The Art of the Actor: The Essential History of Acting from Classical Times to the Present Day, and: Stanislavski in Practice: Exercises for Students (review)

The study of acting and methods of training actors are probably as old as acting itself. Plato took a dim view, convinced that actors ("hypocrites") create illusions that dissuade spectators from "truth." The role of emotion in acting, the actor's goal of mimesis, the actor's comportment of voice and movement, and the means of stimulating the actor's creativity are merely some of the many additional issues arising since antiquity. By the eighteenth century, the vexing concerns were what Denis Diderot called "the paradox of acting"—the dichotomy of the appearance of emotion to an audience and the actuality of the actor's feeling, or what he called "sensibility." David Garrick emerged as Diderot's model of the intelligent actor able to convey emotions without paradoxically having to experience them at every performance. By the end of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, acting focused on what William Gillette called "the illusion of the first time"—the perception that the actor behaves spontaneously despite the play being rehearsed and performed. Inspiring passion and concentration that enables the actor to perform at consistently high levels of spontaneity during each performance was scientifically scrutinized and illustrated by Konstantin Stanislavski, who by dint of his lifetime efforts laid the foundation of modern acting theory and technique. From Stanislavski onward the debates over acting art and training have expanded considerably, inspiring more schools and teachers than ever before. The notion of an academic "drama department" devoted to actor training would have been largely unthinkable before Stanislavski; now, demands for it makes it virtually de rigueur.

The widening popularity of acting schools and broadening of training methodologies have also inspired a plethora of acting books. The works generally fall under two categories: those honoring the trajectory of acting history, and those stressing individual techniques from specific teachers and focusing narrowly on one or two methods. The textbooks reviewed here are the former and the latter, respectively, each providing a wide range of valuable historical documentation and promising classroom exercises. Taken together, they form cogent bookends for students and teachers of acting. In The Art of the Actor, Jean Benedetti attempts "to trace the evolution of the theories of the actor's art from classical times to the present day" in order to demonstrate "the persistence of certain key ideas over a period of 2,500 years" (vii), some of which are: How should an actor experience feelings onstage? How should the actor employ his gesture and voice? How much should the actor "identify" with the role? What constitutes "naturalistic" acting? What constitutes quality in the art? In Stanislavski in Practice, Nick O'Brien emphasizes practicum, offering a stair-step approach for beginning actors. Benedetti's book echoes A. M. Nagler's Sourcebook of Theatrical History, Brander Matthews's Papers on Acting, and Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy's Actors on Acting, all of which offer a rich resource of acting theory through the lens of European documents. Benedetti adds to this with translated and reproduced quotes from Aristotle's Rhetoric, Cicero's Art of Oratory, Garrick's "Letters on Acting," Diderot's Paradox, Coquelin's Art of the Actor, Shchepkin's Memoirs, and Stanislavski's The Actor's Work on the Self, as well as commentary by Antoine, Copeau, Jouvet, Meyerhold, Brecht, Artaud, and Grotowski.

Benedetti's expertise in translating Stanislavski has added valuable insights into his "system," making the chapter on the Russian teacher most rewarding. Stanislavski was an awkward writer; his scattered works and occasionally contradictory statements made comprehension of his system a labyrinthine task. Benedetti has done a yeoman's job of organizing and arranging Stanislavski's process. As Benedetti sees it, Stanislavski divided the actor...