In the early part of the twentieth century, two men were credited with helping to bring a naturalistic, less presentational style of acting to the stage. One man, Constantin Stanislavski, was Russian. The other, Lee Strasberg, was American. It is interesting that Strasberg believed he was working within the same principles as Stanislavski. While many concepts the two men championed were the same, they did differ on a few points with regard to what the most important aspect of the performance was. Two main issues of disagreement were in the aesthetics of the actor and in the emotional smoothness of the performance.
For many years, the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT) had used a system of acting that tried to eliminate the formal, static, and presentational performances given on the traditional stage. In 1936, Constantin Stanislavski wrote the first of three books explaining the system the actors at the MAT used. For the first time in published form, it was recommended that actors use their own real emotions while acting instead of showing a representation of said emotions. In his first book, An Actor Prepares, Stanislavski discussed the exercises MAT actors went through to get in touch with and in control of these emotions so as to be able to call them up to be used on stage at any given moment. He used key phrases such as the magic if and intention to help the actor respond to situations realistically. The magic if helped the actors put themselves in the situation and respond as if the action were really happening to them. Allowing the actors an intention helped give them something to do on stage. If they wanted something from another actor, this intention gave them a direction to take their action while also informing the characters" relationship. Such ideas made the performances look natural, but Stanislavski still believed that acting was an art form. As such, he stated that "our aim is not only to create the life of a human spirit, but also to express it in a beautiful, artistic form" (Stanislavski 2003: 16).
