Who Are All Of These People?
All eight characters in An Actor Prepares are Stanislavski. But the historical Stanislavski was an actor: he liked to pretend to be other people. Our Stanislavski is no different. Throughout the course of the play, Stanislavski assumes the parts of others. Of course, not all of these others are as famous as Stanislavski was (most aren’t even real people), and so we thought it would be helpful to clarify their identities. Some of these characters have already been mentioned above, but they’ll be repeated here, in case you skipped that part.
Characters are first by category (from Actor Prepares, other fictional characters, and real people), and then in order of appearance.
Characters in An Actor Prepares (book)
Kostya: An Actor Prepares takes the form of a diary written by a young acting student named Kostya. Vaguely modeled on a young Stanislavski, Kostya has little experience on stage. What he does know comes from the very overwrought school of Russian theater that Stanislavski’s system rejects. Over the course of the book he comes to master Stanislavski’s method.
Tortsov: The director and teacher of the students in An Actor Prepares. Modeled on Stanislavski the author, he overturns the faulty assumptions of his students and teaches them to act honestly and realistically, according to the System.
Marya: A classmate of Kostya’s, prone to terror.
Grisha: A classmate of Kostya’s, enthusiastic and over-confident.
Sonya: A classmate of Kostya’s. An attractive woman, also prone to over-confidence.
Vanya: A classmate of Kostya’s. Described as “jumpy”.
Pasha: A classmate of Kostya’s. Portrays Iago against Kostya’s Othello.
Other Fictional Characters
Iago: The villain of Othello. The first chapter of An Actor Prepares revolves around Pasha’s performance of this role in tandem with Kostya’s Othello.
Othello: The principle character of Shakespeare’s Othello. He is the first role Kostya attempts, and although his performance is poor, he finds his first fleeting second of theatrical truth in his portrayal.
Famusov: The main character of Griboyedov’s 1823 play Woe from Wit. Tortsov perfectly assumes the role of Famusov in An Actor Prepares in order to teach the students how to live a role. Their minds, according to the script, are thoroughly blown.
Historical Figures
Stanislavski: See previous pages.
Vselvod Meyerhold: A Russian actor and director contemporary to 
Stanislavski. At 22 he saw Stanislavski play Othello. Inspired, he later studied under Moscow Art Theater co-founder Vladimir Nemirovich and joined the MAT in time to originate a role in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Originally an enthusiastic Bolshevik, Meyerhold would become deeply disillusioned with The Soviet Union and disgusted by the constraints of Socialist Realism. After being fired from a position at The Imperial Theater in St. Petersburg and having his own Stanislavski-inspired company, The Meyerhold Theater, shut down by Stalin, Meyerhold briefly assumed the directorship of the Moscow Art Theater after Stanislavski’s death in 1938. However, in 1940, the Soviet Police arrested him. After being tortured into confessing his role as a British Spy (a false confession), he was executed by firing squad.
Mika (Mihael Vladimirovich): Stanislavski’s nephew. Arrested in the early 1930s by Stalin (essentially for being married into a family of anti-Stalinist Bolsheviks), he was sentenced to hard labor in a Gulag death camp. Stanislavski attempted to use his social prominence to intervene on Mika’s behalf but was unsuccessful: Mika was executed in the gulag.
