This article will be permanently flagged as inappropriate and made unaccessible to everyone. Are you certain this article is inappropriate? Excessive Violence Sexual Content Political / Social
Email Address:
Article Id: WHEBN0000017318 Reproduction Date:
Konstantin Sergeievich Stanislavski (Russian: Константи́н Серге́евич Станисла́вский; IPA: ; 17 January [O.S. 5 January] 1863 – 7 August 1938) was a Russian actor and theatre director.[2] The Stanislavski system has had a pervasive influence, especially in the period after World War II.
Stanislavski treated theatre-making as a serious endeavour requiring dedication, discipline and integrity. Throughout his life, he subjected his own acting to a process of rigorous artistic self-analysis and reflection. 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 one of the great modern theatre practitioners.
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.[1] It 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, including An Actor Prepares, An Actor's Work on a Role, and his autobiography, My Life in Art.
Stanislavski grew up in one of the richest families in Russia, the Alekseyevs.[3] 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.[4] 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.[2] The Alexeyevs were a prosperous, bourgeois family, whose factories manufactured gold and silver braiding for military decorations and uniforms.[3] Until the Russian revolution in 1917, Stanislavski often used his inherited wealth to fund his theatrical experiments in acting and directing.[4] His family's discouragement meant that he appeared only as an amateur onstage and as a director until he was thirty-three.[4]
As a child, Stanislavski was exposed to the rich cultural life of his family.[5] His interests included the circus, the ballet, and puppetry.[6] In 1877, 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); that year, he had a fully equipped theatre built on his estate at Liubimovka, providing a forum for Stanislavski's adolescent theatrical impulses.[7] After his debut performance there, Stanislavski started what would become a lifelong series of notebooks filled with critical observations on his acting, aphorisms, and problems.[8] It was from this habit of self-analysis and critique that Stanislavski's system later emerged.[9] 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.[10] Stanislavski chose not to attend university, preferring to work in the family business.[11]
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".[12] 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.[13] 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 singers.[14] Komissarzhevski provided one of the models (the other was Stanislavski himself) for the character of Tortsov in his actor's manual An Actor's Work (1938).[15] 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 tutors.[16] Disappointed by this approach, he left after little more than two weeks.[16]
Instead, Stanislavski devoted particular attention to the performances of the Maly Theatre, the home of psychological realism in Russia.[17] Psychological realism had been developed here by Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol and Mikhail Shchepkin.[18] 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:[19]
Gogol, meanwhile, campaigned against overblown, effect-seeking acting.[21] 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 bonnet.'"[22] This inner desire forms the "heart of the role," to which the "tiny quirks and tiny external details" are added as embellishment.[22] 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."[23] This actor would "become the character" and identify with his thoughts and feelings: he would "walk, talk, think, feel, cry, laugh as the author wants him to."[24] A copy of Shchepkin's Memoirs of a Serf-Actor, in which the actor describes his struggle to achieve a naturalness of style, was heavily annotated by Stanislavski.[24] 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").[25] 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.[26]
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.[27] 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.[27] So too did Tommaso Salvini's 1882 performance of Othello.[28] Years later, Stanislavski wrote that Salvini was the "finest representative" of the "art of experiencing" approach to acting.[29]
By the age of twenty-five, Stanislavski was well known as an amateur actor.[30] 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.[31] 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 exhibition rooms.[32] 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.[33] To research the curriculum of the society's drama school, Stanislavski spent the summer of 1888 studying the classes and performances of the Comédie-Française in Paris.[34] The society's school was to offer classes in dramatic art, the history of costume, make-up, drama, Russian literature, aesthetics, fencing and dancing.[35] The school opened on 8 October 1888 while the society itself was officially inaugurated on 3 November with a ceremony attended by Anton Chekhov.[36] Under the auspices of the society, Stanislavski performed in plays by Molière, Schiller, Pushkin, and Ostrovsky, as well as gaining his first experiences as a director.[37] 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.[38] He also became interested in the aesthetic theories of Vissarion Belinsky.[39] 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.[40] At this time Stanislavski warned in his diary:[41]
On 5 July 1889, Stanislavski married Lilina (the stage name of Maria Petrovna Perevostchikova), with whom he had just performed in Intrigue and Love.[42] Their first child, Xenia, died of pneumonia in May 1890 less than two months after she was born.[43] Their second daughter, Kira, was born on 21 July 1891.[44] In January 1893, Stanislavski's father died.[45] Their son Igor was born 14 September 1894.[46]
Stanislavski described his production of Leo Tolstoy's The Fruits of Enlightenment in February 1891 as his first fully independent directorial work.[49] 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.[50] The Ensemble's general approach included historical accuracy in set, props and costumes and complex crowd effects achieved through a tightly drilled rehearsal process.[51] Its use of off-stage sound to produce the illusion of a reality beyond the visible stage particularly impressed Stanislavski.[52] 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.[52] 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."[53] 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":[54]
Writing years later in his autobiography unified naturalistic aesthetic of the Ensemble's approach.[43]
It was at this time that Stanislavski first met Leo Tolstoy.[56] Tolstoy re-wrote the fourth act of his The Power of Darkness along the lines of Stanislavski's suggestions in 1896.[57] 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.[58] On the eve of creating the Moscow Art Theatre, Stanislavski wrote of the importance of simplicity, directness and accessibility in art.[59]
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.[60] 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.[61] "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."[62]
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.[63] He proposed to call them "open" or "accessible" theatres, in a bid to avoid alarming the authorities with their connection to the dangerously [66]
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, joint stock company.[74] Stanislavski would only ever invest an initial 10,000 roubles in the MAT.[75] 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.[76] The company had 13 shareholders, who signed an agreement on 10 April 1898.[77] 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.[77] 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.[78] Viktor Simov, whom Stanislavski had met in 1896, was engaged as the company's principal designer.[79]
In 1898, Stanislavski co-directed with Nemirovich the first of his productions of the work of Anton Chekhov. 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."[85] 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 threatened to have his name removed from the posters when Nemirovich refused his demand to postpone its opening by a week.[86] Stanislavski played Trigorin, Meyerhold played Constantin, 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 the time.[87] To commemorate this historic production, which gave the MAT its sense of identity, the company to this day bears the seagull as its emblem.[88] Stanislavski went on to direct the successful premières of Chekhov's other major plays: Uncle Vanya in 1899, Three Sisters in 1901, and The Cherry Orchard in 1904.[89] 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.[90] 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 fact that an officer is going and leaving his lady behind" (referring to the conclusion of Three Sisters).[91]
Stanislavski's 'system' is a systematic approach to training actors. Areas of study include 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."
Many actors routinely identify his system with Lee Strasberg's Method approach, an adaptation of Stanislavski's approach. Strasberg's adaptation relied exclusively on psychological techniques and contrasted sharply with Stanislavski's multivariant, holistic and psychophysical approach, which explores character and action both from the 'inside out' and the 'outside in'.[5] Stella Adler, who had studied with Stanislavski, offered an American adaptation of the technique much more in keeping with that of Stanislavski focusing on both inner and outer sources of experience in building a character.
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 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.
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.
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) 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. Sanford Meisner, another Group member, joined with Adler in opposing Strasberg's approach. This conflict was the partial cause of the Group Theatre's dissolution. After the Group broke up, Strasberg, Adler and Meisner each went on to found their own acting studios which trained many of the most prominent actors in American theater and film.[92]
Lord Laurence Olivier wrote that Stanislavski's My Life in Art was a source of great enlightenment" when he was a young actor.[93]
Sir John Gielgud said, "This director found time to explain a thousand things that have always troubled actors and fascinated students." Gielgud is also quoted as saying, "Stanislavski's now famous book is a contribution to the Theatre and its students all over the world."
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.
Eugene Onegin, Romanticism, Vladimir Nabokov, Russian Empire, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Macbeth, Titus Andronicus
Aesthetics, Wallenstein (play), Sturm und Drang, Immanuel Kant, Romanticism
Leo Tolstoy, Russian Empire, The Seagull, Ukraine, Uncle Vanya
World War II, Russia, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian language, Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic
New York City, Authority control, Russian Empire, Samuel Goldwyn, Kiev
Moscow, Arts, Italy, Yaroslavl, Ilya Repin
Émile Zola, Modernism, Evolution, Miss Julie, Theatre
Bertolt Brecht, Metaphysics, Sociology, Germany, Plot (narrative)
Russia, The Master and Margarita, Kiev, Moscow, Russian language