Konstantin Stanislavski

Russian theatre and acting innovator.

Born Konstantin Sergeyevich Alexeyev in Moscow to a wealthy family. He had an early interest in acting and took the stage-name Stanislavski to preserve the reputation of his family. In 1888 he established the Society of Art and Literature at the Maly Theatre, where he gained experience in aesthetics and stagecraft. In 1898, with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, he founded the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT), Russia's first ensemble theatre.

From there, based on the realist tradition of Pushkin, he developed his ideas of what he called the Stanislavski Method and which would later be called method acting - actors would research the situation created by the script according to their character's motivations and their own experiences. Ideally, the actor would make his motivations identical to those of the character in the script. He could then replay these emotions and experiences in the role to achieve a more genuine performance. The 17th C play Tsar Fyodor was the first used to demonstrate his ideas.

He laid the foundations of modern opera and boosted the works of writers such as [Maksim Gorki]? and Anton Chekhov, who's works could be well used by his methodology.

Stanislavski survived both the 1905 Revolution and the 1917 one, apparently Lenin intervened to protect him. In 1918 Stanislavski established the First Studio as a school for young actors and wrote two books, My Life in Art and The Actor and His Work.