The Stanislavsky Institute for the 21st Century

To bring Stanislavsky’s System of actor training into clear and accurate focus for the 21st-century performer.

Sharon Marie Carnicke is an internationally known expert on the Stanislavsky System for actor training and on film acting. Her books include Stanislavsky In Focus: An Acting Master for the Twenty-First Century (Second Edition), The Theatrical Instinct: Nikolai Evreinov and the Russian Theatre of the Early Twentieth Century, and the co-authored Reframing Screen Performance. Her translations of Anto

n Chekhov’s plays have been produced nationally, with her Seagull winning a Kennedy Center award. Her translations are published as Chekhov: 4 Plays and 3 Jokes (nominated for the National Translation Award). In addition to teaching at the University of Southern California, she has founded the Stanislavsky Institute for the Twenty-First Century and conducts an on-going laboratory workshop for acting in LA. She has taught master classes on Stanislavsky’s Active Analysis throughout the US and globally, including intensives for Italy’s Metodifestival, in Finland and Puerto Rico, and at the National Institute for Dramatic Arts in Australia. Sharon began acting at the American Shakespeare Festival Theatre in Stratford Connecticut at age twelve, and later appeared as an actor and dancer in New York on and off Broadway. She has directed theatrical productions in New York, Los Angeles, and Moscow. Her direction of The Locked Room at New York’s Lincoln Center was a finalist for the Samuel French New Play award. From Sharon Marie Carnicke:

When an acting teacher of mine asked me to look up a term in Stanislavsky’s Russian language books, I was astonished by what I found. The Russian Stanislavsky was much more forward-looking an artist than the commonly accepted Americanized portrait of him. If you think of Stanislavsky as single-mindedly committed to psychological realism, consider his words: “My System begins where realism ends.”*

If you think of him as tyrannical, remember what he said to actor Olga Knipper during rehearsals for his 1907 symbolist production of The Drama of Life: “I consider it my duty to give you full freedom in the treatment of your role.”*

And if you think of Stanislavsky as patriarchal, know that in 1937 he cast a young woman, Irina Rozanova, as Hamlet at his Opera-Dramatic Studio; he told her, “Hamlet will be your university.”*

I like this Russian Stanislavsky! And, on behalf of The Stanislavsky Institute for the 21st Century, I invite you to meet him as well.