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Abstract
Cultural Transmission of Actor Training Techniques (CTATT) is a research project that studies how actor training practices are transmitted across cultures, and in this process appropriated and transformed. It studies both historical and contemporary instances of actor training transmission, with particular attention given to how modern approaches like Stanislavsky’s system and Meyerhold’s biomechanics are adopted in contemporary training. The project is based at the Department of Theatre Studies (University of Malta) and was officially launched in April 2018. In this essay project director Stefan Aquilina contextualises the research within broader discourses about cultural transmission, and discusses the first event – a series of workshops on Stanislavsky’s magic ‘if’ with different European practitioners – organised within the project’s remit.
Notes
1 I would like to signal here Jonathan Pitches’ work in the field of performer training transmission, which has provided a starting point for my own research in the field. I would also like to thank Professor Pitches and the other members of the research group Performer Training, Preparation and Pedagogy of the School of Performance and Cultural Industries (University of Leeds; http://www.pci.leeds.ac.uk/research/research-groupings/performance-training-preparation-and-pedagogy/) for their generous feedback on some of the ideas about cultural transmission and actor training presented here.
2 Odin Teatret actress Iben Nagel Rasmussen, for example says that ‘[t]eaching has in fact taught me a lot. […] It’s important to peel off all the mistakes you’ve made, and pass on what you feel to be essential. Teaching gives you an opportunity to see if your principles are objective, if they have value for anyone other than yourself’ (Christoffersen Citation1993, p. 174).
3 This is not to say, of course, that issues arising from the ‘higher realms’ of politics (Lefebvre Citation2008, p. 45) are not embroiled in transmission processes, because they are. Issues related to colonialism (e.g. a tension between acceptance and resistance), for example, are key factors in understanding how transmission works across cultures whose past is defined by power relations. See, for example, Syed Jamil Ahmed’s reading of Stanislavsky’s influence in Bangladesh, in Pitches and Aquilina Citation2017, especially pp. 437–40.
4 More information about the Department of Theatre Studies of the University of Malta can be accessed here: https://www.um.edu.mt/performingarts/theatre.
5 These interviews can be found in the Interviews section of the Project’s website, https://www.ctatt.org/interviews. I would like to thank the three practitioners for their inputs during the workshops and their general availability.
6 For more information see relevant interviews on the project’s website.
7 The attempt to broaden the application of the ‘system’ chimes with Stanislavsky’s own efforts to show that his practices could indeed be applied not only to realistic texts like Chekhov’s or Gorki’s but to any kind or style of theatre practice (in Toporkov Citation1979, p. 153).
8 For a longer discussion of ludus and ludo see Pitches (Citation2005, pp. 158–60).
9 The importance of precision was also underlined by Bergamo and Korčák, the former when working with imaginary objects for example, the latter during the exploration of invented scenarios.
10 Carnicke (Citation2009, p. 221) explains: ‘For the American Method, Lee Strasberg rejected [the “what would I do?”] formulation, adopting what he thought to be Yevgeny Vakhtangov’s modification: “What would motivate me, the actor, to behave in the way that the character does?” This question allows the actor to replace the play’s circumstance with a personal one (called a “Substitution”)’. Jones, in fact, often used this alternative formulation to the ‘if’, namely: what would make me do/think/feel what the character does/thinks/feels?
11 Korčák remarked that the source of this exercise on the centres of energy was Mikhail Chekhov.
12 A scenario of Korčák that particularly foregrounded process work was that of ‘the seed growing into a tree’. This manifested a developmental trajectory that was easy to articulate: start from the seed and allow it to grow, experiencing its various stages of growth. Korčák developed a very complex dramatic situation around this exercise, which included the presence of the wind, the sea, the sun, the type of tree, etc.
13 All three practitioners also used variations on the basic ‘walk in the space’ exercise, confirming its wide use in actor training (see also Vorwerg Citation2018, p. 56).
14 In my work as a teacher, I often use the metaphor of breathing, of ‘letting the action breath’, to expose students to the need of going through the necessary logistical steps when executing a task, without hurrying to the end result.