The Russian Pre-Theatical Actor and the Stanislavsky System.

Abstract

The present study juxtaposes the “pre-theater” of Russian mummery and ritual sequences to Stanislavsky’s “System” of actor training. This approach affords an alternative perspective on the place and meaning of traditional performance in Russian theater history. The resulting narrative is based not on “evolution” and simplistic convergences such as the proposition that certain types of performance, such as those bearing a superficial resemblance to proscenium type presentations (mummers’ shows at Yuletide), were more “advanced” than less contained manifestations of traditional performance such as ambulatory rituals. Instead, continuity exists in structural and processual links between pre-theater and the System present in shared techniques for creating and inhabiting a character and the effects on this process of an actor’s relationship to fellow performers, audiences, and his community’s system of beliefs and practices. While pre-theatrical performance is not analogous to the System acting, traditional performers share many aspects of their approach with System actors. In this study, functional and structural features of each illuminate the other, such as applying Stanislavsky’s concept of “playing the self in given conditions” to describe the participant performer’s work as an actor in the traditional wedding sequence, and comparing the phenomenon of collective action in traditional performance to the genesis of the System and its transmission in the classroom. Applying Stanislavsky’s System to pre-theater provides a useful theoretical model for mapping a comprehensive description of an actor’s process onto certain aspects of performance in traditional communities. This model privileges the role of individual creation as a key factor in the dynamic process of challenging and reinforcing cultural continuity. As such, this study offers an alternative to accounts of traditional culture where impersonal social and cultural processes predominate. In terms of theater history, this research represents both an alternative to “evolutionary” accounts of Russian theater history and a consideration of the fundamental cultural roots of the System, those aspects of actor training and approaches to embodied performance which transcend not only 20th century acting theory but all of Russian theater as a national variant of the European stage-play tradition.