The Science of Acting in the Russian Theatre at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century – From the Modern Epoch to the Avant-Garde

Abstract

K.S. Stanislavsky’s System remains the basis for actor training in conservatoires in the UK and more widely and Vs. E. Meyerhold’s Biomechanics is increasing in popularity as a training method in the twenty-first century. Both methods were rooted in scientific understandings from the modern epoch to the avant-garde, so it is important to question how this remains relevant to today’s practice. This essay explores responses to Diderot’s Le paradoxe sur le comédien (The Paradox of the Actor) in Russia from the nineteenth century to the 1930s, which, essentially, questioned whether “head” or “heart” should be primary in acting. A.N. Ostrovskii and P.D. Boborykin discussed this question from the 1860s in relation to the new science of I.M. Sechenov, which theorised generating emotion by reflex. Reflex theory impacted the debate between “experiencing” and “representation” in acting. The development of I.P. Pavlov’s reflex conditioning had further implications for “heart” or “head” and “experiencing” or “representation” debates for Stanislavsky and Meyerhold. In the 1930s, L. S. Vygotsky proposed a new response to Diderot’s Paradox and N.A. Bernstein’s neurophysiology pushed against the Soviet Pavlovian paradigm – a new context for reassessment of the great directors’ work.