Stanislavsky in Focus by Sharon M. Carnicke, and: Twentieth Century Actor Training ed. by Alison Hodge, and: Acting Emotions: Shaping Emotions on Stage by Elly A. Konijn, and: Method Acting Reconsidered: Theory, Practice, Future ed. by David Krasner, and: On Actors and Acting by Peter Thomson (review)

Reviews Van Brussel, Jill. Review of Straight White Male and Out o/Character. Text and Performance Quarterly 19 (1999): 10 1-4· SH ARON M. CARNICKE. Stanisiavsky ill Focus. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic , 1998. Pp. 252, illustrated. $40.00 (Hb); $23.00 (Ph). ALISON HODGE, ed. Twentieth Century Actor Training. London: Routledge, 2000. Pp. 251, illustrated. $20.99 (Pb). ELLY A. KONIJN. Acting Emotions: Shaping Emotions on Stage. Trans. Barbara Leach with David Chambers. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2000. Pp. 209, illustrated. $26.50 (Pb). DAVID KRASNER, ed. Method Acting Reconsidered: Themy, Practice, Future. New York: SI. Martin's Press, 2000. Pp. 312. $ 18.95 (Pb). PETER THOMSON. On Actors and Acting. Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2000. Pp. 21 I, illustrated. £25.00 (Hb). Reviewed by Tracy C. Davis. Northwestern University Two premises preoccupy debates on what constitutes good acting. The first premise, epitomized in G.H. Lewes's 011 AClOrs alld the Art ofActing (1875), depends upon the optique dllthefltre to supply a more "elevated" portrayal than would be seen in everyday life, seeking to impress an idealized image on spectators ' minds. According to this idea, acting is not"natural"either in essence or effect, though it strives to be recognizable by bearing a relationship to commonplace observation. "The supreme difficulty of an actor," Lewes maintains, "is to represent ideal character with such truthfulness that it shall affect us as real" while taking care not to "drag down ideal character to the vulgar level" (112). Thus, the actor edits and intensifies natural expressions, cleansing them of impurities, hesilancies, incoherence, and colloquialisms so as to be simultaneously typical and pictorial. The artful actor finds a level between passion and natural feeling, avoiding the Scylla of bombast and the Charybdis of prosaicness . This subsumes the sensible idea that judgments about the appropriateness of actors' emotional levels are culturally and historically contingent, as tastes vary among people, contexts, and temporal fashions. The second premise concerns the internal experience of the actor while striking this balance. It is the central issue in Diderot's Paradoxe sur Ie comediell ("The Paradox of Acting"), written in ' 770 and first published in 1830, a dialogue asking whether or not actors' experience is in parallel 10 what their characters feel. Does intellect hold sway over the actor's resources, or does 370 REVIEWS genuine feeling guide the performance? Diderot comes down in favor of the former: "[TJhey sayan actor is all the beller for being excited, for being angry. I deny it. He is best when he imitates anger. Actors impress the public not when they are furious, but when they play fury well" (71). These debates boil down to differences in technique. Some would also argue that they result in distinct aesthetics. In the twentieth century, as acting has become an academic subject in the West, taught through academies and universities rather than learned primarily by apprenticeship on the job, the articulation and transmission of technique has been more closely examined than ever before. The task of acting and the means to teach it have preoccupied artists, who have ongoing debates on this subject. Meanwhile, the general public has adopted the idea that quality acting is synonymous with authenticity - hence former president Bill Clinton'S assertion "I feel your pain," meant to be a reassuring bona fide of his sincerity. The proficiency with which actors deploy technique to consistently convince spectators of their achievement is the divider between professional and amateur. The best-selling titles on this topic have consistently been the autobiographical , theoretical, and prescriptive works on Konstantin Stanislavsky. Here, the Enlightenment concerns of Diderot are resolved in a quintessentially Modernist paradigm of subjectivity. As David Krasner argues in Method Acting Reconsidered, actors following Stanislavsky's teachings "seek ways of aligning subject (the performers) and object (the characters) through their interpretive viewpoint" (22). This may be why, in an artistic milieu increasingly ruled by postmodernisrn, the self-reflexivity of Method technique comes under fire as self-indulgent, unartful, and stylistically limited. Likewise, it comes under fire from feminists who charge that it reinforces gender stereotypes and sometimes deploys questionable ethics of psychological manipulation. The very idea of actors having free will and exerting complete agency in...