Biesta defines three basic dimensions of education: qualification, socialization, and subjectification. In the teaching of acting, qualification and socialization are inevitable. This paper focuses on subjectification in acting pedagogy. Subjectification is what makes the actor's situation truly existential. Stanislavsky's expression of the existential experience of being here and now is "Ya yesm" and finds its most evident exponent in the method of Active Analysis. Psychologist, writer, performer, and teacher Ivan Vysko & ccaron;il developed the principle of radical openness in his discipline of "the dialogical acting with the inner partner," in which the actor learns to listen to his inner impulses and respond authentically without fear of making mistakes. Stanislavsky and Vysko & ccaron;il similarly argue that acting cannot be learned through imitation of patterns, but that the actor must become the subject of action, radically open to the situation and audience. Finally, the text focuses on education as practical wisdom and the acting teacher as "phrominos," capable of making wise educational decisions which are always specific to the educational task in question.
My proposal focuses on Stanislavsky's early training years with the aim of reconstructing the cultural and artistic context that shaped his personality and influenced his theoretical and practical work as an actor and director. Cross-referencing data and documents with publications that are usually ignored by traditional studies highlights the two cultural matrices that lie at the origin of his early theatre training. The first matrix is that Stanislavsky was trained by Mamontov and that the Mamontov's Private Opera was the direct precursor of the Moscow Art Theatre. The second matrix emerges from the innovative method of acting and staging devised by Alexander Ostrovsky for his realist plays at the Maly Theatre in Moscow. I argue that there is a common thread connecting Stanislavsky to both Ostrovsky and Mamontov.
This case study explores how Stanislavsky's legacy of actor training offers pedagogy that helps future doctors embody and perform a more connected, empathetic demeanour with others. It explores role-playing and Stanislavsky-based training that helps medical students embody and perform empathic responses in high-stress circumstances. Since Stanislavsky's actor training requires performers to physically and vocally respond to internal and external stimuli, using theatre-based pedagogy in medical schools can directly impact how future doctors define, express, and perform empathetic response in their medical practice.
