The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act

by Isaac Butler

Hamlet likely marks the first time that Stanislavski put together several key concepts of the “system.” Having already realized that a script could be divided into bits and that characters had a supertask, a sverkhzadacha, he next realized that each character’s bit had its own zadacha: a little step taken, often unsuccessfully, toward the character’s ultimate goal. Zadacha means both “task” and “problem.” It is a thing that a character needs that is important enough to demand actions. Those actions are then generally phrased as infinitive verbs (“I want to _____”). To take a mundane example, if your problem is that you are thirsty, then your action might be to get a glass of water. Zadachi were not psychological to Stanislavski. They were the immediate actions that needed to be accomplished to move the character closer to their goal. Change the interpretation of a bit’s task/problem or its action, and you changed how dialogue was delivered. Try saying a simple line like “that’s quite a dress, where did you get it?” What is the action behind the line? Perhaps you want to flatter the listener, or to degrade them. Perhaps you want to model yourself after them. All of these would flow from different tasks/problems. You’ll know you’ve found the right one when it moves your character closer to their supertask. Correctly defined, the zadacha acted as a lure, coaxing ever reluctant feeling from its hiding place. There were other lures, of course, including affective memory and the...