Stanislavski Studies

Practice, Legacy, and Contemporary Theater

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Vasiliev’s methodology: situational and ludo

structures

Julia Listengarten & Lyubov Zabolotskaya Weidner

To cite this article: Julia Listengarten & Lyubov Zabolotskaya Weidner (2017) Vasiliev’s
methodology: situational and ludo structures, Stanislavski Studies, 5:1, 13-19, DOI:
10.1080/20567790.2017.1293366

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/20567790.2017.1293366

Published online: 25 Feb 2017.

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Stanislavski Studies, 2017
VOL. 5, NO. 1, 13–19
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20567790.2017.1293366

Vasiliev’s methodology: situational and ludo structures

Julia Listengartena and Lyubov Zabolotskaya Weidnerb
a
Theatre Department, School of Performing Arts, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA; bIndependent
Scholar

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
A student of Maria Knebel, Anatoly Vasiliev has developed a unique Vasiliev; stituational
model of actor training that combines the principle of Active Analysis, structure; ludo structure
rooted in the teachings of both Stanislavski and Knebel, with the
concept of ludo or ludic theatrical structures that Vasiliev developed
through his pedagogy and directing. This focus on what Vasiliev calls
“ludo structure,” based on the conceptual analysis of the text, versus
“situational structure,” based on the psychological analysis, is at the
core of Vasiliev’s pedagogy. This article shares specific examples from
his class discussions and scene work that embody Vasiliev’s theatrical
philosophy, conceptualize his pedagogy, and place it in the context
of Stanislavski’s legacy in contemporary theatre.

Anatoly Vasiliev rose to prominence in the late 1980s with his productions of Cerceau and Six
Characters in Search of an Author, which toured both nationally and internationally and won
major theatrical awards. The School of Dramatic Art, which he founded in Moscow in 1987,
became a laboratory for rigorous actor training that experimented with both psychological
and metaphysical approaches to theatre. Over the two decades, Vasiliev continued to
systematize his approach to actor training. Advanced Course for Theatre Pedagogues –
Pedagogia della Scena – a three year seminar he taught in Venice between 2010 and 2013
– is one of the recent pedagogical venues where he offered his acting methodology. In this
article, we will share a few examples from his class discussions and scene work to explore
Vasiliev’s theatrical philosophy and pedagogy, and place them in the context of Stanislavski’s
legacy in contemporary theatre.

The situational structure versus the ludo structure

A student of Maria Knebel, Vasiliev has developed a unique model of actor training that
combines the teachings of both Stanislavski and Knebel with the concept of ludo or ludic
structure, which Vasiliev developed through his pedagogy and directing. Vasiliev himself
acknowledges the direct influence of both Knebel and Stanislavski on his methodology.
He contends that he has reconstructed Stanislavski’s system by building upon the concept
of psychological analysis. “Everything has remained the same,” he writes, “except where

CONTACT  Julia Listengarten  Julia.Listengarten@ucf.edu

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
14   J. LISTENGARTEN AND L. Z. WEIDNER

you place ‘the object of action [or play]’ (‘oбъeкт игpы’) – in the past, in the history, or in
the future. I place this object or event in the future – not within but outside the play–and
the actor is in constant contact with this future.”1 For Vasiliev, the ability to find action is
paramount for an actor; and in order to facilitate this process, he – in his acting laborato-
ries – fosters the principles of active analysis, improvisation and etude work, all of which
emerged in Stanislavski’s later period and were then further explored and implemented by
Knebel. In his analysis of action and conflict, Vasiliev however distinguishes between the
situational structure rooted in psychological analysis, which both Stanislavski and Knebel
continued to tease out in their work, and his own methodology, which he terms after the
Roman expression “ludo” – meaning “I play.” This focus on what Vasiliev calls “ludo” struc-
ture or “ludo” theatre, based on the conceptual analysis of the text and the embodiment of
the idea of “play,” is at the core of Vasiliev’s pedagogy.
In the situational structure, according to Vasiliev’s concept, the center of the conflict lives
within, inside the situation itself and is predicated upon the initial or inciting event; in the
ludo structure, the center of the conflict exists outside the linear psychological trajectory and,
as Jonathan Pitches extrapolates in his excellent essay about Vasiliev’s pedagogy, “is coloured
by [the main, concluding event] through a kind of conscious perspective awareness.”2 In the
situational theatre, the action is continuous and exclusively connected to the psychological
world of the characters – their suffering and conflicts born out of their opposing desires and
intentions. The root of the action lies in the initial event, which informs the development
of the conflict and continues to drive it toward the final moment. The movement of the
action is, therefore, linear and progressive. The actor is informed by the character’s past, by
the given circumstances that reside in this past. The actor then begins to appropriate the
character’s personality, eventually identifying with it – with the character’s wants, desires
and motives. There is no distance between the personality of the character and the identity
of the actor; existing in the state of disagreement or conflict within the given situation, the
characters move toward its resolution or creation of a new conflict.
In the ludo structure, the root of the action is in the main event, rather than the ini-
tial one, which could be interpreted as a concluding or final moment of the play. Vasiliev
underlines the necessity of establishing the split between persona and personage in order
to construct a ludic composition. Persona, the actor, is aware of the main event in the future
and operates on the basis of this knowledge. The main event also becomes the actor’s source
of energy. Personage is unaware of what happens next and moves along the development of
the story in a vertical fashion. The conflict only exists between personages while personas
are in full and mutual agreement, building the conflict with the complete knowledge of
the final outcome. The knowledge and perspective that the persona obtains elevate him
or her above the psychological struggles of the personage. This distance between persona
and personage – the actor and the character – and the divergent vectors in their conflict
development foreground the concept of the ludo structure. The ludic approach to character
development in this type of actor training precipitates then the shift from the theatre of
psychological battles to the theatre of ideas.

A short parable about exchange and deception

Vasiliev’s parable about exchange and deception further explicates his concept of the ludo
structure:
 STANISLAVSKI STUDIES   15

Two people meet to exchange their currency and one ends up deceiving the other. The question
is how to perform this situation? One of the characters does not know that the other one is
going to deceive him but both actors do have this information. Instead of pretending that they
don’t, they embrace the knowledge and build the conflict in accordance with the perspective
they have that the characters don’t. There is a mutual understanding and agreement between
the personas while the characters are in conflict, and the scene shifts from being about exchange
and deception to becoming about the idea of deception.3

Chekhov’s The Seagull and the ludo structure

Two examples that we offer in this section to elucidate Vasiliev’s application of his meth-
odology are from Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull and Plato’s dialogue entitled Ion. Vasiliev
worked on the analysis of these works with his students to demonstrate the differences
between the situational and conceptual approaches to exposing the conflict in a dramatic
work or dialogue.4
In focusing on the final scene between Nina and Treplev in The Seagull, Vasiliev points
to the importance of exploring several different layers in the construction of meaning dur-
ing the play analysis. The play is about relationship – between mother and son, between
people who love and who desire to be loved. The Seagull is also about people who create art
and, therefore, about art itself: at the start of the play, Treplev and Nina are aspiring artists
while Trigorin and Arkadina have already achieved recognition as a writer and actress,
respectively.
As Vasiliev explains, for the situational analysis, the characters’ initial given circumstances
are of the foremost significance. The love relationship between Treplev and Nina becomes
the main tension and determines the outcome of the final act. Treplev loves Nina; Nina loves
Trigorin and elopes with him leaving Treplev behind. After a few catastrophic years together,
Trigorin abandons Nina and returns to Arkadina. Treplev commits suicide when he realizes
that Nina will never come back to him since she confesses that she still loves Trigorin.
For the conceptual analysis, the focus expands to include the territory of art, which is
imperative to each character. If Trigorin and Arkadina belong to the world of literature and
theatre from the start of the play, Treplev and Nina arrive there in Act IV. Their choices have
pulled them into the vortex – a vortex of literature and theatre – and their place in this vortex
determines the conflict and their opposing subject positions. Nina leaves Treplev to become
an actress. Treplev becomes a writer but continues to love and pursue her, relentlessly tracing
her whereabouts. Even though Nina becomes an actress, Trigorin intentionally leads her
to face disappointment in theatre and ultimately in her profession. The meeting between
Treplev and Nina in Act IV is the point of their intersection in the vortex of art. The moment
is no longer about two ex-lovers who meet again; this moment turns into a complex scene
about the relationship between two artists who have chosen their paths, made their choices
and lost their illusions. In the conceptual analysis, Treplev shoots himself not because he
realizes that he has lost his former lover irrevocably, but because he has lost his muse and
thus his ability to create. Love for him becomes inseparable from art. Nina, in turn, having
lived through disappointment and failure, finds faith and thus discovers the meaning of
life. Faith and art interconnect. The given circumstances in this analysis, therefore, do not
exclusively emerge from the story of unfortunate love but, instead, encapsulate the journey
of two young artists and their artistic defeat or victory.
16   J. LISTENGARTEN AND L. Z. WEIDNER

Arguing that almost any play could be analysed as either situational or conceptual,
Vasiliev identifies another key difference between the two approaches. In the situational
analysis, Nina does not love Treplev but Treplev continues to believe that she will be with him
eventually. Since he does not know why she is there to see him, he has a glimmer of hope,
which disappears momentarily and he is completely crushed at the end. In the conceptual
analysis, Vasiliev suggests that Treplev (or his persona) knows that Nina will leave him and,
therefore, the scene shifts from the relationship between two people to the relationship of
these people to their art. What seems significant here is that Vasiliev elevates Chekhov’s
psychological drama and the heartbreaking moments that the characters experience to
the realm of metaphysics. The ludo system thus enables the actors to uncover the meaning
beyond the characters’ immediate happiness or suffering and to gain a necessary perspective
on their journeys, to see a larger multilayered landscape. It also expresses Vasiliev’s belief
in the transcendent power of theatre – a nod to his artistic influences such as Michael
Chekhov and perhaps even Stanislavski, who in Knebel’s recollection, as Sharon Carnicke
has observed in her chapter “The Knebel Technique: Active Analysis in Practice,” shared
Chekhov’s interest in the imaginative and transcendental.5

Plato’s theatre of ideas

Working on Plato’s dialogue Ion, Vasiliev operates exclusively with the ludo system since,
in his opinion, the psychological approach to understanding the conflict in this piece will
most likely fail. Vasiliev is drawn to Plato’s work in particular because, as Pitches argues,
Vasiliev’s own understanding of theatre resonates with Plato’s worldview in which the images
that we perceive are only the “shadows” of the ideal forms. Pitches further explains the link
between Plato’s metaphysics and Vasiliev’s philosophical approach to theatre:
in recognizing that the theatre is essentially a fiction, rather than pretending that it is not (as
much of the Stanislavsky tradition has done), the meta-theatrical practitioner exposes the
layers of meaning – reveals that they are different levels – and thus brings the spectator closer
to the practice of philosophy as Plato conceived it.6
The form of dialogue that Vasiliev embraces is conducive to both questioning and play-
ing with a multitude of options in the process of constructing points and counterpoints. In
Plato’s theatre of ideas, the reverse movement/trajectory from the main or final event to the
initial event is at the root of the action. This is the form of theatre, he posits, where personas
– actors – exist in agreement with each other while the characters are in opposition. For
instance, in Plato’s shortest dialogue Ion, Socrates debates with Ion, a professional rhapsode
who specializes in performing Homer, whether his performance is knowledge-based and
can be transferred to performances of other works or, instead, a result of divine inspira-
tion. Vasiliev discusses how actors need to seek the key themes of the dialogue and explore
personal analogies in order to create the type of conflict that is rooted in the conceptual
approach. When the actors enter into the direct conflict between themselves and the sub-
ject of their debate remains within – between them – rather than outside, the metaphysical
element is lost. It turns into a conflict between the learned man and the simpleton. The
principle of conflict in the ludo structure is based on the assumption that the two opponents
are equally sophisticated and equipped intellectually and philosophically for the debate (or
equally unsophisticated). Even if Ion, the persona, presents himself as less knowledgeable
or as the one who lacks the ability to reason, it is his tactic or intentional manipulation that
 STANISLAVSKI STUDIES   17

he uses to confuse his opponent. Each move is a play – a game, of sorts – to set up a trap for
the adversary and both partners participate in orchestrating those moments throughout the
intellectual debate. They are equal players, both eager to win. The dialogue then turns into
a play of opinions and arguments and the process of setting up traps determines the actors’
approach to this work. After finding the key arguments and discovering the shifts in the
composition, the actors then use the etude method where, with the help of improvisation,
they move through the philosophical debate relying on their own words.

Vasiliev’s methodology: influences and correspondences

While Vasiliev’s method is undoubtedly unique and requires an in-depth study and full
immersion on the part of the actors, it also points to previous acting techniques and
approaches to actor training. Outside the Russian theatre tradition, Bertolt Brecht’s estrange-
ment approach to distancing the actor from the character that he/she portrays reveals a
degree of similarity with Vasiliev’s separation between persona and personage. Within the
Stanislavskian school of acting, the etude work in particular, the key component of Knebel’s
Active Analysis, served in Vasiliev’s laboratory as the foundation for uncovering the layers of
meaning, finding action and building conflicts. Through the etude process, Vasiliev argues,
actors are able to tackle the literary text to analyse the play’s structure, to identify the initial
and main events, to define shifts between scenes and to discover the overall perspective,
which then enables them to find action and construct a theatrical composition. In the etude
work, the literary text becomes an instrument, a tool for the actors to create a theatrical text
through improvisation and the process of trial and error. Michael Chekhov’s acting tech-
nique is also of significance here, especially in relation to Vasiliev’s focus on imagination in
establishing the relationship between persona and personage. Vasiliev encourages actors to
look for the ways in which the abstract image of the character existing outside the actor may
become more concrete thus forging the relationship – the contact – between persona and
personage. He insists that it is the actor’s imagination that enables this movement from the
abstract to the concrete and thus allows the actor to mold and to reshape the image of the
character. Incidentally, Vasiliev himself has noted that Chekhov anticipated the concept of
ludo theatre when the latter suggested that characters only exist in the actors’ imagination.
Vasiliev’s commitment to fostering the connection between theatre and metaphysics is
perhaps another parallel between his theatrical philosophy and Chekhov’s approach to art.
Considered from a metaphysical point of view, the cherry orchard, in Vasiliev’s ludo theatre,
is no longer merely an orchard – it is a concept, an image of the ideal form, of beauty and
fate – and the theatre’s goal is to transport this image from the abstract realm to the concrete
world of the play and turn it into an “object of action.”
While many student actors continue to search for ways to create irony and ambivalence
in their character portrayal, to uncover dramatic shifts in active analysis and to achieve the
lightness and freedom through improvisation-based exercises, Vasiliev’s methodology that
espouses these principles is relatively unknown to American actors. What are the ways in
which actors may balance their traditional training in psychological analysis with Vasiliev’s
conceptual approach to theatre thus probing the intersections of psychological and ludo
structures? What will be the challenges of teaching Vasiliev’s approach to acting in the US
acting programs that have been so heavily dominated by various and at times flawed inter-
pretations of Stanislavski’s system? And finally, what are the practical ways to expand the
18   J. LISTENGARTEN AND L. Z. WEIDNER

constricted understanding of Stanislavski’s legacy in contemporary theatre and continue

to introduce new acting techniques into the mainstream US theatre programs, which have
built Stanislavski’s citadel and anxiously defend their vision of it?
*****
After note: Since the closing of the S Word Symposium in late March, Stanislavski Studies
began to publish a series of excerpts from Mikhail Butkevich’s work Towards A Theatre of
Games (edited by David Chambers and translated by Maxim Krivosheyev).7 The student of
Knebel and Andrey Popov, Butkevich is perhaps another source of influence on Vasiliev, and
his concept of theatre of games, based on improvisation and game playing, bears a strong
resemblance to Vasiliev’s ludic approach to play analysis and actor training.

Authors’ note
Julia Listengarten and Lyubov Zabolotskaya Weidner had a first-hand experience working
with Vasiliev. Julia Listengarten observed Vasiliev's rehearsal process on numerous occa-
sions when she was writing her undergraduate thesis about Vasiliev's theatrical philosophy
in the early 1990s. Lyubov Weidner studied under Vasiliev's mentorship in the 1980s and
participated in his recent actor training and pedagogical seminars including the "Advanced
Course for Theatre Pedagogues" in Venice. She also transcribes his audio archives.

Notes
1. 
Here and throughout the article, Vasiliev’s quotes are from his lectures during the “Advanced
Course for Theatre Pedagogues” – Pedagogia della Scena, transcribed by Lyubov Zabolotskaya
Weidner.
Pitches, Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting, 182.
2. 
3. 
This is a shortened and paraphrased version of Vasiliev’s parable about exchange and deception
that he likes to share with his students when introducing his ludo concept.
The following discussion on Chekhov’s The Seagull and Plato’s Ion is informed by Vasiliev’s
4. 
lectures during his seminars including the recent Pedagogia della Scena in Venice.
See Carnicke’s chapter “The Knebel Technique: Active Analysis in Practice,” in Twentieth-
5. 
Century Actor Training, edited by Alison Hodge (Routledge, 2010).
Pitches, Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting, 190.
6. 
See Stanislavski Studies, 4/no. 2 (November 2016) for ‘MIKHAIL BUTKEVICH: The Bridge
7. 
to the Contemporary Russian Avant-Garde.’ Translations by Maxim Krivosheyev. Introduced
and edited by David Chambers.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors
Julia Listengarten is a professor of Theatre and director of Graduate Studies at University of Central
Florida. She has worked professionally as a theatre director, dramaturg, and translator, and her research
interests include avant-garde theatre, contemporary scenographic practice, and performances of
national identity. She is the author of Russian Tragifarce: Its Cultural and Political Roots (Susquehanna
UP, 2000), co-author of Modern American Playwriting: 2000-2009 (with Cindy Rosenthal, Methuen,
forthcoming), and co-editor of Theater of the Avant-Garde, 1950-2000 (Yale UP, 2011) and Playing
 STANISLAVSKI STUDIES   19

with Theory in Theatre Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). She has contributed to many edited
collections and theatre journals and is currently editing Decades of Modern American Playwriting:
1930-2009 (with Brenda Murphy) for Methuen.
Lyubov Zabolotskaya Weidner is a theatre and film actor and acting teacher. She has performed at
major Moscow and St. Petersburg theatres and participated in a number of workshops led by Anatoly
Vasiliev.

Bibliography
Carnicke, Sharon Marie. “The Knebel Technique: Active Analysis in Practice.” In Twentieth-Century
Actor Training, edited by A. Hodge, 99–116. New York: Routledge, 2010.
Pitches, Jonathan. Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting. London and New York: Routledge,
2006.