Active Analysis by Maria Knebel, and: Analysis Through Action For Actors And Directors: From Stan-Islavsky To Contemporary Performance by David Chambers (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Active Analysis by Maria Knebel, and: Analysis Through Action For Actors And Directors: From Stan-Islavsky To Contemporary Performance by David Chambers
• David Krasner

ACTIVE ANALYSIS. By Maria Knebel. Compiled and edited by Anatoli Vassiliev. Translated by Irina Brown. London: Routledge, 2021; pp. 260. ANALYSIS THROUGH ACTION FOR ACTORS AND DIRECTORS: FROM STAN-ISLAVSKY TO CONTEMPORARY PERFORMANCE. By David Chambers. London: Routledge, 2024; pp. 316.

Konstantin Stanislavsky is one of the most influential acting teachers of the twentieth century. Yet, despite his significance and his death over eighty years ago in 1938, new facets of his teachings are still being uncovered. The miasma surrounding Stanislavsky is due to Soviet censorship, the vagaries of translation, and the fact that during his life Stanislavsky reevaluated his theory and practice of actor training. We now know, for instance, that during his final years, Stanislavsky revised his methodology, coalescing around a new theory termed in English as "active analysis" or "analysis through action." Previously, active analysis/analysis through action (AA) was dubbed "the method of physical action," a term Stanislavsky did not use but that derived from actor Vasili Toporkov, Stanislavsky's student at the Moscow Art Theatre. In his book Stanislavsky in Rehearsal, Toporkov coined the English variation of the term. The method of physical action was then promulgated by Stalinist ideologues and acting teachers who believed that this training procedure nullified Stanislavsky's earlier techniques, most notably Stanislavsky's "affective memory" (the term describing emotional recall). Claiming that Stanislavsky created two "periods" of work—dubbed "Early and Late"—advocates of the method of physical action argued that Stanislavsky's Late period rejected affective memory tout court in favor of mechanical physicality, which alone was deemed the cornerstone of Stanislavsky's System. The doyen of Method Acting, Lee Strasberg, was demonized as the arbiter of the supposedly regressive affective memory, and the phrase "do the action first and the feelings will follow" lodged into acting training's collective consciousness.

These two books, Active Analysis (2021) by Maria Knebel and Analysis through Action for Actors and Directors: From Stanislavsky to Contemporary Performance (2024) by David Chambers, set the record straight. Knebel, one of Stanislavsky's students, and Chambers, an acting teacher and historian of Russian theatre, each provide detailed analyses of Stanislavsky's final working method, one that never abandoned the actor's task of personalizing, experiencing, and humanizing the role. Instead of dividing Stanislavsky into two periods, these books clarify Stanislavsky's methodology as a continuum, with the work in his later life, notably AA, simply being an extension of his earlier techniques. Knebel insists that

Stanislavsk[y] stated that assessing the facts [of the role] through your own life experience—and without that no true art is possible—occurs only when an actor compels their imagination—even in the initial stages of the work, during the "mental reconnaissance"' of the play—to treat the play's dramatis personae as if they were real people living and operating under specific living conditions.

(113)

Chambers reiterates this, noting that Stanislavsky demanded the actor "employ her own personal emotional memories," adding that Stanislavsky "did not abandon emotional memory as some would later claim, although it may not have held the highest priority it once did" (53). By taking Stanislavsky's work as a gestalt, these two books shed light on acting technique that rejects an either/or Early/Late periodization in favor of a wholistic approach. [End Page 582]

Knebel was one of Stanislavsky's most important protégées at the end of his life. According to her, Stanislavsky recoiled at what he observed to be the intellectualization of acting practice; he witnessed actors rehearsing what is called "table work," whereby the play and its roles were analyzed by the performers and the director literally over a table. Rehearsals would collate ideas, actions, and actorial tasks verbally, with each role examined through intellectual discourse, rote memorization, reciting the text aloud, and academically inclined analysis. Stanislavsky sought to reverse this cerebral, stultifying, and emotionless trend, insisting that actors physicalize immediately during nascent rehearsal processes, embodying the play not through discourse and intellectualization, but through active, physical connection—literally rising to their feet and...