Stanislavski

Constantin Stanislavski

1

Constantin Stanislavski Constantin Stanislavski

Born

Konstantin Sergeyevich Alekseyev [1] 17 January 1863 Moscow, Russian Empire

Died

7 August 1938 (aged 75) Moscow, Soviet Union

Occupation

Theatre director · Actor · Theatre theorist

Literary movement Naturalism · Psychological realism · Socialist realism · Symbolism Notable work(s)

Founder of the Moscow Art Theatre An Actor's Work My Life in Art

Spouse(s)

Maria Petrovna Perevostchikova (stage name: Maria Liliana)

Сергеевич Станиславский) (17 January Constantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski (Russian: Константин Сергеевич 1863 – 7 August 1938), was a Russian actor and theatre director.

[2]

[O.S. 5 January]

Building on the directorially-unified directorially-unified aesthetic

and ensemble playing of the Meiningen company and the naturalistic staging of Antoine and the independent theatre movement, Stanislavski organized his realistic techniques into a coherent and usable 'system.'

[3]

Thanks to its

promotion and development by acting teachers who were f ormer students and the many translations of his theoretical writings, Stanislavski's 'system' acquired an unprecedented ability to cross cultural boundaries and developed an international reach, dominating debates about acting in the West. That many of the precepts of his system seem to be common sense and self-evident testifies to its success. Stanislavski treated theatre-making as a serious endeavour, requiring dedication, discipline and integrity, and the work of the actor as an artistic undertaking. Throughout his life, he subjected his own acting to a process of rigorous artistic self-analysis and reflection. His system resulted from a persistent struggle to remove the blocks he encountered. His development of a theorized praxis —in which practice is used as a mode of inquiry and theory as a catalyst for creative development — —identifies him as the first great theatre practitioner.


2

Stanislavski's work was as important to the development of socialist realism in the Soviet Union as it was to that of psychological realism in the United States.

[4]

Many actors routinely identify his system with the American Method,

although the latter's exclusively psychological techniques contrast sharply with Stanislavski's multivariant, holistic and psychophysical approach, which explores character and action both from the 'inside out' and the 'outside in'.

[5]

Stanislavski's work draws on a wide range of influences and ideas, including his study of the modernist and avant-garde developments of his time (naturalism, symbolism and Meyerhold's constructivism), Russian formalism, Yoga, Pavlovian behavioural psychology, James-Lange (via Ribot) psychophysiology and the aesthetics of Pushkin, Gogol, and Tolstoy. He described his approach as 'spiritual Realism'. Stanislavski wrote several works. Those available in English translation include An Actor Prepares , An Actor's Work on a Role, and his autobiography My Life in Art .

Biography Family background Stanislavski had a privileged youth, growing up in one of the richest families in Russia, the Alekseyevs;

[6]

he was

born Constantin Sergeyevich Alexeyev —"Stanislavski" was a stage name that he adopted in 1884 in order to keep his performance activities secret from his parents.

[7]

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.

[8]

The Alexeyevs were a prosperous, bourgeois family, whose

factories manufactured gold and silver braiding for military decorations and uniforms.

[9]

Up until the Russian

revolution in 1917, Stanislavski often used his inherited wealth to fund his theatrical experiments in acting and [10]

directing.

His family's discouragement meant that he appeared only as an amateur onstage and as a director until

he was thirty three.

[10]

As a child, Stanislavski was exposed to the rich cultural life of his family; ballet, and puppetry.

[12]

[11]

his interests included the circus, the

His father, Sergei Vladimirovich Alekseyev, was elected head of the merchant class in

Moscow (one of the most important and influential positions in the city) in 1877; that same year, he had a fully equipped theatre on his estate at Liubimovka built for the entertainment of his family and friends, providing a forum for Stanislavski's adolescent theatrical impulses.

[13]

Stanislavski started, after his début performance there, what

would become a life-long series of notebooks filled with critical observations on his acting, aphorisms, and [14]

problems.

It was from this habit of self-analysis and critique that Stanislavski's 'system' later emerged.

[15]

The

family's second theatre was added in 1881 to their mansion at Red Gates, on Sadovaya Street in Moscow (where Stanislavski lived from 1863 to 1903); their house became a focus for the artistic and cultural life of the city. Stanislavski chose not to attend university, preferring to work in the family business.

[16]

[17]

Early influences Increasingly interested in "living the part," Stanislavski experimented with the ability to maintain a characterization in real life, disguising himself as a tramp or drunk and visiting the railway station, or disguising himself as a fortune-telling gypsy; he extended the experiment to the rest of the cast of a short comedy in which he performed in 1883, and as late as 1900 he amused holiday-makers in Yalta by taking a walk each morning "in character".

[18]

In

1884, he began vocal training under Fyodor Petrovich Komissarzhevsky, a professor at the Moscow Conservatory and leading tenor of the Bolshoi (and father of the famous actress Vera Komissarzhevskaya), with whom he also explored the co-ordination of voice and body.

[19]

Together they devised exercises in moving and sitting stationary

"rhythmically", which anticipated Stanislavski's later use of physical rhythm when teaching his 'system' to opera [20]

singers.

Komissarzhevski provided one of the models (the other was Stanislavski himself) for the character of [21]

Tortsov in his actor's manual An Actor's Work (1938).

A year later, in 1885, Stanislavski briefly studied at the

Moscow Theatre School, where students were encouraged to mimic the theatrical tricks and conventions of their

Constantin Stanislavski [22]

tutors.

3

Disappointed by this approach, he left after little more than two weeks.

[22]

Instead, Stanislavski devoted particular attention to the performances of the Maly Theatre, the home of psychological realism in Russia.

[23]

Mikhail Shchepkin.

Psychological realism had been developed here by Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol and

[24]

In 1823, Pushkin had concluded that what united the diverse classical authors —Shakespeare,

Racine, Corneille and Calderón —was their common concern for truth of character and situation, understood as credible behaviour in believable circumstances:

[25]

Stanislavski as the Knight in The Society of Art and Literature's 1888 production of Alexander Pushkin's The Miserly Knight.

The truth concerning the passions, verisimilitude in the feelings experienced in the given circumstances, that is what our intelligence demands

“

”

of a dramatist.

[26] Pushkin's aphorism, 1830.

—

Gogol, meanwhile, campaigned against overblown, effect-seeking acting.

[27]

In an article of 1846, he advises a

modest, dignified mode of comic performance in which the actor seeks to grasp "what is dominant in the role" and considers "the character's main concern, which consumes his life, the constant object of his thought, the 'bee in his [28]

bonnet.'"

This inner desire forms the "heart of the role," to which the "tiny quirks and tiny external details" are

added as embellishment.

[28]

The Maly soon became known as the House of Shchepkin, the father of Russian realistic

acting who, in 1848, promoted the idea of an "actor of feeling."

[29]

This actor would "become the character" and [30]

identify with his thoughts and feelings: he would "walk, talk, think, feel, cry, laugh as the author wants him to."

A

copy of Shchepkin's Memoirs of a Ser f-Actor , in which the actor describes his struggle to achieve a naturalness of style, was heavily annotated by Stanislavski.

[30]

Shchepkin's student, Glikeriya Fedotova, was Stanislavski's teacher

(she was responsible for instilling the rejection of inspiration as the basis of the actor's art, along with the stress on the importance of training and discipline, and the practice of responsive interaction with other actors that Stanislavski came to call "communication").

[31]

Shchepkin's legacy included the emphasis on a disciplined, ensemble

approach, the importance of extensive rehearsals, and the use of careful observation, self-knowledge, imagination and emotion as the cornerstones of the craft.

[32]

As well as the artists of the Maly company, performances given by foreign star actors —who would often come to Moscow during Lent (when Russian actors were prohibited from appearing) —also influenced Stanislavski.

[33]

The

effortless, emotive and clear playing of the Italian actor Ernesto Rossi, who performed major Shakespearean tragic protagonists in Moscow in 1877, particularly impressed Stanislavski. [34]

performance of Othello.

[33]

So too did Tommaso Salvini's 1882

Years later, Stanislavski wrote that Salvini was the "finest representative" of the "art of

experiencing" approach to acting.

[35]


4

The Society of Art and Literature By the age of twenty-five, Stanislavski was well known as an amateur [36]

actor.

He made a proposal to Fyodor Sollogub and Alexander

Fedotov (a theatre director and estranged husband of Glikeriya Fedotova) to establish a society that would unite amateur and professional actors and artists.

[37]

The profits from his family's factory

were particularly high in 1887 – 1888; Stanislavski decided to use the surplus 25,000 – 30,000 roubles to form the Society of Art and Literature, for which he had the Ginzburg House on Tverskaya Street converted into a luxurious clubhouse with its own large stage and [38]

exhibition rooms.

Fedotov became head of the dramatic section,

Komissarzhevski was the head of the operatic and musical section, while Sollogub was appointed head of the graphic arts section; the drama and opera sections each had a school.

[39]

To research the

curriculum of the society's drama school, Stanislavski spent the summer of

1888

studying

the

Comédie-Française in Paris.

classes [40]

and

performances

of

the

The society's school was to offer classes

in dramatic art, the history of costume, make-up, drama, Russian literature, aesthetics, fencing and dancing.

[41]

The school opened on 8

Stanislavski with his soon-to-be wife Maria Liliana, playing Ferdinand and Louise in The

October 1888 while the society itself was officially inaugurated on 3 November with a ceremony attended by Anton Chekhov.

[42]

Society of Art and Literature's production of

Under the

Schiller's Intrigue and Love in 1889.

auspices of the society, Stanislavski performed in plays by Molière, Schiller, Pushkin, and Ostrovsky, as well as gaining his first experiences as a director.

[43]

With the guidance of Fedotov and Sollogub, Stanislavski finally abandoned the operatic conventions

and theatrical clichés in his acting that he had mimicked from other actors' performances. interested in the aesthetic theories of Vissarion Belinsky.

[45]

[44]

He also became

From Belinsky he took his conception of the role of the

artist, on which he based a moral justification for his desire to perform that accorded with his family's sense of social responsibility and ethics.

[46]

At this time Stanislavski warned in his diary:

[47]

Young actors, beware of your female admirers! Make love to them, if it amuses you, but do not discuss art with them! Learn in time to listen

“

to, to understand and love the bitter truth about yourselves! And get to know those who can tell it to you. It is with them that you should discuss art.

”

On 5 July 1889, Stanislavski married Lilina (the stage name of Maria Petrovna Perevostchikova), with whom he had just performed in Intrigue and Love. months after she was born. Stanislavski's father died.

[51]

[49]

[48]

Their first child, Xenia, died of pneumonia in May 1890 less than two

Their second daughter, Kira, was born on 21 July 1891.

Their son Igor was born 14 September 1894.

[52]

[50]

In January 1893,


5

'When you play a good man, 'try to find out where he is bad, 'and when you play a villain, 'try to find where he is good. Stanislavski, 1889.

In 1889 in the society's production of Aleksey Pisemsky's historical play Men Above The Law, Stanislavski discovered his "principle of opposites," as expressed in his aphoristic advice to the actor: "When you play a good man, try to find out where he is bad, and when you play a villain, try to find where he is good."

[53]

Stanislavski

insisted that the actors learnt their parts thoroughly, almost entirely removing the prompter from the society's [54]

productions.

Stanislavski described his production of Leo Tolstoy's The Fruits of Enlightenment in February 1891 as his first fully [55]

independent directorial work.

His directorial methods at this time were closely modeled on the disciplined,

autocratic approach of Ludwig Chronegk, the director of the Meiningen Ensemble, whose productions of Julius Caesar , The Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night , as well as a number of plays by Schiller, Stanislavski had

studied enthusiastically during their second visit to Moscow in 1890.

[56]

The Ensemble's general approach included

historical accuracy in set, props and costumes and complex crowd effects achieved through a tightly drilled rehearsal [57]

process.

Its use of off-stage sound to produce the illusion of a reality beyond the visible stage particularly [58]

impressed Stanislavski.

Their productions demonstrated a model for artistic achievement with relatively unskilled

actors that Stanislavski was to adopt for the early part of his career as a director.

[58]

By means of a rigid and detailed

control of the mise-en-scène, including the strict choreography of the actors' every gesture, in Stanislavski's words "the inner kernel of the play was revealed by itself."

[59]

Whereas the Ensemble's effects tended toward the grandiose,

however, 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":

[60]

Stanislavski as Othello in 1896.

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.


6

Writing years later in his autobiography My Life in Art (1925), Stanislavski described Chronegk's approach as one in which the director is "forced to work without the help of the actor."

[61]

Jean Benedetti suggests that Stanislavski's

task at this stage was to unite the realistic tradition of the creative actor inherited from Shchepkin and Gogol with the [49]

director-centered, organically unified naturalistic aesthetic of the Ensemble's approach. It was at this time that Stanislavski first met Leo Tolstoy.

[62]

Tolstoy re-wrote the fourth act of his The Power of

Darkness along the lines of Stanislavski's suggestions in 1896.

[63]

Tolstoy was another important influence on the

development of Stanislavski's thought; his What Is Art? (1898) promoted immediate intelligibility and transparency as an aesthetic principle.

[64]

On the eve of creating the Moscow Art Theatre, Stanislavski wrote of the importance of

simplicity, directness and accessibility in art.

[65]

From 1894 onwards, as part of his painstaking rehearsals for Karl Gutzkow's melodrama Uriel Acosta and Shakespeare's Othello, 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 in rehearsals.

[66]

Stanislavski's

Othello (1896) made a strong impression on the 22-year-old Vsevolod Meyerhold, who was later to work with him

before becoming an important director and theatre practitioner in his own right.

[67]

"The task of our generation,"

Stanislavski wrote at this time, is "to liberate art from outmoded tradition, from tired cliché and to give greater freedom to imagination and creative ability."

[68]

The Moscow Art Theatre See also: MAT production of The Seagull and MAT production of Hamlet

In 1896 Stanislavski discussed with Nikolai Efros his ideas for a scheme to establish a network of touring theatre companies that would bring high-quality drama to the surrounding area of selected towns.

[69]

He proposed to call

them "open" or "accessible" theatres, in a bid to avoid alarming the authorities with their connection to the dangerously democratizing "popular theatre" movement that was spreading across Europe, spearheaded by Romain [70]

Rolland.

In February 1897 Stanislavski joined Anton Chekhov, whom he had met on 15 February at a

literary-musical evening, in an open public discussion on the creation of a popular theatre that was reported in the [71]

press.

At this time he also helped to organise the first all-Russian conference on the theatre, whose keynote

speaker, Yevtikhiy Karpov, urged the creation of a "Russian people's theatre."

[72]

It was Stanislavski's historic meeting with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko on 22 June 1897, however, that would create what was called initially the "Moscow Public-Accessible Theatre" but which came to be known as the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT).

[73]

Their eighteen-hour discussion —lasting

from lunch at 2pm in a private room in the Slavic Bazaar restaurant to 8am the following morning over breakfast at Stanislavski's family estate at Liubimovka —has acquired a legendary status in the history of theatre.

[74]

Nemirovich was a successful playwright (whose work was performed by the Maly and whose play The Worth of Life had beaten Chekhov's The Seagull to win the Griboyedov prize, much to the author's dismay), critic, theatre director and acting teacher at the Philharmonic school (where he taught Vsevolod Meyerhold and Olga Knipper), who was also committed to the idea [75]

Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko,

of a popular theatre.

co-founder with Stanislavski of the

Nemirovich needed Stanislavski's directorial talent for creating vivid stage

Moscow Art Theatre, photographed in

images and selecting significant details, while Stanislavski needed

1922.

Their abilities complemented one another:

Nemirovich's talent for dramatic and literary analysis, his professional expertise and his ability to manage a theatre.

[76]

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, they


7

worked out the policy of their new theatre.

[77]

Together they would forge a professional company with an ensemble

ethos that discouraged individual vanity, selecting actors from Nemirovich's class at the Philharmonic school and Stanislavski's amateur Society of Art and Literature group, along with other professional actors; 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).

[78]

Responsibility was to be shared between them on the basis of their

individual strengths, with Stanislavski overseeing production and Nemirovich in charge of the repertoire and literary decisions; each had a veto.

[79]

Given that Stanislavski's family's assets amounted to some 8 million roubles at the time, Nemirovich assumed initially that Stanislavski would fund the theatre as a privately owned business, but Stanislavski insisted on a limited, [80]

joint stock company.

Stanislavski would only ever invest an initial 10,000 roubles in the MAT.

[81]

To raise the

rest of the theatre's 28,000 roubles launch capital, Nemirovich persuaded some of the directors of the Philharmonic Society to contribute, members of the board of the Society of Art and Literature also invested, but the theatre's principal shareholder was to be Savva Timofeievich Morozov, who invested 10,000 roubles. shareholders, who signed an agreement on 10 April 1898.

[83]

[82]

The company had 13

With an annual salary of 4,200 roubles each,

Stanislavski and Nemirovich were to represent the interests of the acting company in the business, though with the aim of transferring control to the actors eventually.

[83]

The company consisted of 39 actors, 23 men and 16 women,

30% of whom came from Nemirovich's Phiharmonic class and 35% of whom came with Stanislavski from the Society of Art and Literature, with a total staff numbering 323. 1896, was engaged as the company's principal designer.

[84]

Viktor Simov, whom Stanislavski had met in

[85]

For want of suitable rehearsal space in Moscow, the company met [86]

in Pushkino, isolated 50 miles from the city.

In his opening

speech on the first day of rehearsals, 14 June 1898, Stanislavski stressed the "social character" of their collective undertaking: "We are striving to create the first rational, moral, and public-accessible theatre," he said, "and we dedicate our lives to this high goal."

[87]

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.

[88]

Throughout June and July the company

rehearsed productions of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Sophocles' Antigone, Hauptmann's Hannele, Pisemsky's Men Above The Law, Lenz's The Tutor and Alexei Tolstoy's Tsar Fiodor Ioannovich.

[89]

It was at these rehearsals that Stanislavski's

life-long relationship with Vsevolod Meyerhold began; by the end of June, Meyerhold was so impressed with Stanislavski's directorial skills that he declared him a genius.

[88]

On his

death-bed Stanislavski was to declare Meyerhold "my sole heir in the theatre —here or anywhere else."

[90]

At Pushkino in 1898, Vsevolod Meyerhold prepares for his role as Konstantin to Stanislavski's Trigorin in the

In 1898, Stanislavski co-directed with Nemirovich the first of his

Moscow Art Theatre production of Anton Chekhov's

productions of the work of Anton Chekhov. The MAT production

The Seagull.

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."

[91]

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 and thr eatened to have his


8

name removed from the posters when Nemirovich refused his demand to postpone its opening by a week.

[92]

Stanislavski played Trigorin, Meyerhold played Konstantin, and Olga Knipper played Arkadnia. 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 [93]

the time.

To commemorate this historic production, which gave the MAT its sense of identity, the company to

this day bears the seagull as its emblem.

[94]

Stanislavski went on to direct the successful premières of Chekhov's [95]

other major plays: Uncle Vanya in 1899, Three Sisters in 1901, and The Cherry Orchard in 1904.

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.

[96]

By 1922, however, 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 [97]

fact that an officer is going and leaving his lady behind" (referring to the conclusion of Three Sisters).

Stanislavski's system Stanislavski's 'system' was a systematic approach to training actors. He developed principles and sets of exercises to help actors develop their acting techniques. Areas of study included concentration, voice, physical skills, emotion memory, observation, and dramatic analysis. Stanislavski's goal was to find a universally applicable approach that could be of service to all actors. Yet he said of his 'system': "Create your own method. Don't depend slavishly on mine. Make up something that will work for you! But keep breaking traditions, I beg you."

Emotion memory Stanislavski's 'system' focused on the development of artistic truth onstage by teaching actors to "experience the part" during performance. Stanislavski hoped that the 'system' could be applied to all forms of drama, including melodrama, vaudeville, and opera. He organised a series of theatre studios in which young actors were trained in his 'system.' At the First Studio, actors were instructed to use their own memories in order to express emotion. Stanislavski soon observed that some of the actors using or abusing this technique were given to hysteria. He began to search for more reliable means to access emotion, eventually emphasizing the actor's use of imagination and belief in the given circumstances of the text rather than her/his private and often painful memories.

The Method of Physical Actions In the beginning, Stanislavski proposed that actors study and experience subjective emotions and feelings and manifest them to audiences by physical and vocal means. While in its very earliest stages his 'system' focused on creating truthful emotions and embodying them, he later worked on the Method of Physical Actions. This was developed at the Opera Dramatic Studio from the early 1930s. Its focus was on physical actions as a means to access truthful emotion, and involved improvisation. The focus remained on reaching the subconscious through the conscious.


9

Legacy Stanislavski had different pupils during each of the phases of discovering and experimenting with his 'system' of acting. Two of his former students, Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya, founded the American Laboratory Theatre in 1925. One of their students, Lee Strasberg, went on to co-found the Group Theatre (1931 – 1940) 1940) with Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford, which was the first American acting company to put Stanislavski's initial discoveries into practice. Clurman and Strasberg had a profound influence on American acting, both on stage and film, as did Stella Adler, who was also part of the Group Theatre and who had studied briefly with Stanislavsky and quarreled with Strasberg's approach to the work. Sir Laurence Olivier wrote that Stanislavski's My Life in Art was a source of great enlightenment" when he was a young actor.

[98]

Sir John Gielgud said, "This director found time to explain a thousand things that have always troubled actors and fascinated students."

A portrait of Constantin Stanislavski by Valentin Serov.

Gielgud is also quoted as saying, "Stanislavski's now famous book is a contribution to the Theatre and its students all over the world."

Honours and awards This article incorporates information from the equivalent article on the Russian Wikipedia.

• Orde Orderr of of Len Lenin in - 193 1937 7 • Order Order of the Red Red Bann Banner er of of Labour Labour - 1938 1938 • People People's 's Artist Artist of the the USSR USSR,, 1936 1936

Fictional references


10

Mikhail Bulgakov satirized Stanislavski through the character Ivan Vasilievich in his novel Black Snow (also called "The Theatrical Novel"). (It is no coincidence that Ivan Vasilievich was the name and patronymic of the notorious 16th-century czar Ivan the Terrible.) In Bulgakov's novel, Ivan Vasilievich is portrayed as a great actor, but his famous acting "method" is held up as a farce, in fact often hindering actors' performances through ridiculous exercises. Bulgakov's cutting portrait of Ivan Vasilievich likely reflects his frustrating experiences with Stanislavski during the latter's eventually aborted production of Bulgakov's play A Cabal of Hypocrites in 1930 – 1936. While this depiction of Stanislavski is in stark contrast to most other descriptions, including those of Westerners who had met him, it should be noted that Bulgakov and Stanislavski were otherwise good friends.

Stanislavski's grave at the Novodevichy Cemetery

Significant students •

Vsevolod Meyerhold

•

Andrius Jilinsky

•

Yevgeny Vakhtangov •

Leo Bu lg akov

•

Michael Chekhov

•

Varvara Bulgakov

•

Richard Boleslavsky

•

Vera Solovyova

•

Maria Ouspenskaya

•

Tamara Daykarhanova

•

Joshua Logan

•

Olga Knip per

Notes [1] Old Style date 5 January 1863 [2] The introduction to this article draws on the introductions and overviews in the following commentaries: Banham (1998), Benedetti (1989), Carnicke (1998), Counsell (1996), Innes (2000), Milling and Ley (2001). [3] Stanislavski began developing a 'grammar' of acting in 1906; his initial choice to call it his System struck him as too dogmatic, so he preferred to write it as his 'system' (without the capital letter and in inverted commas), in order to indicate the provisional nature of the results of his investigations. Modern scholarship follows that practice. See Benedetti (1999, 169). [4] Milling and Ley (2001, 2) and Carnicke (1998). [5] Not only actors are subject to this confusion; Lee Strasberg's obituary in The New York Times credited Stanislavski with the invention of the Method: "Mr. Strasberg adapted it to the American theatre, imposing his refinements, but always crediting Stanislavsky as his source" (Quoted by Carnicke 1998, 9). Carnicke argues that this "robs Strasberg of the originality in his thinking, while simultaneously obscuring Stanislavsky's ideas" (1997, 9). [6] "If, in the United States one could be 'rich as Rockefeller, 'in Moscow the corresponding expression was, and is, 'rich as Alexeyev'" (Benedetti 1999, 3). See also Carnicke (2000, 11) and Magarshack (1950, 1). Margarshack indicates that at this time "the life of the rich Moscow merchant was indistinguishable from the life of the Moscow nobility" (1950, 3). [7] Benedetti (1999, 24) and Carnicke (2000, 11). Benedetti explains that Stanislavski "inherited" his stage name from another amateur, Dr Mako:

"a friend at Luibimovka, and an admirer, as he had been as a boy, of the ballerina Stanislavskaia. It was a safe name to adopt. Of Polish origin, it suggested humble status and was unlikely to be associated with one of Moscow's most eminent bourgeois f amilies." Magarshack gives the amateur actor's name as Markov (1950, 19). [8] Benedetti (1999, 21) and Carnicke (2000, 11).


[9] Magarshack (1950, 1). [10] Carnicke (2000, 11). [10] [11] "The children were taken to the theatre and concerts almost as soon as they could walk" (Benedetti 1999, 10). [12] Benedetti (1999, 6 – 11) and Magarshack (1950, 9 – 11, 27 – 28). [13] Benedetti (1999, 13) and Carnicke (2000, 11). [14] Benedetti (1999, 14) and Magarshack (1950, 21 – 22). [15] Magarshack (1950, 21). [15] [16] Benedetti (1999, 18) and Magarshack (1950, 31 – 32, 77). [17] Benedetti (1999, 18) and Magarshack (1950, 26). [18] Benedetti (1999, 18 – 19) and Magarshack (1950, 25, 33 – 34). [19] Benedetti (1999, 19 – 20) and Magarshack (1950, 49 – 50). [20] Magarshack (1950, 50). [20] [21] Benedetti (2008, xxi). [21] [22] Benedetti (1999, 21). [22] [23] Benedetti (1999, 14 – 17). [24] Benedetti (2005, 100). [24] [25] Benedetti (1999, 14 – 15) and (2005, 100). [26] Benedetti (1999, 15). Benedetti offers an alternative translation of Pushkin's aphorism in hisThe Art of the Actor : "Authenticity of the passions, sentiments that seem true in the proposed circumstances, that is what our intelligence requires of the writer" (2005, 100). [27] Benedetti (2005, 100 – 101). [28] Benedetti (2005, 101). [28] [29] Benedetti (1999, 16) and Banham (1998, 985). [30] Benedetti (1999, 16) [30] [31] Banham (1998, 985) and Magarshack (1950, 51 52). – [32] Banham (1998, 985). [32] [33] Benedetti (1999, 17). [33] [34] Benedetti (1999, 18). [34] [35] Stanislavski (1938, 19). [35] [36] Magarshack (1950, 52). [36] [37] Magarshack (1950, 55 – 56). [38] Benedetti (1999, 27). Benedetti writes that as a result of the profitability of the family factory, Stanislavski "suddenly found himself with 25,000 – 30,000 roubles more than he expected"; he continues: "he decided to spend it all on an ambitious scheme". Worrall, however, offers a more modest figure for Stanislavski's initial financial investment in the Society: "With his first year’ s dividend of 1,020 roubles he established, together with Komissarzhevsky and Fedotov, the Society of Art and Literature" (1996, 24). [39] Magarshack (1950, 56). [39] [40] Benedetti (1999, 29 – 30) and Worrall (1996, 25). [41] Worrall (1996, 25). [41] [42] Benedetti (1999, 30). [42] [43] Benedetti (1999, 30 – 40) and Worrall (1996, 24). [44] Magarshack (1950, 64). [44] [45] Benedetti (1999, 35 – 37). [46] Benedetti (1999, 35 – 36). [47] Magarshack (1950, 61 – 62). [48] Benedetti (1999, 37) and Magarshack (1950, 54). Worrall writes, apparently in error, that they married in June (1996, 26). [49] Benedetti (1999, 42). [49] [50] Benedetti (1999, 43). [50] [51] Magarshack (1950, 81). [51] [52] Benedetti (1999, 47). [52] [53] Worrall (1996, 27), Benedetti (1999, 39) and Magarshack (1950, 67 68). The title of Pisemsky's play has also been translated as Despots – and A Law unto Themselves. [54] Magarshack (1950, 75 – 76). – [55] Worrall (1996, 27). See also Magarshack (1950, 78 80) and Benedetti (1999, 42 – 43).

[56] Benedetti (1999, 40 – 43), Magarshack (1950, 70 – 74) and Worrall (1996, 28 – 29). [57] Benedetti (1999, 40 – 41). [58] Benedetti (1999, 41). [58] [59] Magarshack (1950, 80) and Benedetti (1999, 48). [60] Benedetti (1999, 35 – 36, 44); the following quotation is from Benedetti (1999, 44 and 50 – 51). [61] Magarshack (1950, 73). [61] [62] Magarshack (1950, 82 – 85). They first met on 29 October 1893. See Benedetti (1999, 46).

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Constantin Stanislavski [63] Magarshack (1950, 84 – 85). [64] Benedetti (1999, 46). [64] [65] Benedetti (1999, 54). [65] [66] Worrall (1996, 28 – 29), Magarshack (1950, 86 – 90) and Benedetti (1999, 47). [67] Benedetti (1999, 52). [67] [68] Benedetti (1999, 55). [68] [69] Benedetti (1999, 56). Nikolai Efimovich Efros (1867 – 1923), the Moscow Art Theatre's first literary manager. – [70] Benedetti (1999, 56), Bradby and McCormick (1978, 11 44), and Worrall (1996, 15).

[71] Benedetti (1999, 59). [71] [72] Benedetti (1999, 59) and Worrall (1996, 35). [73] Benedetti (1999, 59) and Worrall (1996, 43). [74] Benedetti (1999, 61) and Worrall (1996, 64). [75] Benedetti (1989, 16) and (1999, 59 60). – [76] Benedetti (1999, 60 – 61). [77] Benedetti (1989, 16). [77] [78] Benedetti (1989, 18) and (1999, 61 62). – [79] Benedetti (1989, 17) and (1999, 61). [80] Benedetti (1999, 62 – 63) and Worrall (1996, 37 – 38). [81] Benedetti (1999, 63). [81] – [82] Benedetti (1999, 64) and Worrall (1996, 38 40).

[83] Worrall (1996, 40). [83] [84] Worrall (1996, 43 – 44). [85] Benedetti (1999, 67) and Braun (1982, 61). [86] Benedetti (1999, 68 – 69). [87] Worrall (1996, 45) and Benedetti (1999, 68). [88] Benedetti (1999, 70). [88] [89] Worrall (1996, 46 – 47). [90] Rudnitsky (1981, xv). [90] [91] Rudnitsky (1981, 8) and Benedetti (1999a, 85). [92] Rehearsals were spread over 24 sessions: 9 with Stanislavski and 15 with Nemirovich; see Benedetti (1999a, 85). [93] Braun (1981, 64). [93] [94] Braun (1981, 62, 64). [94] [95] Leach (2004, 14). [95] [96] Chekhov and the Art Theatre, in Stanislavski's words, were united in a common desire "to achieve artistic simplicity and truth on the stage"; Allen (2001, 11). [97] Quoted by Benedetti (1999a, 272). [98] Lord Olivier, Confessions of an Actor , 1982 p. 64

Bibliography • Banham, Martin, ed. 1998. The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521434378. • Benedetti, Jean. 1989. Stanislavski: An Introduction. Revised edition. Original edition published in 1982. London: Methuen. ISBN 0413500306. • ---. 1998. Stanislavski and the Actor . London: Methuen. ISBN 0413711609. • ---. 1999. Stanislavski: His Life and Art . Revised edition. Original edition published in 1988. London: Methuen. ISBN 0413525201. • ---. 2005. The Art of the Actor: The Essential History of Acting, From Classical Times to the Present Day. London: Methuen. ISBN 0413773361. • ---. 2008. Foreword. In Stanislavski (1938, xv – xxii). • Bradby, David, and John McCormick. 1978. People's Theatre. London: Croom Helm and Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield. ISBN 085664501X. • Braun, Edward. 1982. "Stanislavsky and Chekhov". The Director and the Stage: From Naturalism to Grotowski . London: Methuen. ISBN 0413463001. p. 59 – 76.

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• Carnicke, Sharon M. 1998. Stanislavsky in Focus. Russian Theatre Archive Ser. London: Harwood Academic Publishers. ISBN 9057550709. • ---. 2000. "Stanislavsky's System: Pathways for the Actor". In Twentieth Century Actor Training. Ed. Alison Hodge. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415194520. p. 11 – 36. • Counsell, Colin. 1996. Signs of Performance: An Introduction to Twentieth-Century Theatre. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415106435. • Hagen, Uta. 1973. Respect for Acting . New York: Macmillan. ISBN 0025473905. • Hobgood, Burnet M. 1991. "Stanislavsky's Preface to An Actor Prepares ". Theatre Journal 43: 229 – 232. • Innes, Christopher, ed. 2000. A Sourcebook on Naturalist Theatre . London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415152291. • Magarshack, David. 1950. Stanislavsky: A Life. London and Boston: Faber, 1986. ISBN 0571137911. • Merlin, Bella. 2007. The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit . London: Nick Hern Books. ISBN 9781854597939. • Milling, Jane, and Graham Ley. 2001. Modern Theories of Performance: From Stanislavski to Boal . Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave. ISBN 0333775422. • Mitter, Shomit. 1992. Systems of Rehearsal: Stanislavsky, Brecht, Grotowski and Brook. London and NY: Routledge. ISBN 0415067847. • Moore, Sonia. 1968. Training an Actor: The Stanislavski System in Class. New York: Viking. ISBN 0670002496. • Roach, Joseph R. 1985. The Player's Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting . Theater:Theory/Text/Performance Ser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0472082442. • Stanislavski, Konstantin. 1936. An Actor Prepares . London: Methuen, 1988. ISBN 0413461904. • ---. 1938. An Actor s Work: A Student s Diary. Trans. and ed. Jean Benedetti. London: Routledge, 2008. ISBN ’

’

9780415422239. • ---. 1961. Creating a Role. Trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood. London: Mentor, 1968. ISBN 0450001660. • ---. 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 0413630803. • ---. 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. IS BN 0413477703. • Toporkov, Vasily Osipovich. 2001. Stanislavski in Rehearsal: The Final Years. Trans. Jean Benedetti. London: Methuen. ISBN 041375720X. • Whyman, Rose. 2008. The Stanislavsky System of Acting: Legacy and Influence in Modern Performance. Cambridge: Cambrdige UP. ISBN 9780521886963. • Worrall, Nick. 1996. The Moscow Art Theatre. Theatre Production Studies ser. London and NY: Routledge. ISBN 0415055989.

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