Interchangeable Parts: Acting, Industry, and Technology in US Theater 047213146X, 9780472131464

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Note on Language
Introduction: Immune to Luck
One: A Dream of Scales
Two: Taylor and the Experimental Theatre, Inc.
Three: Cogs in the Wheel
Four: “Are You Willing to Work Hard?”: Chasing Silent Screen Success
Five: I Have This Chart and It Explains All of Acting
Six: MGM University: Learning to Play in Hollywood
Seven: “Oh, Yes, You Can Teach Acting”
Eight: Four Teachers: Strasberg, Adler, Meisner, and Hagen
Epilogue: Brave New Stage
Works Cited
Index

Citation preview

INTERCHANGEABLE PARTS

THEATER: THEORY/TEXT/PERFORMANCE

Series Editors: David Krasner, Rebecca Schneider, and Harvey Young Founding Editor: Enoch Brater Recent Titles: Interchangeable Parts: Acting, Industry, and Technology in US Theater by Victor Holtcamp Ruins: Classical Theater and Broken Memory by Odai Johnson Gaming the Stage: Playable Media and the Rise of English Commercial Theater by Gina Bloom Immersions in Cultural Difference: Tourism, War, Performance by Natalie Alvarez Performing the Intercultural City by Ric Knowles Microdramas: Crucibles for Theater and Time by John H. Muse Haunted City: Three Centuries of Racial Impersonation in Philadelphia by Christian DuComb Long Suffering: American Endurance Art as Prophetic Witness by Karen Gonzalez Rice Alienation Effects: Performance and Self-Management in Yugoslavia, 1945–91 by Branislav Jakovljević After Live: Possibility, Potentiality, and the Future of Performance by Daniel Sack Coloring Whiteness: Acts of Critique in Black Performance by Faedra Chatard Carpenter The Captive Stage: Performance and the Proslavery Imagination of the Antebellum North by Douglas A. Jones, Jr. Acts: Theater, Philosophy, and the Performing Self by Tzachi Zamir Simming: Participatory Performance and the Making of Meaning by Scott Magelssen Dark Matter: Invisibility in Drama, Theater, and Performance by Andrew Sofer Passionate Amateurs: Theatre, Communism, and Love by Nicholas Ridout Paul Robeson and the Cold War Performance Complex: Race, Madness, Activism by Tony Perucci The Sarah Siddons Audio Files: Romanticism and the Lost Voice by Judith Pascoe

Interchangeable Parts ACTING, INDUSTRY, AND TECHNOLOGY IN US THEATER

Victor Holtcamp

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS

Ann Arbor

 Copyright © 2019 by Victor Holtcamp All rights reserved This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher. Published in the United States of America by the University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-­free paper First published July 2019 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-­0-­472-­13146-­4 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-­0-­472-­12576-­0 (ebook) Cover image: Vintage time-lapse photograph that captures the motion of a man walking, through multiple exposures. Next to him is dynomograph, an instrument for recording the degree of muscular force. Chronophotography by Etienne-Jules Marey, courtesy Collège de France Archives.

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

Note on Language

ix

Introduction: Immune to Luck

1

ONE

A Dream of Scales

23

TWO

Taylor and the Experimental Theatre, Inc.

59

THREE

Cogs in the Wheel

99

FOUR

“Are You Willing to Work Hard?”: Chasing Silent Screen Success

136

FIVE

I Have This Chart and It Explains All of Acting

164

SIX

MGM University: Learning to Play in Hollywood

193

SEVEN

“Oh, Yes, You Can Teach Acting”

226

EIGHT

Four Teachers: Strasberg, Adler, Meisner, and Hagen

254

Epilogue: Brave New Stage

301

Works Cited

325

Index

339

Digital materials related to this title can be found on the Fulcrum platform via the following citable URL: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10094573

Acknowledgments

I have benefited enormously from individuals and institutions lending me their expertise, interest, and insight, to say nothing of material support provided by the universities where I have been fortunate enough to be employed during the research and writing process. A Humanities Research Grant from the University of South Carolina underwrote two trips to Los Angeles to work in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Herrick Library and archives, the UCLA film archive, and the Warner Brothers archives at the University of Southern California. My special thanks go to the librarians and archivists at all three locations, whose assistance in introducing me to the wealth of materials in their collections, suggestions for specific sources to consult, and patience with multiple requests was enormously helpful. Tulane University granted a semester’s research leave to focus on composing the text, additional funds for research, and a Faculty Networking Grant to bring an outside scholar to campus. The staff members of the Tulane library system were unfailingly helpful in pulling dusty tomes from long-­term storage and arranging loans from other institutions where necessary. In addition, the Tulane University School of Liberal Arts provided a generous subvention grant to aid in the production of the book. My thanks go out to LeAnn Fields and her team at the University of Michigan Press, including Sarah Dougherty, Susan Cronin, Marcia LaBrenz, and Daniel Otis, whose collective assistance, wisdom, and patience were invaluable and much appreciated. LeAnn also arranged for perceptive and generous outside readers whose comments, questions, and suggestions inarguably strengthened the text. I am similarly indebted to the participants of the Comparative Drama Conference, Mid-­America Theater Conference, and the Space Between Conference for their feedback when I shared aspects of this work. Whatever errors remain after such perceptive reading and review are undoubtedly my own. Kimberly Jannarone was kind enough to read and comment on early segments of the manuscript, offered tremendous guidance through the

viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

composition process, and graciously accepted my invitation to come to Tulane to work together in person. Thanks also to Kara Reilly for her comments and recommendations on early versions of the first chapters, as well as her encouragement to present preliminary materials at a special conference on science and theater at the University of Birmingham. Special thanks to the Journal of American Drama and Theatre for initially publishing my thoughts on A Chorus Line, and then granting permission for selections from that essay to be included in the conclusion of this book. Like many, I have ongoing gratitude for my own teachers. For my grounding in the history of science and technology I have primarily Professor Bruce Hevly to thank, who also directed my undergraduate history thesis at the University of Washington. Professors Robyn Hunt and Steve Pearson have been my most influential acting instructors, and it has been a singular joy to study and work with them. I feel particularly lucky in the roster of artists and scholars I have studied with: Michelle Bach-­Coulibaly, Herbert Blau (in memoriam), Sarah Bryant-­Bertail, John Emigh, Oskar Eustis, Spencer Golub, Odai Johnson, Tina Redd, David Savran, Laurie Sears, Julie Strandberg, and Don Wilmeth. Without exception I continually return to lessons I learned from each of you in my teaching and research. To Barry Witham, however, additional acknowledgements are necessary. Barry showed me a way to combine my interests in theater and history and has been a mentor and friend from my undergraduate career until now. He helped me pursue graduate study, guided the dissertation this book is derived from, and supported my work as I moved into the profession. For all this, and much more, I offer my heartfelt gratitude and thanks. It is a privilege and a pleasure to get to work in theater and teach what I love to others, and this is possible only because my parents, Anita and Ron Holtcamp, supported my studies even when a clear path forward with two liberal arts degrees wasn’t immediately obvious. Finally, my wife Amy’s support and sharp intelligence—­in things theatrical and otherwise—­has enriched this manuscript, my work, and my life. For this I am eternally grateful.

Note on Language

I have endeavored to keep all quotations in their original spelling and voice, while utilizing modern conventions in my own prose (e.g., “Stanislavsky” is the most commonly accepted transliteration today, while historically “Stanislavski” was used). British variant spelling has been maintained where used in quotations. Similarly, I have generally used “actor” as a non-­gender-­specific referent but kept “actress” where used in original quotations or for clarity relative to the subject of discussion.

Introduction: Immune to Luck

As young undergraduates in a first-­year acting class, my classmates and I performed an exercise where we lay on the floor, eyes closed. We were then fed various foods, to which we were supposed to physically respond. I got a gummy worm. Had I known Diana’s song “Nothing” from A Chorus Line I might have internally summoned it and reached down to the bottom of my soul to see how a gummy worm felt. Instead, I quivered in what I can safely describe as a fairly undramatic fashion while my inner critic immediately pointed out that there was no real connection between eating a gummy worm and appearing to suffer a petit mal seizure. Instead I had a quick succession of thoughts: Is this how I was going to fail as an actor? Is this even acting? Why a gummy worm? Is my response good enough? What was the goal? What are we all doing? In short, what was everybody—­ myself, my fellow classmates, my teacher, and whoever had conceived of this exercise in the first place—­thinking? And why? In the same class my teacher discussed Uta Hagen’s categorization of “representational” and “presentational” acting styles, roughly analogous to an internal or external focus on building a character, and I recall noting this distinction approvingly in my requisite journal. When the time came to move to the next quarter’s class with a different instructor, we were asked what from our first ten weeks had stuck with us. I volunteered Hagen’s description of two distinct approaches to acting. About the gummy worm, I thought, the less said the better. The smorgasbord of approaches that made up my undergraduate, nonconservatory acting classes highlighted the variety of techniques actors had found useful in shaping their craft. In theater history I learned of the near-­ soap-­opera conditions that prevailed among the pantheon of coaching deities of the twentieth century, who were all ostensibly working toward the same goal and trying to solve the same problems, but who arrived at vastly different solutions. While continuing my theater studies, I was also studying the history of science and technology. I was fascinated not simply by the succession of

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innovations, but by the remarkable ways in which culture influenced technologies and vice versa. This is where I was first exposed to Kuhn and the idea of the scientific paradigm, and where I learned about the history of interchangeable-­parts manufacture in the United States. When I set about finally digging into my long-­held interest in systems of acting, it was the phrase “interchangeable parts” that initially brought these two disciplines together. I was struck by how in industry it meant a part that could be put together with other component pieces to make an effectively identical final product, and in theater it could mean both a stock character and a part that could easily be played by multiple actors. Inspired by the seeming happenstance of somewhat overlapping usage, I began considering how the idea of interchangeable parts in the culture at large might shape the contours of stage practice. In the span of a few generations—­from the first wide-­scale application of interchangeable parts technologies in the 1870s through the conjoined triumph and nadir of industrialization demonstrated by World War I—­the assumptions, expectations, and philosophies behind this manner of manufacture spread far beyond factory walls. It was a short jump from the sphere of business to other areas, including domestic work, leisure activities, education, and the arts. The confluence of the last two categories is where my particular interest lies, for at the same time the United States was beginning to implement modern manufacturing practices a sea change was underway in the unlikely arena of acting pedagogy. Prior to this shift, learning to act used to be like pre-­Newtonian astronomy: you watched the stars and copied their actions. Becoming an actor was observational, repetitive, miraculous at times, but with the exception of secondary skills such as speaking and fencing, mostly irreducible to generalities. What you learned watching someone play Hamlet wouldn’t necessarily help you play Romeo. In the nineteenth century this conception of actors and acting began to change. The idea of a theatrical “science” gained greater and greater currency, and soon it became possible to talk about a “method” for acting just as you could talk about a method for producing an automobile, and with a similar vocabulary. These methods offered a technology of acting, whereby the science of the stage could be harnessed via tools and techniques to gain greater agency over the product of performance. The idea of controlling the apparently uncontrollable through specialized knowledge has a long lineage, reflected in the root word for technology itself: techne, the subject of a laudatory choral ode in Sophocles’ Antigone:

INTRODUCTION 3

And speech, and wind-­swift thought, and all the moods that mold a state, hath he taught himself; and how to flee the arrows of the frost, when ’tis hard lodging under the clear sky, and the arrows of the rushing rain; yea, he hath resource for all; without resource he meets nothing that must come; only against Death shall he call for aid in vain. (Sophocles 125) The geographer Yi-­Fu Tuan in his book Cosmos and Hearth (1996) offers a lovely reading of this celebration of techne.1 Far from being only about tools, techne encompasses ceremonies, methodologies, and practices under its umbrella. Speech and political science are forms of focused knowing as surely as the ability to build a house, hence the praise for language and “the moods that mold a state” alongside shelter from the elements, and through techne “a palpable world can be called into existence by a combination of evocative words and ritual gestures” (Tuan 149) (not a bad definition for theater itself). Tuan, in turn, is informed by Martha C. Nussbaum’s magisterial The Fragility of Goodness (1986) where she draws from the classical Greeks the distinction between techne and tuchē. Tuchē is “what just happens” to someone, while techne is what one “does or makes” (Nussbaum 3, emphasis original). As the chorus promises above, having techne meant you weren’t at the mercy of fate or chance. With the right knowledge only Death could catch the Greeks unarmed and unprepared. In Tuan’s succinct formulation, “Techne makes it possible for people to make themselves immune to luck” (Tuan 149). Such inoculations had been tried in theater before, of course. Acting lore is replete with rituals and miniceremonies designed to insulate actors from chance. Rabbits’ feet and other charms of good fortune, prohibitions against certain practices and names (e.g., whistling, “Macbeth”), and rituals surrounding rehearsal and performance practice and etiquette, both broadly accepted and highly individualistic, have all served as attempts to propitiate or curry favor from whatever gods of the theater might exist. To make a technology of acting, however, was something else entirely, and represented a radical break with the past. The process of acting, when it was described at all prior to the late nineteenth century, had been largely described along scientific but observational lines. What was missing was a practical system applying those scientific principles to the problems of performance. If science is the mathematical description of the mechanical advantage gained by using a lever, technology is the crowbar. You don’t need to do the math to use the tool. 1. Sophocles’s celebration is qualified; see discussion of Antigone in the conclusion.

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INTERCHANGEABLE PARTS

This isn’t to say that there hadn’t been sustained and sincere analyses of stage practice prior to the 1870s. Joseph Roach in The Player’s Passion (1985) cites a series of articles in The Prompter in the early 1700s where playwright and critic Aaron Hill inveighed against the classic stage, going so far as to sign his articles “B” for “‘Broomstick’ because he meant to sweep the stage clean of worn-­out conventions” (Roach 79). Hill viewed the traditional rhetorical representations of the passions as “mistakes and absurdities which are so much the more ridiculous by that pretense of authority” they derived from a classical lineage, which, as Hill points out, was originally directed at lawyers rather than stage actors (Hill et al. 82). In place of these stale gestures and vocal conventions Hill proposed a new system of emotional representation, no less universal, but built on far more recent scientific investigations into the physiological bases of emotion. Hill even went so far as to propose creating a “tragic academy” under the patronage of the Prince of Wales in 1735 where actors could learn the latest in emotive techniques, but the school was never launched (see Campbell 179). Laudatory as Hill’s goals might be, he did not spark a revolution in the practices of most actors. Close to a century after Hill’s promise to remake the stage the critic Leigh Hunt “was still grumbling about ‘declamation’ and the ‘puttings forth of the old oratorical right hand’” (Roach 79).2 Hill and his fellow travelers were proposing a new scientific foundation for the emotional work of the actor but were unable either to craft a usable technology applying their scientific knowledge or to integrate their recommendations into the working lives of performers. Hence the persistence into the nineteenth century of gestures dating to imperial Rome. While Hill may have felt that he had a better grasp of the science, he hadn’t offered an alternative crowbar for actual actors to use. This begins to change in the late nineteenth century, especially in the United States. People were crafting (metaphoric) crowbars with greater abandon, and others were picking them up and using them. Ideas about the nature of theater and theatrical performance were translated into new exercises, practices, and ways of writing, seeing, and reading theatrical texts. These methodologies, while initially greeted with suspicion, were adopted more and more widely by actual actors, who saw in them the promise of precision, control, accountability, and stability in interpreting and performing a dramatic work. Even those with the misfortune to be born 2. Hunt’s comments are directed at Kean’s portrayal of Richard III, where he had hoped to find “an actor as little artificial as possible” with “no declamation, no common rant, no puttings forth . . .” etc. Sadly, Kean did not live up to Hunt’s hopes: “no better than the best kind of actor in the artificial style” (L. Hunt 113).

INTRODUCTION 5

with less natural aptitude were offered salvation, for given the appropriate technique a minor talent could enjoy a major triumph. What occurred in the realm of acting practice is akin to what historian of science Thomas Kuhn referred to as a “paradigm shift”—­described in his totemic work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970)—­and what Michel Foucault would similarly describe as a change in episteme, or worldview. 3 Such a shift occurs when a former model of thought—­in this case the conception of what actors do and how they do it—­is replaced by a newer model. Both Kuhn and Foucault argue that history, in particular the history of ideas, is less a gradual accretion of “more right” thinking and is better described as a collection of invested or interested participants in a given debate lurching unevenly from one model to another. Kuhn used Copernicus and the heliocentric solar system as his prime example. Copernicus arrived at his ideas outside the mainstream of contemporary (i.e., early 1500s) cosmology, and it wasn’t until long after his death that his system was widely adopted. As Kuhn describes in his study, “authors who applauded Copernicus’ erudition, borrowed his diagrams, or quoted his determination of the distance from the earth to the moon, usually either ignored the earth’s motion or dismissed it as absurd” (Kuhn, Copernican 186). In other words, astronomers went on assuming the Earth stood still, even as they used Copernicus’s formulas to calculate the position of heavenly bodies. Whether on stage or in the observatory, old habits die hard. A paradigm shift, according to Kuhn, occurs when a new model is introduced in an attempt to solve problems unsolvable by the current paradigm and a substantial number of adherents coalesce around the new system. Often this shift is generational, as new entrants to a field naturalize the newer model, while the older either adapt or refuse to be integrated and fade away. Sometimes a single text is enough to define an entire scientific paradigm, either challenging an accepted view or creating a field where previously none existed. Newton’s Principia did as much for physics just as Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus did for astronomy. Roach rightly ascribes to Diderot’s 1773 Le paradoxe sur le comédien the status of a Kuhnian “paradigmatic text” as it laid out the boundaries and vocabulary of argumentation about acting for subsequent generations of 3. See The Order of Things (Foucault). His concept of the episteme is so closely aligned with aspects of Kuhn’s articulation of a paradigm that he had been accused of borrowing without citation. In Foucault’s own description, he says he respects Kuhn’s work, but he had finished The Order of Things prior to reading Kuhn. See Pamela Major-­Poetzl’s Michel Foucault’s Archeology of Western Culture for a detailed recounting of the parallels and differences between the two theories.

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practitioners and theorists. The central question was one of feeling: were the best actors possessed by their roles during performance? Diderot’s answer was an emphatic Non. Acting wasn’t possession, Diderot argued, it was practice, shaped by the actor in performance. Not “mad in fact” as Hamlet says about himself, but “mad in craft.”4 To form the bulk of his argument Diderot did not stray terribly far from the star-­gazing model of acting, with the example of Garrick as the embodiment of stage success due to his mastery over his own instrument, his charming mechanical wig notwithstanding.5 Diderot saw Garrick in Paris when the actor stopped in while taking the “Grand Tour” in 1763, and Garrick graciously obliged requests to perform while on vacation. According to one account of a salon performance, Garrick played the dagger scene of Macbeth, the “curse” scene of Lear, and “‘the falling asleep’ of Sir John Brute” before concluding with a silent piece of his own invention, “the poor pastry cook’s boy, who had let fall his tray of tarts, in the street, and whose face expressed all the transitions from stupid astonishment to surprise, terror, and hopeless grief” (Fitzgerald 122–­23).6 Diderot even recorded a performance where Garrick did away with plot entirely and simply demonstrated emotional presentation: Garrick will put his head between two folding-­doors, and in the course of five or six seconds his expression will change successively from wild delight to temperate pleasure, from this to tranquility, from tranquility to surprise, from surprise to blank astonishment, from that to sorrow, from sorrow to the air of one overwhelmed, from that to fright, from fright to horror, from horror to despair, and thence he will go up again to the point from which he started. (Diderot 38) Garrick’s ability to conjure and project emotions in rapid succession was almost universally praised, and Roach points out that competing theorists of acting “all claimed Garrick as exemplar and champion” (Roach 111). Diderot used this example to claim that Garrick couldn’t actually be feeling what he was presenting. Such a rush of emotions in so brief a time period would be too overwhelming to contemplate. Instead, Diderot reasoned, Garrick’s mastery must be the result of cool detach4. III.iv.187–­88 (Riverside, 2nd ed. 1997) 5. Garrick had fashioned, for his playing of Hamlet, a mechanical wig that would literally cause his hair to stand on end during his first encounter with the ghost. See Roach (58). 6. Garrick’s biographer Percy Fitzgerald italicizes what is actually Garrick’s character name, “Sir John Brute,” from John Vanbrugh’s The Provoked Wife (1697).

INTRODUCTION 7

ment in the moment. How someone might acquire such cool detachment was another matter entirely. Diderot recorded Garrick’s genius but, like Hill, did not produce an applicable technology to allow his successes to be replicated by others. It is the paradigmatic shift to the idea that acting could be technologized, and then the diversity of technologies for performance that emerge, that I am interested in tracking here. In addition to Kuhn I have been influenced by the work of E. W. Constant II’s extension of the paradigm model to technology in his “A Model of Technological Change Applied to the Turbojet Revolution” (1973). Constant defines a technological paradigm similarly to the Greeks’ broad definition of techne, encompassing “rationale, practice, procedure, [and] method” (Constant II 554). While there is some overlap with the workings of scientific paradigms, Constant argues that technological paradigms operate under a separate set of constraints that influence their adoption and dismissal. Scientific paradigms are said to be in crisis when a critical mass of questions regarding the dominant understanding arises and a new model offers superior problem-­solving capabilities. In extending Kuhn’s basic concept to technology, Constant identifies three different scenarios for paradigmatic technological change. The most straightforward crisis and the one most analogous to a paradigmatic shift in science is simple failure: a given technology is not able to meet the requirements of a new scientific paradigm, fails to meet the demands for ever-­improving service, or both. The second is “ad hoc intuition,” where “an individual assumes intuitively that he can produce a better or a new technological device” (Constant II 554). Here the current system is widely accepted as fine, but a newer system offers unexpected benefits proposed and promoted by individuals or groups, and then these benefits become naturalized. Third is the “presumptive anomaly,” where failure in a given technological practice is foreseen before it occurs, and a new technology is developed and adopted in anticipation (Constant II 555). The presumptive anomaly is epitomized for Constant by the adoption of jet engines over propellers. Prop planes hadn’t failed in the 1930s, but they were predicted to fail as planes approached the speed of sound. Despite the lack of an immediate crisis in the development of the propeller, engineers shifted to an alternate technology. Constant’s extension of Kuhn’s paradigm model offers insight into two significant technological shifts related to acting in this period. First is the acceptance of the idea that acting could be broken down into a system or methodology and learned independently from simply going on stage. This was prompted both by crisis factors (for example, the breakdown of the stock

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system in the US) and ad hoc invention on the part of early pedagogical innovators. Early champions of acting methodologies were adamant that there was a science informing and influencing successful acting, and they pursued their ideas in the face of much popular scorn and derision. Alongside the shift in where and how actors would learn their trade, the second major paradigmatic change I identify is the reinterrogation of the role of emotions in rehearsal and performance. The primacy of emotions to an actor’s professional concerns had been taken for granted for generations. Diderot himself observed as much from Garrick’s mastery of emotional representation. Whether felt or not, an actor’s raison d’etre was to portray emotions, and the proper means of conveying sadness, despair, elation, etc. was a foundational concern for performers. Part of learning to act meant learning how to emote, and analyzing a script meant assigning the right emotions to the right moments. Yet this centrality of attention was called into question in the modern industrial era. Should emotions continue to define the core of acting or, like the Copernican Earth, be relegated to orbiting some other central principle? To put it more colloquially, how much should an actor “worry” about emotions under a given system? Two interconnected shifts occur in this trajectory. The first is the move away from a chromatic set of emotions an actor would be expected to know and reproduce, and an embrace of a more individualistic emotional representation on stage. The second was replacing “worry” about emotions with concern for other elements of performance. These shifts were partially prompted, I propose, by a potential “presumptive anomaly” on the part of certain acting teachers, who foresaw a limit to the means of regulating and generating emotions. In response, they shifted their attention to aspects of performance that could be described and analyzed with greater rigor, and thus would be more congruent with industrial expectations. Not for nothing are emotions all but banished from the technocratic society of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World—­industrialization views them as a liability and makes no room for them.7 In our own world, audiences would still expect, and get, emotions from the actors on stage. What changes is the amount of mental space emotions take up in a given methodology and whether emotions are primary or secondary in rehearsal and performance. Are actors “practicing” emotions, or something else? If they are playing emotions, what is the science supporting their approach? If they aren’t, what takes their place? 7. “‘Fortunate boys!’ said the controller. ‘No pains have been spared to make your lives emotionally easy—­to preserve you, so far as all that is possible, from having emotions at all’” (Huxley 29).

INTRODUCTION 9

In constructing and interpreting this history I have also turned to the comparatively recent analytic framework of “Actor-­Network Theory” (ANT). Founded in the works of Bruno Latour (among others), the “actor” in ANT does not apply specifically to theatrical performers. Instead, “actors” in ANT can be considered nodes in a network diagram who earn their privileged place by dint of their influence over other nodes and the size of the network they can impact. Furthermore, ANT actors can be human or nonhuman, and depending on the researcher’s scope of interest may comprise individuals, animals, vegetables, elements, machines, and institutions. As Latour writes, “any thing that does modify a state of affairs by making a difference” can be considered an actor under ANT (Latour, Reassembling the Social 71). As such, ANT analysis does not privilege human actors over nonhuman actors, and a foundational assumption of ANT is how “the non-­ human, in the guise of technological artefacts, routinely shapes the comportment of, and the inter-­relations amongst, human actors” (Michael 17). David Krieger and Andréa Belliger see an overlap between philosophical hermeneutics and ANT, writing that like hermeneutics, ANT analyses may start from “an ancient philosophical fragment, a poem, a work of art, or an industrial power plant,” (a list very much in keeping with my own predilections). From such humble beginnings, a network can be sketched as moving outward like ripples from a stone, tracing lines of influence and interference between actors. Krieger and Belliger also highlight the shared concern of hermeneutics and ANT for “embodied knowledge” and the link between “knowledge and action” (Krieger and Belliger 15). This emphasis is especially appropriate for this study, which focuses extensively on how acting theory is literally embodied by performers. ANT actors, furthermore, can themselves be networks, and any given actor can belong to numerous networks at any given time. Thus the mental model of an ANT network is fractal and multiple in nature. While this suggests the theoretical possibility of an uber-­network of infinite complexity and universal inclusion, on a practical level ANT seeks to explicate meaning and significance within discrete, contingent, and arbitrary (inasmuch as they reflect the research concerns of the specific scholar) networks, with the acknowledgment that other networks may be in play in the field of study. A guiding principle is to “follow the actors”—­whether human or otherwise—­and see where they lead. A network or actor may become “black boxed”—­a term derived from industrial usage—­if its internal workings are closed off from easy external review by dint of its regularity; it simply acts in accordance with the expectations of the rest of the network. Latour, in his Science in Action, after seeing a pattern in many previous scientific histories of starting with the finished product and then building a

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narrative to explain it, shifted the focus to the emergence of systems, rather than the systems themselves. “We realised . . . how much simpler it was to be there before the box closes and becomes black. With this simple method we merely have to follow the best of all guides, scientists themselves, in their efforts to close one black box and to open another” (Latour, Science 21). This emphasis on looking for networks in flux resonates with my own goals for this study, to look at the development of a new network of influences over theatrical and cinematic practice. Despite the affinities in nomenclature, ANT studies involving actors and acting in theater and film are not nearly as common as studies involving science (both “hard” and social sciences), economics, and politics. Joanne Entwistle and Don Slater’s 2013 essay “Reassembling the Cultural” points out this disparity, arguing “there is no good reason for a reluctance to ‘follow the actors’ into the model agency, TV studio, or brand consultancy any less than into the laboratory or financial market” (Entwistle and Slater 162). Their own essay begins by engaging with “canonical” ANT as established by Latour before offering an example of how ANT might be applied to cultural “goods” (in the economic sense) by building an investigative network on a “model’s ‘look.’” Models (meaning people who model for a living, rather than another ANT appropriation of entertainment terminology) are investigated as “materially assembled entities, whose identity and meaning is widely dispersed, both within the modeling world itself and beyond, to the eventual consumption of model images by readers.” The subject allows the authors to discuss what a more conventional ANT analysis might miss: “the role of ‘culture’ in the actor’s formatting of their own actions” (Entwistle and Slater 167). Marlis Schweitzer’s “Networking the Waves: Ocean Liners, Impresarios, and Broadway’s Atlantic Expansion” (2012) uses ANT to explore how ocean liners “facilitated the expanding transnational trade in theatrical commodities at the turn of the twentieth century and functioned as actors themselves in the multiple actor-­networks that extended across the Atlantic Ocean” (Schweitzer 243). In “The Bandmann Circuit: Theatrical Networks in the First Age of Globalization” (2015), Christopher Balme engagingly and productively applies ANT techniques to illuminate a forgotten touring circuit, seeing in ANT a means to “rethink the complex relationships between theatrical trading, imperial formations and an understanding of what it meant to circulate and perform theater on the eve of the First World War” (Balme 23).8 8. Cinema studies has applied ANT with relatively greater frequency, both to individual films and to larger conglomerations of concerns. For example, “Actor-­network theory and doc-

INTRODUCTION 11

While I do not claim to offer a “pure” ANT reading of the histories I am tracking, I have found ANT’s embrace of the artist and engineer alongside their respective cultural artifacts useful in appreciating lines of influence across traditional disciplinary boundaries. ANT’s emphasis on how knowledges—­often described as “matters of fact”—­are generated by network interactions is likewise useful in highlighting the new ways theatrical practice was conceived after the industrial incursion of the late nineteenth century. At various points I will explicitly call out elements or events that can be usefully clarified with recourse to ANT vocabulary and modeling, as the project of making acting into a technology required assembling a network of human and nonhuman actors to reshape the conception of theatrical preparation and performance. The network I highlight here is one of rhetorical associations and goals among many overlapping, non–­mutually exclusive networks of influence in theatrical and cinematic practice.

TECHNOLOGY’S ECOLOGY

The shift toward “systems” of acting begins in the late nineteenth century, and the reduction in the relative emphasis placed on emotions occurs most strongly in the middle of the twentieth. Neither, I argue, is arbitrary or coincidental. Foucault’s episteme model encompasses cultural pressures that make the adoption of one set of beliefs over another possible.9 Copernicus’s model of the solar system, for example, could only be widely accepted in a culture with enough distance from religious orthodoxy to accept displacement from the center of the universe. Similarly, I contend that the newfound prevalence of interchangeable parts manufacturing allowed the idea that acting itself was a collection of disparate skills united by an actor in rehearsal and performance to achieve popular acceptance. Subsequently, umentary studies” by Ilana Gershon and Joshua Malitsky sees an overlap between scholars utilizing ANT and documentary filmmakers, because both “share concerns  .  .  . about how people construct truths and facts” (Gershon and Malitsky 66). Norman Taylor’s Cinematic Perspectives of Digital Culture (2012) uses ANT to examine linkages between traditional cinema and digital creation and consumption. The article “Murphy’s Law in Action: The Formulation of the Film Production Network of Paul Lazarus’ Barbarosa (1982)—­An Actor-­Network-­Theory Case Study” by Spöhrer (2013) is an example of ANT applied to a discrete film, specifically to production studies. 9. “By episteme, we mean, in fact, the total set of relations that unite, at a given period, the discursive practices that give rise to epistemological figures, sciences, and possibly formalized systems . . . it is a constantly moving set of articulations, shifts, and coincidences that are established, only to give rise to others” (Foucault 191–­92).

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the widespread adoption of industrial values led to the demotion of emotion in the field of acting theory. The idea of interchangeable parts goes back as early as the mid-­eighteenth century. A French general named de Gribeauval suggested a “uniformity system” for firearms manufacture in 1765, and a very small number of weapons were produced with replaceable parts in France. Scaling up, however, was an issue. Eli Whitney (of cotton gin fame) was awarded a contract by the US government in 1798 to make 10,000 firearms with interchangeable parts, but he had overpromised. “It took Whitney eleven years, until 1809, to complete his contract, and even then the parts in his guns were not interchangeable” (Pacey 196).10 It was not until after the US Civil War that manufacturing technology began to deliver on the promise of rapid assembly from functionally identical components. The “American System,”11 as it was known, became more and more widespread, culminating for many in the combination of interchangeable parts with assembly-­line organization at Ford’s Highland Park plant by 1915 (Hounshell 239). This seemingly innocent change in making products more efficiently dramatically altered the episteme of the culture at large. In brief, interchangeable parts meant that things were no longer “things” in an organic sense, but rather assemblages of smaller and smaller identical components. This significant perceptual shift in industrial practice occurs simultaneously with the rise of an atomized conception of an actor’s work. If household goods could be seen as a collection of smaller things put together in a new way, why not characters and performances? This new worldview was supported by the rapid success of industrialization and the dissemination of industrial values throughout the culture, provocatively and influentially trumpeted in Fredrick Winslow Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management in 1911. Taylor’s slim volume makes the case that inefficiency and subjectivity are to be avoided at all costs, that there are rules governing everything of value, and that these rules can be harnessed by anyone with the proper tool kit. Principles of Scientific Manage10. See Pacey for a fuller recounting of the difficult history of interchangeable parts manufacturing. 11. For historians of science and technology the traditional term “American System” has been supplanted by “The New England System” as being more accurate in describing these early attempts to implement interchangeable parts manufacturing techniques. However, the term “American System” was used contemporaneously, originally by “British observers at the Springfield Armory” and referred to the project to replace “individualizing handwork with standardized mechanization for the purpose of lowering production costs” (Banta 280).

INTRODUCTION 13

ment is paradigmatic in its own right and has an enormous bearing on the conception of theatrical work in the twentieth century. Scholars and practitioners alike have connected Taylorism and scientific theory to theatrical practice, often focusing on specific teachers or theorists. Famously, Meyerhold’s biomechanics were linked to Taylor, though as Edward Braun argues in Meyerhold on Theatre, while Meyerhold initially “compared [biomechanics] to the experiments in the scientific organization of labour by the American Fredrick Winslow Taylor and his Russian follower Gastev,” Taylor’s influence on his thinking was “superficial and . . . exaggerated by Meyerhold in order to show that his system was designed in response to the demands of the new mechanized age, as opposed to those of Stanislavsky and Tairov, which were unscientific and anachronistic” (Braun 183). Meyerhold used the power of Taylor’s cultural capital to buttress his own approach to actor training, even if he wasn’t directly cribbing from Taylor’s actual work. When Taylor is invoked in the voluminous literature on acting it is most often in connection with Meyerhold. For example, the sole entry for Taylor in Acting (Re)Considered, edited by Phillip B. Zarrilli, comes from Mel Gordon’s essay “Meyerhold’s Biomechanics”; similarly, “Taylorism” is only mentioned in connection with Meyerhold in The Purpose of Playing: Modern Acting Theories in Perspective, by Robert Gordon. A notable exception is Jonathan Pitches’s Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting, where he illuminates rhetorical connections between Stanislavsky’s work and Taylorism, as well as how Meyerhold linked his own ideas to Taylorism in the postrevolutionary period in Russia. Stanislavsky’s life and work have rightfully attracted a tremendous amount of attention, and many scholars have directly engaged with questions of science, technology, and the cultural connotations of each in regard to the development of his systems of acting. Rose Whyman, in her The Stanislavsky System of Acting, pursues this line of inquiry, writing, “Paradigmatic ideas of the machine, the emotions and the spirit, in relation to acting, were part of the body of knowledge of Stanislavsky’s time . . . [I]deas circulated from one discipline to another and in the case of theories of acting, as well as in other spheres, ideas were appropriated, renamed or disguised in order to conform to dominant political and scientific ideologies” (Whyman xii). In her text Whyman also explores the cultural pressures in postrevolutionary Russia that helped prompt Meyerhold’s inclusion of Taylor as part of the explanation of his system, and compares Meyerhold’s work to Stanislavsky’s (see Whyman, chapter 6). Natalie Crohn Schmitt’s Actors and Onlookers: Theater and Twentieth-­Century Scientific Views of Nature

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includes a chapter on “Stanislavski’s Nature; Stanislavsky’s Art,” with an emphasis on Stanislavsky’s quest for “natural” behavior on stage linked to scientific theory. Rhonda Blair’s essay “The Method and the Computational Theory of the Mind” (in Krasner’s Method Acting Reconsidered) reviews Stanislavsky’s theories in light of “cognitive science.” Sharon Carnicke’s Stanislavsky in Focus (1998, 2nd ed. 2009) revisits Stanislavsky’s career and methodology, stripping away what she calls the “statue” of Stanislavsky to offer a far more complete accounting of his work, system, and beliefs than might easily be gleaned from his interpretations and mutations by teachers and practitioners in the United States. Closer to my own focus is the essay “An Actor Manages: Actor Training and Managerial Ideology” by Broderick D.V. Chow, who explores multiple management schemas (“Taylorism, Management by Objectives, and Human Resources”) to build a “citational network” in relation to “Stanislavskian and post-­ Stanislavskian actor training” (Chow 132). My own intentions, though overlapping at times with the scholars and projects described above, diverge from a focus on singular individuals or methodologies, and for me to attempt to join in the process of reevaluating Stanislavsky’s true intentions would be as foolhardy as it would be redundant, given the work of Carnicke and others. Instead, I focus my attention on exploring how industrial influences and values are reflected and refracted in the vocabulary and processes of theater and film practitioners in the United States, and how the idea of a “technology” of acting was promulgated by significant figures of the period. The success of the American System as a manufacturing practice and the subsequent popularization of Taylor’s “scientific management” privileged qualities such as interchangeability, repeatability, centralized control, and rationalization. Simultaneously, respect for tradition, instinct, and emotional (rather than analytic) responses were all conversely devalued under the technological paradigm. As I will show, these valuations end up being repeated (with variations, to be sure) by theater theorists and practitioners starting in the late nineteenth century and continuing throughout the twentieth. To the above list of associated beliefs should be added an expectation that any technology will be widely, ideally universally, usable. This foundational assumption is grounded in the original conception of techne. Fittingly for the ancient Athenians, techne is inherently democratic. Antigone’s burial rites are not dependent on any special talent she naturally possesses, and Creon, ruler though he might be, cannot simply declare Antigone’s actions null and void. If a technology works for one, it works for all. Max Wollering, an engineer hired by Ford in 1906 to develop shop practices for

INTRODUCTION 15

automobile assembly, said he was building “farmer tools,” because with the “fixtures, jigs, and gauges” he created, “he could make a farmboy turn out work as good as that of a first-­class mechanic” (Hounshell 221). Ford’s workers didn’t need to understand why they were doing what they were doing, they just needed to apply the technology as directed, and they could compete with an experienced (and more highly paid) fabricator. The democratic expectation meant that as competing technologies emerged, those able to be applied more widely would be valued more highly. As a shorthand I will sometimes refer to this constellation of aesthetic, moral, and epistemological judgments drawn from industrial and technological expectations as “Industrial Modernism.” Combined, they encapsulate a set of dominant values that influenced twentieth-­century culture broadly, and acting and theatrical practice more specifically. Crucially, this included the work of film actors as well. Hollywood quickly earned the monikers “the Industry” and “the Dream Factory,” and every major studio in its heyday faced the challenge of how to produce roughly one film per week. Realizing that popular (or at least competent) actors were integral to their success, among the artists, technicians, carpenters, costumers, animal handlers, writers, secretaries, stars, and contract players on company payrolls, studios also employed their own acting teachers and coaches. These women and men adopted pedagogical practices from the theater and adapted them to the realities of filmed performance, including one-­on-­one coaching, scene study, and even full-­length live theatrical productions performed in-­house for other studio employees. While the studios tended to publicly disguise or hide the work that went into learning to act, they absolutely worked to train their contract actors. What emerges from an investigation of movie studio activities are the similarities in assumptions, approaches, and concerns shared by stage and screen acting coaches, and their common debt to the technological paradigm in performance. I am in no way claiming that the triumphs of Taylorism (here meaning both Taylor’s specific innovations and also the industrial valuations from the nineteenth century that he synthesized into his own work) are the singular reason why any given acting class of the twenty-­first century looks the way that it does. As anyone who has been involved in even one small show knows, theater in general and acting in particular are incredibly complex collaborative undertakings, illustrating ANT’s axiomatic truth that networks can be multiple and nonexclusive. Numerous cultural influences can be reflected in the daily execution of teaching, coaching, rehearsals, and performances. Rosemary Malague’s An Actress Prepares (2012) illus-

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trates, expertly and clearly, how gendered assumptions and expectations internalized by the major postwar figures of “Method” acting impacted not only how they organized their classes but their very conception of how to go about being an actor. Ludena Marie Thomas, in Baraba Ann Teer and the National Black Theatre (1997), relates how Teer, in creating courses for actors at the National Black Theatre in 1969, consciously accounted for the condition of omnipresent racism lived by many of her students, and shaped her own pedagogy accordingly (see especially Thomas’s fourth chapter). More recently, Cynthia Baron, in an example of an alternate network encompassing many of the same players, offers an insightful history of major acting teachers of the 1930s and ‘40s in her Modern Acting: The Lost Chapter of American Film and Theatre (2016). Here she places Lee Strasberg and “Method” acting—­characterized by an emphasis on the actor in relation to the performance—­in opposition to “Modern” acting, espoused for Baron most famously by Stella Adler. To Adler, Baron adds a number of lesser-­ known but still influential figures who coached actors for both stage and screen between the wars, all of whom generally shared a privileging of text analysis as a pathway to creating a character distinct from the actor. Bruce McConachie, in American Theater and the Culture of the Cold War (2003), argues that cultural reactions to the Cold War in the United States—­in particular a focus on “containment” and cultural responses to radio and telephone technologies—­provided a framework for audiences to particularly appreciate the performance style embodied by actors associated with Method acting. In particular, the frank narcissism that attended many of the totemic Method actors, where the actor was perceived alongside the character, “conformed to the contained, psychologized self of cold war culture” (McConachie, Cold War 99). Elsewhere, McConachie and F. Elizabeth Hart’s collection Performance and Cognition includes a section devoted to “Acting and Cognition,” where principles from cognitive science are used to investigate aspects of performance practice (see their section 3). Alternately, W. B. Worthen, in The Idea of the Actor (1984), explores an idea of “modern” acting stemming from the emergence of realist and naturalist texts, particularly Ibsen, that helped inspire Stanislavsky’s own reconception of acting, which in turn led to the multiplicity of voices and approaches to performance practice that characterize the mid and late twentieth century (see Worthen 5 and section 3). More broadly, the collection The Politics of American Actor Training (2009), edited by Ellen Margolis and Lissa Tyler Renaud, offers a diversity of sociopolitical frameworks as they intersect with aspects of performance practice. At a more quotidian level, the changing material conditions of performance in terms of size of house, advances

INTRODUCTION 17

in stage technologies, and—­starting in the 1920s especially—­reaction to the growing dominance of film all played roles in thinking about theater and acting in this period.12 To these I would add my own perceived network of influence and analysis, as I find that the overlapping rhetoric between the world of theater and the technological paradigm as enunciated by Taylor remains a quite striking and underappreciated aspect of how theater practice in the twentieth-­century United States developed as it did. On stage or off, it is difficult to overstate the impact of the technological worldview espoused by the Taylorites, and I have relied (as will be seen) on such scholars as Sharon Carnicke and Jonathan Pitches, among others, to help make sense of this particular collection of ANT actors. A model I found especially useful in structuring my own responses to this history came from Neil Postman in his 1993 book Technopoly, where he describes technological change as “ecological.” A society that adopts a new technology is never just that same society plus a gadget; technologies of sufficient efficacy and power reshape cultures in deep and often unanticipated ways. He identifies three major categories of change prompted by technological innovation. First, new technologies change what we think about, meaning the topics that we deem important to consider. Second, they change how we think, in the sense that the mental abstractions and symbols we apply are altered by new technologies. Finally, technologies change who we involve in the conversation, both whom we talk to and who we decide is worth listening to (Postman 20). Industrialism inarguably changed the way we think about actors, acting, and the nature of performance. It changed the very nature of what “to act” meant, and it changed who was viewed as an authority on the subject. As systems of acting grow in popularity, this trio of concerns provides a useful collection of elements to check in with. In thinking about acting, the necessity of substantial natural genius is one of the first pillars to fall. Inborn talent becomes less and less necessary for success as faith in the conjoined effectiveness and necessity of training grows. As technologies, systems of acting inherited the democratic ideal of techne, meaning that acting methodologies were ideally usable by all performers across all styles of theater, and could improve any actor, regardless of inherent aptitude. Systems of acting also inherit a prioritization of effi12. See, for example, Josephine Dillion Gable’s comments in her Modern Acting (1940): “Now that acting has moved from the theater to the screen, for the first time the audience can see the eyes and their changes of expression” (Gable 3). Similarly, she includes in her book a lecture titled “The History of Acting Is the History of Light,” examining how improvements in lighting have been tied to changes in theatrical style (cited in Baron 20).

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ciency in execution, and many theorists and instructors seek to identify a hierarchy of skills an actor should learn, with assurances that if the most important aspect is taken care of everything else will fall into place. Similarly, the “protean ideal,” whereby the best actor is considered the most versatile, ebbs and flows over the course of this period. Is the best actor one who can play many varied roles, or who has specialized in mastering a particular type? Whereas in the nineteenth century most actors would not have identified wide-­ranging versatility as necessary for success, schools of acting began to emphasize the flexibility that students would develop as a result of their studies, making them able to be cast against “type.” As acting methodologies developed over the twentieth century, the question of how much the work of acting is a projection of an actor’s individual personality and how much is the creation and presentation of a fictive character who should be perceivably different from the performer is likewise posed and answered in diverse ways, often with recourse to industrial or scientific vocabulary. The shift in how we think about acting is likewise connected to industrial influence. This is best exemplified dually by the new conception of performance as a process of construction from disparate skills and the changing fortunes of emotion. The idea of acting as a set of component abilities to be learned in the abstract and assembled during rehearsal marked a decisive change from the observational/apprentice model that had dominated theatrical practice for centuries. “Acting” was redefined as an activity that could be learned offstage, rather than on. Further, each new system of acting methodology grappled with the inherently messy and idiosyncratic realm of emotional affect and presentation, with a consistent inclination toward either demoting emotion in favor of more standardizable aspects of character and performance, or asserting a techne of emotional control grounded in science and learnable by actors in a classroom or studio. Another telling example is found in the increasing inclusion of craft and scientific language in theater company names. It would be unusual, to say the least, to imagine a theater company calling itself a “Laboratory” in the early 1800s, but such an appellation is relatively common by the twentieth century. Similarly, a growing number of theatrical “studios” and “workshops” were established in the twentieth century, hearkening to a world of rigorous craft rather than ephemeral performance, and in both name and deed companies included explicit calls to experimentation in a scientific rather than avant-­garde sense. As Shannon Rose Riley points out in her essay “Lab/Studio,” “Rethinking theatre as a laboratory can be seen as an at-

INTRODUCTION 19

tempt to theorize (perhaps legitimize—­perhaps protect) the theatre arts from a modern, scientific perspective” (Riley 140). From a remove of nearly a century it is easy to glide past the names to get to the remarkable history of literature and performance these companies produced, but the names, I offer, are important markers of how the technological paradigm was embraced by the participants at the time. Thirdly, the changing nature of who was involved in the discussions of performance can be seen most clearly in the increasing invocation of scientific authority to buttress arguments about the right way to act. “Science,” broadly speaking, is cited regularly and approvingly by acting theorists of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Over and above this general reverence, teachers began quoting specific scientists and theories as they explained the “why” of their methodologies. Acting exercises were conceived as manifestations of scientific laws, just as technologies were, and it became more and more natural for the specific science underlying an exercise or approach to be cited in the discourse around a particular performance practice. Finally, another useful indicator of the power of the technological paradigm in a given conception of theatrical work is the prevalence of unquantifiable or metaphysical aspects. Benjamin argues that the “aura” of a work of art withers in the age of mechanical reproduction because (in part) art loses “its parasitical dependence on ritual” (Benjamin 224). As tradition and ritual were replaced by methods and systems (as Taylor indefatigably argued for), theater practitioners grappled with the draining away of the metaphysical from their profession. This was not always greeted with the cheers Benjamin imagined. Roach points out the long history of this trend: “What physiology and psychology since the eighteenth century have done is to define this process of elaboration in terms of the body as a physical instrument, demystifying some of its sacred totems at great cost to the actor’s sense of his own spirituality” (Roach 226). In examining approaches to theatrical practice I adopt “auratic” to reference those qualities within a given system that resisted easy measurement, definition, or prediction. The systematization of acting led to increased auratic “drain,” and to counter this, theorists and practitioners alike often continued to make room for mysterious or unknowable aspects of performance.13 At the same time, the 13. Newton himself made room for his own version of the auratic in his astronomical theories: the ongoing and active intervention of the hand of God keeping the heavenly bodies aligned in their orbits. “Newton maintained his belief in God as the great clockmaker . . . [and] was grateful to God for enabling him and other students of the Book of Nature to appreciate how . . . he [God] providentially intervened from time to time, maintaining the machinery of

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auratic is not directly opposed to the industrial. Film actors (for example) could enjoy tremendous auratic power in the form of their star personas, and still perform for the camera without any contact with an actual audience. Despite there being no easy equivalency between industrialization and auratic content, how much room a given practitioner might offer to seemingly mystical qualities within their gestalt of performance practice still proves to be a useful point of comparison in seeing the infusion of the industrial in the theatrical. To explore these questions I have tried to eavesdrop on the declarations, classes, discussions, and arguments around acting and theater that began in the US in the 1870s, highlighting the rhetorical echoes of industrial modernism. I have relied on texts about acting and acting practice, newspaper and journal articles, and archived interviews with participants who shared their recollections as active investigators and subjects in a grand experiment to move acting away from a pure on-­the-­job learning model. Often these traces are just as effectively found in the metaphoric margins of texts as they are in the actual practices, and so I include autobiographical statements of authors, framing descriptions of exercises, prefaces, forewords, afterwords, and other inscriptions often bypassed when looking to explicate the mechanics of any given system. I spend the bulk of my analysis on the most widely known theorists and teachers of the twentieth century, looking in the dominant models of acting pedagogy for traces of their industrial roots, in terms of both their activities and the language used to describe their approaches. I also explore a few salient examples from the worlds of playwriting and production that encapsulate the naturalization of the industrial paradigm. I have followed a largely chronological structure in telling this tale. The first chapter begins in the 1870s, when the tide begins to shift toward the new conception of acting as something that might be learned offstage as well as, or even better than, on. The work of Steele MacKaye, disciple of emotional theorist and teacher François Delsarte; MacKaye’s student Genevieve Stebbins; and the arguments about elocution as it applied to an actor’s craft are taken up here. In chapter 2 I focus on the paradigmatic text for the new age: Fredrick Winslow Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management (1911), exploring how it echoes the spirit of the times, and is in turn echoed by others, exemplified here by an examination of Edward Gordon Craig’s 1911 On the Art of the Theatre alongside lauded actress Minnie Maddern the stellar system, just as he maintained the machinery of the planets . . . God, in Newton’s view, had entered into a servicing contract with creation” (Hoskin 221).

INTRODUCTION 21

Fiske’s 1917 memoir and reflections on the art of acting. I also explore the lesser-­known work of Luther Anthony’s journal The Dramatist, advertised as the “only journal of dramatic technology” during its run from 1909 to 1929. The chapter concludes with a look at one of the most highly regarded companies of the period, the Provincetown Players, and I highlight their rhetoric around the nature of scientific experimentation and the theater. Chapter 3 explores the significance of the Moscow Art Theatre’s tour to the US in 1923, examines early lectures on acting technique from former MAT member Richard Boleslavsky, and looks at how the publishing house of Longmans, Green, and Company embraced the technological paradigm in their script offerings to amateur theaters across the country. In chapter 4 I turn my attention to Hollywood and the early film industry, examining the vocabulary used to talk about acting in the presound era, using silent film star Mae Marsh’s 1921 book Screen Acting alongside early fan magazines as a window into cinematic practice at the time. Chapter 5 returns to the stage, focusing first on Boleslavsky’s Acting: The First Six Lessons (1933) and then on the conflicts over the role of emotion in acting in the Group Theater that ended up splitting Lee Strasberg from the Group in the mid-­1930s. In chapter 6 I explore actor training during the “Golden Age” of Hollywood in the 1930s after the arrival of sound. In particular, I look at in-­house training conducted by the major studios themselves for the benefit of their contract players and investigate the remarkable roster of instructors working behind the scenes to teach performance skills to the hopeful stars under their tutelage. Chapter 7 explores the postwar acting landscape in Hollywood and New York. Here I look at the history of the Actors’ Laboratory in Los Angeles (established in 1941) as well as the final training conducted by the film studios before the contract system was effectively eliminated in the late 1950s. I also closely read Robert Lewis’s 1958 Method—or Madness? as an early example of popularizing the “Method.” In chapter 8 I investigate the rhetorical traces of industrial modernism in four major teachers of acting: Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, Sanford Meisner, and Uta Hagen, whose collective influence on actor training in the US (and abroad) is immense. To conclude, I look briefly at a few more contemporary approaches to actor training, some in opposition to the predominant technological paradigm and others that wholeheartedly embrace it. The idea that actors could be made more than they were born, the limits and devaluation of genius, the emphasis on training prior to venturing on the stage, the recourse to specific scientific theories to justify approaches and exercises, and the reconsideration of emotional presentation as central to the work of an actor all occurred simultaneously with the triumph of

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interchangeable parts manufacturing and Taylorite approaches to industry. My purpose is not to side with one school over another or to offer a blanket criticism of the values of industrial modernism. Nor do I claim that acting methodologies were consciously modeled after any specific manufacturing technique or process. Instead, my goal is to explore the interplay between the seemingly disparate realms of industrial philosophy and theatrical practice, illuminating and deciphering the accretion of theater and performance theory as it engaged with an increasingly dominant technological paradigm in the twentieth century. As Erika Fischer-­Lichte, in her article “Culture as Performance” points out, “the same forces are at work in performance as in culture at large. Performance thus becomes a sort of laboratory for studying these forces” (Fischer-­Lichte 9), and my own interest runs along similar lines. How do the valuations of modern manufacturing show up in the realm of theatrical conception and production? How did the technological paradigm of acting pedagogy change once it was established? How were various methodologies of performance technique—­ many hugely influential and still vibrant today—­derived in part from practices initiated on factory floors close to 150 years ago? What echoes from those earlier times still resonate? How did actors learn to learn to act? Encompassing the worlds of both industry and drama was Steele MacKaye. MacKaye was an engineer, author, actor, and director who helped form the first dedicated schools of actor training, including the still-­extant American Academy of Dramatic Arts, even as he was patenting an elevator stage as well as the folding theater seats now ubiquitous in auditoriums everywhere. His studies with François Delsarte in the early 1870s convinced him that there was not only a science of the stage, but a means of harnessing that science through exercises. Alongside his other pursuits, MacKaye worked to convince others that the theater was not a mysterious practice, subject only to inspiration and natural genius, but a process that could be made much more scientific than it had ever been before.

ONE

 | A Dream of Scales

In March of 1871 Steele MacKaye, theatrical polymath, was showing off in a parlor of Boston’s St. James Hotel to a crowd of between 200 and 300 people. More accurately and generously he was concluding a lecture on the “scientific basis” of performance by demonstrating an acting exercise called “The Gamuts of Expression” (MacKaye, Epoch, vol. 1 155). MacKaye stood before the crowd, his body unmoving except for his smoothly changing expression: He showed a chromatic state of emotion running through satisfaction, pleasure, tenderness and love to adoration, and, having retraced his steps, descended facially through dislike, disgust, envy and hate to fury. Again he exhibited the transitions from repose through jollity, silliness and prostration, to utter drunkenness; and made a most astonishing but painful spectacle of his fine face, passing through all the grades of mental disturbance to insanity. (MacKaye, Epoch, vol.1 152) Entertainment value aside, this was not a mere party trick or a display of virtuosity like Garrick’s for Diderot in the 1760s (see Introduction). MacKaye’s chromatic states of emotion represented a foundational technique for an aspiring actor to develop, one that could be learned independently of working on a specific show and then applied to any part the actor might be cast in. The Gamuts exercise was an affirmation of MacKaye’s belief that actors could and should be trained offstage before performing in public. In 1871, however, this belief placed him in a very small and distinct minority. In this chapter, I begin by contextualizing the background for MacKaye’s radical idea for offstage training. I explore the general organization and understanding of an actor’s work in the period prior to MacKaye’s proposals, and look at some examples from emotional theorists who predate MacKaye, including his own mentor François Delsarte. Returning to MacKaye, I then discuss his own career as an acting teacher and founder of

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the earliest schools of acting in the US, paying special attention to the work of one of his exceptional students, Genevieve Stebbins, and her book on Delsarte and MacKaye. To conclude, I analyze theater critic Alfred Ayres’s collection of newspaper articles and essays Acting and Actors (published 1894). In his book, Ayres included the record of his extended debate with fellow critic Andrew Wheeler—­carried out in the pages of their newspapers—­regarding systematic actor training. Despite arguing for training as strenuously as MacKaye, Ayres has an entirely different idea of what should be important to an aspiring performer. While their proposals differ, MacKaye, Stebbins, Ayres, and Wheeler are united by the shared belief that there could be a system for training actors outside of rehearsal that would prove not merely effective, but superior to the apprenticeship model that had dominated theatrical practice for generations.

BOUND BY TRADITION, STEEPED IN JARGON: TRADITIONS OF ACTING

For much of the nineteenth century most professional actors in the US saw their job as playing one or more “lines of business”—­categories of characters aligned with a specific type—­learned on the job in an apprenticeship system in a “stock company.” While there was great variety in the size and ambitions of stock companies, they often shared a set of characteristics. As Benjamin McArthur describes them in his book Actors and American Culture, stock companies were “autonomous local operations headed by a manager who owned or leased the theatre, hired the actors, picked the plays and offered a rudimentary form of direction to the cast. Seasons normally ran for forty weeks in the mid-­nineteenth century. Six performances a week was standard, increasing to eight a week by 1870” (McArthur 5). Stock performers, with the guarantee of a season’s worth of work, were relatively settled in their respective communities, and a given company would play a number of shows in reparatory. From our point of view the number of different scripts is quite striking, with McArthur calculating that one of the most prominent stock companies of the 1850s, the Boston Museum, mounted 140 different productions in their 1851–­52 season (McArthur 5). To learn a line of business, as well as “the business” of theater, an aspiring actor apprenticed with a stock company and watched others perform while playing minor parts. These entry-­level lines were generally referred to as “utility” men or women or “Walking Gentleman/Gentlewoman”

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(McArthur 15). Newcomers fleshed out scenes by playing the messengers, servants, and other necessary but unglamorous roles, while learning stagecraft and the practices of a more advanced (and highly paid) line. “Stock provided regular experience under conditions of actual productions; special rehearsals were conducted for the young ‘walking ladies and gentlemen’ of the company to instruct them in the skills, graces, and deportment of the stage.  .  .  . A long apprenticeship was expected of the young actor before he would be entrusted with a responsible line of parts” (Blanchard 618). Knowledge transmission in the theater worked like many other professions, with practices, traditions, rules, and norms handed down from masters to apprentices. While lines such as “leading lady” could be quite broad, others were more sharply delineated. A young woman, for example, might be hired as a “soubrette,” “singing soubrette,” or “leading soubrette.”1 Your line was your job as an actor, and by definition it meant that while the specific dialogue would change from show to show, the basic idea of the “character” was far more rigid. A soubrette would continue to be a soubrette, regardless of the play she might be appearing in. For most actors, being able to play any part in any line of business was not the goal, if for no other reason than it was highly unlikely that you would be called on to do so. Rehearsals were not designed to develop an individual approach to a character, but “consisted mainly of a technical preparation for the performance that proceeded according to well-­established conventions of scenic staging” (R. Gordon 26). Once established in a stock company, many actors continued to play their particular line or lines, with little or any variation, for the bulk of their careers. But in the nineteenth century a new classification emerged: the touring star. To be a star meant you could command your own fate, choose your own roles—­without concern for a particular line—­and make more money. It also meant that rather than being locked down in one company, you traveled from town to town, and local stock companies would back you up. Starring actors have existed for almost as long as theater itself in the West,2 but the itinerant star system shook up the stock company because the star as an outsider meant the company would often have less than twenty-­four hours to rehearse before opening, and all lines of business would be jug1. McArthur identifies thirty lines and sublines of business for women in use as late as 1888, with another twenty-­four for men (McArthur 13–­14). 2. Aristotle in The Poetics chides authors for writing works for favored actors without dramatic cohesion. In his words, they write “to please the players; for, as they write show pieces for competition, they stretch the plot beyond its capacity” (Aristotle 69).

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gled to accommodate the star. Despite the shifting of roles, this was not a system that lent itself to fully realized performances any more than traditional stock. The demands were simply too great. “Actors might have to learn from three hundred to five hundred lines in a day. Modern theories demanding reflection upon one’s role were necessarily unknown to them. They did well to understand the plot” (McArthur 10). With such limited rehearsal time the work of the nonstar actor was to support the star, utilizing the habits of performance inculcated through a reliance on lines of business, even if their role wasn’t an exact match to their traditional line. There were actors whose work highlighted their transformative powers and tacitly implied that this self-­transformation was the apex of an actor’s art. Yet even these stars ended up playing a limited range of roles. A prime example of this school might be Richard Mansfield (1854–­1907), whose transformation from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde—­in full view of the audience—­ was seen (and promoted) as a testament to his skill as an actor.3 Such malleability was key to Mansfield’s understanding of acting, as well as his own (quite substantial) self-­promotion, evident in his playing the Baron Chevrial in A Parisian Romance. After the show, Mansfield “would not take curtain calls until he had time to take off his make-­up and wig to dramatise the difference between the doddering, dissolute role he had been playing and his true, more youthful body” (Danahay 60). While Mansfield didn’t play the title character in Rip van Winkle (that would be Joseph Jefferson III), he did, early in his career, play a father and son sequentially in the script (the role of the Vedders, innkeepers in Rip’s village), again emphasizing his skills in self-­transformation. “This was a tour de force of acting on his part, but also showed his interest in the transformation of the actor into completely different people in the same play” (Danahay and Chisholm 11). By the end of the nineteenth century, actors such as Joseph Jefferson III and James O’Neill were stars through their association with the specific parts of Rip van Winkle and the Count of Monte Cristo respectively. Each required a substantive transformation over the course of the evening, from young Rip to old or from Edmund Dantes to the Count, and they treated the audience to an example of the actor’s malleability. Yet once they had established their signature roles neither O’Neill or Jefferson (to a lesser extent) played anything else with great regularity. In effect they had a line of business with one singular role. More broadly, the protean ideal that an actor should be prepared to play any role, or even a wide variety of roles, 3. See Danahay for a discussion of Mansfield’s transformative abilities as an actor and its relation to film history.

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was not a common expectation, not even for these most self-­transformative of performers. If most acting wasn’t about radical transformation, then what, to put it bluntly, was an actor supposed to do on stage? When you learned a line of business with a stock company you learned how someone else had performed the same role or type of roles. You learned comedic timing for comedies and dramatic emphasis for melodramas and tragedies, and you were expected to have or to develop good vocal projection and enunciation. But the alpha and omega of performance was the representation of emotion on stage. For example, Helen Brooks looks at the “she-­tragedy” of Jane Shore from 1714 and its demands that the actress playing Jane be able to quickly move between extremes of emotion. “[The] final act, read as a performance and in light of contemporary acting theory, is tight-­ packed with the presentation of a diverse range of passions” (Brooks 42). The title role requires the actor be able to quickly navigate between emotional states, presenting them coherently to the audience in rapid succession, just as Garrick demonstrated in Paris and MacKaye offered to teach to his prospective students. Identifying the appropriate emotional state for a character and then displaying it was the basic test of whether one could act in the nineteenth century. A long history informed the “correct” way to present various states of agitation, depression, elation, love, and so on, with lineages that in some cases could be traced all the way back to the work of Greek and Roman rhetoricians. The increasing urge to turn an analytic eye on the human condition beginning in the sixteenth century in the West inspired a variety of commentators to both identify what emotional states looked like and to pursue questions into the nature of emotion itself. Underlying this work was a set of assumptions: emotions were stable in presentation across time, space, and culture; emotions could be projected by the application of will or the calling up of emotion by the performer; and the audience would perceive emotions in viewing the physical totality of an actor. James Burgh’s The Art of Speaking offers a wonderful encapsulation of what this meant in practice. Originally published in 1761 and reprinted with minor edits and additions in 1804, Burgh offers a catalog of the major “passions”—­he lists an ambitious seventy-­five in all—­and how to make them sensible to an audience. For Burgh, “passions” are effectively the equivalent of emotions, and should be communicated when engaging in public speaking, not merely by tone of voice, but by physical posture. “Every part of the human frame contributes to express the passions and emotions of the mind, and to shew [sic] in general its present state.” To this end,

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each passion comes with a description of how best to convey it. For example: “Tranquility, or apathy, appears by the composure of the countenance, and general repose of the body and limbs, without the exertion of any one muscle. The countenance open; the forehead smooth; the eyebrows arched; the mouth not quite shut; and the eyes passing with an easy motion from object to object, but not dwelling long upon any one” (Burgh 16, 18). (Burgh has very strong feelings about the liberal use of italics in writing, and so all emphases are his unless otherwise noted.)4 Having cataloged and described the passions, Burgh offers textual selections to give students the chance to practice their emotive skills. The first examples have comparatively few shifts in emotion, but once he gets warmed up the exercises get quite detailed and complex. Lesson forty-­nine (of eighty-­two) is headlined “Anguish Followed by Transport” and is taken from the conclusion of Richard Steele’s play The Conscious Lovers (1722). According to Burgh the scene starts with Civility, and in the span of four pages encompasses Confusion, Offense, Apology, Apprehension, Recollection, Confusion (again), Apology (again), Wonder with Disapprobation, Vindication, Inquiry with Apprehension, Distress, a third return to Apology, Pity with Disapprobation, Caution, Resolution, Distress, Lamentation, Phrenzy, Amaze, followed by Joy, Surprise and Joy (combined), then Rapture, until finally concluding with Extreme Joy (Burgh 146–­50). Critically—­and somewhat familiarly for anyone who has marked a scene for actions, objectives, and obstacles (or other vocabulary of your choice)—­Burgh presents the text with the appropriate passions already indicated in the margin. A student would learn the words along with the corresponding passions for each section and present both in performance. As Robert Gordon points out in The Purpose of Playing, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, “movement and gesture continued to be conceived as an illustration and extension of rhetorical speech . . . even after the main emphasis of a theatrical production had become visually spectacular rather than controlled by the spoken text” (R. Gordon 128). Scored to the text, the passions and their associated gestures become what was actually being played as the text is enunciated. The idea of scoring a text certainly has contemporary resonance in theat4. “Time was, when the emphatical word, or words, in every sentence, were printed in Italics and a great advantage it was towards understanding the sense of the author, especially, where there was a thread of reasoning carried on. But we are now grown so nice, that we have found, the intermixture of two characters deforms the page, and gives it a speckled appearance. As if it were not infinitely of more consequence to make sure of edifying the reader, than of pleasing his eye” (Burgh 13–­14).

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Figure 1: Two pages from Burgh’s Art of Speaking

rical practice, but some critical differences exist between the goals of Burgh and twentieth-­century acting coaches, not the least of which is the intended audience. Burgh’s self-­reported purpose was to provide a textbook for use in schools, and his imagined audience was lawyers, politicians, or members of the clergy. It is actually Anglican ministers (and seminary students) who seem to be Burgh’s primary target, and toward whom Burgh directs his greatest ire for their oratorical defects. (Their delivery is unfavorably contrasted with the more dynamic preaching style of the Catholics; among Burgh’s many strong opinions is a decided prejudice against Roman Catholicism, hence his hope to match their rhetorical eloquence.) Far from needing his help, Burgh felt most actors and actresses were already skilled in public address and emotional presentation because this is what they learned during their apprenticeships. “The younger part of the

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players rehearse, and practice over and over, many a time, and are long under the tuition of the principal actors, before they appear in public” (Burgh 41). Burgh, good Protestant that he is, commends this strong work ethic, lauding their commitment to not appear on stage before their skills are up to snuff. What the actors and actresses are rehearsing is the presentation of passions, the very thing he is trying to teach through his textbook. Thus, he is not expecting that stage folk will flock to the bookstalls to buy The Art of Speaking, even if he is using dialogues from Richard Steele’s The Conscious Lovers or Shakespeare’s plays as practice material. Actors were already ahead of the game, a fact he freely admits. “If I wanted to have a composition of mine well spoken, I would put it into the hands of a second-­rate player, rather than of any preacher I ever heard” (Burgh 42). The theater world, through rehearsal and apprenticeship, teaches emotional presentation to a higher degree than could be found anywhere else. Certainly, in Burgh’s strong opinion, to a higher degree than Anglican seminaries. Burgh was hardly the only investigator laboring in this field. In The Player’s Passion Joseph Roach catalogs a host of similarly inclined researchers, all working on more-­or-­less universal systems of how to convey emotional states to an observer. Some, such as seventeenth-­century English natural philosopher and physician John Bulwer, focused on gestures and came complete with diagrams of hand positions used to convey passions from supplication to duplicity; his contemporary Charles Le Brun, a French painter, captured the faces of primary emotions (Roach 36, 67). But it is just as well that Burgh wasn’t aiming to reform the stage, for despite the clear effort by these observers of human expression stretching back hundreds of years, until the late nineteenth century the vast majority of actors did not choose to spend their time studying what might have seemed overly theoretical and technical works. To be sure there were individual actors who were known to have made a study into classical representations of emotions. In addition to Garrick’s reported study of both art and science,5 the celebrated actor Barton Booth (c. 1679–­1733) was known to model his own performances on great works of visual art. From these “he studiously derived poses and expressions. His mastery of these ‘Attitudes’ and the ‘Easy Transitions’ between then was so carefully rehearsed that his admirers claimed to be unable to distinguish them from spontaneous reactions” (Roach 70–­71). Yet these examples, like those of Joseph Jefferson and James O’Neill, continue to serve as the exceptions to the rule. Most actors weren’t Garricks, Booths, Jeffersons, or 5. See Roach (59).

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O’Neills. They were more-­or-­less skilled in their line and delivered it nightly. Understandably, actors were suspicious of changing what had been quite successful performances just for the dubious promise of greater scientific accuracy made by emotional theorists. This did not stop the scientists of the stage from continuing to define and describe the range and presentation of human emotions. One of these stage scientists was the Frenchman François Delsarte (1811–­1871), who had been continuing the tradition of Burgh and Bulwer by identifying the physical presentation of emotional states and describing how to replicate them at will. He in turn ended up teaching his system to Steele MacKaye, who had originally come to Paris to study at the Conservatoire before finding Delsarte and committing to study with him, making such progress that he was promoted to instructor within a year (Shaver 207). What MacKaye was learning, and then teaching, was a systematized means of presenting emotional states to an audience through the physical positioning of the body. Delsarte codified stances and positions of the feet, legs, arms, and head, which, when properly replicated, would be analogous to the emotional and mental state of the character being portrayed.6 Delsarte, like his fellow passion analysts, believed his assignment of emotive states to specific poses was based in natural law. These poses were a science of gesture, based on observations.7 Despite the potential to see Delsarte’s postures as frankly artificial, Delsarte himself was fighting against what he felt was a far falser stylized stage presentation taught at the Conservatoire (Wilson 101). MacKaye’s plans to bring Delsarte to the United States to teach were upended by Delsarte’s untimely death in the summer of 1871. However, in the autumn of that year, MacKaye opened the St. James Theatre and School in New York City, generally considered to be the first independent school of theater in the United States (McTeague 17). Despite closing within six months, the St. James indicated where MacKaye’s attentions would be focused in the near future: the revolutionary idea that acting could be taught in a classroom, no apprenticeship as a utility player required. Theater critic Andrew C. Wheeler, writing as “Nym Crinkle” in the paper The World, summed up the headwinds against MacKaye’s idea to 6. Sharon Carnicke records a wonderful resurrection of sorts for Delsarte in her essay “Collisions in Time: Twenty-­First-­Century Actors Explore Delsarte on the Holodeck.” Faced with the challenge of trying to teach virtual reality constructs how to emote, Carnicke “suggested we (re)turn to the principles of François Delsarte” (Carnicke, “Holodeck” 247). 7. Delsarte’s Catholicism played a part in how he structured his system, which might argue against its pose of scientific objectivity. Seeing the number three as a holy number (à la the Holy Trinity), Delsarte’s codifications are heavily tripartite (see Wallace 204).

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teach acting: “If he had contemplated martyrdom, he could not have behaved with more suicidal intent than by announcing a system. Good system or bad, the sin is in having one” (MacKaye, Epoch, vol. 1 176). It was the idea, not its execution, that caused the most immediate consternation. As was commonly understood, the only “system” of acting was to watch those who were better and then do what they did. In this way theater was not unlike many other trades, even if the final product was ephemeral rather than material. You learned the craft by doing the simplest and most menial of necessary jobs, and simultaneously being instructed, slowly but surely, by the more senior members of your trade. Burgh allowed as much in his The Art of Speaking, when he called actors the best speakers in the land (versus the milquetoast Anglican ministers), largely because they were so thoroughly trained by masters of the field before venturing into large roles in public. Theater at this time, as McArthur describes, “was exclusive . . . bound by tradition, steeped in jargon, technical in its business, and require[ed] great practice,” all hallmarks of traditional trades. But an apprentice craftsman in other fields often had recourse to schools of instruction, common theory, and a clear path to join the profession, all of which theater lacked (McArthur 26). It is this disparity that MacKaye sought to rectify.

MACKAYE, STEBBINS, AND THE ACTING EXERCISE

MacKaye argued passionately for preperformance training for actors. When he founded his “School of Expression” in 1877 at 23 Union Square, MacKaye published a pamphlet laying out his artistic and curricular plans (titled, plainly enough, “Conservatoire Æsthetic, or School of Expression”), in which he rhetorically asked: Hundreds crowd to perform in public who have had no preliminary training.—­Is this right?—­Would any man dare apply to the leader of an orchestra for position among his musicians, if he had not already given years of study to his special instrument?—­Is the human body, with its infinite stops—­a whole orchestra of instruments in itself—­less worthy of attention than a violin, a flute, a trumpet, or a drum? (MacKaye, Epoch, vol. 1 268, emphasis original) The musical metaphor is worth calling out, as it will be repeated, with minor variations, by almost every significant acting teacher of the twentieth

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century. MacKaye did not, of course, invent the comparison out of the whole cloth. Goethe precedes MacKaye in comparing actors to musicians, and in lamenting the acceptance of chance in theatrical performance. In Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (c. 1795) the title character exhorts his fellow performers: Can any thing be more shocking than to slur over our rehearsal, and in our acting to depend on good luck, or the capricious choice of the moment? . . . Why is the master of the band more secure about his music than the manager about his play? . . . I could wish, for my part, that our theatre were as narrow as the wire of a rope-­dancer, that so no inept fellow might dare venture on it. (Goethe 204)8 Goethe worked to institute some level of training for the actors under his direction at the Weimar Theatre, though as in the earlier examples of emotional theorists, the revolution was long in coming. His complaints lived on after him, picked up nearly a century later by people such as MacKaye, who found a more congenial environment for such ideas to develop. For MacKaye, the haphazard means of entry into the theatrical profession was no way to insure a professional, competent theater. He sought to create schools where aspiring actors could receive structured training in the work of acting, mirroring a path that had been trod by theater’s more traditional siblings in manufacturing and crafts in the nineteenth century. “Preparation for skilled occupations came to mean institutionalized training. . . . In every case the schools . . . stressed technical proficiency and a theoretical understanding of their field, usually incorporating a standard set of exercises to develop skills” (McArthur 98). Acting, like other professions, began to embrace these hallmarks of modern instruction to prepare aspirants to the stage. Contributing to the transitional state of theatrical practice was the growth of realism, as Brenda Murphy documents in American Realism and American Drama, 1880–­1940 (1987). Here again, Steele MacKaye’s influence is impossible to ignore:

8. Versions of the “rope-­dancer” line in the quote above are cited by legendary twentieth-­ century acting teachers Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner in various forms. Adler used it as an epigraph to the introduction of her book The Technique of Acting (1988), and Meisner, in addition to using it as an epigraph to his own On Acting (1987), went so far as to have a poster-­sized version of the quote hung in his office at the Neighborhood Playhouse (see the openings to Adler and Meisner’s respective texts).

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It was the season [1879–­80] when Steele Mackaye’s Hazel Kirke, recognized by theater historians as a watershed in the development of American dramatic realism, was first produced. It was the season when Mackaye’s technically advanced Madison Square Theatre opened and when Augustin Daly began his reign as manager and promoter of realistic ensemble acting at Daly’s Theatre. It was the season when James A. Hearne (The “American Ibsen”) made his first appearance in New York. (Murphy, Realism 2) Murphy calls out dramatic literature, the physical locations of performance, and new approaches to acting (exemplified by Daly’s ensemble and Hearne’s acting) as all pointing toward a theater in transition. What was old would not necessarily serve the new. Murphy also identifies distinct strains in acting at the time, noting “The [eighteen-­] seventies were a period of transition for acting in America, just as they were for the drama,” with performers falling into one of three modes: the “classical” (Edwin Booth), “emotionalism” (stereotypical melodrama), or the “character acting of the comedians.” This third category included Joseph Jefferson’s portrayal of Rip van Winkle, lauded for his attention to detail, if not his protean abilities (Murphy, Realism 18). Jefferson is seen as pointing the way toward realist actors such as Hearne himself (lauded for his own attention to detail) and the idea “that the character was a ‘person’ rather than a series of attitudes or emotions . . . that was to be carried to fruition by such actors in the next generation as Minnie Maddern Fiske and George Arliss” (Murphy, Realism 19).9 This instability in theatrical practices is useful insofar as Actor-­ Network Theory seeks entry into analysis at points of indeterminacy. ANT practitioner Madeleine Akrich, describing a fruitful state for inquiry, writes “We need to find disagreement, negotiation, and the potential for breakdown” (Akrich 207). This state of flux allows for greater visibility and appreciation of the various actors involved in negotiating new systems. Furthermore, this transformation in acting and stagecraft occurred at a moment when the overall structure of the theatrical enterprise was shifting. Stock companies were a culturally contingent institution, and the culture that nourished them was changing.10 The stock company model had first been threatened by the star system. Now “combination shows,” prepackaged productions complete with a full (or nearly full) cast going on the 9. See the next chapter for a discussion of Fiske’s approach to the stage. 10. “In both its structure and daily operations, the early nineteenth-­century stock company was very much a pre-­industrial institution, ideally suited to its times” (Frick 198).

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road (or, more specifically, the rails), also threatened the local stock company.11 As the road model proved more and more successful, there was an increased need for actors to fill the touring companies, with a simultaneous decrease in the viability of the traditional source for actors, the local stock company. Stock didn’t die out all at once, but its centrality in the theatrical landscape was steadily reduced, including its role in the traditional path to the stage for actors. Where would new actors come from, if not from stock? And how would they learn what was required in a changing theatrical landscape? In 1879 the Illustrated Dramatic Weekly published a call to colleges and universities to train the actors of the future, just as they trained other professionals prior to entering the job market, thus shifting from a preindustrial to an industrial model of instruction (McArthur 99). Yet nearly forty years later, in a 1926 issue of The Drama, theater manager (and actor, director, and stage manager) Jessie Bonstelle could still laud the stock company as the best possible training for an actor: “A good stock company will soon correct faults and odd mannerisms and give the player confidence of having actually ‘done it,’ instead of theorizing about it” (Thorne 216). Bonstelle’s stock, however, was not MacKaye’s. Her model of stock was not stable actors with lines of business, but a company of actors dividing roles as much by number of lines as suitability to the part. “Where else but in a stock company can a young actress get the opportunity to play the part of a girl of sixteen one week and perhaps a woman of seventy the next?” (Thorne 216). The wide variation of parts played is an asset, not a detriment as Bonstelle sees it, and offers the chance for the young actor to just “do it,” unlike in acting schools, where the assumption—­sometimes warranted—­ was that there was little actual acting going on. As the arguments about how best to prepare actors for their profession continued in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the disparaging adjective “theoretical” was often leveled at systems of actor training that encompassed anything but rehearsal and performance, dismissing them as unconnected to the realities of the business. Such disagreements about how best to proceed are predicted by theoreticians of technological and scientific change, most notably Thomas Kuhn in his Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Instead of seeing scientific progress as a linear rising slope of knowledge, Kuhn argues that in practice any substantive change 11. See “The Private Theatre Schools in the Late Nineteenth Century” by Francis Hodge, in History of Speech Education in America, for a concise recounting of the various pressures on the stock company model, as well as an encapsulation of contemporaneous arguments for and against formalized training programs for the stage.

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to worldview (Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, etc.) is marked by conflict within the profession, as any significant discovery invalidates previously held beliefs and models. Kuhn refers to these collections of beliefs, areas of inquiry, problems, and solutions as paradigms. It is only when one side has both demonstrated the superiority of their model and the adherents to the old model succumb, retire, or die out that a new paradigm is established. A true paradigm shift occurs when “an achievement was sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity” and was “sufficiently open-­ended to leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to resolve” (Kuhn, Structure 10). Paradigm shifts close down “older” lines of inquiry, while simultaneously defining new problems and methodologies to investigate them. Given the subjective nature of assessing acting (as opposed to the more objective nature of observable physical reality), it is to be anticipated that arguments over how best to prepare actors for the stage would emerge between those who support more “traditional” methods and those who propose newer models. The paradigm model has been usefully applied to changes in performance style, as when Betterton or Garrick came to prominence, but this shift was different. As Wheeler noted, it wasn’t the content of MacKaye’s system that caused concern. It was the fact it was any system at all. MacKaye wasn’t just suggesting minor changes to stock companies or a different emphasis in declaiming verse. He was recommending a wholesale altercation in how acting was conceived, and by extension, what it would mean to be an active participant in acting pedagogy and performance. Had MacKaye simply taught Delsarte’s positions to his students he would still be an innovator in the US for moving such work off the stage and into the classroom. (The Paris Conservatoire, although their content had been scorned by Delsarte and MacKaye, did offer a model for systematized classroom instruction of actors that influenced MacKaye as well.) But MacKaye’s truly revolutionary act was to take Delsarte’s scientific observations and craft exercises from them that students could then practice independently from any text (unlike, say, Burgh, who had scored passions to specific texts for practice). This model is at the root of nearly every school of acting methodology that followed throughout the twentieth century and marked a major break in both the setting (classroom) and approach (the exercise) from previous modes of actor training. Which returns us to MacKaye and his “Gamuts of Expression”—­unlike Garrick, MacKaye’s display of a chromatic scale of emotion was not meant (only) to illustrate his expertise as a performer. It was a demonstration of a

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skill, divorced from any specific play, that a student could (and should) learn to become a better actor. In MacKaye’s lecture notes he outlined three “gamuts” with seven emotions in each. In an 1874 lecture series he discussed exercises to “develop Flexibility of the various articulations of the Head, Torso, and Limbs” alongside “Exercises to develop Prevision of Expression, including . . . Gamuts of Expression in Facial Expression and Pantomime” (MacKaye, Epoch, vol. 1 231). MacKaye is also credited with a series of exercises based on Delsarte’s observations of emotion known variously as “Harmonic Gymnastics” or “Æsthetic Gymnastics.” MacKaye was taking Delsarte’s stage science and theory and turning it into a technology via practical exercises. Just as musicians had their scales of notes, these emotional shifts would be scales for the actor. MacKaye firmly believed he was illuminating an area of scientific inquiry. Throughout his son Percey’s two-­volume biography, MacKaye’s endeavors are described as a work of science. Delsarte’s system was described satirically, but with the ring of truth, as “the algebra of art” by the critic Andrew Wheeler (MacKaye, Epoch, vol. 1 169). When Columbia University wrote to engage MacKaye as a guest speaker, the invitation letter opened by citing the “fame of the profound scientific system of François Delsarte” and of MacKaye’s desire to establish a “free school of art” headed by Delsarte, “where art may be taught on scientific principles . . . to the development and training of artistic genius” (MacKaye, Epoch, vol. 1 158). A description of MacKaye’s second school in 1877 promised to develop “the student’s faculty to feel by a scientific exposition of the natural facts and laws governing the manifestation of human emotions” and went on to claim that “the best age of the Drama . . . will be reached when the Moral and Intellectual forces of Society and Science have been brought to bear upon its Art, through properly organized and thoroughly administered institutions of dramatic education” (MacKaye, Epoch, vol. 1 268–­69 emphasis mine).12 Pairing dramatic art with “science” allowed for structured education, which in turn would usher in a new flowering of theatrical achievement. ANT would view MacKaye’ activities as network building, with both MacKaye and the idea of “science” as primary actors. Extending this network were MacKaye’s followers who also helped publicize his work, and one of the most influential and prolific was Genevieve Stebbins. Her Del12. Even in his stage designs MacKaye strove to match a scientific ideal. For his production of Won at Last (c. 1877), he designed a “scientific moon” that would, as it rose against the backdrop, mimic the changing color of the real moon in the sky. (In practice the effect was apparently plagued with technical difficulties.) (MacKaye, Epoch, vol. 1 280).

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sarte System of Expression13 was first published in 1885. Despite the title, Stebbins presented MacKaye’s exercises—­she had been his student for two years—­alongside Delsarte’s catalogs of behavior and posture. In doing so she married the science of the stage (the theory) with the technology of practice (the exercise). Stebbins describes Delsarte’s motivation for his theatrical investigation in terms both poetic and scientific: Realizing he [Delsarte] had been shipwrecked for want of a compass and a pilot, he determined to save others from his fate by seeking and formulating the laws of an art hitherto left to the caprice of mediocrity or the inspiration of genius. After years of unremitting labor and study [ . . . ] he succeeded in discovering and formulating the laws of æsthetic science. Thanks to him, that science now has the same precision as mathematics. (Stebbins 4–­5) The emphasis on founding the art of the theater on solid, scientific laws that have the same precision as mathematics is a trend that will continue, in both impulse and vocabulary, throughout the next 100 years. Stebbins, in an example of Foucault’s epistemic model, attributes Delsarte’s investigations and recordings to the spirit of the times. “This is an age of formulation,” she writes, and Delsarte’s goal was to “rescue from the void and formless mass of collected material a system whose symmetry and beauty should embody all that is worth saving” (Stebbins 5). The scientific era demanded a scientific approach to the stage. Stebbins (via MacKaye and Delsarte) believed that the role of training was to reduce or even eliminate the reliance on elusive and fickle inspiration, writing “acting should have some higher standard than the empirical caprices of its exponents.” Then quoting Delsarte himself, Stebbins asserts “trusting to the inspiration of the moment, is like trusting to a shipwreck for your first lesson in swimming” (Stebbins 5). As for the concern that a reliance on technique will make actors “mechanical and elocutionary,” Stebbins counters by saying that all things have fundamental laws that must be learned to achieve greatness, and this includes “artistic” pursuits such as poetry and painting. By implication, theater has its own set of laws that can be discovered and taught. When properly applied these laws will 13. While grammatically it might be more natural to title the book The Delsarte System of Expression, Stebbins forwent the determinate article.

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all0w an actor more control over their performance, making one—­at least partially—­immune to luck. Stebbins allows that a hypothetical untrained genius in acting might stumble on the same truths MacKaye and Delsarte uncovered, but that process would be woefully inefficient. To make her point, she relates an anecdote of a young painter who labored for two years in isolation on his technique. Emerging, he showed his work to noted artist Gérôme. “My dear boy” the master is said to have replied, “I could have showed you that in five minutes, and saved you two years of time!” Efficiency is a primary selling point for systematic instruction, as is a sense of guaranteed success, a point that she makes explicit about Delsarte’s own work. “Delsarte has saved for the students of the dramatic profession many years of unnecessary labor; and to those who will faithfully and conscientiously follow his guidance, the result is certain, for he holds the lamp of truth” (Stebbins 7). Her arguments echo the rhetoric of the rapidly industrializing and professionalizing crafts industries, where traditional methods were being replaced with “scientific” processes. Similarly, the refrain about structured study being a more efficient means of learning will be continually repeated and amplified in the subsequent decades of discussion regarding acting pedagogy. Finally, the valuation of efficiency—­in this case meaning a less effortful acquisition of knowledge—­is unquestioned. There is no allowance that metaphoric friction might be effective in shaping some aspect or another of the young artist. These are not the calculations of the age, and so they are excluded from the reckoning of the costs and benefits of study. In keeping with the industrial paradigm, Delsarte, MacKaye, and Stebbins all used charts to convey important information. Delsarte System of Expression has seventeen diagrams covering such topics as “Zones of the Head” and “Attitudes of the Eyeball” (Stebbins ix). In charts dealing with physical positioning of the body, Delsarte applied three combinatorial criteria: “Normal,” “Eccentric,” and “Concentric,” and the combination of these leads to a three-­by-­three mapping of positions for the eye, brow, legs, and so on. Each pose is accompanied by an exercise designed to build a student’s familiarity and facility with it. Unlike Burgh, Stebbins does not use specific plays for her examples. Instead she describes generalized situations the student is expected to enact and apply as appropriate in actual rehearsal and performance. These are pieces that can be assembled into parts. To prepare for this assembly, Stebbins includes “pantomimes” for the student to practice. In lesson nineteen, for example, Stebbins sets the scene: “You are standing idly in a room; a step on the stairs attracts your attention.

Figure 2: Chart from Stebbins’s book on Delsarte

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The door opens to admit a person for whom you have an affection. You greet this person in delighted surprise.” What follows is a highly technical description of physical actions to convey the narrative and emotional coloring just outlined: “Assume the attitude of the legs con.-­ex; right leg strong. Attention called to noise on the right, you lift right ear, eyes turning left in opposition. Door opens. Eyes turn right toward object entering. Head follows in rotary motion, leveling gaze on object” and so on through a full paragraph of eighteen lines (Stebbins 177–­78). Like Burgh, Stebbins is scoring physicality to situation. Unlike Burgh, she believes this is fundamental training for an actor. In addition to the content, Stebbins’s book fights for a new paradigm of actor training in another way. After a lengthy introduction, the book proper starts with “Lesson One” and takes a form familiar to readers of more modern texts on acting technique: a fictional acting class. This makes perfect sense, as Stebbins was writing this book (along with others) to be used in classrooms as well as for independent study. It is natural that the fiction aligns with the intended use. What is worth recalling is that the very idea of an acting “class” in 1885 was incredibly radical. By reinforcing the efficacy of classroom-­style instruction through their narratives, Stebbins and those who followed continued to throw their support behind the idea that acting exercises formed a technology of the stage, one that could be learned more effectively by diligent work in classrooms than by mere apprenticing in a stock company. Stebbins begins the first lesson with direct address to the fictional student: “Dear pupil, will you accompany me, an invisible presence by my side as we trace our way through a course of lessons? And if you practice faithfully, I can assure you that you will not regret the time and patience required in the study” (Stebbins 11). Although the student is not nearly as developed Boleslavsky’s “Creature” (see chapter 5) or any of the students recounted in Stanislavsky’s texts, Stebbins does allow for brief moments of personalization, at one point offering to fix a goldenrod bloom “in her dress” (Stebbins 57). The limits of this structure might also be seen when the student is “called away” for an unexplained reason before lesson six. The succeeding lessons, save the final one, are “concise summaries of the laws to be apprehended” (Stebbins 87). For Stebbins the difference in presentation is actually relatively minimal. Despite the fiction of the reader peeking over the shoulders of master teacher and pupil, unlike in later examples of the recounted tutorial (e.g., Boleslavsky’s Acting: The First Six Lessons, Sanford Meisner’s On Acting, Hethmon’s Strasberg at the Actors Studio, or Stella Adler’s posthumous The Art of Acting), the content in the first

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five lessons has very little back and forth between instructor and student. The pupil, still unnamed, does return in lesson twenty-­one for a discussion of the meaning of colors according to Delsarte, as well as some final thoughts on acting and performance.14 In this final lesson the tension between theory and practice is explicitly called out under the subheading “Parting Advice.” Stebbins feels she cannot completely discount the mystical and metaphysical in performance and anticipates the line of defense, more clearly enunciated by successive acting teachers, that training makes inspiration more possible and serves as a safety net when it proves elusive. “Practice all of the æsthetic gymnastics,” she exhorts, “use all the charts, but as gymnastics only. Never, in creating a role, make them your masters by a voluntary seeking of their attitudes in symbolic meaning” (Stebbins 227). She follows up the quote with a story from her own experience. After first establishing that she had diligently practiced all of the lessons, she nevertheless asserts that “my best results have been attained when I, a passive subject, obeyed an inner inspiration coming from whence I know not and urging me on to results I had not aimed at” (Stebbins 229). Despite her admonitions against inspiration, it seems that it is sometimes necessary to achieve transcendence and greatness in performance. More directly, Stebbins says that training is necessary for the full development of potential, “because the fruit, the flower, the child needs cultivation for development” (Stebbins 230). Training is cultivation, allowing natural qualities to be developed to their highest pitch, as well as creating fertile ground for inspiration to bloom. In short order this same argument will be extended and magnified by subsequent acting theorists, to the point where even prodigious natural talent will not be enough on its own and should or must be shaped by a conscious training regimen. Stebbins’s text is one of the earliest “how to” books aimed directly at prospective actors in the US. Going far beyond elocution and vocal projection, she offers a comprehensive system for actor training based on Delsarte’s abstractions of human emotions and their physical manifestation. She frames all this within a structure that presupposes an individual teacher-­student relationship set outside the bounds of a rehearsal for a specific production. While sharing many traits with earlier stage scientists such as Burgh and Bulwer (of the hand positions)—not the least of which is 14. Colors, like gestures, are imbued by Stebbins via Delsarte with a scientific certainty of their universal associations and meaning, despite their somewhat mystical content, and, naturally, come complete with their own chart.

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a propensity to include examples from classic statuary of Greece and Rome—her argument, methodology, audience, and expectations are radically different, just as they are different from the received understanding of how actors learn to act. While not universally lauded, Delsarte’s ideas did gain traction in the US. By the end of the nineteenth century the University of Colorado boasted a speech teacher reported to be “an enthusiastic admirer of Delsarte,” the University of Michigan offered instruction in the “Rush and Delsarte philosophies,” and the University of Oregon advertised that they employed the “General Principles of Delsarte and Mackaye” (Hochmuth and Murphy 171). Stebbins and MacKaye had, at least in some cases, succeeded in spreading the gospel of Delsarte. Even as MacKaye’s applications of Delsarte were being disseminated, he continued to materially support the idea of actor training programs. In 1880, three years after opening the “School of Expression,” MacKaye opened the Madison Square Theatre, leaving it in 1883. In 1884, he helped open the Lyceum Theatre with a training program that looked more like a modern MFA curriculum than anything previously seen. The Lyceum was a joint project of Steele MacKaye and Franklin H. Sargent, MacKaye’s business and artistic partner. MacKaye provided the curricular guidance and inspiration, while Sargent initially provided the structure for the institution.15 “Following MacKaye’s basic idea, Sargeant carried through the organization of a unique ‘school of acting’ that brought together a faculty of specialists in their field to teach aspiring actors a specific theory and technique of acting in formal classes.” Such a school, as McTeague notes, “was the first of its kind” (McTeague 46, emphasis original). They named the Lyceum school the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (AADA),16 an institution that would outlive all of its founders and maintains the distinction of being the oldest school of acting in the US, still in operation over a century after its founding. Under MacKaye’s training regimen at the AADA, students would work on exercises designed to increase skill in “practice, relaxation, and control” 15. “If MacKaye was not the organizer of the school’s curriculum, he was certainly the force behind it. If he was not responsible for formulating the structure of the Lyceum curriculum, he was certainly the molder of the idea. If he was not responsible for the specific approach to the subject matter taught in the courses, he was the formulator, along with Delsarte, of the philosophy of acting which was taught. The Lyceum Theatre School, then, can be said to be the fullest expression of Steele MacKaye’s contribution to the American acting school” (McTeague 29). 16. As Baron points out, the establishment of the AADA can be seen as part of the nascent push to offer actor training outside the apprenticeship system in Britain and Europe. “The London Academy of Dramatic Art [was founded in] 1861, the Moscow Art Theatre ([in] 1898), and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London ([in] 1904)” (Baron 137).

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(McTeague 31) and conduct life observations that would be recreated in the rehearsal studio. Just as Stebbins eschewed specific scripts for practice, MacKaye “did not appear to employ ‘scenes’ from plays, but rather situations that could happen in any play. The purpose, is it assumed, was to study the reactions of a person in any situation” (McTeague 39). This emphasis on abstracting specific character situations into generalized exercises is a hallmark of the new pedagogy. A student was not training for a particular part, or even a particular line of business, but was rather working on essential—­in every sense of the word—­skills widely, if not universally, considered applicable to the challenges faced in preparing for a specific role. In the 1896 AADA catalog, Sargent offered the following explanation for what students could be expected to get out of training at the school: The dramatic school idea is something more than the putting on of plays. It is the training of the pupil’s mind, cultivation of his body and the inculcation of the right principles of investigation. It is merely a primary department for the higher studies that are never ending in the actor’s professional career. (McTeague 57) Something more than the putting on of plays. The AADA was emphatically not a secret stock company. Rather, their business was to provide students a firm foundation that would allow them to continue to work and grow in the field. To reach the pinnacle of technique, the students were expected to gain mastery over themselves through the equivalent of piano scales for the individual. This level of self-­control allowed the fullest reach of expression while on stage. “Even before the aspiring actor was given an opportunity to train his imaginative powers, rigorous training was pursued which was intended to free him vocally and physically” (McTeague 65). This freedom was considered necessary to allow the actor to express completely the nuances of a character, and developing it was most definitely a technical matter, as expressed in the AADA’s journal, Dramatic Studies: “Trained knowledge and skill are the power of the true professional which distinguished him from the amateur. Body and voice are the actor’s instruments. Mechanical expertness in playing upon these instruments must precede the art of acting” (cited in McArthur 101–­2). Again and again the AADA’s catalog copy reinforced that much of what was being learned was preparatory to public performance. Rather than throwing their students on stage on

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day one, the curriculum was designed so that students received a great deal of training before attempting the “art of acting” itself. A summary of their curriculum shows the new approach being taken to actor training and illustrates its similarity to contemporary practice: Coursework concentrated on technical aspects of acting, correcting bodily movement and expression and striving for poised, controlled movement of hands, arms, legs, and face. Students analyzed the voice and production of sound. They had exercises to improve resonance and articulation. Basic acting skills were stressed: stage business, pantomime, fencing, French, dialects, dancing, and singing. Pantomime study incorporated the basic Delsartian idea of liberating inner feelings. Instructors criticized any lack of sincerity or concentration. (McArthur 102) With few changes this generic description could stand in for any number of conservatory style programs in the US today. Classes in physical and vocal technique, dialect work, singing and dancing, and fencing (read: stage combat) are all well represented in many schools; also familiar is the idea that inner feelings should be liberated, as is criticism for lapses in sincerity and concentration. In reviewing the AADA’s program, what is most surprising may be just how unsurprising, to someone familiar with the terrain of contemporary actor training, it actually is. At the same time, the AADA did maintain aspects of the apprenticeship model, with the second year of study being largely devoted to a stock company experience. Students performed “in-­house” and on tour, as well as taking small roles in the professional theater in New York (McArthur 102). MacKaye’s son Percey included approving stories about MacKaye’s efficacy as a teacher in Epoch. When MacKaye took his play Won at Last on the road in 1878, he cast two of his students. Percey quotes the Brooklyn Eagle’s review, which is striking not only for its celebration of MacKaye but for its invocation of sculptural craft in describing his work. “MacKaye may consider Miss Blanche Meda . . . one of his greatest triumphs in the art of teaching, for he has converted her by his genius from something little better than a block of wood into a thoroughly good actress” (MacKaye, Epoch, vol. 1 283). The New York critic Stephen Fiske championed the entire company, and MacKaye’s system in particular, in language clearly influenced by industrialism. Fiske writes “there was no mistaking the improved efficiency: a subtler meaning had been given to the balance, relative beauty in the

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whole; more sincerity, spontaneity and nature in the several parts.” As in the Eagle review, Miss Meda is singled out as for her marked improvement and engaging performance. “When I saw Miss Meda’s début in another play uptown,” Fiske recounts, “I despaired of her ever doing anything on stage.” But MacKaye had worked his systemic magic, for “when I saw the skill, repose, simplicity, [and] cogency of her work in Won at Last, I gave in to Mr. MacKaye and his ‘system.’” (MacKaye, Epoch, vol. 1 283) Two points stand out from these reviews. First, that it was through a system that Miss Meda and her fellow actors were improved. Their work was shaped by MacKaye in a manner separate from theatrical direction in rehearsal. When Stephen Fiske gives in to “the system” he is throwing his allegiance behind the idea of a system, any system, of acting. Second, the nature of the improvement was efficient. Fiske cites the “improved efficiency” of the company as a positive virtue, along with the “simplicity” of Miss Meda’s performance. The same positive virtues can be found in a review of another of MacKaye’s students, the actor John McCullough. Andrew Wheeler wrote about McCullough in 1878 and the enormous leap he had made as an actor. “His Othello and Richelieu astonished me by being entirely unlike his former impersonations of those characters. . . . The native vigour, resonance, and fire were there, but they were disciplined and controlled.” Beyond the perceptible increase in discipline and control (values favored by industry), he continues, “The intelligibility of subtler emotions had been made sharper and clearer. There were noble climaxes of passion, less waste of energy in making himself felt.” McCullough credited his improvement entirely to MacKaye. “MacKaye has taught me more in three months than I could have learned otherwise in twenty years, and I don’t care who knows it.” For his part, MacKaye denied building up an actor entirely from scratch, and allowed “I couldn’t have taught [McCullough] if he hadn’t been gifted in a wonderful manner” (MacKaye, Epoch, vol. 1 270–­71). Even as MacKaye is advocating for systematized training, he still professes a healthy respect for natural talent. In an interesting precursor to the gendered arguments about acting that Hollywood in particular would propagate (see especially chapter 6), Miss Meda goes from being a block of wood to a successful actor through MacKaye’s tutelage, whereas Mr. McCullough possessed natural gifts that were simply more efficiently shaped under MacKaye’s guidance. As one final example of MacKaye’s reported skill in training, the great US tragedian Edwin Forrest, after learning the basic principles of Delsarte’s system from

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MacKaye in 1871, reportedly said, “MacKaye has thrown floods of light into my mind. In fifteen minutes he has given me a deeper insight into the philosophy of my own art than I had myself learned in fifty years of study” (MacKaye, Epoch, vol. 1 149). Despite the achievements of MacKaye’s students, and although the AADA could, in a few short years, boast of quite successful alumni, resistance remained entrenched within the profession against the idea of training programs. The actor Lawrence Barrett was quoted in 1882 as saying “Training must be essentially practical. No school of elocution, no training outside the theatre can I regard as valuable. . . . The theatre is the school of the actor.” Minds could be changed, however, as Barrett performed with the New York School of Acting within three years of his disavowal of any nonstock or professional training for actors (Hodge 556). Other factions quickly joined the arguments over the polar opposites of stock and school. Elocutionists complained that while stock companies hadn’t necessarily produced vocally trained actors, the new breed of acting school wasn’t doing much better. Alfred Ayres (nom de plume of Thomas Embley Osmun), a writer for the Dramatic Mirror in the late nineteenth century, went so far as to publish the perceived verbal slips of actors in his paper along with his reviews, highlighting the words he felt should be stressed in italics (a formatting choice that probably would have won him applause from Burgh). Which is not to say that Ayres disapproved of off-­stage training—­he had been in the inaugural list of instructors at the AADA, though they had parted ways quite quickly. “After the first lecture,” he recounted in the New York Dramatic Mirror, “I was told I should not be wanted any longer, because my system was elocutionary rather than pantomimic” (cited in McTeague 47). Although his ideal training regimen was wildly different than MacKaye’s, he was an enthusiastic, even aggressive, supporter of the idea that a top-­notch actor could be trained independently of the old stock apprentice system. Ayres hammered at this point in his articles, while also excoriating current stage technique and expressing disdain for the “traditional” training for actors. Many of these articles were later collected in Acting and Actors, Elocution and Elocutionists: A Book About Theater Folk and Theater Art (1894). They make for fun, if curmudgeonly, reading, and are striking in the ways Ayres and his supporters (his book has a preface, introduction, and laudatory poem, all written by others) embrace the rhetoric of scientific certainty and industrial values in performance.

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ELOCUTION AND EMOTION

Right off the bat, Harrison Grey Fiske asserts in the preface that “Alfred Ayres is in no sense a theorist.” Harrison Fiske was the husband of famous actress Minnie Maddern Fiske and had been the editor of the journal the Dramatic Mirror (Ayres’s home paper) for fourteen years when Acting and Actors was published. Buttressed by his own substantial experience, Fiske assures us that Ayres “has made a careful study of the subjects upon which he discourses. His utterances have the weight of patient research, of keen analysis, and of a fine mind schooled to the utmost exactitude and to judicial impartiality” (H. Fiske 5). Edgar S. Werner, journalist and editor of Werner’s Journal, for whom Ayres also often wrote, states in his introduction that Ayres gained his knowledge not from thought experiments but from directly observing celebrated actors such as Edwin Forrest and Charlotte Cushman (both of whom receive a special dedication from Ayres himself), as well as “other giants of pure speech and effective delivery” (Werner 14). Ayres is depicted as a scientist, dispassionately recording and reporting his objective findings, rather than as advocating an aesthetic, subjective viewpoint based on preconceived ideas of how theater should work. In Werner’s introduction he divides the concerns of public speakers (including actors) into three components: physical presentation, tonal musicality, and verbal language. For Werner (and by extension, Ayres), the apex of the actor’s art is verbal language, and it is on this that actors should focus their attention. Furthermore, this diligent study “will unavoidably cultivate the first two . . . [and] much time and effort are saved by starting at once with the oral expression of thought” (Ayres 12). In other words, studying in the manner Ayres prescribes is promoted to be a faster, easier, and more efficient means of achieving necessary knowledge (the same advantages attributed to the systems of MacKaye and Delsarte). Elocution, for Ayres, is the “one thing” an actor needs to worry about. Everything else will either fall into place or can be learned with ease. Ayres even made this idea his opening epigraph on the title page of the book: “More than all else it is the actor’s utterance that fixes his position as an artist” (Ayres). In another echo of MacKaye, Ayres laments that “a singer studies for years before he thinks of venturing before the public, while the player often rushes before the public without any preparatory study whatsoever” (Ayres 22). What is required is a training regimen, ideally one aligned with Ayres’s ideas of what makes a great actor.

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Rounding out the prefatory materials, a James A. Waldron contributed an introductory poem to Ayres’s volume. It is a lyrical tribute to the power of instruction, lending its voice to the argument that successful acting could certainly be taught. The poem starts by acknowledging that natural genius can exist, but those who lack innate talent can improve themselves through diligent practice. As an example of such self-­improvement the poem retells the story of Demosthenes teaching himself to be a powerful public speaker. Yet Waldron attributes Demosthenes’s success to a “self-­improving genius” he possessed. For those lacking natural speaking ability or the gift of being able to independently correct their defects, a third path remains: instruction. “All the arts must mentors have to show / The mountain paths to those who walk below  .  .  . And teachers elementary must toil, / That youthful faults may not great virtues foil” (Waldron 15–­16). This rebuke to those who would argue against the utility of teaching in elocution is gentle compared to Ayres’s defense of instruction once he really gets going. For those who might feel that Ayres ascribes too much importance to textual utterance, he retorts “If I do err herein . . . I err in company with all the great actors that have lived” (Ayres 23). He backs up his allegiance with “all the great actors” by recounting Edwin Forrest’s own appreciation for the great Romantic actor Edmund Kean, arguing that “the distinctive characterization of Kean’s utterance was the intelligence that he breathed into every sound he uttered, which intelligence was not more the product of his genius that it was the fruits of close study” (Ayres 24). Kean earned his success by thinking more clearly and directly about his parts, and then conveying that thought through his performance. This is Ayres’s hope for aspiring actors of his day. But what if one has neither natural genius—­overrated by Ayres in any case—­nor a genius for self-­education such as Kean or Demosthenes possessed? What then is the proper course for one who wishes to pursue a career on the stage? Ayres quickly dispenses with the idea that simply doing it—­as most actors in the US and England would suggest—­is an appropriate means of study, because it is no actual course of study at all. Rather, it is a haphazard, catch-­as-­catch-­can opportunity to learn bits and pieces as you go along. Instead, a structured curriculum should be pursued. “No matter what the art, if the learner would acquire a knowledge of it rapidly and thoroughly, he must be systematically taught and not left to pick up a knowledge of it when and where he can” (Ayres 29, emphasis original). The emphasis points directly to the ascendant idea that there could be a system for teaching acting superior to the time-­tested apprentice model. Such training

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didn’t even need to be in an actual theater: “Well-­nigh everything [the aspiring actor] has to learn can be learned in a room ten feet square just as well as it can be learned anywhere else. . . . A man might play Hamlet, and play him well, and never step foot on the stage until, say, ten days before he made the attempt” (Ayres 37). Ayres is quite aware that he is preaching heresy by contending an actor could scale the heights of Hamlet as the melancholy Dane without a long stage apprenticeship, but that is his argument just the same. He does admit that such a course of study would not allow the student to embody the protean ideal, but he dismisses it as an unrealistic goal in any case. A naturally gifted actor, someone like Forrest or Cushman, could, within two years, be taught to play “a limited number of parts—­say of two or three.” Tellingly, they wouldn’t be much use in an “old time stock company” as they would “have none of the old stager’s knack of ‘faking’ through.” In a sign of the shifting working conditions for theater artists, Ayres has no apparent concern about describing stock as old-­fashioned in 1894 and suggests that the demands of stock are different than the demands of theater “today.” The actors trained as Ayres imagines would be “infinitely the old stager’s superior as artists.” They might not be able to play a great number of parts, but “there is more glory and more money in playing one part superbly than in playing a hundred parts tolerably” (Ayres 33). Note that Ayres explicitly conjoins artistic and economic success—­another inoculation against the charge of being overly “theoretical.” Ayres doesn’t believe the best actors are the ones who are most versatile, but the ones who have studied most intensely the parts they are to play. Later he will deny the protean ideal even more clearly: “Excellence in one is better than mediocrity in all. He that can do the greatest thing is the greatest man. Versatility never yet has made greatness” (Ayres 37). Specialization is the hallmark of modern industrial practice. The factory laborer is not asked to build an entire sewing machine from start to finish, but rather to focus on producing one specific part, or assembling one component that will be further assembled by another workman. In the same way Ayres imagines contemporary actors as specialists who should not be expected to master all the varied roles in dramatic literature, but instead to concentrate their efforts on mastering a few particular types. While willing to dispense with the protean ideal, Ayres cannot give up the need for natural talent in acting, even if genius is not necessary. Some level of affinity is necessary, but for Ayres this would probably manifest itself in a predilection for text analysis rather than stage presence. It is elocution—­meaning the proper understanding and speaking of the text—­

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that requires the most attention from the would-­be actor. “All else that the actor has to learn is comparatively easy, and can be learned twice over, with time to spare, before even the most gifted can learn to read really well” (Ayres 38). In many places in his collected essays, Ayres breezily dismisses everything nonelocutionary the actor might need to do on stage. Learn elocution, he argues, and everything else will either take care of itself or can be sorted out in a rehearsal or two. Ayres finds one foil in Dion Boucicault, who was engaged to run a dramatic school by Albert Palmer in the late 1880s (known simply as the “Palmer-­Boucicault School”). Boucicault, according to Ayres, was uninterested in anything but practical experience, and thus the school immediately put the students on stage, as though they were a stock company. Per Boucicault, “everything learned in a room . . . is devoid of practical value.” These are fighting words for Ayres, who ripostes, “If Mr. Boucicault were going to build a house, he would presumably, begin with the roof” (Ayres 143). Pre-­training for Ayres is a necessity for real actors. Yet Ayres also disdains the methods derived from Delsarte and AADA’s course of study: “I am one of those that believe in attacking the actor’s art from the intellectual, not from the gymnastic side,” he writes, neatly dismissing the physical manifestations of emotions that actors might be expected to learn (Ayres 39). Both schools—­the Delsartean “gymnastic” and the Boucicaultian “just do it”—­are joined for Ayres in the falsity of their premises, despite one including a full course of preparatory study and the other dispensing with it entirely. To borrow the Diderotian reduction, acting must always be inside-­ out for Ayres, never outside-­in, and this is where both competing approaches fail for him. Where Boucicault argues that the most important thing in performance is “the action, the movement,” Ayres counters that the way to present convincing emotions is by analyzing the text (a line of reasoning later adopted by Stella Adler, among others). “Create the emotion by mastering the thought and the sentiment of the author, and Nature requires but little aid from Art to furnish the expression” (Ayres 146–­47). Emotion is still the end product, but its wellspring is in the play itself, and to make sense of the text, the actor should be thoroughly trained in proper elocutionary techniques. While Boucicault’s school was very short lived, Ayres did have a chance to witness the work of MacKaye’s students when he attended a student showcase in the mid-­1880s. As might be anticipated, he found the vocal skills of the students sorely lacking. They mispronounced words, spoke too quickly in comedic scenes, and chewed the scenery in dramatic ones. He

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continued his critique by, in effect, giving line readings, using italics to show the words that were stressed by the young actors, and which, in his opinion, should have been stressed. He then lobs his familiar criticism that the AADA is too concerned with the physical training of actors, but he does commend the young actors’ stage presence. “Their bearing . . . was thoroughly actor-­like. They can all keep still, and their hands never seem to be in their way” (Ayres 174). The physical training may have paid off to some degree, but given the other detriments it was certainly not enough to convince Ayres that what they were doing was of any real value to students of the stage. It is (perhaps) to his credit that Ayres includes, as the final section of his book, a series of articles that appeared in the Mirror in 1888 written alternately by himself and fellow critic, Nym Crinkle (aka Andrew Wheeler, the lamenter of MacKaye’s sin in having “any system at all” mentioned previously), arguing over the role of thought and emotion in acting. Straightforwardly titled “Thought versus Emotion” the articles offer a glimpse into the early shifts about the relative importance of emotion to actors, as well as exploring the necessity of talent or genius to stage success. In addition, the back-­and-­forth reveals places where the scientific and technological language and values make themselves felt on both sides of the debate, showing the increasing prevalence of these ideas in the discourse.

AYRES VS. WHEELER: THOUGHT VERSUS EMOTION

Wheeler starts by accusing Ayres of “willfully ignoring emotions” in his focus on elocution. For Wheeler, emotions are crucial to the success of a performance and cannot be calculated as easily as an appropriately stressed syllable. Audiences want “emotion, not ideas. . . . What thought is there in a pang?” (Ayres 243). Wheeler here echoes Stebbins’s reverence for the correct answer that breaks the rules, and certainly doesn’t truck with focusing primarily on the pronunciation of words as the determiner of a great performance. “Give us correctness of speech by all means . . . but beware, oh, beware of mistaking the chandelier for light and confusing the polished faucet with the water that flows through it!” (Ayres 243–­44). Ayres responds in terms familiar from the last century of Diderotian argument: actors don’t actually feel what they are presenting, but merely simulate the feeling itself. That simulation is brought about through thought, which in turn is found “in the language of the play” (Ayres 244). Studious comprehension and precise delivery lead to better simulations of

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emotion and allow the play to work as the author intended. Further, simply playing the emotion (and this could come straight from any number of action-­oriented acting teachers of the twentieth century) will read as false to the audience. “Stage emotions without thoughts behind them are as unthinkable as trees without roots beneath them” (Ayres 245). Not content to simply say that thought leads to emotion for the actor, Ayres raises the importance of thought for the audience, in effect arguing that better theater was thoughtful theater in the most literal sense of the word. In response, Wheeler argues the supreme actor in performance “pictures terror, love, and revenge in his mind. If the picture is strong enough to affect his unconscious nerve centers we shall get what I have called spontaneity and what the world has often enough called by its pet names of genius, magnetism, sympathy, etc.” Wheeler, similarly anticipating aspects of twentieth-­century acting theory, believes that emotion conjured simply through intellectual activity will never read as anything other than studied affect. “If the unconscious faculties are not called into play we get the verbalist doing with a hard, pragmatic brain what ought to have been done by the heart” (Ayres 263). Wheeler offers an illustrative comparison between Clara Morris’s instinctual style and Sarah Bernhardt’s careful composition when both successfully played Camille. “You are forced by every view of the two subjects into the admission of a distinction between nature and art, and of an acknowledgement that nature [Morris] has her own efficacy quite distinct from art [Bernhardt] and oftener violates its rules than obeys them” (Ayres 265). Clara Morris probably wouldn’t meet with Ayres’s approval, breaking as many “rules” of performance as she does, but for Wheeler her triumph cannot be denied. Wheeler repeatedly reinforces the point that stage success can come from instinct instead of study. Of Clara Morris he says, “You only have to talk with [her] half an hour to find out that she knows nothing whatever of her own processes” (Ayres 265). Elsewhere, Wheeler writes “we are continually confronted with the fact that comparatively uneducated women walk upon the stage and do with a natural and spontaneous function that which education and drill make hard, strenuous, and painful” (Ayres 256). Finally, Wheeler argues for the role of the unquantifiable in successful art, and in what may have been an either inadvertent or blatant challenge to Ayres, cites Edwin Forrest himself as an actor who surpassed his own planning. Arguing that Forrest’s earliest successes were the result of inspiration, and that his middle roles never met with the acclaim of his earlier work, Wheeler then turns to the great triumph of Forrest’s late career King Lear (which he first played while still a young man, in the 1820s). Forrest in

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the title role “transcended everything that had ever been seen on our stage.” Critically for Wheeler, Forrest’s Lear was not a pure product of stage experience and study. Quoting the actor himself: “I act Othello, Spartacus, Macbeth, sir; but, by God, I am Lear!” (Ayres 265). The line between character and actor is far more fluid for Wheeler than for Ayres, with Forrest’s personality infusing his portrayal of one of his most celebrated roles. Like Ayres, Wheeler employs industrial language and scientific knowledge to argue his points. That actors are both mechanical and spiritual beings, Wheeler argues, is “the hardpan of indisputable facts of positive science” (Ayres 262). When Ayres argued that Wheeler’s use of the phrase “conscious endeavors” was oxymoronic, as all endeavors required conscious choices, Wheeler replied, “I am forced to point out to him in scientific phraseology that there is such a thing as ‘unconscious cerebration’” (Ayres 249). In a subsequent defense, Wheeler writes, “There is, too, an unconscious side to his intellectuality. Emerson called it the Over-­soul. Science calls it the Involuntary” (Ayres 256). It is Wheeler’s alliance of science and mystery in theater, his ease in equating Emerson with what would soon be Freud, that may be the most unusual aspect of any of the arguments being presented. As the language and assumptions of science, industry, and technology increase in theatrical discourse, the role of mystery and inspiration lessens. For Wheeler, however, there is no conflict between arguing that emotions are a matter of scientifically proven “unconscious cerebration” and professing that all art, acting included, contains aspects of the auratic that defy analysis. In fact, Wheeler argues both points within the same paragraph in one of his articles: There is in all good acting, as there is in all poetry and all great art, some element of the mysterious and indescribable, just as there is in all beauty. . . . To call it accent and stage realism is the cheapest mechanical summary. To say that tears are not caused by reflex action is to whistle down the wind the stark, staring, undeniable fact of exact science that tears are never caused by anything else. (Ayres 267) As much as Wheeler predicts the contours of arguments to come, examples like this portray a discussion in transition. Wheeler’s free blending of scientific certainty with an equally strong faith in the power of the metaphysical and unquantifiable becomes more untenable as the technological paradigm gains currency and cultural power. Ayres has far less sympathy than Wheeler with the idea that some un-

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quantifiable factor is at work making or breaking performances. Wheeler likely predicted that his inclusion of Forrest as evidence for the “over-­soul” side of theater would rile Ayres, and true to form Ayres rushes to his defense, claiming there was never “a more intellectual or a more correct, a more scholarly player than Edwin Forrest” (Ayres 273). Forrest, unlike Wheeler’s inspiration-­driven geniuses, studied long and hard to achieve his success on stage, especially in elocution. Here Ayres is on familiar ground from his early tributes to the great Forrest, as he cites elocutionists Dr. Samuel Rush and Dr. Lemuel White as both providing tutelage at various points for Forrest in his career. (He does not mention Forrest’s celebration of MacKaye mentioned above.) Elocution, with its specific vocabulary and analytic tools, was an early component of acting to be brought into the scientific stable, so it is unsurprising that this is where Ayres bases his own scientific sympathies, seeing the acting process as one that can be fully explained without recourse to mysticism. Ayres describes Dr. White and Forrest—­and by implication, himself—­as “precisionists . . . one that is not satisfied with the approximative; one that would be absolutely correct; one that, for example, in reading is content to work at a passage just as long as any betterment in the delivery seems possible” (Ayres 274). This is a prime example of embracing the industrial mindset, for as Taylor will argue in another decade, scientific management presupposed an ideal, singular solution to any process under investigation. Hence Ayres’s faith in one supreme line reading as the “most correct” is absolutely in keeping with the technological paradigm, as is his faith that proper elocution will pave the way for general stage success. As for the great Forrest, “there was nothing slapdash, haphazard, or chaotic about anything Mr. Forrest did. . . . [His] greatest triumphs . . . were the result of study, of mental application, of intellectual prevision, of cut-­and-­ dried, prepare-­beforehand brain effort” (Ayres 274). Ayres is arguing—­in the language of science and technology—­that great performances are made, not born. As such, Ayres naturally professes himself unconvinced that there is any need to have recourse to Wheeler’s “nerve centers, unconscious cerebration, and composite mysteries” in thinking about acting (Ayres 275). Acting is intellectual for Ayres, and anything that needs to be done on stage can be thought of and planned in advance. The right answer might not be in the back of the book, but it is out there waiting to be discovered. Both Wheeler and Ayres imbibe from the fountain of science and technology; Wheeler with his biological justifications for inspiration and Ayres with his faith in a singular right answer.

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It is striking, reading the totality of Ayres’s commentary from a twenty-­ first-­century perspective, how many of his arguments are essentially identical to acting critiques made fifty or more years after his time. (Ayres died just after the turn of the century.) His criticisms of unintelligible actors destroying authorial intent could be applied, almost without editing, alongside other critiques of the Method in the 1950s and ’60s.17 Similarly, his demand that the text be respected above all else has many champions throughout the twentieth and twenty-­first centuries.18 What has become commonplace was, for Ayres and his audience, cutting-­edge theoretical thinking about theater. Ayres was a supporter of systems of actor education at a time when most of the profession was not. Further, he devalued emotion, at least as far as where the attention of the actor was placed, and argued for something far more rational to replace it. At the same time, Ayres did not believe in a protean ideal for actors but encouraged specialization in performances and was absolutely committed to the idea of a single right answer, including the proper way to deliver every line in every play and the appropriate method to learn to be an actor. Finally, like Delsarte and his disciples, as well as Wheeler, he endowed his observations with the weight of scientific authority. Ayres, Wheeler, Stebbins, and MacKaye are all figures caught up in a period of profound transition, reflected in their various statements and actions. Just as Wheeler and Ayres hadn’t settled on either a full embrace of the scientific worldview in theater or a complete repudiation of it, Stebbins offered a highly systematic approach to actor training while at the same time embracing the idea of transcendent inspiration in performance. MacKaye also remained tied to traditional theater forms even as he pushed the boundaries of acting pedagogy. He left the Lyceum after only eight months, stating to the board that “It has seemed wise to you to make the Lyceum a combination house. In so doing, the principal value of my services, which grows out of my experience in organizing and training stock companies of actors and in superintending the production of plays is suppressed” (MacKaye, Epoch, vol. 2 51). Although his methodology would serve as a model for the training of combination actors for decades after, his own conception of live theater remained with the stock company. MacKaye embodied the US impulse toward systematization in his development of a structured curriculum for actors independent of a particular stage, company, or even play. By mastering the “scales” of acting, actors 17. See discussion of the “Method” stereotype introduced by Robert Lewis in chapter 7 and reiterated by Stella Adler and Uta Hagen in chapter 8. 18. Notably Stella Adler (chapter 8) and the system of Practical Aesthetics (discussed in the Conclusion).

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could assemble a specific role out of their toolkit of techniques. His was an “outside-­in” approach, with its focus on physical presentations of emotion, as compared with Ayres’s ideal of the words unlocking all the emotion the actor would ever need, and both contrasted with Wheeler’s faith in the summoning of emotion in the moment. What they all share is a faith that there could be a system for acting. As Nym Crinkle, Wheeler wrote numerous pieces in support of MacKaye and his plan for a school of acting. Ayres might have hated the performance of the AADA students trained in a model championed by Stebbins and MacKaye, but he also argued, over and over, that the skills of an actor could and should be taught outside of rehearsing a specific play. Collectively they were a distinct minority within the wider theatrical community, facing the same resistance that Wheeler identified as blowing against MacKaye’s “any system at all.” But their ranks were beginning to grow as the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth. A set of rhetorical landmarks emerges in this period that will recur with striking regularity in subsequent discussions and analyses of acting technique: 1. The “Dream of Scales”—­Many subsequent systems of actor training called for exercises for actors conceived of as foundational techniques to enable greater facility in playing, even if the exercises themselves were not designed for public performance. 2. Off-­stage instruction—­In conjunction with the “Dream of Scales,” actors could learn these technique-­building exercises outside of rehearsing and performing a play and didn’t even need to be on a physical stage in order to improve their stage technique. 3. Necessity of cultivating talent—­Every actor, regardless of natural ability, is believed to benefit from training and instruction (e.g. Forrest and McCullough’s tributes to MacKaye’s instruction). It isn’t enough to be gifted, you must be trained. 4. The “One Thing”—­Acting pedagogies often highlighted a single primary concern that was proposed as superseding all other elements of performance. Whether it was elocution for Ayres or the positions of Delsarte for MacKaye, mastering this “one thing” paved the way to stage success. ANT’s concept of a black box is especially useful here, as it suggests a network node (itself comprised of a network) whose complexities in construction and operation can be taken for granted. Given stable inputs, stable outputs will predictably occur.19 19. See, for example, the discussion of Fiske and her “thorough-­bass” in the next chapter.

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These points, in turn, echo industrial values made more prevalent by the increasing successes of modern manufacturing. Theater itself became more industrial in structure and practice, and the valuations of industry exerted a tremendous influence on all aspects of theatrical work.20 Bruce McConachie highlights a significant linguistic marker of this shift, noting that only in the 1890s was the word “production” linked to theatrical activity, its etymology connecting it inevitably to “the discourse of political economy” and the paradigmatic text for economic thought in the late eighteenth century, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (McConachie, “Historicizing” 285). Theatrical productions became “productions” because they were seen as an example of productive (economic) activity. “The shift in usage from manager to producer and the emergence of production to denote the producer’s actions consequently marked a significant stage in the transformation of dramatic entertainment under capitalism” (McConachie, “Historicizing” 286). The linguistic emergence of production at this time is further evidence of McArthur’s argument, presented at the opening of this chapter, that the “theater” saw itself as unfavorably compared to more modern industries with their clear paths to entry and advancement. Describing a show as a production, as surely as offering structured education for workers, signaled the desire to be considered part of the modern economic world. The epitome of the industrial worldview that helped prompt this shift can be found in Fredrick Winslow Taylor’s 1911 Principles of Scientific Management, whose unassuming beginnings as an initially rejected tract for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers belied how powerful an articulation of the requisite valuations for the American System of manufacture it would end up being, and how widely adopted its technocratic vision would become. This was the new species in the ecosystem, and nothing, not even a traditionally bohemian profession such as the theater, proved immune.

20. As historian John Frick noted, by the early 1900s the theater was “composed of a series of interlocking professions, each dependent upon the others, with its business operations centralized structurally and geographically. It had . . . assumed the role of manufacturer of a product prepared and packaged for nationwide distribution” (Frick 198).

TWO

 | Taylor and the Experimental Theatre, Inc.

Fredrick Winslow Taylor believed in science, not luck. Already a highly respected engineer when he published The Principles of Scientific Management in 1911, his text became a catechism of the technological paradigm and its hierarchy of assumptions, expectations, and values. In it, he argues that there is a single optimum solution to every problem discoverable by scientific analysis and able to be implemented with correct management techniques. Finding these solutions was the only way to slay the beast of inefficiency that plagued the country as a whole. Taylor’s ideas did not spring full-­grown from his head like some sort of managerial Minerva. Taylor had engaged in task-­management analysis, consulted with factories, and presented papers on the same subjects for a good part of the 1900s. Systematized management had been developing apace with the American System of manufacturing, and aspects of what would be called “Taylorism”—­from Taylor and others—­are easily found prior to 1911. Even the term “scientific management” predated Taylor’s book, having been coined by Louis Brandeis (then working as an attorney, later to become a Supreme Court justice and the namesake for Brandeis University).1 Samuel Haber, in his Efficiency and Uplift, describes two significant cliques in nineteenth-­century industrial thinking: the “systematizers” and the promoters of “industrial betterment.” The latter turned their attention to the conditions of workers, workplaces, and home life, seeing “human happiness as a business asset.” To this end, their recommendations included “lunchrooms, bathhouses, hospital clinics, safety training, recreational facilities” and other benefits a benevolent company should provide. The “systematizers,” by 1. “Prior to 1911 . . . Louis Brandeis, noted reform attorney from Massachusetts, was credited with inaugurating the idea and name of scientific management. . . . But once Taylor’s book appeared in 1911, an increasing number of people in the United States and abroad recognized what the profession had known since Taylor delivered his 1903 paper before ASME [the American Society of Mechanical Engineers]: that Taylor, not Brandeis, was the true prophet of scientific management” (Banta 114).

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comparison, “attacked improvisation in business and taught the profitability of orderly arrangements.” The explanations for their theories “leaned heavily upon analogies to the human body, the machine, and the military  .  .  . [and] at times these illustrations passed beyond analogy and appeared as instances of natural laws of organization” (Haber 18–­19). Taylor’s particular synthesis, extension, and alteration of these traditions of industrial practice marks his distinct contribution to management theory. Taylor, like those in the “betterment” camp, saw a direct link between morality and productivity, though his focus was almost entirely on the worker at work and not at home. “Hard work,” for Taylor, “yields morality and well being,” rather than good morals leading to good working habits (Haber 20). At the same time, Taylor counted himself a “systematizer,” but unlike many of his fellows he “was not satisfied . . . simply with an orderly arrangement of parts.” Taylor posited, and then worked to discover, “scientific laws of work to answer the closely related questions of how a job could best be done and how much could be produced” (Haber 21). It was this combination of interests and methodology that caught the attention of industrial managers and homemakers alike. After the publication of Principles of Scientific Management Taylor quickly became synonymous with the phrase. By the end of the 1910s, due to the decimation of European economic and political structures during the war, the US emerged as the dominant manufacturing force in the world. Taylor and Henry Ford became the prophets of the future. Ford’s Model T in particular seemed to symbolize the benefits of industrial modernism and technology. It became, in the words of historian Carroll Pursell, “newly necessary,” a tribute to technology’s power to go from novelty to naturalized component of daily life (Pursell 243).2 Aided by the complete openness with which Ford and the plant managers described and demonstrated their system to any and all interested parties, other industries began to follow suit, and the interchangeable part met the assembly line in the apotheosis of the American System. Within the next ten years “many household appliances such as vacuum sweepers and even radios were assembled on a conveyor system” (Hounshell 261). The success of interchangeable-­parts manufacture encouraged a widespread faith in science and technology and strengthened the values of industrial modernism. No longer confined to workshops and factories, scientific management methodologies were happily, in some cases zealously, applied to ever more far-­flung areas of culture and society. 2. The public’s embrace of the Model T exemplifies Constant’s arguments about technological change coming from innovators’ instincts. People didn’t know they wanted a Model T until they had the chance to get one.

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The widespread applications of scientific management’s philosophy were embraced by Taylor himself, who firmly believed it should guide thinking in all aspects of public and private life. “It is hoped,” he wrote, “that it will be clear to other readers that the same principles can be applied with equal force to all social activities: to the management of our homes; the management of our farms; the management of the business of our tradesmen, large and small; of our churches, our philanthropic institutions, our universities, and our governmental departments” (Taylor iv). Taylor explicitly sought to build his own network of influence centered on scientific management. The result is “Taylorism,” a word that encompasses not only the work undertaken by Taylor and his acolytes, but the broader collection of cultural currents he amplified, many of which—­as seen in the previous chapter—­predate his own period of prominence. Without trying to be overly reductive, in recognition of Taylor’s close linkage in popular culture with scientific management I use “Taylorism” to reference the conglomeration of industrial values he espoused in his book.3 To explore the reach of Taylorism in the theater, I begin by looking at Taylor’s text itself, pulling out some of his key ideas that recur in theatrical practice. I then explore a few texts looking at the growing concern for a theater science: Edward Gordon Craig’s On the Art of the Theatre (1911), Minnie Maddern Fiske’s Mrs. Fiske: Her Views on the Stage (1917), and the journal The Dramatist (1911–­1928). Finally, I recount the organizational history of one of the most famous theater groups from the decade, the Provincetown Players. In each instance the vocabulary of the technological paradigm is quite pronounced, and shapes the assumptions, values, and views related to theatrical practice in ways congruent with Taylor’s own work.

TAYLOR AND SCHMIDT: “THE BEST MANAGEMENT IS A TRUE SCIENCE”

Taylor encapsulated the major concerns and approaches of industrial modernism, and US theater could no more escape his influence than any other aspect of culture. The terms of argument about theater were shifting dra3. Martha Banta points to a similar usage of the term in her Taylored Lives, writing, “In 1893 Taylorism was no more than a shadowy yet unnamed idea hovering behind whatever attention was paid to women who were beginning to incorporate ‘industrializing’ skills into the domestic sphere” (Banta 235). Similarly, Broderick Chow in his article “An Actor Manages” writes that Stanislavsky’s work with the MAT “correspond[s] with practices at the beginning of modern organizational management  .  .  . specifically Fredrick Winslow Taylor’s development of the paradigm of Scientific Management, commonly known as Taylorism” (Chow 133).

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matically at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the rhetorical weapons were often drawn from the same quiver as Taylor’s exhortations about how to better manage a steel factory. As such, it is worth looking at The Principles of Scientific Management and seeing how Taylorism is subsequently reiterated in theatrical discourse. Early on Taylor lays out three goals for his text and, by extension, his system: First. To point out, through a series of simple illustrations, the great loss which the whole country is suffering through inefficiency in almost all of our daily acts. Second. To try and convince the reader that the remedy for this inefficiency lies in systematic management, rather than in searching for some unusual or extraordinary man. Third. To prove that the best management is a true science, resting upon clearly defined laws, rules, and principles as a foundation. . . . Whenever these principles are correctly applied, results must follow which are truly astounding. (Taylor iv) Taylor begins by promising to show that inefficiency is omnipresent and a cause of direct suffering. His immediate target is the craft-­based system of manufacture, in which rules-­of-­thumb, tradition, and tricks of the trade are handed down from master to apprentice. For Taylor it is impossible that such a system could produce an optimized process; traditional methods axiomatically enabled inefficiency and waste. By extension, the way that the US did nearly everything was, at best, wildly inefficient, and at worst, completely and totally wrong. Fortunately, all that is needed is a commitment to the system of scientific management. Taylor promises a science for everything (or at least everything worth doing or knowing). The bedrock of scientific management is the faith that every activity has a set of discoverable laws. Once discovered, these laws will offer the most efficient means of accomplishing any task through the development of systems and processes that work in accordance with them. Collectively, the three points above simultaneously paint an immediately bleak picture and a path forward to a glorious technocratic utopia. We may be mired in the darkness now, Taylor says, but I have come—­Delsarte-­like—­holding the lamp of truth to show you the way. However, embedded within these points and throughout Taylor’s text are several culturally contingent, nonneutral assumptions that shape what scientific managers created. Taylor’s fundamental idea was that there was

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“one method and one implement which is quicker and better than any of the rest” (Taylor 9). Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, two of Taylor’s most ardent followers and industrial consultants in their own right, enshrined this as “The One Best Way To Do Work,” a goal that “became idiomatic in the writing and thinking of the Gilbreths” (Haber 41). The Gilbreths, fascinating in their own right, are another example of how the impetus to apply science in daily life predated Taylor. Lillian, a graduate of the University of California, had married Frank in 1904, and together “they agreed to have twelve children, six boys and six girls, and to raise them by the most scientific methods . . . [T]he Gilbreth’s household, a laboratory of efficiency, would show the world what economies of scale were all about.” Their plan was remarkably successful, and their story was popularized in the semi-­autobiographical novel—­written by two of their children—­and then movie Cheaper by the Dozen (1948, 1950). Although the book and film were crowd-­pleasers, “Lillian disliked [them], not least because both completely ignored the fact that, during those years, she ran a consulting business, became the first pioneer of scientific management to earn a doctorate, and wrote very many books” (Lepore 104). The Gilbreths lived and died by efficiency, and this led them to Taylor and their work in management consulting.4 All of the investigation into work practices and methodologies had as its goal the discovery and description of a singular, definitive procedure for accomplishing a given task.5 When this is applied to manufacturing Taylor is on relatively solid ground, because the variables are largely mechanical and related to stable properties, such as the qualities of a given metal or the ways a machine shapes a particular component part. But the postulate of the singular solution, like so many of Taylor’s ideas, takes root far beyond the machine shop, and prompts searches for optimum answers to problems that are far messier than Taylor’s original targets. 4. In a manner somewhat akin to the arguments over Stanislavsky’s legacy and technique, the Gilbreths broke with Taylor in about 1914 over the relative importance of time and motion studies—­a particularly Gilbrethian innovation—­in the overall scheme of scientific management. “He [Taylor] finally became convinced that Gilbreth did not understand scientific management or its implications” (Haber 38). Taylor died in 1915, and when Frank Gilbreth returned to a meeting of the Taylor society in the late 1920s, he leveled the accusation that the “true Taylor philosophy . . . has suffered in the hands of Mr. Barth [another dedicated Taylorist] and many other loyal friends of Dr. Taylor.” Claiming the mantle of Taylor’s true inheritors, Gilbreth later declared, “We shall continue to stand for Science in Management, even if we stand alone” (Haber 42). 5. So central to Taylorism is this belief that one study of Taylor’s life and work is simply titled The One Best Way (see Kanigel). For a rhetorical echo in the theater, see Telling Stories: A Grand Unifying Theory of Acting Techniques (Rafael).

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The most notorious example Taylor uses in Principles also illustrates Taylor’s fondness for anecdotal dramatic narrative: Schmidt and the pig iron. (Pig iron is a term for large, rough ingots, each weighing about 100 pounds.) In this story Taylor explains how a science of moving pig iron was developed, and also how to work with laborers to bring them into harmony with the system. His narrative captures the strict division of labor and management that Taylor expected as a matter of course, a focus on regulation and control that becomes a hallmark of his systems, the belief in a complex science that underlay even the most seemingly simple tasks, and the championing of the accoutrements of engineering to determine all things of worth. These aspects, in turn, reappear in subsequent theatrical discourse as practitioners, knowingly or not, imbibed the technological paradigm that was becoming a dominant force in US culture and society. Taylor begins his story with an axiomatic truth: left to their own devices, men moving iron might carry more or less depending on a variety of unquantifiable factors and would probably not even carry the same amount from day to day. Taylor’s way of making the business immune to luck was to develop the science of pig-­iron moving, and then implement a management system in accordance with that science, regularizing the amount of iron moved by every man, every day. Taylor starts by stating that the average amount loaded by one man per day was around twelve and a half long tons, or 28,000 pounds. But this number did not stand up to scientific scrutiny. “We were surprised to find, after studying the matter, that a first-­class pig-­iron handler ought to handle between 47 and 48 long tons per day” (Taylor 19). Taylor presents elaborate calculations to buttress his claim, beginning with the distance from pig pile to car, coupled with a previously arrived at “law” that “a first-­class laborer, suited to such work as handling pig iron, could be under load only 42 per cent. of the day and must be free from load 58 per cent. of the day” (Taylor 27). Dividing the day into “loaded” and “unloaded” periods and then taking the average speed of travel while under load, Taylor arrived at the remarkable figure of approximately quadruple the previous amount. Surprising, but scientific, the number could not be ignored. Taylor thus sets for himself the seemingly impossible challenge of how to get each man to move an additional 79,520 pounds of pig iron each day. Supported by science, Taylor knows it can be done. With the math complete, the next step was to shape the activities of the laborers who would have to do the actual carrying, but here too Taylor has recourse to science. “Our first step was the scientific selection of the workman. In dealing with workmen under this type of management, it is an inflexible rule to talk to and deal with only one

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man at a time, since each workman has his own special abilities and limitations” (Taylor 19). After watching the men assigned to the task for a period of three or four days, they “picked out four men who appeared to be physically able to handle pig iron at the rate of 47 tons per day.” But, crucially, physical prowess alone wouldn’t give Taylor the knowledge needed to treat each man as an individual, and so “we looked up their history as far back as practicable and thorough inquiries were made as to the character, habits, and the ambition of each of them” (Taylor 19). This information would then be used to better apply the “abilities and limitations” of each of the workers into the master plan of moving more iron. For their first intervention they selected “a little Pennsylvania Dutchman who had been observed to trot back home for a mile or so after work in the evening about as fresh as he was when he came trotting down to work in the morning” (Taylor 19). Taylor also discovered that the worker had managed to buy a plot of land and was busily erecting a stone wall before coming to work and at night when he got home. The implication, though never overtly stated, was that this was clearly a waste of energy that could be usefully applied for the good of the company. Finally, this worker “had the reputation of being exceedingly ‘close,’ that is, of placing a very high value on a dollar” (Taylor 19–­20). With all of this information, Taylor and his crew would be able to convince him to move more pig iron. Taylor records the dialogue between (presumably) himself and the laborer, Herr Schmidt. Taylor leads off with a question seemingly designed to throw Schmidt off guard: “Schmidt, are you a high-­priced man?” to which Schmidt (utilizing a theatrical German accent) replies, “Vell, I don’t know vat you mean” (Taylor 20). Taylor explains that if Schmidt is a high-­ priced man, he will want to earn $1.85 per day, rather than the $1.15 the other laborers are earning. Schmidt is ready to sign up, but Taylor now introduces the scientific management portion of his system, first introducing a foreman Schmidt has never seen before, and then commanding him to follow his instructions: When he tells you to pick up a pig and walk, you pick it up and you walk, and when he tells you to sit down and rest, you sit down. You do that right straight through the day. And what’s more, no back talk. Now a high-­priced man does just what he’s told to do, and no back talk. Do you understand that? (Taylor 20–­21) Taylor acknowledges that this may seem to be “rather rough talk” but argues that this approach is necessary with those who are of the “mentally

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sluggish type,” and that it is “not unkind, since it is effective in fixing his attention on the high wages which he wants and away from what, if it were called to his attention, he probably would consider impossibly hard work” (Taylor 21). Taylor’s amusing use of understatement aside (for a roughly 60 percent pay raise Taylor is demanding close to 400 percent greater productivity), Schmidt’s considerations of what might be possible or impossible are nowhere to be valued here. Science has spoken. Forty-­eight long tons of iron must be moved by Schmidt, under the direction of the scientific manager, who guides Schmidt to working in accordance with the laws discovered by Taylor and his colleagues. The core of Taylor’s system is driven by this tripartite division between scientist, management, and labor: first is the discoverer and describer of the laws of moving pig iron; then the taskmaster who might not be able to deduce the laws but can apply them to individuals; and finally the actual worker picking up ninety-­two-­pound ingots and moving them from plant to rail car, who had no need to know the science at all. Having told Schmidt’s tale, Taylor is sure “the reader will be thoroughly convinced that there is a science of handling pig iron, and further that this science amounts to so much that the man who is suited to handle pig iron cannot possibly understand it, nor even work in accordance with the laws of this science, without the help of those who are over him” (Taylor 22). The system might not need geniuses, but it certainly needed scientists of labor who would determine the objective rules that governed potential production and could guide others in their application. The Schmidts of the new factory floor, like the Deltas and Epsilons of Huxley’s Brave New World, didn’t need to think about what they were doing, and probably couldn’t understand it anyways, they just needed to be able to take direction. A sentiment that can ring uncomfortably true in acting circles even today. Taylor ends his book exhorting his readers to carry forth the gospel of scientific management, and even invites anyone interested to drop by his home in Philadelphia to receive a tour of local companies utilizing the system. In a final plea to follow his guidance and start making things more efficiently, Taylor rhetorically asks whether the issue of inefficient industrial practice isn’t “of far more importance than the solution of most of the problems which are now agitating both the English and American peoples? And is it not the duty of those who are acquainted with these facts, to exert themselves to make the whole community realize this importance?” (Taylor 76). Once you see what Schmidt can really do, Taylor seems to say, you owe it to your fellow citizens to advocate not for Schmidt, but for the system. Taylor even opens his text by arguing “In the past the man has been

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first; in the future the system must be first” (Taylor iv). It makes sense, if inefficiency must be defeated at any price, but not everyone will get the same bill. As Broderick Chow succinctly points out in his “An Actor Manages”, “The designation ‘Scientific’  .  .  . is not neutral, but ideological—­it naturalises the imperative of maximising surplus value, regardless of the human cost” (Chow 134). This idea that the needs and wants of workers could be so easily molded or dismissed was not without its critics. Despite Schmidt being an invention of Taylor, factory management dramatically increasing output expectations was quite real, often with detrimental effects on the employees. “Some of the ironworkers Taylor had timed in Bethlehem were so wrecked after a Taylor-­sized day’s work that they couldn’t get out of bed the next morning” (Lepore 103). The president of the International Association of Machinists accused the Taylorites of wanting “strong men with big physical bodies, but take their heads off; we do not want men with heads” (Banta 272). Taylor didn’t do himself any favors in this department, writing towards the end of Scientific Management, “the pig-­iron handler is not an extra-­ordinary man difficult to find, he is merely a man more or less of the type of the ox, heavy both mentally and physically” (Taylor 72). Elsewhere, Taylor was accused of trying to turn men into automata who would mindlessly follow the directions of the overseer. Taylor anticipated this criticism, saying one does not quibble with the surgeon whose occupation is filled with dictated movements and specialized tools, and whose training is exacting. “All of this teaching, however, in no way narrows him. On the contrary, he is quickly given  .  .  . the best knowledge in the world up to date, [and] he is able to use his own originality and ingenuity to make real additions to the world’s knowledge, instead of reinventing things which are old” (Taylor 66, emphasis original). Like Stebbins invoking Gérôme, Taylor argues that learning technique is self-­ evidently superior to reinventing the wheel. Knowledge creation, part of the inevitable march toward a brighter future, is a laudable byproduct of scientific management. That such learning and creation would be efficient should come as no surprise. A worker like Schmidt, who will never be a foreman, let alone a scientist of industry, under scientific management has been trained to “his highest state of efficiency, and has been taught to do a higher class of work than he was able to do under the old types of management” (Taylor 76). If Schmidt doesn’t do much thinking on the job, at least he is doing it efficiently. Despite the toll Taylorism took on laboring bodies, Taylor’s work exerted enormous and long-­lasting influence in the US and abroad. No less a luminary than post-­WWII management guru Peter

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Drucker described Taylor as “the Isaac Newton (or perhaps the Archimedes) of the science of work” (Drucker, Management 181), and elsewhere that Taylor’s Principles was “the most powerful as well as the most lasting contribution America has made to Western thought since the Federalist papers” (Drucker, Practice 280).6 Taylor’s encapsulation and extension of the industrial mindset that had grown increasingly prominent in the US with the arrival of the interchangeable-­parts system of manufacturing had a vibrancy and currency that resonated even with those who had no interest in moving pig iron. The values Taylor espouses—­science as the triumphant authority, benefit and detriment narrowly construed as profit and loss, a decrease in the value of feeling, a belief in the general efficacy of systems and the inefficiency of tradition—­were adopted by the culture at large and applied outside factories to, at times, nearly every aspect of public and private life. To offer but one example, toward the end of the 1910s, Christine Fredrick “turned her Long Island home into the Applecroft Kitchen Home Experiment Station” inspired by the work of Taylor and the Gilbreths (Lepore 108–­ 9). Fredrick was also an author, who wrote a series of articles on scientifically conducting housework that were later collected and expanded into the 1920 book and correspondence course for homemakers: Household Engineering: Scientific Management in the Home. Her goal was “to show the new, modern conception of homemaking, with its many possibilities for scientific work, for the use of improved machinery in the home, for less waste in materials, energy, and time—­to the end that the woman herself, and her family, and the nation will be developed to the fullest power and vantage ground in health, happiness and true prosperity” (Frederick 515, emphasis original). Her echoing of Taylor’s utopian vision and sweep is hardly accidental. This was, as the title suggested, scientific management brought into the home. There was no reason a kitchen, any less than a foundry, couldn’t benefit from Taylorism. As Martha Banta observes in Taylored Lives, “it is especially family living that the ethos of good management wishes to commandeer,” with troubles stemming from a “feudalistic patriarchal system” supplanted by “modern tales about good fathers and mothers trained in the modern paternalistic principles of family management” (Banta 10). Even if Taylor himself wasn’t invoked, Taylorism remained a powerful force. 6. Drucker was not, however, ignorant of Taylorism’s shortcomings. Writing as early as 1954, Drucker argued that “Scientific Management, despite all its worldly success, has not succeeded in solving the problem of managing worker and work” (Drucker, Practice 282). In his later book, Management (1974), he follows a similar path, identifying gaps and missteps in Taylor’s ideas and their applications; see pages 181–­82 in particular.

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Theater wasn’t immune to this larger cultural current. Taylorist theatrical antecedents include the conviction that a system for training actors should exist, the belief in a science of the stage, the increasing focus on “technical” aspects of the process of acting, and above all, the continued invocation of efficiency as a fundamental, privileged value, while simultaneously making inefficient an epithet. But whereas in the previous century there was a small chorus of voices calling for a reconsideration of how actors were prepared for the stage, now a larger and more varied collection of commentators and practitioners began to discuss theater in terms that were familiar to any Taylorite. As the Taylorist network grew, so did its power to influence its own application.7 Taylorism offered a lens through which to view not just industrial practice but nearly any activity, and contained within the lens was the set of criteria to judge what was being seen and created. The increasing emphasis on “experimentation” in theater is one example of this larger tendency. An epigram to an article discussing the 1912 Drama League Convention calls this out explicitly: “There was life in the air, and a newness, the diffusion of talents, ingenuities, experiments” (E. R. Hunt 96). “Experimental theater” was taken far more literally at the time than in its later application to art-­house productions. The expectation was that by experiment, universal laws of the theater could be discovered, in much the same way that Taylor conducted labor investigations to determine how to optimize a particular process. The embrace of “experimentation” in theater indicated a firm belief in the power of the scientific method to reveal the means of achieving a more effective performance. For instance, in a 1911 article titled “A Plea For Experiments” in the journal The Drama, G. C. Ashton Johnson recommends experimentation to determine theatrical truths. Among his concerns is the proper performance style of choral recitations: “Should these choruses have been spoken by a single character or intoned or chanted in unison by many? . . . What should be the nature of the music? Unaffectedly modern or quasi-­ancient, and what the character of the orchestration? Only experiment in public can decide these knotty points” (G. C. A. Johnson 238–­39). Johnson was genuinely interested in these questions, arguing that the best way to discover the answers was to use a scientific experimental methodology. He recognized that to truly pursue this agenda would require “impossibly large funds” to support “some artistic genius to carry out a prolonged series of such vitally necessary preliminary work if a satisfactory art-­form is ever to be arrived 7. “It is the network that constructs meaning and does its own interpretation” (Krieger and Belliger 20).

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at,” but the result would be to “sweep away into the limbo of the forgotten and despised the effete, inartistic, banal bastard of fashion and futility that masquerades as grand opera” (G. C. A. Johnson 239). Johnson reiterates the concrete nature of his call for experimentation, saying, “The whole problem of the blending of poetry and music awaits further practical experiment” (G. C. A. Johnson 240). It isn’t idiosyncratic personal expression that characterizes Johnson’s idea of experimentation, but a rigorous examination of the interaction of performance variables, with an eye to determining an ideal solution. “Science” as a concept was often invoked approvingly in thinking about problems of the theater. In a review of Brander Matthews’s 1910 A Study of the Drama, Bernard Papot praises the text for its “clear and scientific form” and recommends it for its rationalistic approach. “Being scientific, it [the text] deals with facts; that is to say, it performs an autopsy upon the structural framework of some dramatic masterpieces, ancient, mediaeval, and modern” (Papot 187). Just as Taylor would hope, the book summarizes the events of the past dispassionately, passing on the best of the information, and lays the foundation to increase the world’s store of knowledge. Another firm believer in repudiating tradition and embracing experimentation was Edward Gordon Craig. Craig had started his career as an actor but found lasting fame as a designer and theorist of the theater. Although geographically far afield from the other US practitioners, he is worth including in this study both for the significant overlap between his proposed investigative plans in theater and the technological paradigm, and for how influential he proved to be with significant theorists and practitioners in the United States.

CRAIG: “WITHOUT SO MUCH DIFFERENCE AS BETWEEN TWO FARTHINGS”

In 1911, the same year Taylor’s Principles came out, Craig’s On the Art of the Theatre was released, a combination of previously published work and new material. Although some took issue with his apparent desire to replace all actors with marionettes (just as others accused Taylor of trying to make puppets of workers), it is far more difficult to find theater practitioners or academics who voiced objections to his industrially-minded research program. While the wild artistic flights of fancy that traditionally characterize Craig might initially seem to be a far cry from the cold rationality of Taylor’s steel mills, Craig’s writing illustrates his own desire for a theater built

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on something more substantial than rule-­of-­thumb tradition, as well as his belief in the applicability of modern scientific and industrial practice to drama. Craig exhibits a faith in the existence of scientific rules that is quite similar to Taylor’s, even as he calls out the new savior of the theater in the dedication of his own book: TO THE SINGLE COURAGEOUS INDIVIDUALITY IN THE WORLD OF THE THEATRE WHO WILL SOME DAY MASTER AND REMOULD IT  .  .  . You are a young man; you have already been a few years in a theatre, or you have been born of theatrical parents . . . or you have been a manufacturer. (Craig, On the Art 1–­2) Craig’s messiah may or may not have any theatrical experience—­a point that Ayres certainly wouldn’t be concerned about—­but significantly may have been a manufacturer. As Craig would go on to show, this suggestion of an industrial background was not meant merely as a flippant opposition to someone steeped in the arts. Rather, the experience of manufacturing would have a direct bearing on making the theater into a true art. Craig repeatedly connects ideal theater work to calculation and science, emphasizing the need for greater centralized control in the artistic process. In describing the standard, competent actor, he lists a number of salutary qualities: a “genial companion” who is generous with his time and experience, able to share the stage with others, a commanding voice, and so on. Yet all too often the actor possesses, in Craig’s opinion, “about as much knowledge of the art as a cuckoo has of anything which is at all constructive. Anything to be made according to plan or design is foreign to his nature” (Craig, On the Art 9). This is not to accuse the capable actor of outright incompetence, but actors of the old school are guided by instinct and a reliance on stage devices to produce effects in the audience. Far from immune to luck, this type of actor courts it nightly. “But what he [the actor] does not know is this, that this same bubbling personality and all this same instinctive knowledge doubles or even trebles its power when guided by scientific knowledge, that is to say, art” (Craig, On the Art 9, emphasis mine). For Craig, at least in this passage, art and science are conjoined in the theater. Control is the dominant theme throughout Craig’s text. Craig’s über-­ director is one who “is able to take a play and produce it himself, rehearsing the actors and conveying to them the requirements of each movement, each situation; designing the scenery and the costumes and explaining to those who are to make them the requirements of these scenes and costumes; and working with the manipulators of the artificial light, and conveying to them

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clearly what is required” (Craig, On the Art 19). Like Taylor’s management consultant, Craig’s director is one who understands the underlying science of the activity to be attempted. With this knowledge the director can organize those who could apply the laws but perhaps not comprehend them (that is, actors, set and costume builders, lighting technicians). Schmidt will never understand the mathematics that tells the factory foreman to call rest and work periods when he does; he simply has the constitution to pick up and move pig iron according to the schedule. Similarly, an actor needn’t understand the “whys” of the director’s requests, merely how to fulfill them. For Craig, it is the public nature of an actor’s work that has caused traditional performance methods to have such a long life. The actor must conduct “all his experiments [ . . . ] in front of a public” (Craig, On the Art 39, emphasis original). Unlike painters, who have the luxury of working in private, actors present their process in front of an audience. Because of this, they are tempted to do only what has already proven to be effective, and traditional means of performance are conserved for generations. More worryingly, Craig felt that the lack of calculation and control over an actor’s work denied the actor the right to call him-­ or herself a true artist. “Art arrives only by design. Therefore in order to make any work of art it is clear we may only work in those materials with which we can calculate. Man is not one of those materials” (Craig, On the Art 55–­56). Again, Craig is concerned with the ability of theater practitioners to calculate rather than trust to tradition, luck, or instinct. To explore these issues Craig concocts a fictional dialogue between a composer (who remains largely silent), a painter, and an actor. In a false show of modesty, Craig “refrains” from participating: “I who represent an art distinct from all these, shall remain silent” (Craig, On the Art 64). It falls to the painter to lay out the problems with considering acting an art. “The most intelligent statement,” argues the painter, “is a work of art. The haphazard statement, that is a work of chance.” Acting, in turn, is beholden to chance because “each statement you make in your work is subject to every conceivable change which emotion chooses to bring about” (Craig, On the Art 69). Emotions, for Craig, represent a major liability for the actor, as they interfere with the goal of a perfectly planned and executed performance. Earlier he wrote that the actor’s head and limbs, “if not utterly beyond control, are so weak to stand against the torrent of his passions, that they are ready to play him false at any moment. It is useless for him to attempt to reason with himself” (Craig, On the Art 56). Without emotional control there is no way that a truly pre-­determined product can be presented to the audience, and thus no true artistry.

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The painter offers some comfort, giving actors credit for imagination and intelligence, but laments that their ideas for creating an ideal performance will inevitably be dashed by the unpredictable and uncontrollable medium of the actors themselves. The only way to solve this conundrum, and pave the way toward acting as true art, is rigorous training for the body and jettisoning all trappings of traditional theater, Shakespearean texts included: If you could make your body into a machine, or into a dead piece of material such as clay; and if it could obey you in every movement for the entire space of time it was before the audience; and if you could put aside Shakespeare’s poem—­you would be able to make a work of art out of that which is in you. For you would not only have dreamt, you would have executed to perfection; and that which you had executed could be repeated time after time without so much difference as between two farthings. (Craig, On the Art 70–­71) Taylor would be right at home in this discussion, with the emphasis on identically repeated performances and removing impulse and instinct from the final product. The actor is either reduced or elevated to the nature of a machine. As the actor in Craig’s dialogue laments that there seems to be no way to make his art a true art, the painter replies, in strikingly Tayloristic fashion, “Surely there must be laws at the roots of the Art of the Theatre, just as there are laws at the roots of all true arts, which if found and mastered would bring you all you desire?” (Craig, On the Art 71). Like the science of pig iron, there must be a science of theater. Once the laws are known, the process by which they are harnessed can be refined until a performance could be free from the liability of chance. The director of this future theater, knowledgeable of the laws of the art, can create theatrical pieces with scientific certainty. Craig repeatedly refers to the craft required to accomplish this, and states that the ideal director will be “a master craftsman” (Craig, On the Art 148). Perhaps this is why the savior of the modern theater might have been a manufacturer, for Craig’s placement of the director is somewhere between the foreman of a shop floor and the management consultant called in to uncover the science of a specific labor practice. By far the most concretely ambitious part of Craig’s text is his proposed plan to discover these theatrical laws. Striking for both its scope and the matter-­of-­fact manner in which Craig presents it, the entire project is steeped in the engineering philosophy of the day. He proposes to build an

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extensive research lab for theater, complete with outdoor and indoor stages, for “these two stages, closed and open, are necessary for our experiments, and on one or the other, sometimes on both, every theory shall be tested and records made of the results.” Further, Craig calls for recording and evaluation equipment to preserve the results of these experiments. “These records will be written, drawn, photographed or registered on the cinematograph or gramophone for future reference” (Craig, On the Art 239). Like the efficiency engineers armed with stop-­motion cameras and stopwatches to uncover the science of industry, Craig is calling for his own phalanx of investigators, armed with the same tools, to explore the science of the theater. Craig doesn’t stop there, continuing to add features to his research program. It is stunning, at nearly every point, in its similarity to Taylorist exhortations to analyze and interrogate: Other instruments for the study of natural sound and light will be purchased, together with the instruments for producing these artificially, and will lead us to the better knowledge of both sound and light, and also to the invention of yet better instruments through which the purer beauty of both sound and light may be passed. (Craig, On the Art 239) Read in the context of the increasing role industrial practice played in daily life, Craig’s desire to delve into the laws of theater looks far less mystical than might otherwise be expected. In what might be the most truly humble aspect of his entire project Craig gives up the right to exclusive genius, instead placing his faith in the investigative process that will point the way to a new art. This analogue to Taylor’s dismissal of the necessity of genius is yet another echo of the industrial modernist worldview Craig embraces. On the other hand, Craig maintained a sense of skepticism that fallible humans could ever be truly turned into actors en masse, and always incorporated a sense of the spiritual into his conception of the theater, a trend that increased in his later writings. In his 1937 essay “Stanislavsky’s System,” Craig qualified his earlier praise for the company—­whom he had called “the best actors on the European stage” in a 1908 letter (Craig, On the Art 135)—­and Stanislavsky, now describing him as “lacking in that ancient and instinctive sense of measure which belongs to the dancer . . . [and] that light and intangible genius of Lemaître or a Giovanni Grasso,” though Craig allows, “he is none the less an undeniable example of the valuable, good actor” (Craig, “System” 88). The Moscow Art Theatre actors in turn

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are described as “Young men and women without much natural talent . . . creatures who after a few years of training acquire a capacity to do clever tricks which seem more extra ordinary than they actually are” (Craig, “System” 88–­89). Stanislavsky, Craig argues, hasn’t actually made good actors out of them, just taught them the ability to do “clever tricks,” suggesting that one person’s techniques were another’s tricks-­of-­the-­trade. Training was suitable only for the already gifted, for “none but born actors should be trained to act. . . . A very little training helps the born-­actor: nothing can help the would-­be actor who lacks the essence of acting in his composition. . . . [Systems of acting] threaten genius and stifle expression, and open but a small path to ‘new talent’ which they manage to mechanise” (Craig, “System” 89). Training, while somewhat helpful for the truly talented, will never replace actual talent in an actor, and by promoting its widespread adoption (the essay seems prompted at least in part by the recent release of Stanislavsky’s An Actor Prepares),8 true geniuses of the theater—­and Craig would certainly not be shy about including himself in that number—­are in danger of being displaced. For Craig in 1937, a true actor (and he offers a lyrical description of “Artem” of the MAT who rises to that level in his estimation) has an irreproducible vitality that cannot be trained. Systems of acting for Craig “fail to create in him [the beginning actor] that sense which the born-­actor always possesses. They do rid the actor of some of his artificiality: but at the same time they instil into him another kind of artificiality, inferior to the old one . . . they chase away all that is lyrical in him” (Craig, “System” 90). In the end, Craig cannot give up the necessity of talent to true acting and the auratic linkages that that entails.9 Craig might not have found close kinship with Taylor or Ford, and he would probably not have supported their vision of an entire world run by the principles of scientific management, though given his propensity for control and love of systematization it is intriguing to entertain the possibility. He does paint a picture at the end of “Stanislavsky’s System” of a topsy-­turvy world where “politicians [are] manufactured from men with8. “And I thoroughly distrust this book by Stanislavsky, because he guarantees that he and his system can make a good actor out of any man, no matter what he was born to be” (Craig, “System” 92). 9. Part of what Craig is reacting against is the supposedly dogged focus of Stanislavsky on “natural” acting. As Carnicke and others have pointed out, this public focus—­eliminating his investigations into nonrealist/naturalist work and styles—­was prompted by the political exigencies of the Stalinist state in the USSR, and did not necessarily reflect his true interests or desires.

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out any political instinct  .  .  . composers [are] manufactured, lacking all sense of the musical,” and the natural-­born artists end up as “artisans on the railway” or “serving badly behind the bar.”10 “And so it goes,” he continues, “muddle from the day a boy gropes to be something, and no one informed enough, nor any committee with a plan practical enough to say what he was born to be and to keep him to that—­help him at that—­and hand him to the nation as a first-­class unit” (Craig, “System” 92). Craig’s hope for a committee to ensure that people do what they are intended to do suggests some technocratic sympathies. Whether planning his own theatrical experimentation or defending the role of the auratic in truly great performances, scientific values and philosophy are never far from Craig’s concerns.

MINNIE MADDERN FISKE AND THE SCIENCE OF ACTING

Craig was by no means alone in adopting elements of the technological paradigm. Actress Minnie Maddern Fiske’s 1917 memoir Mrs. Fiske: Her Views on Actors, Acting, and the Problems of Production has a great deal to say about acting and the work of the theater in light of industrial influence. Fiske was one of the most celebrated actors of her day, lauded for her commitment to serious drama as well as her facility in light comedies. She had championed Ibsen, playing Nora and Hedda among other roles. She shared responsibility for the Manhattan Theatre Company with her husband, the director Harrison Fiske, and she toured throughout much of her career, giving her well-­earned name recognition beyond Broadway. Even a relatively cursory review of her thoughts reveals deep sympathies with the technological paradigm. At the same time, she continues to reflect the ongoing tension between the auratic and the measurable. Her memoir, structured as a series of interviews with the journalist Alexander Woollcott, offers an engagingly conversational look at Fiske’s opinions about actor training and theatrical practice, enlivened by anecdotes and examples drawn from her career dating back to the 1870s. The entire first chapter of Fiske’s memoir is a sustained attack on stock and repertory companies and the idea that the best training for an actor is 10. Although probably coincidental, Craig’s 1937 vision of mismatched occupations prefigures Ayn Rand’s later imagining in Atlas Shrugged of philosophers, artists, and engineers alike leaving their vocations due to societal dysfunction, and working—in Rand’s view—beneath themselves; as when Rand’s fictional genius philosopher Hugh Akston is discovered by Dagny Taggart making “the best-­cooked food she had ever tasted” at a diner in the Rockies (Rand 327).

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to be found pounding out multiple roles in quick succession. That she herself spent a great deal of her early career in stock is hardly an impediment to her critique. “I’m not aware any one ever pretended it was the best way, the artistic way” she offers. “Then it was the only possible way” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 29, emphasis original). Stock, Fiske says, is old-­fashioned, suited to its time but not appropriate to a modern sensibility and approach. Far superior, in Fiske’s mind, is the custom-­fitted cast to a specific show. “This, my friend, is an age of specialization, and in such an age the repertory theatre is an anachronism” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 11). The stock company was preindustrial, unfit for the dawning scientific age where the actor can be matched to the role and the company, and then a new company formed to produce a subsequent script. Woollcott, in seeking clarification, asks whether there might be anything useful in a young actor working in stock? Fiske’s droll reply is quite clear. “Only if the young actor kept repeating to themselves: ‘This is all wrong, wrong, wrong  .  .  . This does not teach me acting. It teaches me tricks’” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 38). Stock taught what Ayres in the last chapter called “the old stager’s knack of ‘faking’ through.” Stock acting was traditional, passed along from older actor to younger, and had all the traits of craft manufacture that Taylor condemned in Principles of Scientific Management. Thus it is not surprising it should be shunned by actors seeking a more scientific path for their art. Like Ayres, Fiske is a great proponent of developing depth over breadth, another strike against stock company training. “I do not know who started the precious notion that an actor needs half a dozen parts a season in order to develop his art. Some very lazy fellow, I suspect. If he has one rôle that amounts to anything, that has some substance and inspiration, he simply cannot exhaust its possibilities in less than a year” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 37, emphasis original). Alongside Ayres, Fiske echoes Taylor’s evangelizing about the depth of science involved in the moving of pig iron. Despite its seeming simplicity, there is a great deal to learn even playing one part, and the rewards from sustained study will be worth the narrowing of focus and experience. Elsewhere, Fiske echoes the Taylorites in her belief that “for every production in the theater there is a psychologically right moment” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 48, emphasis original), just as for Taylor there is a single solution to any given problem, and for Ayres a singular correct reading for any line. Reaching back toward MacKaye (and Craig and Goethe), Fiske invokes the musician comparison with a twist. Fiske argues that actors might prepare a number of parts on their own, as their own form of practice that

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would never be seen by the public. An actor “may have only one rôle in the theater, but he may have a dozen in his room. A violinist will have an immense repertory before he makes even his first appearance in public” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 39). Then, almost to the phrase, Fiske follows MacKaye’s lamentation that musicians rehearse for years before appearing on the stage, whereas actors are expected to learn it as they go. An actor might perform a dream of passion, but it is the dream of scales for actors that animates Fiske and Craig, along with MacKaye, Stebbins, and the like. Fiske is clearly at home applying the vocabulary of science and technology to an actor’s work, and such terms appear with great regularity throughout the book. In describing one of her stage heroes, Eleanora Duse, she commends both her “marvelous spirit and the astounding revelation of her technical fluency” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 11). Duse marries the spiritual with the technical to create a truly amazing performance. Elsewhere Fiske offers an exhortation to any actor or actress seeking to undertake Ibsen or another similarly challenging playwright’s work: “Go to the theater well versed in the science of acting, and knowing thoroughly the person Ibsen has created, and you need take no thought of how this is to be said or how that is to be indicated. You can live the play” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 70–­73, emphasis original). Later, Fiske bestows perhaps her ultimate compliment on George Henry Lewes’s book On Actors and the Art of Acting (1875): “What Lewes wrote forty years ago and more holds good today. Thus fixed are the laws of science” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 104). A true science describes immutable natural laws, and it is this quality Fiske finds in Lewes’s own work. Despite her professed love of the spirit animating Duse’s work, Fiske’s sympathies and attention when it comes to analyzing acting tend toward the technical. Woollcott opens chapter 3, “To the Actor in the Making,” saying that should Fiske ever write a book on stage technique it would be called The Science of Acting. “Let everyone else from George Henry Lewes to Henry Irving make utterance on the ‘Art of Acting’; hers would be the science” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 75). Throughout the chapter Fiske continually reinforces the idea that there is a body of technique that must be mastered by anyone hoping for stage success. She attributes the phrase “science of acting” not to herself but to Ellen Terry. “It may be difficult,” she writes, “to think of her indescribable iridescence in terms of exact technic, yet the first would have gone undiscovered without the second” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 76–­79). Fiske’s argument is that success requires talent paired with technique. Technical mastery allows the true artist to shine, although that mastery is not what makes the artist in the first place. Later in the book she returns to Terry, comparing her with Henry Ir-

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ving, and continues her devaluation of the protean ideal. “I am inclined to think that Miss Terry was the greater actor. . . . [W]hile I can think of Irving in widely varied characterizations, I can think of her only as the quality that was Ellen Terry . . . the brilliance that was like sunlight shimmering on the waters of a fountain” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 163). Fiske downplays the versatility and absorption into the role that might elsewhere be aspired to, and champions the shining personality inside the personification. Similarly, Eleanora Duse inspires reverence despite the fact that “I cannot think of her degree of success in this or that impersonation . . . I think only of the essential thing, the style, the quality, that was Duse” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 160). Furthermore, both Terry and Duse were great technicians of the stage. “No school can make a Duse” she cautions, “but with such geniuses as hers has always gone a supreme mastery of the science of acting, a precision of performance so satisfying that it continually renews our hope and belief that acting can be taught” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 76). For Fiske true geniuses might need no instruction but would still develop a systematized method for achieving successful performances on their own. Fiske goes so far as to decry what might be an effective performance that was lucked into, rather than crafted. Her condemnation is worth quoting at length for the explicit invocation of industrial modernist concerns: As soon as I suspect a fine effect is being achieved by accident I lose interest.  .  .  . I am not interested, you see, in unskilled labor. An accident—­that is it. The scientific actor is an even worker. Any one may achieve on some rare occasion an outburst of genuine feeling, a gesture of imperishable beauty, a ringing accent of truth; but your scientific actor knows how he did it. He can repeat it again and again and again. He can be depended on. . . . Genius is the great unknown quantity. Technic supplies a constant for the problem. (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 79–­80, emphasis original) Here Fiske offers as clear an enunciation of Taylorist thinking in theater as any. Acting has a science, a “technic,” that can guarantee constant, steady results night after night. One who merely stumbles on a successful moment or characterization is doomed to be an uneven worker, and therefore undependable. One of the Taylorist laments about the old craft system was that production was uneven—­given a quota, the workers would perhaps rush to meet the deadline, and then not work for multiple days. Scientific management promised to regularize production by illuminating the appropriate work expected per worker per day, and then bringing everyone in the

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factory into conformity with the plan. Steady, regular production is modern production, in factories and theater alike. Whereas the stock or rep system might be more forgiving of a lesser performance one night and a better one the next, the new stage demanded a scientific actor who was an “even worker.” Relying on genius or inspiration was not sufficient. To clarify what might be meant by “scientific acting” and how to achieve “technic” for the stage, Woollcott proposes a fictional dialogue. What course of study, Woollcott prompts, would Fiske recommend to a young stage hopeful? In explaining what is most important, Fiske initially seems to be a direct follower of Ayres. Her primary advice is “consider your voice; first, last, and always your voice. It is the beginning and the end of acting.” She even goes so far to suggest going immediately, “this very evening, my child, to some master of the voice, and if need be, spend a whole year with him studying the art of speech” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 82). Fiske even suggests, like Ayres, that the voice might be the only thing needing true study, for “our young friend here might forget all the rest. It would take care of itself . . . And such a nicely calculated science it is!” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 83). Taylor and Ayres would assuredly agree with Fiske that vocal production could be a science, and both would nod approvingly at the idea of it being so “nicely calculated.” Fiske also shares with Ayres (and Craig) a view of what most actors do (or fail to do) to actually work on their craft: “An appalling proportion of the young players who pass our way cannot have spent one really reflective hour since the stage-­door first closed behind them” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 85, emphasis original). This too is found in Taylor’s avowals that inefficiency is rampant because nobody has bothered to think about what they were doing and how they were doing it. Yet Fiske is not entirely in harmony with Ayres’s ideas. Where Ayres would imagine spending a year learning about textual analysis in order to properly emphasize the correct words to convey the author’s true intention, Fiske has a very different idea of what vocal training will accomplish. Fiske sees the voice as the essential tool in presenting emotions, with strong affinities to MacKaye and Delsarte’s emotional essentialism. Examine Fiske’s example of what the trained voice should do and its relation to the science of acting: You are to utter a cry of despair. You could do that? Are you sure it would sound perceptibly different from the cry of anguish? Do they seem alike? They are utterly different. See, this cry of despair must drop at the end, the inescapable suggestion of finality. The cry of

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anguish need not. They are entirely different sounds. And so it goes. Does it seem mechanical? Do these careful calculations seem belittling? They are of the science of acting. Only so can you master the instrument. (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 83–­84, emphasis original) Fiske’s specificity when it comes to distinguishing a cry of anguish from despair is the science of acting and, along with MacKaye and Delsarte, echoes Burgh’s cataloging of the various passions and the manner in which they are best conveyed. They are the scales of emotion for the actor, as surely as the pianist works the keys. It is easy to imagine a vocal “gamuts of emotion” exercise in which the young actor would practice moving from anguish, to despair, to loss, and so on. But where Delsarte and others focused on physical presentation, Fiske relocates the seat of emotional conveyance to the voice. Fiske, like Taylor, anticipates the argument that this will seem overly mechanical, and dismisses the concern in the same way: it is only through exacting specificity that true freedom is to be found. While her allegiance to the idea of a science of acting puts her in firm fellowship with Taylor, Fiske initially appears to chart a separate course by wedding acting technique to a Romantic ideal of the inspired artist. Immediately following her proposal for learning the science of the stage by focusing on the voice, Fiske then exhorts the prospective actor to “stay by yourself, dear child. When a part comes to you, establish your own ideal for it, and, striving for that, let no man born of woman, let nothing under the heavens, come between it and you” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 88–­89). Other actors should only be trusted if they are “real actors,” and one should “pay no attention, or as little attention as possible, to the director. The chances are that he is wrong.” And, perhaps most shockingly, “above all, ignore the audience” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 89, emphasis original). In suggesting that the director be ignored, along with the representatives of the market in the form of the spectators, Fiske seems to be recommending a decidedly heretical course from a Taylorite perspective. Yet her admonitions are not as unabashedly auratic as they might initially appear. Her faith in the singular vision of the actor-­artist has strong Romantic roots, but once she begins denigrating audiences and directors she is actually returning to the industrial fold. The audience, for Fiske, had tremendous potential to derail the actor’s work. “An actor who is guided by the caprices of those across the footlights is soon in chaos,” she writes. “A great artist . . . must command the audience; no actor can afford to let the audience command him” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 90). Audiences might not

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know what they should like best. It is up to the trained and experienced actor to provide the ideal product.11 Fiske’s dismissal of the director is likewise perfectly understandable if the director, like most other workers in the theater, has no real knowledge of the science of the stage. This is also why only “real actors” and not all actors should be trusted. Among Taylor’s many criticisms of traditional manufacturing, the pervasive ignorance about the “science” of whatever is being attempted is a constant. Similarly, most directors, like most actors, are probably not true technicians of performance, and approach their work from a comparatively old-­fashioned standpoint of a bag of tricks and traditions, catering to what they imagine will please an audience instead of what will demonstrate true art. Taylor would dismiss such directors as being unworthy of the name and also recommend ignoring them. Then Fiske almost literally takes a page from Edward Gordon Craig, comparing the solitude of the painter to the work of the actor. “The painter does not work with his public at his side, the author does not write with his reader peering over his shoulder. The great actor must have as complete, as splendid an isolation” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 93). Where Craig despairs that such isolation could be possible, Fiske finds it in actors turning inward, listening to their own internal voice about how best to proceed with a role and bringing the audience along with them.12 This is how she threads the needle of maintaining the auratic within an industrialized theater. “A piece of acting is not only a thing of science, but a work of art, something to be perfected by the actor according to the ideal that is within him—­within him” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 93, emphasis original). Her emphasis on the internal truth being the North Star places the work of the actor squarely within the Romantic tradition on one hand, even as the technical skills required to realize that voice inside become more and more specific and detailed on the other. Fiske embraces science and technology in rehearsal and performance, and also makes room for the spiritual aspects she perceives in great theater, for she says what is truly most impor11. The audience is still expected to ultimately appreciate the skill of the trained actor—­an assumption that will be weakened in the mid-­twentieth century, when the divide between being a working actor and “acting” becomes more pronounced. See especially the discussion of Stella Adler, Sanford Meisner, and Uta Hagen in chapter 8. 12. These arguments about isolation and the creative process that Craig and Fiske explore are radically recast when film becomes a dominant force in shaping perceptions of performance. A film actor, while certainly subject to the whims of the box office and studio system, is able to work in relative isolation, crafting a finished product without immediate audience reaction, though the mediation of the final product offers its own challenges to arriving at true artistry. See in particular Boleslavsky’s arguments in favor of film discussed in chapter 5.

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tant for an actor is to “go on stage with love in his heart—­always” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 106). By contrast, Taylor’s Schmidt probably does not love moving pig iron, but that is of little concern to Taylor, the factory managers, or even Schmidt himself—­though as a high-­priced man he loves money as much as the rest of them. Fiske fights to make room for the human heart amid the scientific stage; she cannot imagine a true theater without it. Naturally Fiske and Woollcott spend time discussing whether the actor truly feels the emotion being presented. Unsurprisingly, Fiske champions a divided-­consciousness answer to the question. Certainly the actor may be feeling in sympathy with the character or situation, just as a reader feels sympathetically the emotions conjured by a particular story. But “the more poignant the expression, the more cheering is the approval from the critic within him . . . such is the dual nature of the actor” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 100). For Fiske, the interior audience of one will be watching with cool detachment, able to neutrally assess the success of the emotional presentation. Further, Fiske argues that with practice emotions can be conjured as reliably as any other product. The scientific actor, she contends, “remembers the means, and relying on that memory, need not himself feel so keenly. The greater the artist, the less keenly need he feel. The actor with no science must keep lashing his own emotions to get the effect a master technician would know how to express with his thoughts” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 100). While not a direct articulation of emotional memory exercises, the contours are familiar. With practice and technique the emotional state becomes easier to slip into, and so the performance itself becomes easier, more clinical, more scientific, more technical, and more efficient in accomplishing the central task of presenting that state to the audience. For Fiske, emotions remain the primary concern for an actor. Woollcott describes a glimpse at Fiske’s own rehearsal scripts that reinforces this centrality. He reported that the margins contained notes such as “‘Soften all, make gracious,’ or, ‘Sudden, passionate outthrust,’ or, ‘Brilliant, contempt, independence, ardor, bravery,’ or, ‘Free, brave, individual.’” There is not, however, a corresponding concern for blocking. “You might find the word ‘pensive’ in the margin without any suggestion that the girl must cross to left center and gaze sadly at the coals in the fireplace” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 129). So firmly does Fiske believe in the right action presenting itself out of emotional preparation that she eschews actual directions, preferring to focus on emotional descriptions. Fiske even developed her own technology of emotions for use in scene analysis, rehearsal, and performance. She called it the “thorough-­bass,”

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and it refers to the dominant emotional tone of a character or scene. “It is often the secret of a scene, the very key to the floundering actor’s problem. For lack of it you often see a performance expire before your very eyes” (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 126). The example she shares with Woollcott offers insight into Fiske’s technique, and illustrates how Taylorist values emerge in her own thinking about performance. Here she is discussing her direction of one of the actors in a Fiske vehicle, Erstwhile Susan (1916): It was in the scene where he was developing his precious scheme for marrying Juliet. I told him to remember always that he was marrying her for money, that with old Barnaby it was a matter of greed, greed, greed from first to last. I told him to keep that abstract quality—­greed—­constantly in mind, and trust to it to color all his playing. He tried it, and the missing note was sounded perfectly. His thorough-­bass was there. It worked. It always does. (M. M. Fiske, Mrs. Fiske 127) First off, the thorough-­bass is not specific, but rather a more generalized emotional state, as opposed to the relatively nuanced direction she includes in her own rehearsal script. By keeping greed in mind, the actor was able to deliver a more successful performance. It was the “missing note” (continuing the parallel comparison of musicians and actors) he needed to play. While more modern acting teachers might blanche at the idea of letting an emotional state color a scene, this is precisely what Fiske was after. Further, in true Taylorist fashion, this technique not only works, but always works. From an ANT perspective, the thorough-­bass is another example of a black box. As defined by Mike Michael, a black box is a process whose specific workings are hidden from other nodes in the network, and “all that is of interest is the input and the output” (Michael 154). Here, you put in the fundamental emotional state, and the character comes out. Even if the actor doesn’t understand the why of the thorough-­bass (the stage science behind it), it is enough to use it. Fiske falls in a growing line of acting theoreticians integrating aspects of industrial philosophy and valuation into the work of the stage. Much of her writing is influenced, either directly or indirectly, by people such as Craig, MacKaye, and Ayres, all of whom pursued ideas of a science of the stage. In her book she celebrates the virtue of science quite explicitly, while simultaneously downplaying the role of inspiration in performance. Inspiration is instead reserved for the initial conception of the character. Once grasped, the actor—­like a sculptor seeing the form within the rock and then carving

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away the excess—­shapes via technic the performance witnessed by the audience. While still allowing for this unquantifiable aspect of acting, she has moved decidedly into the realm of the technological for the bulk of an actor’s work.

LUTHER ANTHONY AND DRAMATIC TECHNOLOGY

Some embraced the technological paradigm more aggressively than others. A wonderful example of the industrial mindset being applied wholeheartedly to the theater can be found in the journal The Dramatist. It premiered in 1909, lasted until 1929, and proudly advertised itself as “A Journal of Dramatic Technology.” Luther B. Anthony was general editor and seemingly almost the exclusive creator of the journal’s content. (While in the earlier volumes Anthony used the plural first person “we” in editorial statements, by the 1920s it was replaced with direct address in the first person singular or, occasionally, second person direct.) Revisiting Anthony’s initial exhortations over a century after they were published is a curious experience, for Anthony never lays out a comprehensive guide to his technical vocabulary, apparently by design. As Anthony says, “our effort in these pages is to enunciate the general theories of Technic by practical application to the Plays you may see and read. In this way we may avoid unorganized generalizations. In every instance our analyses are deduced from simple first principles” (Anthony, “Technic” 1).13 Anthony lays the science-­talk on thick in this brief statement, eschewing “unorganized generalizations” in favor of specific, practical examples of the playwrights’ “technic” gleaned from axiomatic truths that cannot be argued with. Anthony salts his analyses with key terms set off by capitalization (his preferred method of Emphasis, rather than italics). These may be terms he has used previously, or might be introduced on the fly. For example, in the very first issue Anthony dives into the deep end, without providing a general introduction to the journal or its work, and begins analyzing a popular but now forgotten play called The Climax (1909) by Edward Locke. Although the script “abounds in minor flaws and elements foreign to the structure and the ‘Climax’ when reached is merely talked into the audience instead of coming out of dramatic invention,” the 13. The page numbers are irregular across much of The Dramatist’s print run. In this case, although the article is from volume 3, number 4, I have indicated page 1 rather than the continuous page numbers used elsewhere. (See note 14 below for more information.)

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Figure 3: Cover of the journal The Dramatist

play is overall quite successful in Anthony’s opinion, almost exclusively because of Locke’s facility with dramatic structure (Anthony, “New Plays” 1). “The acts are ideal divisions of the material. They define the Beginning the middle and end of a completed action in a very skillful way. The blending of plot theme with melody theme is a master stroke and the Play deserves its place in the ranks far to the front!” Locke’s success is attributed to knowing the “technic” of playwriting, which he gained through years as an actor and journalist (Anthony, “New Plays” 1–­2). While many of his terms are relatively familiar to someone versed in the vocabulary of text analysis in the theater (The Poetics, especially), Anthony himself never actually defines them. Instead he charges ahead, confident that context will bring the reader along as he celebrates “plot theme” and

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“melody theme” alongside a capitalized “Beginning” and lowercase “end,” to say nothing of the idea of a “completed action.” Anthony does offer an enumeration of what he refers to as the “TEN COMMANDMENTS IN PLAYWRITING” in a subsequent article (still in the first issue) called “First Aid to the Dramatist.”14 These are: “Theme, Plot, Unity, Logic, Sequence, Scenes, Acts, Action, Diction, and Dialogue,” which are coupled with “humor, wit, satire, good story and clever, snappy dialogue” (Anthony, “First Aid” 10). Without going into any more detail about any of these elements, Anthony assures the reader that “it is the failure to recognize these immutable laws that account[s] for the many failures in plays” (Anthony, “First Aid” 10). Using these terms suggests there is a process, complete with an exacting vocabulary and analytic lens, founded on “immutable laws,” that can examine the content and construction of a play and determine, with great precision, what went right and what (often) went wrong. In addition to relying on an analytic terminology that purports to divide a play into its component parts and analyze each for its contribution to the overall project, Anthony drinks from the Taylorist well in other areas. There are multiple references in The Dramatist to “The Institute of the Drama,” based in Easton, PA. The “First Aid” article cited above is ostensibly taken from an interview with a President Holenny of the Institute (a name that, suspiciously, never appears again in the journal; a cursory web and literature search turned up no further references to Holenny). The institute, at least as a service, appears real enough. Playwrights could learn the craft of stage writing either by correspondence or on location in Easton. Whereas preindustrial workers had no access to systematized training, the shift away from the master-­apprentice model brought with it organized schools, even if in this case the school was largely the product of one very dedicated individual. Another instance of the Taylorist impulse in The Dramatist is the proposed analogy of playwriting with science and technology. Answering the criticism that there have been no schools of playwriting, President Holenny reportedly said “Ben Franklin never heard of a University course in Electrical Engineering . . . but we now have several such schools in the country” 14. Curiously, the article “First Aid for the Dramatist” is excluded from the widely available Google Books scan of The Dramatist, but it is available in the original print version of the journal. It is not that that the pages were available but unscanned, as the pagination in Google Books is consistent. Rather, it seems that the scan is based on a reprint of the entire first volume, instead of the originally published individual issues, and that the article was left out when the publisher re-­released the volume. The original issues are devoid of page numbers until the July 1910 edition, so I have paginated this particular article myself.

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(Anthony, “First Aid” 9). In case the reader misses the point, the president, a few lines later, says “the science has only recently been formulated making possible to offer instruction in the Art” (Anthony, “First Aid” 9). Elsewhere, Anthony urges his readers (imagined as prospective playwrights) to “Persevere and study! Look upon your art as the physician-­candidate contemplates his course at the University. The dramatic is the most subtle Science of them all” (Anthony, “Specimen” 57). Despite plays having a multimillennial existence, it is only recently that the science of writing for the stage has been developed, just as lightning is eternal but the science of lightning is quite new, or disease is forever but germ theory is a recent innovation. New fields, then, develop training regimens for those who would harness the laws that govern them and apply them to their own ends. That the rules for electricity or disease transmission might be less open to debate than dramaturgical success does not figure into Anthony’s enthusiastic call to arms. Anthony opens 1911 with an all-­caps defense of fault-­finding in recognizably successful plays. Channeling his inner Edward Gordon Craig, he writes, “IS IT ANY MARVEL, THEN, THAT THE SUDDEN BIRTH OF A NEW SCIENCE, THE SCIENCE OF PLAY CONSTRUCTION, FINDS INFINITE FLAWS IN THE PRODUCTS OF THOSE WHO HAVE PRACTICED THE ART WITH NO THOUGHT TO SCIENTIFIC TRAINING?” Anthony does allow that plays written without recourse to stage science may still be successful, if only for want of more sophisticated and modern competition. However, in looking ahead (still in all caps), plays that don’t conform to the rules of scientific writing will necessarily fall by the wayside. “A NEW GENERATION OF PLAYWRIGHTS SCHOOLED IN THE PRINCIPLES OF THEIR CRAFT WILL PUT PRESENT PRACTITIONERS TO FLIGHT AS DID THE DOCTORS THE QUACKS IN THE MEDICINE OF OLD. MANAGERS WILL SELECT THEIR SPECULATIONS WITH THE AID OF A POSITIVE SCIENCE AND CRITICS WILL BASE THEIR OPINIONS ON ROCK BOTTOM FACTS” (Anthony, “Province” 114). Whatever faults Anthony may possess, opacity is not one of them. It is crystal clear that Anthony expects the science of playwriting to continue to be refined and developed, sweeping away the old plays and making every aspect of the theater business, from play selection to professional reviewing, conform to an agreed-­upon collection of criteria for success or failure. There is also the familiar call to the efficiency of scientifically founded, standardized training. Assuming a student came to the institute “with dramatic instinct . . . we can by scientific instruction in the essential principles of play construction obviate ten to twenty years of the research and obser-

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vation he would be doomed to encounter singlehanded” (Anthony, “First Aid” 9). Like Stebbins’s invocation of Gérôme, Anthony acknowledges that individuals could arrive at these laws on their own, but it would be a prodigal waste of time that would be far better spent learning and applying already-­observed rules for playwriting. Later in the same article the president is asked, “What professional reference can you offer as to your efficiency?” While the reader is assured that testimonials from noted members of the profession could be supplied on request, the best proof is suggested to be a review of a prospective student’s own manuscript (Anthony, “First Aid” 10). The focus is put back onto the product itself, judged by the fast-­ becoming universal desire for efficiency. Anthony also embraces the democratic ethos of technology, with study promoted as beneficial for any conscientious student. In his second article in the first issue Anthony lauds one Leo Dietrichstein for his adaptation of Is Matrimony a Failure?, a play that was a success in Berlin before being brought to the US by impresario David Belasco. For Anthony, Dietrichstein’s skill in adaptation is happily divorced from any need to be creative. “Here is a triumph as a result of the strenuous study of technic without the aid of inventive genius required to construct an original Play.” The application of learned technique in dramatic construction is the technology that made Dietrichstein successful. Matrimony’s triumph should be an encouragement to authors everywhere who lament a lack of originality in their own writings. “There is a wide chance in the field of adaptation and dramatization for utilizing the fancy of others. But the one ever necessary requisite is Technical skill. If you cannot be a Fitch be a Dietrichstein!” (Anthony, “Matrimony” 2). Creative ability is great (like playwright Clyde Fitch), but even to those who lack a facility for dramatic invention the theater is still open if they master the science of the stage. Just as critically, creativity alone isn’t enough, for the one truly necessary thing is a mastery of the “technical skill” of writing for the stage. The Taylorist distrust of genius is also prefigured in The Dramatist. In the first issue Anthony reprints selections from salesman Arthur F. Sheldon (reportedly the coiner of the Rotary Club’s motto “He Profits Most Who Serves Best”) on “Natural-­Borness,” repudiating the idea that inborn talent is sufficient for success in sales. What is needed, just as it was for Fiske and Ayres, is “cultivation.” “I want you to see clearly how foolish it is to make the claim that because one is born that way he cannot become stronger by scientific cultivation.” Or a bit later in the same article, “The richest natural soil will not produce its richest harvests except by cultivation. . . . Without scientific care, it will soon lose its strength and go backward” (Anthony

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and Sheldon 5). Sheldon, the man of business, argues that cultivation based on scientific principles is the surest road to success, which Anthony happily applies to the work of playwrights. Sheldon is another of the new breed of scientist, in this case a scientist of salesmanship, seeking undiscovered laws and bringing them to light—­a situation Anthony sees as analogous to that in theater. Anthony fervently defends the integration of science and theater as vociferously as any entrenched Taylorite: The reign of law has crept into every department of life transforming knowledge everywhere into Science. . . . For the first time in the history of Dramatic Literature can Drama boast of a Science! The Science of Drama shows the student the underlying laws and interdependent principles upon which good plays must be constructed. It is this enlightened method of studying the Art of Playwriting that has enabled Dramatists to advance the standards of plays to meet the modern demand for higher Art. The imbecile play does not fit the scientific spectator! (Anthony, “Managers” 12) Taylor could hardly have said it better. Not only has knowledge everywhere been subsumed into a science, but even an artistic pursuit such as playwriting has a body of laws applicable to its products. In summing up his review of 1909’s The Commanding Officer, Anthony offers that the only hope of the author to be a success is if “he wakens to the fact that an entirely new type of Drama has evolved—­a scientific Drama which requires systematic structure” (Anthony, “Officer” 14). Anthony’s recourse to “Science” was hardly limited to an abstract idea of laws governing effective play-­writing. The pages of The Dramatist come complete with advertisements for books on psychology and (on at least one occasion) phrenology as well (Anthony, “Read” 141).15 These advertisements suggest a readership comfortable with conjoining dramatic theory to other sciences, pseudo or otherwise. Like Fiske and Ayres, Anthony denigrates the heighted emotional style of theater in the recent past. An “imbecile” play for Anthony is an overly emotive one, say from a generation or so back when plays were “a mere vehicle for the absurd hysteria of the emotional capacities of the actor” (Anthony, “Managers” 11). The emotional roller coaster of Jane Shore would 15. Also not available via Google Books—­see note 14 above. I have used the scanned page numbers to help assign pages to the unpaginated originals.

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probably not sit well with him. Anthony’s anticipation of Brecht’s “scientific spectator” allows him to highlight how audience tastes have changed, which he attributes to the increasing prevalence of science and technology in everyday life. Unlike Fiske, he does not dwell on the relative place of emotion in performance, but rather focuses entirely on the content of the plays themselves, seeing in the overwrought characters and scenes from even twenty years earlier an unscientific excess and illogical story construction, whereas “the new or naturalistic type depicts life in its real aspects exposing its virtues and vices and drawing conclusions therefrom” (Anthony, “Managers” 11). This more rationalistic story is what a modern “scientific spectator” is expecting. Anthony does, however, recognize that emotional evocation is also important in a successful script. His critique of Percey MacKaye’s play To-­ morrow offers a case in point. “It contains a theme for the man who thinks,” he writes, “not for the crowd who feel” (Anthony, “To-­Morrow” 371). MacKaye’s primary problem, according to Anthony, is that he lets his thematic concerns overwhelm emotional development, despite the fact that “emotional appeal [is] the only valid medium of dramaturgic communication” (Anthony, “To-­Morrow” 371).16 Even in the midst of a strenuous effort to bring theatrical criticism into conformity with an agreed-­upon set of laws for the stage, emotion still has a privileged place—­just as it did for Fiske, who could not imagine conceiving a scene without it. Most tellingly, Anthony launched his journal, and made many of the arguments I cite above, two years before Taylor’s Scientific Management hit the shelves. He wasn’t aping Taylor, he was anticipating him. Taylor, as mentioned previously, was giving voice to a predilection and approach that was years in the making, and that had already found ready adherents in far-­flung occupations. Anthony’s devotion to the scientific paradigm didn’t diminish over time. By 1914 The Dramatist was subtitled “A Journal of Dramatology,” an appellation it would continue to hold through the 1920s. His neologism was yet another example of the aspirations to a stage science that Anthony promoted throughout the remarkably long existence of the magazine. Every issue offered examples of scientific analysis applied to plays, with the belief that there were underlying laws that could be learned and applied to the theater taken as a given. While the extremity of Anthony’s insistence on dramatic technologies 16. In a suggestion redolent of modern-­day script doctors, Anthony recommends changing the conflict in the second act by adding a pregnancy and thus upping the stakes: “Instead of merely letting the girl fall in love with the libertine make her the illicit mother of his contaminated offspring” (Anthony, “To-­Morrow” 373).

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was over and above that of many of his contemporaries, he was—­as has been shown—­far from alone in working to apply technological solutions to theatrical problems. At the same time, there were voices raised against the increasing prevalence of industrial approaches in the theater. Thomas H. Dickinson’s “The Drama of Intellectualism” in the journal The Drama, August 1912, offers a partial criticism of industrial values emerging in theater and seeks to carve out room for aspects of performance that would resist industrial analyses. Using his review of the book Modern Dramatists by Ashley Dukes as a springboard, Dickinson ruminates on the privileging of an intellectual and technical standpoint in theater, oscillating between condemning the contemporary scientific impulses in the drama and appreciating their advantages. “Modern drama,” he begins, “has been created out of a world of thought, peopled by speculative mannikins [sic], circumscribed in technique prescribed by logic. . . . In modern drama life has been reduced to formulas.” Hardly a ringing endorsement, yet Dickinson allows that “this kind of writing is peculiarly appropriate to the spirit of the age.” Dickinson’s scientific spectator is characterized by a “keen and speculative interest in all the phenomena of living” (Dickinson 149). Audiences are more interested in the conditions of existence, and the theater, like other arts, should rightly reflect that concern. He even lauds theater for being among the first of the arts to embrace this modern sensibility. Yet Dickinson cannot offer unqualified support for this trajectory, for while it has brought great intellectual arguments to the stage, it has also produced self-­limiting rules for stage expression, especially among the adherents to Realism and Naturalism, which boast “a code of regulations as rigorous and as alien to the pure purposes of art as the rules of the classic French stage” (Dickinson 150). More damning, “we see how this fetish of thought in art has drawn into drama some men who would by no possibility have been dramatists in other days, how it has made great poets turn into poor logicians, and has lifted craftsmen to eminences as leaders of thought” (Dickinson 152). Dickinson does not reference Anthony by name, but his description certainly cuts close to Anthony’s approach. What has been lost by this shift in values is perhaps incalculable, but that does not make the loss any less. As art subsumes itself to logical reality, it pares away that which previously made art distinct from life itself. “This is the price our times have paid in insisting upon the interchangeable value of art and life” (Dickinson 153–­54). In a period marked by an embrace of interchangeability and utility, Dickinson is mounting a rear-­guard defense of art for art’s sake, proposing that art and life might exist on parallel but distinct planes. “The white certainty of truth and beauty of the poet is

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not the logic of the scientist” (Dickinson 154). Dickinson is making room for aspects of theatrical expression that might resist, either partially or in their totality, the quantifying gaze of the age. Dickinson reconciles art and science, after a manner, by acknowledging that it is not enough to simply resurrect plays of the past and expect them to speak to a contemporary audience as they did when they were first created. Theater is tightly connected to culture, and thus as culture changes so will theater: It would be a mistake to suggest that art can ever again ignore the results of an era of industrious science. . . . We have eaten of the tree of knowledge and the art will be a more sophisticated thing. But we believe it will be not less beautiful for that. For we will find the vivid imaginings of an ancient beauty taking on new meanings in the light of an understanding at once exact and reverent. (Dickinson 162) Dickinson, with remarkable insight, perceived the speed at which industrial modernism had been naturalized, and what that might mean for artistic expression. Taylor saw tradition as a threat to rationalism and efficiency. Anthony saw almost all past plays as hopelessly lacking in adherence to the laws of play-­writing. Dickinson’s reverence for the past suggests a meeting of theater at least partly on its own terms. Classic texts will be understood in a manner both “exact”—­paying tribute to industrial certainty—­ and “reverent,” with a respect for their history and artistic and auratic power. “It is only the inorganic that can be ultimately analysed,” Dickinson argues in closing. “The microscope has not isolated life for the eye of science. Why should we expect it to do so for the eye of art?” (Dickinson 161). A script or performance cannot be reduced to the product of analytic frameworks and grids. For Dickinson, true theater must still contain auratic and transcendental elements.

INCORPORATING THE PLAYERS

Of the many little theater companies that sprang up in the 1910s, the Provincetown Players are among the most famous, and perhaps most fully embody the contradictions between a romantic conception of art and artists and the scientific spirit of the age Dickinson outlined. Many of the founding members were self-­conscious Bohemians, deliberately taking stances regarding property and propriety that put them in opposition to majority

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views. However, like E. Gordon Craig—­with whom they were familiar—­ their work shows how the structure of science and technology influenced their art. They still adopted traits, values, and qualities espoused by Taylor and his intellectual kin. In particular, their rejection of tradition, their reduction of the role of emotion in performance, and their professed desire to “experiment” indicate a level of acceptance with the new realities and concerns inherent in the technological paradigm. The most obvious connection to science is the constant evocation of the words “experimental” and “laboratory” in relation to their work, expressed in their self-­produced manifestos. As Robert Sarlós writes, “The frequently used metaphor of a laboratory signals the Players’ dedication to bringing forth a new kind of theatrical art, characteristics of which are unpredictable. ‘Experiment’ or one of its derivatives, appears to be the most often used word in descriptions of the group” (Sarlós 156, emphasis original). During the first summer of their existence, 1915, the Boston Globe ran a feature about the group titled “Laboratory of the Drama on Cape Cod’s Farthest Wharf” (Sarlós 30). Jig Cook, after the first season on the Cape, wanted to transplant the “‘laboratory of human emotions’ to the teeming and seething [Greenwich] Village” (Sarlós 60). Writing a press release about the brownstone that the Players were converting into a theater, Cook wrote about the “experiment with a stage of extremely simple resources” and cited the “success of the experiment” as reasons for celebration (Sarlós 67). Sarlós traces an arc of the group dynamics that focused on the transition from “spontaneous theatrical playmaking, to the presentation of products from the laboratory of human emotions” (Sarlós 105). Ida Rauh, one of the most celebrated actors in the company, was described as an “‘experimental Bernhardt,’ a genius, and a star” (Black 86). The Players were more than comfortable with the language of scientific inquiry, using it to describe their own work investigating the nature of stage performance. In rejecting tradition the Provincetown Players were very much in line with the technological spirit of the time. Stylistically, they interrogated received performance styles and found them wanting. “Technique, especially technique which called attention to itself, was frowned upon, and a growing emphasis came to be put upon the study of character and psychological motivation” (Ashby 263). The rejection of “older” acting technique meant relegating emotional projection to a lower status, hence the study of “character and psychological motivation.” It was no longer enough to simply present heightened emotional states, there needed to be a science—­ psychology—­explaining why characters did what they did.

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This division between old and new acting was brought into sharp relief for the Players when Eugene O’Neill’s father arrived at a rehearsal of Eugene’s 1916 one-­act play Before Breakfast, and took the liberty of directing Mary Pyne per his own conception of acting (see Black 76). “Mary Pyne had the sense to do everything James O’Neill told her—­grandiloquent gestures, melodramatic inflections and all. . . . As soon as he had gone, his son redirected her from the beginning to end and . . . mumbled about his father’s ‘old fogey’ approach” (Sarlós 70). In the end “the Players, who had ‘no wish to revive the histrionic technique of a bygone era,’ were thrilled by Pyne’s ‘fine performance’” (Black 77). The very idea of what an actor was to do on stage was changing, sometimes literally in front of their eyes.17 This anecdote touches on two themes under investigation: the process of the paradigm shift, and the repudiation of tradition. Kuhn’s paradigm model presupposes that a fraction of the old guard will never recognize the new model during their careers. James O’Neill, seasoned in the trenches of stock and night-­after-­night performances of The Count of Monte Cristo, had a conception of acting focused on “grandiloquent gestures” and heightened emotional states played for effect. The new paradigm in acting rooted in the science of psychology was still young but had clearly won adherents among the Players and their audiences. Tradition was, for the new breed, a liability, not a strength. The Provincetown Players left two major legacies: the plays of Eugene O’Neill and Susan Glaspell, and an acting style focused on a more realistic portrayal of human interaction. Clifford Ashby quotes an unnamed reviewer who said, “Some of the very worst acting on any stage has been done on the stage of the Playwrights’ Theatre—­and some of the best” (Ashby 268). Which was which was a matter of debate, and from the scant reviews of the early Provincetown productions there is no consensus as to who had succeeded in carrying out their part and who had not meet the challenge. Part of this confusion stems from the crisis in standards by which acting was judged in the US. “Evidence suggests that what critics were calling ‘professional techniques,’ actors like Glaspell and Rauh considered ‘old-­fashioned tricks’” (Black 91). James O’Neill, had he seen the final ver17. Although it is difficult to trace a direct influence, Eugene O’Neill in his early peripatetic occupational wanderings was employed for a time by one of the major industries to adopt interchangeable parts technology: the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Although they made the transition relatively late (c. 1880), by the time O’Neill worked there the company would have been completely based on an interchangeable parts manufacture model. See Hounshell’s chapter “The Sewing Machine and the American System of Manufactures” for more information.

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sion of Before Breakfast, probably would not have given Mary as glowing a review as her compatriots did. Cheryl Black points out that the Players were instrumental in “facilitating the transition from the ‘old, imitative’ methods to the ‘new’ methods seeking greater psychological truthfulness and individual imaginative creation” (Black 75). “Imitative” here refers to the “star-­gazing” model of acting pedagogy, where the younger aspirants observe and copy the more experienced actors. While the Players had no formal acting classes, they still looked to newer approaches for performance. Perhaps because of their interest in the science of the stage, they adopted an acting style that drew from the new science of psychology. An appetite to break with tradition also influenced their performances. As Rauh wrote in 1920, “All the old-­ fashioned theatrical tricks should have no place in it [modern performance]. . . . Yet the treatment of the stage is unreal today. It continues to use those old feelings and methods which to other people do not mean much” (cited in Black 87). This, as much as the text of the plays and the size of their houses, contributed to the more “realistic” portrayals of character. The repudiation of tradition is part of any paradigm shift, but it is also a critical component of Taylorist experimental investigation. Taylor believed all activities could be improved by scientific inquiry, a belief paralleled by the members of the Provincetown Players. Staging, playwriting, acting, directing, and design were all hopelessly out of date and needed to be reevaluated through experimentation. By ignoring the traditional means of performance—­the style of the “old fogeys”—­the Players engaged in that most Taylorist of pastimes: disregarding the past. Industrial modernism and the technological paradigm affected the Players in ways they might not have expected. The organizational history of the company offers some examples of how the desire to be a laboratory of theater influenced events offstage. Initially begun as a mostly anarchic collective, within five years committees had been formed, organizational charts had been drawn up, and administrative staff had been put on payroll (Sarlós 70–­71, 119–­20). When Cook returned after a year away from the company, “members of the younger faction felt that they had made good use of [his] absence to prove that a laboratory can thrive in an organized, professional atmosphere as well [as] or better than in an environment of spontaneous bursts of creativity that were a matter of faith with Cook” (Sarlós 125). They had shifted from a reliance on inspiration and luck to a more standardized structure, making use of the tools of modern management available to them. This is not to say that the Provincetown Players were crypto-­technocrats.

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Rather, it shows the pervasiveness of the technological paradigm when these influences can be discerned in a group as avowedly anti-industrial as the Players. Nor is it to claim that members were completely unaware of the possible repercussions of conforming to industrial norms. Company member Hutchins Hapgood had previously spoken to the group on “the death which lurked in organization,” and he spoke up again as the Players moved toward a more traditional hierarchy (Sarlós 71). Hapgood saw that committee structure was more than an innocent division of labor. If it were to take hold it would change how the company produced work, which would change the work itself. The committee was the technology that would change the ecology of the Players. Change it did. Not as drastically or as quickly as Hapgood predicted, though in the end just as fatally. The old values of collectivity and decentralization gave way to a more authoritarian structure. Tensions between members led to disagreements and resignations, reorganizations and reshufflings, and the company effectively dissolved in 1922. Amid acrimony over the intellectual property rights to the name “Provincetown Players” O’Neill recruited fellow alumnus Robert Edmund Jones and relative newcomer Kenneth Macgowan to form a new theater company they named “The Experimental Theatre, Inc.” (Murphy, Provincetown 214–15). The name paid tribute not only to their avowed interest in theatrical experimentation, but with the explicit “Incorporated” appended to the name, their sympathy with the industrial spirit of the times. To the list of rhetorical touchstones highlighted at the end of the previous chapter (the dream of scales, support for off-­stage training, cultivation of talent, and a faith in “one thing” to focus on), I would like to add similar elements prompted by the extensions of Taylorism and dramatic theory discussed in this chapter that similarly will recur in subsequent discussions of theatrical practice:



1. Division of knowledge: Per Taylor, knowledge and work—­inside and outside the factory—­can be split between the scientist who discovers laws, the manager who can apply laws, and the laborer who works in accordance with the laws. This division, with modifications to be sure, will recur in theatrical organization and practice. 2. Science and laws of the stage: In accord with Taylor’s faith that everything has a science, theater is anticipated to have fundamental laws that define its operations, the knowledge and application of

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which can contribute to the success or failure of any given theatrical enterprise. While enunciated in a limited fashion prior to Taylor (most notably in the emotional theorists discussed in the Introduction and previous chapter), after Taylor this postulate takes on additional weight and resonance as part of the wider cultural shift toward “sciencing” aspects of life. 3. Experimentation: Connected with point 2 above, theater makers began actively voicing the need to experiment to determine the optimum means of training, rehearsal, and performance, linking their inquiries to the larger project of scientific investigation more broadly. 4. Actors as “in control”: Craig’s concern over the variability of a human performer leads to the criticism that untrained actors are not in sufficient control over their own instrument to reliably give a repeatable performance from night to night, or even moment to moment. This concern will end up being applied most strongly to emotional presentation, with the result that in order to remain scientific, acting theory will need to either displace emotions from the center of an actor’s attention, or assure practitioners that with the right technology, emotions can be controlled with industrial precision.

These concerns, along with those identified in the previous chapter, encapsulate the most commonly repeated points of discussion and distinction related to the emerging network of performance “technologies” and will figure with great frequency in the debates that follow. In the twenties, Taylor’s scientific management continued to be popular with plant managers as well as the general population. Culturally, an emphasis on efficiency and the application of Taylorist philosophy to all areas of work and play began to exert themselves, theater included. The embrace of Taylorism went so far as to shape the reception of one of the most anticipated foreign companies to come to New York: the Moscow Art Theatre. In the next chapter I look at their arrival, and the excitement about seeing the results of their fabled system firsthand.

THREE

 | Cogs in the Wheel

A half-­century after the event, Lee Strasberg recalled the impact of his first encounter with the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT) as a young man in New York in 1923. In his A Dream of Passion, he describes the compelling power of the actors on stage (all the more remarkable because their performances were in Russian) and calls special attention to the fact that it wasn’t a single standout performance that stayed with him. He had, as he says, seen great acting before from the likes of “Chaliapin, Ben-­Ami, Duse,” but the MAT productions were peopled with actors who had fully fleshed out every role, from the largest to the smallest. “Obviously,” he wrote, “this truth and reality was achieved by some singular process or procedure of which we in American theater had little knowledge” (Strasberg 38). What the MAT had, he believed, was a system, a technology of rehearsal and performance, that might be utilized in the US, and Strasberg was keenly interested in a systematic means of approaching performance. Taylorist visions, like Strasberg’s dream of systems, continued their infiltration of the theatrical landscape for the simple reason that the culture at large continued to place incredible faith in the efficacy and benevolence of industrialization. The new factories springing up were expected to provide things more efficiently, less expensively, and in greater abundance than ever before.1 The cultural influence of the technological paradigm continued to grow as a new generation, ensconced in a rapidly industrializing culture, embraced and naturalized the inherited expectations of Taylorism. As the title of a 1920 article in The Independent by Edwin E. Slosson proclaimed, “Back to Nature? Never! Forward to the Machine!” (Slosson 5). Slosson articulated a decidedly scientific and technological vision for the future and took aim at those retrograde elements who appeared to oppose the beneficial dominance of the modern era. “God is not in the thunder or whirlwind,” he 1. For a direct look at the engagement of theater with the idea of technology, see Technology in American Drama, 1920–­1950 by Dennis G. Jerz.

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preaches, “but in the voice [of] the artificial creation of man” (Slosson 38). Less theologically, Slosson suggested that it is through technological advancement that human suffering can be eliminated, for “there is no longer any need for human labor in the sense of personal toil, for the physical energy necessary to accomplish all kinds of work may be obtained from external sources and it can be directed and controlled without extreme exertion. . . . [B]y means of the machine he can do the work of giants without exhaustion” (Slosson 40).2 The machine is the new ox yoked to the plow in Antigone, the path to a techne-­enabled future where all obstacles save death are conquered through the ingenuity of humanity. Slosson’s voice rivals Anthony in the last chapter for stridency, but he was hardly alone in his faith in the powers of technology. As an alternate example of the technological paradigm in the broader culture, consider an unassuming ad for AT&T from the 1920s. The top third of the ad is a picture of a small store. The proprietor is directing a traveling businessman (indicated by his briefcase, hat, and coat) to the telephone on the counter. Beneath the image is the headline “The People’s Telephone,” and the copy waxes rhapsodic about the democratic telephone and the stretch of its system from sea to shining sea. “The telephone” it says, “knows no favorites. It does the bidding of the country store and city bank.” Every voice is treated equally by the Bell System, no one voice rises above the others in importance. Furthermore, service will continue to get better, as “numberless discoveries and improvements developed by the Bell System have made the telephone more useful for all the people.” Finally, after praising the minimal costs associated with telephone usage, AT&T promises that the fifteen million telephones in the system “contribute to the security, happiness, and efficiency of all the people” (AT&T). Reading this ad broadly, the telephone is technology. It cuts across geographic lines to improve the lives of the entire population. It is democratic, in that the traveler needs merely to be pointed toward the phone rather than instructed in its use, because it is the same for everyone. Genius is stripped from the innovations to the phone, because they are no longer 2. Slosson’s criticisms of the age are at times seemingly contradictory, but always engaging even from nearly a century’s distance: “The call of the wild is drowning out the appeal of civilization. ‘Back to barbarism!’ is the slogan of the hour. Sink into savagery. Praise the country and denounce the city. . . . Extol forests and despise laboratories. . . . Jazz your music and cube your painting. Roughcast your walls, deckle your bookedges, wormhole your furniture, coarsen your fabrics and deform your pottery. Condemn everything old and worship everything new” (Slosson 37).

Figure 4: AT&T ad

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made by a singular Alexander Graham Bell but rather by the nameless engineers and scientists employed by AT&T. Finally, this technology directly contributes to the “security, happiness, and efficiency of all people.” Efficiency, although lacking pedigree in either the Declaration of Independence or Constitution, is cheerfully listed as a fundamental value of the Republic, and like the telephone itself “knows no favorites.” Everybody, obviously, desires more efficiency, which technologies such as the telephone provide.3 This is the culture that the MAT dove into when they arrived in New York, and it helps contextualize the fascination with the MAT’s “system” for training actors. In this chapter I explore elements of technological and theatrical culture that preceded the MAT. First, I look at the background to the MAT’s arrival in New York, with an emphasis on what had already been reported before their tour began. I then touch on the establishment of the first US college degree in theater in 1914—­significantly, at the Carnegie Institute of Technology—­and look at some of the discussions emerging around curricular theater training in higher education. I then return to the impact of the MAT by looking at the lectures of the most visible member in the US, Richard Boleslavsky, who began speaking about the MAT training system before the company had even finished their original tour. To conclude, I explore the work of publishing house Longmans, Green and Company, specifically their 1925 textbook Acting and Play Production and their “Director’s Manuscripts,” promptbooks designed to let local theater companies replicate successful professional productions as exactly as possible. Each instance offers examples of how the industrial paradigm was being transferred and translated into the theater.

THE SYSTEM OF THE MAT

Fascination with Stanislavsky and his theater was hardly limited to Strasberg, or just to the instance of their tour to the US. The MAT had been the subject of many a breathless account for at least a decade prior to their arrival in New York. Back in 1911 Edward Gordon Craig, in addition to call3. A reflection of “efficiency” as a popular value and conception can be found in Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine (1923): “My efficiency experts have recommended the installation of adding machines . . . in an organization like this, efficiency must be the first consideration” (Rice 13). Chaplin’s 1936 film Modern Times also trenchantly skewers this trend, particularly in the sequence with the automatic feeding machine..

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ing them “the best set of actors on the European stage,” noted approvingly that “everything is treated seriously” by the company (Craig, On the Art of the Theatre 135).4 Two years later Lucy France Pierce published “The Seagull Theatre of Moscow” in The Drama, praising the work of the MAT. In particular, she highlighted that “a dramatic school is maintained in conjunction with the theatre in which the ‘Seagulls’ are prepared for public appearance” (Pierce 176). Far from the resistance toward “any system at all” that faced MacKaye, Pierce celebrates the idea of a school of acting where actors receive instruction without needing to appear on stage. Pierce describes the MAT as a scientific company engaged in productive theatrical research. “A hundred different literary by-­paths probed for material,” she writes, celebrating their drive to systematically explore and discover, and neatly aligning the company with industrial vocabulary and values. Their experimentation is not the flouting of tradition for its own sake, but a program to discern the most effective means of theatrical presentation. Their success with Chekov’s plays was due to their diligence in preparation as well as the “perfect unity of all the arts employed on the stage and by all the people employed in the action” (Pierce 170, 174). Alexander Bakshy, writing in The Drama in 1919, reiterated the unity of the MAT productions, and likened the company to a musical ensemble. “This musical nature of Chekhov’s dialogue was brought out with a perfection that would have done credit to the best symphonic orchestra” (Bakshy 44). This is high praise, given the history of rhetorical invocation of musicians as systemic artists, and brings together both the analogy between musician and theater worker and the valorization of centralized control espoused by Taylorists. For Bakshy the systemic training of the actors allows them to be better utilized by Stanislavsky in creating an engrossing world on stage. A year later, in 1920, Gregory Zilboorg, former member of the MAT (and, according to The Drama, a former member of the pre-­Russian Revolution Kerensky Cabinet5) wrote about the MAT with similar praise.6 For 4. As mentioned in the previous chapter, by the 1930s Craig had cooled on Stanislavsky and the MAT. 5. This fact is true, based on his obituary in the American Journal of Psychiatry (Braceland). After serving in the provisional government, Zilboorg was “hounded from Russian shores” and turned to theater to support himself before earning a US medical degree in psychiatry at Columbia University (he had earlier earned a medical degree in Russia, which was likely not honored in the states). The latter part of his career was in psychiatry, both in practice and writing. His last book was Freud and Religion, published in 1958, one year before his death. 6. Zilboorg is listed in the October 1920 edition of The Drama as being available for booking to “Centers” (organizational units for the Drama League of America); he is described as “a lecturer of unusual eloquence and magnetism. He has a wide range of subjects” (Best 30).

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Zilboorg, two pillars stand at the center of the MAT’s success. First, echoing Craig’s praise, he notes that even minor characters are taken seriously. The second critical component was the MAT’s practice of using a regisseur or director shape the entire production (Zilboorg, “Star” 96). Consciously or not, Zilboorg reiterates a Taylorist answer to the tension between respect for individualism and the industrial need to standardize processes and procedures. Just as Taylor insisted that scientific management allowed the fullest realization of an individual’s potential, so Zilboorg argued that true artistic freedom can be found through subservience to the overarching view of the director. While it might seem counterintuitive, the ensemble playing prized by the MAT, guided by a strong directorial hand, gives “every participant the full possibility of self-­expression” (Zilboorg, “Star” 96). Far from being in conflict with personal artistic achievement, a strong directorial vision allows all actors to achieve their highest level of performance.7 Zilboorg, Bakshy, and Pierce were hardly alone in their praise, and articles extolling the MAT were not hard to come by in the period. In addition to the favorable discussion in the international press, the tour’s immediate success was also assisted by the work of theatrical producer Morris Gest and his partnership with Otto Kahn. Together they had helped bring a number of notable Russian artists and companies to the United States, as recounted in Valleri J. Hohman’s Russian Culture and Theatrical Performance in America, 1891–­1933, the MAT among them. Having previously brought Nikita Balieff’s “Chauve-­Souris”8 to the US from Paris (Balieff had moved to Paris at the outset of the Russian Revolution), Gest then leveraged the company’s popularity to support the arrival of the MAT by stressing the Chauve-­Souris’s emergence “out of the cabaret-­style, impromptu performances given by members of the Moscow Art Theatre” (Hohman 94, 88). Gest helped negotiate publicity that countered the fear that the MAT was coming to spread communist propaganda, even going so far as to arrange a meeting between Stanislavsky and President Calvin Coolidge. “Among the publicity efforts,” writes Hohman, “some poorly conceived and ill-­timed, were many effective strategies that helped lead to the enduring relationship between Stanislavsky and the American theatre.” Most critically for this study, Gest was instrumental in arranging 7. Zilboorg also notes that the Moscow Art Theatre’s output had declined of late due to World War I followed by the Russian Civil War, though the “Moscow Art Studios,” as he calls them, are still “doing splendid work” (Zilboorg, “Star” 96). 8. A variety show of sorts featuring “Russians songs and dances from various eras, short plays and poems by famous Russian writers like Chekhov, Gorky, and Pushkin, satirical sketches and tableaux set in Russia, France, and the Far East” (Hohman 88).

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Richard Boleslavsky’s initial lectures on the Stanislavsky system while the company was still in residence in New York (Hohman 97–­98). As a company, the MAT faced significant challenges when it came to material resources. As Strasberg points out in his same celebratory section from A Dream of Passion, the production values of the MAT were hardly comparable to the scenic spectacles that graced New York stages at the time, and Stanislavsky was said to look with envy on the technical capacities of US theaters. Yet despite the substandard design and the language barrier, the performances were seen as consistently excellent across the board. This was no stock company desultorily throwing lines at the visiting star. This was a fully realized fictional world inhabited by actors immersed in their characters, whose success on stage, crucially, did not seem to depend on inherent genius. “We saw for the first time the possibility of that greatness being shared by talents that were not necessarily on the same level, yet were capable of the same intensity, reality, belief, and truth” (Strasberg 40). Like Zilboorg, Strasberg comments on the capability to turn actors into engaging players even if they started with uneven levels of natural talent. To put it another way, the MAT had figured out how to make their Schmidts tote more iron each day. They had a method whereby they systematically developed the actors’ abilities and talents, turning worse actors into better ones. To be clear, this was not merely a projection on the part of the US aficionados of the MAT’s work due to an immersion in a Taylorist culture. One of Stanislavsky’s primary objectives was to develop a system that would “create the favorable condition for the appearance of inspiration by means of the will” and no longer leave inspiration and good performances to chance. Jonathan Pitches, in Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting, calls out strong Newtonian and Cartesian influences on Stanislavsky (and Meyerhold), “although it [Stanislavsky’s system] was equally responsive to the contemporary influences of Fredrick Winslow Taylor, Alexi Gastev [one of the foremost Russian and Soviet proponents of Taylorism] and Ivan Pavlov” (Pitches 3). Recalling his initial frustrations in My Life in Art, Stanislavsky realized that to try and attack the problem of “acting” as a whole was too immense, and so he proposed working on “each of the component elements in one’s self separately, systematically, by a series of certain exercises” (Stanislavsky 462, emphasis mine).9 His description would hardly be out of place in a Taylorist prescription for the better development and training of factory workers, and 9. This is echoed to a certain extent by one of Chekov’s admonitions about writing: “A man of letters must be as objective as a chemist” (cited in Hirsch 28).

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perhaps significantly—­especially given Craig’s call to arms for manufacturers to remake the theater—­Stanislavsky was himself the child of textile-­mill owners, and until the revolution had continued to own and operate “the family factory that made gold thread” (Carnicke, Stanislavsky, 2nd ed. 21). Stanislavsky had worked for years on creating and refining a system of actor development, so there was an alliance between his goals and the New York audience’s expectations. “Over and over again they [US actors] agreed that the Russian troupe’s ensemble work distinguished it from Broadway, and young actors linked this special talent to a rumored System for training actors” (Carnicke, Stanislavsky, 2nd ed. 29). Interest was high enough that a mere eight days after their first performance in 1923, Richard Boleslavsky, former MAT member and as of 1922, resident of New York City,10 offered the first in a series of public lectures on the working methods of the MAT studio, and three months later published articles in Theatre Arts Magazine and Theatre Magazine detailing aspects of the actor training system. When the company departed in June, Boleslavsky remained, along with MAT actor Maria Ouspenskaya, and before year’s end they were both teaching at the newly formed American Laboratory Theatre (ALT). The hallmarks of modern instruction were in full force at the ALT, “with classes in diction, voice production, and body rhythm. Only after a year of classroom exercises and practical study did the school evolve into a workshop of scenes and play production” (Hirsch 60). Far from the Fiske-­derided stock model of actor training, this was a modern approach to artistic instruction, broken down into parts and exercises and then built back into a constructive technique for the stage. In this the ALT was not breaking new ground, at least in the United States. The debate over actor training had decisively shifted from the nineteenth-­century battle over stock or not-­stock. Instead, the arguments were now about the content of curricula, with the expectation that there would be some schooling before a professional debut becoming the norm. As such, it is worth reviewing a few salient voices and moments in that conversation, to better contextualize the emergence of the ALT.

A TYPE OF SOBER TRAINING, NOWISE FANTASTIC

The American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1881 had instituted a curriculum that offered a conservatory model for subsequent schools, and many 10. Rhonda Blair, in her introduction to her recent edition of Boleslavsky’s Acting: The First Six Lessons, offers an overview of Boleslavsky’s biography. See Blair, “Editor’s Introduction,” ix–­x.

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such “independent” schools had sprung up in the first decade and a half of the twentieth century. Joining their ranks were university courses in theater under the auspices of speech or English departments. But the first stand-­alone theater program debuted in 1914. Fittingly, given the increasing importance of industrial philosophy in the theater, it was at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. A description of the program offers a clear example of the links between the technological mindset and the new approach to the stage: “A type of sober training, nowise fantastic, and never scornful of those general and essentially cultural studies which are likely to be thrown overboard by the more impetuous schools of the Fine Arts” (Stevens 635–­36). Thomas Wood Stevens, founder of Carnegie’s program, assured readers of The Drama in 1914 that theater students would receive a rigorous education. They would be enrolled for four years, as other degree seekers were, and would be vetted according to the standard application process for the College of Applied Arts. By the time they earned their Bachelor of Arts, they would have taken “a long list of general studies, a severe training in technical practice, and an emphasis on the cultural as well as the scientific—­on appreciation and historical knowledge as well as on the application of paint to canvas” (Stevens 636). It is a small (almost Ayres-­like) point, but the construction of the phrase “emphasis on the cultural as well as the scientific” suggests scientific knowledge is the baseline, whereas the cultural is called out as additional, and thus less fundamental, to the educational project (an unsurprising hierarchy at an institute of technology). Carnegie Tech consciously shaped their theatrical course of study to mirror other programs, indicated in Wood’s own description: “The theatre is as busy as any other laboratory in the Institute” (Stevens 635). Theater, Stevens is at pains to argue, is just as much work and study as any other discipline. The ANT network defined by college curricula overlaps, at Carnegie Tech, with the developing network of theatrical pedagogy. It is also due to Andrew Carnegie—­only partially indirectly—­that college instruction in general was standardized and quantified by modern credit-­hours. Although credit-­hour systems had been adopted prior to the twentieth century, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, to manage an endowment for professor pensions established by the Carnegie Foundation, sought to rigorously define what constituted a college and, by extension, a professor at a college. Part of this definition was to determine how much work—­as defined by hours in direct contact—­a full-­time student and faculty member should be expected to share. “The fundamental criterion was the amount of time spent on a subject, not the results attained” (cited in Shedd 8).

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This numeric score would be used to determine pension program eligibility for full-­time professors. “The ‘Carnegie unit,’ as it became known, was finally defined and accepted in 1909. . . . [B]ecause few colleges at the time had their own pensions or annuity funds, the unit was quickly accepted in both colleges and high schools. By 1910 almost all high schools measured course work by the Carnegie unit,” with colleges keeping pace (Shedd 8).11 Teaching time, like other work, was standardized, even for theater professors. While Carnegie Tech was ensuring a thorough course of study (with appropriate amounts of contact time), they weren’t worried about their students’ eventual stage success. “We were not, to put it quite bluntly, concerned with whether a student should become an actor or not,” Wood writes. Instead, a student should come out of the program knowing “the drama, its history, its literature, in a measure its technic, and perhaps that he have some hint of its social implications” (Stevens 636). After describing the intensity of the first three years of the curriculum (beginning with “correct diction” and “severe and continued exercise in reading,” which must have pleased the spirit of Ayres), Wood reports that in the fourth year “we plan to relax a little the severity of our requirements” to make room for “more daring experiment” and “personal specialization” (Stevens 637, 639). What form this experimentation might take isn’t specified, but given the rhetorical connections to scientific practice, this probably meant personal investigations to determine what postgraduation path might be most fitting. Indeed, Stevens continues, “We do not know what the student will make of himself through and after this course—­actor, writer, critic, manager, scene-­painter? We are not vitally concerned with the question, having before us the task of sending him out a trained man or woman” (Stevens 639).12 In teaching more than acting, Carnegie was offering a variation on the protean actor, seeking to create a more flexible theater worker who could contribute to production both onstage and off.13 Carnegie’s program was (and remains) incredibly influential. When 11. In addition to a latter-­day history of the uses of the credit-­hour, Shedd provides an informative summary of the push to “science” higher education that occurred in the 1910s, with emphasis on a 1910 report by Morris L. Cooke titled “Academic and Industrial Efficiency”—­ another overlap between the networks of manufacturing/business and academia, and a further example of Taylorism’s application outside the machine shop. 12. Men and women were both accepted into Carnegie’s program, but the curriculum was adjusted for each. “The girls substitute work in costuming for scene painting, but they do not forego the survey courses on that account” (Stevens 637). 13. An excellent account of the growth of BA, BFA, and MFA programs in theater arts can be found in Acting in the Academy: The History of Professional Actor Training in US Higher Education (2016) by Peter Zazzali.

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Otis Skinner in 1919 wrote that “the greatest need of the theatre in this country to-­day is a school, or conservatory, for the development toward perfection of acting,” his ideal model was Carnegie Tech’s (Skinner 43). Prospective actors, Skinner argued, should be trained by someone much like Craig’s über-­director, studying “under an actor of long experience, high intelligence and skilled in all schools,” but critically not a “theorist or experimenter” (Skinner 44). Skinner is looking for a regimen grounded in technical, and technological, reality. For Skinner, writing in 1919, the dearth of good (trained) actors is the most difficult hurdle for the theater in general to overcome. “Many a play,” he laments, “has been brushed violently from the knees of the gods because it was not ‘actor proof’ and the actors proved it” (Skinner 44). Further, in his ideal school, the student actors would not be limited to “high-­brow” drama, as “all sorts and conditions of plays should be the medium of the students’ training.” The goal was to make actors even more versatile than a pure focus on classic literature would allow. “For breadth, ease and authority [the actor] should be trained in the old plays of dramatic value—­prose and verse, from Shakespeare, Molière and the ‘old comedy’ writers of yester-­year to those of the present day” (Skinner 44). Skinner’s goals of “breadth, ease and authority” point toward a continuing move away from the lines-­of-­business casting model and toward more protean actors, expected to have at their command the ability to play a variety of different roles as a result of their training. A three-­part essay in The Drama in 1920 by Howard Granville-­Barker,14 “The School of ‘The Only Possible Theatre,’” highlights many of these issues that contemporary theater programs were navigating, along with a special focus on the demands of the Ibsenian realist school of play-­writing. While Granville-­Barker’s focus is on English theater and practice, his publication in The Drama meant his ideas were part of the larger conversation about US acting and theater pedagogy, and are worth exploring for their support of the technological paradigm as applied to theater. “What I want to insist on is that there is an actual technique attaching to the playing of Ibsen and his followers . . . which has not been worked out in theory or put into practice of teaching at all” (Granville-­Barker, “School [I]” 251–­52). “Modern” plays had resulted in acting technique taking a back seat to literary skill, a fact that Granville-­Barker states has been “experimentally proved.” Actors, bereft of the grandstanding style embedded in the melodramas of the past, felt that a rigorous technique in performance was un14. As a minor bibliographic note, Granville-­Barker was listed as “Granville Barker” when he published this set of essays, his self-­chosen hyphenation occurring after 1920.

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necessary and only “sympathy and understanding were needed” (Granville-­Barker, “School [I]” 252). As might be guessed, this is hardly Granville-­Barker’s opinion. What follows is both a staunchly Taylorist critique of the current state of English acting alongside a near-­textbook description of a paradigmatic change in science and technology: The older technicians are dying out, the older technique, even if it could be recaptured, is insufficient equipment for the work of the modern dramatist. No new technique has been thought out. The young actor goes into the struggle equipped with good intentions, the rudiments of knowledge of how to behave himself in public, some out-­of-­date traditions—­little else. Let him have the luck to get effective parts to play, the public, bless them, will never find him out. (Granville-­Barker, “School [I]” 252) With the passing of the old guard and no systematic means of analyzing the needs of the current theater, generating appropriate techniques for performance and teaching them in a rigorous and structured manner is impossible. There is no new model to replace the old one. Instead, it is up to chance whether the actor (or playwright) will meet with success or failure. Furthermore, just as Constant proposed in his study of technological change that innovation might not come from public demand but from a singular belief that a new method would be superior, Barker believes that neither the general spectator nor the bulk of professional theater critics have the vision or knowledge to adequately critique current theatrical practice.15 But with a better technique both the writer and actor’s work would be raised immeasurably. In either an overt evocation of the technological paradigm or an unconscious sublimation of it, he later argues that the school must not “so much teach acting as the component parts of acting” (Granville-­Barker, “School [II]” 300, emphasis mine). He lists a number of these components: “voice production, elocution, oratory, dialectics, eurhythmics, music and . . . dramatic literature, theatre history, dancing, fencing, costume” (Granville-­Barker, “School [II]” 302) and urges that these be pursued at length before “acting” itself is actually broached. With such a broad collection of courses undertaken early in an academic career, a wider variety of students might remain 15. This is a point that Skinner makes as well: “The taste of the many-­headed mob is destined to remain lamentably low, I fear” (Skinner 43).

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involved in their education, and from this group “it would be easier to pick out the sound student whose talent was likely to mature, than from a closely competing few, depending upon luck in the allotted parts, or upon their more showy qualities” (Granville-­Barker, “School [II]” 302). Granville-­ Barker again shuns the role of luck in building a theatrical career in the same voice with which he disdains “showy qualities,” preferring instead a plan of cultivating a natural talent into a formidable performer for the modern stage. For him, training in performance practice itself is a fraught proposition. “The attempt, made through the medium of coaching pupils in parts or plays, soon degenerates into the teaching of stage tricks” (Granville-­Barker, “School [II]” 302). This is the dreaded handing-­down of rules-­of-­thumb, denounced by modern industrial practice and, for Granville-­Barker, incompatible with a modern training regimen. In the final section of the essay he emphasizes his belief that simply participating in theater is hardly an effective means of learning the craft. “One must insist very sharply that hanging about a theatre supering is not a complete course of study in the art of acting, nor a proper substitute for it” (Granville-­ Barker, “School [III]” 347). Playing small roles and watching others play larger ones is a haphazard means of knowledge transmission at best, and—­ though he does not say this directly—­one clearly in conflict with the Taylorist vision of structured instruction. MacKaye’s American Academy of Dramatic Arts, to offer a final example of the trends in acting curricula, had outgrown its roots. MacKaye’s partner Franklin Sargent had run the school until his death in 1923, at which point Charles Jehlinger, an inaugural graduate of the program in 1886 who had returned to teach in 1898, became the new director, a post he held until his own death in 1952 (Baron 137). Even before his assumption of the directorship, Jehlinger had moved the curriculum away from MacKaye’s interpretations of Delsarte, developing, according to a 1959 retrospective article published in the New York Herald Tribune, “an ‘inner system’ which anticipated the theories of Stanislavsky in America by many years” (cited in Baron 142). Student Eleanor Cody Gould’s notes offer a window into the content of Jehlinger’s courses and approach (cited by Baron and others), providing insight into the AADA’s methodology in the first decades of the twentieth century. Firstly, Jehlinger emphasized the breadth of knowledge a superior actor should possess. “You need the understanding of all human nature, the sense of beauty of an artist and poet, the rhythm of the dancer and musician, and the mentality of a philosopher and a scientist” (cited in Baron 143). This wide perspective would support imaginative character analysis,

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another central tenet of the AADA curriculum. Character creation, informed by text analysis and separated from the lived experience of the actor, was a foundational technique for students in the program. James McTeague in Before Stanislavsky quotes Gould to explain the AADA’s guiding principle: “One dictum that appeared in the Catalogue and was taught the actors in the classroom was ‘live your characters. . . . You must live with them, study their attitude towards the various other characters in the play, their habit of thinking and living’” (cited in McTeague 52). Once an actor has constructed a complete character, distinct from the actor’s identity and based in the textual reality as given by the author, Jehlinger assured students that the “emotion will handle itself if you just give in” (cited in Baron 143). Both Baron and McTeague note that Jehlinger’s technique as recorded by Gould included language similar to Stanislavsky’s “Magic If”: “Stop and ask yourself. What would happen here in real life? I would do a thing this way—­but how am I different from the character that I am portraying? So—­how would the character react to this?” (McTeague 54; Baron 143). Complementing the course notes by Gould, the 1939 book The Actor Creates, written by one of AADA’s primary instructors, Aristide D’Angelo, is often taken as a proxy for Jehlinger’s own work.16 Naturally Jehlinger’s ideas could have shifted during his more than four decades of teaching, so the disparity between when he started at the AADA and the publication date prevents a strong chronology of Jehlinger’s development from being recreated from the text. More crucially, although Jehlinger began teaching in the early 1900s, D’Angelo in 1939 is writing in a theatrical milieu that is cognizant of Stanislavsky, Boleslavsky, Ouspenskaya, and even the Group Theatre, so his writing will almost assuredly partake of the contemporary vocabulary, rather than offering a pure “precontact” version of the AADA’s guiding methodological principles. Indeed, in D’Angelo’s preface he thanks “Lee Strasberg, former director of the Group Theatre, Harold Clurman, its present director, and Philip Loeb, actor and teacher, for their influence during his association with them” (D’Angelo viii). D’Angelo makes no effort to try and capture the historical essence of Jehlinger’s work with actors,17 as his goal is to write a textbook for actors (and teachers) to con16. Baron supports this contention with reference to an archival report in the AADA collection from graduate Jim Kirkwood: “Kirkwood explains that in his view, and based on his conversations with other graduates, D’Angelo’s book provides the best view of Jehlinger’s ideas” (Baron 152n26). McTeague also uses The Actor Creates to better explain the approach of the AADA as a whole. 17. Jehlinger does get cited by D’Angelo: for example, “‘The real actor,’ says Jehlinger, ‘must

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sult, and thus he happily includes contemporary figures as examples within his text, Stanislavsky included.18 D’Angelo, like Gould, stresses character creation grounded in the text of the play married to the imagination of the actor. “He [the actor] believes the fiction (Stanislavsky’s magical, creative if). . . . Once the actor begins to believe in imaginative truth unreservedly and unqualifiedly he has begun to master what is perhaps the greatest secret of his art.” This imagination, however, cannot be whatever whim the actor might dream up. “His imaginative conjurings must have their roots firmly embedded in the play” (D’Angelo 6). This imagination and text analysis are to be utilized by actors who have worked to physically train their own instrument, though D’Angelo’s focus is elsewhere, writing “I am reserving the nature of this preliminary technical and creative training for another work” (D’Angelo 5n1). The Actor Creates is concerned with the dual techniques of character analysis and creation and the theatrical expression of that character. Jehlinger, D’Angelo, and the AADA have their own set of shared network nodes with the industrial paradigm. The blending of auratic and scientific elements in the list of requisite knowledge for actors is in keeping with the ongoing negotiation of quantifiable and metaphysical elements in the art and craft of acting. The emphasis on a rigorous text analysis to develop a character imaginatively, rather than simply extending one’s personality, suggests a push toward the protean that characterized the distance between historical lines of business and contemporary production practice. McTeague highlights the AADA’s expectation in the efficacy of training the imagination: “The basis of the Academy’s theory was the cultivation of the imagination, mind and feeling, and its theory was firmly rooted in the premise that imagination, like principles of technique, could be enhanced” (McTeague 58). The reassurance found in Gould that given the proper preparation the emotion will “handle itself” is a direct iteration of the “one thing” enunciated by Taylor. For his part, D’Angelo hits many of the rhetorical landmarks of the technological approach to acting. D’Angelo counts himself among the believers in a science of the stage, and despite occasionally remonstrating against a too-­systematic mindset in the theater, he offers a highly strucpossess the courage of a lion and the sensitivity of a lamb’” (D’Angelo 7–­8), and “‘The actor’s mind must always be quicker than that of the audience,’ says Jehlinger” (D’Angelo 27). 18. D’Angelo’s recounting of the “to feel or not to feel” debate, for example, invokes figures ranging from Aristotle to Vakhtangov, along with Helen Hayes and the Lunts (D’Angelo 55–­ 56).

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tured roadmap of five separate stages for an actor at work, beginning with “Knowledge of the Play and Belief in Imaginative Truth,” then “the Character,” “Improvisation,” and passing through “The Rehearsal” (with seven substages identified), to end with “Performance” itself. Acting, D’Angelo argued, “requires long, arduous, systematic study. That it has its own separate technique, variable but nonetheless definite, there can be no doubt, contrary opinions notwithstanding.” Similarly, natural talent is not enough, for while “dramatic ability is fundamentally a natural gift, a perfect control of the media of communication is necessary to translate that dramatic ability into a reality” (D’Angelo 79). This echoes Craig’s call for supreme self-­ control on the part of the actor in the hopes of achieving true art. For D’Angelo, acting technique exists, is teachable, and is necessary to achieve true stage success. In the second half of the book, “Expression in Theatre,” D’Angelo covers familiar territory, with subsections encompassing “Concentration,” “Relaxation,” and “Inspiration,” all topics that had been previously addressed by Boleslavsky in his lectures and writings from the 1920s and ’30s (see below), as well as by others. D’Angelo’s comments on inspiration, for example, mirror much of what Stebbins had argued a half-­century prior. Inspiration certainly exists, and it is wonderful when it happens to you, but “true inspiration comes only with work, study, and practice. Without a knowledge of the technique of study and expression, the intention may be good, but the execution faulty” (D’Angelo 73). Like Minnie Maddern Fiske, D’Angelo admits that an actor may get lucky on occasion, “but how can he achieve some similar result the next time, should inspiration leave him? For acting is not only production but reproduction” (D’Angelo 74). D’Angelo even echoes Taylor’s comparison of technique and artistry to the surgeon, arguing that inspiration to be a doctor is not enough without the training acquired by attending medical school “and then practice, practice, practice operating” (D’Angelo 73). D’Angelo does not banish the auratic entirely, because inspiration comes from “the Almighty . . . [and] is greater than those who would analyze the ways of creation and impart its precepts to others,” but to imagine acting as a purely auratic exercise in divine possession would be incomprehensible (D’Angelo 73). At the same time, across the various AADA-­related sources, summoning and presenting emotions remains central to the work of an actor. McTeague argues that “the entire concept of acting [at the Academy] springs from the feelings which are conjured through the imaginative situation. Given a specific character, the actor was asked to identify feelingly with the character, to understand the character’s feelings, and to project them.” Or,

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as the catalog copy would put it, “It does not suffice to indicate emotion; the actor himself . . . must feel ever more deeply, until he becomes lost in his emotions and all sense of personal limitation vanishes before the anger, the sorrow, the love, the pain or joy that is stirring within him” (McTeague 59, 60). For D’Angelo’s part, he divides emotions between “life feeling” and “artistic feeling.” The latter “springs from the imagination” and “prompts artistic expression in the theatre” (D’Angelo 60). Anticipating critiques of Method actors, he goes on to criticize the “feeling” of most actors on stage as “false and shallow . . . [they] suffer because they will not make characters and incidents their source of study and inspiration. Many of them will throw their own personal feelings upon the character to a point where the character is never fully or even partially realized.” Too much of the “real” actor prevents the imagined character from taking the stage. With a nod to Freudian psychology, D’Angelo writes “subconsciously, the richness of the actor’s personal feelings born of full living will subtly nourish the character’s feelings provided the actor will create and obey the character shaped in the imagination” (D’Angelo 61). Imagination and text analysis are combined to create a character who becomes filled with real emotion, presented by the trained actor in performance.19

THE AMERICAN LABORATORY THEATRE

Thus, by the time the American Laboratory Theatre opened in 1923 there was already a lively and longstanding debate about what a specialized course of study for actors might look like, stretching back from Carnegie Tech through Fiske and Ayres to the AADA and MacKaye. Structurally, the ALT followed in the footsteps of other conservatory-­style programs in the US. What made the ALT unique was having MAT alums Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya teach Stanislavskian techniques. In her role as editor of the 2010 reissue of Boleslavsky’s iconic text Acting: The First Six Lessons, Rhonda Blair includes surviving transcripts of the talks Boleslavsky gave while the MAT was still in the US, as well as materials presented during his lectures at the ALT. She offers a wonderful contextu19. McTeague allows that D’Angelo could certainly have imbibed some of his philosophy and approach from Boleslavsky, given the relative publication dates of their respective texts, but goes on to note that “many of the MacKaye-­Delsarte influenced schools embraced similar ideas as early as the 1890s. Drawing on memory of life experience as a source for imaginative feeling was, therefore, an American view long before Stanislavsky appeared on the scene” (McTeague 59).

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alization of his work and its reception by the next generation of acting teachers such as Strasberg and Adler. Two specific points made by Blair in her introduction bear emphasizing here for their intersection with the absorption into the theatrical community of the technological paradigm. First is the belief in a scientific underpinning for the acting technique being taught at the ALT. Scientific authority is invoked more clearly now than in the past, as the work in the classroom is directly tied to specific theories. Second, the ALT students’ understanding and application of what Boleslavsky and Ouspenskaya were teaching was influenced by many factors, not least of which was the predisposition of the students to hear what they were primed to hear. Beginning with the scientific, the work of psychologist Theodule Ribot stood behind Stanislavsky, and Boleslavsky similarly mentions Ribot in his lecture “The Qualifications of a Creative Actor.” Part of an actor’s necessary development, according to Boleslavsky, was “to get a knowledge, even though an elementary one, of the first principles of the Psycho-­ Analysis of Human Feelings, using any popular manual of Psychology (Ribot)” (Boleslavsky, Acting 104). Blair points out that Ribot’s fundamental model for humanity was one of organic wholeness, “unlike earlier views which separated mind from body or feeling from reason” (Blair, “Editor’s Introduction” xix). Technologies are applications of scientific principles. Using the principles drawn from Ribot, Stanislavsky and others created exercises designed to develop aspects of the actor’s abilities leading to better performances. Ribot offered the science, and Boleslavsky provided the technology in the form of exercises to explore and unlock emotions in performance. As for Boleslavsky’s pedagogical descendants, Adler and Strasberg took different things away from their time at the ALT, and Blair highlights that this is partly attributable to the inclinations of the students themselves. Blair includes quotes from Adler and Strasberg citing the ALT in general, and Boleslavsky in particular, as hugely important in terms of establishing and developing their approaches to performance. However, Carnicke points out that Boleslavsky was often away from the ALT during Strasberg’s brief tenure there, where “he occasionally heard Boleslavsky lecture about acting, but consistently practiced his craft with Ouspenskaya” (Carnicke, Stanislavsky, 2nd ed. 44). Where Adler “emphasized given circumstances, observation, and imagination” Strasberg focused on “relaxation, concentration, and affective memory” (Blair, “Editor’s Introduction” xvii). As Carnicke asserts, what Boleslavsky’s students took away from their time with him “depended as much upon what [the] students expected to

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hear, as it did upon what Boleslavsky himself actually had to say” (Carnicke, Stanislavsky, 2nd ed. 64, cited in Blair xvi). A reasonable extension of this argument is that students were attracted to those aspects of Boleslavsky and Ouspenskaya’s approaches that were congruent with their cultural expectations of how to think about acting and the theater—­expectations that had become increasingly atomized and technological in the past twenty-­ plus years in the US. Again, this is not to argue that students were reading material into Boleslavsky that simply wasn’t there; rather, the appreciation and excitement that attended his lectures and teaching were due, in part, to the fact that he was arguing that there could be a system—­any system—­to teach acting. Adler recalled the ALT offered training that was “thorough and complete, well-­rounded and systematic, at an unmatchable level” (Hirsch 62). This systematization is reflected in the content of Boleslavsky’s lectures. For example, in “The Qualifications of a Creative Actor” he lists eighteen different aspects of a successful actor and artist. “All these qualities, with the exception of talent could be and should be developed by the actor. But this development must be done gradually in a definite and logical sequence” (Boleslavsky, Acting 103). Students sympathetic to a Taylorist approach to solving the problems of the stage would naturally grab onto a promise of sequential and logical development. Boleslavsky had opined that talent could not be taught in his earlier “What Is an Actor” lecture, where he goes so far to say an actor “has to have 18 qualities. The first is talent. If one has that, the other 17 do not matter” (Boleslavsky, Acting 82). Yet Boleslavsky—­as would Taylor—­is not content to simply say talent is all an actor needs. An actor for Boleslavsky is actually the merging of two distinct components of the self: the “artist creator” whose talent is their fundamental characteristic, and the “material,” referring not to the script, but rather to the corporeal and mental capacities of the individual performer. While the first aspect of acting couldn’t be taught, the second “is entirely in his [the actor’s] power and it could and should be developed” (Boleslavsky, Acting 82). Boleslavsky argues the same point as Taylor: Schmidt must have the natural ability to lift and load forty-­eight long tons of pig iron per day, but training is essential for him to achieve this level of efficiency and accomplishment. Minnie Maddern Fiske sounded a similar note in “The Gift of Comedy” in 1920, in which she argues that while the actual “gift of comedy” is just that, a gift that cannot be taught, “the intuitive comedy sense will attain no great heights unless it is supplemented by imagination and training” (M. M. Fiske, “Comedy” 249). Again, training and cultivation are required of even the most gifted and talented

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aspirant to the stage. The debate is about what that training should entail and how a young actor should go about getting it. These same arguments about the necessity of cultivating talent would continue to be amplified decades after Boleslavsky’s untimely death in 1937. Boleslavsky, in his early lectures to the US public, was careful to clarify that even topics that sounded more metaphysical than corporeal could be approached systematically. Take “Spiritual Concentration,” the title and subject of Boleslavsky’s thirteenth lecture. While the name might suggest a mystical and unquantifiable aspect of an actor’s work, Boleslavsky matter-­ of-­factly defines the subject and then assures his listeners of its capacity for improvement by diligent effort: “Spiritual Concentration” is the ability to say to any of your feelings: “Stop, and fill my entire being!” This faculty can be developed and trained as much as one can train the human body,—­and this training is the main problem of a creative school of acting. (Boleslavsky, Acting 107) Boleslavsky’s description highlights two hallmarks of his approach to training and his understanding of acting. First, Spiritual Concentration is trainable, and Boleslavsky will go on to compare this training—­as had so many of his predecessors—­to musicianship: “Just as the hand of a pianist or a violinist requires daily exercises, so does our spirit with the only difference that the exercises of our spirit are much harder than those on a piano” (Boleslavsky, Acting 111). Second, Spiritual Concentration’s focus on feelings highlights the importance of emotion within Boleslavsky’s conception of the work of the actor. As Blair notes, Strasberg would make emotion central to his work with actors, whereas Adler would come to see emotion as a result of playing a character’s action. In the same lecture Boleslavsky lays out a set of twenty exercises to develop the capacity for Spiritual Concentration, all centering on the ability to recall physical and emotional states. Number 4 is a good example of a physical recall exercise: “Remember the gown you had on, the day you experienced an event of great importance.” Exercise 10, by contrast, is practically a definition of Strasbergian emotional recall: “Remembering your last strong emotion try to retain it for a certain definite period of time. (The time should be gradually increased from a few moments to several hours.)” (Boleslavsky, Acting 112, emphasis original). Whether the memory was tactile or emotional, for Boleslavsky it was all part of “affective memory” (Blair, “Editor’s Introduction” xvii). (Strasberg would subdivide this con-

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cept—­as the Taylorist paradigm would predict and encourage—­into sense and emotional memory, further atomizing the work of the actor.) What Boleslavsky and his pedagogical descendants shared was the idea that recall was a skill, necessary for actors, that could be improved with practice. Throughout his lectures, Boleslavsky proposed approaching the work of acting in a manner that had been gaining currency in the US through the continued embrace of industrial modernism. Such training would be exercise-­based, compartmentalized, structured, and absolutely necessary even if one possessed natural talent. In chapter 5 I will return to the legacy of Boleslavsky, Ouspenskaya, and the American Laboratory Theatre through the work of the Group Theatre, and also look more closely at Boleslavsky’s Acting: The First Six Lessons (originally published 1933). For the second part of this chapter I turn to two lesser-­known but still illuminating examples of how Taylorist values influenced the approach to theatrical production and the work of acting. One is a textbook, the other a specific manuscript version of a play script, and both are products of the publishing house Longmans, Green and Company (New York and London). These materials offer a look at how Taylorist values were not confined purely to professional theatrical activities in New York and were spread across the country. To conclude, I explore a few brief examples of the ongoing dynamic between auratic and quantifiable aspects of performance as reflected in the rhetoric of contemporary commentators.

ALL THE QUALITIES OF A PROFESSIONAL PLAY

In 1925 Longmans, Green and Company released Acting and Play Production by Harry Lee Andrews and Bruce Weirick. Subtitled “A Manual for Classes, Dramatic Clubs, and Little Theatres,” the book offered a course outline of sorts, with three chapters on actor training, another three chapters on selecting and rehearsing a play, and a concluding appendix with selections from scripts for use by student actors. Chapter 4 (“The Play”) is the transitional chapter between acting technique and production practice, and focuses on selecting a script for production, which the authors allow is “the dread of the director.” However, “this dread may be lessened by an acquaintance with the very efficient aid to be had from several companies that publish lists of plays, and who sell the plays to amateur organizations” (Andrews and Weirick 146). Helpfully, they proceed to list nine such publishers (with Longmans naturally at the top). The list does not include all publishers that have plays in their catalog;

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the ones included were considered the “most convenient and efficient [!] in this field” (Andrews and Weirick 147). Longmans enjoys prime position not (only) because they published Acting and Play Production, but because they offered a unique product. A company requesting to perform a script could get two different versions of the text, one for actors and one for the director. The “Players’ Prompt Book” contained “no stage directions” and was “intended only for reading preliminary to production and for the convenience of the players in memorizing their lines.” By comparison, the “Director’s Manuscript”20 had the complete play, plus all the information necessary to the production. Diagrams of stage settings, pictures of characters, lighting and property plots, make­up directions and general instructions are all included in addition to the complete stage business and lines of each part. The directions are explicit and clear, so that even the inexperienced director may not be handicapped in producing these plays. (Andrews and Weirick 147–­48) This was an enticing package of benefits, offered as an add-­on if a company was buying acting editions and performance rights for a show. While the acting copies were purchased, the director’s version was a complimentary loaner, though Longmans indicated they would charge a five-­dollar replacement fee for any Director’s Manuscript not returned in good condition once rehearsals were complete (Tompkins and Reeid, Millionaire, PM np). Because there were far fewer copies of the Director’s Manuscripts published, and these were designed to be returned to the company rather than kept, most of the Longmans plays of the period on library shelves are acting editions. Fortunately, the New York Public Library Billy Rose Theatre Division has preserved a number of Director’s Manuscripts in their collections alongside the player’s copies, and these provided my window into this particular product. In an early example of cross-­promotion, Longmans advertised this service in the acting editions of their plays. Actors were greeted with a boilerplate page, standard across titles, labeled “Important Information for the Director.” This text explained that the “Player’s Book is for the actor alone.  .  .  . Beyond the psychology of the part, it contains no instructions 20. Longmans variously uses “Director’s Manuscript” and “Directors’ Manuscript” when referring to this product. I have tried to remain faithful to each source in direct quotes, and default to the singular form where applicable.

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whatever, and will not serve the director in producing the play.” But if someone were interested in mounting a production, “the Director’s Manuscript is a complete producing text in every particular. It has been arranged wholly from the director’s standpoint, and is intended only for his use.” The various aspects of production included in the director’s version are then enumerated, including sets, properties, lighting, “photographs of stage sets and characters; descriptions of characters, costumes, and make up; and complete stage directions, reproducing utterly the entire action of the original professional performance” (Harvey np). Longmans was clear that the Director’s Manuscript was loaned for free but would not be mailed until the rights were secured and the royalties either paid or guaranteed.21 Note also that the player’s scripts, despite being stripped of almost all information, were still provided with the psychology (the science) of the characters. To eliminate this from the text would, apparently, be a step too far even for Longmans, and indicates a level of comfort with the integration of science within theatrical practice. Directors got their own standard text in their scripts as well. After the basic title page and copyright notices, each Director’s Manuscript I reviewed began with a generic essay titled “Suggestions to the Director” followed by a primer on “Stage Principles.” The introductory materials are noted as being under copyright to Longmans dated 1928, three years after the mention of Director’s Manuscripts in Acting and Play Production, indicating some sense of refinement and progression as the service expanded. Both “Suggestions” and “Stage Principles” are credited to one Nathaniel Reeid, who seems to have served as an in-­house dramaturg at Longmans. His name appears at the end of the general advice to directors, and he is also credited as the adaptor on a number of Longmans’ scripts.22 Addressing himself to leaders of small theater groups, Reeid first states that because road shows are disappearing, “the responsibility of presenting good drama to the outlying community has come to rest wholly with the amateur. It is a great responsibility, and carries with it a wonderful op21. For what it is worth, none of the Director’s Manuscripts that I have reviewed to date included actual photographs. It may be that the photos were sent separately and not preserved alongside the scripts themselves, or it could be that they intended to include photographs but that it became prohibitively expensive for the plays they were selling. Or it could be that it was good marketing to offer them, even if they wouldn’t be available. 22. For example, Reeid is listed as the “editor” of Ayn Rand’s The Night of January 16th, published by Longmans in 1933. In the “descriptive bibliography” of Rand’s works, the Director’s Manuscript is indicated as having a photo of the Broadway cast included. See Perinn, 46–­49. The Longmans-­published play The Millionaire (1930) is credited to “Juliet Wilbor Tompkins in collaboration with Nathaniel Edward Reeid” (see acting edition of The Millionaire).

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portunity” (Reeid 1). The opportunity Reeid mentions is to mount productions that would otherwise not be seen outside major cities. The responsibility is to do those shows justice, in particular by avoiding sloppy, amateurish production qualities and practices. This is where the Director’s Manuscripts come into play. They are differentiated from scripts from competing publishing houses by dint of the extensive research Longmans’ employees ostensibly did to craft the final product. According to their advertising copy, other publishers might only take the original director’s script and notes, package them up, and send them out. But this would only contain “such directions as the director saw fit to jot down; it does not contain the numerous other things that he merely ‘kept in mind.’” These unnoted aspects of the production are then lost to producing companies across the country. “As a result,” the essay mournfully concludes, “their productions frequently fall far short of the original” (Reeid 1). Although these competitors are never named, it is hard not to fill in the blanks with Samuel French as well as the others listed in Acting and Play Production. Riding to the rescue are the recorders of Longmans. “Our method is to take this original script into the theatre and sit through the professional performance night after night, correcting and clarifying, until every omission is supplied and every detail placed. Thus our Manuscript becomes a professional production on paper.” So armed, the local director can marshal his or her forces into producing the play as it was professionally presented. From blocking to design the original production can be reproduced by a local company. For the neophyte it offered a proven path to success, and even for those who had acting or directing experience “it offers the suggestions of the ablest experts of the theatre” (Reeid 1). In practice, the definition of “ablest experts” could justifiably be seen as hyperbolic, as it’s a bit of a stretch to say that the artistic team of the original production of the largely forgotten play The Inner Circle at Mrs. Martin Heydemann’s Playhouse of Cleveland, Ohio, was composed of the cream of the theatrical crop, yet it is their production that is immortalized in the Director’s Manuscript. Regardless of the provenance of the content, Longmans’s language points to both the aspirational nature of the project and the pitch to theater groups that they would be able to produce a professional-­quality production with a Director’s Manuscript at their disposal. Philosophically, Longmans argues forcefully for the director as the dominant creative force in any production, echoing both Taylor and the celebration of the MAT’s use of a regisseur. “The director, under the inspiration of the author, conceives the standpoint of the production and deter-

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mines its course of development. Since there can be but one standpoint in a given production, there can be but one director.” The other elements, including the actors, “are merely the means by which this standpoint is developed and the unity maintained. They are parts serving the whole—­cogs in the wheel—­and can render only a special service” (Reeid 1). Actors are allowed some creative freedom in characterization, but within the bounds of the director’s vision. The actor’s “supreme and undisputed task is interpretation, but only the interpretation of a part as related to the whole.” Perhaps acknowledging the apparent restrictions of such an approach, Reeid suggests that actors be given a “free week” in which to explore their parts as they best see fit. “Many inconsistent things will be done,” he warns, but it will offer the actors a chance to flex their creative muscles, “and at the same time make them thoroughly appreciative of the difficult task of the director” (Reeid 2). The experience, in other words, will reinforce the desired hierarchy. This is a theatrical structure Taylor could get behind. The actors are the laborers, the director is the foreman, and the scientific manager is represented in absentia by the Director’s Manuscript, laying out the means to achieve a preordained successful end. This philosophy is powerfully reiterated when Reeid asserts that the director’s best asset “is his absolute domination of the players through a superior knowledge of the play.” Longmans, as intimated above, was taking no chances on this front, having eliminated much of the information shared with the director from the acting manuscripts. With the actors inoculated by purposeful obliviousness, the director can carry on, “unhampered by a questioning cast” (Reeid 2). Actors in such a production, like Schmidt moving pig iron, just needed to be able to take direction. Whereas the “Suggestions to the Director” offered guidance on logistics and rehearsal practices, “Stage Principles” offered diagnostic tenets the director should keep in mind when actually rehearsing. Analogous to Anthony’s “Commandments” from the previous chapter, they are described as an “infallible guide of the producing director,” and “when trouble develops in any scene, they should not only indicate to him what is wrong, but also point the way out. They are the underlying principles of all professional work” (Reeid 2). These eight principles range from “Maintain the Stage Picture” to “Leading Characters Take Strongest Stage Positions” to “Pick Up Cues Instantly With Voice or Body or With Both.” Each principle has a paragraph explaining the pertinent problem and how to apply the solution with the cast. Finally, there is a one-­page primer on stage directions. The assumption is that most of the cast will be wholly new to con-

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cepts such as stage right and upstage left, so Reeid recommends that time be taken to insure the cast learns the positions. In keeping with the somewhat aggressive tone set so far, Reeid suggests that one group could go on stage “and step rapidly into positions as the director calls them out, while another group sits by and points out the mistakes.” Once mastered, the actors should be expected to write down their blocking in their own scripts, as well as indicate on which word in their line they are expected to begin their movement (Reeid 4). For a director who is religiously following the Director’s Manuscript, this might amount to actors simply transcribing the predetermined direction, but the advantages of having the actor remain ignorant of the original plan are perceived as greater than the efficiencies to be gained by having the full blocking preprinted in the actors’ scripts.23 In his conclusion, Reeid admits that while “play production among amateurs is usually a nerve-­racking task,” the only essential difference between amateurs and professionals “is definiteness; [and] that the indefinite amateur of today, by proper rehearsal, may become the definite professional of tomorrow. But to content oneself to amateur work is to shut the door of progress” (Reeid 4). This offers a succinct summation of the Director’s Manuscript’s underlying assumption: there is no special talent or genius needed to either direct or perform, at least when it comes to works that have already been professionally produced. The Director’s Manuscript offers a step-­by-­step guide to replicating an already successful performance, and when difficulties emerge, an effective application of the eight principles of the stage, as condensed by Reeid, should be enough to troubleshoot anything problematic noted in rehearsal. Through diligent application of these basic techniques the amateur can offer a performance rivaling a professional, whose primary advantage is their “definiteness,” or ability to faithfully execute according to plan. Some clear parallels between Actors and Play Production and Reeid’s work emerge from a comparative reading. Reeid suggests doubling the cast, and Andrews and Weirick do the same, primarily for insurance should 23. A variation on this idea emerges in the recommendation for the director to have a “secret plan” when working under the “Active Analysis” model developed by Stanislavsky at the end of his life, as described by scholar and artist James Thomas. While a full analysis of this iteration of Stanislavsky’s thinking is necessarily outside the scope of this project, it is worth noting that whereas the Longmans’s director’s notes are assumed to be set in stone, the “secret plan” of the Active Analysis director “is not intended to manoeuver the actors into guessing what the director is thinking, but to empower the actors to take responsibility for their own work. . . . The director checks the specificity and accuracy of the actors’ thoughts, changing his or her own previous night’s homework if an actor suggests something more interesting and accurate” (J. Thomas 51).

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an actor prove unable to perform at the requisite level. Elsewhere Reeid recommends enforcing timeliness (as a means of modeling professional practice), as does the textbook in a strongly Taylorist vein: “Tardy actors, and actors absent without leave, should be dealt with severely, and if necessary dropped. You can produce a better play with a working even if naturally slow cast than with a group of lazy ‘geniuses.’ The man who is late or absent is an enemy of the play” (Andrews and Weirick 167–­68). Taylor would have absolutely no patience for employees not showing up to work, despite any natural gifts they might have, and would happily have designated them as the “enemy.” Slow and steady is the winner of the race, even if that means cultivating talent where it might not be so easily perceived. At the same time, there are some departures between Acting and Play Production and the guidance given to directors in the Longmans’s scripts. Reeid argues that “Stage Picture” should be always maintained, that the director shouldn’t hesitate to “shift others to keep balance,” and that “all movement, including gestures, positions, turns, crosses, entrances and exits, must be made in deference to the ‘picture sense’ of the audience” (Tompkins and Reeid, Millionaire DM 2–­3). Andrews and Weirick do concede that “a messy looking stage, one badly balanced, with no pleasing grouping for the eye of the spectator will harm even the best acting,” but argue that the way to achieve this is not through the director making choices about blocking before rehearsals begin, but rather through “trial and error, letting the actors take what positions they find most in character, and checking them only when the results are obviously bad from the view in the house” (Andrews and Weirick 195–­96). Andrews and Weirick have more faith in the abilities of the actor than Reeid, arguing that “the right mood in the actor will usually determine his position, and stage groupings, better than a director could do it” (Andrews and Weirick 196). For Reeid, nobody is better suited to making decisions about the movement of characters than the external director, yet for Andrews and Weirick this is precisely what they are proposing. This points to a fundamental distinction between the philosophy and goals of Acting and Play Production and what Longmans was selling in the Director’s Manuscripts. Where Andrews and Weirick argue that it is just as wrong to give line readings to actors as to tell them “where to stand, how to move, [and] how to be grouped” (Andrews and Weirick 197), the whole point of a Longmans script was to do exactly that. An actor was merely a cog in the wheel whose design was set independently of their ideas of character or “mood.” Andrews and Weirick place some faith in the power of actors to embody their characters and make decisions that will seem natu-

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ral and right. “If you are in character,” they assure the reader (and here “in character” can be taken to mean understanding the emotional content of the moment being rehearsed and the relation of the characters to each other), “anything is proper. If it is not good, look at it twice; you will not be in character” (Andrews and Weirick 198, emphasis original). The Longmans script replaces confidence in the actors with the scientific certainty of successful professional blocking and stage business faithfully recorded in the manuscript. The textbook cautions against too heavy a directorial hand in rehearsal, which would cramp “the naturalness of the actor, and [stamp] the play with the arbitrary mould of the director’s imagination” (Andrews and Weirick 195–­96). This is nowhere to be found in Reeid’s work. Actors are more of a liability than a resource when using the Director’s Manuscripts. Their sole responsibility is to interpret their role within the bounds established by the director and the Longmans team. These contradictions, far from requiring reconciliation, are useful indications of the focus of each product, as each is aimed at a different audience. Actors and Play Production is a textbook for actor training and play production. As such, the authors couldn’t suggest that you didn’t actually need any training to be successful, just the ability to follow directions established by someone else. Longmans’s scripts, by comparison, are marketed to theater-­makers at every level, and make no assumptions about the training, skill, or experience of any member of the production team. In fact, relying on a community theater actor to find the right mood and characterization, when they may never have been on stage before, seems a risk unlikely to yield better results than simply following the directions in the script. This would then allow the company to spend its limited rehearsal time on drilling a successful premade performance. The Director’s Manuscripts do offer incredibly detailed design and blocking notes, with more description than might be found in a comparable Samuel French script. Each page of the director’s edition is keyed to the page(s) of the Players Book, as the extra description in the Director’s Manuscript, even with full-­size pages as opposed to the smaller sheets of the actor’s texts, means that the pagination will be out of sync between the two versions. Just the opening description in The Millionaire is enough to push all character lines off the first page of the director’s version. Where the actor’s edition describes the setting, opening character positions, and characters’ activities in a paragraph of some eleven lines, the director’s version dilates that to three substantive and descriptive paragraphs, each about eighteen lines. Similarly, far more character description is given in the Di-

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rector’s Manuscript than in the acting edition, a curious turn of events given the assurance that the acting edition contains the psychology of a character. For example, the character of “Blanche Heath” is described for the director as about forty, with a striking personality. She feels and gives the impression that she is bigger than her surroundings—­an Alexander sighing for other worlds to conquer. She is cultured and elegant, but with many edges left unpolished. She is selfish and wicked without knowing it—­a politician stirred by high motives that involve only self. (Tompkins and Reeid, Millionaire DM 1) Her description continues with a costume breakdown and hair and makeup notes. The actor would see none of this, despite the acting edition supposedly maintaining the “psychology” of the character. Perhaps this sort of information was deemed too empowering for the actor—­if she had access to her larger motivations, she might argue with the director about specific choices. In practice, giving actors access to the “psychology” of the character meant detailing the basics of their blocking and intentions in each scene, stripped of the technical details of where to move. In the acting edition, for example, “Gideon” at one point “shows mixed sorrow for BLANCHE, and joy for his own good fortune. He finally lays down the note, quickly gets his suitcase, and opens it as if to dress and go out” (Tompkins and Reeid, Millionaire, PM 30). The director sees, “He shows mixed sorrow for Blanche, and joy for his own good fortune. He X DRC finally lays down the note, quickly X DLC gets his suitcase, and puts it D of sofa and opens it, as if to dress and go out” (Tompkins and Reeid, Millionaire, DM 31).24 The technical details of “cross down right center” professionally rendered as X DRC and the like, along with the overall character arcs, are the special knowledge reserved for the director alone to parcel out to the cast. Finally, it is worth noting that while actors need not be geniuses, they did need to be able to emote. The character’s “psychology” is boiled down to the emotions they portray in the moment. The Taylorist foundations of Longmans’s product could be appreciated even without reading a single script, as their advertisements in the theater journals of the day often explicitly invoke Taylorist values. The 24. Stage directions in the Director’s Manuscripts are underlined, whereas in the acting edition they are italicized.

Figure 5: Longmans ad

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format was often a list of their most recent acquisitions, testimony about the quality of the plays, and a box set off from the rest listing the advantages of using the Director’s Manuscript. Occasionally they ran a flashier ad, and these make for the best reading, as in this advertisement from The Drama of March 1930. A man and woman in evening dress are sketched in conversation. The upper left corner contains two quotes from (presumably) the woman talking to the man: “All the qualities of a professional production!” and “I never would have believed it possible for an amateur group to produce a play so well. How did you manage it?” The director pays his compliments to choosing a good play, selecting a good cast, and working hard, “But the thing that turned our play from just a good amateur performance into what seemed a professional production was the DIRECTORS’ MANUSCRIPT lent me by Longmans when we selected the play.” The director goes on to list all the information included in the director’s version—­sets, costumes, lights, props, and makeup—­finishing with, “it reproduced the action of the entire professional performance but everything was so clarified and simplified that it was easy for me to work it all out so that our performance seemed so professional” (Longmans, Green and Company). In none of the above quotes have I added any emphasis; Longmans was clearly interested in highlighting the availability of a professional production to any amateur group wise enough to select a Longmans script and utilize their particular DIRECTOR’S MANUSCRIPTS. Judging from the testimonial quotes included in the ad, the primary audience for these scripts were high school and college theater programs. Of the four excerpts from satisfied customers, three are from high schools and the fourth from the Department of Drama at Drake University. “Little time was available,” says an unnamed source from Washington Irving High School in New York, “but in spite of this handicap a copy of the Director’s Manuscript so simplified the work of production and coaching that our play went over with a bang” (Longmans Green and Company). Everything about the manuscripts was about overcoming one obstacle or another, not the least of which was the desire to produce “professional” quality productions with decidedly amateur actors. What Longmans Director’s Manuscripts promised to their customers was not just blocking, but efficiency and quality, guaranteed by the meticulous recording of a successful production and the clarity with which it was conveyed to their customers. When Esther Williams Green from West Virginia High School in Morgantown is quoted in an ad saying “I have always found the Longmans Plays, with the invaluable aid of the Director’s Manu-

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script, have the edge upon other plays presented” (Longmans, Green and Company), the “edge” is the superiority assured by following the preestablished production recorded in all its descriptive detail. Unlike “other plays,” whose scripts include only what the director recalled, Longmans’s own product is based on direct observation, and all but guarantees that an already successful production can be remounted by using their texts. If enough variables are controlled for, the promise is that what worked in one venue will work as well in another. Like Fiske’s thorough-­bass, the Director’s Manuscript is a black box of sorts, hiding levels of development and complexity away in order to provide a consistent output. Reeid does warn that while it is often fine to scale the set down to fit a particular stage, changing “the location or relationship of doors and furniture is to necessitate the change of all action with reference to them, thus destroying the Manuscript.” Reeid doesn’t say that other stagings won’t work, but for a director who wants to reenvision the set, it would be better “to discard the Manuscript altogether and work directly from the Player’s Prompt Book” (Tompkins and Reeid, Millionaire, DM 2). The unspoken critique is that such a process would necessarily be less efficient than simply replicating the production that has already proven itself. While it might be more personally satisfying as an actor to explore a role, or as a director to conceive and execute an original vision, or to collaborate collectively and generate a new production concept, this was not seen as anywhere near as important, or as useful, as devotion to the unifying vision of a singular, repeatable, successful production. Nowhere in Reeid’s commentary is there a sense that by following the instructions laid out in the Director’s Manuscript violence was being done to the process or product of theater. The artistic contributions of the actors are limited to interpretation within the bounds of the director’s vision. Physically, mass production requires identical, interchangeable parts. Philosophically, efficiency and repeatability need to be valued above individuality and variation for it to make sense to pursue mass production. Longmans’s scripts offer yet another example of the reification of those values in the culture at large, another node in the developing network growing from the interaction of industrial philosophy and theatrical practice. The Director’s Manuscripts are efficient because they have done the work for you. The production process has been streamlined since rehearsal can be about practicing the final product, rather than developing it. The scripts are, in essence, an attempt to mass produce a particular production. The set, costumes, lighting, and blocking are recorded in great and glorious

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detail in the Director’s Manuscript and standardized from production to production. The science of each show has been established by the ablest experts in the field. The actors are cogs in service to the larger machine of the show, with the local director tasked not with true creation but execution, in accordance with Taylor’s division of workers into scientist, manager, and laborer.

SCIENCE, EXPERIMENTS, AND THE STAGE

Director’s Manuscripts had little room for the auratic, because everything was to have been quantified and recorded before a local company received the script. While this marks a somewhat extreme banishment of the spiritual from the theatrical, the same technological vocabulary and tension between auratic and systematic performance appear with remarkable regularity in the texts of the decade. To offer a few brief examples, in a 1924 article in The Drama, one Maurice Browne describes the activities of a theater school he and a Miss Van Volkenburg established in San Francisco. “Our former approach to the theatre through a play’s ‘printed word’ and ‘business’ did not, we all soon found, take us nearly far back enough, and we started experimenting.” Leaving behind the traditional stage business, the first “experiments” (the word itself is repeated three times in a single paragraph) were “mainly in pantomime (both stylistic and naturalistic) and in improvisation,” but they felt that there was something still deeper to be discovered. So, in the last year, they began “the most radical experiments which we have yet made, we believe, in any branch of theatre.” Their approach was to have students work on the expression of “primary emotions—­fear, hate, love, joy, pain, and the like, through a simultaneous and synchronized fusion of pantomime with the vowel sounds alone.” The goal of this work was to extend the range and versatility of their students and allow an actor to become “not only his own poet but simultaneously his own interpreter” (Browne 33).25 The students generated scenes, and later plays, with only nonverbal vocalizations as accompaniment. Public response to these vowel-­sounded emotional performances was 25. An interesting echo to the Painter’s advice to the Actor in the Edward Gordon Craig dialogue discussed in chapter 2. This may not be entirely by accident, as in the same article they credit Craig with the phrase “sportsman and craftsman” in describing Edward Kuster, a former student who had opened a theater in Carmel, California, where the author’s next adventure awaited (Browne 34).

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mixed, but questions about the morality of their new approach, or even of long-­standing educational benefit, were of little concern to Browne and Van Volkenburg, “who are nothing so high-­sounding as educationalists or moralists, being merely workers in and for the theatre” (Browne 34). They labor, through experiments, to determine the rules of effective performance. Emotions remain the central concern, and as in any good physics experiment they strip away complicating variables (such as coherent speech) to dissect first principles. This is not meant to turn the actors into automatons, but rather to free them to be poets and interpreters of their own artistry—­ making room for the spiritual within the scientific experimentation. As another example, in a single-­page article from 1926 titled “Rhythm in Acting” by a Colin Campbell Clements, the same echoes of scientific vocabulary and experimentation can be heard. Clements ruminates on acting in realist drama, the scientific form of the age. He laments that these plays often seem to lack some quality of vivacity that attended the days of melodrama, and sees expressionism and symbolism as attempts to do with design what might have previously been accomplished by the actor, “but as of yet no one of these experiments has been entirely successful” (Clements 132). The issue is that modern acting “has no definite style of its own,” and the classical style, “even if it were revived would be inadequate for our modern apronless, wingless, and electric lighted stage. What we need is a new form of acting.” Of paramount importance for the contemporary actor, à la Craig, is “perfect command of [their] instrument: the actor’s body; it must emanate from a body so perfectly coordinated that it responds instantly to the actor’s brain.” Clements sees in Dalcroze Eurhythmics a potential solution, as students who have undergone such systematic and rigorous training enjoy exactly such control. From there the actor can then meld with “the imagination of the playwright” and “the actor’s body becomes the willing instrument of the play he is interpreting” (Clements 132). This, in turn, will define the new style of acting suited to the times: actor artists who subsume their individuality to the overarching vision of the playwright’s words (and presumably a director’s guidance, though a director is not mentioned by Clements). Both Browne and Clements invoke experimentation to determine a suitable course of artistic action, and this use of “experimental” is part of the literal sense the word had enjoyed in theater, stretching back into the 1900s and 1910s, and forward into the ’30s and ’40s. When the Black newspaper the Boston Chronicle criticized African-American director Ralf Coleman’s programming for the local “Negro Unit” of the Federal Theatre Project in the 1930s, they wrote “The Federal Theatre is the finest chance that the

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Negro actor has had to experiment and endeavor to educate white audiences in accepting characterizations without seeking to penetrate through the grease paint. Uncle Sam has provided the money for us to carry out just such an experiment.” These experiments would be in how best to present to a white audience African-American actors on stage who weren’t “gin swizzling, crap-­shooting and razor cutting” (cited in Fraden 163). While radical for its time, the goal of these “experiments” was to find the best means of portraying rich, complex characters on stage. National director of the FTP Hallie Flanagan sounded the same note, writ more broadly: We live in a changing world: man is whispering through space, soaring to the stars in ships, flinging miles of steel and glass into the air. Shall the theatre continue to huddle in the confines of a painted box set? The movies, in their kaleidoscopic speed and juxtaposition of external objects and internal emotions are seeking to find visible and audible expression for the tempo and psychology of our time. The stage too must experiment—­with ideas, with psychological relationships of men and women, with speech and rhythm forms, with dance and movement, with color and light—­or it must and should become a museum product. (Flanagan 45–­46) Flanagan’s experiments, like the Boston Chronicle’s recommendations, are not driven by a simple contrarian streak, but are genuinely intended to make theatrical practices and products that reflect the contemporary world. Film embodied the modern tempo and rhythm of life. Only experimentation could allow theater to do the same. The same spirit probably animated Flanagan, in her role as theater professor at Vassar prior to heading the FTP, to name the college’s performance space the “Vassar Experimental Theatre,” a name still in use today. A final example offers a succinct linkage between experimentation and the priority placed on efficiency. The article “The Face of a Puppet”, published in The Drama of January 1923, offers the following description of one of the accompanying images: This experimental puppet for a poetic tragedy was made to bring out the possibilities of expressionism in puppets. The face is reduced to the fewest and simplest lines possible. The mechanism too, is exceedingly simple as everything has been eliminated except the one or two essential movements which express the character in the tragedy. Under the illusion of stage lighting and in the atmosphere of an appro-

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priate set the face seems to actually change expression with the mood of the play. Only extreme simplicity can achieve this result. (Mick 138) The goal of the experiment is to find the most effective means of conveying tragedy on stage, albeit with puppets. This was no puppet to confound an audience. Rather, this was a sincere attempt to make performances better by following an experimental procedure and sharing the results with like-­ minded investigators. The language emphasizes the efficiency of the puppet and the effectiveness it was discovered to have through its “extreme simplicity.” The process led to an improved product. The excitement that attended the tour of the MAT, Boleslavsky’s lectures, and the subsequent work at the ALT was driven, in large part, by the same impulses that gave birth to the Longmans scripts and the articles cited above. In each case the values of the technological paradigm spurred attention and investment in aspects of theatrical practice that were congruent with the philosophies of industrial modernism. The ALT offered a technology for acting, derived in part from the scientific theories of Ribot, available for all to use. For those with talent, this was a means to cultivate and develop the necessary skills for successful performance and production. Longmans, in both their textbook and Director’s Manuscripts, promised formulas, systems, and processes to create successful (in this case, popular) productions, based on the same set of philosophies and valuations. Individual theatrical contributors spoke happily of experiments in performance, of a need to shift from old-­fashioned to modern acting practices, characterizing the modern actor as one who could put a formidable physical command of self at the service of a large, unifying vision for theatrical achievement. This linkage of technological practice and aesthetic appreciation was described by one of the most astute analyzers of the interrelation of technology and culture, Lewis Mumford. In his 1930 article “The Drama of the Machines,” he wrote, “Expression through the machine implies, however, the recognition of relatively new aesthetic terms: precision, calculation, flawlessness, economy, simplicity. Feeling attaches itself, in these new forms, to different qualities from those which make handicraft so jolly: the elegance of a mathematical equation, the inevitability of physical interrelations, the naked quality of the material itself” (Mumford 156). Mumford succinctly enunciates the changes to the aesthetics of arts and crafts inspired by the influence of Taylorism. In the realm of performance, these aesthetic valuations went beyond the living stage to the silver screen. Hollywood studios were naturally indus-

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trial creatures, dependent on massive amounts of technology to produce their product. Even before the seismic arrival of the “talkie,” studios prepared actors for work on film, and once speaking skills became necessary this process took on new urgency. The next chapter explores the presound era of filmmaking in the US, examining instances of Taylorist rhetoric and philosophy in early commentary and analysis on the new art and craft of movie-­making.

FOUR

 | “Are You Willing to Work Hard?”: Chasing Silent Screen Success

In the center column of the Washington Herald’s front page of Saturday, August 27, 1910, beneath a brief article about how the “alleged nephew” of South Carolina senator Ben Tillman was arrested in Wisconsin on suspicion of forgery, a headline proclaimed “EDISON MAKES SHADOWS TALK: Inventor Perfects Wonderful Kinetophone” (Anonymous, “Edison”). Edison’s system—­essentially a record player synchronized to a silent film—­never took off, but he glibly promoted it as being all but finished. While in his comments to “a limited number of scientific men and the press” he correctly anticipated that politicians would eventually flock to recording and filming their speeches to reach the masses (the presidential race of 1912 was already in the news), his other predictions proved far more fallible. “This machine,” promised Edison, “will crowd out the casino Johnny, for nobody will ever think of getting stuck on a ballet dancer that is the thousandth part of an inch thick” (Anonymous, “Edison”). The first movie producers hoped that Edison would be right, and worked to keep actors’ names, metaphorically and literally, out of the picture. The vain goal was for audiences to identify with the production company, rather than the individual, giving the producers more power in their role as employers. Sadly for the producers, it quickly became apparent that audiences for film, despite Edison’s predictions, were falling in love with actresses a thousandth of an inch thick (albeit sometimes twenty or more feet high) and demanded to know who they were and how they could see them again. The auratic power of performance would not be so easily subdued. Actors, initially reticent about being credited in films for fear of damaging their reputations as theater artists, also quickly realized the potential power of being seen by an enormous audience, and they capitulated to the quickly developing ecosystem of the movie star and the studio. Part of film’s rapid development occurred in the arena of actor preparation and performance technique. In the theater the criteria for judgment and the vocabulary of discussion grew to mirror those used in assessing

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and describing industrial methodologies. The bugbears of Taylorism—­ tradition and rules-­of-­thumb—­were being banished from the production process, and the historical training method of apprenticeship was being replaced by structured offstage education. Film followed a similar, though greatly accelerated, trajectory. Many of the same impulses and tensions that had emerged in the theatrical discourse of the late nineteenth century were revisited in film as movies grew in stature and influence, attracting more resources and becoming more complex undertakings to produce. The first filmmakers in the modern sense of the word were making it up as they went along, and so relied heavily on instinct. Instinct, in turn, gave way to process and procedure, tested against the results as determined by the marketplace. Acting for film developed apace, and while some saw silent film actors as nothing more than glorified models, most performers came to the profession with some stage experience, and almost all worked on small parts to learn the mechanics of acting for the camera before taking on larger roles and greater visibility. Then the cycle repeated itself again in frenzied miniature as a technological crisis erupted after The Jazz Singer was released in 1927. While it might seem clear in retrospect that audiences would prefer “talkies,” this was anything but obvious at the time. In William C. De Mille’s1 memoir, he writes, “How could producers be sure that it [sound] was not just a sudden fad, like miniature golf, which would sweep the country for a brief season and die completely?” (De Mille 272). From the pages of The Dramatist Luther B. Anthony urged the film industry not to give in to sound as late as April of 1929. “You have made a magnificent progress in the mastery of synchronized sound. . . . But now that you have almost achieved this great feat, my advice to you is DO NOT USE IT!” (Anthony, “Talkies” 1391). Anthony, true to form, is more exuberant in his commentary than others, but he speaks to the widespread sense that stage and screen were fundamentally different art forms. By making movies and live performance more alike, film might become merely a watered-­down version of traditional theater. (That film would steal audiences from the theater might also have been considered but was far less talked about.) Anthony and studio executives notwithstanding, audience preference insured that sound pictures were here to stay. In 1928, 220 silent films were released. The next year there were only 38 (Finler 281). In short order Hollywood embraced the new paradigm and started making pictures with synchronized sound. I pick up the story of sound’s arrival in Hollywood and the changes it 1. Elder brother to Cecil B. De Mille, and a director in his own right.

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wrought for actor training in chapter 6, and then return to postwar studio training in chapter 7. Here I wish to start with the rhetoric around film practice in the silent era, when there was actually a great deal of talk about the amount of work that actors, and everyone else, was required to put into creating the newest of art forms. I pull from fan magazines of the 1910s and ’20s, highlighting arguments that overlap with the industrial concerns called out previously, and pay special attention to silent film star Mae Marsh’s 1921 book Screen Acting for its evocations of aspects of the technological paradigm as read into film practice. I close this chapter by looking at responses to the increasing popularity of film from within the theatrical community. In particular, a review of the literature from the early period of motion pictures reveals a powerful—­and understandable—­concern with emotive power on screen, an interrogation of the process of preparing to perform on camera, a predilection for vocabulary drawn from science and industry, and a palpable spirit of democratic boosterism in many early sources as they championed a literally new technology and worked to make film, like the Model T, newly necessary.2

EMOTIONS AND THE PHOTOPLAYER

Like contemporary stage practice, early-­twentieth-­century film performance saw emotional presentation as the fundamental job of the actor. Movie Picture Magazine ran a series of articles in 1914 titled “Expression of the Emotions” that made this point quite clearly. Written by one of the journal’s founding editors, a Eugene V. Brewster, the essays examine emotive technique as evidenced in film, coupled with scientific theories on emotional representation (nodded to in the article’s title, itself a reflection of Darwin’s book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals from 1872). Beginning by marveling at the expressiveness of the human face, Brewster dives into an analysis of how emotions can be portrayed. Putting even Burgh’s 75 passions to shame, he lists 168 different emotional states, though he declines to offer details on how best to convey each one. Similar to Burgh in chapter 1, Brewster’s target audience does not seem to be actors. Instead he is writing for movie audiences, suggesting that the more 2. As Constant points out, one of the drivers of technological change isn’t necessarily a pressing need, but a belief in the market’s willingness to support a new technology. Film would fall into this category of technological paradigmatic shift.

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time you (the reader) spend developing the skill of identifying emotions, “the greater will be your powers to recognize expression on the faces of the actors on the stage and on the screen” (Brewster, “Emotions I” 108). Brewster signs off his first article in the characteristic boosterish style that typifies so much popular writing about film at the time: “The recognition of facial expression . . . is an art and a science that can be, and no doubt will be, in the future, cultivated to a degree heretofore undreamt of” (Brewster, “Emotions I” 114). The conjoining of art and science, recently married in the theater, has already migrated to the world of motion pictures. Brewster is hardly shy about including scientific references in his own articles. He begins the second installment by invoking Darwin to explain why humans show feelings as they do, then focuses on how improvements in film technology enable more sophisticated acting. Early cameras, lighting, and makeup, he argues, conspired to prevent effective use of the face by the film actor to convey emotion. Now, with the advanced cameras of 1916, “there is no excuse for a player in a well-­regulated company who cannot make his or her face tell the story without resorting to melodramatic ranting. . . . A good player can express almost any emotion, however intense, by the slightest movement of the facial muscles” (Brewster, “Emotions II” 107–­8). Note as well the description of the film company as “well regulated” and the efficiency in expressiveness expected of an au courant actor for the screen. D. W. Griffith noted the same trend in 1918. “The farther motion picture art progresses the more important does this become. . . . Actors make less and less fuss with their hands, and tell more and more with their eyes” (Carr 25).3 Acting is still about emoting, even if it is more reserved than in days gone by, and Brewster closes his second essay with a “gamuts of emotion” example from actress Norma Talmadge, shown in a constellation of her own face in various emotional states, demonstrating her mastery over her instrument. In part 3 Brewster begins by siding with Diderot in believing that actors do not need to actually feel the emotions they are portraying. “It is unfortunate that so many players rely on their emotions themselves, trusting that a proper expression must follow as a matter of course. . . . This method will not always work satisfactorily” (Brewster, “Emotions III” 97). Personal experience and re-­creation are no guarantee of successfully conveying the emotional content of a scene. Instead, Brewster advocates a more Delsar3. The same article has a striking usage of scientific descriptors. The author, despairing of getting a good interview with Griffith, tries to manage expectations, saying “no one expected him to publish the formulas of his laboratory” (Carr 24), making Griffith the scientist in the lab unlikely to reveal his secrets.

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Figure 6: Norma Talmadge

tean approach augmented—­probably unknowingly—­by Bulwer’s 1644 Natural Language of the Hand. Brewster supports his contention that physicality is inherently linked to emotional presentation by using a picture sent in by silent film actress Mary Fuller. In it, she is playing “surprise,” but Brewster calls the reader’s attention to her hands. “The palms held down would tend to illustrate something dark or gloomy; if held upward, something bright and cheerful. It is quite difficult to express surprise with the palm held upward” (Brewster, “Emotions III” 97). Alongside Burgh and Delsarte, Minnie Maddern Fiske’s specificity about the difference between despair and anguish is also echoed, for the argument is the same. There is a natural language of physicality and expression for emotional states, and this language is perceptible to audiences without particular regard to cultural specificity.

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Brewster continues to emphasize the scientific nature of his studies, saying that he has read “the authoritative works on the subject [emotional expression], which, by the way, every artist, Photoplayer and actor should study” (Brewster, “Emotions III” 98). In part 3 alone Brewster cites the physiologist Müller, includes a nearly page-­length quote from Dr. Francis Warner’s Physical Expression,4 and finally recommends to those who wish “to go deeper into the subject” Bell’s Anatomy of Expression as well as Darwin’s Expression of Emotions (Brewster, “Emotions III” 98–­100). The concern with offering a scientific basis for emotional presentation in the movies comes across loud and clear, even in this article aimed not at professional players, but audiences. Like Burgh’s trust in actors to correctly present emotional states, Brewster feels that successful “Photoplayers” already do what he describes. Mary Fuller’s expressive hand might not be informed by reading Bell’s Anatomy of Expression, but it is a result of that science nonetheless. Brewster is the astronomer, reading the motions of the stars by the light of scientific theory. Given his mastery of the science, he is able to anticipate whose emotional representations will prove most successful, just as the astronomer can predict where the stars will appear in the sky.5 Even as he argues for general principles about the emotional valence of an upturned palm, Brewster takes into account the variations introduced by characterization, stating “there are no two persons alike, nor can two different persons express an emotion precisely the same” (Brewster, “Emotions III” 101). In doing so, he offers an encapsulation of his understanding of an actor’s work: The first thing a player should do . . . is to think that character until he knows it thoroughly. He should have the personality so firmly fixed in his mind that he knows just what that character would do under various sets of circumstances. And then, when that character has an emotion to express, it must be expressed in harmony with the player’s conception of the character. In other words, create a real, genuine, new character and stick to it. (Brewster, “Emotions III” 102) 4. Warner is incorrectly identified as “Francis Walker” in the original article. Brewster quotes from page 194 of Physical Expression, Its Modes and Principles (1893). 5. Brewster’s alliance to science is further illustrated by his opening the fourth article by apologizing that he has been unable to “make this series of articles as simple and free from scientific terms as I first thought possible. There are certain questions that must be answered, and some of the answers must be more or less scientific” (Brewster, “Emotions IV” 113).

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Here, as early as 1914, is a clear repudiation of the idea that actors in early film were merely models playing themselves. Brewster, again echoing Fiske, lists a number of emotional distinctions that an actor would be expected to know (e.g., “envy is an ungenerous repining and not a momentary passion . . . suspicion is characterized by earnest attention”) that would then be shaded by the stamp of characterization. Brewster is describing a set of emotive skills, based in science (i.e., Darwin and psychology), that actors use in their work. He also embraces an expansive protean ideal, the creation of a distinct character being an important aspect of approaching the work of presenting emotion. “Those players who play every part the same,” Brewster warns, “will never be a success in the future, for there is now too much competition by players who are making a study of characterization and of expression of emotions” (Brewster, “Emotions III” 102). As for training he offers no specific process except self-­study, but there is no doubt that study and practice are required. From two years later comes a firsthand account by a photoplayer of learning her craft. In the August 1916 issue of Motion Picture Magazine Olga Grey’s straightforwardly titled article “How I Learned to Act” details what she felt she needed to learn when she made the jump from pianist to silent film actor. “I set about trying to solve the problem which presented itself—­to make plain, for photographic purposes, the emotions, intentions, and motives of each character” (Grey 69). She began her education by watching other films, and while she initially believed the only means of expressing emotion was through the face, she later decided that the entire body must be brought to bear. “I began to train my arms, my shoulders, and all the muscular orbits I possessed, to play their parts in expressing whatever the emotion required in whatever scene I appeared before the camera.” Sadly, she does not specify in her article how she went about training her arms to reveal emotion, but she does claim a strong measure of success. “Before I became an actress, I had mastered the art so thoroughly as to be able to reveal as much of my mental processes by muscular movement and without even facing the camera, as in the beginning I had been able to portray by the most intense facial contortions and a vast verbosity” (Grey 69). This shift from emotion being purely a matter of facial expression to a process encompassing her whole being is what she says she needed to know “before I became an actress.” Learning this skill marked her as a true professional, as surely as a mastery of Fiske’s delineation of emotional states or MacKaye’s gamuts of expression might have for an earlier generation. Descriptions of the early film industry often emphasized the speed at

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which the form changed, for both producers and audiences. Nothing about the process of film was considered inherently stable. An example can be found in a 1917 Photoplay (another fan magazine) article about “Eye-­Dropping,” the practice by which audiences read the lips of silent movie stars: It started when movie fans began to get a thrill at observing their idols mouth the words, “Stop,” “Don’t,” “Help,” and so on. In the old days the players faked any sort of repartee. Those good old days have passed. Real lines are spoken in most of the studios these days. Indeed, scenarios now provide the necessary lines for the actors. Nothing is left to chance. (Anonymous, “Eye-­Dropping” 33) Naturally it is the last line in the quote that I find so engaging: nothing is left to chance. Greater and greater specificity is demanded of even silent films, to such an extent that improvised lines, a habit from the “good old days” of little more than ten years prior, have been usurped. Nor is this merely for the benefit of lip-­reading audiences. In the same article, actor William S. Hart is quoted saying that all the dialogue is written and rehearsed before filming, and “I insist that the spoken lines are the real thing, indeed, that they are as real as every detail of the setting” (Anonymous, “Eye-­Dropping” 33). But as the lines aren’t actually going to be heard by the audience, might this not count as wasted effort were Taylor to bring his scientific management eye to bear? Hart and others would argue not, because the dialogue helps evoke the right emotional response in the scenes. “I could never work up to a dramatic climax if I talked to my leading woman about the weather.  .  .  . The voice is a vital part of human expression—­even in the movies” (Anonymous, “Eye-­Dropping” 33). Even if the script is never truly “heard,” the finished product will be superior because the emotion will be presented with greater fidelity and believability. Actors were inarguably necessary to the success of film. Nevertheless, making a film decentered actors relative to their position in live theater. Even movie stars were bound by the technological constraints of film production and couldn’t shape a performance with the same impunity as their stage counterparts. In 1921, years before Nathaniel Reeid’s advice to directors using Longmans’s Director’s Manuscripts that actors were nothing but cogs in the wheel, silent film star Mae Marsh wrote that in moviemaking, “Time is money. Each of us constitutes a more or less important cog in a great machine” (Marsh 42). Marsh was one of D. W. Griffith’s leading la-

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dies, notably appearing in his Birth of a Nation and Intolerance, among others. Marsh’s 1921 book Screen Acting is a blend of memoir and discussion of film technique, and it offers tremendous insight into the world of silent film at a point long before the expectation of the arrival of sound. Throughout she talks about what makes a successful film actor and performance, offering an excellent point of reference before the talking picture tornado swept through Hollywood, upturning everything and everyone in its path.

SILENT SCREEN ACTING AND THE VALUE OF GOOD BUSINESS

Marsh opens her book with an admission: nobody can really know who might become a star. That said, she firmly believes there is a technique to film performance. Her primary goal in Screen Acting is to introduce the uninitiated to the mechanics of cinematic practice, including her own preparation and performance techniques, and to remove some of the glamour that had already attached itself to the world of movies. While her stated purpose is not to illustrate how film practice was enmeshed with industrial technique, this too is apparent in a close reading of her text. Marsh, like many of the authors and theorists looked at previously, seeks to identify what can be learned versus what must be inherent in a successful actor, and she uses a vocabulary drawn from the technological paradigm for much of her investigation. Marsh starts by dispelling the myth of the overnight success. Stars are made, not born, and she offers the cautionary tale of an unnamed starlet who was “built up” by a studio, only to fail after an expensive advertising campaign on her behalf. What went wrong? The actress didn’t know how to act. “All the little important things that one can learn by nothing save experience, things which mean everything to successful screen acting, were missing in her work. She was like one trying to paint without knowing color, to compose without a knowledge of counter-­point, to write without having learned grammar school English” (Marsh 25). Lest the reader weep for the actress placed at the pinnacle of fame ahead of her time, Marsh relates that once she retreated to the ensemble of a film company, she began to develop her acting skills to such an extent that she is now a “better actress today than she was when she was advertised as a star” (Marsh 25). Talent coupled with cultivation led to success. This brief introductory anecdote illuminates contemporary assumptions about the nature of film work as well as rhetorical similarities with theatrical theory from the prior two decades. First, Marsh believes there is

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a discrete skill set for screen actors that can only be learned on the job. Second, Marsh invokes the comparisons between acting and other arts that had become commonplace in theater, comparing the unlearned actress to a painter without knowledge of color, a musician ignorant of musical theory, and a writer without a command of the language. In each case there is a technical, standardized vocabulary that the artist is expected to have mastered prior to essaying their work before the public. It is this technique the premature star learns by working as a supporting player, which then turns her into a better actress. As for her own trajectory, Marsh says she learned her craft through “years of rigorous training, self denial and hard work,” belying the idea that there was anything preordained or inevitable about her own (or her colleagues’) success. Enduring stars such as Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish remained vital because of “the amount of their natural talent, plus the excellence and length of their training” (Marsh 26). Her reiteration, multiple times in a few pages, of the necessity of training and study points to the seriousness with which she approached her job, and also to a desire to counter the popular perception that film acting was already seen as something anyone might do based on luck. Marsh works, as others had, to separate what could and couldn’t be learned or cultivated by the aspiring performer. Fittingly for the industrial paradigm, Marsh divides the qualities of film success into seven discrete components: natural talent, ambition, personality, sincerity, agreeable appearance, vitality and strength, and the ability to learn quickly (Marsh 33). Some of these she touches on only lightly, others (such as appearance) occupy her attention for multiple chapters. Two are mostly resistant to self-­ improvement. “Natural talent” is obviously the hardest to cultivate, and “appearance,” insofar as it pertains to the camera “liking” someone, is also outside an individual’s control. The other five, however, are all presented as within the grasp of the aspiring actor to investigate and improve. Once fitness for the camera is established, the knowledgeable actor can even control appearance. Finally, while Marsh believes the qualities of personality and sincerity are difficult to fake, as the all-­seeing eye of the camera “is keen in detecting the weak or vapid  .  .  . [and] a motion picture camera seems especially to delight in exposing insincerity” (Marsh 35–­36), here too there is room for agency through making “good” choices in life. “To sustain success on the screen I believe there is nothing more important than clean thoughts and clean living. They do register” (Marsh 36). Both personality and sincerity are subject to self-­improvement through determination and a willingness to forego temptation. Overall, the track to screen success for Marsh is closely aligned with the

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general Protestant work-­ethic path to the American dream. Further, while Marsh does not explicitly make the comparison, an argument is also being made that the technological innovation of the moving picture camera is perhaps better able to determine the truth of a person and performance than an audience member sitting in a traditional theater. The camera sees more, and more deeply, than a live audience, and is therefore an improvement on simple human perception. Clean thoughts and clean living on the part of the performer “register” on film as Marsh says. As a result, movie actors face challenges different from their stage brethren, for they are held to a higher standard of truthfulness. Clean thoughts and practices are not enough, of course, to insure a successful performance. That takes work and preparation. In chapter 5 Marsh offers three “mechanical details” to focus on when preparing for a film role: the story, makeup, and costuming. Marsh then helpfully outlines her own process relative to these areas. The first step is to read the entire script. “We want to know what the author is telling and how he is trying to tell it. We find the big situations and the action that precedes them. More important, we locate the why of it” (Marsh 52). So far so good, but then the real work begins of figuring out what you, the actor, are going to actually do. Thus the next step is to work out “bits of business,” physical manifestations of character and situation. In her words: When I have established the idea of the play I immediately go over the script again with an eye alert for business. By business I mean the tricks, mannerisms, and the apparent unexpected or involuntary moves that help to sustain action. (Marsh 52–­53) This sounds dangerously like tricks of the trade, which Taylor would abhor. Yet Marsh is not calling for actors to recycle mannerisms, but rather to work out gestures and habits specific to the character and situation. Further, these critical decisions cannot be left to inspiration in the moment of performance. She admits that “we have all discovered very telling bits of business during the actual photographing of a scene,” but, echoing Stebbins and Delsarte, “we count this as nothing but good fortune. To leave the matter of business until the director called ‘Camera!’ would be fatal” (Marsh 54). Far from trusting to luck, the “business” of the character should be carefully explored ahead of time. The established business is then paired with an emotional scoring of the script (which Marsh subsequently describes in chapter 8), and from this body of preparation and experimentation the actual performance is constructed. Audiences, of course, should

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believe that these bits of business are spontaneous, yet they “must be planned in advance and it is only an evidence that they have been well planned when they appear to be done unconsciously” (Marsh 54), a close paraphrase of Ayres’s own arguments from the late 1800s. Screen acting for Marsh is a combination of emoting and the performance of preplanned physical business connected to the story, character, and scene. Makeup and costume, her remaining “mechanical details,” are taken up in turn; both are part of the overall focus on “appearance” she cited previously as one of the critical factors in success. As in live theater only a generation or so earlier, it was often assumed to be film actors’ responsibility to handle their own makeup, hair, and wardrobe (barring a period piece where historical recreations would be required). Diligent study in this area rewards the aspiring photoplayer, further reducing the role of luck. “The beginner who learns the knack of dressing for the screen in a manner that is sharply expressive of the character being played, and, in a way to bring out what the actress herself has come to regard as her strong point, will find her pains rewarded” (Marsh 67). Marsh again highlights the importance of conveying a character through the choices the actor makes, offering an example from her own work with Griffith on Birth of a Nation. For the scene where her character throws herself off a cliff, “I experimented with a half dozen dresses until I hit upon one whose plainness was a guarantee that it would not divert from my expression” (Marsh 72). Griffith, naturally, was the final arbiter of her clothing choice, as befits an industrially organized laboratory, but Marsh was an active participant in costuming who “experimented” until she found an outfit that wouldn’t draw focus away from her emotional presentation in a climactic scene.6 Marsh singles out one other notable aspect of Griffith as the chief scientist and investigator in the laboratory, and that has to do with his treatment of actresses in particular. Before shooting a “vital scene” with an actress, Griffith might say something like “You understand this situation. Now let us see what you would do with it.” This is favorably contrasted with “other directors I have seen,” who will say to the woman, “You understand this situation. Now here is the way to do it. Follow me closely.” Marsh’s criticism of the two approaches is rooted in the expectation that “a man and woman have a way of acting differently in the same situation and Mr. Griffith, by letting the actress show what she would do, is shrewd enough 6. Griffith, she says, would do screen tests for costumes even for “two-­reelers,” and would have no compunction about saying that a given costume wouldn’t work. “Possibly,” she writes, “we were trying to do too much justice to ourselves” rather than honestly convey the character as written (Marsh 68).

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to profit by Nature. Our self-­sufficient director,” by comparison, “wants us to act only as a man would think a woman ought to act in a given situation” (Marsh 115). Issues of gender equity are secondary in Marsh’s approval of Griffith’s practice. It is Griffith’s continued quest for the truest performance that drives him. Marsh is quick to point out that Griffith, more than other directors, “has a way of bringing a player more abruptly to his or her senses when he or she is unqualifiedly in the wrong” (Marsh 116). Just as with costuming, Griffith retains for himself the role of ultimate arbiter. Marsh explicitly views this role as generative, noting that Griffith “is big enough not to be small about receiving suggestions.” Griffith carefully considers all recommendations proposed to him, “even though he knows in advance that he probably cannot use one in a hundred of them. Yet that one may be important enough to balance the patience expended in listening to the other ninety-­nine” (Marsh 116). Griffith is the scientist sifting evidence, choosing the best path forward, in terms of both acting choices—­ Marsh tells how it was her story of laughing in the face of terror that inspired Griffith to have her own character laugh during a frightening scene in Birth of a Nation—­and film technology more broadly. His “camera men and assistants, as well as assistant directors, are always on the alert for something new. They know their suggestion will be given due consideration. And for that reason to Mr. Griffith and his staff we owe credit for most of the new inventions of telling a story by pictures. This director is as expert in the mechanics of his art as he is bold in story conception” (Marsh 118). Griffith, like Edison, has harnessed a stable of talented and industrious workers whose job it is to push the boundaries of cinematic technique. Similarly, like Taylor, Griffith examines competing processes and possibilities, either through experimentation (rehearsals or multiple takes) or mental visualization, and selects the optimal path forward. How best to create and portray the emotion remains an actor’s central concern, and here Marsh opposes Diderot and Brewster. Feelings must be truly felt to be successfully captured on film. “If you do not feel the particular action being played, then the result will certainly be a lack of sincerity. We have already decided that is fatal” (Marsh 76). She reinforces her point of view with an anecdote from her work in Intolerance. Called on to cry at the death of her character’s father, she first tried to copy actress Marjorie Rambeau, whom she had recently seen in a particularly effective role. Despite her efforts, neither she nor Griffith was happy after reviewing the dailies. “I don’t know what you were thinking about when you did that,” Griffith reportedly said, “but it is evident that it was not about the death of your father.” Marsh agrees. When they shoot the scene again, Marsh

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“thought of the death of my own father and the big tragedy to our little home.” This performance was not merely acceptable to both Marsh and Griffith, but “is said to be one of the most effective” in the film. The lesson Marsh drew from this episode is that “it never pays to imitate anyone else’s interpretation of any emotion” (Marsh 79). For Marsh, when it comes to the all-­important presentation of emotion, there is no substitute for real feeling. The camera will capture subterfuge. “We cannot too greatly concentrate upon our parts. If we do not feel them we can be very sure they will not convince our audiences” (Marsh 80). One aid to this is the script itself, as by 1921 realistic dialogue had become de rigueur. “Before the camera lines are spoken and it is of utmost importance that they be pronounced clearly and with feeling” (Marsh 97). She even mentions that lip-­reading is a common practice among fans, though she does not refer to it as “eye-­dropping” as her predecessors at Photoplay did. The character’s speech is another means of evoking the appropriate emotion for actor and audience alike. Marsh does acknowledge the seeming advantage in emoting that the screen actor has. “At no time is the motion picture actress or actor called upon for a sustained performance such as is true on the spoken stage.” Yet the disconnected nature of film production means that performers must be able to summon the necessary emotions without the scaffolding and inertia of a full production in front of an audience. “Genius,” she writes, “has been described as the ability to resume a mood. In the case of motion pictures it is necessary that a mood be resumed not once or twice, but possibly twenty times during a day” (Marsh 84). Surprisingly, she breezily dismisses the challenge of dropping into and out of a particular emotion—­so central to subsequent discussions of film technique—­and simply recommends that a young actress retire to the quiet of the dressing room to rest and “do a little mental bookkeeping on the part she is playing.” With experience, picking up a mood where it was dropped will “become something that is subconsciously accomplished,” and so it isn’t worth really worrying about by the newcomer to the screen (Marsh 87). While Marsh does say that “the physical strain before a camera is a peculiar thing,” reinforcing the idea that movie acting was labor, the specific problem of recreating emotions is assumed to come naturally with a little practice, and despite the definition cited above, does not require any specific genius to accomplish.7 7. This ease with emotion is called out by Baron as a hallmark of “Modern” acting: “While Modern acting teachers would see ‘real’ emotion in performance as an uncomplicated by-­ product of preparation, it was the elusive goal of Strasberg’s Method, which assumed actors are necessarily cut off from their emotion” (Baron 54).

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After spending much of her discussion on the actors’ emotions and thoughts, Marsh concludes with a few paragraphs on the importance of physically conveying the character, although again the primary purpose is to present emotional states. “The body is almost the equal of the face in expression and the way to talk and use the hands and feet are things that must be sedulously studied” (Marsh 88). As before, Marsh puts the responsibility to decide on a physical characterization with the actor. “In going over a part it is of the utmost importance that we decide upon the way our heroine is going to carry herself and then throw our body, as well as our thoughts and expression, into our role” (Marsh 88). As for the source of this physical knowledge, Marsh recommends direct observation (as opposed to the codifications of Delsarte or the like). Later, she relates that when working with Griffith, she made several “observation tours” of New York slums to prepare for her roles, and for Intolerance in particular she visited poor mothers and children, and even spent a half-­day in jail “observing the characters therein.” Such observations, drawn from life, allow the actor or actress to “show a thing as it is, not as we think it ought to be” (Marsh 108). This truth in representation will be captured by the discerning eye of the camera and be translated into more truthful and moving performances for audiences. Marsh directly comments on the relationship between emotional presentation and the camera, with special emphasis on the close-­up (or “insert” as she often calls it) and the use of the eyes in performance. The insert shot is “always to depict a particular emotion,” and because it is a shot of a single person, it is “entirely a matter of imagination or feeling.” To convey the emotion, the actor must first identify “precisely the emotion that we are supposed to express” and then “bend every effort to concentrate on it” (Marsh 98). Stating a truism that would be repeated many times in subsequent conversations about film acting, Marsh emphasizes how important the eyes of the actor are in that moment. “The mere expression of the eyes may be all that is necessary to convey to the audience the emotion of the player.” Over-­acting in the close-­up betrays “no real depth of feeling” on the part of the offending actor, merely “the playing at feeling” (Marsh 99). In other words, the difference between what someone thinks sadness looks like, and genuine sadness, is discernable with the camera so close—­a reiteration of Marsh’s contention that the camera has an uncanny ability to record the thoughts of the subject surveilled. Close-­up film acting requires a commitment to thinking and feeling the truth of the character that even medium-­ and long-­shot takes do not demand, to say nothing of the live stage.

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The goal is a happy medium between under-­ and over-­acting as expressed not just in a given scene, but over the course of an entire film. Marsh explicitly celebrates actress Norma Talmadge’s ability to convey a state of mind in a particular shot, and to construct her entire performance from beginning to end, thinking about where moments of high emotion are warranted and where a more restrained performance is called for. Yet even when she is conveying reserve, “her repression seems ever illuminated by the fires of potential emotion” (Marsh 83). Marsh putting emotion at the center of successful film acting is hardly surprising. What is notable about her Talmadge anecdote is the control over the entire performance granted to the actor. It is incumbent on performers to trace the emotional paths of their characters and decide how best to convey them. Marsh closes this section with a plea for film directors to have proper rehearsals, more akin to theatrical practice than what, in her experience, is often merely a quick run-­through of the action before the camera starts rolling. Her argument, however, is grounded in business sense rather than artistic violation. It is “illogical and costly” when making a movie that costs “twenty times as much as the average spoken drama” to take “twenty times less of care in rehearsal.” In Marsh’s estimation, rehearsed performances will be better artistically, and costs will be lessened because “of the labor spared in editing” (Marsh 90). Taylor himself couldn’t have walked the tightrope of artistic achievement and economic considerations any better. Despite the differences in performing for the camera and on the stage, Marsh’s description of her own technique in approaching a film role and the components of acting are remarkably similar to those expressed in other early-­twentieth-­century writings on stage technique. In place of stock theater, Marsh substitutes playing small roles in feature films as the ideal training ground for an aspiring actor, but she insists that training is necessary. Emotions remain the central concern of the actor, even as the camera adds a technological wrinkle to the Diderotian question of truth in feeling, as Marsh—­and others after her—­argue that the camera in close-­up captures any disconnect between thought and presentation. She describes the necessity of drawing from one’s own store of emotional memory to accomplish the necessary task of emoting in character, and she outlines a method of text analysis and descriptive scoring (of business and emotional color) that goes beyond even Fiske’s examples of augmenting the text with notes for performance. Marsh, like many before her, also disdains relying on inspiration for a successful performance, stressing the need for proper preparation and rehearsal before filming. With only minor modifications her

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techniques could have been promoted by MacKaye or Stebbins nearly forty years prior.

FILM SUCCESS: “TECHNIQUE AND THE PERFECTION OF ALMOST INFINITE PRACTICE”

Marsh, like many early writers on movies, also writes as a booster for the entire film industry. Film faced an initial crisis in convincing performers and the public alike that it was a legitimate field of endeavor, with the aspersions historically attached to actors (and actresses in particular) finding root in early perceptions of cinema. Compounding this was the seemingly arbitrary nature of stardom, something dangerously akin to relying on luck. To counter these concerns, a number of other commentators mirrored Marsh’s arguments about the amount of work required of actors, with a consistent rhetorical goal of deemphasizing the role of chance in achieving success. I wish to briefly examine these aspects of the presound discussion, as the profilm arguments are heavily inflected by Taylorist vocabulary and values. Marsh promoted the film industry as a wholesome occupation, at once acknowledging and refuting the already-­emergent concern that a movie life was a loose life. When Marsh suggests that vitality and clean living are captured by the camera, she also includes a warning to her female readers to “be very careful of our most precious possession. I know of so many young girls in motion pictures who have let their health get away from them. And some of the cases are so pitiful  .  .  .” (Marsh 41). The ellipses might suggest nothing more than a wistful reminiscence of former colleagues who have tried and failed to maintain their health for the movies, but it also offers a slightly coded warning against young girls giving away their most “precious possession” and ending in a tragic state. It seems a tacit acknowledgment that alongside cinema’s more laudable imports from the world of theater, the casting couch had sadly established a toehold as well. Naturally the young actress can and should resist this temptation, and while the allure of film has attracted some who would be unwelcome in any industry, “the majority of those who succeed in motion pictures do so by honest work.” Marsh’s final defense of film seems custom-­made to appeal to a Protestant work-­ethic audience, for success only comes through “long hours and application. I doubt if the average successful business man puts in as much time or as high-­tension effort as the picture actress, actor or

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director who gets somewhere” (Marsh 128). Marsh describes a film industry full of serious laborers striving for the betterment of the form, working even harder than their industrial counterparts. Marsh goes so far as to paraphrase the proverb about idle hands, saying her friends “are too busy to worry unnecessarily over what the public may think of motion picture morals. They assume only to regulate their own conduct” (Marsh 128). Working too hard to get into trouble, they can only continue their path of solid effort, providing their contribution to the magnificent creation that is the evolving motion picture industry. Film’s newness was also used to rhetorical advantage by its early defenders, for participants could claim the mantle of pioneers, evoking powerful US archetypes of vision, grit, and conquest. Marsh invokes this title for herself, saying that her qualifications to write her book include her being “one of the motion picture pioneers” (Marsh 21).8 William De Mille uses the same image, arguing that early film workers “shared that loneliness which is the common lot of the pioneer,” and on the same page describing D. W. Griffith as “the first American pioneer director” (De Mille 15). If that didn’t do it, De Mille’s later description of early film work certainly would: “The thrill of the pioneer was ours in full measure, and out of all the sweat and dust, the adventure and the danger, the ceaseless work with its discouragements and its triumphs, slowly grew a new art” (De Mille 27). As pioneers, film workers (including actors and directors) could be seen as vigorous and rugged, excellent qualities for a fledgling entertainment form seeking to win friends in the US. By the time Marsh is writing, the pioneers had at least partially paved the wagon trail, and film’s popularity had grown by leaps and bounds since the early days in terms of audiences and prospective participants. Marsh allows that there are far more screen hopefuls in 1921 than when she started out, but she exhorts the reader not to let that discourage them. Radiating an Alger-­esque optimism, she assures the reader, “Sooner or later, merit may be counted on to assert itself” (Marsh 103). While a combination of talent plus hard work and personal development might not necessarily lead to stardom, it would almost certainly allow the actor in question to rise to a position of respect in the profession. Work is the constant refrain for the newcomer and old hand alike. Even the established star, she argues, 8. Technically Marsh disavows being a pioneer, as the full quote says, “As for my qualifications I was about to say that I am one of the motion picture pioneers. Yet when I say pioneer I think of Daniel Boone. And Mr. Boone, had he lived, would have been an old, old man” (Marsh 21). The intention seems clear: were it not for the accusation of age, she would gladly accept the title.

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must be constantly aware of new developments in screen technique, lest he or she be left behind by the ever-­advancing medium of film. In this she combines a boosterish spirit about movies in general with Taylorist platitudes tied to a democratic ethos that places everyone in film in roughly the same boat. As further evidence of this egalitarian strain, Marsh cites the number of directors known and celebrated by the public. “No medium has equaled the screen in its kindness to those who do creditable work . . . our camera aristocracy” (Marsh 119). This directing aristocracy is not one of birth, but skill, talent, and product. They are linked, of course, with that other constellation of great names, the stars, whose fortunes depend not on their bloodline but on the direct love (and coinage) of film audiences across the country and around the world. This is nobility in the American style, voted on by the citizens of the cinema. The emphasis on the audiences’ agency in choosing who to elevate helped ameliorate the stubborn fact that nobody could manage to predict who would become a star. Instead, the very arbitrariness of stardom was turned into a celebration of the enfranchisement of the audience. Jesse L. Lasky (of “Lasky’s Famous Players” film company), in answer to the question “What makes a star?” posed in Photoplay magazine in February of 1920 (a year before Marsh’s book was published), replied to the readers, “You make the stars. It is not in my power, nor in the power of any manager, to ‘make’ a motion picture star or stage star. We can only set promising people in your way. If you like them, you do the rest” (Lasky 32). De Mille sounds a similar note of populist celebration when surveying the recent history of the cinema. “One force alone has been responsible for the present dominating position of motion pictures in the entertainment of the country, and indeed, of the world. That force is the pressure exerted by an audience of seventy million people who go to motion pictures every week in the United States alone” (De Mille 20). Screen success in terms of stardom was reframed. It wasn’t about luck, it was about the agency of the audience. The aggressive emphasis on consumer demand and power was often coupled with a reminder that making a film, for all the magic that attended the finished product, required arduous labor from all concerned, actors included. Marsh reiterated this point early and often, and she was hardly alone. After confirming that only audiences could create a star, Lasky spends much of the rest of his article describing the effort that goes into becoming a first-­rate screen actor. His first example is Lilia Lee, who despite a successful vaudeville career wasn’t resonating with audiences in her initial screen outings. Lasky says he respected her work, as did Cecil De

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Mille, but even they could not make her a star. Lee does as Marsh might have recommended to her unnamed actress, deciding to “buckle down and work hard, [and play] every part that was given.” As a result, Lee “became one of the hardest workers in the Hollywood studio, neglecting no opportunity to learn, to acquire experience, to add to her knowledge of make-­up, characterization, or dramatic interpretation” (Lasky 33). Having trudged the path of diligent labor Lee is finally able to achieve real film success. While allowing that movie acting required some natural gifts, Lasky argues that these are overshadowed by the importance of “technique and the perfection of almost infinite practice” (Lasky 129). Lest the reader feel this is an isolated incident, Lasky goes on to cite the careers of Charles Ray and Wallace Reid. “On my word of honor, let me tell you that both of them are products of year after year of labor—­plus the ultimate good luck of public selection” (Lasky 33). Mary Pickford’s work ethic, earlier celebrated by Marsh, is championed by Lasky as well. “There are very few men or women, of any age, who have so thoroughly immersed themselves in their chosen work. To Mary Pickford . . . life has been nothing but exhausting labor, or else quiet secluded preparation for more exhausting labor.  .  .  . She is the hardest worker I have ever known on the screen” (Lasky 33). Across sources and years, especially in the presound era, the theme of work is sounded again and again. Even good looks, an attribute commonly associated with both stardom and luck, is consistently downplayed. As a final example, the Photoplay article immediately preceding Lasky’s is an answer to the question “Is beauty essential to success?” Actress Olive Thomas assures readers that it is not. Work is essential, a point frequently made in the short piece. To young girls longing for a film career Thomas asks, “Are you willing to work hard? Work like—­like the devil? Then don’t worry if you’re not beautiful” (O. Thomas 129). For those who might miss the subtle nuance in the article the title is quite clear: “W-­ O-­R-­K That’s All!” Luck wasn’t about talent, or beauty, but was confined to whether or not the actor or actress photographed well. About this there was little anyone could do, but “the fortunate possessor of the ‘camera personality’ is only on the first rung of the ladder of success, and there are many, many rungs before the top is reached” (Lasky 129). For Lasky this is reflected even in the changing content of films. While in the past “freak personalities or mere photographic prettiness” were all that was required, now “we are discovering that the pieces which succeed are the pieces in which all parts are well played, rather than those pieces in which some genius, or some great favorite, is surrounded by a cast of sticks and nonentities” (Lasky 129). Marsh

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offers a similar criticism, and finds a kindred spirit in Minnie Maddern Fiske, for Marsh says that if she goes to a film and sees “mere beauty being exploited on the screen with no semblance of acting talent,” she is ready to leave before the film is even through (Marsh 45). Taylor’s negation of necessary genius is also paralleled here. A successful silent feature doesn’t depend on a single naturally gifted (either artistically or physically) star, but on a company of well-­trained professionals—­including actors and actresses—­accomplishing their skilled work with efficiency and polish. Marsh, like Lasky, argues that good looks were hardly enough to insure a lasting and successful career, and while beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, “the quality of expression or animation is seldom denied those who possess it” (Marsh 49). In other words, the ability to emote is less open to interpretation than attractiveness and is far more central to engaging acting. Being “liked” by the camera is only the first step. The rest of the treads require hard work. Lasky does admit that some stars were poor actors and actresses. But the majority, he assures the readers, know their craft, and there are many more performers who are good actors but haven’t been selected for stardom by audiences. Like Marsh, Lasky recommends not worrying about stardom, and focusing on learning the craft. “The public has erratic momentary whims,” he allows, “but in the long run it never makes a mistake; the star who endures from year to year only does so because he or she deserves to endure” (Lasky 129). This focus on work can be directly connected to modern industrial practice. Incredible advancement is possible by dint of finding the field you are naturally suited to (pig iron moving or moving pictures) and then developing one’s self either through dedicated independent study or—­looking ahead to the golden age of the studios—­by some sort of standardized training regimen overseen by scientific and knowledgeable instructors and managers. Everyone in the early days of cinema was engaged in what Actor-­ Network Theory describes as network building. From a position of minimal influence and power, the “idea” of cinema emerged as a coupling of human supporters, technical artifacts, and social conditions. These linkages are expected by ANT, as “distinctions between what could count as social, natural, or technological . . . collapse into each other in innumerable combinations—­and indeed are routinely mixed up by scientific and technological actors themselves” (Michael 34). Hallie Flanagan’s description from the previous chapter of how the aesthetics of technology and speed are better reflected in film than traditional theater is an example of precisely this point. The limits of Edison’s Kinetophone, the advances in lenses and lighting cited by Brewster, the embrace of “technology” on a cultural

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level, and the realities of production practice shared by Marsh are part and parcel of the support of cinema itself that Marsh, De Mille, Lasky, Brewster, and others publicly voiced, along with the specific rhetorical arguments regarding democracy and hard work they marshalled in cinema’s defense. Film was fighting for respectability as a legitimate member of the “modern” era of industry as well as a viable form of artistic expression. How much money the movies were spending (and getting) was breathlessly reported as proof that film, in the parlance of the day, was a “going concern.” In fan magazines, interspersed with the articles about how the actors “put it over,” features on soon-­to-­be-­released films, and gossip from the industry, readers could find paeans to cinema in poetic form. For example, the poem “Movie Magic” by a Ralph Garner Coole, published in 1916, has as its central conceit that by sitting in a movie theater one is able to see the wonders of the world, from the Rock of Gibraltar to the Land of the Midnight Sun. He concludes by saying that Aladdin’s lamp “Might do very well in his day; / But they’d call it a piker for magic / Where the movies hold glorious sway” (Coole 62). Presumably the readers of a movie fan magazine are already convinced of how delightful film is, and thus while they might enjoy a poem celebrating their favorite art form they would not need to be sold on its pleasures. While true, the poem (and the magazine more broadly) work as a form of network reinforcement, articulating the arguments for seeing the cinema as legitimate artistically and as a business, and simultaneously assuring the reader that their loyalties to the new enterprise are not misplaced. With each year of success the network grew stronger and more complicated. As networks are both fractal and multiple, with increasing complexity and dominance, the overlaps with other techno-­social networks—­for example, industrial practice, contemporary finance, international relations—­ grew more pronounced. An area of predictable network overlap was with the world of traditional theatrical practice. However, while live and filmed performance could be expected to have shared elements, the complexities of reception insured an unpredictable network interaction, epitomized by the responses to early cinema from those in the theatrical world.

HOLLYWOOD AND THE STAGE: MAXIMUM EFFECT WITH MINIMUM EFFORT

Just as nobody could predict how audiences would respond to actors on film, the world of live theater was unsure what to make of the early film industry. In 1921 Gregory Zilboorg (he of the Kerensky cabinet and an

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MAT alumnus, see chapter 3) defended live theater in his article “Art and the Cinema,” describing film as a literal shadow of the vitality of live performance. “Technically ‘movies’ are Art,” he allows, but then, echoing Edison, he argues that “they are only a flat reproduction in two dimensions of something that has more than three” (Zilboorg, “Cinema” 352). He believed that film could never hope to achieve the status of drama because it lacked an immediate personal connection between performer and audience. “Emotional continuity cannot be rendered without our seeing the actor in person. . . . There is always an invisible tie between the person, who acts and the beholder, always a continuous psychological interinfluence [sic] and interplay. Without this element there is not theatre” (Zilboorg, “Cinema” 352). Zilboorg staked a claim to the aura of theater as its defining characteristic—­the ability to see live people on stage. At the same time, he attempted to “science” the aura with his descriptions of “psychological interinfluence,” in effect arguing that it was scientifically impossible for film to compel audiences in the same way that live theater could. Who could get stuck on an actress 1/1000th of an inch thick? The necessity of sharing space with live performers and a defense of an ineffable quality that could not be captured on film became central arguments for many in the theatrical camp who would attempt to dismiss film, even, and perhaps especially, after sound pictures became commonplace. What film had in abundance was an inescapable connection to technology and industrial practice. Thus one avenue for those who sought to differentiate theater from film was a repudiation of industrial values such as standardization and repeatability, which were relatively new to the theatrical community to begin with. Theater, under this strategy, should celebrate its limited scale of production and nightly variation. These liabilities from a Taylorist point of view were remade into assets that theater brought to the world of art and became markers of a unique and (it was hoped) privileged set of qualities that would preserve theater against the faster and cheaper entertainments of film. Zilboorg continues his fight for the uniqueness of theater arguing, “Our mechanistic and materialistic age has accepted movies because they are psychologically ‘easier,’ because they are ‘speedy,’ because, finally, they are the standard-­bearer of an over-­industrialized society where a new mechanical contrivance seems to be more interesting than a new moral, esthetical, or spiritual value” (Zilboorg, “Cinema” 352). Zilboorg’s sympathies clearly lie with theater in all its antitechnological glory. “Art is individual. John Barrymore in Hamlet is an individual Hamlet, a Hamlet that cannot be transferred from one place to another without Barrymore

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himself.” Film, because it is the same everywhere, feeds the belief of technological egalitarianism, and as such, Zilboorg’s argument ends up running against the faith in a democratic ethos that characterized both industrial innovation and US society more broadly. Like the phone, film knows no favorites. Even Zilboorg concedes that watching a film either on Broadway or on “Main Street in some Gopher Prairie you will find the same impressions of the same brand” (Zilboorg, “Cinema” 376). Zilboorg suggests film’s homogeneity in subsequent (and simultaneous) performances is antithetical to true art. Zilboorg linking movies to cultural values of speed and mechanization was prefigured by the poet Ezra Pound. In his 1916 article “Mr. James Joyce and the Modern Stage,” he found room to lavish praise on the movies. “The minute [a spectator] comes to the conclusion that Chaplin is better than X—­, Y—­, and Z—­, because he, Chaplin, gets the maximum effect with the minimum effort, minimum expenditure, etc. etc. the said spectator is infinitely nearer a conception of art” (Pound 130–­31, emphasis mine). Pound does not criticize the spectator for privileging efficiency (and he certainly prized it in much of his own work). On the contrary, a modern spectator must see that Chaplin’s efficiency is part of what makes Chaplin—­and film more generally—­great. These are the values of modern society, inherited from industry, and applied broadly across the culture. Film, in personifying them, situates itself as the entertainment form best suited to the age. Zilboorg’s call for an appreciation of the special qualities of live performance in opposition to movies has been echoed many times since. Others, however, were inspired by the possibilities of film, and saw auratic possibilities in the new medium that were not solely the province of actors on stage. In the 1923 essay “A Substitute For Dreams,” Hugo von Hofmannsthal acknowledged the highly commercial nature of film-­ making and the constant appeal to the lowest common denominator, but still argued that “the motion picture is the only medium through which the men of our day—­and by that I mean the great masses of mankind—­ are able to come together for the purpose of enjoying a wonderful, yes a spiritual, heritage, and of making their own lives a part of the lives of all the world” (von Hofmannsthal 248). One year later Louise Hamburger predicted a glorious future for both film and the United States, blatantly invoking patriotic themes for each. “With the coming of masters of the new medium, a great art will grow up of the people, by the people and for the people in a way no other art has ever been before, an art equipped to be the hand-­maid of democracy.” The reasons for this faith are similar to those cited above: the wide appeal of movies, the relative heterogeneity

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of the audience, and the identical nature of the performance being watched. “It is,” she wrote, “the modern church without distinction of race, color or creed, where brotherhood is a reality” (Hamburger 138). While not everyone attached such revolutionary impacts to cinema, the repeatable, egalitarian experience of watching a movie was acknowledged by many, as a cause for either celebration or sadness. Even for those in theater who appreciated the possibilities of movies the problem remained of how to keep live drama vital in the face of films’ incredible popularity. Experiments were tried where film and live theater were integrated, but nothing much came of them. Another tactic was to adopt some of the traits of the cinema, in particular the repeatable nature of the performance. The easiest way to do this was to double down on the practice of typecasting. In one sense this was just lines of business reworked, but the emphasis on the physical similarity to a preexisting idea of the character negated the work actors might do as far as building roles and marrying their own personal sensibilities to the outlines left by the author in the script. This was more in keeping with Longmans’s “actors as cogs in the wheel” philosophy. As such, it was generally not greeted with cheers and applause. When the young actor in Odets’s Waiting for Lefty (1935) pleads for a chance to take an open part, arguing “I could build it up and act it,” the producer curtly replies, “What do I care if you can act it? . . . We protect investments: we cast to type. Your face and height we want, not your soul, son” (Odets 378). Odets is voicing an auratic theater artist’s protest against the overcommodification of theater. Typecasting in the name of lines of business wouldn’t have been the target of complaint forty years earlier. Acting was lines of business. Now, with a conception of acting emphasizing the personal construction of a character from a collection of skills developed through exercises and study, the idea of a good actor as a protean performer capable of convincing an audience of the truth of their performance had taken hold. Criticisms of typecasting came from a number of fronts. Odets in the ’30s suggested it neglects the possibility of artistic achievement in the theater. Benjamin Kauser, in his 1928 article “Casting a Play,” argues that typecasting has dramatically lowered the mean level of acting. “The prevailing system of casting today is: ‘He looks the part.’ But the question: ‘Does he walk like the part? Does he talk like it? Does he think like it? Does he ACT like it?’ is never asked. That’s why we have no Romeos, no Lears, no Oedipuses. [ . . . ] The day when an actor had to know how to fence, to sing, to dance, to walk and talk, belongs to the memories of Booth’s golden art” (Kauser 253). Kauser offers a nostalgic sense that back in Booth’s day actors knew

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what it meant to act, even if what he lists are the same physical skills that modern trained actors would be exposed to. Yet he also imagines the pinnacle of acting to be expressed in the transformative display of the actor, and it is this that has been denigrated when actors are cast already “matching” to a greater or lesser extent the idea of a particular character. Edith J. R. Isaacs, editor of Theatre Arts Monthly sometime prior to her publishing Stanislavsky’s An Actor Prepares, provides one of the finest descriptions not only of typecasting as it was practiced in action, but of the motivations behind it and the challenges posed in a 1933 article in The Drama. Invited one day to come to the theater to see “good directing,” she arrived expecting to watch a rehearsal. What she found was the director looking at two pictures in his office. One was the current New York cast of a “highly diverting comedy,” and the second was a new cast assembled in New York to open the show in Chicago: Height for height, color for color, pound for pound, this director had doubled these actors. Casting offices had scoured the town to make this perfect match. Each one of those actors had, moreover, the producer assured me, watched his original over and over again in performance until he had copied squarely every gesture, every bit of business, every facial expression. “And that,” said the dear man, “I call good directing. They say we don’t give Chicago as good as we got. There isn’t one of them can tell the difference.” (Isaacs, “Type Casting: The Eighth Deadly Sin” 133) As it turns out, audiences could tell the difference. According to Isaacs, the Chicago production—­in a triumph or failure of live theater, depending on your values—­didn’t enjoy the success of the original production. Despite looking like the original cast and rigorous drilling in blocking and business, something was missing. Isaacs writes that one of the New York actors “played like a flash” and set the pace for the production, contributing an apparently intangible quality that could not be duplicated despite the identical outward show. Isaacs, like Zilboorg, sought to celebrate an auratic element of theater that escaped measurement, calculation, and simple reproduction. I love this story because it crystalizes issues film’s success brought front and center regarding theater and its place in an increasingly technologically focused society. The first point regards the replacement of actors. While the old star system expected local actors to be essentially interchangeable, inasmuch as they were supposed to simply feed lines to the

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visiting star, there was still an understanding that the star him-­ or herself (say a James O’Neill or Sarah Bernhardt) was entirely unique and irreplaceable. Someone else playing Edmund Dantes would be inherently less satisfying to an audience who either knew or expected the original performance. Now, with the ability to see a star in any city in the country playing in a particular movie, the idea of a show requiring a particular actor began to seem more like a liability than a benefit for all but the biggest stars who could command audiences based on their status and were willing to tour frequently. Hence the director happily comparing pictures in his theater office. By casting look-­alike doubles and rehearsing them in the original stage business, he is attempting to show the same show in two cities simultaneously. Critically, none of the actors is described as a star, which would have meant they were carrying auratic baggage that could not be easily replicated. Typecasting in the manner Isaacs describes was one theatrical answer to the continuing privileging of industrial values generally and the specific threat posed by the inroads cinema was making in narrative entertainment. In the theater world, typecasting could embody the Taylorist vision of an efficient production machine, with no wasted work in restaging a successful show, à la Longmans. Just cast look-­alikes, copy the stage business, and send them off to Chicago. Theater could be made along industrial lines more efficiently, with greater regularity, output, and quality control. The second issue is one of repeatability more generally. Until film forced the issue, theater practitioners voiced a low tolerance for true variation in performance. A well-­run show, even before the arrival of the modern industrial paradigm, was expected to function largely the same from night to night. The new industrial age heralded by interchangeable parts and championed by Taylor’s scientific management emphasized regularity and predictability, and the theater continued to reify those values. Yet theater could never be exactly the same across nights and venues, while movies were practically the Platonic ideal of repeatability. As film grew in dominance, theater’s options were either to strive for even greater regularity in performance (like Isaacs’s director) or to champion the inherent variation and unpredictability of live performance that had hitherto been seen as industrial liabilities to be avoided. What couldn’t be avoided was film’s inexorable march. First viewed as an embarrassment, then a curiosity, then a partner, and finally, with the arrival of sound, a significant threat to live drama, film exerted direct and indirect pressure on every aspect of theatrical production, casting and acting included. The negotiation of whether theater and film were both creating the same kind of art or whether there was something distinct about

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each—­and what that might be—­occupied film-­ and theater-­makers in the 1920s and ’30s. Even as the Crash of 1929 and subsequent Depression soured many on the idea of a capitalist system, the values of the industrial and technological paradigm heralded by Taylor continued to be adopted in theater, compounded by the need to somehow address the ever-­increasing success of the dream factory. Out of this 1930s milieu emerged the Group Theatre, one of the single most influential theater companies in US theater history. The Group, in various ways, both embraced and opposed industrial modernism as applied to the theater, and their history illuminates the ongoing negotiation of performers and artists within the technological paradigm, especially in regard to acting pedagogy. Undergirding many of the Group’s early assumptions about how to train actors is the work of Richard Boleslavsky, and it is first to his own work—­in particular his text Acting: The First Six Lessons—­that I turn in the next chapter before examining the Group Theatre in more detail.

FIVE

 | I Have This Chart and It Explains All of Acting

In her introduction to Boleslavsky’s 1933 Acting: The First Six Lessons, Edith J. R. Isaacs (potentially fresh off of her experience witnessing typecasting as described in the previous chapter) describes the difference between Boleslavsky and nearly every other preceding actor who wrote about acting: Talma, Fanny Kemble, Coquelin, and among the moderns, Louis Calvert and Stanislavsky stand out as actors who have tried to interpret acting. But Stanislavsky’s fine contribution is welded into the text of his autobiography My Life in Art, and all the rest are, generally speaking, an effort to create a philosophy of acting rather than to analyze elements of the art of acting or to establish a technique for the player. . . . They have clarified the fundamental laws of the art for many artists. But they do not help an actor learn the elements of his craft. (Isaacs, “Introduction” 2) These other actors have, perhaps, helped describe the science of acting, but they haven’t offered a technology for actors to harness that science. Boleslavsky’s lessons, by contrast, stand “alone in their field” for Isaacs. Each chapter is designed to “help a young actor on his way. They actually select his tools for him and show him how to use them” (Isaacs, “Introduction” 2). Boleslavsky is offering more than philosophy, he’s offering techne. Acting: The First Six Lessons began as a series of articles published in Theatre Arts Monthly between 1927 and 1932. These were collected and published as a stand-­alone book in 1933 and encapsulate much of what he had been teaching at the American Laboratory Theatre in the 1920s. The articles take the form of six imagined lessons in dialogue form—­he refers to them as a “Morality Play”—­between Boleslavsky, referred to as “B,” and an unnamed female student known, infamously, only as “the Creature.” In them Boleslavsky lays out a foundational set of approaches based on his own

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work with Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre. His influence—­either through his writings or his work at the ALT—­is broad and deep. My goal here is not to fully explicate the details of his approach to acting, but rather to call out those elements of his teaching that exemplify aspects of the technological paradigm in performance, and to look at those points where Boleslavsky simultaneously embraces Romantic or auratic aspects of the theater alongside the industrial.1 After examining Boleslavsky’s text, I close the chapter by looking at some of Boleslavsky’s most influential students from the American Laboratory Theatre and their work in the Group in the 1930s. In particular, I examine the fundamental disagreement between Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg over Stanislavsky’s methodology and explore how even in this moment of contention both parties grappled with the legacy of Taylor and the technological paradigm.

B AND THE CREATURE: BOLESLAVSKY’S SIX LESSONS

Boleslavsky offers a single-­sentence definition of acting in the first chapter of his book that would make any Romantic proud: “Acting is the life of the human soul receiving its birth through art” (Boleslavsky, Acting 7, emphasis original). Theater more generally is also defined in such terms. “The theatre is a great mystery, a mystery in which are wonderfully wedded the two eternal phenomena, the dream of Perfection and the dream of the Eternal. Only to such a theatre is it worth while to give one’s life” (Boleslavsky, Acting 10). The Romantic notion of suffering for art’s sake is also hit on in the book’s opening, for when the Creature cries, worried she will never become a true actress, he commends her, saying “You suffered now; you felt deeply. Those are two things without which you cannot do in any art and especially in the art of the theatre” (Boleslavsky, Acting 6). Finally, he reiterates a point he made in his earlier teaching that innate talent is necessary for a successful actor. In one of his lectures at the ALT, Boleslavsky suggested that “One may have a strong will, but if he has not talent, he can’t do what he wants to do” (Boleslavsky, Acting 125). The necessity of talent nicely aligns with the Romantic conception of the artist as a separate and special being. Yet while ample attention is paid to striving for “perfec1. Pitches, in Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting, offers an alternative close read of Six Lessons focused on elements of Freudian and behavioral psychology as they are evidenced in Boleslavsky’s work (see especially 94–­109).

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tion” in subsequent chapters, the “eternal” is not often mentioned, and the mystery of theater is likewise often absent. In laying out his text, Boleslavsky enunciates a number of assumptions informed by the culture of technology, chiefly a faith in technique and the improvability of skill, along with a cheerful adoption of systematized instruction and methodology in approaching the work of acting. The first chapter is titled “Concentration” and is described as the bedrock of an actor’s technique—­in marked contrast to the vocal production stressed in the previous century2—­and one that could be improved through practice. Specifically, the Creature is told that she must develop “Spiritual Concentration” (just as Boleslavsky had lectured on at the ALT; see chapter 3) that will allow her to call up “something materially imperceptible” (Boleslavsky, Acting 7). He means emotional states, although at this stage it is more appropriate to say that this is an openness to emotional states and an ability to focus the body on their reception and projection. This becomes clearer in the second chapter when Boleslavsky looks approvingly at his student’s progress, stating “she doesn’t miss the slightest hint of emotion. She is like a violin whose strings respond to all vibrations, and she remembers those vibrations. . . . She will make a good actress” (Boleslavsky, Acting 12). (In line with Boleslavsky’s original conception of the chapters as a morality play, much of the text is in dramatic dialogue form, including the use of italics to set apart stage directions or direct address, as he does in the quote above.) That she eventually masters the skill of concentration, coupled with her natural talent, seems enough to insure success as an actress. Note also the approving comparison to a musical instrument, linking Boleslavsky’s description to the long lineage of seeing musicians as models for contemporary actors. Critically, the presentation of emotion must be self-­initiated, rather than following a Delsartean model of standardized and idealized emotional presentation. To heighten the contrast between the old-­fashioned approach and his own, Boleslavsky inserts a description of the Creature recounting her portrayal of King Lear in a school play. Boleslavsky asks how she played the “Blow winds” speech, and she replies, “I had to stand this way, my feet well together, incline my body forward a little, lift my head like this, stretch out my arms to heaven and shake my fists” (Boleslavsky, Act2. Compare to the advice reportedly given to a young Sarah Bernhardt, recalled in The Drama in 1923: “A correct pronunciation is the first requisite for an actor, but, of course, and most of all, a strong will is the surest factor in theatrical work as in any other career. Then, one has to reckon with physical imperfections: a wide mouth, well closed teeth, prevent the objectionable whistling sound always so distressing” (Mairet 288). Appropriate dental work, while undoubtedly important, rarely figures into more recent discussions of stage prerequisites.

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ing 5). All of her details invoke the sort of playing that MacKaye might have been accused of dealing in, with a specific stance and posture to curse the heavens dictated by tradition or training. Boleslavsky, in the final chapter, gets in a last dig at outmoded approaches by having the Creature gently criticize stock companies. “In stock, the poor actor often has no time or opportunity to find out what to do” (Boleslavsky, Acting 60). The actor of the past was poor in both time and technique, and so relied on tricks, habits, and tradition. As might be anticipated, Boleslavsky is not interested in working in this fashion, and uses the same musical simile that animated so many acting theorists, MacKaye included, before him. “You want to play a Chopin Nocturne without knowing what the notes are” (Boleslavsky, Acting 5–­6). Naturally the solution is to realize the dream of an actor’s scales just as pianists have their own exercises. “Such scales,” Boleslavsky explains, “are your five senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. . . . Learn how to govern this scale, how with your entire being to concentrate on your senses, to make them work artificially” (Boleslavsky, Acting 8). Boleslavsky also echoes Edward Gordon Craig, comparing the ideal actor to a painter at work, whose concentration on applying paint to canvas should be seen as a model for actors playing themselves as instruments before an audience. A year passes in the fictional world of the book before the Creature returns to see Boleslavsky, and it is clear that she has spent that time diligently improving her powers of concentration.3 Having acquired the skill to express emotional states, the next problem is how to conjure them effectively for the stage. It is here that Boleslavsky cites the psychologist Ribot as scientific proof that emotions can be recalled through the “special memory for feelings,” and he assures the Creature that she has plenty waiting for her to bring to the surface. “And what is more,” he continues, “when you do awaken them, you can control them, you can make use of them, you can apply them in your craft. I prefer that word to ‘Art’” (Boleslavsky, Acting 16). The citation of scientific authority as the basis for acting exercises places Boleslavsky squarely within the Taylorist paradigm, the exercise serving as the application of Ribot’s theory. The Creature, shown to have talent and having accomplished the necessary prerequisite training in emotional availability, is free to make use of her own emotional memories, scientifically proven to exist and unlockable through applied technique. This is a systematic approach to artistic creation rather 3. Between Boleslavsky’s first and second articles on acting in Theatre Arts Monthly, two years actually elapsed.

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than the activity of a Romantic artist at the whim of a fickle muse. “If you have done all the work you say you have and if the part is within your range,” Boleslavsky promises, sounding like Mae Marsh, “you cannot fail. . . . Work and patience never fail” (Boleslavsky, Acting 13). With the right techne there is no need to worry. Craft is a constant refrain with Boleslavsky. When the Creature raises the objection that in a scene she is talking to her mother, but in her appropriate emotional memory she is speaking to her brother, Boleslavsky answers “Be logical. You substitute creation for the real thing” (Boleslavsky, Acting 17). The exhortation to logic in the work of acting coupled with another explicit mention of “craft” a few lines later emphasizes the methodical nature of Boleslavsky’s approach.4 This facility with emotional recollection and presentation was compared, unsurprisingly, to work in other arts. “How do you learn a tune you want to remember? How do you learn the outline of muscles you want to draw? How do you learn the mixture of colors you want to use in painting? Through constant repetition and perfection” (Boleslavsky, Acting 17–­18). While some will be more naturally adept at this than others, the skill is presented as something anyone can develop. In time, he assures her, recalling emotions will become easier and easier, requiring less and less effort until “finally the flash of thought will be sufficient” (Boleslavsky, Acting 18). A good actor is an efficient actor. Boleslavsky also contends that there are often only a few points of truly high drama in any play that necessitate this level of emotional work. This idea is later challenged by some of his spiritual descendants, when they regard every moment as potential fodder for an exercise. For now, Boleslavsky is content to argue that a true actor only really needs to worry about a few minutes of the entire show, trusting that the rest will fall naturally into place. Before closing the chapter, Boleslavsky emphasizes the constructed nature of acting one more time, comparing emotional memories to “paints and brushes” and calling them the “only friends and teachers in your craft” (Boleslavsky, Acting 21). He also intimates a level of emotional differentiation on par with Brewster’s cinematic “Expression of the Emotions,” commanding the Creature “to bring me at least a hundred records of your registered moments” (Boleslavsky, Acting 21). His emphasis on diligent work that will naturally lead to effective (and affective) playing is another expression of faith in the power of science-­based systems and in the demo4. “Through your will power and the knowledge of your craft you have organized and re-­ created it [the emotion]” (Boleslavsky, Acting 17).

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cratic promise of technology, capable of being wielded by anybody who knows the technique. Despite calling the third chapter “Dramatic Action,” the main subject is arguably a defense of acting for the camera. The Creature sees an impossible performance situation in film, where the actor is an accessory to the technical requirements of filmmaking. Boleslavsky, conversely, delights in the very modernity of film with its promise of bringing scientific precision to the work of the actor. When the Creature complains that her “whole nature as an actress rebels” against working in cinema, Boleslavsky chides her, for what real actor wouldn’t rejoice in the discovery of a great and final instrument of drama; the instrument which all the other arts have had since time immemorial, and which the oldest art, the theatre, lacked until today; the instrument that gives to the theatre the precision and scientific serenity which all the other arts have had; the instrument that demands of the actor to be as exact as the color scheme in painting, form in sculpture, string, wood, brass in music, mathematics in architecture, words in poetry. (Boleslavsky, Acting 24, emphasis mine) Film is the answer to the challenges Edward Gordon Craig mounted against seeing the actor as a true artist. If the actor is compromised by the varied nature of performance from moment to moment and night to night, film offers the ultimate solution, for the performance can be repeated until perfect, allowing the theater (here meaning performance generally) the “scientific serenity” that comes from the ability to offer an audience a precise, and repeatable, performance. Further, making a film removes the element of public experimentation, similarly lamented by Craig, from the work of the actor. “Do you realize,” he continues, “that the intimate creative work of an actor need no longer be performed before the public eye. . . . The actor is free from onlookers in the moment of creation and only the results of it are judged” (Boleslavsky, Acting 24). Through the miracle of technological innovation, film leaves nothing to chance. The direct refutation of Craig’s arguments is probably deliberate. Elsewhere in Six Lessons Boleslavsky explicitly invokes Craig, and he had personally worked with him when Craig directed Hamlet for the Moscow Art Theatre in 1912.5 5. On page nineteen Boleslavsky mentions that Craig “has a charming book-­plate” and later the Creature cites Craig as the source of the line “it’s just too bad that someone’s best is so bad” (Boleslavsky, Acting 19, 35).

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Alongside the rhapsodic defense of film, the third lesson discusses “dramatic action.” Boleslavsky describes it as the “spine” of a play and likens it to the trunk of a tree, describing it as “nature’s law of action” (Boleslavsky, Acting 26). His metaphor endows the concept with scientific certainty, and by extension supports the analytic theory that follows from the concept. The director, under Boleslavsky’s division of labor, is responsible for deciding on the spine or trunk of the play. The actor’s responsibility is to build smaller actions that complement the main action, like branches from a tree trunk all reaching skyward. One advantage of this—­ particularly for film work—­is that the actions can then be recalled independently from one another. “Your scene, or part, is a long string of beads—­ beads of action. You play with them as you play with a rosary. You can start anywhere, any time, and go as far as you wish” (Boleslavsky, Acting 28). Armed with the appropriate techne, the disjointed nature of film production is no hindrance to the actor’s art. Significantly it is actions, not emotions, that are explicitly scored at this point. While emotions are clearly important to Boleslavsky, he connects them more strongly to action than many previous theorists had, Boleslavsky included. In the 1927 essay “Fundamentals of Acting” in Theatre Arts Monthly, he had written about “dynamic action,” a related but not identical term to “dramatic action” that for him at the time seemed to mean an actor should be comfortable alternating between the poles of Joseph Jefferson’s famous dictum to act with a “warm heart” and “cool head,” with the head informing the heart of what heat is required. An actor should be able to go smoothly from being “cool headed and firm of purpose, aware of the problem before him,” and then “to precipitate himself intensely into the action which the situation requires.” Experienced actors reportedly have difficulty with this, as “he [the actor] generally is altogether convinced that should he pause while acting a part to consider his next move, although it might be only for an unnoticeable part of a second, he would come out of character and so destroy the illusion.” For Boleslavsky, this is an old-­ fashioned worry, perhaps borne out of a totalizing concern for emotion in their own technique. In contrast, he finds that younger actors “are very easy to convince on this point and exceedingly sensitive as to this simple method of connecting problem and action.” The youthful actor is more accustomed to thinking in this manner and is thus better served by modern practices. Boleslavsky argues that this oscillation between assessment and direct activity “is based on the very essence of that form of acting which we use in our daily life.” Finally, he argues that this methodology is particularly useful with “American actors, particularly those of Anglo-­Saxon ori-

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gin, [as] I have found this the only effective way of arousing the emotions and of making their nervous emotion on the stage count for something real and sincere” (Boleslavsky, “Fundamentals” 127). As a technique, “dynamic action” points toward an alternate engine for generating emotions beyond simply focusing on the feelings of the character. At the same time, his language indicates that this might be a useful technique when directing, rather than in extended instruction, which may help account for its mutations in Six Lessons. Pitches draws a comparison to Stanislavsky’s own trajectory, writing “by 1925 Boleslavsky was re-­evaluating the place of emotion and looking as Stanislavsky did later, for a more significant role for action” (Pitches 106). In the subsequent Six Lessons, Boleslavsky explores “action” even further, breaking down the actor’s creation of subsidiary actions into three parts: deciding what the character wants, defining it with a verb, and then enacting it, which are examples of the artist’s will, technique, and expression, respectively. Once they are established they can be recorded in the script and memorized along with the text itself. By doing this, actors make themselves more like musicians, where the difference between two different actions “would be just as different in their delivery as the singer is when he takes ‘C’ or ‘C flat’” (Boleslavsky, Acting 28). Boleslavsky again emphasizes the specificity demanded of the modern, scientific actor, with a half-­tone standing in as the difference between two actions, just as Fiske argued for an actor to know the difference between anguish and despair. An actor’s work should be standardized, repeatable, and interchangeable, all cornerstones of the technological paradigm. To address the scientific medium of film, Boleslavsky offers the technology of dramatic action. The next meeting between B and the Creature takes place in an actual theater, and in this and the subsequent chapter Boleslavsky makes his most explicit arguments against traditional on-the-job learning. In each he brings in a third character, here the doorman of the theater, upon whom Boleslavsky lavishes some detail at the outset. “His very presence bars the entrance. He acts the part. He is not just a watchman—­he is a splendid impersonation of Francisco, Bernardo, or Marcellus at his post” (Boleslavsky, Acting 31). After gaining entrance through the intercession of his student and being waved into the building, Boleslavsky thinks to himself, “It takes an actor to be so economically gracious. I wonder if he is one?” (Boleslavsky, Acting 32). Of course he is, but the reveal will wait until the lesson is complete. Boleslavsky’s immediate task is to aid the Creature in a process of characterization, moving her performance from a generalized idea of a character type to a specific character, in this case Ophelia from Hamlet.

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The Creature is stymied. Despite using Boleslavsky’s first three lessons correctly, her performance seems off in some way. “[They say] I ‘tear a passion to tatters.’ That nobody would believe me. That it is pathological hypnotism, not acting, and that I will ruin myself and my health” (Boleslavsky, Acting 36). Boleslavsky agrees with both her director and her. She has done everything correctly, but there is more to learn. In a passing reference, Boleslavsky echoes the argument that modern training was efficient, allowing a student to bypass tedious trial-­and-­error. “If I did not tell you right now what I’m going to tell you, you would work until you found it. . . . It might take a few years, maybe more” (Boleslavsky, Acting 36). Fortunately for the Creature, those potential years of struggle can be eliminated with B’s help. Warming to his topic, “Characterization,” Boleslavsky revels in the mechanistic nature of his work, to the initial discomfort of the Creature. He no longer invokes musicians or painters but suggests that cobbler would be a profession analogous to actor. Both systematically labor at their craft. “The only difference between an artist and a shoemaker,” he writes, is that “when the shoemaker has done his pair of boots, it is over. . . . When an artist finishes a piece of work, it is not done.” The Creature retorts that he is being “exasperatingly logical; just like an old mathematician, one, two, three, four. Disgusting. No art, just a handicraft. An old cabinet maker, that’s what you are” (Boleslavsky, Acting 36). Rather than offending him with a seeming dismissal of an artistic sensibility in his work, Boleslavsky contentedly replies “You mean emotion maker? Thank you for the compliment” (Boleslavsky, Acting 36). Despite the attention paid to actions in the previous chapter, emotions remain at the core of acting. “Emotion,” says Boleslavsky, “is God’s breath in a part. Through emotion, the author’s characters stand alive and vital.” Emotional presentation is the province and specialization of the actor, so much so that it is the sole place where the actor’s interpretation should overrule the playwright’s. “An actor is justified in adjusting the author’s writings to achieve the best results for his own emotional outline of the part” (Boleslavsky, Acting 42). Modern industrial practice is predicated on the notion of specialization, here epitomized in the acceptance that in the embodiment of emotion the trained actor reigns supreme. When it comes time to layer physical characterization onto the previous work—­and Boleslavsky suggests this should occur late in the rehearsal process—­he sounds like an industrial engineer constructing a new machine from old parts, treating physical choices like so many interchangeable components. “You can borrow a head from Botticelli, a posture from

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Van Dyck, use the arms of your sister and the wrists of Angna Enters. . . . 6 All of this will make a composite creature” (Boleslavsky, Acting 39). Creating a character, for Boleslavsky, is a combination of the qualities of the individual actor mixed with physicalities taken from great works of art, real-­life observations, or both, to shape a performance that will ring true for an audience. Naturally this process, when done properly, will be efficient, allowing an actor to quickly construct a complete physical persona derived from a storehouse of postures, positions, and attitudes. Also noteworthy is the promise of greater malleability in physical presentation. Whereas actors of an earlier generation might have been content to simply play the roles most closely associated with their natural selves, or strive toward a particular line of business, the emphasis on constructing a character points toward the protean ideal of an actor, endlessly transformable from piece to piece. Putting it all together, the Creature essays the Mousetrap scene. Suddenly the Doorman joins the rehearsal, feeding her Hamlet’s lines from the back of the house. Boleslavsky describes his voice as “old, shaky, but trained and rich,” and the Doorman acquits himself well, delivering the “country manners” line with a suggestion of pain. “He must hurt one he doesn’t want to hurt, to convince the others” (Boleslavsky, Acting 43). When the scene concludes the Creature asks him how he came to know the lines, and he confesses he had been an actor. Then he delivers an endorsement of Boleslavsky’s training regime: I have played almost every part in all the big plays. I studied them all, I worked hard. But I did not have time to perfect myself or to think about all the things this gentleman has told you. Now, when I have time to think . . . I know all my mistakes, and the reasons, and the ways of doing. . . . I have enjoyed your talk, sir. Everything was true, very true. (Boleslavsky, Acting 44) The Doorman is an example of an actor who found success through much trial and error, but without the “time to think” or a systematized approach to the work he was always going to be at a disadvantage; an unscientific actor in a scientific age. Perhaps Boleslavsky’s initial description of him as a Marcellus or Bernardo is another reinforcement of this idea, for he is not described as a Laertes (Boleslavsky’s own role in the MAT/Edward Gordon Craig Hamlet) or as the melancholy Dane himself. 6. A famous dancer of the time.

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The next chapter reinforces this theme through another tertiary character: the Creature’s Aunt. She and Boleslavsky are waiting for the Creature to join them in the Aunt’s apartment for tea. Their small talk turns to the theater and actor training in particular. Immediately after her niece’s entrance, the Aunt lays it on quite thick: I know that I am right. I don’t believe in all the theories and lectures, psychological analyses, and brain-­befuddling exercises my niece has told me about. . . . My theory is: To be an actor one must act. So act all you can,—­as long as it pays. . . . If one has talent the pay will last for a long time. (Boleslavsky, Acting 46) Just as the Creature’s first ill-­directed attempt at Lear was predicated on an old-­fashioned physical stylization, so too are the Aunt’s ideas of how to become a good actor similarly obsolete. Her laundry list of what she doesn’t believe in is the catalog of advances in modern acting: solid theory, grounded in science, explicated through lecture and exercise. As such, a witty and rousing defense of the contemporary approach cannot be far behind. Boleslavsky begins by playing the cultivation card, for “talent needs cultivation, [and] only through cultivation can one discover the presence of talent” (Boleslavsky, Acting 46). Boleslavsky’s prior acceptance of talent as a prerequisite to successful playing suggested that talent existed independently, and before the actor undertook a course of study. But here Boleslavsky subtly demotes talent, arguing that it may be impossible to determine whether a given person actually possesses talent until they have undertaken at least some training. It is possible that this shift reflected his own changing position over the five-year composition period of Six Lessons. While a small point here, it is another move toward the continued deemphasis of inherent genius or natural talent in the larger conversation about the role of training in acting. After all, if “talent” could only be discerned after training, who was to say that training couldn’t create talent in the first place? While Boleslavsky doesn’t go quite this far in 1933, others later will. The topic of the Aunt’s chapter is “Observation” and its necessity for an actor. Building on the instruction of the last chapter to construct a part from remembered components from art and life, the point of observation is to accumulate an internal store of images that can be combined and applied when acting. But having celebrated his status as a carpenter-­like “emotion maker” in the previous chapter, Boleslavsky brings back elements of the

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auratic in this discussion. A keen sense of observation offered a number of practical advantages to an actor, but it is also credited with improving the actor’s life in decidedly nonmaterialistic ways. Boleslavsky remarks that a cultivated observational sense “enriches [the] inner life by full and extensive consumption of everything in outward life” (Boleslavsky, Acting 49). To make the mystical connection clearer, Boleslavsky then compares observational practice to the ascetic minimalism of “Hindu follower[s] of Yoga.” Despite a diet that is “one banana and a handful of rice,” they thrive because they “consume [it] rightly . . . that food gives the Hindu immeasurable energy, spiritual power, and vitality” (Boleslavsky, Acting 49).7 The Creature, a little later, relates how, to develop this skill, she set aside one hour for observing and recording everything she saw around her, and “in three months’ time I became as rich as Croesus in gold. . . . I’m ten times as alert as I was. And life is so much more wonderful. You don’t know how rich and wonderful it is” (Boleslavsky, Acting 51).8 Like the Hindu mystics, Boleslavsky argues, actors have access to a different, spiritual plane of existence, even if that access is facilitated by a concrete methodology. Actors who answer the call of their talent (which may not be perceptible until cultivated) are not merely workers on a theatrical assembly line. They possess a spiritual essence that must necessarily suffuse their work. Boleslavsky seeks to articulate a way for theatrical practice to be both industrial and spiritual at the same time. When talent was equated with natural genius, aura and theater were seen as indissoluble as the artist reached into ethereal realms to bring a character to life. By embracing methods and processes designed to be explicable, efficient, and repeatable, actors helped demystify the nature of their own work. Even inspiration was subject to the new regime. Boleslavsky himself, weighing in on the subject of inspiration with the Aunt, says “I believe that inspiration is the result of hard work, but the only thing which can stimulate inspiration in an actor is constant and keen observation every day of his life” (Boleslavsky, Acting 50). Boleslavsky addressed this same idea in one of his lectures at the ALT, invoking comparisons to other, more technique-­based arts. “The 7. Given Stanislavsky’s early inspiration from yogic practice (Carnicke writes that he had been using yoga-­esque practices as early as 1906 and had received copies of Hatha Yoga and Raja Yoga in 1911), this reference may not be quite as much of a non sequitur as it might initially appear. (See Carnicke, Stanislavsky 2nd ed., chapter 9, esp. 170–­71). 8. While not an exact match, when the Creature talks of her newfound observational skills I can’t help but recall Emily in Act III of Our Town (1938): “EMILY: Do human beings ever realize life while they live it?—­every, every minute? STAGE MANAGER: No. (pause) The saints and poets, maybe—­they do some” (Wilder 100).

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days when artists tramped around the world, creating only when they were inspired are gone. Now the artist must be on the job like everyone else. . . . You must have your technique as the musician must have his note and the painter his brush, and you must know how to the last possibility to create a human soul” (Boleslavsky 125). Far from being an unpredictable bolt from the blue, with the right techne inspiration could be created just as surely as anything else. Against the pressures of typecasting as described earlier by Isaacs, the increasing expectation of repeatability brought about by film performance, along with the rise of contemporary acting methodologies based on methods and systems, diminished the aura of the actor in performance, and by extension the entire profession. Some might welcome this, but others—­and Boleslavsky might easily be counted in this category—­were hardly ready to give up all mystery in the theater. A growing challenge for those like Boleslavsky was to reconcile an expanding set of methodologies that promised to regularize artistic expression with the transcendent and inspirational attributes that were traditionally native to the entire Romantic theatrical enterprise. Given the rapid increase in methodological approaches to the stage, was theater at risk of becoming nothing but shoemaking? Boleslavsky’s answer was no. Even if acting was far less mystical than might be commonly believed by people like the Creature’s Aunt, the auratic could never be completely eliminated. Like the eventual elimination of talent, this maintenance of the metaphysical within a more systematic means of performance would be further challenged by latter-­day practitioners. The concluding chapter of Six Lessons is simultaneously a reaffirmation of the aura in acting, a tribute to Boleslavsky’s newly adopted home, and a final embrace of technological progress. It is set, fantastically, on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. The Creature has brought Boleslavsky here to gaze at the world from this, the (then) tallest building on the planet, and the sublimity of the view prompts a discussion of “Rhythm.” Boleslavsky admits up front that the concept is difficult to precisely define, especially as applied to the theater. He says that he learned a great deal about rhythm as applied in music and dance from Dalcroze, and that there is a book (unnamed) on rhythm in architecture that he admires but is unfortunately unavailable in English. He confesses that he is unsatisfied with his own attempts to define “rhythm” in a manner generalizable across all the arts (a very Taylorist dream of universalization), but offers (in italics) his current working definition: “the orderly, measurable changes of all the different elements comprised in a work of art.” “Sounds methodical,” the Creature somewhat laconically replies. But instead of embracing the adjec-

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tive as he has done so many other times throughout the book, Boleslavsky says it sounds so because “it is the beginning of a thought” (Boleslavsky, Acting 58), suggesting that a less methodical answer might be desired. The looseness of his definition allows this chapter to range between the purely mechanical and the auratic, with references to strict processes alongside far more organic or intuitive elements. For example, to interrogate the idea of rhythm, the Creature and Boleslavsky use painting to discuss representing “orderly and measurable changes” in a work of art, calling out Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel and da Vinci’s Last Supper especially. In a wonderful (and probably unintended) callback to Bulwer’s guide to hand positions from the seventeenth century, the Creature relates that she “studied the movement of all the hands in [the Last Supper]. I knew them by heart and could use all of them freely and naturally” (Boleslavsky, Acting 59). Unlike Bulwer’s attachment of specific emotional states, however, these were character observations, filed away and ready to be assembled into a particular incarnation of a role per Boleslavsky’s instructions in chapter 4.9 The recourse to great works of art is similarly a reference to the exhortation made (most recently) by Boleslavsky that actors should study paintings and sculpture to find inspiration for their own work. Yet alongside this mechanistic approach to building a character, Boleslavsky also suggests that inspiration may strike during an actual performance. The actor “may, on the spur of the moment, discover what to do,” unlocked through “a developed sense of rhythm” (Boleslavsky, Acting 60). This, in turn, can be cultivated through sublimation of the self, “giving himself up freely and entirely to any Rhythm he happens to encounter in life.” Given the obscure nature of the term’s meaning, it might seem that this sense of rhythm is finally where talent lies—­one either has rhythm or doesn’t—­but again Boleslavsky frustrates the expectation, saying that “there is not a stone in the universe without a sense of Rhythm. A few actors maybe, but very few” (Boleslavsky, Acting 61). To develop a sense of rhythm one should start, methodically and systematically, with music, where rhythmic changes are most pronounced, then proceed to visual arts, and so on to the theater. But then he whipsaws back into the auratic with his parting advice to the Creature as they gaze out at the city: Don’t look at me now, my dearest friend, look into space and listen with your inner ear. Music, and the other arts which follow natu9. “Look at Van Dyck, look at Reynolds. . . . Study the hands of Botticelli, of Leonardo, of Raphael” (Boleslavsky, Acting 39).

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rally, will be only an open road to the whole of the universe. Don’t miss anything in it. Listen to the waves of the sea. Absorb their sweeping change of time, with your body, brain, and soul. Talk to them as Demosthenes did, and don’t weaken after the first attempt. Let the meaning and Rhythm of your words be a continuation of their eternal sound. Inhale their spirit and feel at one with them, even for an instant. It will make you, in the future, able to portray the eternal parts of universal literature. (Boleslavsky, Acting 63) This is aura on a grand scale, with the spiritual and metaphysical aspects of a life in the theater evoked through elemental imagery alongside the promise of transcendence as the Creature plays “the eternal parts of universal literature.” Yet embedded in the Romantic imagery is the call for instruction and improvement. Demosthenes, after all, talked to the waves not to hear their answer, but to improve his skills in public speaking.10

THE GROUP’S METHOD: “AS CLEAR AND AS SOUND AS A THEOREM OF EUCLID”

Boleslavsky taught actual people, not merely fictional creations, at the American Laboratory Theatre. Given his love of cinema, his citation of scientists in his writing, and his structure of education based on exercises, he was modern in many senses of the word when it came to acting pedagogy. This, along with his understanding of Stanislavsky’s system, he passed along to some of the young men and women who became the founding members of the Group Theatre. Even before the Depression, troubles in the US theater weren’t difficult to find for those who were looking for them. In Wendy Smith’s incredible Real Life Drama she recounts the events leading up to the founding of the Group Theatre in 1931, including the series of combination lectures, harangues, and sermons that Harold Clurman gave in the late 1920s on the sorry state of professional play-­making. “His frustration with the theatre of the twenties stemmed from his belief that it had nothing to say, no interest in the world beyond the stage door” (Smith 8). Among his partners in outrage were Cheryl Crawford, whose firsthand observations of the Theatre Guild’s operations as executive assistant to executive director Theresa Hel10. Hence his inclusion in the celebratory poem that helps open elocutionist and critic Alfred Ayres’s book (see chapter 1).

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burn had left her wanting a more substantial theater, and Lee Strasberg, who for years had been voraciously consuming everything he could get his hands on regarding the problem of the actor on stage. “Gordon Craig’s On the Art of the Theatre excited him as it did Clurman, but other books were also influential, especially those that dealt with the art of acting. . . . From the beginning he was fascinated by the question of how an actor could summon up real emotion during a performance rather than simply relying on external skills to imitate feeling” (Smith 12). This emphasis on acting in particular would prove to be the focus of nearly his entire professional career in the theater. As a company the Group radiated a sense of the auratic in their work. Much of the history surrounding the Group Theatre emphasizes their devotion to artistic ideals, their repudiation of monetary success on Broadway or Hollywood, and even the adoption of communism by some of its members—­all traits popularly associated with opposition to industrial modernism. At the same time, their methods, structure, vocabulary, organization, and approach to the problems of the stage owe a great deal to industrial practice and illustrate how pervasive the technological paradigm had become. First and most critically was their appreciation for the system of acting taught by Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya at the ALT. As Wendy Smith points out, “what was important in the beginning was not just the content of the system . . . but the idea of systematic training for the actor, an alternative to the commercial theatre’s hit-­or-­miss approach” (Smith 9). This was the inversion of the criticism that faced MacKaye in the 1880s: now, good system or bad, the blessing was in having one. Strasberg explicitly called out this aspect of his experience with the ALT in his A Dream of Passion: It was Boleslavsky’s notion of a unified system of actor training that remained with me. . . . Yet more electrifying was the growing concept set forth by Boleslavsky of a fixed sequence of procedures that would serve the young actor in the same way standard training techniques serve the young musician—­a sequence of exercises that would physically and mentally develop the necessary stimulus for creativity in the actor. (Strasberg 78–­79) This was what they were going to replicate with the Group. Members would participate in a methodical and comprehensive training program, and time would be devoted to character creation in rehearsal based on the

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same exercises learned abstractly in classes. Like musicians, they would develop a technique that would grant them mastery over their instruments. Just as important was the contrast to the “hit-­or-­miss” commercial theater. Having a method was seen as substantial insurance against a truly bad performance. Despite his initial enthusiasm, Strasberg did not complete a full course of study at the ALT. “The exercises and general attitude he learned at the Lab formed the basis of his work for the rest of his life. But he didn’t stay long. Once he’d absorbed the basics, the youthful autodidact preferred to study on his own and explore the ramifications of the system through his work as an actor and director” (Smith 15). Despite his somewhat limited attendance, the influence of Boleslavsky and Ouspenskaya on the formation of the Group is significant. Charter members Stella Adler, Ruth Nelson, and Eunice Stoddard had all studied at the Lab, as had Harold Clurman, and in a 1963 interview Strasberg said, “the technical work in the Group Theatre came definitely from the work . . . [and] knowledge that I had acquired in the Lab” (Willis 115–­16). While they weren’t doing pure MAT/Boleslavsky/Ouspenskaya studies, the evolving methodologies the Group pursued were largely inspired in form and content by those sources. Beyond the excitement around a rigorous technique, for many members of the Group the disposable nature of actors in the current theatrical structure was of particular concern, and one that directly highlighted the negative implications of an industrialized art form. David Garfield, in his history of the Actors Studio, notes prosaically that “Strasberg was reading a great deal of Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky at the time, [and] defined the actor’s problems in Marxist terms” (Garfield 21). For Strasberg, there was no functional difference, at this point, between a piece on an assembly line and an actor thrust into a show. Garfield summarized Strasberg’s point of view: “The actor in the U.S. was a ‘commodity.’ He was a victim of the ‘type system’ which in the craft of acting paralleled the capitalist system of production at its zenith. Typing an actor was industrializing him and turning him into a mechanism for manufacturing a specific product” (Garfield 21). It is this viewpoint Odets reflected in the actor’s scene in Waiting for Lefty, written largely for the Group (even if it wasn’t premiered by them), about casting to type to protect investments. The plan for the Group was to reshape this relationship between the actor and the product. The name itself was a public announcement that here was a company an actor could feel secure in and belong to in a deep way. To break the hold of typecasting, a structured method of actor training derived from Stanislavsky, Ouspenskaya, and Boleslavsky would ex-

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tend the actors’ ranges, leading to greater artistic development, flexibility, and satisfaction. Strasberg, whose search for the system that produced the remarkable productions of the MAT in the early ’20s took him to the ALT, emerged as the primary acting instructor in the Group until the middle of the decade. But the other aspect of training a number of actors to be highly versatile is that they become more interchangeable, not less; it was a natural result of working to develop all members equally, and directly in keeping with the model of the MAT. Margaret Baker recalled that when she asked Franchot Tone whether she should join the Group, he replied, “If you want to be a good actress then come with the Group. If you want to be a star then don’t,” suggesting an emphasis on submerging the self into the work. (This is a telling contrast to the work and goals of some Hollywood studio programs; see discussions in chapters 6 and 7.) Cheryl Crawford was, typically, more direct in her suggestion to Baker. “If you want to play neurasthenic ingenues the rest of your life, stay in The Barretts of Wimpole Street. If you want to be an actress, join the Group” (Chinoy 521). The Group would teach you how to play against type, opening up possibilities for parts and performances that the commercial theater was unlikely to grant. At the same time, there was the suggestion that true artistic achievement was not necessarily linked to commercial success—­that to be an actor might mean something other than acting for money on Broadway. This neo-­Romantic idea, somewhat distinct from MacKaye and the AADA’s hopes of making successful actors out of their students, would be reiterated by Group Theatre alumni in their respective endeavors after the company dissolved (see, in particular, chapter 8). The Group Theatre, while on the one hand distancing itself from the more obvious Taylorist parallels that had become part of US theater, would on the other hand replicate industrial values in training, rehearsal, and production. The founders and members of the Group were no more immune to the ecological changes wrought by modern manufacturing than anyone else. Strasberg certainly appreciated the centralization of control that both Marx—­who offered a “scientific” view of history—­and Edward Gordon Craig stressed as a prime value. Strasberg was a fan of Craig, and had a special connection to his theatrical call to arms, quoted in chapter 3; for while Strasberg had not come from a theatrical family, he had been a manufacturer of wigs (Frome 14–­15). The approach to actor training espoused by Boleslavsky and Ouspenskaya at the ALT was one of atomization and recombination, where an actor developed discrete skills that would then be employed in rehearsal to build a part from the disparate sources. With this

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background, it is hardly surprising that the work of the Group reflected these aspects of the technological paradigm. The Group’s first production, The House of Connelly (1931), was the first exposure many of the actors had with Stanislavsky’s system (as interpreted by Strasberg) and was the initial step toward creating a company with a unified rehearsal and production technique. Group actor Phoebe Brand recalled, “Lee [Strasberg] took it upon himself to give us a complete technique, from A to Z, and we worked our heads off” (Smith 37). The central exercise Strasberg emphasized was emotional recall, but even at this early stage Strasberg also utilized sense memory and improvisational work during rehearsals. These three categories formed the tripod of what Strasberg was already referring to as the “method” (with a lowercase “m”), and he encouraged generous use of them, directing the actors to “‘take an exercise’ for virtually every moment in the script” (Smith 38). For their part the actors were generally excited about this first contact with the method. Group member Friendly Ford, in the shared journal, described it in terms both auratic and scientific. “One quavers before the ‘method’ as if one were facing for the first time some grand, majestic idol. . . . It is as clear and as sound as a theorem of Euclid” (Smith 38–­39). The Group was experiencing the same knitting of apparent opposites that Boleslavsky described in Six Lessons, finding within a technological framework the aura of wonder. Emotions were central to the Group’s initial methodology, but not in the way they were for Fiske or MacKaye. Presenting emotions was no longer just a matter of replicating a range of countenances or gamuts of expression. Emotive power was instead drawn from the actor’s own experience, channeled through the structure of the play. Further, alongside the focus on emotion, a new variable was in ascendance: action. When Clurman began to lecture the Group about Stanislavsky, he started with “Action” rather than emotion, and Sanford Meisner recorded Clurman’s working definition as “the thing to do irrespective of emotion or characterization, the actor’s basic function, the foundation of a part through which the fundamental idea of the play is revealed” (Smith 43, emphasis mine). Action, at least in this lecture—­and as captured by Meisner—­is described as the bedrock concern for the actor, preceding a worry about emotion or character. What hadn’t changed from the time of MacKaye was the acceptance of taking a methodological approach to rehearsal and performance. In the Group diary in 1931, Strasberg wrote “we have a feeling that something will happen—­we gamble—­we hope—­we dream—­but we don’t Work!” (quoted in Smith 44). Work, meaning appropriate acting technique, replaces gambling with far more predictable outcomes. For Strasberg and

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many others, it was not only possible but necessary for actors to embrace this new reality, informed by industry, so they could work in an efficient and repeatable fashion. This was in keeping with Clurman’s own diagnosis of the failure of both the Theatre Guild’s Studio Theatre (a predecessor to the Group) and the larger landscape of professional theater in the late ’20s: inefficiency and waste. “[Clurman] argued that individual problems in the theatre were symptomatic of society’s sickness. America was boiling with energy, yet it all seemed to evaporate without issue” (Smith 27). The answer, for Clurman, Strasberg, and Crawford, was to commit themselves to founding the Group Theatre. Taylor might not have embraced the proposed cure, but he would certainly have agreed on the cause of the disease. Another example of the incursion of the technological mindset in the Group occurred during initial deliberations about whether to pick up and move the entire operation out of New York City. One of the members, Roman “Bud” Bohnen, wrote a letter to his brother outlining artistic and lofty reasons for moving the company elsewhere (i.e., decentralizing the US art scene) alongside a highly concrete and industrially tinged justification: “To do its best work, the Group must operate in a place where it has maximum control over the factors that influence its work. From a sheer TECHNOCRATIC point of view it is smarter to operate in Chicago (or Boston)” (Smith 119, emphasis original). Technocracy didn’t win the day, and the company remained a largely New York–­based institution (though Bohnen eventually relocated to Hollywood; see chapter 7). Just as in Six Lessons, the auratic doesn’t negate the industrial, and vice versa. It is clear that there could easily exist ineffable qualities that commanded the attention of the members, while at the same time assessments could be made where a technocratic reference would not be out of place. Taylor’s ghost doesn’t just haunt the decisions about where to operate. Reverberations of scientific management can be found in the operations of the Group itself. The founders, early on, began conducting one-­on-­one interviews with members of the company to help bring them into conformity with the ideal participant as they defined it. “They [Clurman especially] analyzed character defects and pointed out how they contributed to difficulties in the work” (Smith 49). Just as Taylor exhorts scientific managers to treat every worker as an individual, because this is the only way to assure that they will be able to contribute their full share to the enterprise, the leaders of the Group conducted individual sessions with the actors. The interviews were designed to guide actors toward greater personal artistic achievement and to increase their integration and contribution to the shared pedagogical and rehearsal process.

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A critical production for the company and this history is Men in White (1934). The play, an early hospital drama, can be read as a tribute to science and progress, with heroic doctors and nurses using their techniques and scientific knowledge to achieve the miraculous (surgery was a favorite example for Taylor of rigid structure setting loose the limitless possibilities of greatness; see chapter 2). In preparing the play, Strasberg implemented sense and emotional memory exercises alongside extensive improvisations. In rehearsals, blocking was set and drilled with incredible precision. Before opening, the triumvirate of Clurman, Crawford, and Strasberg huddled. All of the details were correct and cleanly executed, yet something was still wrong. The problem was emotion—­specifically, too much of it. “They realized that all of them had become so caught up in the high drama of life and death a hospital presented that the actors were performing the medical scenes with the emotional sensitivity of artists instead of the impersonal objectivity of trained professionals” (Smith 147). The show got better when they reduced the overt emotionality. This production also saw the beginning of a shift in how Strasberg approached emotions in rehearsal. Men in White is generally credited as the production where Strasberg began to replace the “Creative If” of Stanislavsky with a formulation inspired by one of Stanislavsky’s students, Evgeny Vakhtangov. Strasberg’s summary of the original question is as follows: “Given the particular circumstances of the play, how would you behave, what would you do, how would you feel, how would you react?” But Strasberg began to feel that this set of questions “fails to help the actor attain the necessary intense and heroic behavior that is characteristic of the great classical plays.” Strasberg began to suggest Vakhtangov’s revision: “The circumstances of the scene indicate that the character must behave in a particular way; what would motivate you, the actor, to behave in that particular way?” (Strasberg 85). Strasberg had actually experimented with this approach prior to joining the Group when he was directing amateurs at the Chrystie Street Settlement House in 1930 (Smith 18). While this would seem to privilege individual knowledge and experience, granting more agency to the performer, at the same time it asks for greater conformity from the actor, for it predicates the interior emotional work on the stated demands of the script. Under the original creative if, different actors could come to different conclusions about how they would act in those circumstances. The final product in the second formulation is far more consistent: the character must behave in a particular way. What results is a more rational model, where emotions are caused by something explainable that is directly connected to the actor playing the role.

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Naturally this is not to say that Strasberg was removing emotions from the center of an actor’s work. He was intensely concerned with emotions and the emotional content of scenes and plays. He became notorious for working to draw “real” emotions from actors to enrich their performances. However, to accomplish this task he employed a vocabulary drawn from the technological paradigm with recourse to scientific authority. Strasberg’s techne concerned the regulation of the inner emotional life in service of the part being portrayed. Of the major acting teachers to emerge from the Group, it was Strasberg who most aggressively kept a focus on the actor’s emotions as the foundation of a great performance. Other instructors—­ notably Adler, Robert Lewis, and Meisner—­later displaced emotional work from the center of the actor’s concerns, replacing it with a variation on “action.” The daily operations of the Group also showed the stamp of industry in ways large and small. Despite the name there was a decided hierarchy, with Clurman, Crawford, and Strasberg at the top. Strasberg’s predilection for “dense factual books that told him how things worked” (Smith 17) fit nicely with a paradigm that stressed quantifiable factors instead of ephemeral instincts as privileged elements of proof. Clurman’s tendency to lecture, rather than lead discussions, would be expected by Taylorists, who would see Clurman as the holder of knowledge that must be passed down to those who lack it. Crawford was instrumental in organizing the Group so they could exist in the commercial world, and she focused on the logistics of the company as a business entity, at one point attempting to sell shares of stock in the Group Theatre itself (Smith 79). The rank-­and-­file actors, for their part, sought to organize an “Actors Committee” that would “have a recognized institutional role in making Group policy” (Smith 131). Everyone in the Group, despite a professed desire to separate themselves from the standard practices of commercial theater, remained enmeshed in a matrix of valuations derived from industrial philosophy, and these influenced the composition and management of the company itself.

“WE DON’T USE THE STANISLAVSKY SYSTEM . . .”

This matrix also sets the scene for arguably the single greatest Taylorist triumph in the US theater: the return of Stella Adler from Paris in 1934. Adler, Clurman, and Strasberg had traveled to the USSR earlier that year to see the work of the Russian theater firsthand, especially the Moscow Art Theater. To their dismay, all three felt that the MAT productions weren’t as

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spectacular as they recalled from their first encounter with the company almost fourteen years prior. It is supposedly for this reason that when the opportunity came to visit with Stanislavsky himself, who was then living in Paris, Strasberg declined. Adler famously didn’t shy away from meeting Stanislavsky, and the substance of her work with him provided the ideological grounds for the subsequent split in the Group Theatre. Adler had been dissatisfied with Strasberg’s instruction and approach to directing, because of both temperament and her substantial prior stage experience. “She believed that a lot of what he [Strasberg] did came from his need to force something interesting out of the basically untheatrical and inexperienced young actors in the company” (Garfield 33), two adjectives that few would use to describe Adler herself. The specifics of her initial meeting with Stanislavsky are hazy, with each participant remembering a somewhat different series of events. Stanislavsky recalled that she was “a completely panic-­stricken woman”; Adler describes looking at him “eye to eye” and saying “I loved the theatre until you came along, and now I hate it!” (Carnicke, Stanislavsky, 2nd ed. 65). Tone aside, Adler shared her frustration about working on the play Gentlewoman (directed by Strasberg) with the Group, and Stanislavsky offered to coach her on the role. She studied with Stanislavsky for a little over a month. When she returned to the United States and the company, she announced that the acting methodology the Group Theatre had been pursuing was completely wrong, and she could prove it. Imagine the setting: serious actors gathered to attempt to plumb the depths of human experience and scale the heights of artistic achievement. Stella Adler had gone and actually studied with the master, a man whose name was revered throughout the Group and who was considered the font of knowledge from which they all drank. Actors endured grueling rehearsals on the smallest details of the smallest characters, work that was often highly emotional, requiring the recollection of memories of heartache and hurt, generating moments of extreme elation and dark despair. In addition, imagine the knotted web of political, platonic, and romantic entanglements that had spread throughout the Group during the preceding four years. Into this environment, to prove her case, Stella Adler returned from a month in Paris with Stanislavsky, proudly brandishing a technically detailed but essentially incomprehensible chart. Even more amazingly, the other members of the Group, as bohemian a collection of artists as might be found away from the Lower East Side of New York City, sat in rapt attention at a Catskills hotel as she explained it. Twice. What is remarkable, and defines the moment as a Taylorist victory, is

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Figure 7: Stanislavsky’s chart given to Adler in 1934 (from Method—or Madness?)

that no one seems to have questioned that she could use a chart to explain acting. Charts in the theater were not without precedent, of course, but this was something else entirely. Rather than a collection of facial expressions or stances to reproduce, as could be found in Delsartean training manuals from the turn of the century, Adler had brought back a forty-­component graphic reproduction abstracting the work of the actor, as specialized as

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anything a technocrat could have concocted. Adler’s triumphant “You’re wrong and I’ve got this chart to prove it” wasn’t laughed out of the rehearsal room precisely because of the naturalization of the industrial philosophy expounded by Taylor and others. A chart had become a perfectly acceptable, perhaps even preferred, means of distinguishing truth from falsehood and right from wrong. As such it was accorded a respect that other, more auratic, unquantifiable means of argument would not have received. The chart formed the basis of two lectures Adler gave to members at the start of their summer retreat in 1934 (which, due to their performance schedule that year, actually occurred in August). Her technical explication of the chart led to the conclusion that they weren’t using Stanislavsky correctly; in particular, she argued that the company had overused affective memory exercises (Smith 180). In an interview almost thirty years after the fact, Adler emphasized the specificity with which she recorded Stanislavsky’s teachings, and stated, “Since Lee at that time was the sole director, it was more or less aimed at correcting the faults of Lee’s interpretation” (Chinoy 509). Strasberg, who pointedly did not attend either of Adler’s public sessions, gave his own talk following Adler’s. “The gist of it, said Bobby Lewis, was: ‘We don’t use the Stanislavsky system; we use the Strasberg method’” (Smith 181). In a 1979 article in the New York Times, Lewis recalled that after Adler’s lectures “Strasberg hit the roof. After that he never looked at Stella kindly again” (O’Malley). This disagreement was the nexus of the fissure within the Group and set up the development of divergent strains of Stanislavsky-­inspired techniques in US acting in the postwar period. At its core the division was about emotion. Not merely the classic conundrum of whether the actor feels real emotion, but rather what precedence to give emotion in the totality of an actor’s work and how to achieve its representation onstage. Where Adler argued that action should be the primary concern, Strasberg held on to emotions. “Action we have always used,” he argued, “but the emphasis on action as the main thrust, no. If you are unable to bring in emotion, then what is the point of action?” (Smith 181). From an ANT-­inflected viewpoint, emotions emerge as a “matter of concern” within the theatrical performance network, to be contested by the future actions of network actors. Far from the black box of stable inputs and outputs posited elsewhere in ANT, “a matter of concern” is a preliminary identification about which there is engaged disagreement. A matter of concern “points to the gathering or assembling or composing . . . [entailing] a multitude of elements, practices, ‘interests,’ contingencies, and so on” (Mi-

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chael 160). In this instance, the correctness of Strasberg’s methodology specifically and the emphasis placed on emotional representation more broadly are called into question. Adler and Strasberg thus emerge as mediators, enacting the role of transmitters of knowledge and influence from one node to another in the process of network-­building. However, Latour drew a distinction between an intermediary, which “transports meaning or force without transformation,” and a mediator, which may “transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning or the elements they are supposed to carry . . . [No] matter how apparently simple a mediator may look, it may become complex; it may lead in multiple directions which will modify all the contradictory accounts attributed to its role” (Latour, Reassembling the Social 39). The reverence in which to hold Stanislavsky, the notion of how actors should create compelling performances, and even the idea of what an ideal actor and performance might look like are called into question through the mediating work of Strasberg (translating the elements of acting technique he had learned and developed) and Adler (translating her time with Stanislavsky and the chart). The results, as ANT suggest, led in multiple directions, altering the shape of the network as it continued to expand. Yet there is still substantive overlap in the competing networks or nodes, even as they diverge. While Strasberg reportedly argued that Stanislavsky had “gone back on himself” (Edwards 246), he did not criticize using a chart to prove points about acting. Both he and Adler shared the technological paradigm that defined acceptable questions and answers. The argument with Adler (and others) was not about whether acting exercises divorced from a specific production were useful, but rather about the specific form and content of the exercise. It wasn’t a conversation about whether the work of an actor could be broken into component parts, but rather how those divisions should be made and what components should be dominant. Adler, for instance, did not return from Paris saying that exercises were wrong and that a more organic and instinctual approach to the stage was called for. This would have amounted to a return to pre-industrial modernism acting pedagogy. Adler and Strasberg, like the other members of the Group, were inhabitants of the same discursive/epistemic structure that accepted charts and the technical vocabulary embodied in them as privileged knowing. There are certainly important philosophical and methodological differences between the approaches embodied by Adler and Strasberg, but their arguments are framed by shared industrial values. The knowledge that Adler’s recommendations were “cutting edge” for Stanislavsky supported adoption of his revised methodology, because it was newest. The expecta-

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tion that technology would improve lent rhetorical weight to the most recent innovations. But newer might not necessarily mean better if the alternative could be argued to be superior within the industrial episteme. For Strasberg, Stanislavsky could be painted as the voice of tradition (always a dubious position under Taylorism), and thus while he may have had some good ideas in his day, Strasberg was more than justified in disregarding new information from an old source in favor of his own scientifically derived methodology, buttressed by his formidable reading and research, and proven through successful experiment with the company. In structure the two sides had a great deal in common despite the differences that fueled their rivalry through the rest of their lives. Both accepted the use of exercises. Both sought a scientific, standardized approach to the theater. Both had the goal of repeatable performances in which the actors accomplished tasks with great efficiency. Both emphasized a vocabulary of the stage that drew strongly from the language of industry. And both rank among the most influential teachers of acting in the English-­speaking world following World War II. In the moment, however, the focus was not on the similarities in cultural assumptions about the nature of work or acceptable evidence to prove a thesis about acting. What came to the fore was a conflict over the role of emotion, embodied by Strasberg’s approach to generating the performances he was interested in seeing and his privileged position as the primary interpreter and instructor of Group acting technique. The threat to Strasberg’s central role opened divisions that would never heal, though he stayed with the Group for another three years.11 In 1936 Adler began teaching classes to Group members, and this added another straw to the camel’s back. As organizational pressures mounted in the company, Strasberg resigned (or was strongly encouraged to resign) from the Group in 1937, as did Cheryl Crawford, leaving behind the troupe of actors he had trained.12 Clifford Odets, years later, would pay homage in strikingly industrial terms to Strasberg’s achievement: I don’t think in our day you will see a company like that. . . . It was Lee Strasberg’s baby and he was one hundred percent responsible 11. See, in particular, the description of rehearsals for Gold Eagle Guy Smith describes in Real Life Drama (192–­93). 12. McConachie writes that “Strasberg’s tyranny and intransigence, in fact, had led to his forced resignation from the Group Theatre” (McConachie, Cold War 89); in Real Life Drama, Smith uses a letter from Strasberg to his wife to illustrate “the bitterness over the step [resignation] that he, like Crawford, felt he’d been forced to take” (Smith 302).

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for it. Later with this perfected tool, this ensemble, this acting company, anybody could direct them who had a common lingo and a common frame of reference. It was very easy for Harold Clurman to direct Awake and Sing or Golden Boy with this company that Lee Strasberg had put together. I could have directed it. Any actor could have directed it by that time. Lee Strasberg has never gotten enough credit for that. (Garfield 43) Strasberg, in fine industrial fashion, had taken a number of individuals, trained them according to their particular strengths and weaknesses (another tenet of scientific management), and made them into a company of utility players, a “tool,” in the words of Odets, that anyone who shared the language could wield. The individual components—­even actors and directors—­had become interchangeable parts, able to be utilized by anyone who had access to their techne, ready to be assembled into any number of final products. While the Group was founded to fight the industrial typing that was (and still is) prevalent in theater, they were simultaneously enthusiastically partaking of the technocratic philosophy that Taylor had enunciated two decades prior. The Group, of course, was a distinct minority of the theatrical community at the time. For many performers in the 1930s, straightforward emotional presentation was still seen as both the primary job of actors and a source of great personal satisfaction. In the 1934 textbook Elementary Principles of Acting, the authors define acting as “the art of re-­presenting human emotions by a just expression of artificial and natural language” and the book has a chapter dedicated entirely to “Laughter” (“Showing the Actor How to Produce It at Will”) and another to “Crying and Weeping” (Mackay 4).13 In the 1936 play Stage Door by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman, the main character, an actress named Terry, excitedly shares booking a role with her fellow stage hopefuls. “It’s not big, but it’s good,” she says, “It’s got one marvelous scene—­you know—­one of those gamuts. (With three attitudes and a series of wordless sounds—­ one denunciatory, one tender, one triumphant—­she amusingly conveys the range of the part.).” Her housemate Susan confesses that “it sounds marvelous!” (Ferber and Kaufman 16). When at the end of the play Terry auditions for a cynical movie producer, she is asked to cold read a fiery monologue rousing workers to go on strike (winkingly cribbed from Waiting for Lefty). In both the fictional audition and the actual scene, emotions reign supreme. Per the stage directions, the 13. Despite the similarity in last name, this is no relation to Steel MacKaye.

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actress playing Terry is to haltingly read until “tears and anger struggle for mastery” (Ferber and Kaufman 96). Over the final two pages she is by turns furious, enraptured by her erstwhile boyfriend’s newly professed support and love, delighted to be cast in a play, and ends up “surprised to find herself crying in KINGSLEY’S arms” (Ferber and Kaufman 98). Ferber’s demands for emotional acrobatics would be at home in the Jane Shore she-­tragedies of yore,14 and also find a ready analogue in Burgh’s scoring of passions for study or MacKaye’s own gamuts of expression. In the fictional theater world of Terry and the actual experiences of performing and watching plays, expressing a range of emotions quickly and succinctly is what acting still seemed to be all about. I will return to developments in training for the stage in chapters 7 and 8, paying particular attention to the parsing of emotion by major figures of the postwar period, including Group alums Strasberg, Adler, and Meisner. But first I will go back to Hollywood and look at the dramatic expansion of in-­house actor training in the 1930s as the studios confronted the reality that actors could no longer remain silent—­they would have to be heard as well as seen.

14. See chapter 1.

SIX

 | MGM University: Learning to Play in Hollywood

Everything changed with the arrival of sound in Hollywood at the end of the 1920s. Actor William Haines, under contract with MGM during both the silent and sound eras, famously quipped, “the outbreak of sound at Metro was like the discovery of clap in a nunnery” (Higham 130). William De Mille offered a more detailed but no less poetic description of the heady days of late 1927–­28. “The great sound revolution of 1928 was sweeping and devastating, and found the industry, as a whole, utterly unprepared to cope with it” (De Mille 272). Actors who had been successful in the silent era feared for their jobs when they would be asked to talk, and for those unable to make the leap, the results were often catastrophic. Even where particular actors had fine voices, if the sound didn’t match what the audience thought their voices should sound like, their careers were probably over. “It was agonizing heartbreak,” wrote De Mille, “for those stars who were at the height of their success in April and heard themselves condemned to professional death before Christmas” (De Mille 286). Momentarily taken aback, Hollywood studios “retooled” in the same way manufacturing plants did, by changing the literal tools of production and the methods of management. But unlike a single switch from making one kind of car to another, or even changing the specific product of manufacture, this was an ongoing process over a number of years to continually adapt to advancing technologies in filmmaking. More options for staging and filming became available as the equipment improved, but discovering how to make effective sound pictures was a continuous practice. Very little in the way of filmmaking technique from the silent era could be guaranteed to work in this brave new world. Studios began a wholesale overhaul of their entire operations, and in less than two years following 1927’s The Jazz Singer, cinema and sound were inextricably linked. Sound stages—­as opposed to silent film stages—­were built. Sound engineers, many imported from the telephone industry, became the most important people on set. The entire process of movie-­making was redesigned

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to meet the strict demands of “Iron Mike,” as De Mille metonymically referred to the multitude of requirements for successfully capturing sound for film. In the first flush of the “talkies,” the microphones were in fixed positions, limited in what they could pick up, and easy to vocally overload. The cameras were similarly ensconced in immobile soundproof boxes, with the action captured through a window at the front. Sets reverted to the painted flats of theater’s yesteryear as fear of echoes spurred construction in fabrics rather than lumber. Even the lighting changed completely as arc lamps, whose operation interfered with the microphones, were replaced by incandescent bulbs (De Mille 282). Alongside these physical technological changes, studios changed their approaches to acting, in particular their emphasis on training actors under contract. This training, like other aspects of filmmaking, was often hidden from the public. Cynthia Baron and Sharon Carnicke in Reframing Screen Performance (2008) interrogate the historiography of film performance in the studio period. They argue that the bulk of material describing the work of actors in pre-­WWII film is geared toward de-­emphasizing that any acting is actually taking place, a narrative that was anything but accidental. “In the studio era, from roughly 1930 to 1950, articles in the popular press reflected and reified the established view that film performance consists primarily of instinctive behavior captured and projected on screen” (Baron and Carnicke, Reframing 17–­18). However, contrary to much of the studios’ own publicity, there was a robust history of developing acting technique for film, much of it created from within the studio system itself. The women and men who found themselves as acting coaches to the stars and lesser-­ known contract players alike developed vibrant pedagogical practices for film performance, drawing from a shared body of material generated from previous investigations into stage techniques. In this chapter I explore Hollywood studio training for actors after the advent of sound, looking at some of the most influential studio acting teachers. I focus especially on the activities at Paramount, MGM, and Warner Brothers, pulling from internal newsletters and documents in studio archives as well as a remarkable collection of oral histories of Hollywood figures collected by Ronald Davis.1 I also review footage of an unreleased MGM short that looks at the training actors could expect on the studio lot. To conclude, I look at the career and writing of Sophie Rosenstein, the pri1. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences archive at the Herrick Library in Beverly Hills holds a great many classic studio files as well as a copy of the Davis oral histories. The Warner Brothers papers are archived at the University of Southern California.

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mary author of 1936’s Modern Acting: A Manual and head of Warner’s talent division prior to World War II. My goal is to give a sense of what was being taught and how, and to put this into the broader contextual conversation occurring in theater about how to go about training actors in accordance with the technological paradigm.

RETOOLING THE DREAM FACTORY

What was known in the aftermath of sound’s acclamation by the public, immediately and terrifyingly, was that actors on screen would need to be able to talk—­meaning that they would need to be able to act with their voices as well as their bodies. To say that the studios hadn’t worried at all about whether their actors could speak is only a slight understatement. Silent film star Mae Marsh confessed that she was nervous when she was pressed to address the crowd at the 1917 National Convention of Motion Picture Producers (the first day was designated “Mae Marsh Day”). “My voice,” she conceded, “has never been strong,” a frank admission of the truth that vocal power or skill was of essentially no use in silent Hollywood, real lines of dialogue notwithstanding (Marsh 44). But no longer. Sound films meant that actors needed to speak, and speak well. It also meant actors would need even better dialogue and directors or coaches who could offer direction aimed at improving line readings. Broadway writers, actors, and directors were imported in short order, and actors who could successfully speak on camera were a valuable commodity. Glenda Farrell recalled, “when I went out there to do Little Caesar in 1930, the talkies were still new.  .  .  . Not many actors could talk, so they shoved the ones who came from Broadway into everything” (Bubbeo 76). It was partly the need for actors who could talk that spurred the studios, on top of the massive investments they were making in machinery and facilities, to develop training programs for their contract actors. While the running of these programs differed from studio to studio, what was somewhat consistent was their relative obscurity. While commentators in the silent era often trumpeted the labor of filmmaking as a means of defending the respectability of the industry, this shifted with the rise of the major studios and the “dream factory” aspect of Hollywood. As Baron and Carnicke note, “During the studio era, the American press rarely if ever published stories at odds with the studios’ public position that acting in film was a natural, effortless experience for stars and starlets whose charm and physical beauty made them uniquely suited to the fantasy entertainments

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Hollywood provided for its customers” (Baron and Carnicke, Reframing 24). This legacy had remarkably long legs, even after the demise of the studios. The book MGM Stock Company (1972), for example, credits the B movies as a training ground for stars, while Lillian Burns, a dominant figure in actor training at the studio during the 1930s, gets one mention in 862 pages: “Signed to an MGM contract, Lucille [Bremer] was trained by studio drama coach Lillian Burns, and then assigned to Arthur Freed’s Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)” (Parish and Bowers 91).2 For those within the system, however, there was no secret about training. On the contrary, MGM’s Burns was widely regarded as one of the most powerful people at the studio, male or female. Her opinions on who had star potential were widely heeded, and her work with actors—­in particular the young actresses in MGM’s fold—­was celebrated by executives and actors alike. By her own account she was also graced with one of the highest honors at MGM: her own table in the commissary.3 Far from unknown, Burns was a force in finding, training, casting, and coaching the actors on the studio’s payroll. The materials from the period reflect this strange bifurcation between wishing to portray acting as minimally heightened natural behavior captured on film and the acknowledgement that the work of acting wasn’t just the long hours on set, but an actual skill or set of skills that could be honed and developed. As to the first, in 1935 the actor Basil Rathbone was quoted in the MGM Studio News (a “house organ” or internal publication of the studio itself) saying, “Good acting is a matter of opinion and this opinion is seldom freed from the chemical contact we make with the artist’s personality” (Rathbone, “Public” 3). The ineffability of talent firmly established, Rathbone goes on to list some techniques an actor should know to be effective: Keep your hands still . . . get through a scene without putting your hands in your pockets or lighting a cigarette . . . a good actor should be able to use weapons of all periods—­daggers, broadswords, rapiers. . . . He should be able to dance the minuet, the gavotte, the mazurka. . . . He must have perfect balance, ability to move gracefully, but not artificially, in any costume and to do the same in modern clothes. He must be restrained in all his emotions. (“Public” 3) 2. As another somewhat shocking example for the millennial age, as of this writing (May 2019), Lillian Burns has no Wikipedia page, though she is mentioned as the wife of director George Sidney, and gets passing, non-­cross-­linked references as an MGM “dramatic coach” in the biographies of a few stars (e.g., Lucille Bremer and Janet Leigh). 3. See Burns, esp. 10–­20.

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Rathbone’s conception of good acting sounds quite traditional: talent is a product of personality and “chemical contact” and thus can’t really be taught, but an actor should know how to dance and fence and enjoy good physical and emotional control. This idea of film acting in particular is parallel to the supposed “natural performance” on camera that Baron and Carnicke identify as being promulgated by the studios themselves. MGM even re-­ran Rathbone’s comments, nearly word for word, seven years later in The Lion’s Roar (another house organ; see Rathbone, “An Actor” from 1942). Rathbone’s list of skills was rooted in traditional approaches to acting coupled with a sense of protean adaptability given the desired facility with weapons, dances, and period clothing. Even the sense of being restrained in emotion could be seen as classical, for as Roach points out, it was the seventeenth-­century theorists who felt that emotion needed restraint—­ “worrying about how to cap the gusher”—­versus the more modern concern that emotion was elusive and hard to come by (Roach 218). Rathbone’s emphasis on reserve was also a testament to the close-­up of film, which Marsh among others identified as benefiting from control rather than over-­ the-­top displays of emotion. Yet in the same journal, a scant few weeks after Rathbone’s initial comments were published in 1935, Edward Norris and Robert Taylor are both mentioned as graduates of the “Laboratory of Acting” run by an Oliver Hinsdell on the MGM lot (Anonymous, “Crime Short” 2). Two months later, the Laboratory of Acting was reportedly expanding into musicals. “Formerly,” the article says, Hinsdell “staged plays with his students so they could be trained for screen roles.” The article proceeds to list a number of the graduates, including Norris and Taylor, and then shares that Hinsdell hopes to find some new “Eleanor Powells, George M. Cohans, Fred Astaires and Clifton Webbs” (Anonymous, “Musicals” 8). The studios were clearly invested in teaching something to their actors, despite Rathbone’s opinion that acting was unknowable. If they weren’t, why bother with the Laboratory of Acting in the first place? The truth is the studios already knew better than to believe that a pretty face augmented by the best design money could buy would be enough to make a movie a hit. While studios might seek to hide the extent of the dramatic coaching and actors’ effort that went into crafting film performances, there was no reason not to avail themselves of the work on improving actors’ abilities that had begun in the theater and could then be imported, like writers, into the studio system. As in theater, the world of film acting had begun to embrace the efficacy of training, transitioning from a strong attachment to the idea of actors being destined for success to believing in improvement through effort. D. W.

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Griffith argued in 1918 that it was the “light within” that made an actress successful, not just “a good pair of eyes and a smooth face of proper contour. . . . If you have that light, it doesn’t matter much just what you do before the camera. If you haven’t it—­well, then it doesn’t matter just what you do, either” (Carr 24). This would certainly seem to be a throwback to the idea of innate talent as the ultimate arbiter of success, yet Griffith almost immediately softens his stance, arguing that it would be a “ghastly untruth” to say that “a girl is born a heaven-­sent genius or a predestined failure.” Like Marsh, real success for Griffith comes from the power of concentration and feeling. “The only woman with a real future is the woman who can think real thoughts. Some get these thoughts by reading and study; others by instinct” (Carr 26, emphasis original). Even before 1920, one of the leading figures in the silent film industry allows that study could improve a performer’s abilities. By the time sound arrived, studios had embraced actor training more explicitly, with an eye toward insuring that at least some of their actors became matinee idols. While the physical production of films could be tightly controlled through schedules, systems, and five-­and-­a-­half-­day workweeks during filming, stars couldn’t be created with the same ease that legions of carpenters created sets or costumers and stitchers created gowns. In her book The Star Machine, Jeanette Basinger sums up the studios’ situation: nobody knew how to make a given actor into a star, but they had figured out a methodology by which stars could be incubated. “Was there a formula? No. There was a process. The hard part was that the process cost a great deal of money, and it was fraught with potential disasters” (Basinger 6). The method, in brief, was to build up as many aspiring actors as they could, and then—­Lasky-­like—­let the public elevate those it chose. Everyone understood that the vast majority of players were never going to be stars, yet they were offered the training to become one. Partly this is a matter of industrial efficiency. Actors under contract received a guaranteed weekly salary, whether they were shooting a film or not. Thus, the more versatile the player, the more the studio could “work” them rather than having them be idle. But it was also an economics of scale. More actors in the pipeline meant it was more likely that one or more of them would become stars. Stardom wasn’t just personal, it was corporate, and the benefits were shared (not always equitably, to be sure) between the individual and the studio. Each investment held the promise of increased payoff, so the fractional cost of adding actors to the rosters of acting lessons was easily balanced against the box-­office receipts a bona fide star would return. Note

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in the description of the “Laboratory of Acting” above that the avowed purpose was not to create great character actors, but to find the next great star or stars. To begin, an unknown and variably experienced actor, after being signed following a successful screen test, would generally be assigned bit parts. This gave them the opportunity to watch the process of filming and observe more experienced actors. When they weren’t in a picture, they could take classes in a variety of skills the movies might require: horseback riding, fencing, tap dance, classical dance, and singing and voice, as well as acting. Course offerings varied from studio to studio. Republic, home of the low-­budget Western, offered little to their actors, and that irregularly. At the other end of the spectrum, MGM had such a wide array of classes and coaches that Esther Williams (of water ballet fame) referred to it as MGM University in her autobiography. In fact, when Williams first signed with MGM in 1941, she negotiated an initial nine-­month “gestation” period in her contract where she wouldn’t be cast in any movies, though she would still be earning a salary while availing herself of the training MGM offered its players. She writes—­in a sentiment that would do MacKaye proud—­ that she wanted to learn to perform for the cameras prior to stepping in front of them. “If it took nine months for a baby to be born,” she writes, “I figured my ‘birth’ from Esther Williams the swimmer to Esther Williams the movie actress would not be much different” (Williams 73). Those without the clout to negotiate a paid training period caught classes when they could and dropped them as needed. Dialogue coaches were used on a film-­by-­film and even actor-­by-­actor basis to do dramatic coaching for specific parts, and many studios had “talent” departments employing acting teachers who would work on scenes in current projects and also run actor training sessions outside of specific productions. These were acting classes, paid for by the studio, offered for free to contract players, and most lasted until the breakup of the studios in the 1950s. While studios had begun offering classes in physical skills in the ’20s, the advent of sound spurred the extension of talent departments and made the work of the women and men who staffed them central to the entire artistic and economic enterprise. Baron and Carnicke, in an essay published prior to their shared book, offer a succinct list of many of the major coaches and teachers of the period, which I reproduce here both to give a sense of the widespread support for the idea of training within the studio system and to show that this was a relatively small group who exerted enormous influence over how actors actually acted in film:

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Lela Rogers (Ginger Roger’s mother) established the actor training program at RKO and women such as Lillian Albertson, Lillian Burns (Sidney), Josephine Dillon, Florence Enright, Estelle Harmon, Josephine Hutchinson, Phyllis Loughton (Seaton), Sophie Rosenstein, and Moscow Art Theatre [expat] Maria Ouspenskaya were the primary drama coaches in the studio era. (Baron and Carnicke, “Capturing” 91)4 Recall that in this period seven major studios dominated US—­and by extension, global—­filmmaking, so the influence as far as crafting acting styles and performances is quite concentrated. One early arrival to the ranks of acting coaches was the aforementioned Oliver Hinsdell. According to a biography from the Paramount studio archives, he was originally from Illinois, graduated from Northwestern, and after a stint in the Navy moved to New York before returning to Northwestern to found and lead their “department of play production.” He subsequently ran theaters in New Hampshire, New Orleans, and eventually Dallas, Texas. Back-­to-­back wins by the Dallas Little Theatre in a national competition landed him on MGM’s radar, and he took a job with the studio in 1931 (Anonymous, Hinsdell Biography). He had also written a book, Making the Little Theater Pay (1925), more than glancingly influenced by industrialism, in which he cast himself as the successful scientific manager explaining the streamlined process for building a new and successful theater company.5 Hinsdell had also served on the editorial board of Little Theatre Monthly, and, back in 1921, toured as a featured speaker for the Drama League, performing readings of recent noteworthy plays such as Drinkwater’s Abraham Lincoln and O’Neill’s Beyond the Horizon (Anonymous, “Ad: Hinsdell”). Whether it was his experience with less-­than-­professional actors or his past work as a solo (speaking) performer that made him an attractive prospect, MGM initially hired him as a vocal coach. William Haines (of the “clap in a nunnery” comparison) actually remembered working with Hinsdell, whom he called a “dreadful old fool” (born in 1888, Hinsdell would have been a sprightly forty-­three at the time). Hinsdell reportedly 4. Cynthia Baron, in chapter 3 of her Modern Acting, offers an overview of Josephine Dillon and Sophie Rosenstein’s approaches to acting. Maria Ouspenskaya is discussed in chapter 5, Dillon and Albertson in chapter 11, and Loughton and studio training more generally are addressed in chapter 9. 5. From the first chapter: “The principles of organization management, from the beginning to the end, must at all times be founded upon sound business practices and common-­sense methods. A good start is the race half won” (Hinsdell 13).

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tried to get Haines to produce “pear-­shaped tones” with limited success (Higham 130).6 Despite Haines’s misgivings, Hinsdell forged a remarkably successful career for himself, first at MGM and then at Paramount. An article from 1935 (the year he switched studios, but published before he moved) states that, “although he has no official title, [Hinsdell] is in charge of all the younger contract players at [MGM]. His job is to recognize talent wherever he may see it, and to train it—­a sort of combination scout and coach.” The article goes on to broadly describe what he actually taught. “He trains them in stage technique and schools them from the beginning, teaching them how to carry themselves, how to walk, and what to do with their hands, before he lets them read a line” (“Herald: Hinsdell”). Hinsdell was teaching theatrical techniques for performance (hence the Laboratory of Acting and the mention of “stage technique”) as well as what can be called “Hollywood style” with the classes in walking and hand usage. Hinsdell even showed up in a March 1936 article in fan-­magazine Photoplay titled “The Private Life of the Talking Picture.” It was the second in a series of articles on the behind-­the-­scenes work of the studios in making movies. (The previous installment had been an overview of the MGM studio lot and its various departments.) This one focused on talent and wardrobe—­ever closely linked in the public’s mind—­and included a photo of Hinsdell “testing Eleanor Stewart, winner of M-­G-­M’s talent contest, for voice control.” Hinsdell was there as evidence that those who became stars were “developed.” Speaking directly to the reader, the author Howard Sharpe describes the commonly held idea of a talent scout as one who finds a good-­looking actor or actress and simply “toss[es] the best-­looking specimens onto the screen from the pavement. You’ve been led to believe,” he continues, “that that’s all there is” (Sharpe 52). Naturally this is not all there is, and what follows is a description of the studio making stars out of hopefuls. The scouts, Sharpe reports, are “only the first pawns in a game that in the last few years has become systematized, scientific. They bring in the raw material, and Metro’s drama shop, directed by Oliver Hinsdell, does the rest.” There is no attempt to mitigate the metaphor: the studio is a factory, the actors are the raw materials, and Hinsdell is set up as the foreman 6. Haines had a voice that didn’t make it easy to transition to sound. His style, according to author Bosley Crowther, was highly physical, and more suited to silent films. “Although Haines made a dozen or so pictures after Alias Jimmy Valentine (1928), he steadily lost ground and finally gave up in 1933. Happily, he became one of the most fashionable and successful interior decorators in Hollywood” (Crowther 178).

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overseeing the process of manufacturing actors. Given the premise that film technique requires special knowledge, it stands to reason that nobody, regardless of their natural talent level, could possibly understand all the minutiae that go into crafting a successful screen performance. One way or another, education is necessary. What follows is a near-­textbook description of the rapidity with which the development of actor training in film mirrored that in live theater: Until recent times they got their experience before the camera in small parts, gradually gaining fame with polish. But the heartbreak and error of that system is lost in a better one. Hinsdell teaches them first, and thus when they reach the screen they are ready at once for big rôles—­for greatness, if the public sees fit. That’s why there are more overnight stars today than ever before. (Sharpe 53) The shift from on-­the-­job training to training prior to performance is exactly the arc that live theater had traveled. Movie acting, as a discipline, was barely thirty years old, and yet there was an open embrace of the idea that there was an alternative to simply being in films and watching other people act. The emphasis was on the efficiency of the new system, which was superior to the “heartbreak and error” of mere apprenticeship. This new approach was validated by the increased number of “overnight stars,” though they weren’t really overnight sensations. Instead, they’ve developed outside the public eye—­a state of affairs Craig devoutly wished for the actor—­and could display a far more finished “product” to the audience. Sharpe, in another example of not hiding the metaphor, lists a number of actors who had been “hatched in Hinsdell’s efficient actor-­incubator” (Sharpe 53). The science of the regimen is what makes it better than the old method. The stars are gestated under Hinsdell’s systemic wings, and then launched into the cinematic world. Specific details as to the lessons learned by the young hopefuls, despite the article’s premise, are few and far between, with the emphasis being—­as Baron and Carnicke describe—­primarily on the external shaping of the actor. Sharpe—­presumably speaking on behalf of MGM’s talent department—­ does list “good taste” and “good cultural background” as both improvable by dint of education or effort, echoing Marsh’s concern for actors making “right choices” and improving themselves. According to Sharpe, actor training at MGM included “everything from actual work in small plays to the study of lighting.” To be successful, aspiring actors should be “first class subjects replete with talent, intelligence, vitality, poise, a natural dra-

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matic spark, and individuality. . . . They must want very much to be good actors” (Sharpe 53, emphasis original). These qualities are analogous to Taylor’s Schmidt being physically able to be a first-­class mover of pig iron and also a “high-­priced man” whose desire for increased wages would make him amenable to the new scientific management system. Taylor reverberates throughout this brief article, as “Each student is handled separately, of course, since any hint of routine would produce a brand of actors alike as cookies.  .  .  . When they have finished the training they know as much about screen work as the most seasoned veterans” (Sharpe 53). Systematized training, customized to each individual, is superior to the old-­ fashioned observation and replication that characterized stock acting on stage and in early film work. A newcomer can be equal to the seasoned veteran on the screen, all through the magic of preperformance training.7 A particularly rich example of the studio party line regarding the camera capturing real behavior comes from Hinsdell’s time at Paramount. The Herrick library’s clipping file on Hinsdell includes what looks to be a proof copy for a magazine article highlighting Olympe (pronounced “O-­lamp”) Bradna, who received star billing in the 1938 film Stolen Heaven and had come to Paramount with extensive prior performance experience in dance in Europe.8 Yet it is not her experience on stage that the article focuses on; rather, it is her relative inexperience in romance, and a truly surprising amount of ink is devoted to the question of how much kissing a young woman should engage in if she hopes for a career as an actress. Hinsdell, described here as a “Paramount drama coach,” opens the article by saying, “Don’t waste your kisses, girls, if you ever want to get ahead on the stage or screen . . . casual kissing on the front porch is strictly taboo for girls with thespic ambitions.” This is followed by “Girls free and easy with their kissing . . . tend to dissipate emotional force needed by every young actress, particularly in her first two or three performances.” Too much kissing is linked by Hinsdell (or at least by the publicity writers for Paramount) to young women becoming “indifferent or calloused to situations that should bring about strong emotional response.” And it is this natural response that ostensibly contributes to Bradna’s success in the film. “She had never been kissed by 7. I am indebted to Basinger’s The Star Machine for citing and summarizing Sharpe’s article (see Basinger 70). 8. The date typed on the proof copy is actually April 14, 1936, however, given the details regarding Stolen Heaven included in the article, and the fact that the film was released in spring of 1938, it seems likely that the piece was also composed in 1938, and the header date a typo.

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a young man until Gene Raymond took her into his arms for a romantic scene that is the high spot of the picture. When Olympe felt Raymond’s lips upon her mouth, it meant something. Her restrained excitement gives the embrace tremendous conviction.” After a breathless paragraph break, our writer returns: “This would never have happened if Olympe had scattered her kisses generously in Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, New York, and other cities where she traveled before coming to Hollywood.” Then, after giving due credit to her parents for watching over “the emotional integrity of their daughter,” an allowance is made for a situation where true love exists. “If a girl’s really in love with a man, kissing doesn’t make her ‘emotionally tough’ or indifferent.” In closing Hinsdell says, “I would summarize my advice this way: be in love, or don’t kiss. That is, if you ever want to be a successful emotional actress” (Anonymous, Kisses). Bradna’s not really acting, the article implies, just reacting. Supporting the contention that this was studio publicity material, major sections of Hinsdell’s “interview” appeared in the Lincoln Sunday Journal and Star (Nebraska) in an article titled “The ‘Silly Season’ is Here—­So Let’s Talk About Kisses, or Rather Let Hollywood’s Glamour Girls Tell What They Know About Osculation and Other Things.” One Alice L. Tildesley receives the byline, with a dateline of Hollywood, and evidence points to Tildesley being part of the Hollywood press that was unaffiliated with any particular studio but worked closely with publicity departments to “sell” Hollywood across the country.9 She clearly had access to Paramount’s copy—­the third and fourth paragraphs are near-­verbatim quotes, and there are a number of other direct duplications of Paramount’s material—­which she then expanded on by including, as the long title suggests, responses to Hinsdell’s advice from famous actresses of the day. Some are in full agreement. Florence Rice at MGM is quoted saying “Drawing too constantly on one’s emotions definitely leaves its mark on any girl.” Others are not so convinced. Ann Sheridan suggests “You don’t mean anything by your screen kisses, so you don’t sacrifice anything when you kiss off screen.” Elsewhere, actress Sharon Ross, while appropriately disdaining casual kissing, goes on to say “but honestly I doubt it would affect my screen love scenes if I did. Casual kissing is a waste of time, if you like, but how could it dissipate emotional force? Who would put emotional force into a casual 9. An Alice L. Tildesley is credited with some one-­act plays from the early 1920s (Marrying Money, 1920, and The Cast Rehearses, 1921), and also has—­according to IMDB—­an authorial film credit in 1921 (Short Skirts, released by Universal [see also Goble 952]). Jennifer Frost’s book Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood includes references to Hopper being quoted by Tildesley (see Frost 227n36).

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kiss?” Tildesley ends by summarizing Ross’s position on kissing: “The more successful screen kisses should be thoroughly plotted and planned in advance. A matter of technique. Nothing more” (Tildesley). There are a few points to unpack here. First, Paramount promoted the emphasis on “real” emotional response as what actresses are expected to bring to the table, seemingly aligning Hinsdell’s expectations of acting with Baron and Carnicke’s description of the studios’ conscious choice to portray acting as just natural behavior captured on film. It is the “real” emotion of having a first kiss that helps sell Bradna’s performance, never mind the fact that this first “kiss” would have been meticulously staged, lit, costumed, and observed by anywhere from 25 to 100 people or more over multiple takes. This leads to a second point of consideration: all of the content is potentially manufactured to better create and support a given product, whether that is Hollywood, a particular studio, a given star, or a particular film, and cannot be taken at face value as the “real” opinion of anyone involved. Even Hinsdell’s own opinions can’t be safely inferred, given the thorough interpellation of the publicity machine with the content of the article, whose primary goal was selling Stolen Heaven and Olympe Bradna as a star. After all, if being a great actress is just about saving yourself for love, why have Hinsdell around at all? This relatively insignificant article offers an opportunity to witness network-­building per ANT, as each “actor” can be a network unto themselves, even in their interaction with other networks. Paramount Studio is a network, as is “Ann Sheridan,” whose star persona is a web of influences ranging from studio publicity to her films. Even “kissing” becomes an actor here, with the network of associations related to kissing, kissing in Hollywood, and what people in Lincoln, Nebraska, reading Tildesley’s article might anticipate about each. Tildesley’s article becomes another opportunity for network maintenance and extension. Ann Sheridan’s response promotes and extends the “idea” of Ann Sheridan the star, just as Ross’s does. Reading past the problematic attributions of opinion to the quoted individuals, the article—­both as draft publicity materials and Tildesley’s eventually syndicated piece—­is perfectly in keeping with the ongoing tropes of actor training and performance under the studio system. The downplaying of character construction, the supposed “realness” of the performances, in particular the gendered expectations around making a “star” and the concern with the morality of screen actors (again, especially for young women), all find ready analogues here. It is not hard to imagine Marsh agreeing that screen hopefuls should not become emotionally deadened to romantic ex-

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periences, because they will be asked to summon those emotions in performance, to say nothing of the concern that young women will “lose themselves” and cease to focus on the work at hand. At the same time, she would probably be aligned with Ross’s closing statement that planning and technique are what will actually make a great screen kiss. Hinsdell was hardly the only expat from theater who found work coaching actors for film in the ’30s. Phyllis Loughton (later Phyllis Loughton Seaton) came to Hollywood in 1933 and became head of talent at Paramount. (She was later demoted in favor of Hinsdell, which she discovered in the most stereotypically Hollywood way possible, by reading about it in the trade papers.) Like so many others brought out to Hollywood after the arrival of sound, her background was in live theater. Unlike some of her colleagues, she was a product of the stock system, claiming that she never studied acting, but instead “learned it by osmosis,” and she was a staunch advocate for stock as a training ground.10 “There is nothing to replace it . . . [it] trains everything—­your mind, your body, memory” (Seaton 2). When asked to identify what an actor needs to be able to do, she replied, “You’ve got to move your body, use your voice, know how to think as well as speak, be the character, not yourself” (Seaton 13). This is a far cry from simply capturing natural behavior augmented by a mazurka dance. Seaton felt that talent in acting was the same in film and on stage, but that the techniques of performance were necessarily different. “In theater your focus is always the whole scene, but in pictures it’s wherever the director puts the camera. Everything changes as far as the performance is concerned, from an actor’s point of view” (Seaton 10). Helping actors navigate this shift and building up their general skills in acting were Seaton’s primary coaching responsibilities. Seaton used a two-­pronged approach to training actors at Paramount, and both tracks owe something to her stock background and faith in experiential education. First, she read all the scripts being produced to find smaller roles for the contract actors under her charge. “They [Paramount] put out fifty-­two [films] a year. So you could place the ones you thought were ready and give them an opportunity” (Seaton 15). This work on set would allow them to experience camera conditions and to observe how other, more experienced actors performed for film. The second part was to 10. Loughton had, in fact, started as a child actress with Jessie Bonstelle’s stock company—­ cited in chapter 1—­and became, according to Cynthia Baron’s Modern Acting, “the first female stage manager in New York” (Baron 172). Loughton shared Bonstelle’s love of stock and defended it in similar terms. See “The Stars That Shine” (Thorne) for Bonstelle’s defense of stock theater training.

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teach acting and characterization, and for this Seaton turned to plays. “I put on about three plays a year with the kids, and the directors and producers came—­we did them right at the studio—­and they came and watched them” (Seaton 16). In this she was aligned with Hinsdell, who also staged plays (and musicals) to teach acting technique and to highlight the contract players for studio personnel so they could be cast. Each path worked to provide acting experience—­either in characterization or camera technique—­ while at the same time promoting the actors’ visibility to casting directors and other studio executives. After losing her position at Paramount, Seaton continued to work with actors, moving to MGM for a time (where she was Lillian Burns’s boss) and then working as a “dialogue director” on a movie-­by-­movie contract. She explained that she might be brought on at the request of either the director (“If a director felt you could be of help”) or the actor. She described this work as far removed from being a simple voice coach,11 encompassing character creation and communication. “Her internal feelings would be discussed, but the physical action would be planned by De Mille. . . . I’m better at character, directing character” (Seaton 24). The emphasis on character, again, reinforces the idea that actors were doing “real” acting, rather than simply behaving on camera.

“THE KISS IS AWFUL”—­B EHIND THE SCENES AT MGM

Before moving on from Seaton it is worth turning to MGM’s metaphoric vaults (in this instance stored in UCLA’s film archive) and another (partial) discussion of kissing, notably one with nary a mention of “casual kisses” outside the studio gates. A remarkable piece of evidence has survived regarding the studio’s talent development process. MGM planned and shot—­ though seemingly never released—­a newsreel-­style look at actor training during Seaton’s tenure called How Stars Are Made at MGM Dramatic School (1934). The rough footage gives a sense of what MGM considered important enough (or felt strongly enough about “star making”) to include in this glimpse behind the scenes. As the film was never completed, viewing it is not the same as watching a finished feature. The events are disordered, and multiple takes are included in the surviving footage. That the film was 11. Which is not to say that she didn’t do vocal coaching either. Elsewhere Seaton recalls working at MGM with Heddy Lamarr and other actors for whom English was not the first language (Seaton 29).

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never released might speak to the same impulse Baron and Carnicke identify, of studios wishing to downplay the “constructedness” of films and film acting, preferring to focus on the stylish gowns and adoring crowds. Even in its unfinished state, the film confirms that a tremendous amount of thought and labor went into creating movies, as well as offering visual evidence of some of the classes young actors might take on the lot. The footage begins with rapid cuts between subjects. First is “Behind the Scenes at a Tap Rehearsal,” which is, unsurprisingly, a tap class. Next are snippets of an unattributed—­and probably specially invented—­scene with a man and a woman at a door. Calisthenics come next. This consists of eight women doing high running in place, then doing bicycle kicks (lying on their backs, legs in the air, pedaling motion) before heading off for a jog. It looks, in many ways, like the most glamorous boot camp imaginable. In its focus on young women becoming stars through exercise, and specifically in displaying young women exercising in a titillating manner, the film aligns with the prejudice, noted by Baron and Carnicke, for studios to frame starlets as essentially empty vessels to be shaped and molded—­ physically—­by studio personnel in the quest for stardom (see Baron and Carnicke, Reframing 18–­23). After these preliminaries, the footage settles in to more detailed sequences of teaching. The first extended instructional segment is all about walking. The cast of characters includes two young hopefuls and their teacher, who is never named but according to the index card in the Hearst files, is actually Lillian Burns. She begins: “Correct posture, walking, and balance, are three of the most important things a young actor should know.” The action takes place on a lawn in front of a mirror, which the two girls walk toward and away from, badly. “Do either of you know what was wrong?” asks Burns. “No,” they reply, though it is clear—­to my eye at least—­that they were emphasizing all the clunky motions one could make and still manage to walk in a semistraight line. They clomp up and back, apparently joined at the hip, and both actresses let their outside arms swing back and forth like pale orangutans. The correction follows. “First your posture. You must stand perfectly relaxed. Shoulders back. Chin up. Your arms easy at your sides. Stand on the balls of your feet, forward. Then after you’re walking, you start with the heel of your foot, the heel of the foot comes down first, and then on to the ball of the foot, like that.” This is followed by a close-­up of the foot rolling from heel to toe, after which we are introduced to Virginia Grey, “a young featured player,” who shows the young women “the correct way of walking, sitting down, going up the stairs and coming down again.”

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Virginia is clearly a product of the system. She is elegant, graceful, and easy in her demeanor. After Burns critiques the way the two actresses are sitting (one with her legs spread, the other with them crossed in a stereotypically unladylike fashion, ankle over knee), we move inside and take on the stairs, with more of the same sorts of interplay between the four women. The two new actresses are as clumsy and awkward in their physicality as they could be without devolving into outright parody, while Virginia Grey is everything they can be turned into if they follow their teacher’s guidance.12 The final segment of newsreel footage features Seaton herself, indicated by the name emblazoned on the back of a director’s chair that looks straight out of central casting. She is watching two young actors—­Alan and Priscilla—­perform a snippet of dialogue: ALAN: Marie, wait. I’m sorry. You’ll forgive me, won’t you? PRISCILLA: No. I’ll never forgive you. I’ll hate you as long as I live. Then they go in for a kiss, which is where Seaton stops the action. “In the first place, the kiss is awful. You know perfectly well not to bump noses that way. . . . Keep your face on this side of his.” Then she asks the actress to throw away her gum, at which the actress looks suitably sheepish. This is one of the segments with a great deal of extra footage, so the viewer is treated to reverse angles and close-­ups of the same bit of action, in addition to some scenes where Seaton says she doesn’t believe Alan’s line delivery.13 The archival materials end with more shots of the walking and sitting women and more shots of actresses exercising. Despite the unfinished nature of the material, it is possible to situate this within the larger framework I have been developing. There are the obvious lessons: dancing, demeanor, deportment; and then there is the “acting” class, which is at least as much focused on the mechanics of acting for film (“that kiss was terrible”) as it is 12. Grey actually enjoyed a very nice career at MGM and elsewhere, making the transition to TV work in the ’50s. For those who love Hollywood lore, Grey was also widely known to be a long-­time lover of Clark Gable, and was reportedly devastated when he didn’t marry her after Carole Lombard passed away. (See Telegraph obituary “Virginia Grey.”) 13. There is a remarkable similarity between the MGM footage I viewed at UCLA and Baron and Carnicke’s description of a 1937 Life magazine article about the Fox Drama school. “Three pages of photographs that show young women exercising (sometimes legs in the air, bottoms to the camera), being taught how to stop frowning, blinking, popping their eyes, and letting their double chins sag. . . . Two photographs show young men learning tricks of the trade: one contract player learns the secrets to on-­screen kissing, another how to walk down stairs with eyes gazing upward” (Baron and Carnicke, Reframing 21).

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on what the theater might consider “real” acting (“I didn’t believe you”). The film also exemplifies the conflict the studios faced in offering a public glimpse into learning to be a star, but not wishing to delve into the actual work of acting. Text analysis and character development, perhaps, didn’t pass their screen test, just as they were downplayed in the multitude of articles about becoming a star that focused on remaking young actors into visions of Hollywood style. When Seaton moved on from MGM, Lillian Burns took her spot, and as mentioned above became one of the most powerful people at the studio. She too had worked in live theater, and had even studied acting with Dame Lilian Baylis in her youth. According to an LA Times article from 1977, when Burns first arrived in Los Angeles in 1935 she headed to Republic studios, where she was asked if she was interested in enrolling in their acting studio. Her reply was “No, but to run it” (Shevey). After Republic she was at MGM, where she stayed until after the war. Her resignation from MGM in 1956 was widely reported in the trade papers, as was her subsequent hiring at Columbia as an executive. Widely loved and respected, she was not necessarily a good match for everyone. Esther Williams recalled: [Her] teaching method consisted of reading chunks of dialogue in her style, which we were then expected to imitate, but her melodramatic incantations didn’t work for me. . . . We all learned the same mannered technique. Ava Gardner [before exiting a room] snapped her neck; so did Lana Turner and Janet Leigh. Even little Margaret O’Brien left a room that way. (Williams 76) This was echoed by Catherine McLeod, who when asked what approach Burns used in working with young actors, replied, “She taught them all to be herself” (McLeod 12). At the same time, McLeod believed Burns to have been “enormously helpful,” and even went so far as to take out a full-­page ad in Variety thanking Burns for her help (McLeod 12). Williams discovered that Burns had influenced her as well. “I thought I had avoided picking up most of her mannerisms, but seven years of classes were bound to leave their mark. I remember watching Neptune’s Daughter and when I saw my nostrils flare and my eyes pop out of my head, I thought, ‘Oh, Lillian, you sneaked those into my subconscious!’” (Williams 76). Talent scout Al Trescony was unqualified in his admiration of her work. “Lillian was one of the foremost drama coaches in the business,” he recalled in a 1986 interview, “she could get performances out of actors that even surprised them. She could get right to the heart of the matter and out would come the per-

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formance” (Trescony 7). Far from just throwing beautiful people on the screen, Burns was actively engaged in shaping her students’ approaches to preparation and performance. Burns freely admitted the value of studying voice and movement, but at MGM those classes were taught by specialists, leaving Burns to work closely and individually with prospective and current MGM contract actors. Burns said on many occasions that acting couldn’t be taught. “I don’t believe you can teach acting. Anybody who tells me that is a charlatan. You can help develop talent, or even a great personality, but in developing that talent or that personality you must truly help develop that person.” For Burns, this meant introducing young actors—­particularly actresses—­to elements of culture and class, offering a variation on Marsh’s arguments about clean living coming out on screen. “Donna Reed, Debbie [Reynolds], many of them say, ‘What we knew about antiques, what we knew about music or culture, was started in [your] office’” (Burns 8–­9).14 A movie star would be expected to know something of music and antiques, and Burns believed that to make these young women into stars, this was necessary knowledge. For all her protestations that acting couldn’t be taught, it might be more accurate to say that for Burns innate talent was necessary and unlearnable, but that skill in performance—­what many might define as acting—­could absolutely be developed. It is clear from the surviving evidence that it wasn’t only tea and classical music she offered her students. In a New York Times article about Burns from 1945, she is quoted as saying, “A dramatic coach . . . can only help actors to properly interpret and understand a character. If an actor is bad to begin with, then there isn’t much any dramatic coach can do about it” (Pryon). But if an actor had “talent,” then the work of cultivation could begin. A concise four pages of notes in the Herrick archives, undated, has a set of quotes from Burns and her then-­husband George Sidney, possibly for an interview piece that was never published. In them she described working with Van Johnson. “When Van first started, I would take a script—­we would discuss the character—­the relationship of all characters together. What to expect in difficult scenes—­break them down—­Peculiar thing of knowing what you are doing and not appearing 14. In the memorial notice of Burns’s passing in the Hollywood Reporter she was described as survived by her “adopted daughters DEBBIE REYNOLDS and JANET LEIGH” alongside her nephew David Broder (Anonymous, “Memorium”). It is also worth noting that Debbie Reynolds started as a teenager with Warners, where she studied with Sophie Rosenstein (see below for discussion of Rosenstein, and Debbie: My Life for details about Reynolds’s early history with the studios).

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to be acting” (Sidney, George—­Notes Undated). All of the work that she would do with actors in preparation for their performances was to address the “peculiar thing” of needing to be acting while appearing “natural.” Janet Leigh offered another glimpse into Burns’s approach in an interview conducted in 1984: You can understand a script and understand a character; you can give that character life through you by establishing a complete person. . . . Even though it has nothing to do, or would ever show in actuality in the film . . . where she went to school, what did she like to wear, what color does she like, what would she do in this circumstance because of her relationship with her mother and her father and her sister and her brother, or her friends . . . [Y]ou know where this person’s been, why this person reacts the way she does. Because it may not be your way of reacting. . . . And then also that it should always be simple; you should never try to “act.” You know, that’s something she [Burns] said very strongly. And honesty, simplicity, energy—­not only physical, but mental energy, so that the juices are always going. (Leigh 6–­7) For Burns, to “act” with the scare quotes seems to be a stand-­in for oversized reactions, non–­character specific choices, or technique that calls attention to itself as “acting,” whereas the true work of film performance was the creation of a fully fleshed out character who would appear natural, despite being a meticulous construction. Even if the details were never explicitly shown in the final product, this level of creative engagement would help the actor present an honest representation of the character as written. Burns, like Seaton, was a believer in experience as the best preparation for young actors, lamenting in an interview in 1986, “Young people today, without the small theaters (which, thank goodness, are coming back into communities, and have really made progress), have no training ground. And I’m not talking about teachers . . . about schools” (Burns 2–­3). Despite this, she discontinued Seaton’s policy of staging plays. “Mr. Mayer would say to me, ‘Don’t you want a stage? Use stage five.’ I said, ‘Is there a proscenium arch on the set? No way.’” Instead, Burns used her office, which she had outfitted “like a living room. . . . It even had a grand piano in it and a fake fireplace, a fake mantel” (Burns 10). It was here that she would conduct her coaching sessions, which varied from actor to actor, but the evidence suggests were a combination of “Hollywood-­style” lessons—­as Wil-

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liams described above—­and discussions of character and character relationships per Van Johnson and Janet Leigh. Part of her resistance to offering “classes” or a “school” was that she wanted the actors to feel like they had already made it. “I did not want that label of ‘students’ put on them. . . . They had to know that was their stage and they could dig their toes into it” (Burns 9). In the unpublished notes, she says she “came to one conclusion—­in a studio, [it’s] too late to have a school. Each person is worked with individually. The only time they work together is for a test” (Sidney, George—­Notes Undated). While Burns may not have held regular classes, she did at times bring multiple actors together to work on scenes. MGM actor Marshal Thompson, a contract player in the 1940s, recalled that actors would put a scene together and show it in front of Burns and other studio actors. “We’d work on it and present it to the class and then she would do a critique on it. Then she would explain certain things . . . the whole thing was that you had to get that specific point across that was required in the scene, but you would do it differently than anybody else. Because you can’t change yourself, you can only put yourself into a situation” (Thompson 10–­11). This echoes Burns’s own approach to developing character, which is that a great part of film performance originates with the actors themselves. How they express various emotions could not be replicated in the sense of a Delsartean universalism. By the same token, Burns wasn’t creating protean actors capable of playing widely disparate roles. If, as Williams and others attest, she was essentially teaching Hollywood style layered onto personality, the type of character any actor would play would be circumscribed by the actor’s natural inclinations and appearance, despite the character biographies that Leigh describes. Far from embracing the protean ideal, this was an attempt to realize the dream of achieving stardom, and it was widely understood across studios that this was how one became a movie star. “Every top-­of-­ the-­line movie star had to find a type that he or she could play over and over. And over. That would keep the movies rolling and the money flowing in. . . . The star had to become a recognizable shelf product” (Basinger 72). Acting, in this case, wasn’t about disappearing into character, but about matching the demands of a script and character with the expectations of the audience who would witness the performance, mediated by the mechanics of film. The focus on the “real” persona of the actor in performance connects to the appreciation of the camera in close-­up. Like Marsh, Burns ascribed to the camera incredible power to discern an actor’s thoughts. In her words it was a “truth machine. . . . You cannot say ‘dog’ and think ‘cat,’

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because ‘meow’ will come out if you do” (Burns 1–­2). When Marsh stumbled in Intolerance, trying to ape Rambeau’s celebrated performance instead of recalling the death of her own father, she was running afoul of the “truth machine,” and Burns would have predicted both the failure and the means of correction. Marsh’s attempt to adopt another’s portrayal of sadness was also an example of what Burns worried would happen in a classroom setting, where a single successful student might prompt unproductive emulation. “If you said ‘That was very good  .  .  .’ someone would say, ‘I’m going to do it that way.’ No. They had to be individual” (Burns 9). For Burns, the camera was too accurate a truth machine to be fooled by imitations of others.

CATCHING UP AT WARNERS—­R OSENSTEIN AND MODERN ACTING

While MGM had the most developed training system in the 1930s and ’40s, they were hardly alone in offering classes for their actors. Most of the studios offered some level of education to their contract players. Warner Brothers (WB), despite pioneering the talking picture, committed to a dedicated talent department relatively late in the game. The establishment of a permanent, in-­house acting coach at Warners can be dated with some certainty based on an August 25, 1936, memo in the WB archives. It concerns the hiring of one Malvinia Dunn, who, according to her school’s advertising flyer preserved in her file, had been teaching “a course of study for the Screen and Stage in the Development and Use of Voice and Body adapted from the Method in Use at the Conservatoire in Paris” at 120 South Maple Drive in Beverly Hills. The memo, by executive producer Hal Wallis, is worth quoting at length, as it lays out the motivation behind WB’s hiring of Ms. Dunn, what they expected she would do, and their relation to the other studios as far as training of their actors: I am engaging a woman MALVINIA DUNN, whose card is attached, to work here at the studio exclusively, for the purpose of coaching our younger players. In the past we have tried to do this in a hit and miss manner with whatever dialogue directors happen to have a few days or a week off, but it has never been done systematically, or with any degree of regularity.

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Beginning September first, this woman will be at the studio, and I want you to assign suitable quarters to her, to establish office hours and classes so that our promising young people can make regular appointments with this woman to assist them in their work. Also, whenever we give anyone such as June Travis, Ann Sheridan, Jeanne Madden, et cetera, an important part, this woman can go through the whole script with them and coach them in their lines. Every other studio in the business is doing this with a great degree of success, and I want to try it out for three months and see what results we get. Will you please arrange to start this woman September first at $125 weekly and give her a letter agreement, guaranteeing her three months work. (Dunn Materials)15 First, WB acknowledges that they have never committed to a full-­time acting coach before, instead relying on dialogue coaches—­whose responsibilities would be to a single film—­to offer pointers and advice as time allowed. But this hit-­or-­miss coaching was never done “systematically,” something anathema to the process of production at all the major film studios, and to the values of industrial modernism. Moving forward, Dunn would be established in a set location and be available to work with all their “promising young people”—­meaning the actors under contract. Dunn would work specifically with major players (i.e., Ann Sheridan), coaching their performance through the entire script. Finally, WB acknowledges that they are behind the other studios in establishing a training program for their actors, though they are initially only going to commit to three months. The experiment proved successful. Based on the surviving materials I reviewed I cannot say how long Dunn remained with WB. Her last contract that I was able to find began in December of 1936 and had a standard six-­ month-­with-­options structure. The WB files contain contractual remnants of other dialogue directors, among them Irving Rapper, who worked in that capacity between 1935 and 1939 (he later became a features director). 15. As a delicious example of the industrial practices that undergird Hollywood studios, every WB memo form had printed across the bottom of the page “VERBAL MESSAGES CAUSE MISUNDERSTANDING AND DELAYS (PLEASE PUT THEM IN WRITING).” These were later supplanted by the “WarnerGram” form for interoffice communication, which had an abbreviated version: “P.S. DO NOT GIVE OR ACCEPT VERBAL ORDERS.” Needless to say, this emphasis on documentation makes the archival holdings relatively rich, if somewhat overwhelming.

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But the most significant person to work in the talent department at Warners in this period was Sophie Rosenstein, who arrived in 1940 and stayed until moving to Universal in 1948.16 Prior to her work at Warner Brothers, Rosenstein had been at the University of Washington where she taught after earning undergraduate and master’s degrees in theater. She was the primary author of Modern Acting: A Manual, published in 1936 by Samuel French. An article in the New York Times in 1943 (“Nurse to the Warner White Hopes”) doesn’t indicate a specific reason for her move from Washington to California, only that “academic life began to pall.” After moving she took a job teaching at “Henry Duffy’s El Capitan School of the Theatre in Hollywood.” She seems to have done some freelance directing at this time, as the article indicates she directed the West Coast premiere of Margin of Error by Clare Boothe Luce, apparently to great acclaim. “The play opened on a Saturday. On Monday Miss Rosenstein was an employee of Warners” (Strauss). Rosenstein started at WB on March 26, 1940 (actually a Tuesday, as it happens), hired by Jack Warner himself. Her initial salary was $100 per week, and her responsibilities included “dramatic coach—­test director—­ dialogue director—­and other such kindred services” (Rosenstein Materials). One of the best descriptions of her work comes from a letter she wrote as part of an appeal by WB to the federal Salary Stabilization Unit in the fall of 1944 requesting a waiver to the wartime practice of freezing salaries. In three paragraphs she outlines her history with Warner Brothers, the work she was responsible for, and the direction the talent department was projected to take in the future. She begins by explaining that she was promoted to lead drama coach two months after arriving at the studio, as “the other coach” was let go and “the training of the entire group was placed in my hands.” At the time this was a cohort of ten actors. “Training them consisted of teaching them the fundamentals of acting, grooming them in appearance, [and] general preparation for use, as soon as possible, on the screen.” The number of actors under her charge increased in 1941 to “approximately twenty-­one,” with another eight added the next year, with a total of thirty-­three actors for 1943 and ’44. Not only did the number of actors increase, but the training became more intensive. “Between 1942 and 1943 . . . I instituted a more elaborate 16. Rosenstein’s New York Times obituary lists her as continuing to work at the University of Washington until 1939, and her folder in the WB archives has nothing dated prior to 1940 pertaining to her.

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course of training with a staff of teachers whom I selected and whose curriculum I prepared. This included a singing teacher, a dancing teacher, and a specialist in voice placement and diction.” She established the overall schedule of courses, all the instructors reported directly to her, and she oversaw each actor’s progress. Looking ahead, Rosenstein foresaw even greater responsibility for her area, including “long-­range planning . . . between producers and directors for the particular talents of the young people we have on hand.” Rosenstein would not only oversee the training of actors at Warners, but would be involved in project development to best utilize their contract players. The goal, as always, was greater efficiency. Rosenstein’s self-­described responsibility was to “fore-­shorten the time between the entrance of the player into the studio and his screen debut. This responsibility is entirely my own. It involves a plan of departmentalization on a more formal basis than ever before, and has meant, and will mean, further staffing within the department” (Rosenstein Materials). In a supplementary letter of support, the studio wrote that despite being hired as a simple “Dramatic Coach” she had quickly assumed far greater responsibilities. “She is now Head of the Department which she originally joined as a subordinate, and furthermore, the development itself has expanded and developed largely under her guidance to a point where it is an independent division and no longer a subordinate to the Casting Department” (Rosenstein Materials). In short, they were asking to pay Rosenstein more money because she had taken on a tremendous amount of work that was outside the original scope of her contract, and due to the war they needed the government’s approval to give her a raise. As part of the justification for Rosenstein’s proposed new contract, Warners reviewed what the other major studios were paying their acting coaches. The list offers a good comparison of the various studios and shows how widespread studio-­based acting coaches were by the 1940s (figures are weekly salaries): a. 20th CENTURY FOX: 2 coaches, one at $175 and one at $250. One test director and coach at $250 b. MGM: 2 dramatic coaches, one at $350 [almost assuredly Lillian Burns], and one at $225. Special test director and head of talent at $250 c. PARAMOUNT: Coach and directs shorts at $250. “Hire coaches from outside by picture. One person at $175, doing dramatic coaching and helps on tests. They hire coaches from outside by picture.”

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d. RKO: One dramatic coach at $200 e. COLUMBIA: One dramatic coach (has been there just a short time) at $150 f. REPUBLIC: No dramatic coach, etc. (Rosenstein Materials) Every one of the major studies, with the exception of Republic, had at least one and often multiple people identified as coaches. These numbers exclude “dialogue directors” who would often work on a single film, so the actual number of people concerned with actors and acting connected to a given film would be even greater. According to a letter in the file, the SSU approved (on appeal) a new contract for Rosenstein. Warners could rehire Rosenstein at $350 a week in 1944, raise her to $400 in 1945, then extend at $500 for two years, and then $750 a week for the two years after that. A final memo dated September 8, 1948, from Jack Warner indicates that the studio was restructuring the entire test department, and that Rosenstein should be given her two weeks’ notice, her last day being September 24. Actress Joan Leslie worked with Rosenstein while under contract with Warners, describing her as “a wonderful dramatic coach.” Leslie’s understanding of Rosenstein’s job was to do “all the testing of the new, young people coming out. She gave them classes, and if you wanted it and you had a role to work on, she’d give me time. If she couldn’t see me during the day, I’d come out to her house at night and she would work with me on the scene, one-­to-­one dramatic coach” (Leslie 8–­10). Rosenstein also apparently worked with Leslie on voice and speech, but her primary responsibilities were in script analysis and character development. Leslie described her own process, derived from her work with Rosenstein at Warners: I still work on the theory Sophie taught me many years ago. You think through as you can, culled from what you have in the script, and you make a character for yourself. You think what perhaps she did before this show started, and what perhaps she’s going to do after the story ends. . . . So you create this kind of a person. . . . Try to make your lines consistent with the character line you’ve set up for yourself, kind of build a tree and say, “This is one characteristic of this person, this is another. And this makes her be this way.” And try to be consistent within the framework of that part while you’re in that part. (Leslie 47–­48) Leslie’s focus on character illustrates what a key concern this was for Rosenstein, as well as the open acknowledgement that acting was character

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creation and line delivery, and not merely looking glamorous or replicating natural behavior. It is illuminating to read this firsthand account of Rosenstein’s approach against her own text to better understand her conception of the art and craft of acting. Rosenstein’s Modern Acting: A Manual, written with Larrae Haydon and Wilbur Sparrow, is not directly referenced in the studio materials I reviewed, but some parallels suggest that her text offers a good guide to her approach to working with film actors in Hollywood. For example, in her chapter on characterization Rosenstein outlines a process similar to what Leslie describes above: “After [the actor] has reconstructed the emotional reactions of his character he must work out what we call a careful thought pattern. A thought pattern is an outline of thinking which is arrived at by an analysis of the mind of the character and the reactions this character has to incumbent circumstances” (Rosenstein et al. 67–­68). The similarity offers some confidence that there was a fair bit of overlap between the text and her work with actors in Hollywood. In Rosenstein’s introduction she lays out a working definition of what an actor is supposed to do: “Present to an audience various overt behavior patterns including those which go under the name of emotion. The problem is to present them in each dramatic situation so that they will seem to be appropriate to the situation and to the character” (Rosenstein et al. 1). Significantly, while emotion is still a core concern for the actor, it is augmented by plot and character. She allows that one method of teaching emotional representation would be to travel Delsarte’s path and standardize the expression of emotion. But this, she notes dryly, “in so far as it is successful . . . leads to highly conventionalized and wooden patterns.” A superior method is to draw inspiration from personal experiences. “These must have involved the expression of subjective emotion and feeling similar to those called for by the dramatic situation and character.” Rosenstein accepts that not every textually required feeling will have an experiential analogue in the actor, so “it will frequently be necessary to draw on vicarious experience from such sources as literature, painting, sculpture, and other transmitters of knowledge, as well as upon careful observation of the characteristic behavior of others” (Rosenstein et al. 2). Emotional memory is thus augmented with imagined or sympathetic emotional response to enable effective acting. Prefiguring later criticisms of “Method” acting, under “Voice and Speech” Rosenstein critiques the “tendency of modern actors in their efforts for ‘naturalism’ to slight projection and to be satisfied with slovenly enunciation” (Rosenstein et al. 89). Being “real” is no excuse for not being heard or understood while on stage.

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Rosenstein also pushes away from a central fixation on emotion in characterization. An actor playing Eilert in Hedda Gabler would naturally identify “mingled feelings of curiosity and excitement” as the emotional state for the character. To bring this to light in performance, however, the actor should not simply say to himself “How excited I am!” or “How curious I am!” because this is not actually what the character would be thinking. Instead, the actor should generate these emotions “by wondering what Hedda’s point of view will be, how she will greet him, what Tesman will say to his book, and by recalling Hedda’s former power to fascinate him.” Rather than focusing directly on the emotional outcome, the actor should think the thoughts of the character through what subsequent acting teachers would call an internal monologue. The actor in rehearsal establishes the “thought pattern” of the character and practices it along with the lines in the script. “Good dialogue on the stage does not differ from night to night,” Rosenstein argues, and “in the same way this well worked out thought pattern should remain constant” (Rosenstein et al. 60–­61). Rosenstein’s emphasis on repeatability and standardization, as well as nudging emotion away from the center of an actor’s concerns, is in concert with the technological paradigm in acting. Who might be capable of achieving lasting success as an actor? Like Burns, Rosenstein acknowledges that a good actor is one who has natural talent, for which there is no substitute. At the same time, Rosenstein absolutely believes in the efficacy of training. “Although talent cannot be taught in a classroom, the elements which comprise a technique can be.” For Rosenstein, a good actor should possess “developed concentration, keen observation, a plastic body, voice and speech adaptability, and a practical knowledge of literature, history, science, and the arts” (Rosenstein et al. 3–­ 4). All of these areas can be improved by training and effort, and to make her case Rosenstein invokes the familiar comparison to musicians and the dream of scales for actors. “It has been sometimes said that the way to learn to act is to act. If this were true, the way to learn to play a Beethoven sonata would be to sit down at the piano and play a Beethoven sonata. . . . The artist’s first task is to master his instrument. In the case of the pianist, it is the piano; in the case of the actor, it is himself” (Rosenstein et al. 1). Rosenstein will return to the comparison of the actor with the musician—­and later the painter, to echo Craig—­as a useful contrast in the relative value of preparation and practice, with the unstated goal of giving acting a grounding in objective technique such as exists in its sister arts. The means of acquiring this technique form the bulk of her book, with the subsequent sections taking each area of improvement listed above in turn.

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Despite coming out in the mid-­1930s, many of the exercises in the book feel remarkably familiar and can be found, with little variation, in subsequent acting texts throughout the twentieth century. As Baron discusses in her own Modern Acting, Rosenstein’s approach was characteristic of what Baron describes as “modern” acting, where actors “see each script as a window into the lives of other people; then, in performance, concentration on the characters’ chain of actions and reactions is what allows players to express the life breath of the characterization” (Baron 54). Rosenstein, along with Josephine Dillon (who also wrote a book titled Modern Acting, published in 1940) serve as progenitors of more contemporary techniques, hence their familiarity. For example, Rosenstein’s chapter on “Sensibility,” devoted to improving students’ observational recall, suggests that students study an object brought into class for one minute, then write a detailed description of the item. For “Observation,” students might be asked to pantomime a simple action (“Handle a teacup” is one suggestion) and then receive a critique from the class as to how vividly they recreated it (Rosenstein et al., 8, 18). Elsewhere actors are instructed to create improvisational scenes based on specific environmental or physical constraints to help develop imagination. This, in turn, points toward the most significant factor for Modern Acting’s contemporary feel: its wholesale embrace of exercises as the component parts of learning to act. While MacKaye or Stebbins might argue that actors should learn emotional representation through aesthetic gymnastics, Rosenstein begins with the assumption that nearly everything an actor needs to do can be abstracted into an exercise, developed independently of other skills, and put together by the actor during the process of rehearsal and performance. The references to specific characters (such as Eilert in Hedda above) are not examples of how to play that particular role, but are meant to illustrate how the various component skills can be assembled in a process of constructing a character and playing it in front of an audience. While certain aspects of the text are naturally of their time, the overall impression is that Rosenstein’s Modern Acting is just that—­a guide to approaching the work of actors whose assumptions mirror those that would dominate acting theory through much of the twentieth century. As such, the exercises prescribed are familiar, even anticipatory, of the work of Adler, Meisner, and Strasberg in many places. This anticipation of more modern acting approaches, similar to D’Angelo’s text on the AADA, might be traced to the influence of Boleslavsky’s Acting: The First Six Lessons, although Rosenstein’s text never makes an explicit claim to a particular acting lineage. In the introduction,

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she writes that “the actual procedures which are described here have been arrived at by a long process of trial and error in the practical pedagogical situation of the drama classroom” (Rosenstein et al. 3).17 However, Rosenstein explicitly quotes Boleslavsky in her first chapter: “Richard Boleslavsky says, ‘We have a special memory for feelings which works unconsciously by itself and for itself’” (Rosenstein et al. 12). Although the quote is uncited, she is quoting either the initial publication of Boleslavsky’s “A Second Lesson in Acting” in Theatre Arts Monthly from July 1929 or Boleslavsky’s own Acting: The First Six Lessons, published in 1933.18 A few other overt echoes of Boleslavsky’s work appear in the text. Where Rosenstein recommends one to two hours of physical training a day, Boleslavsky advocates “an hour and a half daily” on gymnastics and the like (Boleslavsky, Acting 9). Where Rosenstein argues that an actor needs “a practical knowledge of literature, history, science, and the arts,” Boleslavsky holds that the second pillar of an actor’s education is “intellectual, cultural. . . . I need an actor who knows the world’s literature . . . an actor who knows the history of painting, of sculpture and of music” (Boleslavsky, Acting 9).19 And like many who preceded them chronologically, Rosenstein and Boleslavsky both draw a distinction between talent, which cannot be taught, and skill, which can and must be cultivated. Science—­psychology in particular—­is another area of overlapping concern for Rosenstein and Boleslavsky. Rosenstein, after describing a process of emotional recall to get at the physical reality desired in a scene, explains “in the words of the psychologist we are substituting new stimuli to arouse a similar reaction” (Rosenstein et al. 29). In his second lesson Boleslavsky invokes Théodule Ribot when defining and explaining “affective memory” (Boleslavsky, Acting 15). Ribot, in turn, provides the foundation for Boleslavsky’s “special memory of feeling” cited by Rosenstein. In addition, Boleslavsky says he wants an “actor who has a fairly clear idea of the psychology of motion, of psychoanalysis . . . the logic of feeling” (Boleslavsky, Acting 10). The references in each text to psychology anchor the work of an actor in scientific fact and point toward the centrality of characterization based on psychological principles. 17. Note the rhetorical linkage to the experimental scientific tradition through the invocation of “trial and error” in arriving at the final form of the exercises. 18. See Boleslavsky (“2nd Lesson” 500; or Acting 15). 19. Rosenstein and Boleslavsky are evocative in turn of the 1918 Jehlinger quote cited in chapter 3: “You need the understanding of all human nature, the sense of beauty of an artist and poet, the rhythm of the dancer and musician, and the mentality of a philosopher and a scientist” (cited in Baron 143).

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This emphasis on science also contributes to the contemporary sensibility of Modern Acting. Rosenstein, like a good Taylorist, is backing up her methodology by grounding it in scientific knowledge (just as Boleslavsky did). In her introduction she says “there are undoubtedly passages in the following chapters which will sound peculiar to professional psychologists, but we believe that that peculiarity will largely be a matter of terminology” (Rosenstein et al. 2). The science behind the exercises is reliable, she assures us, even if the vocabulary is not that of the clinical practitioner. She reinforces the scientific foundation of the work by making an analogy to animal training. Animals were discovered to respond to methods that “frequently sounded bizarre” but “for which a sound scientific basis can be made out” (Rosenstein et al. 3). The exercises, even though they may appear “bizarre” to outsiders, are applications of scientific truths that can be utilized even by those who are ignorant of the underlying theory. Although Rosenstein does not use the word, her exercises are presented and utilized as technologies. All of this is not to say that Rosenstein and her coauthors merely cribbed Boleslavsky’s texts. Given his prominence and influence, it is to be expected that Rosenstein and her collaborators would draw from his work in developing their own materials. More broadly, Rosenstein and Boleslavsky shared the same scientific foundations and assumptions about what an actor was responsible for: crafting a psychologically consistent character, individual to the actor, using the tools of affective memory. But where Boleslavsky offers a single, contrived case study of “the Creature” as a student, Rosenstein’s text is specifically written as a textbook for a course of study. Rosenstein’s suggestions for how to work are far more fully developed, with specific exercises, prompts, and expected outcomes. There is more techne in Rosenstein’s text, and more ways to make use of the scientific processes that govern performance than there are in Six Lessons. Rosenstein’s work is clearly shaped by the needs of structuring a college curriculum in acting, rather than imparting lessons to an individual student. In her conclusion Rosenstein admits the dual nature of theater as both art and craft, for theater “has all the fascination of art and all the complexities of science” (Rosenstein et al. 128). She also allows that because actors are individuals, training must be flexible. One actor might need more work on concentration, another to spend more time on imagination, and so on. The goal of Modern Acting is to summarize (in good scientific management fashion) a process of training that will impart “a reliable system which attempts to equip the actor for sincere, assured, and inspired playing” (Rosenstein et al. 128). Against the haphazard method of apprenticeship

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and tricks of the trade handed down in the greenroom—­which leads to “the American public accept[ing] inferior plays, inadequate direction, and incompetent acting” (Rosenstein et al. 129)—­Rosenstein offers a real system for learning the craft of performance through exercises derived from scientific principles. Rosenstein acknowledges the resistance such an approach might face. “It is easy to scoff at attempts to place the theatre on a more scientific basis. Actors often mock suggestions which may be found within the covers of a book” (Rosenstein et al. 129). She counters these arguments in familiar terms: while certain aspects of theater are purely artistic, “it remains a craft, the success of which depends upon painstaking and relentless endeavor” (Rosenstein et al. 129), echoing Jesse Lasky’s definition of achieving screen success cited in chapter 4 through “technique and the perfection of almost infinite practice.” This view of acting as a combination of art and science found strikingly fertile ground in Hollywood, where marrying artistic expression to industrial methodology was necessary for the scale of operations envisioned by the studio heads plotting cinematic world domination. Moving away from Griffith’s faith in the “light inside” as the critical component of screen success, studios and film actors alike had, in an incredibly short time, embraced the notion of actor training, and they were heavily influenced by the work of major theoreticians in live theater. Coaches adjusted their work to the special demands of performing for the camera, while at the same time sharing a basic set of assumptions about the nature of acting and performance. Live theater and film had both begun to move away from the predominantly emotional descriptions that might be found in Fiske’s prompt book (“make all gracious”) and turned their attention to crafting individual characters who were composites of the actor’s self and the techniques of performance learned through exercises and classes. Even in the New York Times feature from 1943 on Rosenstein at Warner Brothers, Rosenstein’s methodology is described as “all very scientifically conceived,” and multiple references to science combined with the methodological approach to acting described in the article prove the point. According to Rosenstein, natural skill is not necessary, for “long ago she learned that skill is not an essential at the start because it can be acquired.” Where Boleslavsky moved from talent being a prerequisite to talent perhaps being latent and needing some cultivation, Rosenstein went further, arguing that inherent abilities count for little in the face of effective training. That said, there was still room for the metaphysical; Rosenstein is also reported as appreciating the unquantifiable elements that contribute to a successful film performance. What the “camera catches,” she says, is “the essence of

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the person and not merely acting finesse” (Strauss).20 Acting retains, at least in part, an irreducible element of personality that cannot be taught. Rosenstein was, by all accounts, one of the best in her field, and exemplified the trend toward seeing acting as a collection of component parts that could be learned outside of “just acting.” Reviewing contemporary descriptions of her work at Warners alongside her own Modern Acting suggests a great deal of overlap between the approach described in her text and the work she did with the studio actors under her charge. After being let go from Warners she moved to Universal. I will return to her and the larger story of the changes in Hollywood actor training after the war in the next chapter, when Group Theatre alumni began teaching acting on both coasts, the Hollywood studio system collapsed, and Robert Lewis helped popularize the idea of “the Method” in his 1958 book Method—or Madness?, outlining the central concerns of a Stanislavsky-­inspired (and technological) approach to character creation and performance practice.

20. To which the reporter adds, “Were you listening Stanislavski?,” suggesting a view of Stanislavsky’s work that was entirely systematic, and that Rosenstein was softening to a certain degree. See the discussion of Craig’s latter-­day criticism of Stanislavsky and the MAT in chapter 2.

SEVEN

 | “Oh, Yes, You Can Teach Acting”

After the war, Hollywood studios faced a changing producing environment that prompted a reconsideration of their entire business model. Partly this was a product of the successful antitrust proceedings that forced the major studios to divorce themselves from the distribution and presentation of their own products. But, as many historians of film have noted, there was also a financial shift toward producing fewer but more expensive films (see Staiger, for example), and fewer films meant fewer actors were needed. At the same time, actors’ salaries increased, which made keeping actors under studio contracts less financially feasible. As a result, studios shed their contract players and the training programs developed to improve them. While there were still a few in-­house development programs in the 1950s, by the 1960s these had been effectively eliminated. This didn’t mean that Hollywood had given up on the idea that actors could be trained in some fashion or another, but the studios no longer saw it as their problem. Just as stock used to be a training ground for stage actors and was then replaced by an assortment of schooling options for potential performers, so the replacement of the studio system led to actors seeking training from an increasing variety of teachers and institutions. In this chapter I start in Hollywood in the 1940s, looking briefly at the history of the Actors’ Laboratory, Inc., started in Los Angeles by Group Theatre alumni as both a producing organization and acting school. I then recount the final efforts of the studio training systems before their dissolution, drawing from interviews with actors and teachers of the period. Finally, I examine Robert Lewis’s 1958 book Method—or Madness?. His series of lectures on “the Method” offers a glimpse into the dispersion of acting techniques derived from Stanislavsky, Boleslavsky, and Ouspenskaya, as well as highlighting, at this relatively early date, the shape of the disagreements that would characterize the major figures in postwar acting pedagogy, which I take up in turn in the final chapter.

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AN ALTERNATIVE STUDIO: THE ACTORS’ LABORATORY, INC., IN LOS ANGELES

It is customary to think of the Actors Studio as the successor to the Group Theatre. Because it has enjoyed a long (and ongoing) history of success, it is easy to overlook projects that other former Group members initiated or supported in the years between the ending of the Group and the founding of the Studio. One of these was the Actors’ Laboratory, Inc., whose name alone places it in the tradition of scientifically and industrially minded theater organizations in the US. Based in Los Angeles, the Lab could trace its roots to both the spirit of the Group Theatre and the Federal Theatre Project (its predecessor organization was the Hollywood Theatre Alliance, made up of former FTP employees). The Lab began in 1941, and the executive board “included three former Group members: Virginia Farmer, Joe Bromberg, and Bud Bohnen” (author of the technocratic musings on the location of the Group Theatre back in the early 1930s, see chapter 5) (Smith 413). Later, Group alums Morris Carnovsky and Phoebe Brand would also join the Lab. Over its nearly ten years in existence the Lab offered a variety of classes and productions, ranging from USO shows during the war to remounts of classical work, alongside an active educational wing. Substantive historical accounts of the work of the Actors’ Lab are few and far between, with Delia Salvi’s 1969 dissertation The History of the Actors’ Laboratory, Inc. 1941–­1950 only recently having been augmented by a dedicated chapter in Cynthia Baron’s 2016 Modern Acting: The Lost Chapter of American Film and Theatre. A founding mission of the Actors’ Laboratory was to train actors. Notes on the curriculum saved by Farmer indicate three levels of ascending technique. The first stage was described as including “exercises for the establishment of technical fundamentals and the approach to work  .  .  . sense memories, etc. No scenes.” Scene work would come at stage two, coupled with “fundamental exercises and improvisations on a more advanced level and now designed especially for individual development as well as group work.” This in turn led to stage three, where the work done previously would be applied in the rehearsal and performance of full-­length plays (Salvi 29). As might be expected, the language used to describe the work of the actor suggests precision. Based in the Boleslavsky/Ouspenskaya lineage from the MAT, it is likewise unsurprising that sense memory should be included as a foundational technique. Whatever else the Lab Theatre might be offering, it wasn’t a decisive break from the now-­established—­ though still unevenly accepted—­conceptual model of acting as a set of dis-

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crete skills to be achieved in succession, with a complete approach to performance built through mastering various exercises at intermediate stops along the way. At the same time, the Lab inculcated an auratic aspect to acting. An exhortation found in an early “Statement of Policy” adopted by the executive board in May of 1941 stated that the goal of instruction at the Lab wasn’t limited to the acquisition of rehearsal and performance techniques. The larger goal was to facilitate for their actors “a real understanding of and participation in the life of our times—­based on an intelligent appraisal of the social forces at work in this particular political period—­and as people who consider the preparation of democracy and democratic culture a matter of life or death” (Salvi 35). Elsewhere, the formula for their actor training program was described as a “union of craft and social awareness” (Salvi 187). In the words of board chairman Lloyd Gough in 1949, “an actor can’t begin to know his character until he knows the world that made him what he was” (Salvi 188). Even while the work of acting was made more technical and industrial in approach, there was a push to recapture a sense of significance and auratic importance for the profession. This extended to directors as well. “Carnovsky and others had always believed that a director had to have an ‘artistic appetite’ for a play because only under such conditions could he be fully creative” (Salvi 212). While this was not a belief universally shared in the Lab, it is a decided throwback to the view that inspiration plays a leading role in the work of a theater artist. In this case, even if proper acting technique should insulate the actors from such a need, it is the director who must be inspired. In the final year of the company, when productions were few and far between, this attitude would come under sharp questioning, as the need to produce new work grew in importance as the organization was threatened with dissolution. The dominant methodology of the Lab might best be expressed as Boleslavsky/Ouspenskaya. When the Lab looked for a new head of acting in 1943 (incidentally the same year that they officially incorporated and added “Inc.” to their name), they eventually chose a woman named Mary Tarcai. She had studied at the American Laboratory Theatre, earned a theater degree from Columbia, and taught at the Neighborhood Playhouse for six years (Salvi 48). She was widely respected, “described in a 1945 news clipping . . . [as] ‘America’s leading specialist’ in actor training” (Baron 48). Her own training at the ALT and experience teaching at the Neighborhood Playhouse gave her a shared language with the former Group members active at the Lab, and she remained in a leadership position until 1948, when she stepped down as executive director but remained as a teacher.

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Compared to the Actors Studio under Strasberg, the Lab was less homogenous in the approach offered to students. While ex-­Group members might focus on Stanislavsky-­inspired exercises, at least one teacher, Jules Dassin, was critiqued for his “external approach” to acting, derived, in part, from his history working with the Jewish Art Theatre (Salvi 32). Salvi notes that at least two instructors were not “Method-­oriented . . . and yet they were accepted and respected as teachers” (Salvi 83). As for what students should come away with, an indication can be found in Bohnen’s goals for a staging of an act of Odets’s Paradise Lost to go up in December of ’41. According to him, successful actors needed, “at some time the personal experience of having given a truthful performance in a play along with other truthful performances” (Salvi 40, emphasis original). Playing truthfully alongside other skilled actors “permanently endows the actor with comprehension of what his very personal goal should always be in all his work and study” (Salvi 40). While the definition of “truth” could be up for grabs, the basic premise of working well with others who are working well seems widely applicable across the Lab’s instructional activities. There is an illuminating anecdote about the Lab’s rehearsal techniques drawn, surprisingly, from their performance programs. In 1944 the Lab produced a series of one-­acts that played on alternate Sundays. At one point improvisations—­the rehearsal technique—­were included on the bill. Company member Lee J. Cobb (himself a Group Theatre veteran) opposed their inclusion but didn’t suggest eliminating them completely. Instead, he recommended that a one-­act be cast, and then on the night of the performance the actors would “demonstrate to the audience how improvisation and sense memory were used in developing material.” In essence he proposed staging an open rehearsal of the one-­act, rather than the one-­act itself, to give audiences a sense of context for the act of improvisation in developing a fleshed-­out performance. While the idea sounded exciting in practice, it apparently did not play particularly well and was eliminated after the second performance (Salvi 53–­54). Showing the work behind a final performance took Craig’s argument about the liability of live theater and tried to turn it on its head, making a virtue of what had been a vice. If theater couldn’t compete with film in terms of regularity, maybe its very irregularity could be a draw? Performing improvisations was like a pass into the artist’s studio, or more appropriately, like a tour of the scientists’ laboratory as they conducted their experiments. And perhaps, like the ill-­ fated How Stars Are Made short at MGM, the real work of actors couldn’t compete with the glamor of a finished product. Being based in Hollywood, questions of film technique and perfor-

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mance also occupied the Lab’s attention, though movie acting did not initially drive their work. Many of the first members already worked in film and sought out the Lab for a more traditional acting experience in live theater. By 1944, however, interest had increased in directly addressing the problems of acting for the camera. It was proposed that a questionnaire be sent to leading figures in the film field asking about on-­camera acting practices. Based on the feedback, a “method [of] teaching technique for motion picture acting” would be developed and offered (Salvi 50). Sadly, any responses to the survey seem not to have survived, and the Lab never created a stand-­alone curriculum to specifically address film acting. Instead, “lectures, demonstrations, and an occasional course were offered, informally” in the subsequent years (Salvi 51). Among those who guest-­lectured at the Lab under this program were dialogue director Joan Hathaway and film directors Frank Tuttle and Irving Reis; even Sophie Rosenstein, still at Warners as head of talent at this time, is recorded as speaking to the students about the art and craft of movie acting (Baron 192). This is not to say that the Lab kept Hollywood at arm’s length. After the war, two separate streams of students came to the Lab: returning veterans under the G.I. Bill and actors under contract with 20th Century Fox and Universal. To better serve and strengthen their educational offerings, the Lab created a separate structure called “the Workshop” that was an umbrella for all their classes. Like Lillian Burns they decided on the name “Workshop” rather than “School” to reduce the potential stigma of actors feeling like unready students rather than developing professionals. The Workshop taught classes to studio actors (alongside others) from 1945 to 1947. Students were to attend class “from ten to five, five days a week and one night a week, plus rehearsals if necessary” (Salvi 78). This schedule quickly proved unrealistic, because the contract actors had film obligations that took precedence over their classes. Irregular attendance threw instructors’ plans into disarray and made it difficult for studio actors to actively engage in any project requiring a partner. An additional complication for the leadership of the Workshop was the realization that their assessments of the actors under contract were being used by the studios to determine whether to keep the actors under contract. The faculty was in a difficult position, because they felt that the criteria for continued participation in the Workshop were different than the studios. Lab instructors were understandably reluctant to become instrumental in causing actors to lose their livelihood, leading them “to accept whomever the studios sent and to refrain from giving honest critical evaluations in order not to jeopardize the young actors’ contracts.” The

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problem became moot in 1947 when the studio training contracts weren’t renewed (Salvi 111). The early diversity of Lab styles remained under the new Workshop structure, and many members saw this variety as a problem. “Tremendous effort and time was spent by the faculty in trying to arrive at a unified approach to acting, a similar terminology, and a curriculum which all  .  .  . could follow, but these goals were never attained” (Salvi 82). A primary fault line mirrored the one in the Group Theatre regarding whether the original techniques should be preserved, or whether their methodologies should be updated “to suit the time and temperament of a new generation” (Salvi 82). As mentioned previously there was no set methodology that bound the members of the Lab together. Even instructors based in Stanislavskian techniques wouldn’t necessarily remain doctrinally “pure.” Carnovsky, for example, worked with students on text analysis, identifying actions, beats, and the spine of the play and of each character—­all work that Stanislavsky had described in his published work. At the same time he included techniques from Michael Chekov, specifically the “psychological gesture” exercise (Salvi 85–­86). As such, it is not surprising that despite the effort to articulate a “Workshop” or “Lab” pedagogical progression, none was ever rigorously defined or implemented. Instead, students picked up techniques from a variety of viewpoints and sources and worked to synthesize the material into a coherent process for themselves. Despite a lack of standardization, pedagogical commonalities did emerge. In the postwar period there was general agreement that the use of affective memory (for those so inclined) should be avoided, out of concern that it could trigger deeply traumatic memories in returning veterans. Another area of reported agreement is that the ultimate goal of good acting, as suggested by Bohnen’s comments above regarding Paradise Lost, was “the truth of a performance on stage—­the creation of real life” (Salvi 83). The most common exercise used was improvisation. A review of the curricular summaries of the major teachers shows that most used it in some form, ranging from sense memory improvisations to improvised monologues. As a technique to get to truth on stage, improvisation assumes that the “real” actor is the foundation for a performance that will read as true to an audience. As a result, “external technique was de-­emphasized in order to focus on a technique of true communication between the actors” (Salvi 83–­ 84). This did not mean a rejection of rehearsal in preparing for a performance. Instead, this was a family of technical exercises, based on the central idea of improvisation, designed to attune students to the sensation of not knowing what happens next, which would then (ideally) translate to

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the same sensibility being present in rehearsed performances. There was an acknowledgement that this focus could lead to “smaller-­than-­necessary” performances, and additional courses were added irregularly to address this concern.1 There was also a shared faith that training would work consistently to make students better actors. Tarcai, as head of “Performance,” sought to create a full ladder of development from beginning classes to professional production work. The Lab had created another offshoot in 1945—­the “Theatre Wing”—­that would be responsible for professional productions, and this seemed like the natural culmination of the training.2 Talent was still very much a prerequisite, however; Tarcai recommended a more selective admissions process and cutting students from the program after three months if they turned out to be a poor fit. For those who continued through the curriculum, Tarcai expected that “after fifteen months of training a student would be of such calibre that the Theatre Wing would be anxious to use him” (Salvi 113). While this official roadmap was never fully implemented,3 it speaks to the instructors’ faith in the efficacy of their technique to turn talented but uncultivated students into professional-­quality performers in less than two years. This was an industrial idea if ever there was one, reminiscent of Oliver Hinsdell’s own Laboratory of Acting at Paramount. The Actors’ Lab also availed itself of scientific knowledge in support of their work, for on at least one occasion they had a Dr. Franklin Fearing from the UCLA department of psychology come and lecture to one of the classes (Salvi 114n19). Like other contemporary acting teachers, the instructors at the Lab backed their techne by connecting their work to science. The Workshop lasted only four years, from 1945–­1949. The studio contracts were eliminated in 1947, which left a financial gap in the balance sheet to support the work of the organization. Far more damaging were the accusations of communism. In the immediate aftermath of the federal Parnell hearings on communism in Hollywood, the California state senate established its own investigative committee, headed by Jack B. Tenney. In an echo of Parnell they initially subpoenaed nineteen people, four of whom 1. This is similar to Adler’s concerns about actors shrinking the role to their own size, rather than growing to it. See discussion of Adler in the next chapter. 2. In practice the “Theatre Wing” was never wholly independent of the larger Lab organization. According to Salvi, “the term really only designated the difference, in the minds of the Lab people, between a major production . . . and a Workshop production” (Salvi 98). 3. The full range of internal battles that Tarcai fought on behalf of the Workshop arm are covered in more detail in Salvi (147–­51).

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were executive board members at the Actors’ Laboratory (Salvi 176). Despite this inauspicious beginning, the Lab endured the initial attack quite well, and the company continued making plans for future productions, even seeking a more permanent theater building for their production work. But by the winter of 1948 the Laboratory was struggling on a number of fronts. The four “witnesses” had all been blacklisted, film professionals were keeping their distance from the company for fear of guilt by association, and student numbers were diminishing. The IRS informed them that their tax-­exempt status had been revoked, though no official explanation aside from their connection to the Tenney hearings had been offered. These external pressures were compounded by the loss of Bud Bohnen in early 1949, who died of a heart attack in the middle of a performance in a Lab show. By all accounts Bohnen was the metaphoric center of the Laboratory, and his passing was a blow that even under better circumstances would have been difficult to weather. As it was, the Laboratory’s leadership became increasingly divided over the relative importance of the Workshop and Theatre wings. The conflict spread into the student body, and the strife was then picked up by the local press, which further dampened enthusiasm for the organization as a whole. The Lab was forced to withdraw from offering veterans’ training programs, which meant foregoing the tuition monies paid by the government. By January of 1950 the Actors’ Laboratory, Inc., had declared bankruptcy. They actually still had one show to do, a musical adaptation of Dion Boucicault’s Streets of New York, which opened in February and closed in May. When the show closed, the Actors’ Laboratory was effectively dissolved.4

SLOW FADE: HOLLYWOOD STUDIO TRAINING AFTER THE WAR

The classes the Lab taught for Fox and Universal ended up being part of a larger transition away from the contract actor system that had reigned since the silent days. Hollywood studios underwent massive structural changes in the years following World War II, prompted by the demise of “block booking” and the ruling that the tight vertical integration between making and presenting movies was anticompetitive. Contracts across the board were terminated as the traditional studio ceased to be the primary force in production. According to Barry Langford’s Post-­Classical Holly4. See Baron 201–­9 for an in-­depth description of the political difficulties faced by the Lab as well as a recounting of their final activities. See also Salvi, chapter 6.

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wood, “The decade 1945–­55 accordingly saw the total number of contract players at the major studios (apart from MGM)5 decrease from 804 to 209 . . . writers under contract at the majors dwindled from 490 to just sixty-­ seven” (Langford 23–­24). The studios had built vast production systems to maintain a steady flow of movies into their own networks of theaters. With the “divorcement” of production and distribution, the assembly-­line production of a feature every week or so was no longer a viable business model, and writers and actors were reduced accordingly. With fewer (if any) contract players, studio training departments likewise evaporated. MGM and Universal bucked the trend the longest, maintaining a larger stable of actors in-­house than their peers and continuing to offer training to their contract players. A Life magazine article from May 1951 shows MGM actor Phyllis Kirk studying with Gertrude Folger, Jeanette Bates, and Lillian Burns herself (Anonymous, “Studious Starlet”). Even after Universal cut ties with the Laboratory, the studio continued to put actors under contract and groom them for film work. Sophie Rosenstein, as mentioned in chapter 4, was let go from Warner’s in 1948 but was quickly picked by Universal soon after they decided to bring their training program back on the lot. On October 1, 1950, the LA Times ran a brief article on Universal’s talent-­ development program describing what they called a revival of the “stock player system” in Hollywood. According to the article, classes ran from 9:00 until 3:30 and included subjects such as “diction, swimming, fencing, rhythms (for general grace) and gymnasium.” As for actual acting, “the school stages shows and skits at frequent intervals,” though these are just as much for the benefit of the casting heads at the studio as for the students (Associated Press). Rosenstein’s name is never mentioned in the article, despite being head of the department. Sadly, Rosenstein’s tenure was cut short after only a few years. A few months after marrying actor Gig Young (whom she had coached back at Warner Brothers), she was diagnosed with cervical cancer and died at age forty-­five in November 1952. The New York Times obituary noted that she had been “instrumental in developing the careers of Tony Curtis, Piper Laurie, Rock Hudson, Jeff Chandler, Julia Adams, and others” (“Rosenstein Obit”). 5. MGM’s unusual situation is described in Crowther’s history of the studio, The Lion’s Share: “[MGM when Dore Schary took over in 1951] was burdened with a tremendous financial overhead and an inordinate roster of contract players for the limited number of films being made. The insistence of Mayer upon maintaining a large staff of producers and stars on long-­term contracts to provide the advantage of what was boastfully termed ‘strength in depth’ had resulted in an overload of high-­priced and not always too active personnel. The studio had some 4,000 employees to make an average of twenty-­nine pictures a year.” (Crowther 301)

“OH, YES, YOU CAN TEACH ACTING”

For her part, Piper Laurie expressed admiration for Rosenstein, but the reality of her work at Universal belied the simple narrative implied in the press releases. “They put me to work in movies right away,” she recalled in an interview, “and I never really got more than half a dozen classes with her” (Laurie 5). Some of the best information about what the postwar Universal system was like comes from Rosenstein’s successor, Estelle Harmon, who had been recommended to the studio by none other than Kenneth Macgowen of Provincetown Players and Experimental Theatre, Inc. fame (see chapter 2). He had moved to the West Coast in the ’30s and was heading the UCLA theater department when Universal needed to fill Rosenstein’s position. “Sophie Rosenstein had been their acting coach,” Harmon recalled, “so I went in originally to be the acting coach, then I became their head of talent. The program expanded to include a speech man . . . and then we had singing, voice, and even horseback riding and swimming” (Harmon 4). Piper Laurie recalled that she screen-­tested at Warners “at the time they were firing everybody” (Laurie 3–­4), whereas Universal seemed intent on bringing back the complete star machine of the prewar period. Under Harmon the talent department continued to grow. Her responsibilities included general classes in acting as well as private coaching on specific parts when needed. Once a year she staged a showcase of scenes with the contract players for an invited audience of producers, both inside and outside the studio. Outside producers were invited “because we would do loan-­ outs and make a nice profit” (Harmon 5). She would also coach the actors before “personal appearances,” which would include developing “some special thing they might do; if they sang a little, or had a comedy routine, even a speech from one of the films they were in, so they wouldn’t just stand there” (Harmon 13). Harmon paints a picture of a talent department with lots of contact with the actors, and one that worked with the producing arm of the studio to place them in films as appropriate. For Harmon there was no question that acting could be taught, though she recognized the cultural shift necessary to make that conception possible. “I’m sure there was a time when you had to become an actor that way—­or a doctor or a lawyer. You just apprenticed and you did it,”—­a sentiment that would do Boleslavsky’s portrait of the Creature’s Aunt proud, and that Harmon disagreed with as much as Boleslavsky. “I think it is possible to teach the craft and art of acting, especially of film acting,” she affirms. “There are a lot of ‘craft’ things to learn . . . everything from hitting your marks on a set to tools for developing your own inner life, oh, yes, you can teach acting. It is very apparent to me that you can, and we do it” (Har-

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mon 7). Harmon still maintained that a certain level of talent was necessary—­she answered “yes” when asked if she was ever asked to develop actors who “had no talent whatsoever” (Harmon 14)—­but it is clear she felt the bulk of what an actor needed to do, both the technical aspects of film performance and the larger issues of character creation and presentation, was teachable. Her matter-­of-­fact answer, that teaching people to act is what she did, and did well, is an excellent marker of how powerful the ANT network of techne-­driven acting pedagogy had become. Harmon offered a modest example of the kind of work she would do with actors, which indicates a character-­ and emotion-­driven approach to acting. “We might do what I call ‘peg the character,’ which would mean describing the character with descriptive adjectives: outgoing, greedy, frivolous, etc.” Once the character was “pegged,” she and the actor would divide the adjectives into three groups: that which was very like the actor, partially like the actor, or nothing like the actor. “From that we would know where and how to work” (Harmon 6–­7). While she does not specifically outline the next steps, it seems clear that she would work with the actors to bring out the aspects of the role that seemed most foreign to them, and thus allow them to present more fully developed characters independent of their natural tendencies. Harmon also indicates that she developed exercises to address some specific challenges of film acting. Actors in film needed to develop what Harmon called “instant ensemble,” a sense of rapport and history that might, in traditional theater, develop during the longer rehearsal period. Another challenge Harmon identifies is shooting out of sequence, particularly when it comes to moments of high emotion. “In a play let’s say the crisis won’t be until the end of the second act. But here, ‘Now we’re going to do your close­up as the baby dies,’ eight a.m. So there are some special exercises and tools to help actors in film do that.” At the same time, Harmon believed that the fundamentals of acting—­character analysis and creation—­were essentially identical between stage and screen. “I don’t mean to make it sound as though a fine New York actor has to start from scratch. . . . There are a great number of differences but they usually can be picked up with a little help. It isn’t as if you have to take four years of training” (Harmon 20–­22). She does allow that “a film actor learns to be terribly, terribly honest in his acting, that’s when we like them best. And that same level of communication becomes dull and bland and deadly on a Broadway stage” (Harmon 22). The ability to scale a performance, whether between long shots and close-­ups on film or between small and large houses in theater, is another central concern of Harmon, and one that she emphasized in her own teaching.

“OH, YES, YOU CAN TEACH ACTING”

Despite her successes, Harmon left Universal after a relatively short time, unhappy with the ratio of responsibility to authority in the position. She recalled being frustrated at the challenges of getting the contract actors cast because of “that old dinosaur idea that if you’re studying you’re not ready to act.” After Harmon left Universal, they had two other people in her position, but neither stayed especially long. In Harmon’s recollection, “I think it just sort of disappeared.” Almost immediately after leaving she was asked to do private coaching, and this developed into her primary employment for decades afterward. She noted that in comparison to her time at the studio, it was now expected that auditioning actors were getting coaching from somewhere. “Whenever our people go out for interviews, one of the first questions they’re asked is, ‘Where are you studying?’” (Harmon 4–­5).6 This, in turn, mirrors a larger trend noted by Baron and Carnicke in Reframing Screen Performance. During the prewar period, studios carefully shaped the narrative surrounding how stars learned their craft, consciously deciding to downplay any talk about acting classes or the effort required to research and present a role. This storyline was altered in the 1950s, especially as the contract player system began to disintegrate. Now it became more acceptable to talk about the work that went into performing. “Rather than presenting actresses as hapless butterflies or multigaited horses, journalists had discovered they could sell behind-­the-­scenes articles about screen stars learning to produce natural performances” (Baron and Carnicke, Reframing 24). Training for actors, once relegated to semisecrecy in Hollywood, was becoming an accepted and expected aspect of a performer’s life. When Lillian Burns left MGM in 1956, Louella O. Parsons—­the grande dame of the Hollywood press—­openly praised her work, writing “There’s no one who has built up more stars than Lillian. Her training has insured many a young actor and actress stardom” (Parsons). Acknowledging that actors learned how to act came slowly to Hollywood, and the 1940s and ’50s in particular offer examples of the new openness about instruction alongside more traditional pieces. An example of the “old” style of publicity in this transitional period comes from the April 30, 1945, edition of Life magazine. Warner Brothers had remade Of Human Bondage, and actress Eleanor Parker had been cast in the role of Mildred that Bette Davis had played to great acclaim in 1934. The article, which is uncredited, begins by describing Mildred as “one of 6. Baron identifies some of the people who taught at Universal after Harmon and their post-­ Universal activities. See Baron 246.

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the most unlikeable women in contemporary literature,” yet it is this role that “lifted her [Davis] into the company of the screen’s foremost actresses.” Parker is then introduced as “an actress who can slip into Bette Davis’[s] slatternly slippers.” Parker is a “tall, wistfully pretty, blue-­eyed brunette” who “transforms herself before the camera into an expressive and highly emotional actress (see pp. 38–­39), but in private life she is a shy and retiring girl whose hobby is collecting classical phonograph records. By a curious quirk,” the article continues, “she cannot listen to music of any sort without bursting into floods of tears” (Anonymous 37, italics original). The copy reads like golden-­age publicity-­office-­generated biography, right down to the enchanting contrast between her public and private selves and the “hobby” of collecting music that will make her cry. Further, the cross-­reference to pages 38 and 39 is internal to the magazine, directing the reader to a series of photographs of Parker performing what can only be described as a version of the gamuts of expression, with six “faces” performed in costume for the magazine’s photographer. The first set of four portrays “a soliciting streetwalker, smoldering resentment, self-­pity, [and] suspicion,” before concluding with two contrasting shots of “sullen curiosity [and] anguish.” The copy goes on to reveal that Parker is “highly strung and deeply sincere,” and “ended this photographic session characteristically, by breaking into tears” (Anonymous 38–­39). Parker’s volatile emotional state is disconnected from a particular character, and is presented as something inherent in her, “a curious quirk” related to her weeping while listening to music. Warners publicity played up her versatility, calling her “the Woman of a Thousand Faces.”7 Parker, however, was anything but an untrained emotional savant. Even before arriving in Hollywood she had received training in acting. “By the time the Parkers moved to Cleveland in the mid-­1930s, Eleanor was intent on being an actress. She was fortunate to have the support of her parents, who sent her to the Tucker School of Expression in Cleveland. When she was fifteen they let her go to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, where she spent two summers with the stock company of Tucker’s sister school, the prestigious Rice School of Expression” (Bubbeo 175). After coming to L.A., she studied as the Pasadena Playhouse, where she was reportedly spotted by talent scout Al Trescony.8 After 7. “Gorgeous Eleanor Parker was one of Warners’ rare commodities—­a delicate, blue-­eyed beauty with a chameleon-­like ability to transform herself into any character the studio assigned her to play. Equally adept at romantic comedy (Voice of the Turtle) and tense melodrama (Caged), Eleanor was labeled by publicists as ‘the Woman of a Thousand Faces’” (Bubbeo 175). 8. Trescony worked for both Warners and MGM during his Hollywood career. For informa-

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Warners signed her, Parker studied with Sophie Rosenstein before appearing in her first feature (1942’s Busses Roar) (Bubbeo 176). Yet none of this background in performance study is revealed in Life magazine, just her propensity to cry and her remarkable ability to summon and present emotions.9 In contrast, an inkling of the new direction comes from a 1946 Pageant magazine feature titled “So you want to be an actress?” In six picture-­heavy pages, the piece offers ample evidence that acting was changing. The article follows a “day in the life” format, focusing on one Jo Ellen Loop and the “rocky road that may lead to Broadway and Hollywood” from her studies at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Readers are warned that prospective actors shouldn’t expect a job with “short hours and easy work” and applicants needed “the memory of an elephant, the stamina of Joe Louis and the selflessness of a suicide pilot.” Assuming one is accepted, “Discard any ideas you ever had about acting. You’ll spend your first months learning to breathe, to stand and fall down. Then you’ll learn to talk” (Anonymous, “So You Want to Be an Actress?” 75). This was a far cry from picking up a few pointers about facing out when speaking, and described a rigorous and exacting program of physical development before even getting to speech. In one sense this isn’t too far removed from the boosterish articles in the fan magazines from Hollywood’s earlier days. The emphasis on work is certainly familiar, as is the compartmentalization of acting skills (breathing, standing, falling down) taught independently of doing any actual “acting.” But elsewhere there is at least the acknowledgment that a shift in style is also occurring. “Melodramatic matinee idols are now passé, laid to rest by public taste and by such realistic acting techniques as those taught by the Academy’s head of instruction, Charles Jehlinger.10 For 50 years Jehlinger has been expounding one basic idea: acting is the re-­creation of character, from the ‘soul’ out” (Anonymous, “So You Want to Be an Actress?” 76). The AADA and Jehlinger’s long history are presented not as a bastion of old-­ fashioned ideas (though the subsequent mention of the second-­year “stock company” program for screen hopefuls might raise some eyebrows), but rather as innovators in a less bombastic acting style that was being welcomed on stage and screen alike. For her part, Jo Ellen’s dreams are clearly of the Hollywood-­star variety. She is shown in her room, lying on her bed, tion on the Pasadena Playhouse see Baron’s Modern Acting, chapter 8. 9. Continuing her trajectory as a protean actor, Parker would go on to play a set of siblings (Laura and Ann) in 1948’s Woman in White. 10. See the discussion of Jehlinger and the AADA in chapter 3.

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with posters of Lauren Bacall and Jennifer Jones (both former AADA students) looking down at her. The article concludes with an acceptance of the inherently unpredictable nature of show business, saying “she may hit the top overnight. Or she may not. That’s the chance she takes and her fellow students take it with her” (Anonymous, “So You Want to Be an Actress?” 80).11 The work is presented as necessary, even if it can’t guarantee eventual success. The Pageant article offers one example of describing training for actors who dream of Hollywood (albeit from New York City). By contrast, The American Weekly in October 1950 published a full-­page feature on Universal’s in-­house training program titled “Learning to be Movie Stars.” Those lucky enough to make it through the described gauntlet of auditions and test screenings would earn a spot in Universal’s “prize emoting university” (“Learning”). The article is quite light on specifics, and as a publicity piece for Universal its claims should be taken with a grain of salt. However, it is possible to pull a few salient details from the information presented. An accompanying photo shows a man and woman entering a room and reacting to a “corpse” (actually just another of the participants playing dead). “After each student gets a turn onstage,” the caption reads, “the whole class has a chance to criticize individual performances.” No specific criteria are given, but it can be assumed that the class is looking for believability in the performers and would make suggestions to increase the realism of their surprised reactions when they stumble across a body. It is worth noting that this particular exercise is one of pure emotion or passion: displaying surprise. There is no action to be played or anything a character “wants” when faced with such a gruesome discovery. In another picture, two actors are shown in a romantic scene watched over by a director and camera operator. “Two students go through a love scene under the watchful eyes of a professional director,” reads the caption. “Promising pupils get small parts in real movies to round out their education.” Elsewhere it is reported that “every 60 days, detailed reports are made on the youngsters’ progress in dancing, singing, and diction.” Finally, successful graduates are rewarded with significant film roles, and “here, if the student survives, lies the path to stardom” (“Learning”). Just as Oliver Hinsdell at Paramount wasn’t trying to construct a great roster of character actors, the point of all this training is to become a star. As a quasi-­puff piece, “Learning to be Movie Stars” can’t be expected to 11. In this case, it seems she was not a success, overnight or otherwise. I have been unable to find a record of her career after AADA.

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reveal intricate details about the operation of the talent school. As in the earlier article from the LA Times cited above, Sophie Rosenstein’s name is nowhere to be found, giving the school a headless quality. At the same time, the article is useful in highlighting those aspects of actors and acting that were assumed to resonate with the general public. The long odds against getting in, a perennial aspect of theater and film careers, are on display here, along with the gatekeeping function of the screen test, insuring that the prospective actor will at least be “liked” by the camera. The goal of becoming a star, and not merely a featured player, is understandably the focus of the piece, and of the student’s efforts. Finally, emotions are central to the actor’s work, as indicated by the test scene of discovering the dead body, the practice love scene, and the description of the school as an “emoting university.” Overt emoting held a special fascination for many observers of film. Baron and Carnicke note the longevity of this tradition, writing in 2006 that “the vision of Method acting central to writing about film will continue to valorize emotion that emerges instinctively from actors’ bodies” rather than seeing in film acting the product of genuine craft and technique (Baron and Carnicke, “Capturing” 101). This, in turn, points to what is missing from ”Learning to be Movie Stars,” and that is any indication of how these actors might go about getting better, aside from general commentary from their classmates and the suggestions of the “professional director” (unnamed) who watches over their romantic clinch. Details of classes are not what the public, or at least the reader of the American Weekly, was expected to want or appreciate. But insofar as the learning process for film stars is acknowledged, there is a sense that perceptions of acting are changing. The old silence about technique is being broken, and the work of acting made incrementally more visible to a wider public. Besides Universal the only other studio to hold onto the golden age model with such tenacity in the 1950s was 20th Century Fox. In the 1958 promotional film The Big Show,12 which was designed for “internal” viewing (it was not a publicly released feature, but instead was shot and edited for distributors), the audience was assured by the corporation president, Spyrous Skouras himself, that “at this very moment, talent scouts from the studio are travelling all over the world, to find new and exciting young people. And right here on the lot we have set up a million-­dollar dramatic school. A theatrical laboratory to develop the talents of gifted young people.” 12. Not to be confused with The Big Show, a 1961 circus movie released by 20th Century Fox, starring Esther Williams and Cliff Robertson, directed by James B. Clark.

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What follows is a visual introduction to some of these new would-­be stars, including Joanne Woodward, Al Hennesy (“recruited from Broadway!”), Patricia Powell (“Another graduate of our talent school”), and a young Pat Boone (“The greatest young singing personality to appear since Bing Crosby”) (Skouras). This initial inclusion of unknowns feels a bit out of place, because the primary focus of the film is on the ambitious production schedule Fox has committed to in an effort to stave off the threat of television, described as their “greatest competitor.” Nor is it the result of Fox lacking bigger names to highlight. Rodgers and Hammerstein appear in the cinematic flesh, promoting the upcoming release of South Pacific. Yet 20th Century Fox spent precious time advertising their actor training program, something the average distributor might be expected to care less about than the final product they would be booking. When taken in the context of the entire piece, however, the throwback to in-­house actor development fits with the overall narrative Fox was selling: they were locking down artistic properties auguring success, recapturing the confidence of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Early in the film we cut to a shot of “Buddy” Adler, a production chief at the studio, sitting at a desk surrounded by scripts. “We have here,” he asserts, “the greatest line up of proven properties any studio has offered to exhibitors” (Skouras). Adler is referring to the scripts the studio has optioned and developed, but later the reference is to the actors. The young people, like the scripts and stories, have potential. By binding them to the studio, the theory goes, the company (and the distributors) will reap the benefits when the public clamors for more films from Joanne Woodward or Pat Boone. The fact that they will be developed in a “laboratory” is just icing on the rhetorical cake, suggesting a scientific assurance to the process of turning unknowns into knowns. Estelle Harmon recalled the resurrection of Fox’s contract player program highlighted in Big Show, but it was also not long for the world. Harmon had succeeded in having several of her private students put on contract at Fox, recalling “they gave them the acting training in the main, and even Sandy Meisner, I think, coached over there for awhile. But it didn’t really have the support of the studio and it fell apart” (Harmon 16–­17). While the changing financial landscape of the film industry contributed to the dissolution of the studio-­run classes in performance techniques, Harmon also notes the expansion of training opportunities for actors in the postwar period. “When I started there was Pasadena Playhouse (which then closed), there was Actors Lab (which died, supposedly, because of the McCarthy era), and there were the colleges.” Given a relative paucity of training options, the studios, she argues, charged into the breach, creating

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their own programs to teach acting skills to their contract players, which was “wonderful for the actors” (Harmon 16–­17). Now with so many options available (albeit of uneven quality, in her estimation), the studios had far less need to run their own schools, leaving it to the actors themselves to seek out training in preparation for their careers.

ROBERT LEWIS AND THE METHOD

By the mid 1950s, one potential source of training was to learn “the Method,” which was, if not widely understood, at least widely discussed. Robert Lewis, although not canonized in the same way as Strasberg, Adler, and Meisner, nevertheless had a decided influence on post-­war acting pedagogy, and his relatively early book Method—­or Madness? (1958) is an effective summary of his understanding of the Method—­which for him means Stanislavsky’s method—­and how it works.13 A founding member of the Actors Studio, Lewis had also been a founding member of the Group Theatre, having remained with them until their official dissolution in 1941. After the war he enjoyed succeess as a director on Broadway, most famously with his production of the musical Brigadoon in 1947, and ended up teaching acting at both Sarah Lawrence and Yale over the course of his career (Wilmeth and Miller 231). He had also been invited to direct Night’s Lodging at the Actors’ Lab in 1944, although this production apparently never opened to the public (Salvi 51). Method—or Madness? shares many traits with other technologically inclined approaches to acting: tension between quantifiable methods and auratic elements, a negotiation of the fraught position of emotions in a system of rehearsal and performance, and an argument for the system’s universal application across periods and styles. Reading his text offers a view into the popular conceptions of (and misconceptions about) the Method in the 1950s, as well as what Lewis suggests is the “true” legacy of Stanislavsky and the right way to play. Originally given as lectures and subsequently published, Lewis’s book includes an introduction by Harold Clurman, who praises Lewis’s “common sense.” This quality is “rather desperately needed in regard to the Method which may simply be defined as a codified formalization of the technique of acting” (Clurman, “Introduction” xi). Rather than a mysteri13. “We must presume that what is meant by ‘The Method’ as it is being discussed around Downey’s [Note: An actor’s restaurant on Eighth Ave. in N.Y.C.] is the system set down by Constantin Stanislavski, or, more probably, some derivative of that system” (Lewis 17, note in original text)

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ous process full of secrets, Clurman argues, the Method is relatively straightforward in its goals and approach, making plain what many actors had stumbled upon. Clurman also, in his brief introduction, asserts the universal applicability of Method techniques to realist and nonrealist plays, just as others had before him. “The Method relates to every kind of acting—­ good acting—­and not narrowly to realistic acting as such” (Clurman, “Introduction” xii, emphasis original). This introduction sets the stage for Lewis’s first lecture, where he immediately picks up the charge that Method acting can’t be used outside of realism, curiously citing Michael Redgrave’s 1953 The Actor’s Ways and Means as containing “a great and continuing tribute paid to [the Method] . . . by a famous English Shakespearean actor” (Lewis 4). It is a passing reference, but it does strike the comparative reader as an intriguing interpretation of Redgrave’s intentions, for while Redgrave does acknowledge how useful Method acting techniques can be for less-­poetic drama, at one point he directly challenges the idea that Stanislavsky could approach the character of Prospero using his methodology and arrive at anything like the proper way to play the character.14 While Redgrave is overall quite comfortable with the idea of methodologies for performance, this assertion that an alternate set of techniques might be superior in solving the problems of Shakespeare is a departure from the industrial paradigm’s dream of universal application.15 Here it is enough for Lewis that Redgrave offers at least partial praise for Method techniques. In his later lectures Lewis will more directly address the charge that the Method is unsuited to verse. Lewis then lays out his goals for the upcoming lecture series, wanting to “describe what I think the Method is,” and to “lift the veil of what some people feel is secrecy.” For Lewis, no mystery should attend Method acting, because between Stanislavsky’s An Actor Prepares and Building a Character the whole system is revealed. He even goes so far as to describe them collectively as “the bible.”16 In a reference to the endurance of the auratic in 14. “I consider Shakespeare more impressionist than realist in his presentation of character. . . . I would like to have seen how Stanislavski would have tried to reconcile Prospero with plausible psychological terms. I do not think it can be done” (Redgrave 100–­101). As mentioned previously, the late ideas regarding Stanislavsky’s rigidity can be partly attributed to the political pressures of the Soviet Union in the 1920s and ’30s. See note 9 in chapter 2. 15. Redgrave’s language actually expresses a great deal of sympathy with the industrial/ technological paradigm in theater, though a full discussion of his text is outside the bounds of what I can cover here. As a quick example, the title of his first chapter is “Cause and Effect,” suggesting an affinity with Newtonian mechanics. 16. The difficulties with the available English editions of Stanislavsky’s works at this time should not be discounted but are outside the realm of the discussion here. See Carnicke’s Stan-

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connection with such a supposedly straightforward methodology, Lewis cites unnamed “propagators of the faith” for inculcating a “High-­Priest attitude” about the technique (Lewis 7). He also suggests that many actors’ innate fear of anything that has a “scholarly tinge” to it leads them to seek out and nurture the idea of secrecy.17 Though he doesn’t say this in so many words, the predilection toward guruship can be seen as a hedge against draining the auratic from performance. In by now quite familiar terms, Lewis counters this fear of losing the artistic nature of acting by comparing actors to other artists who enjoy a significant body of technique. “Performing dancers, singers, violinists—­especially great ones—­study and practice all their lives; and the finer the equipment the more technique they need to support it” (Lewis 7). Lewis does not feel the need to complete the thought that for modern actors, studying and applying technique should be as natural as a musician or dancer learning scales or steps, but he is clearly playing the same tune. The concept of technique occupies the bulk of Lewis’s attention in the first lecture, and after offering a brief biographical sketch of himself and his experience in the theater he gets down to it. He first cites Webster’s dictionary for a definition of “technique”: “An expert method in execution of the technical details of accomplishing something, especially in the creative arts, as the technique of a master violinist, etc.” Lewis suggests that if the term “method” is troubling to any in the audience, “you could, if you wish, use the term ‘technique,’” and then suggests that few actors would say they were devoid of any techniques, but “there are some formalized techniques; and then there are the ‘do-­it-­yourself’ varieties” (Lewis 15–­16). In a remarkable display of efficiency, Lewis summarizes Brecht and Meyerhold in under a page as examples of alternative “formalized techniques.” Brecht’s verfremsdung is described as setting “the action of the play before you rather than involve you in it by means of empathy,” and Meyerhold’s technique “is subordinated entirely to mechanics and mathematics,” drawing its inspiration from

islavsky in Focus, along with Senelick’s “Stanislavsky’s Double Life in Art” and Benedetti’s newer versions of Stanislavsky’s main texts. Of particular note, Pitches highlights that the translation of zadacha as “objective” rather than the more accurate “task” indicates a level of conformity with Taylorist ideas of “task management” (Pitches 31). 17. This is an echo of Sophie Rosenstein’s own assessment in Modern Acting: “Actors often mock suggestions which may be found within the covers of a book” (Rosenstein et al. 129). Michael Redgrave addressed a similar concern in his own text, citing nineteenth-­century British actress Fanny Kemble: “Greater intellectual cultivation and a purer and more elevated taste, are unfavorable to the existence of the true theatrical spirit” (Redgrave 10). Redgrave, like Rosenstein and Lewis, believed this to be an outmoded idea of how to work in the theater.

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“Taylorism” (Lewis 16, emphasis original).18 Lewis concludes by suggesting that untrained actors have their own techniques, but these are focused on effects that in turn lead to self-­aggrandizement or exploitation. Method technique, by contrast, is concerned with interpreting the text of the play and is process-­oriented. Despite not citing Taylor as an inspiration for his own approach to the stage, it is easy to see the impact of scientific management in Lewis’s defense and exposition of the American Method of acting. Just as Taylor is deeply invested in analyzing the process by which a factory actually creates products, so does the Method privilege an analysis of rehearsal and development. A stereotypical Method actor was believed to privilege this process over an intelligible performance, though Lewis argues against this particular canard of modern acting multiple times in his lectures. He also makes room for natural talent (and its inverse), for “there are some untalented technical experts in acting, as well as some very talented actors who cannot execute the simplest technical problems” (Lewis 19). For him, as for so many of his predecessors, talent must be paired with technique to produce real success. Lewis takes the whole of his second lecture to analyze and explain Adler’s chart of the Stanislavsky system that she presented to the Group back in 1934. His goal is to “point out the presence of certain elements which I feel are not emphasized strongly enough or are totally neglected by various exponents of the Method,” and he asserts that everything he will say can be found in Stanislavsky’s own writings (Lewis 24). After showing a copy of the chart he admits that it “looks forbidding. As a matter of fact, this lecture will be the most technical of all” (Lewis 25). Here Lewis becomes Taylor’s scientific manager, one who might not have codified the science (that would be Stanislavsky), but who can understand it and show others how to apply it. He has at his command a vocabulary referencing component elements of an actor’s work, all of which can be addressed through exercises and practiced independently from rehearsal for a given play. The chart, he reassures his audience, “is simply an attempt to put down in some organized form what good actors are doing when they are acting well” (Lewis 25). In other words, the chart is a map to the science of acting—­the fundamental rules that govern performance—­and technique is the application of this science, harnessed for individual use. Lewis begins by giving a very quick overview of the entire chart, likening it to a pipe organ with giant foot pedals across the bottom, the columns 18. See discussion of Meyerhold in the introduction for useful complications to this linkage of Meyerhold and Taylor.

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representing the pipes themselves, and the lettered stations at the top representing the music produced. He points out, before getting into specifics, that half the chart is concerned with “internal” problems of acting, described on the chart as the “process of feeling,” and the other half is “external,” emphasizing the “process of expressing your emotion.” Lewis also opines that much of the contemporary talk about the Method is concerned with internals, while the problems of expressing emotion on the external side are “more likely to be sniffed at by the Devoted. And yet, there it is, fifty per cent worth!” (Lewis 28–­29). Here Lewis positions himself as a unifier, not disregarding the role of emotional and psychological analysis in the work of an actor, but seeking to reaffirm that fully half of an actor’s work is of a different nature. It is worth pulling out a few points that Lewis makes in what is, as promised, a highly detailed and technical lecture on acting terminology and technique. Analyzing Lewis’s explanations helps to illustrate the elements of the technological paradigm exemplified by his approach, and to highlight the battle over emotions as it was being waged in the late ’50s. This offers an example of the pressures Constant identifies as leading toward a “presumptive anomaly” in technological innovation: the belief that a given path will inevitably lead to failure, and so an alternate line of development is taken.19 This expectation of limits is seen most clearly in Lewis’s description of points eight, nine, and ten: Mind, Will, and Feeling, respectively. “The Mind is easiest to control, says Stanislavski, the Will a little harder, and needs disciplining, and Emotion is the hardest of all to summon and control” (Lewis 29). This hierarchy is perfectly in keeping with the perception of emotion as too loose to support true rigor in rehearsal and performance (it is labeled the “most capricious” on the chart itself, an assessment Edward Gordon Craig would assuredly agree with). Later, in the fifth lecture, Lewis returns to this trio, arguing that when it comes to finding the emotional notes for a character, “if you use the mind, which includes the understanding of the whole play . . . and if with your will . . . you fully execute exciting intentions, then the proper emotion should be present” (Lewis 95, emphasis original). Rather than worrying about trying to control the most capricious of the three, simply rely on the combination of mind and spirit—­ each far easier to manage than feelings—­and the heart will follow. As a result, the way to create greater emotional depth in a scene is not, paradoxically, by focusing on the actual emotional content, but by committing 19. See discussion of Constant in the introduction and chapter 1.

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more strongly to the actions being played. By respecting this hierarchy, “you are still in a realm that you can control: you are still using your mind to give you an idea; and you are still using your will to execute that idea” (Lewis 95, emphasis mine). Emotions are so difficult to manage that the actor is better off working with what can be regularized and clearly described: the language of action and intention. The subject of emotion cannot be avoided when Lewis gets to box seventeen, “Emotional Memory,” though Lewis theatrically quails before it. “I wish I could be a coward and skip over this one entirely. . . . This is the same item that was subsequently referred to as ‘affective memory’ in the Group Theatre days” (Lewis 35, emphasis original). He does admit that it is a legitimate technique, one good actors have always been able to utilize, and he shares an anecdote about Ellen Terry using vivid memories to summon emotions in performance to illustrate his point. He then offers a succinct but fairly detailed description of a generalized exercise to recall emotional memories. But rather than concentrate on the remembered emotion, here too Lewis suggests mining elsewhere, and directing one’s attention to the details of the environment and situation rather than just the emotion itself.20 He allows that this gets into some mystical-­sounding territory. “For those of you who have never done anything like this, it all may seem very dubious, but it is possible. . . . Stanislavski tried to work this out so that it can be used as material by the creative actor.” The qualifications “tried” and “creative actor” are worth reading more deeply. “Tried” obviously suggests that Stanislavsky did not fully succeed, and that other, more contemporary techniques proved decisive in the technological battle for acting supremacy. “Creative actor” is noteworthy, for it asserts that actors will not simply play themselves, but will instead create something new out of the raw material they have, emotional or otherwise. Lewis hinted at the same point previously when he said, “a writer, painter, or composer is fed by this all the time,” the “this” referring to a heightened emotional sensitivity through which feelings can be invoked “without his thinking consciously about it at all” (Lewis 35).21 Lewis is, again, drawing a contrast with the supposedly pure emotional work presumed to characterize the practices of the Actors Studio as opposed to other approaches to acting. He closes the discussion of emotional memory 20. This description is quite similar to Uta Hagen’s approach to emotional memory, see next chapter. 21. Lewis’s placing emotional sensitivity at the core of artistry prefigures Evangeline Morphos’s comments on emotion being key to all artistic creation in her preface to Strasberg’s A Dream of Passion (see discussion of Strasberg in the next chapter).

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by saying, “of course a great deal of the nonsense that used to be spoken about the Group Theatre in the thirties came from this particular item. It’s dangerous territory to tread, in any case” (Lewis 36). And then, with no further explanation of why such territory might be dangerous, he moves right into box eighteen on the chart, “Attention” (here meaning concentration). It is easy to imagine that he is responding to the growing stereotype of the overly emotional Method actor, or the deeply personal interrogations that characterized not just the work at the Studio but also Strasberg’s work with actors back in the Group Theatre. When Lewis gets to the second half of the chart on expressing emotions, he highlights his own emotional response for his audience. “Did you notice the thrill in my voice when I read out those items before? I felt they needed a little emphasis these days” (Lewis 41). They need emphasis because the dominant Method acting style seemed to focus almost exclusively on the interior life of the character, with apparent disregard for the full communication of that life to an audience. The stereotypical Method actor (again unnamed, but clearly referencing Strasberg and the Studio) is held up as the popular conception of acting that is in dire need of correction. An example of this comes from an unexpected component of the chart: “Dancing” (number thirty-­five). “I think any knowledge of dancing that you can have will help you in the creation of characters which require some sense of movement other than slouching around” (Lewis 44). It is the “slouching around” that contains the critique, and it is echoed at the end of the second lecture: “Gone would be the unrelated slouch, the self-­conscious hands in the pockets, the sawing of the air, the running of the fingers through the hair of so many Method advocates” (Lewis 84). The overall impression is that the stereotypical Method (as opposed to the Stanislavsky Method or System) encouraged slouching, both physical and mental. It was loose rather than focused and controlled. This same accusation of laxity crops up again in the fourth lecture, not so subtly titled “Method Fetishes.” Addressing the practice of improvisation in rehearsing a role, Lewis worries that “instead of achieving a sense of ‘freedom,’ improvisation can lead to a looseness of form. It can lead to playing ‘yourself’ at the expense of character rather than searching for the character in yourself.” Then, emphasizing the rigor that true acting study demanded, he asserts that improvisation done correctly is “control of the problem” (Lewis 79, emphasis original). Naturally Taylor would be quite pleased to hear Lewis speaking in such emphatic terms, for control, rigor, and focused work are all celebrated in the industrial paradigm, while unfocused looseness is clearly to be avoided.

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Given the rhetorical similarities with Taylorism, it should come as no surprise that Lewis invokes scientific authority and vocabulary in defending his own work. He endeavors, like Taylor before him, to argue that these techniques are not arbitrary but are derived from natural laws, and thus unassailable by mere opinion. Stanislavsky was not inventing a subjective methodology, but rather “trying to put down something which is based in the laws of creation” (Lewis 54). Lewis references psychology, with aspects of an actor’s work arising from the “unconscious”—­the internalization of technique—­and also from conscious decisions informed by learned craft (Lewis 51). Elsewhere, Lewis attempts to contextualize the current debates over “real” emotion. Saying that he always checks the date whenever he reads something about it, Lewis writes “that [the date] is very important because modern acting, just like modern life, has been very much affected by the research in psychology that has gone on in recent years. . . . We have all this new scientific material to deal with . . . [and] we have to incorporate it somehow into our work” (Lewis 96–­97). Acting techniques will inevitably become more modern, because they follow the assumed-­to-­be-­ inevitable improvements in scientific theory. One critical role these improved techniques play for the actor is as a mediator between unfettered creativity and utter mechanization in performance. As an example, he defends giving line readings on occasion when directing, and he unashamedly confesses that he has done so. While some “purist actors” might believe that a line reading forces them into falsehood, for Lewis what they are really saying is, “acting is something generated inside them and can’t be subjected to such controls” (Lewis 93). Control, by contrast, is exactly what contemporary acting practice is concerned with, so the excuse strikes Lewis as old-­fashioned at best, with the actor being content to trust that inspiration will strike. Lewis makes his perspective clear at the outset, for in the very first lecture he asserts that most actors have some sort of technique, although they themselves may be ignorant of their own process. Channeling such an actor, he says, “‘I just go onstage and something happens; some fog of inspiration descends on me and I am the rôle!’ Well the fog part is quite true. What do they do, I often wonder, when that inspiration isn’t there?” (Lewis 17). This hit-­or-­miss approach to the stage is a hallmark of an earlier, less advanced time in theater technique. A modern actor, such as MacKaye and Fiske argued for, can apply a methodology that will insure a consistent, regular performance night after night. The technological paradigm also shapes Lewis’s comments on how to properly rehearse. He chastises actors who only concern themselves with “big” moments and give short shrift to the rest of the play. In true

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component-­parts fashion, he states, “each and every problem in the part added up is what makes the rôle—­not only the big moments” (Lewis 100). It is a brief but telling statement. This is far from playing for points, or, in Coleridge’s immortal description of Kean, seeing Shakespeare illuminated by lightning. It even contradicts Boleslavsky’s assertion that only a few moments in a play really require intensive preparation on the part of the actor.22 Whereas before it might have been fine to trust that the smaller moments of the play will take care of themselves, now each moment should be analyzed and constructed to better guarantee the desired outcome. In chapter 5, “Truth in Acting,” Lewis picks up the challenge posed in the first lecture about the Method’s suitability for poetic or other nonrealist drama, refuting the accusation that this technology fails in universal applicability. Lewis does acknowledge that a certain type of actor—­the by-­ now-­familiar stereotypical actor of his talks—­would certainly seem unsuited to the demands of Shakespeare. He relates seeing a production of Merchant of Venice with a Portia whose method was to apply all of the naturalist verbal tics and tendencies to her speech, an example of which Lewis happily (and humorously) enacts from the “Quality of Mercy” monologue.23 “Oh, it was very real,” Lewis says after his performance, “but it was her reality, not Shakespeare’s” (Lewis 99). The actress’s failure was to seek only “the kind of personalized feeling which may be really felt, but is unconnected with the source of the material being interpreted” (Lewis 98). She made Portia into herself rather than the other way around. Yet this example does not prove Redgrave correct and mean the Method can’t handle Shakespeare.24 For Lewis, it is merely the “rhythm” that changes, not the technical demands of approaching a character or scene. In his next lecture he quotes at length from Stanislavsky’s Building a Character on the demands of paying attention to the rhythm of a given text as the key to its style. He uses his own work on My Heart’s in the Highlands (1939) as a case study.25 Each choice the actors made in the production could be justi22. See discussion in chapter five of Boleslavsky and his second chapter of Acting: The First Six Lessons (“Memory of Emotion”). 23. “The quality of mercy isn’t strained! It droppeth—­as the gentle rain from heaven up on the place b e n e a t h. It is twice blessed! [And here she counted off on two fingers.] It blesseth him that GIVES and him that TAKES!” (Lewis 99). 24. Lewis, displaying a gentlemanly aversion to naming names (as he also does when telling the story of Adler and Stanislavsky), does not mention Redgrave as the source of the critique of the Method as applied to Shakespeare, though he cited him approvingly in his initial lecture. 25. Although a Group Theatre production, the heightened language, visuals, and poetry in this extended one-­act by William Saroyan made for an uncomfortable fit with the company’s dominant focus on psychology (as observed by Lewis), but seemed tailor-­made for Lewis’s

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fied as “real,” but the overall effect, supported by the director and designers, created the heightened world of the play on stage and in performance. Lewis saw the “poetic” as an assembly of component parts shaped by specialists, which is itself very much an industrial ideal. This is by no means foreign vocabulary to Lewis. In his third lecture he says a director who is preparing a production “analyzes the script, breaks the play down into its component parts, and decides on his production scheme” (Lewis 51). In his final summation, he argues that realism has a specific form and set of concerns that are different from poetic drama, but that actors well versed in Stanislavsky’s system will naturally be able to adjust accordingly due to the control they’ve developed through technique. Even without the advantages of hindsight allowed by reading Adler’s later texts against Lewis’s (see the discussion of Adler in the next chapter), it is clear that his sympathies are with Adler over Strasberg. In addition to his veneration of Adler’s chart, Lewis recounts the story of Adler meeting Stanislavsky in Paris in his third lecture, though he refrains from naming Adler directly, simply saying “And to his Group Theatre visitors in 1934, he [Stanislavsky] said, ‘If the System doesn’t help you, forget it.’ Then he added, ‘But perhaps you do not use it properly’” (Lewis 54). For those who knew their Group Theatre lore, the message was clear: Stanislavsky felt that Strasberg was not teaching his system correctly and said as much to Adler, who received the chart, and true knowledge, from her time with Stanislavsky. Lewis’s rhetoric is replete with the phrases and values of industry. Control, technique, the guiding hand of the director bringing the various component parts into line, the citation of scientific authority, the belief in a single right answer—­all of these elements have a strong lineage in the modern theater, stretching back to the beginning incursions of industrial culture in the nineteenth century and adopted, knowingly or not, by theater practitioners. When Lewis argues that a well-­trained Method actor can easily make the adjustment to shift from Ibsenian realism to Shakespeare, he doesn’t use the phrase “retooling the plant,” but it is hard to see how he would object to the phrase. When an industrial plant retools it is reorganized to create a different product with the same basic set of resources. The movie studios retooled to produce sound films. In a similar fashion, modern actors and directors could “retool” their creative process to meet the demands of different texts. Lewis’s Method—or Madness?, alongside the own interest in more stylized theater. See Smith’s Real Life Drama, pp. 358–­60, for an extended description of the production process.

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new openness about training actors for the stage and screen, as well as the actor-­training programs created or continued in the 1940s and ’50s, suggests a powerful extension of the ideological network begun in the US by MacKaye and others to move training for actors offstage, and to conceive of acting in technical, scientific terms. Even as specific institutions like the Lab and the in-­house studio programs closed, the power of the network continued to grow. In 1959, one year after Lewis’s book was published, the Los Angeles Mirror News ran an article titled “Stars Learn to Act.” The big news was the arrival of master acting teacher Sanford “Sandy” Meisner from New York and the remarkable roster of sixty-­four students, including many established and successful film actors (including Mort Sahl and Pat Boone) who had publicly signed up to study with him. Unlike the articles on learning to act from a decade prior, where instruction, when acknowledged at all, was barely discussed or advertised, now newcomers and old hands alike were reported as taking classes. Meisner was described as bringing “the famed ‘Meisner method’ to Hollywood for a 10-­week summer course,” and the article’s author tells of asking him about “the controversial ‘method’ acting, of which he is an exponent.” Meisner demurs that there is a singular method, but he did allow that he didn’t teach actors to “be natural.  .  .  . Those ‘too, too’ natural kids think they are acting, but they’re not” (E. Johnson). This brief article is as much an indictment of the stereotypical “Method” actor as any, echoing Lewis’s criticisms and simultaneously pointing to the popular conflation of “Method” with multiple practitioners. For Meisner, however, Hollywood proved to be a brief hiatus from teaching in New York. Within a couple years he was back at his home-­base Neighborhood Playhouse, a metaphoric stone’s throw from the other major figures of postwar acting pedagogy: Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, and Uta Hagen. These four figures, more than nearly anyone, helped solidify various approaches to acting in the US that remain popular to this day. Despite significantly different conceptions of the work of the actor, all offered technologies of acting, with all the rhetorical and philosophical ramifications that implies. In my final chapter I look at each in turn, closely reading their primary acting texts and drawing from their remarkable body of work elements they have in common with industrial modernism.

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EIGHT

 | Four Teachers: Strasberg, Adler, Meisner, and Hagen

When actor Burgess Meredith confessed to joining the Actors Studio, many of his friends were aghast. “For them,” he recalled, “‘method’ seemed a derogatory word, a euphemism for bad acting. ‘Acting is not a method, for God’s sake. It’s an art!’” (Meredith, “Introduction” xi, emphasis original).1 Despite the far-­reaching infusion of industrial values in wider US culture, the work of teachers such as Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, Sanford Meisner, and Uta Hagen who offered structured and systematic means of approaching acting still faced resistance in the 1940s and ’50s, even from those in the theater community. By the 1960s the dominance of the Actors Studio in the popular imagination, along with the increasing attention paid to Strasberg’s competitors, meant that the idea of training offstage to be an actor onstage (and on screen) had gained increasing respect. It became commonplace to think about acting as a skill to be cultivated through the intervention of teachers rather than simply picked up through observation and experience. This chapter is broken into four sections, focusing on Strasberg, Adler, Meisner, and Hagen. Each enjoyed a long career teaching acting, and all wrote their primary texts relatively late in their careers (Uta Hagen’s two acting texts are both the earliest and the latest. Her Respect for Acting was published in 1973, with a revised and expanded version called A Challenge for the Actor published in 1991). A comparative reading of their works brings the conflict over the centrality of emotions in an actor’s work to the fore, because the relative weight of emotional generation and presentation is one of the primary differentiators between schools of acting; per ANT it was an ongoing “matter of concern” as the instructors sought to build their own networks of influence. While actions and emotions aren’t necessarily opposed, different methodologies ranked their relative importance differently. The question becomes how much an actor utilizing a given approach 1. Meredith uses the same description in his memoir So Far So Good (see pp. 85–86).

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would “worry” about emotions relative to other aspects of rehearsing and building a character. Furthermore, as indicated in the discussion of Robert Lewis’s approach to emotions and the actor in the previous chapter, disagreements over emotion also illustrate elements of Constant’s “presumptive anomaly” in technological progress. Edward Gordon Craig had openly questioned whether humans could control their own emotional states precisely enough to allow performance to rise to the level of art, and this question would be either affirmed or addressed by subsequent practitioners. If emotions could be shown to actually be controllable, ideally through techniques backed up by science, then Craig’s concern would be mooted. Alternately, if actors’ emotional control was effectively impossible, new lines of attack would need to be developed. Thus “control” becomes another useful comparator between schools of acting. In addition to these points directly related to emotions, I look more broadly at each system’s respective relationships with other rhetorical touchstones of the technological paradigm, including the invocations of scientific theory in support of specific exercises and approaches, the balance of auratic and technologic elements, and the ongoing dream of scales for actors.

STRASBERG: CULTIVATING EMOTIONS AT THE STUDIO

The Actors Studio plays an outsize role in the conception of actor training in the latter half of the twentieth century. Founded in 1947 by erstwhile Group Theatre members Elia Kazan, Cheryl Crawford, and Robert Lewis, the original “Actor’s Studio” (the apostrophe was soon dropped) was initially conceived of as a “gym” for actors where performers could keep their acting chops in shape between gigs. It was also a place for ongoing development of acting technique, “a place where we could explore and expand our theatrical ideas,” recalled Robert Lewis. Carnicke described it as an extension of the lineage stretching back through the Group, the ALT, and the MAT First Studio, because it allowed “experimenting with the craft of acting” (Carnicke, Stanislavsky, 2nd ed. 53). Strasberg began teaching part-­ time at the Studio in late 1948, and by 1951 he was listed as the artistic director (see Garfield 80–­83). He and the Studio were wedded in the public conception nearly ever afterward, and he continued to teach at the Studio, and at its Los Angeles outpost after it was established in the mid-­1960s, almost until his death in 1982. Robert H. Hethmon, in contextualizing the collection of transcripts and

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lectures that constitute his book Strasberg at the Actors Studio, tries to explain why so many found Strasberg an engaging and rewarding teacher, and in doing so, enunciates a number of industrial modernist traits: Strasberg has the great teacher’s ability to adjust himself personally and fully to each individual actor with whom he works. This is the central element of his effectiveness. He treats each actor as an individual because he knows that he is an individual. And he has an extraordinary ability to observe and analyze an actor’s work objectively and accurately. This is why all the cant about “Method” is so utterly at variance with the facts. (Hethmon 17) Taylor would approve of much in this description. First, he encouraged the scientific manager to “treat each man as an individual” so that the worker, in partnership with management, finds the best way to get the desired outcome, just as Strasberg reportedly does.2 Further, Strasberg is said to possess keen, objective, and accurate observational skills (another industrial modernist melding of values) and used them to pinpoint the specific strengths and weaknesses of each actor. The industrial impulses behind more rigorous training for actors also emerge in the remarks of Elia Kazan at the opening of the Studio. “We want a common language so that I can direct actors instead of coach them. . . . It’s not a school. Actors can come and actors can go. It is a place to work and find this vocabulary” (Garfield 54). In other words, the Studio’s goal was to concretize an emerging process of rehearsal and performance and establish a common language to be understood by actor and director alike. The basic instructional process at the Studio had actors working on scenes or monologues as well as exercises designed to strengthen various component parts of an actor’s craft. Once they are imbued with this vocabulary and set of skills, the actors are interchangeable. The system will live on, regardless of a single individual. In the preface to Strasberg’s posthumously released A Dream of Passion (1987), Evangeline Morphos, former chair of the NYU Tisch School of Drama, wrote that Strasberg’s “discovery of ‘emotional memory’ as a key to the actor’s creative process grew [into] his theory that emotional memory is the origin of the creation of any work of art. In this regard, Strasberg stands in a direct line with the great Romantics” (Morphos xiii).3 Viewing 2. See the discussion of Taylor in chapter 2. 3. While Dream of Passion was not published until after Strasberg’s death, Morphos asserts

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Strasberg as one of the last Romantics is evocative and useful, because it helps contextualize his emphasis on emotion even as his peers shifted their focus toward more readily quantifiable and repeatable elements.4 “Strasberg was a fanatic on the subject of true emotion,” Harold Clurman recalled. “Everything was secondary to it. He sought it with the patience of an inquisitor, he was outraged by trick substitutes, and when he had succeeded in stimulating it, he husbanded it, fed it, and protected it” (Clurman, Fervent 44). Strasberg, in his own book, replied, “While I am perhaps not a fanatic, I must admit I feel as intensely today about the basic discoveries of Stanislavsky as I did then. And if anything, even more so” (Strasberg 82). Nor would Strasberg necessarily disagree with being labeled a Romantic; he devotes significant time in A Dream of Passion to the work of English Romantics Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Byron, writing, “This link between affective memory and creativity has been a constant presence in poetry” (Strasberg 116), and by extension, his own art. After all, the Player in Elsinore was not in a “Dream of Action” or a “Dream of Repetition.” Passion animated his soul to his conceit and made him weep for Hecuba. Strasberg’s emphasis on true emotion didn’t, however, entail a retreat from process or procedure. Alongside the Romantics Strasberg includes another poet, T. S. Eliot, and Strasberg cites his “objective correlative” as a means of producing emotion in a work of art. Strasberg quotes Eliot’s own definition: “a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked” (cited in Strasberg 121, emphasis original). Just as Eliot offered a formula for emotion in textual art, Strasberg sought a means of producing emotion with the same inevitable, necessary success. More broadly, Strasberg famously never shied away from using terms such as “Method,” and the working title for A Dream of Passion was originally What Is Acting: From Stanislavsky to the Method (Morphos xi), indicating that Strasberg absolutely saw himself as not merely continuing Stanislavsky’s systemic work, but usefully correcting and extending it. In that “the manuscript of the book was complete when Lee Strasberg died. What had not been finally determined was the exact order of the sections and the inclusion of the sections he had dictated after the first draft” (Morphos xv). As such, the book can fairly be said to speak for Strasberg’s intended description of his work. 4. Baron notes the same tendency, writing “For Strasberg, authentic (romantic) acting involved the display of personal emotion, and so he expected performers to eliminate any inhibitions that might keep them from exhibiting this in performance” (Baron 55).

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describing his current (c. 1980s) formulation for “The Method,” Strasberg said it was “based not only on the procedures of Stanislavsky’s work, but also on the further clarification and stimulus provided by Vakhtangov,” whom Strasberg earlier describes as Stanislavsky’s “outstanding student” (Strasberg 84). It was from Vakhtangov that Strasberg adopted the modified “Creative If” of Stanislavsky, a shift Vakhtangov made because of his “search for a more definite theatrical intention and form.” This shift is still in keeping with the general tenets of Stanislavsky, because it solved “some of the limitations Stanislavsky himself had acknowledged” (Strasberg 85–­ 86). The book suggests a process of refinement that mirrored scientific discovery, pointing out that Stanislavsky himself was not satisfied with his own answers, and referencing Vakhtangov’s “clarification and stimulus” of Stanislavsky’s method. The basic Stanislavskian paradigm of acting could still hold with the later adjustments framed as part of an ongoing development (and improvement) of acting technique. Strasberg includes his own inventions here as well. “I have also added my own interpretation and procedures,” Strasberg writes. “Through our understanding, analysis, applications, and additions, we have made a sizable contribution to the completion of Stanislavsky’s work” (Strasberg 84). The same rhetorical framework is established again when Strasberg describes some of the techniques used by the Group. “Stanislavsky himself had never fully expounded the procedures of improvisation, work with imaginary objects, and emotional memory. It is in these areas that the Method has made a significant contribution.” Strasberg refers to this work as “experiments” and assures the reader that “most of the procedures were applied within the context of rehearsing for a particular production” (Strasberg 90–­91). Stanislavsky laid the foundation, Vakhtangov made necessary alterations, and Strasberg and his collaborators further extended the system, building on past discoveries to offer an effective theory of acting proven by experiential practice. Strasberg embraces the dream of scales for actors, seeing in the exercises a means of developing the component skills required to act, just as practicing scales develops the skills of the musician. He explicitly calls out the compartmentalized nature of this work, saying that an actor’s instrument “is composed of his mind, his emotions, and his body. And this work has to be done separately, not just by understanding a part [a single role]” (Hethmon 34). You can’t just learn to act by acting, you have to take up each piece in turn. Furthermore, Strasberg insisted that the work in the Studio was not art for art’s sake, but a practical means of artistic improvement. “I don’t like the kind of separation in which professional work is regarded as

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practical, but the work at the Studio is done only when you want a little stimulus, when you’re a little poor in spirits” (Hethmon 32). Despite the stereotype of impractical artists, Strasberg’s description of the work at the Studio had, as its goal, both artistic and commercial success.5 For all of the rhetorical similarities to science and industry that Strasberg employs, he maintains areas of auratic influence as well. Strasberg drew a distinction between a “system” (which he argued he was not imparting to his students) and a “methodology” applicable to the problems of preparing for performance. “A system,” he said, “implies a theory with precise rules of what to do exactly at each moment.” Delsarte was an example of this approach for him—­with each emotion codified. By contrast, “The Stanislavski method is no system. It does not deal with the results to be attained and therefore sets no rules for what should be done. It only tries to show the actor the path to be followed” (Hethmon 41). Taylor, it might be usefully recalled, also argued that scientific management was not merely a cookie-­cutter set of steps to enact, but rather an encompassing philosophy, a way of seeing the world. In similar fashion, Strasberg offers not merely a set of rote procedures, but a far more comprehensive approach to rehearsal and performance. Another aspect of the auratic within Strasberg’s Method is the emphasis on the totality of the educational experience. Any given note from Strasberg, taken in isolation, might not be particularly insightful, or even comprehensible. His pronouncements “could seem crystal clear to those in touch with his basic assumptions about acting, while utterly unintelligible to others” (Carnicke, Stanislavsky, 2nd ed. 68). Among these assumptions was the necessity of experiencing the work firsthand. When Shelley Winters, in reference to one of Strasberg’s exercises, admitted she “didn’t know how it works,” Strasberg replied, “Darling, nothing here can be understood. You have to do it” (Hirsch 143). At a 1988 symposium in Paris some of Strasberg’s former students “refused to answer questions about the Method, invoking its experiential level” (cited in Carnicke, Stanislavsky, 2nd ed. 69). Yet this same acceptance of the transcendent existed side by side with a devout faith in the methodology itself. “How ticklish, sensitive, wonderful our impulses are: how can we make the bird do what we want? That’s our aim here. We cage it, lock it up, train it. . . . If we trust our technique it rewards us” (Hirsch 131–­32). For Strasberg, the Method could easily contain elements that were both rigorous and auratic, definable and indescribable. 5. The fraught relationship to stardom of Strasberg and the Studio is a topic in itself. See, for an introduction, Hirsch 160–­62.

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One other notable inclusion of the auratic with the larger Method worldview is the role of talent. “No one can explain the mystery of talent,” Strasberg says (Hethmon 41), carving out room for the unknowable within the more straightforward workings of acting craft. Describing the audition process, Strasberg writes, “When we take people in, the primary thing we judge is talent, though I must honestly say that we directors have never found a way of defining exactly how that judgement is reached” (Hethmon 31). Elsewhere Cheryl Crawford said, “After two decades of looking at actors, I can spot talent in a minute. . . . I look for a unique, special energy” (Hirsch 225). Coupled with talent for Strasberg and his fellow examiners is “a sense of what we feel are greater capacities and possibilities in an individual than he now employs” (Hethmon 31–­32). The Studio wants actors, in short, who show the promise that cultivation—­one of the great touchstones of modern acting pedagogy—­will be rewarded. This blend of the auratic and technocratic is reflected in the combination of vagueness and detail that Strasberg employs in describing his own exercises in A Dream of Passion (a marked contrast with Adler and Hagen’s step-­ by-­step clarity). “This is not a ‘how to’ section,” Strasberg writes of the relevant chapter, “It is not intended to take the place of training under proper supervision, nor does it supply exercises that the actor can perform by himself” (Strasberg 123). Instead, Strasberg narrates descriptions of exercises: relaxation, concentration, sense memory, the “private moment,” the “animal exercise,” emotional memory, and the “song-­and-­dance” exercise. The summaries and anecdotes, which occupy approximately thirty-­ five pages of his book, are followed by a rough map of how a student would proceed, starting with the exercises previously described and progressing to “the ability to carry out actions logically and truthfully” (Strasberg 160). In addition, the order of the exercises is further supported by experimentation. Strasberg specifically says, “The sequence . . . was not arrived at casually, but contains a basic logic derived from practice and experience” (Strasberg 124), echoing Strasberg’s appreciation of the systematic instruction he was exposed to at the ALT. While the details of any given Method exercise may only be available to those present in the training sessions, their structure and logical progression from one to the next ameliorate the potential for a Taylorist-­inspired critique of his teaching. Pointedly, actions are secondary in Strasberg’s description, built atop the already-­developed emotional sensibility in the actor. This intensely personal process was framed by Strasberg’s references to the science that underlay the pursuit of emotional memory—often psychology, though not exclusively. In A Dream of Passion he, like Boleslavsky in Six Lessons, cites

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Ribot’s The Psychology of Emotion as part of the scientific foundation of his own work, noting its influence on Stanislavsky himself. But he augments Ribot with a more modern scientific authority, a “Canadian brain surgeon” named Dr. Wilder Penfield.6 In the course of probing an epileptic’s brain, Dr. Penfield seemed to cause a moment of emotional recall in his patient when a particular area was stimulated. While not encouraging actors to poke their own cerebellums, Strasberg did suggest that with the right methodology the same emotional recall the brain-­surgery patient experienced is available to the actor, and quite efficiently too. In recounting his experiences leading workshops in his techniques, Strasberg reports that spectators were always taken aback at the “quickness and ease” with which his actors could use emotional recall, “and at the ease with which the actor could change from one emotion to another” (Strasberg 151), calling to mind MacKaye and his gamuts of emotion. In an explicitly mechanistic description, Strasberg insisted on the necessity of delving into strong personal emotions, because they were the “oil” for “the entire instrument” (from Strasberg sound recordings, cited in Carnicke, Stanislavsky, 2nd ed. 64). Strasberg promised near-­industrial efficiency and control, all while maintaining emotions as the central concern of the performer. This emotional control promised by the Method explicitly countered Edward Gordon Craig’s critique that theater was not a true art because of actors’ inherent variability. Strasberg argued that actors trained in the Method were “capable of satisfying those demands for inner precision and definiteness which Gordon Craig was asking for when he demanded that the actor be [an über-­marionette]” (Strasberg 151).7 Strasberg’s development of specific exercises to develop emotional memory and its presentation vanquished Craig’s belief that actors experiencing emotion cannot control their own performances. Techne triumphs over human frailty. For Strasberg the Method (though not a system) was the singular solution to an actor’s problems. Armed with the proper technique, actors could transcend their history of inconstant emotional control and reliance on inspiration. Foster Hirsch, in A Method to Their Madness (1984), observed, 6. Carnicke includes a selection of medical metaphors Strasberg used in teaching, offering another example of the intermingling of the scientific and artistic (see Carnicke, Stanislavsky, 2nd ed. 69–­70). 7. Craig was a significant figure in Strasberg’s thinking about acting, particularly related to the self-­control an actor should have. Earlier in Passion he writes, “The Super Marionette was not intended to replace the actor. On the contrary, the notion of it was to remind the actor that he must possess the precision and skill that the marionette is capable of. In other words, acting should be an art” (Strasberg 29).

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“Clearly what’s important at the Studio is the first part of the Stanislavski System, the actor’s work on himself, with the subsequent matters of building a character and creating a role seeming to take up comparatively little time” (Hirsch 196). Just as Ayres a century prior had argued that elocution was the only subject an actor needed to spend time learning, getting the emotions right is the paradigmatic “one thing” the Method actor needs to worry about. In a direct counterpoint to Ayres, Strasberg at one point said, “When the actor is acting properly, there is no problem with projection. Vocal energy for the actor is different. Actor’s energy is more than the human being has to begin with; it is more that it would be in life” (Hirsch 130). Strasberg would go on to say that vocal technique was addressed at the Studio, and that he did not embrace the mumbling and shambling “realist” stereotype ascribed to Method actors. “He [Strasberg] constantly cautions young Studio actors against the sort of naturalistic slouch that became part of the Brando-­Dean image. Such casualness, he warns, is not to be equated with being real on stage; it ‘is only the pose of reality’” (Garfield 181). Despite this, speaking is relegated to a mere technical detail, easily solvable. Nail the emotions. After that, everything else will fall into place. Technologies are expected to be widely, if not universally, applicable, and one critique of the Method that emerged relatively early was its supposed lack of utility in nonrealist works. Taylor would have predicted that such a challenge could not stand. If the Method is a true technology, founded on scientific laws of performance, then it should be applicable regardless of the specific textual content of the piece being performed. Robert Lewis directly countered this criticism (see previous chapter), and Strasberg rises to the challenge as well. In addition to the offhand references to Shakespeare scenes that actors have improved through their work at the Studio,8 Strasberg devotes the final chapter of his book to defending the universal applicability of the Method, listing Antonin Artaud, Jerzy Grotowski, and Brecht as three commonly accepted challengers to Method practice. Artaud is quickly dismissed as an engaging theoretician whose works are not truly realizable on stage. Grotowski, on the other hand, clearly produces works of compelling theater requiring skill that Strasberg respects, but Strasberg admits his unease with the emphasis on “the mystic nature of Grotowski’s theories and his reliance on collective and mythic unconscious” (Strasberg 180–­81). After viewing a production of Grotow­ ski’s Polish Lab Theatre in 1969, Strasberg was not impressed. Although 8. See, for example, the discussion of the “potion scene” from Romeo and Juliet in A Dream of Passion, 171–­72, as well as a more glancing reference on 126.

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the actors’ voices were clearly well trained in terms of range and power, “the actual expression seemed to follow the conventional theatrical intonation” (Strasberg 181–­82). Worse, while “I was immediately impressed with the dedication and training of the actors I was disappointed by the results. . . . It seemed to me that the gestures and movements were not expressive of a deep personal commitment  .  .  . they were theatrically conventional” (Strasberg 181). Strasberg lumps Grotowski into a category of “‘external’ or ‘objective’ schools of acting” whose lineage Strasberg traces back to Meyerhold and his goal “to counter Stanislavsky’s training in affective memory with an external technique.” Strasberg credits not Taylor but psychologists William James and Carl Lange as inspiring Meyerhold’s approach through their eponymous “James-­Lange Theory [linking] muscular response with the sensation of emotion” (Strasberg 183). Strasberg sees subsequent “external” schools, of which Grotowski’s is the most recent incarnation, as building their approach on this scientific foundation. ANT would identify this as a partially overlapping network, with nodes representing certain scientific elements and the primacy of emotion common to both, while other nodes related to pedagogical and conceptual foci remain distinct. Strasberg begins his defense of the wide applicability of the Method by examining the science itself. The fundamental formula of the James-­Lange theory is widely understood to hold that emotions are the results of physical actions, with Strasberg offering the following illustration: “I saw a bear. I ran. I became afraid” (Strasberg 183). If accurate, this would be a significant scientific blow against Strasberg’s own emphasis on emotional memory as the key engine of expression on stage. However, after going back to the primary sources, Strasberg reports he was “shocked to discover [James’s] description was completely different in emphasis. In addition, it [the theory] constituted a clear and precise statement of the ‘emotional’ point of view” (Strasberg 184). He goes on to quote at length sections of James’s own writing (six block quotes over three pages, plus additional in-­ line citations). These extracts largely focus on the intricacy of emotional embodiment and feeling, and it is this complexity that brings James back to Strasberg’s side. The upshot, for Strasberg, is that because feelings are so complicated in their manifestations, it is only through the actual summoning of real emotion that an actor could hope to enact a believable state to an audience. When James argues that “the revivability in memory of the emotions  .  .  . is very small,” Strasberg swoops in with the Method. “This is precisely the area that the exercises in our training deal with in the effort to strengthen the capacity not just to remember but to revive, that is, to relive,

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the emotion” (Strasberg 187–­88). An appropriate understanding of the science leads to further justification for the exercises, which in turn gives the Method additional scientific bona fides. Grotowski’s directorial style is one thing, but the performances are quite another, and in that area, the Method still triumphs. Finally, Strasberg has a special relationship to the question of Brecht and the suitability of Method acting to Epic performance. He begins by acknowledging that Brechtian theater has the reputation for being antiemotional, a general misunderstanding that “led to the assumption that Brecht was opposed to Stanislavsky” (Strasberg 189). Strasberg argues that it would be more accurate to say that Brecht shared Craig’s belief that an actor experiencing emotion would be “unable to deal with other facets demanded by the work on the character and the intentions of the scene” (Strasberg 191). But, as Strasberg has already insisted, this liability has been removed through the correct application of scientifically grounded technique. Strasberg then shares a personal anecdote about working alongside Brecht himself in 1936, when Strasberg agreed to rehearse one of his pieces with actors from the Group Theatre. Strasberg recalls Brecht being in the room and nodding approvingly when “I ventured the opinion that Mr. Brecht desired the actor to be real, truthful” (Strasberg 194). While the intensity of the emotion might be muted to accommodate the stylistic demands of Brecht, “the reality of feeling remains the same” (Strasberg 195). Epic theater is thus brought under the wing of Method acting, or, alternately, the Method is shown to have applicability across styles and genres, suitable for solving a variety of theatrical problems. Truthful emotions still dominate, even in works assumed to be anti-­emotional. For those who read Strasberg’s book cover to cover (or are well versed in theater history), Strasberg offers an alternate form of support for his argument. Brecht’s theater is described as “the most significant from a theatrical point of view since Stanislavsky and Vakhtangov” and Strasberg calls Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle “the closest thing in style, imagination, and spirit to the productions by Vakhtangov” (Strasberg 196). The rhetorical linkage of Brecht and Vakhtangov is powerful, given Strasberg’s own stated alliance with Vakhtangov as an extender of Stanislavsky’s initial theories. If Brecht is like Vakhtangov, and Vakhtangov paved the way for Strasberg, the Method could safely be argued to be wholly appropriate to the demands of Epic theater. Nor does Strasberg hide this argument. “The best part of his [Brecht’s] work with actors derives from Stanislavsky and perhaps even uses the techniques of the Method” (Strasberg 197). The linking of Brecht’s approach to Method techniques places the Method in the

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same category as a scientific law: you can get to the answer in multiple ways—­either through Brecht’s vocabulary or Strasberg’s—­but the answer will always be the same. Just as there is a science of moving pig iron, so too is there a science of acting and emotion whose effective techniques are not arbitrarily created but are shaped according to scientific laws. Despite the centrality of emotion to his own work, when defending the Method Strasberg sounds less like a true Romantic hero of two centuries prior and more like an industrial engineer, emphasizing the standardization, repeatability, efficiency, scientific pedigree, and universality of his approach. Emotions are the key concern, the one thing the actor needs to worry about; an ANT black box, because given the right inputs, the outputs are predictable. Strasberg is absolutely cast as the discoverer of scientific laws of performance, sharing his knowledge for all to use if they will avail themselves of the right techne. This techne, in turn, allows the actor the necessary control to make acting into both an art and craft, repeatable night after night. No inspiration required. Other acting teachers of the postwar period would make similar claims about their own work—­that it too would eliminate Craig’s concerns about unpredictability in performance, that the techniques were founded in scientific fact, and that they could (and should) be applied across a variety of theatrical styles. But some Method alternatives moved emotions out of their central location in the actor’s concerns, finding that the variability of emotional presentation could be supplanted by a focus on more rigidly definable qualities such as action and objective. Their champions saw these as more amenable to the technocratic valuations inherited from industrial practice, and they serve as a point of differentiation between practitioners.

ADLER: “IT IS NOT FOR GENIUSES”

Even within the world of the Actors Studio, at least in the early days, the emphasis on emotion was tempered with action. Kazan, when he was still in residence, would assign an exercise to students where an actor would get one or two lines and then play “up to twenty or so different ‘actions’ . . . while speaking them” (Garfield 58). This is MacKaye’s “gamuts” with a critical difference. Emotions are replaced by a scale of actions the actor is expected to present in rapid succession. While to an uninitiated spectator the difference might be only marginally perceptible, it is a decided shift in attention, vocabulary, and concern on the part of the actor. No longer is emotional representation the key skill. Emotions are the result of a focus on

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actions, and it is playing an action, not emoting, that is the actor’s work. An actor’s “scales” don’t involve learning the difference between anguish and despair, but between “to entice” and “to persuade.” Stella Adler embraced action as an actor’s core concern. After leaving the Group, she taught in Irwin Piscator’s Dramatic Workshop before establishing the Stella Adler Conservatory in 1949. Fully in keeping with a Taylorist expectation of a single maximal solution to any problem she continued to argue that there was a “better” process of acting than Strasberg’s. Adler’s The Technique of Acting was published in 1988, and is the sole text composed explicitly by her. To her shelf in the library can be added three works released after she died in 1992: The Art of Acting by Stella Adler (2000), compiled by longtime New York theater critic Howard Kissel from recordings of Adler’s classes along with notebooks from Adler’s own collection; and two volumes of lectures on playwrights, both edited by Barry Paris, a film critic and biographer. (Stella Adler on Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekov came out in 1999, and a volume on US playwrights was released in 2012.) While my primary analysis focuses on Adler’s Technique of Acting, I utilize the other sources as appropriate to explore aspects of the technological paradigm in Adler’s work. A comparison between Technique and The Art of Acting is particularly useful in this regard, because part of the latter’s self-­ reported genesis was a conversation between Adler and Glenn Young, publisher of Applause Books, in which he admitted his dislike of her first book. “I told her,” Young reports, “she deserved a better book than the one that was allowed to appear under her name . . . She [Adler] wanted you to be extravagant. She offered you the right of passage into this intellectual extravagance, and the book that had been produced was, to my mind, the antithesis of that.” Young further described Technique as “a pale, reductive, mechanical book in which all the adventure and all the fire had been depleted and expunged” (Adler, Art 267). Technique, perhaps, lived up to its name too well, because the ratio of Adler’s own voice to a breakdown of a specific technique is relatively low—­the plurality of the book is given over to the steps in given exercises. While certainly in keeping with the technological paradigm of cut-­and-­dried prescriptions for activities, it did not display a great deal of the auratic power that Adler possessed. Kissel writes, “This was the mandate Glenn Young gave me—­to convey not only the literal teaching of Stella Adler, but the tone in which it was imparted” (Adler, Art 269). True to its goal, The Art of Acting contains far more moments of conversation and classroom transcription than Technique—­each chapter is framed as a separate class in a course progression—­and does (in my opin-

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ion) convey a greater sense of Adler’s personality and presence than her previous book. Central to Adler’s work was her time with Stanislavsky in Paris in 1934, and this is referenced in every volume. In the introduction to Stella Adler on Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov, Paris quotes Adler on Stanislavsky (and by inference, Strasberg): Thank God Stanislavsky’s real method has come over here to a certain degree now. I think maybe he wanted his philosophy to be taken over by an American who understood him. He had done all this work. He didn’t want it to be misunderstood. When I first gave him my opinion of his Method, he laughed. He knew something was wrong. (Paris xiii) Here Adler fires yet another shot in the war over affective memory and the true method of Stanislavsky. If you know that her original laughter-­ prompting knowledge of Stanislavsky’s method came from Strasberg, the attack is quite clear. If you didn’t know it, you could find out by reading the biographical sketch of Adler included at the end of Technique. (The biography is in the third person and labeled “compiled by Irene Gilbert” on the final page.) “After Gentlewoman [1934], dissatisfied with her performance and disturbed by director Lee Strasberg’s excessive use of ‘affective memory’ exercises, Stella took a leave of absence and went to Europe. There she was introduced . . . to Konstantin Stanislavski himself.” Gilbert then summarizes Adler’s experience with Stanislavsky, concluding with, “As a result of this, she was, upon her return, able to correct the Group Theatre’s interpretation of Stanislavski with a formal report to her fellow actors, complete with charts outlining the system and the blunt admonition that the undue emphasis on ‘affective memory’ warped the actor” (Adler, Technique 129–­30).9 That Adler would choose to include in her triumphal recounting of her time with Stanislavsky and subsequent lectures to the Group—­which, as a 9. In Art of Acting the story appears as the initial three pages of the chapter “Stanislavski and the New Realist Drama,” and in a greatly truncated form in Kissel’s afterword (Adler, Art 265). In the US playwrights volume, Adler says “I’m the only American who worked with him. God did it. Once in a while, God does something; he put Adler together with Stanislavsky and a great deal came out of it—­for me and for you” (Adler and Paris, America’s 10). Even Marlon Brando alludes to Adler’s connection to Stanislavsky in his foreword to Technique, writing, “She was one of the very few, if not the only one, who went to Paris to study with Konstantin Stanislavski. . . . She brought back to this country a knowledge of his technique and utilized it in her teaching” (Adler, Technique 1).

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reminder, were a half-­century in the past when she was writing Technique—­ the fact that she was able to give not only a “formal report” but one that was “complete with charts outlining the system” is a clear indication of the power of the technological paradigm. Charts and formal presentations are where the truth of acting can be established, and the contrast between this and the habits of a pre-­MacKaye theatrical world is difficult to ignore or overstate. In a Taylorist read of the episode, Strasberg is cast as the poor manager who has failed to understand the science behind the organization of the work. The flaws in the previous system can be corrected by returning to the scientist who cataloged the original laws, who will then diagnose the issue and generate charts and clarified techniques. Great achievements do not require geniuses at every level, but once the science has been identified—­ whether for pig iron moving, restaging a Longmans’ script, or character creation—­one ignores it to one’s detriment. As Adler’s title suggests, she is hardly shy about using “technique” to describe acting. She allows that techniques have always existed, but Stanislavsky’s is the “most modern” and the only one (in Adler’s estimation) able to handle the demands of modern playwrights stretching from Ibsen forward. She continues by saying that Stanislavsky’s system began to be known in the US “simply as ‘the Method’ . . . [and] for some reason, his teaching quickly became distorted in America. Not by all actors, but by many.” She then invokes the Method stereotype: “a bunch of inarticulate—­ and often slobbering—­actors showing off their ‘real feelings,’ even when they had nothing to do with the playwright or his characters.” She briefly tells of how she studied with Stanislavsky in 1934, and soon after her return “started to teach and direct, trying to correct the mess that was made of Stanislavski’s technique” (Adler, Technique 6). While Strasberg is only named in the concluding bio cited above, the critique is still quite clear, in particular the inarticulate vocalization and overt emotionality that for many marked Method performances. From one point of view, however, both Strasberg and Adler were working toward the similar goal of a heightened performance aesthetic on stage. For Adler it was developing an engaging sense of theatricality—­recounting her work with Stanislavsky, she refers to herself as “a dramatic actress” (Adler, Technique 120)—­while for Strasberg the presentation of deep emotional states would elevate a performance from the mundane to the transcendent. Adler also pushed against the centrality of personal experience that Strasberg preserved at the core of an actor’s work. In her lecture on Ibsen, she begins by saying that instead of identifying oneself as an actor, it would be better to say “I am a script interpreter. . . . The whole point is interpreta-

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tion” (Adler and Paris, Ibsen 4). In Art of Acting she says “You cannot play Chekhov from the lines alone. There was no way in which you can play Ibsen in his lines, or Strindberg or Tennessee Williams . . . or Odets. . . . He [the actor] starts with words but then must go beneath them. Texts must be examined. They have a secret under and around the words” (Adler, Art 160). Adler’s list of writers is not accidental—­they correspond to the “modern” dramatists, starting with Ibsen, who necessitated a modern acting technique (Stanislavsky’s) grounded in text analysis. By focusing on interpreting the written script, Adler also emphasizes the necessity of imagination, divorcing the portrayal of the part from the quotidian experiences of the actor. As Kissel describes it, “intelligence and imagination lead the actor into the mind of the character” (Adler, Art 265). In Adler’s lecture on Odets’s The Country Girl, she lists a number of questions to ask when starting any project: “What is the theme of the play? What does it say? What is the style?” These are followed by character-­ specific elements: “Put down the clothes, the manners, the kind of rooms you live in. Most of all, ask ‘How do I think?’ And then contrast your own thinking with that of the character.” The point, as the last sentence suggests, is to highlight the differences between the actor as a person and the character he or she is portraying. “As you steer away from yourself,” Adler promises, “you’ll get closer to the way the character thinks” (Adler and Paris, America’s 168). Answers to all these questions, in turn, lead the actor to grasp what is specific about the playwright’s style as presented in the text, and what is called for in the performance of that specific play. These skills can be cultivated (of course) through instruction with a qualified teacher. “The actor of the present time,” she writes in Technique, “has to be helped. . . . The teacher guides the actor as he begins to work with ideas. . . . The actor, throughout history, has always had a deep and cosmic understanding. The teacher can now capture this understanding and release the actor’s imagination” (Adler, Technique 4). In Art of Acting, Adler summarizes the “old” method of apprenticeship in a company, and then, in a remarkable indication of how far the paradigm has shifted, says, “Now there is a certain snobbism today that says you don’t learn acting by . . . acting. They think you have to learn acting in a classroom. Well, I learned acting by acting.” Yet Adler is hardly advocating a return to the palmy days of stock theater; she immediately says, “But that’s over. There are people who traveled the country by covered wagon. That’s over too. The classroom is not ideal,” she allows, “but it’s all you have. And so here you are.” At the same time, the classroom offers the decidedly Taylorist advantage of efficiency over the old apprenticeship system “The only

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way . . . you can learn your job quickly—­because that is what acting demands of you today—­is through a studio, a school.” Further, modern instruction is how an actor can shed the shackles of smallness. “The young actor today tends to be little. He seeks to protect his little emotion as he sits comfortably in his little chair in his little blue jeans and stares at his little world that extends from left to right” (Adler, Art 11). Adler, never described as a small personality in her own right, seeks to develop in her students an appreciation for the power of theatricality and characterization on stage, as well as liberating them from the bounds of their own self-­ imposed emotional domains. “Write this down,” she admonishes her students in Art, “You have to develop size. That is what we are here to work on” (Adler, Art 20). This is paired with her encouragement to see acting as an auratic occupation, with the possibility, even necessity, of personal transcendence intimately bound up in the process. “As we are today is not enough for the actor,” she writes in Technique, “and what is more important, not interesting for the audience. . . . On [the actor] rests the high responsibility of interpreting the content of the play, of bringing the ideas of the playwright to life. . . . You are going to express the author’s epic ideas. . . . You are part of this eternal struggle” (Adler, Technique 4–­7). In the later Art, Adler’s musings on the topic are granted more leeway, and much of the first chapter, “The Art of Acting,” emphasizes this point. “A certain amount of what we do as actors is totally within our control,” she says at the outset, with “a certain amount” promising aspects beyond the reach of techne. “Technique is first of all a way of controlling what we do on stage. It’s also a way of helping us reach something deeper, something less tangible, something more difficult, which we must learn to wrestle to the ground” (Adler, Art 20). Technique, here, paves the way for auratic inspiration to strike from above. It is hardly by chance, for example, that she not only praises Kahlil Gibran’s book The Prophet and describes his life seeking spiritual wisdom, but the very first assignment she gives her students is to “take one of his ideas, paraphrase it, write it out in your own words, then come back here, stand on the stage and give it to us.” Gibran, she says “is able to lift you to where he wants to go. Your mind is inclined towards the pedestrian, but he wants to lift you to his level” (Adler, Art 25–­26). The too-­common actors of the day are small, tied to their particular selves and an idea of what “real” people are like. To act, Adler believes, should be to enlarge the self to contain the multitudes present in the great works of dramatic literature. This calling is necessarily spiritual, and Adler is the prophet of the great god Stanislavsky.

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Placing this in the larger context regarding technique, Adler is arguing that there are schools of acting (unnamed, but clearly Strasberg) that homogenize the performance of their students by too strong a reliance on an overtly showy presentation of emotion; this paradoxically leads to smaller performances, with the actors making the characters like themselves. An Actors Studio production of Ibsen would appear, in Adler’s assessment, just like a Chekov, or an Odets, and that is utterly incorrect.10 The path to the protean ideal for Adler starts with performers being able to subsume themselves to the differing demands of contemporary dramatists. Critically, it is not through a focus on emotional presentation that the modern actor rises to the challenge of the great playwrights. Instead, the focus is on physicality and the playing of actions. Emotions as a topic are granted a single page in The Technique of Acting (p. 47 in my edition, comprising approximately 397 words), and Adler’s approach to them, indeed her entire model of emotion and the actor, is quite different from Strasberg’s. Early on she suggests that an actor’s “emotional range must be extended to the maximum,” and that you as the actor need to constantly work on “your body, your speech, your mind, your emotions” (Adler, Technique 9). That said, there is next to no discussion on how to work on emotions directly. Instead, they are described as results of action and a byproduct of fully imagining the situation as the playwright has described it. “The actor has enough resources within himself to get the emotion that he needs from the play, from the character,” she writes on her solitary page. “All the emotion required of him can be found through his imagination in the circumstances.” Should actors need to delve into their own experience they certainly may, and sometimes must, but “not for the emotion, but for a similar action. In your own personal experience, you had a similar action in which you had an emotional response. . . . If you recall the place, the feelings will come back to you” (Adler, Technique 47, emphasis mine). An analogous action and reaction means the actor will remain within the play’s reality, whereas using personal emotional memories means it is the actor’s reality, not the character’s, that is being portrayed. “It is the circumstances of the play that have to be done truthfully by borrowing what was physical in the action you had in the past, not the emotion” (Adler, Technique 47).11 Elsewhere she is equally explicit. “Emotion comes 10. Foster Hirsch, in A Method to Their Madness, recounts just such an event, watching two studio actors play a scene from Noël Coward’s Private Lives. “Slow, weighted with subtext, with not even a vestigial glimmer of drawing room smartness and style, this is a decidedly Actors Studio version of Noel Coward” (Hirsch 194). 11. Strasberg, if he were to directly respond to this argument, would probably cite William

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out of action. Never look for the emotion—­you’ll drive it away. Let it come out of what you’re doing” (Adler and Paris, Ibsen 303). Actions, specific and recallable, can be translated from real life into the play, and these will naturally lead to the correct emotional response by the actor in the moment. Real emotional memories, by contrast, mean you are necessarily recalling different circumstances than the play demands, and this dichotomy will serve neither actor nor audience. The emphasis on action is mirrored in the rest of Technique. Chapter 5 is titled and entirely devoted to “Actions,” chapter 9 offers a section called “The Vocabulary of Action,” and there are a multitude of individual references to action throughout the text. For example, in her final chapter Adler suggests the actor must first “lose his dependency on the words and go to the actions of the play,” after which she exhorts that “the actions come first and the words come second” (Adler, Technique 114). Where Ayres the elocutionist argued for close textual analysis to determine the right way to speak and thus effectively convey emotional states for the audience, and for Fiske the right emotion would lead to the right stage business, for Adler the text is a guide to actions, with everything else falling into place accordingly. Throughout it is clear that action, not emotion, is the driving force in her technique. Correctly chosen actions, in harmony with the playwright’s intentions, are the “one thing” an actor needs to worry about, letting everything else flow from them. A similar balance of emotion to action is found in The Art of Acting, although even the single dedicated page from Technique is banished. Out of twenty-­two chapters, five have the word “action” or “actions” in their title; none include “emotion.” In Kissel’s summary of her methodology, for Adler “actions . . . elicit emotions both in the actor and the audience.” Then, in support of Adler’s technocratic merits, he writes, “The emphasis on doing rather than feeling makes the Adler approach more practical. It is reasonable, she—­and Stanislavski—­asserted, to expect the actor to be able to perform actions; it is not reasonable to expect him to conjure emotions” (Adler, Art 265). Adler and Stanislavsky side with Craig—­the actor’s emoJames, as he does in his defense of the Method against the “external” schools such as Grotow­ ski’s in his own text. In A Dream of Passion, at the close of a block quote from James’s Principles of Psychology, Strasberg includes this line: “Just as an artificially imitated sneeze lacks something of the reality, so the attempt to imitate an emotion in the absence of its normal instigating cause is apt to be rather ‘hollow’” (Strasberg 185). The instigating cause is the summoning of the emotional reality for, in this case, the actor. Without that, Strasberg suggests, the presentation of an emotional state will always be lacking, leading to a substandard performance.

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tions are too much of a liability to be counted on, and if acting aspires to the controlled nature of a true art, a more controllable quality must be made primary. References to emotion in the text are similarly terse and in the same vein, and many suggest ongoing barbs against “Method” acting and its focus on emotional recall, along with an emphasis on an actor’s self-­control. “Remember, emotion is the cheapest commodity in the American theatre,” she says. “Control is always more theatrically interesting. With control the words become clear” (Adler, Art 224–­25). Elsewhere, “This technique is about doing, not about feeling.  .  .  . Whatever you reconstruct from your emotional memory is no substitute for putting your imagination to work” (Adler, Art 83). Or, “An actor must correct himself as he goes along and not let emotion distort or interfere with the action” (Adler, Art 123). Finally, should there be any doubt as to the sides in the war, the following comes from the chapter “Developing the Imagination”: “You have to get beyond your own precious inner experiences now. I want you to be able to see and share what you see with an audience, not just get wrapped up in yourself. Strasberg is dead” (Adler, Art 65). Emotions arise from actions, and actions derive from text analysis and imagination. Not from the work of Strasberg and the Studio. A suggestive absence from Adler’s texts is recourse to scientific theory. In the afterword to Art of Acting, Glen Young uses physics-­inspired vocabulary to describe his rapport with Adler—­“I think she [Adler] was intrigued by someone who had a specific not a general interest in these plays, in the subatomic level of these plays. We got along very well on that molecular level” (Adler, Art 267)—­but she did not cite scientists in support of her technique. Where Strasberg went to great lengths to assure his readers of the soundness of the science that supported his work on emotions, Adler’s singular authoritative source is Stanislavsky himself (augmented, in a way, by the foreword to Technique provided by Marlon Brando, selections of which were also used as the foreword to Art of Acting, his aura of stardom and actorly achievement further testifying to Adler’s significance). Stanislavsky’s is the name invoked to burnish the descriptions of exercises and grant legitimacy to Adler’s own work. While the last chapter of Technique is titled “The Actor’s Contribution,” after two-­and-­a-­quarter pages it becomes “On My Way to Stanislavsky.” Five-­and-­a-­half pages describe Adler’s first contact with the Stanislavsky system via Boleslavsky and Ouspenskaya at the American Laboratory Theatre and her later work with Stanislavsky himself. Eliding the conflicts within the Group and with Strasberg men-

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tioned elsewhere (notably in her bio eight pages later), Adler moves almost frictionlessly from studying at the ALT to working with Stanislavsky in Paris, which she describes hagiographically: Stanislavski and I were in the greatest closeness of director and actress, and very soon it was just actor and actress! . . . We worked intimately on scenes and on improvisations, and I was able to be completely at ease, completely at home. I felt as if I had worked with him for a lifetime. He was gentle and “absolutely theatre”; nothing but theatre came through. Kindness and interest—­a master with a student . . . I had worked with the master teacher of the world, the man whose words were going to flood the world with truth. (Adler, Technique 120–­22) Adler imbues Stanislavsky with auratic and scientific power, enshrining him as a genius whose methods for training actors and rehearsing plays will “flood the world with truth.” Adler’s exercises draw their authority from Stanislavsky’s own work (one reason why the foundational story of her time with him is repeated across her texts; see discussion and note above). She feels no need, in Technique of Acting, to even bring up Stanislavsky’s own references to Ribot.12 The master’s words are enough. The only science needed is the science of the stage. She positions herself as the scientific manager (as well as the prophet) of Stanislavsky’s discoveries—­able to direct others in their proper usage and application. One other reason Adler may not feel the need to cite scientists is because she barely concerns herself with emotions as a product of the process. The bulk of Technique is made up of exercises notable for their precision and conciseness, and they are thus already in concord with the expectations of industrial modernism. Most chapters are dedicated to one aspect of performance—­“Imagination,” “Circumstances,” and “Actions” are chapters 3 through 5, respectively—­and contain a discussion of the topic along with specific exercises related to strengthening it for the actor. This is not to say that there are no outside authorities aside from Stanislavsky that Adler recommends. Her continued emphasis on the play gives the writer pride of place in supporting the choices made in rehearsal. “Preparation of your character naturally begins with the playwright’s text” (Adler, Technique 66). This is accompanied by regular exhortations for actors to learn about the 12. A digital search of the text of Art of Acting similarly turned up no references to Ribot (or Freud or Jung), and only three usages of the word “psychology.”

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context for whatever play they are working on, which she saw as necessary to craft an engaging performance. In a 1979 New York Times article, the author describes a similar focus in Adler’s teaching: “Instead of exercise classes, she teaches a more conventional acting ‘principles’ class. There, a student learns to build character through evidence provided by the playwright and to embellish that evidence with his intuition rather than his personal history” (O’Malley). Solid text analysis and strong actions make for a compelling performance that is true to the world of the play. While affective memory and emotions mark the fundamental disagreement between Adler and Strasberg, they clearly share the baseline assumption that acting was an activity that could be subject to analysis and improvement through techne. “Acting is stubborn work,” Adler writes. “It is not for geniuses. It is for people who work step-­by-­step. While there is no recipe for acting, it does follow a sequence of principles” (Adler, Technique 6). The overt devaluation of genius follows the ongoing trajectory of lessening the role of natural talent in the makeup of the actor under the technological paradigm. Stage success is not limited to the innately talented; it is also open to those who have the discipline to follow what Stanislavsky and Adler have codified. “The most important thing I look for in actors is will,” she remarked in an early 1970s interview. “Before a person is working you don’t look for talent. . . . In acting a person can sit for four months and it’s all inside, and then suddenly it will flower. That happened to Marlon Brando. He was not an actor when he came in. He was just a boy” (Chinoy 512). In Art Adler tells her students on the first day of class, “The thing that leads you here, at this moment, is that you have talent. Take my word for it. That thing that makes you say, ‘I want to do something’—­that is the beginning of talent” (Adler, Art 12). Adler’s approach to the “talent” question mirrors Boleslavsky’s implication in the scene with the Creature’s Aunt cited in chapter 5: “Talent needs cultivation, [and] only through cultivation can one discover the presence of talent” (Boleslavsky, Acting 46). It is also contra the Actors Studio’s focus on talent as a prerequisite for study, which may suggest an additional motivation to exile talent from Adler’s first impression of student actors. Adler invokes the dream of scales for the actor with an explicit comparison to musicians. “An actor rehearsing a play is like a pianist warming up by doing scales. A Beethoven sonata cannot be performed faultlessly at once” (Adler, Technique 113). A similar comparison is found in Art in the fictional sixth lesson. Acknowledging that some students may be wondering when they will do scene work, she says, “When you begin playing the piano, do you immediately begin studying Beethoven sonatas? Of course

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not. You begin by working on scales, by making your fingers strong. . . . It takes a long time before you’re ready to do Beethoven sonatas. The same is true in theatre” (Adler, Art 80). Just like Strasberg (and others), Adler argued for the universal applicability of her techniques. “If you speak to a man like Grotowski, he has a very good Stanislavsky base. If a man like Grotowski, who is most avant-­ garde, uses it as a base, it seems to be something that makes the director and the actors feel they can use their craft in any direction” (Chinoy 511). Whether it is Ibsen or Grotowski, the technique can and should be used. Similarly, Adler asserts that her techniques will make actors more versatile. “With proper training you can stretch your talents immeasurably, creating a new depth and range of scenic roles” (Adler, Technique 7). Note that nobody at this time is arguing that the purpose of training is to discover your “type” and then teach you to play only that, as stock might have done with its lines of business. Adler even specifically inveighs against typecasting, while simultaneously championing training and disdaining talent, in Stella Adler on Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov: What is a better way of artistic life than typecasting, the movie-­star way? The answer is craft. Only craft releases talent. If you learn the craft of acting completely, it can become the art of acting—­a healthy system that will equip you to play a full range of parts. It requires only a normal body with normal talent (Adler and Paris, Ibsen 292, emphasis original). Far from hoping to shape her students into narrowly molded stars, the protean ideal of the infinitely malleable actor is held up as the goal, achievable through a mastery of craft. Without it, the art cannot be practiced. Further, there is no need for genius; only a normal body and a normal amount of talent are needed.

MEISNER: TRAINING THE INSTINCTS

Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg, and Sanford Meisner are widely acknowledged as the “Big Three” in postwar US acting training. Another original member of the Group Theatre, Meisner (1907 –­ 1997) began teaching at the Neighborhood Playhouse starting in 1935, and with only a few gaps—­primarily his time in Hollywood referenced at the end of chapter 7—­stayed there as an instructor until 1990. As a methodology, Meisner Technique can be seen

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as a blend of Adler and Strasberg’s approaches to acting: emotions aren’t central to the system but are not exiled outright. Perhaps for this reason, while references to scientific theory are fewer and less extensive than in Strasberg, they are still present in Meisner’s text, supporting work on the industrial liability that is emotional presentation. Scientific citation aside, Meisner’s totemic book, On Acting (written in conjunction with Dennis Longwell, 1987) offers multiple references to elements of the technological paradigm. Meisner invokes science, acknowledges but does not worry overmuch about emotion, inveighs against relying on natural talent and “tricks of the trade,” emphasizes the necessity of “work” and cultivation in learning to act, and even mirrors the Taylorist dynamic between worker and manager found in Principles of Scientific Management. For Meisner, the fundamental unit of acting was “doing” and the reality of engaging in an action on stage, and in this way he is certainly in harmony with Adler, whose third chapter in her Art of Acting is titled simply “Acting Is Doing.” However, for Meisner, what the actor actually does should arise from instinctual responses, rather than an overt dive into text analysis. “My approach is based on bringing the actor back to his emotional impulses and to acting that is firmly rooted in the instinctive. It is based on the fact that all good acting comes from the heart, as it were, and that there’s no mentality in it” (Meisner and Longwell 37).13 To develop an actor’s instincts, Meisner invented his signature exercise, “Repetitions.”14 The basic repetition is one actor stating an observation about another actor, which is then repeated (“You have a blue shirt.” “I have a blue shirt.”). Constant’s analysis of technological change would see this as an example of instinctual innovation—­the sense that something could be improved, even if there wasn’t a particular demand for it or theory behind it. Meisner pursued experiments designed to bring the actor into a state free of prejudgment, where instinctual reactions could dominate, and Repetitions was the result. Meisner frankly admits that the Repetitions are machine-­like. “It’s mechanical, it’s inhuman, right? But it has something in it. It has connection” (Meisner and Longwell 22). After working on “simple” Repetitions, the exercise is deepened by the addition of an “independent activity” that shifts one actor’s focus onto completing a specific task with high stakes, and the second 13. Here Meisner effectively restates Wheeler’s arguments with Ayres in the 1890s. Wheeler: “If the unconscious faculties are not called into play we get the verbalist doing with a hard, pragmatic brain what ought to have been done with the heart” (Ayres 263). 14. Meisner’s “official” nomenclature as established in On Acting is the “Word Repetition Game” (22), though common usage shortens this to “Repetitions.”

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actor knocking and entering the fictional room. Ideally, Repetitions and their variations led to truthful, in-­the-­moment connections with other actors, which could then be leveraged into greater range and flexibility in playing. With openness and responsiveness to the reality in front of them, “the actor [can] create the role from the given material present on stage and in the life of another person, rather than a mental preconception of the character” (Krasner 146). Meisner emphasized a focus on an actor’s scene partner(s) as a source for truthful performance. “Acting is not talking. It is living off the other fellow” (Meisner and Longwell 42).15 What actors get from their partners is processed, through sharpened instincts, into engaging acting. Despite the emphasis on spontaneous, unintellectual performances, Meisner fully believed in technique and exercises, and was more than content to dismiss traditional solutions for the stage. Meisner recalled that his first lessons in acting came at the Theatre Guild school under Winifred Lenihan, whom Meisner scorns as “a stock-­company technician” while describing the entire school as “a mediocre place” (Meisner and Longwell 7). Meisner elsewhere uses the phrase “stock-­company stuff” to describe poor acting habits (Meisner and Longwell 48). Following a class session in which Meisner pauses to dismiss a student who had the audacity to confess that he felt like he wasn’t learning anything, he says to his assistant, “Bruce is quite similar. Although he’s been in the business for twenty years, like Lila—­who God knows I should get rid of too—­he has no technique. Instead he has accumulated an awesome number of superficial tricks” (Meisner and Longwell 114). Tradition, rules of thumb, and on-­the-­job education—­indicated by the “twenty years” Bruce has already spent working in the industry—­all receive the same derision inherited from modern industrial philosophy. Students Bruce and Lila stand out in the early chapters of On Acting. Both are older and had worked as actors for years before being accepted into Meisner’s class. About a month into the class they were performing an exercise, which Meisner eventually interrupted. “There is so much to talk about here” Meisner begins, explaining that he only wants to see his exercise, not any “acting.” When Lila agrees, saying “I knew I was way off base” (she had brought a costume to wear), Meisner interrupts again with a sharp “No talking!” and proceeds to harangue Lila about trying to “act” rather than learn the basics of acting (Meisner and Longwell 53). 15. This is another echo of Adler: “Acting is always reacting, and shouldn’t arise out of a false response. And the reacting always presumes the presence of a partner” (Adler, Art 181). By comparison, Strasberg emphasized a near-­radical self-­reliance at times: “An actor has to be able to do his part on stage without depending on someone else” (O’Malley).

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The entire exchange is quite rich, and Malague in particular unpacks aspects of gendered argumentation between Meisner, Lila, and Bruce (see Malague 119–­22). There are two points in particular connected to the technological paradigm. The first is the idea that Meisner is teaching acting technique separate from actually acting, meaning what someone would do onstage in a performance. To make his point, Meisner explicitly raises the musician comparison: You [Lila] were like somebody who’s been playing the piano for years by ear, who decides to study the instrument and finds a teacher—­this is not meant unkindly—­who [says] ‘Learn to raise a finger without tensing and then drop it. Then learn to raise another. And he takes you back to the absolute beginning of learning how to play. (Meisner and Longwell 53, emphasis original) Meisner makes his exercises analogous to the most basic finger movements of a novice piano player; they are the scales of the actor, the prerequisites to performance.16 Lila (and later Bruce) are described as having previously learned to play by ear. They may have natural talent, and may even have achieved some measures of success by doing what they stumbled upon. What they lack is real technique. On Acting privileges the idea of “technique.” One of the students says “There are many supposed techniques around, but nobody with a really clear vision of what to do. . . . I’m a person who needs some kind of clarity in being taught—­you know, step-­by-­step. I’ve worked with a lot of people who teach scenes, who know what to do in any number of given scenes, but who have no clarity, no technique, no way to help the student go step-­by-­ step.” Despite the near-­echo of Adler’s own assertion that acting was for people who worked step by step, Meisner’s reply is typical for the period: “There are no teachers of acting technique around. They’re fakers! I say this impersonally. I’ve seen their work” (Meisner and Longwell 186). Meisner, of course, is no faker. He offers the promise of an acting techne that will allow students to succeed in a variety of parts, because they know the equivalent of their scales and fingering. A second point that emerges from the Lila/Bruce episode is Meis16. Meisner’s invocation of musicianship had a special resonance for him, because he played piano as an adolescent and even studied for one year at the “Damrosch Institute of Music (later absorbed into the Julliard School)” (Meisner and Longwell 6).

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ner’s emphasis on the necessity of work, always a laudable position under Taylorism: Don’t behave as if acting were something that any amateur can turn on! It’s not true! . . . You both are making me be very sharp and determined because you don’t put enough work into what you’re doing! . . . This country is full of actors who have been trained beautifully—­by me! But they worked! I say, “Don’t act, don’t fake, don’t pretend—­ work!” That will train your concentration, your actor’s faith and, maybe, your emotion. (Meisner and Longwell 54–­55, emphasis original) Meisner’s invocation of work as the necessary component of true acting has its roots a century in the past in the shift to acting being perceived as a craft profession. MacKaye and Stebbins demanded that the young actor learn the craft before appearing on the stage. Ayres hoped that actors would devote themselves to a thorough course of elocutionary study prior to doing any acting. Fiske reveled in the need to learn the shades of emotion and their proper representation. Hollywood, both before and after sound, promised that successful acting was W-­O-­R-­K. Lewis’s lecture stressed the “Work on Oneself” that an aspiring actor learning “the Method” should be prepared to do, and Strasberg and Adler made the same point in a similar fashion. Meisner is just the latest seeking to reinforce the idea that acting required labor. His final advice to the class is in the same vein. “Keep working all the time . . . [and] hold on to the foundation of your technique. It’s solid” (Meisner and Longwell 250, emphasis original). Despite his position as an advocate for the most “organic” and instinctual of methodologies, instincts can only be cultivated through work (specifically, work guided by Meisner himself). This episode exposes another similarity between Taylorism and Meisner. The harsh tone Meisner takes with his students is mirrored by Taylor and Schmidt, and reflects the scientific management distinction between scientists, managers, and laborers. After Taylor tells Schmidt that a high-­ priced man “will do exactly what this man [the manager] tells you to-­ morrow, from morning until night,” he explains, “This seems to be rather rough talk. And indeed it would be if applied to an educated mechanic, or even an intelligent laborer. With a man of the mentally sluggish type of Schmidt it is appropriate and not unkind” (Taylor 21). Schmidt doesn’t, and couldn’t, understand the science behind the work. Neither, it seems, do most of the actors in Meisner’s class, and his rough talk is seen as neces-

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sary to make clear what the actors need to do. When his assistant asks whether Lila’s age and experience make it harder for him to teach her, Meisner responds, “Yes, but I treat her like a child. . . . I don’t treat her like somebody with a reputation. I know what her problems are as an actor, and I go after them” (Meisner and Longwell 174). One exception to the strict binary division between scientist (Meisner) and laborer (actor) is Meisner’s student Ray. “He’s intelligent. I can always count on him to summarize accurately whatever point I’m struggling to make. Of all of them he would make the best teacher, I think” (Meisner and Longwell 95). By the end of the book Ray has become Meisner’s new assistant, a budding scientific manager who will, in due course, take up the mantle of managing according to the laws of the stage as determined by Meisner. Just as Taylor acknowledges that not everyone is suited to moving pig iron professionally, not everyone in Meisner’s class proves amenable to the system. Lila is permitted to stay, but Bruce and another student named Philip are asked to leave (Bruce is reinstated after a personal appeal to Meisner). When cutting students, Meisner says, “I usually write to say that I regret that in my opinion I am not the right teacher for him” (Meisner and Longwell 113), suggesting that another teacher might be a better fit. However, given his vociferous defense of his methodology and his open disdain for nearly every other acting teacher working, it seems just as likely that any student who can’t, or won’t, commit to mastering the Repetitions is deemed doomed to fail. Taylor was careful to say that not everybody could move forty-­seven long tons of iron a day, but for those who were best suited to the task, scientific management would allow them to achieve their maximum capacity. Similarly, if you aren’t suited to acting, Meisner can’t guarantee results. If you are, then the technique, based in the science of the stage, is the means for your highest personal achievement. Real emotions, as far as an actor’s work is concerned, remain important. Meisner doesn’t buy Diderot’s suggestion that emotions not felt could be as compelling as an emotion truly experienced by the actor. “You cannot escape the impact of emotion, whether it’s in a big theater or a tiny one. . . . If you have it, it infects you and the audience. If you don’t have it . . . just say the lines as truthfully as you are capable of doing. You can’t fake emotion. It immediately exposes the fact that you ain’t got it” (Meisner and Longwell 87). No external acting can replace the power of true feeling, so it is better not to try and convince the audience of emotions that aren’t there. “Just say the lines as truthfully as you can” and that is enough. Industrialism viewed emotions as illogical and difficult to control. Meisner accepts the capricious nature of emotions and builds his approach around this liability.

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Meisner holds legendary actress Eleanora Duse in high regard (as did Strasberg and Hagen17). The first chapter in On Acting is titled “Setting the Scene: Duse’s Blush,” drawn from a G. B. Shaw review of Duse in performance in 1895. Duse’s character has returned home as a successful opera singer after being thrown out by her father twenty-­five years in the past. The father of her child (had out of wedlock) is now a close friend of the family and comes to call in the third act. In Meisner’s recounting of the performance and Shaw’s review: All of a sudden she realizes that she’s blushing, and it gets so bad that she drops her head and hides her face in embarrassment. Now that’s a piece of realistic acting! And Shaw confesses to a certain professional curiosity as to whether it happens every time she plays that part. It doesn’t. But that blush is the epitome of living truthfully under imaginary circumstances, which is my definition of good acting. That blush came out of her. She was a genius! (Meisner and Longwell 14–­15, initial emphasis mine) Meisner’s assurance that Duse would not have blushed the same way every night does not diminish her stature as a giant of the stage. It was enough that she was playing truthfully within the imaginary circumstances of the play and feeling what she was feeling in the moment. The blush was just icing on the cake. Duse is not merely an introductory anecdote. Her picture graces Meisner’s desk at the Playhouse (Meisner and Longwell 36), and Meisner invokes her during class as a true artist who made her materials and performances her own. At the same time, when Meisner discusses Duse’s history with his students, part of her legacy is a dismissal of the full protean ideal. Duse has her own strengths and weaknesses, as do all actors. “Each of us has a certain scope and certain limitations. That’s our nature, our theatrical nature.  .  .  . Duse could not play Shakespeare. She tried but she failed” (Meisner and Longwell 143). While Meisner will suggest that excellent acting technique can make actors more flexible, he does not pretend that every actor is equally suited to every role. 17. Hirsch quotes Strasberg on Duse: “Duse’s performances summarized the search for inner and outer truth. . . . She arrived at a fusion of the inner and external that we haven’t achieved. . . . Her work had meaning and reality and conviction greater than any in the entire history of the theater. It will take the next one hundred years of the theater to deal with her accomplishment” (Hirsch 146–­47). In A Dream of Passion, Strasberg calls Duse “the most extraordinary performer of her time” (Strasberg 16). For Hagen on Duse, see below.

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Classical difficulties aside, Duse is still celebrated as a genius of the theater. The story of her blush is told to the students, along with Meisner’s assessment that it was a result, not Duse’s end goal in the scene. “I think it happened when it happened. That’s all. That blush cannot be prepared for, that’s my point” (Meisner and Longwell 191). It isn’t the external markers of emotion that an actor needs to prepare, it is the inner responsiveness to the situation that allows truthful emotion to emerge. Real emotion is brought to a given scene in one of two ways. The first is from “Preparation,” introduced in chapter 6. Preparation is not simply remembering an emotional state, but imagining a situation in which you (the actor) would feel as the character is asked to feel. By contrast, Strasberg asks actors to summon an emotional memory from their own experience, whereas Adler asks for recall of an action analogous to one in the text. This is emphatically not emotional memory as practiced in the Group, or a stereotypical Stanislavskian exercise. While in “the early days of the Stanislavsky System” Stanislavsky used “emotional memory,” Meisner says, “I don’t use it, and neither did he after thirty years of experimentation” (Meisner and Longwell 79). Rhetorically, Meisner grants himself reflected authority via Stanislavsky, whose thirty years of experimentation (with all the scientific goodness that phrasing provides) eventually made him give up emotional memory, just as Meisner has. Imaginative preparation is what allows the actor to start a given scene with the correct emotional content. At the same time, Meisner has faith that actors who have honed their instincts and responsiveness will find emotion waiting for them in the action of playing a scene. In the next chapter, Meisner likens emotions to a river and the text of the play to a canoe riding on the river. “First build a canoe and then put it on the water, and whatever the water does, the canoe follows. The text is the canoe, but you must begin by putting the emphasis on the stormy river. I can’t be any clearer than that” (Meisner and Longwell 116). Great actors’ emotions “arise from the given circumstances of the play, the situation they imagine themselves to be in.” When one of the students suggests that “it’s not necessarily something they bring on with them,” Meisner agrees (Meisner and Longwell 121–­22). In discussing the students’ final scenes, Meisner offers, “A preparation is only for the beginning of the scene, and each moment feeds it and changes it. You’re not going to get it from the text!” (Meisner and Longwell 199). Emotions are too difficult to map and control, Duse or no Duse. The best you can hope for is to have an emotional preparation that will launch you into the scene; afterward you are “riding the river” of emotion that should be flowing from the interaction of the characters.

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Meisner also doesn’t worry overmuch about the author’s lines or the actor being heard. These “technical concerns” are of far less importance, and are far easier to accomplish, than the grounding in responsiveness that he hopes to inculcate through progressing through the Repetitions. He’s like the elocutionist Ayres: you can learn pretty much everything you need to know about playing Hamlet and only go on stage in the last couple weeks of rehearsal if you have worked through his system. While Ayres would substitute elocution for repetitions, the idea is the same. Do one thing, and everything else is easy and falls into place. After watching Lila’s final scene from Spring Awakening, Meisner comments, “Technically its fault was lack of clarity, but I don’t care about that. The problem is to be understandable without losing the emotional life of the scene, which you now have. Getting used to having the emotion will help greatly; the clarity will come by itself. The canoe won’t capsize” (Meisner and Longwell 200). The actual lines are an afterthought. A trained actor’s instincts will allow them to navigate the river every time, even if the reality of the river/emotion changes from night to night. Meisner is notoriously light on the specifics of how to go about generating emotive states. As Malague summarizes, “Meisner gives almost no instruction on how ‘preparation’ can actually be achieved.  .  .  . Meisner simply tells his actors that they should think of stimulating and evocative situations or images, but he offers very little in the way of teaching them how to become susceptible to their own internal suggestions” (Malague 148). Meisner calls it “daydreaming” when he introduces it to the class. “It’s daydreaming which causes a transformation in your inner life, so that you are not what you actually were five minutes ago, because your fantasy is working on you” (Meisner and Longwell 84). Beyond this, there is no specific technique articulated—­just that the actor will feel the emotion that will then color the presentation of the scene. An example comes from the scene-­study portion of the text. For Lila and her acting partner Sarah, Meisner suggests a performative emotional state with both actresses crying to begin. “I don’t care what you think of. Cry! And don’t stop crying until I tell you to. . . . Sarah, if somebody told you that your mother was about to die, would it upset you? . . . Okay, so start to cry” (Meisner and Longwell 197). What they think of, and how, isn’t interrogated. Summoning emotion is portrayed as an essential skill of the actor, but one that can occur naturally and with little difficulty.18 What emotion a scene calls for 18. In keeping with Malague’s overall read of Meisner technique, it is unsurprising that the bulk of the crying recounted in On Acting is done by women. See Malague’s discussion of

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is not drawn from an intensive text analysis, but from (predictably) an instinctual response. Meisner, however, solely determines which instinctual responses are “correct.” Malague explores an episode from Meisner’s own On Acting where Meisner effectively forestalls any alternatives to his chosen interpretation of the final scene of Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour. When an actor suggests that anger might be a valid choice for the character of Karen, Meisner curtly replies, “Then it’s a mischoice.” When asked “[H]ow do you make the right choice?” Meisner replies “Your instinct!” (Meisner and Longwell 141). Through training, Meisner believes, the single right choice will become instinctual for actors. Malague, and others, understandably find this problematical and self-­contradictory. “Meisner claims to revere actor instinct above all else, but [the idea] that there might be more than one plausible human reaction in this scenario . . . is refused. Meisner’s choice is presented as the only choice, and it is not supported by any kind of script analysis” (Malague 144). By keeping himself as the arbiter of appropriate instinctual responses, Meisner maintains his role as the scientific manager and scientist of the stage, with the students relegated to struggling Schmidts. Further, by allowing only one right answer, Meisner continues the Taylorist tradition of seeing every problem as having a single optimum solution.19 There is also a suggestion of Esther Williams’s criticism of Lillian Burns at MGM applied to Meisner: he’s training them all to be himself. Beyond Taylor and Burns, another parallel suggests itself between Meisner and the history of techne: Longmans’s Director’s Manuscripts. Meisner has the answers for every scene. The actors don’t. For example, there was apparently no expectation that the students would read the full plays that their final scenes were taken from (the sides were handed out in class). When Meisner asks who “Mrs. Schmidt” is in Lila’s scene, she replies she “assumed, for the sake of the scene . . . that she’s an old friend.” Meisner corrects her, “No! She’s the abortionist!” (Meisner and Longwell 199). But there is no anger about her not reading the entire play, no public shaming for not knowing the given circumstances of the scene, no commandment (as she would have received from Adler) to go back to the text and insure that it is clear and understood. The actors, as cogs in the machine, are responsible for generating an appropriate initial emotional state and then riding the river, guided by someone else, either the director or instructor. gender-­based stereotypes on 136–­37, as well as the discussion of Freud in relation to Meisner on 137–­41. 19. Also echoed by Ayres and his claims of being a “precisionist”—­see chapter 1.

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This emphasis on emotions, despite or perhaps because of the lack of specific technique, may be why Meisner includes references to scientific authority, psychology and Freud in particular, where Adler felt no similar need. In the first chapter’s biography of Meisner he describes himself as someone with “considerable experience in psychoanalysis” (Meisner and Longwell 5). Chapter 7, “Improvisation,” opens with a long epigraph from Freud’s “The Relation of the Poet to Day-­dreaming” (Meisner and Longwell 96), and Meisner cites (at length) a section from Freud’s A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis at the close of chapter 8.20 Meisner described the section in Freud as “marvelous. I can’t tell you how much this discussion of fantasy helped me clarify my thoughts about the dreadful problem of preparation” (Meisner and Longwell 134). In a chapter comprised of unordered tidbits and anecdotes drawn from Meisner’s teaching, he confesses that he shared his personal mental model of how an artist transforms neuroses into art with “a famous psychoanalyst” who, instead of telling him he was flat wrong, “said he saw some truth in it” (Meisner and Longwell 190), proving that Meisner’s instincts are supported by modern science. Freud is also specifically invoked with the class in the first chapter on emotional preparation. “Dr. Freud  .  .  . maintains that all fantasy comes from ambition or sex” (Meisner and Longwell 81). A few pages later he returns to the role of imagination in generating emotions, supported by psychology: “We use our imagination in order to fulfill in ourselves what we have more or less determined is our emotional condition before we begin the scene. I’ve quoted Freud. I’ve said that preparation is a product of your ambitious or sexual imagination” (Meisner and Longwell 85). The same point is reiterated in the follow-­up chapter: “Ambition or sex. That’s according to Dr. Freud, and I believe it” (Meisner and Longwell 119).21 Just as Meisner’s system is stripped down to seeming essentials, so too are the psychological motivations underpinning his approach. Its either ambition or sex—­one or the other will suffice. Finally, there is a tendency in Meisner, found in Strasberg, Adler, and Hagen as well, to separate acting from being an actor, and this is connected, for me, to the stubborn refusal of show business to conform to the precision of Anthony’s “Journal of Dramatic Technology” visions. Bruce and Lila—­ 20. This chapter opens with an extended epigraph from George Lewes’s Actors and the Art of Acting (1875)—­a departure from the normal practice of short quotes from Meisner or snippets of exchanges between Meisner and his students—­suggesting an alternate source of authority being invoked. 21. Pitches argues that despite Meisner’s citations of Freud, it is the work of J. B. Watson and “Behaviourism” that shapes his actual practice (see Pitches 122–­23).

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Meisner’s initially problematic students—­are, by any historical definition, actors. Both had made their living being on stage, but that is different than being successful in class. Meisner can suggest that those who work with him will find success—­his roster of former students indicates as much—­ but by separating popular acclaim (and casting) from “being an actor,” Meisner can better define success and failure on favorable terms. Adler draws a similar distinction, saying “It is good for the young actor to verbalize his needs and fear, to make a distinction between people’s (the public) idea of success (stardom) and the slow maturing of a great performer who can make more developed choices” (Adler, Technique 8). More directly, in Art of Acting Adler says, “I want you to be able to say, ‘They can give me the part or they can take away the part. I know I’m an actress’” (Adler, Art 15). While Strasberg’s emphasis on nurturing (some would argue poaching) “stars” ameliorates this point to a certain extent, as Carnicke writes, “the Studio survived by strictly limiting its activities to the development of the actor’s craft and avoiding commercial pressures” (Carnicke, Stanislavsky, 2nd ed. 53). The focus is shifted away from the concrete and easily measurable metric of employment—­what the Creature’s Aunt in Six Lessons might describe as working as long as there is pay, and if you have talent, the pay will last for a long time—­and toward a loftier but critically more ambiguous, perhaps even auratic, measure of success: acting well. Job or no job, the actor can still be an actor. Conveniently for Meisner, this is a position where his own judgment, rather than the gods of the marketplace, serves as the final adjudicator. When student Bette laments that she’s never cast in “roles I’d really love to do  .  .  . killer parts,” Meisner replies simply, “That’s our theater.”22 “Now, that’s encouraging,” she says. “He didn’t say I couldn’t do those parts, but that they didn’t think I could do them, or that they didn’t want to see me do them. They don’t want people to act. They want people to be what they appear to be” (Meisner and Longwell 189, emphasis original).23 It isn’t that Bette can’t act, it is the lack of imagination and vision on the part of the business of theater that keeps her from acting in public. But 22. Compare with Boleslavsky’s assurance that the Creature will be able to play “the eternal parts of universal literature” (Boleslavsky 63). He does not suggest the possibility she won’t play them in the same way that Meisner does, but the seeds of this trajectory are arguably planted here. Fiske, in contrast, assures her readers that a stage actor armed with diligent technique can command the audience, and by extension casting directors, and will find commercial success through their skills. 23. Given the importance on true emotion in Meisner, the complaint that casting agents want people to be what they appear is somewhat self-­contradictory, since that is what Meisner himself demands. If you are to appear sad, you must feel sad, and so on.

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Meisner can still mold her into an actor, even if she never works on stage a day in her life.24 Compared with Adler or Strasberg, Meisner’s technique is now one of the most widely taught, a quality partially attributed to a highly industrial quality: its reproducibility. In a survey of Meisner teachers cited by Malague, it was “the absence of a systematic step-­by-­step teachable procedure in the approaches of Strasberg and Adler” that accounted for the increasing popularity of Meisner technique in conservatories and schools (Holub 214, cited in Malage 116–­17). The critique by Meisner’s student that many teachers don’t have a real “step-­by-­step” approach is here echoed in the real world. Despite the clarity of Adler’s exercises or the methodology of emotional recall developed by Strasberg, it is the simplicity of the Repetitions, with Meisner’s minimal variations and scientific scaffolding, that ends up enjoying a privileged curricular position. Despite sometimes saying he wanted his technique to die with him (specifically, when asked what should happen to the Playhouse when he stopped teaching, he said “I hope they close it down. It will have done its work” [Meisner and Longwell 186]), he had actually created an ideal system for the scientific management model.25 In teacher and scholar Brandt Pope’s scientifically tinged description, “While it is certainly possible to reject the fundamental tenets of Meisner-­based work, it is difficult to comprehend how principles this radical and transformational (once adopted) could be inconsistently applied to dramatic material. So, as the physics professor might say, if gravity works, it works all the time” (Pope 147).26 Meisner established the science. The subsequent managers could then take the system and guide the laborers in accordance with the pre-­established progression of exercises, confident in the process and their universal applicability. 24. Chow cites Angela McRobbie’s article “Clubs to Companies: Notes on the Decline of Political Culture in Speeded up Creative Worlds” in identifying a “high level of self-­exploitation in the creative industries, due to a combination of passion and pleasure. The rewards for creative labour are presented as ‘inherent’; one’s work becomes reconceptualised as one’s craft” (Chow 140). 25. Meisner was not alone in seeing himself in a privileged position as a teacher. “Strasberg never coached a successor because he felt no one could replace him; and when she [Adler] was asked recently who would continue in her footsteps after she was gone, Stella answered, ‘No one.’” (Hirsch 217). 26. This sentiment was reflected by one of Meisner’s most prominent students-­turned-­ teacher William Esper. “That’s one of those things that’s kept me with Meisner for so long. It’s what his work does. It’ll take you to Shakespeare. It’ll take you to Restoration. It’ll take you to avant-­garde stuff like Wooster group . . . The work prepares the student to be any kind of actor. They can go anywhere with it. Because truth is truth” (Reiter).

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HAGEN: “WHATEVER IT MAY BE, IT SHOULD SERVE AS A LABORATORY”

Finally, a useful example of how these various rhetorical strains could be recombined can be found in the work of Uta Hagen (1919–­2004). Alone among the figures presented in this chapter, she was not a member of the Group Theatre, having made her way to the professional stage in the 1930s. A dedicated actor, she enjoyed success prior to her casting as Desdemona opposite Paul Robeson’s Othello in 1945. Other notable roles included Blanche in a Harold Clurman–­directed production of A Streetcar Named Desire (1950) and the original Martha in Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962). Appearing on Broadway and film infrequently over the course of her career, her primary focus was on teaching and performing at the HB Studio, from 1947 nearly until her death. Hagen wrote two books on acting: Respect for Acting (1973, in conjunction with Haskel Frankel) and A Challenge for the Actor (1991). In her second book Hagen alters some of her vocabulary, and while at one point she claimed to have “disassociated” herself from the first text (Buckley), the central exercises, underlying philosophy, and expectations about how to work on one’s self as an actor remain remarkably consistent between the two texts. Respect is shorter than Challenge by close to 100 pages and offers a more straightforward catalog of exercises (somewhat analogous to Adler’s Technique versus The Art of Acting), both of which probably help account for its greater popularity as an acting textbook than the subsequent Challenge. My analysis primarily focuses on Hagen’s first text, though I have included points from the second book where a useful comparison or extension of her original ideas might be found. Hagen begins both books confessing she used to be like the Creature’s Aunt (even if she doesn’t actually cite her), believing that “you’re just born to be an actor” and that “any further training [beyond voice and body] can come only from actually performing before an audience” (Hagen and Frankel 3).27 She then quickly transitions into familiar comparisons between musicians, dancers, and actors; the first two have a body of technique that can be learned and mastered, whereas the actor seems to exist bereft of such supports. She allows that a few “made their way in this sink-­or-­swim world, but they were geniuses” who had managed to independently de27. Respect for Acting is divided into three sections, each of which has an introduction set off in italics from the specific content chapters. When quoting from these introductions I have eliminated the blanket italics for clarity while maintaining her original emphases as appropriate.

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velop a set of techniques that allowed them to rise above the general lack of craft in the profession. Now genius is no longer necessary to achieve theatrical success, for “even though we can’t be all so endowed, we can develop a higher level of performing than the one which has resulted from the hit-­ or-­miss customs of the past” (Hagen and Frankel 4). Technique familiarly replaces instinct, offering a path to stage success. As for her own early experience, in addition to her faith in the outmoded just-­do-­it approach, she catalogs a list of “tricks” she acquired: “‘clean entrance’ techniques, manufactured tears and laughter, lyric ‘qualities,’ etc.—­all the things to do for calculated outer effects” (Hagen and Frankel 8). All of her criticisms of traditional theater training could have been leveled, with only minor changes to specific references, by Taylor at traditional manufacturing, by Fiske after him at historical performance practices, or more recently by Meisner at the professional actors in his class who lack technique. Hagen describes a theatrical milieu in which the traditions of the past are handed down, picked up haphazardly, and applied with little worry beyond a quick affirmation by an audience potentially unable to imagine an alternative to what they are seeing in front of them. This is essentially analogous to the state of manufacturing as Taylor sees it before the arrival of scientific management. Hagen credits Harold Clurman (not Taylor) with changing her views on theater and theatrical practice. “He took away my tricks,” she writes, “he imposed no line readings, no gestures, no positions on the actors” (Hagen and Frankel 8). Clurman inspired Hagen to explore acting technique more deeply, and she worked in conjunction with (and eventually married) Herbert Berghof. It is Berghof who “gave me painstaking help in how to develop and make use of those discoveries [from Clurman], how to find a true technique of acting” (Hagen and Frankel 8–­9, emphasis mine). Berghof, despite having founded the Herbert Berghof Studio (later just the HB Studio) in 1945, was a charter member of the Actors Studio (Carnicke, Stanislavsky, 2nd ed. 52), and so Hagen’s self-­identified influences were closely tied to the Group Theatre lineage, even if she was one step removed. As with the other major teachers of acting, Hagen and Berghof gathered their own roster of subsequently successful acting students who studied under them. Like Kazan’s initial plan for the Actors Studio, Hagen’s recounting of the overall goal of the HB Studio highlights the efficiency to be gained by sharing a training regimen. “It will be a company of people who have grown together, who are united by common aims and by a way of work which has a common language and results in a homogenous form of expression” (Hagen and Frankel 10). Speaking the same language will make it easier to produce unified works of art.

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A shorthand for Hagen’s conception of divergent approaches to performance is her distinction between representational/external and presentational/internal acting. Perhaps the most radical confession that Hagen makes in both books is that while she favors and teaches the Presentational, “I do not reject in toto the Representational. To do so would be to reject actors of brilliance who have found their way along that path” (Hagen and Frankel 13). Her open-­mindedness, however, is quite qualified. As an example of a successful Representational actor, she invokes Sarah Bernhardt. In playing a moment in a popular melodrama, Bernhardt roused the audience to “scream and shout its admiration,” shaping her rhetorical delivery of the lines for maximum audience impact. Yet when Eleanora Duse played the same scene, her delivery was quite different. Instead of a “rising vibrato of passion,” Duse offered a quiet and sincere line reading. As a result, Hagen reports, “Duse’s audience wept” (Hagen and Frankel 12). Duse’s presentational approach is portrayed as the higher achievement in artistry. Even while professing to appreciate the skill of the successful representationalist, it is the internal, presentational actor who is Hagen’s hero. Hagen revisits these definitions in Challenge, replacing “representational acting” with “formalism” and “presentational acting” with “realism.” Duse is more fully fleshed out as Hagen’s idol in the latter book, with Bernhardt still serving as an actor who achieved popular success following the formalistic route. She then quotes at length from the same George Bernard Shaw review of Duse that Meisner cited for his own students describing “Duse’s blush” (Hagen 42–­43, small caps emphasis original). This expansion on Duse’s virtuosity leads Hagen into an extended recounting of other great figures in acting history (Edwin Booth, Henry Irving, etc.) before invoking Stanislavsky himself, who, she says, sought out talented actors to learn “the procedures they were using. He wanted to define what they had in common that set them apart from formalistic, traditional actors, to make the seemingly mysterious sources of their work concrete” (Hagen 45). Stanislavsky wanted to codify how to create an engaging performance, the same goal Hagen set for herself in her teaching and writing. Stanislavsky, however, is not to be revered as an all-­knowing oracle, because he was necessarily a product of his place and time. The specific limits Hagen cites are telling: Stanislavsky only knew the science of his day. As a result, his discoveries were based on his understanding of how the great realistic actors applied the psychology of human struggles and drives.  .  .  . It is wrong to assume he would have stood still, clinging to the conclusions to which he came at the early part of the twentieth century. We

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cannot ignore the findings of the many behavioral psychologists that have come to our attention since his death. (Hagen 46, emphasis original) What follows is a list of twentieth-­century scientists and theorists (Jung and Maslow are listed alongside “Bruno Bettelheim and his uses of enchantment”) who were necessarily unknown to Stanislavsky. New science leads to new technologies, and the list of significant thinkers, she implies, informs more recent systems of acting pedagogy, including her own. Perhaps most tellingly, Hagen later assures the reader “I have no desire to diminish the importance of Stanislavsky’s pioneering efforts: He provided us with a new concept of the approach to our work. He laid the foundation for a common language and gave us the knowledge that tools existed with which to work on our craft” (Hagen 49, emphasis mine). Stanislavsky, for Hagen, pioneered the view that acting could be approached in a systematic manner and “gave us the knowledge that tools existed”; critically, however, she does not say he provided the tools themselves. His actual system is necessarily outdated, and as such, can be relegated to history like the slide rule. Hagen celebrates Stanislavsky as an innovator staking out the territory, but believes his methods must be supplanted by technologies of acting informed by contemporary science. Hagen’s text includes numerous examples of congruence with the technological paradigm. An overt example from Challenge comes near the end, in a special section for teachers. Here she offers “my urgent suggestions for the prerequisites of an actor’s space, for a studio, workshop, atelier, stage, or classroom. Whatever it may be, it should serve as a laboratory” (Hagen 295, emphasis original). Hagen put it in bold: learning to act should take place in a space organized for scientific investigation. Hagen’s views on talent are also in keeping with the technological mindset. While talent was necessary, it alone wasn’t sufficient to offer a hopeful actor success. In addition to a natural talent, which she describes as a combination of “high sensitivity, easy vulnerability, high sensory equipment . . . [and] a vivid imagination” (among other factors), true actors must acquire and develop “character and ethics, a point of view about the world in which you live and an education” (Hagen and Frankel 13). In an echo of the Hollywood boosters of the presound era, it is training and dedication that make the lesser actor the victorious tortoise against the hare. “The less-­ talented actor can win [against the gifted actor] with a thorough, back-­ breaking discipline in his work, in his examination of his materials and his relationship to it, in the dedication . . . to his work” (Hagen and Frankel

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19).28 Without training, technique, and the willingness to work, the actor is lost. Toward the end of Respect, she quotes Max Reinhardt: “Never mind your talent! Do you have tenacity?” She then quotes her own mother in a similar vein: “Talent is a gift which many people have. What you make of it determines whether or not you will be an artist” (Hagen and Frankel 203). Study and dedication are the truly necessary qualities of the successful actor, so acting is largely an exercise of will rather than an exhibition of natural gifts. In a connection to the broader conversation around “Method” acting, Hagen, writing in 1973, cites the same stereotype that Lewis conjured in his lectures fifteen years prior as an example to be avoided. The “realities often relied on by the supposedly ‘modern’ actor, such as Brooklyn speech, head scratching, belching, and blue-­jean postures,” she opines, “will not bring about a Horatio who is a close friend to a prince of Denmark” (Hagen and Frankel 23). The stereotype lives on in 1991’s Challenge, where she lists a similar catalog of supposedly “real” behaviors as she distinguishes truly “realistic” acting and “naturalistic” acting. The latter “produces the nose rubbing, the sniffing and throat clearing, the shrugging and scratching . . .” (Hagen 49). In Challenge she more directly confronts the Strasberg model, writing that when an actor “uses the emotion for its own sake, indulging in it, displaying it rather than using it as a springboard to find and feed the selected actions of his character in the given circumstances, he is confusing feeling with doing” (Hagen 48, emphasis original). She even invokes the rhetorical shorthand of “slouching,” which Garfield references vis-­à-­vis Strasberg’s own distance from the Method stereotype, and that Lewis similarly employed. Referring to a small-­dreaming actor who only seeks success in television in roles that are not a stretch, she says that then “your blue-­ jeaned slouch and your own regional speech will be acceptable. . . . But if you are aiming for something more, please trust my advice” (Hagen 37).29 In her diagnosis of what ails the American actor, Hagen, like Adler, worries that actors too often shrink the part to match themselves, rather than expanding to the metaphoric size of the role. “We look at our daily lives for 28. She also echoes the Hollywood arguments against needing to be naturally beautiful: “Physical beauty is not a prerequisite to becoming an actor. Few of our present-­day stars are physically beautiful in the conventional sense” (Hagen and Frankel 14). 29. Adler, too, makes use of the “slouch” to stand in for the poor physical habits of most actors, and also connects this to TV. For example: “The American actor has no tradition. He slouches. He doesn’t dress. Thanks to television. Television wants you as yourself. The acting profession doesn’t want you. Only what you can make of yourself” (Adler, Art 208–­09, emphasis original).

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convenient, recognizable behaviorisms to transfer to the stage” (Hagen and Frankel 24). Instead, Hagen urges actors to embrace the heightened performative conditions of playing a theatrical character. Hagen’s approach to emotions, however, is far closer to Strasberg than to Adler or Meisner; she believes in both the efficacy and importance of emotional recall. Where Adler gives a single page to emotions in her text, and Meisner, despite two chapters on “Preparations,” seems primarily concerned that a psychological block would prevent actors from using imagination to summon emotion, Hagen devotes an entire chapter of Respect to “Emotional Memory.” Hagen accepts without question actors’ substituting analogous emotional situations (not actions) from their own past to color a moment in a performance. At the same time, Hagen carves her own path away from Strasberg, or at least from the excesses attributed to him and others teaching in this manner. “There are teachers who actually force actors into dealing with something buried.  .  .  . What results is hysteria or worse, and is, in my opinion, anti-­art” (Hagen and Frankel 49). Suitable emotional recall can only be utilized when the events surrounding the strong emotion have been processed enough that they can be regarded with some degree of objectivity. The process for accessing emotional memories is slightly different in Hagen than Strasberg, and unsurprisingly she turns to scientific authority to make her case. In both books she cites a Dr. Jacques Palaci30—­“a close friend trained in psychology, psychiatry and human behavior”—­who confirms her experimentally and experientially derived methodology. What is needed to bring up an emotion for use in performance is not complete recall of an entire episode, but merely a single totemic element Hagen calls a “release object.”31 This remembered object could be incidental to the bulk of the memory, but is associated in the mind with that particular emotional state. Sounding much like Boleslavsky and the Creature, Hagen assures the reader that “the consequence of this discovered procedure is endless. You will learn to build your own storehouse of little trigger objects” (Hagen and Frankel 48), that can be used to present emotional states to an audience as 30. In Challenge, Hagen retains references to Dr. Palaci but notes in her introduction that because he had moved back to Paris when she was writing the follow-­up to Respect for Acting, she could not use him as a primary source in the same way. In his place is “noted New York psychologist and psychiatrist Dr. Harvey White. I want to thank him for his invaluable help and enlightenment. Although we were not always in total agreement, he said he was eventually ‘comfortable’ with my conclusions” (Hagen xi). 31. There is a similarity here to Rosenstein’s assurances cited in chapter 6 that the exercises in her own Modern Acting are scientifically sound, even if the vocabulary is not precisely what a professional psychologist would use.

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needed.32 Further, the appropriate use of this technique negates the Adlerian criticism that the actor is not living within the character. “In performance you will avoid ‘leaving the stage,’” Hagen writes, because of the efficiency of using release objects to generate emotions. The recall of these objects is practiced along with the rest of the scene, so that bringing them to mind is made “synonymous with the event, the person, or the object of your stage life to trigger the response you need” (Hagen and Frankel 49). Hagen has taken the technology of emotional recall, and with recourse to more advanced science (the knowledge of the “release object”), adjusted it to better solve the problems of the actor on stage. Hagen is unequivocal that this is true techne. If a given memory goes stale, it isn’t a natural consequence of how memory works; rather, “you [the actor] are failing technically because of a number of possible reasons,” which she then lists (there are five) (Hagen and Frankel 50–­51).33 In an echo of Reeid’s commandments to directors in Longmans’s scripts, one or more of these potential errors will be at the root of the problem. The technology itself is scientifically founded and sound, another example of a “black box” procedure. This emphasis on technique and process continues in her introduction to part 2 of Respect for Acting, “The Object Exercises.” Hagen begins by citing the companion disciplines of music and dance as having set techniques that the aspirant can work on and master. Seeing a lack of structured practice in the theater, Hagen says, “I began to devise exercises for myself to tackle a variety of technical problems” (Hagen and Frankel 81–­ 82). She makes the same point in Challenge, writing “The actor must know that since he, himself, is the instrument, he must play on it to serve the character with the same breathless dexterity with which the violinist makes music on his. Just because he doesn’t look like a violin,” she continues, “is no reason to assume his techniques should be thought of as less difficult” (Hagen 37).34 Hagen’s exercises are specifically designed for an actor to 32. In Boleslavsky’s second lesson, “Memory of Emotion,” he relates a story of a couple who got engaged near a field of cucumbers, and through this happy association cucumbers became trigger objects of a sort for them. Boleslavsky is using the story to illustrate the effectiveness of affective memory à la Ribot, and not as an example of a trigger object—­his own conception of how emotional recall works is different—­but the lessons are connected. Where Boleslavsky sees this as proof that emotional memories exist and can be controlled, Hagen would probably point to the cucumbers themselves, rather than a memory of the proposal itself, as the key to unlocking the emotional state in performance. 33. This same list is reproduced, substantively unchanged, in Challenge on page 99. 34. Hagen is quite close to MacKaye’s injunction against untrained players cited in chapter one: “Is the human body, with its infinite stops—a whole orchestra of instruments in itself—­less worthy of attention than a violin, a flute, a trumpet, or a drum?” (MacKaye, Epoch vol. 1, 268 emphasis original).

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practice in isolation and are not connected to any pre-­existing text. A century earlier, this would have been widely considered to be heresy. Now it is accepted as a matter of course, another answer to the dream of scales for performers. Strong technique allows for the achievement of the protean ideal, and also makes the system universally applicable. “A correctly trained actor . . . should have at his fingertips a technique so flexible that he can justify almost any direction he is given, and execute it in terms of his personal realities . . . good technique should make it possible to execute anything” (Hagen and Frankel 149–­50). Actors strengthen their transformative powers by learning an effective and affective acting methodology and being able to apply it in rehearsal and performance, regardless of content. In her advice to aspiring professionals, she writes, “Have material ready for any audition, whether it be for a soap opera at a television office or for a classic in New York or the provinces” (Hagen and Frankel 202). As befits a woman who played one of the most celebrated Desdemonas in US theater history, Shakespeare is as susceptible to strong technique as any other author, and throughout the text she references specific examples from non-realist playwrights to illustrate aspects of her approach to rehearsal and performance. The deliberately understated attention paid to challenging or avant-garde works (e.g. The Bald Soprano, The Merry Wives of Windsor) reinforces the notion that all plays, in all styles, share at least some of the same laws of the stage that undergird her exercises. Hagen’s approach to actor training and performance is further predicated on a subdivision of labor by specialist. Like Robert Lewis, she sees the “style” of a piece as primarily a director’s concern rather than an actor’s. Style “is a product of the director’s concept of the playwrights’ content expressed by the inner and outer life of the character” (Hagen and Frankel 217). Similarly, elements such as pace, rhythm, and tempo “all spell doom if you, the actor, concern yourself with them. . . . The responsibility for these results is in the hands of the director” (Hagen and Frankel 204). The director is positioned as the assembler of the various components into the final product of performance. In thinking about the necessity for actors to have good vocal projection on stage, she first dismisses the “old-­fashioned” notion of “projection of the voice and body” before clarifying, “I am not referring to the outer technical problems of having a poorly produced, breathy or squeaky voice which must be corrected by a voice teacher, and which must be slavishly corrected by you, or blurred, messy articulation of sounds, which lies in the department of speech and must be similarly conquered” (Hagen and Fran-

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kel 214). Such basic requirements are dismissed as “technical” concerns (the same adjective Meisner used to describe being heard in a scene), and with that descriptor the concerns are stripped of their challenge. Anyone can overcome a simple technical problem with the right technique. Like Lillian Burns at MGM, she doesn’t deny the need for actors to avoid squeaking or mumbling, but that is another department’s concern. Alongside this strong faith in rigorous, repeatable technique, throughout her book Hagen still makes room for the auratic in acting. A clear example of the sometimes rapid oscillation between these two poles occurs in her introduction to section 3 (“The Play and the Role”). “For years,” she begins, “I used the word organic when speaking about acting” (Hagen and Frankel 145). Like Lewis with “technique,” she uses Webster’s dictionary to define her term (“pertaining to or derived from living organisms”), and then amends the definition with its more contemporary ecological usage: “In this sense, it means to make use of nature’s own gifts and habits by learning them, understanding them, and putting them to use without adding anything synthetic, chemical or artificial” (Hagen and Frankel 145). Harnessing natural law (making use of “nature’s own gifts and habits by learning them”) through techne is the ideal approach to acting, as is a rejection of the “synthetic” and “artificial.” Embracing an organic idea of acting does not mean that a structured and rational approach to rehearsal cannot be realized. The next seven chapters of Respect are “all of the areas we must explore before arriving at the final selection of actions for the specific character” (Hagen and Frankel 145). Then again, while each aspect must be investigated, “the working steps must be flexible” (Hagen and Frankel 145), and some work could even be instinctual. “Great actors,” she says, “have accumulated the substance of these chapters, almost subconsciously” (Hagen and Frankel 146). For those who strive for greatness, the mastery of this techne replaces raw talent and provides a guide to success. “We must learn these techniques and begin our work with a kind of blueprint based on them” (Hagen and Frankel 146). Within the span of two pages Hagen invokes the power of a structured approach to performance and argues that it is a superior solution to the problems of the stage—­even going so far as to compare this approach to an architectural blueprint—­while also allowing that inspiration is a powerful pathway to artistic expression that might escape easy prediction or codification. A final example of this balancing act between the auratic and methodical comes in Hagen’s conclusion to Respect for Acting; it recalls Boleslavsky and the Creature contemplating the sublime atop the Empire State Build-

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ing. “To achieve a technique which will allow for a genuine existence on stage can take a lifetime to accomplish. The search never stops; there are no dead ends” (Hagen and Frankel 222). But it is only through submission to work and technique that this is possible, for on the same page she reiterates that “consistently good acting is never an accident” (Hagen and Frankel 222). Prefiguring Meisner and Adler’s redefinitions of success and failure, Hagen suggests that whether or not actors perform for money, they can still be actors if they are sufficiently committed to the idea of acting. Speaking to the uneasiness this disconnect might inspire, she writes, “If you should feel schizophrenic about attempting to stay an honest artist and worker in our present day theater . . . remember that what makes you an artist is your private domain, and you can try to stay an artist or develop into one” (Hagen and Frankel 211). She emphasizes the same thing in Challenge, writing, “In our society, which seems to equate success with the amount of dollars earned, the performer . . . begins to believe he is failing when he is not ‘making a living,’ or earning very little, sometimes even while he is working in the theatre” (Hagen 31). A strong commitment to being an actor leads to almost Zen levels of detachment from the concerns of the pedestrian world. “If we pursue this search, many of the humiliations to which we are subjected become meaningless. Success and failure become a fascinating struggle to be evaluated by the individual actor in conjunction with his own awareness of the work at hand” (Hagen and Frankel 222). Arguably, the very irrationality of the market for theater necessitated this division between acting for money and being an actor. An actor can’t control the urge of casting agents and directors to typecast, or the role of chance in determining who among many qualified contenders gets a given part. But by divorcing market success from self-­identity, the actor is free to make use of a democratic techne and reap the rewards—­a mastery of acting technique.35 The Method wars were at least partially about systematized control of characters and actors in a US culture that increasingly prized repetition and repeatability, privileging those values over individual inspiration and 35. An echo of this can also be found in the essay “An Actor Manages.” The author, Broderick D. V. Chow, relates his own experience working as an actor in Vancouver and taking a scene-­study class. “Though nearly all of us in the class had already completed training at a university or drama school, it was understood that working on one’s craft was a lifelong process. Eventually, the glorious moments in scene studies of American greats became the thing itself, far superior to any job . . . it could sometimes seem like the acting in class, not the stuff out in the industry, was real acting” (Chow).

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variability. While aspects of these battles were certainly about significant differences in approach and interpretation, it is worth keeping in mind that each of the major players was also—­in fitting industrial fashion—­running a business and offering to share the technologies of successful acting with their student customers. In a culture that believes in a single answer democratically available to everyone, it was inconceivable to argue that a given system was fine for some and not for others, or that it might work in some situations but not always, or even worse, that there was a great deal of luck involved in whether a given system, school, or process would lead to either personal or professional success. Such an assertion would be faced with a near-­visceral opposition ingrained by nearly half a century of naturalizing Taylorist tendencies. In addressing this point, it is notable that Strasberg, Adler, and Meisner all suggested that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to replace them, implicitly promoting their own unique value in the marketplace. Meisner, as mentioned above, said he hoped the Playhouse would just shut down after his death. Strasberg was slightly more generous, saying in 1979 that he was writing a book and making videotapes, and that “it is my hope that my wife, Anna, will carry on.” Adler, when asked about her script-­ interpretation class for the same 1979 article, said, “Nobody else can give it. It is going to die out” (O’Malley). Hagen bucks this trend, with her focus on the work of the “HB Studio” as a whole. She subsumed herself to the larger calling of investigating the power of the performer, as was reflected in her devotion to the place, even as her formidable gifts as an instructor earned her a privileged standing among her students and fans. In a near-­direct refutation of Meisner’s self-­appointed role as the ultimate instinct (and, conversely, a link to Adler’s focus on text analysis), in the final chapter of Challenge, Hagen writes, “If you believe that your own [interpretation] is definitive, or the only one, you are not only wrong, but you will stultify the actor’s imagination and rob him of creative freedom. . . . As long as you lead the actors into their own identification with the author’s world, their interpretations will evolve into ones which might even surprise, enlighten, or teach you a thing or two” (Hagen 294). Hagen, willing to learn from her students, wouldn’t think of arguing that she was uniquely essential to the process of learning to act. The system would live on without her. It is this overall industrial and technological model applied to theatrical and performance practice, consistent in its general contours even while differing in its specific incarnations, that characterizes the shift begun with Steele MacKaye and the American Academy at the end of the nineteenth century and continuing through the work of Group alumni and others in

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the 1940s, ’50s, and beyond. The mental model of how to approach character creation is rooted in the same assumptions drawn from modern manufacturing practice that had been naturalized in the culture at large. While Strasberg and Hagen’s view that emotional recall was a foundational skill for actors made them outliers to a certain extent, Hagen, Meisner, Adler, Strasberg, Lewis, Bohnen at the Lab; Rosenstein, Burns, and Harmon in Hollywood; and countless lesser-­known teachers of acting for stage and screen were all offering a techne of acting, requiring a shared assumption that acting is primarily a set of technical problems that can be met with an appropriate component skill that can be learned in isolation, like a musician’s scales, outside of an actual production. In my epilogue I explore the continuing trajectory of talent, technique, and emotion in more recent conceptions of an actor’s work from practitioners and teachers who to varying degrees oppose or accept the technological paradigm.

Epilogue: Brave New Stage

The reigning god of Aldous Huxley’s 1932 Brave New World is Henry Ford. It is Ford’s name taken in vain when cursing (“Ford, how I hate them!”), and when “Ford’s in his flivver” then “all’s well with the world.” All the Christian crosses have had their tops lopped off to form giant T’s, genuflecting has become the act of signing a letter T over the stomach, and years are no longer designated A.D. but A.F.: “After Ford.” Huxley’s adoption of Ford as the messiah of his futuristic dystopia was firmly rooted in reality. Huxley completed his book after the deification of Ford and Taylor had migrated well beyond the ranks of factory owners and the assembly-­line engineers employed by them. Their combined techniques promised to march industry and society into a gloriously efficient future.1 The industrial modernist values of efficiency and repeatability, and a worldview that privileged the immediately quantifiable and discounted instinct and feeling, began to be more widely adopted outside of industrial practice. As the twentieth century continued, this rhetoric increasingly found its way into thinking and writing about theater and film practice, especially—­though not exclusively—­in the realm of acting theory.2 While I have chosen my prior examples largely based on their relative influence in the world of US acting pedagogy, the same vocabulary and industrial models can be found in many authors and teachers of the period and beyond. Take Sonia Moore. A Russian expat and alumna of the MAT training system, she founded and ran both the American Center for Stanislavsky Theater Art and her own Sonia Moore Studio of the Theatre, where she taught for over thirty years. Well respected, she wrote a number of texts on 1. “A Europe destroyed morally as well as physically by ‘The Great War’ of 1914-­18 saw in Fordismo and Taylorismo a way out of its morass of failed traditions. Powerful, clean, scientific, modern, and, at least in terms of its product, democratic, American technology attracted both attention and emulation” (Pursell 248-­49). 2. Chow, informed by Colin Counsel’s Signs of Performance, connects literary Realism (and realism) to industrial practice: “Realist drama therefore reflects life as defined by productivity, managerial ideology at its purest” (Chow 142).

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Stanislavsky’s system, including Training an Actor: The Stanislavski System in Class (1968). Far from denying the constellation of values associated with industrial modernism, she wholeheartedly embraced them. Stanislavsky’s system (which for her included the “Method of Physical Actions” he shared with Adler in the mid ’30s) was the only possible means of training effective actors, representing the single and ultimate solution to the problem of preparing a performance. Writing in the first flush of the US regional theater movement, Moore asserted that “without actors trained in the Stanislavski technique the repertory theaters being organized throughout the United States are doomed” (Moore, Training xxii). The System earns its privileged valuation because it is based on eternal laws. It “creates life by following the laws of nature through which the human being functions in life; therefore it can never become dated” (Moore, Training xxii, emphasis original). The System is science applied, a point Moore reiterates throughout the text. Within the first few pages of her book, Moore enunciates many of the rhetorical landmarks established in the quest to make acting into techne, making her text something of a palimpsest of the arguments developed around systematic actor training over the prior century. The book itself falls into the category of a “course recounting,” with each chapter a transcription of an imaginary class in Stanislavsky’s technique led by Moore herself at her studio. She starts by defending the very idea that there can be a system of acting (“It may come as a surprise to you that there is a technique for actors.”). Next comes the comparison with other arts (“The System is as important to you as the technique and theory of music are to musicians.”). Then the claim of universality because of the System’s grounding in science, which exists outside culture. (“And since the system is based on natural laws of human behavior, it is the same for old and young actors, for classic and contemporary plays, for conventional and unconventional productions, for all nationalities and in all times.”) Finally, natural genius is not necessary, for while “we cannot make any of you into another Laurence Olivier or Eleonora Duse,” she confesses, “we can teach you laws which, when they are assimilated, can help talented actors to be as good” (Moore, Training 3–­4). The training, she promises, can make any semitalented actor the equal of two legends of the stage. Moore doesn’t stop there. She goes on to invoke the stereotypical Method student (“Some of our mumbling actors believe that the stage exists only for them”) and defends the use of emotional memory as a proper technique as long as it is done correctly, meaning in a manner congruent with scientific theory. “To transfer an actor’s emotions into those of the

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character, according to scientists, is as complex as, for example, transforming the energy of Niagara Falls into the lights on Broadway.” Finally, and most delightfully for me, Moore pursues this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion: “It is the responsibility of technology to transform elemental forces of nature into useful work. And Stanislavski gives us a technology with the help of which an actor transforms his own emotions into those of the character he portrays” (Moore, Training 4–­5 emphasis mine)3. Within the first two pages of the first chapter of Training an Actor, Moore invokes every major argument made in the previous hundred years on the problem of preparing an actor for the stage: MacKaye and others insisted early on that there could be a system to train actors; textbooks were written as though they were class transcriptions (per Stebbins); scientific justifications for various exercises and approaches were articulated; emotional presentation was regularized and talent denigrated because the system works as a technology to apply the laws of the stage to performance; and the concomitant argument that the system is universal because it is based on unchanging scientific laws. Those who argued against seeing Stanislavsky as all-­encompassing because they want to “use all the methods  .  .  . should know that they are speaking only about certain stages of his work. . . . The fact is,” she continues, “there is no other method of acting but Stanislavski’s” (Moore, System xi–­xii). Science, embodied here in Stanislavsky’s complete system, offers a way to assure regular, repeatable performances, as it had increasingly been doing for the last century. It was as clear and as sound, as Friendly Ford said of the early use of “the Method” in the Group, as a theorem of Euclid. The rhetorical network Moore employs and enmeshes herself in is a result of a long historical process. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century the Enlightenment project of rationalization met the technological reality of systems analysis and interchangeable parts. The highly visible success of this philosophy and methodology created an environment where even something as far removed from the factory floor as acting practice could be reconsidered in its light. It allowed acting to move away from being an observational science to an applicable technology where the methods and practices of successful actors could be replicated and taught to others, completely divorced from rehearsing a show for performance. Prior to industrialization, acting had certainly been considered a craft, 3. Moore used similar language in The Stanislavski System (originally published 1960): “Ethics impregnate all Stanislavski’s teachings and are indivisible from his technology” (Moore, System 21), and “The Stanislavski System is the science of theater art” (Moore, System 23).

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but it was a craft learned almost exclusively on the job. Most practitioners made few claims to an understanding of or faith in a fundamental science of the stage. Moreover, even for those who might believe in a science of acting, there was little development of applied technologies to use that science outside of maintaining various (but mutable) traditions in performance and some rudimentary building blocks of emotional representation. The strength of the technological paradigm and industrial modernism fueled a revolution in approaches to the stage. By the mid-­twentieth century, actors could expect to gather—­via training—­a toolkit of techniques, exercises, procedures, skills, and abilities to utilize across the theatrical spectrum as the situation demanded. The science of the stage could be put to work. The most obvious example of this technological mindset in theatrical practice is the constant increase in actor training programs throughout the twentieth century. Preindustrial theater assumed a sort of theatrical Calvinism, with the preordained destined for success regardless of their path to the stage. Training to “act,” aside from learning to dance the mazurka (for example), would be largely unnecessary for those truly called to the profession. However, beginning in the late nineteenth century and continuing into the twentieth, training went from irrelevant to essential, regardless of how much natural talent an actor might possess. Talent needed cultivation lest success, which might seem so close, prove elusive. Boleslavsky’s original conceit for Acting: The First Six Lessons as a morality play came into its own, as Everyman’s salvation requires the partnership of Knowledge and Good Deeds. Film studios quickly acknowledged that there were skills in performance that could (and should) be taught, but often downplayed the actual work actors did to prepare for their roles to better control the aura of mystery and magic that attended the brightest stars. Despite this more-­or-­less official silence on the subject in the 1930s, the studios built a remarkable infrastructure for “talent development,” which included one-­on-­one coaching, classes in performance, and the production of scenes and full-­length plays, all predicated on the notion that a worse actor could be turned into a better one through education and exercises. Theatrical practice grappled even more directly with technological reality in seeking to offer to audiences on the road the “same” show as was seen in New York, increasing the alliance with the industrial values of homogeneity, predictability, and repeatability in production. The values of industrial modernism became naturalized to a remarkable extent in US culture, as did this new means of conceiving of rehearsal and performance, even outside of the relatively cloistered world of professional actors. While audiences still expected to see emotional states on stage, as the twentieth century continued the formerly central role of

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emotion began to be displaced by systems of acting that relegated emotion to a secondary, reactive status. As a brief example, Sonia Moore’s description of Stanislavsky’s “Method of Physical Actions” explicitly makes emotions the result of physical choices on the part of the actor: “Since the psychological and the physical in the human being are indivisibly united, truthful fulfillment of physical action involves an actor’s truthful emotions. The physical action is the ‘bait’ for an emotion.  .  .  . [Stanislavski] discovered that a physical action is the key to an actor’s emotions” (Moore, “Physical Actions” 74). To unlock the emotion, pursue the action. Sharon Carnicke recalls serving as a translator for MAT director Sam Tsikhotsky when he was invited to work at the Actors Studio on a production of The Seagull. Tsikhotsky’s training included work with one of Stanislavsky’s last students, and his emphasis in rehearsal turned out to be quite different from that of Studio-­trained actors. “I translated their differing interpretations about the same techniques. With Tsikhotsky’s stress on action and the cast’s concerns with emotion, their views embodied the evolution of Stanislavsky’s ideas” (Carnicke, Stanislavsky, 2nd ed. 8). Alternately, new methods were promoted promising to make emotional recall and presentation as rigorous and dependable as any other aspect of a character, most prominently by Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen. Their divergent but associated approaches offered technes centered on emotion rather than action. Outside the world of theatrical training, the public at large had developed a sense of what a “Method” actor might be called on to do, even if the term “method” with its industrial roots was never consciously interrogated. The success of alumni of the Actors Studio, along with graduates from the Stella Adler Conservatory, Meisner’s classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse, Hagen’s at the HB Studio, and BFA and MFA students from conservatories across the country all helped solidify the idea that acting was something that could be studied in a structured way. What would emerge from the machine of instruction were actors, ready to tackle whatever parts were thrown at them.

COOL IT AND DANCE LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE

As an example of the extremes to which the naturalization of these conceptions was taken, it is useful to look at the 1975 musical A Chorus Line.4 Set 4. Portions of the subsequent discussion on A Chorus Line appeared previously in my “Working on the Line,” published in JADT in 2011, and reprinted here with their kind permission.

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during auditions for an unnamed musical, the bulk of the action is the director, Zach, interrogating the dancers about their lives. In speech and song, the dancers reveal details about their experiences working as “gypsies” and their history in theater. But the reason they do this (outside of providing a dramaturgical scaffold for creator Michael Bennett) is because Zach claims it is necessary: ZACH: There are some small parts that have to be played by the dancers I hire. Now, I have your pictures and resumes . . . but that’s not gonna help me. And I don’t want to give you just a few lines to read. I think it would be better if I knew something about you—­about your personalities. (Hamlisch et al. 30) For someone versed in the history of Taylorism this should sound familiar. Zach is seeking to scientifically select his final dancers, just as Taylor assessed the pig iron movers to find his Schmidt. Recall that to choose their first workers Taylor and his partners made “a careful study” of all the possible candidates. “We looked up their history as far back as practicable and thorough inquiries were made as to the character, habits, and the ambition of each of them” (Taylor 19). This information would be used to better mold the disparate workers into conformity with the means of working arrived at scientifically. Despite Zach’s insistence that he doesn’t want to see them “performing,” it is clear from everything the audience can glean about the musical being cast that it is nothing but heightened performance (probably in a 1930s style). It isn’t diversity but uniformity Zach seeks to enforce, a point he makes with remarkable bluntness: ZACH: Now—­this is important! I want to see Unison Dancing. Every head, arm, body angle, exactly the same. . . . I don’t want anybody to pull my eye. (Hamlisch et al. 105) Zach puts the dancers through a stereotypical “Method” (meaning Actors Studio/Strasberg) acting session—­they share personal stories of past trauma, regret, sadness, fear, and worry—­even though the parts he is casting are far from emotive in this fashion. In addition, it is only in the service of making everybody interchangeable that Zach seems to be going to the trouble of this unorthodox audition process in the first place. Two factors are at work here. The first is the expectation that this is what actors were supposed to do. Stories of emotional breakdowns under Strasberg, to say nothing of the tears of actors elsewhere, were commonplace

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tropes by the 1970s. An audience watching A Chorus Line when it first opened would not have been overly troubled by Zach’s delving into the personal lives of the actors on display. For many, both inside and outside the profession, that was practically the definition of being an actor, even if, as in Diana’s song “Nothing,” the exercises could be taken to outlandish extremes, such as trying to figure out how an ice cream cone felt. The second is the utilization of Taylor’s technique of treating each man individually so you could better manipulate him to conform to the necessary, external standard imposed by scientific management. Lest the ultimate goal be lost, Zach shouts at Cassie during the final dance audition sequence, “You’re distorting the combination Cassie. Pull in. Cool it. Dance like everybody else” (Hamlisch et al. 115). Cassie, for her part, is allowed to make the final cut after she promises she only wants to be another dancer on the line, nothing special. The character of Shelia, who consistently challenges Zach’s characterization of the dancers as “boys and girls,” is noticeably not asked to join the cast, as Taylor would predict. She proved too resistant to manipulation and would be an inefficient addition to the group. German theoretician Siegfried Kracauer, in his 1927 essay “The Mass Ornament,” highlighted the sublimation of individuality as an aesthetic component of modern capitalism, explicitly invoking Fredrick Winslow Taylor as he discussed the chorus lines of the British “Tiller Girls” dance shows, writing that the spectacle “is conceived according to rational principles which the Taylor system only takes to its final conclusion. The hands in the factory correspond to the legs of the Tiller Girls. . . . The mass ornament is the aesthetic reflex of the rationality aspired to by the prevailing economic system” (Kracauer 70). Kracauer argues that the existence of a largely anonymous chorus line in entertainment is effectively demanded by a capitalist system as an artistic reflection of the daily lived experience of the audience. Like Taylor, Kracauer would probably not be surprised by A Chorus Line, though he would almost assuredly view its implications with far more skepticism. In A Chorus Line the tension between anonymity and individuality is brought into sharp relief. The one thing the entire cast has in common is a love of dance, and their characters’ objective in the show to be cast as dancers. Dance, as some past commentators on acting wistfully noted, enjoys a higher level of objective criteria for success or failure than theater because it has a body of established technique. Dance generally presupposes a structure that any trained dancer should be able to step into, learn the routine, and perform. Such anonymity is foregrounded in A Chorus Line, because the parts in the fictional musical are supporting the “One,” and the

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desire to give names and faces to those who normally labor in the shadow of the star was part of the impetus for the entire Chorus Line project in the first place. When Zach calls Cassie “special” and argues that she should aspire to be more than a dancer on the line, she responds, “No, we’re all special. He’s special—­she’s special. And Shelia—­and Richie, and Connie. They’re all special. I’d be happy dancing in that line. Yes I would” (Hamlisch et al. 122). Cassie is highlighting the “real” people behind the interchangeable parts, even while expressing a desire to be subsumed by the very system A Chorus Line works to expose. Significantly, two of the three people Cassie calls out by name, Connie and Shelia, don’t make the final cut. Bennet, in an interview, called out the intention behind who gets a part. “We very carefully considered who would get the job. It’s not arbitrary at all. The tall people get the job. Good-­looking people get the job. People who haven’t been personality problems all evening get the job, if you notice” (“Backstage”). A high-­priced man, as Taylor reminded Schmidt, doesn’t talk back to the foreman. It wasn’t Bennett’s original intention to have audiences as elated at the end of Chorus Line as they were. When the dancers appear for the final number, “One,” in their gold sparkles and hats dancing in unison across the stage, Bennett envisioned a moment of tremendous sorrow. “That finale is so sad. . . . The craft is wonderful, but you ask, did they go through all that just to be anonymous?” (Freedman vii). Bennett’s initial vision for the finale was even more damning. “It’s going to be the most horrifying moment you will ever experience in a theater. I have a vision of them forming a V and marching with frozen smiles, like in Metropolis. If I do this right, you will never see another chorus line in a theatre” (Mandelbaum 171). While the juxtaposition of individuals we have come to know suddenly appearing in uniform costumes and choreography is quite striking, it is safe to say that Bennett’s original vision was undercut by the reality of performance.5 In its final version, all seventeen of the original dancers are costumed, as though they all got parts, alongside Zach and Larry the dance captain. They proceed across the stage, all singing, all dancing, all doing what they would “do for love” anyway. Even Paul, torn cartilage and all, is back, right in line, dancing with the rest. The audience claps, the orchestra plays, and 5. Not that there weren’t critics who noted the potential for near-­nihilism in the end. Julius Novick, writing for the Village Voice, saw the final number as “a moment of savage irony, only deepened by the rousing energy of all the dancing: all that effort, all that yearning, all that pain, were for this, this number, this orgy of vapidity and crassness? This, this, is what show-­biz is?” (cited in Schmitt 84).

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the dancers dance. This serves as the only curtain call, in Bennett’s conception “a kick line that goes on forever” (Hamlisch et al. 145). Paradoxically, appearing in the anonymous chorus line was a celebration of their individuality; a statement of faith that the blood, sweat, and tears were not in vain. The sadness comes when their imminently replaceable position in the line is considered, alongside the knowledge that the emotionally flaying audition process they went through is useful primarily so Zach can know the best way to manipulate the dancers to conform to an exact, external standard. The audition isn’t to determine the best actor or dancer. It’s to find the best worker. Of course, there is now a standard for A Chorus Line itself. Each production can avail itself of what is colloquially known as “The Bible.” This record, like the Longmans Director’s Manuscripts, describes the original costumes, light cues, blocking, character notes, and so on. The actors and designers who are assembled to bring a production of A Chorus Line to life are so many interchangeable parts who will build the show according to the preordained plan. In accordance with Taylor’s dictums and Longmans’s philosophy, the experiments have all been done and the final product established. This is not merely a fanciful simile. In the first productions there was some leeway as to who of the remaining sixteen dancers (after Paul injures his knee) would be cast. “To keep his dancers on edge, Bennett had continued the practice of announcing a different list of eight audition ‘winners’ each night.” But this ended after only a week of performances, and the dancers who “made it” were set in stone, like the rest of the show. One particular motivation to lock in the successful dancers was the palpable negative reaction if Cassie wasn’t cast (Viagas et al. 239).6 In ways large and small, the optimum science of A Chorus Line had been determined and then recorded for others to follow. This extended even to the technical aspects of the show. As Christin Essin reports in her history of the backstage work on A Chorus Line, this was the first Broadway show to replace multiple electricians working analog light boards with a computerized lighting system that could be run by one operator. But it wasn’t the labor cost that prompted the move to computer control. It was the inability for the people running the physical “piano boards” (as they were known) to match the digital design established in the original production. The humans were no match for the machines. In trans6. Marsha Mason, who was married to Neil Simon during his involvement with A Chorus Line and saw the show during development, said “It might be more truthful . . . but you can’t just kill off people’s hope” (Viagas et al. 239). See also “Backstage.”

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ferring A Chorus Line from the Public to the Shubert Theatre, the designer, Tharon Musser, demonstrated that the computer cues written for the Off-­ Broadway Public Theatre would be impossible to replicate with the manual system still in place on Broadway. “Musser wrote the show’s first ten cues for piano boards and paced a union crew through the opening number; they were physically unable to set the levels and fade the cues fast enough” (Essin 206). For the Broadway show to conform to the already successful production downtown, an entirely new lighting system was implemented. On stage and off, A Chorus Line established its own scientific system of success, and then replicated that night after night after night. Famously, A Chorus Line enjoyed a very long run on Broadway, surpassing Grease as the longest-­running show in Broadway history early in 1983. An oversized poster created to commemorate the event visually captures the necessary interchangeability of the actors. It is a long vertical banner divided into rows. Each row contains a picture of a different cast, dating back to 1975, in their totemic pose “on the line.” By running your eye vertically down the poster you can see the subsequent actors who played each part, each in roughly the same pose, looking effectively the same. “Height for height, color for color, pound for pound,” the spirit of Edith Isaacs calls out, they cast the same show again, and again, and again. To make this possible the specific stories of the original dancers had to be abstracted and condensed into character types that could then be reliably filled. Constructing a piece around specific dancers would have been a tremendous liability for a long-­run play. The actors are literally playing interchangeable parts. If Taylor had lived long enough, he probably would’ve loved A Chorus Line, perhaps privately rechristening it An Assembly Line. Like any of the other interchangeable products of American assembly lines, the dancers in A Chorus Line begin as disparate raw materials. Each is assessed and assayed, cajoled and manipulated, until they can collectively be shaped into an indistinguishable chorus at the back of the mystery musical Zach is directing. Taylor would have admired the precise standard for judging the workers and the investigation into their personal lives to see how best to get them to conform. The final product could be transported everywhere, with the individual roles—­despite being derived from the personal stories of actual dancers—­abstracted into types that could easily be filled by visually similar actors. For his Schmidt, he might look at Cassie and see someone who “was known to be” quite desperate, having failed to successfully move up from the chorus, and look approvingly at using this to gain more conformity from her performance. Finally, the establishment of the ultimate “science” of the show, which would then be brought into being by

Figure 8: Detail of poster from A Chorus Line

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talented overseers directing human laborers, aligns perfectly with Taylor’s own tripartite division of the world into scientists, managers, and line workers.

ARTAUDIAN ATHLETES

Even those seemingly far afield from industrial rigor proved susceptible to the dream of techne. Noted Polish director Jerzy Grotowski, famed for his avant-­garde sensibilities and apparent disregard for Stanislavskian character preparation (Adler’s assessment notwithstanding), in a 1969 interview in the New York Times stressed “the need for systems” in rehearsal and performance. Throughout the relatively short interview Grotowski’s vocabulary constantly reinforces the technical and scientific nature of his company’s work. For example: If you experiment in this field, you will discover in most cases, that if you create a sort of osmosis in space between the actors and the spectators, the spectator feels himself much more alienated in a psychological sense. . . . One has to experiment and choose those conclusions that are palpable in the field in which one is experimenting and not juggle ideas and seek magic solutions. (Kisselgoff 54) Even Grotowski’s company name—­“The Laboratory Theatre”—­joins the long litany of institutions whose names reflect a focus on science or craft. In 1967 Grotowski likened the establishment of his theater to the Neils Bohr Institute for physics research, “a meeting place where physicists from different countries experiment and take their first steps into the ‘no man’s land’ of their profession” (Grotowski, “Methodical” 127). This exchange of ideas from within and without the disciplinary boundary of physics was mirrored by Grotowski’s own goal in the theater to draw from a diversity of sources. “To do research such as this,” he wrote, “is to place oneself already on the borders of scientific disciplines such as phonology, psychology, cultural anthropology, semiology, etc.” (Grotowski, “Methodical” 129). Here, Grotowski is another scientist of the stage creating a technology—­a means of insuring the desired outcome through the application of inquiry and observation, modeled by other sciences. Further, Grotowski’s own debt to Meyerhold’s biomechanics and their perceived inspiration in the work of Fredrick Winslow Taylor (as well as Delsarte’s own work on “extroversive and introversive reactions”

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[Grotowski, “Poor” 16]) would suggest sympathy with aspects of the technological paradigm. It’s scientific answers to problems of performance that he seeks, not magical solutions. At the same time, Grotowski always maintained an uneasy relationship between the auratic and systematic, writing in the same essay in which he compared the Laboratory Theatre to the Bohr Institute, “Of course the theatre is not a scientific discipline, and even less so the art of the actor on whom my attention is centered. However, the theatre, and in particular the technique of the actor, cannot—­as Stanislavski maintained—­be based solely on inspiration or other such unpredictable factors as talent explosion” (Grotowski, “Methodical” 127–­28). While not eliminating inspiration, he cannot allow it to be the foundation of artistic achievement. Grotowski would later turn away from traditional theater, most recognizably disdaining the standard categories of spectator and performer in what he called his “paratheatricals,” and this shift is coupled with distancing his work from the industrially inspired matrix within which his earlier pieces were created. If, as Roach suggests, Grotowski could never elude the specter of Diderot and his persistent paradox (Roach 226), he might at least have hoped to escape the clutches of the Taylorites, waiting with stopwatches and clipboards to record and analyze the time and motion of his plastiques. Grotowski, of course, was hardly alone in doubting the beneficence of the technological paradigm. When the entirety of his Antigone is taken into account (see Introduction), Sophocles himself offers a more complex view of the benefits of techne extolled by the chorus. As Barbara Nussbaum illuminates, the examples praised by the men of Thebes (the boats over the sea, the plows furrowing the earth, etc.) reverberate through the text so that “every item mentioned . . . points to some problem in the way of human progress” (Nussbaum 73). Brecht’s version (translated by Judith Malina of the Living Theatre) foregrounds the darker view of the promises made by the champions of techne. “There is much that is monstrous,” Brecht’s analogous choral ode begins, “But nothing / more monstrous than man” (Brecht 25). While the fundamental examples of mastery over the world are still listed, they hardly represent a triumph, for “He counts what is human / as nothing at all. He has become / his own monster” (Brecht 26). Read broadly, Brecht is identifying and critiquing the ecological aspect of technological adoption, for the change is not just to the specific process or product but to the entire culture. In plainer terms, there is no such thing as a free lunch. You cannot name yourself the “Experimental Theatre, Inc.” or refer to Stanislavsky’s method

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as a “technology” and not bring along additional conceptual and philosophical baggage from the industrial world that privileged scientific experimentation and incorporation in the first place.7 You are tying yourself to a network whose actors will work to influence you. Adopting Taylorist valuations outside the factory didn’t create nineteenth-­century theater with better-­trained actors. It altered the entire practice and structure of theatrical activity. For some, Grotowski among them, the full scope of paradigmatic change in traditional theater proved unpalatable, and radical departures resulted. Others sought to re-­integrate aspects of performance, particularly emotions, that had been increasingly marginalized within the theatrical framework as it emerged, working to escape, in the words of Phillip Zarrilli, “the inherent Western mind-­body dualism” (Zarrilli 18). As a side effect of the emphasis on rationality and action in acting, its opposite acquired, in the ’60s, ’70s, and beyond, a coterie of supporters who could count themselves among the most avant of the avant-­garde. Artaud’s declaration that “the actor is an athlete of the heart” and his comments on the biological nature of emotions, to wit, “All the tricks of wrestling, boxing, the hundred yard dash, high-­jumping, etc., find analogous organic bases in the movement of the passions” (Artaud 133), encouraged artists who sought to maintain emotional evocation (even as they might disdain the methods of Strasberg or Hagen) and/or auratic mysticism at the core of acting. For some practitioners, a systematic approach could still achieve this new goal, while others questioned more fully the assumptions that had become naturalized in creating works for the stage. Joseph Chaikin’s Presence of the Actor (1972) offers many examples of bucking the trend in acting theory. He rejected the idea of a totalizing technique, arguing “an actor prepared to play in Shaw’s Saint Joan is hardly closer to playing in Brecht’s Saint Joan of the Stockyards than one not prepared for Shaw’s work” (Chaikin 5). He describes the Open Theatre’s training as giving the performers “access to the popular version of our sadness, hurt, anger, and pleasure” (Chaikin 6), highlighting a focus on emotions and the actor. In the same vein, Chaikin revels in the auratic and mystical aspects of performance, dismissing the idea of a set methodology, for “systems are recorded as ground plans, not to be followed any more than rules of courtship” (Chaikin 21). It is the unknowable that commands much of Chaikin’s attention in Presence, and this alongside a seeming contentment 7. Similarly, the title of Mark Rafael’s Telling Stories: A Grand Unifying Theory of Acting Techniques, suggests sympathy with a scientific approach to the stage.

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to ask questions that he cheerfully professes unanswerable divides his own approach from many of the methodologies covered previously. At the same time, the Open Theatre developed its own catalog of exercises for performer and performance development, and so sought to utilize the technology of actor training while explicitly distancing themselves from other industrial aspects of the theatrical episteme. An even more extreme repudiation of the foundational beliefs of the technological paradigm can be found in the work of Eugenio Barba. Toward the end of A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology (1991), he dismisses his earlier structured approach to actor training in his essay “The Myth of Technique.” After internalizing the belief that technique in performance was “something which it was possible to acquire, possess, and which would give the actor conscious mastery of his body  .  .  . a sort of magic power which could render the actor invulnerable,” he and his collaborators became dubious that they could, in his words, “attain consciously, by cold calculation, something which is warm and which obliges the spectator to believe with all their senses” (Barba and Savarese 244). His opposition of cold calculation and warm instinct echoes, probably inadvertently, Williams’s argument to the elocutionist Ayres quoted in the first chapter from over a century prior: “we get the verbalist doing with a hard, pragmatic brain what ought to have been done with the heart” (Ayres 263). The upshot for Barba was a decision to forgo any shared training, believing that the differences between individuals rendered any such universalizing impulse doomed to fail, saying “Go your own way, there is no common method” (Barba and Savarese 244). Performers determined their own ideal training regimen, even though “they know that training does not guarantee artistic results” (Barba and Savarese 244). Barba, in essence, rejects the entire structure of theatrical pedagogy as it emerged in the twentieth century, which he elsewhere trenchantly described as the “age of exercises” (Barba 100). In its place was a self-­centered, in the most literal sense of the word, exploration into performance, led by the individual, with no assurance of success. Another coach of Artaudian athletes is Richard Schechner, whose investigations into modes of rehearsal and performance were influenced early in his career by Indian traditions. In the mid-­1990s Schechner developed a series of exercises based on the structure of the eight rasas as described in the Indian Natyasastra (dates uncertain but ranging from 500 BCE to 200 CE). As Schechner and others have noted, “rasa” as a concept is difficult to precisely translate. A useful generalization is that a rasa is an emotional state that can be called for in rehearsal and presented in performance. In

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contrast to definitions of emotion that have prevailed in the Western tradition, rasa has a strong element of physical sensation, which has often led to rasas being translated as “tastes.” Different roots lead to different trees, and Schechner is quite clear that embracing rasic aesthetics means a radically different understanding of how a performance for spectators should operate, in terms of both the actor’s responsibilities and the framework for the observer’s response. The “Rasaboxes,” the exercise developed by Schechner and used with his East Coast Artists company, was not an attempt to create “authentic” Indian theater in a non-­Indian context. In Schechner’s own words, the Rasaboxes “‘comes from’ rather than ‘is an example of’” the underlying theory of sensation expressed in the Natyasastra (Schechner 44), and was an attempt to realize Artaud’s “athlete of emotion” ideal for the actor (Schechner 43). In brief, the Rasaboxes is a means of pairing a physical transition from one emotional state to another along with practice in presenting that state to an audience. A three-­by-­three grid is marked out on the floor, and each of the eight rasas is randomly assigned to one box, with the center square left open for the so-­called “ninth rasa,” a state of transcendence. As collaborator Michele Minnick describes it, “the idea is to move from one box to another with no ‘daylight’—­no period of transition—­between them. This develops an emotional/physical agility the actor can use to transform instantly from expressing rage to love to sadness to disgust, etc.” (Minnick 40). Schechner lays out twelve progressive steps in utilizing the boxes in training, ranging from participants writing their responses to each rasa, to embodying a sense of a particular rasa, to finally moving quickly between states and engaging with another actor who is similarly shifting rapidly from one rasa to another. “Here one begins to see how a whole production could be mapped as a progression of rasas. The progression could be scored or improvised with each performance” (Schechner 44). In the context of the Rasaboxes exercises (and, Schechner contends, Indian performance tradition more generally), the Diderotian question of whether actors actually feel what they represent is considered unimportant. Truly felt or skillfully imitated, it is the communication of the state to the receiver that is the pudding proved by the eating. Without discounting the very real aberrations from the industrial ideal expressed in the description of the Rasaboxes (e.g., Schechner’s emphasis on open-­ended, potentially unanswerable questions), what I find fascinating in light of the arguments I have developed are the multitude of echoes to the technological paradigm contained in the brief twenty-­three pages of the essay. Delsarte’s focus on the holiness of the number three led him to

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create his own nine-­square grids illustrating positioning of the body to communicate emotional states. The goal of seamless transitions between states mirrors MacKaye’s gamuts, and is another answer to the dream of scales. While the gustatorial description of rasas might raise a late-­ nineteenth-­century eyebrow, scoring a text for rasic content could easily be interpreted as marking the emotional shifts à la Minnie Maddern Fiske or Burgh before her. The Rasaboxes, as described in the article, have a progressive structure moving the participant/student from easier to more-­ challenging applications of the rasic content, in an manner analogous to other performance curricula. Beyond these elements of the technological paradigm, the Rasaboxes is also advertised as a path to protean agility and as being applicable to a range of stylistic demands. “Through the training it is possible to develop an incredible range of expressiveness—­from the filmic to the operatic or grotesque—­without sacrificing the element of greatest concern to Western performers: ‘sincerity’ or ‘truth’” (Minnick 40). Range is the fundamental component of both the protean ideal and universal utility, and its advocates contend that sincerity and truth are just as much products of rasic study as emotional athleticism and agility. Further, a performer skilled in rasa aesthetics will be at no disadvantage in performing traditionally Western works of drama, regardless of style. Finally, the Rasaboxes is backed up by science—­in this instance, the neurobiology of “the enteric nervous system [ENS]” and Dr. Michael D. Gershon’s investigations into the behavior of the neuron clusters in the “gut.”8 “In light of ENS research,” Schechner asks, “when someone says ‘I have a gut feeling,’ she is actually experiencing a feeling, a neural response, but not one that is head-­centered,” prompting the question, “Can such feelings be trained?” (Schechner 37). The answer is unsurprisingly a resounding “yes,” because “during training especially, it [the rasic system of response] works directly and strongly on the ENS” (Schechner 38, emphasis original). The focus on emotion marks the technique as opposed to the general industrialist trend in US acting methodology, even while the rhetorical connections to the technological history of performance in the preceding century are too strong to be entirely dismissed.

8. In his article, Schechner cites a New York Times piece on Gershon’s work as well as Gershon’s own book, The Second Brain (1998), to provide readers with details of the scientific theory.

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ACTING IS NOT FEELING: THE TECHNE OF PRACTICAL AESTHETICS

If the technological paradigm in theater is an arc with one end rooted in the late nineteenth century, the other might be said to lie in the late twentieth, epitomized by “Practical Aesthetics.” Based on the work of David Mamet and William H. Macy, “PA” as recorded in A Practical Handbook for the Actor (1986) moves toward a near-­complete repudiation of the definition of acting as it was understood a century earlier, and embraces manifold aspects of the technological paradigm. With an intimation of Stella Adler speaking to the Group in 1934 in the background and a strong dash of self-­promotion in the foreground, A Practical Handbook begins with a forward from David Mamet assuring the reader that everything they know about actor training is likely wrong. “Most actor training is based on shame and guilt. . . . Most acting teachers, unfortunately, are frauds, and they rely on your complicity to survive. . . . [A Practical Handbook] is the best book on acting written in the last twenty years” (Mamet ix–­x).9 PA’s foundational assumption is that lots of what occupies other acting approaches is uncontrollable, inefficient, and a waste of time. Practical Aesthetics, on the other hand, expunges the Taylorist taboos and promises that every effort expended in the system will have a tangible and describable outcome. Acting is a knowable and teachable process that has no need to rely on mysticism of any kind. As the name suggests, this is an eminently practical system of acting. PA’s efficiency is stressed early and often. Some of the first advice in A Practical Handbook explains that as an actor you should determine what you can and cannot control, and then focus solely on the aspects that are explicitly governable. Among the things an actor should not be concerned with are some expected chestnuts: how others see you, how talented other members of the production team are, whether a certain critic is in attendance at a given performance, and similar concerns. But alongside these, PA suggests not worrying about “your height, your feelings, and so forth” (Bruder et al. 5). That feelings are considered equivalent to size in importance to the performer’s mental activity carries devaluation of emo9. Mamet studied for a year with Meisner but didn’t complete the second year of the program at the Neighborhood Playhouse. However, because Meisner’s On Acting didn’t come out until the year after A Practical Handbook, Mamet is not directly criticizing Meisner’s text, nor, given the publication dates, the totemic works of Adler or Strasberg. Hagen’s Respect for Acting (1973) is fair game, however, as would be the works of Sonia Moore cited in the Epilogue previously.

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tion, initiated early in the century, to either its zenith or nadir, depending on your predilections. Where Rasaboxes answered “To feel or not to feel?” by not raising the question, PA similarly declares the question nonsensical, except that, rather than embracing emotions as the primary responsibility of the actor, they are permanently considered a secondary result of other activity on stage. In Robert Bella’s synopsis of PA in Training of the American Actor, the repudiation of emotion is equally absolute: You cannot control your emotions—­at least not consistently, and not for any real length of time. If you could, you wouldn’t be human. . . . Mamet took this fundamental truth one step further. He said that attempting to control emotions was not only an inconsistent way of working; it was actually detrimental to the process of storytelling. . . . Acting is not feeling or believing. To act is to do. (Bella 230, emphasis original)10 Edward Gordon Craig thought acting was about emotional representation. Because people could not effectively control their emotions, they were unable to effectively act. Where Strasberg and Hagen would argue that with the right set of exercises backed by psychology they could eliminate the variability attendant to emotions, PA goes in the opposite direction, arguing that acting has nothing whatsoever to do with feelings. While not advocating for an emotion-­free performance,11 to an orthodox PA practitioner, feelings are not worth spending any mental energy on. “The scene definitely will have an emotional life,” but rather than progressing through predetermined emotional stages, the emotions will be “spontaneously born out of the actor’s experience of trying to accomplish something, the degree to which he succeeds or fails, and his reactions to the other person while he is trying to fulfill his action” (Bruder et al. 21–­22). This is a far cry from MacKaye’s “Gamuts” or Fiske’s dissection of the distinction between despair and anguish, but entirely in keeping with the ongoing deprecation of emotions as an element of performance resistant to standardization and control. Action is 10. While not as intense as Burgh (see note 4, chapter 1), as might be surmised for a methodology originated by Mamet, there is a greater than average use of italics in describing aspects of Practical Aesthetics relative to other contemporaneous acting methodologies. 11. The popular perception of Richard Maxwell’s aesthetic, where the actors are often directed to severely downplay their character’s emotions in performance, would be more in line with a truly emotion-­free performance from the audience’s point of view.

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now the single irreducible element—­the quark—­of performance. Play the actions and emotions will emerge. Talent, whose role has been steadily reduced over the course of the twentieth century, is now exiled completely, and in its place is a completely craft-­based model of acting. Where Boleslavsky maintained in one of his lectures, “One may have a strong will, but if he has not talent, he can’t do what he wants to do” (Boleslavsky, Acting 125), PA argues the exact opposite. “Talent, if it exists at all, is completely out of your control. . . . The only talent you need is a talent for working. . . . To put it simply, anyone can act if he has the will to do so, and anyone who says he wants to but doesn’t have the knack for it suffers from a lack of will, not a lack of talent” (Bruder et al. 5). Talent is banished. It is strength of resolve and desire, not gift, that is the arbiter of stage success.12 In the introduction to Training of the American Actor, Bartow similarly emphasizes this aspect of Mamet’s philosophy. “[Mamet] believes that there is a direct way in which to teach craft that anyone can learn. . . . Anyone can make a shoe. Some make a more beautiful shoe than others, but anyone who applies himself can make a shoe” (Bartow xxxviii). Bartow’s choice of metaphor echoes Boleslavsky, who said “the only difference between an artist and a shoemaker” was that the artist was never finished, while the cobbler could at least count on one pair of shoes being complete before moving to the next (Boleslavsky, Acting 36). And like Boleslavsky, PA stresses the technical aspects of the craft of acting, even if a contemporary PA practitioner would shudder at Boleslavsky’s application of craft to emotion. “An old cabinet maker, that’s what you are” the Creature says. “You mean emotion maker? Thank you for the compliment” (Boleslavsky, Acting 36). Replace “emotion” with “action” and they might get along just fine. A key technique in PA is a variation on the “Magic If” question, framed in PA as: This situation in the play is as if this alternative situation were happening to me (the actor). The analogous example should be totally imaginary, not the scenario in the script recast from the actor’s own experience (as Adler might suggest). A good “as if” will “shed light on the essential nature of the relationships, the overall scene, the underlying dilemma, and what is at stake for your character. It will communicate to your body what it feels like to play the scene and action in your own life and thereby make it easier for you to act the script” (Bella 237). Critically, the analogy should 12. This tendency is exemplified by the title of Gay McAuley’s ethnographic account of rehearsing Toy Symphony in Sydney, Australia: Not Magic but Work—­the title taken from Brecht’s The Curtains.

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be discarded long before actual performance. It is not designed to “substitute your own emotional life for the character’s, but rather to utilize an imaginary situation to shed light on how to play the scene” (Bella 237, emphasis original). The authors of A Practical Handbook make the same point about not focusing on the character’s feelings. “The way to achieve the . . . benefits [of preparation] is not by investing in an emotional state, but by creating for yourself a tangible, personal stake in the action you have chosen” (Bruder et al. 28). Compare this with Boleslavsky’s exhortation to the Creature to record the emotional experiences of her own life so that she might recall them at key moments in performance. In PA it is the imaginary action, rather than the experienced emotion, that is used to explore a given scene. PA retains the idea of sense memory, but it is relegated to the subconscious level in performance; the actor does not revisit the exercise or moment while in front of an audience. “Create the muscle memory, create the habit, and then let the specific story go” (Bella 237). Like Stebbins arguing that the work on aesthetic gymnastics needed to recede into the background in performance, or Ayres demanding that instinctual reactions on stage be the product of rehearsal, PA practices to forget in the moment of acting for an audience. Industrial vocabulary is used liberally to describe and discuss PA methods and results. “Script Analysis is a system designed to help you identify the underlying conflicts in the scene, distill those conflicts into a few phrases that are easy to remember and simple to implement, and make your performance more precise and repeatable” (Bella 238). Efficiency and repeatability are lionized; these are the true results of applying the system to the problem of acting. Exercises also figure prominently in PA’s work. In particular, Mamet adopted and adapted “Repetitions” from Meisner, and a description of its mechanics and projected outcomes is given its own sub-­ section in Bella’s essay. There are three “stages” of repetitions in PA, designed to consciously move the actor from simple word repetition to incorporating playing an action within the context of the exercise. In form and content, the exercises echo industrial modernism. The stages build logically from simple to more complex and are completely divorced from any particular play. The purpose is to build facility with fundamental skills that the actor can then apply to any future performance situation. PA asks for no character identification by the performer—­the actor is never expected to become another person. “Remember that it is you onstage, not some mythical being called the character” (Bruder et al. 75). As a result, there are multiple “correct” ways to read a given scene. Because each actor is a different person, a superior choice for one actor might be a

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weak choice for another. (Mae Marsh would probably agree, given her experience trying to copy another successful actress. Conversely, elocutionist Ayres would take issue with this, because as a “precisionist” he believed a single, authoritative delivery existed for every moment in a play. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Meisner, too, believed that instinct could be trained to arrive at the single “right” answer for a given scene.) The concept of “character” still has currency in PA, but is—­industrially—­broken down into component parts, as Robert Lewis argued about style with his example of My Heart’s in the Highlands. “Character is the illusion created by the words and given circumstances provided by the playwright and the physical actions of the actor” (Bruder et al. 74). The protean ideal is nowhere to be found or pursued in PA. An actor shouldn’t worry about creating a character, and instead should concentrate on behaving in accordance with the play as established by the playwright. This will suggest to the audience that they are seeing a character on stage. PA assumes that “character,” as perceived by the audience, is a composite effect that an individual actor cannot and should not take responsibility for. As for a scientific foundation for the work, it is primarily psychology that PA calls into service. Robert Bella closes his discussion with an extended quote from the essay “Habit” by William James, who speaks approvingly of cultivating practices that will “make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy” (Bella 249). The earlier demand for the sublimation of “homework” in PA is based on psychological principles, for the conscious rehearsal technique of yesterday becomes the internalized (and thus not consciously invoked) execution of a moment tomorrow. Given that Strasberg also cites William James’s Principles of Psychology as the scientific justification for his own intensely emotion-­focused approach to acting (see previous chapter), perhaps it is significant that instead of the original book, PA appears to prefer the newer Reflections on the Principles of Psychology (helpfully listed in a “Recommended Reading List” at the close of Bella’s article and in a similar list at the end of A Practical Handbook). In addition to psychology, PA places great store on systematic textual analysis. Alongside Reflections, the student is recommended to study pieces such as Aristotle’s Poetics, Bettelheim’s work on fairy tales (cited by Hagen in her own list of influential thinkers), and Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces. Like other acting methods, PA connects an actor’s work to acknowledged authorities. Finally, PA—­like any good technology—­is not only universally accessible but universally applicable. Appendix B in A Practical Handbook makes the following claim: “We have never found a scene that could not be analyzed for action using this method. We have analyzed everything from

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Shakespeare to the various objects you might find in a child’s bedroom.” The authors even collectively make an industrially-tinged guarantee: “If you come across a particularly difficult scene or you find one you are convinced cannot be analyzed into a playable action, send the scene to us with a self-­addressed stamped envelope and we will analyze it for you free of charge” (Bruder et al. 90). PA starts with the science of compelling storytelling conjoined with psychology, and from these builds a set of tools that can be used by anyone with the will to employ them on any play that might come to their attention. “This method of physical action is a practical one” the authors of A Practical Handbook write, and “if it is applied assiduously, it will help you through the most demanding performance and rehearsal circumstances” (Bruder et al. 70). It isn’t talent or chance that makes or breaks an actor, or the ability to subsume oneself into a fictional character or present a convincing array of emotions. Rather, it is the clarity and coherence with which an actor pursues specific actions, rigorously defined, that guarantee stage success. These techniques are available to all, applicable to anything, and once learned will serve the actor regardless of the content or difficulty of the part. Focus on physical actions, PA says, and you don’t need to worry about anything else. * * * * * The ramifications of industrial modernism on acting theory, theatrical culture, and rehearsal and production practice are far-­reaching and profound, and they continue to influence the three areas of fundamental technological change identified by Postman in Technopoly: what we talk about, how we talk about it, and with whom. To a remarkable extent, contemporary US culture internalized and naturalized the industrial assumptions that for so many in the 1910s and ’20s were epitomized by Ford and the seemingly limitless capacity for producing Model T cars that his company represented, and that Huxley saw as pointing toward an uncertain but terrifying future. Those disenchanted with, say, the Actors Studio are likely to riposte that the methodology espoused by Stella Adler, or Sanford Meisner, or Bobby Lewis, or Uta Hagen, or PA, or Suzuki Tadashi, or some other teacher, is superior. For true partisans the disagreements take on the tone of religious clashes, with followers of one sect or another claiming the ultimate (Taylorist/auratic) truth of how to approach acting. Others argue that the best system is one that blends multiple aspects of various approaches. But the debate is almost always over which system is superior, and almost never about whether any system can exist. Every actor is living in an “After Ford” world, acting on a brave new stage.

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If we dig into Antigone and its celebration of techne, we find the roots of contemporary culture in the US where everything is expected to have a techne of its own, even a pursuit as outré as acting. No matter if one is ignorant of the science, the tools are available, potentially revealed by something as humble as a gummy worm. If we hold aloft a shard of the ewer Antione uses to pour libations for her dead brother, we might turn it in the light and see it as a fragment of pig iron from Schmidt’s foundry, or even Stanislavsky’s chart brought from Paris enumerating forty components of acting. Mere stargazers no longer, actors now possess technologies to harness scientific truths in pursuit of better performances. If learned correctly, the argument goes, these techniques will armor us against chance and misfortune. We can interchange the pieces of our knowledge and turn them into the parts we play. Do but this, techne promises, and we become immune to luck.

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Index

A Chorus Line, 1, 305, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311 A Parisian Romance, 26 A Streetcar Named Desire, 289 AADA. See American Academy of Dramtic Arts (AADA) Abraham Lincoln, 200 acting action(s), 172, 185, 265–­66, 305, 319, 321 Adler, 188, 266, 271–­72, 274, 277, 283 Boleslavsky, 170, 171 Lewis, 248 Meisner, 182 Strasberg, 188 active analysis , 124 affective memory, 223, 263, 275 Actors’ Lab, 231 Adler, 188, 267 Boleslavksy, 118, 222, 295 Lewis, 248 Strasberg, 116, 257, 267 chart(s), 187, 188 Adler, 186, 189, 246, 252, 267, 268, 324 Lewis, 246, 247 MacKaye/Stebbins, 39 concentration, 167 Boleslavsky, 166 Lewis, 249 Strasberg, 260 cultivation ·44, 57, 90, 98, 111, 245, 304 Adler, 269, 275 Boleslavsky, 174, , 224, 275

Burns, 211 MacKaye/Stebbins, 42 Fiske, 117 Marsh, 144, 145 Meisner, 277 Rosenstein, 222 Strasberg, 260 dream of scales, 23, 57, 78, 98, 220, 255, 258, 266, 275, 296, 317 efficiency, 18, 39, 45, 46, 48, 69, 172, 183, 190, 295, 318 emotion(s), 4, 6, 8, 11, 13, 18, 21, 27–­28, 30, 31, 34, 51, 52–­54, 56, 91, 95, 96, 99, 114–­15, 127, 131, 142, 171, 184, 188, 190, 191–­92, 196–­97, 204–­6, 236, 239, 240, 241, 254–­55, 275, 302–­3, 305, 309, 314, 316, 317, 318–­19, 321, 323 Adler, 118, 268, 271–­74 Boleslavsky, 116, 166, 167, 170–­ 71, 172 Burns, 213 Craig, 72 Fiske, 80–­81, 83–­84, 272, 280 Hagen, 293, 294–­95 Lewis, 243, 247, 250 MacKaye/Stebbins, 23, 37, 42 Marsh, 148–­51 Meisner, 277, 280, 281–­86 Rosenstein, 219–­20 Strasberg, 118, 182, 184–­85, 188, 257, 262, 263–­65 emotional memory/recall, 300, 302, 305

339

340

INDEX

acting, emotional memory (continued) Adler, 273 Boleslavsky, 118, 167, 168, 222, 321 Fiske, 83 Hagen, 294–­95 Lewis, 248–­49 Marsh, 151 Meisner, 283 Rosenstein, 219, 222 Strasberg, 119, 184, 256, 258, 260–­ 61, 283, 288 exercise(s), 4, 19, 20, 21, 28, 37, 41, 45, 57, 105, 106, 118, 160, 189, 190, 222, 224, 236, 240, 255, 256, 259, 274, 294, 303, 304, 307, 315, 316, 319, 321 Actors’ Lab, 227–­28, 229, 231 Adler, 188, 266, 273, 274, 288 Boleslavsky, 116, 118–­19, 167, 174, 178 Hagen, 289, 295–­96 Lewis, 246 MacKaye/Stebbins, 22, 36–­37, 38, 43 Meisner, 278–­79, 288 Rosenstein, 221, 223–­24 Strasberg, 179–­82, 184, 258, 260–­ 61, 263–­64 film. See film acting genius, 21, 49, 52, 105, 276, 282, 283, 302 Adler, 275 Craig, 75 Fiske, 79 Hagen, 289–­90 Marsh, 149, 156 imagination Adler, 269, 273, 274 Hagen, 292 Meisner, 283 improvisation Actors’ Lab, 229, 231 Meisner, 286 Strasberg, 184, 258 inspiration, 38–­39, 54–­55, 56, 84, 97,

105, 114, 115, 175, 219, 228, 298, 313 Adler, 270 Boleslavsky, 175–­77 Fiske, 77, 80 Hagen, 297 Lewis, 250 MacKaye/Stebbins, 22, 38, 42 Marsh, 146 Rosenstein, 223 Strasberg, 265 “magic if,” 112, 113, 320 Strasberg, 184, 258 Method of Physical Actions, 302, 305 music/musician comparison, 32, 33, 37, 48, 77–­78, 84, 118, 144, 145, 166, 167, 168, 169, 171, 176, 180, 220, 245, 248, 258, 275–­76, 279, 289, 295, 300, 302 observation, 44 Boleslavsky, 174–­75 Marsh, 150 Rosenstein, 221 “one thing,” 18, 48, 51, 57, 98, 113 Adler, 272 Meisner, 284 Strasberg, 262, 265 painting/painter comparison, 72, 82, 144, 145, 167, 168, 169, 176, 220, 248 protean ideal, 18, 26, 34, 50, 56, 108, 109, 113, 142, 160, 197, 213, 239, 317, 322 Adler, 271, 276 Boleslavsky, 173 Fiske, 77, 79 Hagen, 296 Meisner, 282 Repetitions, 321 Meisner, 277, 284, 288 rhythm Boleslavsky, 176–­77 Hagen, 296 science (support or rhetorical invocation for acting), 4, 8, 14, 19, 21, 37, 54–­55, 95, 97–­98, 116,

INDEX 341

121, 134, 164, 253, 302-­ 03, 304, 312–13, 317, 319, 322, 323, 324 Actors’ Lab, 232 Adler, 273, 274 Boleslavsky, 167, 169, 171, 222, 223 Craig, 71 Fiske, 76, 78, 79, 81–­82 Hagen, 291–­92, 294–­95 Lewis, 250, 252 MacKaye/Stebbins, 23 Meisner, 277, 281, 286, 288 Rosenstein, 222–­24 Strasberg, 260–­61, 263–­65 sense memory Actors’ Lab, 227, 229, 231 Boleslavsky, 118 Strasberg, 119, 182, 184, 260 talent, 52, 111, 198, 202, 206, 236, 303, 313, 320, 323 Actors’ Lab, 232 Adler, 275, 276 Boleslavsky, 117, 165, 166, 167, 174, 175, 177, 222, 224, 320 Burns, 211 Craig, 75 Fiske, 78 Hagen, 292–­93, 297 Lewis, 246 MacKaye/Stebbins, 46 Marsh, 144, 145, 153, 154, 156 Meisner, 279 Rosenstein, 220, 222, 224 Strasberg, 105, 260, 275 Taylorist tripartite division in theater, 246 Adler, 268, 274 Meisner, 280–­81, 285 universal applicability of technique, 17, 109, 302, 303, 314, 315, 317, 322–­23 Adler, 276 Hagen, 296 Lewis, 244, 251–­52 MacKaye/Stebbins, 44

Meisner, 288 Strasberg, 262, 263, 264–­65 vs. being an actor, 286–­88, 298 Acting and Play Production, 119–­20, 121, 122, 124–­26 Acting: The First Six Lessons. See Boleslavsky, Richard Actor-­Network Theory (ANT), 9–­11, 15, 17, 34, 37, 57, 84, 107, 156, 157, 188–­89, 205, 236, 254, 263, 265 black box, 9–­10, 57, 84, 130, 188, 265, 295 intermediary, 189 matter of concern, 188, 254 mediator, 189 Actors’ Laboratory, Inc., 21, 226, 227–­ 33, 234, 242, 243, 300 Theatre Wing, 232, 233 Workshop, 230, 231, 232 See also topics under “acting” Actors Studio, 180, 227, 229, 243, 248, 254, 255–56, 265, 271, 275, 290, 305, 306, 323 Adams, Julia, 234 Adler, “Buddy”, 242. See also topics under “acting” Adler, Stella, 16, 21, 33, 41, 51, 56, 82, 116, 117, 118, 165, 180, 185, 186–­ 90, 192, 221, 232, 243, 246, 251, 252, 253, 254, 260, 265–­76, 277, 278, 279, 280, 283, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 293, 294, 298, 299, 300, 302, 305, 312, 318, 320, 323 action vs. emotion, 271 –­ 273 circumstances, 274 Stella Adler Conservatory, 266 aesthetic gymnastics. See Stebbins, Genevieve Albertson, Lillian, 200 American Academy of Dramatic Art (AADA), 22, 43–­45, 47, 51–­52, 56, 57, 106, 111–­15, 181, 221, 239, 240, 299, American Laboratory Theatre (ALT), 106, 115 –­ 19, 134, 164, 165, 166, 175, 178, 179, 180, 181, 228, 255, 260, 273, 274

342

INDEX

Anthony, Luther. See Dramatist, The Antigone, 2–3, 14, 101, 313, 323 Applecroft Kitchen Home Experiment Station, 68 Art of Speaking, The. See Burgh, James Artaud, Antonin, 262, 314, 316 Astaire, Fred, 197 AT&T, 101, 102 aura/auratic, 19-­ 20, 54, 75, 76, 81, 82, 94, 113, 114, 119, 131, 136, 158, 160, 161, 162, 165, 175, 176–­78, 179, 182, 183, 188, 225, 228, 243, 244–­45, 255, 259, 260, 266, 270, 273, 274, 287, 297, 304, 313, 314, 323 Ayres, Alfred, 24, 47–­57, 71, 77, 80, 84, 90, 91, 107, 108, 115, 147, 178, 262, 272, 277, 280, 284, 285, 315, 321, 322 Bacall, Lauren, 240 Baker, Margaret, 181 Balieff, Nikita, 104 Barba, Eugenio, 315 Barrett, Lawrence, 47 Barretts of Wimpole Street, The, 181 Barrymore, John, 158 Bates, Jeanette, 234 Baylis, Lilian, 210 Before Breakfast, 97 Belasco, David, 90 Bell, Alexander Graham, 102 Ben-­Ami, Jacob, 100 Bennett, Michael, 306, 308, 309 Berghof, Herbert, 290 Bernhardt, Sarah, 53, 95, 162, 166, 291 Bettelheim, Bruno, 292, 322 Beyond the Horizon, 200 Big Show [industrial film]· 241 –­ 42 biomechanics, 13, 312 Birth of a Nation, 144, 147, 148 Bohnen, Roman “Bud”, 183, 227, 229, 231, 233, 300 Boleslavsky, Richard, 21, 41, 82, 102, 105, 106, 112, 114, 115–­19, 134, 163, 164 –­ 78, 179, 180, 181, 182, 221, 222, 223, 224, 226, 227, 228, 235, 251, 260, 273, 275, 287, 294, 295, 297, 304, 320, 321

dramatic action, 169, 170, 171 dynamic action, 170–­71 “Spiritual Concentration”, 118, 166 See also topics under “acting’ Bonstelle, Jessie, 35, 206 Boone, Pat, 153, 242, 253 Booth, Barton, 30 Booth, Edwin, 160, 291 Boucicault, Dion, 51, 233 Bradna, Olympe, 203–­5 Brand, Phoebe, 182, 227 Brandeis, Louis, 59 Brando, Marlon, 262, 267, 273, 275 Brave New World, 8, 66, 301 Brecht, Bertolt, 92, 245, 262, 264–­65, 313, 314, 320 Antigone, 313 Bremer, Lucile, 196 Brewster, Eugene V., 138 –­ 42, 148, 156, 157, 168 Brigadoon, 243 Bromberg, Joe, 227 Browne, Maurice, 131–­32 Bulwer, John, 30, 31, 42, 140, 177 Burgh, James, 27 -­30, 31, 32, 36, 39, 41, 42, 47, 81, 138, 140, 141, 192, 317, 319 Burns, Lillian, 196, 200, 207, 208, 210 –­ 14, 217, 220, 230, 234, 237, 239, 285, 297, 300. See also topics under “acting” Busses Roar, 239 Calvert, Louis, 164 Carnegie Institute of Technology, 102, 107 –­ 09, 115 Carnegie unit, 108 Carnegie, Andrew, 107 Carnovsky, Morris, 227, 228, 231 Children’s Hour, The, 285 Chaikin, Joseph, 314 Chaliapin, Feodor, 100 Chandler, Jeff, 234 Chaplin, Charlie, 102, 159 Chekov, Anton, 103, 269, 271 Chekov, Michael, 231 Clurman, Harold, 112, 178, 179, 180,

INDEX 343

182, 183, 184, 185, 191, 243–­44, 257, 289, 290 Climax, The, 85 Cobb, Lee J., 229 Cohan, George M., 197 Coleman, Ralf, 132 Columbia (Studio), 37, 103, 210, 218 combination shows, 34 Constant II, E. W., 7, 247, 255, 277 Cook, George Cram “Jig”, 95, 97 Coolidge, Calvin, 104 Copernicus, 5, 11, 36 Coquelin, Benoît-­Constant, 164 Count of Monte Cristo, The, 26, 96 Country Girl, The, 269 Craig, Edward Gordon, 20, 61, 70 –­ 6, 77, 78, 80, 82, 84, 89, 95, 99, 102 –­ 3, 104, 106, 109, 114, 131, 132, 167, 169, 173, 179, 181, 202, 220, 225, 229, 247, 255, 261, 264, 265, 272, 319 on Stanislavsky, 74–­75, 102–­3 See also topics under “acting” Crawford, Cheryl, 178, 181, 183, 184, 185, 190, 255, 260 Creative If. See acting–­“magic if” Crinkle, Nym, See Wheeler, Andrew Crosby, Bing, 242 Curtis, Tony, 234 Cushman, Charlotte, 48, 50 D’Angelo, Aristide, 112 Dalcroze, Émile, 132, 176 Darwin, Charles, 138, 139, 141, 142 Dassin, Jules, 229 Davis, Bette, 237, 238 de Gribeauval, Gen., 12 De Mille, C. B., 155, 207 De Mille, William C., 137, 153, 157, 193 Dean, James, 262 Delsarte, François, 20, 22, 23, 24, 31, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 45, 46, 48, 51, 56, 57, 62, 80, 81, 111, 115, 139, 140, 146, 150, 166, 187, 213, 219, 259, 312, 316 democratic ethos (of technology), 14, 15, 90, 154, 159, 160, 168–­69, 299

Demosthenes, 49, 178 dialogue director, 207, 214, 215, 216, 218, 230 Diderot, Denis, 5–­7, 8, 23, 51, 52, 139, 148, 151, 281, 313, 316 Dietrichstein, Leo, 90 Dillon, Josephine, 200, 221 Dramatic Workshop (Piscator), 266 Dramatist, The, 21, 61, 85 –­ 93, 137 dream of scales, See acting –­ dream of scales Drucker, Peter, 68 Dunn, Malvinia, 214–­15 Duse, Eleanora, 78, 79, 100, 282, 283, 291, 302 ecological model of technological change, 17 Edison, Thomas Alva, 136, 148, 156, 158 Elementary Principles of Acting, 191 Eliot, T.S. and objective correlative· 257 elocution, 20, 47, 48, 51, 55, 110, 262, 280, 284 Enright, Florence, 200 enteric nervous system [ENS], 317 episteme, 5, 11, 12, 190, 315 Erstwhile Susan, 84 Eurhythmics, 110, 132 experimentation (concept in theater), 18, 21, 69, 70, 72, 74, 76, 95, 97, 98, 99, 103, 108, 109, 131–­34, 148, 169, 222, 255, 258, 260, 283, 312, 314 Farmer, Virginia, 227 Farrell, Glenda, 195 Federal Theatre Project (FTP), 132, 133, 227 Ferber, Edna, 191, 192 film close-­up, 150, 151, 197, 208, 213, 236 science (invocations of)· 148, 201–­2, 242

344

INDEX

film acting, 137–­43, 145–­52, 155–56, 169, 170, 171, 176, 194, 196–­97, 201–­2, 206–­7, 208–­14, 216, 217, 230, 234–­36, 237, 239–­41, 304 Fiske, Harrison, 48, 76 Fiske, Minnie Maddern, 21, 34, 45, 48, 57, 61, 76–­85, 90, 91, 92, 106, 114, 115, 117, 140, 142, 151, 156, 171, 182, 224, 250, 272, 280, 287, 290, 317, 319 “thorough-­bass”, 57, 83, 84, 130 See also topics under “acting” Fiske, Stephen, 45, 46 Fitch, Clyde, 90 Flanagan, Hallie, 133, 156 Folger, Gertrude, 234 Ford, Friendly, 182 Ford, Henry, 12, 14, 15, 60, 75, 301, 323 Forrest, Edwin, 46, 48, 49, 50, 53–­54, 55, 57 Foucault, Michael, 5, 11, 38 Fredrick, Christine, 68 Freed, Arthur, 196 Freud, Sigmund, 54, 103, 274, 285, 286 FTP, See Federal Theatre Project (FTP) Fuller, Mary, 140, 141 gamut of actions, 265 gamuts of emotion/expression, 23, 36, 37, 81, 139, 142, 182, 191–­92, 238, 261, 265, 317, 319 Gardner, Ava, 210 Garrick, David, 6–­7, 8, 23, 27, 30, 36 Gastev, Alexi, 105 Gest, Morris, 104 Gibran, Kahlil, 270 Gilbreth, Frank and Lillian, 63, 68 Gish, Lillian, 145 Glaspell, Susan, 96 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 33 Gough, Lloyd, 228 Gould, Eleanor, 111 Grey, Olga, 142 Grey, Virginia, 48, 142, 208, 209

Griffith, D. W., 139, 143, 147 –­ 49, 150, 153, 198, 224 Grotowski, Jerzy, 262–­63, 264, 276, 312–­13, 314 (Polish) Laboratory Theatre, 312, 313 paratheatricals, 313 Group Theater, 21, 112, 119, 163, 165, 178–­192, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 231, 243, 246, 248, 249, 251, 252, 255, 258, 264, 266, 267, 273, 276, 283, 289, 290, 299, 303, 318 Awake and Sing, 191 Gentlewoman, 186, 267 Golden Boy, 191 House of Connelly, 182 Men in White, 184 Hagen, Uta, 1, 21, 56, 82, 248, 253, 254, 260, 282, 286, 289–­99, 300, 305, 314, 318, 319, 322, 323 “organic” acting, 297 object exercises, 295 Presentational and Representational, 1, 291 release object, 294, 295 See also topics under “acting” Haines, William, 193, 200 Hapgood, Hutchins, 98 Harmon, Estelle, 200, 235, 236, 237, 242–­43, 300 Hart, William S., 143 Hathaway, Joan, 230 HB Studio, 289, 290, 299, 305 Hedda Gabler, 220, 221 Helburn, Theresa, 178–­79 Hennesy, Al, 242 Hero with a Thousand Faces, 322 Hill, Aaron, 4 Hinsdell, Oliver, 197, 200–­207, 232, 240 Hollywood, 15, 21, 134, 137, 144, 155, 179, 181, 183, 192–­95, 201, 204–­6, 209–­13, 215, 216, 219, 224, 225, 226, 227, 229–­30, 232, 233–­43, 253, 276, 280, 293, 300 studio breakup, 226

INDEX 345

How Stars Are Made at MGM Dramatic School, 207, 229 Hudson, Rock, 234 Hunt, Leigh, 4 Hutchinson, Josephine, 200 Huxley, Aldous, 8, 66, 301, 323 Ibsen, Henrik, 16, 34, 76, 78, 109, 268, 269, 271, 272, 276 industrial modernism, 15, 20, 21, 22, 60, 97, 119, 134, 163, 179, 215, 253, 274, 302, 304, 321, 323 aesthetics of, 133–­34, 156, 158, 159, 301 Inner Circle, The, 122 interchangeable parts, 2, 11, 12, 22, 96, 130, 162, 191, 309, 310 Intolerance, 144, 148, 150, 214 Irving, Henry, 78–­79, 291 Is Matrimony a Failure, 90 Isaacs, Edith J. R., 161, 164 James, William, 263, 322 James-­Lange theory of emotions, 263 Jane Shore, 27, 91, 192 Jazz Singer, The, 137, 193 Jefferson III, Joseph, 26, 30, 34, 170 Jehlinger, Charles, 111–­13, 222, 239 Jewish Art Theatre, 229 Johnson, Van, 211, 213 Jones, Jennifer, 240 Jones, Robert Edmund, 98 Jung, Carl, 274, 292 Kahn, Otto, 104 Kaufman, George S., 191–­92 Kazan, Elia, 255, 256, 265 Kean, Edmund, 4, 49, 251 Kemble, Fanny, 164, 245 Kinetophone, 136, 156 Kirk, Phyllis, 234 Kracauer, Siegfried, 307 Kuhn, Thomas, 2, 5, 7, 35–­36, 96 Laboratory of Acting (MGM), 197, 199, 201, 232 Lange, Carl, 263

Lasky, Jesse, 154, 224 Laurie, Piper, 234–­35 Le Brun, Charles, 30 Lee, Lilia, 154–­55 Leigh, Janet, 196, 210, 212, 213 Leslie, Joan, 218 Lewes, George Henry, 78 Lewis, Robert, 21, 56, 185, 188, 225, 226, 243–­52, 255, 262, 296, 300, 322, 323 “Truth in Acting”, 251 dancing, 249 rhythm, 251 See also topics under “acting” lines of business, 24–­26, 27, 35, 44, 113, 160, 173, 276 and star system, 25–­26 Little Caesar, 195 Locke, Edward (The Climax), 85 Loeb, Philip, 112 Longmans, Green and Company, 21, 102, 119, 129, 130, 134, 162 Director’s Manuscripts, 102, 120–­ 31, 134, 143, 285, 309 Loop, Jo Ellen, 239–­40 Loughton, Phyllis. See Seaton, Phyllis Loughton Lyceum Theatre. See American Academy of Dramatic Arts (AADA) Macgowan, Kenneth, 98, 235 MacKaye, Percey (To-­morrow), 92 MacKaye, Steele, 20, 22, 23, 24, 27, 31, 32–­34, 35, 36–­37, 38, 39, 43–­47, 48, 51, 52, 55, 56, 57, 77, 78, 80, 81, 84, 92, 103, 111, 115, 142, 152, 167, 179, 181, 182, 191, 192, 199, 221, 250, 253, 261, 265, 268, 280, 295, 299, 303, 317, 319 Æsthetic Gymnastics, 37 Gamuts. See gamuts of expression/ emotion Madison Square Theatre, 43 St. James Theatre and School, 31 School of Expression, 43 See also topics under “acting” Macy, William H., 318

346

INDEX

Madden, Jean, 215 Making the Little Theater Pay, 200 Malina, Judith, 313 Mamet, David, 318 Mansfield, Richard, 26 Margin of Error, 216 Marsh, Mae, 21, 138, 143, 144–­54, 155–­56, 157, 168, 195, 197, 198, 202, 205, 211, 213, 214, 322. See also topics under “acting” MAT, See Moscow Art Theatre (MAT) McCullough, John, 46, 57 McLeod, Catherine, 210 Meda, Blanche, 45, 46 Meet Me in St. Louis, 196 Meisner, Sanford, 21, 33, 41, 82, 182, 185, 192, 221, 242, 243, 253, 254, 276–­88, 290, 291, 294, 297, 298, 299, 300, 305, 318, 321, 322, 323 instinct, 277, 278, 280, 283, 284, 285, 299 preparation, 283–­84, 286, 294 Repetitions. See acting—­ Repetitions See also topics under “acting” Meredith, Burgess, 254 “Method” acting, 16, 56, 241, 243–­46, 249, 253, 254, 256, 259, 261, 264, 268, 273, 305 stereotype of, 219, 249, 253, 262, 268, 271, 293, 302, 306 Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 207–­14, 215, 217, 219, 221, 223, 225, 229, 234, 237, 238, 285, 297 Metropolis, 308 Meyerhold, Vsevolod, 13, 105, 245, 246, 263, 312 Millionaire, The, 120, 121, 126–­27 Moore, Sonia, 301–­303 American Center for Stanislavsky Theater Art, 301 Sonia Moore Studio of the Theatre, 301 Morris, Clara, 53, 108

Moscow Art Theater (MAT), 21, 43, 61, 74–­5, 99, 102–­6, 115, 122, 134, 158, 165, 169, 173, 180, 181, 185, 200, 225, 227, 255, 301, 305 Musser, Tharon, 310 My Heart’s in the Highlands, 251, 322 Natyasastra, 315, 316 Neighborhood Playhouse, 33, 228, 253, 276, 282, 299, 305, 318 Nelson, Ruth, 180 Neptune’s Daughter, 210 Newton, Isaac, 5, 19, 20, 36, 68, 105 Night’s Lodging, 243 O’Brien, Margaret, 210 O’Neill, Eugene, 96, 98, 200 O’Neill, James, 26, 30, 96, 162 Odets, Clifford, 160, 180, 190–­91, 229, 269, 271 Of Human Bondage, 237 Olivier, Laurence, 302 On Actors and the Art of Acting, 78 Open Theatre, 314–­15 Osmun, Thomas Embley, See Ayres, Alfred Ouspenskaya, Maria, 106, 112, 115, 116, 117, 119, 179, 180, 181, 200, 226, 227, 228, 273 PA. See Practical Aesthetics Palmer, Albert, 51 paradigm shift (Kuhn), 5, 36, 96, 97, 110 Paradise Lost, 229, 231 Paramount Studio, 194, 200, 201, 203–­ 05, 206–­07, 217, 232, 240 Parker, Eleanor, 237–­39 Parsons, Louella O., 237 Pasadena Playhouse, 238, 239, 242 Pavlov, Ivan, 105 Penfield, Dr. Wilder, 261 Pickford, Mary, 145, 155 Piscator, Irwin, 266 Pound, Ezra, 159 Powell, Eleanor, 197 Powell, Patricia, 242

INDEX 347

Practical Aesthetics (PA), 56, 318–­23 “As If,” 320 Principles of Scientific Management. See Taylor, Fredrick Winslow Prophet, The, 270 Provincetown Players, 21, 61, 93–­97, 98, 235 Pyne, Mary, 96, 97 Rambeau, Marjorie, 148, 214 Rand, Ayn, 76, 121 Rapper, Irving, 215 rasa, 315, 316, 317 Rasaboxes, 316, 317, 319 Rathbone, Basil, 196, 197 Rauh, Ida, 95, 96, 97 Ray, Charles, 155 Raymond, Gene, 204 Redgrave, Michael, 244, 245, 251 Reed, Donna, 211 Reeid, Nathaniel, 120–­27, 130, 143, 295 Reid, Wallace, 155 Reis, Irving, 230 Republic Studio, 210, 218 Reynolds, Debbie, 211 Ribot, Théodule, 116, 134, 167, 222, 261, 274, 295 Rice School of Expression, 238 Rice, Florence, 204 Rip van Winkle, 26, 34 RKO Studio, 200, 218 Robeson, Paul, 289 Rogers, Ginger, 200 Rogers, Lela, 200 Romantic/Romanticism, 49, 81, 82, 165, 168, 176, 178, 181, 257, 265 Rosenstein, Sophie, 194, 200, 211, 216–­25, 230, 234, 235, 239, 241, 245, 294, 300. See also topics under “acting” Ross, Sharon, 204–­5, 206 Rush, Samuel, 43, 55 Sahl, Mort, 253 Saint Joan, 314

Saint Joan of the Stockyards, 314 Sargent, Franklin H., 43, 44, 111 Schechner, Richard, 315 Schmidt. See Taylor, Fredrick Winslow School of Expression. See MacKaye, Steele scientific management, 14, 59, 60, 61–­ 68, 75, 99, 162, 183, 191, 203, 223, 259, 280–­81, 288, 290, 307; See also Taylor, Fredrick Winslow Screen Acting. See Marsh, Mae Seagull, The, 305 Seaton, Phyllis Loughton, 200, 206–­7, 209, 210, 212 Shakespeare, William, 30, 73, 109, 244, 251, 252, 262, 282, 288, 296, 323 Sheridan, Ann, 204, 205, 215 Sidney, George, 211 Skinner, Otis, 109 Spring Awakening, 284 Stage Door, 191 Stanislavsky, Konstantin 13, 14, 16, 41, 61, 63, 74–­75, 102, 103, 104, 105–­06, 111, 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 124, 161, 164, 165, 171, 175, 178, 180, 182, 184, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 225, 226, 229, 231, 243, 244, 245, 246–­49, 250, 251, 252, 255, 257, 258, 259, 261, 262, 263, 264, 267, 268, 269, 270, 272–­74, 275, 276, 283, 287, 290, 291–­92, 301, 302, 303, 305, 313, 324 star system, 25, 26, 105, 162 Stebbins, Genevieve, 20, 24, 37–­43, 44, 52, 56, 57, 78, 90, 114, 146, 152, 221, 280, 303, 321. See also topics under “acting” Stevens, Thomas Wood, 107 Stewart, Eleanor, 201 stock company, 7, 24–­25, 27, 34–­35, 36, 41, 44, 45, 47, 50, 51, 56, 77, 80, 105, 106, 151, 167, 206, 226, 238, 239, 278 Stoddard, Eunice, 180 Stolen Heaven, 203, 205 Strasberg, Anna, 299

348

INDEX

Strasberg, Lee, 16, 21, 41, 100, 105, 112, 116, 118, 149, 165, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184–­85, 186, 188–­ 89, 190–­91, 192, 221, 229, 243, 248, 249, 252, 253, 254, 255–­65, 267, 268, 271, 272, 273, 275, 276, 277, 278, 280, 282, 283, 286, 287, 288, 293, 294, 299, 300, 305, 306, 314, 318, 319, 322 A Dream of Passion, 100, 105, 179, 248, 256, 257, 260, 262, 272, 282 animal exercise, 260 private moment, 260 relaxation, 260 song-­and-­dance, 260 See also topics under “acting” Streets of New York, 233 Strindberg, August, 269 Suzuki, Tadashi, 323 Talma, François Joseph, 164 Talmadge, Norma, 139, 140, 151 Tarcai, Mary, 228, 232 Taylor, Fredrick Winslow, 11, 12–­13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 55, 58, 59–­70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 80, 81, 82, 83, 91, 92, 94, 97, 98, 99, 104, 105, 113, 114, 117, 122, 123, 125, 131, 143, 146, 148, 151, 156, 162, 163, 165, 183, 184, 188, 191, 203, 246, 249, 250, 256, 259, 262, 263, 280, 281, 285, 290, 301, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 312 Schmidt, 64, 65, 66, 67, 72, 83, 105, 117, 123, 203, 280, 285, 306, 308, 310, 324 Taylorism/Taylorist, 13, 14, 15, 22, 59–­70, 79, 84, 88, 90, 97–­98, 99, 100, 104, 105, 108, 110, 117, 119, 125, 127, 134, 135, 137, 152, 154, 158, 162, 167, 176, 181, 185, 186, 190, 223, 245, 246, 250, 260, 266, 268, 269, 277, 280 –­ 81, 285, 299, 306, 313, 314, 318, 323 tripartite division of work, 31, 66, 98, 123, 131, 312

techne, 2, 3, 7, 14, 17, 18, 101, 164, 168, 170, 176, 185, 191, 223, 232, 236, 265, 270, 275, 279, 285, 295, 297, 298, 300, 302, 305, 312, 313, 323, 324 technological paradigm, 7, 14, 17, 19, 21, 22, 54, 55, 59, 61, 64, 70, 76, 85, 95, 97–­98, 100–­102, 109, 110, 116, 134, 144, 163, 165, 171, 179, 182, 185, 189, 195, 220, 244, 247, 250, 255, 266, 268, 277, 292, 304, 313, 315, 316, 317, 318 technological paradigm shift presumptive anomaly, 7, 247, 255 Teer, Barbara Ann, 16 Tenney, Jack B., 232, 233 Terry, Ellen, 78–­79, 248 theater cultivation, 90, 91 efficiency (as value)· 129, 130, 133, 134 science of (belief in/invocation), 30, 31, 38, 42, 48, 56, 70, 73, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 96, 98, 113, 227, 314 Craig, 71 Fiske, 78 MacKaye/Stebbins, 22 theater vs. film, 158–­60, 162, 169, 236 Thomas, Olive, 155 Thompson, Marshal, 213 Tiller Girls, 307 To-­ morrow, 92 Travis, June, 215 Trescony, Al, 210–­11, 238, 239 Tsikhotsky, Sam, 305 Tucker School of Expression, 238 Turner, Lana, 210 Tuttle, Frank, 230 Twentieth Century Fox, 217, 230, 233, 241, 242 typecasting, 160, 161, 162, 164, 176, 180, 276, 298 Universal (studio), 216, 225, 230, 233, 234, 235, 237, 240, 241 university training in theater, 35, 102, 106–­9

INDEX 349

Vakhtangov, Evgeny, 113, 184, 258, 264 Van Volkenburg, Ms., 131, 132 Vassar Experimental Theatre, 133 Waiting for Lefty, 160, 180, 191 Waldron, James A., 49 Wallis, Hal, 214 Warner Brothers (WB), 194, 195, 211, 214–­18, 224, 225, 230, 234, 235, 237, 238 Webb, Clifton, 197 Wealth of Nations, The, 58 Wheeler, Andrew, 24, 31, 36, 37, 46, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 277

White, Lemuel, 55 Whitney, Eli, 12 Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 289 Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, 33 Williams, Esther, 199, 210, 241, 285 Williams, Tennessee, 269 Won at Last, 45 Woodward, Joanne, 242 Woollcott, Alexander, 76 Young, Gig, 234 Zilboorg, Gregory, 103, 104, 157