“Neither the set, nor the director, nor the designer can carry the play… it is in the hands of the actor.”

Moscow Art Theatre Ensemble Training

1897 met Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko to discuss opening a popular theatre, or a theatre everyone could afford. Initially called "The Moscow Public-Accessible Theatre", later renamed The Moscow Art Theatre. 

• • Ensemble-based work, more of a school than a theater.  Open rehearsals (public could watch). Extensive reading and research.  Detailed rehearsals in which the action was defined in tablework.  Long rehearsals. Employed improvisation as tool to understand character.

  • "Tolstoy's demand for simplicity, directness, and accessibility in art"

  • Vsevolod Meyerhold, Stanislavski's protege

1898, The Seagull

• • • Playwright Anton Chekhov.  Son of a serf.  Writer of short stories and plays. 

      • Trained to be a doctor, started writing short stories.

      • Real life was about trivialities: master of subtext. 

    • 80 hours of rehearsal, still felt under-rehearsed by Stan

    • Lead played by Vsevold Meyerhold with the line, "We need new forms!"

    • “delicate representation of everyday life”, play of ensemble

    • Matched the “despondent uncertainty” mood of Russian intelligentsia of the time

SIGNIFICANT PRODUCTIONS

Hamlet @ MAT

• Legitimate to ignore stage directions of playwrights

• Directorial collaboration with Edward Gordon Craig.  Pictured a symbolist drama, a dreamlike vision from the POV of Hamlet (contrasting with Stan’s vision)

• Stanislavski shifts from Naturalistic external surface to character subtext

• Grabbed international attention, revolutionized staging of Shakespeare’s plays

First Studio, 1912: Founding members.  Actors trained in stage technique, voice and speech, movement, dance.  They focused on experimentation, improvisation, self-discovery:

• Yevgeny Vakhtangov

• Michael Chekhov

• Richard Boleslavsky

• Maria Ouspenskaya

• Vsevold Meierhold

Second Studio, 1916: Pedagogical work; developed techniques for An Actor’s Work.  As Stan continued to evolve past Realism, students were continuing to evolve to find the technique.  

Michael Chekhov, Nephew of Anton.  Author of To The Actor.  Created the concepts of Psychological Gesture, Centers of Attention, Creative Individuality (pieces of his technique to find empathy).   Another defining difference (attributed to Ragnar Freidank's lecture to the left) is when Stan focuses on the actor within the character, Chekhov felt "the technique is there so the actor can forget himself... actor [looks] for something bigger than he" (Freidank).  If there's distance between you and the character, you need technique to bridge the gap. 

In a time where America was wrangling with labor dispute, wealth disparity, unequal states of living, The Group's intent was to produce plays dealing with modern, important, social issues.   Stan's Method of acting and directing created passion, fervor, and empathy for characters onstage.  Later, members would found The Actors Studio, est. 1947 (Robert Lewis, Elia Kazan, Cheryl Crawford).  In 1951 Strasberg took over and began teaching The Method.

Lee Strasberg, “The Father of Method Acting in America”

• He continued to develop the use of improvisation and affective memory where the actor would recall the physical and personal circumstances surrounding an intensely emotional experience in actor’s past.  Known  for saying, “Take a minute!”  Called Emotional Recall. 

• Sensory imagination: use of recall of physical sensations surrounding emotional events, trigger emotion 

• Tennessee Williams: “They act from the inside out.  They communicate emotions they really feel."

• Taught Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, James Dean, Paul Newman

Sanford Meisner

• “To Live Truthfully under Given Imaginary Circumstances”  : Step-by-step procedure of self-investigation

• Built upon stimulus, repetition, activity

• After Adler got back from Paris…

• Abandoned use of affective memory (emotional recall)

• Meisner Technique: “The Reality of Doing”

• Neighborhood Playhouse

• Martha Graham, Jeff Goldblum, Allison Janney

Elia Kazan

• 1940s film direction for his generation; influenced the films of the 1950s and 1960s with issue-driven themes

• Emergence of the Method in Hollywood

• 1951 Streetcar Named Desire

• Directed for the stage, debuted Brando on film

• 1954 On the Waterfront

• “2nd generation” Group member; Clurman and Strasberg father figures

• Founded the Actors Studio (Strasberg later took over)

• Actor’s director

Stella Adler 

• Sensory imagination is Adler's use of recall of physical sensations surrounding emotional events which triggers emotion. 

• “In your choices lies your talent”:  Most grand character interpretation possible: “don’t be boring”.  All body language carefully crafted, voices clear and expressive; physical and vocal necessary to command the stage

• Adler split with Strasberg on his development of Emotional Recall: “Drawing on the emotions I experienced- for example when my mother died- to create a role is sick and schizophrenic.  If that is acting, I don’t want to do it.”  She met with Stanislavski who threw out Emotional Recall except as a "last resort".

• Marlon Brando, Robert DeNiro, Harvey Keitel, Judy Garland (subsequently Benecio del Toro, Salma Heyek, Mark Ruffalo, Martin Sheen)

Harold Clurman

• Scholar of the Group (spoke multiple languagee, well-read, listened to a lot of music)

• Later director, Awake and Sing!

• Inspire, guide and constructively critique designers rather than dictate

• “Actors find active verbs;” believed Stan’s entire system was too time-consuming to use fully

• No tricks: no line-readings, no gestures, no positions on the actors; Clurman didn’t like “characters like costumes”

• Demanded the actor onstage

• Helped shape American Theatre by writing about it 

Cheryl Crawford

• Not a lot of information yet :)

Attached is a valuable document I received from Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department under the direction of the late Sheldon Patinkin.  Colleagues and I had competed to read all the plays on the list: it was pretty easy in Chicago due to the Harold Washington Library and its ENTIRE 8th floor dedicated to playtexts.