It All Starts with Imagination: Stanislavski in Training

In It All Starts with Imagination, Victoria May gives Konstantin Stanislavski's An Actor Prepares a welcome contemporary facelift, making it a useful teacher's companion in the study of his method.

In the preface, she writes of the misconceptions that surround the practice of Stanislavski – the misunderstanding that, in pursing theatrical truth, his techniques are akin to psychoanalysis. Over the years, his method has become muddled; clumsy attempts to explore emotional memory have left pupils and teachers feeling, at best, uncomfortable, and at worst, extremely vulnerable.

In this book, May attempts to reinject the spirit of playfulness, with the intention of allowing students to enjoy their personal development as actors. She re-examines Stanislavski's intentions in a way that is totally authentic but presents them in easy to digest, step-by-step workshops.

We find all the recognisable features here – the ‘magic if’, ‘given circumstances’, ‘objectives, ‘units and actions’ – spliced throughout with quotes from An Actor Prepares, and it is reassuring to feel the presence of the source text. However, this fresh guide feels so accessible, the exercises can simply be lifted off the page and into the rehearsal room.

That said, May reminds us that Stanislavski's exercises made up a year-long actor training programme, and here too, she recommends that her workshops be completed in linear order, many times over, before being finally applied to a full production. Unfortunately, school timetables do not allow for this indulgent, purist approach. Busy teachers will even find themselves hard-pressed to give each workshop the time it really requires.

However, schools are not actor-training programmes and almost all of the exercises here still offer rich scope for energised, dynamic, and playful exploration of the system. Thus, this is an extremely welcome addition to the teacher-toolkit. Reading it has given me new incentive to use Stanislavski as a key practitioner at A Level.