Popular Theatre: A Sourcebook. Edited by Joel Schechter. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Worlds of Performance series. Pp. xv + 279 + 34 illus. £65 Hb; £19.99 Pb

[...]Merlins detailed analysis of An Actor Prepares together with a careful examination of Stanislavskys later work on the Method of Physical Actions and Active Analysis argues admirably for his continued place in contemporary practice beyond the boundaries of neo-realistic dramatic form. Reviewed by Andrew Wachtel, Northwestern University Fifteen years ago, had an Anglophone scholar been interested in reading up on Russian theatre, she would have been almost completely unable to nd material relating to anything other than the classical high-literary tradition stretching from the mid-eighteenth century to the early Soviet period. In three parts, it deals rst with basic aspects of the ancient performers art (song, musicianship, movement, gesture, delivery, and voice), moves on to the circumstances and contexts of performance, and concludes with a series of reections on the idea of the actor, on the importance of theatricality in ancient life and thought, and on the place of the ancient actor in the scholarly and theatrical traditions. [...]Barthes muses on Bunrakus general signicance for puppetry as it excludes improvisation and spontaneity [that] would be[a] return to the stereotypes which constitute western profundity (p. 50).