The "magic if" is a method acting technique, where an actor must try to answer the question "what would I do IF I were the character or in their situation?" Stanislavski thought that an actor cannot genuinely believe in the reality of events on the stage to be true, but he said that an actor could believe in the possibility of the events. It is used to strongly stimulate the actor's inner creativity and it transports the actor into the imaginary circumstances. "The Magic If" is a powerful stimulus to the actor's thoughts, imagination, and his logical actions. It allows the actor to explore new emotions and helps to put you in the character's shoes. It gives a "feeling of truth" and makes an actor's actions more believable to both him and the audience.
Emotion Memory .
Another technique, which came from Stanislavski's belief of realistic acting, is Emotional Memory, also known as Affective Memory. In this, the actor is required to draw on a previous personal experience, to remember and recreate the feelings they experienced at that time. They need to pick up on the emotions, which are similar to the feelings that their character is experiencing. The actor then needs to allow the emotions that they once felt to resurface and to take over their mind; these feelings must then be transferred to the character or script. Stanislavski believed that this would make the performance more realistic, as the emotions would be true to the actor. This technique is used so that the actors play their role with real, believable emotions and with human depth, to make the performance more compelling as opposed to fake and over exaggerated .
Units, Objectives and Motivation.
An aspect of Stanislavski's method is that every character has a 'Super-Objective' during the action. A super objective is the underlying fundamental objective and is usually linked to the general outcome of the play.
