Reconsidering Stanislavsky: Feeling, Feminism, and the Actor

Abstract

A few years ago I attended a conference session on feminist theory, theatre, and performance. One of the participants, in describing a performance she had seen, told how she was deeply moved by it and then apologized for having had such a response; in short, she seemed to be apologizing for having felt something. In the session as a whole, there was a skeptical stance toward feeling, narrative, and imagination. Though that particular conference session was centered on reception and this essay is centered on the performer, I believe the anecdote is apposite, since a mistrustful attitude toward feeling and the biological body in general has been common in feminist theories of performance since the early 1980s. These anxieties are understandable, given the power of feeling, imagination, and narrative, and the way that these and pseudo-scientific constructions of sex and race in biological bodies have historically been manipulated to oppress women. However, we feminists must move beyond responses based on received information and routinized antiessentialism (which itself is a kind of essentialism). Recent developments in cognitive neuroscience and neurophysiology can provide a fruitful way for reengaging issues of feeling, consciousness, and performance, and concomitantly, for reassessing Stanislavsky's contributions to systematizing the actor's process.