the dog


Declan Donnellan - from his INTRODUCTION to An Actor's Work - the new translation of the Stanislavski books. 
The best Stanislavski story I know isn’t about an actor at all but about a dog. An actor had a dog. This dog used to come to rehearsals and, being rather lazy, would sleep in the corner all day long. Strangely, every evening, just before the actors were to finish, the dog would already be at the door, leash in mouth, waiting to be taken home. What astounded Stanislavski was that the dog would wearily haul himself to his feet several minutes before his master called him. Regular as clockwork, come the end of every rehearsal, the dog would trot to the door and wait there patiently. Now how could a dog possibly know that the rehearsal was over before anyone moved to the door? Finally Stanislavski figured it out. The dog could hear when the actors started talking like normal human beings again. 

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We like to interpret the story as - the dog would KNOW when that mysterious 'performance energy' was turned on, or off.

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