{"id":349,"date":"2021-11-24T15:41:50","date_gmt":"2021-11-24T15:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/24\/?p=349"},"modified":"2021-12-05T19:28:13","modified_gmt":"2021-12-05T19:28:13","slug":"rediscovering-stanislavsky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/24\/rediscovering-stanislavsky\/","title":{"rendered":"Rediscovering Stanislavsky"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Maria Shevtsova<\/strong>
442 pp. Cambridge University Press<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reviewed by Nathan Thomas<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With her new volume Rediscovering Stanislavsky, <\/em>noted British scholar Maria Shevtsova gives us an important and welcome addition to a bourgeoning list of necessary books about the great Russian director and acting teacher. Shevtsova\u2019s research is both broad and deep. She easily shifts from wide-angle contexts to extreme close-ups as she shares history as well as contemporary perspectives on Stanislavsky\u2019s life and work .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For someone like Stanislavsky who has garnered so much attention, it should not be surprising that so many myths about him continue to this day. Often, as actors and creators, we are interested in theatre history only insofar as it can help us make our next production. We tend to use Stanislavsky like a chef who has written a rather complicated cookbook. \u201cAdd a thimble-full of imagination to three imaginary if\u2019s and a block of interior actions. Stir until thickened (about three weeks of rehearsal).\u201d As a result, Stanislavsky remains for some simply a rather fussy fellow who can help us most when we do a realistic play, but, otherwise, of not much use. Shevtsova\u2019s book serves to remind us about the fullness of Stanislavsky\u2019s life and especially his contribution to acting, directing, story-telling and the creative process generally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shevtsova takes us into the cultural environment that nourished the young Stanislavsky, scion of a wealthy manufacturing family. If \u201cit takes a village\u201d to raise any child, we are right to wonder what Stanislavsky\u2019s village was actually like? Shevtsova introduces us to one made up of Moscow\u2019s late nineteenth century manufacturing families, enlightened people who both enjoyed life and sought to positively give back to the community. A number of these families also belonged to the Old Believers sect. For those who don\u2019t want to get entwined in the weeds of theological\/political\/cultural minutiae, suffice it to say that it is not essential to determine Stanislavsky\u2019s personal views on the nature of the bread and wine in an Orthodox Mass. Yet, Shevtsova does illuminate the Old Believer perspective of communion\u2014of people joining together in a spiritual and corporeal sense. One can see how Stanislavsky would be attracted to this and other similar facets of the faith and apply these perspectives in other parts of his life\u2014like theatre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Saxe-Meiningen Players from Germany had earlier transformed staid crowd scenes on a stage making sure that the actors were at least costumed appropriately and individualized in their stage activities. But the nature of the Saxe-Meiningen crowd did not create the spirit <\/em>of ensemble playing. It was Stanislavsky and his dramaturgical colleague Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko who developed the idea of a genuine ensemble<\/em> theatre. Each person on and off stage needed to be committed to the mission of a production. To that end, a stagehand as well as an actor was each important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Put another way, Stanislavsky advocated artistic ethics that tried to respect the contributions of all. He worked to help actors achieve a creative state of being <\/em>on stage. He searched for a way to join body and spirit in the act of creation. As Shevtsova notes, it\u2019s distressing that an earlier Stanislavsky explicator like Jean Benedetti chose to translate the word for \u201cspirit\/soul\u201d as \u201cmind\/personality.\u201d For Stanislavsky, the goal of the actor, as we see here, was to show the embodied life of the human spirit.<\/em> That is, Stanislavsky\u2019s own super-objective was to get to the humanity at the center of any dramatic work. Shevtsova establishes that the totality of Stanislavsky should be read in the light of the religious belief system of his \u201cvillage.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arguably of as much importance as the Moscow Art Theatre was to the development and dissemination of Stanislavsky\u2019s ideas about acting and theatre were his many \u201cstudios,\u201d workshops <\/em>starting with one run by Meyerhold in 1905 and continuing through his Opera Studio which was in operation when Stanislavsky died. Shevtsova devotes an entire chapter to the studios and their work and provides a refreshing historical re-assessment of them, especially Meyerhold\u2019s. Hopefully, researchers will look at Shevtsova\u2019s work here along with Kathryn Syssoyeva\u2019s dissertation of 2009 and the materials published by Oleg Feldman and his team and see that this actual \u201cfirst\u201d studio was not the failure that it has often been said to be. Likewise, Shevtsova shines a spotlight on the adventurous Leopold Sulerzhitsky a section that raises hopes for a full biography of Sulerzhitsky himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shevtsova\u2019s chapter on Stanislavsky\u2019s many stagings shows him as an endlessly imaginative director. Early in his career, he preferred full directorial pre-production plans.\u00a0 As he developed however, he made more and more use of improvisation and etudes\u2014a practice that drove some playwrights\u2014Mikhail Bulgakov for one\u2014to distraction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s often forgotten that Stanislavsky himself actually ran his family manufacturing interests from the death of his father until the company was taken away by the Russian Revolution. Obviously, Stanislavsky knew how to deal with tough customers, whether commodity suppliers or government hacks. That said, his actions through the 1920s and 1930s sometimes betray a sense of political naivet\u00e9. He publicly complained about Lenin\u2019s plans to nationalize the Moscow Art Theatre. He later asked for permission to produce Erdman\u2019s biting satire, The Suicide<\/em>, a permission that was not surprisingly refused.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shevtsova\u2019s exploration of Stanislavsky\u2019s personal politics sometimes lacks the genuine precision found elsewhere in this valuable volume. What comes through is a depiction of someone working to take care of both his families\u2014his blood relations and his theatre relations. Perhaps, the real lesson he learned running a factory was simply to keep his head down and just survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some small complaints. Sometimes an idea and sentence gets convoluted, as when differentiating Michael Chekhov\u2019s spirituality from Vakhtangov\u2019s metaphysical imagination. And there are occasional infelicitous constructions like actors \u201cperforming performances.\u201d I also believe the lack of any reference to Rebecca Gauss\u2019s important 1999 monograph, Lear\u2019s Daughters: The Studios of the Moscow Art Theatre 1905\u20131927<\/em> (Peter Lang Publishing) is a regrettable omission. But these are small matters indeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, this is a most useful book showing that Stanislavsky was himself even more complicated than we previously have been led to believe. Shevstova suggests we over-simplify him at our<\/em> intellectual peril, and this book provides genuine context for that view, contexts that continually reward the reader. In Shevstova\u2019s hands, we are introduced to a full human being, one we will want to re-visit often. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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*<\/a>Nathan Thomas<\/strong>, PhD, is Chair of the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at Alvernia University in Reading, PA.\u00a0 As an actor he has toured extensively, giving hundreds of performances throughout the U.S.A. A former columnist for the on-line arts journal Scene4.com<\/em>, he has translated\/adapted Chekhov\u2019s Uncle Vanya<\/em> for the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9<\/strong> 2021 Nathan Thomas
Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em> e-ISSN: 2409-7411<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Creative<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution International License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":351,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/24\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2021\/11\/Stanis-cover.jpg?fit=264%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":651,"url":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/24\/dada-shakespeare-oakland-fun-during-the-plague\/","url_meta":{"origin":349,"position":0},"title":"Dada Shakespeare: Oakland Fun during the Plague","author":"Nathan Thomas","date":"December 18, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Lissa Tyler Renaud* The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [revised], by Adam Long, Daniel Singer, Jess Winfield; additional material by Reed Martin. 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Music: Astor Piazzolla.\u00a0Book: Horacio Ferrer. Translated by Albert\u00a0Denn. Lyrics: Alex \u0218tef\u0103nescu. Direction, choreography and costumes: R\u0103zvan Mazilu. Set:\u00a0Drago\u0219 Buhagiar. Lighting design: \u0218tefan Vasilescu. 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Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. Shakespeare, Hamlet They say a man is not dead as long as another still remembers his voice. Ion Caramitru has not died, nor has he retired to take a rest.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In Memoriam"","block_context":{"text":"In Memoriam","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/24\/category\/in-memoriam\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/24\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2021\/11\/image10.jpeg?fit=800%2C533&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/24\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2021\/11\/image10.jpeg?fit=800%2C533&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/24\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2021\/11\/image10.jpeg?fit=800%2C533&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/24\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2021\/11\/image10.jpeg?fit=800%2C533&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":626,"url":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/24\/romanian-theatre-waiting-for-the-present-to-take-shape\/","url_meta":{"origin":349,"position":4},"title":"Romanian Theatre: Waiting for the Present to Take Shape","author":"Nathan Thomas","date":"December 18, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Kinga Boros* Piatra Neam\u021b\u00a0Theatre Festival, 32nd edition, 3\u201312 September 2021, Romania. Romanian theatre at the end of summer 2021 was marked by two deaths. Voicu R\u0103descu, the founder of the Romanian independent theatre movement, passed away first, and Ion Caramitru, director of the Bucharest National Theatre shortly after him. 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