ABSTRACT
Further, it demonstrates the elements of counterfactual thinking in Stanislavsky’s exercises and the correspondences between his insights and T.S. Eliot’s concept of an ‘objective correlative.’ It presents the compound ecosystem consisting of the theatre stage and the audience hall, and the ‘squared performance’ of actors simulating human performances in a subjunctive world while striving in the face of an audience for endurance and success in the real world.
Finally, it shows how descriptions of the work of consciousness by John Searle (the ‘Background’), and Gerald Edelman and Giulio Tononi (the ‘dynamic core’ hypothesis) explain Stanislavsky’s detailed techniques of settling within a subjunctive world to reach the state he calls ‘I am’ (ya yesm). The notion of the ‘dynamic core’ sheds special light on Stanislavsky’s relations to an actor’s focused attention.
