The correspondences of the founders (Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko) and key talents (e.g. Chekhov, Gorki, Isadora Duncan) of the legendary Art Theatre, from its turn of the century origins through its first 40 years, as selected, edited, and translated with commentary by Benedetti. Acidic pa

How did acting begin? What is its history, and what have the great thinkers on acting said about the art and craft of performance? In this single-volume survey of the history of acting, Jean Benedetti traces the evolution of the theories of the actor's craft drawing extensively on extracts from key texts, many of which are unavailable for the student today. Beginning with the classical conceptions of acting as rhetoric and oratory, as exemplified in the writing of Aristotle, Cicero and others, The Art of the Actor progresses to examine ideas of acting in Shakespeare's time right through to...

This work contains a translation of verbatim transcriptions, published in English for the first time, of Stanislavski's notes and practical exercises from sessions which took place between 1935 and 1938 at the Opera-Dramatic Studio in Moscow.