YEAR 10 DRAMA
RESEARCH ASSIGNEMT
- CONSTANTIN (KONSTANTIN) STANISLAVSKI
- JERZY GROTOWSKI
- VSEVOLD MEYERHOLD
CONSTANTIN (KONSTANTIN)
STANISLAVSKI
- Konstantin Sergeyevich Alekseev was born
on the 17th of January 1863 in Moscow,
Russia.
- He was a famous and very well known
man who grew up with wealth from his
family. His father Sergei Alekseev was a rich
industrialist.
- He attended ballet, puppetry and circus
acts and was very interested in
performances from when he was a child.
-He performed armature plays with his
brother and two sisters and learned how to
play the piano and to sing. By the age of 14
he got involved in acts in a theatre of
which his father built.
- Constantine joined his fathers business and
won a gold medal for his achievements and fortune making.
-In 1885 he begun studying theatre and arts and at the same time he
directed at the Maly theatre in Moscow.
- He partnered up with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and they bought the
Maly theatre to direct their own plays.
- Plays that they created were 'The Seagull', 'Uncle Vanya', 'The Three Sisters',
and 'The Cherry Orchard', the four big plays which remained in the repertoire
ever since.
-Constantine directed many theatre plays, acted and was an overall
talented man. All of the plays are still very well known to today.
- He was an inspiration for many people and a role model. He constructed his
own productions and followed his fathers footsteps.
- although his dad created the stage of which he practiced, Constantine still
started from scratch to create his own methods and criteria’s of the theatre.
- He passed away on the 7th of August 1938 from heart failure.
JERZY GROTOWSKI
- Jerzy Grotowski was born August 11 1933, in
Rzeszow, Poland.
- His father was a sculpture and painter and
Jerzy observed his art skills before his dad
went to off to fight for the country.
- He was in hospital in a serious condition at
the age of 16 for a year and began to think
about what he wanted to do when he got
out.
- He entered the Advanced School of
Dramatic Art in 1951 at the age of 18 to
become a director.
- In 1962 he visited China and became
interested in ancient art of opera.
- He went to teach drama as an actor in
Poland at the same theatre school as he
attended in 1960.
- In 1967 he produced ‘the constant prince’
which was said to be the most successful of
his work in the 20th century.
- Jerzy’s theatrical movement looked at theatre in a different way and didn’t
want to use makeup or costumes to bring out a characters personality but to
use direct lighting and shadows.
- He influenced U.S. experimental theatre movements, notably the Living
Theatre.
- He wrote a book ‘towards a Poor Theatre’ (1968)
- He emphasized the centrality of the actor and advocated minimal stage
sets.
- Grotowski died on January 14 1999.
VSEVOLD MEYERHOLD
- Birth name was Karl Theodor Kazimir Emil
Meyerhold and was born in Penza, Russia in
1874.
- Myerhold’s theatre career occurred from
1902 to 1906.
- He was a German protestant all of his life but
changed to Russian orthodox and renamed
himself Vsevold in memory of the Russian writer
Vsevolod Garshin.
- He had previously participated in a number
of amateur performances during high school
- At 21 he married a girl named Olga Munt and
had three girls within the next few years.
- Meyerhold worked for Imperial Theatres in
1907-1917.
From 1898 to 1902 Vsevold was accepted into
the Moscow Art Theatre in which he worked at.
- In July of 1939 Meyerhold accused of anti-governmental political activities
and was sentenced to death
- executed the day after being sentenced.
- More than 300 productions were created or directed by Meyerhold and he
performed in more than 100.
- Vsevold in theatre plays such as The Three Sisters, The Seagull, the Terrible
and many more.
Vsevold was known for his ideas of symbolism and bio-mechanics. His acting
skills and qualities are still used to this day and have left a huge impact on
theatre productions.
- Meyerhold was the most known to grasp on techniques and methods and
teach the people how to really emphasize acting and per sway the audients.
He showed actors whom played in his productions how to show the correct
emotion and physicalisation.
- Overall he has left his theatrical methods and studies with performers and
which now new comers to the theatre can learn and use for success.
- Died on 2 February 1940 in Moscow.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.theactorsstudio.org/studio-history/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Grotowski
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantin_Stanislavski
http://www.cothespians.com/constantinestanislavski.htm
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=10064081
http://filmtraveler.tripod.com/Grotowski.htm
http://owendaly.com/jeff/grotows1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vsevolod_Meyerhold
http://www.meyerhold.ru/en/biography/
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Vsevolod_Meyerhold.aspx
http://method.vtheatre.net/stanislavsky.html
http://www.kryingsky.com/Stan/Biography/bot.html