Teaching Stanislavsky : periodization and the formation of theatre canons

Abstract

Using Stanislavsky’s pre-System work as a case-study, this essay documents a recent experiment in “practice-based theatre histories”, where the teaching and research of historical material is treated as an embodied experience, lived through in the practice of the studio or performance. The core of the essay provides some suggestions for practice which draw attention to a number of techniques which Stanislavsky adopted during the years of the Alekseev Circle, the Society of Arts and Literature, and the early phase of the Moscow Art Theatre. While initially used to reinvigorate a history-based Stanislavsky class, the essay shows how these exercises developed into a broader historiographical engagement with periodization and the formation of theatre canons.