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System, while secretly failing to clarify that this was only one half of his intended 
work – only the more “internal” half of his System of “experiencing” – while also 
failing to properly accommodate non-American understandings of performance, 
psychological experience, and the bodymind that would be necessary for  
understanding this half of Stanislavski’s ideas. One of the most significant factors 
towards these miscommunications and separated practices under “Stanislavski’s 
System”, in my opinion, is Hapgood’s use of “character/part” in place of 
Stanislavski’s reference to “role”. 
Stanislavski’s approach to an actor’s objective with regards to character is often
inaccurately understood as “the art of living the part”, derived from Robbins’ 
translation of Stanislavski’s autobiographical My Life In Art (Hobgood 1973: 149), 
i.e. the practice of attempting to live the performance “as” the character you  
perform, as if the character is another “person” you can “become”. So  
widespread is this misunderstanding around Stanislavski’s approach to character, 
that Stanislavski’s critics sometimes do not understand that they agree with him – 
as Sharon Carnicke puts it: “Mamet writes…: ‘There is no character. There are only 
lines upon a page’. Stanislavsky agrees” (Carnicke 2009: 4). This interpretation of 
Stanislavski’s practice-ideology can be traced directly to Hapgood’s translation, 
where she conveys, very straightforwardly, precisely this pursuit. Early in the book, 
Hapgood’s Tortsov would seem to wisely assert:  
	
To play truly means to ... think, strive, feel and act in unison with your role. If 	
	
you take all these internal processes, and adapt them to the spiritual and 	
	
physical life of the person you are representing, we call that living the part. 
	
(Stanislavski 1989:15) 
Meanwhile, Stanislavski’s Tortsov in the original Russian text says nothing of the 
sort. The turn of phrase that is translated into “in unison with your role” concerns 
both “being with the living conditions of the role” and “being with total analogy to 
it”; he does not imply a consciousness beyond yourself belonging to the role that 
would allow “unison”. Moreover, there is no mention of a “person” who has a “life” 
you “represent”, only, again, the idea of “role”, and of “feeling the same with it” – 
“it”, not “them” or “her” or “him”. The Russian word he uses – rol’ – carries very 
similar nuances to the English word “role”, and conveys, first and foremost, 
the actor’s task and position within the action of the play, what Carnicke calls 
“the...‘score’ for the actor’s performance” (Carnicke 2009: 4). Unlike the word 
“character” in English (that Hapgood later uses synonymously with “role” and 
“part”), it bears no synonymity with psychological concepts like “personality” or 
“personhood”, and unlike “part”, is not explicitly theatrical or “false”. Like the  
English word “role”, rol’ shares a word with the concept of “social role” – i.e. the 
positions and identities we internalise and express in our day to day life. Thus, it is 
crucial to approach Stanislavski’s concept of “role” not as a departure from  
ourselves or representation of “another person” who does not exist, but a set of 

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