The words and wisdom of Constantin Stanislavski:

There is a good side to this period of waiting [to go on stage]. It drives you into such a state that all you can do is to long for your turn, to get through with the thing that you are afraid of. . . .

But the minute the curtain rose, and the audience appeared before me, I . . . felt myself possessed by its power. At the same time some new unexpected sensations surged inside of me. [Although] the set hems in the actor . . . [and] this semi-isolation is pleasant . . . a bad aspect is, that it projects the attention out into the public. Another new point was that my fears led me to feel a certain obligation to interest the audience. This feeling of obligation interfered with my throwing myself into what I was doing. I began to feel hurried, both in speech and in action. . . . The slightest hesitation and a catastrophe would have been inevitable. (AP)

The words and wisdom of Constantin Stanislavski:

I went out to the front of the stage and stared into that awful hole beyond the footlights, trying to become accustomed to it, and to free myself from its pull; but the more I tried not to notice the place the more I thought about it. Just then a workman who was going by me dropped a package of nails. I started to help pick them up. As I did this I had the very pleasant sensation of feeling quite at home on the big stage. But the nails were soon picked up, and again I became oppressed by the size of the place. (AP)

The words and wisdom of Constantin Stanislavski:

To arouse a desire to create is difficult; to kill that desire is extremely easy. If I interfere with my own work, it is my own affair, but what right have I to hold up the work of a whole group? The actor, no less than the soldier, must be subject to iron discipline. (AP)

The words and wisdom of Constantin Stanislavski:

A work of art born on the stage lives only for a moment, and no matter how beautiful it may be it cannot be commanded to stay with us. (MLIA)

The words and wisdom of Constantin Stanislavski:

Much in creativeness is incumbent upon us all, the young and old, men and women, the gifted and giftless. All men are forced to put food in their mouths, to hear with their ears, to see with their eyes, to breathe with their lungs, and all actors without exception must receive creative food according to the laws of nature, must treasure what they receive in their intellectual and emotional memory, must rework the material in their artistic imagination, according to the well-known laws that are incumbent upon all, must give birth to the image and the life of the human spirit, and having lived them over, incarnify them naturally. (MLIA)

The words and wisdom of Constantin Stanislavski:

I have told you how we were educated in our childhood and youth. Compare our life with the life of the present generation of youth brought up on a regime of poverty and danger. We spent our youth in a Russia that was peaceful; we drank from the full cup of life. The present generation has grown up amidst war, hunger, world catastrophe, mutual misunderstanding and hate. We knew much joy and did not share it with those near to us to any great degree, and now we are paying for our egotism. The new generation does not know the joy that we knew, it seeks and creates joy in agreement with the circumstances of life, and tries each moment to regain and make its own again those years of youth that it has lost. It is not for us to condemn them for this. It is for us to sympathize with them, to follow with interest and good wishes the unrolling evolution of the new art and the new life created by the laws of nature. (MLIA)

The words and wisdom of Constantin Stanislavski:

To the accompaniment of a pianist’s improvisations, the pupils lived for hours in rhythm, explaining in their actions how they felt the music. Relying on the same bases of the sensations of inner rhythm and action they learned to walk, to do gymnastics, plastic and other exercises in my system for the development of correct consciousness of self in which rhythm plays a great and important part. There was a whole series of exercises and classes for the development of the feeling for the word and speech, for an altogether exceptional amount of attention was paid to diction in the opera. (MLIA)

The words and wisdom of Constantin Stanislavski:

In a series of variegated exercises I tried to develop in my pupils not the outward rhythm of movement and action, but the inner rhythm of that unseen energy which calls out movement and action. In this manner I was able to develop in my pupils the sensation of movement and gesture, walking and the entire inner pulse of life. These are purely practical methods and theses, which are useful in our work, and it would be a mistake to look in them for any scientific bases, from which I feel myself to be very far. (MLIA)