ABSTRACT
From 1923, Stanislavsky tried to impose on his writings the literary form of an educational novel: a Bildungsroman. In the later years, however, he gradually renounced these ambitions, and in An Actor’s Work, only the remnants of the original design remain. This chapter comments on this initial attempt and follows how it foundered, at the same time describing the literary means by which Stanislavsky tried to convey his message.
At the beginning of the course, Stanislavsky’s fictional teacher Tortsov puts his students through a rite of passage, depriving them of their old identities and habits, and enforcing their active presence, which consisted in their ceaseless recognition of their circumstances and identifying the optimal actions under these circumstances.
One can best explain Tortsov’s efforts and insights through the models that explain how the human psyche functions, which were developed at the end of the twentieth century. These models are rooted in new discoveries in the field of neurophysiology and add to the ‘Copernican turn’ which overcame the previously dominating Cartesianism. This chapter focuses on the findings of Gerald M. Edelman and introduces two pairs of crucial terms he focussed on: recognition vs cognition, and instruction vs selection.
