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 * Sandbox for the article on Given circumstances • Remember the principles of WP:SS and MoS:Lead - the introduction needs to repeat and summarise the contents of each section.

In acting, given circumstances (predlagaemye obstoiatelstva) are what determine a character's behaviour. They include everything that the playwright proposes in the dramatic text, all of the social, historical, cultural, and environmental conditions that its setting implies, and anything that the director or designers establish during the process of its production. All of these circumstances are "given" to the actors to incorporate into their performances. The term originates in the Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski's 'system' of actor training, production preparation, and rehearsal technique.

Origin
Authenticity of the passions, verisimilitude in the feelings experienced in the proposed circumstances, that is what our intelligence requires of a dramatic author. Stanislavski invented the term "given circumstances" and defined it in his acting manual An Actor's Work (1938): "They mean the plot, the facts, the incidents, the period, the time and place of the action, the way of life, how we as actors and directors understand the play, the contributions we ourselves make, the mise-en-scène, the sets and costumes, the props, the stage dressing, the sound effects etc., etc., everything which is a given for the actors as they rehearse." He based his term on a phrase in what he called "Pushkin's aphorism", which appears in the Russian Romantic playwright Alexander Pushkin's essay "On National-Popular Drama" (1808). Unlike the playwright, who in Pushkin's phrase "proposes" the circumstances (predpolagaemye obstoiatelstva), from the point of view of the actor, Stanislavski reasoned, the circumstances are "given" (predlagaemye obstoiatelstva).

Imagination
Actors use their imaginations to invest the given circumstances with "life". The more or less vague information that the playwright provides in the text and in the "cryptic descriptions" in its stage directions, Stanislavski argued, is not sufficient "to create fully what a character looks like, his mannerisms, his walk, his personal habits", nor will a purely formal execution of the direction given by the director "determine all the nuances" of the character's "thoughts, feelings, aspirations, and actions". He expected actors to imagine all of the detail necessary for their characterisations. Every given circumstance that the play and its production prescribes, he insisted, must be elaborated, extended, and deepened by the actors, in a creative act that supplements the playwright's own. For example, the actors might form a vivid and detailed mental image of the rooms of the house in which the play is set, visualise a journey through them, and engage in imaginary conversations with the other characters that they could meet there. When their imaginations are focused and active, it facilitates the actors' experiencing of the inner life of their character and enables them to behave in the ways that the director and the text indicate. "The imagination takes the initiative in the creative process," Stansiavski wrote, "drawing the actor along behind it."

As an element in the rehearsal practice that the 'system' promotes, given circumstances mediate the relationship between actors and the director (as well as the other creative contributors to the process). Stanislavski warned that when actors lack imagination and are unable to embellish and justify creatively their given circumstances, then a director may usurp their autonomy and they will become pawns in a directorial vision.

Tasks and actions
The given circumstances of a scene present its actors with "tasks", to which they respond with actions.