6FLHQFHDQGWKH6WDQLVODYVN\7UDGLWLRQRI$FWLQJUHYLHZ

,DQ:DWVRQ

Modern Drama, Volume 49, Number 4, Winter 2006, pp. 528-530 (Review)

3XEOLVKHGE\8QLYHUVLW\RI7RURQWR3UHVV
DOI: 10.1353/mdr.2007.0014

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mdr/summary/v049/49.4watson.html

Access provided by New York University (5 Aug 2015 03:54 GMT)

528

REVIEWS

still-raging academic war but argues that these plays could not have been
created without this multiplicity of influences. She also does her
homework well outlining, for instance, how Lawsons Processional is
the product of a confluence of sources, including the ballet Parade, the
West Virginia coal miners strike of 1920, blackface minstrelsy, and
vaudeville puns. Walker wisely ends her study with a discussion of
Machinal, where she demonstrates how Treadwells deft contrapuntal
layering of bodies, voices, and words within a powerful literary text
effectively justifies her thesis.

JONATHAN PITCHES.

Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting. London and

New York: Routledge, 2006. Pp. ix 225, illustrated. $115/65 (Hb).

Reviewed by Ian Watson, Rutgers University

In Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting, Jonathan Pitches
explores what he terms the scientific subtext underlying Stanislavskys
acting system from its origins through its North American incarnations
and into contemporary Russia (2). Pitches attempts to unpick the
underlying framework of a practice that has shaped much of western
theatre since the early years of the twentieth century, dividing his
investigation into three parts (2). The first section, The Roots of the
Tradition, deals with the evolution of Stanislavskys actor-training
system in light of the Cartesian division between mind and body and the
scientific ideas of Isaac Newton. Having established what he describes as
the mechanistic nature of Stanislavskys approach to performance against
the backdrop of early twentieth-century industrial practice in America
and Russia among the likes of Henry Ford, the management theorist
Fredrick Winslow Taylor, and his Russian disciple, Alexei Gastev,
Pitches contrasts Stanislavsky with Meyerhold in the second part,
The Newtonian Branch. Drawing upon the relationship between
Meyerholds biomechanics, Taylor, Gastev, and Ivan Pavlovs experiments with reflexology, and the American behaviourist school of
psychology, he concludes that Meyerholds acting theories are even
more Newtonian than those of his predecessor. Meyerholds contribution
to an historical understanding of Stanislavskys theories established,
Pitches traces a further variation in their move to North America via
Richard Boleslavsky, Lee Strasberg, and to a lesser extent Stella
Adler, Sanford Meisner, and Robert Lewis. In the third part of the book,
The Romantic Tradition, Pitches contrasts the linear, rational
trajectory of Stanislavskys legacy with what he characterizes as the
Romantic branch of his acting tradition. Rooted in Goethes view of

Reviews

529

science as a synthesis of nature in which the whole is encapsulated in the

smallest of things, this is the strain of performance practice that favours
the organic and intuitive over mechanistic causality. Michael Chekhovs
acting technique, particularly as it evolved during his residence at
Dartington Hall in England between 1936 and 1938, and the ludo theatre
system developed by the contemporary Russian director and teacher
Anatoly Vasiliev (who is little known in the west) are at the heart of
these chapters.
More in the vein of cultural studies than conventional assessments of
acting techniques, Pitches book traces these contrasting foundational
modalities through a weave of history, theories, practice, and, at times,
philosophy. All but Vasiliev in this study are dead. But, in acknowledgement
of oral traditions that have been passed down through the generations,
Pitches includes brief interludes with some of those he has observed
personally who carry historys legacy in their teaching and performance.
These include the likes of Alexei Levinsky and Gennady Bogdanov, who,
through their studies with Nikolai Kustov, have a direct link back to
Meyerhold; David Zinder, who bases his work in Israel on Chekhov; and
Vasiliev himself, who studied at the institute founded by Meyerhold
and served his apprenticeship under Maria Knebel, a pupil of both
Stanislavsky and Michael Chekhov.
This is a book for those with an investment in performer training and
technique; yet the writer does not assume his reader knows all the facts
and/or history of each of the theories dealt with. He supplies thumbnail
histories of his protagonists while examining the circumstances that
affected each of the actor-training systems he considers. The studies of
Boleslavsky and Chekhov are particularly revealing in this regard, as is
the consideration of the French psychologist Theodule Ribot, whose
work on affective memory informed Stanislavskys early psychologically
based acting theory.
The volume offers a perceptive blend of technical analysis, historical
research, and comparative insight. Some might ask, for instance, why
Pitches includes Meyerhold, who is frequently cast as the antithesis of
Stanislavsky, in an evaluation of the latters legacy. But the chapter on
Meyerhold reveals not only a connection between them in light of their
relationship to science; it also provides a historical context for
Meyerholds ideas that, in turn, places Stanislavsky in the thinking of
his day in a way that a critique of the latter alone could not. Similarly, the
studies of Chekhov, Strasberg, and Vasiliev owe a debt to historic
investigation as much as an appraisal of their theories and practice.
While Pitchess synthesis is largely successful, it also leads to
imbalances in some sections. The chapters on Boleslavsky and
Chekhov are, for example, more developed and informative than those

530

REVIEWS

on Meyerhold or even Stanislavsky himself. This is no doubt due, in part,

to the fact that there is relatively more information in general currency
about the latter than the former. Hence the writer can safely assume that
the reader knows certain facts about Meyerhold and Stanislavsky,
leading to somewhat fragmented and truncated examinations of both.
This is not true of Chekhov and Boleslavsky, whose histories are much
more woven into the fabric of the discussion of their acting theories,
teaching, and practice. Equally, some parts of the book are more
successful than others. The lengthy digression into comparing Japanese
Noh theatre to biomechanics does little to advance the authors thesis,
for instance. Yet this harnessing of a contemporary practice to illustrate a
point is most helpful elsewhere, as in the consideration of Bogdanov and
Levinsky, which helps save Meyerhold (somewhat) from the accusation
of opportunism.
Minor quibbles aside, this is a book that attempts nothing less than to
straddle the Atlantic divide. Its narrative is in keeping with a division that
is more common in Europe than in the United States between the applied
training of the conservatory and the scientific nature of theatre studies
in the academy. Theatre science, a not uncommon term in continental
Europe especially, is a term rarely heard in America. This book goes some
way towards addressing that divide by explicating a scientific thesis
underlying the most practical of applied systems, actor training, and, by
extension, performer practice. The fact that the writer admits that the
Stanislavsky tradition encompasses two opposing branches of science
only serves to highlight how difficult it is to offer a cohesive dialogue
between science and art.

JOHN PILLING. A Samuel Beckett Chronology. Author Chronologies series.

New York and Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Pp. xviii 265.
$65/55 (Hb).

Reviewed by Craig N. Owens, Drake University

Becketts conciseness is both tragic and joyful. We mourn words,
sentences, and paragraphs excised from drafts on their way to becoming
finished texts. Still, we rejoice in the lightness of his work, marvelling at
the mastery of a fast-forward in Krapps Last Tape or a fragmentary
reminiscence in Rockaby. The ghost of the unsaid seems to haunt
Becketts works, animating the said and arbitrating sayability. John
Pilling, in his recent synopsis of Becketts life and work, A Samuel Beckett
Chronology, evokes the same tragic joy, tantalizing us with the
unrevealed, even in the midst of revelation. He plays lightly within the