THE STANISLAVSKY SYSTEM: A New Authoritative Dictionary of Terms

The idea behind creation of this 1994 dictionary of terms arose in Moscow at the 1989 International Symposium, “Stanislavsky in a Changing World.” From reports of foreign participants it was discovered that Stanislavsky’s works are studied abroad mainly through their original English translations. This situation came about mainly because the initial publication rights for English language editions of Stanislavsky were given exclusively to Elizabeth Hapgood, the American translator of the book The Work of an Actor on Himself (aka An Actor Prepares). Translations from the English edition into other languages have created terminological confusions and semantic distortions of the original Russian texts. That is why today a new dictionary is needed to explain clearly and concisely the meaning of each term of the “system.” The Russian original was published in 1994, and is translated into English here for the first time.