Book 1: Boleslavsky's Acting: The First Six Lessons. Chapter 1: Concentration

Having read this book previously, now with new eyes and a listening for what is acting & how to cultivate technique, immediately I had to look up the word, "Concentration" in the dicitionary.

According to dictionary.com:

Concentration

–noun

1. the act of concentrating; the state of being concentrated.

2. exclusive attention to one object; close mental application.

3. something concentrated: a concentration of stars.

4. Military .

a.the assembling of military or naval forces in a particular area in preparation for further operations.

b.a specified intensity and duration of artillery fire placed on a small area.

5.the focusing of a student's academic program on advanced study in a specific subject or field.

6.Chemistry . (in a solution) a measure of the amount of dissolved substance contained per unit of volume.

7.Also called memory. Cards . a game in which all 52 cards are spread out face down on the table and each player in turn exposes two cards at a time and replaces them face down if they do not constitute a pair, the object being to take the most pairs by remembering the location of the cards previously exposed.

Boleslavsky on page 9 states:

"Concentration is the quality which permits us to direct all our spiritual and intellectual forces toward one definite object and to continue as long as it pleases us to do so---sometimes for a time much longer than our physical strength can endure."

He then goes on to describe:

"I knew a fisherman once who, during a storm, did not leave his rudder for forty-eight hours, concentrating to the last minute on his work of steering his schooner. Only when he had brought the schooner back safely into the harbor did he allow his body to faint. This strength, this certainty of power over yourself, is the fundamental quality of every creative artist. You must find within yourself, and develop it to the last degree."

What is acting? Page 11 states:

Acting is the life of the human soul receiving its birth through art.

"In a creative theater the object for an actor's concentration is the human soul. In the first period of his work---the searching--the object for concentration is his own soul and those of the men and women who surround him. In the second period--the constructive one--only his own soul. Which means that, to act, you must know how to concentrate on something materially imperceptible,---on something which you can perceive only by penetrating deeply int your own entity, recognizing what would be evidence in life only in a moment of the greatest emotion and most violent struggle. In other words, you need a spiritual concentration on emotions which do not exist, but are invented or imagined."

Somewhere here, I get the sense as the author points out that:

"...it is only after studying and rehearsing that the actor starts to create." This is what I'm interested in.

Chapter 1 begins with the Creature entering to speak to Boleslavsky or rather "I" requesting that he teach her dramatic art. He tells her art can not be taught and that loving the theater is not enough...and that one must give the theater their EVERYTHING and realize that they should expect that the theater will give you nothing in return. He states that she does not "possess the most elemental quality of a literate man--an ability to transmit the thoughts, feelings, and words of another logically."

Only when you suffer does one feel deeply. "Those are two things without which you cannot do in any art and especially in the art of the theater. Only by paying this price can you attain the happiness for creation, the happiness of the birth of a new artistic value."

To be continued...