Stanislavsky and Meyerhold by Robert s> Leach (review)

Abstract

I30 SEER, 83, I, 2005 application to the text of Bakhtin'sconcept of 'great time', which she relates sensitivelyto questions of love and forgiveness,as a solution to the apparent absence of dialogue in Zosima's authoritativediscourse, is a majorcontribution to Dostoevskiistudies,and representsthe high point of thiscollection. It is a pity, therefore, that certain technical inadequacies should detract even in a small way from the consistentlyexcellent content of the collection; for example, the language in Gerigk's essay would have benefited from revision. There are numerous inconsistencies, in the use of differentreferencing formatsand of feminine endingsof surnames,the lattersometimeswithin the same essay:Knapp has 'AnnaDostoevsky' but 'Marya Lebyadkina'.Far more seriousis the absence of both a bibliographyand an index. The former is perhaps excusable, given the number of good bibliographiesappended to recentmonographsand edited collections,but the failureto provide an index, particularlyfor a work with such breadth of reference, is inexplicable, and a mistakeone would not normallyexpect fromthis admirableseries. Nottingham SARAHJ. YOUNG Leach, Robert. Stanislavsky andMeyerhold. Stage and Screen Studies, 3. Peter Lang, Oxford, Bernand New York,2003. 255 pp. Illustrations.Appendices . Notes. Bibliography.Index. f27.oo (paperback). THE theatrehas alwayssufferedin comparisonwith its sisterartsof music and dance. To become a professional musician or, especially, a ballet dancer requires not merely talent but performing skillswhich can only be acquired throughspecificmethods of trainingwhich have establishedprocedures.Postrenaissance Western theatre may generally be said to have lacked any recognizable systemof trainingwhich was in any way comparablewith either of these disciplines,or withJapanese theatre, or even with the apprenticeship systemwhich characterizedthe theatre of the Elizabethans. Stanislavskiiand Meierkhol'dwere among the firstto set about repairingthisdeficiency. Stanislavskii'sperformance theory, as set forth during the I930S in his Rabotaaktera nadsoboi,might be described as that of a man who viewed the world in terms of a darkened auditorium where true reality can only be glimpsedwithin the atmosphericallyilluminatedspace of a stage-setbeyond a proscenium arch. Actors are encouraged, within this space, to infect an unacknowledgedaudience with the 'truth'of their own heightened emotions. Their actor-training is designed to access the imagined emotions of the theatricalcharacterby drawingon the actor'sown emotional experiencesand applyingtheseto the 'givencircumstances'of theplay.RobertLeachillustrates the way in which Stanislavskii'sideas might be deployed in the opening scene of Chekhov's 7The Seagull, whilst the relevant section of the director'soriginal I898 production scoreis reproducedas an appendix. If Stanislavskiisaw the world as a darkenedauditoriumand, in many ways, remained committed to a rather elitist nineteenth-centuryvision of theatre, Meierkhol'd sought to remove the theatre from its nineteenth-century auditoriumand returnit, at leastimaginatively,to the more popularrealmsof marketplace, fairground,circus and open-air arena. Meierkhol'd'stheatrical REVIEWS 13I spirithas much more in common with the Greeksand Elizabethans,although his actual practice was mainly confined to indoor spaces or conventional proscenium arch theatres.The major differencebetween the two men lay in Meierkhol'd'semphasis on the physical, ratherthan the emotional, resources of the actor. This gave rise to his rather complex notion of bio-mechanics, which Robert Leach attemptsto makeaccessibleand intelligibleto the reader whilstraisingquestionsabout the viabilityand currencyof both Meierkhol'd's and Stanislavskii'stheoretical approaches. What cannot be doubted is that Stanislavskiiwasa charismaticandmulti-talentedactorandthatMeierkhol'd's greatestproductionsremainlandmarksof twentieth-centurytheatre. Both men were not unlike the kind of magisterialorchestralconductor of the past who was both revered and feared, to whom 'genius' was attributed, whose 'greatness' was a product of individual uniqueness, but whose inimitability meant that the power of genuine influence tended to cease with their own demise. Of the two, Stanislavskii'sposthumous legacy has proved the more pervasive, although it is noticeable that he has had no obvious successors.His influence in America, in particular,is evidenced by the ways in which film acting seems to have fulfilledStanislavskii'svision of the world as a darkened auditorium designed for the display of powerful emotion. Meanwhile, his 'system'is taught injust about every acting school and finds its apogee in television drama, especially the kind which trades in emotional sincerityand empatheticfeeling. Meierkhol'dwas the more intellectual of the two and his written legacy is probably the more interesting and systematicallyrigorous. You will not find himpeddling unsophisticated formulas such as the 'Magic If', although the arcane nature of his bio...