ABSTRACT
In the last years of his life, Stanislavsky continued to explore innovative means of rehearsing a play and exploring a role. Instead of his prior approach, which relied on deep textual and psychological research manifested in extensive director-actor sessions at the table, he now turned to a radical new means: exploring the play and the role through physical action. While he had always employed improvisations on themes of the play, in part to stimulate affective memory, he now urged beginning the work with what he called Études, drawn directly from scenes of the play but forgoing the exact words of the text to experience the Given Circumstances and Events that the play proposed. He was awarded Soviet government support for a student training institute to explore his new approach both in drama and opera, employing a trained group of associates and assistants. The chapter surveys the work of this entity, called The Opera-Dramatic Studio, during its three years of existence, 1935 to Stanislavsky’s death in 1938. Very little has been written about this crucial project in the Anglophone world, and even Russian research is sparse.
