“The eternal glory of Mr W., the United States, and the Method”: Sam Wanamaker, Stanislavskian

Abstract

The opening of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe in January 2014 cemented the connection between Wanamaker’s name and historically informed, reconstructionist approaches to staging Shakespeare and early modern drama. In the two decades since his death in 1993, Wanamaker has been routinely depicted in academic and journalistic accounts as The Man Who Built the Globe, the theater for which he campaigned tirelessly in the last third of his life. Stories about that life tend to begin and end with the Globe project. What is lost in these stories–and what this article seeks to remember and celebrate–is Wanamaker’s earlier career as a stage actor and director, in particular his reputation as the foremost exponent of the Method on the English stage in the 1950s, a decade that climaxed with his appearance at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1959 as Iago to Paul Robeson’s Othello. Drawing on previously unseen archive material, this account of Wanamaker’s preparatory work on Iago reveals a politically engaged and progressive naturalistic actor: one whose intellectual and emotional engagement with the major theorists of twentieth-century performance is at some odds with his current reputation as a preeminent advocate of “Original Practices.” Remembering Wanamaker’s earlier work as an actor and director serves as a salutary reminder that no approach to acting is inherently conservative or revolutionary, and that Stanislavsky’s work in particular has been, and can be again, mobilized to progressive political effect.