Editing Konstantin Stanislavski (section)

==A manual for actors==
While on holiday in August 1926, Stanislavski began to develop what would become ''An Actor's Work'', his manual for actors written in the form of a fictional student's diary.<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 303) and Milling and Ley (2001, 15–16).</ref> Ideally, Stanislavski felt, it would consist of two volumes: the first would detail the actor's inner experiencing and outer, physical embodiment; the second would address rehearsal processes.<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 331) and Carnicke (1998, 73).</ref> Since the Soviet publishers used a format that would have made the first volume unwieldy, however, in practice this became three volumes—inner experiencing, outer characterisation, and rehearsal—each of which would be published separately, as it became ready.<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 331) and Milling and Ley (2001, 4).</ref>

The danger that such an arrangement would obscure the mutual interdependence of these parts in the [[Stanislavski's system|system]] as a whole would be avoided, Stanislavski hoped, by means of an initial overview that would stress their integration in his [[Psychophysiology|psycho-physical]] approach; as it turned out, however, he never wrote the overview and many English-language readers came to confuse the first volume on psychological processes—published in a heavily abridged version in the US as ''[[An Actor Prepares]]'' (1936)—with the system as a whole.<ref name=b332>Benedetti (1999a, 332).</ref>

The two editors—Hapgood with the American edition and [[Liubov Gurevich|Gurevich]] with the Russian—made conflicting demands on Stanislavski.<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 344), Carnicke (1998, 74), and Milling and Ley (2001, 4).</ref> Gurevich became increasingly concerned that splitting ''An Actor's Work'' into two books would not only encourage misunderstandings of the unity and mutual implication of the psychological and physical aspects of the system, but would also give its Soviet critics grounds on which to attack it: "to accuse you of [[Mind–body dualism|dualism]], [[Spiritualism (beliefs)|spiritualism]], [[idealism]], etc."<ref>Gurevich, quoted by Benedetti (1999a, 345).</ref> Frustrated with Stanislavski's tendency to tinker with details in preference to addressing more important missing sections, in May 1932 she terminated her involvement.<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 346).</ref> Hapgood echoed Gurevich's frustration.<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 347).</ref>

In 1933, Stanislavski worked on the second half of ''An Actor's Work''.<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 350).</ref> By 1935, a version of the first volume was ready for publication in America, to which the publishers made significant abridgements.<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 366–367) and Carnicke (1998, 73).</ref> A significantly different and far more complete Russian edition, ''An Actor's Work on Himself, Part I'', was not published until 1938, just after Stanislavski's death.<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 374–375) and Carnicke (1998, 73).</ref> The second part of ''An Actor's Work on Himself'' was published in the Soviet Union in 1948; an English-language variant, ''Building a Character'', was published a year later.<ref name="Carnicke 1998">Carnicke (1998, 73) and Milling and Ley (2001, 15).</ref> The third volume, ''An Actor's Work on a Role'', was published in the Soviet Union in 1957; its nearest English-language equivalent, ''Creating a Role'', was published in 1961.<ref name="Carnicke 1998"/> The differences between the Russian and English-language editions of volumes two and three were even greater than those of the first volume.<ref>Carnicke (1998, 73).</ref> In 2008, an English-language translation of the complete Russian edition of ''An Actor's Work'' was published, with one of ''An Actor's Work on a Role'' following in 2010.<ref>The publication of ''An Actor's Work'' and ''An Actor's Work on a Role'', both translated by Jean Benedetti, enables a detailed comparison of the significant differences and omissions in ''An Actor Prepares'', ''Building a Character'', and ''Creating a Role''; see Stanislavski (1938 and 1957). Carnicke argues that despite some changes to the terminology of the system the "Russian books still serve as one of the best keys to his actual concerns about art" (1998, 82).</ref>