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What kind of an actor was Šiškov?
Educated by the principles of the Stanislavski theory school, or by the particular variant of that school that was practiced (as a method) at that time at the Belgrade Academy, Šiškov thoroughly rules its two most essential methodological postulates: the acting/creative sense of oneself and, of course, the widely known and famous process or reliving. His professional ethics and esthetics – since his first steps that he has done at the scene of the Yugoslavian Drama Theater in Belgrade, until the last ones, the steps with which he had to conquer and overcome the repugnantly non-functional (“hostile”) space of the so-called New Object of MNT 3F – constantly leaning, namely, upon these two “wonders”. Even more: Šiškov deeply believed the acting is possible (good, “true”, “great”…) only if it does emerge as a result of the appropriate and intriguing/productive/inspiring combination between the creative sense of oneself and the famous reliving.
What are we, actually, speaking of?
We speak of the subtle (and quite complicated!) method by Stanislavski that was thought to awake and/or inspire and the creative potentials of the actors and to motivate to really create (and not to imitate).
In order to be so – namely, the actors to create and not to imitate – Stanislavski believed that in should be created a complex interlacing of the “external” scene conditions in advance, as: after the process of “input” within the actor, he will feel/relive their reality, the actor by his intuition (but also by his imagination – with awaking his own system of the emotional memory) will “discover”/“find” the way he should react. The director – further on – doesn’t have to lead the actor any further. The actor – by himself – will guide himself, accordingly his own actor’s and creative sense of oneself.
In the so-called “system” of Stanislavski, the art of presentation and the art of reliving are precisely differentiated. the first art – or we should name it as skill? – factually conveys the knowledge and skilful application of certain quantum of gestures, facial gesticulation, voice intonations and body movements, which (during the performance) simply combine according top the actor’s sense of himself. Stanislavski describes this with the syntagma “actor’s sense of oneself”, implicating that – if it’s a matter of creativity at all – it’s a creativity of the representative, mimetic, imitating, low level. A creation that can be a skill, but hardly an art. that’s “that condition when oneself founds himself on the stage, is obligated to externally show what doesn’t feel internally”, namely that “spiritual and physical division between body and soul, which actors feel and relive during the largest part of their lives: by day since noon to 04:00 PM at the rehearsals, and at night since 08:00 PM until midnight – during the actual performance in front of the public, almost in daily bases” (Stanislavski, 1979:276).
The art, of course, can and should be something essentially different. Something divine and extraordinary, something that should be the goal of the theater (as a medium) in the whole – with no matter if we do that as an actors, directors, drama writers… or just as an audience. In the theory system of Stanislavski, the mean through/by which the divine can be reached, the extraordinariness and the verity (creativity, art…) is described as a mutual conditioned syntagmas “creative sense of oneself” and “the art of the reliving”. To reach/relive the “creative sense of oneself” – and with that, to divide the art from the skill – the artists must go through the specific psychological (psycho-technical) process of reliving.
The Stanislavski himself, insists on this complicated and (inevitably) mystical process to explain (in all of his three books) as a process of imprinting of the drama character and the person of the actor, and their consequent and mutual interlacing within the actor, and their “pass over” into a completely new upper-creature. This upper-creature presents a completely new reality, which exists only during that few critical hours of happening/acting of the theater play “as it is”. Therefore, that reality can’t be either the drama character (let’s say: Mendelj Krik), neither the actor that plays it (let’s say: Risto Šiškov), but some strange psycho-technical combination – certain upper -persona! – which we can name as Šiškov-Krik (or maybe it’ll be more accurate if we name it as Krik-Šiškov). The actor (Šiškov) gives to that upper-phenomenon his body and his intellectual-affective-will material. The drama character (Krik) conditions the structuring of that material whole – its final (creative) transition (“translation”) into a new knowledge. That new knowledge Stanislavski interprets as a specific structure, built of thoughts, emotions and desires which are common to all people. In order to be as much explicit as he can in the interpretation of the new knowledge, he invokes the music composition: every composer has a material of only the seven tones, but he can combine/restructure them into a new and original art deed. So, consequently, every actor that interprets Mendelj Krik – even he bases his interpretation of that character upon his own human material elements (those that are conditioned by this specifically and unique structured persona dramatis, made by Isaac Babel), because in order to create, one must combine the parts of his own intellectual-affective-will material – during his stage-existence as a new, unique upper-person, with which he will completely identify himself. That’s why no other actor in the wide world couldn’t play the Mendelj Krik the way Risto Šiškov did!
Even it’s based on not more than ten theoretical principles (if-would, imagination, stage attention, relieving of the muscles, the feeling of truth and faith, emotional memory, reliving…), the Stanislavski method isn’t easy to learn, and even less to be practiced on daily bases. Highly demanding, that method is acceptable/appropriate only to those actors which – besides their imagination, intelligence, will, personal culture, physical and mental ability, dedication to their profession, persistence, unlimited faith in what they work… – have also that rare readiness for permanent work upon themselves.
As Constantine Sergeevich Stanislavski preaches himself, this method can be practiced only by those actors who are ready not only to fulfil their profession, but also to live it in every moment of their lives. The actor-artist can be only the one who intensively recognizes the world around himself, and isn’t different in any way from it, and who is firmly situated into the social environment and can lead (within it) a “consisted, interesting, nice, various life, a life which excites and elevates” (Stanislavski, 1989:294). the true artist can’t be neutral toward the world around himself. he mustn’t suffocate/repress his passions, nor to oppress that “inner flame” possessed by those rare (chosen) men – because that flame is what makes them artists.
It’s interesting that even Stanislavski – that sovereign “high priest” of the stage realism! – doesn’t forsake this mystical, metaphorical, inherited by the Romanticism syntagma “inner flame”!
Šiškov, I think, feels that as his own personal life credo. Even he never formulated as clear as Stanislavski did – at least I didn’t succeed to find any so explicit formulation in any of his numerous interviews in which he was explaining his own poetics (that can be also a fault of those who were putting down his explanations – the interviewers!) – Šiškov firmly lived that famous (“egocentric”) theater and art principle of Stanislavski – “I am”:
“I am” in our language means that I’ve put myself for the center of the imaginary life conditions, that I feel present within them, that I exist in the imaginary life, in the world of the imaginary things, and that I begin to work/act as it is really me – with a sense for the full responsibility” – wrote Constantine Sergeevich (Stanislavski, 1989:99).
The every episode, not only of the actor’s, but also of the civil biography of Šiškov constantly gives the arguments in tribute of his permanent/continuous reliving, namely of this emphasized (“egocentric”) way of living. At the theater stage, in front of the film camera, on the street, in the bar, at home with my family, in the newspapers …
The “I am” – position he chose to represent, personally and professionally, since his high-school days (his high-school professors wrote “he stands on his points, if he’s right“ – undoubtedly, that “I am” position surely was highly demanding, very difficult and not easily defensive. Especially in an environment like ours, small and narrow (narrow-minded): small theater, small town, small cinematography, small relations/distances (starting with the urban ones and ending with the inter-human ones)…
Whether – in some different and “wider” circumstances – life and professional destiny of Šiškov would be different?
The science, mainly, doesn’t prefer to deal with assumptions. Not even in this “clear case”.
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Literature:
1. Stanislavski, Constantine Sergeevich, 1988, MY LIFE IN ART, Zagreb, Cekade
2. Stanislavski, Constantine Sergeevich, 1989, THE WORK OF THE ACTOR ON HIMSELF I, Zagreb, Cekade
3. Stanislavski, Constantine Sergeevich, 1991, THE WORK OF THE ACTOR ON HIMSELF II, Zagreb, Cekade
Translated by: Petar Volnarovski
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3. Macedonian National Theater