In 1936, after three decades of work, two heart attacks, and a prolonged battle with editors on both sides of the Atlantic, Stanislavski published An Actor Prepares. The same year, only blocks away in the Kremlin, Joseph Stalin ordered the systematic purge of four million Russians. By the end of the decade, Vsevolod Meyerhold – Stanislavski’s handpicked heir to the directorship of the Moscow Art Theater – would be arrested, tortured, and executed, leaving the theater Stanislavski spent his life building in shambles.
Given the gravity of these eventualities, its difficult to imagine that Stanislavski came from the relatively humble beginnings of being an infant. But he did. This, then, is how a young aristocrat, trained in the operatic conventions of traditional Russian theater, came to write An Actor Prepares.
Childhood
Christened Constantin Sergeyevish Alexeyev, Stanislavski was born in 1863 to the Aleskeyev merchant family, one of the wealthiest in Imperial Russia. This privilege allowed the young Stanislavski an exposure to the arts unequaled amongst his peers: as a child, he was able to attend every circus, ballet, and opera in Moscow. These experiences motivated a childhood fantasy of becoming an opera singer, however, lacking an ear or a voice, these dreams were never realized. Later, when he had settled on a career in non-musical theater, Stanislavski’s inheritance provided as many as 30,000 spare rubles a year to fund his theatrical endeavors.
However, Constantin’s social rank also posed problems for the young actor. In 1861 – only two years before his birth – the Russian serfs were liberated. Until that year, actors had been part of this slave class, typically handpicked by their feudal lords to perform in the company of an estate. By the 1880s Russian actors were still considered part of the underclass and for Constantin’s parents it was unacceptable for their son to aspire to the stage. This prohibition forced him to take the stage name “Stanislavski” and appear only as an amateur until he was thirty-three years old. Throughout his teenage years, Stanislavski was trained to one-day take over his father’s business: creating gold embellishments for Russian military uniforms. Obviously, he never quite assumed that role.
