Konstantin Stanislavsky

Russian theater director and producer

• Born: January 17, 1863
• Birthplace: Moscow, Russia
• Died: August 7, 1938
• Place of death: Moscow, Soviet Union (now in Russia)

The founder (with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko) of the Moscow Art Theatre, director of the plays of Anton Chekhov, and writer of the most influential acting lessons in modern times, Stanislavsky is the founder of modern acting techniques. All modern actors, directors, and acting schools owe a great debt to Stanislavsky’s methods, which revolutionized the theater in the early twentieth century.

Early Life

Konstantin Stanislavsky (kohn-stahn-TEEN stan-ih-SLAHF-skee) was born into an affluent and cultured Russian family. He participated in amateur dramatic entertainments at his family’s estate from a very early age, putting on small plays and musical pieces with his brothers and sisters, for family guests. The Alekseyev Circle, a group of amateur players largely recruited from Stanislavsky’s immediate family, provided not only the entertainments for his parents and friends but also the first school of dramatic theory for young Stanislavsky. As visiting actors from Moscow and from foreign companies visited the country estate and participated in the productions (sometimes only as audience members), Stanislavsky gleaned more and more about their techniques for creating and sustaining stage characters. Their criticism after performance, whether positive or negative, helped Stanislavsky gradually form an idea about how to approach the actor’s art.

This combination of experiences was to feed him as he moved from family entertainment to amateur acting in other parts of Russia. His merchant “aristocracy” prevented his turning professional, but the amateur status did not deter him from playing important roles in major professional productions in his early life. It was necessary for Stanislavsky to assume a stage name to avoid embarrassment to his family; the profession of actor was held in low esteem in this period, especially in contrast to the prestige his father enjoyed as owner of a gold- and silver-thread manufacturing company.

A unique combination of happenstance and personal traits was to lead to the wide-ranging and even more widely accepted “method” of acting that Stanislavsky left as his heritage. His impressionable temperament, together with his absolutely ruthless ability to examine his own imperfections, caused him to examine in close study every actor he saw on stage or in society. He copied the external features of their acting styles and at the same time struggled with his external discipline to achieve the characterizations he saw and admired on stage. Rather than compromising his standards or causing him to give up, each frustrated attempt prodded Stanislavsky to try harder and harder to reconcile all the disparate influences bombarding him. Further, being of independent means, he did not have the economic burden of self-sustenance that plagues so many theater figures.

Stanislavsky’s first experiments with acting styles, as well as the forming and running of his first acting companies, have been well documented, especially in his own autobiography, My Life in Art (1924), more an explanation of his theater philosophies than a personal memoir. Subsequent biographers traced every detail of Stanislavsky’s early roles, the development of his talent and skills, and the reaction of audiences (often friends and family members) who saw him emerge as one of Moscow’s finest actors, amateur or professional.

One of the most influential factors in his development was the Meiningen players (whose 1890 tour Stanislavsky saw), a German acting company, from whom Stanislavsky learned the power of crowd scenes, the importance of overall mood, and the value of a rigid discipline among the actors. He quickly was to refine his own ideas, however, past the militaristic limitations of the company’s regisseur, Ludwig Kronegk.

Life’s Work

Stanislavsky’s work truly began with the formation of the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898, with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, a literary figure and regisseur already enjoying Moscow success. That partnership began on June 22, 1897, after a now-famous eighteen-hour marathon discussion of the principles of the ideal theater. The division of labor was interesting Stanislavsky was to deal with the artistic considerations while Nemirovich-Danchenko would be the businessman and the literary adviser (the term “dramaturge” expresses his contributions well). More accurately, each had veto power in his particular area, but their work was a cooperative collaboration from the start. For Stanislavsky, it was the culmination of several earlier attempts at producing and honing his skills as “director,” a term not fully in use at that time.

The Moscow Art Theatre was propelled by the combined efforts of these two men of the theater and one great Russian writer. The playwright whose name was to be permanently linked with the Moscow Art Theatre was Anton Chekhov, already a successful short-story writer and medical doctor. His plays, only five in number but central to modern drama from his time on, were produced at the Moscow Art Theatre in a way that demonstrated Stanislavsky’s approach to theater production and the new realistic acting style that was to become his trademark.

It was the Moscow Art Theatre’s production in 1898 of Chekhov’s Chayka (1896; The Seagull , 1909) that marked the beginning of its successful relationships with the playwright. This production was the second one for the play; it had failed in St. Petersburg when a talented but misguided group of professionals tried to find its essence without understanding that this new kind of writing called for a new kind of acting. The Moscow Art Theatre’s production, which did in fact combine the realistic acting style with the new play script, was moderately successful, but the marriage of literary idea and theatrical realization was so ideal that the theater took the seagull as its insignia. To this day, the stylized seagull figure from the first production flies on the flag over the theater. Subsequent productions of Chekhov’s plays, notably Dyadya Vanya (1897; Uncle Vanya, 1914) in 1899, Tri Sestry, (Three Sisters, 1920) in 1901, and Vishnyovy sad (The Cherry Orchard, 1908) in 1904, were unqualified critical successes.

Stanislavsky’s international popularity was determined by the many visitors to Moscow who saw and were astounded by his theater accomplishments. When the company toured (to Germany in 1906, and to the United States in 1922), an even larger audience appreciated the care, attention to detail, absolute discipline, and intelligence of the productions.

Stanislavsky’s accomplishments with the Moscow Art Theatre and Chekhov would have ensured him an international reputation all by themselves, even without his subsequent accomplishments with acting style, developed and practiced on stage, in rehearsals, and in the studios and classrooms of the theater. This style, actually a system of preparation, development, and performance, is usually referred to simply as The System (not to be confused with its American offshoot, The Method). It was designed gradually over the full length of Stanislavsky’s career; he constantly rethought, revised, and upgraded his ideas, working in notebooks.

His complete works, published in many volumes in Russian, have come to English-speaking audiences in bits and pieces, not necessarily in the order of their composition but roughly in the order of their intended application by the individual actor. In their first English edition, they are An Actor Prepares (1936), Building a Character (1949), Stanislavski’s Legacy (1958), and Creating a Role (1961). This series of theoretical speculations, illustrated and demonstrated out of Stanislavsky’s own theater experiences, is considered a must-read for all modern actors. The books deal with each distinct step in the actor’s art: preparing one’s body, voice, and mind for roles in general, constructing a characterization from the clues of the text, and working in an actual production. Together with his analytical midlife autobiography, My Life in Art, these books constitute the “bible” of acting, the Stanislavsky System.

The American tour marked a major schism in the Moscow Art Theatre that was not so much artistic as it was geographic. Some of Stanislavsky’s best actors chose to stay behind and open schools of acting and directing in New York. As a result, a second and third generation of Stanislavsky’s ideas were spread by his own students, who naturally altered the basic principles with refinements of their own, sometimes adding a vocabulary that clarified for some and obfuscated for others the original intent of the acting system Stanislavsky propounded.

Stanislavsky ended his own acting career in 1928 but actively continued to revise his theories right up to his death in 1938. Near his death, he had been discussing ideas with one of his students, Vsevolod Meyerhold, whose earlier experiments with expressionist stage techniques had temporarily estranged him from his teacher. On the day Stanislavsky died, his thoughts were on Nemirovich-Danchenko, also estranged from him over aesthetic differences. Despite these differences, Stanislavsky was deeply respected by all of his peers for his monumental contributions to and love of his art and his uncompromising zeal for truth in the theater.

Significance

Acting teachers can trace a direct line through the American acting schools and companies such as the Actors Studio and the Group Theatre, through the Russian students of Stanislavsky such as Michael Chekhov (Anton Chekhov’s nephew) and Richard Boleslavsky, back to the Moscow Art Theatre’s American and European tours of that period. N. M. Gorchakov took elaborate notes of Stanislavsky’s directing methods at the height of his powers; these, too, are studied by today’s student directors and teachers, whose mentors in turn, such as Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg, owe a great debt to their exposure to the Moscow Art Theatre.

The Stanislavsky heritage, as Christine Edwards describes it in her book of that name, is the belief “that the actor must experience real emotion, that he must identify with the character he is portraying, that he may use his own past emotional experiences, and above all, that he must learn to speak and behave naturally, as a human being in life.” The fact that it is inconceivable to challenge such a statement today is convincing testament to the ubiquitous influences of Stanislavsky on modern theater.

Bibliography

Benedetti, Jean. Stanislavski: An Introduction. New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1982. A slim, handy introduction to The System, weaving biographical material into an explanation of how the system functions. Of value to the actor looking for an entry into the complexities of the multivolume work of Stanislavsky himself. Includes a chronology, an index, and a list of topics discussed in the text.

Edwards, Christine. The Stanislavsky Heritage: Its Contribution to the Russian and American Theatre. New York: New York University Press, 1965. Puts Stanislavsky’s work in the context of two important movements: traditional Russian stage practice and the emerging and developing American theater in the first half of the twentieth century. The very considerable influence of The System on the American “method” is well chronicled here. Includes a bibliography, an appendix, and an index.

Leach, Robert. Makers of Modern Theatre: An Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2004. Examines the work of Stanislavsky and three others who were influential in the history of twentieth century theater. Examines the nature of Stanislavsky’s life and times, artistic legacy, dramatic philosophy and practices, and contemporary perspectives of his work and ideas.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Stanislavsky and Meyerhold. New York: P. Lang, 2003. Chronicles the parallel careers of the two artists, focusing on the development of their acting methods.

Magarshack, David. Stanislavsky: A Life. London: Macgibbon & Kee, 1950. Still the authoritative study, not only of Stanislavsky but also of the theater itself; contains a good balance of personal and professional information and is careful in the details of production. Particularly valuable is the discussion of how Stanislavsky gradually found the vocabulary to express and teach his acting system. Includes twenty illustrations and an index.

Merlin, Bella. Konstantin Stanislavsky. New York: Routledge, 2003. A concise yet effective overview of Stanislavsky’s influence, life, and ideas about acting.

Nemirovich-Danchenko, Vladimir. My Life in the Russian Theatre. Translated by John Cournos. New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1968. Stanislavsky always insisted that the Moscow Art Theatre was founded by both him and Nemirovich-Danchenko. This autobiography puts the dramaturge’s experiences in the context of a longer, more varied career. Literary and sophisticated compared with Stanislavsky’s autobiography.

Sayler, Oliver M. Inside the Moscow Art Theater. Reprint. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1970. This study was conducted during the height of Stanislavsky’s success and after two American tours. Following a preliminary chapter on the effect of these tours on the temperament of the company, Sayler offers the most complete and respectful record in print of the theater’s accomplishments. Full informative photographs and illustrations throughout, including marvelous portraits of leading actors, valuable production stills, a flowchart of the management, and an index.

Senelick, Laurence. Gordon Craig’s Moscow Hamlet: A Reconstruction. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982. A book-length examination of the monumental production at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1912, in which Stanislavsky and Edward Gordon Craig, two geniuses of the modern theater, met and worked together in what should have been but could never be the ideal collaboration. An excellent way to understand Stanislavsky’s way of working on classics. Includes illustrations, two appendixes, notes, a bibliography, and an index.

Wiles, Timothy J. The Theater Event: Modern Theories of Performance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. One-third of this important study of modern performance theories is dedicated to Stanislavsky, especially his work on Chekhov’s The Three Sisters. Examines the common ground between Stanislavsky’s system and Chekhov’s intentions; Wiles believes Chekhov may have feared that the Moscow Art Theatre and Stanislavsky “constantly misinterpreted” his plays, turning his comedies into tragedies.