The great Russian director, Stanislavski, created the modern acting methodology while working with playwright Anton Chekhov. The two were interested in creating theater that was human, rather than performative. The Group Theater brought his method to the US, which quickly gave birth to the many schools of method acting, all of them still preeminent today: Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, Herbert Berghof and Uta Hagen’s HB Studio, and Sanford Meisner, to name a few. Aside from giving us the “objective” or what I refer to as the Intention, Stanislavski gave us the “beat.” Lore has it that he was saying, “this little bit and then this little bit,” but to an American ear is sounded like… Read on.