ABSTRACT
The long anticipated publication of An Actor Prepares in 1936 appeared to offer a definitive English-language source of information for theatre practitioners, who had searched avidly for rules of the System in a charged atmosphere of disagreement. Could not American theatre people now test lore against the written word? But this book did not answer questions so much as raise new ones. Time and time again the differences between the two editions were dismissed as either unimportant or the necessary polishing of Stanislavsky’s long-winded prose. Suspicions about the English books percolated from the scholarly community into the professional theatre world. In 1969, Strasberg warned that Stanislavsky’s “books give a wrong impression.” As the Soviet government seized more and more control over the arts, he reacted paradoxically. On the one hand, he boldly supported ostracized artists in whom he believed. Stanislavsky’s handling of two of the Moscow Art Theatre’s political advisors exemplifies his misreading of Soviet reality.
