Jean Benedetti, who has died aged 81, combined several theatrical careers in one. The former principal of Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance, in Sidcup, Kent, he was also a dramatist for stage and television; a translator of French, Italian and German plays, including those of Brecht; an actor and director; and a scholar of the seminal theorist of modern acting, Konstantin Stanislavski.
Jean's translation of Stanislavski's autobiography, My Life in Art (1974, revised in 2008), was followed by a bestselling handbook for acting students, Stanislavski: An Introduction (1982) and Stanislavski: A Biography (1988), the first and only such account in English (now sadly out of print), which he expanded and revised over the years.
For Stanislavski scholars, it was widely known that the trilogy of English-language volumes of his writings (An Actor Prepares, Building a Character and Creating a Role), translated by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood – a fine linguist and academic but not a theatre scholar – were inaccurate and sorely dated when compared with Stanislavski's work published in Russian. Stanislavski continued to work on his theories until his death in 1938, which meant that volumes such as An Actor Prepares were a mistaken representation of what he came to believe about what the actor does in preparation to play a role on stage.
Over time gross misunderstandings grew about Stanislavski and his "system", such as the over-limited reliance on psychological approaches that led to the American conception of method acting; Jean spent the latter part of his life trying to correct these through research in Russian archives and examination of Stanislavski's own manuscripts. His short summary Stanislavski and the Actor (1998), based on his new findings, would eventually be followed by the long-awaited re-translations from Routledge of Stanislavski's most seminal texts, which Jean based on Stanislavski's final Russian manuscripts and published versions: An Actor's Work: A Student Diary (2008) and An Actor's Work on a Role (2009). Though these translations, in time, may also be contested, they set a new standard in Stanislavski research and research into the process of acting.
Jean was born in Barking, Essex, as Norman Bennett. In 1965 he changed his name by deed poll to Jean-Norman Benedetti, reflecting his love for things French and Italian, though he used Jean for his work as a writer. From an early age he was a gifted linguist, fluent in French, German and Spanish, and later Russian. Throughout his life he divided his time between England and France, where he did his most productive writing in a house in the Dordogne borrowed from friends.
His early education was in music at Newcastle University, but he left before getting a degree in order to work as a teaching assistant in France. Once he decided on a career in theatre, he enrolled at the new Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama, as it then was, and studied under Bruford herself. Her demanding, disciplined teaching and love of verse and verse-speaking engaged him. For Jean, acting was almost effortless. He was a gifted student and repeatedly won prizes. After graduating, he worked in rep theatres across the country and in the West End, where, in 1965, he stepped into Dudley Moore's part in Beyond the Fringe. He graduated to work in radio and television, both acting and script writing.
From 1964 to 1974 he worked intermittently at Laurence Olivier's newly established National Theatre at London's Old Vic, where he was adviser on European repertoire to Kenneth Tynan, Olivier's literary manager. He also brought European plays to the attention of British publishers.
In 1970 Jean returned to Rose Bruford College as principal and stayed as head until his retirement in 1987. Throughout the 70s and early 80s specialist drama schools in the UK were trying to gain credibility and sustainability as educational institutions. Jean had studied to be both an actor and a teacher, a double role that Bruford felt was important to pioneer at the college. The connection between the practice of dramatic technique and the intellectual rigour of higher education was a natural link for Jean to make. The college became the first British institution with university status to offer a BA in acting rather than just in dramatic literature and theatre history. BA degrees for technical theatre training and community theatre work soon followed. A pattern was set that other drama schools would eventually follow. Jean presided over the college during a golden period that produced a new breed of British stage and screen actors including Gary Oldman.
Jean's later publications included David Garrick and the Birth of the Modern Theatre (2001) and a book about the history of acting from ancient times to modern, The Art of the Actor (2005), both written while he was working through his grand Russian project, The Complete Stanislavski. He enjoyed diversions like these. I worked with him as his editor at Methuen and followed him, many years later, to become principal of Rose Bruford College. I remember him telling me, in animated fashion, about the wonderful letters exchanged between Anton Chekhov and his actor wife, Olga Knipper. Now that would be a terrific book, I said. Several months later an impeccably translated manuscript arrived on my desk: Dear Writer, Dear Actress: The Love Letters of Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper, published in 1997.
A witty and gregarious man, Jean could become fierce, narrowing his eyes and adopting an imperious tone when faced with bad acting or poor scholarship about the technique of acting. Having set new standards in theatre and actor training, his books generated new approaches to the field of performance studies. He redefined how we write and think about performance.
Jean had no close surviving relatives; his circle of friends went back to his schooldays.
• Jean (Jean-Norman) Benedetti, theatre and acting historian, born 30 December 1930; died 27 March 2012
