Stanislavski Method Research Articles

Enhancing Creativity in Arts Students: Stanislavski Method and Physical Actions

This study aims to explore the impact of the Stanislavski Method and Physical Actions on the creative performance abilities of students in art universities. The Stanislavski Method, with its core focus on deeply exploring a character's internal emotions and psychological states, emphasizes the use of emotional memory and the 'Magic If' in acting. In contrast, Physical Actions focus on stimulating emotions and thoughts through bodily movements, enhancing the performer's physical expression capabilities. Through theoretical analysis and case studies, this research reveals the role and effectiveness of these two methods in enhancing creative performance. The case studies show that the combined use of the Stanislavski Method and Physical Actions significantly improves students' emotional depth, physical expression, and character innovation abilities. However, these methods also face challenges in application, such as emotional risks, individual differences, and resource limitations. The study emphasizes that addressing these challenges requires flexible teaching strategies and attention to individual differences. Finally, the research proposes future directions for applying these methods in different cultural contexts and the possibility of integrating these traditional acting methods with emerging art forms. Overall, the Stanislavski Method and Physical Actions hold significant theoretical and practical value in cultivating the creative performance abilities of art university students.

«Я понимаю!»: опыт реализации инновационного межвузовского проекта по обучению китайских студентов русскому языку на базе кинопедагогики и «системы Станиславского»

This article presents the results of an academic experiment dedicated to learning Russian by Chinese students, utilizing the program “I Understand!”. “I Understand!” is an innovative system of working on authentic audio-visual film production, this system was created for foreign language speakers learning Russian as second lan-guage (RSL) at B1–B2 level. The program has been implemented in 6 universities in Russia and China since 2022 and is regarded as a first application of elements of academic theatrical methodology (“Stanislavski Method”) and professional dubbing of films by RSL students. The effectiveness of work performed in the dub-bing studios opened at the participating university campuses is justified by the high level of students’ voice-overs for the cartoons and films submitted to the international festival, as well as by the accelerated transition of foreign students to a qualitatively new level of Russian language proficiency – from B1 to B2 and from B2 to C1.

Exemplars Embodied: Can Acting Form Moral Character?

AbstractTheatre practitioners use empathy formation techniques within their acting methodology to develop particular characters for the stage. Here, Ann Phelps and Dylan Brown argue that, when Constantin Stanislavski's seminal dramatic method is placed in conversation with exemplarist moral theory, acting can become a tool for moral formation. To illustrate this claim, they describe their work with the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University, where a neo‐Aristotelian virtue ethics framework is embodied and expanded using this dramatic method. By using acting exercises to help students rehearse how their moral exemplars would respond to situations, Phelps and Brown challenge students to embody their exemplars instead of merely engaging with them as a passive intellectual exercise. Moral educators can achieve their pedagogical aim by expanding Stanislavski's dramatic “super‐objective” to encompass a “moral meta‐objective.” This neo‐Aristotelian modification to Stanislavski's method might extend beyond the stage in ways that facilitate the embodiment of morally exemplary behavior, even after the curtain falls.

"I'm the Empty Stage Where Various Actors Act Out Various Plays": Theatre Translator's View of their Work

When theatre translators are commissioned to translate a play, they know the stage it is intended for, the director and sometimes even the actors. In a small country, theatre translation has always been significant, and even today translated plays account for around half of the annual performances on the Finnish stage. This situation has triggered off the following piece of research into how theatre translators themselves see their own role in the preparation of a production and, also, how closely their work follows the one that actors do in constructing characters. The two questions set for the analysis were: 1) what is theatre translators’ experience of their physical participation in the construction of a performance?; and 2) how far does their psychological involvement go into the lives of the play’s characters? I drew my material from two collected works of theatre translators’ self-reflections that I have edited in Finland. Of the two compilations, I selected 27 articles written by theatre translators. My method was Critical Discourse Analysis, and my toolbox consisted of discourse, repertoire, (theme), topic and metaphorical narratives. The analysis revealed repertoires that consisted of the physical participation in the production process that fell mostly in the category of Exclusion or Liminality, and to a much lesser extent to that of Inclusion. The answers to the second question concerning the psychological involvement in the lives of the play’s characters fell mostly in the repertoire which I labelled as the Brechtian Verfremdung, or Distancing and somewhat less to the repertoire of Emotional Recall, or Memory, of the Stanislavski Method.

PENGEMBANGAN MODEL PEMBELAJARAN PEMERANAN BERORIENTASI TEKNIK CS PADA TEATER TRADISI

This learning model is the author's attempt to develop acting method in traditional theater through the Stanislavski's
 technique, although the need for theater tradition performances and theater conventional realism performance is different. During this time the method of play in the theater tradition is still spontaneous, but the method of acting on the theater tradition must be measurable and can be studied in the academic field, hence, the author develops acting methods based on Stanislavski's technique as a reference in learning. An actor is a student for nature and pupil for anyone as long as the knowledge he earned is useful to develops his acting creativity. Therefore this Stanislavski's method becomes very influential to train the actor's intelligence, despite his need for traditional theater. Why is Stanislavski's method becoming important to be learned by actor candidate ?. Because the analysis used by Stanislavski's method is still very logical and reasonable, it did not rule out the effects of int elligence for anyone who applied it. This circumstance emphasizing the importance of Developing Stanilavski's technique-oriented Learning Model on Traditional Theater. In order for candidates who will perform for traditional and modern show, are expected to be ready with all the acting devices to employ. Therefore, this learning method need to be applied, especially in STKW Surabaya. The purpose of this research is developing a learning model for acting in the theater tradition. This research carried out by producing several outcome. First, a handbook of Stanislavski's method learning model for student. Second, a lecturer's handbook for an effective and efficient learning process

Stanislavski’s language in Fomenko’s theatre

The Stanislavski method was revolutionary for the culture of the nineteenth century because it put in question all the effects of the mimetic theatre tradition that had been formed on the basis of the character identification in ancient and modern tragedy. Stanislavski makes the copernician transformation of theatre aesthetics in order to overpass the conditions of the ancient and modern mimetism and to articulate the character’s representation with the singular sensorial and motional experience of an actor’s personality. The forms of individual intuition will determine the artist’s existence on stage because all the contents presented begin to depend on private and intersubjective living (vécu). But the Stanislavski aesthetics establish the “pure symbol of beauty” proceeding from an isolation and an objectivation of all the effects of personal internal movements. That is why the “fourth wall” doctrine appears. This is the point of demarcation from the psychological tradition for Piotr Fomenko who tries to open the theatre of “future in the past”. The future in the past is the time for passing over the “psychological” heritage, reducing it to the new prose of the world. This prose is revealed in Fomenko’s productions of Wolves and sheep (Ostrovsky) and Three sisters (Chekhov) as an infinite interference of polyphovic voices. The world prose is the coexistence of voices when all the motivating modus of perception, of thought and of desire are devaluated. Fomenko’s method looks to create an expressive language of “the joy of being” for the conscious singular ensemble in a time of excessive nihilism and cynism.

New Ideas and Clinical Practices to Improve Corporeal Self-Esteem

It’s common to face, concerning patients with eating disorders, the lack of trust towards others and the fear of judgment. In the clinic, this aspect is very interesting but also difficult to engage. The aim of this research is to evaluate theatrical techniques as tools to develop confidence toward the others’ point of view, through an improvement of collaborating and interaction abilities. We interviewed about building a character on the scene fifteen not professional actors and fifteen recovered eating disorder patients, attending to theater classes using Stanislavski Method. To compare the clinical and the amateur actors group and to analyze the link between the self-descriptions as a common person and self-descriptions as actors on the scene, we used modified repertory grids and semi-structured interviews. The outcomes of the work show us that every participant appreciate the stage activity as a potential training for the multiplicity of “the self”. Anyway, the Eating Disorder Group is more likely to reduce the interaction impact's size and to disconnect actors and observers (director and audience), in comparison to the Amateurs Group. The Clinical Group also doesn't recognize the importance of being a relational feedback during the construction of characters and it's easy that they give importance just to the aspects of the character which they already see in themselves. Thus, the fear of judgment could be overcome thanks to the theatrical laboratory, in fact the screen of the theatrical performance offers protection to actors. Possible outcomes in the clinical practice will be discussed.

Explicit recognition of emotional facial expressions is shaped by expertise: evidence from professional actors

Can reading others' emotional states be shaped by expertise? We assessed processing of emotional facial expressions in professional actors trained either to voluntary activate mimicry to reproduce character's emotions (as foreseen by the “Mimic Method”), or to infer others' inner states from reading the emotional context (as foreseen by “Stanislavski Method”). In explicit recognition of facial expressions (Experiment 1), the two experimental groups differed from each other and from a control group with no acting experience: the Mimic group was more accurate, whereas the Stanislavski group was slower. Neither acting experience, instead, influenced implicit processing of emotional faces (Experiment 2). We argue that expertise can selectively influence explicit recognition of others' facial expressions, depending on the kind of “emotional expertise”.

Exploring an Acting Method to Contain the Potential Madness of the Creative Writing Process: Mental Health and Writing with Emotion

This article enters a debate on mental health and writing with emotion sparked off by comments from the established South African writers I interviewed and my own search for a positive approach to managing the emotional roller coaster of writing fiction. Margie Orford switched from journalism to crime novels because she wanted to move away from reporting facts to telling the emotional truth that really moves people. To do this, she has to enter the lives of both victims and perpetrators, which is emotionally taxing for a mother of three. To cope, she withdraws from family life at specific points in her writing process. John van de Ruit uses his training in Method acting to generate the scenes he is writing about. Like many comedians, he went into a depression after writing his first book. Providing vicarious experience of emotion is perhaps the great service provided by creative writers. However, it exacts a heavy toll as authors have to mine their own emotions to fetch this gold to the surface. Exploring possible mechanisms of Stanislavski's Method acting, applied to creative writing, this article suggests ways of easing these emotionally taxing processes.

Meeting at La Sapienza: or, On the Cultivation of Onions

Revised and elaborated from responses to questions during the final two days of a seminar at the University of Rome La Sapienza, Biagini's talk traces the early stages of his 13 years of work alongside Grotowski and Thomas Richards, evoking both the importance of craft in the practice of Art as vehicle and its subtle interior processes, as well as the unique process of transmission from Grotowski to Richards. Biagini reflects on the application of Stanislavsky's method of physical actions, the construction of an actor's score, the central importance of traditional song in the Workcenter's ongoing practice, and on the work initiated in 1998 with four actresses from Singapore.

Moving Bodies: Jacques Lecoq and Drama Education in Australia

This article explores Jacques Lecoq's pedagogy of theatre training and considers its usefulness as an approach for secondary school drama teachers. Lecoq's principles and practice can be successfully applied in drama education to develop skills in theatrical creation and performance. The four pillars of Lecoq's integrated approach—movement, improvisation, creation and stylisation—are explored in terms of their suitability for the drama classroom. The pedagogy is seen to offer a viable alternative to the ‘Stanislavski method’, primarily because its theory and practice are grounded in a paradigm of embodiment rather than Cartesian dualism. The proposition that Lecoq's practice is valuable for secondary drama education is supported by the testimony of Australian Lecoq graduates who have conducted pre-service and in-service teacher training, student workshops and Theatre-in-Education programs.

Developing the impression management skills of the service worker: an application of Stanislavsky's principles in a services context

The theatrical nature of service performances has been discussed in the services literature for many years. If services are theatre, it makes sense to look for theatrical ways to train service workers, particularly those who interact with the customer. One method for training actors, which has strong significance for developing frontstage service personnel, is a system developed by Konstatin Stanislavsky. This article examines the theatrical presence of services' contact personnel, explores the tenets of the Stanislavsky method of actor training and their relevance for services marketing, and applies the method to training services workers.

STANISLAVSKI'S ACTING METHOD AND CONTROL THEORY: COMMONALITIES ACROSS TIME, PLACE, AND FIELD

Constantin Stanislavski revolutionized 20th century theater by developing a highly articulated and practical system of acting, now referred to simply as “the method.” Stanislavski's method presents a model of human behavior and motivation that is strikingly similar to the “control theory” of psychologists Charles Carver and Michael Scheier. These similarities are in the areas of (a) the regulation of behavior by goals, (b) the process of goal formation, (c) the hierarchical organization of behavior, (d) the disruption of goals by obstacles, (e) outcome expectancies, (f) the sequencing of behavior into units, and (g) the formation of identity. These commonalities provide something akin to “construct validity” for the basic assertions of each model.

Del actor medieval a nuestros días. Actas del seminario celebrado los días 30 de octubre al 2 de noviembre de 1996, con motivo del IV Festival de Teatre i Música Medieval d'Elx , and: Teatro medieval, teatro vivo. Actas del seminario celebrado del 28 al 31 de octubre 1998, con motivo del V Festival de Teatre i Música Medieval d'Elx

Reviews Del actor medieval a nuestros días. Actas del seminario celebrado los días 30 de octubre al 2 de noviembre de 1996, con motivo del IV Festival de Teatre i Música Medieval d'Elx. Ed. Josep Lluís Sirera. EIx: Institut Municipal de Cultura, 2001. 214 pp. No ISBN Teatro medieval, teatro vivo. Actas del seminario celebrado del 28 al 31 de octubre 1998, con motivo del V Festival de Teatre i Música Medieval d'Elx. Ed.Josep Lluís Sirera. EIx: Institut Municipal de Cultura, 2001. 283 pp. No ISBN These proceedings from the fourth and fifth Festivales de Teatre i Música Medieval d'Elx represent a substantial contribution to the growing body of research on the medieval theater. The 1996 Actas describes actors and acting in the Middle Ages from a variety of perspectives. The most extensive and informative of the essays, Evangelina Rodriguez Cuadros's "Del histrión medieval al actor barroco: La rehabilitación del gesto" (15-47), traces the changing styles of acting across the centuries. Like several other contributors , she ascribes the medieval contempt for actors to the free, often grotesque, use of the human body for entertainment. Eventually the exaggerated and disorderly style of the mimi and histriones yielded in the liturgical drama to a carefully orquestrated series of symbolic gestures and in secular recitations to socially determined movements. With the Renaissance actors incarnated the characters, using their bodies to express emotions in a style that anticipates the Stanislavsky method. A second technique was based on the concept of decorum that anticipates Diderot. Both these styles were endorsed by baroque theoreticians like Alonso López Pinciano (1596). In "El arte del actor en la cultura medieval" (51-63) Federico Doglio laments the incompleteness of Aristotle's Poetics, notes Horace's recommendation that actors lose themselves in their roles, and quotes Tertulian's allegation that actors are in the clutches of the devil. Their rehabilitation began already in the Carolingian Renaissance when singers and musicians were distinguished from scurrilous entertainers who performed with their La CORC)NiCA 31.2 (Spring, 2003): 327-33 328ReviewsLa corónica 31.2, 2003 bodies. In the thirteenth century Geoffroi de Vinsauf included the art of recitation in his Poetria Nova (1208-1216). In "Valores visuales del actor medieval" (67-71) Rafael Maestre explains how religious symbolism restricts the freedom of actors and directors by shaping the scaffolding, araceli (aerial lift), costumes and gestures. For example , the funereal mask worn by the actor impersonating the Virgin conceals her face and camouflages her pain since according to Church doctrine she died "sin dolor, como dormida" (71). Josep Lluís Sirera's "Els atitors de teatre híspante a l'edat mitjana i la construcció de Tactor ideal" (103-119) underscores the differences between medieval thespians and modern professional actors. In the secular drama the social conventions of courtly love limited the actors' creativity, but in the religious theater the performers cast as devils or monsters moved and gesticulated wildly because evil was associated with the ugly, the grotesque, and the ridiculous. In "Juglares, actores y bufones: La invasión del espacio teatral en los siglos XV y XVI" (123-40) Alfredo Hermenegildo states that the paid professional actor did not emerge until the sixteenth century when social conditions were favorable. In the liturgical drama the participants were not actors since they were controlled "por unas normas ajenas y exteriores al hecho dramático mismo" (125). In the fifteenth century Miguel Lucas de Iranzo was both author and actor as real space and theatrical space converged. This blending , I might add, also occurred in the politically motivated Farsa de Avila (1465) where the unpopular Enrique IV of Castile was deposed in effigy and his brother Alonso, who played himself, took his place (see Mackay). Encina too merged theater and reality whereas in the second half of the sixteenth century Lope de Rueda perceived actors and characters as inhabiting separate worlds. Paola Ventrone reviews the condemnation of actors in "La definizione professionale dell'attore nell'Italia del Rinascimento" (143-53), stressing the privileged position of those performers who recited poetic texts. Their fine diction placed them in...

Social Studies Through Poetry

As a veteran teacher of over 30 years in the classroom, I have had the opportunity to instruct literally thousands of students, many of them appropriately classified as gifted. As I see it, working with the gifted often rakes place in two separate milieus, which I call external and teaching. A way to understand this is by using two different examples. Class A is learning about slavery. Part of their assignment is to visit a pre-Civil War farm/museum, including the slave quarters. They have the opportunity to see people wearing the clothing of the time. They can observe how food was prepared. They can hold in their hands the chains and whips that were actually used on the slaves of this particular farm. When they return to the classroom, they may relate these experiences to how they feel about perceived arbitrary and unnecessary behavioral regimentation at home and at school. I call this external teaching because the members of the class are outside of the experience. Like a televised showing of a police chase on a network drama, the viewer can attentive to the action, but can also detached and unmoved by its outcome. Class B is studying the judicial system. Each member of the class is assigned a courtroom role: judge, defense attorney, prosecutor, juror, defendant, and complainant. Each must research what part he or she plays in the coming trial and present cogent and reasonable responses to the other participants in the role-play. This type of teaching allows the student to become emotionally tied to his or her role. As in the Stanislavski method of acting, the performer lives the part and becomes the character. Gifted students are highly responsive to teaching and welcome the opportunity to use their imagination, creativity, sense of competition, and ability to empathize. The outcomes of internal teaching have been achieved for years through the use of novels (Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl, Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer) as well as by movies, theatrical performances, and television programs. Poetry, however, allows for compressing events in relatively few lines, the most economical venue for explaining a scenario. By identifying the hidden speaking voice inside a poem, students are able to touch base with the emotional state and philosophical beliefs of that voice in place and time. In this way, history can become an expression of living people and compelling situations. The poem Crackers (Siegelman, 1992) follows: A family of barefoot whites Hobbled on the red dirt road Twisting past the cotton fields on either side: Winding to the grand plantation house ... slaves bent motionless In the bleaching July sun Glistening with sweat As they watched in Silence. The barefoot men asked the master For food and drink Only for Their children, But knowing they'd get more. Then asking for some work with a clever half-smile As They were down on their luck. They were whispered out of sight To the back yard shade Where they longed to invisible to thoughtful blacks. They Picknicked on the handouts jokes About the 'benefits of slavery For the South.' The poem jettisons the reader into a scenario of slavery in the antebellum South not often dealt with in texts or primary sources, thus allowing him or her to identify with the crackers who capitalized on slavery to increase their status in the plantation caste system. Gifted children are uniquely able to take notice of shifts in paradigm in whatever they read. In the poem Crackers, Asking for some work / But knowing they'd get more, or [Crackers] Whispered out of sight / To the back yard shade / Where they longed to be then Drawling jokes /About the benefits of slavery I For the South' lends an immediacy to the conversation. Secondary students begin, in this manner, to conceive of contradictory paradigms to explain similar sets of facts, which could labeled by an astute teacher as, for example, Freudian, behavioral, economic determinist, or rational worldviews. …

Mamet's Heresy and Common Sense: what's True and False in ‘True and False’

David Mamet's book, True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor (Faber, 1998), is rapidly becoming recommended reading amongst the acting fraternity. In this article Bella Merlin offers a critical dissection of Mamet's approach, drawing on the working knowledge of Stanislavsky's Method of Physical Actions, or Active Analysis, which she acquired at the State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. She underlines the fragility of Mamet's dismissal of Stanislavsky, and illustrates how much of his ‘common sense’ actually derives from the principles underlying the Method of Physical Actions. Bella Merlin is an actor and lectures in Drama and Theatre Arts at Birmingham University.

The Impact of Acting on Student Actors: Boundary Blurring, Growth, and Emotional Distress

The Impact of Acting on Student Actors: Boundary Blurring, Growth,and Emotional Distress Suzanne Burgoyne (bio), Karen Poulin (bio), and Ashley Rearden (bio) In “A Crucible for Actors: Questions of Directorial Ethics,” which appeared in the first issue of Theatre Topics, Suzanne Burgoyne posed the question of what impact acting may have on student performers’ personal lives. The article resulted from her own experience directing The Crucible, in which she observed what she called “psychological fall-out” from the show, including actors’ reported nightmares. Since nothing in her training had warned her that acting might result in student emotional distress—much less prepared her to deal with it—she began researching the impact of acting on performers. She found that, though some theatre educators seemed aware of the issue, little research had been done. Indeed, Richard Schechner contends that theatre scholars have traditionally focused their attention on the production itself and that “aftermath,” which he defines as “the long-term consequences or follow through,” is the least studied aspect of performance (19). Seeking a research methodology that would allow her to begin to understand and document the impact of acting, Burgoyne contacted Karen Poulin, a psychologist with expertise in a qualitative methodology known as grounded theory. Burgoyne and Poulin brought together backgrounds in theatre and counseling psychology to collaborate on a study. 1 Burgoyne joined Poulin’s research group to learn grounded theory; Poulin took an acting class and served as a consultant on several productions. Our review of the (scanty) literature dealing with the impact of acting revealed that a voice conspicuously underrepresented was that of the university student actor. In our study, we decided to allow this voice to be heard. In this article, we present the theory emerging from our study, in which we conducted and analyzed in-depth interviews with fifteen student actors. 2 The theory suggests that the blurring of boundaries between actor and character may be a significant condition for impact, and that the actor’s ability to control that blurring may influence whether an acting experience leads to growth or emotional distress. Since some inside-out approaches to acting encourage the actor to use her own personal experience in building a character, thus facilitating boundary blurring, this theory has major implications for theatre pedagogy. 3 [End Page 157] While some of our interviewees have learned through experience that boundary blurring may become problematic, none of them reported having been taught boundary management. Liz, a doctoral student who has studied in several theatre programs, felt that “the psychological aspects of acting” are not addressed systematically in actor training: In theory, we’re supposed to learn this in class, but it’s really not what you get taught even when you’re taught Stanislavsky method or Lee Strasberg or any of that stuff. You’re just really not taught how to attune yourself psychologically and how to get back out of that state. It just . . . sort of happens for most people, and, quite frankly, there are a lot of actors I know who can’t get out of roles, who step into a part once they’re cast and . . . whenever the show ends, that’s when they start losing the personality aspects of their character in their daily lives. Awareness of boundary blurring appears to be a first step for students to develop strategies for boundary management. Although teachers may understand that acting can have psychological side-effects, our interviews reveal that young actors may be unaware of that possibility until they have an emotionally distressing experience. On the basis of the theory emerging from this study, we suggest that the theatre profession address boundary management as an aspect of acting pedagogy. Methodology A brief explanation of our methodology, known as grounded dimensional analysis (a form of grounded theory), is first necessary to show how we have developed the theory we propose here. 4 Like other qualitative approaches to social science research, grounded theory is used to investigate subjective experience, as opposed to quantitative approaches, which investigate more objective matters. The goal of dimensional analysis is to generate theory about a complex phenomenon from the point of view of the participants. Prior to beginning the...

Working on the play and the role: the Stanislavsky method for analyzing the characters in a drama

This work presents the Stanislavsky method for analyzing the characters in a drama, systematized for the first time and clearly explained, using the complete text of The Cherry Orchard as illustration. An excellent book, highly useful for actors and directors. - Nicholas Rudall.

Physiological detection of deception: measurement of responses to questions and answers during countermeasure maneuvers.

ABSTRACTPhysiological detection of deception (“lie detection”) procedures were evaluated with 24 actors, half of whom were “guilty” of a mock‐crime and half were “innocent.” All subjects were trained in the Stanislavsky method of acting and were instructed to use this method to appear innocent on the polygraph test. Two versions of the control question detection of deception test were employed: one in which subjects verbally answered immediately following each question and the other in which they delayed their verbal answer for 8 sec following each question. The delayed answer technique allowed the separate measurement of physiological responses to the questions and the answers. Skin resistance responses, cardiovascular changes, and respiration were recorded and analyzed. Excluding inconclusive results, the overall accuracy of the decisions varied between 78% and 91% depending on the test employed. The principal results were: 1) attempts by guilty subjects to appear innocent were totally ineffective, 2) physiological responses elicited by the questions were more valid indicators of deception and nondeception than were the responses elicited by the verbal answers, and 3) errors occurred more frequently with innocent subjects (between 17% and 25% depending on the measure used) than with guilty subjects (0% with each measure). Variables which may affect the generalizability of these results to the field situation are discussed and suggestions for increasing the generalizability of laboratory findings are made.

Discovering Meyerhold: Traces of a Search

It is evening of December 17, 1898, opening night of Chekhov's play The Sea Gull at Moscow Art Theater. On stage, in roles of two opposed playwrights, Treplev and Trigorin, are Vsevolod Meyerhold and Konstantin Stanislavsky. What we need is a kind of theater, says aspiring Treplev/Meyerhold. We need forms. . And Nina, when she complains that his play no living people in it, he replies Why should there be? I don't want show life as it is, or way it should be, but way it is in dreams. Nina rejects Treplev/Meyerhold and becomes lover of Trigorin/Stanislavsky, who tells her: I'd like be in your shoes just for an hour, see through your eyes and find out what you're thinking and what kind of person you are. Like Nina, revolution rejected Treplev/Meyerhold and chose Trigorin/ Stanislavsky. It abandoned openly revolutionary vision of the way life is in dreams and chose prurient desire, private petty desire, to be in your shoes just for an hour, see through your eyes and find out what you're thinking. ... The reasons for that choice are less interesting than fact that a choice had indeed be made; Chekhov had understood that as clearly as he understood most things. And casting of his play for that evening seems an act of prophecy, for choice must still be made today: in distinctions between work of Stanislavsky and work of Meyerhold definition of a modern theater is be found. Some of those distinctions are historical: triumph of Moscow Art Theater and Stanislavsky's Method was not in what it began, but in what it ended. It was end of nineteenth century, not beginning of twentieth. It was a triumph of culmination, not of innovation. Yet it was a triumph; Art Theater endures this day, and its influence has been powerful, especially in America. It is familiar. Meyerhold and his theater were obliterated. Upon what basis, then, can we make a reasoned choice? How can we distinguish, so late, Meyerhold's new forms? It is difficult; we must speculate over what has vanished irretrievably. But others have speculated before us, one in particular, all day long, after seeing Meyerhold's production of Griboedov's play Woe Wit in Moscow on evening of March 25, 1928.