Editing Stanislavski's system (section)

==Tasks and action==
[[File:A Month in the Country with (1909) with Massalitinov, Samarova, Stanislavski, and Knipper.jpg|thumb|300px|right|[[Konstantin Stanislavski|Stanislavski]] and [[Olga Knipper|Knipper]] (''centre'') in ''[[A Month in the Country (play)|A Month in the Country]]'' (1909), the earliest recorded instance of the analysis of action in discrete "bits".<ref name="b190">Benedetti (1999a, 190).</ref>]]
{{cquote|Action is the very basis of our art, and with it our creative work must begin.|author=[[Konstantin Stanislavski]].<ref>Stanislavski, quoted by Magarshack (1950, 397).</ref>}}
An actor's performance is animated by the pursuit of a sequence of "tasks" (identified in Elizabeth Hapgood's original English translation as "objectives").  A task is a problem, embedded in the "[[given circumstances]]" of a scene, that the character needs to solve. This is often framed as a question: "What do I need to make the other person ''do''?" or "What do I want?"

In preparing and rehearsing for a role, actors break up their parts into a series of discrete "bits", each of which is distinguished by the dramatic event of a "reversal point", when a major revelation, decision, or realisation alters the direction of the action in a significant way. (Each "bit" or "beat" corresponds to the length of a single motivation [task or objective].  The term "bit" is often mistranslated in the US as "beat", as a result of its pronunciation in a heavy Russian accent by Stanislavski's students who taught his system there.)

A task must be engaging and stimulating imaginatively to the actor, Stanislavski argues, such that it compels action:
<blockquote>One of the most important creative principles is that an actor's tasks must always be able to coax his feelings, will and intelligence, so that they become part of him, since only they have creative power. [...] The task must provide the means to arouse creative enthusiasm.  Like a magnet, it must have great drawing power and must then stimulate endeavours, movements and actions. ''The task is the spur to creative activity, its motivation. The task is a decoy for feeling.'' [...] The task sparks off wishes and inner impulses (spurs) toward creative effort. The task creates the inner sources which are transformed naturally and logically into action. The task is the heart of the bit, that makes the pulse of the living organism, the role, beat.<ref>Stanislavski (1957, 138).</ref></blockquote>

[[List of productions directed by Konstantin Stanislavski|Stanislavski's production]] of ''[[A Month in the Country (play)|A Month in the Country]]'' (1909) was a watershed in his artistic development, constituting, according to Magarshack, "the first play he produced according to his system."<ref>Carnicke (2000, 30—31), Gordon (2006, 45—48), Leach (2004, 16—17), Magarshack (1950, 304—306), and Worrall (1996, 181—182). In his notes on the production's rehearsals, Stanislavski wrote that: "There will be no ''[[Mise-en-scène|mises-en-scènes]]''. A bench or divan at which people arrive, sit and speak—no sound effects, no details, no incidentals. Everything based on ''perezhivaniye'' [experiencing] and intonations. The whole production is woven from the sense-impressions and feelings of the author and the actors."; quoted by Worrall (1996, 192).</ref> Breaking the [[Moscow Art Theatre|MAT]]'s tradition of open rehearsals, he prepared [[Ivan Turgenev|Turgenev's]] play in private.<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 190), Leach (2004, 17), and Magarshack (1950, 305).</ref> The cast began with a discussion of what Stanislavski would come to call the "through-line" for the characters (their emotional development and the way they change over the course of the play).<ref>Leach (2004, 17) and Magarshack (1950, 307).</ref> This production is the earliest recorded instance of his practice of analysing the action of the script into discrete "bits".<ref name="b190"/>

The pursuit of one task after another forms a through-line of action, which unites the discrete bits into an unbroken continuum of experience. This through-line drives towards a task operating at the scale of the drama as a whole and is called, for that reason, a "supertask" (or "superobjective"). A performance consists of the inner aspects of a role (experiencing) and its outer aspects ("embodiment") that are united in the pursuit of the supertask.

In his later work, Stanislavski focused more intently on the underlying patterns of dramatic conflict. He developed a rehearsal technique that he called "active analysis" in which actors would [[Improvisation|improvise]] these conflictual dynamics. In the American developments of Stanislavski's system—such as that found in [[Uta Hagen]]'s ''[[Respect for Acting]]'', for example—the forces opposing a characters' pursuit of their tasks are called "obstacles".