Editing Stanislavski's system (section)

==Given circumstances and the Magic If==
{{cquote|When I give a genuine answer to the ''if'', then I do something, I am living my own personal life. At moments like that there is no character. Only me. All that remains of the character and the play are the situation, the ''life circumstances'', all the rest is mine, my own concerns, as a role in all its creative moments depends on a living person, i.e., the actor, and not the dead abstraction of a person, i.e., the role.|author=[[Konstantin Stanislavski]].<ref>Letter to Gurevich, 9 April 1931; quoted by Benedetti (1999a, 338).</ref>}}
Stanislavski's "Magic If" describes an ability to imagine oneself in a set of fictional circumstances and to envision the consequences of finding oneself facing that situation in terms of action.<ref name=counsell28>Counsell (1996, 28).</ref> These circumstances are "given" to the actor principally by the playwright or screenwriter, though they also include choices made by the director, designers, and other actors. The ensemble of these circumstances that the actor is required to incorporate into a performance are called the "[[given circumstances]]". "It is easy," Carnicke warns, "to misunderstand this notion as a directive to play oneself."<ref>Carnicke (1998, 163).</ref> A human being's circumstances condition his or her character, this approach assumes.<ref>Carnicke (1998, 163–164).</ref> "Placing oneself in the role does not mean transferring one's own circumstances to the play, but rather incorporating into oneself circumstances other than one's own."<ref>Carnicke (1998, 164).</ref>

In preparation and rehearsal, the actor develops imaginary stimuli, which often consist of sensory details of the circumstances, in order to provoke an organic, subconscious response in performance.<ref name=counsell28/> These "inner objects of attention" (often abbreviated to "inner objects" or "contacts") help to support the emergence of an "unbroken line" of experiencing through a performance, which constitutes the inner life of the role.<ref name=counsell28/> An "unbroken line" describes the actor's ability to focus attention exclusively on the fictional world of the drama throughout a performance, rather than becoming distracted by the scrutiny of the audience, the presence of a camera crew, or concerns relating to the actor's experience in the real world offstage or outside the world of the drama. In a rehearsal process, at first, the "line" of experiencing will be patchy and broken; as preparation and rehearsals develop, it becomes increasingly sustained and unbroken. 
 
When experiencing the role, the actor is fully absorbed by the drama and immersed in its fictional circumstances; it is a state that the psychologist [[Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi]] calls "[[Flow (psychology)|flow]]."<ref>Carnicke (1998, 108).</ref> Stanislavski used the term "I am being" to describe it. He encouraged this absorption through the cultivation of "public solitude" and its "circles of attention" in training and rehearsal, which he developed from the [[meditation]] techniques of [[yoga]].<ref>Leach (2004, 32) and Magarshack (1950, 322).</ref> Stanislavski did not encourage complete [[Identification (psychodynamic)|identification]] with the role, however, since a genuine belief that one had become someone else would be [[Pathology|pathological]].<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 202). Benedetti argues that Stanislavski "never succeeded satisfactorily in defining the extent to which an actor identifies with his character and how much of the mind remains detached and maintains theatrical control."</ref>