With a Ph.D. in Russian Literature from Columbia University and professional theatre experience in acting, directing and dance, I study Russia’s rich theatrical history and its impact on world theatre.

• In The Theatrical Instinct (Peter Lang), I examine Nikolai Evreinov’s theory of theatre as instinctual social role playing and analyze how his base concept informs his work as director and playwright. Startlingly, Evreinov’s ideas anticipate recent scholarly developments in performance studies.

• In Stanislavsky in Focus (Harwood/Routledge), I offer revitalized readings of Stanislavsky’s System of actor training, by exploding theatrical myths about him that arose during the Moscow Art Theatre’s tours to the US during the 1920s. Given the translations and abridgement of his books in the US and their censorship in the USSR, these myths have been more persistent than the history from which they grew.

• In my study of the US reception of The Cherry Orchard (in Chekhov: Then and Now, ed. Douglas Clayton, Peter Lang, 1997) I take "a sobering look at how popular taste shapes art", to quote The North American Chekhov Society.

• In my widely produced translations of Russian plays, I have used my experience as an actor to play all the roles in my head. My 1997 translation of Chekhov's The Seagull, produced by the University of Evansville, received an American College Theatre Festival Award for Meritorious Translation (The Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.). To mark the 100th anniversary of Chehov’s death, the USC School of Theatre alumni are staging my translation of The Cherry Orchard.

• Supported by a number of grants, I am at present exploring the interactions of music, theatre, and dance in Russian ballet. I developed co-taught seminars in “Stravinsky and the Dance” and “The Ballets Russes as a Crossroads of the Arts” and restaged Debussy’s/Nijinsky’s “L’Après Midi d’un Faune” and Stravinsky’s/Nijinska’s “Svadebka”.

• Supported by a research grant from the American Society of Theatre Research, I am laying the foundation for a future book on director Maria Knebel’s approach to actor training, aptly called “deistvennyi analiz”.

CET biography of Sharon Carnicke