tries various things all the time. He practices beyond rehearsing. He sticks to it. He keeps searching, looking for gestures. (I: 138)
"Stanislavsky told us that when he invented certain movements, certain gestures, certain facial expressions for Doctor Stockman, he tried to use all those movements, gestures, and expressions in his daily life. He went to sleep as Doctor Stockman would and he woke up as Doctor Stockman; he experienced this character not only within the framework of the role but in his own existence. What is this process? It is the process of fixing the [outline of the] role in your imagination.... (II: 194)
"Your facial expressions are all wrong.... Facial expressions must emerge from the actor's clear notion of the person he is actually playing.... Your gestures are not well-defined, and consequently your facial play is poor, without any idea of the character. The impression here is that the actor meticulously carries out the mise-en-scene, invented by the director. But you can't deceive the audience; the audience takes in [the performance] as a whole. If an excellent mise-en-scene is accompanied by poor facial play, the spectator will disapprove the mise en scFne as well. (II: 194)
"When people go to a sculpture exhibit, they do not expect to find painted eyes or real natural eyes inserted into a tiger's skin. Nobody demands that these eyes sparkle like the real ones; nobody says: where is the true color of the human skin? The theatre audience also knows the secret of the stage, it knows that everything will be theatrical, not real.... Excitability must be measured according to the stage's needs; it is absolutely necessary for the actor to have an inner controller who helps him to measure [excitability] in front of the audience. There is one degree of excitement for Sophocles's Antigone and another for a vaudeville. (II: 197-98)
Stagematrix -- direct.vtheatre.net
The quotations are from "Actors on Acting" and "Meyerhold" by Rudnitzky
"the fundamental principles of the art of relativistic, or conditional (uslovnyi), theatre."(137)
"In relativistic theatre the stage action poetically transforms reality." (139)
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