Table Of ContentActor Training
Second Edition
Actor Training expands on Alison Hodge’s highly-acclaimed and bestselling
Twentieth Century Actor Training. This exciting second edition radically updates the
original book making it even more valuable for any student of the history and practice
of actor training. The bibliography is brought right up to date and many chapters
are revised. In addition, eight more practitioners are included – and forty more
photographs – to create a stunningly comprehensive study.
The practitioners included are:
Stella Adler Joseph Chaikin Vsevolod Meyerhold
Eugenio Barba Jacques Copeau Ariane Mnouchkine
Augusto Boal Philippe Gaulier Monika Pagneux
Anne Bogart Jerzy Grotowski Michel Saint-Denis
Bertolt Brecht Maria Knebel Włodzimierz Staniewski
Peter Brook Jacques Lecoq Konstantin Stanislavsky
Michael Chekhov Joan Littlewood Lee Strasberg
Sanford Meisner
The historical, cultural and political context of each practitioner’s work is clearly set
out by leading experts and accompanied by an incisive and enlightening analysis of the
main principles of the practitioners’ training, practical exercises and key productions.
This book is an invaluable introduction to the principles and practice of actor training
and its role in shaping modern theatre.
Alison Hodge has been a professional director since 1982. She was assistant director
for Gardzienice Theatre and co-authored, with Włodzimierz Staniewski, Hidden
Territories: the Theatre of Gardzienice (Routledge, 2004). She is director of The
Quick and the Dead, an international theatre research company, and a Reader in
Theatre Practice at Royal Holloway College, University of London. Her website can be
found at www.alisonhodge.net
Actor Training
Second Edition
Edited by
Alison Hodge
First published 2010
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
Selection and Editorial Material © 2010 Alison Hodge
Individual Chapters © the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Actor training / edited by Alison Hodge. – 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Previously published under title: Twentieth century acting training,
2000.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Acting – Study and teaching. I. Hodge, Alison, 1959–
II. Twentieth century acting training.
PN2075.T94 2010
792.02'807 – dc22 2009028309
ISBN 0-203-86137-X Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-47167-2 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-415-47168-0 (pbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-86137-X (ebk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-47167-1 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-47168-8 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-86137-0 (ebk)
For Sophie and Hannah
And, in gratitude, to Janice Barton, Tatiana Bre, Daniela Garcia Casilda, Chiara
D’Anna, Luis Gallo Mudarra, Alexia Kokkali and Göze Saner
Contents
List of illustrations ix
Notes on contributors xii
Acknowledgements xvi
Preface xvii
Introduction xviii
stanislavsky’s system: pathways for the actor
1
Sharon Marie Carnicke 1
meyerhold and biomechanics
2
Robert Leach 26
jacques copeau: the quest for sincerity
3
John Rudlin 43
michael chekhov on the technique
4
of acting: ‘was don quixote true to life?’
Franc Chamberlain 63
michel saint-denis: training the
5
complete actor
Jane Baldwin 81
the knebel technique: active
6
analysis in practice
Sharon Marie Carnicke 99
viii contents
brecht and actor training: on whose
7
behalf do we act?
Peter Thomson 117
joan littlewood
8
Clive Barker 130
strasberg, adler and meisner:
9
method acting
David Krasner 144
joseph chaikin and aspects of actor
10
training: possibilities rendered present
Dorinda Hulton 164
peter brook: transparency and the
11
invisible network
Lorna Marshall and David Williams 184
grotowski’s vision of the actor: the
12
search for contact
Lisa Wolford 199
jacques lecoq, monika pagneux and
13
philippe gaulier: training for play,
lightness and disobedience
Simon Murray 215
training with eugenio barba: acting
14
principles, the pre-expressive and
‘personal temperature’
Ian Watson 237
ariane mnouchkine and the théâtre
15
du soleil: theatricalising history;
the theatre as metaphor; the actor
as signifier
Helen E. Richardson 250
w odzimierz staniewski: gardzienice
16 Ł
and the naturalised actor
Alison Hodge 268
anne bogart and siti company:
17
creating the moment
Royd Climenhaga 288
augusto boal and the theatre of the
18
oppressed
Frances Babbage 305
Index 325
Illustrations
1.1 Konstantin Stanislavsky (1922) 2
1.2 Stanislavsky as Astrov in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (1899) 3
1.3 Stanislavsky as Satin in Gorky’s The Lower Depths (1902) 7
1.4 Stanislavsky as Gaev and his wife Maria Lilina as Anya in
Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (1904) 14
1.5 Stanislavsky as Mikhailo Raikitin and Olga Knipper as
Natalya Petrovna in Turgenev’s A Month in the Country (1909) 20
2.1 Biomechanics: The Stance on the Back 27
2.2 Biomechanics: The Leap to the Chest 31
2.3 Biomechanics: The Stab with the Dagger 32
2.4 Biomechanics in action: D.E. (1924) 34
2.5 Meyerhold’s exercise: The Dactyl 35
2.6 Meyerhold’s exercise: Shooting from the Bow 39
3.1 Copeau: gymnastics class in the garden at Le Limon 45
3.2 Jacques Copeau as Plébère in L’Illusion 52
3.3 Copeau’s production of Les Fourberies de Scapin, Place
Saint-Sulpice, Paris (1922) with Georges Vitray as Scapin and
Suzanne Bing as Hyacinthe 59
4.1 Chekhov in the title role of Strindberg’s Erik XIV (1922)
directed by Vakhtangov and performed by the Moscow Art Theatre 66
4.2 Chekhov in the Dartington Studio with students 69
4.3 ‘Lightness’ exercises by Chekhov Theatre Players in the
Dartington Hall Gardens (1936) 72
4.4 Chekhov as Malvolio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night
performed by the Moscow Art Theatre 76
5.1 Saint-Denis giving a mask workshop at Juilliard retreat (1968) 83
5.2 Neutral or ‘noble’ masks: Four male and four female. Four stages
of life – childhood, youth, maturity and old age 92
