K. S. Aleksyev (Stanislavskiy) – Gimnazist c.1880
Despite the social stigma and contrary to his parent’s wishes. Stanislavski formally attended drama school in 1883 when he was twenty years old. While he would drop out long before graduating, Stanislavski became friends with famed Russian director Glikeria Fedotova during his time at school.
Glikeria Fedotova
The friendship proved valuable: in 1888, Stanislavski launched his career by appearing in two of Fedotova’s productions: Les Plaideurs and Gogol’s The Gamblers.
Over the next decade, Stanislavski would continue to grow in prominence as an actor. Using excess profits from his father’s factory, he founded the short-lived Society of Arts and Literature (the opening gala was attended by Chekhov), where he continued to act and gained his first experience as a director.
Stanislavski as Othello 1896
Touring both Russia and Europe, he appeared in numerous roles, culminating in his famous 1896 performance of Othello (a production attended by a 22-year-old Meyerhold). He wore blackface, but that’s okay: it was the 19th century.
But even at this young age, and despite his success, Stanislavski was discontent with the state of Russian theater. Throughout much of the 19th Century – while film, music and painting were becoming increasingly avant garde, – theater remained a highly stylized, traditional art. Actors were trained to intone their lines in a traditional meter, regardless of the text. Even in acting school, Stanislavski had been taught a number of simple gimmicks and operatic conventions that informed many of his early performances. As he explains in My Life In Art: “What was considered at the time to be fine acting: when nobody spoke in a natural voice, when acting consisted of excessive, ugly declamation, with the words spoken as loudly as possible, and almost every word was accompanied by a gesture”.
(An example of Russian symbolist painting. Mt. St. George by Bogaevsky. This style represented Russian avant garde art in the Imperial era.)
Burdened by an increasing sense that this acting style was cheap and inadequate, Stanislavski began to explore the nascent realist movement pioneered by Gogol and former serf Milkhail Schepkin in the mid-19thcentury. This movement rejected the conventional style of Russian theater and instead strove for a realism whereby the technical elements of plays accurately created the world they represented, and actors spoke and behaved in the manner of real conversation rather than the “overblown” norm (to use Gogol’s phrasing).
Vrubel’s Flowers In The Blue Vase, another example of symbolist painting
This method inspired Stanislavski to adopt a number of techniques that would influence his later system: dressing up as and pretending to be his characters as a form of research, taking a daily walk – interior monologue included – “in character”, and refusing to respond to his real name before a performance. However, opportunities to perform in this manner remained limited, and Stanislavski’s first artistic crisis continued the demand a resolution until the end of the century.
MUSIC:
Stravinski’s Piano Sonata. A good example of avant garde music in Russia before Stalin.
A compilation of pieces from the “Mighty Handful” – five Russian composers whose work exemplified pre-Soviet Russian music. They drew heavily on traditional Russian folklore and fairy tale for their source material, putting them at odds with the later ideals of Socialist Realism.
A 1903 silent film of Alice In Wonderland. A prime example of early experimentation in cinema.
