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Stanislavsky in Focus: An Acting Master for the Twenty- First Century, 2nd edition. By Sharon Marie Carnicke. New York: Routledge, 2009; pp. xiv + 252. $115.00 cloth, $28.95 paper.
In Stanislavsky in Focus: An Acting Master for the Twenty-First Century (2nd ed.), Sharon Carnicke "strives to set the record straight" (1). Indeed, she successfully demythologizes and deconstructs the legendary director and acting teacher. Divided into three sections, "Transmission," "Translation," and "Transformation," the text chronicles and analyzes Stanislavsky's early trips to the United States, examines the "publication maze" (vii) in both the US and USSR, and explores previously overlooked aspects of his System. In addition to a thorough bibliography and endnotes, Carnicke concludes with a glossary of terms from Stanislavsky's System, including "In Practice" annotations for some. These examples of "historically based exercises from Russian-language documents and class work at the Moscow Art Theatre Studio, the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts (formerly GITIS) and the Bennett Lab" (211) lend a pedagogical element to the text.
Carnicke offers several examples of popular notions of Stanislavsky that have prevailed for decades, and then counters those assumptions. She dispels the myth that Stanislavsky was solely devoted to realism, with its psychological and emotional underpinnings, by including direct translations from a selection of his notes on the topic of "through-line" (2). These mention the concept of "prana" (2), later described in her glossary as "a Sanskrit word from Yoga to describe the energy that gives life to the body" (222), and, interestingly, they do not include concepts such as "emotional recall and personal substitutions" (3) associated with the American Method. Furthermore, Carnicke acknowledges that...