Maria Knebel was an actor, director, teacher, author of five books and pioneer of 'active analysis'. She is arguably one of the most influential theatre pedagogues in 20th-century Russian theatre. Knebel was a student of Michael Chekhov, Nemirovich-Danchenko, and Stanislavski with whom she collaborated closely during his final years at the Opera-Dramatic Studio. She was instrumental in promoting and disseminating their acting and directing methodologies through her own teaching and directing practice.

Anatoli Vassiliev is one of Europe's leading theatre directors, theatre innovators and pedagogues. He trained at GITIS (the Russian State Academy of Theatre Arts) under Maria Knebel and Andrei Popov. In 1987 Vassiliev founded his own theatre company School of Dramatic Art in Moscow, a creative experimental laboratory, which he ran until 2006. He has directed many internationally acclaimed productions with his own company, as well as, among others, Comédie Française and L'Odéon in Paris, TNS in Strasbourg, and Hellenic Festival in Epidaurus. He has taught all over the world including GITIS and VGIK in Moscow, Grotowski Institute in Wroclaw, ENSATT in Lyon, Isola della Pedagogia in Venice, the Royal National Theatre and the Stanislavski Centre for Contemporary Practice at Rose Bruford College in London.

Irina Brown, originally from St Petersburg, has lived in Britain since 1978. She is a theatre and opera director, dramaturge, translator and theatre pedagogue. A former Artistic Director of the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, she has directed for the Royal National Theatre, the Royal Opera House, in London's West End and internationally. She is Programme Director of the MA/MFA in Contemporary Directing Practice and Curator of the Stanislavski Centre at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance, London.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE by Irina Brown; BEGINNINGS by Anatoli Vassiliev; ABOUT MARIA KNEBEL by Adolf Shapiro; Part I BOOK ONE: ACTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY AND THE ROLE; Part II BOOK TWO: THE WORD IN THE ACTOR'S CREATIVE WORK; Part III I AM MICHAEL CHEKHOV'S STUDENT Chapter Two from My Whole Life by Maria Knebel; Part IV APPENDICES; Index