The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act

by Isaac Butler

Concentration was as much a capacity as it was a state to Stanislavski, and, as Orthodox mystics and yogis agreed, it could be trained through exercises. Take a coin and put it on a table. This is your object of attention. Eventually, these objects will not need to be tangible. Anything you focus on, real or imagined, literal or conceptual, is an object. But back to the coin. Sit, relax, breathe. Explore the coin. What year was it minted? Is there dirt on it? Little imperfections? See where it has been worn smooth, where the green of zinc or oxidized metal becomes visible. Explore the coin so closely that you could describe it down to the tiniest detail from memory. Most of the rest of the world has now fallen away. You have created a circle of attention. The circle is tiny, encompassing but one little coin. Now you can expand it. You could, for example, make it as large as the table on which the coin rests, exploring the table in as much detail as you explored the coin. If you can accomplish this, perhaps you can expand the circle again and, when ready, yet again, always taking into account every new detail there is to notice. Perhaps, like Stanislavski, you could turn on a few lamps in your room and make whatever each lamp illuminates a different circle of attention. Remember: The audience is almost always outside the circle, in the darkness, in the realm of things to be ignored.