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p I was born too late to be his pupil. I
learned from his productions, learned watching the actors he had trained, learned from those he had taught and had faith in. Thousands of facts and even more legends about Stanislavsky the man, about his sense of humour and how he lost his temper, made him seem terribly familiar, as though we were close friends.

p I saw Stanislavsky the actor before I dreamed of going into the theatre. I saw him a few times as a student, and only once, together with a small group of young directors, had the good fortune to be his guest and chat with him. That was shortly before his death. It is most extraordinary but I feel I knew him long before I actually met him and still know him to this day. For more than thirty years now I have been holding conversations with him in my mind and asking him countless questions. For thirty years I have felt his stern, disapproving gaze fixed upon me. All these years I have been trying to learn to understand him. I feel he understands me perfectly, understands my weaknesses, where I have erred, and the reason for my mistakes. I have frequently imagined Stanislavsky watching my productions, and imagined what he would say if he were present at a rehearsal I was conducting.

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p There are quite a few of us who are continuing to learn from Stanislavsky to this day. Our master has acquired new pupils whom he did not know during his lifetime. Some of his old pupils have broken with him. Stanislavsky no longer puts on plays, but I have frequently seen flashes of his thought in productions and characters created by my contemporaries.

p More than a quarter of a century has passed since Stanislavsky was last among us. For those who are twenty-five today he already belongs to history as a great theatrical reformer who revolutionised dramatic art. Is he then a brilliant phenomenon belonging wholly to the past?

p No, no, and a thousand times no! What Stanislavsky discovered and taught belongs to the theatre of today.

p In the long history of the theatre we find various periods of flowering and decline and thousands of great names. Hundreds of times people who knew and loved the theatre tried to explain the magic of the stage, to reveal the secret of its impact. Every age left its theory of the theatre. Aristotle and Diderot, Goethe and Wagner, all offered their “systems”, which were fine for their particular age, but which today belong entirely to the past. It was the same in Russia. For a long time two great actors, Karatygin and Mochalov, were opposed to one another. Later the theatre world was divided into the two camps on the basis of support for the different methods of the Maly Theatre and the Art Theatre. Later still, further new movements grew up like the Proletkult and the schools of Meyerhold and Tairov, and countless others. And young people are bound to ask: What is it that makes Stanislavsky’s system superior to any other?

p It is at once easy and difficult to answer this question. Easy because it is impossible to confuse any other trend in the theatre with the universal laws of scenic creativity revealed by Stanislavsky. Difficult because Stanislavsky was not just a great actor and thinker who created a science of acting, but also a brilliant director who created a certain trend in the theatre. Nobody but Stanislavsky united in a single harmonious system the experience of a galaxy of talented actors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; nobody but Stanislavsky revealed the objective laws of comportment on the stage; nobody but Stanislavsky attempted to find a conscious approach to the actor’s subconscious mind.

p In a way one can say that Stanislavsky did for the theatre what Pavlov did for physiology. Each discovered in his own sphere the laws of the unity of man’s physical and spiritual life, laws that are eternally valid, for they are not inventions but discoveries. They have always existed and it was simply a question of bringing them to light. However much the productions of other directors may have differed from those 35 of Stanislavsky, the actors from the most different theatres could not help but live according to the laws of human nature. And they acted well when they observed them, and badly when they failed to observe them. If we profess realism there is only one system for us-the system rooted in real life-though there may be dozens of different trends and experiments. However startling the formal conventions of a production, whether the scenery and costumes are traditional or excitingly bold genuine emotion, living the part, depends on a single conditionfidelity to nature. No one can betray the truth with impunity.

p Stanislavsky’s method creates first the actor and the director, and subsequently the production.

p The Soviet theatre is called upon to fulfil a great task, that of serving the people of today in the best manner possible. It aspires to a great ideal with its aim of preparing people for life in communist society.

p The aesthetics of the contemporary theatre are born out of productions and discussions. The cornerstone was laid by Stanislavsky with his “system” and its practical embodiment-the Moscow Art Theatre.

p Stanislavsky naturally could not know what mankind would be like twenty-five years later, could not know how and how much the Soviet citizen’s spiritual life and aesthetic feeling would change. But the universal laws of acting, the emotional “formula” and the nature of the interdependence of the theatre and the people discovered by Stanislavsky provide the most accurate and suitable compass for today. Its needle points to realism. Whoever uses this compass is in no danger of losing his way. A genius may one day be born who will offer the world a new, more perfect acting method. But for the time being there is no system to compare with Stanislavsky’s: the best of yesterday, and today in the theatre is the product of his brilliant discoveries, and the best of tomorrow will be essentially derived from them.

p Stanislavsky’s “system”, like all products of genius, is amazingly simple. And incredibly complicated. A person who knows and loves life will understand it. A person with talent will master it. Whoever understands man will understand Stanislavsky’s teaching. But anyone whose knowledge of life is derived solely from books and plays, films and theatre critiques will get nothing at all out of Stanislavsky.

p By studying the great actors of his day and himself, Stanislavsky determined the laws by which an actor can call to life in himself every evening the real, genuine feelings of the character he is playing. Stanislavsky determined the conditions in which the reincarnation of the actor in his role takes place. He offered a method of educating the actor, the artist, the citizen. No artistic method is worth a sou unless it is born from practice and confirmed by practice.

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p Stanislavsky’s “system” has been tested in theatrical practice. Stanislavsky’s school raised the Soviet theatre to unprecedented heights. Stanislavsky’s books are translated into all the world’s major languages and he is honoured by the most progressive stage-directors and filmmakers the world over. Such recognition speaks for itself.

p Stanislavsky’s teaching and experience is the patrimony of the whole Soviet theatre today. Every one of us basks in the reflected glow of his glory, and this places a tremendous responsibility on us for how our theatre develops.

p Stanislavsky has left a priceless legacy. We could easily squander it, live on the interest, or consign it to a museum, but to do so would be criminal. It is our duty to double, to triple, to increase tenfold this inheritance.

p Stanislavsky could not complain that he was ignored by his contemporaries. He was loved by theatregoers and had a host of admirers. But the Moscow Art Theatre that he and Nemirovich-Danchenko founded was a favourite target of the reactionary critics. Stanislavsky had to wage a constant battle, right up to the last days of his life, in defence of realism against the theoreticians and practitioners of the Old Theatre. During his long life in art, Stanislavsky was accused of all the deadly sins, first of facile imitation, later of decadence and tendentiousness, indifference to politics and idealism, despotism and aestheticism. As a progressive theatre, before the Revolution the Moscow Art Theatre often found itself in serious difficulties, and was several times on the verge of a financial disaster.

p It is hard to say what the future of the Art Theatre would have been but for the October Revolution. Throughout the hard times of war, famine and destruction Stanislavsky continued to act, put on new productions, write books and teach. He founded actors’ studios, drew up plans for the reorganisation of the theatre, travelled all over the place to attend various meetings and special performances.

p Stanislavsky’s whole life was work, work and work, with hardly a moment to spare. After an exhausting lesson or rehearsal he would spend ages explaining to an actor or young director the essence of his mistakes. His rare “free” time he would devote to writing.

p Even during his lifetime Stanislavsky became a legend. His irresistible charm, fertile imagination and complete dedication to the theatre combined with irrepressible vitality, child-like spontaneity, and above all talent, made him, as Gorky put it “a fine figure of a man”. In the eyes of the young people Stanislavsky was the legendary Knight in Shining Armour of the theatre.

p Although it was common knowledge that Stanislavsky had long been suffering from a chronic illness, his death came as a shock. The 37 news of his death spread around Moscow like wildfire. There are no words capable of expressing the profound sense of destitution and bereavement felt by the members of the Art Theatre. The queue of people to file past the bier was many kilometres long, a touching farewell from the people of Moscow to the great revolutioniser of the theatre.

p It is quite beyond me how some glib theatre critics or a drama school lecturers can present the life of Stanislavsky and the history of the Art Theatre as a long row of successes and triumphs.

p It was not like that at all. The “system” took shape gradually in the course of long battles and controversies, and not as a ready-made whole, immediately bearing fruit. It was born in the crucible of heated disputes, in travail. Every thesis was put to the test in a thousand practical experiments. Thousands of pages of writing were mercilessly discarded and consigned to the waste-paper basket. Conversion to the new “system” was a long, slow process: followers were won over gradually, one by one. It was not until after the Revolution that Stanislavsky’s lessons became the common patrimony of our theatres, actors’ studios and drama schools. Stanislavsky’s path to the young people was certainly never strewn with roses.

p Controversy between the followers and opponents of Stanislavsky continued throughout his life and went on unabated after his death.

p Today Stanislavsky and his “system” are no longer a subject of controversy: they have earned universal recognition. Just when exactly the mass enlightenment took place one cannot say. This should be enough to put one on one’s guard. Especially as one cannot help noticing that many of the actors and directors who have a portrait of Stanislavsky hanging in the most conspicuous place, like an icon, secretly worship false idols. Soft-pedallers have been only too ready to draw from the “system” anything that makes life easier for them-not learning the lines, not “acting”, being physically “relaxed” and so on. They will claim that Stanislavsky “approved” their sloth. Directors hypnotised by their own “brilliance” and originality have called upon Stanislavsky for “justification” of their dazzling tricks.

p Stanislavsky insisted “One must love art in oneself not oneself in art”. But there are still a lot of people about today who like to adapt Stanislavsky to suit themselves.

p For many Stanislavsky remains a closed book, or a book of which they have only read the first few pages.

p Stanislavsky’s “system” is not a code of rules that can be hastily “swotted up”. Every artist must discover it one day in himself. But this does not simply mean following the behests of the Master. Stanislavsky’s teaching must be multiplied by life which is ceaselessly 38 in flux. The laws he discovered must constantly be developed and perfected.

p As a director Stanislavsky approached realism by a long and tortuous path, but as actor and thinker he was always faithful to realism in the highest, deepest and most precise meaning of the word.

p Stanislavsky spent his whole life seeking and testing manifold forms, rehearsal techniques and teaching methods, to ensure that his “system” was firmly linked with practice. His productions achieved a varying degree of success, but to the last he was never satisfied and prepared to rest content with what he had achieved. He realised, he felt deep down inside him, that neither he himself nor his theatre had yet reached their peak. Stanislavsky could see the peak, and urged people on to conquer it. But not all his comrades-in-arms understood him. And Stanislavsky turned to the young people.

p Shortly before his death, when he was already gravely ill but as enthusiastic as ever, he created a new actors’ studio. Very few people saw its productions. Stanislavsky himself did not live long enough to make full-fledged actors of his students. But it was at this time that he developed the foundations of the high truth of the nature of dramatic art. Stanislavsky summed up the essence of his teaching as a method of physical actions. Today we can say that this method is unique, and that it has no equal in the world theatre, past or present.

p Stanislavsky was a great theatrical talent and a great citizen of his country. He was a worthy successor of Belinsky and Dobrolyubov, Chernyshevsky, Stasov and Gorky, faithful to their view that art should serve man’s high ideals. He never looked upon the theatre as pure entertainment, but insisted that it was a rostrum from which a great deal of good could be addressed to people. All Stanislavsky’s fine life In art involved service of the noble idea of struggle for human happiness.

p The most important idea in Stanislavsky’s “system” is that of the “super-objective”, as he termed the essential idea of a play. His work on a production was concerned above all with searching for a true and absorbing “super-objective” and subordinating the whole play to it. He did not regard this “super-objective” as the be-all and end-all, and widened the concept to that of the “super-super-objective”, thus designating the aim in life of the man and artist, the idea underlying the whole artistic activity of the actor, director and playwright.

p Stanislavsky held that this “super-super-objective” should inform people of what was most important, most essential and necessary in the artist’s day and age. It should be a bridge between the stage and the audience, making even an old classic sound contemporary, fusing the thoughts and feelings of actors and audience in a single élan.

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p How little we know Stanislavsky and how inept we are in making use of his theory of the “super-objective” and the “super-super- objective”! How many productions are still put on goodness knows why or for whom! If one asks oneself: Does every production I put on help people to live better, to understand themselves and our way of life better, to infuse them with the strength to struggle and the feeling of great fellowship and brotherhood? The honest answer is: No, by no means every....

p Born over a hundred years ago, Stanislavsky provides a fine example of civic ardour and full awareness of his duty to the people. For only a highly developed sense of civic duty and commitment to a cause can make an artist stand the test of time.

p Stanislavsky’s sense of civic duty was most of all in evidence in his directing and teaching work. He had a way of embodying the noble ideas of a play and a production in the characters and their actions by the most subtle, and often imperceptible means. The implacable logic, the psychological and social authenticity of every character produced a genuine picture of life on the stage, and unnoticeably but very definitely shaped the audience’s thoughts and feelings.

p Stanislavsky’s ideal, “super-objective” and civic ardour were fused with the characters’ profound psychological and artistic truth.

p Noble ideological content and the most skilful means of expression are the major conditions for the creative activity of the realist artist.

p Stanislavsky taught that the theatre should create “the life of the human spirit”.

p Stanislavsky’s teaching is completely alien to art that is indifferent to man, cynical and anti-social. Stanislavsky is of no use at all to art that ignores reality or seeks to escape it.

p We are wont to speak of the “simple Soviet man”, but he is not, after all, so simple.

p This Soviet man is an amazingly complex “mechanism”. But there is a magic key to his heart. It was not easy to find, to awaken man’s creative energies and initiative, concern for the common cause, and the ability to find bold solutions. Our people are building, studying and inventing, and at the same time preparing themselves for life in communist society. The task of all our art is to inculcate in people the moral qualities necessary for life in communist society.

p Maxim Gorky called literature the study of man. The theatre is concerned with the same science.

p Our age offers ideal conditions for this science to flourish. All Stanislavsky’s tremendous experience, his lessons, productions and books are available and help our theatre comprehend the spiritual essence of Soviet man and inculcate in him new ideals of Beauty.

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p The young people of today for some reason imagine Stanislavsky as a venerable old sage, a stuffy “upright” scholar of art. What rubbish! Stanislavsky was an amazingly vital, volatile, restless personality, highly inventive and temperamental, even mischievous at times. He had an awesome temper. But what impresses me most about him was his courage. Having achieved international fame, he sat down and wrote My Life in Art, a work in which painstakingly and with merciless honesty he listed and analysed his mistakes. His mistakes, not his triumphs. Who of our contemporaries would be capable of such bold frankness? Having opened a new chapter in the history of the world theatre, trained a whole pleiad of remarkably talented actors, and finally, elaborating his remarkable “system”, in the last years of his life he came to the conclusion that all he had achieved in half a century of work was not the end of the road but the beginning, and already hampered by illness he set out to choose new students and begin all over again.

p Stanislavsky is a model of a man who feels he must go forward all the time, the eternal seeker who can never rest and take time off from the quest.

p Stanislavsky’s art is a remarkable blend of wisdom and sly humour, of scintillating imagination and classical harmony, of passion and warmth. He can play with equal virtuosity on the kettledrum or the most delicate heartstrings. He has a perfect mastery of Russian that can be understood by people the world over. His love for his fellow men and his faith in the creative powers of the people go hand in hand with angry protest against all that is base and unworthy. He knew and loved his own people, and had faith in them, and he always told them the truth.

p Fortunately, time does not make Stanislavsky any more tolerant of all forms of falsehood. He never forgave himself anything. He never invented excuses for himself, and never trembled for his authority. He could abandon what had once been dear to his heart without regrets if he found something dearer.

p Somebody has spread the myth that Stanislavsky had no time for form in art and did not even know the meaning of it. It is beyond me how people can bring themselves to say such a thing about the author of such masterpieces as Warm Heart and The Marriage of Figaro and many, many others.

p Somebody has spread the myth that Stanislavsky was dry and austere in art-practically a puritan and an ascetic. That about the man who in La Locandiera (The Mistress of the Inn) had the young nobleman Ripafratta go so far as to rip the petticoats off the brazen Ortensia and Dejanira!

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p Someone is persistently spreading the myth that Stanislavsky had a coldly rational and analytic mind. This can hardly be said of a man who once got so carried away that he rushed onto the stage and demonstrated to a live horse how to flick away bumblebees and gadflies!

p Stanislavsky was an ordinary genius and an extraordinary man. A man, not one of the Twelve Apostles. Like all men, he had his weaknesses. At times he could be unjust. He could lose his temper with people for no reason at all. He frequently suffered from angina. In his youth he was a bit of a dandy.

p He created his remarkable “system” above all for himself. For a long time he considered himself a bad actor, and it was a long time before he decided that his “system” might be useful to others.

p Today Stanislavsky’s “system” is the property of all. There was a time when it was forced down people’s throats whether they wanted it or not. Which probably explains why to this day there are people who, without having ever taken the trouble to study the “system” properly have dubbed it a code of rules and instructions. Vulgarisers and ignoramuses have failed to understand that it is in the very nature of the “system” to reject all rules and ready-made solutions. The “system” does not restrict the actor in any way but on the contrary unchains his creative spirit, making the whole world his stage. Everyone must find the “system” in themselves. For the “system” is fidelity to nature. Like nature, it moves, changes and lives. The “system” is a revolt against dogmatism. One has to be pretty blind to understand it dogmatically.

p The “system” belongs to us all and we all swear allegiance to it, but by no means all of us act or produce the way Stanislavsky taught.

p Stanislavsky has borne the blame for the boredom, colourlessness and bleak realism of many present-day productions. It is not worth lowering oneself to argue with those who make such accusations, people who use the fruits of Stanislavsky’s teaching, without bothering to consider who cultivated them.

p Within the recent memory of all of us there came the order to “fall into line with Stanislavsky”. Instead of getting into line with the moving Stanislavsky, people were content to catch up with books about him. Stanislavsky has long since forged ahead, leaving the rest of the field way behind, and those who have “lined up” with him are softpedaling, if not running on the spot. The time has come for the command: “Forward to catch up with Stanislavsky!”, and those who enter the field will need a good pair of legs to keep the fleet Stanislavsky in sight even.

p When we arrive at the theatre of the future, Stanislavsky will be the first to meet us, young as ever, wise and smiling mischievously.

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p He was born and lived for the theatre of the future, and that is where his monument should be. Meanwhile, he is with us, only way ahead.

p Stanislavsky was born a hundred years ago and died over a quarter of a century ago, but his time is only just coming.

p Stanislavsky is being born anew. He has left us definite rules for realistic acting, the actor’s organic existence and the methods for achieving truth on the stage. But this does not absolve us from the duty of continuing the search; it does not mean that there is nothing left to be discovered and that no problems remain to be resolved.

p It would be very wrong to take such a view, for it makes the rules of the “system” an abstract dogma. The great genius of the theatre left us an enormous patrimony, but our only benefit from it will be dry scholasticism and abstract speculation if we are prepared to accept it as a ready-made solution rather than making it our everyday practice, frequently taking a new look at it.

p Time passes and the concept of truth in art does not stand still and remain unchanged. There is no such thing, and cannot be, as a truth for all times. The rules formulated by Stanislavsky are in perpetual motion, constantly developing, and we are required to make a tremendous creative effort to rediscover them for ourselves every time we embark on a new undertaking. It is not enough to know these rules: we must make them a part of ourselves, of our time, try to penetrate their very essence in order to understand how Stanislavsky himself would have viewed them and put them into practice in today’s conditions.

p Only thus can we ensure that the “system” is alive and new, just as Stanislavsky would have wished to see it. This is in fact what he demanded of his pupils and followers. That they treat his “system” not as a ready recipe, but as an effective instrument for everyday practical creative work. Unless we adopt this approach, however much we may pay lip service to Stanislavsky his great discoveries will be quite worthless. Quite enough has been done already to make a dogma of his theories, to destroy people’s respect for his “system”, and their willingness to put it into practice in the contemporary theatre. This attitude discredits Stanislavsky’s teaching, completely eliminates it as an effective force, and gives rise to all kinds of nihilistic declarations.

p We should arm ourselves today with Lenin’s thesis that protecting our heritage means above all developing it. Every stage-director should make his contribution to the development of the “system” and its creative application. This is not a task for individuals, for in the arts, just as in science, the age of individual discoveries has given way 43 to an age in which new breakthroughs can only be achieved through the combined efforts of a group of like-minded people.

p We must discover the laws of Stanislavsky for ourselves in a new quality, in new manifestations, for in art there is not, and cannot be, a “universal gadget” that can be used in any contingency. Every one of us must strive to carry out Stanislavsky’s chief behest-to create our own method on the basis of his teaching.

I do not claim credit for any special discoveries, innovations or original theories. I consider myself Stanislavsky’s pupil. I merely wish to share with others, with the reader, my conclusions, observations and ideas from thirty years of work in the theatre.