Dr Hannah Grainger Clemson

In the process of social life, feelings develop and former connections disintegrate; emotions appear in new relations with other elements of mental life Lev Vygotsky Our type of creativeness is the conception and birth of a new being – the person in the part. It is a natural act similar to the birth of a human being.

Konstantin Stanislavski

K. Stanislavski L. Vygotsky

Born Russia 1863 Actor & Theatre Director Born Russia 1896 Teacher & Psychologist

LENINGRAD

Pavlov’s Laboratories

Conditioned Reflex

Institute of Psychology KREMLIN

MOSCOW ART THEATRE

Identifying a character’s ‘task’ that guides an actor’s performance

SERPUCHOVSKAIA STREET

Goal-directed thought Awareness of “own responses as new stimuli”

Experiences contribute to internal state of actor ↓ ↓ External theatrical character realised and spontaneously recreated Experiences internalised and understood ↓ ↓ (Children) make meaning of social existence & act upon the world

Investigating the motivation and interpretation of human behaviour...

Text of the Play

SOPHYA: O, Chatsky, but I am glad you’ve come.

Parallel Motives

Tries to hide her confusion.

CHATSKY: You are glad, that’s very nice; But gladness such as yours not easily one tells.

It rather seems to me, all told, That making man and horse catch cold I’ve pleased myself and no one else.

Tries to make her feel guilty by teasing her. “

Aren’t you ashamed of yourself ?”

Tries to force her to be frank.

LIZA: There, sir, and if you’d stood on the same landing here Five minutes, no, not five ago You’d heard your name clear as clear.

You say, Miss! Tell him it was so.

Tries to calm him. Tries to help Sophya in a difficult situation.

SOPHYA: And always so, no less, no more.

No, as to that, I’m sure you can’t reproach me.

Tries to reassure Chatsky.

“I am not guilty of anything” [A. Griboedov,

Woe from Wit

, Act I] Performed MAT 1906 KS Notes 1916-1920

TOOLS SUBJECT GOAL RULES COMMUNITY RESPONSIBILITIES

Vygotsky died in 1934 of tuberculosis, aged 37.

Though premature, his death perhaps saved him from a worse fate at the hands of the authorities.

Stanislavski prepared to hand over the Moscow Art Theatre to his former pupil Meyerhold, who was unemployed and under great threat.

Stanislavski died in 1938, aged 74 .

But that year, Meyerhold - the surviving link between these two men, as a former student of Stanislavski and teacher to Zaporozhets, a student of Vygotsky, - was himself arrested, tortured, and shot.

Stanislavski’s writings were translated into English in the 1930s and have formed a significant part of actor training in the West ever since. Vygotsky’s ‘Thought and Language’ was first published in Russian in 1936, two years after his death. It was not until 1962 that it was first published in English and his ideas became widespread in the field of education.

...The experience of the actor, his emotions, appear not as functions of his personal mental life, but as a phenomenon that has an objective, social sense and significance that serves as a transitional stage from psychology to ideology. Lev Vygotsky, 1932 ‘On the Problem of the Psychology of the Actor’s Creative Work’