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ABSTRACT
Central preoccupations of Stanislavsky’s theatre practice and thought involve continuous laboratory explorations, revisions and developments. What emerges as new at one time is constantly renewed, indicating that his work of perpetual change raises the question as to what actually were the defining achievements of the Opera-Dramatic Studio. This was the last of the seven studios that Stanislavsky founded and led, or encouraged and protected under the flagship of the Moscow Art Theatre as he taught to varying degrees in each. The discussion here rejects the commonplace idea that Stanislavsky discovered the “method of physical action” in the closing years of his life, showing earlier avatars of “physical action” while unfolding its different but interconnected aspects, including “word action.” Stanislavsky’s comprehensive approach to acting together with his intensive research on the actor-singer, music, movement, vocalization and other components that bind opera and dramatic theatre gave the Opera-Dramatic Studio its unique identity.
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This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1. This was my keynote address at the international symposium The S Word: Stanislavsky’s Last Words, held at The Theatre Faculty (DAMU) in Prague 11–13 November 2022. All translations are mine M.S.
2. Stanislavsky was persistently unhappy with the term “system,” which he frequently wrote in citation marks to indicate that he was quoting his colleagues. The latter had started to use the word ironically and largely critically in the mid-1900s, when Stanislavsky began his experimental explorations in acting with the Moscow Art Theatre. My Rediscovering Stanislavsky explains the fraught situation confronting Stanislavsky as well as my use of the term with a capital “S” for the sake of convenience. I fully acknowledge Stanislavsky’s dissatisfaction with “system” and his qualms over using it, given that he saw acting and theatre making as a perpetual process of change. See especially Chapter Three “Actor” in Rediscovering Stanislavsky, 99–104, 109–20, and 123 for his statement that “the ‘system’ did not exist,” since “there was only nature,” to which I have added my explanatory “from which the creativity in all human beings springs.” The words “Stanislavsky’s thought” in this address and in the above book are a way of “correcting” the mechanistic overtones of “system” and mechanistic approaches to Stanislavsky’s practice.
3. The quotation in the title of this essay comes from “The Bolshoy Theatre Opera Studio” in Stanislavsky, Moya zhisn v iskusstvye, 387, and appears here intentionally to accentuate the continuity but difference and developmental shifts between the Bolshoy Studio and the Opera-Dramatic Studio.
4. Kristi, Rabota Syanislavskogo v Opernom Teatre, 220.
5. Novitskaya, Uroki vdokhnoveniya, 54.
6. Ibid., 54–61.
7. See note 4 above.
8. Novitskaya, Uroki vdokhnoveniya, 123.
9. Ibid., 133.
10. Ibid., 65. See re kneading dough and other actions with imaginary objects, 66–74; also the document K.S. 21147 in the archives the Moscow Art Theatre Museum.
11. Novitskaya, Uroki vdokhnoveniya, 102–3.
12. Shevtsova, Rediscovering Stanislavsky, 121–4.
13. Novitskaya, Uroki vdokhnoveniya, 75.
14. Ibid., 35.
15. For a comprehensive map of the Studios and their respective activities, see Shevtsova, Rediscovering Stanislavsky, 129–79.
16. Stanislavsky, Rezhissersky Plan Otello, 231.
17. Ibid., 226.
18. Ibid., 321.
19. Novitskaya, Uroki vdokhnoveniya, 150.
20. I.N. Vinogradskaya asserts that there are forty-eight transcripts whereas my count is thirty-eight. See her Stanislavsky repetiruyet, 441. The COVID-19 pandemic and now the Russian-Ukrainian war have made it impossible for me to pursue my research any further in the Moscow Art Theatre Museum archives to clear up this discrepancy.
21. Novitskaya, Uroki vdokhnoveniya, 55.
22. Kedrov continued to run the Opera-Dramatic Studio from 1938 to 1948 but more like a repertory theatre than a laboratory, thus counter to Stanislavsky’s intentions and wishes for the Studio. He was artistic director of the Moscow Academic Art Theatre (MXAT) from 1946 to 1955.
23. Novitskaya, Uroki vdokhnoveniya, 142.
24. Ibid., 143.
25. Vinogradskaya, Stanislavsky repetiruyet, 500.
26. Novitskaya, Uroki vdokhnoveniya, 179.
27. Ibid., 172.
28. Ibid., 177.
29. Ibid., 179.
30. K.S. 21162 (Moscow Art Theatre Museum archives as above) documents how on 27 April 1937, in the earlier stages of work on Romeo and Juliet, Stanislavsky has Novitskaya orally run through the principles of actions and their connective links with feelings, after which he refers to the part that “emotional memory” plays in this process. He interlaces this binding process with wanting (desire) as well as the “inner elements” which Stanislavsky otherwise calls “the living inner material,” that pertain to the human-being actor playing a given role.
31. Kristi, Rabota Syanislavskogo v Opernom Teatre, 245.
32. Ibid., 225–6.
33. Knebel, Vsya zhizn, 279. For what is tantamount to an homage to Stanislavsky, see Knebel’s preface and opening chapter on directing in Knebel, O Deystvennom analize pyesi i roli, 19–39. Note that Knebel refers to Stanislavsky’s “method of physical action” as his “new working device – the method of active analysis of the play and the role” (19) and uses this adjusted formulation for the title of her book. She thereby indicates the source of her inspiration in Stanislavsky’s work at the Opera-Dramatic Studio, without here naming the Studio as such.
34. Kristi, Rabota Syanislavskogo v Opernom Teatre, 236.
35. Shevtsova, Rediscovering Stanislavsky, 104–9. The book shows as well that the persistently mistranslated “zadacha” as “problem” or “objective” needs to be eradicated. “Zadacha” simply means “task.”
36. Kristi, Rabota Syanislavskogo v Opernom Teatre, 236.
37. Ibid., 236–7.
38. “Vstrechy c K.S. Stanislavskim,” 444–91.
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Notes on contributors
Maria Shevtsova
Maria Shevtsova (Goldsmiths University of London) is renowned internationally for her teaching, research and scholarship on Russian theatre, past and present, contemporary European theatre directors and companies, and the interdisciplinary theories and methodologies of the sociology of the theatre, which she has founded and which underpins her entire work. Her more recent books notably include Rediscovering Stanislavsky (2020), Robert Wilson (second, updated edition 2019), The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Directing (2013, co-authored), Directors/Directing: Conversations on Theatre (2009), Sociology of Theatre and Performance (2009), Fifty Key Theatre Directors (2005, co-ed), and Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre: Process to Performance (2004). She is the author of over 150 chapters in collected volumes and articles in refereed journals. Her books and prominent book chapters and journal articles have been translated into fifteen languages. Apart from keynote and other contributions to university conferences, Research Centres and Cultural Institutes in Europe, and acting schools and conservatoires (in English, Russian, French and Italian), Shevtsova gives public lectures at major international theatre festivals across the world, leads post-performance public discussions as well as conversations with theatre actors and directors, serves on the juries of festivals (also as president of the jury of the Belgrade International Festival of Theatre, BITEF) and undertakes other outreach and multimedia activities that include online talks and radio and television broadcasts in the UK and abroad. She is the editor of New Theatre Quarterly and on the editorial teams of Stanislavsky Studies and Critical Stages, the online journal of the International Association of Theatre Critics. She is a member of the Board of the Stanislavsky Research Centre.