ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the consequences of Mikhail Bakhtin insistence on the return to our own place. It seems Bakhtin is arguing that the other is the form in which a living person's life can become an artistic memory. Bakhtin describes the creation of a character as a three-stage process: it begins with the recognition of someone with whom one sympathises. Bakhtin offers a critique of the actor based on his theory of authorship. Towards the end of this chapter the author argues that Stanislavsky does have a notion about aesthetic distance between the actor and the role, but in the meantime they return to the aesthetic activity that Bakhtin describes when the author has returned to his or her place. Bakhtin argues that the establishment of the author's own attitude towards the hero is essential to the creation of an aesthetically effective image but it is hard-won and involves an internal struggle within the author.
