The birth of the moscow art theatre

In 1897 two prominent figures in Russian theatre, Constantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Dachenko, came together with the common aspiration of propagating a more “naturalistic” style of theater in the face of the melodrama popular at the time.

In June 1897 Stanislavski received two letters from Vladimir Nemi­rovich-Danchenko suggesting a meeting. He replied by telegram: “Will be glad to meet you June 22 at 2 o'clock at Slavyanski Bazaar”. The discussion lasted eighteen hours ending at Stanislavski’s villa at eight the next morning. This meeting resulted in the birth of the Moscow Art Theater, a revolutionary repertory company that still exists today.

Nemirovich shared Stanislavski’s dissatis­faction with the state of Russian theatre. The two men had reached the conclusion on the reforms that were necessary. It was logical that they should meet.

Nemirovich left a much more detailed account of the eighteen-hour meeting than Stanislavski himself. In it he describes not only the decisions they took but the abuses against which they were reacting. Nemirovich speaks of his pleasure in discovering that they shared a common working method - detailed discussions and reading followed by slow meticulous re­hearsal, section by section.

Moscow Art Theatre was more than the culmination of two men’s aspirations; it was the embodiment of the reforms which Pushkin, Gogol, Ostrovski and Shchepkin had advocated over three quarters of a century. Finally it broke with the tired routine and the outworn cliches which stifled any creative impulse.

The first concern was to create a genuine ensemble, with no star players – “Today Hamlet, tomorrow an extra”. Self-centred, false, histrionic actors were rigorously excluded. All productions were to be created from scratch, with their own sets and costumes. Working conditions were to be decent and comfortable. Discipline was to be strict, both for the cast - no talking in the corridors during a performance - and for the audience. No one was to be allowed back-stage during the performance and spectators were to be encouraged to take their seats before the curtain went up. The late-comers had to wait until the interval before being admitted. The orchestra, which was a regular feature in most theatres, was abolished as an unnecessary distraction.

Nemirovich had too many unpleasant memories of the bureaucracy of the imperial theatres, so when the original theatre was built, everything, including the administration, was subordinated to the process of creation. It was agreed that responsibility for artistic policy should be divided between the two men. Stanislavski was to have the last word in all matters concerning the production, Nemirovich in all matters concerning repertoire and scripts.

Finally they had to decide what kind of public they wanted to attract. Both wanted a popular theatre which could fulfil its mission to enlighten and educate the people. Originally they planned to call their new theatre The Moscow Art Theatre Open to All. But their dreams of presenting free per­formances to working-class audiences soon came to grief. There was a special censor for all plays presented to workers. And Nemirovich was warned that if he persisted in his idea of presenting special workers' performances he would be arrested. The plan was abandoned and the name shortened simply to the Moscow Art Theatre.

The importance of the new theatre’s policy lay not in the origin­ality of any of its elements, but in its organic unity. The Meiningen company from Germany had shown what ensemble playing could achieve.

In France Andre Antoine had created his Theatre Libre where a more natural style of acting was encouraged. Strindberg had published his views on intimate theatre. Carefully researched sets and costumes were not unknown in western Europe.

The achievement of MXAT was to bring them all together and to create a style of acting in which the dominant element was human truth.

DAVID GARRICK (1717-79).

From the moment in 1741 when he stepped onto a London stage until his retirement in 1775, David Garrick reigned over the English theater. The 5-foot-4-inch actor played both comic and tragic roles with great success. After his burial among England’s notables in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey, Edmund Burke wrote of him: “He raised the character of his profession to the rank of a liberal art”.

Garrick changed the style of English acting. When he first came to the stage, actors delivered their lines as formal declamations. Garrick flamboyantly delivered his in the spirit of the character and the words. His style of acting would be called hammy today, but then it was considered naturalistic.

Garrick was born on February 19, 1717, in Hereford, where his father was on duty as an English army officer. The family home was in Lichfield. Young Garrick’s vivacious charm made him a great favorite at the officers’ mess. Lifted to the table, he would recite parts heard from strolling players.

He attended the Lichfield grammar school with Samuel Johnson, who was seven years older. Later, when Johnson opened his own school, David and a younger brother were pupils. Johnson’s school was not a success. He and Garrick journeyed to London together, Johnson to find work at translating and Garrick to study law. Garrick’s father died soon after, however, and he and an older brother started a wine business, with David the London representative.

The wine business did not do well, perhaps because Garrick's interest in the stage took much of his time. In the summer of 1741 he played with a traveling troupe at Ipswich. Although he knew his family would object, he determined to be an actor. He returned to London and played his first London professional engagement as Shakespeare’s Richard III in a small theater in Goodman’s Fields.

His success was immediate. During his first year he played some 19 roles, almost all of which were greeted with acclaim. Johnson said of his success: “More pains have been taken to spoil that fellow than if he had been heir apparent to the empire of India”. Although Johnson often jibed at Garrick himself, he would permit no other to do it in his presence.

Over the next few years Garrick played in London’s famed Covent Garden and Drury Lane theaters and in Dublin. In 1747 he became a partner in the Drury Lane. (The fourth theater of the name now stands on the site.) As actor-manager, Garrick continued on the stage, except for two years’ travel on the European continent, until his retirement. He played more than 90 roles and wrote some 80 prologues and epilogues and innumerable verses and songs. He either wrote or adapted 35 plays; many were adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, a common practice of the time. Some of his plays were very successful, but none of his writings shows great literary merit.

Garrick formed an early attachment for Margaret (Peg) Woffington, a famous actress, but they never married. He did marry Eva Maria Veigel, a Viennese dancer who was the protegee of Lord and Lady Burlington, in 1749. They had no children. Garrick died in London on January 21, 1779. On a monument in the cathedral at Lichfield is Johnson’s reaction: “I am disappointed by that stroke of death that has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasur”.

BERTOLT BRECHT (1898-1956).

A playwright, poet, and director who became the major German dramatist of the 20th century, Bertolt Brecht developed what became known as epic, or nondramatic, theater. In Brecht’s view drama should not imitate reality, or seek to convince audiences that what they are watching is actually occurring, but should mimic the epic poet’s art and simply present an account of past events. His theory is expounded in A Little Organum for the Theater (1948). A Marxist after the late 1920s, Brecht viewed mankind as victims of capitalist greed, but his skill as a playwright produced characters of unusual depth and dimension.

Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht was born in Augsburg, Germany, on February 10, 1898. Brecht entered the University of Munich as a medical student in 1917, but he had more interest in literature and drama than in medicine. Called into the German army, he served in a military hospital during the last year of World War I and became a pacifist. His first play, Baal, was completed in 1918. His second play, Spartakus (renamed Drums in the Night), brought Brecht immediate recognition when it was first performed in 1922, and he was awarded the Kleist prize as the most promising young playwright of the year. In Berlin in the mid-1920s, Brecht worked briefly under Max Reinhardt at the German Theater. Works of this period were the play A Man's a Man (1926) and several operas with music by Kurt Weill - including The Threepenny Opera (1928), perhaps Brecht’s best-known work, and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1930).

Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1933, Brecht lived in exile in Denmark for six years, Sweden and Finland briefly, and the United States from 1941 to 1947. Among the best-known plays from this period were Mother Courage and Her Children (1941), The Life of Galileo (1943), The Good Woman of Setzuan (1943), and The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1948).

In 1949 Brecht moved to East Berlin, where he and his second wife, actress Helene Weigel, founded a theatrical company. (He had divorced actress Marianne Zoff in 1927.) Under his talented direction the Berliner Ensemble won worldwide acclaim. Brecht died in East Berlin on August 14, 1956.

LEE STRASBERG (1901-82).

Theater director, actor, and acting coach Lee Strasberg was the chief U.S. teacher of method acting, or the Stanislavski method. This method, pioneered by Russian actor and producer Konstantin Stanislavski, encourages actors to use their emotional experiences and memories in preparing to “live” a role.

Strasberg was born on November 17, 1901, in Budzanow, Poland (now Budanov, Ukraine). His family emigrated to the United States when Lee was 7 years old. By the age of 15 he had begun acting in plays at the Christie Street Settlement House. He later took lessons at the American Laboratory Theatre, whose instructors, Richard Boleslavski and Maria Ouspenskaya, had studied in Moscow under Stanislavsky. Strasberg began his professional career, as actor and stage manager, in the 1920s with the Theatre Guild. In 1931 he joined with Harold Ciurman and Cheryl Crawford to form the Group Theatre, which for ten years staged a number of brilliant experimental plays, including the Pulitzer prizewinning Men in White (1934).

From 1941 to 1948 Strasberg was in Hollywood for what he later called “an unfruitful but nevertheless educational experience”. In 1948 he was back in Manhattan, having joined the Actors Studio, Inc., which had been founded the previous year by Elia Kazan, Cheryl Crawford, and Robert Lewis, all former associates of the Group Theatre. Strasberg was artistic director of the Actors Studio from 1948 until his death, over the years counseling in “the method” such students as Julie Harris, Geraldine Page, Marlon Brando, Anne Bancroft, Rod Steiger, Eli Wallach, Patricia Neal, Sidney Poitier, Dustin Hoffman, and Robert DeNiro and developing such noted plays as A Hatful of Rain, Any Wednesday, and The Night of the Iguana.

In later years, Strasberg appeared in several Hollywood movies, including The Godfather, Part II (1974), The Cassandra Crossing (1977), And Justice for All (1979), Boardwalk (1979), and Going in Style (1979). He died on February 17, 1982, in New York City.