A man in the latter half of the nineteenth century was concerned about the expression of the innermost spirit of human creativity. Consequently he studied the best of nature and science as best he could. He taught various students. As has happened with most educational innovations, eventually the "new" method found its way to America and became part of American actor training. Uncomfortable with publishing his discoveries, this man's students - good, bad, and indifferent - were responsible for the dissemination of the master's teaching in print and in person. Unsurprisingly, some of the material - usually the easiest part of the master's work - was taught as the whole method by some. Consequently the master's method has been misunderstood by friend and foe alike for many decades. Am I referring to a teacher from Russia . . . . . or France? For the past fifty years, actors, scholars and interested lay-people have argued about Stanislavsky and his system. But Stanislavsky's work was not the first method to reach American actors as a new means to expressive acting. The work of Francois Delsarte has been long misunderstood by most American theatre folk. Usually people reference the Delsarte method as a chart of exterior poses - old-fashioned and funny and to be used if grand, baroque acting is required. Like many myths, there's a germ of truth at its center, but (like many myths) not the whole truth of the matter. In contrast to the usual conception of Delsarte, a close reading of the available materials show that Delsarte's aims went far more deeply than developing certain charts of poses. Delsarte (incidentally an uncle to the composer Georges Bizet) was a French Catholic who worked to find the imprints of the Trinity in all creation, including the expressive creative works of humankind. As a consequence, Delsarte described everything in terms of ternary parts. The spiritual part of humanity had three parts: Life, Mind, and Soul. In turn, "Life" was composed of three parts: sensation, instinct, and sympathy. "Mind" comprised the trinity of jundgement, induction and conscience. Sentiment, contemplation, and intuition made the trinity of the "Soul." Humanity's "Organic" side also had a triune composition with each part having its own triune constituents. James McTeague noted about Delsarte's philosophy, "Every phenomenon can be resolved into its fundamental three, and the purpose of science is to discover these underlying trinities which form the key to the divine reason of all things." [Italics mine.] (McTeague, James H., "Before Stanislavsky." Scarecrow Books: Metuchen, 1993, p 7.) Delsarte seems to have been driven by a number of ideas in his work. First, Delsarte gave almost holy or sacred weight to artistic creation and expression. (Human creativity mirroring the divine.) His work, therefore, stems from a belief in the spiritual or instinctual essence of humans to express the inspirational best of human life. Instinct trumps reason. Secondly, though, Delsarte seems to have breathed a part of the age in which we still live. An idea's legitimacy necessarily springs from its expression in scientific terms. So Delsarte's method includes the "scientific" study of the outward expression of those inner feelings. As some readers recall, in a later age Stanislavsky drew a chart of his system with the left half given to 'experiencing' the role (the much-discussed word 'perezhevanye') and the right half given to 'embodying' the role. Likewise, as noted above, Delsarte based his method on his scientific study of the "spiritual" side of humanity and the "organic" side of humanity. In keeping with the trinitarian concept of life, Delsarte split the 'organic' into feeling, thought, and love. The first item in the organic trinity that made up feeling was the vocal apparatus - made up of the trinity of the lungs, back of the mouth, and the larynx. The scientific charts of positions and exercises followed from these concepts. Genevieve Stebbins was among Steele MacKaye's star pupils. (MacKaye was Delsarte's chief apostle in the USA.) Stebbins wrote a book on the Delsarte "System of Expression," the sixth edition of which was published in 1902. The first lesson of the exercise section listed activities that don't seem unusual to a modern actor. The first series of exercises were intended to teach relaxation by releasing tension, starting from the extremities and working upward (from fingers to wrist to elbow, etc), and gently shaking each part as tension is released. Such activities have been advocated as part of physical warming-up for decades. Much of what Stebbins included in her text doesn't seem much more far-fetched than that. Contrasting with the myth of Stanislavsky (who supposedly was all about the interior life of the actor), the myth of Delsarte was supposedly all about exterior expression. What happened? McTeague argues that various students only learned a small piece of Delsarte's total vision and went out to become teachers on their own, teaching the small piece they learned. In looking at the situation, it seems to me that sound-bite thinking is older than we suppose, and the easier parts of a whole artistic system are more widely dispersed than the more intangible nuances. Developing creative expression is somewhat like trying to out-clever the wily fox - it can be done with patience and sometimes approaching the object indirectly. Giving finely nuanced expression to human feelings may be simple, but it's rarely easy. Nevertheless, expression is precisely the task of the artist. Because of this task among the many tasks within the ranks of humanity, artists must have courage. This courage in the area of expression can lead to caution in talking about how we go about our task. This is understandable and appropriate. Like Delsarte, the gentle, precious ideas of our creativity can be mostly misunderstood and lost. | 
