ABSTRACT
Building upon her important re-evaluation of Konstantin Stanislavsky’s System, Sharon Marie Carnicke provocatively posits actress and director Maria Knebel as the Russian director’s true heir. Given that canonical theatre history has long upheld and at times revered Stanislavsky as the father of psychological realism, Carnicke’s bold endorsement of Knebel interrupts patrilineal transmission processes that safeguard the legacies of great male pioneers. She provides solid evidence for her provocation by grounding it in Knebel’s unique insight into the final period of Stanislavsky’s work, in which she participated by serving as his assistant, and argues that although Knebel’s interpretation of Stanislavsky’s ultimate contribution to actor training was both more accurate and more sophisticated than that of her rival Mikhail Kedrov, the latter was nevertheless adopted as the official version that came to be known as the Method of Physical Actions. Carnicke historicizes the tension between Knebel and Kedrov over Stanislavsky’s legacy by placing their divergent views in the political context of Stalinist Russia. Since both Knebel and Kedrov assisted Stanislavsky in the last phase of his research and drew from this experience to develop their respective directing careers, Carnicke remarks that “she, as easily as he, could have called herself Stanislavsky’s heir” (“Stanislavsky and Politics: Active Analysis and the American Legacy of Soviet Oppression” 20).
