Staging Chekhov's play, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko discovered a new manner of performing: they emphasized the ensemble and the subordination of each individual actor to the whole, and they subordinated the director's and actors' interpretations to the dramatist's intent. Actors, Stanislavsky felt, had to have a common training and be capable of an intense inner identification with the characters that they played, while still remaining independent of the role in order to subordinate it to the needs of the play as a whole. Fighting against the artificial and highly stylized theatrical conventions of the late 19th century, Stanislavsky sought instead the reproduction of authentic emotions at every performance.
In 1902 Stanislavsky successfully staged both Maksim Gorky (Gorky, Maksim)'s The Petty Bourgeois and The Lower Depths, codirecting the latter with Nemirovich-Danchenko. Among the numerous powerful roles performed by Stanislavsky were Astrov in Uncle Vanya in 1899 and Gayev in The Cherry Orchard in 1904, by Chekhov; Doctor Stockman in Henrik Ibsen (Ibsen, Henrik)'s An Enemy of the People in 1900; and Satin in The Lower Depths. Both as an actor and as a director, Stanislavsky demonstrated a remarkable subtlety in rendering psychological patterns and an exceptional talent for satirical characterization. Commanding respect from followers and adversaries alike, he became a dominant influence on the Russian intellectuals of the time. He formed the First Studio in 1912, where his innovations were adopted by many young actors. In 1918 he undertook the guidance of the Bolshoi Opera Studio, which was later named for him. There he staged Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich)'s Eugene Onegin in 1922, which was acclaimed as a major reform in opera.
In 1922–24 the Moscow Art Theatre toured Europe and the United States with Stanislavsky as its administrator, director, and leading actor. A great interest was stirred in his system. During this period he wrote his autobiography, My Life in Art. Ever preoccupied in it with content and form, Stanislavsky acknowledged that the “theatre of representation,” which he had disparaged, nonetheless produced brilliant actors. Recognizing that theatre was at its best when deep content harmonized with vivid theatrical form, Stanislavsky supervised the First Studio's production of William Shakespeare (Shakespeare, William)'s Twelfth Night in 1917 and Nikolay Gogol (Gogol, Nikolay)'s The Government Inspector in 1921, encouraging the actor Michael Chekhov in a brilliantly grotesque characterization. His staging of Aleksandr Ostrovsky (Ostrovsky, Aleksandr Nikolayevich)'s An Ardent Heart (1926) and of Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (Beaumarchais, Pierre-Augustin Caron de)'s The Marriage of Figaro (1927) demonstrated increasingly bold attempts at theatricality. His monumental Armoured Train 14–69, V.V. Ivanov (Ivanov, Vsevolod Vyacheslavovich)'s play about the Russian Revolution, was a milestone in Soviet theatre in 1927, and his Dead Souls was a brilliant incarnation of Gogol's masterpiece.
While acting in The Three Sisters during the Moscow Art Theatre's 30th anniversary presentation on October 29, 1928, Stanislavsky suffered a heart attack. Abandoning acting, he concentrated for the rest of his life on directing and educating actors and directors.
The Stanislavsky method, or system, developed over 40 long years. He tried various experiments, focusing much of the time on what he considered the most important attribute of an actor's work—bringing an actor's own past emotions into play in a role. But he was frequently disappointed and dissatisfied with the results of his experiments. He continued nonetheless his search for “conscious means to the subconscious”—i.e., the search for the actor's emotions. In 1935 he was taken by the modern scientific conception of the interaction of brain and body and started developing a final technique that he called the “method of physical actions.” It taught emotional creativity; it encouraged actors to feel physically and psychologically the emotions of the characters that they portrayed at any given moment. The method also aimed at influencing the playwright's construction of plays.
Saburo Muroga Ed.
Additional Reading
David Magarshack, Stanislavsky (1950, reprinted 1986); and Jean Benedetti, Stanislavski, 2nd ed. (1990), are biographies. Discussions of the Stanislavsky method include Nikolai M. Gorchakov, Stanislavsky Directs (1954, reprinted 1985); Sonia Moore, The Stanislavski System, 2nd rev. ed. (1965); and Training an Actor: The Stanislavski System in Class, rev. ed. (1979), a work based on class tape recordings demonstrating the Stanislavsky technique in practice.
Stanislavsky method
▪ acting
also called The Method, or Stanislavsky System,
highly influential system of dramatic training developed over years of trial and error by the Russian actor, producer, and theoretician Konstantin Stanislavsky. He began with attempts to find a style of acting more appropriate to the greater realism of 20th-century drama than the histrionic acting styles of the 19th century. He never intended, however, to develop a new style of acting but rather to codify in teaching and performing regimens the ways in which great actors always have achieved success in their work, regardless of prevailing acting styles.
The method requires that an actor utilize, among other things, his emotional memory (i.e., his recall of past experiences and emotions). The actor's entrance onto the stage is not considered to be a beginning of the action or of his life as the character but a continuation of the set of preceding circumstances. The actor has trained his concentration and his senses so that he may respond freely to the total stage environment. Through empathic observation of people in many different situations, he attempts to develop a wide emotional range so that his onstage actions and reactions appear as if they were a part of the real world rather than a make-believe one.
A risk in the Stanislavsky method is that, when role interpretation is based on the inner impulses of the performer, a scene may unexpectedly take on new directions. (This temptation was opposed by Stanislavsky himself, who demanded that the actor subordinate himself to the play.) Some directors are disposed against the method, seeing in it a threat to their control of a production. Many, however, find it especially useful during rehearsals in uncovering unsuspected nuances of character or of dramatic action.
The method was widely practiced in the Soviet Union and in the United States, where experiments in its use began in the 1920s and continued in many schools and professional workshops, such as the prestigious Actors Studio in New York City.
Moscow Art Theatre
▪ theatre, Moscow, Russia
in full Moscow Art Academic Theatre , Russian Moscovsky Akademichesky Khudozhestvenny Teatr , or Moscovsky Khudozhestvenny Teatr
outstanding Russian theatre of theatrical naturalism founded in 1898 by two teachers of dramatic art, Konstantin Stanislavsky (Stanislavsky, Konstantin Sergeyevich) and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (Nemirovich-Danchenko, Vladimir Ivanovich). Its purpose was to establish a theatre of new art forms, with a fresh approach to its function. Sharing similar theatrical experience and interests, the cofounders met and it was agreed that Stanislavsky was to have absolute control over stage direction while Nemirovich-Danchenko was assigned the literary and administrative duties. The original ensemble was made up of amateur actors from the Society of Art and Literature and from the dramatic classes of the Moscow Philharmonic Society, where Stanislavsky (Stanislavsky method) and Nemirovich-Danchenko had taught. Influenced by the German Meiningen Company, Stanislavsky began to develop a system of training for actors that would enable them to perform realistically in any sort of role and situation.