Unit of action

This article is about acting. For other uses, see Action (physics), Future Force Unit of Action, Classical unities, and Beat (filmmaking).
Rehearsal work on "bits" (or "units") of action to explore the dramatic possibilities of a script was propounded by Konstantin Stanislavsky (here seen in the role of the conservative patriarch Famusov in Alexander Griboyedov's satirical verse comedy Woe from Wit)

In acting, units of action, otherwise known as bits or beats,[1] are sections that a play's action can be divided into for the purposes of dramatic exploration in rehearsal.[2]

The concept was propounded by the Russian actor, director and educator Konstantin Stanislavsky, who initially liked to use the term kusok (Russian: кусок, IPA: [kʊˈsok] ⓘ) an ordinary Russian word that can be translated as bit – as in a bit, or slice, of bread or meat.[3] This was the term Stanislavsky preferred in the original drafts of his books. Stanislavsky also referred to these bits of action as episodes, events and facts.

The term “unit” was introduced in the standard early translations of Stanislavsky's writings. Use of beat in the place of bit has become mainstream in American method acting. This historic mistranslation may have helped spawn the common metaphor of the dramatic script as a musical score. Stanislavsky used the same metaphor to refer to detailed production plans. It was also taken up by the innovative Polish director Jerzy Grotowski as a score of physical actions.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Carnicke-2009 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Stanislavski, Konstantin (2008). Benedetti, Jean (ed.). An Actor's Work: A Student's Diary. Taylor & Francis. p. 682. ISBN 978-1-134-10146-7. [From editor's glossary of key terms:] Kusok, Bit, Unit – A section of the total action of the play that can be explored separately. Bits can be large, medium or small. The definition of a bit depends entirely on what the actor can understand and improvise immediately in the early stages of rehearsal. Elsewhere, Stanislavski defined bits as episodes, events and facts.
  3. ^ Benedetti, Jean (2013). Stanislavski and the Actor. Routledge. pp. 7, 150–151. ISBN 978-1-136-75804-1.