ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the part 2 of chapters in this book. The political background to the period when Bakhtin was writing his early manuscripts and Stanislavsky was writing his books saw immense changes in the Soviet Union. It is based on close readings of two of Bakhtin's earliest works Toward a Philosophy of the Act and Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity and of Stanislavsky's Life in Art and An Actor's Work, along with transcripts of him at work. Philosophy of the Act argues that people have a responsibility to consider the world around us that is, our natural and cultural environments as questions or problems to be answered rather than facts or truths that can be taken as given. Bakhtin's ethics is based on things in the world having a value to a particular person at a particular time and place rather than a factual and value-neutral meaning.
