When you go into the professional world, at a stock theater somewhere, backstage you will meet an older actor--someone who has been around awhile. He will tell you tales and anecdotes about life in the theater. He will speak to you about your performance and the performances of others, and he will generalize to you, based on his experience and his intuitions, about the laws of the stage. Ignore this man. -- Sanford Meisner
Practical applications of theory are in training. And first of all, mental attitude. Understanding and realization that movement must be dramatically structured. Changes must be expressed physically in space and time.
If you think it's too complicated, you are right, and you should know what's ahead of you in Method Acting. Could you progress without knowledge of acting theory? Could you be an inventor without engineering degree? Be a CEO without MBA? A musician without knowledge of solfeggio? A surgeon not knowing the anatomy? There are no short cuts in any profession. Sooner or later you have to learn it, if you stay with profession.
But first, we have to change the attitude about studying acting.
"Those who work in improvisation have the chance to see with frightening clarity how rapidly the boundaries of so-called freedom are reached." (Brook [1] 425)
With horror and amusement I see thousands in NYC who are after ten, twenty, thirty years since graduation still trying to break into business. The grand illusion is that acting is easy, simple, fun.
Since most of acting is acquired through experience, it's extremely difficult to bring it in formulas, terminology and rules. Acting theories are relatively new. Most of the theatre schools appeared only half a century ago, but mass society, which is a communication society, asks for mass market for acting.
This is how-to-do-it-yourself acting book.
Discipline isn't possible without limitations. Instead of your mind's limitations get laws which will teach you by giving the limits.
I don't like constructivism terminology (mechanics, building a character, and etc.) I believe that we discover things (which look like our inventions).
"The great system of Stanislavsky, which for the first time approached the whole art of acting from the point of view of science and knowledge, has done as much harm as good to many young actors, who misread it in detail and only take away a good hatred of the shoddy." (B 428)
Of course, there's a danger that it could be taken mechanically, as the only answer, not a tool. Any power tool is a danger also.
"At least one can see that everything is a language for something and nothing is a language for everything." (B 429)
Actor is a carrier of theatre. He alone creates the space and time of performance. He is a magician. We rediscovered that a shaman was not at the beginning, but always with actor.
"Holy Theatre" = space is to become subjective, transferred through and transformed by actor.
Now you're ready for Method Acting.