ABSTRACT
In Stanislavsky’s eyes, experiencing may represent the ultimate goal for the actor, but in New York emotion took precedence. In so far as experiencing leads to the communication of emotion through art, the two notions are linked. However, as the Western branch of the System evolved, “experiencing” went unrecognized as a discrete concept. If anything, the debate about the place of emotion in the actor’s arsenal has only intensified in the first decade of the twenty-first century. On one side are those like the prominent Los Angeles teacher, who recasts Affective Memory into post-Freudian terms by modeling her “Twelve Step Chubbuck Technique” on contemporary recovery programs. Strasberg countered such criticism in his own time with an insidious argument that drew upon his adoption of the psychoanalytical thinking that had engulfed American culture in the 1950s. Stanislavsky’s writing easily supports the Russian point of view. A knot of concepts forms around affective memory.
