Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

Theatre 41
Daniel Radcliffe, famed for his performances as the film world’s Harry Potter, began his stage career as the leading
actor in both the London and New York revivals of Equus, and then the revival of the musical How To Succeed Without
Really Trying. Here he is shown as the lead character in the 2014 Broadway production of Martin McDonagh’s Irish tale,
The Cripple of Inishmaan. © Sara Krulwich/The New York Times/Redux
and Renaissance idealism; his viewpoints circulated
widely in Europe and America through the nineteenth
century and remain influential in some measure in classical
theatre training in the modern era, particularly in
France and England.
In the American theatre, however, the inside method
has increasingly held sway ever since the Russian actordirector
Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863–1938) and his
Moscow Art Theatre visited the United States in 1924
and 1925. Astounding American audiences with an
intensely realistic and convincing acting style in New
York and thirteen other cities, Stanislavsky’s system of
acting—described as the actor “living the life of his or
her character on stage”—turned many American actors
into Stanislavsky disciples. When taken up by various
American acting teachers, particularly Lee Strasberg in
New York, Stanislavsky’s system transformed into “the
Method.” As taught by Strasberg at the Group Theatre
in the 1930s and at the Actors Studio from 1951 until his
death in 1982, variations of “the Method” became core
beliefs of actors such as Paul Newman, Ann Bancroft,
Al Pacino, James Dean, Dustin Hoffman, and Marilyn
Monroe, and Stanislavsky’s basic theory became
world renowned through the success of these actors on
the American stage and, more notably worldwide, in
American films.
“Method” acting still mesmerizes our culture. Critics
and audience members often speak approvingly
of actors “losing” themselves or “disappearing” into
a role, as if their character had fully come to life and
replaced the performer. But can an actor disappear too
much? Can a role “take over” completely—and is that
healthy? The romance that surrounds the method also
has a peculiar darkness to it. Tales abound of actors
going too far into a role and losing their senses—but
these are largely fictions. Professional actors recognize
the limits of “becoming” their roles. They are always
in control. Part of the paradox of acting is that we may