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  • Stanislavsky in Focus: An Acting Master for the Twenty-First Century, 2nd edition
  • Missy Thibodeaux-Thompson
Stanislavsky in Focus: An Acting Master for the Twenty-First Century, 2nd edition. By Sharon Marie Carnicke. New York: Routledge, 2009; pp. xiv + 252. $115.00 cloth, $28.95 paper.

In Stanislavsky in Focus: An Acting Master for the Twenty-First Century (2nd ed.), Sharon Carnicke "strives to set the record straight" (1). Indeed, she successfully demythologizes and deconstructs the legendary director and acting teacher. Divided into three sections, "Transmission," "Translation," and "Transformation," the text chronicles and analyzes Stanislavsky's early trips to the United States, examines the "publication maze" (vii) in both the US and USSR, and explores previously overlooked aspects of his System. In addition to a thorough bibliography and endnotes, Carnicke concludes with a glossary of terms from Stanislavsky's System, including "In Practice" annotations for some. These examples of "historically based exercises from Russian-language documents and class work at the Moscow Art Theatre Studio, the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts (formerly GITIS) and the Bennett Lab" (211) lend a pedagogical element to the text.

Carnicke offers several examples of popular notions of Stanislavsky that have prevailed for decades, and then counters those assumptions. She dispels the myth that Stanislavsky was solely devoted to realism, with its psychological and emotional underpinnings, by including direct translations from a selection of his notes on the topic of "through-line" (2). These mention the concept of "prana" (2), later described in her glossary as "a Sanskrit word from Yoga to describe the energy that gives life to the body" (222), and, interestingly, they do not include concepts such as "emotional recall and personal substitutions" (3) associated with the American Method. Furthermore, Carnicke acknowledges that our contemporary understanding of Stanislavsky was largely created by "enthusiastic Americans" (3), and that "cults developed around both the American Method in the US and the Method of Physical Actions in the USSR," which fed the "mythic image of Stanislavsky" (4). She reasons that in his 1999 dismissal of Stanislavsky's "Method," David Mamet argued not "with Stanislavsky but with his statue" (4), reminding us that contemporary culture accepts surface knowledge and myths about Stanislavsky as the end of the story. Misconceptions and confusion surrounding Stanislavsky, perpetuated through theatrical culture into popular culture, and the need to introduce his System to twenty-first-century students of theatre justify Carnicke's second edition.

Chapter 1, "Demythologizing Stanislavsky," clearly maps the two poles of the Stanislavsky System as Moscow and New York. Carnicke clarifies that both the New York version, the American Method, and the Moscow version, the Method of Physical Actions, evolved based on their cultural, social, and political backdrops: "two doctrines evolved from the same source, each gaining the force of unambiguous authority within its own culture, while the source itself receded into a vague and misty past. The real Stanislavsky was relegated to anecdotes that took on mythical rather than historical force" (8). Carnicke examines the complicated path the System took toward becoming the American Method. She places Stanislavsky's US visits, and the consequences of those visits, in a political and cultural context, supplying a thorough explanation and examination of the System's route.

The next two chapters, "From Moscow to New York" and "New York Adopts Stanislavsky" comprise the "Transmission" section of the book, each providing further cultural and historical contexts for understanding the development of the System. "New York Adopts Stanislavsky" explores the beginnings of the evolution of the System into the American Method, focusing on the American Laboratory Theatre, the Group Theatre, the development of the Actors Studio, and the infiltration of the System and American Method in US university theatre. These chapters include a detailed timeline and give the reader a specific, inclusive retelling of the story.

Part 2, "Translation," offers challenging yet pedagogically interesting chapters. Chapter 4, "The Classroom Circuit," examines the oral tradition behind the dissemination of the System. In the years surrounding the Moscow Art Theatre's (and Stanislavsky's) first visits to the United States, there was precious little written about the System. As a result, actors in the US relied heavily on the oral traditions of...

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