Word: stanislavskian
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...Brando, that heartbreakingly beautiful champion of the Stanislavskian revolution in acting, never arrived at Hamlet. Never even came close. He would go on to give us a few great things, and a few near great things, but eventually he would abandon himself, as every tabloid reader knows, to suet and sulks, self-loathing and self-parody. The greatness of few major cultural figures of our century rests on such a spindly foundation. No figure of his influence has so precariously balanced a handful of unforgettable achievements against a brimming barrelful of embarrassments...
What the rerelease does is re-establish Streetcar's historical value. You see anew how it opened theater and movies to new realms of psychology and language, gave Brando the showcase that established Stanislavskian subjectivity as the standard for serious American acting and offered director Elia Kazan the chance to develop a style that subtly, hypnotically serves conflicting demands, including the play's for claustrophobia, the actors' for ensemble playing, the movies' for sheer movement...
...that lies a real problem. There is no getting around the fact that Chekhov wrote his play for Stanislavskian actors. The Three Sisters is (and this is a classi-fication, not a judgment) a "rich" play. While the work has explosions underneath much of its surface, some of the play is just surface. For the purposes of a "poor" theatre, the Chekhovian detail that is not sitting on top of emotional volcanoes is useless. No doubt Moss will encourage his company to try new things every night, and certainly one thing he will...
Obviously, Maria does not go through these Stanislavskian contortions for the histrionic hell of it. She finds that they give her a more immediate experience of how it feels to be the person she is portraying. As Maria explains her method and her goal: "I drive to the center of the being I must become, until I know it as I know my own. But more than that. I want the parts I play to represent not one woman, but all women, The Woman. I am trying to separate truth from reality. There are millions of leaves, each in itself...