From C. Stanislawski. 1937. An Actor Prepares (trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood). Reading: Methuen Drama. 2006: p.7.
“Today we had a second rehearsal on stage. I arrived early, and decided to prepare myself right on the stage, which today was quite different from yesterday. Work was humming, as properties and scenery were being placed. It would have been useless, amid all this chaos, to try and find the quiet in which I was accustomed to get into my role at home. First of all it was necessary to adjust myself to my new surroundings. I went out to the front of the stage and stared into the awful hole beyond the footlights, trying to become accustomed to it, and to free myself from its pull; but the more I tried not to notice the place the more I thought about it. Just then a workman who was going by dropped a package of nails. I started to pick them up. As I did this I had a very pleasant sensation of feeling quite at home on the big stage. But the nails were soon picked up, and again I became oppressed by the size of the place.”
