He is a young man, not yet thirty by his own account, who has quite an insightful and intuitive view of the future world, and remarks in act 2, "....But I believe life itself will remain the same; it will still be difficult and full of mystery and full of happiness. And in a thousand years' time people will still be sighing and complaining: 'How hard this business of living is!' - and yet they'll still be scared of death and unwilling to die, just as they are now." To me this suggests quite a bit of wisdom and understanding of life.
Yet at other times he shows some sensitivity, especially in the way he commented on his companion Vassily Vassilich (known to us as Soliony), "He's strange fellow. I feel sorry for him, even though he irritates me. I think he's shy" He appears to be defending Soliony.
All in all, this character is a complicated one and perhaps one of the most involved and dare I say it enigmatic in the play, and this brings us to the Stanislvaski method. Perhaps a good start would be to find a copy of Stanislavki's book 'An actor prepares'!
To be brief, we will look at of the fundamentals of method acting as described by many modern proponents of the Stanislavski method.
1. Relaxation
2. Concentration
3. Objects
4. Animal exercise
5. The private moment
6. Moment to moment
7. Affective memory
8. The Magic If
9. Substitution
10. Song and dance
11. Speaking out
and finally, 12. Justification.
We will discuss the Magic If very briefly, although we may return to the other points at some point in the future. The Magic If is in one sense encompasses many if not all of the above points and is a way a kind of union and ulitmate culmination of the combination of the 11 other points above.
It is of course important to attain a good grasp and understanding of relaxation and concetration before one goes on to the Magic If. So we once pick up the script, read it once, form certain ideas, read it again and clarify more for oneself. Then you ask oneself, "Where do I start with this?" A good starting point for creating inspiration is a concept Stanislavski described as we already know, the "magic if".
The "magic if" asks the actor to begin his work by asking, "What would I do if I were in these circumstances?"
The answer to this simple question can be a springboard to creativity and inspiration, because it allows the actor to realize the fact that, when all is said and done, he or she is living out a fictional life, a figment of the author's imagination with sets and props that are actually just sets and props -- not real trees or real windows, or real guns. For example if I were playing Toozenbach in this class and even without props, I would have to imagine the uniform that Toozenbach is wearing, or in a sense 'assume' the form of one who is uniform.
It is the actor's job to make the props and set real to himself. By using the "magic if" the actor is granting himself permission to "believe" in these imaginary objects, in the same way a young girl believes her doll is real, or a young boy believes he is really "Tarzan", or "Spiderman", or that the water pistol he is using is really a gun. On some level we must all recapture that childlike quality!
Of key importance in using the "magic if" in an actor's work is exploring with absolute honesty what the actor would actually do in the often unusual circumstances the author has presented them with
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What would you really do if you were in Russia in the last century?
