What Diderot had really uncovered in his comparison of the two actors were the polarities of inspiration and technique. Neither Macklin, Garrick, Diderot, Dumesnil, nor Clairon solved the problems of inspiration and expressiveness for other actors. For one thing, the schools and treatises they left behind were more philosophical than technical. In fact, Garrick's natural school of acting vanished with his death. For British audiences, it was a fad associated with the actor. The truth of the matter was that Garrick and the rest could not teach their highly personal techniques. The emotional and antiemotional acting styles of the great actors ran in cycles through the 19th century. In every country, an actor of one generation championed the first technique and was followed by a younger performer who advocated the other. So the romantic and emotive Edmund Kean followed the stately Sarah Siddons, who followed Garrick. But as limelight gave rise to gas lighting and then to electricity, more and more physical detail appeared on the stage. Costumes and scenic displays grew in complexity and size, dwarfing the actor. Techniques In 1907 Konstantin Stanislavski, artistic director of the Moscow Art Theater in Russia, began developing a new form of actor training. Already internationally celebrated as an actor and director, Stanislavski searched for a system to awaken the performer emotionally. His goal was to achieve the creative state of mind in the actor. Harking back to Polus, Stanislavski thought the performer's past emotional experiences could be truthfully relived on stage. Basing his discoveries on the preparations of great actors and his knowledge of yoga, Stanislavski schooled his Moscow Art players in physical exercises that emphasized relaxation, concentration, and belief. According to Stanislavski, one could reawaken and control these memories only indirectly, through the stimulation of the five senses. Revised continually over several decades, Stanislavski's system in many variations became the touchstone of 20th-century actor training. Its attention to awakening truthful emotion in the actor, which registers in facial detail, made it an ideal technique for naturalistic film and television acting. Almost from the start, however, Stanislavski's teachings produced countertheories and opposing approaches, from both experimental and traditional directors. In Russia, Vsevolod Meyerhold and Mikhail Chekhov, both students of Stanislavski, designed actor-training regimes that shunned psychological stimulation for more physical and imaginative actor preparations. Avant-garde theater practitioners in the 1930s, such as German playwright Bertolt Brecht and French theorist Antonin Artaud, also challenged Stanislavski's theatrical orientation as overly realistic and internalized. To a large degree, Stanislavski's clarion call was ignored in countries where theatrical traditions were firmly entrenched, as in France and England.
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