Because everyone in Packer’s cast knows that these won’t be their definitive interpretations, anything goes. This led the Soviet regime to fixate on the method of physical actions because it was a manageable utopia that fit the Marxist dialectic. Just like Stanislavsky in his later practices, Packer is not an auteur-director with a predetermined vision of a production.

Giuliani says “Truth Isn’t Truth” in Defense of Trump’s Legal Strategy’, New York Times, 19 August, 2018. Knebel (herself an acclaimed actor and director) worked closely with Stanislavsky during the last years of his life, and in 1954 she wrote a doctoral dissertation on Active Analysis, which placed her as ‘its definitive spokesperson’.Yet the means by which the iGeneration receive their knowledge and consume information are unfathomably different. In Part II, we move into a more subjective realm, as I continue pulling into focus my Anglo-Russian-American perspective on psychophysical acting and ‘the creation of the living word’. Yes, actors do want their scripts at the start, they want it as a safety blanket, but I tell them that their partner is their safety blanket: “You’ll help each other, you’ll get there”. He was born into the Renaissance of medicine and philosophy, as humanity transitioned out of the Dark Ages.

The difference is the feeling that is present: the actors are really talking to each other – because that’s all they’ve been doing from the very first rehearsal. The iGen’ers’ dependence on texting, tweeting, Snapchating and Instagraming as their primary modes of communication means that their words are ‘living’ in ways we couldn’t have imagined twenty years ago. To really measure the power of the actor’s excitement,’ continues Stanislavsky, ‘we must direct our attention to how he takes in the facts and events, how he evaluates the thoughts of his partner; we must watch him during his moments of absorption’. It’s extremely off-putting, especially for a student of color, to read on the second page of An Actor Prepares about Stanislavsky’s use of blackface and his offensive assumptions about Othello’s African origins, even if he’s being deliberately naïve.The basis of the Method of Physical Actions is that one simple action leads to the next action, which leads to the next action, which leads to the next, and so on. I then address those questions by analyzing my practice-based experience as an actor, rather than as a scholar, historian or critical theorist.