According to Adler, Stanislavski said the Group had gotten his “system” wrong. He did not use, and did not think people should use, emotional memory exercises. Problems, action, the given circumstances, and imagination were the keys to the “system.” You got to emotion through them, not the other way around. “If your director … says, please feel [first] and then you will be able to play, tell him ‘when I know how to swim then I will go into the water,’ ” he said. “Can one swim without going into the water? One cannot feel and then do the problem—first act the problem for the physical action and
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