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https://doi.org/10.1177/09593543231200680
Theory & Psychology
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From the proscenium: The
influence of Konstantin
Stanislavski and the psychology
of acting in Vygotsky’s work
G. Logan Pelfrey
The Ohio State University
Michael Glassman
The Ohio State University
Irina Kuznetcova
Akita International University
Shantanu Tilak
The Ohio State University
Abstract
The Soviet psychologist L. S. Vygotsky was immersed in theater and the arts through much of his
life, collaborating with scholars of the psychology of acting, including Konstantin Stanislavski’s close
confidante and long-time editor Liubov Gurevich, on terms and theories expressed in his historically
defining text, An Actor’s Work. This article connects linguistic, theoretical, and methodological
aspects of Stanislavski’s work with Vygotsky’s quest to develop a new psychology, finding its apogee
in the works of his final years, especially after he gained access to an extended draft of Stanislavski’s
chapters. As Vygotsky’s theories continue to influence the field of psychology, this article looks to
provide a guidepost for refining understanding of Vygotsky’s theories based on archival evidence and
a close reading of contemporary translations of Vygotsky’s major works.
Keywords
cultural-historical activity theory, psychology of acting, social psychology, Stanislavski, Vygotsky
Corresponding author:
G. Logan Pelfrey, Department of Educational Psychology, The Ohio State University, 175 E. 7th Avenue,
Columbus, OH 43201, USA.
Email: pelfrey.19@osu.edu
1200680TAP0010.1177/09593543231200680Theory & PsychologyPelfrey et al.
research-article2023
Article
2 Theory & Psychology 00(0)
Lev Vygotsky, 1896–1934
Lev Vygotsky is often credited with the development of cultural-historical activity the-
ory, which is a lens through which one can analyze human activity systems. The theory
emphasizes the interaction between thought and activity situated within an environmen-
tal context (Engeström, 1999; Jonassen & Rohrer-Murphy, 1999). His work stood in
contrast to many of the approaches to psychology of his time, which viewed learning and
development as divorced from their social surroundings and from broader institutions
(Vygotsky, 1934/1987b). Vygotsky and his colleagues published several articles in psy-
chological journals in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Although his first article in English
was published in 1929, his work was not known or widely recognized in the West until
the 1960s and 1970s. One possible reason for this is that his seminal work, Thinking and
Speech, became available to western English-speaking scholars upon its translation in
1962 (Vygotsky, 1934/1987b).
Konstantin Stanislavski, 1863–1938
Stanislavski was an actor, a director, and the founder of the Moscow Public-Accessible
Theater, later known as the Moscow Art Theater (MAT). He is regarded as most influen-
tial for his systematic manualization of actor preparation, training, and rehearsal, known
as the Stanislavski “system” (Benedetti, 1990). The “system” emphasized a rigorous
analysis of the actor’s role and objectives within the larger plot of the production.
Stanislavski, following the revolution in realism ushered in by Ibsen and Chekhov (and
Gorky), stressed a psychophysiological approach to acting, which integrated physical
gestures (of all types) into the collaborative development of character and scene. His
pedagogical approach to instructing his students and actors placed particular importance
on preparation, during which actors would analyze the overarching plot and their charac-
ter’s motivation and activity (Benedetti, 1982/2004; Stanislavski, 2008).
In this article, we argue that Vygotsky’s early experiences as a theater critic and expo-
sure to the work of Stanislavski and the MAT influenced his later work as a psychologist.
An intellectual connection supplemented by his ongoing collaborations with scholars at
GAKhN (Государственная академия художественных наук—the State Academy for
the Scientific Study of Art, founded in 1921) throughout his career influenced especially
his later work in searching for a new type of psychology that emphasized human thought
and activity as situated within and contingent on the context of the environment. Vygotsky
was especially active in the GAKhN subsection on “The Psychology of the Actor,” which
focused on the work of Stanislavski and his contemporaries. The subsection was chaired
by Stanislavski’s editor, Liubov Gurevich. We suggest that Vygotsky’s lifelong fascina-
tion with theater, and his exposure to Stanislavski’s theory on (the psychology of) acting,
made critical contributions to his thinking as he struggled to reformulate his understand-
ing of psychology and the human condition. Failure to tie Vygotsky’s work to his con-
temporaries, and his attachment(s) to the artistic/theatrical revolution taking place in
Russia during the early 20th century, is something Vygotsky himself might decry—
ignoring the role his own emotional and social history played in his purposeful activity.
Pelfrey et al. 3
We connect different aspects of Stanislavski’s (1936, 1948) An Actor’s Work as trans-
lated and compiled by Jean Benedetti (Stanislavski, 2008), outlining the psychological
aspects of character development and acting that Stanislavski developed over decades,
with Vygotsky’s (1934/1987b) burgeoning ideas, finding their apogee in one of his final
works, Thinking and Speech. While his ideas and methods for the study of human con-
sciousness are often seen as groundbreaking and revolutionary in the field of psychology,
it is important to consider that Vygotsky’s theories did not develop in a vacuum. Unlike
in the West, Russia had departments within its colleges devoted to the study of the psy-
chology of different arts, including music, material arts, and theatrical arts. Vygotsky,
because of both his interests and his history, seems to have been drawn to the psychology
of the actor. Gudkova (2019) establishes connections between Vygotsky and many of the
preeminent theater scholars of the early 20th century in Russia. The academic epicenter
of articulating and expanding Stanislavski’s theories was GAKhN. Vygotsky frequently
attended presentations at the Theater Section throughout the 1920s (Gudkova, 2019).
Earlier, Vygotsky developed pieces with the GAKhN Psychology of Acting faculty,
including Shklovsky, Iakobson, and Eikhenbaum. These were published in the journal
Zhizn’ iskusstva (Жизнь искусства) between the years 1918 and 1922. He maintained
these collaborative ties as his work progressed into the 1930s. Although Vygotsky shifted
his focus to studying psychology more broadly, “Iakobson’s work after GAKhN fol-
lowed in Vygotsky’s footsteps” (Gudkova, 2019, pp. 301–302, note 5).
Vygotsky (1934/1987b) collaborated with scholars and regularly lectured at GAKhN,
where Liubov Gurevich was a faculty member, leading up to the publication of Thinking
and Speech. For instance, on January 23, 1928, Vygotsky presented a piece titled “Toward
the Study of the Psychology of the Actor’s Work” at the Theater Section’s “The
Psychology of the Actor’s” subsection (Gudkova, 2019). He maintained connections
with GAKhN faculty well into the 1930s. Vygotsky’s (1932/1936) “On the Problem of
the Psychology of the Actor’s Creative Work” (“К вопросу о психологии творчества
актера”), written in 1932, was first published in 1936 as an appendix to GAKhN faculty
member Pavel Iakobson’s Психологии сценических чувств актера (Psychology of
stage feelings of an actor). In 1930, Gurevich defended a lecture by Iakobson “as
endorsed by Vygotsky at a GAKhN Theater Section” (Gudkova, 2019, p. 610). Vygotsky
exchanged ideas with these scholars. We argue that these experiences informed his think-
ing and the development of his later ideas. Perhaps the most important influence was
Stanislavski himself. Vygotsky had access to Stanislavski’s (1936) theater textbook, as
edited by Gurevich (the most relevant and comprehensive version of his work, not gener-
ally available even in Russia prior to 1936). There is direct evidence that Gurevich con-
sulted Vygotsky on the manuscript to check Stanislavski’s terminology in 1929,
immediately before Vygotsky experienced his personal and professional crisis, culminat-
ing in a radical reformulation of his theory. This is referenced in a letter from Gurevich
to Stanislavski found in Volume 10 of a journal called Minuvshee (Минувшее; A. Lin,
personal communication, March 11, 2021):
In some chapters—for example, the chapter on Affective memory—you used terms that are
incorrect from the psychological perspective.
4 Theory & Psychology 00(0)
I have been pointing out this imprecision in your terminology for a while now, but, unwilling
to rely on my modest knowledge on the matter, last winter and this winter I purposefully
consulted three prominent psychology experts to dispel my doubts: Chelpanov, Ekzemplyarsky
and the young and very artistically sensitive Vygotsky. All of them corroborated my opinion.1
Stanislavski’s “system” reached its height in the Russian arts community at large just
as Vygotsky became a theater critic. Stanislavski was becoming a celebrity of interna-
tional renown. The young Vygotsky apparently knew Stanislavski’s work quite well from
early on in his intellectual life.
We argue that Vygotsky’s exposure to the work of Stanislavski, Gurevich, and GAKhN
scholars influenced his later cultural-historical theories of psychology. The first section
of this article provides an overview of Vygotsky’s life as a theater critic in Moscow and
his hometown of Gomel, during which he drew heavily on work being done at the MAT
on a natural rather than hyperbolic approach to acting using psychological realism, bor-
rowing terms and ideas directly from Stanislavski, as well as his later relationships with
members of the GAKhN subsection as he was formulating his ideas on a unified approach
to thought and activity. The borrowing of terms from An Actor’s Work (Stanislavski,
2008), many of which initially appeared in his theater reviews in Moscow and Gomel,
later surfaced in Vygotsky’s publications dealing with problems in the field of psychol-
ogy. In the second section of this article, we establish a connection between An Actor’s
Work and Vygotsky through one of the best-known aspects of Vygotsky’s work: recog-
nizing action as primary in understanding/analyzing human behavior. In the third sec-
tion, we address the role of “bits and tasks”—a key component of both Stanislavski’s
system and Vygotsky’s later work.
Individual history, social history, and volition in the
development of Vygotsky’s theory
Vygotsky might advise that, to understand his own work as a psychologist, we as
scholars must understand the mediating tools and settings he experienced during the
years his thinking developed. Vygotsky was born into a large family in the city of
Orsha and spent his youth in the city of Gomel at the height of the Silver Age, a period
in Russian history characterized by a cultural blossoming in the domains of the arts,
especially theater (Rubtsova & Daniels, 2016). Vygotsky’s family life reflected this
historical moment; it was common for evenings to be spent around the table discussing
literature as well as the latest theatrical productions (Lowe, 2009). He was an active
member of Khudjestvenny Sovet (Художественный совет—the Art Council), which
granted free access to performances in Gomel. Vygotsky was familiar with the famous
Russian theatrical directors Konstantin Stanislavski and Vsevolod Meyerhold, was
close friends with the literary critic Yuri Aykhenvald (who oversaw Vygotsky’s dis-
sertation on Stanislavski’s 1912 production of Hamlet), and attended a reading group
with the renowned Soviet Acmeist poet Osip Mandelstam—whom he quotes at the
beginning of Chapter 7 of Thinking and Speech (Vygotsky, 1934/1987b). In some
ways, Chapter 7 of Thinking and Speech can be seen as a homage to this time and intel-
lectual space in Vygotsky’s life.2
Pelfrey et al. 5
Vygotsky left Gomel to be a theater critic in Moscow, particularly at MAT (Lowe,
2009). He inevitably came into contact with the tight community around MAT, including
Gurevich. Vygotsky returned to Gomel a few years later. While in Gomel, he maintained
his working relationship with the theater, writing over 80 essays, the majority of which
were theatrical reviews published in the Nash ponedel’nik (Наш
понедельник) and Polesskaia pravda (Полесская правда) newspapers (Sobkin &
Klimova, 2018; Yasnitsky, 2012). In these reviews, the young Vygotsky explored the
psychological aspects of character development and stage direction, drawing on the
ideas of Stanislavki.
The topics addressed in Vygotsky’s reviews included distinguishing the external and
internal planes of the actor, children at play, and the notion of dual meaning (later
addressed in Thinking and Speech). He also wrote pieces on the emotional nature of
dramaturgical experience, examining the utterance in the context of action and emotion,
and the relationships between utterance, gesture, action, and emotion, which he addressed
in has later work as a psychologist (Sobkin & Klimova, 2018). Additionally, his early
reviews for the theater explored the idea of mood/affect as a moderator of an actor’s
performance, and the notion of an actor’s accumulated experience defining their range
and capabilities in terms of appropriate casting. This foreshadowed his ideas on how
development progresses in accordance with the lived experiences and mediating tools to
which an individual is exposed throughout their lifespan (Sobkin & Klimova, 2018).
Vygotsky would continue to explore and develop his understanding of these topics
through his later scholarship as a psychologist, reinforced by his exposure to Stanislavski’s
manuscripts (via Gurevich), who was attempting to put his ideas on the psychotechnique
of acting in writing as his career drew to a close.
In the later sections of this article, we will explore these relations between Vygotsky’s
work and Stanislavski’s “system” further, but first, by way of establishing this linkage,
we should note that Vygotsky drew terms and acting devices coined by Stanislavski in
the theatrical critiques he published in Moscow and Gomel. These terms and concepts
later resurfaced in his publications as a psychologist.
To our knowledge, Vygotsky mentions Stanislavski in 14 instances in his theater
reviews, notes, and lectures that are available in existing archives between the years of
1917 and 1924 at the time of this publication (Sobkin, 2015). As Vygotsky transitioned
from the theater to the academy to focus on psychology and human development, he car-
ried the symbolist understanding of human psychology gleaned from Stanislavski’s work
and his collaborations with GAKhN researchers into his later scholarship.3 Vygotsky
began to publish his ideas on a new human psychology in 1925.
Linguistic borrowings
Vygotsky’s relationship to Stanislavski and MAT was not only defined by the historical
moment (although we believe both Vygotsky and Stanislavski would say that was enough
to put his scholarly activities into a specific context). It was also defined by the way
Vygotsky began to use the language of MAT to express his thinking. A preponderance of
Vygotsky’s reviews addressed issues relating to the performance’s “super-objective” or
“super-task” (sverkhzadacha, сверхзадача), a term drawn from Stanislavski’s work
6 Theory & Psychology 00(0)
(Sobkin & Mazanova, 2015). Stanislavski (2008) defines it in his glossary of terms as:
“The theme or subject of the play. The reason why it was written” (p. 684). This term is
also the subtitle of the first part of the book (but was removed when published in the
USA). We also see this term surface as an important part of Vygotsky’s (1927/2004)
explorations into human thinking in later works such as “Imagination and Creativity in
Childhood”: “The children draw, model, cut out, sew, and again all these activities take
on meaning and purpose as part of a general objective [emphasis added] the children are
engaged with” (p. 71). In this piece, Vygotsky establishes activity as always having a
defined objective. This objective may be fluid, but it is always present, moderating
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. We should note that sections of “Imagination and
Creativity in Childhood” focus on using dramaturgical arts as an ideal setting for child
development, as theatrical productions, including their preparation and set design, adhere
to the criteria of always having a super-objective—perhaps a nod to Vygotsky’s earlier
career as both a theater critic and a teacher of the dramaturgical arts. Early in his career,
Vygotsky and his brother took out an advertisement in a local newspaper for an institute
for the study of drama (Lowe et al., 2009).
Vygotsky also may have borrowed the terms nastroenie (“mood,” настроение)
and obshchenie (“communicating/communing,” общение) from An Actor’s Work
(Stanislavski, 2008), although skeptics could argue that these connections are more tenu-
ous due to the common use of these terms in everyday speech, particularly when address-
ing the aesthetic nature of a work of art such as a theater production. However, it should
be noted that even during his time as a theater critic, Vygotsky addressed these designa-
tions for aspects of productions in purely psychological terms (Sobkin & Klimova,
2018).
“Through-action” (skvoznoe deistvie, сквозное действие) is another term that bears
linkage to the work of Stanislavski, and is connected to later Vygotskian ideas regarding
action as primary. Stanislavski (2008) defined the through-action as “[t]he logical
sequence of all the actions in the play that gives coherence to the performance” (p. 684).
In other words, action is what makes the production real and gives it life. Stanislavski
(2008) provides a definition within the dialogue of An Actor’s Work that positions this
psychological concept beyond the proscenium opening:
The Through-action is the direct extension of the dynamic of the inner drives that have their
origin in the mind, will, and creative feeling of the actor. If there were no Through-action, all
the Bits and Tasks in the play, all the Given Circumstances, communication, adaptations,
moments of truth and belief, etc. would vegetate separately from one another, with no hope of
coming alive.
But the Through-action brings everything together, strings all the elements together, like a
thread through unconnected beads, and points them towards the common Supertask. (p. 312)
Stanislavski acknowledges the fundamental human element of this concept in relation
to goal orientation, motivation, and action as the core of creating a theatrical production
that is authentic and natural: “Let us agree for the future to call this vital goal a human
being/actor has, the Supertask and the super-Through-action” (p. 314). This concept
Pelfrey et al. 7
broadly aligns with Vygotsky’s (1987a) later ideas on education and psychology, with his
work placing action as the genesis whence all human consciousness emerges on both the
external and internal planes.
Perhaps Vygotsky’s most well-known borrowing from Stanislavski is the concept of
perezhivanie (переживание, pronounced pe-re-zhe-vah-ni-e). The exact translation of
this term has confounded translators, but both Sobkin (for Vygotsky) and Benedetti (for
Stanislavski) translate it as “experiencing” (Benedetti, 1982/2004; Sobkin & Mazanova,
2014). The word is defined vaguely by Stanislavski (2008) in the glossary of terms of An
Actor’s Work as “[t]he process by which an actor experiences the character’s emotions
afresh in each performance” (p. 683), and it is central to their work and their “system.”4
Vygotsky first used this term in his piece “The Red Torch Tour: Cricket on the Stove—
Dog in the Manger—Ocean—Victory of Death” (“Гастроли ‘Красного Факела’:
Сверчок на печи—Собака на сене—Океан—Победа смерти”), in which he refer-
ences Stanislavski directly:
The Stanislavski system also strives to replace the art of presentation with the art of perezhivanie
[emphasis added]. The author himself called this spiritual naturalism.[5] The actor is to elicit in
[them]self on every occasion the feeling [they are] acting out, rather than just portraying it. The
system was, remarkably enough, created as a way to combat the empty theatrical platitude, the
cliché, the sham that says nothing. (Sobkin, 2015, p. 340)6
Vygotsky (1934/1998) would carry this struggle between representation and perezhi-
vanie into his last work (i.e., “The Problem of Age”).
There are other examples of this artistically oriented (MAT) version of perezhivanie
in Vygotsky’s early writings on the theater. In his review of Anatoli Lunacharsky’s silent
film Locksmith and Chancellor (Слесарь и Канцлер) from 1923, Vygotsky (1923)
writes: “a true-to-life metamorphosis, the same perezhivanie [emphasis added] of the
artists as the lining underlying his acting, ... which infects the spectator and establishes
the intimacy in their soulful intimacy to everything unfolding in front of them” (p. 4)7
Here, we see early signs of Vygotsky’s later ideas on an actor’s socio-historical
experiences accumulated prior to being cast in a given role as the basis for their artis-
tic expression. Placing action as the genesis of an authentic actor–audience relation-
ship in this 1923 review, Vygotsky is already establishing the actor’s performance of
the role as being moderated by their accumulated social experiences/tools, and mak-
ing methodological decisions in ways that are consistent with his later scientific
research program.
Vygotsky must walk the same fine line as Stanislavski did throughout his theory
development. Stanislavski came to recognize that he was restricting the possibilities of
an actor in varied roles by treating prior life experience as definitive. It was one of the
reasons why he moved to the concept of action as not only the product of emotional
memory and social history, but also generative and forward-looking. We suggest that
Vygotsky attempted to thread the same psychological needle: action as both the product
of perezhivanie and the point of departure for all future relationships, communications,
and activities.
8 Theory & Psychology 00(0)
Vygotsky uses perezhivanie in his later academic work such as Ape, Primitive Man,
and Child: Essays in the History of Behaviour (Luriia & Vygotsky, 1930/1992),
“Imagination and Creativity in Childhood” (Vygotsky, 1927/1990), “Mind,
Consciousness, the Unconscious” (Vygotsky, 1930/1997c), and “On the Problem of the
Psychology of the Actor’s Creative Work” (Vygotsky 1932/1999). The timeline for these
publications, going back to his use of the term in his early reviews, demonstrates a con-
tinuity between his work and interest in the theater and his research in the field of psy-
chology. Vygotsky employs perezhivanie in his later writings to establish action(s) within
a setting that allow for an individual to experience given circumstances, engage with
them via action in some capacity, and thereby learn and develop through that action.
Action within the context of perezhivanie is culturally situated and typically includes
cooperation with others (Glassman et al., 2023).
These linguistic borrowings establish a link between the work of Stanislavski and that
of a “young and very artistically sensitive Vygotsky” (Gudkova, personal communica-
tion, March 11, 2019), who carried the influence of his understanding of theatrical pro-
duction and the systematic development of the actor’s psychotechnique into his work on
psychology. Conceptually, the terms are further developed and articulated to readers
through the dialogues of An Actor’s Work (Stanislavski, 2008) and through Vygotsky’s
lectures, articles, and experiments in psychology. On careful examination of their work,
it is possible to see how the theoretical underpinnings guiding Stanislavski’s and
Vygotsky’s thinking and writing on both the theater and psychology are aligned. Indeed,
they complement one another, with Stanislavski’s An Actor’s Work serving as the praxis
and Vygotsky’s work serving as the theory.
Vygotsky’s crisis in psychology
Two years seem to have been of particular importance in the evolution of Vygotsky’s
thinking on psychology and the directions he was looking to take: 1926 and 1930. In
1926, Vygotsky entered the Zhakarino hospital in Moscow with tuberculosis. It is
believed that Vygotsky wrote a draft of The Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology
or at least laid out the intellectual groundwork for his thinking during this stay (Hyman,
2012). For a full explanation, one can explore the work of a number of scholars (see
Hyman, 2012) or read the work of Vygotsky (1997b) himself.
In short, Vygotsky identified several issues with existing approaches to psychology,
which he refers to wholistically as “The Crisis.” First, he notes that there was no unified
theoretical basis for building knowledge in the field. Each school of psychology at the
time was building its own principles, and thereby battling with other schools of thought
for primacy (Hyman, 2012; Vygotsky, 1997b). Second, he identified flaws in existing
methodological approaches to studying psychological phenomena. And third, he notes
that there were inconsistent terminologies across different schools of psychology, which
he refers to as philosophical “babyhood” (Vygotsky, 1997b, pp. 298–300). In response to
this Crisis, Vygotsky proposes the development of a “general discipline” that would
unify approaches to studying psychology and allow for the coordination of research pro-
grams (Hyman, 2012).
Pelfrey et al. 9
Vygotsky never published this work in his lifetime, but he outlined his ideas for a new
dialectical psychology and a program of research (van der Veer & Valsiner, 1994).
Zavershneva (2012, 2014) makes the argument that Vygotsky did not publish this manu-
script because he believed it was flawed—a perspective spurred in part by the critiques
of a second reader, who left notes in the margins of the pages. Zavershneva (2012) notes
that Vygotsky published some central ideas first expressed in The Historical Meaning of
the Crisis in Psychology in 1930 in articles such as “Mind, Consciousness, the
Unconscious” (Vygotsky, 1930/1997c) after he ostensibly would have read the draft of
Stanislavski’s (2008) An Actor’s Work given to him by Gurevich. In both the original
Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology and the later “Mind, Consciousness, the
Unconscious,” Vygotsky’s stated alternative approach to psychology strongly resembles
Stanislavski’s psychophysiological technique as a unitary understanding of human
behavior (Benedetti, 1990; Zarrilli et al., 2012). When Vygotsky uses the term dialectical
to describe this new psychology, he may have been referring to a Stanislavskian dialectic
of mind and body (more akin to the modern cybernetic concept of feedback loop; Tilak
et al., 2022), psychology and physiology, as much as other more preeminent scholars
who have used the term, such as Marx (whom he cites directly) or Trotsky, with whom
Vygotsky was inevitably familiar (Newman & Holzman, 2013).
How and why did Vygotsky come up with what was at the time a revolutionary idea
in psychology while lying in the hospital, and why did he return to and reconceptualize
these ideas in 1930? We argue that, in 1926, he was only a few years removed from
immersion in the theater and collaborations with scholars at GAKhN. As Vygotsky
became more frustrated with the nature of psychological research, he turned, at least in
part, to Stanislavski’s conceptualizations of his technique (it took Stanislavski decades to
develop the idea of the psychophysiological technique). Reading the early chapters of An
Actor’s Work (Stanislavski, 2008) around 1929–1930 may have finally congealed
Vygotsky’s thinking on this alternative approach to psychology.
In the following sections of this article, we reify the connection between Stanislavski
and Vygotsky by exploring two areas of alignment in the psychophysiological technique:
(a) action as primary and (b) bits and tasks.
Action as primary
A fundamental characteristic of Stanislavski’s (2008) system of developing the actor’s
psychotechnique to authentically portray a role is the concept that action is the primary
source from which all true playing and “true being” emerge. An Actor’s Work
(Stanislavski, 2008) functions as a guide for actors to develop a deep understanding of
how human psychology functions and how to exercise that understanding via an applied,
practical method to convey a humanistic unification of feelings and experience onstage.
The goal was to truly experience a role, and thereby portray the character and the larger
production realistically through actions. This authentic portrayal of the internal and
external human experience onstage (with the external being a window into the internal)
was the embodiment of the early modernist aesthetic that blossomed at the beginning of
the 20th century in Russia and throughout the West. Stanislavski (2008) believed
10 Theory & Psychology 00(0)
himself to be a psychologist of acting, possessing a natural understanding of human
thought and behavior, and how they functioned as a unity in action. His station in the
theater, soundly outside of the behaviorist laboratories and academic circles of the age,
afforded him the space to objectively analyze and interpret human psychology and
behavior through his own personal experience and observation. Throughout An Actor’s
Work, Stanislavski goes to great lengths to explain and expand in real-world circum-
stances his ideas of how the genesis of authentic human thought and feeling is action.
In the case of the play, the action required by the character’s volition within the given
role and plot is the culmination of the character’s/actor’s inner drives (through-action)
within the broader super-objective of the production. Action, in addition to physical
behaviors, involves the mutually dependent relationship between thought and affect that
takes place in the mind of an individual on the internal plane. These predicated internal
thoughts (internal actions) are then externalized in the actor’s words and deeds (external
actions).
In the case of real life, this is the action required by the given cultural-historical cir-
cumstances of a person’s life within a social context moderated by their needs, fears, and
desires. An individual’s broader objectives over the span of their life form the super-
objective; their behaviors (words and deeds) are the externalization of their motivations
and affective sentiments as their given circumstances relate to cooperation with others
and the achievement of said objective. Each word, each gesture, each variation in tone is
the microcosmic externalization of inner consciousness. Just as the sun reflected in a
raindrop is a microcosm of the sun, each human action is a microcosm of an individual’s
consciousness (Vygotsky, 1934/1987b).
For Stanislavski, authentic action onstage (and in life) must adhere to this theoretical
model. Otherwise, it is “play-acting,” or what Vygotsky (1934/1987b) later referred to as
“mimetic behavior,” a less advanced behavior within the ontogenic trajectory of human
development. Early 20th-century theater emphasized mimetic naturalism—a form of
acting that employed a scripted and rehearsed repertoire of reactions and behaviors
instead of authentically experiencing a role. Stanislavski’s system became the corner-
stone of the broader aesthetic couched in the symbolist movement that he and others,
such as Chekhov, Ibsen, and Strindberg, were looking to bring to the stage. This emerg-
ing school of acting, which incorporated the psychology of the actor and the develop-
ment of the psychophysiological technique, stood in stark contrast to the exaggerated
play-acting of the age.
Beyond positioning action as primary in authentic human behavior, Stanislavski’s
(2008) pursuit of a system for developing and fostering authentic physical and affective
action on the stage led him to establish criteria for what it means to act as “natural,
human” (p. 181). To be authentic, he claimed that all action must adhere to the following
criteria: (a) flow in a logical sequence; (b) be inwardly well founded; and (c) be plausible
in the real world. To guide his students toward these behaviors, Stanislavski prescribed
that action must always justify the moment as experienced by the actor (their desires,
motives, and immediate task):
Having felt inner and outer truth and believing in it, an impulse to action automatically arises,
and then action itself. If all aspects of an actor’s nature, as a human being, are working logically,
Pelfrey et al. 11
sequentially, with genuine truth and belief, then the process of experiencing is complete.
(Stanislavski, 2008, p. 169)
For Stanislavski (and for Vygotsky, as we will explain in the next section), human
agency flows through the following trajectory: action, belief, and truth. When internal
and external belief and truth are present, impulse for action automatically emerges, fol-
lowed by externalized action itself.
In the pursuit of establishing his system, Stanislavski sought to understand the essence
of human psychology and behavior in a practical sense. Stanislavski felt that to under-
stand how to act and think onstage, actors must understand how humans act and think in
real life. As Tortsov (the fictional instructor in An Actor’s Work, thought by many to be a
pseudonym for Stanislavski) notes to his first-year acting students:
We are trying to understand how we can learn to do things onstage, not in a histrionic way—“in
general”—but in a human way . . . with the truth of a living organism, freely, not in the way the
conventions of the theatre demand, but as the laws of a living, natural organism demand.
(Stanislavski, 2008, p. 56)
Understanding the laws that govern living, natural organisms led to the idea that
external and internal action is primary, with action’s relationship to the individual’s affect
moderated by goals and given circumstances (Stanislavski, 2008).
The system applied in Vygotsky’s psychological research
Vygotsky’s perhaps most celebrated work, Thinking and Speech, describes the onto- and
phylogenetic roots of thought and word in human development and consciousness. The
final chapter crescendos with Vygotsky (1934/1987b) stating a rebuttal to the Book of
John: “In the beginning was the deed,” not the word (p. 283).
A recurring theme throughout Vygotsky’s (1934/1987b, 1931/1997a) work that we
continue to develop as psychologists is the theory that all higher mental functions are
social—their development and externalization is moderated by accumulated experi-
ences. That is to say that human development emerges from actions enacted by and upon
an individual over the course of the lifespan:
Every higher mental function was external because it was social before it became an internal,
strictly mental function; it was formerly a social relation. . . . The means of acting on oneself is
initially a means of acting on others or a means of action of others on the individual. (Vygotsky,
1931/1997a, p.105)
Here, Vygotsky not only notes that human development is the product of shared action
and experience, but also—a deviation from the existing psychological theories of his
time—places action as primary in both the moderation and articulation of human thought.
In his theory, Vygotsky also establishes the dual nature of these relationships. The pro-
cess is a scientific articulation of the action–belief–truth chain of reactions that
Stanislavski (2008) explicated in An Actor’s Work—what Vygotsky (1931/1997a)
12 Theory & Psychology 00(0)
referred to later as “direct and mediated relations between people” (p. 104). These rela-
tions manifest through shared “forms of expressive movement and action” (p. 104).
Within this framework, Vygotsky created a new scientific basis for understanding the
ontological development of humans that in many ways mirrors Stanislavski’s work.
Vygotsky explains that action is primary in that human experience and cognition is
the accumulation and resemiotization of the cultural tools and symbols that a person is
exposed to over their lifespan (Vygotsky & Luria, 1930/1994). In the stages of infancy,
the actions that take place around the developing child moderate their development.
This developmental moderator (action) stays constant throughout the lifespan. As
beings develop, they become collaborators (Vygotsky & Luria, 1930/1994). These
experiences and actions within a dynamic set of given circumstances lead to the accu-
mulation of memories and beliefs, becoming an integrated system of cultural tools
(Vygotsky & Luria, 1930/1994). Thoughts and emotions emerge naturally, expressed
via internal thoughts and external actions, and dynamically shape a continuous stream
of circumstances and experiences over our lifetime (Vygotsky, 1934/1987b). Thought,
word, and gesture (action in general) are the unfolding of consciousness and feeling in
any given moment as the culmination of the aforementioned forces (Vygotsky,
1934/1987b).
Word and gesture became of particular interest to Vygotsky in his psychological
research, echoing the exploration of word as an expression of affect in his early theater
reviews. For instance, in a review of Monna Vanna in 1922, Vygotsky wrote:
F. F. Kirikov has all the competence for this style of acting. His muted, sinister, monotonous
voice, dry and solemn, is excellent material for it, just like his reserved, abrupt, schematic
gesture. However, even his Prinzivalle was underwhelming in the last act: he simply stayed
silent, he had no dialogue lines. In the second act, the proportions of his marionette swings—
from demands to denial of a kiss—were drastically minimized, and everything had a trivial and
insignificant, lackluster character. (Sobkin, 2015, p. 170)8
For both Stanislavski and Vygotsky, action is the manifestation of thinking in the
moment—emotional history influenced by the setting and the actions of others—start-
ing with the volition to solve a problem, becoming belief that the action will solve that
problem, and evolving into truth, which can set the context for working through future,
similar problems. Stanislavski developed this continuous action–belief–truth cycle
throughout the early part of the 20th century. He taught his students that action is a
direct expression of a character’s psychological state based, above all else, on the
affect-laden choices they make in a dynamic psychology tied to the past (individual
and cultural history), the immediate (material, physical, and social circumstances), and
the future (setting trajectories for future activities). Vygotsky (1934/1987b) refers to
this as a “chain of reactions.” For Vygotsky, thought and experience spawns new and
continued action from the interlocutors with whom the agents are cooperating.
Vygotsky (1932/1936) expands on this notion in “On the Problem of the Psychology of
the Actor’s Creative Work,” when he accounts for the historical epoch and social set-
ting as a moderator of an actor’s emotional range, as well as human behavior and
expression more broadly.
Pelfrey et al. 13
Vygotsky began developing these ideas early, when his interests were primarily with
the theater. For instance, in a review published in 1922 that he wrote for E. V. Geltser’s
tour, Vygotsky states:
E. V. Geltser is a master of the most complex technique of classical dance. Her dazzling
technique somewhat faded on our stage, too tight and small for her powerful jump and “the
soulful flying,” she seemed a bit listless in strictly constrained pieces of the program, lacking
everything that gives passion, tempest, and then smoke and the wind of dance; its most subtle
nuances and forceful swings could not be shown. However, the most important part was there:
the personal ardor of her dance. (Vygotsky, 1922, pp. 8–9)9
In the theories and analyses that Vygotsky (1934/1987b) developed in his later work
as a psychologist, action was examined as the primary means for understanding mind
and consciousness, thought and word, and the development of the child. Vygotsky
(1934/1987b) also posited that understanding setting (the cultural-historical moment) is
essential to understanding human behavior. With the knowledge that “all [word and]
action must be purposeful, productive, and genuine” (Stanislavski, 2008, p. 57), Vygotsky
continued to develop theories and methodologies that place action as the primary route
for understanding human psychology throughout his career.
Bits and tasks
Previously, we noted that Stanislavski was not a psychologist. He worked closely with
Gurevich and other GAKhN academics such as Pavel Iakobson and N. I. Zhinkin to
refine his ideas and develop what he called the psychology of acting. GAKhN faculty
helped Stanislavski fulfill his expressed goal of manualizing a system for his students
that would allow players to access their subconscious through the volitional actions of
their character, thereby leading to the expression of perezhivanie onstage. In order to
authentically play a role, Stanislavski believed that one had to understand the volition,
goals, ecological setting, and affect (ultimately, the psychological unity of the character).
Affect and volition are conveyed via the character’s (even smallest) actions (a nod, a
look). In the MAT’s initial production of Uncle Vanya, Chekhov pleaded with Stanislavski
not to turn Astrov’s (who Stanislavski was playing) feelings for Helena into melo-
drama—to be careful with the character’s actions so they encompassed his larger
through-action in being both a country doctor and a conservationist (Borny, 2006).10
Astrov desires Helena, but it is a desire of resignation and despair that captures his larger
emotional history of creating a more meaningful life, manifested in sighs, drinking, and
his halting and careful conversations with Helena. If we start from who Astrov is, the
obstacles he faces in his life on a short- and long-term basis comprise the tasks that give
meaning to his actions (bits). Players used what Stanislavski referred to as the “bits and
tasks” method to understand their character’s overall motives, analyze the character’s
external actions, and then take those actions onstage, moving past beliefs to truth through
the cooperative work of the troupe.
Bits and tasks functioned as a sort of theatrical structuralism, in which players would
take a bird’s-eye view of the piece, examine the major milestones comprising the plot,
14 Theory & Psychology 00(0)
and then establish the actions and motives of their character in the story arc. Each activity
milestone comprised what Stanislavski (1936) called “bits” (единицы). The bits, and
how the character goes about completing them, fed back into the larger volitional incli-
nations (what the character desires to happen), which Stanislavski (1936) referred to as
“tasks” (задания, originally translated by Hapgood as “objectives”):
“You need to divide the play into bits not only so that you can analyze and study the work but
for another, more important reason, which is hidden deep within each bit,” Tortsov explained.
“There is a creative task stored in each bit. The task arises organically out of its own bit, or, vice
versa, gives birth to it.” (Stanislavski, 2008, p. 142)
Stanislavski (2008) instructed his students to undertake this process to ensure that
their role was “properly analyzed and studied” (p. 142). The purpose of any analysis is
to provide a deeper understanding of a subject or system. Using the “bits and tasks”
framework, actors established the goal orientation of the characters and carefully broke
up the production into the actions for which they were responsible (bits). The character’s
goal orientation (tasks) and given circumstances then created the affective state onstage
and how they went about completing their bits of the production. Astrov might stutter
when Helena enters a room, darken when another character dominates her time, stare out
a window to the farm in a moment of repose—each bit portraying a man torn by compet-
ing desires (the unreachable Helena and the natural world that calls to him).
Based on his own experiences staging plays from Chekhov to Ibsen and Shakespeare,
Stanislavski (2008) began to believe that the human condition comprises a series of
objectives and obstacles that we are constantly co-constructing, navigating, and attempt-
ing to achieve: “Each of these obstacles creates a Task and the action to overcome it. A
human being wants something, fights for something, wins something every moment of
[their] life” (p. 143). Theater is a grand staging of human bits and tasks.
Stanislavski (2008) felt that one of the fundamental mistakes that players of the early
20th century were making was focusing on the (preconceived) result of the action instead
of the action itself. Most actors of the time were trained to represent the emotions and
feelings of characters imposed by the playwright/poet or director through repeated train-
ing and mimicry. Stanislavski instructed his students to analyze the actions, goal orienta-
tion, and volition of the characters onstage to understand their conscious state so that
emotions were not predetermined, but came out of the characters’ actions (very much
resembling the action–goal–motive scheme that would become central to activity the-
ory). For Stanislavski, through the process of living the characters’ experience within the
given circumstances of the story arc and fulfilling (or not) the tasks and actions for which
they are responsible in the plot, authentic emotion and perezhivanie would emerge natu-
rally and drive future actions forward.
For instance, in life, the simple act of reaching out and shaking someone’s hand (a bit)
has embedded within it all the feelings and emotions that exist between the two subjects
taking part in the activity. Feelings of curiosity, anxiety, respect, admiration, or disdain
are conveyed naturally through the completion of the action itself. Stanislavski under-
stood that personality is physically manifested through action. And the way these actions
are fulfilled is a data point that allows one to understand the general psychological state
Pelfrey et al. 15
of the person completing the action. One might follow the way Astrov shakes (or does
not shake) the main character’s hand before and after the character has announced he will
sell his farm, betraying the land and taking away Helena from his life.
The system gave Stanislavski’s students a means by which to separate the production
into bits, allowing for the meaningful understanding of the characters’ operations
(actions), goals, and motives in the context of socio-historically derived affect.
Stanislavski prescribed the analytical process of breaking down the individual actions
comprising the characters’ behavior into bits and tasks as a means of understanding the
unified nature of internal thoughts and external actions.
Vygotsky used a similar approach and terminology as he posed nascent approaches to
psychology. In the article “Mind, Consciousness, the Unconscious,” ostensibly after
reviewing Stanislavski’s manuscript, Vygotsky (1930/1997c) returned to his unfinished
(and unpublished) thinking from the year he spent in the hospital recovering from tuber-
culosis in 1926, calling for a theoretical and methodological reframing of the “three
fundamental psychological issues” (p. 109) referred to in the piece’s title. Vygotsky
(1934/1987b) notes that the existing approach being employed by psychologists to
explain “the problem of the relationships and connections among the various mental
functions was inaccessible to traditional psychology” (p. 41). Vygotsky voiced the same
critique of early 20th-century psychologists as Stanislavski had of theater directors and
actors of his era—they were focusing on the result and not the action.
Vygotsky’s predecessors and contemporaries often used reflexological explanations
for issues of the mind and consciousness (Münsterberg et al., 1910). Even as scientific
breakthroughs emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries incorporating the uncon-
scious (Freud, 1915/1957) into explanations of human thinking and behavior, a concep-
tual folly predominated in the field, with different psychological schools tending to study
mental functions independently of each other (Vygotsky, 1934/1987b). Driven by an
obsession with being positioned amongst the natural sciences, the explanations and
methods of the field(s) for studying relationships between various mental functions
focused on physiology, refusing to study the mind (losing the roles of emotional history
and affect); solely on mental processes (losing the primacy of action in driving thought
and behavior forward); or on understanding the mind through the unconscious (losing
the unity of the mind and physiology; Vygotsky, 1934/1987b). While these various
schools of psychology had different ways of understanding the mental functions of the
brain, a common methodological practice was to study mental functions as distillate
phenomena instead of a unified system. Operating under the false (and unclearly formu-
lated) premise that the links between the functions of the mind are fixed, relationships
between thought and memory, memory and perception, and perception and attention
were studied as separate constants (Vygotsky, 1934/1987b).
Vygotsky’s time in the theater and his connections with the scholars at GAKhN
might have influenced his conclusion that existing explanations of thought, word, and
action (human consciousness) were flawed, not least because they ignored the roles of
volition and affect in a unified perspective of human behavior (action and thinking as
integrated). They also isolated the aspects of mental function and physical action that
scholars at GAHkN and Stanislavski (1936) contended should be developed as a unified
system. Vygotsky’s collaborators at GAKhN, including Iakobson, were articulating
16 Theory & Psychology 00(0)
similar theories. In contrast to his contemporaries in the field of psychology, Vygotsky
proposed an approach wherein the mind is studied as a series of dynamic psychosocio-
logical processes that manifest and develop dialectically in context with the current
ecology. Mental and physiological processes are a unified product; there exists an irre-
ducibility between them ( Vygotsky, 1934/1987b). The only way to understand human
actions and thinking is to observe actions, reduce them to their smallest constituent bits,
and then work backwards toward emotional memory and volition/motive. Reminiscent
of Stanislavski’s system, both internal thought and physical actions are an integrated
expression of the subject’s or character’s psychological state; the goal of the actor or
psychologist is to understand how external actions are material manifestations of this
state.
A psychology concerned with the study of the complex whole . . . must replace the method of
decomposing the whole into its elements with that of partitioning the whole into its [bits].
Using this mode of analysis, it must attempt to resolve the concrete problems that face us.
(Vygotsky, 1934/1987b, p. 44)
Vygotsky proposed a possible solution to the problem of understanding the relation-
ships of the various mental functions as unified. Functions of thought, speech, memory,
and affect are seen as part of a whole. Human activity is the key to understanding this
system, articulated in specific actions that tie back to a goal and a motive (Glassman,
1996); development is enmeshed with an immediate environment that functions within
the broader social-historical setting(s). In order to study human cognition, behavior, and
ultimately consciousness in accordance with this understanding, Vygotsky proposed
employing a methodological approach reminiscent of Stanislavski’s “bits and tasks” sys-
tem of analysis. Instead of focusing on examining the elements of mental functions,
Vygotsky proposed using the bit as the unit of analysis. Vygotsky defined a bit as
a product of analysis that possesses all the basic characteristics of the whole [emphasis added].
The [bit] is a vital and irreducible part of the whole. The key to the explanation of the
characteristics of water lies not in the investigation of its chemical formula but in the
investigation of its molecule and its molecular movements. (Vygotsky, 1934/1987b, p. 44)
In the same manner as Stanislavski’s system, Vygotsky’s methodology posited exter-
nal action as the point of origin for understanding behavior and sought to separate actions
into bits to analyze their internal subtext.
Vygotsky used this method of analysis to pose nascent solutions to many of the prob-
lems of psychology that vexed his contemporaries. For instance, previous studies of the
word in human thought analyzed meaning and sound separately (Vygotsky, 1932/1999).
Vygotsky instead proposed focusing on the word as an action in context, wherein both
the linguistic meaning and intonation/sound are considered in understanding the rela-
tionship between thinking and speech. Speech—both the meaning of the words and the
tones and sounds—is a unified expression of the subject’s psychological state. The sub-
ject’s motive and affective state determine both the words used and how they are said
(including gestures and tone). The sounds of the words as spoken not only alter the
meaning but also represent the most basic component of a task.
Pelfrey et al. 17
We have tried to substitute the analysis based on decomposition into elements with
the analysis partitioning the complex unity of verbal thinking into bits; we understand
the latter as the products of analysis that, in contrast to elements, are the initial generative
moments, not in relation to the whole phenomenon under investigation, but in relation to
only its separate, concrete aspects and characteristics. Unlike elements, these products of
analysis do not lose the explainable characteristics of the whole but contain in a simple,
primitive form the characteristics of the whole that the analysis aims to investigate
(Vygotsky, 1934/1987b).
An example of this bidirectional relationship between the unified whole and the
deconstructed bits can be found in Vygotsky’s (Vygotsky, 1934/1987b) dissection of a
scene from Dostoevsky, in which the competing, complex motivations of six drunken
workers can be broken down to not just the single word they keep repeating to each other,
but also the tone with which the word is voiced—allowing the observer to develop a keen
understanding of the emotional and social issues facing each of the characters at that
moment, as well as the evolving relationships between them. Vygotsky also proposed
using this method as a means for understanding development during adolescence. Prior
to his proposed methods, Vygotsky believed that these relationships were wholly inac-
cessible to psychologists. Vygotsky argues, “it is our contention that it is accessible to an
investigator who is willing to apply the method of [bits]” (1934/1987b, p. 47).
Another problem of psychology that traditional methodological approaches were
unable to reconcile was that of the connection between affect, intellect, and action. Other
schools studied mental functions in isolation, for the most part ignoring affect and voli-
tion in studies of the intellect. Traditional methods also ignored the social nature of
thinking and speech: “Thinking was divorced from the full vitality of life, from the
motives, interests, and inclinations of the thinking individual. Thinking was transformed
either into a useless epiphenomenon, a process that can change nothing in the individu-
al’s life and behaviour” (Vygotsky, 1934/1987b, p. 47).
Just as Stanislavski had instructed his students at MAT to use the analytical process
of focusing on bits to establish the goal orientation and allow the affective state of their
characters to manifest in their words and actions, Vygotsky’s method focused on ana-
lyzing actions to understand their internal subtext. The original term (единицы) has
sometimes been translated as “units,” depending on the translator. However, both
Stanislavski and Vygotsky use the same source Russian term and, more importantly, the
same application of the term and conceptual approach to understanding human activity.
This interpretation and proposed method for analysis centered around the idea that
every thought possesses a vestige of the subject’s affective relationship to reality.
Vygotsky (1934/1987b) explains in Thinking and Speech that analysis into bits allows
investigators to clearly understand the reciprocal relationship between a subject’s needs,
desires, and activity.
Conclusion
Vygotsky’s early life experiences, academic collaborations outside of the psychologi-
cal sciences, and exposure to the manuscript of Stanislavski’s (2008) An Actor’s Work
likely shaped his later thinking and research as a psychologist. It is not only Stanislavski,
18 Theory & Psychology 00(0)
however, who was part of Vygotsky’s intellectual orbit, but a generation of artists who
came of age just as Vygotsky was beginning to make his way in the world. Gurevich
was a major intellectual force of the times (and, like Vygotsky, considered herself as
the other because of her Jewish heritage). Members of “The Psychology of the Actor”
theater section at GAKhN were exploring new ideas on the role of action in human
consciousness. We suggest that his collaboration with these scholars shaped Vygotsky’s
approach to psychology, and some of the core concepts and nomenclature found in his
later work. Activity theory in particular and psychology in general continue to use
many of the phrases Vygotsky developed from (we argue) his connections to the “psy-
chology of the actor” subsection at GAKhN. The idea of motive as an overarching
force in human behavior and goal orientation as a context for activity, which has had a
major impact on psychology far beyond cultural-historical activity theory, may not
have started with Stanislavski, but he and his colleagues at MAT were among the first
to systematize these ideas. Stanislavski was among the first to explore the idea of
action as primary and that all thinking in some way follows from these complex
actions. Stanislavski was also central in bringing the role of affective memory as inte-
grated into human thought and action—an idea we believe is a core component of
Vygotsky’s late model for a new type of psychology, yet often ignored in favor of more
“how-to” applications such as the zone of proximal development and recognition of
context in teaching and learning processes (see Glassman et al., 2023).
We feel it is important to remember that neither Vygotsky nor Stanislavski came up
with these ideas over just a couple of years; they certainly did not develop them in
isolation. Stanislavski explored and experimented with his psychology of the actor
over decades, interacting with luminaries such as Chekhov, Bulgakov, Nemirovich,
Craig, Bernhardt, and, later, Meyerhold in the theater; Tolstoy as he turned from real-
ism to mysticism later in life; Gurevich; and other stalwarts in the Russian symbolist
movement. His notes suggest the psychology of the actor came slowly and painfully,
accompanied by failure, as new ideas often are. We suggest that Vygotsky, absorbed
with theater in general and Stanislavski’s work in particular through a large part of his
life, recognized the possibilities that the psychology of the actor offered in solving
what he viewed as the crisis in psychology. Stanislavski’s manuscript and the work
being done at GAKhN were central to Vygotsky’s attempts to turn psychology in a new
direction. As we work to refine our understanding, application, and further develop-
ment of Vygotsky’s ideas, these connections can provide an additional guidepost for
future inquiry.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/
or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Pelfrey et al. 19
ORCID iDs
G. Logan Pelfrey https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3583-0229
Michael Glassman https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3870-8760
Shantanu Tilak https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5264-2652
Supplemental material
Supplemental material for this article is available online.
Notes
1. “В некоторых главах, например, в главе об Аффективной памяти у Вас остались
неправильные с точки зрения научной психологии термины. Я уже давно указывала
Вам на эту неточность Вашей терминологии, но, не желая полагаться в этом случае на
свои скромные познания, нарочно проверила эти свои сомнения прошлой и этой зимой
у трех видных психологов-специалистов: Челпанова, Экземплярского и молодого,
очень чуткого к искусству Выготского. Все они полностью подтвердили мое мнение.”
All translations were made by a native Russian speaker (Dr Irina Kuznetcova) and might
sacrifice style to maintain the text translation as close to the original as possible. We only
provide the Russian versions if there is no official translation available or if we need to zero
in on translation accuracy.
2. The Mandelstam quote at the beginning of Thinking and Speech (Vygotsky, 1934/1987b)
speaks to the complexity of Vygotsky’s thinking at the time and poses a (probably unsolv-
able) riddle for the reader. As mentioned, Mandelstam was a major Acmeist poet, yet many
passages in the chapter reflect Russian symbolism (e.g., the sections of Dostoevsky and
Stanislavski). There were major intellectual rifts between the Acmeists and the symbolists.
Did Vygotsky actually, at least in part, see the chapter as a response to Mandelstam and the
Acmeists? A word could never be lost because it was always present in our actions?
3. Prior to coming to Moscow, Gurevich was the editor of one of the leading symbolist journals
in St Petersburg.
4. The theatrical ideas of perezhivanie seem to have been central to MAT, as Gurevich published
a book in 1927 entitled The Art of the Actor: On the Nature of Artistic Perezhivanie Onstage.
5. Stanislavski became more and more adverse to the term “naturalism” as he looked toward
codifying his system. He in part worried that actors would downplay or ignore the psy-
chophysiological and collaborative aspects of developing a character. He much preferred
“psychological realism” and, when he used naturalism, it was almost always pejoratively
(Benedetti, 1982/2004).
6. “Система Станиславского и стремится к тому, чтобы искусство представления
заменить искусством переживания. Сам автор назвал ее душевным натурализмом.
Актер должен вызвать в себе всякий раз то чувство, которое он играет, а не изобразить
его. Замечательно, что система создавалась как средство борьбы с пустым театральным
шаблоном, штампом, ничего не говорящей подделкой.”
7. “жизненно-конкретное перевоплощение, то же переживание артиста, как подкладка его
игры, . . . которая заражает зрителя и устанавливает его душевную близость к тому, что
пред ним проходит.”
8. “Ф. Ф. Кириков имеет все данные для игры такого стиля. Его глухой, зловещий,
однотонный голос, сухой и важный—прекрасный материал для нее, как и скупой,
отрывистый, схематизированный жест. Но и его Принцивалле был невнушителен в
последнем акте: он просто молчал, у него не было реплики. Во втором—пропорции
20 Theory & Psychology 00(0)
его марионеточных размахов—от требования до отказа от поцелуя—были страшно
уменьшены, и все получило мелкий и незначительный характер, маловыразительный.”
9. “Е. В. Гельтцер в совершенстве владеет всей сложнейшей техникой классического танца.
Ее изумительное техничесуое мастерство несколько поблекло на нашей сцене, тесной,
маленькой для ее мощного прыжка и «душой исполненого полета», она казалась чусть
вялой в вегетариански-ограниченных клочках программы, без всего, что дает страсть,
бурю, а после дым и ветер танца; его тончайшие тонкости и сильнейшие размахи не
могли быть показаны. Но все же самое важное было: личный пафос ее танца.”
10. Stanislavski and Checkhov had a volatile relationship/partnership, but it had a major impact
on theater going forward.
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Author biographies
G. Logan Pelfrey is a doctoral student in the College of Education and Human Ecology at The Ohio
State University. His research interests include the integration of technology into preschool set-
tings and exploring the ways children develop through play. His background in the dramatic arts
and interest in the work of Lev Vygotsky are what brought him here.
Michael Glassman is professor of educational psychology at The Ohio State University. His work
has centered around implementing a Deweyian (and, by extension, Vygotskian) model of distrib-
uted, project-based technology-assisted learning and looking at the participatory potential of the
Internet through the lens of theorists such as Ivan Illich and those involved in the cybernetics
movement. His recent publications include (with T.-J. Lin & S. Y. Ha) “Concepts, Collaboration,
and a Company of Actors: A Vygotskian Model for Concept Development in the 21st Century” in
Oxford Review of Education (2022) and (with I. Kuznetcova, J. Peri, & Y. Kim), “Cohesion,
Collaboration and the Struggle of Creating Online Learning Communities: Development and
Validation of an Online Collective Efficacy Scale” in Computers & Education Open (2022).
Irina Kuznetcova is an assistant professor in the Global Connectivity Program at Akita International
University. She completed her PhD in educational psychology at The Ohio State University, where
she focused on the curricular integration of technology, such as virtual worlds, games, and virtual
reality. Her research interests lie at the intersection of education, psychology, technology, and
language teaching and learning, and her recent projects have investigated such issues as English-
medium instruction in Japanese universities, the use of ChatGPT by students and teachers in Japan,
and identity construction in tabletop role-playing games and video games. Her recent publications
include “Using a Mobile Virtual Reality and Computer Game to Improve Visuospatial Self-
Efficacy in Middle School Students” in Computers & Education (2022) and “The GameStop Saga:
Reddit Communities and the Emerging Conflict between New and Old Media” in First Monday
(2022).
Shantanu Tilak is the director of the Center for Educational Research and Technology Innovation
at Chesapeake Bay Academy. He completed his PhD in educational psychology at The Ohio State
Pelfrey et al. 23
University, with his work focusing on how to synergize informal Internet-influenced learning and
formal learning in classroom environments to allow students at varied ages (from elementary
schoolers to lifelong learners) to acquire the skills for critical Internet navigation. At the Center for
Educational Research and Technology Innovation, Dr Tilak’s research focuses on how neurodi-
verse students use information technologies to construct new knowledge and project-based arti-
facts at the collaborative and individual level. His recent publications include “Gordon Pask’s
Second-Order Cybernetics and Lev Vygotsky’s Cultural Historical Theory: Understanding the
Role of the Internet in Developing Human Thinking” in Theory & Psychology (2022) and
“Investigating Social Studies Teachers’ Implementation of an Immersive History Curricular Unit
as a Cybernetic Zone of Proximal Development” in Cogent Education (2023).
