Adapting to the Moment

Stanislavski called being in the moment Adaptation. He says in An Actor Prepares:

“On stage and in life we adapt our behaviour, voice, mannerisms, etc in response to the situation, who we’re talking to and what we want.”

This is the goal of the best acting, to live truthfully, adjusting and adapting one’s behaviour  to the prescriptions of the scene and the behaviour of the scene partner.

This means the aim is not to fix how you will act and react in performance until you are in that moment.  Actress/ProfessorBella Merlin notes in her book The Complete Stanislavski Toolkit:

“ ‘How’ doesn’t need to be fixed.  It’s your right – no your art – to adapt the ‘How’ each night to the nuances of your fellow actors…”

Adaptation places acting very firmly in the ‘how’ and away from the damaging academic questions of ‘What? and Why?’ which force an actor back into their own head.

We shouldn’t need to think about ‘How’ we should respond to our fellow actors, we should just respond within the moment but in accordance with the Given Circumstances.

During our performance, we adapt to what is happening in front of us, filtered through the confines of our understanding of the scene. When practised to habit, it is a simple, intuitive process. But like most things, it is surprisingly difficult to remain in the moment with our scene partner, with all the other demands upon us.