VYGOTSKY & STANISKLAVSKI

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

Born Russia 1863Actor &

Theatre Director

L. Vygotsky

Born Russia 1896Teacher &

Psychologist

Previous experiences

Self in action Current environment

LENINGRAD

Pavlov’s LaboratoriesConditioned Reflex

Institute of Psychology

MOSCOW ART THEATREIdentifying a character’s ‘task’ that guides an actor’s performance

KREMLIN

SERPUCHOVSKAIA STREETGoal-directed thoughtAwareness of “own responses as new stimuli”

Vperezhivanie

‘lived through’Experiences internalised

and understood↓ ↓

(Children) make meaning of

social existence & act upon the worldInvestigating the motivation and interpretation of

human behaviour...

SExperiences contribute to

internal state of actor

↓ ↓External

theatrical character

realised and spontaneously

recreated

Text of the PlaySOPHYA:O, Chatsky, but I am glad you’ve come.

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 coldI’ve pleased myself and no one else.

LIZA:There, sir, and if you’d stood on the same landing hereFive minutes, no, not five agoYou’d heard your name clear as clear.You say, Miss! Tell him it was so.

SOPHYA:And always so, no less, no more.No, as to that, I’m sure you can’t reproach me.

[A. Griboedov, Woe from Wit, Act I]

Parallel Motives

Tries to hide her confusion.

Tries to make her feel guilty by teasing her. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself ?”Tries to force her to be frank.

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

Tries to reassure Chatsky. “I am not guilty of anything”

Performed MAT 1906KS Notes 1916-1920

Dramatic tensions

Emotional experiences

Communicative tools

New perspectives Social networks

Shared space

‘Fictional’

‘Real’

‘Meta’

SUBJECT

RESPONSIBILITIES

GOAL

COMMUNITYRULES

TOOLS

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’