The Actor as a Tourist in a New City

Michael Holdsworth

This essay is a series of wistful musings born from provocations, new translations and exciting discoveries made whilst attending The S Word Symposium in Prague in November 2022. In this capacity I am young in my research career, this being my first physical conference and marks my first year of PhD study. In addition, I am a lecturer specialising in acting technique to first year students on an undergraduate course. Finally, I am always an actor, having trained at a Conservatoire nearly twenty years before moving into teaching. Despite my long absence from the stage, the sensibilities of the actor/artist lie deep within me.

Running parallel to my visit to the city of Prague for the symposium, I am also a sight seer, an excitable tourist stumbling with wonder through that beautiful, labyrinthian city. In this essay, these two viewpoints intersect and the roles of actor and tourist merge together with a sense of wanderlust. This alternative perspective brings a nuance to the practices and details of the actor’s processes when working on a new role. In this essay, both actor and tourist are united together through their process of discovery and exploration (the actor in a role, the tourist in a city) and analyses the nature of their intent behind these actions.

For many, the opportunity to submerge ourselves into a new character in a full production, (due to practicalities and opportunities) can at times be quite rare. Whilst doable in the imagination, the real meat and bones of the actual practice is lost. Our thoughts must be put into action and sadly we can’t be in a new play every day. The viewpoint of a tourist is a somewhat easier mantle to assume. The tourist in a new city is lost and must make discoveries to establish their way around. Whilst we may not be fortunate enough to travel as much as we like, we are readily arriving at new places and figuring out our way around.

Through the process of not knowing our way around a place and “figuring it out” a window into the actor’s process of discovery is opened.

In her keynote address, author, researcher, pedagogue and Stanislavsky-expert Maria Shevtsova informs the enthusiastic attendees that the long used terminology of Given Circumstances is no more, gone, out. The symposium shook.

It has not specifically gone as it was never there to begin with. It was a mistranslation and then a misunderstanding. A misunderstanding which has been built upon, as it integrated itself into the traditions of year-on-year drama teaching. In its departure, thanks to new and more accurate translations and with better understandings of Stanislavsky’s world view, we have a new term: Proposed Circumstances.

The previously-used term of Given Circumstances refers to the information provided by the author, text, director, etc. about the play and its contents, material which informs character and action. Bella Merlin describes it as “all the data you can glean from the script plus the physical conditions of the actual production as determined by the director and the medium.”1 Taken as an extreme, this interpretation of Given Circumstances can be burdensome to the actor, when the sheer weight of all information to consider is far too great and stifling to the actor’s inner creativity.

However, there is nuance in the translation of circumstances as being proposed and not given. There is a change in the offer that is being made. They are no longer given and therefore taken, they are offered, and by that same token they can be rejected. The actor does not have to take them, as it’s an offer after all. This altered view is not entirely new, but it was hiding in plain sight. As Merlin states, it is “not about acquiring a whole list of facts and figures; it’s about appealing to your IMAGINATION, to your ‘personal creative feelings’ and then stimulating your desire to get up and act out the script’s drama.”2 Over a decade ago (Merlin wrote this in 2009), the nuance is visible when she says that the circumstances gathered must be those that appeal to the imagination of the actor and which then springboard us into action.

The same role in the hands of different actors contains elements that appeal differently to each individual performer: the nuance of “proposed circumstances” was with us all along; it was just missed.

With this realisation, new questions emerge: if they are proposed, can we reject them? Ignore them? What happens to the proposed circumstances that are rejected? Can we simply go around ignoring the ones we don’t like? How many and how much can we reject? The answers to these questions lie, unsurprisingly, in the action itself, in the act of proposing. Circumstances are proposed, I may reject them, but despite this rejection the offer still occurred, and the things in the offer are still present even if I have decided not to engage with them.

Returning from the symposium, bustling with all the thoughts taken from it, I returned to my own classrooms where I unpacked what I had discovered to a group of bewildered first year students. Silence, confusion and tension as my excitement and expectation did not meet their targets in the way that I had hoped. Until one student, who until recently had struggled with formal education but who clearly finds a resonance with Stanislavsky’s thoughts, offered:

If I asked someone to marry me and they said no, they rejected me…But I still proposed. I can’t just pretend it never happened (well, I might try). They and I will always know it happened, it will always be there between us and anyone else that knew about it. It’s not like the person I proposed to ceases to exist because that course of action isn’t continuing. It will continue to affect me even though it’s not taken up.

The class visibly sighed as conceptual thought shifted into a resounding understanding from all, accompanied by exclamations of “Ok, I get it now.”

My student’s offering stayed with me and allowed me to consider the dynamics of Stanislavsky’s thoughts through a different lens. While the student opted for dramatic analysis through the prism of a relationship, my recent experiences travelling offered me a different perspective on the notion of being offered something and rejecting it. As I did so, like falling down a rabbit hole, I began to see other connections and the analogy gave me a different perspective on Stanislavsky’s thoughts to creating a role and exploring a production.

Before attending the symposium in Prague, I was fortunate to have time to explore the city. Some time, but not much. There was a limit on my time and so I could only see a few of the city’s offerings, but not all of them.

I landed at Prague Airport full of the enthusiasm and anxiety of arriving in a new city. I wanted to enjoy myself, I wanted to learn new things and experience what Prague had to offer. This actor was a tourist. Just like the tourist in a new city, the actor is a visitor to the world of a new (to them) play, coming to it from the outside, not from within. Everything is new. Stepping into the rehearsals of a play opens infinite possibilities of a new script, with actors, props, sets and costumes; a collection of unknowns that will shape the course of the action into a final performance. This feeling is just like a tourist encountering everything new a city has to offer them.

Ahead of my travelling I did my homework to ensure I was a prepared traveller. I checked maps, I researched bus routes, tube stations, took pictures of maps on my phone. I was ready. Despite this, I still felt an unnerving anxiety brewing in my gut as I took my initial steps out of the airport. Things seemed somewhat familiar, I had rough ideas, but nothing was certain. As I boarded the airport bus hoping that I was going the right way, within myself there was a transitionary state of being: I had an idea of what I was doing whilst feeling entirely vulnerable and very unsure.

The transition from understanding what I was doing and where I should go, to actually doing it, was a big one, and it required confidence and faith. But most of all it required action. The actor is a tourist who can plan and plan, but the joy is in the doing and not the thinking. From reading the play an actor can make choice after choice about all the wonderful things their character is, what they will do, what exchanges with other characters will occur, etc. But all of this is merely conceptual. It does yield some benefits – the actor may understand what is going on – but it is not till the work is tested in action that the true discoveries and experiences can be made. As Knebel summarises: “The playwright gives us only dialogue, only words. We have to create everything else.”3

Upon arriving at my hotel, I dropped my luggage, took out my tourist map that I had picked up from the concierge, and spread it open across my hotel bed. The city, laid bare in this manner, made its propositions of all the places I could go to: tourist attractions, museums and exhibitions, restaurants and bars, parks and shopping centres. This map for the tourist was akin to the play’s text for the actor: full of dialogue, plot twists and turns, passionate exchanges between characters and endless considerations for the actor’s imagination to draw upon.

The city’s offering was staggering and seemingly endless. It was clear that there was far too much to take in in the few days I had. It crossed my mind that I could cram in as many places as possible, dashing from attraction to attraction, trying to see them all. If I did this, undoubtedly, the experience of each place would be diminished, because I would be engaging with them in a rushed manner. Potentially, visiting them would have very little impact on me or none at all. I didn’t know what to do. As absurd as it sounds, I was apprehensive about getting my stay wrong. The actor is a tourist who is scared of getting get it wrong. I am reminded of the actor who we have all seen and maybe even been, the ones “who are mortally afraid of making mistakes […]. A timid actor needs only to make a tiny slip and he is already lost.”4 This self-consciousness in the actor is the death of creativity and freedom. It closes the actor into themselves and they become unavailable to the offerings that are being made their way. The only cure is self-belief, a faith in their work, the need to “develop the self-control to be unafraid of making a slip into falseness, then he can instantly return to the path of truth.”5

If I resisted the rushed and haphazard approach of cramming all the city had to offer into a single visit, and instead only selected a few attractions, surely, I would have a more satisfying experience with the places I engaged with. But how could I account for the opportunities offered by those places that I would miss out? In these unvisited locations, who knows what treasure trove of discoveries I could have uncovered. I was at a loss. Where do I start? Where do I go? There was simply too much to see, and I was left dumbfounded by the limitless offers the city was giving me. The problem of “infinite possibilities” was all too real and I felt lost about where to begin. The actor is a tourist with too much to do. As an actor, this conundrum is all too apparent. How many of us have felt excited when the first rehearsal of a new project is about to begin, but also all the anxiety induced thoughts that accompany it: How about this? What about that? What if this happens? But if we do that, we won’t be able to do this. How often have we thought “that’s a nice idea, but save it for another time?” Up until the point where the full company is about to begin the practical work, all we have is the script and our thoughts, and only the brain has been used. Starting a production is like staring at a mountain that looms over you and you have the intention of climbing it. It is daunting, there is too much…all we can do and should do is climb. As Shevtsova affirms, “Stanislavsky concluded that the stumbling block was the table work, which exercised only the brain and reason, making actors passive, whereas the antidote was ‘immediate action’, physically engaging from the very start.”6

So I picked a direction and set off into the city; I acted, I began to climb the mountain. And I immediately felt better. Certainly, some of the anxiety of uncertainty remained, but it was dissipated by the action of “doing.” I was exploring. I was engaging with the city. To be clear, it wasn’t so much a direction, as in “I shall head north.” This was more of a direction of travel, an overarching theme to my city exploration. As I was to attend a conference on the second day of my visit, and being in my first year of PhD study, I decided that academic pursuits would set the tone for my sight-seeing agenda: museums, galleries, exhibits, etc. I gave myself a task: I wanted to learn more about the city and find potential resonances with my research. I had a problem to overcome and I had something to do. The actor is a tourist who must “do.” Amidst all the details of a production and its text it is easy to become overburdened, lost, and so we must “do.” Sharon Marie Carnicke highlights Stanislavsky’s thoughts here: “He recommends that the actor ask how the given circumstances at the opening pose a problem. Name that problem with an adjective or an adverb, and then ask what the character might do to solve it. [. . .] Your answer is your verb!”7

As soon as I was in the city with this new sense of purpose I felt alive. This was different to the sensations I had experienced when I had timidly journeyed from the airport to the city centre. This was an excited sense of adventure. Now I had a plan of what I could do or wanted to do, not what I had to do. It did not matter if it failed as I was certain that discoveries would be made all the same. I had destinations to visit, dictated by my tourist map, and I had multiple ways of achieving my task. The actor is a tourist who must make choices and put them into action. By making choices in relation to their actions, the actor creates a concept of what they may attempt to do, and the character’s will is put into physical practice. Through the process of etudes in Active Analysis these actions can be explored in the rehearsal, without risk: “It was like a controlled experiment in which the variables […] were always controlled by the text.”8 The spirit of discovery, of finding nuance about the characters can be placed at the forefront of the actor’s thoughts. This process removes the call to have a perfected performance from the start. Through this approach there is room to explore, encounter infinite possibilities and the fear of failing is removed. There is no failure in the rehearsal process; only discoveries. By identifying the through-action the actor’s creativity and imagination are sparked into being and doing emerges more readily: Active Analysis “showed the actors the direction that their actions were to take and the direction in which the cumulative actions of the whole play were going.”9 Through this methodology the actor can be confident with their direction of travel and a stumbling block is lifted. The fear of failure is eased.

I started simple: elimination. I ruled out the offerings that did not spark my curiosity or resonate with my interests. I had no need of the cannabis shops and, as for the bars, I do not enjoy drinking alone; so, they were off the list. I would not be visiting them.

Yet, despite their removal, I was still aware of them. They still featured in my experience and still impacted my behaviour. I discovered them as I walked through the city to my other destinations, and I was still curious about them. I peered in through shop windows and open doorways. My behaviour was affected further when I walked home late at night past those that had partaken or overindulged in the substances on offer. I walked quicker to get past groups. I crossed roads to avoid people that had had a bit too much to drink or smoke. I stuck to well-lit streets to escape the fears being concocted in my overactive imagination. I avoided the darker roads, roads which I would have opted for during daylight without a second thought.

Despite my rejection of the bars, clubs and cannabis shops, they were still there in the city. Their impact upon the people engaging in them was still in the city. Preventing my direct engagement with them did not remove them from my visit, and the same can be said about their impact on my experience.

There were other places that did not make my list of “things to do.” These rejections were not based on some form of preference but on practicality. I simply did not have enough time. But just like the bars, clubs, and cannabis shops, they remained in my experience. I still looked for them whilst on my way to my chosen places. When I did encounter these rejected places, either on purpose or by accident, I was interested. They sparked my curiosity and fuelled my desire for another visit to the city. If they’d been enticing enough, they may have swayed me, I might have gone in and tried to squeeze more into my stay.

In this vulnerable state of being new to the city and of wanting to learn more, I was open to everything the city offered me; the good, the bad, all had an impact. The actor is a tourist who is affected by everything, even the things they chose not to explore. The vulnerable actor, desperate to get it right, often shuts themselves off into a self-protective state where they become unreceptive to what the scene and their partners are offering them; thinking that by doing their own thing, forcing feelings, generating clichés, and generally ignoring others their work will somehow be good. This is a state of self-preservation which ironically is harmful to the actor. In keeping themselves safe actors miss out on all the joy on offer in the scene. It’s a harsh manifestation of Freud’s “reality principle,”10 where they go along rejecting everything on offer to protect themselves, rejecting every new possibility that would lead them to the great performance they seek. It’s some form of twisted, self-fulfilling prophecy: “I wish to be good so I shut myself from others, control every aspect of my performance, do not trust myself, do not trust others. . . .I do not let go to the moment.” And so, the prophecy comes to fruition.

In my own classes Bella Merlin’s words of “Block nothing…Force nothing…Hurt no one”11 have become like a mantra to students exploring work. There is joy to be had and discoveries to be made by following this ideal. Suddenly, everything is available, the scene is full of proposals and each one becomes a springboard to the creative state. The insecure actor who decides to “hide away in their turtle shell”, resisting and rejecting what is happening in front of them, is harmful to their creativity as they ignore all the beautiful moments happening before them. As Stanislavsky puts it, the actor has to lay “the total bestowal of all his powers on the transient ‘now’, without a thought of how he will act and sustain himself until the fifth or sixth act”12 –a true sense of being in the moment.

And so, I adventured through the city in search of my goal, a museum, where hopefully I could learn, and in the process responding to everything the city offered me.

I got lost. A lot.

My tourist map with its bird’s eye view of the city and neatly organised colourful shapes representing the local landmarks bore little-to-no resemblance to the mad labyrinths of buildings that loomed over me. I dashed into a tourist’s information centre and picked up a new map. Despite being the same city this map bore little to no resemblance to the first. I found myself frantically comparing one map to the other, while standing in suspension, not moving, not doing anything but looking at two maps with no clue what to do or where to go –“the stumbling block was the table work.”13

Worse still, when asking directions from locals, they too were confounded by my cheap tourist map and my poor attempts at communicating. No doubt my lack of Czech beyond the word “hello” did not help matters. Despite their generosity as they tried their best to help me, I mostly ignored their helpful directions generated by their (accurate) gestures (Block nothing) instead straining (Force nothing) to try and communicate verbally through every snippet of language I could muster. If only I had been present with them and truly received what they were offering…I would have reached my destination much sooner.

But through this process of losing my way and then finding it again, I grew more and more confident. I began to recognise landmarks, I entered shops, I spoke to whoever would talk to me and very slowly I built a familiarity with the city. Each new attempt to find my way became the process I undertook to familiarise myself more with the city. Every wrong turn still yielded positive results that were used to build an understanding of the city and eventually lead me towards my desired destination.

In turn, these discoveries made navigating the city the next day far easier. It didn’t matter if I didn’t know how to get somewhere, as I had knowledge of other nearby locations, which I could use to help me get closer. I knew which streets were to be avoided and which were entirely dead ends.

My map, which by this point was already showing considerable signs of overuse, was being used less and less. By the second day, it had been thrown away entirely and now my experiences of the city were my guide. The actor is a tourist who will make mistakes and will be better for it. In fact, they won’t make mistakes at all. They will have experiences and make discoveries as they move towards the intended goal: the creation of the character. The word “mistakes” belongs to the vulnerable actor who has a perception of what is right or wrong. There are no mistakes in the processes of truly being open and present within a scene, only discoveries that we make along the way that leads us to our creation.

Carnicke offers a far more encouraging and more accurate word than mistakes: drafts. After an etude she instructs her students: “Please read for the facts again, make whatever adjustments in your map and your verbs that you think might get you even closer to Shakespeare’s text, and try another etude. As Knebel taught, multiple etudes function as successive ‘drafts’ of the scene’s performance.”14 My own explorations of the city as a tourist, getting it wrong and getting lost, was exactly what Carnicke describes; they were drafts to help me find my way. If I hit a stumbling block I checked my bearings, spoke to a passer-by or went back to the map and then had another go, similar to what Shevtsova says that “if they were wide of the mark, the actors had to come back to the text to check what, exactly, their characters had said in the ‘proposed circumstances’.”15

The nuance between actor and tourist suffers here a little; the tourist knows where they are trying to get to, as it is a definite place that exists. However, this same approach within the rehearsal room is very harmful and limits the actor’s exploration. Being all-too aware of the destination you wish to arrive at results in a tendency to ignore any other discoveries on the path to get there, as a student of Carnicke’s explains when discussing objectives: “‘objective’ makes me thinks about how the scene should turn out and so encourages results-oriented acting.”16

As the tourist, I recognised that my movement through the city began to change dramatically as I became more knowledgeable about the location. Day one, as I truly explored, was full of discoveries. I stumbled upon all sorts of things that weren’t contained within the maps. Interesting alleyways, curiosity shops and great places to eat that were tucked away from the hustle and bustle of the main streets. I bumped into an exhibit that hadn’t made my list of “things to do” and was pulled in by it. I lost hours there, but they were valuable and enriching hours that resulted in experiences that stayed with me.

By my third day, I knew how to get to where I wanted to go. I set off with purpose and arrived efficiently at my destination. I remember little of the walks taken that day. I made no discoveries. My journeys were dull, but I got to where I wanted to be. As a tourist, I had enjoyed myself much more when I was exploring and finding my way. The adventure was filled with more life when there was a problem to solve; the problem of “how do I get to where I want to be in the city without knowing the place or speaking the language?”

The actor is a tourist who needs discoveries not destinations. The rehearsal room is a truly magical place where creatives work together to solve the problem of the production. There is so much joy in those initial stages where we do our “working out,” particularly if we can be brave and trust in the processes rather than race to the product (the overall character or the final production).

There is a real danger that being too “objective” oriented can make us too mindful of the result we are seeking when we are in the exploration stages. We are still too mindful of what we are hoping to achieve or bring out with our performance. Carnicke’s thoughts enforce this and offer that by swapping the word objective with “‘problem’ makes the most sense […] [as] ‘objective’ looks to the end result and thus can short-circuit the actor’s journey from problem to solution.”17 But through problem solving we experience creation, as we create the solutions to our character’s predicament.

On day one of my touristic excursion around the city I sought out a particular museum that I thought might resonate with my own research interests. It took several hours to find it. However, upon finally reaching my destination, I was rewarded. I was greeted by a warm man with such a welcoming smile that it seemed to me that he recognised a soul who had overcome great hardships to get there. Not only did I have a sense of enormous achievement in finding the place, but I was also overwhelmed by the wonders inside. My curiosity was rewarded with answers. I must have spent hours in that exhibit; absorbing everything, being deeply moved, and ultimately learning from it.

Despite my complete immersion in this place, it struck me how different my experience of the museum would have been had I brought my young son along. I suspect it would have been a frustrating experience filled with complaints of boredom, quickly pursued by tantrums and demands of leaving for somewhere else that spoke more keenly to his needs. No doubt the city would have met this need as its offer of things to do was vast. It seemingly had infinite proposals of things to do.

But had my son been there, he would have been distracting. He would have taken my attention. My experience of this wonderful exhibit would have been diminished. The actor is a tourist that gives himself over to the circumstances of the scene. The external factors of life that exist outside the moment of the scene are distractions that will only limit your ability to be truly present with your partner and the proposed circumstances existing around you. This is spiritual, in that we are entering into a communion with the scene and its inhabitants: “It is helpful to seize Stanislavsky’s meaning by thinking of the work being made as a transcendent entity to which everyone involved had to submit.”18 This idea of submission is a multi-layered process, as it involves shedding the life of the actor that is external to the scene, as well as the actor’s “ego,” as Shevtsova points out: “Stanislavsky’s ‘submit’ is telling, since it suggests that he was well aware of the push-and-pull and drive for prominence and brilliance of powerful ‘creatives’.” 19

After the museum I continued seeking out other places that had made their way onto my list of “things to do.” Surprisingly not all of my selections rewarded me in the same way. Several places that I thought would hold interest turned out to be dull or did not hold my attention long. I found myself going through them quickly. Suspecting I had engaged with them incorrectly, I went round again. I did my best to be open to their experiences; I submitted. But still nothing.

After a few quick photographs, merely to document that I was there before being immediately relegated to my phone’s camera roll, probably never to be seen again, I was done. And upon returning from my trip, I have neither looked at the pictures again nor discussed the experience with others, unlike my other encounters. Yet despite this, the time there was not wasted. The experience was enjoyable, but not profound. I still had experiences, I still made memories, and the encounter with something that didn’t work still helped me to make better choices the next day. The actor is a tourist who will make choices, not all of which will be successful. Unsuccessful choices are not mistakes; they are the drafting process that help us to find our way in the rehearsal room towards our creation of the character. The actor can access this sense of released accountability to their own drafts through the process of Active Analysis, and be much the better for it. Released from the notion of error and the restrictions of immediately working with the text, they become free, creative, and playful. The actor, through submission to the forces working around him (the proposed circumstances, the problem), and in communion with their partner, becomes electric:

[T]hey really listen, they really respond, they catch every nuance, they sense every movement. They are playful, alert, open in a childlike way, and up for the adventure of performance. They don’t care about ‘getting it right’ (whatever that might mean) – because in exciting performances, there is only one way to get it right, and that’s to respond to what’s happening here and now, right in the moment of interaction.20

Merlin’s idea here on the “adventure of performance” aptly describes my initial journey through the city when I was seeking out the museum and then exploring it like a treasure cove. I was having an adventure and exploring. The next few tourist stops I visited had lost this sense of adventure and became places I had to go to. I had become too objective oriented, too focussed on the end result and not on the process of discovery. I needed to submit again to the joy of discovery.

And so, I did. And I had a wonderful time.

My attendance at the Prague symposium marked the first time that I travelled alone. Previous holiday experiences had always been with family, friends, or partners. This time I was alone. Despite this, I was never lonely, and I never felt bored. As I walked the city I spoke to strangers. I asked them for directions and in most cases they were warm towards me. They were joyous and helpful. They went out of their way to help me, and we chatted about the city and places they recommended. It became obvious that the city wasn’t just the buildings and its roads, but the people too.

At the symposium I embraced the possibilities of the new people I would find there. I resisted the urge of hiding away under the veil of insecurity. I started conversations, shook hands, hugged, laughed heartily, self-doubted myself severely and was moved when new friends became passionate. I lived freely and was receptive to the interactions born from meeting new people, people who I hope to meet again.

If I’d allowed my insecurities to get the better of me, if I had shot down the offerings from the new people, been more reserved and closed myself off, I most certainly would have felt alone. In one terribly insecure period of my life I would have behaved that way. I would have missed out on so much; my experience and the lasting effects of this trip would have been diminished. These interactions with new people enriched my time in the city and required me to be open and willing to the infinite possibilities provided by other people’s offerings. The actor is a tourist whose experience is shaped by their interactions with others.

It can be so tempting for the actor to exist within themselves. The way we reflect on an actor’s work is partly to blame here, as we refer to an individual actor and their role within a performance. We often singularly judge their merits, when in fact so much of it is shaped by their interactions with the wider experience: the text, the other actors, the creative team. It is easy to see why an actor may become insular. Instead, the actor must take courage and look to things outside themselves. They must have “immense focus and vulnerability, but it also requires a desire to take from your partner all the information they are offering both consciously and unconsciously.”21

The protective actor, who limits their presence for fear of judgement or failure pulls away from the ensemble.

They resist the call of collaboration and are harmful not only to their own practice but also to the work of others. For the ensemble to work creatively, the individuals within also embody their highest creative state. “Time and again he [Stanislavsky] referred to the necessity for nurturing individuality for the sake of the actors’ own abilities and for the highest potential of the ensemble which in his view, could not be realised without the development of individualities in concert, as equals among peers.”22 In this sense, and to ensure that they contribute to the collective, the actor is required to be in a constant state of development, as the person working on and developing themselves as an individual and as an artist. Stanislavsky’s idea here transcends the rehearsal space and moves into a philosophy for daily life. Shevtsova’s words in conversation with me resonate profoundly here: “Stanislavsky’s thoughts are more than performance, they are a worldview.” If we want a better world, we must be better individuals: present, open, brave and willing.

I left the city full of the rejuvenation that comes from a break away from the normal routine. Normally, the effects of such a trip stay in our system for a few days, then quickly dissipate when faced with the challenges and stresses of everyday life. But as this particular visit to the city (as well as attending the symposium) focussed on the development of my artistic and academic self, I am hopeful that the loss will not be experienced. I left with a stronger understanding of my own practice as well as my own sense of self. I was eager to seek out more enriching experiences. I buzzed with the excitement of wanting to put into practice what I had discovered.

A few weeks after my adventure, when writing this essay and reflecting on my time in the city, I am pleased to say my hopes proved correct. Whilst the struggles of life may have worn down my spirit and left me tired to my core, my artistic flame burns bright. My enthusiasm as well as my practice as a lecturer working with developing actors in training has improved tenfold, and quite noticeably, so has my confidence. The actor is a tourist changed by their experiences.

But my time in the city (and at the symposium), however impactful, was ultimately too short. Perhaps if I could have stayed longer, a week, month, even a year rather than just a few days, I might have lost my sense of wonder and enthusiasm and grown restless and weary, closed off to the exciting opportunities the city was offering me. Or, perhaps more favourably, a new change would have occurred. Maybe I would have shifted away from the persona of a tourist and evolved into a person who was much more attuned to the city, someone who is now a part of it as opposed to someone on the outside looking in; someone experiencing rather than observing. Less of a tourist who was simply passing through, and more like a resident feeling at home. The actor is a tourist who grows and changes with those around them.

The acting profession is often lonely as actors move from one job to the next. Rapport building over the course of a project is dashed as the production ends and a new contract is taken up. There is an evident boon to actors who can stay together longer, those that can form a company: “As Stanislavsky saw it, ensemble playing worked best when it worked consistently, and this was reason enough to believe that ensemble theatre should be a permanent group and endure over the long term.”23 Through this longevity a sense of ease and comfort is created, enabling more security and in turn a stronger foundation for creativity and risk taking. Most importantly actors can grow as individuals whilst growing together. “Stanislavsky well knew that duration allowed actors to grow and change as everyday human beings as well as artists, since their body, spirit and successive emotional inner states, in short, everything that they were becoming in the flow of life, were integral to the process of acting.”24

It is inevitable that my time in the city had to come to an end. The visit ended just like every rehearsal process and every production run must eventually close. The curtain must fall for the last time, the audience go home, and eventually the ensemble often ceases and its actors go their separate ways.

Just like the tourist who has been altered by the city, the actor has been changed by the play, particularly if they were willing to give themselves to it. The text and artistic team made their proposals, and the actor has offered theirs in return, responding with their own offerings. And through this process something new has been made and the act of creation has occurred. These two forces, the text and the creatives, have met in the middle and created the experience; in the tourist’s case, a holiday away with infinite possibilities, and in the actor’s case, life on stage without limit.

And once the dust settles and time moves us on, the only real evidence remaining to prove that the experience was real, the only lasting things, are the souvenirs, photographs and notes that document what happened. But these trinkets are superficial and do not capture the true significance of what took place, what has been learned and what has changed. The true experience is retained in the body. The traces of the experience live on in the passion of our discourse with other people, our new lines of enquiry with our thoughts and our renewed practice in the rehearsal room. Unlike the souvenirs we took that now gather dust on a forgotten bookshelf, these embodied practices live on, impacting and changing those we encounter through our continued practice and (perhaps sentimentally) our existence. I believe Maria Shevtsova was right; it is more than acting, it’s a philosophy, a worldview.

And so, the actor is a tourist who is eager for more…but for now, the actor is a tourist with very tired feet.

Notes

1 Merlin, The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit, 67; emphasis in the original.

2 Ibid., 67.

3 Knebel quoted in Carnicke, Dynamic Acting Through Active Analysis, 96.

4 Stanislavski and Rumyantsev, Stanislavski on Opera, 10.

5 Ibid., 10.

6 Shevtsova, Rediscovering Stanislavsky, 175.

7 Carnicke, Dynamic Acting Through Active Analysis, 112.

8 Shevtsova, Rediscovering Stanislavsky, 176.

9 Ibid., 177.

10 Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, 17.

11 Merlin, The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit, 314.

12 Ibid., 28; emphasis in the original.

13 Shevtsova, Rediscovering Stanislavsky, 175.

14 Carnicke, Dynamic Acting Through Active Analysis, 116.

15 Shevtsova, Rediscovering Stanislavsky, 176.

16 Carnicke, Dynamic Acting Through Active Analysis, 112.

17 Ibid., 116.

18 Shevtsova, Rediscovering Stanislavsky, 8.

19 Ibid., 8.

20 Merlin, The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit, 209.

21 Ibid., 209.

22 Shevtsova, Rediscovering Stanislavsky, 10.

23 Ibid.,10; Emphasis in the original.

24 Ibid.,10.

Notes on Contributor

Michael Holdsworth is a lecturer, researcher, performer, and producer based in Lancashire, United Kingdom. For the last fifteen years he has worked as Programme Leader for the BA (Hons) Acting and Musical Theatre programmes at the Blackpool School of Arts. Michael is currently undertaking a PhD at Lincoln University exploring the intersection between the Musical Theatre Chorus and the Crowd Phenomenon, Mob Mentality and Group Behaviour in the development of a new pedagogy. This journal essay marks his first publication.

Bibliography

Carnicke, Sharon Marie. Dynamic Acting Through Active Analysis: Konstantin Stanislavsky, Maria Knebel, and their Legacy. London, New York, Dublin: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023.

Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. London: Penguin Classics, 2002.

Merlin, Bella. The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit. London: Nick Hern, 2009.

Shevtsova, Maria. Rediscovering Stanislavsky. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Stanislavski, Constantin and Pavel Rumyantsev. Stanislavski on Opera. London: Routledge, 1998.