Theatre, Dance and Performance Training

ISSN: 1944-3927 (Print) 1944-3919 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtdp20

Twenty-first-century Russian actor training: Active

Analysis in the UK

David Jackson

To cite this article: David Jackson (2011) Twenty-first-century Russian actor training:
Active Analysis in the UK, Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, 2:2, 166-180, DOI:
10.1080/19443927.2011.602704

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19443927.2011.602704

Published online: 06 Oct 2011.

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 Theatre, Dance and Performance Training,
Vol. 2(2), 2011, 166–180

Twenty-first-century Russian actor

training: Active Analysis in the UK
David Jackson
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Actor training in Europe, Russia and the US is still dominated by the many branches of the
Stanislavskian ‘family tree’. But how has this tradition evolved in Moscow and what fresh
insights does it have to offer? Written from the perspective of a practitioner, this paper
interrogates two strands of Russian actor training in the Stanislavskian tradition. The first
section traces the genealogy of Active Analysis from Stanislavski’s final studio, through the
work of Maria Knebel to the ‘Russian School of Acting’, an idiosyncratic group of teachers who
brought new techniques to the UK in the 1990s. Secondly, the paper analyses recent
developments at the School-Studio attached to the Moscow Art Theatre, revealing a focus on
études and the ‘event’. The third and fourth sections document the impact of a range of
contemporary Russian methods on students in a British drama school, the Mountview
Academy of Theatre Arts. In training, rehearsal and performance, the approach is seen to
enable the students to grasp some of the ‘holy grails’ of acting for the first time. In conclusion,
the paper summarises the potential of Active Analysis and some of the issues raised by
transferring training methods from one theatre culture to another.

Keywords: Stanislavsky, Active Analysis, Maria Knebel, Russian actor training,

Moscow Art Theatre (MXAT), Mountview

But nothing can fix and pass on to our descendants those inner paths of feeling, that
conscious road to the gates of the unconscious, which alone are the true foundation of
theatrical art. This is the sphere of living tradition. This is a torch which can be passed
only from hand to hand . . . through instruction, through the revelation of mysteries, on
the one hand, and exercises and stubborn and inspired effort to grasp these mysteries,
on the other. (Stanislavsky 1925, p. 461)

Introduction

Actor training in Europe, the US and Russia is dominated by the Stanislavskian

tradition. In the US, his influence can be traced through generations of

Theatre, Dance and Performance Training ISSN 1944-3927 print/ISSN 1944-3919 online
Ó 2011 Taylor & Francis http://www.tandfonline.com
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19443927.2011.602704
 Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 167

practitioners, from Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya to the

members of the American Laboratory Theatre and the legendary Group
Theatre to the present (Gordon 2010). In Russia, Stanislavsky has inspired
practitioners as diverse as Meyerhold, Vakhtangov, Michael Chekhov and
Vasiliev (Pitches 2006). In the UK, virtually all Conservatoires cite Stanislavsky
as an influence and all actors have at least heard of the ‘system’, even if they do
not employ it or use only isolated components. But amongst this complex
genealogy of actors, directors and teachers, with its many branches of practice
and performance research, what is most relevant to the contemporary actor?
How have Stanislavsky’s discoveries evolved in his home country and how
might UK practitioners take advantage of the most recent developments in
Russia?
This article interrogates two strands of contemporary Russian training in
the Stanislavskian tradition, current teaching at the ‘School-Studio’ of the
Moscow Art Theatre (MXAT) and Active Analysis. The Method of Physical
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Actions is familiar in the English-speaking world as the product of Stanislavsky’s

final studio, the Opera-Dramatic. Active Analysis is an alternative account of
the work, less familiar in the West but arguably a more comprehensive
interpretation of Stanislavsky’s legacy with a greater impact on twenty-first-
century practice. The term ‘Active Analysis’ was coined by Maria Knebel,
MXAT actress and participant in the final studio. Stanislavsky (quoted above)
refers to the difficulty of transmitting the secrets of actor training by any
means other than direct communication between teacher and student. In
Knebel’s case, personal contact was even more vital, because of the hostile
political climate in the Soviet Union. Her work was suppressed by both censor
and former colleagues. Her two books, On the active analysis of plays and roles
and The word in the art of the actor, were not published in Russia until after the
death of Stalin and are yet to be published in English. So Active Analysis was
disseminated by contact between teacher and student rather than through
literature, often in secret, ultimately reaching the UK through the ‘Russian
School of Acting’ in the mid to late 1990s. This is an account of one
practitioner’s personal experience of Russian training and his efforts to exploit
the potential of the exercises in a British drama school. The aim is to make
these methods available to other practitioners interested in experimenting
with Russian techniques.
The first section describes the transmission of Active Analysis to the UK
through the ‘Russian School of Acting’ (RSA). It reviews the literature
addressing Active Analysis, arguing that this apparently simple technique can
only be fully understood as a method with deep roots in the entirety of the
Stanislavsky ‘system’. The second section uses participant observation to
examine contemporary pedagogy at the MXAT School-Studio, identifies its
antecedents in Stanislavsky’s work and reveals an emphasis on the ‘event’ and
études. Section three is a qualitative case study that documents the
application of Active Analysis in the context of a British Conservatoire,
the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts. The final section reflects on the
author’s experience of the transition from actor training to rehearsal:
the Mountview actors prepare for a performance of D.H. Lawrence’s The
Widowing of Mrs Holroyd, using Active Analysis as the rehearsal method,
supplemented by MXAT exercises. The conclusion summarises the effects of
the training and highlights some of the issues raised by applying an unfamiliar
 168 D. Jackson

methodology in a timescale typical of British training and performance

conditions.

Section one: the RSA and Active Analysis

Soon after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, an international group
of students spent 10 months training at the State Institute for Cinemato-
graphy (VGIK) in Moscow; one of them was Bella Merlin. Merlin was
instrumental in bringing a group of inspirational acting ‘masters’ from VGIK
to teach a series of summer schools in Birmingham. I participated in the first
of these courses, which was known as the ‘Russian School of Acting’, a term
in fairly common usage in Russia (see Borovsky and Leach 1999, p. 14;
Storchak cited Merlin 2001, p. 206). This title suggests the RSA teachers
embodied some generic features of the Russian acting tradition. Certainly
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they are profoundly influenced by their own background and training, but in
this case the term ‘Russian School’ was used simply as a convenient label.
Merlin’s Beyond Stanislavsky (2001) discusses the work of Vladimir Ananyev,
Katya Kamotskaya and Albert Filozov in depth. Movement specialist Ananyev
focussed on ‘work on the self’, using improvisation to awaken the actor’s
body and inner life. Kamotskaya has developed her own exercises to
cultivate the ‘work of the ensemble’, enabling actors to establish powerful
non-verbal connections with on-stage partners. Their work laid the
foundations for the rehearsal of text, led by Albert Filozov. Filozov trained
at the MXAT School-Studio and is a veteran actor of the Soviet era (cf.
Merlin 2001, pp. 152–158). His method was simple and remarkably effective.
After a scene-reading and brief discussion of its content, he asked ‘what is
going on?’ This was the only question Filozov posed before inviting the actors
to play the scene in their own words. For many of the participants in the
RSA, a combination of students and professional actors, the teachers’
methods were a revelation and enabled them to produce their best work.
They inspired a strong commitment to ‘RSA’ techniques and the desire to
disseminate the work in the UK. Merlin and I, for example, formed Fourcast
Theatre, to explore the potential of the approach as actors.
It is one thing for an actor to make a success of ‘RSA’ training when guided
by experts brought up in the Russian system, but what would a practitioner
need to know to employ the methods as a director or teacher? How could
this particular torch be passed on when practical experience is limited? One
way to plug the gaps in one’s knowledge is to investigate the origins of the
methodology, although a literature review is not without its difficulties. The
inaccurate and inconsistent translation of Stanislavsky’s work in the best
known English-language versions is well documented by, for example,
Hobgood (1973), Benedetti (in Stanislavski 2008) and Carnicke (2009).
Furthermore, Carnicke offers a comprehensive account of the distortion of
Stanislavsky’s ideas by other factors, particularly the need to adapt his books
for the American market and the censorship in Russia of any ideas that did
not conform strictly to Soviet ideology. Stanislavsky himself was too ill to
record the outputs of the final studio. Nevertheless, the testimony of his
students and recent scholarship have illuminated the path from the final
studio to the ‘RSA’.
 Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 169

Filozov’s approach can be located in the discoveries of the Opera-

Dramatic Studio. His simple preliminary question echoes the words Michael
Kedrov used to introduce rehearsals: ‘what is happening, what is going on’
(cited Toporkov 2001, p. 117). The prompt move into action recalls
Stanislavsky’s ‘new device’, referred to in a letter of 1936:

It involves reading the play today, and tomorrow rehearsing it on stage. What
can we rehearse? A great deal. A character comes in, greets everybody, sits
down, tells of events that have just taken place, expresses a series of thoughts.
Everyone can act this, guided by their own life experience. (Cited Carnicke
2009, p. 194)

How exactly does this ‘new device’ work? Gordon provides a useful
summary drawn, from an undated transcription circa 1936 (1987, pp. 209–
211). It consists of a 25-point plan: the actors are ‘deprived’ of the text until
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they have improvised the entire play in terms of actions and given
circumstances. Their through-lines, the themes of the play and the text
itself are introduced gradually and the mise en scène emerges organically from
the actors’ improvisations. Vasili Toporkov (2001, p. 111) describes the
application of the new method to Moliere’s Tartuffe, stressing its continuity
with the past:

It can’t be said that Stanislavski brought anything completely new to his final
work with us, or anything contrary to his previous teachings about the
system . . . But now Stanislavski’s method was richer, more practical, and that
was expressed in the definition, the ‘Method of Physical Action’.

The Method of Physical Actions (MoPA) was sanctioned by the Soviet

authorities as Stanislavsky’s last word on the subject of actor training. The
particular version of the MoPA that became dominant in the Soviet Union
was that of Michael Kedrov, the lead actor of the final studio and the director
of its production of Tartuffe after Stanislavsky’s death. But contemporary
critic Sharon Carnicke argues that Kedrov’s interpretation was a truncated
version of Stanislavsky’s work, designed to appease the Soviet authorities
(2009, pp. 191–192). Filozov himself believes the Method of Physical Actions
‘in effect killed Russian Theatre’ (cited Merlin 2001, p. 158). A very different
account of the final studio emerges from actress Maria Knebel, who
consciously distinguished her version from Kedrov’s by calling it ‘Active
Analysis’. If there was a battle between these two rival interpretations, then
it was an unequal struggle. When Kedrov became Artistic Director of the
MXAT, he acquired the power to quell any alternative voices and sacked
Knebel (Carnicke 2009, p. 191). Knebel’s subsequent mission to disseminate
Active Analysis became a cautious process of publishing when the political
climate allowed, directing at the Central Children’s Theatre and conducting
secretive workshops in private apartments (Beumers 1999, Shapiro 2006). In
the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the relaxation of
censorship and increased levels of artistic exchange (Davydova 2008),
Knebel’s influence on the present generation of Russian practitioners has
gradually become evident. Amongst her students were the influential
directors Vasiliev, Anatoly Efros and Oleg Efremov. Filozov too came under
 170 D. Jackson

Knebel’s influence and produced his own synthesis of methods, adding,

according to Merlin (2001, p. 158), spirituality and a sense of play to Kedrov’s
somewhat mechanical approach.
The distinction between the Method of Physical Actions and Active
Analysis has been elucidated by both Merlin (2001, pp. 151–165, 2007, pp.
177–216) and Carnicke (2000, pp. 24–29, 2009, pp. 189–202).
Briefly, the MoPA is the construction of an unbroken, logical sequence of
physical activities with a psychological dimension. Active Analysis is a holistic
process that draws on all the actors’ resources, emotional, physical, mental
and spiritual, using improvisation to investigate the dramatic content of a
play. As well as clarifying terminology, Carnicke (2000, pp. 28–29) also
provides a methodological summary, derived from Knebel:

. Carefully read and assess the facts of the scene on which you are working
[. . .]
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. Immediately play the scene using your own words [. . .]

. Re-read the scene and compare it with what happened in your
improvisation [. . .]
. Repeat your improvisation again, and again check your work against the
text [. . .]
. Memorise the scene for performance.

The most detailed account of Active Analysis is available from Maria

Knebel herself, although not in English. Her two books have been published
in the same volume in French, under the title L’Analyse-Action (quotations are
my translations). Knebel (2006, p. 41) specifies the three main aims of Active
Analysis: to counteract the passivity engendered by ‘round the table’ analysis;
to link the psychological and the physical; and to produce ‘scenic speech’, i.e.
audible words rooted in thoughts, objectives and actions. Of the three aims,
Stanislavski attributed the greatest importance to the use of words:

To struggle against a mechanical delivery of the text, to bring on stage an

authentic thought process, that’s an objective which must always be of the
utmost importance in the work of a theatre company. (Knebel 2006, p. 39)

Learning lines too early increases the risk of such mechanical delivery. For this
reason, Stanislavsky insisted that, initially, actors need the playwright’s text only
to identify the thoughts, facts and events stored in the play (Knebel 2006, p. 51).
The actors then engage in a series of structured improvisations exploring an
aspect of the play in their own words. Their task is to filter the given
circumstances through their own sensibility in order to ‘evaluate’ the facts, to
understand their meaning in the context of the play and to start the process of
‘feeling themselves in the role and the role in themselves’. Useful illustrations of
how we might ‘evaluate the facts’ appear in both Stanislavsky and Carnicke. In
Creating a Role, Stanislavsky (1981, pp. 34–43) ponders how he would feel if he
were a woman in a relationship with Molchalin in Woe from Wit. Carnicke’s
example comes from Mariane’s role in Tartuffe. She suggests questions like ‘how
would I react if I were subject to an arranged marriage?’ or ‘how would I feel if I
were financially dependent on my father?’ So the apparently simple method
employed by Filozov and summarised by Carnicke is in fact a highly complex
 Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 171

process of exploring the events, relationships and action of the play,

simultaneously engaging the intellectual, emotional, psychological and physical
resources of the actor. The aim is to create the dramatic content of the play,
from which the characters’ speech will naturally arise.
In the conclusion of On the active analysis of plays and roles, Knebel (2006, p.
118) reiterates the purpose of her work: to show a new methodology taken
directly from Stanislavsky and to demonstrate its connection with the
‘system’ as a whole. In effect, she warns the reader not to attempt this
method without locating it in the ‘system’. The prospect of attempting to use
Active Analysis on the basis of intense but short periods of training
combined with a reading of the somewhat problematic literature is a
daunting one. However, the potential rewards for directors and acting
teachers are huge. Active Analysis is an exciting strategy for harnessing the
improvisatory skills of the company, filtering the facts of the play through the
experience of the actor, creating the fictional conditions that compel a
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character to speak and forging a connection between actor and character.

An account of my attempts to put Active Analysis into practice appears in
sections three and four.

Section two: the Moscow Art Theatre School-Studio

Knebel’s student Efremov provides a link to the second strand of

contemporary Stanislavskian practice, the MXAT itself. Efremov is credited
with revitalising the theatre when he became Artistic Director in 1970,
indirectly restoring Knebel’s influence 20 years after she had been removed
by Kedrov (Smeliansky 1999). The MXAT regularly hosts a group of actors
and teachers from the Central School of Speech and Drama (CSSD), so they
can experience contemporary Russian training at Stanislavsky’s home
theatre. In the summer of 2009, a party of 22 travelled to Moscow for 10
days of classes, delivered in Russian with simultaneous translation. The
Russian students normally have seven hours of acting classes a day, six days a
week, in addition to tuition in singing, voice and movement, regularly
working until 10pm. Although the CSSD group experienced a lighter
workload, our course constituted a cross-section of the first year of the
MXAT training, including many of the same disciplines: theatre history, stage
movement, Chekhov technique and ballet. The bulk of our time, however,
was spent in acting classes led by Dean of Acting Sergei Zemtsov.
Zemtsov’s sessions consisted of two primary elements: group exercises
and études. All the acting teachers we encountered used complex
clapping games to develop ensemble skills and a sense of tempo-rhythm.
For example, students sit in a circle, one claps a rhythm, the entire
company repeats, then the rhythm is passed around the circle, one clap at
a time. A second game recalls a communication exercise cited by Gordon
(1987, p. 227): the company sings a popular song, as if on the radio.
When the teacher claps, the radio is ‘switched off’, but the actors aim to
continue the song in their heads in the same tempo. On the second clap,
the actors sing out loud again, ideally still synchronised. The second
component of the classes consisted of various ‘études’, widely used in
Russia for training and rehearsal (Gorchakov 1960, p. 10, Shevstova 2004,
 172 D. Jackson

pp. 51–52). There are many types of étude. They can be a method of
devising, a stand-alone acting exercise, an off-text improvisation or draft
of a scene; they can be performed solo, in pairs or in the ensemble;
silently, with the minimum of dialogue or in the actor’s own words.
Knebel, for example, uses the term ‘rehearsal by études’ as a synonym for
Active Analysis (2006, pp. 74–85).
Zemtsov used a variety of études, including a sequence of solo
assignments which developed an approach to characterisation and pair
work related to text. The type of étude that subsequently proved to be
most useful in my own work was a group improvisation Zemtsov used to
start his classes, the MXAT ‘Surprise’. The instructions were to generate
a distinctive atmosphere using a minimum of ‘text’ (i.e. improvised
dialogue) and to introduce a clear-cut ‘event’ that is both plausible and
unexpected. The event must change the atmosphere and affect the entire
company, providing an organic motivation for the actors to leave the
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space. In fact, Zemtsov insisted that all types of étude should contain a
vivid event that transforms the characters in the scene. He succinctly
explained the justification for avoiding words: ‘text is a dangerous thing, it
encourages actors to explain instead of act’ (8 September 2009). One
example of a ‘Surprise’ was a wild teenage party interrupted by a father
returning home. The ‘Group Surprise’ illustrates a shift in Stanislavskian
thinking highlighted by Carnicke (2009. pp. 194–195). She explains how
the individual fantasy Stanislavsky encouraged at the beginning of his
career was later replaced by exercises in collective creativity with a
strong element of play. These études develop seamlessly from actor
training into rehearsal of text. In the second week we began ‘Chekhov
Surprises’, which operated on exactly the same principles but related to
The Seagull. Actors can opt for either contemporary or period settings,
using characters from the play or themselves in fictional circumstances.
One group staged Treplev’s failed play, another created a scene in a hotel
lobby, where a Trigorin-like figure is recognised and pursued by various
women. Zemtsov approved of sharp changes in atmosphere, a ‘vivid’
event that affected the whole group, differentiation of reaction and actors
existing realistically within the given circumstances, recalling the central
concept of the ‘system’, ‘perezhivanie’ or ‘experiencing’ (Hobgood 1973,
Benedetti in Stanislavski 2008, Carnicke 2009). In the case of the
‘Chekhov’ études, Zemtsov pointed out the ingredients that were and
were not appropriate to the play. His comparison between improvisation
and text is a short step from Carnicke’s description of rehearsal by Active
Analysis, suggesting a parallel rehearsal methodology. It is one feature of
the MXAT acting classes that demonstrably shares with Active Analysis a
common origin in Stanislavsky’s late discoveries.
The School demands and receives total commitment from its students, but
the hard work is leavened by a sense of fun and a dictum we heard on several
occasions: ‘easier, lighter, higher, merrier’. The creative response of the
CSSD group suggests many of the games and exercises we experienced are
straightforwardly transferable to the UK. There was plenty of common
ground. Our Russian training was particularly strong in terms of promoting
emotional availability, attention to detail, use of events and atmospheres,
tempo-rhythm and ensemble work. Clearly, the course was a success for the
 Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 173

visitors, but the CSSD group were in something of a holiday mood. The
training was an interesting addition to their normal studies in London. But
how would students in a British Conservatoire respond to contemporary
developments in the Stanislavskian tradition? This key question informed my
teaching at the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts between 2009 and
2010.

Section three: actor training at Mountview

Three separate projects at the Mountview Music Theatre Department

constituted an opportunity to investigate the impact of ‘RSA’ and MXAT
training methods on British students. The object of the first Mountview project
was to rehearse scenes from The Cherry Orchard using Active Analysis. The key
challenges for the practitioner seemed to fall into two areas. Firstly,
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preparation: Knebel warns that initial attempts at Active Analysis are often
‘maladroit’, so I was concerned that if the students suffered early setbacks, they
would lose faith in the approach. Moreover, both Zemtsov and Kamotskaya
approach words cautiously. Therefore a gradual introduction of the method
seemed crucial. Secondly, confidence: there is a degree of discomfort for any
director/teacher entering unfamiliar territory. In the end, the only solution for
the last problem is to ‘suck it and see’.
As a first step, I employed a non-verbal ‘RSA’ exercise which Merlin (2001,
p. 120) calls ‘Two People in the Empty Space’. However, I prefer to make an
explicit link with a key element of the ‘system’ and refer to it as a
‘Communication Exercise’. It is deceptively simple – two (or three) actors
make eye contact and approach one another. They must pay continuous
attention to their own impulses and those of their partner(s) and not impose
any particular outcome on the exercise. Usually, there is a subtle, unspoken
dialogue that takes place as partners advance and retire according to their
inner feelings. When a third person joins the étude, it has the additional
effect of generating unexpected configurations that emerge organically from
the inter-relationships between the actors. It is a meaningful use of stage
space that is a world away from ‘blocking’ imposed by a director. We used
the exercise to establish certain principles essential for successful Active
Analysis:

. unbroken, non-verbal communication between actors;

. attentiveness to the self and partner;
. giving up control of a scene in favour of genuine reactions to impulses,
resulting in an encounter that is ‘alive’.

Once the teacher/director has observed these outcomes, the actors are
ready to move on to the next step, repeating the communication exercise,
but this time incorporating some of the given circumstances of their chosen
scene. I approached this phase on the assumption that the less complicated
the instructions the better. We read some extracts together and following
Filozov’s lead, posed only two questions, ‘what is going on?’ and ‘what do the
characters want?’ A particularly useful discovery was that playing these basic
circumstances in a silent étude threw attention onto the emotional content
 174 D. Jackson

of the scene. Language is used to obscure our thoughts and feelings as often
as it is used to reveal them. As Zemtsov pointed out, articulate actors can
use improvised dialogue to avoid engaging with action and emotion. Pinter
(1976, p. 15) remarks, ‘one way of looking at speech is to say that it is a
constant stratagem to cover nakedness’. Playing a scene without words
prevents the actors from hiding.
I had some anxiety about the next stage, the transition from silent études
to improvised dialogue. I felt the students would need more detailed
knowledge of their scenes in order to play them confidently, but did not
want to engage in excessive intellectual analysis, on the grounds that it is
rarely useful for an actor. I asked myself, what is the minimum information
the actors need in order to play the scene? I decided to avoid jargon where
possible and prioritised three questions: what circumstances are affecting
your character in the scene (given circumstances)? What is on the
characters’ minds (subtext)? What do they want and what do they do to
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get it (tasks/actions)? We found these questions generated sufficient

information for the actors without burdening them with too much detail
at an early stage. While the transition into dialogue is a challenge, it helps to
remind the cast they are not yet required to remember the author’s text, but
to find and play the right actions. Here, time constraints compromised the
process to a degree. The obvious next step would have been to ask exactly
the same question as I had done for the silent études (‘what’s going on?’), and
simply add ‘text’. In fact, I asked the actors to introduce several factors at
once, which ideally should have been layered in gradually.
The actors continued to repeat the études, both ‘publicly’ in class and
independently, exploring the dramatic situation in the play and continually re-
reading the text to ensure no depths and details had been missed. This phase
of repeated études is the most testing period for the teacher-director.
What feedback should I give? What new qualities should be added with each
round of études? When are they ready to move to the author’s text? It is
difficult to offer specific guidance, because the progress of rehearsals
depends on the director’s reading of the content of the scene. Work
continues until all the elements of the scene are present. However, Knebel
(2006, pp. 74–85) explains some of the signposts and pitfalls in the process:
the first phase is to establish the ‘logic’ of the chain of events, the next to feel
yourself in the role and the role in yourself. She warns against the dangers of
straying too far from the content of the piece and of repetition without
development.
Repeating études in their own words enabled the actors to approach
the specifics of the text gradually, while retaining their personal
engagement with the dramatic situation. Before long, they began to ask
when they should learn lines. This transition is a key moment in the
process. Knebel explains that through the work done at each stage, the
actors will almost unconsciously appropriate the text. Once the actor has
‘penetrated deeply into the conception of the dramatist’, the actor ‘can
and must’ learn the lines precisely. At this point, the director must deal
ruthlessly with any approximation of the dialogue (Knebel 2006, p. 108).
It was, then, my role to be vigilant and to insist on accuracy. As the
project approached its conclusion, in the form of a presentation to staff,
the students felt the pressure of impending assessment and were
 Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 175

tempted to take refuge in old habits. It was then essential to remind them
not to compromise the process by prematurely attempting to go ‘off
book’.
How then did the students report their first encounter with the active
analysis of a play? Positive outcomes of the silent études included a reduced
inclination to ‘indicate’ emotion, strong communication with on-stage
partners and establishing a sound foundation of dramatic action. However,
some were confused by this phase, feeling they did not fully understand the
scene and were forcing their emotions. Almost all students found the
process of repeating études in their own words beneficial, because of the
attention to detail and gradual approach to the text. It made them feel secure
to explore the characters and circumstances thoroughly. A number of
students were concerned about the slow pace of the work, particularly in
relation to the limited opportunities for teacher feedback and the likely
rehearsal times available in a professional situation. Time is certainly a
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significant factor in the process but a circumstantial one. A more serious

critique of the method was touched on by Francesca Berlin: ‘improvising the
scene without using the character’s language made me feel like it was just me
in the scene/action . . . I never felt like I could be true to the writer’ (student
evaluations, 6 July 2009). The issue of text provoked some of the strongest
reactions. Knebel’s (2006, p. 39) allusion to the ‘struggle against the
mechanical delivery of text’ is justified, judging by this disarmingly honest
remark by Kim Moorhouse: ‘so many times I would learn lines not having a
clue about what I’m actually saying or why I’m saying it’ (6 July 2009).
Discomfort with text can lead to psychological barriers of an alarming
nature, but some students felt Active Analysis could be part of the solution.
A number of actors had important breakthroughs, including the sense of
being ‘in the moment’, feeling comfortable with silence, experiencing a close
bond with their characters and genuine emotion on stage. No two students
responded in quite the same way, but almost all achieved a new
understanding of their own acting process. In the following months, they
would have the opportunity to experience further Russian training
techniques and to rehearse a full-length production using Active Analysis.

Section four: rehearsal and performance at Mountview

During the second Mountview project, the actors were introduced to a

range of MXAT methods and gained further experience of Active Analysis.
As Music Theatre specialists, it was unsurprising that they adapted readily to
the MXAT rhythmic clapping exercises. They responded enthusiastically
to the ‘Group Surprise’ as an opportunity to devise scenes independently, to
build atmospheres as a company and to experiment with the use of space.
Perhaps most useful of all was a second opportunity for rehearsal by études,
this time working on contemporary texts of their own choice. The ensemble
skills refined by the MXAT exercises and the consolidation of Active Analysis
built up a collective confidence in the Russian approach. Early in 2010, I had
the opportunity to take the process of Active Analysis to its logical
conclusion, when I was invited to direct a production of The Widowing of Mrs
Holroyd, by D.H. Lawrence. The Holroyd project was an opportunity to put
 176 D. Jackson

the method to the test in a production with a typically short rehearsal

period: 12 hours a week for five weeks.
The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd is an intense and claustrophobic play in a
realistic style. Set in one room of a Nottinghamshire miner’s cottage, the
action dramatises the loveless marriage of Lizzie Holroyd and her attraction
to the electrician, Blackmore. Where Charles Holroyd feels belittled by his
wife and takes refuge in womanising and drink, Blackmore yearns for
domesticity and a stable family life. Holroyd’s death in a mining accident looks
like an opportunity for the lovers, but has the paradoxical effect of driving a
wedge between them. The play lends itself to exploration through Active
Analysis for two reasons: firstly, improvisation is an ideal tool for exploring
its rich subtext of simmering resentment and suppressed passion; secondly,
the process provides the actors with a strategy for embodying the lives of
characters very remote from their own in terms of era, society, class and
dialect.
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On a certain level, as noted above, the rehearsal process of Active

Analysis is simple: read the scene, play the scene, compare the improvisation
to the text. Familiar with this sequence, the cast were strongly motivated to
rehearse the play with études. The complexity, from the director’s
perspective, is in knowing how to ‘read’ the actors’ work and respond.
Essentially, you are checking that what you believe should be present in the
scene is visible on stage. The questions the director can ask reveal how the
method is embedded in the components of the Stanislavsky system:

. Can I see what the character is trying to achieve? (Task/Action)

. Can I see what interior or exterior forces are preventing them from
achieving their task? (Counter-action)
. Is the actor behaving as if they are in this specific time, location and
situation? (Given Circumstances)
. Is there an ‘event’ in the scene that changes the characters?
. Does the actor communicate what the character is thinking and feeling,
but doesn’t express verbally? (Sub-text)
. Are the actors relating to their on-stage partners? (Communication/
ensemble)

These are the nuts and bolts of the director’s trade and the ‘system’ provides
a common language for the discourse between director and actor.
Comfortable with the process, the Mountview actors repeated scenes in
their own words, building a progressively richer enactment of the scenes,
gradually absorbing Lawrence’s text.
The basic process of Active Analysis is easy to summarise. But what
milestones and issues are likely to emerge in rehearsals? What guidelines
could be made available to practitioners? It is highly unlikely that any two
projects will evolve in quite the same way, because of the level of
improvisation involved. It is entirely unpredictable what the actors will
discover in the early stages of rehearsal and what elements will need to be
added. Next steps are dictated by the gap between the content of the
improvisation and the content of the scenes as written. The aspects of the
Holroyd project analysed below are therefore not in strict chronological
order, but similar issues could arise for directors at any stage of the process.
 Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 177

Initially, actors have no text, nothing to go on except a basic sense of

what’s going on in the scene and their own creative resources. The actors,
then, have no option but to insert themselves into the fictional
circumstances and ask the question, what would I do in this situation? This
applies to all types of étude. The MXAT ‘Surprises’, for example, can be
readily integrated into the process. I set up ‘Holroyd Surprises’ for both men
and women. In the first, the actresses played a scene in which the women of
the village socialise after work. Lizzie leaves the room, allowing the others to
discuss Blackmore’s frequent visits. This étude helped motivate Lizzie’s
resentment of village gossip in Act Three. The men, on the other hand,
prepared a Surprise set in the village pub. The ‘event’ was a suggestive
remark made about Holroyd’s wife, which provoked a brawl. The public
embarrassment, experienced in the context of the étude, informed
Holroyd’s attempts to humiliate his wife in Act One, Scene Two, when he
brings two women home to flaunt his infidelity. The use of études harnesses
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the inventiveness and enthusiasm of the actors by drawing on their creativity

and personal experience.
As the actors continually compare their improvisations to the text,
they notice how their own responses differ from those of the character
and gradually incorporate their discoveries. This creates a hybrid of
character and actor, mentioned by Stanislavsky when he refers to himself
as ‘Stockman-Stanislavsky’ in My Life in Art (1925, p. 293). The transition
from ‘self in circumstances’ to ‘character in circumstances’ can be
illustrated by the work of Dominic Smith as Chambers, the mine manager.
During the challenging scene in Act Three, played around Holroyd’s
corpse, Smith initially delivered his account of the disaster with simple
pathos. In effect, he asked himself, how would I feel if one of my friends
at drama school were killed in an accident? As rehearsals progressed, he
developed a more complex performance consistent with the role: the
element of pathos was qualified by a sense that the miners endured an
arduous profession in which fatalities were relatively common. He also
added an undercurrent of blame that prefigured the inquest into
Holroyd’s death. Active Analysis enabled him to move beyond, ‘what
would I do in this situation?’ to ‘what would Chambers do?’ On another
occasion, the entire cast were startled when Melanie Bright, playing Lizzie
in Act One, became ‘Bright-Holroyd’. Provoked beyond endurance by
Holroyd and his women, she shrieked ‘‘How dare you bring them to my
house, how dare you!’’ (Lawrence 1988, p. 22). Bright later reported she
had the sensation of speaking as the character, not herself. In the work of
Smith and Bright, we can see how the process forges a link between the
actor and character.
The benefits of the Communication Exercise could be observed in the
work of Bright and Dean Wilson as Holroyd in Act One, Scene Two. The
scene begins with Clara and Laura bursting in on Lizzie, closely followed by
Holroyd himself. Holroyd does not speak immediately, but needs to make an
instant connection with his wife because he has brought the ‘Paper Bonnets’
to the house specifically to humiliate her. As soon as he hit the stage,
‘Wilson-Holroyd’ fixed ‘Bright-Holroyd’ with a defiant glare, challenging her
to respond. Similarly at the end of the scene, when the women depart, the
characters have little dialogue, but a poisonous silence ensues:
 178 D. Jackson

There is silence in the room. HOLROYD sits with his chin in his hand. MRS HOLROYD
listens. The footsteps and voices of the two women die out. . . .
HOLROYD (ashamed yet defiant, withal anxious to apologize): Wheer’s my
slippers?
MRS HOLROYD sits on the sofa with face averted and does not answer.
HOLROYD: Dost hear? . . . (No answer. . .)

During this sequence, the two actor-characters made no eye contact but
communicated with each other only too well, building up a formidable
degree of suppressed aggression which laid the foundations for the violent
confrontation that follows.
This ability to generate strong on-stage relationships, fostered by the silent
études, is linked to the manifestation of subtext. During the early stages of
rehearsals, Bright and Smith, playing Mrs. Holroyd and Blackmore in Act
One, made useful discoveries which would have been impossible had they
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been carrying scripts. When folding a sheet, ‘selvidge to selvidge’, their hands
made a momentary contact, giving the actors an opportunity to reveal the
underlying attraction between the characters. At another moment, the
actors placed their hands on the back of a chair, unconsciously mirroring
each other’s posture. This enabled them to externalise the inner
compatibility of the characters and motivate Blackmore’s line, ‘they sort of
go well with one another’ (Lawrence 1988, p. 11). A number of
contemporary directors, including Peter Hall and Katie Mitchell, now insist
their actors learn lines before the first rehearsal, having come to the
conclusion that little of value can take place until the books go down. Active
Analysis deals with the problem in a different way, using improvisation to free
the actors.
Amongst the difficulties encountered by the cast, one actor, cast well
outside her age range as the Grandmother, struggled with her role, initially
falling into the trap of ‘crone acting’, with a stereotypically bent body and
quavering voice. I encouraged her to abandon this acting ‘stencil’ and draw
on fundamental elements of the ‘system’. She used improvisations to
rehearse specific Tasks, such as ‘to inspire pity for her plight’ and ‘to
persuade Lizzie to adopt a different attitude towards Charles’. The actress
then found a kind of dark humour in the character and a more complex
psychology. Secondly, the physical dimension of the process enabled her to
discover a means of portraying the character with greater originality. Charles
is the third of the Grandmother’s sons to be killed or seriously injured in the
mines. She responds to this latest disaster by executing ritualistic actions,
washing the corpse and dressing it for burial. By focussing on the actions of
the character rather than her grief, the actress was able to generate an air of
stoical dignity. The blows life had delivered to the Grandmother were
incorporated in the actress’s body instinctively and, to a degree, her
physicality took care of itself. Active Analysis, then, provided it is seen as a
method with its roots in the entirety of the system, provides effective
strategies for dissolving acting blocks.
The Holroyd project demonstrated that Active Analysis does not
necessarily require a lengthy rehearsal period, if the company is confident
with the process. There were moments when, faced with an imminent
performance, actors had the urge to reach for the security of scripted
 Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 179

dialogue, but the majority of the cast resisted the temptation and delayed
rehearsing with the text until the penultimate week. Nevertheless, they felt
secure in performance, because they fully understood their characters and
the dramatic situation, and actors across the spectrum of ability achieved
results that were better than expected. Could similar performances have
been achieved without Active Analysis? Certainly, there are numerous routes
to the same destination. Nevertheless, the Holroyd project suggests some
particular strengths of Active Analysis:

. harnessing the creativity and enthusiasm of the actor;

. dissolving acting ‘blocks’ for actors at all levels;
. forging a link between the actor and character;
. generating strong on-stage relationships;
. creating a rich dialogue between external expression and subtext.
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Conclusion

Active Analysis, as it is practised in the twenty-first century, is one of the

most exciting techniques to emerge from post-1991 Russia. Its roots are in
the ‘new device’ that was the greatest achievement of Stanislavsky’s final
studio, since updated and tested by succeeding generations of practitioners.
It is a methodology that respects the actor as a creative artist, but also
encompasses absolute attention to the details of the text. It engages all the
actors’ resources, promoting an integrated use of instinct, emotional
intelligence, physical expressivity and cognitive ability. It is simple in principle,
but immensely rich in practice, and for that reason very attractive to a
director or teacher. Perhaps one of the most important benefits of Active
Analysis is that it lays the foundations for creativity and spontaneity in
performance. Rehearsal by études trains actors to respond to what is
actually happening between on-stage partners, not to pre-arranged moves.
The actors know what their objectives are, but do not necessarily know how
they will pursue them night by night. On-stage partners are confident in their
ability to adapt to whatever variations colleagues might bring to their roles.
One of the few disadvantages of Active Analysis is that it is a gradual process.
This does not always suit the timetables of either students in training or
professional productions in the UK. It works best as part of a shared
language of an ensemble, which is not necessarily compatible with the life of a
‘jobbing actor’. Nevertheless, the Holroyd project suggests that with
preparation, it is perfectly possible to rehearse using Active Analysis in a
compact time-scale.
The only danger in transferring Active Analysis from Russia to the UK
seems to be that its apparent simplicity can be deceptive. The success of
Filozov’s work with the ‘RSA’ was dependent on the ‘work on the self’ and
‘work in the ensemble’ provided by Ananyev and Kamotskaya, and was
informed by a lifetime of practice in the Russian system. Knebel is at pains to
point out the profound connections between Active Analysis and the
entirety of the system. Transplanting methods from one country to another
surely has its pitfalls. Anna Tolputt, a Russian-speaking actress who has
trained in both St. Petersburg and London, remarks: ‘like all systems, if it’s
 180 D. Jackson

done properly, it’s very, very beautiful and brilliant and if it’s only sort of half
understood, then it just can be awful’ (interview, 3 August 2009). An
understanding of the purpose and origin of exercises, acquired by practical
or theoretical means, helps to avoid that trap.
The challenge of absorbing a foreign theatre culture should not inhibit us
from borrowing from the rich traditions of Russian actor training. Ideas have
been transmitted from generation to generation, both through literature and
direct contact between teacher and student, and each human link in the
chain necessarily filters the information through their own body and
sensibility. I am encouraged by a remark made at the beginning of a class by
Vladimir Ananyev, who always struck me as a brilliantly original teacher:
‘everything I’m about to teach you, I learned from someone else’.

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