{"title":"The Stanislavsky-Grotowski lineage: part I","authors":"Virginie Magnat","doi":"10.1080/20567790.2023.2196286","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20567790.2023.2196286","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The connection between Konstantin Stanislavsky and Jerzy Grotowski is often overlooked or underplayed because there are substantial distinctions between them in terms of practices and approaches. In Part I of this essay, I examine Grotowski’s reflections on the significance of Stanislavsky’s final experiments for his own artistic research, I identify key points of connection between the Russian and Polish directors’ respective investigations of performance processes, and I foreground these convergences as particularly consequential in the context of the often-divergent genealogies of twentieth century theatre historiography. In Part II, I explore the implications of the Stanislavsky-Grotowski lineage for contemporary performance research in light of current explorations of embodied experience in neuroscience and phenomenology.","PeriodicalId":40821,"journal":{"name":"Stanislavski Studies","volume":"25 1","pages":"45 - 62"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81225392","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Belief through Knowledge: The Relationship of Knebel’s Active Analysis to Stanislavsky’s System","authors":"S. Carnicke","doi":"10.1080/20567790.2023.2196284","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20567790.2023.2196284","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Stanislavsky placed belief in imagined circumstances at the heart of his acting System. As he wrote, “Everything on stage must instill belief in the possibility that it could exist in life as actual feelings and sensations, analogous to those that the artist undergoes while creating.” However, leading proponents of Stanislavsky’s late work rarely mention belief when they write about his last rehearsal technique, named Active Analysis by Maria Knebel. My essay interrogates this puzzling absence through Knebel’s practice, which still positions belief as “the foundation of foundations” in acting, but also sees belief as originating from actors’ active exploration of their roles’ circumstances. For Knebel, there can be no belief in fictional possibilities without the visceral knowledge, acquired through the rehearsal process.","PeriodicalId":40821,"journal":{"name":"Stanislavski Studies","volume":"91 1","pages":"19 - 31"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83713855","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ukrainian theatre during the current war","authors":"Anastazie Toros","doi":"10.1080/20567790.2022.2115601","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20567790.2022.2115601","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Use of creativity in places of conflict is an essential base for the survival of individuals. Theatre can be produced during wartime, and it should be an ongoing process. Until the end of the conflict is in sight, artists need a platform to share and transform their ideas into reality. The violence can be filtered through a process of self-reflection and analysis; despair can be changed into hope and songs, sadness into opportunity and new openings. People should keep believing in their freedom – and theatre is just the right place to be free.This series of interviews concerns Ukrainian Theatre since the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. The interviews highlight the current thinking among people deeply involved on how to respond to the current conflict in different contexts and how to present the material to Ukrainian and international audiences.","PeriodicalId":40821,"journal":{"name":"Stanislavski Studies","volume":"155 1","pages":"177 - 185"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73755694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Towards or not towards? Using the ACT Matrix as a psychological tool in the analysis and interpretation of dramatic texts and characters","authors":"Benjamin Askew","doi":"10.1080/20567790.2022.2116153","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20567790.2022.2116153","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article addresses key elements of “ACT for Acting”, an ongoing project using the psychological framework of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy/Training (ACT) to explore the processes of acting and actor training. The article introduces readers to a tool called the ACT Matrix and demonstrates how it can be used to “sort”, understand, and visualize different aspects of human experience and behaviour. It then illustrates the application of this process to a dramatic text through the discussion of a Shakespearean soliloquy: Hamlet’s “To be or not to be”. It is suggested that the ACT Matrix can provide a useful tool for textual analysis and serve as the foundation for new approaches to dramatic action and character that are grounded in twenty-first century understandings of human behaviour and psychology.","PeriodicalId":40821,"journal":{"name":"Stanislavski Studies","volume":"6 1","pages":"119 - 138"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82200954","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stanislavski training and mindfulness – being in the moment","authors":"Dawn Ingleson","doi":"10.1080/20567790.2022.2094103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20567790.2022.2094103","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT ‘I understand that an artist must be capable of stopping time and allowing for spaciousness, but now I realise that to welcome and cultivate stillness and quiet into my work, I must welcome and cultivate stillness and quiet into my own life.” Stanislavsky’s “creation of the life of the human spirit” is an exciting aspect of his work and the underlying spirituality is something that he kept partially hidden in his writing due to the political situation and Soviet ideology that he was living through at the time. It is this sense of spirituality and a meditative approach to the work of the actor that this paper explores. Specifically, an exploration of mindfulness and drama techniques. Mindfulness helps us to increase our awareness. We learn to do this by paying full attention to all our experiences, including our bodies, thoughts, moods, and emotions and to the small changes within them. There are many parallels between mindfulness and Stanislavsky’s thoughts on acting, from the need for an attitude of openness and curiosity and being in the moment through to an awareness of our physical sensations and a control over our attention. Bogart’s ideas of spaciousness also influence this examination of the practice of mindfulness and concentration. This article analyses the calmness that mindfulness can bring through the teaching and learning of Acting and Performance students at London South Bank University, and how we can use it to focus on being grounded in our body and the world around us, going about our everyday business in life and on stage. “Let the tenseness come, he says, if you cannot avoid it. But immediately let your control step in and remove it.”","PeriodicalId":40821,"journal":{"name":"Stanislavski Studies","volume":"36 1","pages":"161 - 176"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86019548","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"In plain sight: hidden Stanislavski: part 2","authors":"Eric Hetzler","doi":"10.1080/20567790.2022.2092812","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20567790.2022.2092812","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT A quick search of acting texts on Amazon UK returns 8000 results. This is a staggering number of books about acting. Certainly, there are duplications, and a quick scroll shows that not all of them are how-to books. But even if these amounted to 90% of the total, that’s still 800 acting texts. Many of them will be by teachers espousing their own special technique that they have developed over years of performance experience and teaching. This presents some questions: just how “original” are these techniques? How many of them merely re-name the ideas of Konstantin Stanislavski without crediting him? How many even know that their ideas originated from him? As we consider the legacy of Stanislavski in the public mind and his contributions, it is worth exploring where he hides. In this second part, the author will continue the examination of these issues and ideas asking the question: is it possible that Stanislavski’s ubiquity is such that he has become hidden and that people are no longer aware of what is his?","PeriodicalId":40821,"journal":{"name":"Stanislavski Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":"151 - 160"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74501266","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stillness and André Gregory’s Meyerhold","authors":"Geoffrey Lokke","doi":"10.1080/20567790.2022.2094104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20567790.2022.2094104","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article considers André Gregory’s transition from the acclaimed “physical theatre” produced with his company the Manhattan Project to a signature form of static performance circumscribed by stillness and poetic declamation. Gregory’s 2020 book This Is Not My Memoir, written with Todd London, offers complementary lineages that have shaped Gregory’s approach to theatre. His early career reflects his progression through a pedigree defined by his firsthand study of Brecht and Grotowski, while his later work mirrors a conscious channelling and revivification of a genealogy back through Grotowski to Meyerhold – whom he would maniacally impersonate – and Stanislavski.","PeriodicalId":40821,"journal":{"name":"Stanislavski Studies","volume":"10 1","pages":"187 - 194"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86977420","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}