Wrapping Up: Unboxing Bakhtin

I’ve just finished my 5 part mini-dive into Mikhail Bakhtin on the Crosspoints Substack. He's been a bit of a guide for me this past year; a philosopher, literary critic, and all-around disruptor of tidy categories—and it’s left me thinking hard about actor training in general.

Mikhail Bakhtin, creative portrait generated in Midjourney.

What does a 20th-century Russian theorist of language and the novel have to do with acting studios and rehearsal rooms? More than you might expect.

Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism—the idea that meaning is always created in conversation, between voices, bodies, and perspectives—resonates deeply with the kind of actor training I value. The actor isn’t just "creating a character"; they’re entering into dialogue with it. With the text. With their scene partner. With the audience. With themselves.

Another key idea is polyphony: the coexistence of multiple, equally valid perspectives. In training, this breaks the myth of one “correct” way to perform. Instead, it supports a process-oriented practice where contradictions can coexist and where a character is not a fixed point but a field of potential.

Bakhtin also elevates the carnivalesque—the subversive, the embodied, the upside-down. This directly feeds into how I approach rehearsal spaces: as sites of temporary freedom where new rules of engagement apply. Spaces where masks can be tried on and ripped off. Where actors can transgress the social codes that normally define identity and power.

For me, Bakhtin doesn’t just live on the bookshelf, he’s alive in the studio, in the work and the risk. His philosophy offers a language for the messy, relational labour of being an actor in process.

I’ll be digging more into how philosophy intersects with Stanislavsky, Active Analysis, and my own Crosspoints system in upcoming posts. I think my next one will be on Gilles Deleuze. What do you think?

For now, here’s to Bakhtin—the unlikely patron saint of my rehearsal room.