ABSTRACT
One can find something similar to the actor’s internal technique in other art forms, but in none of them does either the internal technique itself or its components individually create a piece of art. Let’s take painting, for example. A painter, just as much as an actor, needs, let’s say, imagination. In order to train this element of the internal technique, Leonardo da Vinci encouraged young painters to examine naturally created stains, which would develop their imagination and trigger a flow of associations. Another element of the painter’s as well as the actor’s external technique is sense memory; for a painter it would be visual sense memory. He also needs attention: a large circle of attention would be a landscape up to the horizon, a small circle his canvas and brushes. Creative state of mind and working conditions are also important. Look at the inspired artist in the act of creation (the best demonstration of it you can find is in one of the documentaries about Picasso): this is the state that Stanislavski described as ‘I am being’ or ‘today, here and now’, or ‘the full concentration of the whole spiritual and physical nature’.2
