“How does Brecht’s system differ from Stanislavski’s?” I have often heard this question asked, sometimes in exactly these words, and probably we shall all live to see the question appear in much this form on college examination papers. I recall, too, that as a young admirer of Brecht’s, nearly twenty years ago, I myself described an actor in one of his plays as having gone “beyond Stanislavski.” Will the acting profession soon be divided between Method actors and Brechtians?

The actions of Hamlet are all beginning and end, with no middle. The play takes place in the shadow of three events—the murder of King Hamlet, the marriage of Claudius and Gertrude, and the death of Polonius. The consequences of these events—the suffering of the wronged, the remorse of the wrongers, the extensive repercussions in subsequent events—are fully and inexorably worked out. Within this atmosphere of prolonged aftermath, numerous actions are begun, stopped, started again, stopped, and not generally brought to completion until the finale. It is these arrested actions which set the main rhythm of the play.

I first saw Stanislavski’s work in 1922, when the Moscow Art Theatre presented in Paris The Lower Depths, The Brothers Kammazov, and The Cherry Orchard. I was carried away with admiration for The Cherry Orchard. The play is written in an impressionistic style that leaves room for silence and long pauses. Although it was bathed in a profusion of naturalistic detail, the production grew into a brilliant, comic, and moving spectacle. I felt that this was poetry—poetry without rhetoric, theatricality, or lyricism. Solely through the skill of the actors, everything became as true as life.

Stanislavski and Freud share many common features, not the least of which is that each is supported by violent partisans, is attacked by violent antagonists, and is the object of unproductive discussion. Whatever the ultimate fate of their doctrines, we shall never go back to our pre-Stanislavskian naivete about acting in the theatre or our pre-Freudian naivete about living in the world. It must be born in mind in the following discussion that each is a great man, and if either is subjected to less than favorable comparisons it should not obscure the fact that each is pre-eminent in his field. The problem will be to estimate in some judicious and productive manner the nature and importance of their contributions in the light of the problems of the theatre.

First, acknowledge the talent of so many American actors. Why, then, is their acting so bad? Between talent and its expression on stage stands an Establishment which brutally uses its people, even while improving the theatre. Earlier still, the actor in training is confused and misled, over-worked and under-trained, frustrated and stunted. Training is so isolated, haphazard, and contradictory that it is hard to discuss it, almost impossible to evaluate it with anything but blanket condemnation. In no other profession is there so little agreement about standards and methods, so little active contact among those doing the work.