I have just begun studying the work of the Polish Theatre's hero, Jerzy Grotowski. I am amazed by his thoughts and insights into acting as an art form and I really can't wait to work with his techniques in my classes this coming year.
First of all, Grotowski is different from most other teachers in the United States. When "The Method" was introduced to America in 1923, it became synonymous with "good" and that is not always the case. Each ideologist has their own way of looking at things. I was fascinated to read and contrast several methods in the wonderful book The Acrobat of the Heart by Stephen Wangh, one of my infamous eBay purchases. For example, he quotes Strasberg quite a bit. As he is considered the quintessential proponent of method acting, I was surprised to realize that I had Strasberg a little bit wrong.
Classes had taught me that Method acting was feeling and applying an affective memory to the acting situation. In other words, recalling a situation from the past using all your sensibilities then applying that memory to the current acting problem. In his book, A Dream of Passion, Srasberg actually says, "the aim of affective memory is not really to feel or see or touch something--that is hallucination--but to remember the mood when doing that." WOW! Now this book was published in 1987 and everything I have ever seen prior to this had been written by or about Strasberg in the 30s and 40s, so he could have changed his mind like Stanislavski did. Why didn't we then change our teaching?
Wangh was one of the first students of Grotowski at NYU when he began what is now referred to as the experimental theatre course. I am interested in talking to Lourdes Mendez about it, because that is the program that she entered over a year ago and I already sense a new maturity about her discussion that surely must translate into her work. So, Lourdes, have they begun Grotowski yet? LOL.
From his work, Strasberg developed what he called the "emotional memory" exercise. In this exercise, he asked students to recreate a specific event in their life. They must pick an older memory, at least seven years or more, and it must be one in which they felt extreme emotion--anger, joy, fear or whatever (sort of like Harry Potter when he first creates a patronus-ha, ha, ha.) Stanislavski taught that we can create a memory through sensory recall--how did it smell, taste, sound etc. In what became known as "The American Method" Strasberg convoluted this theory a bit by saying that we can stimulate our emotions by creating that memory.
Later in his life, Stanislavski decided that by concentrating on developing feelings, he had neglected the body. Thus he created what we refer to as his Method of Physical Actions. He reveals to us in his book Creating A Role that he came to believe that behind every action, unless it is rote or purely mechanical, there is a hidden action or feeling. Thus he began work with physicality. But, Strasberg was still old school and although Stanislavski had changed his mind about the importance of stimulating emotions through muscle control, Strasberg continued to teach emotional recall and it continued to be the dominant instruction taught in the U.S. (and pretty much still is).
So, where does Grotowski fit into all of this? He actually picked up the studies into physicality where Stanislavski left off. In the book, The Theatre of Grotowski, by Jennifer Kumiega, she quotes him as saying, "we do not possess memory, our entire body IS memory and it is by means of 'the body-memory' that the impulses are released."
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