The Works of I.S.Turgenev in the Art of M.V.Dobuzhinsky

The article is the first to examine the issue of the influence of Ivan Turgenev’s works on the art of Mstislav Dobuzhinsky not only in scenography, but also in illustrations and vignettes. Thanks to the artist’s memoirs, it was established that Turgenev’s works did not arouse his creative interest. It is concluded that Dobuzhinsky read the novels The Noble Nest and Smoke in his youth. In the design of Turgenev’s plays A Month in the Village; Breakfast at the Leader; The Workman; Where it is thin, there it is torn; and Provincial for the Moscow Art Theater, Dobuzhinsky turned to the proposal and choice of Konstantin Stanislavsky. The author used a comprehensive method that combined a formal-stylistic analysis of the sketches of sets and costumes, illustrations and vignettes, with a source-based analysis of the artist’s diaries and letters. It was revealed that the silhouette-figure “Girl with Flowers” can be attributed to the complex of these vignettes. The article is the first to address the issue of Dobuzhinsky’s appeal to the art of the Italian Renaissance. It is established that the Cathedral of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice influenced the image of the greenhouse in the sketches of the scenery for the play based on the play A Month in the Village, while the portraits of Pietro della Fancesca and Sandro Botticelli influenced the portrait of actress Lydia Koreneva.

Teatro baseado em imagem: uma nova pedagogia para um teatro “novo”

Esse artigo captura a apresentação, discussões e diálogo interativo da conferência A função teatral da imagem e sua relação com os outros elementos da encenação. A ideia principal da conferência é que hoje em dia o contexto das artes performáticas pede reconsideração do método pedagógico da profissão de diretor teatral. Eu vou lembrar como o “trabalho” de diretor teatral emergiu no século XIX como um resultado lógico da industrialização. Trazer luz elétrica aos auditórios de teatro, construir grandes teatros com longos palcos, o apetite do público por encenações elaboradas e realistas usando modelos #D e maquinário complicado – tudo isso impôs a necessidade de um homem que tem ou desenvolve habilidades e knowhow de encenar. E foi assim que a história do teatro mundial foi reescrita no século XX – O Século do Diretor. Além disso, as duas pessoas mais influentes do teatro do último século foram ambos diretores e professores: Konstantin Stanislavsky e Bertolt Brecht. Mas e sobre nosso século XXI? O teatro ainda é um playground para os diretores? Minha teoria é que as artes performáticas hoje estão apagando os padrões “tradicionais” dos precursores do teatro sob a pressão do novo papel que o teatro é exigido a performar na sociedade. O teatro do Era Digital precisa ter a mesma estrutura “pixelada” que todas as outras criações humanas. Esse é o porquê eu acredito fortemente que a pedagogia do teatro deve ser reconsiderada e reorganizada tendo como sua ideia central a dicotomia entre a estrutura dramática e pós-dramática da peça. Afinal, como Peter Brook disse, “uma peça é uma peça”. Como suporte para demonstração e discussões, usarei a teoria de Meyerhold sobre como construir uma performance, o diagrama de Schlemmer sobre tipos de performances, as observações de Brecht sobre teatro dramático versus teatro épico, a teoria de Lehmann sobre teatro pós-dramático e os argumentos de Erika Fischer-Lichte sobre estéticas transformadoras. Usarei imagens de shows encenados por diretores de teatro de destaque, que marcaram ou marcam como fazemos e vemos o teatro hoje.

Acting

Acting on the modern stage ranges from the psychological realism of Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863–1938) to the sensory assault of Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) to the didactic presentation of Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), to name only three of the best-known styles. While the range and variety of acting styles is not unique to the modern stage, the self-conscious delineation of those styles—both in relation to and as theories of representation—is. Previously, an actor’s performance—often of a well-known dramatic text—was regarded as his or her own interpretation of a role, assessed in relation to other actors’ forays in that part. But with the development of advanced stage machinery, allowing for elaborate scenic and lighting designs, acting became only one of many elements from which to make a theatrical work of art, displacing the actor from the center to the margins of the creative process. Assuming center stage were the playwright and director. The passage of an international copyright agreement in 1891 meant that playwrights could exercise more authorial control over their dramatic designs. And, in order to realize the material dimensions of such dramas in performance, the specialized position of the director emerged to coordinate the increasingly complex elements of the production. Consequently, modernist styles of acting developed in relation to the textual and directorial constraints of the newly configured modern theater.

“Suiting Forms to Their Conceit”: Emotion and Convention in Eighteenth-Century Tragic Acting

When Horace wrote in Ars Poetica, “If you would have me weep, you must first feel grief yourself” (“Si vis me flere dolendum est primum ipsi tibi”), he expressed the ancient world's view that, in order to emotionally affect his audience, an orator needed to feel the emotion himself. This idea was widely subscribed to in the eighteenth century. In the modern era Konstantin Stanislavsky engaged in a sustained investigation of emotion and acting, stressing that the actor needed to experience “real feeling” in order for the audience to experience authentic emotions also. As a theory of emotional transmission, it seems like common sense. Yet, when Denis Diderot witnessed in Baron d'Holbach's salon David Garrick's parlor trick of sticking his head out between two screens, and cycling through a range of passions with his face, the great philosophe wondered whether the actor felt anything at all even though his audience, including Baron Grimm, evidently did. “Can his soul have experienced all these feelings, and played this kind of scale in concert with his face?” Diderot asked, and then answered, “I don't believe it; nor do you.” By deciding in the negative, that Garrick could not have felt anything, Diderot reveals a common fallacy of the audience: the belief that what an audience feels reflects, and is a result of, what an actor feels. The problem for Diderot, which he addressed in the Paradox of Acting (1773), was how an actor such as Garrick managed to evoke emotions in his audience when he apparently felt nothing himself.

The Breath of a Poem

Today, we may know confessional poetry as a set of texts that are printed in books, but in its time it was also a performance genre. This chapter demonstrates how the performance of poems—in the privacy of the poet’s study, at public poetry readings, and in the studios of recorded literature companies—shaped this genre, determined its tactics, and influenced its style. An extended comparison of Robert Lowell and Allen Ginsberg shows that breath was a key medium for confessional poets, and a study of Anne Sexton’s career—both on the page and at the podium—shows how she “breathed back” dead poems in live performance. Throughout, this chapter focuses on the feelings of embarrassment confessional poetry raised, and the uses to which poets could put such feelings. It also highlights contemporary trends in “performance” and their impact on confessional poets—e.g., Anne Sexton’s debt to the acting theories of Konstantin Stanislavsky and to Method acting as theorized by American director Lee Strasberg.

Explanations and Implications of ‘Psychophysical’ Acting

The term ‘psychophysical’ in relation to acting and performer training is widely used by theatre scholars and practitioners. Konstantin Stanislavsky is considered to have been an innovator in developing an approach to Western acting focused on both psychology and physicality. The discourse encompasses questions of practice, of creativity and emotion, the philosophical problem of mind–body from Western and Eastern perspectives of spirituality. In this article, Rose Whyman attempts to uncover what Stanislavsky meant by his limited use of the term ‘psychophysical’ and suggests that much of the discourse remains prone to a dualist mind–body approach. Clarification of this is needed in order to further understanding of the practice of training performers. Rose Whyman is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham. She researches the science of actor training and is the author of The Stanislavsky System of Acting (Cambridge, 2008) and Stanislavsky: the Basics (Routledge, 2013).