WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.000 Good morning, afternoon or evening depending on where you are in the world, and welcome to this latest event in the Stanislavsky Research Centre's range of activities. 00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:26.000 This is a centre co hosted by the University of Malta, and the University of Leeds, and co directed by Dr. Stefan Aquilina from Malta, and Professor Paul fryer is a visiting professor at Leeds amongst many other things and great to see them both in the 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:28.000 call. 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:36.000 My name is Jonathan Pitches. I'm Professor of Theatre and Performance. Here at Leeds, here being a virtual thing. 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:40.000 And I'm head of the School of Performance and Cultural Industries. 00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:44.000 and the Deputy Director of the Stanislavsky Research Centre. 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:54.000 I'm going to speak very briefly, but before I hand over to the very capable hands of Mark Shields, who's worked extremely hard to bring such a fantastic panel together. 00:00:54.000 --> 00:01:00.000 I wanted to just put this panel in context. 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:10.000 And also to apologize personally for an early exit for a long standing event to attend as part of my role as Head of School. 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:28.000 This, then, is one of a series of webinars as part of The S Word project. A key strand of the Stanislavsky Research Centre's program of activities. Previous events, if you haven't seen them, or connected to them after the event. 00:01:28.000 --> 00:01:35.000 Were on Stanislavsky and Race, Stanislavsky and Disability, and Stanislavsky and Online Learning. 00:01:35.000 --> 00:01:48.000 And I'll drop some links into the chat before I leave. If you check out the website you'll see recordings of these webinars and links to an incredibly wide range of Stanislavsky research resources. 00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:56.000 I should say, excitingly, that this is connected to a new book series, edited by Paul Fryer. 00:01:56.000 --> 00:02:01.000 Perhaps, unsurprisingly, named "Stanislavsky and..." 00:02:01.000 --> 00:02:12.000 and we welcome responses and ideas from any of you for new suggestions or proposals, either for webinars or books in this series. 00:02:12.000 --> 00:02:29.000 This is the last event for this year. But we have two further webinars coming up. So do keep a lookout and ongoing discussions about how to deliver our annual S Word international conference, maybe Paul has some thoughts about that later. 00:02:29.000 --> 00:02:47.000 So now let me with some pride and the deepest respect hand over to Mark, who amongst many other things is studying for a PhD with myself and Maria Kapsali at Leeds. Thank you very much, Jonathan. 00:02:47.000 --> 00:03:00.000 Hello everyone, I am Mark Shields, my pronouns are they/them. I am a postgraduate researcher at the School of Performance and Cultural Industries University of Leeds, I want to welcome and thank you for joining us today. 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:17.000 As the organizer and moderator I thought it might be helpful to give a brief sense of how I approached creating this event. 00:03:17.000 --> 00:03:23.000 And at first I admit that the title suggested a polemic that made me feel uncertain. 00:03:23.000 --> 00:03:38.000 As I mentioned in the description to the event, the prevalence of Konstantin Stanislavsky's work and its influence endures across the vast field of performance, and his prominence as a male figure receives renewed debate and criticism. 00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:53.000 and the subsequent actor training methodologies that cite and acknowledge his positive influence on them, are described by some feminist scholars, as oppressive. Nevertheless, Stanislavsky's artistic career and creative development was in close collaboration with women. And I also note the remarkable wealth of 00:03:53.000 --> 00:04:08.000 the remarkable wealth of scholarship by women in Stanislavsky Studies to celebrate. The practicalities of organizing such an event meant that I could only invite six speakers and I was spoiled for choice. 00:04:08.000 --> 00:04:17.000 Stanislavsky may provoke a sense of excitement, curiosity, reverence, nostalgia and the warmth of familiarity. 00:04:17.000 --> 00:04:28.000 Conversely, or perhaps not, his name also may feel strange, dissociating, outdated, offensive, and even painful. 00:04:28.000 --> 00:04:39.000 He still has the power to conjure a range of responses that may not always be experienced as exclusive from each other as the facile binary that I have just described might suggest 00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:44.000 Gender; its language, and significance, and function, continues to proliferate. 00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:53.000 And I think it is vital in any discussion of gender to acknowledge that gender is experienced understood and articulated differently across cultures. 00:04:53.000 --> 00:05:04.000 First Nation, indigenous, global south, global majority and pre colonial cultures may not necessarily articulate gender as phenomena organized in a binary structure of male and female. 00:05:04.000 --> 00:05:19.000 More recently, an expanded view of gender has gained resonance socially and politically as people find new and diverse language to describe their experiences of gender and identity. Stanislavsky, of course, was not immune to how socio cultural and political change 00:05:19.000 --> 00:05:33.000 shapes notions of gender as his lifetime spanned Imperial Russia, Revolution and the Soviet Union which produced new ideologies of what the Soviet man and woman should be. 00:05:33.000 --> 00:05:49.000 From Stanislavsky scholarship, we might also understand how language evolves and inflects the transmission of knowledge. A common feature globally in the discussion of gender are inequalities, and I cite Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality here. Crenshaw's concept which identifies the multiple levels of marginalization 00:05:49.000 --> 00:06:03.000 experienced by black women in the US criminal justice system has gained popularity outside of its original context to aid the understanding of the nuances of marginalization discrimination and inequality, and what Crenshaw explains, and I quote, 00:06:03.000 --> 00:06:07.000 the conceptual limitations of a single issue analyses. 00:06:07.000 --> 00:06:14.000 It is important to recognize the power of critique for breaking cultures of silence that enable and perpetuate harm. 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:23.000 I also invite us to think about how the repetition of injurious experiences might not solely define the pairing of Stanislavsky and Gender. 00:06:23.000 --> 00:06:35.000 Returning to this potential polemic, when I approached our speakers, I expressed that I am interested in what gender can offer Stanislavsky scholarship conceptually to cultivate new research practice and perspectives. 00:06:35.000 --> 00:06:47.000 Instead we might think of Stanislavsky with Gender, or, Stanislavsky through gender, rather than demarcating an unhelpful binary between the two that the use of 'and' in the title may signify. 00:06:47.000 --> 00:07:00.000 Instead, how might this relation we are making between Stanislavsky and Gender intersect and inevitably fragment. And how can this dynamic be mobilized productively by each of us respectively in a variety of ways. 00:07:00.000 --> 00:07:12.000 Dr. Maria Ignatieva will no longer be presenting this afternoon, unfortunately. Though our five speakers have accepted and interpreted my invitation of the conversation in their own way, with their own expertise and with much generosity, which I am delighted 00:07:12.000 --> 00:07:14.000 about and I thank them. 00:07:14.000 --> 00:07:27.000 Each speaker will have 10 minutes before we open for discussion between ourselves and questions from the Q&A function that Professor Paul Fryer has kindly offered to moderate and he will also conclude for us. And you can also use the chat function. 00:07:27.000 --> 00:07:34.000 So, I will now hand over to Professor J Ellen Gainor from Cornell University. 00:07:34.000 --> 00:07:41.000 Thank you, Ellen. 00:07:41.000 --> 00:07:54.000 Hello, everybody. Thank you so much, Mark for inviting me to be part of this today and I hope everyone will bear with me I am going to read a text just because that's, I think the, the best way for me to get through all of this. 00:07:54.000 --> 00:08:14.000 And let me just preface this by saying that this is new research. So your questions and your thoughts will be very welcome. And I look forward to, to hearing, hearing those from you. As Mark said I'm Professor J Ellen Gainor I'm in the department of 00:08:14.000 --> 00:08:26.000 Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University. My research centers on British and American modernist theatre and women's dramaturgy, as well as gender theory and performance. 00:08:26.000 --> 00:08:37.000 I have an article on Stanislavsky and feminism, that appeared a number of years ago now that I think is why Mark invited me so I'm delighted to be continuing this research. 00:08:37.000 --> 00:08:56.000 Now, I'm going to be speaking today about modernist acting on the American stage pre 1923 with textual evidence from Susan Glaspell's Trifles and A Jury of Her Peers, and I want to preface this also by saying that what really is spurring 00:08:56.000 --> 00:09:16.000 This work is not only these two texts, but also my interest in interrogating a trope in the history of American acting that basically looks at 1923, as a pivotal moment of significant transition and I'm going to talk about that. 00:09:16.000 --> 00:09:23.000 During during my remarks so we just want to frame things that way. 00:09:23.000 --> 00:09:42.000 In January, 1917, the French modernist director Jacques Copeau and actors from his Vieux-Colombier company arrived in New York for what became a two year residency Copeau had already been strongly influenced by Stanislavsky's writings and considered him 00:09:42.000 --> 00:09:47.000 his master in Copeau's own development as a director and teacher. 00:09:47.000 --> 00:10:00.000 During his time in New York Copeau documented his observations of US theater. And these first hand impressions filtered as they were through Copeau's Stanislavskian sensibility. 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:21.000 Opened helpful windows on to American stage artistry of this moment, just a few years before Boleslavsky and Ouspenskaya arrived in 1923 to introduce Stanislavskian techniques. 00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:41.000 Copeau later directly positioned his contibutions as precursors to those of Stanislavsky. And this is Copeau, quote, if the examples of our art that we were able to produce in New York, have made an impression. If they have had some influence and so prepared the way for the great Konstantin Stanislavsky, we are today 00:10:41.000 --> 00:10:45.000 happy and very proud. 00:10:45.000 --> 00:11:04.000 Now, given the dominant historical narrative that 1923 marks a revolutionary moment as completely changing the landscape of American acting Copeau's remarks suggests we may need a more nuanced historiography, particularly as we consider how Stanislavsky 00:11:04.000 --> 00:11:21.000 techniques, initially resonated with American acting. As a case study, we might consider the performances and dramaturgy of Susan Glaspell, who's work for the American I'm sorry the experimental Little Theatre Company. 00:11:21.000 --> 00:11:39.000 The Provincetown Players Copeau admired and for those, maybe not familiar with the Provincetown players It was one of the first of the American little theatre companies based on European alternative theatre models, and it's probably best known historically 00:11:39.000 --> 00:11:45.000 for starting Susan Glaspell's career as a playwright and also the playwriting of Eugene O'Neill. 00:11:45.000 --> 00:11:58.000 Now while Glaspell is remembered today primarily as a writer. I want to emphasize the synergies between her writing and her acting and explore how if examined this way. 00:11:58.000 --> 00:12:09.000 Her artistry may provide evidence of techniques that would soon resonate with those imported from Russia, especially for her female characters. 00:12:09.000 --> 00:12:19.000 In April 1917 Copeau attended a performance of Glaspell's play The People, in which she also performed one of the key roles. 00:12:19.000 --> 00:12:38.000 While he was critical of others in the cast, seeing in their work, the need for training in the modernist style Copeau noted that Glaspell's acting technique touched him, quote, to the core by the simplicity of her attitude, the pure quality of her person. 00:12:38.000 --> 00:12:44.000 The inimitable feeling in a nuance of her intonation. 00:12:44.000 --> 00:13:03.000 Now Copeau does not speculate on how she achieved this impact technically, but I'd like to suggest that her performances were effective because she already intuited, some of the psychological and physical underpinnings of the Stanislavskian actor's 00:13:03.000 --> 00:13:16.000 process. She was already quite familiar with the evolving psychological research and actually had already written another play about this called Suppressed Desires. 00:13:16.000 --> 00:13:34.000 Moreover, I believe that Glaspell through her explanation of the compositional steps for her best known play from 1916 called Trifles that play will offer us insights as relevant to her acting as to her play writing indeed shows us the important 00:13:34.000 --> 00:13:43.000 parallels between these forms of artistry. Glaspell began her career as a journalist in Iowa. 00:13:43.000 --> 00:14:01.000 For the Daily News she had been assigned to cover the trial of a farmer's wife accused of murdering her husband, and that case later formed the basis for Trifles and it short story counterpart, A Jury of Her Peers as Glaspell scholar Linda Benz 00:14:01.000 --> 00:14:20.000 observes Glaspell's reporting and her attitude toward the accused woman underwent a significant sympathetic shift. After she had been allowed to visit the farm and see for herself, the barren conditions of the accused woman's life. 00:14:20.000 --> 00:14:29.000 Now Glaspell provided us with a detailed description of how she developed this play for the Provincetown players company. 00:14:29.000 --> 00:14:33.000 And this is a little bit of a longer quote from Glaspell. 00:14:33.000 --> 00:14:40.000 I sat alone and looked for a long time at that bare little stage. 00:14:40.000 --> 00:14:44.000 After a time, the stage became a kitchen. 00:14:44.000 --> 00:14:51.000 I saw just where the stove was the table, and the steps going upstairs. 00:14:51.000 --> 00:15:07.000 Then the back door opened, and people all bundled up came in two or three men I wasn't sure which but sure enough about the two women who hung back reluctant to enter that kitchen. 00:15:07.000 --> 00:15:19.000 When I was a newspaper reporter out in Iowa, I was sent to do a murder trial. And I never forgot going into that kitchen of a woman locked up in town. 00:15:19.000 --> 00:15:24.000 I had meant to do it as a short story, but the stage took it for its own. 00:15:24.000 --> 00:15:35.000 Whenever I got stuck, I would run across the street, sit in that leaning Little Theater, until the play was ready to continue. 00:15:35.000 --> 00:15:51.000 Now what Glaspell doesn't mention here is that in the original 1916 production, she played one of those two women, and that these recollections of entering and observing the Iowa kitchen would have been resonant for her, not only as a playwright, but 00:15:51.000 --> 00:16:08.000 also as an actor, and obviously we can identify in this explanation the acting technique variously known as affective memory or emotion memory as Hapgood translated it or analytic memory as it came to be known in the US after 1923 from Boleslavsky and 00:16:08.000 --> 00:16:09.000 Ouspenskaya. 00:16:09.000 --> 00:16:20.000 And importantly, Glaspell described this creative process as occurring to her before it was codified for American actors. 00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:36.000 One of the other remarkable gendered dramaturgical elements of Trifles is Glaspell's crafting of these women's speeches, using fragmented syntax that leaves significant thoughts and feelings unspoken but nevertheless palpable Glaspell captures the essence 00:16:36.000 --> 00:16:55.000 of subtext exactly as we understand it from Stanislavsky expert Sharon Carnicke who explains that quote subtext may be inferred by identifying gaps in the text such as pauses or ambiguities in language, through which the actor imagines the unspoken thoughts 00:16:55.000 --> 00:16:58.000 that prompt the spoken lines. 00:16:58.000 --> 00:17:08.000 For example, in the dramatic moment of identification with the incarcerated for a farm wife accused of murder. One of the women recalls. 00:17:08.000 --> 00:17:12.000 When I was a girl, my kitten. 00:17:12.000 --> 00:17:17.000 There was a boy took a hatchet and before my eyes. 00:17:17.000 --> 00:17:26.000 And before I could get there, if they hadn't held me back I would have hurt him. 00:17:26.000 --> 00:17:43.000 We might productively compare this fractured dramaturgy to that of another American playwright Sophie Treadwell who used similar syntactic patterns for the central female character in her 1928 play Machinal significantly however Treadwell deployed such 00:17:43.000 --> 00:17:55.000 dramaturgy after her intensive actor training with Boleslavsky and close involvement with the American laboratory theatre that Boleslavsky and Ouspenskaya had started. 00:17:55.000 --> 00:18:13.000 Importantly, then these two scripts, both products of actor playwrights give us clear evidence of techniques identified with Stanislavsky, but being utilized in modernist productions both before and after their dissemination in the United States. 00:18:13.000 --> 00:18:28.000 Finally, I want to suggest that Glaspell's short story version of the same narrative, A Jury of Her Peers, published, just a year after her appearance in Trifles can be read as a further refinement of that productions performances. 00:18:28.000 --> 00:18:46.000 Now in the fiction version Glaspell provides details of characters movements gestures motivations and vocal delivery, that we can understand as either capturing her fellow actors work or equally possibly amending their performances, to more closely reflect 00:18:46.000 --> 00:18:49.000 her own artistic vision. 00:18:49.000 --> 00:19:04.000 Well, these two works are usually read as related but distinct due to their generic differences. I want to suggest that they can also be read as the before and after versions of a performance text. 00:19:04.000 --> 00:19:23.000 As such, they provide a unique glimpse of modernist acting leading up to the arrival of Stanislavsky's proteges equally important as the fact that these modernist techniques appear in a woman's writing represented through her female characters. 00:19:23.000 --> 00:19:37.000 And lastly if indeed American actors were already developing or at least becoming aware of such modernist techniques, then perhaps we can better understand how Boleslavsky and Ouspenskaya could quite quickly. 00:19:37.000 --> 00:19:46.000 Connect with performers, seeking a more holistic, and comprehensive modernist approach to acting for the American Theatre. 00:19:46.000 --> 00:19:55.000 Thank you. 00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:57.000 Thank you so much, Ellen. 00:19:57.000 --> 00:20:04.000 And we'll take questions and discussion at the end but there's plenty that I've been scribbling down so thank you so much. 00:20:04.000 --> 00:20:09.000 So, Next we have Professor Peta Tait. 00:20:09.000 --> 00:20:25.000 Professor Peta Tait is an academic and playwright and fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities she has written over 60 scholarly articles and chapters and edited and authored 12 books, including the authored Forms of Emotion Human to Nonhuman in Drama 00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:43.000 Drama Theatre Performance published by Routledge. Theory for Theatre Studies, Emotion, published by Bloomsbury in 2020, the edited Great European stage directors: Antoine, Stanislavsky and St Denis Volume One London Bloomsbury and the co-edited Feminist Ecologies Changing 00:20:43.000 --> 00:20:55.000 Environments in the Anthropocene in 2018, and the authored Fighting Nature Sydney University Press 2016. So please welcome Professor Peta Tait. 00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:57.000 Hi, everyone. 00:20:57.000 --> 00:21:01.000 Thank you so much, Mark, and thank you Paul. 00:21:01.000 --> 00:21:04.000 It's a fantastic opportunity to be here. 00:21:04.000 --> 00:21:23.000 So, I want to begin by acknowledging the country that I speak from which is Wurundjeri country of the Kulin nation here in Australia, and to pay my respects to the elders, past, present, and emerging. 00:21:23.000 --> 00:21:31.000 I'm going to now share my screen. 00:21:31.000 --> 00:21:53.000 Please excuse this particular version of the PowerPoint which has to do with the fact that I'm not on my good computer because the internet connection is unstable. 00:21:53.000 --> 00:22:01.000 Olga Knipper and Konstantin Stanislavsky's acted together to acclaim in the early. 00:22:01.000 --> 00:22:09.000 Moscow Art Theatre productions of Chekhov's plays that established the company's reputation. 00:22:09.000 --> 00:22:27.000 When Oliver Sayler claims that the three great moments in the production of Chekhov's Three Sisters Acts 2 and 3 were between Knipper and Stanislavsky as Vershinin and Masha he attributes these moments to Stanislavsky's genius Knipper's contribution 00:22:27.000 --> 00:22:43.000 to this theater history is far less recognized yet it is Knipper as Masha and Stanislavsky as Vershinin that created these moments that are clearly about emotional exchanges. 00:22:43.000 --> 00:22:55.000 She was recognized as the Moscow Art Theatre's, leading or greatest female performer 00:22:55.000 --> 00:23:16.000 in instances where Knipper's interpretation had to be adjusted, scholarship in English about a disagreement over the interpretation of emotions implicitly values Stanislavsky's analytical approach and accepts Knipper's approaches felt as if the acting 00:23:16.000 --> 00:23:21.000 of feeling does not also require thought. 00:23:21.000 --> 00:23:37.000 There are different kinds of thought of course. To what extent then was a perceived divergence in their productions, due to gender perspectives and indicative of a wider pattern in 20th century theater. 00:23:37.000 --> 00:24:07.000 So Stanislavsky's System, followed the advent of the pioneering James-Lange theory, arguing that emotional feeling involves physiological responses that happens, I'll just see if I can move this slightly there, that, that hit that physiological responses 00:24:21.000 --> 00:24:40.000 Now Stanislavsky perceived that physiological feeling was difficult to act and emphasized the performance of emotional expression in his direction of Knipper's female characters and I'm quoting here from an early translation Stanislavsky writes quote, 00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:54.000 but feelings cannot be fixed they run through your fingers like water, it is necessary to find a more substantial means of affecting and establishing your emotions. 00:24:54.000 --> 00:25:02.000 Female collaborators, like Knipper, need to be accorded more significance in theater. 00:25:02.000 --> 00:25:23.000 And now my analysis does not set out to denigrate Stanislavsky in any way. Because I value his work, highly, but to question gendered assertions and assumptions about working relationships, and about approaches to acting emotions. 00:25:23.000 --> 00:25:36.000 So it affirms theatre is a collaborative undertaking, as it highlights Knipper's approach to the early realistic acting of emotional feeling. 00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:54.000 Now both Knipper and Stanislavsky offer perspectives, and I'll come back to this so they offer perspectives well in advance of approaches developed later in studies of the emotions. 00:25:54.000 --> 00:26:03.000 Now I also contend, and I'm not going to elaborate here but I have written about this in Forms of Emotion. 00:26:03.000 --> 00:26:21.000 I contend that Stanislavsky concepts of experiencing and active nalysis can be aligned with the way sensations of bodily affect are being distinguished from emotional feeling in 21st century affect theory. 00:26:21.000 --> 00:26:36.000 This includes the way thought creates bodily sensation. 00:26:36.000 --> 00:26:49.000 it's also part of the embodied process, 00:26:49.000 --> 00:26:53.000 some of which are aligned with personal expression. 00:26:53.000 --> 00:27:04.000 00:27:04.000 --> 00:27:08.000 If you could just mute your mic, that'd be great. Thank you so much. 00:27:08.000 --> 00:27:32.000 Okay, I'll just repeat that. And so, um, so the idea is that affect; thought creates affect or bodily sensation an actor's thinking is also part of the body process that cues responses and expression, and the, some of which align with emotional expression, 00:27:32.000 --> 00:27:57.000 Knipper's interpretation of emotions, was resistant. Jean Benedetti reports that Knipper wanted to act Masha's confession of love for Vershinin, quote, a note of high almost desperate emotion, pouring out her heart 00:27:57.000 --> 00:28:16.000 and Stanislavsky felt that at this point in Act 3 her delivery should be subdued to fit into his directors plan, the emotional progression of the whole production, but was this realistic, they disagreed so vehemently that Benedetti believes 00:28:16.000 --> 00:28:21.000 that Stanislavsky considered taking her out of the production. 00:28:21.000 --> 00:28:43.000 But the disagreement was resolved when the co founder of the Moscow Art Theatre, Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko then agreed with Stanislavsky and rejected Knipper's approach and then Chekhov subsequently agreed with Nemirovich. 00:28:43.000 --> 00:29:01.000 This was not simply a disagreement over Knipper's general approach to acting emotions and nor was it indicative of her style. It was her interpretation of a particular characters emotion in specific circumstances of a woman engaging in an extramarital 00:29:01.000 --> 00:29:18.000 affair Masha is confessing about a life changing event to her sisters who are close companions and monitor how each other is feeling. It was emotionally, socially morally confronting for these female characters. 00:29:18.000 --> 00:29:28.000 And conversely, prior to this role Knipper had found it 00:29:28.000 --> 00:29:47.000 quite difficult. Acting like the highly strung interpretation of Helena in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya imposed on her by Stanislavsky and Nemirovich instead she wanted to create a more cool and impassive character. 00:29:47.000 --> 00:30:01.000 So beyond the validity of the same to create an overall tempo for production Stanislavsky's interpretation of the realistic reactions of female characters was questionable. 00:30:01.000 --> 00:30:23.000 His instruction to Knipper as Arkadina in the Seagull to pace the stage with her hands behind her back when she is angry, after Treplev stops his play strikes J L Styan as inappropriate for an actress that is accustomed to command 00:30:23.000 --> 00:30:27.000 attention. 00:30:27.000 --> 00:30:49.000 Bias arising from beliefs about gender difference is supported by long standing binary values and Western culture. So esteemed analytical thought is associated with masculinity and emotional expression is feminine and therefore coming under masculine control, 00:30:49.000 --> 00:31:10.000 to a large extent, the sequence formulated by Aristotle in which merit mental impressions thought facilitated emotional expression or emotional responses to a theatrical narrative have remained historically dominant because of this was how emotions were 00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:29.000 understood to happen. The sequence was thought and emotional feeling followed, or mental impression then emotional feeling, but then in the wider philosophical context from 1884, and particularly with William James. 00:31:29.000 --> 00:31:39.000 However, this was significantly reversed by sequence in which emotional feeling arises within the body prior to thought. 00:31:39.000 --> 00:31:44.000 So, This development coincided with early realistic theater. 00:31:44.000 --> 00:32:01.000 Yet, the approaches of both Knipper and Stanislavsky revealed the conception of the bodily primacy of emotional feeling proves less helpful to the performing of emotions that might first appear. 00:32:01.000 --> 00:32:17.000 And this early realistic theater offers alternative understandings of the emotions that correspond more with approaches developed in psychology in the second half of the 20th century. 00:32:17.000 --> 00:32:27.000 So, in Knipper's account of her work with Stanislavsky. She describes a dynamic of acting. 00:32:27.000 --> 00:32:45.000 Acting her character in relation to the looks and emotional intimations of Stanislavsky's character Knipper is describing an approach to acting that is relational in that she works in response to the expressiveness of another character. 00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:56.000 Now we know she was part of theatre movement which rejected melodramatic 19th century acting styles of demonstrating gestures and actions that signal the emotions. 00:32:56.000 --> 00:33:06.000 And as Benedetti describes the Moscow Art Theatre were very successful at quite doing nothing and representing emotions. 00:33:06.000 --> 00:33:15.000 But Knipper describes her relation to other performers through dynamic interaction 00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:24.000 and emotions are being specifically defined as relational by the late 20th century. 00:33:24.000 --> 00:33:35.000 So the understanding that was here at this time and early realist theater was well ahead of its conception elsewhere. 00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:49.000 After 1917 Stanislavsky advocates, active analysis, in which physical enactment creates the circumstances in which emotional expression can emerge. 00:33:49.000 --> 00:34:12.000 Now this is another more complicated version of relationality and psychological studies develop appraisal theory and this was happening from the 1960s that argues for an expanded type of relationality in that it is a description of how 00:34:12.000 --> 00:34:32.000 emotional feeling arises through orientation to others, events, and the surroundings, which provide the stimuli for emotional feeling. And this was appraisal theory developed because the James's theory created the kind of feedback loop. 00:34:32.000 --> 00:34:37.000 So, I'm arguing here that both Knipper and Stanislavsky. 00:34:37.000 --> 00:34:40.000 Understood. 00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:48.000 Feeling through working in realistic theater in a way that was in advance of what came later. 00:34:48.000 --> 00:35:07.000 But of course, this didn't prevent the interpretation of a female characters emotional feeling from being gendered, And I'll finish there and thank you everyone. 00:35:07.000 --> 00:35:10.000 Thank you so much. 00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:15.000 And next up we have Dr. Baron, Kelly. 00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:26.000 Dr. Baron Kelly is a four time Fulbright scholar and Professor of theatre in the theatre and drama department at the University of Wisconsin Madison. 00:35:26.000 --> 00:35:39.000 Baron has performed internationally for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Canada, the National Theatre of Norway, the Yermelova Theater in Moscow, Russia, the Constans Theater in Athens, Greece, Academy theatre Dublin, Edinburgh Theatre Festival. 00:35:39.000 --> 00:35:58.000 Bargello Florence Italy, and among others Broadway credits include Salome and Electra numerous classical and contemporary roles for over 30 of America's leading regional theaters, including Oregon, Utah, Dallas Fort Worth, and some California Shakespeare festival, 00:35:58.000 --> 00:36:03.000 Yale Repertory, the Guthrie, Shakespeare Theatre Washington among others. 00:36:03.000 --> 00:36:06.000 Dr Kelly's work has been published in the Theater Journal. 00:36:06.000 --> 00:36:19.000 Journal of American Drama Theatre African American National Biography American Theatre, Stage Directors and Choreographers Journal. The Cambridge Scholars Publishing Peter Lang Publishing. 00:36:19.000 --> 00:36:22.000 The Journal of Institute for African Studies and others. 00:36:22.000 --> 00:36:41.000 He serves on the Fulbright Review Panel, International Institute of Education China-US, the scholars review panel and the board of the Ardern Shakespeare series, Lagos Notes and Records. 00:36:41.000 --> 00:36:57.000 comparative drama conference the Stanislavsky Institute Advisory Board, the National Theatre conference and the American Society of for theatre research in 2022 Baron will be invested as a fellow in the College of Fellows of the American Theater, his book 00:36:57.000 --> 00:37:09.000 An Actor's Task Engaging the Senses is available from Hackett Publishing Company. He is currently under contract to Routledge publishers for a co edited and co authored manuscript with Karen Kopryanski, titled the Embodiment and Text so please welcome 00:37:09.000 --> 00:37:15.000 Dr Baron Kelly. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Paul. 00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:37.000 You know I'm just flattered to be in such distinguished company and when you reached out to me I didn't know if I had anything really to say about this, but I think first of all I have to give credit to my late great friend Lynn Redgrave who gave me the 00:37:37.000 --> 00:37:51.000 courage and the impetus to do what I'm going to talk about and also in conversations within Ian McKellen yes I'm name dropping but these people were very instrumental in me putting together. 00:37:51.000 --> 00:37:56.000 What I've had tremendous opportunity to do. 00:37:56.000 --> 00:38:11.000 This presentation is called, pretty much, using the tools of Stanislavsky finding empathy and uncovering Ira Aldridge profit of protest, 00:38:11.000 --> 00:38:26.000 quote, the child of the sun, black, my countenance yet I stand before you in the light of my soul true feeling and just expression, are not confined to any climb, what color. 00:38:26.000 --> 00:38:45.000 These are some of the words of Ira Aldridge America's first internationally acclaimed actor, born in 1807, New York, Aldridge spoke out against slavery and became the first African American actor to achieve success on the international stage when 00:38:45.000 --> 00:38:53.000 he was a teenager, he joined the first black professional company in 1820 in New York the African Theatre Company. 00:38:53.000 --> 00:39:10.000 He also at that time, became a valet to a British actor named Henry Wallack and learned by watching while tutored by Wallack, and he realized at that time, certainly, that there was no opportunity for him, he had a dream of being an actor and 00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:23.000 Wallack gave him an introduction, letter of introduction to Britain to the Colbert theatre, and in a pursuit of a dream, he travelled to England, and. 00:39:23.000 --> 00:39:27.000 And from there for the next 44 years of his life. 00:39:27.000 --> 00:39:43.000 He travelled to you throughout Europe and Russia breaking racial barriers during a time when many of his black brethren and were enslaved in New York, between 1852 and 1867 he completed a number of successful tours of the various cities in the continental 00:39:43.000 --> 00:40:05.000 Europe, including St Petersburg Moscow Odessa Tallinn, Marseille, Riga among others. During that time, also Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was being translated in Russia, and Hungary, dealing with many issues certainly that were in conversation 00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:11.000 at Russia dealing with the freedom of the serfs at that time. As actors 00:40:11.000 --> 00:40:23.000 Our work should be about the broadest human experience. Yes, it can be narrowed into one's culture. One's sexuality, but at the core, one is still human. 00:40:23.000 --> 00:40:39.000 This is a quote from Stanislavsky in Stanislavsky Directs quote you must love your chosen profession because it gives you the opportunity to communicate ideas that are important and necessary to your audience, unquote. 00:40:39.000 --> 00:40:55.000 During my travels in Russia, and Eastern Europe, I had to go into the archives to get more to the heart of this man if I was going to develop a one man show about him I had to get into the letters and the newspaper clippings. 00:40:55.000 --> 00:41:09.000 as Ellen had said I had to read between the lines I call it the space between the notes, to be able to create these dialogues, the scenes real and imagined that happened in his life. 00:41:09.000 --> 00:41:22.000 The nature of acting at least in part involves the critical analysis of oneself, and the internalizing of situations and feelings. I'm going to read a little bit after I finished this sort of preamble here. 00:41:22.000 --> 00:41:43.000 The development of imaginary reality through sensory responses to imagery, senses and feelings, to channel particular kinaesthetic responses that I personally experienced in Norway, and Russia cemeteries and with family 00:41:43.000 --> 00:41:57.000 of great particular actors in Hungary and internalizing this with particular roles that I've had a wonderful opportunity to be able to play. 00:41:57.000 --> 00:42:15.000 So it was interesting for me to do this and to figure out how the character's action in this particular place, Aldridge's action was driven by his need to be able to stand on these stages and be able to speak the king's English in these particular situations 00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:19.000 and be accepted as a man. 00:42:19.000 --> 00:42:39.000 So I had to use my imagination and energy and physical life to translate that need into his particular psychological human experience for the characters in my performances, to open my heart and act from an unprotected self to bring my authentic self into 00:42:39.000 --> 00:42:41.000 the room. 00:42:41.000 --> 00:43:00.000 The ability to work from my unprotected self under imaginary circumstances that are imaginatively created truth means different things for many people Stanislavsky was after the sincerity of acting truth on the stage is anything we can believe in 00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:10.000 with sincerity, whether in ourselves, or in our colleagues, truth cannot be separated from belief, no belief from truth. 00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:30.000 Truth in human behavior is embedded in the action between the mind so basically I have co opted Stanislavsky's tools or some of them to help me in an unearthing, a particular history of Aldridge that could have been marginalized, and in some cases it is 00:43:30.000 --> 00:43:37.000 forgotten to help me to understand me and my place in the world. 00:43:37.000 --> 00:43:56.000 Using acting as a way of exploring human potential. And, you know, when I was a young actor I was able to study with Uta Hagen and Sandy Meisner in New York and so basically I've turned a lot of these teachings into finding a way into the truth, 00:43:56.000 --> 00:44:03.000 as McKellen would say, I'm going to read a little bit of 00:44:03.000 --> 00:44:05.000 cutting as they say. 00:44:05.000 --> 00:44:08.000 I'm going to set it up. 00:44:08.000 --> 00:44:20.000 Aldridge is just giving a performance outside of St Petersburg, and a Rabbi fights his way through the crowd to come to Aldridge. 00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:28.000 And I'll just read this in these voices because I'm not going to be able to act on zoom. 00:44:28.000 --> 00:44:33.000 Hey, Excuse me, Mr Aldridge. 00:44:33.000 --> 00:44:36.000 Please excuse me, friends. 00:44:36.000 --> 00:44:40.000 I won't to keep you a moment, please. 00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:45.000 Madam, translate what I say, please. 00:44:45.000 --> 00:45:01.000 Thank you, Mr Aldridge. I was told I could not see you, and I hope you will forgive this unorthodox behavior from an orthodox rabbi. 00:45:01.000 --> 00:45:11.000 I am Rabbi of a very small congregation, just outside of St Petersburg. 00:45:11.000 --> 00:45:15.000 And so I do not wish you any harm. 00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:20.000 I'm sure you do not Father, are you all right? 00:45:20.000 --> 00:45:27.000 I know this is such bad manners, Mr Aldridge. 00:45:27.000 --> 00:45:38.000 But I represent several congregations in the Jewish community who want to thank you for your moving portrayal of Shylock. 00:45:38.000 --> 00:45:44.000 You have shown him, honestly, with his horns and his halo. 00:45:44.000 --> 00:45:49.000 It gives us pride and hope, Mr. Aldridge. 00:45:49.000 --> 00:46:05.000 And so, I would like to present you with this scroll of David from several hundred well wishes and this specially made necklace. 00:46:05.000 --> 00:46:18.000 It is a Star of David, our homes will always be open to you good friend shalom. 00:46:18.000 --> 00:46:24.000 Shalom Father, you do me great honor. 00:46:24.000 --> 00:46:38.000 This is one of a series and I don't have enough time to do a couple of others, to give sense of empathy to this great man who is being acknowledged today. 00:46:38.000 --> 00:46:51.000 Finally, and as a black man. And there's another scene I was going to read where the Rabbi tells him that he should leave his hands, unpainted. 00:46:51.000 --> 00:47:04.000 Un made up to leave them black so that he can show who he really is underneath his actors mask. 00:47:04.000 --> 00:47:06.000 And thank you very much. 00:47:06.000 --> 00:47:07.000 Thank you Mark. Thank you. 00:47:07.000 --> 00:47:19.000 Thank you. Thank you very much, next we have Barry Fitzgerald. If you would like to introduce yourself. 00:47:19.000 --> 00:47:22.000 Thank you, Mark. 00:47:22.000 --> 00:47:25.000 And the whole team thank you so much for having me. 00:47:25.000 --> 00:47:28.000 and echoing what Baron said there. 00:47:28.000 --> 00:47:31.000 It's wonderful to be in such an esteemed company. 00:47:31.000 --> 00:47:46.000 And also, Mark asked me at first to be part of the panel, I think we had quite a conversation, where I was like, why would you ask, I don't have anything to say so, um, I guess I'll just preface that this. 00:47:46.000 --> 00:48:01.000 whole preface that this is from my own experience as it is with everyone, as a maker, performer, an acting tutor, and lots of many hats, as it is as a freelance artist, but it's very much from. 00:48:01.000 --> 00:48:06.000 Yeah, when my work is with performers, actor training. 00:48:06.000 --> 00:48:13.000 So, my name is Barry Fitzgerald. I use, he they pronouns. 00:48:13.000 --> 00:48:29.000 I'm a white Irish person, and I have bleached blonde hair, gold piercings in both ears. I'm wearing a lavender roll neck top with a gold chain. And I'm sitting in a room with light gray walls, and two bookshelves. 00:48:29.000 --> 00:48:39.000 The title of what I'm going to speak about is called working with the queer performer, or maker to shift perspectives on actor training. 00:48:39.000 --> 00:48:55.000 I'm a queer performer maker director and acting teacher, the work I make is often queer focused interdisciplinary and increasingly experimental alongside I teach and direct in university and in conservatoire settings, including here in London ArtsEd Mountview 00:48:55.000 --> 00:49:00.000 and most regularly at the Royal Central School Speech and Drama. 00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:15.000 I'm not a standard Stanislavsky scholar, but his methods have played a big part of my creative life from university and drama school training as an actor to my teaching and directing work right through to my creative projects as a solo maker. 00:49:15.000 --> 00:49:17.000 In terms of my actor training. 00:49:17.000 --> 00:49:33.000 There are elements that in hindsight I find troubling unsafe practices by teachers to mine for emotions without any sense of aftercare or observations that either ashamed or denied me the opportunity to inhabit my queerness in my acting work, and no 00:49:33.000 --> 00:49:34.000 doubts in ways I replicated elements of these practices when I first started teaching. 00:49:34.000 --> 00:49:50.000 in ways I replicated elements of these practices when I first started teaching. But there have been projects, especially in the last seven years or so, which have been transformative and instrumental in changing how I approach actor training and making in general. 00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:50.000 I will be speaking about two of these projects. 00:49:50.000 --> 00:50:08.000 I'll be speaking about two of these projects. The first is Trans Acting, a collaboration between two organizations Gendered Intelligence, a trans lead and trans involved charity that exists to increase understandings of gender diversity and improve trans 00:50:08.000 --> 00:50:10.000 people's quality of life. 00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:19.000 And the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, one of the leading drama schools here in the UK, where I've been a visiting lecturer since 2012. 00:50:19.000 --> 00:50:36.000 In summer 2015 Trans Acting started as a series of master classes and workshops at Central with a name to create a safe gender inclusive space for trans non binary gender non conforming people where they could participate in sessions, including voice movement 00:50:36.000 --> 00:50:53.000 text improvisation and audition technique. I was invited to be an acting tutor, and the project was such a success that in the years that followed, we went on to run many more workshops, and we were invited to share work at festivals including the Scottish queer International Film Festival in 00:50:53.000 --> 00:51:12.000 Glasgow BFI flare in London and Transarte in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In recent years, Outbox, a company of LGBTQIA+ creatives have taken on the running of Trans Acting workshops, most recently organizing a summer school in 2019 at the Southbank Centre 00:51:12.000 --> 00:51:26.000 London, and although I still have connections with the project. Full disclosure I'm an associate artist with Outbox. I don't currently lead on it, as it became important for us to support more trans practitioners and leading the sessions. 00:51:26.000 --> 00:51:31.000 But the Trans Acting project challenged and changed my pedagogy. 00:51:31.000 --> 00:51:40.000 Beyond pronoun circles, it highlighted the highly gendered, binary and rigid nature of many acting practices. 00:51:40.000 --> 00:51:48.000 So much of what we're searching for when we're working on the scene or exploring with a character is subjective it's slippy and fleeting. 00:51:48.000 --> 00:51:55.000 We use language to explain or pin things down. Everything from feelings to the bodies, those feelings inhabit. 00:51:55.000 --> 00:51:58.000 but from who's viewpoint? 00:51:58.000 --> 00:52:11.000 When I was at drama school, I had teachers who would consistently comment on how I needed to ground myself, or how there was no point in me exploring flamboyance, I was naturally flamboyant enough. 00:52:11.000 --> 00:52:16.000 At times, I was left feeling that my queer body had failed me once again. 00:52:16.000 --> 00:52:24.000 They had rigid views of character, or how it should be played, of the world the character, and I was not matching up. 00:52:24.000 --> 00:52:33.000 I believed these views unwittingly or not came from the hetero normative cis centred perspective of most training and content. 00:52:33.000 --> 00:52:38.000 We know you can play queer. We're trying to teach you how to be versatile. 00:52:38.000 --> 00:52:54.000 The irony being that when you leave. You don't play queer, or if you do, it's a version of queer from a normative of point of view, while the accolades continue to be lauded upon non queer actors, transforming into queer characters. 00:52:54.000 --> 00:52:55.000 Following Trans Acting. 00:52:55.000 --> 00:52:59.000 I began to use more non gendered language. 00:52:59.000 --> 00:53:04.000 Language that anybody or any body could inhabit. 00:53:04.000 --> 00:53:18.000 allowing performers to use elements of themselves in expanded and connected ways without judgment words that came to mind like firm soft constrained free. 00:53:18.000 --> 00:53:27.000 Alongside this, I found the later Stanislavsky methods and the psycho physical work of practitioners like Michael Chekhov more generative and inclusive. 00:53:27.000 --> 00:53:37.000 Also movement frameworks like Laban efforts and actions, became useful and exploring how performers might approach work directly indirectly with flow or bound. 00:53:37.000 --> 00:53:42.000 It's not that I never use feminine or masculine words, far from it. 00:53:42.000 --> 00:53:51.000 But when I'm working I began to question whether these words were the most useful for the character, but more importantly for the performer. 00:53:51.000 --> 00:54:09.000 The second project, I want to highlight is And The Rest Of Me Floats, by Outbox, the company of LGBTQIA+ creatives I mentioned before, originally devised and performed in 2017 at the Rose Lipman Building a brutalist Community Center in East London. 00:54:09.000 --> 00:54:17.000 The show went on to be programmed as the main house show in 2019 at the Bush theatre here in London, before touring. 00:54:17.000 --> 00:54:29.000 I was part of the cast, which included seven performers from across the trans, non binary and queer communities, working with the show's director Ben Buratta and creative team to devise the show. 00:54:29.000 --> 00:54:45.000 The production was a mix of movement song stand up and dress up autobiographical performance, experienced a queering of time, and the transitions between sections became blurrier and increasingly more central than the actual scenes elements that were more traditional 00:54:45.000 --> 00:54:55.000 actor training were involved in the making, voice work character bios objectives, but Ben found a way for the company to have autonomy in those decisions. 00:54:55.000 --> 00:55:00.000 This shifted perspectives, allowing performers ownership in the work. 00:55:00.000 --> 00:55:18.000 It allowed for connected and nuanced performances enlivened by their own queerness not Ben's version of it. A section of the synopsis describes the show as an anarchic celebration of gender expression and identity, playful and powerful And The Rest 00:55:18.000 --> 00:55:26.000 of Me Floats explores how it feels to live in a society where you are regularly categorized and policed. Do you see me? 00:55:26.000 --> 00:55:32.000 Beyond the questions the confusion and the anger, do you really see me? 00:55:32.000 --> 00:55:37.000 These ideas around categorization extend into actor training. 00:55:37.000 --> 00:55:47.000 So much of actor training is about pinpointing where the work is needed in the performer, your voice needs work. Your articulation needs work, your posture. 00:55:47.000 --> 00:55:56.000 But when you're looking at things from a trans or gender inclusive space, you move towards practices that celebrate qualities in the performers. 00:55:56.000 --> 00:56:14.000 And I believe that this can extend out to all performers we work with these projects are two points on the journey that have shaped my pedagogy. To me, they highlight how we should move beyond safe spaces and inclusivity and build on the work to learn 00:56:14.000 --> 00:56:24.000 be led by and meaningfully include queer trans people across all forms of actor training. We all have a relationship to gender. 00:56:24.000 --> 00:56:39.000 However, for most people, the elements of this construct are rarely considered or fully explored the varied experience of trans queer performers outside binary normative perspectives can shift and expand, everybody's understanding of their gender 00:56:39.000 --> 00:56:51.000 Stanislavsky and psychological realism, form the core of many forms of actor training, but we must continue to question. Who's reality? 00:56:51.000 --> 00:57:02.000 How can the stories we tell, and the concept of realism shift from cis male hetero white ablest middle class Western centered ideologies. 00:57:02.000 --> 00:57:15.000 Lessons from working with the queer performer or maker and creating queer inclusive spaces, are just one element of how we might create a more innovative generative and inclusive training for all. 00:57:15.000 --> 00:57:19.000 Thank you. 00:57:19.000 --> 00:57:28.000 Thank you so much, Barry. I had the great pleasure of being dragged on stage by Barry to dance under the confetti at the end of And The Rest of Me Floats so that's how we met. 00:57:28.000 --> 00:57:31.000 Thank you so much. 00:57:31.000 --> 00:57:39.000 And next, last but certainly not least, Dr Samia La Virgne. 00:57:39.000 --> 00:57:42.000 Wow. Hi everyone. 00:57:42.000 --> 00:57:57.000 Before I begin, I just want to say thank you to all the previous panelists for their interesting thought provoking amazing talks, and I promise that I will endeavor to be just as engaging as they were. 00:57:57.000 --> 00:58:03.000 My name is Dr Samia La Virgne, and my preferred pronouns are she and her. 00:58:03.000 --> 00:58:18.000 I am wearing a long sleeve top and Maroon turban style head wrap, big dangly earrings in the shape of Africa, and red and black cat eyeglasses. I am a brown skinned black woman. 00:58:18.000 --> 00:58:39.000 I'm an actor Theatre Arts practitioner director and academic. I'm originally from California and moved to the UK in 2014 to pursue my postgraduate studies I have a bachelor's and master's, fine arts degrees, and just completed my PhD at Royal Birmingham 00:58:39.000 --> 00:58:41.000 Conservatoire last month. 00:58:41.000 --> 00:58:58.000 My research, examines the social stigma of blackness and womanhood through a comparative study of the stereotypical representations of women in the performing arts industry and the effects they have on black actresses in the UK and US. 00:58:58.000 --> 00:59:02.000 So, got out of the way, that's a little bit about me. 00:59:02.000 --> 00:59:08.000 Please don't be fooled by the title of Dr. in front of my name. 00:59:08.000 --> 00:59:14.000 Although I am a newly minted academic, I am by no means a Stanislavsky scholar. 00:59:14.000 --> 00:59:34.000 So for the next few minutes, I won't present to you any claims, or declarations, but rather an offering of my actor training experience in the US and the UK, with Stanislavsky from the positionality of a black woman. 00:59:34.000 --> 00:59:37.000 The Stanislavsky System. 00:59:37.000 --> 00:59:56.000 This ethereal mechanism of ideology is arguably the bedrock of most modern Western acting techniques taught since the second half of the 20th century, a white man's ideals held to be precious and near and dear to the collective hearts of actors 00:59:56.000 --> 01:00:07.000 who want to be taken seriously and considered among the best When I challenged myself to pinpoint exactly what Stanislavsky System or teachings were. 01:00:07.000 --> 01:00:09.000 I was at a loss. 01:00:09.000 --> 01:00:19.000 I'm a classically trained actor, with a BA in theatre and MFA in acting and just completed a PhD in performing arts. 01:00:19.000 --> 01:00:33.000 I've been in the position of the actor, the director researcher and on a few occasions, the teacher of this bewildering and beguiling discipline of acting yet somehow. 01:00:33.000 --> 01:00:41.000 I still couldn't quite put my finger on the specifics about Stanislavsky that had gone into my training. 01:00:41.000 --> 01:00:43.000 Funny, isn't it. 01:00:43.000 --> 01:00:52.000 How can something that is so important to the art of acting, have been so elusive and imperceptible for me. 01:00:52.000 --> 01:01:03.000 Although most western actor training programs utilized elements of Stanislavsky's system Stanislavsky the man is often dissociated from it. 01:01:03.000 --> 01:01:20.000 Actors engage with exercises and elements of the system when honing their skills while Stanislavsky the man goes on named on my bachelor's acting program Stanislavsky's An Actor Prepares was one of the required textbooks. 01:01:20.000 --> 01:01:26.000 I still have it in a box somewhere buried stored away for safekeeping. 01:01:26.000 --> 01:01:30.000 But admittedly, I never read it. 01:01:30.000 --> 01:01:43.000 I guess I felt that in some way just owning the book and holding it in my hands every now and then. I could absorb some useful nuggets of information through osmosis or something. 01:01:43.000 --> 01:01:56.000 I was only. I was also only about 19 or 20, years old, and the only black woman, and one of a small handful of non white actors in the theater arts department of my university. 01:01:56.000 --> 01:02:03.000 I was struggling with my confidence and agency as a woman, as well as an actor. 01:02:03.000 --> 01:02:21.000 I wondered what could I possibly get from some dead White Russian guy who had no idea how restricting my marginalized intersectional status as a six foot tall, plus sized black woman was in the performing arts industry. 01:02:21.000 --> 01:02:24.000 In preparation for this webinar. 01:02:24.000 --> 01:02:28.000 I had a conversation with an actor friend of mine who was also a black woman. 01:02:28.000 --> 01:02:34.000 I asked about her experience with Stanislavsky in her actor training. 01:02:34.000 --> 01:02:46.000 She said, and I quote, it's a little bit like a lot of school and that it's this white guy that we hold with a certain regard, and it can feel very much like. 01:02:46.000 --> 01:02:55.000 Yes, the Europeans. They do everything so much better. They come up with all the innovations end quote. 01:02:55.000 --> 01:02:59.000 This was immediately followed with a bit of a chuckle. 01:02:59.000 --> 01:03:04.000 All jokes aside. She later went on to say. 01:03:04.000 --> 01:03:16.000 When I think of Stanislavsky, I think of textbooks or books. I think of lots of lines of printed sentences on a page. I don't think of it as something vibrant, or creatively inspirational. 01:03:16.000 --> 01:03:33.000 Clearly, there is a disparity here, because from the research I've since done on Stanislavsky in preparation for today, I discovered that in truth, Stanislavsky devoted most of his life to dissecting the art of acting and creating the system as a means 01:03:33.000 --> 01:03:36.000 to unlock creativity in the actor. 01:03:36.000 --> 01:03:45.000 Bearing this in mind, what it really comes down to is pedagogy, who is doing the teaching. 01:03:45.000 --> 01:03:52.000 How are they interpreting and disseminating the concepts, ideas and exercises of Stanislavsky's system. 01:03:52.000 --> 01:04:09.000 Furthermore, are the teachers and practitioners carefully considering the nuanced intersectional diversity that exists within their students and adapting the system as needed to make the exercise and skill set of his system, something that empowers 01:04:09.000 --> 01:04:28.000 rather than disempowers, or dispossesses actors from their own artistic agency Stanislavsky's system, though rarely named acts as an ever present invisible force guiding actors in their creative artistry. 01:04:28.000 --> 01:04:51.000 Unfortunately, this force along with the constant invisible forces of racism, discrimination and patriarchy and my after training experience, were bearing down on me and hampered my ability to unlock my highest creative potential and thrive as an actor 01:04:51.000 --> 01:05:05.000 Stanislavsky's system in theory should provide tools for actors to access a greater wealth of creativity, because I was being exposed to Stanislavsky's system, and it was never expressly identified. 01:05:05.000 --> 01:05:10.000 It did not feel like something tangible that I possess. 01:05:10.000 --> 01:05:16.000 It was intangible because I didn't have a name for what I was being exposed to. 01:05:16.000 --> 01:05:29.000 I am only now, years later, realizing the extent to which these forces fabricated a loss of agency and onus of my true artistic creativity. 01:05:29.000 --> 01:05:42.000 At some point, usually in the beginning, when you study the fundamentals of acting Stanislavsky is mentioned and then actors go forth learning elements of his system without them being attributed to him again. 01:05:42.000 --> 01:05:53.000 This is in stark contrast to other practitioners and techniques that we love to name drop, such as Uta Hagen, Stella Adler Meisner technique and the Method. 01:05:53.000 --> 01:06:05.000 I find this phenomenon quite interesting, because all of these practitioners and techniques in some way are derivations of Stanislavsky and his system. 01:06:05.000 --> 01:06:23.000 In my efforts to pinpoint exactly what portions of Stanislavsky system have gone into my actor training, I realized that I had been exposed to more of it than I was aware, such as emotion memory, given circumstances, objectives, actions, the magic if 01:06:23.000 --> 01:06:27.000 transmitting and radiating energy, just to name a few. 01:06:27.000 --> 01:06:35.000 But, as I mentioned earlier, none of these had been expressly attributed to Stanislavsky. 01:06:35.000 --> 01:06:52.000 In my opinion, some of this seems obvious if one was going to play a role on stage. What actor wouldn't naturally think about the given circumstances of a character they are playing are some components of Stanislavsky system so obvious to me, because 01:06:52.000 --> 01:07:03.000 the first of his publications was released nearly a century ago, and this has become woven into the fabric of the art of acting, and therefore can no longer be separated. 01:07:03.000 --> 01:07:23.000 Maybe, or is the system so obvious because Stanislavsky didn't invent, or create an acting system at all, but rather found an effective way to codify the complexities of living, when presented in performance in conversation with a friend I mentioned 01:07:23.000 --> 01:07:32.000 earlier, she said, and I quote, it's almost like he didn't invent anything. He just named and described things. 01:07:32.000 --> 01:07:39.000 He was more like a scientist. He is the discoverer in the Christopher Columbus sense of the word. 01:07:39.000 --> 01:07:49.000 Something was already there. But now that he found it in named it, he is now the discoverer of the thing, something to consider. 01:07:49.000 --> 01:07:53.000 Now please don't take offense with anything that I have said. 01:07:53.000 --> 01:08:03.000 Remember, this is an offering a provocation of thoughts on Stanislavsky's System from the positionality of a black woman. 01:08:03.000 --> 01:08:08.000 And towards the end of his life Stanislavsky shared the following with the students. 01:08:08.000 --> 01:08:20.000 The system is a guide, open and read the system is a handbook, not a philosophy. The moment when the system begins to become a philosophy is its end. 01:08:20.000 --> 01:08:38.000 Examine the system at home, but forget about it when on stage. You can't play the system. There is no system. There is only nature, my lifelong concern has been how to get ever closer to the so called system that is to get ever closer to the nature of 01:08:38.000 --> 01:08:41.000 creativity. 01:08:41.000 --> 01:08:44.000 Yet another interesting mental morsel to consider. 01:08:44.000 --> 01:08:54.000 So whether you adhere to the Stanislavsky system, or challenge it, as actors, as artists. 01:08:54.000 --> 01:09:06.000 May we all continue to get ever closer to the nature of creativity and manifest endless possibilities of our artistry in fascinating and unexpected ways. 01:09:06.000 --> 01:09:10.000 Thank you. 01:09:10.000 --> 01:09:22.000 Thank you so much, Samia. I'm just going to offer provocation between the panel before we open up to questions I realized there is one that has already been posted in the chat. 01:09:22.000 --> 01:09:34.000 And the what seems to me, rather organically between us is this concept of relationality that I think has an ebb and flow between the respective speaker's presentations today. 01:09:34.000 --> 01:09:45.000 And I think Ellen's discussion on Glaspell's discipline as a journalist writer and actor. 01:09:45.000 --> 01:10:06.000 she's able to unsettle this common problematic tripartite of the actor, director, playwright, that is often male. I think Lauren Love talks about that locking females into a negative ontology where the actor, the director and playwright, 01:10:06.000 --> 01:10:21.000 so often the male and the female actor. So there's for me, an understanding of relationality between those dynamics that through Glaspell's discipline she's able to kind of unsettle, and perhaps present a different perspective. 01:10:21.000 --> 01:10:42.000 And listening to Peta's talk as well on the the different perspectives taken on emotion, and reading furtherin her work. And there are levels of relationality I feel that are on a technical level and an epistemic level on a social 01:10:42.000 --> 01:10:45.000 level and political level that. 01:10:45.000 --> 01:10:59.000 And I think when we look at, Olga Knipper and Stanislavsky's relationship becomes much more tangible to understand, it seems to be crystallized in that relationship and I think it's really striking when you read more about . 01:10:59.000 --> 01:11:12.000 about Olga Knipper's development as an actor, and what she was able to offer you can see those correspondances to Stanislavsky's creative development in particularly in A Month in The Country, and the sort of spiritual experiments. 01:11:12.000 --> 01:11:14.000 And her response to that. 01:11:14.000 --> 01:11:22.000 And Baron too talking about an empathetic relation and developing and training an empathetic relation. 01:11:22.000 --> 01:11:37.000 We see this remarkable relationship that's developed from Baron's performance of the Rabbi, and Ira Aldridge that kind of transcends a temporality I think, which is very interesting. 01:11:37.000 --> 01:11:58.000 And, and Barry's work is very interesting to me as a queer person and, and how the queer body can shift perspectives and when in space our mere presence can shift perspectives and Barry used the phrase a normative point of view. 01:11:58.000 --> 01:12:18.000 And I'm interested in this, idea between attachments relations and perspectives and how those are not necessarily pre-determined are often fluid and Samia, talking through your experience in relation to the text of An Actor Prepares, which is 01:12:18.000 --> 01:12:33.000 so often disparagingly called An Actor Despairs, and which is written as a student diary to promote this kind of vicarious reading of a relation with the self that identifies with themselves through the reading 01:12:33.000 --> 01:12:36.000 01:12:36.000 --> 01:12:41.000 And also relations between the teacher and the student and who is doing teaching. 01:12:41.000 --> 01:13:08.000 So, I offer this kind of generative theme that is coming out of everybody today, about relationships and different types of relations I wondered if anybody else has any thoughts on that. 01:13:08.000 --> 01:13:23.000 Hi Mark thanks that was very interesting summation and linking everything together and thank you everyone they were fantastic presentations, I, I suppose, I'd have to say that. 01:13:23.000 --> 01:13:45.000 What really emerges from hearing other people speaking about this is this idea of relationality to Stanislavsky, of course, but we've each got a different Stanislavsky we're dealing with here so it's an indirect Stanislavsky, it's not perhaps 01:13:45.000 --> 01:14:02.000 a historical figure it's, you know, Samia is really talking about some kind of mythic legend that haunts actor training and Baron's talking about how I think in a practical way. 01:14:02.000 --> 01:14:18.000 When you're confronted with, and I, This is my experience as a young actor. When you're confronted with something that seems so huge and difficult. It was Stanislavsky that allowed you to break down what you were doing into manageable steps. 01:14:18.000 --> 01:14:29.000 And then when you progressed a little bit more you understood he was saying, but if it doesn't work. Try it again experiment experiment, experiment, you know, keep going. 01:14:29.000 --> 01:14:37.000 And I think, hopefully, from what Barry was saying that eventually. 01:14:37.000 --> 01:14:54.000 It's a way you can even break down these fixed categories of identity and still keep Stanislavsky in the frame. Anyway, I don't know, that's my immediate response. 01:14:54.000 --> 01:14:57.000 Ellen you have your hand raised 01:14:57.000 --> 01:15:13.000 Yes, thank you so much everybody. This was absolutely fascinating and fabulous. You know I'm focusing on this notion of pedagogy right which certainly in, you know, my, my own work. 01:15:13.000 --> 01:15:35.000 The article I wrote a long, long time ago. You know one of the things I emphasize in there is the importance of the disaggregation of the core elements of the techniques themselves from their application and I think, you know, Barry you you Baron. 01:15:35.000 --> 01:15:51.000 Samia all kind of articulated that in different ways how those pedagogy is shape for better or for worse. My response, my thought 01:15:51.000 --> 01:16:04.000 Back to you, my question back to you is on a very pragmatic level. What having recognize these issues right, not only how theorists. 01:16:04.000 --> 01:16:15.000 Initially, did not disaggregate those things right the initial for example feminist rejection of Stanislavsky. I would say is more rejection of the. 01:16:15.000 --> 01:16:34.000 The interweaving of the technique from application, whether that be in a theatrical performative context, or in a pedagogical context. And so what I'm wondering if we can do, and I've been asking this for you know for a long time and and i think folks 01:16:34.000 --> 01:16:58.000 are, you know, beginning to to to think about this, what can we do pragmatically pedagogically to retain the elements of the technique that are of value that are useful in a broad diverse way, and and move those forward you apply those to this wider range 01:16:58.000 --> 01:17:17.000 of of actors in different kinds of performative contexts, so that we can break out of right, this really really problematic loggerhead of, you know, white male hetero interpretations and applications, again, particularly in the acting studio. 01:17:17.000 --> 01:17:36.000 So I just want to put that out there as sort of a plea, and and a question right what can we do. Before I go to anyone else I'm going to just selfishly interject because I think this surfacing of relationality is really really important 01:17:36.000 --> 01:17:53.000 I feel to your question and provocation Ellen because the system itself itself is a relational concept right, you can't have given circumstances without the If without emotion memory without tempo rhythm, without physical action. 01:17:53.000 --> 01:18:04.000 So immediately within, within the technique itself there is a relationality that is present that needs to exist in order to facilitate what it is supposed to do. 01:18:04.000 --> 01:18:20.000 And I think we can kind of scale that up, and we can understand then the system's relation to its political, social, cultural context historically with Stanislavsky and then the surface and narrate our own relationship to that through our own pedagogy 01:18:20.000 --> 01:18:30.000 that I think then give students permission to develop a sense of their own relationality to the work that's, that's something that I'm very interested in. 01:18:30.000 --> 01:18:50.000 That we're not imposing the system wholesale uncritically, and through our teaching and through the critical reflection that the system does foster I think we understand the definition of relationality I think as an ethical endeavour, perhaps, Barry I wonder what 01:18:50.000 --> 01:18:54.000 have to you say. 01:18:54.000 --> 01:19:08.000 It was just I'm going back to I suppose what, what can we do. 01:19:08.000 --> 01:19:20.000 It strikes me that everything is very linear, and it starts with you know maybe classical the Shakespeare or something but then they will go to realism and build from there. 01:19:20.000 --> 01:19:34.000 So at the very basis, we're starting from here and we're experimenting onwards, and I think you know one thing, and I'm sure this does happen and perhaps it does, people may, may be able to talk about is, is to give equal weighting two things that might 01:19:34.000 --> 01:19:50.000 be even experimental and not so across, and, and, you know, been given accolades and trialled and we know these work maybe we could give weighting to things that might not work, and we're just trying here. 01:19:50.000 --> 01:20:03.000 And that could be the first thing the students encounter that they have some agency and making these processes because, you know, the toolbox is a toolbox isn't it if it doesn't work try something else. 01:20:03.000 --> 01:20:15.000 And that takes a while for you to understand there's not one way and I just see students get so frustrated because they're not getting what this framework is or whatever, and really doesn't matter as long as the audience get it right, I think. 01:20:15.000 --> 01:20:22.000 So yeah, I wonder if we can kind of give equal weighting to other practitioners and maybe not be so linear in the way that we learned. 01:20:22.000 --> 01:20:38.000 I think that's a Stanislavskian spirit, he was experimental. He was a researcher and you know he, and there are certain tensions within that as Peta's research shows that you know experimenting with more spiritual approaches and Olga Knipper's response 01:20:38.000 --> 01:20:41.000 to that. 01:20:41.000 --> 01:20:52.000 It's actually not on my behalf, I just wanted to introduce a question from one of our participants today, Martin hi I think you're talking to us from Canada if my memory serves. 01:20:52.000 --> 01:21:04.000 It's been a while since we saw each other, and maybe you'd like to ask your question yourself because I think it's very appropriate to the current thread of this discussion. 01:21:04.000 --> 01:21:06.000 Oh. Hi, I'm Paul. 01:21:06.000 --> 01:21:08.000 Thank you. 01:21:08.000 --> 01:21:15.000 It's great to be here yes I'm in Toronto, Canada, and 01:21:15.000 --> 01:21:17.000 my question. 01:21:17.000 --> 01:21:21.000 Which I and I addressed. 01:21:21.000 --> 01:21:45.000 Barry and and Samia but really is absolutely an open question to the wonderful panel of participants assembled here is, is, is it is about actual application of some of the fundamental language and techniques, you know as we kind of universally have 01:21:45.000 --> 01:21:58.000 come to know them of what you know we call the system and how those techniques can be generatively applied to 01:21:58.000 --> 01:22:02.000 trans acting students. 01:22:02.000 --> 01:22:14.000 Male to Female female to male, which strikes me is slightly different than queer bodies or gender queer identities or fluid identities. 01:22:14.000 --> 01:22:24.000 There's clearly subjective individual commitment to transition to a 01:22:24.000 --> 01:22:27.000 gendered 01:22:27.000 --> 01:22:48.000 subjectivity. And I asked only because I do teach acting and acting through song on a honours BA Music Theatre program here in Toronto, and I have had two students over the last couple of years, who were fully male to female or female to male 01:22:48.000 --> 01:23:11.000 into individuals, and they did not self identify to me that way. At the time, I have since learned that from them and and have had some conversations with them, but at the time I found myself as an instructor in the room, making all kinds of assumptions, 01:23:11.000 --> 01:23:31.000 I think that I'm now really challenging myself in terms of basic things like affective or analytical memory or given circumstances states of being and and the kind of gendered assumptions that were so embedded in 01:23:31.000 --> 01:23:52.000 the language and historiography of using the system. And, and so I am very curious about how some of these basic ideas are applied to individuals who have not had a continuous performative experience as one gender or another, through their lifetime. 01:23:52.000 --> 01:24:11.000 So I'm very intrigued by it. I certainly was at a point of surprise, you know,and some amount of embarrassment, I have to say for me in terms of assumptions that I had made about these individuals in terms of referring to their experience 01:24:11.000 --> 01:24:34.000 of gender, and how that activated itself in the learning in the work. So there you go, there's a little loquacious extension of my of my basic question to, to, to all thanks. 01:24:34.000 --> 01:24:37.000 I'm sorry to put you on the spot Barry if you have a response to that. 01:24:37.000 --> 01:24:42.000 I saw another hand up 01:24:42.000 --> 01:24:58.000 It's a big question isn't as, and that's certainly something I've thought a lot about I do not have all the answers. I think, for me, there are two things probably, which has been spoken about a lot. 01:24:58.000 --> 01:25:15.000 It's the, the culture, the environments that we're teaching in just a very, very, you know, having a trans practitioner leading the session then those nuanced kind of that language will will will pose different meanings just in the very body that it's 01:25:15.000 --> 01:25:17.000 coming from. 01:25:17.000 --> 01:25:27.000 And, and, and, you know, so it's not just about the performers, it's not just about it needs to, like, all intersectionality come from all angles. 01:25:27.000 --> 01:25:43.000 And so that's one thing, but also I think it's about just about understanding. 01:25:43.000 --> 01:26:06.000 gender itself. It's not that simple actually that we need to understand that transness and gender fluidity is a really complex and varied thing. And sometimes I think from our point of view we can just kind of think that people are one thing or the 01:26:06.000 --> 01:26:20.000 other, or this one experience of transness. So, yeah, I think it's those two things it's the culture and who and what we're studying and given that weight, but also just our own understanding of gender and trans identity and speaking about, you know, 01:26:20.000 --> 01:26:30.000 trans identity and what that is and it's so varied. Actually, I don't know if that's in any way answered. 01:26:30.000 --> 01:26:32.000 And then, yeah. 01:26:32.000 --> 01:26:45.000 Yeah, thank you. Um, you know, from a theoretical standpoint right we could immediately go to something like Judith Butler and the notion of gender as a performance right. 01:26:45.000 --> 01:26:52.000 Um, but tying in Martin specifically to to a word you use culture, right. 01:26:52.000 --> 01:27:16.000 I feel like we need to help our students become aware of how the culture imposes such incredibly strict and restrictive ideas about gender and that has implications for vocality it has implications for physicality, the choices that I think our trans students 01:27:16.000 --> 01:27:36.000 are making as they develop a new identity a new way of being in the world may be so informed by these cultural tropes that are themselves reflective of these incredibly old restrictive ideas right. 01:27:36.000 --> 01:27:58.000 So I would suggest that as we're working, particularly with our actors who are either in the midst of a transition or are still developing that new identity that we help them to see the panoply of options that they can employ rather than the ideas that 01:27:58.000 --> 01:28:15.000 they must behave a certain way, in order to be considered, whatever it is that they want to be considered right. And I just think that recognition that sense that you have choices you have different ways of being true to yourself and the identity that 01:28:15.000 --> 01:28:20.000 you have emerged into I think can be very powerful. 01:28:20.000 --> 01:28:40.000 You know, in terms of specific technique I'm thinking particularly about how we work with vocal performers who are undergoing transition, and the fact that we have to be really really sensitive to literally how the voice is changing how you move from 01:28:40.000 --> 01:28:59.000 a former vocal position as a singer into or speaker into a new voice right and to and to help them expand that range on a physiological level, but also on a more psychological level right so that they can find literally a place for their voice to be that 01:28:59.000 --> 01:29:12.000 feels authentic and doesn't feel like an identity has been imposed upon it in order now to be considered. You know truthful to who they are, right, that that truth has to emerge from themselves. 01:29:12.000 --> 01:29:24.000 So that's my thought. 01:29:24.000 --> 01:29:45.000 And I think it's a pedagogical question. We are not Stanislavsky. You know I described my relationship to Stanislavsky as non monogamous I'm not his PR person. And so, you know, if we wanted to think about how how emotion is understood or played out or within the context 01:29:45.000 --> 01:30:01.000 of the work you know bring in Peta's work and start a conversation with this relationship between Stanislavsky and Olga Knipper and invite the voices in, so that they have a tangible example from the work I mean I think a lot of what I've learned about 01:30:01.000 --> 01:30:16.000 about my own pedagogy and how to do research is from the complexities and problems in Stanislavsky scholarship and work you know the changing of the language and, and that sort of thing. 01:30:16.000 --> 01:30:31.000 So, I think it is a pedagogical question and I think it's also about pedagogical accountability right you know and Stanislavsky wasn't a trained teacher, as we might understand that now. 01:30:37.000 --> 01:30:57.000 I wanted to just go back to the with the panoply of choices that you know that Ellen was talking about, I from, from a practical experience for me, I've had been blessed to have many experiences working with prison populations. 01:30:57.000 --> 01:31:02.000 And part of something called Shakespeare behind bars prison project. 01:31:02.000 --> 01:31:09.000 And I've worked with many transgender folks. 01:31:09.000 --> 01:31:26.000 In these situations, and I can tell you that the atmosphere that I've created in these particular shows or these particular rehearsal processes of seeing the dynamic of all of these particular people in a room. 01:31:26.000 --> 01:31:44.000 And the most important thing is the human core in the human connection because we all are human and Sharon Carnicke and I, you're on the Sharon's on this right now and Sharon and I were texting, and it is about the human core but how do you get to that 01:31:44.000 --> 01:31:51.000 with and and and totally, you know, get rid of all the other stuff that's out there. 01:31:51.000 --> 01:32:09.000 And I've seen what happens when these particular people are in a situation where they're enclosed, and they have time to think and they have time to be in a room for three or four hours at a clip and be involved in the creative process is very very healing, 01:32:09.000 --> 01:32:11.000 very healing. 01:32:11.000 --> 01:32:30.000 And I've been, I've been privy to that. And I just wanted to just just piggyback on that that the panoply of choices that can be out there and available to people are very healing and certain aspects, and we get blessed from seeing those changes you know 01:32:30.000 --> 01:32:34.000 that's that's all I just wanted to just 01:32:34.000 --> 01:32:39.000 piggyback on that firsthand. 01:32:39.000 --> 01:32:57.000 I think also Martin in response to your question, you know, speak to them and talk to them and engage in a dialogue and I think, again, we have this notion of Stanislavsky you know whether it comes from the, the directors books that he used 01:32:57.000 --> 01:33:04.000 to produce and impose on his actors or whatever but when you read the text of An Actor Prepares or An Actor's Work. Depending what you're looking at. 01:33:04.000 --> 01:33:18.000 The elder figure of Tortsov is not scared of dialogue with the students, we might want to get into the kind of the end result of those dynamics and I understand that is fictionalized but 01:33:18.000 --> 01:33:36.000 talk to the students and that I think, creating an atmosphere, kind of like what Baron is describing of reflection and discussion which is welcomed and also acknowledging that not one trans person's experiences, is the same as everybody else is that we 01:33:36.000 --> 01:33:36.000 a homogenised group. 01:33:36.000 --> 01:33:54.000 And so I think Rosemary Malague talks about in her chapter on Stanislavsky and Women in the Routledge companion, you know, a multitude of perspectives, is our, you know, is a fantastic resource to have in the classroom, particularly in the acting classroom, 01:33:54.000 --> 01:33:57.000 That's right. 01:33:57.000 --> 01:34:16.000 Yeah, just, just going off what you said they're thinking about the most successful interactions I've had is when, when the subject of gender is already in the room and so I would kind of pose. 01:34:16.000 --> 01:34:27.000 What would it be like for the cis white male actors to discuss gender in that way and understand that their relationship to gender is at play as well. 01:34:27.000 --> 01:34:41.000 And it's so it's not just this reactive. We've got some trans actors, we need to think about gender that that's already at the basis of everything so that people can move towards that and already feel that that's in the room. 01:34:41.000 --> 01:34:46.000 You have your hand up Paul. 01:34:46.000 --> 01:34:56.000 I was just drawing attention to the fact that Sharon was trying to attract our attention. So I'm going to pass directly to her hi Sharon How are you, I'm so sorry. 01:34:56.000 --> 01:35:10.000 It's like I got up at 4.30 to come here because I knew so many of you who were speaking, and I really wanted to be here to hear the conversation. And so I'm a little bit foggy. 01:35:10.000 --> 01:35:28.000 And I was having trouble finding my hand on the new zoom I've been on sabbatical working on a book that I just finished and so I'm out of practice with zoom after teaching for a year on it, so forgive me for that thank you Paul for help. 01:35:28.000 --> 01:35:38.000 I don't know if what I want to say is going to be very articulate, given the fact that I'm still a bit foggy. 01:35:38.000 --> 01:35:59.000 But first of all I want to thank everybody for for speaking, because many of you, of course, are people that I connect with Ellen. I remember when we were first working on that article that you talked about in theater topics which was so important to 01:35:59.000 --> 01:36:02.000 me came out of a conference something like this. 01:36:02.000 --> 01:36:29.000 I think what I would add, maybe in kind of representative of Masha, who was supposed to be here, and that there is a huge and important group of women who were very instrumental in creating the Stanislavsky work that we know my, my recent research has 01:36:29.000 --> 01:36:51.000 been primarily on one of them Maria Knebel who probably became the most important voice, after Stanislavsky's death and through the end of the 20th century she taught, three, three generations of directors who reshaped the Russian theatre post Stalin. 01:36:51.000 --> 01:37:14.000 So, I, I feel, you know, a little sad that we can't bring their names into it so I'm just gonna nod. On the second point I want to connect, if I can. Let's see if I can do this articulately without messing up or or tripping on my own words but Samia, 01:37:14.000 --> 01:37:20.000 Is that your name? May I call you that because we don't know each other. 01:37:20.000 --> 01:37:23.000 You spoke. 01:37:23.000 --> 01:37:47.000 So much of what I want my own students to learn and my frustration as being someone who works in Stanislavsky with Stanislavsky because so many people don't have a clue as to what he actually did in a classroom, and how experimental he was, and I will 01:37:47.000 --> 01:38:09.000 just say by, you know, by point of fact, for this particular session that in 1937, he cast a 19 year old woman to play the role of Hamlet, because that woman came to him and said I want to do it and he said fine that will be in your in your university. 01:38:09.000 --> 01:38:26.000 And that kind of open thinking toward gender and toward the fact that times change is something that we need if we want to ever keep his name or his experimentation about creativity. 01:38:26.000 --> 01:38:40.000 Samia when you said he didn't invent anything that's what he said. He said he looked at what actors did and tried to codify it and systematise it in such a way that we could talk about it. 01:38:40.000 --> 01:38:59.000 So I really feel that this kind of conversation is really important. And it's important to grounded in some of the history, although acting classes tend to work with practice and not history. 01:38:59.000 --> 01:39:09.000 So, I don't know if that is a valuable contribution, or commentary to all your wonderful talks. 01:39:09.000 --> 01:39:32.000 But I really, I will end by saying one thing if I might, when I very first started working with the research on Stanislavsky that led first to a talk at Berkeley that then became Stanislavsky in Focus that then became the second edition which is wildly 01:39:32.000 --> 01:39:49.000 different than the first edition, because it. The second edition came after the fall of the Soviet Union, when all these archives were opened we knew things that had been hidden that had never seen the light of day prior to 1991 about what he actually 01:39:49.000 --> 01:39:55.000 did and what he actually thought, and what he was actually doing. 01:39:55.000 --> 01:40:10.000 A man who was then Stanislavsky scholar came to me when I asked him about doing this work, and he said, you know, at the end of my life. 01:40:10.000 --> 01:40:24.000 I'm really frustrated I'm so sorry that I ever started to study Stanislavsky. I would recommend that you just get off the subject. Because no matter how much I've worked to clear the record. 01:40:24.000 --> 01:40:46.000 Nobody listens. And I'm, you know, in some sense, he was right, because there's so much information out there that acting teachers don't tap, especially stuff that came out after the fall of the Soviet Union, where a lot of what was repressed about his 01:40:46.000 --> 01:41:02.000 interest in non realism about his experimentation, about his casting of Irina Rozanova, all of that had been hidden from us, but we're all somehow still stuck in the 60s, and in the 50s. 01:41:02.000 --> 01:41:27.000 When the method distorted, quite frankly, so much of what he thought about and did and worked with. And if we can't get beyond the 50s we won't be able to see, in my opinion, why he is still valuable to us as actors, no matter what OUR gender is, our identifications 01:41:27.000 --> 01:41:42.000 what in it can we take to express the art that we want to make for ourselves for this century. What are those tools of creativity that we can adapt. 01:41:42.000 --> 01:41:52.000 So, I hope I hope that made some sense because I feel like I need another cup of coffee, and I didn't want to go and make it. 01:41:52.000 --> 01:42:00.000 So thank you all for being here and talking about it and letting me say a couple of words here. 01:42:00.000 --> 01:42:05.000 Thank you very much. 01:42:05.000 --> 01:42:08.000 Yes, Sharon you may call me Samia. 01:42:08.000 --> 01:42:11.000 Thank you. 01:42:11.000 --> 01:42:13.000 Um, yeah, I think. 01:42:13.000 --> 01:42:15.000 Thank you for everything that you just said. 01:42:15.000 --> 01:42:25.000 I think the problem is at least in my experience, a lot of times, you know, the way that Stanislavsky is taught first of all never named it's just these things but it's also taught as. 01:42:25.000 --> 01:42:40.000 This is the baseline. This is the foundation, you know, like you're going to learn the language of acting, you know, these are the A B C's and, you know when you're particularly when you're young actor, you know, you don't want to read these books by 01:42:40.000 --> 01:42:54.000 you want to do stuff. And so, I was, you know, and because I didn't have a name for what I was being exposed to because they never said, Okay, well this is one person's idea that, actually he drew from a lot of different things across the world 01:42:54.000 --> 01:43:06.000 and lot of different practices, then you never know and as a black woman who was always feeling this force of, you know, look at this wonderful white man who did this thing and every aspect of my learning. 01:43:06.000 --> 01:43:19.000 There's this resistance that sort of comes up, especially if there's something that doesn't resonate with me, and then I get looked at like a weirdo and class and no one ever says okay this is one way that you could go about it this is one way that you 01:43:19.000 --> 01:43:34.000 can be exposed to it. But if it doesn't resonate with you. That's okay, you've learned through this exercise today, that this is something that doesn't work and that's just as valuable because now we can look at other practitioners other exercises and 01:43:34.000 --> 01:43:51.000 find things that do work. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen enough in classrooms, there's a lot of, you say, stuck in the 60s, and I'm not trying to come for any practitioners that have been doing their job for a while. 01:43:51.000 --> 01:44:04.000 I think we are in a position where we all need to be more open minded and just because you've been doing something for X amount of years, doesn't mean you have it figured out, nobody's perfect, especially in this industry. 01:44:04.000 --> 01:44:17.000 I think it's helpful for us all to remember whether we're the teacher the student that we are always both the teacher and the student, and if we can put ourselves in the position where we're willing to learn and accept something that might be a little 01:44:17.000 --> 01:44:23.000 bit different from what we have always thought that that's a good thing and we can figure it out together. 01:44:23.000 --> 01:44:36.000 I think teachers, you know, especially in drama schools like hey I've been here for this amount of years, you know I'm trying to keep my job and it's going to take a lot for me to grasp on all these new ideas because that's not what I was taught, but 01:44:36.000 --> 01:44:45.000 just because it wasn't what you were taught, you know, that's okay. You know our students don't have to suffer in some ways as much as they did. 01:44:45.000 --> 01:44:56.000 So yeah, I think it's about breaking that down and becoming a lot more collaborative in every aspect, with, with the acting and the educational on the professional side. 01:44:56.000 --> 01:44:57.000 Yeah. 01:44:57.000 --> 01:45:05.000 You're exactly right. Samia I'm with you absolutely on all of those points. 01:45:05.000 --> 01:45:13.000 There's a flexibility in our acting classes that is problematic at times. 01:45:13.000 --> 01:45:29.000 A lot of times, you could use like flexibility I just, I thinking about a lot of the acting classes that I've had, there's only been well and it's interesting I've seen it for me as the person, you know, who doesn't look like everybody else, there's been more 01:45:29.000 --> 01:45:45.000 flexibility for the white actors, but for me it's been a bit more rigid because when people look at me there's been this assumption on how I should be or how I should act and if I didn't fit in with that then I guess they just couldn't reconcile it so 01:45:45.000 --> 01:45:59.000 for me it always felt like I was trying to be shoved into certain boxes and I didn't feel that I was able to be free and really discover who I was and, As I mentioned in my talk I'm just now realizing Oh, actually it was stifling my creativity, it was 01:45:59.000 --> 01:46:02.000 hampering me as an artist. 01:46:02.000 --> 01:46:18.000 And it wasn't until I took the summer acting five week acting program the Black Arts Institute in New York in 2019. First time that ever worked with instructors that were not white you know they're all black all the students for black. 01:46:18.000 --> 01:46:35.000 I was finally getting a chance to work with works written by black playwrights, and it literally changed my life, because for once I didn't feel these extra forces, I could just be me and figure out what I could discover and I grew so much within five 01:46:35.000 --> 01:46:46.000 weeks with my artistry and I was shocked because I was like, I spent years you know in acting programs and how was it, I'm growing more in weeks but I think it's because that it was that flexibility and working together. 01:46:46.000 --> 01:46:49.000 So, yeah. 01:46:49.000 --> 01:47:02.000 Thank you so much, I'm aware of time I've got about 10 minutes left, and there are a couple of comments in the chat, there's one submitted directly from Charles I don't know if you're able to respond to in the chat and Paul has suggested we wrap up shortly 01:47:02.000 --> 01:47:06.000 but Peta you have your hand up. 01:47:06.000 --> 01:47:26.000 It just wanted to say that a lot of these discussions have been happening in Australia for some time, but there is I wanted to follow on from something that Sharon said and links to what Samia is saying, and I learnt acting way back. 01:47:26.000 --> 01:47:43.000 I learned Stanislavsky techniques from a female teacher now there was some value in the way it came to me in that form. 01:47:43.000 --> 01:48:09.000 And I think we can get it is in essence knowledge and knowledge can come to us in various kind of disembodied ways but having it having it overcoming the kind of issue of being male knowledge to someone like myself who is feminist, it was being taught 01:48:09.000 --> 01:48:22.000 through interpretation by a female teacher made a big difference. So, there's a more complex story going on here I think about who embodies the knowledge and how it is passed on. 01:48:22.000 --> 01:48:24.000 01:48:24.000 --> 01:48:31.000 I'll stop there but thank you everyone. It's been so stimulating very exciting. 01:48:31.000 --> 01:48:38.000 Thank you so much, Paul, I don't know if you wrap up for us. 01:48:38.000 --> 01:48:42.000 Yes, Mark thank you very much indeed. 01:48:42.000 --> 01:48:56.000 I obviously want to start by thanking our panel members today for their tremendous contribution to this event, and for sharing their scholarship and their insight and I also want to thank Steve Ansell, and our colleagues from the University of 01:48:56.000 --> 01:49:02.000 Leeds for their technical hosting of the event, which has been great. Thank you. 01:49:02.000 --> 01:49:11.000 But I also particularly want to say thank you to Mark Shields, our moderator for the huge amount of work that's gone into planning and presenting the webinar. 01:49:11.000 --> 01:49:21.000 Anybody who's ever attempted to do one of these events before just knows how big that challenge is. So thank you very much, Mark. 01:49:21.000 --> 01:49:28.000 And of course I want to thank everybody who's joined us today. We really genuinely have covered the world. 01:49:28.000 --> 01:49:30.000 We've had people from. 01:49:30.000 --> 01:49:34.000 Not quite all corners of the planet but certainly both sides of it. 01:49:34.000 --> 01:49:43.000 In spite of the time differences so thank you very much for getting up in the middle of the night or very early hours of the morning to join us it's greatly appreciated. 01:49:43.000 --> 01:49:47.000 And it's lovely to see so many familiar faces joining us again. 01:49:47.000 --> 01:49:55.000 We hope that you found this to be stimulating and provocative. And I hope that you are now sitting there thinking. 01:49:55.000 --> 01:49:58.000 So what happens next. 01:49:58.000 --> 01:50:12.000 And today, of course, is only a starting point, as these webinars ever are Ellen said in her introduction, this is new research presentations that you've heard in the questions and the discussions. 01:50:12.000 --> 01:50:28.000 They've opened up very important debates and what happens to that debate now genuinely does depend on all of you, Jonathan mentioned his in his introduction at the beginning, we're developing a new book series with Routledge, which will explore Stanislavsky's 01:50:28.000 --> 01:50:46.000 work and legacy, very specifically within a contemporary context. And today's topic Stanislavsky and Gender will certainly be one of the first titles in this new series. But in the meantime, if you have ideas about ways that you would like to 01:50:46.000 --> 01:50:58.000 take the debate forward, or indeed topics that you'd like us to explore in our webinar series, then please do get in touch with us because we're always very pleased to hear from you. 01:50:58.000 --> 01:51:14.000 And this is our last event, obviously before the break, we will be continuing our webinar series in the new year and we hope to see you all again then so can I just wish you a safe and a joyous and a peaceful holiday season. 01:51:14.000 --> 01:51:24.000 And I look forward to seeing you all again in 2022. I'm going to hand back to Mark for any final thoughts. Thank you. 01:51:24.000 --> 01:51:41.000 Thank you very much Paul I wholeheartedly agree that is what do we do next, and very much with emphasis on the accountability of us. Those of us living and working, who are in the rooms doing the work I think we have to take up that challenge ourselves. 01:51:41.000 --> 01:51:50.000 And thank you to Paul who has been an enormous support throughout this whole process and to all of the speakers and indeed the audience who have been absolutely fantastic. 01:51:50.000 --> 01:51:56.000 And, and there are a couple of questions in the chat I don't if the panelists could direct message. 01:51:56.000 --> 01:52:06.000 Some of those offerings, and get in contact with us directly I'm sorry we haven't been able to pick up everything Yaxin I can absolutely pick that up with you directly. 01:52:06.000 --> 01:52:36.000 As my close colleague, and, and, Yes, thank you.