Alongside that sense of dynamic listening comes playfulness: we’re just here to play, we’ll find what we are looking for. e. it is a provocation as much as a definitive solution – in which Merlin ultimately invites the reader to consider how actor trainers can help a generation of risk-averse young people become willingly vulnerable and emotionally accessible actors. Through that experience they may find more balance within themselves and, therefore, a broader range of emotional intelligence with which to handle the world. So how would it be, I ask, if we let the ‘venue where danger lies’ be the theatre and the actor-training environment?

As one of the most well-known names in theatre history, Konstantin Stanislavsky's teachings on actor training have endured throughout the decades, influencing scholars and practitioners even in the present day. While her eye-line was to the ground, I noticed that it shifted from one side to another in a very deliberate way. Bella Merlin has successfully combined a professional career in acting (notably in Max Stafford-Clark's Out of Joint Theatre Company) with teaching at the drama departments of the Universities of Birmingham and Exeter. What if they found that enacting unsettling situations – within the safe structure of a script – enables them to become richer contributors to their broader society? As part of that evolution, I’ve found myself consciously adjusting the lexicon of my acting classes to deliberately embrace both stage and screen.Both Shakespeare through his plays and Stanislavsky through his acting ‘system’ strove for dramatizations that created emotional, empathic responses in their audiences. In the old-fashioned way of working, where you learn the lines, you learn the “blocking” (a word I cannot abide), you get up and do the same scene every night.

As one of my African-American students pointed out to me last year, it’s no longer acceptable to include on curricula Stanislavsky’s portrayal of Othello without overt consideration of the misappropriation. In the work on the self, I can offer strategies for my students to dip their toes in the oceans of emotional complexity. Working with Shakespeare’s plays, Packer’s imperative is obviously and necessarily language driven, so silent études wouldn’t really serve her purpose.

I just want them to listen to each other, to listen to their pauses, to listen to each other’s fear. This is particularly relevant to screen acting – as we’ll see – where close-ups are all about these ‘moments of absorption’).

Biography: Bella Merlin has successfully combined a professional career in acting (notably in Max Stafford-Clark's Out of Joint Theatre Company) with teaching at the drama departments of the Universities of Birmingham and Exeter. While we may never be able to beat the enemy of stage fright, we can embrace its presence and (in the words of The Beatles) Let It Be! Shakespeare paints on a vast canvas including jealousy, rage, vengeance, violence as well as profound and tender love.

I also look at the language passed between characters, as that gives me insights into possible thought process.

This second edition of Konstantin Stanislavsky combines:an overview of Stanislavsky’s life and work, including recent discoveries an assessment of his widely read text, An Actor Prepares (1936) with comparisons to Benedetti’s 2008 translation, An Actor’s Work detailed commentary of the key 1898 production of The Seagull an indispensable set of practical exercises for actors, teachers and directors. We never sat down with the script in the way that I had during my time at university or drama school. Our emotions have a sequence to them even if sometimes it doesn’t make logical sense or intellectual sense.

Yet increasingly over the past few years, well known actors have been forthcoming about the realities and vulnerabilities of the art form.