ABSTRACT
Vasiliev’s declaration, made as he began a week-long masterclass at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, strikes a central chord with the theme of this book. Like so many key theatre practitioners in this and the last century, Vasiliev acknowledges his debt to Stanislavsky, taking his place within a tradition that is as diverse as it is potent. He defected from the sciences to join the theatre in the late 1960s and has been feted with creating a Virtually unique feeling in today’s theatre’ (Smeliansky 1999:202). To do so, he, like the rest of the practitioners considered in this book, has had to reinterpret the tradition in which he locates his practice, responding to the contemporary context of modern Russia at the same time as recognising its complex and rich history.
