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Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski was a pioneering Russian and Soviet theatre practitioner and acclaimed character actor, best known for developing his "system" of actor training. Co-founder of the Moscow Art Theatre alongside Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, Stanislavski revolutionized theatre with landmark productions like The Seagull and Hamlet, promoting Russian playwrights such as Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky. He mentored key figures like Vsevolod Meyerhold and wrote influential works including his autobiography My Life in Art. Awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour and Order of Lenin, he remains a towering figure in theatre history.

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Overview of the system

Main article: Stanislavski's system

Stanislavski subjected his acting and direction to a rigorous process of artistic self-analysis and reflection.16 His system17 of acting developed out of his persistent efforts to remove the blocks that he encountered in his performances, beginning with a major crisis in 1906.18 He produced his early work using an external, director-centred technique that strove for an organic unity of all its elements—in each production he planned the interpretation of every role, blocking, and the mise en scène in detail in advance.19 He also introduced into the production process a period of discussion and detailed analysis of the play by the cast.20 Despite the success that this approach brought, particularly with his Naturalistic stagings of the plays of Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky, Stanislavski remained dissatisfied.21

Both his struggles with Chekhov's drama (out of which his notion of subtext emerged) and his experiments with Symbolism encouraged a greater attention to "inner action" and a more intensive investigation of the actor's process.22 He began to develop the more actor-centred techniques of "psychological realism" and his focus shifted from his productions to rehearsal process and pedagogy.23 He pioneered the use of theatre studios as a laboratory in which to innovate actor training and to experiment with new forms of theatre.24 Stanislavski organised his techniques into a coherent, systematic methodology, which built on three major strands of influence: (1) the director-centred, unified aesthetic and disciplined, ensemble approach of the Meiningen company; (2) the actor-centred realism of the Maly; and (3) the Naturalistic staging of Antoine and the independent theatre movement.25

The system cultivates what Stanislavski calls the "art of experiencing" (to which he contrasts the "art of representation").26 It mobilises the actor's conscious thought and will to activate other, less-controllable psychological processes—such as emotional experience and subconscious behaviour—sympathetically and indirectly.27 In rehearsal, the actor searches for inner motives to justify action and the definition of what the character seeks to achieve at any given moment (a "task").28 Stanislavski's earliest reference to his system appears in 1909, the same year that he first incorporated it into his rehearsal process.29 The MAT adopted it as its official rehearsal method in 1911.30

Later, Stanislavski further elaborated the system with a more physically grounded rehearsal process that came to be known as the "Method of Physical Action".31 Minimising at-the-table discussions, he now encouraged an "active analysis", in which the sequence of dramatic situations are improvised.32 "The best analysis of a play", Stanislavski argued, "is to take action in the given circumstances."33

Just as the First Studio, led by his assistant and close friend Leopold Sulerzhitsky, had provided the forum in which he developed his initial ideas for the system during the 1910s, he hoped to secure his final legacy by opening another studio in 1935, in which the Method of Physical Action would be taught.34 The Opera-Dramatic Studio embodied the most complete implementation of the training exercises described in his manuals.35 Meanwhile, the transmission of his earlier work via the students of the First Studio was revolutionising acting in the West.36 With the arrival of Socialist realism in the USSR, the MAT and Stanislavski's system were enthroned as exemplary models.37

Family background and early influences

Stanislavski had a privileged youth, growing up in one of the richest families in Russia, the Alekseyevs.38 He was born Konstantin Sergeyevich Alekseyev—he adopted the stage name "Stanislavski" in 1884 to keep his performance activities secret from his parents.39 Up until the communist revolution in 1917, Stanislavski often used his inherited wealth to fund his experiments in acting and directing.40 His family's discouragement meant that he appeared only as an amateur until he was thirty three.41

As a child, Stanislavski was interested in the circus, the ballet, and puppetry.42 Later, his family's two private theatres provided a forum for his theatrical impulses.43 After his debut performance at one in 1877, he started what would become a lifelong series of notebooks filled with critical observations on his acting, aphorisms, and problems—it was from this habit of self-analysis and critique that Stanislavski's system later emerged.44 Stanislavski chose not to attend university, preferring to work in the family business.45

Increasingly interested in "experiencing the role", Stanislavski experimented with maintaining a characterization in real life.46 In 1884, he began vocal training under Fyodor Komissarzhevsky, with whom he also explored the coordination of body and voice.47 A year later, Stanislavski briefly studied at the Moscow Theatre School but, disappointed with its approach, he left after little more than two weeks.48 Instead, he devoted particular attention to the performances of the Maly Theatre, the home of Russian psychological realism (as developed in the 19th century by Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol and Mikhail Shchepkin).49

Shchepkin's legacy included a disciplined, ensemble approach, extensive rehearsals, and the use of careful observation, self-knowledge, imagination, and emotion as the cornerstones of the craft.50 Stanislavski called the Maly his "university".51 One of Shchepkin's students, Glikeriya Fedotova, taught Stanislavski; she instilled in him the rejection of inspiration as the basis of the actor's art, stressed the importance of training and discipline, and encouraged the practice of responsive interaction with other actors that Stanislavski came to call "communication".52 As well as the artists of the Maly, performances given by foreign stars influenced Stanislavski.53 The effortless, emotive, and clear playing of the Italian Ernesto Rossi, who performed major Shakespearean tragic protagonists in Moscow in 1877, particularly impressed him.54 So too did Tommaso Salvini's 1882 performance of Othello.55

Amateur work as an actor and director

By now well known as an amateur actor, at the age of twenty-five Stanslavski co-founded a Society of Art and Literature.56 Under its auspices, he performed in plays by Molière, Schiller, Pushkin, and Ostrovsky, as well as gaining his first experiences as a director.57 He became interested in the aesthetic theories of Vissarion Belinsky, from whom he took his conception of the role of the artist.58

On 5 July [O.S. 23 June] 1889, Stanislavski married Maria Lilina (the stage name of Maria Petrovna Perevostchikova).59 Their first child, Xenia, died of pneumonia in May 1890 less than two months after she was born.60 Their second daughter, Kira, was born on 2 August [O.S. 21 July] 1891.61 In January 1893, Stanislavski's father died.62 Their son Igor was born on 26 September [O.S. 14 September] 1894.63

In February 1891, Stanislavski directed Leo Tolstoy's The Fruits of Enlightenment for the Society of Art and Literature, in what he later described as his first fully independent directorial work.64 But it was not until 1893 he first met the great realist novelist and playwright that became another important influence on him.65 Five years later the MAT would be his response to Tolstoy's demand for simplicity, directness, and accessibility in art.66

Stanislavski's directorial methods at this time were closely modelled on the disciplined, autocratic approach of Ludwig Chronegk, the director of the Meiningen Ensemble.67 In My Life in Art (1924), Stanislavski described this approach as one in which the director is "forced to work without the help of the actor".68 From 1894 onward, Stanislavski began to assemble detailed prompt-books that included a directorial commentary on the entire play and from which not even the smallest detail was allowed to deviate.69

Whereas the Ensemble's effects tended toward the grandiose, Stanislavski introduced lyrical elaborations through the mise-en-scène that dramatised more mundane and ordinary elements of life, in keeping with Belinsky's ideas about the "poetry of the real".70 By means of his rigid and detailed control of all theatrical elements, including the strict choreography of the actors' every gesture, in Stanislavski's words "the inner kernel of the play was revealed by itself".71 Analysing the Society's production of Othello (1896), Jean Benedetti observes that:

Stanislavski uses the theatre and its technical possibilities as an instrument of expression, a language, in its own right. The dramatic meaning is in the staging itself. [...] He went through the whole play in a completely different way, not relying on the text as such, with quotes from important speeches, not providing a 'literary' explanation, but speaking in terms of the play's dynamic, its action, the thoughts and feelings of the protagonists, the world in which they lived. His account flowed uninterruptedly from moment to moment.72

Benedetti argues that Stanislavski's task at this stage was to unite the realistic tradition of the creative actor inherited from Shchepkin and Gogol with the director-centred, organically unified Naturalistic aesthetic of the Meiningen approach.73 That synthesis would emerge eventually, but only in the wake of Stanislavski's directorial struggles with Symbolist theatre and an artistic crisis in his work as an actor. "The task of our generation", Stanislavski wrote as he was about to found the Moscow Art Theatre and begin his professional life in the theatre, is "to liberate art from outmoded tradition, from tired cliché and to give greater freedom to imagination and creative ability."74

Creation of the Moscow Art Theatre

See also: Moscow Art Theatre

Stanislavski's historic meeting with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko on 4 July [O.S. 22 June] 1897 led to the creation of what was called initially the "Moscow Public-Accessible Theatre", but which came to be known as the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT).75 Their eighteen-hour-long discussion has acquired a legendary status in the history of theatre.76

Nemirovich was a successful playwright, critic, theatre director, and acting teacher at the Philharmonic School who, like Stanislavski, was committed to the idea of a popular theatre.77 Their abilities complemented one another: Stanislavski brought his directorial talent for creating vivid stage images and selecting significant details; Nemirovich, his talent for dramatic and literary analysis, his professional expertise, and his ability to manage a theatre.78 Stanislavski later compared their discussions to the Treaty of Versailles, their scope was so wide-ranging; they agreed on the conventional practices they wished to abandon and, on the basis of the working method they found they had in common, defined the policy of their new theatre.79

Stanislavski and Nemirovich planned a professional company with an ensemble ethos that discouraged individual vanity; they would create a realistic theatre of international renown, with popular prices for seats, whose organically unified aesthetic would bring together the techniques of the Meiningen Ensemble and those of André Antoine's Théâtre Libre (which Stanislavski had seen during trips to Paris).80 Nemirovich assumed that Stanislavski would fund the theatre as a privately owned business, but Stanislavski insisted on a limited, joint stock company.81 Viktor Simov, whom Stanislavski had met in 1896, was engaged as the company's principal designer.82

In his opening speech on the first day of rehearsals, 26 June [O.S. 14 June] 1898, Stanislavski stressed the "social character" of their collective undertaking.83 In an atmosphere more like a university than a theatre, as Stanislavski described it, the company was introduced to his working method of extensive reading and research and detailed rehearsals in which the action was defined at the table before being explored physically.84 Stanislavski's lifelong relationship with Vsevolod Meyerhold began during these rehearsals; by the end of June, Meyerhold was so impressed with Stanislavski's directorial skills that he declared him a genius.85

Naturalism at the MAT

See also: Moscow Art Theatre production of The Seagull

The lasting significance of Stanislavski's early work at the MAT lies in its development of a Naturalistic performance mode.86 In 1898, Stanislavski co-directed with Nemirovich the first of his productions of the work of Anton Chekhov.87 The MAT production of The Seagull was a crucial milestone for the fledgling company that has been described as "one of the greatest events in the history of Russian theatre and one of the greatest new developments in the history of world drama."88 Despite its 80 hours of rehearsal—a considerable length by the standards of the conventional practice of the day—Stanislavski felt it was under-rehearsed.89 The production's success was due to the fidelity of its delicate representation of everyday life, its intimate, ensemble playing, and the resonance of its mood of despondent uncertainty with the psychological disposition of the Russian intelligentsia of the time.90

Stanislavski went on to direct the successful premières of Chekhov's other major plays: Uncle Vanya in 1899 (in which he played Astrov), Three Sisters in 1901 (playing Vershinin), and The Cherry Orchard in 1904 (playing Gaev).91 Stanislavski's encounter with Chekhov's drama proved crucial to the creative development of both men. His ensemble approach and attention to the psychological realities of its characters revived Chekhov's interest in writing for the stage, while Chekhov's unwillingness to explain or expand on the text forced Stanislavski to dig beneath its surface in ways that were new in theatre.92

In response to Stanislavski's encouragement, Maxim Gorky promised to launch his playwrighting career with the MAT.93 In 1902, Stanislavski directed the première productions of the first two of Gorky's plays, The Philistines and The Lower Depths.94 As part of the rehearsal preparations for the latter, Stanislavski took the company to visit Khitrov Market, where they talked to its down-and-outs and soaked up its atmosphere of destitution.95 Stanislavski based his characterisation of Satin on an ex-officer he met there, who had fallen into poverty through gambling.96 The Lower Depths was a triumph that matched the production of The Seagull four years earlier, though Stanislavski regarded his own performance as external and mechanical.97

The productions of The Cherry Orchard and The Lower Depths remained in the MAT's repertoire for decades.98 Along with Chekhov and Gorky, the drama of Henrik Ibsen formed an important part of Stanislavski's work at this time—in its first two decades, the MAT staged more plays by Ibsen than any other playwright.99 In its first decade, Stanislavski directed Hedda Gabler (in which he played Løvborg), An Enemy of the People (playing Dr Stockmann, his favorite role), The Wild Duck, and Ghosts.100 "More's the pity I was not a Scandinavian and never saw how Ibsen was played in Scandinavia," Stanislavski wrote, because "those who have been there tell me that he is interpreted as simply, as true to life, as we play Chekhov".101 He also staged other important Naturalistic works, including Gerhart Hauptmann's Drayman Henschel, Lonely People, and Michael Kramer and Leo Tolstoy's The Power of Darkness.102

Symbolism and the Theatre-Studio

In 1904, Stanislavski finally acted on a suggestion made by Chekhov two years earlier that he stage several one-act plays by Maurice Maeterlinck, the Belgian Symbolist.103 Despite his enthusiasm, however, Stanislavski struggled to realise a theatrical approach to the static, lyrical dramas.104 When the triple bill consisting of The Blind, Intruder, and Interior opened on 15 October [O.S. 2 October], the experiment was deemed a failure.105

Meyerhold, prompted by Stanislavski's positive response to his new ideas about Symbolist theatre, proposed that they form a "theatre studio" (a term which he invented) that would function as "a laboratory for the experiments of more or less experienced actors."106 The Theatre-Studio aimed to develop Meyerhold's aesthetic ideas into new theatrical forms that would return the MAT to the forefront of the avant-garde and Stanislavski's socially conscious ideas for a network of "people's theatres" that would reform Russian theatrical culture as a whole.107 Central to Meyerhold's approach was the use of improvisation to develop the performances.108

When the studio presented a work-in-progress, Stanislavski was encouraged; when performed in a fully equipped theatre in Moscow, however, it was regarded as a failure and the studio folded.109 Meyerhold drew an important lesson: "one must first educate a new actor and only then put new tasks before him", he wrote, adding that "Stanislavski, too, came to such a conclusion."110 Reflecting in 1908 on the Theatre-Studio's demise, Stanislavski wrote that "our theatre found its future among its ruins."111 Nemirovich disapproved of what he described as the malign influence of Meyerhold on Stanislavski's work at this time.112

Stanislavski engaged two important new collaborators in 1905: Liubov Gurevich became his literary advisor and Leopold Sulerzhitsky became his personal assistant.113 Stanislavski revised his interpretation of the role of Trigorin (and Meyerhold reprised his role as Konstantin) when the MAT revived its production of Chekhov's The Seagull on 13 October [O.S. 30 September] 1905.114

This was the year of the abortive revolution in Russia. Stanislavski signed a protest against the violence of the secret police, Cossack troops, and the right-wing extremist paramilitary "Black Hundreds", which was submitted to the Duma on the 3 November [O.S. 21 October].115 Rehearsals for the MAT's production of Alexander Griboyedov's classic verse comedy Woe from Wit were interrupted by gun-battles on the streets outside.116 Stanislavski and Nemirovich closed the theatre and embarked on the company's first tour outside of Russia.117

European tour and artistic crisis

The MAT's first European tour began on 23 February [O.S. 10 February] 1906 in Berlin, where they played to an audience that included Max Reinhardt, Gerhart Hauptmann, Arthur Schnitzler, and Eleonora Duse.118 "It's as though we were the revelation", Stanislavski wrote of the rapturous acclaim they received.119 The success of the tour provided financial security for the company, garnered an international reputation for their work, and made a significant impact on European theatre.120 The tour also provoked a major artistic crisis for Stanislavski that had a significant impact on his future direction.121 From his attempts to resolve this crisis, his system would eventually emerge.122

Sometime in March 1906—Jean Benedetti suggests that it was during An Enemy of the People—Stanislavski became aware that he was acting without a flow of inner impulses and feelings and that as a consequence his performance had become mechanical.123 He spent June and July in Finland on holiday, where he studied, wrote, and reflected.124 With his notebooks on his own experience from 1889 onwards, he attempted to analyze "the foundation stones of our art" and the actor's creative process in particular.125 He began to formulate a psychological approach to controlling the actor's process in a Manual on Dramatic Art.126

Productions as research into working methods

See also: List of productions directed by Konstantin Stanislavski

Stanislavski's activities began to move in a very different direction: his productions became opportunities for research, he was more interested in the process of rehearsal than its product, and his attention shifted away from the MAT towards its satellite projects—the theatre studios—in which he would develop his system.127 On his return to Moscow, he explored his new psychological approach in his production of Knut Hamsun's Symbolist play The Drama of Life.128 Nemirovich was particularly hostile to his new methods and their relationship continued to deteriorate in this period.129 In a statement made on 9 February [O.S. 27 January] 1908, Stanislavski marked a significant shift in his directorial method and stressed the crucial contribution he now expected from a creative actor:

The committee is wrong if it thinks that the director's preparatory work in the study is necessary, as previously, when he alone decided the whole plan and all the details of the production, wrote the mise en scène and answered all the actors' questions for them. The director is no longer king, as before, when the actor possessed no clear individuality. [...] It is essential to understand this—rehearsals are divided into two stages: the first stage is one of experiment when the cast helps the director, the second is creating the performance when the director helps the cast.130

Stanislavski's preparations for Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird (which was to become his most famous production to-date) included improvisations and other exercises to stimulate the actors' imaginations; Nemirovich described one in which the cast imitated various animals.131 In rehearsals he sought ways to encourage his actors' will to create afresh in every performance.132 He focused on the search for inner motives to justify action and the definition of what the characters are seeking to achieve at any given moment (what he would come to call their "task").133 This use of the actor's conscious thought and will was designed to activate other, less-controllable psychological processes—such as emotional experience and subconscious behaviour—sympathetically and indirectly.134

Noting the importance to great actors' performances of their ability to remain relaxed, he discovered that he could abolish physical tension by focusing his attention on the specific action that the play demanded; when his concentration wavered, his tension returned.135 "What fascinates me most", Stanislavski wrote in May 1908, "is the rhythm of feelings, the development of affective memory and the psycho-physiology of the creative process."136 His interest in the creative use of the actor's personal experiences was spurred by a chance conversation in Germany in July that led him to the work of French psychologist Théodule-Armand Ribot.137 His "affective memory" contributed to the technique that Stanislavski would come to call "emotion memory".138

Together these elements formed a new vocabulary with which he explored a "return to realism" in a production of Gogol's The Government Inspector as soon as The Blue Bird had opened.139 At a theatre conference on 21 March [O.S. 8 March] 1909, Stanislavski delivered a paper on his emerging system that stressed the role of his techniques of the "magic if" (which encourages the actor to respond to the fictional circumstances of the play "as if" they were real) and emotion memory.140 He developed his ideas about three trends in the history of acting, which were to appear eventually in the opening chapters of An Actor's Work: "stock-in-trade" acting, the art of representation, and the art of experiencing (his own approach).141

Stanislavski's production of A Month in the Country (1909) was a watershed in his artistic development.142 Breaking the MAT's tradition of open rehearsals, he prepared Turgenev's play in private.143 They began with a discussion of what he would come to call the "through-line" for the characters (their emotional development and the way they change over the course of the play).144 This production is the earliest recorded instance of his practice of analysing the action of the script into discrete "bits".145

At this stage in the development of his approach, Stanislavski's technique was to identify the emotional state contained in the psychological experience of the character during each bit and, through the use of the actor's emotion memory, to forge a subjective connection to it.146 Only after two months of rehearsals were the actors permitted to physicalise the text.147 Stanislavski insisted that they should play the actions that their discussions around the table had identified.148 Having realised a particular emotional state in a physical action, he assumed at this point in his experiments, the actor's repetition of that action would evoke the desired emotion.149 As with his experiments in The Drama of Life, they also explored non-verbal communication, whereby scenes were rehearsed as "silent études" with actors interacting "only with their eyes".150 The production's success when it opened in December 1909 seemed to prove the validity of his new methodology.151

Late in 1910, Gorky invited Stanislavski to join him in Capri, where they discussed actor training and Stanislavski's emerging "grammar".152 Inspired by a popular theatre performance in Naples that employed the techniques of the commedia dell'arte, Gorky suggested that they form a company, modeled on the medieval strolling players, in which a playwright and group of young actors would devise new plays together by means of improvisation.153 Stanislavski would develop this use of improvisation in his work with his First Studio.154

Staging the classics

See also: Moscow Art Theatre production of Hamlet

In his treatment of the classics, Stanislavski believed that it was legitimate for actors and directors to ignore the playwright's intentions for a play's staging.155 One of his most important—a collaboration with Edward Gordon Craig on a production of Hamlet—became a landmark of 20th-century theatrical modernism.156 Stanislavski hoped to prove that his recently developed system for creating internally justified, realistic acting could meet the formal demands of a classic play.157 Craig envisioned a Symbolist monodrama in which every aspect of production would be subjugated to the protagonist: it would present a dream-like vision as seen through Hamlet's eyes.158

Despite these contrasting approaches, the two practitioners did share some artistic assumptions; the system had developed out of Stanislavski's experiments with Symbolist drama, which had shifted his attention from a Naturalistic external surface to the characters' subtextual, inner world.159 Both had stressed the importance of achieving a unity of all theatrical elements in their work.160 Their production attracted enthusiastic and unprecedented worldwide attention for the theatre, placing it "on the cultural map for Western Europe", and it has come to be regarded as a seminal event that revolutionised the staging of Shakespeare's plays.161 It became "one of the most famous and passionately discussed productions in the history of the modern stage."162

Increasingly absorbed by his teaching, in 1913 Stanislavski held open rehearsals for his production of Molière's The Imaginary Invalid as a demonstration of the system.163 As with his production of Hamlet and his next, Goldoni's The Mistress of the Inn, he was keen to assay his system in the crucible of a classical text.164 He began to inflect his technique of dividing the action of the play into bits with an emphasis on improvisation; he would progress from analysis, through free improvisation, to the language of the text:165

I divide the work into large bits clarifying the nature of each bit. Then, immediately, in my own words, I play each bit, observing all the curves. Then I go through the experiences of each bit ten times or so with its curves (not in a fixed way, not being consistent). Then I follow the successive bits in the book. And finally, I make the transition, imperceptibly, to the experiences as expressed in the actual words of the part.166

Stanislavski's struggles with both the Molière and Goldoni comedies revealed the importance of an appropriate definition of what he calls a character's "super-task" (the core problem that unites and subordinates the character's moment-to-moment tasks).167 This impacted particularly on the actors' ability to serve the plays' genre, because an unsatisfactory definition produced tragic rather than comic performances.168

Other European classics directed by Stanislavski include: Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, and Othello, an unfinished production of Molière's Tartuffe, and Beaumarchais's The Marriage of Figaro. Other classics of the Russian theatre directed by Stanislavki include: several plays by Ivan Turgenev, Griboyedov's Woe from Wit, Gogol's The Government Inspector, and plays by Tolstoy, Ostrovsky, and Pushkin.

Studios and the search for a system

Following the success of his production of A Month in the Country, Stanislavski made repeated requests to the board of the MAT for proper facilities to pursue his pedagogical work with young actors.169 Gorky encouraged him not to found a drama school to teach inexperienced beginners, but rather—following the example of the Theatre-Studio of 1905—to create a studio for research and experiment that would train young professionals.170

Stanislavski created the First Studio on 14 September [O.S. 1 September] 1912.171 Its founding members included Yevgeny Vakhtangov, Michael Chekhov, Richard Boleslawski, and Maria Ouspenskaya, all of whom would exert a considerable influence on the subsequent history of theatre.172 Stanislavski selected Suler (as Gorky had nicknamed Sulerzhitsky) to lead the studio.173 In a focused, intense atmosphere, their work emphasised experimentation, improvisation, and self-discovery.174 Following Gorky's suggestions about devising new plays through improvisation, they searched for "the creative process common to authors, actors and directors".175

Stanislavski created the Second Studio of the MAT in 1916, in response to a production of Zinaida Gippius' The Green Ring that a group of young actors had prepared independently.176 With a greater focus on pedagogical work than the First Studio, the Second Studio provided the environment in which Stanislavski developed the training techniques that would form the basis for his manual An Actor's Work (1938).177

A significant influence on the development of the system came from Stanislavski's experience teaching and directing at his Opera Studio, which was founded in 1918.178 He hoped that the successful application of his system to opera, with its inescapable conventionality and artifice, would demonstrate the universality of his approach to performance and unite the work of Mikhail Shchepkin and Feodor Chaliapin.179 From this experience Stanislavski's notion of "tempo-rhythm" emerged.180 He invited Serge Wolkonsky to teach diction and Lev Pospekhin to teach expressive movement and dance and attended both of their classes as a student.181

From the First World War to the October Revolution

Stanislavski spent the summer of 1914 in Marienbad where, as he had in 1906, he researched the history of theatre and theories of acting to clarify the discoveries that his practical experiments had produced.182 When the First World War broke out, Stanislavski was in Munich.183 "It seemed to me", he wrote of the atmosphere at the train station in an article detailing his experiences, "that death was hovering everywhere."184

The train was stopped at Immenstadt, where German soldiers denounced him as a Russian spy.185 Held in a room at the station with a large crowd with "the faces of wild beasts" baying at its windows, Stanislavski believed he was to be executed.186 He remembered that he was carrying an official document that mentioned having played to Kaiser Wilhelm during their tour of 1906 that, when he showed it to the officers, produced a change of attitude towards his group.187 They were placed on a slow train to Kempten.188 Gurevich later related how during the journey Stanislavski surprised her when he whispered that:

[E]vents of recent days had given him a clear impression of the superficiality of all that was called human culture, bourgeois culture, that a completely different kind of life was needed, where all needs were reduced to the minimum, where there was work—real artistic work—on behalf of the people, for those who had not yet been consumed by this bourgeois culture.189

In Kempten they were again ordered into one of the station's rooms, where Stanislavski overheard the German soldiers complain of a lack of ammunition; it was only this, he understood, that prevented their execution.190 The following morning they were placed on a train and eventually returned to Russia via Switzerland and France.191

Turning to the classics of Russian theatre, the MAT revived Griboyedov's comedy Woe from Wit and planned to stage three of Pushkin's "little tragedies" in early 1915.192 Stanislavski continued to develop his system, explaining at an open rehearsal for Woe from Wit his concept of the state of "I am being".193 This term marks the stage in the rehearsal process when the distinction between actor and character blurs (producing the "actor/role"), subconscious behavior takes the lead, and the actor feels fully present in the dramatic moment.194 He stressed the importance to achieving this state of a focus on action ("What would I do if ...") rather than emotion ("How would I feel if ..."): "You must ask the kinds of questions that lead to dynamic action."195 Instead of forcing emotion, he explained, actors should notice what is happening, attend to their relationships with the other actors, and try to understand "through the senses" the fictional world that surrounds them.196

When he prepared for his role in Pushkin's Mozart and Salieri, Stanislavski created a biography for Salieri in which he imagined the character's memories of each incident mentioned in the play, his relationships with the other people involved, and the circumstances that had impacted on Salieri's life.197 When he attempted to render all of this detail in performance, however, the subtext overwhelmed the text; overladen with heavy pauses, Pushkin's verse was fragmented to the point of incomprehensibility.198 His struggles with this role prompted him to attend more closely to the structure and dynamics of language in drama; to that end, he studied Serge Wolkonsky's The Expressive Word (1913).199

The French theatre practitioner Jacques Copeau contacted Stanislavski in October 1916.200 As a result of his conversations with Edward Gordon Craig, Copeau had come to believe that his work at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier shared a common approach with Stanislavski's investigations at the MAT.201 On 30 December [O.S. 17 December] 1916, Stanislavski's assistant and closest friend, Leopold Sulerzhitsky, died from chronic nephritis.202 Reflecting on their relationship in 1931, Stanislavski said that Suler had understood him completely and that no one, since, had replaced him.203

Revolutions of 1917 and the Civil War years

Stanislavski welcomed the February Revolution of 1917 and its overthrow of the absolute monarchy as a "miraculous liberation of Russia".204 With the October Revolution later in the year, the MAT closed for a few weeks and the First Studio was occupied by revolutionaries.205 Stanislavski thought that the social upheavals presented an opportunity to realize his long-standing ambitions to establish a Russian popular theatre that would provide, as the title of an essay he prepared that year put it, "The Aesthetic Education of the Popular Masses".206

Vladimir Lenin, who became a frequent visitor to the MAT after the revolution, praised Stanislavski as "a real artist" and indicated that, in his opinion, Stanislavski's approach was "the direction the theatre should take."207 The revolutions of that year brought about an abrupt change in Stanislavski's finances when his factories were nationalized, which left his wage from the MAT as his only source of income.208 On 29 August 1918 Stanislavski, along with several others from the MAT, was arrested by the Cheka, though he was released the following day.209

During the years of the Civil War, Stanislavski concentrated on teaching his system, directing (both at the MAT and its studios), and bringing performances of the classics to new audiences (such as factory workers and the Red Army).210 Several articles on Stanislavski and his system were published, but none were written by him.211 On 5 March 1921, Stanislavski was evicted from his large house on Carriage Row, where he had lived since 1903.212 Following the personal intervention of Lenin (prompted by Anatoly Lunacharsky), Stanislavski was re-housed at 6 Leontievski Lane, not far from the MAT.213 He was to live there until his death in 1938.214 On 29 May 1922, Stanislavski's favourite pupil, the director Yevgeny Vakhtangov, died of cancer.215

MAT tours in Europe and the United States

In the wake of the temporary withdrawal of the state subsidy to the MAT that came with the New Economic Policy in 1921, Stanislavski and Nemirovich planned a tour to Europe and the US to augment the company's finances.216 The tour began in Berlin, where Stanislavski arrived on 18 September 1922, and proceeded to Prague, Zagreb, and Paris, where he was welcomed at the station by Jacques Hébertot, Aurélien Lugné-Poë, and Jacques Copeau.217 In Paris, he also met André Antoine, Louis Jouvet, Isadora Duncan, Firmin Gémier, and Harley Granville-Barker.218 He discussed with Copeau the possibility of establishing an international theatre studio and attended performances by Ermete Zacconi, whose control of his performance, economic expressivity, and ability both to "experience" and "represent" the role impressed him.219

The company sailed to New York City and arrived on 4 January 1923.220 When reporters asked about their repertoire, Stanislavski explained that "America wants to see what Europe already knows."221 David Belasco, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Feodor Chaliapin attended the opening night performance.222 Thanks in part to a vigorous publicity campaign that the American producer, Morris Gest, orchestrated, the tour garnered substantial critical praise, although it was not a financial success.223

As actors (among whom was the young Lee Strasberg) flocked to the performances to learn from the company, the tour made a substantial contribution to the development of American acting.224 Richard Boleslavsky presented a series of lectures on Stanislavski's system (which were eventually published as Acting: The First Six Lessons in 1933).225 A performance of Three Sisters on 31 March 1923 concluded the season in New York, after which they travelled to Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston.226

At the request of a US publisher, Stanislavski reluctantly agreed to write his autobiography, My Life in Art, since his proposals for an account of the system or a history of the MAT and its approach had been rejected.227 He returned to Europe during the summer where he worked on the book and, in September, began rehearsals for a second tour.228 The company returned to New York on 7 November and went on to perform in Philadelphia, Boston, New Haven, Hartford, Washington, D.C., Brooklyn, Newark, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Detroit.229 On 20 March 1924, Stanislavski met President Calvin Coolidge at the White House.230 They were introduced by a translator, Elizabeth Hapgood, with whom he would later collaborate on An Actor Prepares.231 The company left the US on 17 May 1924.232

Soviet productions

On his return to Moscow in August 1924, Stanislavski began with the help of Gurevich to make substantial revisions to his autobiography, in preparation for a definitive Russian-language edition, which was published in September 1926.233 He continued to act, reprising the role of Astrov in a new production of Uncle Vanya (his performance of which was described as "staggering").234 With Nemirovich away touring with his Music Studio, Stanislavski led the MAT for two years, during which time the company thrived.235

With a company fully versed in his system, Stanislavski's work on Mikhail Bulgakov's The Days of the Turbins focused on the tempo-rhythm of the production's dramatic structure and the through-lines of action for the individual characters and the play as a whole.236 "See everything in terms of action" he advised them.237 Aware of the disapproval of Bulgakov felt by the Repertory Committee (Glavrepertkom) of the People's Commissariat for Education, Stanislavski threatened to close the theatre if the play was banned.238 Despite substantial hostility from the press, the production was a box-office success.239

In an attempt to render a classic play relevant to a contemporary Soviet audience, Stanislavski re-located the action in his fast and free-flowing production of Pierre Beaumarchais' 18th-century comedy The Marriage of Figaro to pre-Revolutionary France and emphasised the democratic point of view of Figaro and Susanna, in preference to that of the aristocratic Count Almaviva.240 His working methods contributed innovations to the system: the analysis of scenes in terms of concrete physical tasks and the use of the "line of the day" for each character.241

In preference to the tightly controlled, Meiningen-inspired scoring of the mise en scène with which he had choreographed crowd scenes in his early years, he now worked in terms of broad physical tasks: actors responded truthfully to the circumstances of scenes with sequences of improvised adaptations that attempted to solve concrete, physical problems.242 For the "line of the day," an actor elaborates in detail the events that supposedly occur to the character "off-stage", in order to form a continuum of experience (the "line" of the character's life that day) that helps to justify his or her behaviour "on-stage".243 This means that the actor develops a relationship to where (as a character) he has just come from and to where he intends to go when leaving the scene.244 The production was a great success, garnering ten curtain calls on opening night.245 Thanks to its cohesive unity and rhythmic qualities, it is recognised as one of Stanislavski's major achievements.246

With a performance of extracts from its major productions—including the first act of Three Sisters in which Stanislavski played Vershinin—the MAT celebrated its 30-year jubilee on 29 October 1928.247 While performing Stanislavski suffered a massive heart-attack, although he continued until the curtain call, after which he collapsed.248 With that, his acting career came to an end.249

A manual for actors

While on holiday in August 1926, Stanislavski began to develop what would become An Actor's Work, his manual for actors written in the form of a fictional student's diary.250 Ideally, Stanislavski felt, it would consist of two volumes: the first would detail the actor's inner experiencing and outer, physical embodiment; the second would address rehearsal processes.251 Since the Soviet publishers used a format that would have made the first volume unwieldy, however, in practice this became three volumes—inner experiencing, outer characterisation, and rehearsal—each of which would be published separately, as it became ready.252

The danger that such an arrangement would obscure the mutual interdependence of these parts in the system as a whole would be avoided, Stanislavski hoped, by means of an initial overview that would stress their integration in his psycho-physical approach; as it turned out, however, he never wrote the overview and many English-language readers came to confuse the first volume on psychological processes—published in a heavily abridged version in the US as An Actor Prepares (1936)—with the system as a whole.253

The two editors—Hapgood with the American edition and Gurevich with the Russian—made conflicting demands on Stanislavski.254 Gurevich became increasingly concerned that splitting An Actor's Work into two books would not only encourage misunderstandings of the unity and mutual implication of the psychological and physical aspects of the system, but would also give its Soviet critics grounds on which to attack it: "to accuse you of dualism, spiritualism, idealism, etc."255 Frustrated with Stanislavski's tendency to tinker with details in preference to addressing more important missing sections, in May 1932 she terminated her involvement.256 Hapgood echoed Gurevich's frustration.257

In 1933, Stanislavski worked on the second half of An Actor's Work.258 By 1935, a version of the first volume was ready for publication in America, to which the publishers made significant abridgements.259 A significantly different and far more complete Russian edition, An Actor's Work on Himself, Part I, was not published until 1938, just after Stanislavski's death.260 The second part of An Actor's Work on Himself was published in the Soviet Union in 1948; an English-language variant, Building a Character, was published a year later.261 The third volume, An Actor's Work on a Role, was published in the Soviet Union in 1957; its nearest English-language equivalent, Creating a Role, was published in 1961.262 The differences between the Russian and English-language editions of volumes two and three were even greater than those of the first volume.263 In 2008, an English-language translation of the complete Russian edition of An Actor's Work was published, with one of An Actor's Work on a Role following in 2010.264

Development of the Method of Physical Action

While recuperating in Nice at the end of 1929, Stanislavski began a production plan for Shakespeare's Othello.265 Hoping to use this as the basis for An Actor's Work on a Role, his plan offers the earliest exposition of the rehearsal process that became known as his Method of Physical Action. He first explored this approach practically in his work on Three Sisters and Carmen in 1934 and Molière in 1935.266

In contrast to his earlier method of working on a play—which involved extensive readings and analysis around a table before any attempt to physicalise its action—Stanislavski now encouraged his actors to explore the action through its "active analysis".267 He felt that too much discussion in the early stages of rehearsal confused and inhibited the actors.268 Instead, focusing on the simplest physical actions, they improvised the sequence of dramatic situations given in the play.269 "The best analysis of a play", he argued, "is to take action in the given circumstances."270 If the actor justified and committed to the truth of the actions (which are easier to shape and control than emotional responses), Stanislavski reasoned, they would evoke truthful thoughts and feelings.271

Stanislavski's attitude to the use of emotion memory in rehearsals (as distinct from its use in actor training) had shifted over the years.272 Ideally, he felt, an instinctive identification with a character's situation should arouse an emotional response.273 The use of emotion memory in lieu of that had demonstrated a propensity for encouraging self-indulgence or hysteria in the actor.274 Its direct approach to feeling, Stanislavski felt, more often produced a block than the desired expression.275 Instead, an indirect approach to the subconscious via a focus on actions (supported by a commitment to the given circumstances and imaginative "Magic Ifs") was a more reliable means of luring the appropriate emotional response.276

This shift in approach corresponded both with an increased attention to the structure and dynamic of the play as a whole and with a greater prominence given to the distinction between the planning of a role and its performance.277 In performance the actor is aware of only one step at a time, Stanislavski reasoned, but this focus risks the loss of the overall dynamic of a role in the welter of moment-to-moment detail.278 Consequently, the actor must also adopt a different point of view in order to plan the role in relation to its dramatic structure; this might involve adjusting the performance by holding back at certain moments and playing full out at others.279 A sense of the whole thereby informs the playing of each episode.280 Borrowing a term from Henry Irving, Stanislavski called this the "perspective of the role".281

Every afternoon for five weeks during the summer of 1934 in Paris, Stanislavski worked with the American actress Stella Adler, who had sought his assistance with the blocks she had confronted in her performances.282 Given the emphasis that emotion memory had received in New York City, Adler was surprised to find that Stanislavski rejected the technique except as a last resort.283 The news that this was Stanislavski's approach would have significant repercussions in the US; Lee Strasberg angrily rejected it and refused to modify his version of the system.284

Political fortunes under Stalin

Following his heart attack in 1928, for the last decade of his life Stanislavski conducted most of his work writing, directing rehearsals, and teaching in his home on Leontievski Lane.285 In line with Joseph Stalin's policy of "isolation and preservation" towards certain internationally famous cultural figures, Stanislavski lived in a state of internal exile in Moscow.286 This protected him from the worst excesses of Stalin's "Great Terror".287

A number of articles critical of the terminology of Stanislavski's system appeared in the run-up to a RAPP conference in early 1931, at which the attacks continued.288 The system stood accused of philosophical idealism, of a-historicism, of disguising social and political problems under ethical and moral terms, and of "biological psychologism" (or "the suggestion of fixed qualities in nature").289 In the wake of the first congress of the USSR Union of Writers (chaired by Maxim Gorky in August 1934), however, Socialist realism was established as the official party line in aesthetic matters.290 While the new policy would have disastrous consequences for the Soviet avant-garde, the MAT and Stanislavski's system were enthroned as exemplary models.291

Final work at the Opera-Dramatic Studio

Given the difficulties he had with completing his manual for actors, Stanislavski decided that he needed to found a new studio if he was to ensure his legacy.292 "Our school will produce not just individuals," he wrote, "but a whole company".293 In June 1935, he began to instruct a group of teachers in the training techniques of the system and the rehearsal processes of the Method of Physical Action.294 Twenty students (out of 3,500 auditionees) were accepted for the dramatic section of the Opera-Dramatic Studio, where classes began on 15 November.295 Stanislavski arranged a curriculum of four years of study that focused exclusively on technique and method—two years of the work detailed later in An Actor's Work and two of that in An Actor's Work on a Role.296

Once the students were acquainted with the training techniques of the first two years, Stanislavski selected Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet for their work on roles.297 He worked with the students in March and April 1937, focusing on their sequences of physical actions, on establishing their through-lines of action, and on rehearsing scenes anew in terms of the actors' tasks.298 By June 1938 the students were ready for their first public showing, at which they performed a selection of scenes to a small number of spectators.299 The Opera-Dramatic Studio embodied the most complete implementation of the training exercises that Stanislavski described in his manuals.300

From late 1936 onwards, Stanislavski began to meet regularly with Vsevolod Meyerhold, with whom he discussed the possibility of developing a common theatrical language.301 In 1938, they made plans to work together on a production and discussed a synthesis of Stanislavski's Method of Physical Action and Meyerhold's biomechanical training.302 On 8 March, Meyerhold took over the rehearsals for Rigoletto, the staging of which he completed after Stanislavski's death.303 On his death-bed Stanislavski declared to Yuri Bakhrushin that Meyerhold was "my sole heir in the theatre—here or anywhere else".304 Stalin's police tortured and killed Meyerhold in February 1940.305

Stanislavski died in his home at 3:45 pm on 7 August 1938, having probably suffered another heart-attack five days earlier.306 Thousands of people attended his funeral.307 Three weeks after his death his widow, Lilina, received an advanced copy of the Russian-language edition of the first volume of An Actor's Work—the "labour of his life", as she called it.308 Stanislavski was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow, not far from the grave of Anton Chekhov.309

See also

Notes

Sources

Primary sources

  • Stanislavski, Konstantin. 1936. An Actor Prepares. London: Methuen, 1988. ISBN 0-413-46190-4.
  • Stanislavski, Konstantin. 1938. An Actor's Work: A Student's Diary. Trans. and ed. Jean Benedetti. London and New York: Routledge, 2008. ISBN 0-415-42223-X.
  • Stanislavski, Konstantin. 1950. Stanislavsky on the Art of the Stage. Trans. David Magarshack. London: Faber, 2002. ISBN 0-571-08172-X.
  • Stanislavski, Konstantin. 1957. An Actor's Work on a Role. Trans. and ed. Jean Benedetti. London and New York: Routledge, 2010. ISBN 0-415-46129-4.
  • Stanislavski, Konstantin. 1961. Creating a Role. Trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood. London: Mentor, 1968. ISBN 0-450-00166-0.
  • Stanislavski, Konstantin. 1963. An Actor's Handbook: An Alphabetical Arrangement of Concise Statements on Aspects of Acting. Ed. and trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood. London: Methuen, 1990. ISBN 0-413-63080-3.
  • Stanislavski, Konstantin. 1968. Stanislavski's Legacy: A Collection of Comments on a Variety of Aspects of an Actor's Art and Life. Ed. and trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood. Revised and expanded edition. London: Methuen, 1981. ISBN 0-413-47770-3.
  • Stanislavski, Constantin, and Pavel Rumyantsev. 1975. Stanislavski on Opera. Trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood. London: Routledge, 1998. ISBN 0-87830-552-1.

Secondary sources

  • Allen, David. 2000. Performing Chekhov. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-18935-4.
  • Bablet, Denis. 1962. The Theatre of Edward Gordon Craig. Trans. Daphne Woodward. London: Methuen, 1981. ISBN 978-0-413-47880-1.
  • Banham, Martin, ed. 1998. The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ISBN 0-521-43437-8.
  • Benedetti, Jean. 1989. Stanislavski: An Introduction. Revised edition. Original edition published in 1982. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-50030-6.
  • Benedetti, Jean. 1998. Stanislavski and the Actor. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-71160-9.
  • Benedetti, Jean. 1999a. Stanislavski: His Life and Art. Revised edition. Original edition published in 1988. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-52520-1.
  • Benedetti, Jean. 1999b. "Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre, 1898–1938". In Leach and Borovsky (1999, 254–277).
  • Benedetti, Jean. 2005. The Art of the Actor: The Essential History of Acting, From Classical Times to the Present Day. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-77336-1.
  • Benedetti, Jean. 2008a. Foreword. In Stanislavski (1938, xv–xxii).
  • Benedetti, Jean. 2008b. "Stanislavski on Stage". In Dacre and Fryer (2008, 6–9).
  • Botting, Gary. 1972. The Theatre of Protest in America (Edmonton, Harden House, 1972), Introduction.
  • Braun, Edward. 1982. "Stanislavsky and Chekhov". The Director and the Stage: From Naturalism to Grotowski. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-46300-1. p. 59–76.
  • Braun, Edward. 1988. Introduction. In Plays: 1. By Maxim Gorky. Methuen World Classics ser. London: Methuen. xv–xxxii. ISBN 0-413-18110-3.
  • Braun, Edward. 1995. Meyerhold: A Revolution in Theatre. Rev. 2nd ed. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-72730-0.
  • Carnicke, Sharon M. 1998. Stanislavsky in Focus. Russian Theatre Archive Ser. London: Harwood Academic Publishers. ISBN 90-5755-070-9.
  • Carnicke, Sharon M. 2000. "Stanislavsky's System: Pathways for the Actor". In Hodge (2000, 11–36).
  • Clark, Katerina et al., ed. 2007. Soviet Culture and Power: A History in Documents, 1917–1953. Annals of Communism ser. New Haven: Yale UP. ISBN 0-300-10646-7.
  • Counsell, Colin. 1996. Signs of Performance: An Introduction to Twentieth-Century Theatre. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-10643-5.
  • Dacre, Kathy, and Paul Fryer, eds. 2008. Stanislavski on Stage. Sidcup, Kent: Stanislavski Centre Rose Bruford College. ISBN 1-903454-01-8.
  • Gauss, Rebecca B. 1999. Lear's Daughters: The Studios of the Moscow Art Theatre 1905–1927. American University Studies ser. 26 Theatre Arts, vol. 29. New York: Peter Lang. ISBN 0-8204-4155-4.
  • Golub, Spencer. 1998a. "Stanislavsky, Konstantin (Sergeevich)". In Banham (1998, 1032–1033).
  • Golub, Spencer. 1998b. "Shchepkin, Mikhail (Semyonovich)". In Banham (1998, 985–986).
  • Gordon, Marc. 2000. "Salvaging Strasberg at the Fin de Siècle". In Krasner (2000, 43–60).
  • Gordon, Robert. 2006. The Purpose of Playing: Modern Acting Theories in Perspective. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P. ISBN 0-472-06887-3.
  • Hodge, Alison, ed. 2000. Twentieth-Century Actor Training. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-19452-0.
  • Houghton, Norris. 1973. "Russian Theatre in the 20th Century". The Drama Review 17.1 (T-57, March): 5–13.
  • Innes, Christopher, ed. 2000. A Sourcebook on Naturalist Theatre. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-15229-1.
  • Krasner, David, ed. 2000. Method Acting Reconsidered: Theory, Practice, Future. New York: St. Martin's P. ISBN 978-0-312-22309-0.
  • Leach, Robert. 1989. Vsevolod Meyerhold. Directors in perspective ser. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ISBN 0-521-31843-2.
  • Leach, Robert. 2004. Makers of Modern Theatre: An Introduction. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-31241-8.
  • Leach, Robert, and Victor Borovsky, eds. 1999. A History of Russian Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ISBN 0-521-43220-0.
  • Magarshack, David. 1950. Stanislavsky: A Life. London and Boston: Faber, 1986. ISBN 0-571-13791-1.
  • Markov, Pavel Aleksandrovich. 1934. The First Studio: Sullerzhitsky-Vackhtangov-Tchekhov. Trans. Mark Schmidt. New York: Group Theatre.
  • Meyerhold, Vsevolod. 1991. Meyerhold on Theatre. Ed. and trans. Edward Braun. Revised edition. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-38790-9.
  • Milling, Jane, and Graham Ley. 2001. Modern Theories of Performance: From Stanislavski to Boal. Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave. ISBN 0-333-77542-2.
  • Poliakova, Elena I[vanovna]. 1982. Stanislavsky. Trans. Liv Tudge. Moscow: Progress. . Trans. of Stanislavskii. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1977.
  • Ribot, Théodule-Armand. 2006. The Diseases of the Will. Trans. Merwin-Marie Snell. London: Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprints. ISBN 1-4254-8998-2. Online edition available.
  • Ribot, Théodule-Armand. 2007. Diseases of Memory: An Essay in the Positive Psychology. London: Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprints. ISBN 1-4325-1164-5. Online edition available.
  • Roach, Joseph R. 1985. The Player's Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting. Theater:Theory/Text/Performance Ser. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P. ISBN 0-472-08244-2.
  • Rudnitsky, Konstantin. 1981. Meyerhold the Director. Trans. George Petrov. Ed. Sydney Schultze. Revised translation of Rezhisser Meierkhol'd. Moscow: Academy of Sciences, 1969. ISBN 0-88233-313-5.
  • Rudnitsky, Konstantin. 1988. Russian and Soviet Theatre: Tradition and the Avant-Garde. Trans. Roxane Permar. Ed. Lesley Milne. London: Thames and Hudson. Rpt. as Russian and Soviet Theater, 1905–1932. New York: Abrams. ISBN 0-500-28195-5.
  • Schuler, Catherine A. 1996. Women in Russian Theatre: The Actress in the Silver Age. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-11105-6.
  • Taxidou, Olga. 1998. The Mask: A Periodical Performance by Edward Gordon Craig. Contemporary Theatre Studies ser. volume 30. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers. ISBN 978-90-5755-046-1.
  • Toporkov, Vasily Osipovich. 2001. Stanislavski in Rehearsal: The Final Years. Trans. Jean Benedetti. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-75720-X.
  • Whyman, Rose. 2008. The Stanislavsky System of Acting: Legacy and Influence in Modern Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ISBN 978-0-521-88696-3.
  • Worrall, Nick. 1996. The Moscow Art Theatre. Theatre Production Studies ser. London and NY: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-05598-9.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Constantin Stanislavski.

References

  1. Stanislavski's first name is also transliterated as Constantin,[1] while his surname is also transliterated as Stanislavsky[2] and Stanislavskii. As discussed below, Stanislavski is a stage name. /wiki/Transliteration ↩

  2. Russian: Алексеев /wiki/Russian_language ↩

  3. Benedetti (1999b, 254), Carnicke (2000, 12), Leach (2004, 14), and Milling and Ley (2001, 1). ↩

  4. Carnicke (2000, 16), Golub (1998a, 1032), and Milling and Ley (2001, 1). ↩

  5. Benedetti (1999a, 59), Braun (1982, 59), Carnicke (2000, 11–12), and Worrall (1996, 43). ↩

  6. Benedetti (1999a, 165), Carnicke (2000, 12), Gauss (1999, 1), Gordon (2006, 42), and Milling and Ley (2001, 13–14). ↩

  7. Carnicke (2000, 12–16, 29–33) and Gordon (2006, 42). ↩

  8. Bablet (1962, 133–158), Benedetti (1999a, 156, 188–211, 368–373), Braun (1995, 27–29), Roach (1985, 215–216), Rudnitsky (1981, 56), and Taxidou (1998, 66–69). ↩

  9. Benedetti (1999a, 317) and Magarshack (1950, 378). ↩

  10. Benedetti (1999a, 374–375) and Magarshack (1950, 404). ↩

  11. Carnicke (1998, 33), Golub (1998a, 1033), and Magarshack (1950, 385, 396). ↩

  12. From a note written by Stanislavski in 1911, quoted by Benedetti (1999a, 289). ↩

  13. Benedetti (1989, 1) and (1999a, xiv, 288), Carnicke (1998, 76), and Magarshack (1950, 367). ↩

  14. Benedetti (1999a) and Magarshack (1950). ↩

  15. This article draws substantially on these books. ↩

  16. Benedetti (1989, 1) and (2005, 109), Gordon (2006, 40–41), and Milling and Ley (2001, 3–5). ↩

  17. Stanislavski began developing a "grammar" of acting in 1906; his initial choice to call it his System struck him as too dogmatic, so he wrote it as his "system" (without the capital letter and in inverted commas) to indicate the provisional nature of the results of his investigations—modern specialist scholarship and the standard edition of Stanislavski's works follow that practice; see Benedetti (1999a, 169), Gauss (1999, 3–4), Milling and Ley (2001, 1), and Stanislavski (1938) and (1957). ↩

  18. Benedetti (1989, 1), Gordon (2006, 42–43), and Roach (1985, 204). ↩

  19. Benedetti (1989, 18, 22–23), (1999a, 42), and (1999b, 257), Carnicke (2000, 29), Gordon (2006, 40–42), Leach (2004, 14), and Magarshack (1950, 73–74). As Carnicke emphasises, Stanislavski's early prompt-books, such as that for the production of The Seagull in 1898, "describe movements, gestures, mise en scène, not inner action and subtext" (2000, 29). The principle of a unity of all elements (or what Richard Wagner called a Gesamtkunstwerk) survived into Stanislavski's system, while the exclusively external technique did not; although his work shifted from a director-centred to an actor-centred approach, his system nonetheless valorises the absolute authority of the director. /wiki/Moscow_Art_Theatre_production_of_The_Seagull ↩

  20. Milling and Ley (2001, 5). Stanislavski and Nemirovich found they had this practice in common during their legendary 18-hour conversation that led to the establishment of the MAT. /wiki/Vladimir_Nemirovich-Danchenko ↩

  21. Bablet (1962, 134), Benedetti (1989, 23–26) and (1999a, 130), and Gordon (2006, 37–42). Carnicke emphasises the fact that Stanislavski's great productions of Chekhov's plays were staged without the use of the system (2000, 29). ↩

  22. Benedetti (1989, 25–39) and (1999a, part two), Braun (1982, 62–63), Carnicke (1998, 29) and (2000, 21–22, 29–30, 33), and Gordon (2006, 41–45). For an explanation of "inner action", see Stanislavski (1957, 136); for subtext, see Stanislavski (1938, 402–413). /wiki/Subtext ↩

  23. Benedetti (1989, 30) and (1999a, 181, 185–187), Counsell (1996, 24–27), Gordon (2006, 37–38), Magarshack (1950, 294, 305), and Milling and Ley (2001, 2). ↩

  24. Carnicke (2000, 13), Gauss (1999, 3), Gordon (2006, 45–46), Milling and Ley (2001, 6), and Rudnitsky (1981, 56). ↩

  25. Benedetti (1989, 5–11, 15, 18) and (1999b, 254), Braun (1982, 59), Carnicke (2000, 13, 16, 29), Counsell (1996, 24), Gordon (2006, 38, 40–41), and Innes (2000, 53–54). ↩

  26. Benedetti (1999a, 201), Carnicke (2000, 17), and Stanislavski (1938, 16–36). Stanislavski's "art of representation" corresponds to Mikhail Shchepkin's "actor of reason" and his "art of experiencing" corresponds to Shchepkin's "actor of feeling"; see Benedetti (1999a, 202). /wiki/Art_of_representation ↩

  27. Benedetti (1999a, 170). ↩

  28. Benedetti (1999a, 182–183). ↩

  29. Carnicke (1998, 72) and Whyman (2008, 262). ↩

  30. Milling and Ley (2001, 6). ↩

  31. Benedetti (1999a, 325, 360) and (2005, 121) and Roach (1985, 197–198, 205, 211–215). The term "Method of Physical Action" was applied to this rehearsal process after Stanislavski's death. Benedetti indicates that though Stanislavski had developed it since 1916, he first explored it practically in the early 1930s; see (1998, 104) and (1999a, 356, 358). Gordon argues the shift in working-method happened during the 1920s (2006, 49–55). Vasili Toporkov, an actor who trained under Stanislavski in this approach, provides in his Stanislavski in Rehearsal (2004) a detailed account of the Method of Physical Action at work in Stanislavski's rehearsals. ↩

  32. Benedetti (1999a, 355–256), Carnicke (2000, 32–33), Leach (2004, 29), Magarshack (1950, 373–375), and Whyman (2008, 242). ↩

  33. Quoted by Carnicke (1998, 156). Stanislavski continues: "For in the process of action the actor gradually obtains the mastery over the inner incentives of the actions of the character he is representing, evoking in himself the emotions and thoughts which resulted in those actions. In such a case, an actor not only understands his part, but also feels it, and that is the most important thing in creative work on the stage"; quoted by Magarshack (1950, 375). ↩

  34. Benedetti (1999a, 359–360), Golub (1998a, 1033), Magarshack (1950, 387–391), and Whyman (2008, 136). ↩

  35. Benedetti (1998, xii) and (1999a, 359–363) and Magarshack (1950, 387–391), and Whyman (2008, 136). Benedetti argues that the course at the Opera-Dramatic Studio is "Stanislavski's true testament". His book Stanislavski and the Actor (1998) offers a reconstruction of the studio's course. ↩

  36. Carnicke (1998, 1, 167) and (2000, 14), Counsell (1996, 24–25), Golub (1998a, 1032), Gordon (2006, 71–72), Leach (2004, 29), and Milling and Ley (2001, 1–2). ↩

  37. Benedetti (1999a, 354–355), Carnicke (1998, 78, 80) and (2000, 14), and Milling and Ley (2001, 2). ↩

  38. Benedetti (199), Carnicke (2000, 11), Magarshack (1950, 1), and Leach (2004, 6). ↩

  39. Benedetti (1999a, 21, 24) and Carnicke (2000, 11). The prospect of becoming a professional actor was taboo for someone of his social class; actors had an even lower social status in Russia than in the rest of Europe, having only recently been serfs and the property of the nobility. /wiki/Taboo ↩

  40. Braun (1982, 59) and Carnicke (2000, 11). ↩

  41. Carnicke (2000, 11). ↩

  42. Benedetti (1999a, 6–11) and Magarshack (1950, 9–11, 27–28). ↩

  43. Benedetti (1999a, 13, 18), Carnicke (2000, 11), Gordon (2006, 40), and Magarshack (1950, 31–32, 77). ↩

  44. Benedetti (1989, 2), (1999a, 14), and (2005, 109), Gordon (2006, 40), and Magarshack (1950, 21–22). ↩

  45. Benedetti (1999a, 18) and Magarshack (1950, 26). ↩

  46. Benedetti (1999a, 18–19) and Magarshack (1950, 25, 33–34). He would disguise himself as a tramp or drunk and visit the railway station, or as a fortune-telling gypsy. As Benedetti explains, however, Stanislavski soon abandoned the technique of maintaining a characterisation in real life; it does not form a part of his system. /wiki/Tramp ↩

  47. Benedetti (1999a, 19–20), Magarshack (1950, 49–50), and Whyman (2008, 139). ↩

  48. Benedetti (1999a, 21). Students were encouraged to mimic the theatrical tricks and conventions of their tutors. ↩

  49. Benedetti (1999a, 14–17) and (2005, 100). ↩

  50. Golub (1998b, 985). ↩

  51. Benedetti (1989, 2). ↩

  52. Golub (1998b, 985), Benedetti (1989, 20) and (2005, 109), and Magarshack (1950, 51–52). For more on Fedotova, see Schuler (1996, 64–88). The development of a responsive interaction between actors was a significant innovation of the conventions of theatrical performance at the time; as Benedetti explains: "Leading actors would simply plant themselves downstage centre, by the prompter's box, wait to be fed the lines and then deliver them straight at the audience in a ringing voice, giving a fine display of passion and 'temperament'. Everyone, in fact, spoke their lines out front. Direct communication with other actors was minimal. Furniture was so arranged as to allow the actors to face front" (1989, 5). Fedotova encouraged Stanislavski to "look your partner straight in the eyes, read his thoughts in his eyes, and reply to him in accordance with the expression of his eyes and face"; quoted by Magarshack (1950, 52). Stanislavski's term "communication" (Russian: obshchenie) was translated as "communion" in An Actor Prepares. /wiki/Glikeriya_Fedotova ↩

  53. Benedetti (1999a, 17) and Gordon (2006, 41). ↩

  54. Benedetti (1999a, 17). ↩

  55. Benedetti (1999a, 18), Gordon (2006, 41), and Milling and Ley (2001, 5). ↩

  56. Magarshack (1950, 52, 55–56). The society was officially inaugurated on 15 November [O.S. 3 November] with a ceremony attended by Anton Chekhov; see Benedetti (1999a, 29–30) and Worrall (1996, 25). /wiki/Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates ↩

  57. Benedetti (1999a, 30–40) and Worrall (1996, 24). ↩

  58. Benedetti (1999a, 35–37). Belinsky's conception provided the basis for a moral justification for Stanislavski's desire to perform that accorded with his family's sense of social responsibility and ethics. ↩

  59. Benedetti (1999a, 37) and Magarshack (1950, 54), and Worrall (1996, 26). ↩

  60. Benedetti (1999a, 42). ↩

  61. Benedetti (1999a, 43). ↩

  62. Magarshack (1950, 81). ↩

  63. Benedetti (1999a, 47). ↩

  64. Benedetti (1999a, 42–43), Magarshack (1950, 78–80), and Worrall (1996, 27). ↩

  65. Benedetti (1999a, 46), Carnicke (2000, 17), Magarshack (1950, 82–85), and Roach (1985, 216). Tolstoy's What Is Art? (1898) promoted immediate intelligibility and transparency as an aesthetic principle. Stanislavski's concept of "experiencing the role" was based on Tolstoy's belief that rather than knowledge, art communicates felt experience. /wiki/What_Is_Art%3F ↩

  66. Benedetti (1999a, 54) and Roach (1985, 216). ↩

  67. Benedetti (1999a, 40–43), Braun (1995, 27), Gordon (2006, 40–42), Magarshack (1950, 70–74), Milling and Ley (2001, 6), and Worrall (1996, 28–29). ↩

  68. Quoted by Magarshack (1950, 73). ↩

  69. Benedetti (1989, 23) and (1999a, 47), Leach (2004, 14), Magarshack (1950, 86–90), and Worrall (1996, 28–29). ↩

  70. Benedetti (1999a, 35–36, 44). ↩

  71. Benedetti (1989, 23) and (1999a, 48), Leach (2004, 14), and Magarshack (1950, 80). ↩

  72. Benedetti (1999a, 44 and 50–51). ↩

  73. Benedetti (1999a, 42). ↩

  74. Benedetti (1999a, 55). ↩

  75. Benedetti (1999a, 59), Braun (1982, 60), Leach (2004, 11), and Worrall (1996, 43). ↩

  76. Benedetti (1999a, 61), Braun (1982, 60), Carnicke (2000, 12), and Worrall (1996, 64). Their discussion lasted from lunch at 2 pm in a private room in the Slavic Bazaar restaurant to 8 am the following morning over breakfast at Stanislavski's family estate at Liubimovka. ↩

  77. Benedetti (1989, 16) and (1999, 59–60), Braun (1982, 60), and Leach (2004, 12). ↩

  78. Benedetti (1999a, 60–61). ↩

  79. Benedetti (1989, 16) and Leach (2004, 11–13). ↩

  80. Benedetti (1989, 17–18) and (1999, 61–62), Carnicke (2000, 29), and Leach (2004, 12–13). ↩

  81. Benedetti (1999a, 62–63) and Worrall (1996, 37–38). ↩

  82. Benedetti (1999a, 67) and Braun (1982, 61). ↩

  83. Benedetti (1999a, 68), Braun (1982, 60), and Worrall (1996, 45). ↩

  84. Benedetti (1999a, 70). ↩

  85. Benedetti (1999a, 70). ↩

  86. Gordon (2006, 37–38, 55), Innes (2000, 54), Leach (2004, 10). ↩

  87. Allen (2000, 11–16), Benedetti (1999a, 85–87) and (1999b, 257–259), Braun (1982, 62–65), and Leach (2004, 13–14). ↩

  88. Rudnitsky (1981, 8); see also Benedetti (1999a, 85–87) and Braun (1982, 64–65). ↩

  89. Benedetti (1999a, 85), Braun (1982, 64), and Carnicke (2000, 12). ↩

  90. Allen (2000, 20–21) and Braun (1982, 64). ↩

  91. Benedetti (1999a, 386), Braun (1982, 65–74), and Leach (2004, 13–14). Stanislavski also played Shabelski in the MAT's production of Chekhov's Ivanov in 1904. /wiki/Ivanov_(play) ↩

  92. Benedetti (1989, 25–26). By 1922, Stanislavski had become disenchanted with the MAT's productions of Chekhov's plays—"After all we have lived through", he remarked to Nemirovich, "it is impossible to weep over the fact that an officer is going and leaving his lady behind" (referring to the conclusion of Three Sisters); quoted by Benedetti (1999a, 272). /wiki/Three_Sisters_(play) ↩

  93. Benedetti (1999a, 119), Braun (1988, xvi) and Magarshack (1950, 201–202). ↩

  94. Benedetti (1999a, 119–131), Braun (1988, xvi—xvii), Magarshack (1950, 202, 229, 244), and Worrall (1996, 131). Nemirovich took over the direction of The Lower Depths during its rehearsal process and the two directors disagreed on the correct approach to the play; neither of their names appeared on its posters and Nemirovich claimed all the credit for its success. ↩

  95. Benedetti (1999a, 127–129). Viktor Simov, the company's scenic designer, based his designs for the production on photographs taken during the trip. Several photographs of the production, taken in 1904, appear in Dacre and Fryer (2008, 34–37). /wiki/Viktor_Simov ↩

  96. Benedetti (1999a, 127). ↩

  97. Benedetti (1999a, 130), Braun (1988, xvii—xviii) and Magarshack (1950, 202, 244). ↩

  98. Houghton (1973, 8). ↩

  99. Worrall (1996, 36). ↩

  100. Benedetti (1989, 23) and (1999a, 386–387) and Meyer (1974, 529–530, 820). ↩

  101. Quoted by Meyer (1974, 820–821). ↩

  102. Benedetti (1999a, 386), Braun (1982, 61, 73), Counsell (1996, 26–27), Gordon (2006, 37–38, 45), Leach (2004, 10), Innes (2000, 54). ↩

  103. Benedetti (1999a, 149, 151), Braun (1982, 74) and (1995, 28), and Magarshack (1950, 266). ↩

  104. Benedetti (1999a, 151), Braun (1995, 28), and Magarshack (1950, 265). ↩

  105. Benedetti (1999a, 151–152, 386) and Braun (1982, 74) and (1995, 28). ↩

  106. Stanislavski, quoted by Rudnitsky (1981, 56); see also Benedetti (1999a, 155–156), Braun (1995, 29), and Magarshack (1950, 267). ↩

  107. Benedetti (1999a, 154–156), Braun (1995, 27–29), Magarshack (1950, 267–274), and Rudnitsky (1981, 52–76). ↩

  108. Leach (2004, 56). ↩

  109. Benedetti (1999a, 159–161) and Magarshack (1950, 272–274). ↩

  110. Meyerhold, quoted by Rudnitsky (1981, 74); see also Benedetti (1999a, 161) and Magarshack (1950, 273–274). Meyerhold went on to explore physical expressivity, coordination, and rhythm in his experiments in actor training (which would found 20th-century physical theatre), while, for the moment, Stanislavski pursued psychological expressivity through the actor's inner "psychotechnique"; see Benedetti (1999a, 161), Leach (2004, 1) and Rudnitsky (1981, 73). Rudnitsky observes that "Stanislavski at that time still believed in the possibility of 'peaceful coexistence' for Symbolist abstractions and the live, physical and psychological realization of completely credibly acted characters. Stanislavski's subsequent Symbolist productions showed his ineradicable striving toward realistic justification and prosaic circumstantiality of Symbolist motifs" (1981, 75). /wiki/Twentieth-century_theatre ↩

  111. Stanislavski, quoted by Rudnitsky (1981, 75). ↩

  112. Benedetti (1999a, 156) and Braun (1995, 29). ↩

  113. Benedetti (1999a, 154) and Magarshack (1950, 282–286). ↩

  114. Benedetti (1999a, 159). ↩

  115. Benedetti (1999a, 160). ↩

  116. Benedetti (1999a, 161), Magarshack (1950, 276), and Worrall (1996, 170–171). ↩

  117. Benedetti (1999a, 162) and Magarshack (1950, 276). ↩

  118. Benedetti (1999a, 163–165) and Magarshack (1950, 276–277). ↩

  119. Letter to his brother, Vladimir, quoted by Benedetti (1999a, 169). ↩

  120. Benedetti (1999a, 165). ↩

  121. Benedetti (1999a, 166–167) and Gordon (2006, 42). ↩

  122. Benedetti (1998, xx) and Gordon (2006, 42). ↩

  123. Benedetti (1999a, 166–167) and Gordon (2006, 42–44). ↩

  124. Benedetti (1999a, 167–168), Gordon (2006, 42), and Magarshack (1950, 281–282). ↩

  125. Stanislavski quoted by Benedetti (1999a, 168); see also Gordon (2006, 42–44). ↩

  126. Benedetti (1999a, 167–168). ↩

  127. Benedetti (1999a, 181) and Magarshack (1950, 306). ↩

  128. Benedetti (1999a, 159, 172–174) and Magarshack (1950, 287). Benedetti argues that Stanislavski's "attempts to base the production on psychological action only, without gestures, conveying everything through the face and eyes, met with only partial success" (1999, 174). ↩

  129. Benedetti (1999a, 172–173) and Magarshack (1950, 286–287). ↩

  130. Stanislavski in a statement made on 9 February [O.S. 27 January] 1908, quoted by Benedetti (1999a, 180); see also Magarshack (1950, 273–274). /wiki/Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates ↩

  131. Benedetti (1999a, 177, 179, 183). ↩

  132. Benedetti (1999a, 182–183). ↩

  133. Benedetti (1999a, 182–183). The "task" (Russian: Zadacha) is also translated as an "objective" or "problem"; see Carnicke (1998, 181). /wiki/Russian_language ↩

  134. Benedetti (1999a, 170). ↩

  135. Benedetti (1999a, 185) and Magarshack (1950, 304). ↩

  136. Stanislavski, letter to Vera Kotlyarevskaya, 18 May [O.S. 5 May] 1908; quoted by Benedetti (1999a, 184) and Whyman (2008, 247–248). Benedetti indicates that this is the earliest mention of the concept of "affective memory" in Stanislavski's writings and occurs before his exposure to the work of Théodule-Armand Ribot in July 1908. Whyman highlights Stanislavski's interest in the unity of physical and psychological processes in the same year that he discovers Ribot, although she maintains that he sometimes discusses the relationship in dualist terms; see Whyman (2008, 248–253). /wiki/Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates ↩

  137. Benedetti (1999a, 184–185) and Magarshack (1950, 304). Ribot's books The Diseases of the Memory and The Diseases of the Will had been published in Russian translation in 1900; see Ribot (2006) and (2007) for English-language versions. ↩

  138. Benedetti (1999a, 185), Counsell (1996, 28–29), and Stanislavski (1938, 197–198). ↩

  139. Benedetti (1999a, 185–186) and Magarshack (1950, 294, 304). Drawing on Gogol's notes on the play, Stanislavski insisted that its exaggerated external action must be justified through the creation of a correspondingly intense inner life; see Benedetti (1999a, 185–186) and (2005, 100–101). ↩

  140. Benedetti (1999a, 200) and Magarshack (1950, 304–305). ↩

  141. Benedetti (1999a, 201), Carnicke (2000, 17), and Stanislavski (1938, 16–36). Stanislavski's "art of representation" corresponds to Mikhail Shchepkin's "actor of reason" and his "art of experiencing" corresponds to Shchepkin's "actor of feeling"; see Benedetti (1999a, 202). /wiki/Art_of_representation ↩

  142. Carnicke (2000, 30–31), Gordon (2006, 45–48), Leach (2004, 16–17), Magarshack (1950, 304–306), and Worrall (1996, 181–182). Magarshack describes the production as "the first play he produced according to his system." ↩

  143. Benedetti (1999a, 190), Leach (2004, 17), and Magarshack (1950, 305). ↩

  144. Leach (2004, 17) and Magarshack (1950, 307). ↩

  145. Benedetti (1999a, 190). ↩

  146. Benedetti (1999a, 190). This approach was changed substantially in subsequent years. ↩

  147. Leach (2004, 17). ↩

  148. Leach (2004, 29). ↩

  149. Benedetti (1999a, 198). ↩

  150. Carnicke (2000, 31) and Magarshack (1950, 305–306). ↩

  151. Benedetti (1999a, 194) and Leach (2004, 17). ↩

  152. Benedetti (1999a, 203) and Magarshack (1950, 320). ↩

  153. Benedetti (1999a, 203–204), Magarshack (1950, 320–322, 332–333), and Whyman (2008, 242). In a speech given in 1920, Vsevolod Meyerhold proposed a similar practice (1991, 169–170). The British filmmaker Mike Leigh made it the basis of his work. /wiki/Vsevolod_Meyerhold ↩

  154. Benedetti (1999a, 203–204), Magarshack (1950, 320–322, 332–333), and Whyman (2008, 242). In a speech given in 1920, Vsevolod Meyerhold proposed a similar practice (1991, 169–170). The British filmmaker Mike Leigh made it the basis of his work. /wiki/Vsevolod_Meyerhold ↩

  155. Benedetti (1999a, 225). A play could be adapted "to the actor's inner experiences", he explained to a sceptical Nemirovich. To support his position, Stanislavski cited Gogol's advice to "take any play of Schiller or Shakespeare and stage it as contemporary art demands" and Chekhov's delight at the MAT actor Ivan Moskvin's creative departure from Chekhov's intentions in his characterisation of Epikhodov in their production of The Cherry Orchard. /wiki/Vladimir_Nemirovich-Danchenko ↩

  156. Bablet (1962, 133–158), Benedetti (1999a, 188–211), Senelick (1982, xvi), and Taxidou (1998, 66–69). ↩

  157. Bablet (1962, 135––136, 153–154, 156) and Benedetti (1999a, 189–195). ↩

  158. Bablet (1962, 141–142) and Benedetti (1999a, 189–195). ↩

  159. Bablet (1962, 134–136), Benedetti (1999a, part two), Carnicke (1998, 29) and (2000, 29–30), Gordon (2006, 41–45), and Taxidou (1998, 38). ↩

  160. Bablet (76–80), Benedetti (1989, 18, 23), and Magarshack (1950, 73–74). ↩

  161. Bablet (1962, 134), Benedetti (1999, 199), Innes (1983, 172), and Senelick (1982, xvi). ↩

  162. Bablet (1962, 134). ↩

  163. Benedetti (1999a, 211). ↩

  164. Benedetti (1999a, 214). ↩

  165. Benedetti suggests that this inflection indicates the influence of Stanislavski's conversations with Gorky (1999a, 215). /wiki/Maxim_Gorky ↩

  166. From notes in the Stanislavski archive, quoted by Benedetti (1999a, 215). ↩

  167. Benedetti (1999a, 216–218) and Carnicke (1998, 181). ↩

  168. Benedetti (1999a, 216, 218). ↩

  169. Benedetti (1999a, 206–209) and Magarshack (1950, 331). ↩

  170. Benedetti (1999a, 209), Gauss (1999, 34–35), and Rudnitsky (1981, 56). ↩

  171. Benedetti (1999a, 209–11), Leach (2004, 17), and Whymann (2008, 31). ↩

  172. Benedetti (1999a, 210) and Gauss (1999, 32, 49–50). ↩

  173. Benedetti (1999a, 209), Gauss (1999, 32–33), and Leach (2004, 17–18). ↩

  174. Gauss (1999, 40), Leach (1994, 18), and Whyman (2008, 242). ↩

  175. From Sulerzhitsky's notes on a speech given by Stanislavski in September 1912, quoted by Benedetti (1999a, 210); see also Magarshack (1950, 332–333). ↩

  176. Benedetti (1999a, 211) and Gauss (1999, 61–63). ↩

  177. Benedetti (1999a, 236), Gauss (1999, 65), and Leach (2004, 19). ↩

  178. Benedetti (1999a, 211, 255–270), Magarshack (1950, 350–352), Stanislavski and Rumyantsev (1975, x), and Whyman (2008, 135). A series of thirty-two lectures that he delivered at the Opera Studio between 1919 and 1922 were recorded by Konkordia Antarova and published in 1939; they have been translated into English as Stanislavsky on the Art of the Stage (1950). Pavel Rumiantsev documented the studio's activities until 1932; his notes were published in 1969 and appear in English under the title Stanislavski on Opera (1975). /wiki/Konkordia_Antarova ↩

  179. Benedetti (1999a, 256), Magarshack (1950, 351), and Whyman (2008, 139). ↩

  180. Benedetti (1999a, 259). Stanislavski's concept of "tempo-rhythm" is developed most substantially in part two of An Actor's Work. ↩

  181. Benedetti (1999a, 256) and Whyman (2008, 129). Serge Wolkonsky popularised the work of François Delsarte and Émile Jaques-Dalcroze in Russia; see Whyman (2008, 123–130). Lev Pospekhin was from the Bolshoi Ballet. /wiki/Serge_Wolkonsky ↩

  182. Benedetti (1999a, 221) and Magarshack (1950, 336–337). His studies included books by Luigi Riccoboni, his son François Riccoboni, Rémond de Saint-Albin, Adrienne Lecouvreur, Gustave Doré, August Wilhelm Iffland, and Benoît-Constant Coquelin, the theories of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and Denis Diderot, and the history of the previous two centuries of theatre. /wiki/Luigi_Riccoboni ↩

  183. Benedetti (1999a, 222) and Magarshack (1950, 337). ↩

  184. From Stanislavski's article "A Prisoner of War in Germany," quoted by Magarshack (1950, 338). ↩

  185. Benedetti (1999a, 222) and Magarshack (1950, 338). ↩

  186. Magarshack (1950, 338–339). ↩

  187. Magarshack (1950, 339). ↩

  188. Benedetti (1999a, 222) and Magarshack (1950, 339–340). ↩

  189. Gurevich, quoted by Benedetti (1999a, 222); see also Magarshack (1950, 339). ↩

  190. Benedetti (1999a, 222) and Magarshack (1950, 340). ↩

  191. Benedetti (1999a, 222–223) and Magarshack (1950, 340–341). ↩

  192. Benedetti (1999a, 223–224) and Magarshack (1950, 342). ↩

  193. Benedetti (1999a, 224). ↩

  194. Benedetti (1999a, 224) and Carnicke (1998, 174–175). ↩

  195. Quoted by Benedetti (1999a, 224). ↩

  196. Benedetti (1999a, 224). ↩

  197. Benedetti (1999a, 227). ↩

  198. Benedetti (1999a, 227). ↩

  199. Benedetti (1999a, 228–229), Gordon (2006, 49), and Whyman (2008, 122–130, 141–143). ↩

  200. Benedetti (1999a, 248). ↩

  201. Benedetti (1999a, 248). ↩

  202. Benedetti (1999a, 239), Leach (2004, 18), and Magarshack (1950, 343–345). Worrall gives his cause of death as a boating accident (1996, 221). ↩

  203. Benedetti (1999a, 341). ↩

  204. Stanislavski, in a letter to Nestor Aleksandrovich Kotliarevski from 16 March [O.S. 3 March] 1917, quoted by Benedetti (1999a, 245). /wiki/Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates ↩

  205. Benedetti (1999a, 247). ↩

  206. Benedetti (1999a, 245–248) and Magarshack (1950, 348–349). ↩

  207. Benedetti (1999a, 251). ↩

  208. Benedetti (1999a, 245–246) and Carnicke (2000, 13). In 1919, the MAT was nationalised (along with all other theatres). /wiki/Moscow_Art_Theatre ↩

  209. Benedetti (1999a, 251–252). ↩

  210. Benedetti (1999a, 252–253) and Magarshack (1950, 349–350). ↩

  211. Benedetti (1999a, 260) and Leach (2004, 46). ↩

  212. Benedetti (1999a, 126, 257–258) and Carnicke (2000, 13). ↩

  213. Benedetti (1999a, 257–258), Carnicke (2000, 13), and Magarshack (1950, 352). The house contained a large ballroom that he used for rehearsals, teaching, and performances, which following his Opera Studio production of Eugene Onegin (1922) became known as the Onegin Room; see Benedetti (1999a, 259). Leontievski Lane was renamed Stanislavski Lane on 18 January 1938; see Magarshack (1950, 396). /wiki/Eugene_Onegin_(opera) ↩

  214. Benedetti (1999a, 258). ↩

  215. Benedetti (1999a, 274), Magarshack (1950, 356), and Worrall (1996, 221). ↩

  216. Benedetti (1999a, 273–274) and Carnicke (2000, 14). The subsidy to the "academic" theatres was restored in November 1921. ↩

  217. Benedetti (1999a, 275–282) and Magarshack (1950, 357–9). ↩

  218. Benedetti (1999a, 275–282) and Magarshack (1950, 357–9). ↩

  219. Benedetti (1999a, 282, 326). ↩

  220. Benedetti (1999a, 283) and Magarshack (1950, 360–362). Magarshack gives their arrival as late on Wednesday 3 January, disembarking the following day. ↩

  221. Quoted by Benedetti (1999a, 283). ↩

  222. Benedetti (1999a, 284) and Magarshack (1950, 364). The opening night was 8 January 1923. ↩

  223. Benedetti (199a, 284–287), Carnicke (2000, 14), and Milling and Ley (2001, 13–14). Benedetti suggests that the financial difficulties were caused by Gest's decision to set ticket prices too high. ↩

  224. Benedetti (1999a, 286), Carnicke (1998, 3), Gordon (2000, 45), Gordon (2006, 71). In a letter to Nemirovich, Stanislavski wrote: "No one here seems to have had any idea what our theatre and our actors were capable of. I am writing all this not in self-glorification, for we are not showing anything new here, but just to give you an idea at what an embryonic stage art is here and how eagerly they snatch up everything good that is brought to America. Actors, managers, all sorts of celebrities join in a chorus of the most extravagant praise. Some of the famous actors and actresses seize my hand and kiss it as though in a state of ecstacy"; quoted by Magarshack (1950, 364). ↩

  225. Benedetti (1999a, 283, 286) and Gordon (2006, 71–72). Boleslavsky had been able to extend his visa thanks to an invitation from Stanislavski to act as an assistant director to the company. The interest generated led to Boleslavsky's decision to establish the American Laboratory Theatre. /wiki/Richard_Boleslavsky ↩

  226. Benedetti (1999a, 287) and Magarshack (1950, 367). ↩

  227. Benedetti (1999a, 288), Carnicke (1998, 76), and Magarshack (1950, 367). ↩

  228. Benedetti (1999a, 289–291) and Magarshack (1950, 367). ↩

  229. Benedetti (1999a, 291–94) and Magarshack (1950, 368). ↩

  230. Benedetti (1999a, 294) and Magarshack (1950, 368). ↩

  231. Benedetti (1999a, 294) and Carnicke (1998, 75). ↩

  232. Benedetti (1999a, 295). ↩

  233. Benedetti (1999a, 297–298) and Magarshack (1950, 368). ↩

  234. Benedetti (1999a, 301). ↩

  235. Benedetti (1999a, 299, 315). ↩

  236. Benedetti (1999a, 302). Benedetti emphasises the contrast between the perception of the system as being concerned principally with character and Stanislavski's actual attention to the play's "structure and meaning". ↩

  237. Quoted by Benedetti (1999a, 302). ↩

  238. Benedetti (1999a, 302). ↩

  239. Benedetti (1999a, 304). ↩

  240. Benedetti (1999a, 306–308) and Magarshack (1950, 370). ↩

  241. Benedetti (1999a, 308–309). ↩

  242. Benedetti (1999a, 308–309). ↩

  243. Benedetti (1999a, 309). ↩

  244. Benedetti (1999a, 309). ↩

  245. Benedetti (1999a, 309). ↩

  246. Benedetti (1999a, 309). ↩

  247. Benedetti (1999a, 317) and Magarshack (1950, 376–378). ↩

  248. Benedetti (1999a, 317) and Magarshack (1950, 378). ↩

  249. Benedetti (1999a, 317). ↩

  250. Benedetti (1999a, 303) and Milling and Ley (2001, 15–16). ↩

  251. Benedetti (1999a, 331) and Carnicke (1998, 73). ↩

  252. Benedetti (1999a, 331) and Milling and Ley (2001, 4). ↩

  253. Benedetti (1999a, 332). ↩

  254. Benedetti (1999a, 344), Carnicke (1998, 74), and Milling and Ley (2001, 4). ↩

  255. Gurevich, quoted by Benedetti (1999a, 345). ↩

  256. Benedetti (1999a, 346). ↩

  257. Benedetti (1999a, 347). ↩

  258. Benedetti (1999a, 350). ↩

  259. Benedetti (1999a, 366–367) and Carnicke (1998, 73). ↩

  260. Benedetti (1999a, 374–375) and Carnicke (1998, 73). ↩

  261. Carnicke (1998, 73) and Milling and Ley (2001, 15). ↩

  262. Carnicke (1998, 73) and Milling and Ley (2001, 15). ↩

  263. Carnicke (1998, 73). ↩

  264. The publication of An Actor's Work and An Actor's Work on a Role, both translated by Jean Benedetti, enables a detailed comparison of the significant differences and omissions in An Actor Prepares, Building a Character, and Creating a Role; see Stanislavski (1938 and 1957). Carnicke argues that despite some changes to the terminology of the system the "Russian books still serve as one of the best keys to his actual concerns about art" (1998, 82). ↩

  265. Benedetti (1999a, 324). Extracts of the plan are translated in Cole (1955, 131–138) and Stanislavski (1957, 27–43). ↩

  266. Benedetti (1999a, 325, 360) and (2005, 121) and Roach (1985, 197–198, 205, 211–215). The term "Method of Physical Action" was applied to this rehearsal process after Stanislavski's death. Benedetti indicates that though Stanislavski had developed it since 1916, he first explored it practically in the early 1930s; see (1998, 104) and (1999a, 356, 358). Gordon argues the shift in working-method happened during the 1920s (2006, 49–55). Vasili Toporkov, an actor who trained under Stanislavski in this approach, provides in his Stanislavski in Rehearsal (2004) a detailed account of the Method of Physical Action at work in Stanislavski's rehearsals. ↩

  267. Benedetti (1999a, 70, 355–356), Leach (2004, 29), and Magarshack (1950, 373–375). ↩

  268. Benedetti (1999a, 355), Carnicke (2000, 32), and Magarshack (1950, 374–375). ↩

  269. Benedetti (1999a, 355), Magarshack (1950, 375), and Whyman (2008, 242). ↩

  270. Quoted by Carnicke (1998, 156). Stanislavski continues: "For in the process of action the actor gradually obtains the mastery over the inner incentives of the actions of the character he is representing, evoking in himself the emotions and thoughts which resulted in those actions. In such a case, an actor not only understands his part, but also feels it, and that is the most important thing in creative work on the stage"; quoted by Magarshack (1950, 375). ↩

  271. Benedetti (1999a, 355–356) and Magarshack (1950, 375). In a letter to Elizabeth Hapgood, Stanislavski wrote: "Do you know the words? Never mind, use your own. You can't remember the sequence of the conversation? Never mind, I'll prompt you. We go through the whole play like this because it is easier to control and direct the body than the mind which is capricious. That is why the physical line of a role is easier to create than the psychological. But can the physical line of a role exist without the psychological when the mind is inseparable from the body? Of course not. That is why simultaneously the physical line of the body evokes the inner line of a role. This method takes the creative actor's attention off feelings, leaves them to the subconscious which alone can properly control and direct them"; quoted by Benedetti (1999a, 356). ↩

  272. Benedetti (1999a, 325–326) and Gordon (2006, 74). Emotion memory remained useful during training, Stanislavski felt, as a means of addressing emotional inhibition. ↩

  273. Benedetti (1999a, 325). ↩

  274. Benedetti (1999a, 325). ↩

  275. Benedetti (1999a, 325). ↩

  276. Benedetti (1999a, 325–326). ↩

  277. Benedetti (1999a, 326) and Magarshack (1950, 372–373). ↩

  278. Benedetti (1999a, 326) and (2005, 126). ↩

  279. Benedetti (1998, 108), (1999a, 326), and (2005, 125–127). ↩

  280. Benedetti (1998, 108), (1999a, 349), and (2005, 125) and Magarshack (1950, 372). ↩

  281. Benedetti (1998, 108), (1999a, 221), and (2005, 125–126) and Whyman (2008, 149). In contrast to the "perspective of the role" that appreciates the role as a whole, Stanislavski called the moment-to-moment awareness the "perspective of the actor". For Stanislavski's explanation of this concept, see An Actor's Work (1938, 456–462). ↩

  282. Benedetti (1999a, 351) and Gordon (2006, 74). ↩

  283. Benedetti (1999a, 351) and Gordon (2006, 74). Under the influence of Richard Boleslavsky, emotion memory had become a central feature of Lee Strasberg's training at the Group Theatre in New York. In contrast, Stanislavski recommended to Stella Adler an indirect pathway to emotional expression via physical action. Benedetti writes that "It has been suggested that Stanislavski deliberately played down the emotional aspects of acting because the woman in front of him was already over-emotional. The evidence is against this. What Stanislavski told Stella Adler was exactly what he had been telling his actors at home, what indeed he had advocated in his notes for Leonidov in the production plan for Othello." Stanislavski confirmed this emphasis in his discussions with Harold Clurman in late 1935; see Benedetti (1999a, 351–352). /wiki/Richard_Boleslavsky ↩

  284. Benedetti (1999a, 351) and Gordon (2006, 74). ↩

  285. Benedetti (1999a, 318), Carnicke (1998, 33), Clark et al. (2007, 226), and Magarshack (1950, 396). In 1938, Leontievski Lane was renamed "Stanislavski Lane" as part of his 75th birthday celebrations. ↩

  286. Benedetti (1999a, 372) and Carnicke (1998, 33). ↩

  287. Benedetti (1999a, 372). ↩

  288. Benedetti (1999a, 335–336). ↩

  289. Benedetti (1999a, 335–336). ↩

  290. Benedetti (1999a, 354–355) and Carnicke (1998, 78). ↩

  291. Benedetti (1999a, 355) and Carnicke (1998, 78, 80). ↩

  292. Benedetti (1999a, 359) and Magarshack (1950, 387). ↩

  293. Letter to Elizabeth Hapgood, quoted in Benedetti (1999a, 363). ↩

  294. Benedetti (1999a, 360), Magarshack (1950, 388–391), and Whyman (2008, 136). ↩

  295. Benedetti (1999a, 362–363). ↩

  296. Benedetti (1999a, 363) and Whyman (2008, 136). ↩

  297. Benedetti (1999a, 368) and Magarshack (1950, 397–399). He "insisted that they work on classics, because, 'in any work of genius you find an ideal logic and progression'." ↩

  298. Benedetti (1999a, 368–369). "They must avoid at all costs", Benedetti explains, "merely repeating the externals of what they had done the day before." ↩

  299. Magarshack (1950, 400). ↩

  300. Benedetti (1998, xii) and (1999a, 359–363) and Magarshack (1950, 387–391), and Whyman (2008, 136). Benedetti argues that the course at the Opera-Dramatic Studio is "Stanislavski's true testament". His book Stanislavski and the Actor (1998) offers a reconstruction of the studio's course. ↩

  301. Benedetti (1999a, 368–369). ↩

  302. Benedetti (1999a, 371–373). ↩

  303. Benedetti (1999a, 371, 373) and Whyman (2008, 136). ↩

  304. Benedetti (1999a, 373), Leach (2004, 23), and Rudnitsky (1981, xv). ↩

  305. Benedetti (1999a, 373). ↩

  306. Benedetti (1999a, 374) and Magarshack (1950, 404). ↩

  307. Magarshack (1950, 404). ↩

  308. Benedetti (1999a, 375). ↩

  309. Benedetti (1999a, 376) and Magarshack (1950, 404). ↩