Stanislavsky Konstantin Sergeivich

Stanislavsky Konstantin Sergeivich [ Konstantin Sergeivich Alexeyev] (1863–1938), Russian actor, director, and teacher of acting. He had already had some experience in the theatre when in 1898 he founded with Nemirovich-Danchenko the Moscow Art Theatre. In its first productions— Alexei Tolstoy's Tsar Feodor Ivanovich (1898), Ostrovsky's The Snow Maiden (1900), Leo Tolstoy's The Power of Darkness (1902), Julius Caesar (1903)—Stanislavsky put into practice the theories he had formulated under the influence of the Meininger company, and out of his own experience. Rejecting the current declamatory style of acting, he sought for a simplicity and truth which would give a complete illusion of reality. His ideas were particularly acceptable in America, where in the 1930s the Group Theatre made them the basis of a system of actor-training known as the Method. One of Stanislavsky's greatest achievements was his staging of Chekhov's plays, which he produced as lyric dramas, underlining the emotional moments with music and showing how Chekhov's apparently passive dialogue demands great subtlety and a psychologically orientated internal development of the role, with great simplicity of external expression. During the years of upheaval leading to the uprising of 1905 Stanislavsky produced the plays of Maxim Gorky—‘stormy petrel of the Revolution’—including The Lower Depths (1902). In the years of reaction (1905–16) he turned to Symbolism with Maeterlinck and Andreyev in aestheticized, stylized productions. Under the Soviet regime, after an initial period of adjustment, he continued his work, but in later years, because of ill health, he gave up acting and concentrated on production and teaching. Among his best roles were Astrov in Uncle Vanya, Vershinin in Three Sisters, Gaev in The Cherry Orchard, Dr Stockmann in Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, and Rakitin in Turgenev's A Month in the Country.