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expectations and position that we can adopt for the context (in this case, a drama) 
we find ourselves in.  
This is corroborated through Stanislavski’s concept of “Given Circumstances”, 
“Bits” and “Tasks” (2016 – WAH as translated by Benedetti), that help to “make an 
actor conscious of his right to go onstage, and live his own life, one parallel to the 
role” (Stanislavski 2016: 151, emphasis added) – using the same word “analogous” 
as emphasised prior. This distinction between how Stanislavski’s text and  
Hapgood’s translation define an actor’s goal and relationship to their “score”,  
although subtle, is important, as accurately conveying the central concept that  
underpins Stanislavski’s actor-character relationship – the concept of  
“experiencing a role” (Benedetti 2016: 20; Hobgood 1973: 149) – relies on a proper 
understanding of what both these words are supposed to mean. 
I later seek to contextualise why these inaccuracies might have occurred: 
It is crucial to remember that the actors Hapgood was writing for were American 
citizens receiving techniques from a Russian, during a period of high anti-Soviet 
rhetoric in the USA. Even Stanislavski himself, known as he was as a theatre  
practitioner, was framed by American press as “an agent of the new Bolshevik  
government...sending profits back to Soviet coffers and attempting to sway Amer-
ican opinion toward communism” (Carnicke 2009: 20) when he visited America to 
meet with American President Coolidge in 1924. In fact, his reputation as a practi-
tioner has long-term been plagued by anti-Russian xenophobia: John  
Sullivan, when (unfavourably) comparing him against Sigmund Freud, emphasises 
Stanislavski as a man “particularly rooted in and [who] identified with Russia”, one 
of “two types of Europeans, [being the one that has] a close identification with a 
national culture and see the world as it related to a national attitude” (1964:92). 
Even those who thought fondly of Stanislavski himself would find themselves  
suspicious of the culture he came from.  
Upon receiving the manuscript of Part Two of WAH and seeing “the importance  
given to action over psychological states”, Hapgood believed “the System had 
been deliberately reshaped [towards] socialist realism [and against]  
‘psychologism’” (Benedetti 2009: 276), which would seem to be a reasonable 
assumption if it did not also exist within the context of America’s “Freudian-based, 
individually oriented ethos [that] privileged...psychological techniques” (Carnicke 
2009:7). Carnicke also notes, when comparing Hapgood’s depiction of Tortsov to 
Stanislavski’s, that “his Russian persona...was not only the tyrannical dictator” 
as Hapgood’s and other American renditions of him would imply, but that he “had 
a twinkle in his eyes” (2009:12) and playfulness to his classroom. Although the 
portrayal and description of Russian practitioners as “dictators” is not unique to 
Stanislavski (see Meyerhold), between the stigmatisation of Russian pedagogical 
styles (held against what the American critic was used to at home, and saw as the 

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