lect14
Class 14
Theater
K.D. Stanislavsky--the Founder of the Russian Theater.
Post-Revolutionary Theater in Russia.
--Lunacharskiy, appointed Commissar of Enlightenment,
Head of Narkompros placed the former Imperial theaters
under the state control;
--he expressed a preference for "realism" in theatrical performance;
--immediately after the October Revolution, many theater
directors supported the revolutionary cause, e.g. Meyerhold, Eisenstein,
the group Theatrical October--all rejected the theater of the past;
--New plays/themes: The Storming of the Winter Palace, etc.;
--the Russian theater was dominated by conflicting theories regarding
the relationship between theater and the spectator:
(1) based on the concept of demonstration "predstavlenie"
(2) based on the concept of experience "perezhivanie";
--in the Soviet Union, the theater depended on ideology;
--has always functioned as a tool for propaganda;
--Lenin's vision: the theater should be experimental in form and politically engaged;
--Stalin's vision: the theater should create on stage an illusion of a perfect society;
--Khrushchev's and Gorbachev's vision: the theater should expose
the errors, criticize in order to improve;
-The Moscow Art Theater was founded in 1898 by
Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Ivanovich Nemirovich-Danchenko
--a public theater that presented contemporary drama using new,
naturalistic methods of acting and staging;
--opened with a historically accurate production of Count Aleksei Tolstoi's play
about Ivan the Terrible,
-- the new group achieved its first notable success with
Anton Chekhov's The Seagull (1898), a contemporary play perfectly
suited to realizing the untheatrical reality that had previously been
lacking from the stage.
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attained its ideal, i.e --produced a stunning representation of contemporary
life with its lengthy pauses and apparently aimless dialogue;
--The seagull emblem of the Moscow Art Theater commemorates
this early success, as well as Chekhov's long subsequent
association with the theater.
--The theater continued to present the dramatic avant-garde, staging
Gorky's hugely influential The Lower Depths in 1902-03 and plays by
other innovative contemporaries as Maeterlinck, Andreyev,
Hauptmann, and Ostrovsky.
--it received official support after the Russian Revolution
and in the early 1920s made an enthusiastically received tour of Europe
and the United States.
--During subsequent decades it was left relatively free of interference
by the Soviet government and was allowed to tour repeatedly.
--Its influence on the theater worldwide has been enormous.
--In the United States the Group Theater and its descendants are all
children of the Moscow Art Theater (Grolier MM Enciclopedia, 1999)
Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863-1938)
His original name was Alekseyev
--establishing his "method" for teaching actors to realize
a greater degree of verisimilitude "pravdopodobie" on the stage,
--great Russian actor, producer, and director
--in his early career he was associated with the semiprofessional
Society for Art and Literature, both as an actor of classic roles
and as an innovative producer.
--In 1897, together with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko,
Stanislavsky founded the Moscow Art Theater, dedicated
to bringing art to a larger public and to the more realistic (or truthful)
presentation of new plays.
-- the absence of dramatic gesture, rhetorical declamation, and purposeful plot
in Chekhov's plays--including also Uncle Vanya (1899), The Three Sisters (1901),
and The Cherry Orchard (1904), all produced by the Moscow Art Theater
demanded new acting techniques, which Stanislavsky believed must be
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discovered by the actor in the "indirect action" and
"subtext" of the dialogue.
--Method: by putting himself or herself in the character's place, the actor was
to experience the character's internal emotions;
As director he used sounds or background music to create atmosphere.
Important plays directed by Stanislavsky included Ostrovsky's
Snow Maiden (1900), Ibsen's An Enemy of the People (1900-01),
Gorky's The Lower Depths (1902);
--following the Bolshevik revolution, the theater staged Soviet plays as well;
Stanislavsky sponsored three successive studios at the Art Theater,
nurturing the talents of Vsevolod Meyerhold and Eugene Vakhtangov,
who were to make their own contributions to modern theater, and
he headed the Opera Studio.
--Stanislavsky's theories are contained in My Life in Art (1924),
written in English while touring the United States,
An Actor Prepares (1926; Eng. trans., 1948),
Building a Character (Eng. trans., 1949), and
Creating a Role (Eng. trans., 1961).
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