Stanislavskij our contemporary. Gerardo Guerrieri’s research on the Stanislavskij system


Seminar by Fausto Malcovati

23/05/2023, ore 15, Aula E, Via dei Volsci 122

Gerardo Guerrieri has researched Stanislavskij’s theoretical works for almost thirty years; writing articles, introductions and radio scripts. He left an enormous legacy of interesting texts that, to this day, have not been studied. From the beginning, Guerrieri looked into the extraordinary novelty – for the times – of the research Stanislavskij conducted on the figure of the actor. Stanislavskij introduces a series of terminology to define the process of character creation on behalf of the actor; he reads psychology literature, extends his research to apparently unrelated fields such as yoga, the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, and tries to establish precise connections between gestures and words in the actor’s work. Of great interest are also Stanislavskij’s writings on the post-revolutionary period, since his theories – strongly embedded in cultural symbolism – are not easily accepted by the new generations of actors and directors who were active after 1917. Guerrieri’s research also enables to link the Stanislavskij system with more recent research on cybernetics and psychoanalysis, to the point of stating that this system – which emerged in the first thirty years of the last century – awaits still a proper analysis that would be very useful in contemporary theatre.



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