Performer Training: Developments across Cultures ed. by Ian Watson, and: Approaches to Acting: Past and Present by Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe (review)

Reviews 331 themes of witnessing, acting, and perfonning history, but ultimately he is unable completely to resolve the disparities among the various sections of his book. Thus, the reader is left with an impression of deep excavations of individual historical perfonnances but with no real sense of how they come together to support the idea of the hyper-historian/spectator-witness/actor responsible for the channeling of Rokem's perceived energies to audiences in the "here and now." Despite this limitation, Performing History is an important book. Rokem's construction of a visible field of relations in which history lives and is re-envisioned by survivor-witnesses is particularly relevant, given the increase in the past decade of perfonned "survivor narratives," culled from persons living in Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, and other embattled areas, including Rokem's home nation of Israel. His in-depth analysis illustrates how the perfonnance of history has gone beyond ethnographic narratives of re-presenting "fact" to an amalgamation of "truths" constantly re-filtered through the lenses of all the "actors" involved, whether those actors are the perfonners who embody, the members of the audience who witness, or the scholars who study the remains. IA N WATSON, ed. Performer Training: Developments across Cultures. Contemporary Theatre Studies. Australia: Harwood Academic Publishers. 2001. Pp. xiii + 236, illustrated . $29.00 (Pb). DA NIEL MEYER-DINKGRAFE. Approaches to Acting: Past and Present. London: Continuum , 2001. Pp. 225. $89.95 (Hb); $29.95 (Pb). Reviewed by David Krasner, Yale University Ian Watson, editor of Pelformer Training: Developments across Cultures, remarks that his collection emphasizes "the globalizalion of perfonner training " (8). Daniel Meyer-Dinkgrafe, in Approaches to Acting: Past and Present, announces his objective as an effort to describe acting styles "both in the West (Europe and the USA) and in India, Japan, China and Islamic countries as examples of non-Western theatre and performance traditions" (I). Any serious attempt al analyzing varying approaches to perfonnance and their interconnectedness from a worldwide perspective is worth consideration; both books should be credited for describing a multitude of perfonnance techniques. However, despite the claims of diversity and global reach, both works neglect in their entirety the continent of Africa. Rituals, perfonnalive styles, and the development of African-based perfonnance training in general are nowhere to be found. Given the emphasis on globalization that these works profess, this oversight must be judged inexcusable. Watson mentions in passing a single 332 REVIEWS African American, perfonner Sammy Davis, Jr., spelling his name "Sammie" (3)· In the introduction to Performer Training, Watson claims that there are "basically two approaches to training, indirect and direct" (1). In the West, training is indirect; actors represent characters through mimetic portrayals. Direct training is found primarily "in the traditional perfonnance cultures of Asia" (2), where such paradigms as Noh, Beijing Opera, Kathakali, and Balinese dance drama are representative of alternative approaches. Watson's edited volume is divided into three parts. Part One, "Institutional Training," examines rccent trends in Poland, Germany, Australia, and the United States. K.,imierz Braun's essay, "Theatre Training in Poland," proselytizes against the Marxist residue he claims still lurks in Polish acting schools. Steve Earnest also considers the emergence of fonner East Gennan theatre schools from their Russian shadows. The bright spot in this section is Barry O'Connor's essay on current trends in Australia's acting schools. He sheds considerable light on the Australian scene and covers a wide range of acting techniques - Vat Malmgren and Laban's movement, Eric Morris's Strasbergian work, and Lindy Davies's impulse work - examining these processes in detail. Ian Watson attempts to analyze the broad terrain of actor training in the U.S. His examination of ninetecnth- and early-twentieth-century conservatories is clear and concise, but the incompleteness of his analysis shows itself when he turns his attention to the rise of the Group Theatre, the American method, and the contemporary scene. He claims, for example, that "Lee Strasberg traveled to Moscow to observe Stanislavsky's work first hand in 1934" (66). While this is true, it is only half the story; Watson fails to note that Strasberg never met Stanislavsky but, instead, benefited indirectly from a meeting with...