Konstantin Stanislavsky Research Articles

The birth of the ‘cool:’ Marlon Brando and the afro-aesthetics of psychological-realist acting

ABSTRACT Most histories of psychological-realist acting identify the mid-twentieth-century style with Lee Strasberg’s eponymous ‘Method,’ tracing its genealogy back to the work of Russian director Konstantin Stanislavsky and his Moscow Art Theatre protégés. The style’s most iconic practitioner—Marlon Brando—was more circumspect, however, rarely crediting Strasberg for his acting credentials. Taking Brando as a case study, I demonstrate other influences also at work. Tracing his ‘cool’ style of performance to the expanded movement vocabulary of choreographer Katherine Dunham and the intersubjective audience engagement of jazz saxophonist Lester Young, I demonstrate how Brando’s method of psychological-realist acting is rooted in Afro-Aesthetics and was practiced as an anti-racist form of self-imaging.

Stanislavski and Indian media: an exploration of “So Sorry” politoons

ABSTRACT This paper undertakes a study of the Indian “So Sorry” political cartoon (politoon) series, drawing on the work of Russian acting theorist Konstantin Stanislavski. The paper aims to illuminate the cartoons through the prism of Stanislavski’s work. The contribution of this paper will be the application of some of Stanislavski’s key principles to the cartoon series. Thus the paper will provide an example of how Stanislavski’s work can be a useful theoretical framework in the field of media studies. For this study, I have chosen cartoons from the “So Sorry” politoons series, the highly popular political cartoons video series on Indian television. The sample of “So Sorry” politoons for this study is the video “Kamal ki Tsunami” (The Tsunami of Lotus Flower), which was screened on 4 June 2019. I interpret this video to further explore Stanislavski’s notions in the creation of cartoons and to understand the cartoonist´s imagination.

The Works of I.S.Turgenev in the Art of M.V.Dobuzhinsky

The article is the first to examine the issue of the influence of Ivan Turgenev’s works on the art of Mstislav Dobuzhinsky not only in scenography, but also in illustrations and vignettes. Thanks to the artist’s memoirs, it was established that Turgenev’s works did not arouse his creative interest. It is concluded that Dobuzhinsky read the novels The Noble Nest and Smoke in his youth. In the design of Turgenev’s plays A Month in the Village; Breakfast at the Leader; The Workman; Where it is thin, there it is torn; and Provincial for the Moscow Art Theater, Dobuzhinsky turned to the proposal and choice of Konstantin Stanislavsky. The author used a comprehensive method that combined a formal-stylistic analysis of the sketches of sets and costumes, illustrations and vignettes, with a source-based analysis of the artist’s diaries and letters. It was revealed that the silhouette-figure “Girl with Flowers” can be attributed to the complex of these vignettes. The article is the first to address the issue of Dobuzhinsky’s appeal to the art of the Italian Renaissance. It is established that the Cathedral of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice influenced the image of the greenhouse in the sketches of the scenery for the play based on the play A Month in the Village, while the portraits of Pietro della Fancesca and Sandro Botticelli influenced the portrait of actress Lydia Koreneva.

Eugenio Barba and Extra-Daily Scenic Behaviour: Influences of Stanislavski, Meyerhold and Grotowski

Three directors who influenced 20th century theatre, Konstantin Stanislavski, Vsevolod Meyerhold and Jerzy Grotowski, and they each conducted comprehensive studies on the position of acting through theatrical aesthetic. In order to realize this theatrical aesthetic, these directors emphasized the need for actors to practice systematic exercises and develop particular scenic behaviour, which is different from daily behaviour. Their work has paved the way for various theoretical studies on acting. The actor who is going to act within a reality that fictionalized on stage, no matter the strength of its relationship with daily reality, has to leave the automatized daily behaviour behind and develop a technique that is built upon the necessities of the stage context. In this article, the basis of the extra-daily scenic behaviour of actors in the Odin Theatre is dealt with in the light of approaches of directors who strongly affected the theatre approach that developed through the 20th century: namely Stanislavski, Meyerhold and Grotowski.

Del sistema de Stanislavski al método Strasberg: aproximación teórica, análisis y críticas a ambos sistemas.

Konstantin Stanislavski, Russian actor and director, creator of an acting system (The System) for the Moscow Art Theater established this method to get their actors to play roles, to create characters through natural means and embody them in the stage in an artistic way. His experience as an actor and the notes of his teachers helped him to develop a manual which remains valid nowdays.Taking Stanislavski as basis, Strasberg, the American theater director of Polish origin, created what is known as the Method, the basis of the well-known Actor’s Studio. Despite being one of the most studied and effective methods, it is sometimes rejected and criticized.In this article, we propose to explain the Stanislavski system, its evolution to the Strasberg method, and the criticisms that both awaken, using a descriptive methodology, based on the investigations established by Jorge Eines or María Ósipovna Knébel, among others. The objective of this research is to create a theoretical approach that will serve for future lines of investigation of both methods and analyze and ground the criticisms of both systems.

Vsevolod Meyerhold’s Biomechanics and Boris Zakhava's Educational Work

The article deals with two different approaches to training actors. One of them is Stanislavski’s system, and the other is Meyerhold’s biomechanics. Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko are reformers of the Russian theater. As the Art Theater founders, they understood that the emergence of a new drama would require a completely different approach to working with actors and a different design of the stage space. With regard to new performances, it became possible to pose critical social questions related to everyday life before the viewer. Therefore, it was logical that the director's profession became very important. Working on his system, Stanislavski paid great attention to the need for an actor’s comprehensive development. Many wonderful actors who attended his acting school were among the students of this great theater director. Vsevolod Meyerhold was one of them. However, the latter chose his direction and began to engage in staging performances actively and search for new means of expression, having come to an absolute convention on the stage. Meyerhold created his method of working with an actor, known as biomechanics, in the theatrical environment. The principle of this approach is the opposite of Stanislavski's system. With all the difference in views on the theater, in the early stages of Meyerhold's independent practice, Konstantin Stanislavski offered him the opportunity to cooperate, which led Vsevolod Meyerhold to the Studio on Povarskaya Street in Moscow. Evgeny Vakhtangov was another student of Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko. At the request of Stanislavski, Vakhtangov was engaged in educational work in the studio of Moscow Art Theatre. Unlike Meyerhold, he thoroughly mastered the system and then created his theatrical direction called fantastic realism. Vakhtangov's legacy was preserved thanks to the activities of his students, among whom was Boris Zakhava. He turned to Meyerhold for help and spent several seasons with the master, gaining invaluable experience, including revealing the features of biomechanics in practice. Boris Zakhava remained faithful to Vakhtangov’s principles and continued his teacher’s work at the Shchukin Theater Institute.

Konstantin Stanislavski and Michael Chekhov: tracing the two practitioners’ “lures” for emotional activation

ABSTRACT Konstantin Stanislavski points out that emotions are like wild animals that can only be lured rather than approached directly; he urges his students not to try to force emotions to arrive, as feelings are independent of the will and cannot be manipulated. Like a whisperer, the actor should lure emotions, gently invite them in, approach them indirectly, instead of “going after” them and scaring them away. During his extensive and revolutionary research on the actor’s craft, the Russian pioneer discovered various such indirect “lures” for emotional activation. This article reviews the tangible points of entry to the unruly feelings as identified by Stanislavski, as well as those explored by his pupil, Michael Chekhov. The two practitioners’ approach to emotion is examined here, with emphasis on two key publications respectively: Stanislavski’s An Actor’s Work and Chekhov’s To the Actor. The article discusses the lures of concentration, imagination, “well-founded, apt and productive” actions, emotion memory, tempo-rhythm, empathy (fellow-feeling), external stimuli such as lighting and props, and the actor’s focus on that which is specific, tangible, and detailed. The review of Stanislavski’s lures is followed by a discussion of Michael Chekhov’s insights on artistically-induced emotion and the pathways he identified for stirring the performer’s inner life, emphasizing the exploration of qualities of movement, objective atmospheres, and the actor’s embodied imagination.

(Re)Animating Stanislavsky: realizing aliveness in the virtual actor

ABSTRACTThis paper describes my initial attempts to create a believable Virtual Actor: an autonomous computer graphic character depiction that can convincingly portray actions and emotions in-the-moment, in real-time response to given circumstances of a dramatic context. The focus here is on the journey so far; and on some of the discoveries and realizations that have emerged from research and creative processes which have been brought into play. Konstantin Stanislavsky soon emerges in this process as a critical point of reference and inspiration – not only because of his own lifelong quest for means and methods to create ‘life in art’, but also as a compelling subject upon which to base the virtual actor’s likeness. We are thus placed in a dialogue with Stanislavsky’s legacy, and I am able to extend his notion of life in art on the stage to a more generalized ‘beyond life’ concept of aliveness. This is useful as it applies to character portrayal both in theatre and in in mediated forms such as animation, film and autonomously driven real-time computer graphic imagery. Along the way we also encounter historic and contemporary approaches to emotion, animation practice, and Artificial Intelligence in the form of Machine Learning.

Stanislavski versus Evreinov: on stage realism and theatricality

ABSTRACTThe theatrical Avant-Garde at the beginning of the 20th century in Russian culture produced many practitioners and theories which changed the theatre industry and influenced the development of world theatre for generations. Among them, Stanislavski’s Method of Physical Actions and Active Analysis are widely used, while Evreinov’s unique Monodrama still remains relatively unknown. This paper examines the differences and similarities between Evreinov and Stanislavski and specifically their approach to Scenic (Stage) Realism, the understanding of Theatricality, and instigation of modern theatre and performance practices of the 21st century. Evreinov’s theatrical career was overshadowed by his countryman, Konstantin Stanislavski as a result of social changes in Russia at that time.Evreinov’s hostility towards realism was well known. Evreinov particularly enjoyed criticizing Stanislavski’s detailed direction for Chekhov plays. In New Theatrical Inventions, Evreinov engages in polemics against contemporary theatre practitioners, attacking the naturalism of Stanislavski’s staging. In general, professional theatre for Evreinov was a prison to Theatricality, which in his opinion is the cornerstone of Scenic Art.For Stanislavski, Theatricality was exaggeration when juxtaposed with what should be the realistic truth of the stage. Nikolai Evreinov claimed through his theoretical work that life is full of theatrical conventions; that theatre is a universal symbol of existence, an organic urge to transformation, as basic as hunger or sex. Referring to this urge as Theatricality, or the Instinct of Transformation, Evreinov brought the theatre into life, and insisted that life borrows from theatre.

Image-based theatre: a new pedagogy for a “new” theatre

This article captures the one-hour presentation, discussions and interactivedialogue at the conference: The theatrical function of the image and its relation to the other elements of staging. Pedagogical approach. The main idea of the conference is that nowadays the context of performing arts claims a reconsideration of the pedagogical approach of the profession of theatre director. I will recall how the “job” of theatre director has emerged in 19th century as a logical result of the industrialisation. Bringing electric light into theatre auditoriums, building bigger theatres with wider stages, the appetence of the public for elaborate and realistic staging using 3D props and complicated machineries – all this imposed the necessity of a man who has or develops the skills and knowhow of staging. And that’s how the history of the world theatre was re-written in the 20th century – The Century of the Director. Moreover, the two most influential theatre people of the last century where both directors and professors: Konstantin Stanislavsky and Bertolt Brecht. But what about our 21th century? Is theatre still “a play ground” for the directors? My theory is that the performing arts today are erasing the “traditional” patterns of theatre makers under the pressure of the new role that theatre is claimed to perform insociety. The theatre of Digital Era needs to have the same “pixeled” structure as every other human creation. That’s why I strongly believe that the pedagogy of theatre must be reconsidered and reorganized having as its central idea the dichotomy between the dramatic and the post-dramatic structure of the play. After all, as Peter Brook said: “A play is a play.” As support for demonstration and discussions I will use Meyerhold’s theory on how to construct a performance, Schlemmer’s diagram on types of performances, Brecht’sremarks on dramatic theatre vs. epic theatre, Lehmann’s theory on post-dramatic theatre and Erika Fischer-Lichte’s arguments on transformative aesthetics. I will use images from shows staged by outstanding theatre directors, which marked or/and are marking how we make and look at theatre today.

Teatro e trabalho sobre si

O artigo aborda a noção de “trabalho do ator sobre si mesmo”, concebida por Konstantin Stanislávski como princípio operador que permeia as relações entre arte e vida por meio da afirmação dos aspectos concretos do ofício do ator. Propõe, assim, a aproximação de uma tradição teatral que formulou um novo paradigma ético e poético para o artista da cena a partir da urgência de redimensionar o sentido do fazer artístico em um contexto de profundas transformações políticas e sociais.

The ever-widening contexts of Konstantin Stanislavsky

ABSTRACTAdopting and adapting Giorgio Strehler’s notion of treating a great play as a series of nesting boxes, I intend to examine the contexts of Stanislavsky’s life and work as Matryoshka dolls, ever widening in significance. The first, most compact box is the biographical: the influence of family, education, theatrical experience, and cultural background on his artistic programme. It is set within the second: the historical, tracking his responses to the broader political and socio-economic events that bore in upon him. The third is the ideological: siting his ideas within the intellectual and aesthetic trends of his time. Finally, I hope to demonstrate how, become an institution in modern theatrical thought and practice, he has generated an all-encompassing context of his own.

International connections in actor training in Australia: tracing Stanislavski’s system and Brechtian politics

ABSTRACTThis article traces the approaches to actor training offered in Australia based on the training backgrounds of influential teachers. The research for this article finds international connections that reveal strong links to approaches originating with Konstantin Stanislavski and Bertolt Brecht. It seeks to understand with whom a teacher studied to explain what was probably learnt and therefore the type of training knowledge that the teacher is likely to pass on to students. The research confirms that international approaches are fundamental to performance training in tertiary conservatorium courses, and the profiles of nine teachers are presented in detail to encapsulate patterns of training and to show the complex nexus of influences and international approaches. The profiles indicate an increasing influence of American approaches in the second half of the twentieth century alongside British ones, but that British influences remain important for European approaches and for political theatre in particular into the twenty-first century. We argue that even where there was a synthesis happening in the teaching of performance in Australia, the influences of major international approaches are identifiable through the training backgrounds of teachers. In this way, it is possible to locate teachers in Australia within actor training internationally.

Utilizing circles of attention in musical theatre acting: a personal perspective

ABSTRACTPedagogy and methodology for acting curriculum is consistent among universities in the United States. Students are introduced to acting principles formulated by Konstantin Stanislavski, Sanford Meisner, Uta Hagen, Robert Cohen, Jerzy Grotowski, Robert Benedetti, Lee Strasberg, and other experts in the field. This is not always the case for musical theatre acting courses offered by these same institutions. Musical theatre “acting” courses usually just expose students to a broad range of songs within the historical canon of musical theatre repertoire. Primary focus tends to be on the singing technique and vocal interpretation of the song. Musical theatre students in the academic setting must understand that acting technique represents the intellectual life of a character. The musical structure employs the emotional colour to the given circumstances of the character’s reason for singing the song. As a practitioner and educator of musical theatre pedagogy and methodology, I have experienced great success by utilizing Stanislavski’s “circles of attention” when coaching students through musical theatre song performance. The technique provides a clearer path of analysis for song text, activates given circumstances more clearly, clarifies moment-to-moment work, and links musical notation to language in order to achieve a more meaningful performance experience. It has become the most effective teaching tool in my musical theatre courses.

The influence of Christian Orthodox thought on Stanislavski’s theatrical legacy

ABSTRACTExpressed through many possible Orthodox concepts, such as “soul”, “heart”, “love”, “beauty” and “truth”, scattered throughout all his writings, Konstantin Stanislavski’s personal religious feelings seemed constantly to have shaped his life-long sense of an artistic spirituality. Yet, in spite of this presence, the Christian Orthodox connections appear to be neither properly analysed nor fully explained in the literature. Therefore, this paper strives to identify and reflect upon how such generally ignored but key Orthodox ideas might have had a crucial influence on shaping Stanislavski’s “system”.

Los signos del método de las acciones físicas de Stanislavski en el ámbito escénico contemporáneo

Este artículo se ha enfocado en esclarecer los conceptos de sistema, método y técnica gestados en torno a Konstantín Stanislavski y cómo los fue utilizando a lo largo de su trayectoria. A su vez, ha destacado la vigencia de uno de estos métodos en el ámbito escénico actual y los signos que se develan en este. A pesar de que Stanislavski expuso con cierta claridad su continua investigación y que sus compiladores cercanos no mostraron divergencias entre ellos, al transcribir su terminología y sus procedimientos, se ha presentado una inconsistencia terminológica por parte de sus compiladores indirectos.
 Se partió de un marco teórico preciso que logró aclarar qué es sistema, método y técnica enfocados al área teatral, con la finalidad de formular conceptos definidos. Y se aplicó un método explicativo-descriptivo para exponer el cambio del método de la memoria de las emociones al método de las acciones físicas, ambos de Stanislavski, sin perder un sistema como marco unificador, y también para detallar los signos característicos que han identificado al segundo método; todo ello mediante el análisis de materiales documentales relevantes.
 El método de las acciones físicas del sistema de Stanislavski es actual, vigente y necesario, puesto que lleva al actor a poner atención en las acciones físicas y en la fuerza interior que las provoca; a definir lo que haría el actor en la vida real si se encontrara en esa situación y en la condición del personaje interpretado, y a construir no solo un método psicotécnico de crear la vida del personaje, sino un método completo que entiende, reflexiona, analiza y responde a los diferentes ámbitos de la creación de un personaje a través de signos precisos y claros.

InstaStan – FaceBrook – Brecht+: a performer training methodology for the age of the internet

What do we do with a cohort of student-performers who show more interest in Instagram than in Konstantin Stanislavski, in Facebook than in Peter Brook and in Google than in Bertolt Brecht? Based on our experience of working with second-year BA (Hons) Performance and Media students at the University of South Wales, this article aims to provide a performance training methodology for the age of the internet. In particular, it focuses on our approach to creating a laboratory-style training experience, engaging student-performers in critical-creative processes as both participants and facilitators of creative practice. The article argues that this exploratory and experimental journey of using social media and online platforms in live performance allows student-performers to make strong connections between everyday digital tools and theatre and performance methods and techniques. Additionally, we ask questions about what forms these laboratories may take in the future: What would a StanChat laboratory look like? How can we incorporate InstaStan, FaceBrook and Brecht + into our training practices for digital performance more broadly?

Introducing the Inhabiting Technique; highlighting the value of psychophysical processes originated by Konstantin Stanislavski, while showing that most aspects of Stanislavski’s System of Active Analysis are inappropriate for use with Shakespeare; inviting the actor into the role of Psychopomp

ABSTRACTA sharing of practice-based research occurring in actor training labs, this paper will explore subjective findings regarding a new technique called Inhabiting, with reference to inspiration gained at The S-Word Symposium. Investigation of the author’s early psychophysical experiences as theatre practitioner form the foundation of this research.The goal of this work has been to define a new psychophysical method grounded in, but not limited to Active Analysis. Inhabiting is developing in response to American acting students, who feel limited and inhibited by The Method. Inhabiting advocates a form of active analysis (improvisatory, up-on-your-feet-exploration) in combination with somatic techniques. This paper makes the case that Inhabiting is especially appropriate for use with Shakespeare, but that Stanislavski’s Active Analysis, when directly applied to classical text can limit the actor’s expressive capacity.This writing outlines how Inhabiting assists actors to work flexibly with emotion by framing the body as an instrument. Inhabiting has developed out of investigative psychophysical theatre practice. Drawing on the work of Laban, Linklater, Patsy Rodenberg, Cicely Berry, Stanislavski, Grotowski, and Richard Schechner, Inhabiting is taught in actor labs and stresses exploration over getting it right, framing discovery as a starting place for potential mastery.Through learning how to engage a body primed and wired with emotional triggers, the actor begins to trust that everything she needs she already has. Through psychophysical practices like Inhabiting, actors have the potential to embody the sacred role of Psychopomp for their audiences.

The Director’s Prism: E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Russian Theatrical Avant-Garde by Dassia N. Posner

Reviewed by: The Director’s Prism: E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Russian Theatrical Avant-Garde by Dassia N. Posner James Fisher (bio) Dassia N. Posner. The Director’s Prism: E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Russian Theatrical Avant-Garde. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2017. Pp. xxiii + 314 + 46 b/w illus. $99.95 cloth, $39.95 paper, $37.95 eBook. In his legendary 1922 “fantasy-infused” (63) commedia dell’arte-inspired production of Carlo Gozzi’s Princess Turandot, Russian director Evgeny Vakhtangov, long resistant to the juggernaut of realism spreading across European theatres and inspired in part by Konstantin Stanislavski’s work at the Moscow Art Theatre, pointedly banished realism in his innovative theatricalization of Gozzi’s play. As Vakhtangov’s most emblematic production, and also his last, it was aimed to fully break free of the hold of realism. The production was a triumph, but, in a sense, merely a culmination of two decades of avant-garde experimentation by Vakhtangov and others turning toward an overtly theatrical “circusization” (132) of the Russian-Soviet stage. Like Vakhtangov, three particular directors, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Alexander Tairov, and Sergei Eisenstein, looked to dramatic and literary classics of the pre-modern stage for source material that might serve the liberating experimentation they boldly hoped would provide what they viewed as a necessary opposing pole to the rising tide of realism. Among those sources, works by German Romantic fabulist E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822) attracted Meyerhold, Tairov, and Eisenstein. In her engrossing, impressively researched, and highly readable study, The Director’s Prism: E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Russian Theatrical Avant-Garde, Dassia N. Posner digs into the Hoffmannesque productions of these directors, and those who followed their lead, to remind readers that more than a century of the historical influence of Stanislavski, particularly within acting training in America, obscured a fuller understanding that Stanislavski was only one point of reference and that the vast [End Page 146] diversity of the Russian stage offered varied inspirations. The directors Posner examines sought to maintain the seriousness of purpose inherent in realism, while liberating modern stage artists to imagine new worlds through the use of audacious fantasy supplied by works like Hoffmann’s. With Claudia Orenstein and John Bell, Posner scholarship includes co-editing The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance (2015), but in The Director’s Prism, she asserts her voice fully, proving herself a peer of Lawrence Senelick, Spencer Golub, Julia Listengarten, Sharon Marie Carnicke, and the late Edward Braun, all of whom have within their writings restored neglected aspects of Russian-Soviet theatre. Meyerhold, who was murdered in prison by Stalin’s thugs in 1940, has received considerable scholarly attention since the 1970s and Eisenstein’s cinematic work has long been an area of study by film historians, but Tairov, among other Russian theatricalists, is less known. Posner delves into the Hoffmannesque work of Meyerhold and Eisenstein while illuminating the productions of the comparatively unstudied Tairov, offering penetrating analysis of the accomplishments of all three figures, and particularly their productions inspired by Hoffmann’s grotesque tales. Curiously, the Prussian-born Hoffmann has inspired considerable scholarship as a literary figure, but relatively little can be found on his theatrical influence. Despite a varied career as a composer, music critic, and jurist, Hoffmann’s most distinct stage legacy was inspired by his 1816 story Nussknacker und Mausekönig (Nutcracker and Mouse King), a dark and psychologically complex socio-critical work best remembered as the basis for Tchaikovsky’s beloved two-act ballet The Nutcracker (1892), a perennial holiday favorite. Only in Werner Mausolf ’s E. T. A. Hoffmanns stellung zu drama and theater (University of Michigan, 1920) and, more recently, Christopher R. Clason’s E. T. A. Hoffmann: Transgressive Romanticism (Romantic Configurations: Studies in Literature and Culture 1780–1850) (Liverpool University Press, 2018) have Hoffmann’s theatrical inspirations received much critical attention. However, Posner makes a persuasive argument that the innovations of Russia’s key theatricalists were significantly enhanced by Hoffmann’s gothic tales to create a movement that destroyed the slavish use of fourth-wall realism. At the same time appeals to a subjective aesthetic emphasizing the role of emotion in...

Acting Greek Tragedy by Graham Ley

Reviewed by: Acting Greek Tragedy by Graham Ley Tiffany Pounds-Williams Acting Greek Tragedy. By Graham Ley. University of Exeter Press, 2014. Cloth $27.00. 255 pages. In Acting Greek Tragedy, Graham Ley clarifies that he is not attempting to fashion a new method of actor training. Instead, he intends to create an “approach” through which an actor’s dramaturgical analysis of an Attic tragedy can be applied to a performance, thereby training the mind rather than the body or voice (vii). John Barton’s similarly dramaturgically based approach in Playing Shakespeare is directly acknowledged as Ley’s inspiration for this (225). An expert in dramaturgy and performance in ancient Greek theatre, Ley previously published Ancient Greek and Contemporary Performance: Collected Essays (University of Exeter Press, 2015) and The Theatricality of Greek Tragedy: Playing Space and Chorus (University of Chicago Press, 2007). Ley breaks new ground in Acting Greek Tragedy, creating an accessible, thought-provoking workshop series that forces the actor to invert the conventional hierarchy of the stage by recognizing that the chorus is perhaps even more crucial to comprehending Attic tragedies than is the protagonist. Ley recenters the discussion by suggesting that “A full tragic character is to some extent inconceivable without a chorus” (50). This shift in thinking is in line with current scholarly interest in marginalized Greek characters, as in Florence Yoon’s The Use of Anonymous Characters in Greek Tragedy: The Shaping of Heroes (Brill, 2012). Ley’s book is divided into four main chapters, each dedicated to exploring one of his acting workshops. These focus on monologues, dialogues, three-actor scenes, and scenes involving properties, with each workshop scaffolding onto previous ones. This structure allows readers to understand how to avoid the pitfalls of seemingly artificial language in Attic tragedies when faced with increasingly challenging circumstances. In his introduction, Ley establishes the breaking down of scenes into “transactions” and “phases,” which go on to form the core of his workshops (2, 34). [End Page 118] Transactions are defined as the business conducted between at least two parties, and phases are a way to break down lengthy monologues into easily digestible portions of purpose and emotion. In short, phases are changes in the action, whereas transactions are character interactions within those phases. This is similar to Konstantin Stanislavsky’s kusok or bit, later referred to as beats. Ley’s first chapter, “First Workshop—Monologues,” utilizes excerpts from Sophocles’ Antigone and Euripides’ Medea and Hippolytus, which Ley deconstructs into transactions and phases. A notable example is his proposal that Creon’s speech in Antigone, lines 162–210, during which he addresses Thebes as its ruler for the first time, is a transaction in which Creon aims to convince his people to support his rule and his burial proclamation, rather than simply a decree. This recontextualization indicates a need to address the chorus persuasively, as opposed to the dictatorial fashion with which this speech is often approached. Ley’s suggestion reinforces the significance of the chorus in Attic tragedy and encourages a broader range of transactional experimentation during workshops. Chapter 2, “Dialogues,” draws on selections from Sophocles and Euripides to consider scenes involving two actors. Each excerpt is discussed in extended detail, allowing the reader to follow Ley’s train of thought effortlessly. Ley also continues to amplify the chorus in this workshop, cheekily declaring that “it should never be assumed that placing a chorus in a huddle (still less in a ‘formation’) will somehow release the true ‘Greekness’ of a scene or a section of text” (58). The key to demystifying the chorus instead lies in analyzing how it is affected by, for instance, one character’s public disparagement of another. Ley’s focus is on the chorus and not the lead characters, a substantial realignment of character hierarchy, which usually dictates that the protagonist and antagonist are more important roles. This creates a grounded world where the public, their support or opposition, trust or suspicion, can change the outcome of a play through their effect on the psychology and behavior of tragic heroes and their antagonists. Scenes involving three actors are more complicated to dissect into transactions and phases, but Ley succeeds in proving in...