How Can Stanislavski’s System of Emotional Memory, and Truth and the Magic ‘If’ Be Used in the Characterization of Miss Julie in August

Constantin Stanislavski (1863-1938) is considered as the father of realism. His system of acting uses a balance between an actor's personal experience and an attempt to imagine being in their character's situation. Stanislavski believed by preparing correctly with characterization, you can harness your subconscious and create a truthful performance, “Because the very best that can happen is to have the actor completely carried away by the play. Then regardless of his own will, he lives the part, not noticing how he feels, not thinking about what he does, and it all moves of its own accord, subconsciously and intuitively.” However, one cannot create subconsciously without inspiration, and inspiration cannot be forced, so Stanislavski created a system that sets the right conditions or ‘inner stimulus’ for inspiration to be called up. In this essay, I will explore how the use of emotional memory, and truth and the magic ‘if’ can be used as the ‘inner stimulus’ for an actor to characterize Miss Julie.
Miss Julie is the protagonist in the play Miss Julie written by August Strindberg in 1888. The play explores the themes of class, love and lust, the battle of the sexes, and the interaction among them. Miss Julie is the daughter of the count, a strong-willed woman who was raised by her mother to abhor men. She is fresh from a broken engagement and has become ‘wild’, throwing herself at her valet, Jean who is engaged to Christine. “Her mother’s primary instincts, her father raising her incorrectly, her own nature, and the influence of her fiancé on her weak and degenerate brain” motivates Miss Julie and influences her decisions and behaviour.

As Miss Julie was a rather emotional character, the actor representing Miss Julie has a lot of emotions to play with and a lot of opportunities to bring emotions out from her emotional cabinet with the use of emotional memory. It is an actor's duty to stimulate his own emotion memory from which to draw and build a character.

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