Late in Konstantin Stanislavski's life, he was still working to help actors find a way into their craft. Years after he published his now famous trilogy of books, An Actor Prepares,  Building A Character, and Creating a Role, he looked back at his "Method" and at how his students were interpreting his earlier teachings, and he noticed how stiff and trapped within themselves they had become. In prioritizing a character's backstory and focusing on Sense Memory, The Method had actors spending far too much time around a table, looking too much within themselves and therefore cutting themselves off from what was or could truly happen on stage in the present moment.

So he began again. Completely scrapping his methodology that had made him famous, Stanislavski alongside Maria Knebel began putting his actors on their feet immediately after encountering a script: "We can read a play today and perform it tomorrow," he said. This switch in focus validated the actors inherent knowledge of human behavior, reinforcing the concept of "I in the given circumstances" or "The Magic If". In other words, he redefined acting as not playing a different person, but rather filling a character's circumstances with oneself. In doing so, he granted actors the freedom to act and react organically. 

He developed a new way to rehearse, wherein actors explore their given circumstances through energetic exchanges and improvisations called "Etudes". Eventually, those were structured into 4 Stages: Silence, Sound, Actor's Words, Playwright's Words. This gave a progression that moved the actor organically through the process of learning the scene. At no point did he allow his actors to memorize their lines or hold their scripts on stage, which allowed them to organically learn the scene, get it into their bodies so it could be different and fresh each time--"here, now, never before".