Stanislavski and images

Abstract

In Russian, obraz means image as well as character. Stanislavski grew up in a rich pictorial context (1880–1890’s) through stage sets, tableaux vivants, costumes, makeup. From this figurative culture and his practice of drawing and writing the “mise en scène” and the “nastroenie” (mood), he switched towards the “System.” He started to direct for the actor (Turgenev’s A Month in the Country, 1909). He converts the visual rank of the performance into an inner line of psychological action, an inner image. It is also a way of directing without stressing on visuality – a new form of theater process. Inside the “System” many key notions as clichés, attention, imagination, Emotion memory, perspective, line, drawing (of the role), etc, refer to a visual lexicon transposed in a non-visual sphere developing a new interaction between image and action. The main issue is the possibility of both a psychological and plastic directing in space, time, mind and soul.