Spotlight
The spotlight is symbolic of an actor’s ability to act out the nuances of a character they are playing. An actor that has practiced his/her character diligently, put in the requisite time to study how to effectively deliver and portray the role’s minutia works like a kind of spotlight, drawing the audience’s attention to details about a character that might have been missed. In doing this a skilled and assiduous actor makes the theatrical experience more real, more relevant, and ultimately, more enjoyable for the viewing audience.
Rubber Stamp
The author uses the rubber stamp to symbolize substandard or lackluster acting. He makes use of this because symbol because of the mechanical, predictable, repetitive results that the rubber stamp produces is pretty much the same results that a vapid actor produces: predictable, hackneyed, mechanical—just like a rubber stamp in the hand of a bureaucrat.
Teacher and Student
The characters Tortsov and Kostya are both in-novel manifestations of the author representing himself at various junctures in his acting career. Tortsov representing Stanislavsky as an accomplished thespian and Kostya representing Stanislavsky as a young, eager but raw actor. Beyond being his in-novel mouthpieces that he uses to talk about critical elements of acting, they also represent what the author believes to be the most central item to becoming an excellent actor: the willingness to listen to feedback provided by a good mentor, care of the teacher, and the enthusiasm and bold energy of youth, care of the student.
Hunting
The act of hunting is used symbolically by the author to describe an aspect of the acting process. He argues that acting, to a certain extent, is about the ability of an actor to fabricate emotions as a scene or a role requires for an audience to witness. Fabricating emotions on command, however, is anything but simple. The author posits through the character of Tortsov that for an actor to reproduce the correct emotion that a scene or a character demands is much like hunting or fishing where one must pursue because they are like elusive creatures that will not come out unless deliberately chased out of the deepest recesses of the human soul.
Machines/Engineering
The author likens acting to machine work or engineering: the result of precise planning and deliberate practice rather than works of pure emotion and passion. The symbolism of the machine/precision of an engineer is used to discuss Stanislavsky’s acting method of fusing calculated decisions with the instinctive drives and inspired motions in an actor to produce consistently excellent acting.
