Stanislavsky and Chekhov: A Collaboration

STANISLAVSKY AND CHEKHOV: A COLLABORATION

One of ten children, Konstantin Semiyonivich was born in 1863 to Semiyon and Elizavetta Alexeiev of Moscow. Semiyon was the son of a successful textile merchant who made gold and silver thread for the clergy and nobility. Family folklore has it that Stanislavsky’s grandfather was a serf who made enough money selling peas (or money) to buy his freedom, and by age 22, he was wealthy man. Elizavetta was the indiscretion of a nobleman and an actress of little talent and less intellect. Though tempestuous and neurotic, she lavished attention on all her children and they were all encouraged to develop their particular talents. Konstantin, or Kostiya, as he was affectionately known, didn’t display any particular talent, overshadowed by the talented tribe of Alexeiev painters, writers, dancers and musicians.

The Alexeievs were avid theater-goers and Kostiya was a particular fan of the circus and ballet. His favorite ballerina was Stanislavskayia. Their nanny developed pantomime skits with the children in the small family theater and Kostiya began to show considerable talent in his roles. When he was six, one role he variously refers to in his dairies was of Grandfather Frost, where instead of pretending to light a small fire, he really lit one, nearly burning down the house. Thus the roots of theatrical realism and Method Acting were born. The Alexeiev Circle produced several theatrical productions (as well as notebooks) a year for family and an extensive circle of friends and business associates.

In 1886, the Alexeiev Circle came to a close; siblings married or moved on; Konstantin Alexeiev was involved with several amateur theater companies. He joined the Moscow Amateur Music and Drama Circle where he received favorable notice in Gogol’s Inspector General. Billed as Mr. K A v for his family’s sake, and not to upset their business connections, he resisted becoming a professional actor because of the negative social stigma associated with professional acting. However, he was so badly bitten by the stage bug, he appeared in dicey vaudeville and burlesque productions as well as the State Theater, the Mali—this, after his father spotted him in an unsavory play and gave him an ultimatum: that if he must act, to at least pick reputable theaters. During this time, the State had a monopoly on professional theaters and imposed severe censorship restrictions. There was little more freedom to be had in amateur theatrical circles.

During 1887, Stanislavsky worked with a brilliant director from the foremost theater in Russia, the Mali Theater. Fedotov was a founding member of Belenski’s intelligencia, a polemic elite who saw the artist’s role to modernize and liberalize art and culture from a stagnant and repressive society. Under Fedotov’s innovative direction, Konstantin realized there could be no going back to the old ways of acting (the rant & rhetoric school).

In 1889, Stanislavsky formed a theater based on Belinski and Gogol’s ideals. With a $30,000 ruble windfall from the Alexeiev Company, he founded The Society of Art and Literature—with little thought how it would be funded in future, let alone, for the next ten years. Their first piece by Dostoyevsky was held up by the censors, so Pushkin’s The Miserly Knight was their first production. Kostiya was no personality actor, and to his chagrin, he was given the character role of Baron in The Miserly Knight. To get into character, he had a friend lock him in a dungeon, but all he got was ill; he realized he needed a theatrical focus, not just physical surroundings. However, his role as Baron got rave reviews.

In 1889, Stanislavsky performed at least eight roles; and married his leading lady, Lilina. Thereafter, he averaged four roles a year for the rest of his life, often directing as many plays—as well as being an acting coach, lecturer, and perennial fund-raiser. During this time, he took up the stage name Stanislavsky, to protect his family businessr eputation. Also during this fruitful time, he had two children. In 1895, he was Smirnov in Chekhov’s The Bear. This was his first connection with Chekhov, a productive (if tempestuous) collaborative relationship which would change the shape of theater to encompass theatrical realism.

In 1898, in collaboration with director Nemirovich-Danchenko, a former war corespondent, Stanislavsky founded the famous Moscow Art Theater (MAT). The MAT’s extraordinary success was due, in part, to their use of ensemble acting instead of big name stars, and to the development of realism in theater. Stanislavsky had been on stage most of his life, and had seen all the major theatrical production in Moscow, as well as numerous productions in France, Austria and Germany where his father’s business often took the family.

Stanislavsky realized that if theater was going to be meaningful, a clear break with tradition was not only necessary, “it needed to move beyond the external representation that acting had been.” (PBS Online, American Masters; PBS.org). Actors needed to bring their own character and “emotional memory” to the stage. During the next forty years, he created an approach to theatrical productions that “forefronted the psychological aspects of acting.” (Ibid). The “System,” as it was called in Europe, or the “Method” as it was called in America, held that “an actor’s main responsibility was to be believed (rather than recognized or understood).” (Ibid.)

Stanislavsky’s sensational production of The Seagull astounded theater-goers—who well used to the pompous rhetorical style of personality actors—they had never before seen such psychological use of dialogue, realistic action and sound utilized as an integral part of a play. Favorable word got back to Chekhov in the Crimea but he never saw the production. When Chekhov came to see Stanislavsky in Moscow, Kostiya hastily mounted a production of The Seagull but Chekhov was not impressed. He liked the idea of mise-en-scène, but insisted that The Seagull was a comedy, not melodrama. He gave his next play, Uncle Vanya to the official theater, the Mali. Stanislavsky was bitter. Gorky replied that on a bad day, Chekhov hated everyone. (His mood swings due to undiagnosed tuberculosis? He died in 1904). Nonetheless, a strong relationship was forged, not only with Stanislavsky, but with one of his leading actresses, Olga Knipper, whom Chekhov married in 1901.

Stanislavsky’s innovative interpretations of Chekhov’s plays made Chekhov a popular playwright, and Chekhov’s intimate, realistic plays about ordinary (middle class) people changed the shape and subject matter of theater from that of the aggrandizement of classical or historical subject matter to that of the individual and the emotional inner landscape of the mind and the psychological realm.

Perhaps as a reaction to industrialism, a parallel example of the emotional climate that was sweeping Europe, is graphically exemplified in painting where the shift from classical subject matter of the Salon (Davíd’s neoclassical Oath of the Horatii), to the emotional realm of the individual is best exemplified by renegade Impressionists (Manet’s Odalisque—a real prostitute!) Turgenev’s A Month in the Country, written in the 1850s, and ignored by a baffled audience—a forerunner of this bold new theater style,—was rehabilitated by Stanislavsky in 1909. (Stanislavsky played Rakitin.)

A brief list of Stanislavsky’s Chekhovian roles produced at the MAT include Trigorin in Chekhov’s The Seagull (1898); Astrov in Uncle Vanya (1899), Chekhov thought Astrov was Stanislavsky’s finest role; and Vershinin in Three Sisters (1901); he appeared as Satin in Gorky’s Lower Depths (1902) (Gorky was a close friend of Chekhov’s); and Gaev in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (1904). He did many of these roles when he was on tour.

In 1905, the Russian Revolution, a general strike and civil unrest weren’t good for theater but MAT managed to keep its doors open—barely. Chekhov’s triple bill including The Seagull sensationally flopped because the subject matter didn’t fit the times; however Gorky was always popular draw at the box office. Increasing financial difficulties were somewhat alleviated with MAT’s first foreign tour to Berlin in 1906; Uncle Vanya was a real success, but in Vienna, Three Sisters was a flop. Stanislavsky started to work on his first draft on a Manual on Dramatic Art, taken from his production notebooks, which he began to shape into several manuscripts around 1901.

In 1907 Stanislavsky had a major falling out with Nemirovich over directing Maeterlinck’s daring new play, A Blue Bird (based on realism). After some 150 rehearsals, the play still wasn’t ready to be staged and Nemirovich cracked, “we’re all pretending we’re cats and dogs or cockerels at rehearsal.” During this time, Konstantin met Isadora Duncan and founded an acting school based on his ideas.

At the onset of W.W.I, Stanislavsky was stranded in Germany, and in 1915-17, after a private revolution, Stanislavsky & Nemirovich parted company but the MAT continued to function as three entities: Nemirovich’s Moscow base, a provincial touring company and the European touring company which Stanislavsky headed up.

In 1917, the Russian Revolution liberated privately-owned business; Stanislavsky’s family business was converted into a steel cable manufacturing; Stanislavsky’s only salary was from the theater. Luckily, he had Lenin’s ear and support. In 1919, Russian theaters were “reorganized” and the new proletariat audiences had to be trained how to behave in a theater. Among other things, Stanislavsky had to chide them to be quiet during performances and to remove their hats.

During the turbulent years 1922 to 1925, Stanislavsky’s MAT troupe was on tour throughout Europe and America: Zagreb, Berlin, Paris (where the sets almost didn’t arrive; the lighting was full up but the audience was electrified by the performances), Vienna (where MAT again flopped—maybe they just didn’t like Chekhov). Stanislavsky was a sensation in America, where acting was sill largely done in the old style. John Barrymore was elated by Stanislavsky’s performances of Chekhov, claiming that it was the greatest theatrical experience of his life. A young Lee Strasberg, was so elated that he became an actor. (Strasberg later co-found the Actors’ Studio with Robert Lewis where Stanislavsky’s method acting was employed: it revolutionized theater and cinema in the west. Disciples who studied with Stanislavsky in Moscow included Stella Adler her husband Harold Clurman, Stanford Meisner, and Isadora Duncan; other noted method actors include Marlon Brando and Gregory Peck.)

As a result of Stanislavsky’s American success, in 1922, Little, Brown & Co., contracted Stanislavsky to write an autobiography, My Life in Art, which was botched, because he was literally writing it between shows while on the transatlantic road. Meanwhile back in Moscow, it was a changed world; Lenin was dead; the Soviet Union was formed.

In 1925, My Life in Art was finally published in Russian. At one point, Stanislavsky had seven different manuscripts circulating; what he needed was a good editor. Instead, he fell victim to poor western editors who knew little or no Russian; hence the confusion over what his teachings are on “method acting.” Stanislavsky signed over literary executive power to an American, Elizabeth Hapgood, who had translated and edited the American manuscript in 1922, but she didn’t know diddlysquat about theater. In 1936, his manual, An Actor Prepares, was finally published in English but the 14-year-hiatus (17 years in Russia) between parts 1 and 2 of the notebooks was too long a time wait, hence the over-emphaisis on Stanislavsky’s naturalism which he did not consider the central focus of his work.

And Stanislavsky was sacked by Nemerovich as Rostanev in Dostoyevsky’s Village of Stepenchikovo, he considered it to be his own personal tragedy. He never again took on a new character role. In 1928, after suffering a massive heart attack while on-stage, Stanislavsky collapsed while playing the role of Vershinin in Three Sisters. The idea of realism had taken such root that the audience thought it was all part of the act. Stanislavsky later quipped, “You can die on-stage but you can’t miss an entrance.”

Stanislavsky retired from acting but not directing. During his lifetime, he appeared in over 100 roles. From Othello, Malvolio, Tzar Ivan, to Satin; Stanislavsky also directed Molière, Shakespeare, Bizet, Chekhov, Gorky, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Ibsen, and Pushkin. During 1930-36 he directed some nine plays, many of which were musicals or operas. Because opera students had no theatrical training, it proved to be an ideal training ground for Stanislavsky to test his acting theories. Stanislavsky left behinds a mass of unrevised manuscripts including An Actor’s Work on Himself, II, and An Actor’s Work on a Role. “Stanislavsky has been used, rejigged and modified with varying degrees of intelligence or seriousness.... What is important is the spirit of honest inquiry, the asking of simple questions, why? what for? and that acknowledgment that with every play, every role, the process begins again.” (P. 324, Benedetti, Jean, Stanislavsky: A Biography, (1998) Richard Clay, Ltd., GB).

In 1938, Stanislavsky died of heart failure and is buried in the New Maiden Monastery in Central Moscow, where all of Russia’s elite are laid to rest. One corner of the graveyard is reserved for members of the original Moscow Art Company—including Chekhov. In the winter of 1989, one hundred years after Stanislavsky had founded the Moscow Art Theater, I laid red carnations on Chekhov and Stanislavsky’s graves. I imagined another kind of collaboration going on beneath that fresh blanket of snow.



BIBLIOGRAPHY

Benedetti, Jean, Stanislavsky: A Biography, (1998) Richard Clay Ltd., GB.

Jones, David R., Great Actors at Work

(unknown—I tried internet search; it’s a xerox fron Brighde Mullins)

Gilman, Richard, Chekhov’s Plays: An Opening into Eternity (1995) Yale.

Schmidt, Paul, The Plays of Chekhov (1997) HarperCollins.

American Masters at website: www.pbs.org

Nov. 26, 2002
CW 810, Thorstenson
Oral Presentation