Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski (; ; ; 7 August 1938) was a seminal Russian and Soviet theatre practitioner. He was widely recognized as an outstanding character actor, and the many productions that he directed garnered him a reputation as one of the leading theatre directors of his generation.Benedetti (1999b, 254), Carnicke (2000, 12), Leach (2004, 14), and Milling and Ley (2001, 1). His principal fame and influence, however, rests on his "system" of actor training, preparation, and rehearsal technique.Carnicke (2000, 16), Golub (1998a, 1032), and Milling and Ley (2001, 1).
Stanislavski (his stage name) performed and directed as an amateur until the age of 33, when he co-founded the world-famous Moscow Art Theatre (MAT) company with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, following a legendary 18-hour discussion.Benedetti (1999a, 59), Braun (1982, 59), Carnicke (2000, 11–12), and Worrall (1996, 43). Its influential tours of Europe (1906) and the US (1923–24), and its landmark productions of The Seagull (1898) and Hamlet (1911–12), established his reputation and opened new possibilities for the art of the theatre.Benedetti (1999a, 165), Carnicke (2000, 12), Gauss (1999, 1), Gordon (2006, 42), and Milling and Ley (2001, 13–14). By means of the MAT, Stanislavski was instrumental in promoting the new Russian drama of his day—principally the work of Anton Chekhov, Maxim Gorky, and Mikhail Bulgakov—to audiences in Moscow and around the world; he also staged acclaimed productions of a wide range of classical Russian and European plays.Carnicke (2000, 12–16, 29–33) and Gordon (2006, 42).
He collaborated with the director and designer Edward Gordon Craig and was formative in the development of several other major practitioners, including Vsevolod Meyerhold (whom Stanislavski considered his "sole heir in the theatre"), Yevgeny Vakhtangov, and Michael Chekhov.Bablet (1962, 133–158), Benedetti (1999a, 156, 188–211, 368–373), Braun (1995, 27–29), Roach (1985, 215–216), Rudnitsky (1981, 56), and Taxidou (1998, 66–69). At the MAT's 30th anniversary celebrations in 1928, a massive heart attack on-stage put an end to his acting career (though he waited until the curtain fell before seeking medical assistance).Benedetti (1999a, 317) and Magarshack (1950, 378). He continued to direct, teach, and write about acting until his death a few weeks before the publication of the first volume of his life's great work, the acting manual An Actor's Work (1938).Benedetti (1999a, 374–375) and Magarshack (1950, 404). He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour and the Order of Lenin and was the first to be granted the title of People's Artist of the USSR.Carnicke (1998, 33), Golub (1998a, 1033), and Magarshack (1950, 385, 396).
Stanislavski wrote that "there is nothing more tedious than an actor's biography" and that "actors should be banned from talking about themselves".From a note written by Stanislavski in 1911, quoted by Benedetti (1999a, 289). At the request of a US publisher, however, he reluctantly agreed to write his autobiography, My Life in Art (first published in English in 1924 and a revised, Russian-language edition in 1926), though its account of his artistic development is not always accurate.Benedetti (1989, 1) and (1999a, xiv, 288), Carnicke (1998, 76), and Magarshack (1950, 367). Three English-language biographies have been published: David Magarshack's Stanislavsky: A Life (1950); Jean Benedetti's Stanislavski: His Life and Art (1988, revised and expanded 1999).Benedetti (1999a) and Magarshack (1950). and Nikolai M Gorchakov's "Stanislavsky Directs" (1954). An out-of-print English translation of Elena Poliakova's 1977 Russian biography of Stanislavski was also published in 1982.
Overview of the system
Stanislavski subjected his acting and direction to a rigorous process of artistic self-analysis and reflection.Benedetti (1989, 1) and (2005, 109), Gordon (2006, 40–41), and Milling and Ley (2001, 3–5). His system of acting developed out of his persistent efforts to remove the blocks that he encountered in his performances, beginning with a major crisis in 1906.Benedetti (1989, 1), Gordon (2006, 42–43), and Roach (1985, 204). He produced his early work using an external, director-centred technique that strove for an organic unity of all its elements—in each production he planned the interpretation of every role, blocking, and the mise-en-scène in detail in advance.Benedetti (1989, 18, 22–23), (1999a, 42), and (1999b, 257), Carnicke (2000, 29), Gordon (2006, 40–42), Leach (2004, 14), and Magarshack (1950, 73–74). As Carnicke emphasises, Stanislavski's early prompt-books, such as that for the production of The Seagull in 1898, "describe movements, gestures, mise en scène, not inner action and subtext" (2000, 29). The principle of a unity of all elements (or what Richard Wagner called a Gesamtkunstwerk) survived into Stanislavski's system, while the exclusively external technique did not; although his work shifted from a director-centred to an actor-centred approach, his system nonetheless valorises the absolute authority of the director. He also introduced into the production process a period of discussion and detailed analysis of the play by the cast.Milling and Ley (2001, 5). Stanislavski and Nemirovich found they had this practice in common during their legendary 18-hour conversation that led to the establishment of the MAT. Despite the success that this approach brought, particularly with his Naturalistic stagings of the plays of Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky, Stanislavski remained dissatisfied.Bablet (1962, 134), Benedetti (1989, 23–26) and (1999a, 130), and Gordon (2006, 37–42). Carnicke emphasises the fact that Stanislavski's great productions of Chekhov's plays were staged without the use of the system (2000, 29).
Both his struggles with Chekhov's drama (out of which his notion of subtext emerged) and his experiments with Symbolism encouraged a greater attention to "inner action" and a more intensive investigation of the actor's process.Benedetti (1989, 25–39) and (1999a, part two), Braun (1982, 62–63), Carnicke (1998, 29) and (2000, 21–22, 29–30, 33), and Gordon (2006, 41–45). For an explanation of "inner action", see Stanislavski (1957, 136); for subtext, see Stanislavski (1938, 402–413). He began to develop the more actor-centred techniques of "psychological realism" and his focus shifted from his productions to rehearsal process and pedagogy.Benedetti (1989, 30) and (1999a, 181, 185–187), Counsell (1996, 24–27), Gordon (2006, 37–38), Magarshack (1950, 294, 305), and Milling and Ley (2001, 2). He pioneered the use of theatre studios as a laboratory in which to innovate actor training and to experiment with new forms of theatre.Carnicke (2000, 13), Gauss (1999, 3), Gordon (2006, 45–46), Milling and Ley (2001, 6), and Rudnitsky (1981, 56). Stanislavski organised his techniques into a coherent, systematic methodology, which built on three major strands of influence: (1) the director-centred, unified aesthetic and disciplined, ensemble approach of the Meiningen company; (2) the actor-centred realism of the Maly; and (3) the Naturalistic staging of Antoine and the independent theatre movement.Benedetti (1989, 5–11, 15, 18) and (1999b, 254), Braun (1982, 59), Carnicke (2000, 13, 16, 29), Counsell (1996, 24), Gordon (2006, 38, 40–41), and Innes (2000, 53–54).
The system cultivates what Stanislavski calls the "art of experiencing" (to which he contrasts the "art of representation").Benedetti (1999a, 201), Carnicke (2000, 17), and Stanislavski (1938, 16–36). Stanislavski's "art of representation" corresponds to Mikhail Shchepkin's "actor of reason" and his "art of experiencing" corresponds to Shchepkin's "actor of feeling"; see Benedetti (1999a, 202). It mobilises the actor's conscious thought and will to activate other, less-controllable psychological processes—such as emotional experience and subconscious behaviour—sympathetically and indirectly.Benedetti (1999a, 170). In rehearsal, the actor searches for inner motives to justify action and the definition of what the character seeks to achieve at any given moment (a "task").Benedetti (1999a, 182–183). Stanislavski's earliest reference to his system appears in 1909, the same year that he first incorporated it into his rehearsal process.Carnicke (1998, 72) and Whyman (2008, 262). The MAT adopted it as its official rehearsal method in 1911.Milling and Ley (2001, 6).
Later, Stanislavski further elaborated the system with a more physically grounded rehearsal process that came to be known as the "Method of Physical Action".Benedetti (1999a, 325, 360) and (2005, 121) and Roach (1985, 197–198, 205, 211–215). The term "Method of Physical Action" was applied to this rehearsal process after Stanislavski's death. Benedetti indicates that though Stanislavski had developed it since 1916, he first explored it practically in the early 1930s; see (1998, 104) and (1999a, 356, 358). Gordon argues the shift in working methods happened during the 1920s (2006, 49–55). Vasili Toporkov, an actor who trained under Stanislavski in this approach, provides in his Stanislavski in Rehearsal (2004) a detailed account of the Method of Physical Action at work in Stanislavski's rehearsals. Minimising at-the-table discussions, he now encouraged an "active analysis", in which the sequence of dramatic situations is improvised.Benedetti (1999a, 355–256), Carnicke (2000, 32–33), Leach (2004, 29), Magarshack (1950, 373–375), and Whyman (2008, 242). "The best analysis of a play", Stanislavski argued, "is to take action in the given circumstances."Quoted by Carnicke (1998, 156). Stanislavski continues: "For in the process of action the actor gradually obtains the mastery over the inner incentives of the actions of the character he is representing, evoking in himself the emotions and thoughts which resulted in those actions. In such a case, an actor not only understands his part, but also feels it, and that is the most important thing in creative work on the stage"; quoted by Magarshack (1950, 375).
Just as the First Studio, led by his assistant and close friend Leopold Sulerzhitsky, had provided the forum in which he developed his initial ideas for the system during the 1910s, he hoped to secure his final legacy by opening another studio in 1935, in which the Method of Physical Action would be taught.Benedetti (1999a, 359–360), Golub (1998a, 1033), Magarshack (1950, 387–391), and Whyman (2008, 136). The Opera-Dramatic Studio embodied the most complete implementation of the training exercises described in his manuals.Benedetti (1998, xii) and (1999a, 359–363) and Magarshack (1950, 387–391), and Whyman (2008, 136). Benedetti argues that the course at the Opera-Dramatic Studio is "Stanislavski's true testament". His book Stanislavski and the Actor (1998) offers a reconstruction of the studio's course. Meanwhile, the transmission of his earlier work via the students of the First Studio was revolutionising acting in the West.Carnicke (1998, 1, 167) and (2000, 14), Counsell (1996, 24–25), Golub (1998a, 1032), Gordon (2006, 71–72), Leach (2004, 29), and Milling and Ley (2001, 1–2). With the arrival of Socialist realism in the USSR, the MAT and Stanislavski's system were enthroned as exemplary models.Benedetti (1999a, 354–355), Carnicke (1998, 78, 80) and (2000, 14), and Milling and Ley (2001, 2).
Family background and early influences