Stanislavsky in America: An Actor's Workbook (review)

Mel Gordon's textbook Stanislavsky in America: An Actor's Workbook examines Stanislavsky's ubiquitous influence in the United States, analyzing reasons for the Stanislavsky System's firm hold on American acting technique. Each chapter follows the System's incremental development, and each concludes with acting exercises representing the specific teacher or group studied. Gordon begins by identifying antitheses and corollaries between Russia and United States cultures. The System, he says, was "uniquely Russian," reflecting a culture emphasizing "an ingrained mechanism to tamp down prohibited emotional reactions or ideas" (xii). Russia at the turn of the century was a closed society; by contrast, the United States generally frowned upon concealment, encouraging instead openness and opinionated self-expression. For Gordon, two exceptions—"Jews and homosexuals" (xiii)—learned to repress identity and create an inner monologue, the consequences of which made Stanislavsky's emphasis on inner, emotional states a welcomed performance technique. Although he fails to identify them, Gordon maintains that "forty-three [of ] the seventy-five most prominent instructors of the Stanislavsky Technique in America" were Jewish (xiii).

Chapter 1 clarifies components of the Stanislavsky System. The author notes that Stanislavsky constructed his methods around "lived experience." A great admirer of Salvini, Stanislavsky felt that the actor "'lived,' or experienced, the feelings of his character. His movements and vocal responses always appeared fresh and unplanned" (4). Stanislavsky sought to inspire this spontaneous expression through several means, among them the controversial affective memory, tasks (objectives in the United States), imaging, and embodying the physical and psychological adjustments designed by the role. Chapter 2, "American Laboratory Theatre," focuses on two key Stanislavsky emissaries, Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya. Although Boleslavsky lectured widely on the method, for Gordon it was Ouspenskaya "more than anyone [who] brought the 'Russian manner' of acting into the New World" (23). Chapter 3 emphasizes "The Group Theatre," with its hit-and-miss productions, internecine power struggle between Strasberg and Adler, and the enduring Group legacy.

Chapters 4 through 9 stress individual teachers and their specific methods. Chapter 4 provides thumbnail sketches of "Russian Émigré Teachers" Daykarhanova, Leo and Barbara Bolgakov, Lazareff, Astrova, Galpern, and former Habima artists and Michael Chekhov players Jilinsky, Soloviova, and Shdanoff. Chapter 5 illuminates the Hollywood's Actors Lab (1941-50) as "one of the major Stanislavsky-based schools in America," which "continues to be the most neglected or unfairly treated by theatre scholars and historians" (114). In chapter 6, Gordon sympathetically illustrates Strasberg's work at the Actors Studio. He sets the record straight that Strasberg was influenced as much as, if not more, by Vakhtangov than Stanislavsky. Vakhtangov's emphasis on justification from within rather than from the role tilts the emphasis subtly and significantly, making attention to one's personal motives rather than the role's the key feature of the American Method. Gordon also wisely maintains that while the American Method was devised and fostered by Strasberg, the eventuality is that the "Method remains a teachable system of acting with definable precepts and exercises [and is] independent of any one single teacher" (146). The remaining chapters are devoted to the lives and exercises of three key teachers: Stella Adler, Robert Lewis, and Sanford Meisner, respectively.

Despite the importance of this study, there are shortcomings. Gordon notes, for instance, that "Jews and homosexuals formed a special corps" in the Group Theatre and that their "personal devotion to the Stanislavsky System would take shape as future teachers and robust advocates of it" (xiii). A large Jewish influence on the American Method has been reported (see, for instance, my edited collection, Method Acting Reconsidered [2000]), but who were the gay and lesbian performers? He repeats the notion that a "number of the Group inductees were gay and lesbian" (48), but only two, Cheryl Crawford (a producer) and Robert Lewis, are identified (why not Meisner?). The author occasionally writes excessive modifiers: on Kazan's return to the stage, for example, he says that "[b]y 1941, he was back...