ABSTRACT
This part of the book describes how I came to learn the skills outlined and provides a context for the tasks covered in all the previous chapters. It will give you an idea of the artists and methodologies whose thinking and practice underpins this book. It contains four steps – landmarks in my own understanding of the craft:
Stanislavsky Lev Dodin teaches directing in Russia Private directing classes in the UK Research into the biology of emotions
Stanislavsky
Konstantin Stanislavsky was born in Russia in 1863 and died in 1938. Although he started his career as an actor, he eventually began to direct his own productions. He set up the Moscow Art Theatre in 1897 with the playwright and producer Nemirovich-Danchenko and wrote several books about theatre-making, primarily acting. During his lifetime, Stanislavsky’s work influenced theatre in his own country and abroad, most famously in America where his early work on emotional memory was built into a school of acting called ‘The Method’. His later work on physical actions influenced the experiments of his contemporaries (such as Vsevolod Meyerhold) as well as the practice of avant-garde practitioners (such as Jerzy Grotowski) throughout the twentieth century. The revolution Stanislavsky led affected both mainstream Western theatre and its avant-garde. No practitioner since has had such a lasting and profound impact on the craft.
