Reviewed by:

• Interchangeable Parts: Acting, Industry, and Technology in US Theater by Victor Holtcamp
• Christopher Grobe

Scholarly monographs on acting tend to define their subjects narrowly. They might focus on a single teacher or theorist, or they might measure the impact of one company, school, or movement. This kind of narrowness allows for depth and erudition, so it has produced invaluable knowledge. But it can make broader trends and common foundations hard to see. For instance, scholars so exhaust themselves in disentangling the American Stanislavskians (Strasberg, Adler, Meisner, Hagen, et al.) from Stan-islavski and from one another, they have scarcely any energy left to unearth all the many assumptions these theorists share—not just with one another, but with most actors, teachers, and theorists throughout a century or more of US acting history.

In Interchangeable Parts, Victor Holtcamp highlights a few of these broadly shared assumptions, connecting them to broader trends in American culture. Those assumptions include: that acting is “a collection of disparate skills” or component techniques (11), that can therefore “be broken down into a system” (7); that “exercises” could be invented to develop each of the system’s component techniques (19); that these techniques “could be learned off-stage, rather than on” (18); and that the goal is to enable “precision, control, accountability, and stability” from scene to scene, night to night, and role to role (4). Holtcamp refers to this set of assumptions as “the idea that acting [can] be technologized” (7), and he hears in it the constant echo of modern American industrial values. This newly “atomized conception of an actor’s work,” Holtcamp argues, is related to the rise of “interchangeable parts manufacturing,” the “rapid assembly” of complex things “from functionally identical components” (11–12). By teaching people to see common objects as “assemblages of smaller and smaller identical components,” this industrial innovation encouraged people to think in subdivided systems, even (apparently) when they thought about art.

To keep us thinking on this level—seeing the forest, not the trees—Interchangeable Parts offers a panoramic view of US acting. In eight chapters, an introduction, and an epilogue, it ranges from stage to screen, from professional to amateur, from mainstream to avant-garde—and from the 1870s to the 1980s. Even within each chapter, Holtcamp’s argument ranges widely, holding one variable steady (usually chronology), while letting all the other variables go wild. Chapter 2, for example, tracks the impact of Frederick Winslow Taylor’s “scientific management” on acting theory in the 1910s and ’20s. But it assembles, for that purpose, an unlikely cast: not just E. Gordon Craig, but also Minnie Maddern Fiske, the Provincetown Players, and the minor critic and journal editor Luther Anthony. Because these figures share so little with one another, the habits of mind and turns of phrase they do share stand out in sharp relief.

The first three chapters lay three cornerstones for Holtcamp’s argument. Chapter 1 unearths the nineteenth-century origins of what it calls the actor’s “Dream of Scales”—the belief that actor training could be systematized with the help of exercises that, like musical scales, would help actors develop the component techniques of acting. Chapter 2 shows how theatre-makers of the 1910s and ’20s came to see acting as a reproducible process and acting theory as a “science” (that is, Taylor’s ideas of “scientific management”). Chapter 3 shows how these industrial logics crystallized into particular training regimens (for example, the one purveyed by the American Laboratory Theatre) and production tools (like acting editions, director prompt-books, and other tools enabling amateur revivals of professional work).

The last five chapters follow this industrial ideology of acting into different eras, aesthetic schools, and performing arts workplaces. Chapter 4 explores actor training in the silent film era, when ideologies [End Page 257] of acting from the theatre encountered film’s “inescapable connection to technology and industrial practice” (158). Chapter 5 retells the early days of Stanislavski’s uptake in America, showing how Richard Boleslavsky and the Group Theatre...

审核人：

• 可互换部件：美国剧院中的表演、工业和技术，维克多·霍尔特坎普（Victor Holtcamp）
• 克里斯托弗·格罗布

关于表演的学术专着倾向于狭隘地定义他们的主题。他们可能专注于一位教师或理论家，或者他们可能会衡量一个公司、学校或运动的影响。这种狭隘允许深度和博学，因此它产生了宝贵的知识。但它会使更广泛的趋势和共同基础变得难以看到。例如，学者们竭尽全力将美国斯坦尼斯拉夫斯基主义者（斯特拉斯伯格、阿德勒、迈斯纳、哈根等人）与斯坦-伊斯拉夫斯基和彼此分开，他们几乎没有精力去发掘这些理论家共有的许多假设——不仅与彼此，而且与整个一个世纪或更长时间的美国表演历史中的大多数演员，教师和理论家。

在可互换零件中, Victor Holtcamp 强调了其中一些广泛共享的假设，将它们与美国文化的更广泛趋势联系起来。这些假设包括：表演是“不同技能的集合”或组件技术 (11)，因此可以“分解为一个系统”(7)；可以发明“练习”来开发系统的每个组件技术（19）；这些技术“可以在舞台外学习，而不是在舞台上学习”（18）；并且目标是实现从场景到场景、夜到夜、角色到角色的“精确性、控制性、问责性和稳定性”(4)。Holtcamp 将这组假设称为“表演 [可以] 被技术化的想法”（7），他在其中听到了现代美国工业价值观的不断回响。Holtcamp 认为，这种新的“演员作品的原子化概念”，与“可互换零件制造”的兴起有关，“快速组装”复杂事物“从功能相同的组件”（11-12）。通过教人们将普通物体视为“越来越小的相同组件的组合”，这种工业创新鼓励人们在细分系统中思考，即使（显然）在他们想到艺术时也是如此。

让我们在这个层面上思考——看到森林，而不是树木——可互换部件提供了美国演技的全景。在八章、一个介绍和一个结语中，它的范围从舞台到银幕，从专业到业余，从主流到前卫——从 1870 年代到 1980 年代。即使在每一章中，Holtcamp 的论点范围也很广，保持一个变量稳定（通常是年表），同时让所有其他变量变得疯狂。例如，第 2 章追踪了 Frederick Winslow Taylor 的“科学管理”在 1910 年代和 20 年代对表演理论的影响。但为此目的，它召集了一个不太可能的演员：不仅是 E. Gordon Craig，还有 Minnie Maddern Fiske、Provincetown Players，以及小评论家和期刊编辑 Luther Anthony。因为这些人物彼此之间几乎没有什么共同点，所以他们所做的思维习惯和短语转换 份额脱颖而出。

前三章为 Holtcamp 的论点奠定了三个基石。第 1 章揭示了其所谓的演员“音阶梦想”的 19 世纪起源——相信演员训练可以在练习的帮助下系统化，就像音阶一样，可以帮助演员发展表演的组成技巧。第 2 章展示了 1910 年代和 20 年代的戏剧制作者如何将表演视为可复制的过程，并将表演理论视为“科学”（即泰勒的“科学管理”思想）。第 3 章展示了这些工业逻辑如何具体化为特定的培训方案（例如，美国实验室剧院提供的方案）和制作工具（如表演版、导演提示书和其他使业余爱好者恢复专业工作的工具）。

最后五章遵循这种表演进入不同时代、美学流派和表演艺术工作场所的工业意识形态。第 4 章探讨了无声电影时代的演员培训，当时剧院表演的意识形态[End Page 257]遇到了电影“与技术和工业实践的不可避免的联系”（158）。第 5 章重述了斯坦尼斯拉夫斯基在美国的早期发展，展示了理查德·博莱斯拉夫斯基 (Richard Boleslavsky) 和团体剧院如何...