Contribution to theatrical art. How Stanislavsky glorified Russia and how it thanked him

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Introduction

1. Here’s to our happy childhood

2. Amputation and evisceration

Bibliography

Introduction

K.S. Stanislavsky is a Russian Soviet actor, director, theater teacher, founder and director of the Moscow Art Theater. People's Artist of the USSR (1936). A great figure, thinker and theater theorist. Based on the rich creative practice and statements of his outstanding predecessors and contemporaries, Stanislavsky laid a solid foundation for the modern science of theater, created a school, a direction in stage art, which found theoretical expression in the so-called Stanislavsky system. Stanislavsky's parents are Sergei Vladimirovich...

It’s strange to write about Stanislavsky. It's the same as the importance of carbon for life on Earth. The impetus that Stanislavsky gave is the theater of the entire century. It seems implausible, it seems that this is just a figure overloaded with mythology, but it is true. Because Stanislavsky did and expressed something for which culture was already ripe and overripe, for which there was an aesthetic and social demand.

1. Here’s to our happy childhood

He was from a wealthy and educated merchant class, from its highest circle, so the sonorous surname “Stanislavsky” could not be his real surname. This was the stage name that Konstantin Sergeevich Alekseev (5.1.1863 - 7.8.1938) took later, in 1885. His family was related to the collectors Tretyakov brothers and to Savva Mamontov, the creator of private Russian opera. “My father, Sergei Vladimirovich Alekseev, a purebred Russian and Muscovite, was a manufacturer and industrialist. My mother, Elizaveta Vasilyevna Alekseeva, Russian on her father’s side and French on her mother’s side, was the daughter of the once famous Parisian artist Varley...” (“My life in art").

It was a happy and rich family. Money was not counted in this environment; children’s education began at home, where parents set up “an entire gymnasium.” However, from the age of 13, Konstantin studied at the gymnasium, but, by his own admission, he did not learn anything from it. Like almost all future artists, he studied without pleasure, out of inertia, and later called the Maly Theater a source of spiritual development, which spoiled him with a wasteful wealth of talent.

At the same time, amateur performances began (the first performance on the home stage took place in 1877), and it is noteworthy that from the biographical book “My Life in Art” the reader will not even know that after high school Alekseev entered and graduated from the Lazarev Institute and began working in the family firm. Culturally insignificant events are excluded from the autobiography.

But it is described in detail that first dad built a new building on an estate near Moscow with a large hall for amateur performances, and then, “being carried away by our theatrical activities, he built us a magnificent theater hall in Moscow.” It's good to have a rich dad!

Gradually, a circle of amateurs called “Alekseevsky” formed around Konstantin, in which comedies, operettas and vaudevilles were staged. Konstantin himself gave preference to characteristic characters, staged performances along with his brother and sister, loved success with the audience and with women, and enjoyed transformation. There was plenty of youthful energy.

2. Amputation and evisceration

His artistic adolescence ended in 1888 after meeting with director Fedotov, the husband of the famous artist Glikeria Fedotova. I don’t think it was so much about Fedotov himself, although, of course, the first meeting with a professional director could not fail to impress an amateur. Most likely, Stanislavsky himself approached what can now be called a comprehensive understanding of the theater: together with colleagues, including Fedotov, Stanislavsky developed a project for the Moscow Society of Art and Literature, investing significant personal funds there - 25 or 30 thousand rubles.

Here a “rebirth” took place: “Apparently, in the artistic field I remained the same tasteless copyist as before. Fedotov and Sollogub began to perform operations on me: amputation, evisceration, and leaching of theatrical rot that was still kept in hiding. They gave me such a beating that I will never forget for the rest of my life. They ridiculed me so much and, like two times two makes four, they proved the backwardness, inconsistency and vulgarity of my then taste, that I first fell silent, then was ashamed, finally felt my complete insignificance and - "It's as if he's empty inside. The old is no good, and there's nothing new."

At the end of his artistic adolescence in 1889, he married Masha Perevoshchikova (on stage Lilina). In 1891, daughter Kira was born, in 1894 son Igor.

The Society of Art and Literature existed for 10 years, Stanislavsky played 34 roles in it and staged 16 performances. This was his school of acting and constant self-analysis, craft experience and attempts to create a performance as a stage process consciously built by the director, within which the director can invite the actor to play superficially, vaudeville, and maybe, if the artistic task requires it, “force the feeling to get out of its hiding places.” "

This was a ten-year run-up before the founding of the Public Art Theater. It was at this time that reflection on a new type of theater - director's theater - dates back to: in 1890, the troupe of the Duke of Meiningen, headed by director Kronek, came to Russia on tour. Stanislavsky was surprised by the possibility of solving artistic problems using non-acting, staging means, with the help of mise-en-scène and scenography.

However, Kronek’s “director’s inventions” only exacerbated Stanislavsky’s already existing feeling that the actor was no good as a means of expression. Without adequate knowledge of the acting technique, its various technologies and techniques, the need for which is caused by the peculiarities of drama, it cannot be an element of the performance on a par with props, lighting, music, and cannot fulfill the tasks set by the director.

In fact, the understanding of this circumstance, approximately dating back to 1890-1895, was the birth of the director’s theater that developed in the next twentieth century: a director is needed not just to assign actors to roles (“separate”) and to ensure that the text was spoken, and for a specific director's play, all the formative components of the performance, first of all, the actors. Who no longer play as best they can, but in accordance with the director’s requirements.

3. Art theater. First twenty years

General dissatisfaction with the state of acting technique was growing. This was a specifically new look: Stanislavsky looks at the actor from the outside. He thinks and writes about the “art of experience,” which allows the actor to psychologically deeply and subtly feel the feelings and thoughts of a character on stage, making what he is experiencing inside noticeable to the viewer. Instead of cliches, he wants from the actor a specific “genuine experience” on stage, the inclusion of that psychophysical apparatus that the actor uses in life like any other person. It is necessary to remove the clamps that destroy all feelings on stage, and then the soul of the character will be revealed.

Having met with V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, Stanislavsky dares to create his own theater. The public art theater opened on October 14, 1898 with the play “Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich” (Stanislavsky played Prince Ivan Petrovich Shuisky). The theater's mission included a global theatrical reform that affected direction, acting, scenography, all production components, a special selection of dramaturgy, and the education of actors. In almost forty years of work in the theater, all his maximalism, all his dissatisfaction with acting cliches and a constant focus on novelty were manifested: “The Seagull”, “Uncle Vanya”, “Three Sisters”, “The Cherry Orchard”, “Bourgeois”, “At the Lower Depths”, “Doctor” Shtokman", "Human Life", "A Month in the Country"... Innovation and search in everything. “Stanislavsky’s directorial fantasy knew no bounds: out of ten inventions, eight were canceled himself, the ninth - on the advice of Nemirovich-Danchenko, and only the tenth remained on stage” (A. Serebrov).

And continuous experiments: the studio on Povarskaya at the Moscow Art Theater (1905), headed by Vsevolod Meyerhold (who started at the Moscow Art Theater as an actor in the role of a neurasthenic, which he actually was) to search for new theatrical forms, the First Studio was also for experiments , which were difficult to carry out in the theater, because actors love success, and not the search for something new; invitation of G. Craig to stage "Hamlet". In the 1900s -1910s. The “Stanislavsky system” begins to take shape.

4. Experience and representation

One of Stanislavsky's main ideas was that there are three technologies of acting: craft, “experience” and “performance” (quotes mean that these words are endowed with a non-trivial meaning).

The craft is based on the use of ready-made cliches, by which the viewer can clearly understand what emotions the actor is referring to (but not experiencing)

The art of performance is based on the fact that during long rehearsals the actor experiences genuine experiences, which automatically create a form for the manifestation of these experiences, but during the performance itself the actor does not experience these feelings, but only reproduces the form, the ready-made external drawing of the role.

Finally, in the art of experience, the actor, both on stage and at the performance itself, experiences genuine experiences, not the same as in life, but still genuine, and this gives birth to the life of the image on stage, saturated with details so interesting and subtle that they can never be retained when repeated. fixed drawing in the art of performance. There is no demonstration of the results of creativity here, but there is the improvisational process itself and the flow of living human feeling directed from the actor to the viewer.

Stanislavsky problematized the acting of an actor, turned it from an organic property into an artistic means, materializing two philosophical models in acting. The first is based on the fact that life, apart from play, is empty and chaotic, and only the art of play, a beautiful form, “densifies” chaos. “He needs to play, without this he suffocates, like an empty place without content; like a dress that no one is wearing... The actor is not individualized. This is his essence” (V.V. Rozanov, 1914).

The second model comes from overcrowding with life material, from the feeling of “the excess of one’s soul over... one’s face, one’s destiny, one’s life” (F.A. Stepun, 1923). Two opposing philosophical models require different acting technologies, and it was Stanislavsky who gave impetus to their formation.

It is incorrect to say that Stanislavski completely denied “representation.” The main thing in his discovery was the understanding of “representation” and “experience” as equal methods, technologies of acting, functionally related to the director’s task. Sometimes one is required, sometimes another. In other words, Stanislavsky’s historical merit lies in his reflection on the method of acting, which before him was understood as something “natural”, strictly given to man.

It is Stanislavsky who is known both as a theorist and as a practitioner who has achieved overcoming the “gifts of nature.” It is from Stanislavsky that the transformation of the way of existing on stage into a flexible means of artistic modeling comes. Now this is an axiom, although craft still dominates, and the difficulties that Stanislavsky calls for are few in demand. Honestly speaking, Stanislavsky was a genius, and his system is for geniuses. Smaller people thought that he was Mozart who wanted to become Salieri.

From the impetus given by Stanislavski, creolized techniques also arose. The external drawing of the role is given, but at the same time the actor is asked to either “justify” the form (“experienced grotesque”), or with part of his expressive means to reveal an experience that does not coincide in meaning with the given drawing.

Mikhail Chekhov loved exercises on the “experienced grotesque” (squatting on the table, placing an inkwell on his head, justifying this position and declaring his love). Experiments on mismatch (eye expressions and intonations contradict the rest of the facial expressions and gestures) were staged on Marlon Brando in the 1940s by Lee Strasberg, this was masterfully mastered by Arkady Raikin, an entire BDT performance was built on this - “The Story of a Horse” with Evgeny Lebedev in the title role .

In the second half of the 20th century, the technology “an actor plays an actor who plays a role”, defined by Stanislavsky’s ideas, emerged, although elements of it can be discerned in Stanislavsky’s “The Inspector General” with M. Chekhov-Khlestakov. It is with this structure in mind that, for example, the play “Marat/Sade” (1965) by Peter Weiss was written.

At the same time, almost all of Jerzy Grotowski’s experiments, including the task for the actor to “perform the movement of the soul with the help of his body” and the “Beginner’s Arts” project (1980s), stem from the reflection on the acting cabotage that he once undertook Stanislavsky. He truly provided the theater of the future with a stock of ideas and techniques.

5. Second and last twentieth anniversary

By 1917 The Moscow Art Theater came up as the largest theater in Russia artistically.

After the October revolution, the theater almost closed. The performances are free, tickets are not sold but distributed, the press is hooligan, the former neurasthenic Meyerhold became a commissar and walks around with a holster... “We had to start from the very beginning, to teach the viewer, who was primitive in relation to art, to sit quietly, not to talk, to sit down on time, not to smoke, do not bite nuts, take off hats, do not bring or eat snacks in the auditorium" ("My Life in Art")

Moreover, in 1919 a group of Moscow Art Theater artists led by O.L. Knipper and V.I. Kachalov went on tour to Kharkov and found herself in the territory occupied by Denikin, from where she successfully emigrated. The part of the troupe that remained in Moscow was kept by the Bolsheviks as hostages.

However, in 1922 The “Kachalovites” returned, and then in September 1922 the entire Moscow Art Theater went on tour in Europe and America.

It is worth remembering that it was at this time that Russian philosophers and other dissatisfied people were deported to Europe by ship. Almost at the same time, the Moscow Art Theater also left. The tour lasted until August 1924: the theater did not want to return, everyone did not like the Bolsheviks and the revolution.

However, in the end the Moscow Art Theater returned. It seemed that there was food, and if so, then life was getting better (NEP!). They thought that everything would work out, as Stiva Oblonsky’s lackey, at whom his wife shouted, used to say. No one understood that the revolution was worse than what he found his wife with his mistress.

The first high-profile premiere after returning was “Warm Heart”, then “Days of the Turbins” (1926) based on Bulgakov’s play, which, due to a misunderstanding, is still considered almost a “White Guard” play. In fact, it was a classic Smenovekhov thing, which in the political context of those years was perceived as a sign of readiness to change milestones, abandon one’s past and accept a new government, completely deceiving oneself that the Bolsheviks were not the worst option for Russia and that they would preserve eternal and great Russia.

For the theater and Stanislavsky, whose name was not on the poster, this was a kind of first act of surrender. It was consolidated by “Armored Train 14-69” (1927) and “Running” (1928), with which the theater approached the “year of the great turning point.”

It was from this time that the legendary enmity between Stanislavsky and Nemirovich began, funnyly described by Bulgakov. Stanislavsky is no longer interested in producing performances, because he cannot submit to censorship and market conditions, although, of course, he is afraid to confront openly (he was brought up in the traditions of subordination to authority). Nemirovich pulls all the weight, because he is a pragmatist and a philistine who fit into the interior of Stalinist Moscow. And he likes being a “civil general.”

Stanislavsky ran away into experiments, it was as if he forced himself to fall back into childhood, to “play out” in it, so that they would only fall behind; he has a personal doctor, a personal driver, he receives treatment abroad every year, he lives in a luxurious house on a street named after him, deeply immersed in the “pulp of the sofa” and in his thoughts about the nature of acting and the “line of physical actions” and when This pretends that he doesn’t understand anything about what’s happening. And Nemirovich, after much deliberation, returned to Moscow from the USA in 1929 (he also did not want to return), turns out to be the absolute owner of the theater, a political opportunist and a great cynic.

The situation is terrible, truly tragic. For Stalin provides the Moscow Art Theater with unprecedented patronage, turning the theater into a court theater and the main one in the USSR. Moscow Art Theater of the USSR named after. M. Gorky is beyond criticism, its founders are canonized, the actors are treated kindly, the “Stanislavsky system” is obligatory for everyone, like the criminal code. The Moscow Art Theater's answer is deep loyalty, a game of sincere love according to the system of one of its founders.

Horrible Soviet plays are staged, terrible meetings are held at which one must verbally participate in the crimes of the regime. During the years of the “Great Terror” “there was, it seems, not a single political action or process, not a single administrative decision concerning the fate of this or that artist or performance, which would not have been provided with the “unanimous” support of the Moscow Art Theater members” (A. Smelyansky). Demoralization is complete and final, the collapse of the subtle “art of experiencing” is irreversible.

Having soiled your soul in this way, it is blasphemous to play Chekhov, and everyone understands this. The first is Stanislavsky. He realizes that his brainchild was raped and killed, that the souls of his actors were broken, and that he himself is a hostage to the situation. There is only one thing left - to work quietly with a small group of actors on sketches, try to get dirty as little as possible and die with dignity

6. Basic elements of Stanislavsky

This is how Stanislavsky’s historical services to the world theater look according to the famous “Dictionary of the Theater” by Patrice Pavy.

Stanislavsky opened:

a) “subtext” that duplicates or contradicts the executed text; a psychological tool that informs about the character’s internal state, establishing a distance between what is said in the text and what is shown on stage; the subconscious background of the text coexists in parallel with the text actually spoken by the characters, forming something like a continuous and in its own way significant second semantic series;

b) mise-en-scène as the physical palpability of the innermost meaning of a dramatic text;

c) the gravity of the text of the play towards pretext, interspersed with pauses: the characters do not dare to fully express thoughts, or cannot do so, they communicate with each other in half-hints, or they speak in order to say nothing, taking care that this nothing is understood interlocutor as something filled with real meaning.

Essentially, Stanislavsky, long before the advent of film and television art with their close-ups and super-close-ups, developed a system of acting for the “myopic Thalia”, found the means to play in the theater of the absurd, where characters exchange remarks containing nothing, contrasted the word with action, and thereby anticipated theater of the end of the century.

To this I would add the analysis of the play by action, the search for a “line of physical actions” - a universal method that Stanislavsky himself mastered masterfully. There are recordings of rehearsals from 1931-1932. "Fire from mind." The play turns into “life” right before our eyes, everything is filled with logic, comes to life, begins to breathe and move. The most witty scene is in which Stanislavsky himself suddenly began to play Famusov, and Olga Androvskaya - Liza.

The role of the voluptuous master was clearly to his taste, the thirty-year-old charming Androvskaya really liked him, he suddenly shook his old ways, and it all ended with Lisa already sitting on his lap, and he groped over her with his hands and pulled her towards him, preparing to enjoy, which is why Androvskaya I was seriously scared... The classes were held at Stanislavsky’s apartment; he had no desire to go to the theater for a long time. The Moscow Art Theater died ten years before him.

And at the very beginning of the 1938/39 season, on August 7, Konstantin Sergeevich also died while working on Tartuffe. The cause is heart failure, probably coronary artery disease. Coronary artery bypass grafting was invented only half a century later.

Bibliography

Mikhail Zolotonosov. Konstantin Stanislavsky Old Fortress. 2001

http://www.russianculture.ru/

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Stanislavsky's activities and his ideas contributed to the emergence of a variety of theatrical movements and had a huge influence on the development of world stage art in the 20th century. Stanislavsky made a huge contribution to national and universal culture, enriched the world with new artistic values, and expanded the boundaries of human knowledge. According to the recognition of the greatest masters of the foreign stage, all modern theater uses the legacy of the great Russian director.

The Stanislavsky system is the conventional name for stage theory, method and artistic technique. Conceived as a practical guide for the actor and director, it later acquired the significance of the aesthetic and professional basis of stage art. Modern theater pedagogy and creative theater practice rely on it. The system arose as a generalization of the creative and pedagogical experience of both Stanislavsky himself and his theatrical predecessors and contemporaries. It differs from most pre-existing theatrical systems in that it is based not on the study of the final results of creativity, but on identifying the reasons that give rise to this or that result. In it, for the first time, the problem of conscious mastery of subconscious creative processes is solved, and the path of organic embodiment of an actor into an image is explored.

The central problem of the system is the doctrine of stage action. Such an action is an organic process that is carried out with the participation of the mind, will, feelings, the actor and all his internal (mental) and external (physical) data, called elements of creativity by Stanislavsky. These include: attention to the object (vision, hearing, etc.), memory for sensations and the creation of figurative visions, artistic imagination, the ability to interact with stage objects, logic and sequence of actions and feelings, sense of truth, faith and naivety, sensation perspectives of action and thought, sense of rhythm, stage presence and restraint, muscle freedom, plasticity, voice control, pronunciation, sense of phrase, ability to act with words, etc. Mastery of all these elements leads to the authenticity of the action performed on stage, to the creation of normal creative well-being in the proposed circumstances. All this constitutes the content of the actor’s work on himself, the first section of Stanislavsky, which compares the goal that Stanislavsky set and decided. -the purpose and meaning of the second section of Stanislavsky’s system was the section devoted to the process of an actor’s work on a role. It solves the problem of transforming an actor into a character. Stanislavsky outlined ways and developed techniques for creating a typical stage image, which at the same time reproduces the character of a living person. This system includes:

Method of physical action;

Vision of inner vision;

End-to-end action;

Super task;

Counter-through action.

Stanislavsky, studying, clarifying and concretizing his teaching, went through a path in this teaching from a purely psychological method of an actor working on a role to a method of physical actions. “In the area of ​​physical actions,” he wrote, “we are more at home than in the area of ​​elusive feelings. We are better oriented there, we are more resourceful and confident there than in the area of ​​elusive and fixed internal elements.”

The learning to create figurative representations that materialize the actor’s thought, make it figurative, effective, and therefore more contagious and intelligible to the partner - constitutes the vision of inner vision.

A living stage image is born only from the organic fusion of the actor with the role. He must strive for “the most accurate and deep understanding of the spirit and intention of the playwright,” while at the same time the playwright’s work takes on new life in the work of the actor, who puts a part of himself into every role he plays. Therefore, an effective analysis of the play creates, according to Stanislavsky, the most favorable conditions for understanding the work of the playwright and the emergence of the process of transformation of the actor into the character. To do this, the actor must surround himself with the circumstances of the life of the play, trying to answer the question with action: “What would I do today, here, now, if I were in the circumstances of the character”? Stanislavsky called this moment of active analysis the beginning of the actor’s rapprochement with the role, the study of himself in the role or the role in himself.

In order not to go astray when choosing the right actions, the actor must clearly sense the flow of stage events and the development of conflicts, determine for himself what Aristotle calls “the composition of incidents” in which he will have to carry out certain actions. Following the same logical path of the role, an actor who takes the position of Stanislavsky’s system must always strive for the primacy of the creative process, developing in himself an improvisational sense of well-being that allows him to play not according to yesterday, but according to today.

Glossary

Director (French rеgisseur, from Latin rego - I manage), a creative worker in spectacular arts (theater, cinema, television, circus, stage). The director stages a play (drama, opera, ballet, concert or circus program) on the stage. In modern performing arts, he is often called a stage director or simply a stage director. The director who directs the creative work of the entire theater (or other entertainment group) is called the chief director.

Supertask is a term introduced by K. S. Stanislavsky and originally used in theatrical practice. According to K. S. Stanislavsky, an actor, going on stage, performs a certain task within the logic of his character (that is, the hero wants to do something and achieves it or does not achieve it). But at the same time, each character exists in the general logic of the work laid down by the author. The author created the work in accordance with some purpose, having some main idea. And the actor, in addition to performing a specific task related to the character, must strive to convey the main idea to the viewer, try to achieve the main goal. The main idea of ​​the work or its main goal is the super task.

Cross-cutting action - in Stanislavsky's system - is the main line of dramatic development of the play, determined by the idea of ​​the play and the creative intent of the playwright. A correct understanding of the end-to-end action helps the director and actors achieve a consistent, purposeful disclosure of the ideological content of the role and the play as a whole.

Counter-through action (or counter-action) is carried out either in the clash of characters, or in the hero overcoming his internal contradictions. From the interweaving of various lines of action of the characters, what is formed, in Stanislavsky’s words, is the “score of the performance”, an integral action that unites the actors and other means of theatrical expression (light, music, scenery, etc.) with the audience.

The Stanislavsky system is a scientifically based theory of stage art and method of acting technique. In contrast to previously existing theatrical systems, it is based not on the study of the final results of creativity, but on identifying the reasons that give rise to this or that result. The actor should not represent the image, but “become the image”, making his experiences, feelings, thoughts his own.

Having revealed independently or with the help of the director the main motive of the work, the performer sets himself an ideological and creative goal, called by Stanislavsky a super task. He defines the desire to achieve the ultimate goal as the end-to-end action of the actor and the role. The doctrine of super-task and end-to-end action is the basis of Stanislavsky’s system.

The system consists of two sections:

· The first section is devoted to the problem of an actor’s work on himself.

· The second section of Stanislavsky’s system is devoted to the actor’s work on the role, which ends with the organic fusion of the actor with the role, transformation into the image.

The principles of the Stanislavsky system are as follows:

· The principle of life truth is the first principle of the system, which is the basic principle of any realistic art. This is the basis of the entire system. But art requires artistic selection. What is the selection criterion? This leads to the second principle.

· The principle of the ultimate goal is what the artist wants to introduce his idea into people’s consciousness, what he strives for in the end. Dream, goal, desire. Ideological creativity, ideological activity. The supertask is the goal of the work. Using the ultimate task correctly, the artist will not make a mistake in choosing technical techniques and means of expression.

· The principle of active action is not to depict images and passions, but to act in images and passions. Stanislavsky believed that anyone who did not understand this principle did not understand the system and method as a whole. All methodological and technological instructions of Stanislavsky have one goal - to awaken the natural human nature of the actor for organic creativity in accordance with the super task.

· The principle of organicity (naturalness) follows from the previous principle. There can be nothing artificial or mechanical in creativity; everything must obey the requirements of organicity.

· The principle of reincarnation is the final stage of the creative process - the creation of a stage image through organic creative reincarnation.

The nature of an actor's stage experiences is as follows: on stage you cannot live with the same feelings as in life. Life and stage feeling differ in origin. Stage action does not arise, as in life, as a result of a real stimulus. We can evoke a feeling in ourselves only because it is familiar to us in life. This is called emotional memory. Life experiences are primary, and stage experiences are secondary. The evoked emotional experience is a reproduction of a feeling, so it is secondary. But the surest means of mastering a feeling, according to Stanislavsky, is action.

Both in life and on stage, feelings are poorly controlled; they arise involuntarily. Often the right feelings arise when you forget about them. This is subjective in a person, but it is connected with the action of the environment, that is, with the objective.

So, action is the exciter of feeling, since every action has a purpose that lies beyond the action itself.

The purpose of the action: to change the object to which it is directed. A physical action can serve as a means (device) for performing a mental action. Thus, action is the reel on which everything else is wound: internal actions, thoughts, feelings, inventions.

The richness of the life of the human spirit, the whole complex of complex psychological experiences, the enormous tension of thought ultimately turns out to be possible to reproduce on stage through the simplest score of physical actions, to realize in the process of elementary physical manifestations.

From the very beginning, Stanislavsky rejected emotion, feeling as the causative agent of an actor's existence in the process of creating an image. If an actor tries to appeal to emotion, he inevitably ends up with a cliche, since appealing to the unconscious in the process of work causes a banal, trivial portrayal of any feeling.

Stanislavsky came to the conclusion that only the physical reaction of an actor, the chain of his physical actions, the physical action on stage can evoke a thought, a strong-willed message, and ultimately the desired emotion, feeling. The system leads the actor from the conscious to the subconscious. It is built according to the laws of life itself, where there is an indissoluble unity of the physical and mental, where the most complex spiritual phenomenon is expressed through a consistent chain of specific physical actions.

The artist's ultimate task is a term of the Stanislavsky system, a term of the science of theater. But for the actor and director it means something that exists not only in the practice of the theater, not only on the stage, but also in life itself, in the everyday reality around us.

What Stanislavsky took from life and called a “super task” in the system does not lie on the surface of life phenomena. The ultimate task cannot be seen with the naked eye. She is not so much a phenomenon as the single essence of this phenomenon. But we know the essence, as we know, only by studying phenomena, because in phenomena it is always revealed to one degree or another. The super-task is revealed in certain qualities, signs of phenomena, but these signs in themselves are not yet a super-task. It cannot be seen directly, but it can be inferred based on these signs. Then the guess about it can become an established, indisputable fact. But a guess, until it is tested in practice, may be a fiction.

Once upon a time, many years ago, I studied at school in a provincial town. For as long as I can remember, I have always been inquisitive and emotional. There have been many interesting discoveries and observations in my life. In general, this is a very interesting topic - the awakening of the human soul, the discovery of something new, something that others know, but you yourself have not yet known. One of the most attractive things in childhood was the radio. Almost every day we listened to the All-Union Radio, and also the very beloved and intelligent Leningrad Radio. The radio was literally a magical thing for me as a child! Back then there were no mobile phones, no Skype, no Internet. One of the main means of understanding the world was this radio receiver. He took you instantly to any point on the earth, he brought you the voices of long-gone people, he helped you get acquainted with nature and taught you to love it, he brought great classical literature and poetry to your home!

One of my greatest childhood experiences was radio plays. In distant childhood, it seemed that people lived in this black box! They are always busy with something! Now the mortally wounded Cyrano de Bergerac reveals his secret to Roxane, and she suddenly learns with shock that she loved the wrong person, but who she should have loved, she is now losing forever. Here Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are unraveling another mystery. Here Vera Filippovna from Ostrovsky’s play “The Heart is Not a Stone” lives locked up with her rich old husband, and does not complain about her fate, remaining a good Christian, but Vassa Zheleznova tries to take almost the whole world into her hands, but unexpectedly falls and dies, stricken with illness. We can talk about these impressions endlessly! All-Union radio became my main educator in childhood, instilling a taste for good literature, poetry, the Russian language, and the wonderful voices of great artists.

Listening to the radio and reading books, I began to recognize many theatrical names, and very often I came across the names of Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko. These two names were inextricably linked. It was then that I learned the interesting history of the creation of the Moscow Art Theater, and later, as an adult, I realized what role Stanislavsky played in the history of the theater. He is to the theater what Pushkin is to literature, or Lomonosov to science. In any sphere of human activity there is a person who is the cornerstone for this sphere.

Stanislavsky was artistically gifted from his earliest youth. As they wrote in one book, “The Muses stood at his cradle.” From a young age he participated in theatrical performances. Moreover, he came from a family of wealthy merchants, and I can imagine how much effort it took him to leave the family business and fulfill his Highest purpose in life. And he fulfilled this purpose. If he had remained a merchant, no one would have remembered him, but today the whole world knows him!

What did Stanislavsky do in the theater? Why is it the cornerstone of theatre? Several aspects can be noted here.

Firstly, Stanislavsky struggled with theatrical routine and cliches. After all, when you know your job for a long time, you know all the pros and cons, it’s so easy to use what you’ve achieved and not do anything else. By the end of the 19th century, the majority of the public had the concept of the theater as a source of entertainment, where you can come at any time, look at pretty actresses, smoke a cigar, and leave just as calmly. Actors often treated theater in the same way—they knew where to say a phrase effectively, where to cry, where to wring their hands, and so on. In many ways, the theater became routine and became covered in dust and mold. And then Stanislavsky appeared like a young spring wind! It blew away all the cobwebs and washed away the mold! He forced the actors not just to present the play, but to live the lives of their characters, and cry and laugh for real, naturally. Even if the actor had a small role, he had to analyze the life of his hero, think through his biography. Even in wordless roles, you had to go on stage filled with emotions and carry your thoughts. The Stanislavsky Theater showed living life on stage, “the life of the human spirit,” as he said.

Secondly, Stanislavsky discovered the laws of acting, which were set out in the so-called “Stanislavsky system”. He argued that a talented actor should not study his system, because he already plays according to it. Stanislavsky developed his system by empirically studying the performance of brilliant actors - Fedotova, Ermolova, Chaliapin and others. He carefully studied the psychology of people and used it on stage. “I am in the proposed circumstances” is one of Stanislavsky’s main formulas, that is, one must show one’s individuality in one role or another.

Thirdly, Stanislavsky was a brilliant actor. Unfortunately, he died a long time ago and we have nothing left of his acting heritage except photographs known from childhood and numerous memoirs of his contemporaries. Somehow I especially often see his Gaev from “The Cherry Orchard” - a kind of adult child, embarrassedly holding a handkerchief in his hands.

Fourthly, Stanislavski was a brilliant director. If I'm not mistaken, some of his productions are staged at the Moscow Art Theater to this day! Like a brilliant conductor, he saw the entire performance, like a wonderful orchestra performing a great work. How brilliantly he could show a role during rehearsals. I remembered Sofia Pilyavskaya’s story about his show of Korobochka: Stanislavsky was sitting in a chair, and suddenly he stood up - and it was no longer him, but an old stupid woman, whose mind is like a broken watch - it moves and then stops.

Fifthly, Stanislavsky was a great man. There are no such people now. Not for a very long time. There are no words to describe the kind of person he was - you don’t know where to start. Those around him, his students, simply idolized him, were timid and dumb in front of him. I remember the story of Serafima Birman, who could not say “you” to him during rehearsal for the role - she stammered for about 20 minutes, and then he scolded her for it, since it was necessary to separate the role from the person. I can’t even talk about how Stanislavsky was brought up, polite, attentive to people, educated, etc. Any words turn into banality.

Of course, you can’t tell everything in such a short note. I outlined only the outlines of this person. He said nothing about his family, teachers, environment, students. He said nothing about Chekhov's plays - this is a topic for a special note. Much more can be said about this great personality, because, truly, in the theater Stanislavsky is our everything!

How time flies. Reading books about him, living his life with him, you think that he was born quite recently, but a century and a half has already passed! Thank God that Stanislavsky lived with us on earth, after him our life became different!

Vadim Grachev

PUBLICATIONS

Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky(Alekseev)
January 17, 1863 – August 7, 1938
Theater reformer, actor, director, founder of the Moscow Art Theater.
The author of a whole system of methods and principles of training an actor, known under the term “Stanislavsky system”. One of the founders of the theater school, often called "realistic". He made a great contribution to the development of the theory of parsing and analyzing a work of art and staging a play.

Born into a very rich patriarchal merchant family. In 1881, he graduated from the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages, the first eight classes of which were equivalent to a classical gymnasium course. Upon graduation Stanislavsky worked in his father's company, soon becoming one of the most authoritative directors of the Vladimir Alekseev Partnership, carefully and pedantically conducting trading affairs. However, his passion for theater not only does not weaken, but, on the contrary, becomes stronger from year to year. Until the October Revolution he remained its owner and director, combining this activity with fanatical devotion to the theater.

In the village In Lyubimovka, an outbuilding with a real stage, an auditorium, and artistic restrooms was built, where an amateur circle (“Alekseevsky”) began to work. Here Stanislavsky began to act as a director and actor. In 1888 - 1889 Stanislavsky took an active part in the creation of the Society of Art and Literature, an amateur troupe which brought Stanislavsky fame in Moscow. In 1898, together with V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko Stanislavsky founded the Moscow Art Theater, going down in the history of world culture as an artist, director, theorist, who created the science of the artist’s creativity, discovering the objective laws of human behavior on stage. Stanislavsky determined the conditions under which the act of transformation of the artist into an artistic image occurs.

In 1891 he staged Tolstoy's "Fruits of Enlightenment". Already in this work one of the main provisions of his future system was revealed - he tries to eliminate any theatrical convention from the performance and achieves maximum realism.

In 1896, having exhausted all the possibilities of the amateur theatrical Society, Stanislavsky for the first time announced his dream of creating a real professional, public theater. In the end, ten shareholders gathered. The amount collected was small, but it should have been enough to give the business an initial impetus. On June 14, 1898, the troupe gathered for the first time at Arkhipov’s dacha in Pushkino. This date is considered the birthday of the Moscow Art Theater.

The first rehearsals took place in a barn on the river bank. Several performances were prepared at once: “Othello” and “The Merchant of Venice” by Shakespeare, “Tsar Fyodor” by Tolstoy, “The Innkeeper” by Galdoni and “The Seagull” by Chekhov.
in autumn Stanislavsky rented the building of the Hermitage Theater. At the same time, the building was being reconstructed, repairs and rehearsals were taking place. On October 14, the grand opening of the theater and the premiere of Tsar Fyodor took place.

The first season ended with a 40 thousand deficit. However, the shareholders not only agreed to repeat the contributions, but also decided to build a special building equipped with all the latest theater machinery. And indeed, the glory of the Art Theater turned out to be lasting and grew more and more from one season to another.

Chekhov's performances played a huge role in this. In 1899 Stanislavsky staged "Uncle Vanya", in 1901 - "Three Sisters", in 1904 - "The Cherry Orchard". Another constantly featured author was Ibsen. Already in the first years, “Hedda Gabler”, “Doctor Shtokman”, “Wild Duck” were performed. A striking, albeit short, episode was Stanislavsky’s appeal to Gorky. The play "At the Lower Depths" staged in 1902 had a huge public resonance ( Stanislavsky Satine played in it).

Since the early 1900s. The theater's financial affairs improved significantly. In 1902, the Moscow Art Theater moved to its own building on Kamergersky Lane.
In 1906, the theater went on tour abroad for the first time. Before this, Europe was completely unaware of Russian theatrical art.
In 1918, persistent rumors appeared about the closure of the theater. Stanislavsky at this time had to reflect not so much on creative issues, but on the problem of preserving the Art Theater. People's Commissar of Education Lunacharsky, a longtime admirer of Stanislavsky, helped Stanislavsky a lot in this regard. talent, who ardently defended the Moscow Art Theater from the attacks of the Proletcultists.

Stanislavsky I sincerely tried to find a response from a new viewer, but success along this path did not come immediately.
During the 1919/20 season Stanislavsky puts on Byron's "Cain". But the play was not a success (this was its only premiere in six years from 1918 to 1923). In 1922, the Moscow Art Theater went on a foreign tour to Germany, Czechoslovakia, France, and the USA.

The success, as during the first tour, was stunning, especially in the USA. In 1923 and 1924 tours in the USA were repeated. For an American publisher Stanislavsky In 1924 he wrote the book “My Life in Art” in the New York Public Library (where a separate room was specially rented for him). Having returned to Moscow after a two-year absence, he devoted himself to creativity with renewed vigor.

In 1926, after many years of work on the old repertoire, the Moscow Art Theater gave four premieres at once: “Warm Heart” Ostrovsky , "Nikolay I and the Decembrists" by Kugel, "Sellers of Glory" by Pagnol and "Days of the Turbins" by Bulgakov. The last play became a real theatrical sensation and a kind of symbol of the post-revolutionary Moscow Art Theater.

And indeed, the long pause caused by the tragic events is left behind. In 1927 Stanislavsky staged "The Marriage of Figaro" by Beaumarchais and "Armored Train 14-69" by Ivanov. Soviet criticism, which had previously reproached Stanislavsky more than once for being old-fashioned and conservatist (and after “Days of the Turbins” even for sympathy for the white movement), greeted “Armored Train 14-69” with enthusiasm. Lunacharsky wrote about this production: “It was a triumph of young Soviet literature and Soviet theatrical art - the art of socialist realism.”

In 1928, during the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Moscow Art Theater, Stanislavsky had a heart attack. After this, he had to withdraw from direct participation in theatrical affairs.
(As an artistic director, he later participated in only two productions: “Dead Souls” and “Talents and Admirers.”) Recent years Stanislavsky spends most of his time at foreign resorts. He died in August 1938.

The main thing in the system Stanislavsky there was a teaching about the super task - the main thought of the play, its idea. The worldview of the troupe, united in its moral character, was based on the idea of ​​equality and value of every person on earth. Stanislavsky the language of theater was able to convey this democratic thought to the audience. Stanislavsky's activities significantly influenced development Russian and foreign theater of the 20th century. Stanislavsky for the first time on the Russian stage he established the principles of director's theater (the unity of the artistic concept, subordinating all the elements of the performance, the integrity of the acting ensemble, the psychological conditioning of the mise-en-scène). He sought to create a poetic atmosphere of the performance, convey the “mood” of each episode, the life-like authenticity of the images, the authenticity of the actor’s experience. Director of many plays based on the works of Chekhov, Gorky, Turgenev.

In Soviet times, the “Stanislavsky system” became a kind of unifying standard for all theaters and acting schools of the Union. Deviation from the norms and rules of the “system” was considered a violation of the principles of socialist realism in the theater. A certain negative role of the “system” in the context of the development of theatrical culture is connected with this. However, despite this, we cannot claim that the principles of training an actor and staging a play discovered by Stanislavsky are erroneous. They, like the principles of any other theater school, are worthy of study and attention.

The creation of the Moscow Art Theater not only meant the emergence of another artistic group, but with it a new theatrical teaching was born.

The theatrical reform, which was carried out by Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, was aimed at creating theater ensemble, united in his creative aspirations, inspired by common goals in art. In the art of the stage ensemble, the creators of the Moscow Art Theater saw the most perfect form of embodiment of the ideological concept of the performance, a sign of high professional skill.

The idea of ​​the ensemble determined not only the creative practice of the theater, but also the entire organization of the theater business, the ethical and artistic standards of life of the artistic group. The moral and ethical qualities of an actor were no less important for the creators of the theater than his creative talent and professional experience. Stanislavsky's teaching about artistic ethics and discipline is a teaching about the creative atmosphere in the theater, the requirements and conditions of collective stage creativity, without which art is doomed to vegetate. Indeed, theater practice knows thousands of examples indicating that a decrease in ethical requirements entails the artistic degradation of the theater.

But the demands of ethics may turn out to be groundless if the team is not united by the unity of aesthetic views and the commonality of ideological goals and objectives in art. Stanislavsky, in his address to theater youth, said:

“A team of several hundred people cannot unite, hold on and grow stronger only on the basis of personal mutual love and sympathy of all members. For this, people are too different, and the feeling of sympathy is unstable and changeable. To unite people, we need clearer and stronger foundations, such as ideas, public opinion, politics.”

The idea of ​​nationality and high artistry became such a unifying idea for the Moscow Art Theater. Before the start of rehearsals, Stanislavsky addressed the troupe with the following words:

“If we do not approach this matter with clean hands, we will dirty it, waste it and scatter throughout Russia... We have taken upon ourselves a matter that is not of a simple, private, but of a public nature. Do not forget that we strive to illuminate the dark life of the poor class, to give them happy, aesthetic moments amid the darkness that has covered them. We strive to create the first reasonable, moral, public theater, and we devote our lives to this lofty goal.”

On this ideological basis, the special ethics of the Moscow Art Theater developed, welding all members of the troupe into a single team of creative like-minded people. Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko instilled in actors a sense of high civic duty, a sense of responsibility for their theater, for the success of the performance, and not just their role.

Stanislavsky noted that the main thing in art is a super task and a cross-cutting action. By this he determined the ideological orientation of art. He repeatedly emphasized that theater is always at the forefront in the struggle for high ideological and artistic content of art.

“Theater is a double-edged sword: on one side it fights in the name of light, on the other in the name of darkness. With the same power of influence with which the theater ennobles the audience, it can corrupt them, humiliate them, spoil tastes, insult purity, arouse bad passions, serve vulgarity, petty bourgeois beauty.

Then the theater becomes a powerful instrument of social evil, the more dangerous the greater the power of its influence.”(K.S. Stanislavsky. Works, vol. 5, p. 472).

Stanislavsky repeatedly emphasized the importance of the theater as a pulpit, as a sermon. Addressing the students, employees and actors of the Moscow Art Theater branch in 1911, he again notes:

“Theater is the most powerful weapon, but, like any weapon, it has two ends: it can bring great good to people and it can be the greatest evil...

The greatest evil, because it is the most powerful, the most contagious, the most easily spread. The evil brought by a bad book cannot be compared either in the power of the infection or in the ease with which it spreads among the masses.

Meanwhile, in the theater as an institution there are elements of public education, first of all, of course. Aesthetic education of the masses.

So this is the terrible power you are going to wield, and this is the responsibility that falls on you for the ability to manage this power properly.”(K.S. Stanislavsky, ibid., pp. 468-469).

Thus, Stanislavsky’s theatrical teaching includes doctrine of super-task and cross-cutting action(i.e. about the high ideological nature and high artistry of the art of theater); doctrine of artistic ethics, as a necessary condition for collective creativity. The third part of the teaching is what is called the “Stanislavsky system” - the teaching of internal and external acting technique, or more precisely - actor education system.

The actor's education system - mastering the internal and external techniques of acting - involves consistent and constant training elements of actor's skill: stage attention, imagination and fantasy, proposed circumstances and “if only”, feelings of truth and faith, logic and consistency, emotional memory, tempo, etc.

At the same time, Stanislavsky proceeds from the aesthetics of the theater, which he defined as the “art of experience,” in contrast to the “art of presentation,” characteristic of Western European theater. The essence of this theatrical aesthetics is that the artist experiences the role every time and with every repetition of creativity (“today, here, now”).

Creativity is a subconscious process. But he is excited by the actor deliberately. Stanislavsky managed to comprehend this path from the conscious to the subconscious and find a practical method for its implementation in acting. The acting school created by Stanislavsky had the following motto: “Make the difficult familiar, the familiar easy, the easy beautiful.”

Work on the “system” began back in 1907, and it was published under the title “The Actor’s Work on Oneself” only in 1938. Stanislavsky did not publish his discoveries until he had repeatedly tested them with creative practice.

The foundation of the “system” is the objective laws of creativity of the organic nature of the human artist (“the life of the human spirit”). These laws are based on psychology and physiology (Stanislavsky studied the works of Pavlov, Freud and other scientists). Therefore, the laws of Stanislavsky’s system are the same for all people, all nations, all eras.

The essence and goal of the system is to master the subconscious through the conscious, to help one’s nature carry out the creative act.

The theatrical aesthetics of the Russian acting school assumes that the actor lives on stage, and does not appear (“to be, and not to appear” - that’s what’s important).

At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were many concepts of acting art directed against the Stanislavsky system in order to refute it. It was supposed to replace psychology with biomechanics, experience with the skill of performance, a living actor on stage with a puppet, the creation of a character with a report of the author’s thoughts, action with a narrative, transformation with the technique of “alienation,” etc.

Many of these concepts withered away, not outliving their authors, as soon as they left the laboratory experiments. Others stand the test of time. But none of them did the fundamental theory of performing arts of the twentieth century, although each claimed to be so.

Relatively late, “An Actor’s Work on Oneself” was translated into foreign languages. “If this book had appeared even five years earlier, Stanislavski’s voice could have changed the entire direction of American theater.”, wrote one of the American theater magazines in 1964.

Nowadays, theaters in the USA, England, France, Germany, Poland, and Japan have adopted Stanislavsky’s system.