Creating a Role by Constantin Stanislavsky (review)

324 MODERN DRAMA December be made by admitting his defects and applying rigorous literary standards to his work. That we must read and see his plays anew is certain; whether we must revive the old praise and blame is much less certain. WILLIAM L. PHIILIPS University of Washington CREATING A ROLE, by Constantin Stanislavsky, translated by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood. Edited by Hermine Isaacs Popper. Foreword by Robert Lewis, Theatre Arts Books, New York, 1961. Price $4.00. Creating a Role is the seventh of Constantin Stanislavsky's books to be published in the United States, and it may be hoped that it is to be the last. The new volume adds nothing new or significant to what we have already gleaned from the autobiography, the theoretic volumes, or the prompt books for The Seagull and Othello. It is merely a rambling restatement that causes one to wonder why Stanislavsky was so initially impressive. The impact of the great Russian director on the modern theater has been as important as it has been curious. Stanislavsky's first books were fresh, stimulating , and eminently useful. Their greatest value, however, was their insistence upon a point that the glamor of acting had managed to obscure. It was a point that Shaw had made vigorously, first in his novel Love Among the Artists and later in his direct criticism. It was the point that acting is less a matter of inspiration and genius than a matter requiring a disciplined regimen of self-control, study. and practice. This is the main point of Stanislavsky's legacy, and, despite its occasionally absurd exaggerations and misinterpretations, it is still the cornerstone of creating a role. This book, like all of Stanislavsky's later ones, shows a certain thinness and repetitiveness. The reason for this fact has been well noticed by Orson Welles, who wrote: With all of his extraordinary forces and vivid inspiration Constantin Stanislavsky remained a rich dilettante, a genius without talent, an inspired amateur. The superb actors he employed in his theatre were professionals . It is doubtful if more than one or two were better actors than he. but it is certain that for all of them everything to do with acting was easier to come by. For Stanislavsky everything was difficult, unless it was managed after such elaborate and excruciating efforts as he was forced to make himself. The three analyses in Creating a Role-of Griboyedov's Woe from Wit, of Othello, and of The Inspector General-give abundant evidence of the painfully plodding and supremely simplified efforts that Stanislavsky did make. Again Stanislavsky uses the form of the dramatic dialogue, but by now we can see that the brilliance of Tortsov the teacher would appear less glittering if Kostya, Grisha, and the other students were not so remarkably obtuse. Add to this the occasional jargon, the flat and slovenly prose, and the author's predilection for stringing an obvious simile out to paragraph length, and you have an eminently tedious book to read. The book indicates Stanislavsky's own difficulty in plumbing the depth and meaning of a role. The author relates that, in his first eighteen years of playing it, he did not understand the role of Satin in The Lower Depths. This is rather convincing proof that what most people would have grasped from an initial reading was for Stanislavsky a matter of deep and baffiing complexity. Although this fault makes Creating a Role of only minor interest, Stanislavsky's 1963 BOOK REVIEWS 325 real contribution to acting was a splendid and fruitful impulse. Perhaps it may best be summed up in Miller's famous line, "Attention must be paid." ROBERT HOGAN Purdue University DRAMA WAS A WEAPON, by Morgan Y. Himelstein, Rutgers University Press. New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1963, 232 pp. Price $6.00. Dr. Himelstein's Drama Was a Weapon is a thoroughly researched study which contributes a much-needed unraveling of the many threads that made up the leftist theater movement of the thirties. Dr. Himelstein performs that particular task with notable success as he recounts in his early chapters the evolution of the New Theatre League and the Theatre Union. He does not overlook the internal...