By means of études: Boris Kulnev in an advanced actor training class in Beijing, 1955-1956

ABSTRACT

From January 1955 to April 1956, the Soviet acting teacher Boris Grigorievich Kulnev (1904–1990) conducted an Advanced Actor Training Class at the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing. This programme was caught up in a larger agenda, which aimed at diffusing the Stanislavsky System of acting throughout the newly established theatres and dramatic schools in the People’s Republic of China. The participants were carefully chosen from all regions of the country and had to take entrance exams for admission. The year-and-half training programme encompassed all classical Stanislavskian exercises from concentration of attention to the method of étude. All in all, the students rehearsed four plays, including an adaptation of the Chinese novel Baofeng zhouyu (The Hurricane). Once the head of the Boris Shchukin Higher Drama School at the Vakhtangov Theatre, Kulnev was steeped in the Vakhtangov school of stage art, a prestigious lineage traceable to Evgeny Vakhtangov, a protégé of Stanislavsky and Leopold Sulerzhitsky who had adopted the étude technique as one of his staple training practices. By analysing the transcripts of the Advanced Class, this article zooms in on the exercises coached by Kulnev at the stage of basic actor-training and the thematic études he used in devising The Hurricane. I argue that by introducing études, Kulnev enabled the actors to adapt to changing conditions onstage, with improvisation erupting into their performance time and again. Unless otherwise noted, all translations in this paper are the author’s own.

KEYWORDS:

• Boris Kulnev
• étude
• The Hurricane
• Evgeny Vakhtangov
• collective creation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Tsai, Daughter of Shanghai, 195.

2. Ibid., 195, 196.

3. In fact, as early as 1956, “a vulgarized understanding of Stanislavsky” had plagued theatrical performances and some Chinese critics began to question the unanimous imposition of the System on xiqu and huaju training. See Liu, “‘Spoken Drama (Huaju) with a Chinese Flavour’,” 269; Rebull, “Locating Theatricality on Stage and Screen,” 46–71; and Tian, The Poetics of Difference and Displacement, 171–73.

4. According to Sharon Marie Carnicke, the “reinterpretation and adaptation [of the system] is exactly what Stanislavsky hoped to inspire in actors. He hated the dogmatic teacher who insists upon a single correct way” (Carnicke, “Stanislavsky’s System,” 23).

5. Tai, “Stanislavsky and Chinese Theatre,” 62; and Pitches and Li, “Stanislavsky with Chinese Characteristics,” 187.

6. Pitches and Li, “Stanislavsky with Chinese Characteristics,” 170, 171.

7. Ibid., 170; and Anonymous, “Boris Korolyov,” http://www.vakhtangov.ru/en/persones/korolevboris.html, accessed on 17 September 2019.

8. With the exception of Sun Weishi (1921–68) who studied directing and acting with Nikolai M. Gorchakov, Mikhail Mikhaylovich Tarkhanov, and Leslie at GITIS in the mid-1940s, Chinese huaju actors before 1954 had to resort to documentation sources to make a mediate contact with the Stanislavsky technique. Mei Qian (1916–2002), a renowned Chinese huaju actor and director working at the Beijing People’s Art Theatre, once recalled: “I learned the Stanislavsky System of Acting in a circuitous way. I remember that I have borrowed [the Chinese rendition of] An Actor Prepares from my friend after the end of the Sino-Japanese War. This is a book in which Stanislavsky summarized his acting experience and the common rules of stage acting, developing some basic methods for actor training. This first volume privileges the psycho-technique, whereas the second and third volumes addressing the physical action and character-building had not been translated into Chinese at that time. Perhaps for reasons of translation, I had only a hazy grasp of the first volume, while some points it handles read very mystic and cryptic” (Mei, “Ji Kuliniefu,” 71).

9. Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire, 16–27. Sharon Carnicke also stresses the importance of oral tradition (“lore”) and classroom circuit that participated in the transmission of Stanislavsky’s work. See Carnicke, Stanislavsky in Focus, 61–75.

10. For a historical survey of xiaopin, a form of theatrical skit that is regularly staged as part of the televised Chinese New Year Gala Performance and has enjoyed a vogue from the 1980s on, see Du, “Xiaopin,” 382–99.

11. Zarrilli ed., Acting (Re)Considered, 3.

12. Filshtinsky, “Education Through Etudes,” 116.

13. Carnicke, “Stanislavsky’s System” 23.

14. Kulnev, “Sulian zhuanjia Bao·Ge·Kuliniefu dui woyuan jiaoyuan shifan jiaoxue de ketang jilu (13–16),” 74, 75.

15. Ibid., 73.

16. Glaviskusstvo, “‘Biaoyan ke’ jiaoxue dagang,” 44, 45.

17. Ibid., 46–50.

18. Kulnev, Bao·Ge·Kuliniefu zai Biaoyan ganbu xunlian ban jiangke jilu (1–20), 69.

19. Tian, “Youguan biaoyan ke jiaoxue dagang ji jiaoxue fa de jidian yijian,” 2, 3.

20. Gu, Lingshuang aoxue weiran li: Shanghai xiju xueyuan minguo xiaoshi kaolue, 32, 103, 104.

21. Fei, “Huang Zuolin,” 235–48.

22. Bao, “Hong Shen, Behavioral Psychology, and the Technics of Social Effects,” 249–97.

23. Tian, “Youguan biaoyan ke jiaoxue dagang ji jiaoxue fa de jidian yijian,” 5.

24. Xue, “Xuexi Sulian biaoyan jiaoxue dagang de jige yiti,” 19; and Zhang, “Dui zhiding biaoyan jiaoxue dagang de jidian yijian,” 23.

25. Xue, “Xuexi Sulian biaoyan jiaoxue dagang de jige yiti,” 20.

26. Whyman, The Stanislavsky System of Acting, 130–51. Stanislavsky’s impartial attitude towards both perezhivanie and voploshchenie would often crystalize into two parallel curricula for the acting training programme, such as those being exercised at the St. Petersburg State Academy of Theatre Arts (SPGATI) after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. See Farber, Stanislavsky in Practice, 216–26.

27. Anonymous, Xiju yishujia de yaolan: Zhongyang xiju xueyu, 82–86. For a historical overview of folk dance in the PRC, see Wilcox, Revolutionary Bodies. Quyi (song art) is an umbrella term that covers oral forms of traditional Chinese folkloric arts ranging from dagu (drum songs), xiangsheng (crosstalk) to shuoshu (storytelling). One of those special invitees, Hou Baolin (1917–93), a legendary xiangsheng master, was especially adept at playing with the tone, tempo and rhythm of the Mandarin Chinese on the public stage. In one of his xiangsheng pieces he famously averred that “performing xiangsheng is no easy task; At the very least, you have to learn to talk.” See Link, An Anatomy of Chinese, 31.

28. Tian, “Zhongxi ‘Biaoxun ban,’” 14.

29. Lan and Luo, Yanyu pingsheng Lan Tianye, 136.

30. Song, “Sulian xijujia zai Zhongguo,” 9.

31. Ibid.

32. Lan and Luo, Yanyu pingsheng Lan Tianye, 138.

33. Kulnev, Bao·Ge·Kuliniefu zai Biaoyan ganbu xunlian ban jiangke jilu (1–20), 16.

34. Ibid., 32, 33.

35. Ibid., 42, 43. When commenting on similar “make-believe” exercise, Jean Benedetti writes that “what is important is not the object itself but my attitude to it. That is what creates the ‘reality’ of the situation” (Benedetti, Stanislavski and the Actor, 5).

36. Stanislavski, An Actor’s Work, 169, 171.

37. Kulnev, Bao·Ge·Kuliniefu zai Biaoyan ganbu xunlian ban jiangke jilu (1–20), 45, 57, 58, 103.

38. For the translation of this exercise’s name, I am referring to Andrei Malaev-Babel’s glossary of terms. See Malaev-Babel ed., The Vakhtangov Sourcebook, 330, 344.

39. Kulnev, Bao·Ge·Kuliniefu zai Biaoyan ganbu xunlian ban jiangke jilu (1–20), 59.

40. Gordon, The Stanislavsky Technique, 107.

41. Kulnev, Bao·Ge·Kuliniefu zai Biaoyan ganbu xunlian ban jiangke jilu (1–20), 79, 97. “Iconicity” or “icon” is a semiotic term formulated by Charles Sanders Pierce as one of the three types of sign.

42. For the translation of this exercise’s name, see Malaev-Babel ed., The Vakhtangov Sourcebook, 330.

43. Kulnev, Bao·Ge·Kuliniefu zai Biaoyan ganbu xunlian ban jiangke jilu (1–20), 96.

44. Merlin, Konstantin Stanislavsky, 35. As Maria Shevtsova recently mentioned, the original word order of this chain should be “now, today, here.“ “Now” is accentuated by Stanislavsky because “the idea of ‘this instant’ is crucial for defining the state of ‘I am’ (‘I am present’, glossed above) as the ‘threshold’ to the subconscious” (Shevtsova, Rediscovering Stanislavsky, 103).

45. Carnicke, Stanislavsky in Focus, 217.

46. Filshtinsky, “Education Through Etudes,” 121, 125; and “Zhuanye shuyu beihou yincang zhe shenme – ‘xiaopin fangfa’ de qiyuan,” 21, 30.

47. Kulnev, Bao·Ge·Kuliniefu zai Biaoyan ganbu xunlian ban jiangke jilu (1–20), 105, 106.

48. Kulnev, Bao·Ge·Kuliniefu zai Biaoyan ganbu xunlian ban jiangke jilu (51–83), 75.

49. Kulnev, Bao·Ge·Kuliniefu zai Biaoyan ganbu xunlian ban jiangke jilu (1–20), 141–43.

50. Ibid., 135–40.

51. Kulnev, Bao·Ge·Kuliniefu zai Biaoyan ganbu xunlian ban jiangke jilu (21–50), 57, 111, 112, 138.

52. This notion is inspired by but not limited to Joseph Roach’s formulation that analyses the genealogies of the circum-Atlantic performance from the perspectives of “kinesthetic imagination, vortices of behavior, and displaced transmission.” In this sense, the embodied transmission of cultural practices is not a line of succession. Conversely, there is room for interruption, fissure, and overturn. See Roach, Cities of the Dead, 25–30. For example, Chinese spoken theatre practitioners’ kinship with the Vakhtangov school may hearken all the way to Zhu Xiangcheng (1901–43), a leftist director who translated Leonid Andreev’s four-act play The Waltz of the Dogs into Chinese and was said to receive training at the Vakhtangov Theatre circa 1933. Yet he was involved in the Great Purge in 1938, sent to the Gulag camp in Siberia, and died in 1943 (Zhu, “Zhu Xiangcheng: Xiaoshi zai Xiboliya de Zhongguo ren,” 77–79).

53. Kulnev, “Kuliniefu tongzhi zai woyuan qingzhu Shichujin xiju xuexiao jianxiao sishi zhounian jinianhui shang de jianghua,” 15–18.

54. Malaev-Babel, Yevgeny Vakhtangov, 128, 132.

55. Ibid., 34, 82, 83, 136–40. Both Suler and Chekhov were famous for initiating improvisations.

56. Volland, Socialist Cosmopolitanism, 39–61.

57. Huang, “Rural Class Struggle in the Chinese Revolution,” 105–43.

58. Kulnev, Bao·Ge·Kuliniefu zai Biaoyan ganbu xunlian ban jiangke jilu (51-83), 129.

59. Chou, The Hurricane, 11.

60. Kulnev, Bao·Ge·Kuliniefu zai Biaoyan ganbu xunlian ban jiangke jilu (21–50), 149; and Yao, “Cong shenghuo dao juese,” 10, 11.

61. Yao, “Cong shenghuo dao juese,” 10; and “Dakai jiyi de cangku,” 42.

62. Chou, The Hurricane, 54, 55.

63. Yao, “Cong shenghuo dao juese,” 11; and Yao, “Dakai jiyi de cangku,” 40.

64. Ma, “Zhongguo ertong xiju chuchuangqi de wailai yingxiang yu minzu chuangxin – yi Malan hua yu Kuliniefu weili,” 133–42.

65. Collective creation by means of improvisation is traceable to Stanislavsky’s aborted experimentation with Meyerhold at Povarskaya Street in 1905, which “represented a sharp break from the (so recently established) tradition of director as absolute authority.” This approach, albeit “democratic,” was equated with caprice and dilettantism by its opponent Nemirovich-Danchenco. See Syssoyeva, “Revolution in the Theatre I,” 43, 46.

66. Gao, Wutai shang de xin Zhongguo: Zhongguo dangdai juchang yanjiu, 196.

67. By “conformist” I mean the étude technique’s political conformity with the prevailing ideology. Here I am resonating with Catherine Swatek’s insights in her study of Kun Opera actors in the Ming and Qing dynasty (1368–1911). In the light of Pierre Bourdieu’s proposition, she argues that the players at that time inclined to reformulate the originally subversive play texts and suit them to the mainstream ethos. See Swatek, Peony Pavilion Onstage, 21, 22, 248–50.

68. Kulnev, Bao·Ge·Kuliniefu zai Biaoyan ganbu xunlian ban jiangke jilu (51–83), 20.

69. Ibid., 57. By coincidence, such “field trip” tallies with Stanislavsky’s vision of acting traceable to Old Believer values: “work, art and acting were tightly intertwined.” Besides, Stanislavsky also prized the actors’ immersion in the circumstance similar to that of the play. See Shevtsova, Rediscovering Stanislavsky, 31, 202, 203.

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Hanyang (Harry) Jiang

Hanyang (Harry) Jiang is a PhD student in Theatre Studies at UBC, Canada. His research interests include the Stanislavsky System of acting; the cross currents of Modern Chinese, Russian, and Anglophone Theatre; plus, the interrelationship between theatre, emotion, body, and mind. The author is beholden to Jing Liu, Shaun Wang and Phoebe Chow, the librarians of the Asian Library at UBC, for their steadfast assistance regarding archival collection. He also owes a tremendous debt to Fish, Papa, Yiqiao Wang, and Min Qiao who helped scan and download original source material. Besides, he is grateful to Professor Paul Fryer and Dr. Stefan Aquilina for the organization of The S Word Symposium to enable him to present his preliminary ideas. Lastly, he wants to thank Professor Shengqing Wu and Yuning Liu for their insightful feedback; and, in particular, his supervisor Professor Siyuan Liu for his unwavering support and illumination.