Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting offers new insight into the well-known tradition of Russian actor training. Rooted in practice, this is the first book to contextualise the Stanislavsky tradition with reference to parallel developments in science. It presents an alternative perspective based on philosophy, physics, Romantic science, psychology and theories of industrial management. Working from practical sources, historical texts and unpublished archive materials, Jonathan Pitches traces an evolutionary journey of actor training from the roots of the Russian tradition, Konstantin Stanislavsky, to the contemporary Muscovite director Anatoly Vasiliev. The book explores two key developments that emerge from Stanislavsky’s System, one linear, rational and empirical, while the other is fluid, organic and intuitive. The otherwise highly contrasting acting theories of Vsevolod Meyerhold (biomechanics) and Lee Strasberg (the Method) are dealt with under the banner of the rational or Newtonian paradigm; Michael Chekhov’s acting technique and the little- known ideas of Anatoly Vasiliev form the centrepiece of the other Romantic, organic strain of practice. Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting opens up the theatre laboratories of five major practitioners in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and scrutinises their acting methodologies from a scientific perspective. Jonathan Pitches is Principal Lecturer in Contemporary Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University, and the author of Vsevolod Meyerhold (Routledge, 2003). Routledge advances in theatre and performance studies 1 Theatre and Postcolonial Desires Awam Amkpa 2 Brecht and Critical Theory Dialectics and contemporary aesthetics Sean Carney 3 Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting Jonathan Pitches Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting Jonathan Pitches LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.” © 2006 Jonathan Pitches All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-39120-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-68546-6 (Adobe e-Reader Format) ISBN 0-415-32907-8 (Print Edition) Frontispiece Systems Tree representing various levels of complexity (source: adapted from Capra 1983:304). I don’t think I have invented anything in particular, in spite of the fact that the whole theory is a novelty. It is obvious that the top of the tree has changed but that its roots are still the same: of course my vain wish would be to change the roots, too. However, since I admire roots, and the roots of trees in particular, the new roots could only be an offshoot of the old. (Anatoly Vasiliev 1992:48) To Ceri, Harri and George Contents List of illustrations viii Acknowledgements x Introduction: science and Stanislavsky—the evolution of a tradition 1 PART I The roots of the tradition 1 A System for the world? Newtonianism in Stanislavsky’s science of acting 10 PART II The Newtonian branch 2 The theatricality reflex: the place of Pavlov and Taylor in Meyerhold’s 48 biomechanics 3 The System, psychology and the US: Richard Boleslavsky and Lee Strasberg 77 PART III The Romantic branch 4 A delicate empiricism: Romantic science and the Michael Chekhov technique 115 5 The laboratory as sanctuary: the theatre of Anatoly Vasiliev 149 Epilogue: genetic modification and the backbone of tradition 178 Notes 180 Bibliography 189 Index 198 Illustrations Fronti v Systems Tree representing various levels of complexity spiece 1.1 Stanislavsky’s diagram of the System, 1938 38 2.1 Meyerhold’s chart recording theatrical stimuli and audience 74 responses 3.1 Stella Adler’s diagram of Stanislavsky’s System, 1934 106 4.1 Michael Chekhov’s ‘Chart for Inspired Acting’, 1949 145 5.1 Roger Caillois’ taxonomy of game-play 159 5.2 Initial event leading to main event: a psychological model of 161 drama 5.3 Sub-events and the causal model of drama 161 5.4 Stanislavsky’s through-line of action, 1936 162 5.5 Vasiliev’s ludo approach 164 5.6 Initial and main event in Dostoyevsky’s The Meek One: a 165 psychological reading 5.7 Initial and main event in Dostoyevsky’s The Meek One: a ludo 166 reading 5.8 Dostoyevsky’s The Meek One: ludic line versus psychological 166 line 5.9 Climbing or descending—the ludo approach versus the 171 psychological approach Acknowledgements First and foremost I am deeply indebted to Anthony Frost, whose critical insight and exceptional eye for detail as my PhD supervisor for seven years has made the task of rewriting this material as a book as painless as it could be. I am also grateful to George Savona and to University College Northampton for financial support to study and, specifically, for funding my first research trip to Russia in 1994. The Department of Contemporary Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University has also provided me with valuable time to transform my original PhD work and I am particularly grateful to Professor Robin Nelson for his enthusiasm and measured criticism at a late stage in this book’s development. In addition, I would like to thank my colleagues at UCN, specifically Franc Chamberlain, Anthony Shrubsall and Bob Godfrey, for collaborating with me on a range of associated practical projects and for offering commentary and specialist insight on aspects of this work. Thanks must also go to Talia Rodgers, Joe Whiting and Terry Clague at Routledge, to the International Workshop Festival and Dick McCaw, to Martin Dewhirst, Rebecca Edgington and Annelis Kuhlmann, to Monika Koch and Richard Durham, to Angie St John Palmer and the Dartington Hall Trust Archive for permission to reproduce items from their Michael Chekhov holdings, to Robert Leach, Andrei Kirillov and to Gareth Edwards. A huge debt of gratitude is owed to the practitioners with whom I have worked and who constitute a very significant part of this study: Sergei Desnitsky, Mark Rozofsky, Alexei Levinsky, Gennady Bogdanov, David Zinder and Anatoly Vasiliev. Finally I would like to thank my wife, Ceri, and my children, Harri and George. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders for all copyright material in this book. The author regrets if there has been any oversight and suggests the publisher be contacted in any such event. Introduction Science and Stanislavsky—the evolution of a tradition Stanislavsky on science If you were to take Stanislavsky at his word, any search for a scientific root to the tradition of acting associated with his name would seem futile. His preface to An Actor’s Work on Himself (1938) is unequivocal: ‘Do not look for any scholarly or scientific derivations. We in the theatre have our own lexicon, our actors’ jargon which has been wrought out of life’ (Stanislavsky 1958:35). In this revised version of his seminal text, published two years after the New York edition, An Actor Prepares (1936), Stanislavsky is eager to distance himself from any accusation of theoretical abstraction. Instead, he values a colloquial performance language based on experience and practice. True, the development of a ‘jargon’ for actors—that is a specialised terminology understood only by those who are part of a specific community—has its associations with scientific practice, especially if that terminology is derived from the practical study of life. But in principle it would seem that science and art are mutually incompatible in Stanislavsky’s eyes. Yet fourteen years earlier, in his autobiography, My Life in Art (1924), Stanislavsky had articulated a very different attitude to science. Recalling the period of work he undertook with Leopold Sulerzhitsky at the First Studio, he notes: We needed a new beginning. We needed new bases and foundations justified by knowledge and the laws of nature… It will be asked: ‘Can there exist a system for the creative process? Has it really got laws that have been established for all time?’ In certain parts of the system, like the physiological and psychological, laws exist for all, forever, and in all creative processes. They are indubitable, completely conscious, tried by science and found true. (Stanislavsky 1980b:483) Rather than being opposed to any scientific connection with his System, here Stanislavsky appeals to science to validate his ideas. Both sides of his ‘psycho-physical’ acting theory (the internal, psychological side and the external, physiological side) are best expressed in universal laws’, he argues. Nature (and specifically what Stanislavsky sees as the natural process of acting) is, in effect, legitimised by its associations with science. Traditionally, this discrepancy is explained in one of two ways. Either he simply changed his mind, as we know Stanislavsky did throughout his career—fourteen years is, after all, a long time. Or, he wilfully shifted tack to suit his particular position at different Science and the stanislavsky tradition of acting 2 points. As Sharon Carnicke puts it in Stanislavsky in Focus: ‘Like any artist, Stanislavsky incorporates science only when it inspires his imagination’ (1998:87). Carnicke cites Stanislavsky’s own reluctance to meet with Soviet scientists late in his career and his professed ignorance of philosophy and psychology as further evidence for discounting any meaningful connection between his acting System and science.