Creating a Role
Creating a Role is theatre actor/director Constantin Stanislavski's third and final book on his method for learning the art of acting. It was first published in Russian in 1957; Theatre Art Books published an English-language edition, translated by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood, in 1961.
In the two preceding installments, An Actor Prepares (1936) and Building a Character (1948), Stanislavski describes ways in which an actor imagines the lived experience of their character, and then expresses that inner life and persona through speech and movement. Creating a Role applies these principles to rehearsal, in which the actor improves their understanding of the role, and how it fits the script.
01Contents
Part I: Griboyedov's Woe from Wit
- The Period of Study
- The Period of Emotional Experience
- The Period of Physical Embodiment
Part II: Shakespeare's Othello
- First Acquaintance
- Creating the Physical Life of a Role
- Analysis
- Checking Work Done and Summing Up
Part III: Gogol's The Inspector General
- From Physical Actions to Living Image
Appendices
- Supplement to Creating a Role
- Improvisations on Othello
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Creating a Role”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Original cover for Creating a Role.jpg by Unknown, Fair use
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