Stanlevski Blog X UAL Acting

Stan The Man

Who is that?
Stanislavski, original name Konstantin Sergeyevich Alekseyev, (born January 5 [January 17, New Style], 1863, Moscow, Russia—died August 7, 1938, Moscow), Russian actor, director, and producer, founder of the Moscow Art Theatre (opened 1898). He is best known for developing the system or theory of acting called the Stanislavsky system, or Stanislavsky method.


What happened back in his day

Stanislavski spent the summer of 1914 in Marinaded where, as he had in 1906, he researched the history of theatre and theories of acting in order to clarify the discoveries that his practical experiments had produced.^[ When the First World War broke out, Stanislavski was in Munich."It seemed to me", he wrote of the atmosphere at the train station in an article detailing his experiences, "that death was hovering everywhere."

The train was stopped at Immenstadt, where German soldiers denounced him as a Russian spy. Held in a room at the station with a large crowd with "the faces of wild beasts" baying at its windows, Stanislavski believed he was to be executed. He remembered that he was carrying an official document that mentioned having played to Kaiser Wilhelm during their tour of 1906 that, when he showed it to the officers, produced a change of attitude towards his group. They were placed on a slow train to Kempten. Gurevchm later related how during the journey Stanislavski surprised her when he whispered that:

Events of recent days had given him a clear impression of the superficiality of all that was called human culture, bourgeois culture, that a completely different kind of life was needed, where all needs were reduced to the minimum, where there was work real artistic work on behalf of the people, for those who had not yet been consumed by this bourgeois culture.

In Kempten they were again ordered into one of the station's rooms, where Stanislavski overheard the German soldiers complain of a lack of ammunition; it was only this, he understood, that prevented their execution. The following morning they were placed on a train and eventually returned to Russia via Switzerland and France.

Why did Stan The Man make this method ?

During the Moscow Art Theatre's early years, Stanislavski worked on providing a guiding structure for actors to consistently achieve deep, meaningful and disciplined performances. He believed that actors needed to inhabit authentic emotion while on stage and, to do so, they could draw upon feelings they'd experienced in their own lives. Stanislavski also developed exercises that encouraged actors to explore character motivations, giving performances depth and an unassuming realism while still paying attention to the parameters of the production. This technique would come to be known as the "Stanislavski method" or "the Method."

Stanislavski's system was developed through his own cross-cultural experience as actor, director, and businessman. He constantly updated his method through inter-disciplinary studies, absorbing from a range of sources and influences, such as the modernist developments, yoga and Pavlovian behaviorist psychology. He introduced group rehearsals and relaxation techniques to achieve better spiritual connections between actors. Pavlovian approach worked well by conditioning actors through discipline in longer, organised rehearsals, and using a thorough analysis of characters. Stanislavski himself was involved in a long and arduous practice making every actor better prepared for stage performance and eventually producing a less rigid acting style. In his own words, Stanislavski described his early approach as "Spiritual Realism." His actors worked hard to deliver perfectly believable performances, as none of his actors wanted to hear his famous verdict, "I don't believe."

Who Where Stan's friends 

Stanislavsky was also under permanent surveillance, because his Moscow Art Theatre was frequently attended by Joseph Stalin and other Soviet strongmen. However, at that time Moscow Art Theatre became especially popular, because Russian intellectuals needed a cultural oasis to escape from the grim Soviet reality. Under Stanislavski the Moscow Art Theatre produced several brilliant plays by Mikhail A. Bulgakov, and also continued running such classics as 'The Seagull', 'The Cherry Orchard', 'The Lower Bottom' and other original productions of plays by Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky.

Why / How did he survive the Russian revolution

Stanislavski welcomed the February Revolution of 1917 and its overthrow of the absolute monarchy as a "miraculous liberation of Russia". With the October Revolution later in the year, the MAT closed for a few weeks and the First Studio was occupied by revolutionaries. Stanislavski thought that the social upheavals presented an opportunity to realise his long-standing ambitions to establish a Russian popular theatre that would provide, as the title of an essay he prepared that year put it, "The Aesthetic Education of the Popular Masses".

During the years of the Civil War, Stanislavski concentrated on teaching his 'system', directing (both at the MAT and its studios), and bringing performances of the classics to new audiences (such as factory workers and the Red Army). Several articles on Stanislavski and his 'system' were published, but none were written by him. On 5 March 1921, Stanislavski was evicted from his large house on Carriage Row, where he had lived since 1903.