Customer Reviews

Systems of Rehearsal: Stanislavsky, Brecht, Grotowski, and Brook

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This book will open your eyes to so many ways of thinking about acting and rehearsal. If you are an actor, director, writer, or any kind of manager, these different ways of looking at problem solving will definitely help. It is well-written and easy to read.

Having studied the approaches that Grotowski, Brook, Brecht, and Stanislavski have taken to creating theater for many years now, I found the ideas in this book expanding, challenging, and reinforcing parallels that I had drawn between the work of these important theorists. In spite of my approval of this book, I cannot recommend it to someone who is not already well-acquainted with these theorists. The author condenses some very elaborate and difficult ideas to draw relationships between them; an intelligent and capable reader who is not familiar with these ideas will most likely find themselves overwhelmed and confused by the sheer amount of information conveyed in this reasonably short work.

I would recommend looking at the following texts to acquaint one with the theories in this book:
Peter Brook: "Empty Space" & "Open Door"
Grotowski: "Towards a Poor Theater"
Brecht: "Brecht on Theater" Ed. John Willet
Stanislavski: (This is more difficult. You can trudge through his trilogy "Actor Prepares" "Buildign a Character" & "Creating a Role" or I suggest his essay in Bentley's "Theories of the Modern Stage" ...actually, the author's summary of Stanislavski is quite good anyways)

This is an overly analytical diatribe of garbage. People who know do, those who don't, write. If this is the case this author knows little if anything about acting let alone rehearsal. The book is written in what I term thesaurus English in that simpler words perhaps were used in the rough draft, then to make himself appear "smarter" he went through the draft with a thesaurus in hand and changed every "simple" word for another more "complex" and "high brow" alternative. The result - a lot of wasted paper and double talk. The mark of a true genius is the ability to explain a complex subject so any person can understand it. It seems that this author does not understand what he is talking about and tries to cover it up. The dedication alone seems to point to someone who tried to stop this work from being published. It reads as follows, "To M in spite of whose every effort this book is at last complete." Perhaps M was trying to do us all a favor.

To many years spent in academia does this to an author - they tend to write for their peer group. This is a contrived work by an academic trying to impress gawd-alone-knows-whom?

The constant attempt to "write down" to a reader is irritating - one doesn't have to be a walking thesaurus to understand theater - most of us in theater are used to pompous critics - but a book on theater craft should desist from the vocabulary of critics and academics - save that for the theses - the average reader should not be subject to the affected posturings of researchers wandering into the public domain.

Potential buyers of this book would be better-off reading the original works of Brecht, Stanislavsky & Grotowski without the superimposed structure of Mitter's rationale. His attempt to condense these individualistic styles into the narrow confines of his own preconcieved academic theory is not succesful. Covering up the lack of original ideation - the author hides behind obfuscation and well polished lines that really mean nothing.

Overall, this is an avoidable read if you have access to the original works. If you don't, this is still an avoidable read since you will learn nothing without referring to the original works.