Creating a Role

Creating a Roleis the culmination of Stanislavski's masterful trilogy on the art of acting. An Actor Prepares focused on the inner training of an actor's imagination. Building a Characterdetailed how the actor's body and voice could be tuned for the great roles he might fill.
This third volume examines the development of a character from the viewpoint of three widely contrasting plays: Griboyedov's Woe from Wit, Shakespeare's Othello, and Gogol's The Inspector General. Building on the first two books, Stanislavski demonstrates how a fully realized character is born in three stages: "studying it; establishing the life of the role; putting it into physical form."
Tracing the actor's process from the first reading to production, he explores how to approach roles from inside and outside simultaneously. He shows how to recount the story in actor's terms, how to create an inner life that will give substance to the author's words, and how to search into one's own experiences to connect with the character's situation. Finally, he speaks of the physical expression of the character in gestures, sounds, intonation, and speech. Throughout, a picture of a real artist at work emerges, sometimes failing, but always seeking truthful answers.

Constantin Stanislavski (1863-1938), arguably the most influential director in the history of the theater, was the founder of the renowned Moscow Art Theater. A pioneer of psychological realism and improvisation on the stage, he devoted his life to developing the performance techniques now emulated throughout the world.