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Founder: Lee Strasberg, based on Constantin Stanislavski's system. Primary principles: emotional memory, sense memory, and full psychological and emotional identification with the character.

Founder: Constantin Stanislavski. Primary principles: emotional recall, the 'magic if', and a focus on the actor's inner motivation to create a realistic performance.

Founder: Sanford Meisner. Primary principles: 'the reality of doing', repetition exercises, and emotional preparation to create spontaneity on stage.

Founder: Michael Chekhov. Primary principles: use of the 'psychological gesture', imagination, and transformation to access emotions and character.

Founder: David Mamet and William H. Macy. Primary principles: script analysis, moment-to-moment awareness, and use of the 'as if' to connect personal experiences with the character.

Founder: Uta Hagen. Primary principles: substitution, the 'who am I?' questions, and a focus on the characters' objectives to guide the actor's choices.

Founder: Mary Overlie originally; later adapted by Anne Bogart. Primary principles: exploration of time and space, kinesthetic response, and the use of the nine viewpoints (spatial relationship, shape, time, emotion, movement, story, rhythm, and gesture).

Founder: Rudolf Laban. Primary principles: understanding and documenting human movement through concepts like effort, shape, and space.

Founder: Tadashi Suzuki. Primary principles: control and discipline, awareness of breath and center of gravity, and cultivation of the actor's inner energy.

Founder: Jerzy Grotowski. Primary principles: eliminating anything that is not essential to the conveyance of the drama, focus on the actor-audience relationship, and use of the actor's full arsenal of gestures, voice, and movements.

Founder: Bertolt Brecht. Primary principles: use of the 'Verfremdungseffekt' or 'alienation effect', didacticism, and direct audience address to provoke critical thinking.

Founders: Unknown, Italian Renaissance. Primary principles: stock characters, improvised dialogue based on plot outlines called 'scenarios', and the use of physical comedy and masks.

Founder: Stella Adler. Primary principles: act from the 'spine' of the character, use of imagination rather than the actor's personal history, and the study of text for given circumstances.

Founder: F.M. Alexander. Primary principles: improve movement and posture, enhance breathing and vocal production, and decrease performance-related stress and anxiety.