Konstantin Stanislavski: Who was the founding theater practitioner and why is his "system" still used today?



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We remember Konstantin Stanislavski in the last Doodle of Google, who would have celebrated his 156th birthday.

The influential actor, director and practitioner of Russian theater has left a lasting mark in the world of performing arts by founding the Moscow Art Theater and creating his own method of training dramatic.

Konstantin Sergeievich Alekseiev – who later adopted the stage name Stanislavski – was born on January 17, 1863 into a wealthy family in Moscow. His father would have built a scene on their family estate, on which a young Stanislavski would act. He made plays with his brothers and sisters and they often went to the theater, opera and ballet.


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Stanislavski became a member of a drama group, the Alekseyev circle, in 1877 and worked obsessively to perfect his art.

It was not just his biological family that shared his love of theater. Stanslavski married Maria Lilina in 1889 and they had three children, although their first died in infancy.

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1/10 10. Girls and Boys, Royal Court

One of those pieces that made you stagger slightly when you left the stalls. Carey Mulligan presented this show for a woman with a strange self-possession and a ferocious grace telling of how she had met her husband and how they had navigated in his career and in the family. Dennis Kelly's play started with a light, funny sound, but it turned into a heartbreaking tragedy that left you sick and screamed at the conditioned violence of men.
Es Devlin's pictorial approach to light and colors was perfect and produced painful results.

Marc Brenner

2/10 9. Fun Home, young Vic

This American musical was eagerly awaited and did not disappoint. An adaptation of Alison Bechdel's graphic novel about her father in the closet, who ran a funeral home, and her own journey out, it was important to see such a story on stage – and was told with so much beauty, with book and words. by Lisa Kron and music Jeanine Tesori (who also wrote the formidable musical Caroline, or Change, which also stormed London in 2018 after its opening in Chichester last year).
Although the show is not totally etched in memory, Zubin Varla was gorgeous as a father and Eleanor Kane's first badual and love-finding song – "Changing My Major" (to Joan) – was one of my favorite times of the year. .

Marc Brenner

3/10 8. Dance Nation, The Almeida

From the American writer Clare Barron (photo), this play follows a group of teenage dancers, with their most serious dreams, their little rivalries and their general anguish. It sounds like a bad TV series … but it was so, so much more. Barron had these girls discovering their power. Power that delights them; power they are afraid of. A slippery beast, the piece flirted with the supernatural and the mythical by describing the transformation of puberty. Ria Zmitrowicz was particularly memorable among Zuzu among a large group of adults who did not try to hide their adulthood.

Almeida

4/10 7. Company, Gielgud Theater

I pbad more criticisms than I would like to moan about old-fashioned musical covers that fail to tackle problematic material. Stephen Sondheim's musical about Bobby, whose friends are asking him to get married, could have been one, but Marianne Elliott understood it all. It offers an intelligent and coherent approach to rigged distribution.
Bobbie as a woman in her mid-thirties made a lot of sense, as did the switcheroos of several other couples, which gave a new impetus to the grim investigation of the relationship series. The score seemed divine, Rosalie Craig was a sparkling Bobbie and "getting married today" had actually run out of laughter.

Brinkhoff Mogenburg

5/10 6. Sweat, Donmar Warehouse

A late addition: Sweatshirt has just opened, though after rave reviews, tickets are no longer available – catch it by January 26th. Lynn Nottage's play about Pennsylvania factory workers whose friendships and families break up when job loss looms, always tends to be good; he won a Pulitzer, after all. But Lynette Linton's production was fiercely good. Falling to the heart of the emotions of the heartbreaking story of Nottage, he had beautifully controlled performances and a superb performance by Frankie Bradshaw.
And if this incredibly emphatic piece has a lot to tell us about America's blue-collar, she could not have hit harder in Brexit Britain either.

Johan Persson

6/10 5. Misty, Bush / Trafalgar Studies

Game changer, this show has built an exciting momentum, galvanizing the audience and transferring it to the West End, allowing us to conquer once and for all the stunned idea that there is no public for "black coins" in the long run. grbad. And how: Arinze Kene's play has explored and exploded the notion of "black play", with the fascinating Kene playing himself as a writer who has trouble understanding if he is looking for what that producers expect from him by writing "urban safari". jungle s ** t ".
It was an art about art that was urgently needed, and although it had rough edges, there was also a vital vim and intention.

Helen Murray

7/10 4. John, National Theater

Famous American actress Annie Baker, The Flick, left me a little disappointed; that has me completely swept away. A synopsis – a couple fighting in a strange and kitsch B & B filled with mysterious Chinese dolls – does not do it justice.
Here is the most beautiful dissection of a struggling relationship and how gender politics infects us all. Here too, there was a kind of mysterious metaphysics that really moved – John was not a ghost story, but rather, it was strangely inclined to the darker depths of the human soul. It was long, it was slow and I loved every minute.

Stephen Cummiskey

8/10 3. The writer, The Almeida

Yes, another from the North London Theater – but what a year they had! And it's a piece that accurately addresses the specifics of its own setting: Ella Hickson's meta-theatrical masterpiece began with a scene in the theater, where a young writer was joking around older director.
But Blanche McIntyre's production has always ripped you off, she was terribly intelligent and formally exciting, asking vivid questions about gender, power, capitalism and art. As theater about theater, it could also be infuriating and present an extremely ambiguous final scene that made everyone crazy. Probably the most written, the most discussed and the most discussed piece of the year.

Manuel Harlan

9/10 2. Ear for Eye, Royal Court

The past year has seen a real increase in the diversity of stories told in British theater, and Debbie Tucker Green's incendiary play was the climax: brilliantly hard, absolutely necessary. A large black cast ran elliptical scenes denouncing racial prejudices and police brutality – some beautifully poetic, others vibrant with fury. And a long filmed section required the public to face the harsh truth of the British and American slave laws. It was a piece that stayed with me long after its end.

Stephen Cummiskey

10/10 1. summer and smoke, the Almeida

If you ever told me in January that my first place would be this lesser-known piece of Tennessee Williams, probably the least appealing show of Almeida's absolutely awesome program, I might have made fun of it. But Rebecca Frecknall's story about this upset love story was as delicate and distinctive as it was incredibly urgent. Matthew Needham was a very intense man, but it was Patsy Ferran's incredibly detailed and amusing performance that propelled that character to the forefront.
The best news? He has been transferred to the West End, where you can take it until 19 January.

Marc Brenner


1/10 10. Girls and Boys, Royal Court

One of those pieces that made you stagger slightly when you left the stalls. Carey Mulligan presented this show for a woman with a strange self-possession and a ferocious grace telling of how she had met her husband and how they had navigated in his career and in the family. Dennis Kelly's play started with a light, funny sound, but it turned into a heartbreaking tragedy that left you sick and screamed at the conditioned violence of men.
Es Devlin's pictorial approach to light and colors was perfect and produced painful results.

Marc Brenner

2/10 9. Fun Home, young Vic

This American musical was eagerly awaited and did not disappoint. An adaptation of Alison Bechdel's graphic novel about her father in the closet, who ran a funeral home, and her own journey out, it was important to see such a story on stage – and was told with so much beauty, with book and words. by Lisa Kron and music Jeanine Tesori (who also wrote the formidable musical Caroline, or Change, which also stormed London in 2018 after its opening in Chichester last year).
Although the show is not totally etched in memory, Zubin Varla was gorgeous as a father and Eleanor Kane's first badual and love-finding song – "Changing My Major" (to Joan) – was one of my favorite times of the year. .

Marc Brenner

3/10 8. Dance Nation, The Almeida

From the American writer Clare Barron (photo), this play follows a group of teenage dancers, with their most serious dreams, their little rivalries and their general anguish. It sounds like a bad TV series … but it was so, so much more. Barron had these girls discovering their power. Power that delights them; power they are afraid of. A slippery beast, the piece flirted with the supernatural and the mythical by describing the transformation of puberty. Ria Zmitrowicz was particularly memorable among Zuzu among a large group of adults who did not try to hide their adulthood.

Almeida

4/10 7. Company, Gielgud Theater

I pbad more criticisms than I would like to moan about old-fashioned musical covers that fail to tackle problematic material. Stephen Sondheim's musical about Bobby, whose friends are asking him to get married, could have been one, but Marianne Elliott understood it all. It offers an intelligent and coherent approach to rigged distribution.
Bobbie as a woman in her mid-thirties made a lot of sense, as did the switcheroos of several other couples, which gave a new impetus to the grim investigation of the relationship series. The score seemed divine, Rosalie Craig was a sparkling Bobbie and "getting married today" had actually run out of laughter.

Brinkhoff Mogenburg


5/10 6. Sweat, Donmar Warehouse

A late addition: Sweatshirt has just opened, though after rave reviews, tickets are no longer available – catch it by January 26th. Lynn Nottage's play about Pennsylvania factory workers whose friendships and families break up when job loss looms, always tends to be good; he won a Pulitzer, after all. But Lynette Linton's production was fiercely good. Falling to the heart of the emotions of the heartbreaking story of Nottage, he had beautifully controlled performances and a superb performance by Frankie Bradshaw.
And if this incredibly emphatic piece has a lot to tell us about America's blue-collar, she could not have hit harder in Brexit Britain either.

Johan Persson

6/10 5. Misty, Bush / Trafalgar Studies

Game changer, this show has built an exciting momentum, galvanizing the audience and transferring it to the West End, allowing us to conquer once and for all the stunned idea that there is no public for "black coins" in the long run. grbad. And how: Arinze Kene's play has explored and exploded the notion of "black play", with the fascinating Kene playing himself as a writer who has trouble understanding if he is looking for what that producers expect from him by writing "urban safari". jungle s ** t ".
It was an art about art that was urgently needed, and although it had rough edges, there was also a vital vim and intention.

Helen Murray

7/10 4. John, National Theater

Famous American actress Annie Baker, The Flick, left me a little disappointed; that has me completely swept away. A synopsis – a couple fighting in a strange and kitsch B & B filled with mysterious Chinese dolls – does not do it justice.
Here is the most beautiful dissection of a struggling relationship and how gender politics infects us all. Here too, there was a kind of mysterious metaphysics that really moved – John was not a ghost story, but rather, it was strangely inclined to the darker depths of the human soul. It was long, it was slow and I loved every minute.

Stephen Cummiskey

8/10 3. The writer, The Almeida

Yes, another from the North London Theater – but what a year they had! And it's a piece that accurately addresses the specifics of its own setting: Ella Hickson's meta-theatrical masterpiece began with a scene in the theater, where a young writer was joking around older director.
But Blanche McIntyre's production has always ripped you off, she was terribly intelligent and formally exciting, asking vivid questions about gender, power, capitalism and art. As theater about theater, it could also be infuriating and present an extremely ambiguous final scene that made everyone crazy. Probably the most written, the most discussed and the most discussed piece of the year.

Manuel Harlan


9/10 2. Ear for Eye, Royal Court

The past year has seen a real increase in the diversity of stories told in British theater, and Debbie Tucker Green's incendiary play was the climax: brilliantly hard, absolutely necessary. A large black cast ran elliptical scenes denouncing racial prejudices and police brutality – some beautifully poetic, others vibrant with fury. And a long filmed section required the public to face the harsh truth of the British and American slave laws. It was a piece that stayed with me long after its end.

Stephen Cummiskey

10/10 1. summer and smoke, the Almeida

If you ever told me in January that my first place would be this lesser-known piece of Tennessee Williams, probably the least appealing show of Almeida's absolutely awesome program, I might have made fun of it. But Rebecca Frecknall's story about this upset love story was as delicate and distinctive as it was incredibly urgent. Matthew Needham was a very intense man, but it was Patsy Ferran's incredibly detailed and amusing performance that propelled that character to the forefront.
The best news? He has been transferred to the West End, where you can take it until 19 January.

Marc Brenner

He directed The fruits of enlightenment by Leo Tolstoy in 1891, and then described it as his first independent production.

But it was an emblematic encounter between Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko that really put him on the road to success.

Nemirovich-Danchenko, writer and director from Georgia, met Stanislavski in 1897. The meeting would have lasted 18 hours and would eventually have resulted in the creation of the Moscow Art Theater in 1898.

Konstantin Stanislavsky is photographed left with his wife, Russian actress Lilina (right) and the Russian author Maxim Gorky (center). The three of them go to Yalta in 1900. (Photo Hulton Archives / Getty Images)

The theater troupe staged a famous production of the film Anton Chekhov The Seagull in 1898, led by Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko. This new version of The Seagull, which followed a previous failure in St. Petersburg, made the Moscow art theater an influential institution.

As a theater practitioner, Stanislavsky continued to carefully note his work and then went on to write several major works on the art of performance.


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Stanislavsky has developed his own method of theatrical training, called the Stanislavski system, which requires actors to rely on their emotional memory to prepare themselves to fully grasp the spirit of the character. He encouraged the actors to fully live their characters, in search of motivation in their dialogue; a technique now common to many naturalistic drama.

His system later became the basis of the Method actor style still used to this day.

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