Re-Thinking Stanislavsky’s System as Feminist Practice with Bella Merlin

Feminist practitioners and scholars, responding to the legacy of critique of Stanislavsky’s practice have offered persuasive counterarguments to what they see as reductive interpretations of the system, pointing to its potential for a feminist practice. At this cultural moment, when seismic shifts force us to re-evaluate what being human means, questions of identity, agency, and well-being in actor training have never been more urgent. Whilst studies consider the ways that feminist directors and pedagogues have reinterpreted Stanislavsky’s approach, there has been limited scholarship into the teaching and learning exchange itself, how you teach as opposed to what you teach, and the impact of gender on this exchange. How, then, might re-thinking Stanislavsky through contemporary feminisms position this practice as liberatory pedagogy? Echoing the fictional Socratic dialogue between the characters Tortsov and Kostya in An Actor Prepares, this chapter offers a critical reflection between teacher and student about ways of teaching acting. Bella Merlin is an actor, writer and practice-based researcher into Stanislavsky’s principles working in the US. Her former student, Lisa Peck, is a critical pedagogy scholar, actor trainer and theatre-maker in the UK. Together they consider Merlin’s practice as feminist pedagogy including the dynamic between teacher and learner, how to teach personal and social knowledges and how Active Analysis can operate within a feminist praxis.