Top 57 Stanislavski's Quotes
#1. I was truly happy. But my state was not that of any ordinary satisfaction. It was a joy which stemmed directly from creative, artistic achievement.
Konstantin Stanislavski
#2. Talent is nothing but a prolonged period of attention and a shortened period of mental assimilation.
Constantin Stanislavski
#3. Don't go so deep in yourself that you no longer exist for your partner and for the character and for the play.
Constantin Stanislavski
#4. The actor must use his imagination to be able to answer all questions (when, where, why, how). Make the make-believer existence more definite.
Constantin Stanislavski
#5. You can kill the King without a sword, and you can light the fire without a match. What needs to burn is your imagination.
Konstantin Stanislavski
#6. The person you are is a thousand times more interesting than the best actor you could ever hope to be.
Constantin Stanislavski
#9. Everyone at every minute of his life must feel something. Only the dead have no sensations.
Konstantin Stanislavski
#10. Every person who is really an artist desires to create inside of himself another, deeper, more interesting life than the one that actually surrounds him.
Konstantin Stanislavski
#11. My advice to any actor who's playing, quote, unquote, "extra" to think of it more like Stanislavski did. It's not a small part. You are the lead in the movie, in your own movie.
Harvey Keitel
#12. In the creative process there is the father, the author of the play; the mother, the actor pregnant with the part; and the child, the role to be born.
Constantin Stanislavski
#13. If you are looking for something, don't go sit on the seashore and expect it to come and find you; you must search, search, search with all the stubbornness in you!
Konstantin Stanislavski
#14. In life we listen to other people. Listen with varying degrees of concentration and attention, right? Actors must learn to listen in a different way.
Constantin Stanislavski
#15. All art is autobiographical - if it's not, it's not going to quicken on-stage, and it's not going to come alive.
Constantin Stanislavski
#16. Young actors, fear your admirers! Learn in time, from your first steps, to hear, understand and love the cruel truth about yourselves. Find out who can tell you that truth and talk of your art only with those who can tell you the truth.
Constantin Stanislavski
#17. We have as many planes of speech as does a painting planes of perspective which create perspective in a phrase. The most important word stands out most vividly defined in the very foreground of the sound plane. Less important words create a series of deeper planes.
Constantin Stanislavski
#18. Fear your admirers! Learn in time to hear, understand, and love the cruel truth about yourselves!
Constantin Stanislavski
#23. When you're playing a character who's cruel, look for the places where he's kind. When you're playing a character who is unhappy, look for the places where he has a glint of merriment.
Constantin Stanislavski
#24. I always think instinct is more interesting than anything you can think up. I mistrust and am rather bored with actors who are of the Stanislavski school who think about detail.
Denholm Elliott
#27. In talking about a genius, you would not say that he lies; he sees realities with different eyes from ours.
Constantin Stanislavski
#28. The direct effect on our mind is achieved by the words, the text, the thought, which arouse consideration. Our will is directly affected by the super-objective, by other objectives, by a through line of action. Our feelings are directly worked upon by tempo-rhythm.
Constantin Stanislavski
#29. When an actor is completely absorbed by some profoundly moving objective so that he throws his whole being passionately into its execution, he reaches a state we call inspiration.
Constantin Stanislavski
#31. The main factor in any form of creativeness is the life of a human spirit, that of the actor and his part, their joint feelings and subconscious creation.
Constantin Stanislavski
#32. Stanislavski was right, you can find fresh pain every time you discover what you pretty much already know.
Chuck Palahniuk
#33. My mentor Jon Simmons introduced me to the Stanislavski system, which is so heavy on back-story. So you write and write and write these back stories about a character and then you throw it away. So then on set, if it doesn't come, then you didn't do your work.
Chris Zylka
#35. You must be so thoroughly immersed in the given circumstances of the play, then you decide what it is at any given moment what that the actor wants.
Constantin Stanislavski
#36. Create your own method. Don't depend slavishly on mine. Make up something that will work for you! But keep breaking traditions, I beg you.
Constantin Stanislavski
#37. The life of a character should be an unbroken line of events and emotions, but a play only gives us a few moments on that line - we must create the rest to portray a convincing life.
Constantin Stanislavski
#38. Our demands are simple, normal, and therefore they are difficult to satisfy. All we ask is that an actor on the stage live in accordance with natural laws.
Constantin Stanislavski
#39. Gratuitous cruelty borders on the pathological, psychotic and that becomes uninteresting because there is no choice.
Constantin Stanislavski
#42. In the given circumstances you must be rooted in the play. Do not depart from the play. Don't cut yourself off from your partner in the scene, or partners.
Constantin Stanislavski
#43. Never allow yourself externally to portray anything that you have not inwardly experienced and which is not even interesting to you.
Constantin Stanislavski
#44. It is only when an actor feels that his inner and outer life on the stage is flowing naturally and normally, in the circumstances that surround him, that the deeper sources of his subconscious gently open, and from them come feelings we cannot always analyse.
Constantin Stanislavski
#45. Success is transient, evanescent. The real passion lies in the poignant acquisition of knowledge about all the shading and subtleties of the creative secrets.
Constantin Stanislavski
#46. At times of great stress it is especially necessary to achieve a complete freeing of the muscles
Constantin Stanislavski
#47. The character has to have some kind of arch. The character has to go through an event, and be changed by the human event.
Constantin Stanislavski
#49. Unless the theatre can ennoble you, make you a better person, you should flee from it.
Constantin Stanislavski
#50. A true priest is aware of the presence of the altar during every moment that he is conducting a service. It is exactly the same way that a true artist should react to the stage all the time he is in the theater. An actor who is incapable of this feeling will never be a true artist.
Constantin Stanislavski
#51. Of course, if you have thought up to now that an actor relies merely on inspiration you will have to change your mind. Talent without work is nothing more than raw unfinished material.
Constantin Stanislavski
#53. If you have a rifle, hanging on the wall in the first act, it should fire in the last act.
Konstantin Stanislavski
#54. I studied technique for ten years, from age 7 to 17. I guess you could say I went more on the Stanislavski side than the Meisner side - there's always that wide divide among actors when it comes to technique.
Thomas Ian Nicholas
#56. In every physical action, unless it is purely mechanical, there is concealed some inner action, some feelings. This is how the two levels of life in a part are created, the inner and the outer. They are intertwined. A common purpose brings them together and reinforces the unbreakable bond.
Constantin Stanislavski
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top