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Members of Meyerhold and Stanislavski's Theatre-Studio in 1905 (Meyerhold is second on the left, on the back row).

The Theatre-Studio, also known as the Studio on Povarskaya Street, was a theatre studio that Vsevolod Meyerhold and Konstantin Stanislavski created in 1905. In response to the innovations of Russian Symbolism in other arts (poetry, painting, and music) and under the auspices of the Moscow Art Theatre (though in reality funded privately by Stanislavski himself), their collaboration aimed to establish symbolism in the theatre.

Founding of the Theatre-Studio[edit]

The ideas of the Russian Symbolist movement represented the avant-garde in Russia at the time.[1] Materlinck's essay on symbolist drama "The Tragic in Daily Life" (1896) had been published in Russian translation in 1901 (as part of his The Treasure of the Humble).[2] Valery Bryusov called for a form of acting that released the actor's creativity and the audience's imagination from the limitations of the conventions of realism. "The theatre's sole task is to help the actor reveal his soul to the audience".[3] He criticised the realism of the MAT in a famous article entitled "Unneccessary Truth" (1902).[4] As Stanislavski would come to do with his 'system', Bryusov placed the burden for a modernist transformation of the art of the stage squarely on the shoulders of the actor: the "art of the theatre", he wrote, "and the art of the actor are one and the same thing."[5]

In 1904, Stanislavski had finally acted on a suggestion made by Chekhov two years earlier that he stage several one-act plays by the Belgian symbolist playwright Maurice Maeterlinck.[6] In practice, though, Stanislavski struggled to realise a theatrical approach to the static, lyrical qualities of Maeterlinck's symbolist drama.[7] When the triple bill consisting of The Blind, Intruder, and Interior opened at the MAT on 14 October [O.S. 2 October] 1904, the experiment was deemed a failure.[8]

Soon after, however, Meyerhold returned to Moscow with the results of the experiments he had conducted with his "New Drama Association" in the Ukraine and Georgia.[9] Meyerhold had left the MAT in the spring of 1902 and by the autumn had established a company with Alexander Kosheverov in the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine. When in 1903 Meyerhold assumed sole responsibility for the company, he renamed it the "New Drama Association"; Rudnitsky explains that, two years before Stanislavski's experiments, this had been "the first sign that there was in Russia a director who would at least try to depart from the aesthetic system of psychological realism and in practice apply the principles of Symbolism to the theatre. For Meyerhold soon made it known that 'New Drama' was for him not only Ibsen, Hauptmann and Chekhov, but also Maeterlinck, Przybyszewski, and Schnitzler" (1981, 33). Having toured a number of other Russian cities, in 1904 the company moved to the more cosmopolitan Tbilisi in Georgia.[10]

Stanislavski responded positively to Meyerhold's new ideas, which prompted Meyerhold to propose a "theatre studio" (a term which he invented) that would function as "a laboratory for the experiments of more or less experienced actors."[11] Officially attached to the MAT but actually subsidised privately by Stanislavski himself, the Theatre-Studio was inaugurated on 15 June [O.S. 3 June] 1905. Meyerhold was to be the artistic director, with Stanislavski serving as a co-director. The Theatre-Studio's company consisted of actors from Meyerhold's "New Drama Association," actors from the MAT, some from the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, and students from the Art Theatre School. Stanislavski hired a run-down theatre for the Theatre-Studio on the corner of Povarskaya Street and Merzlyakovsky Lane, the former Nemchinov theatre in the Girsh house, which he paid more than 20,000 roubles to renovate.[12]

Aims of the Theatre-Studio[edit]

The Theatre-Studio aimed to develop Meyerhold's symbolist aesthetic ideas into new theatrical forms that would return the MAT to the forefront of the avant-garde in Russia and Stanislavski's socially-conscious ideas for a network of "people's theatres" that could reform Russian theatrical culture as a whole.[13] At the first meeting of its members, Stanislavski defined the studio's task as "to find together with new currents in dramatic literature correspondingly new forms of dramatic art."[14] In his proposal, Meyerhold had described its task as the search for "new means of representation for a new dramaturgy."[15] Bryusov became involved as its literary advisor and helped to define the company's artistic principles.[16]

Stanislavski wrote that their Theatre-Studio was based on the belief that:

The studio's planned repertoire was to include plays by Henrik Ibsen, Gerhart Hauptmann, Maurice Maeterlinck, Emile Verhaeren, Stanisław Przybyszewski, Knut Hamsun, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, August Strindberg, Valery Bryusov, and Vyacheslav Ivanov.

Work and failure of the Theatre-Studio[edit]

Design (by Nikolai Ulyanov) for Meyerhold's planned 1905 production of Hauptmann's Schluck and Jau at the Theatre-Studio he founded with Stanislavski, which relocated the play in a stylised abstraction of France under Louis XIV. Around the edge of the stage, ladies-in-waiting embroider an improbably long scarf with huge ivory needles.[18]

Central to Meyerhold's approach was the use of improvisation to develop the performance.[19] When the studio presented scenes from Maeterlinck's The Death of Tintagiles, Hauptmann's Schluck and Jau, and Ibsen's Love's Comedy on 23 August [O.S. 11 August] 1905 at Pushkino, Stanislavski was encouraged.[20] When the work was performed in a fully-equipped theatre in Moscow, however, it was regarded as a failure and the studio folded.[21]

Meyerhold drew an important lesson: "one must first educate a new actor and only then put new tasks before him," he wrote, adding that "Stanislavski, too, came to such a conclusion."[22] Meyerhold would go on to explore physical expressivity, co-ordination, and rhythm in his experiments in actor training (which would found 20th-century physical theatre), while, for the moment, Stanislavski would pursue psychological expressivity through the actor's inner technique.[23] Reflecting in 1908 on the Theatre-Studio's demise, Stanislavski wrote that "our theatre found its future among its ruins."[24] Nemirovich disapproved of what he described as the malign influence of Meyerhold on Stanislavski's work at this time.[25]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Benedetti (1999a, 150-151), Carlson (1993, 313-316), and Magarshack (1950, 265).
  2. ^ Braun (1982, 109).
  3. ^ Bryusov, quoted by Braun (1995, 31).
  4. ^ Braun (1995, 30-31) and Carlson (1993, 313-314).
  5. ^ Bryusov, quoted by Benedetti (1999a, 151).
  6. ^ Benedetti (1999a, 149, 151), Braun (1995, 28), and Magarshack (1950, 266).
  7. ^ Benedetti (1999a, 151), Braun (1995, 28), and Magarshack (1950, 265). In May 1904 the translator of Maeterlinck's three plays into Russian, Konstantin Balmont, met with the playwright to seek his opinions on their staging. Maeterlinck explained that he wished his dialogue to be spoken with an understated expressivity that should fall somewhere between romantic declamation and total realism; see Benedetti (1999a, 151-152).
  8. ^ Benedetti (1999a, 151-152, 386) and Braun (1995, 28).
  9. ^ Benedetti (1999a, 155), Rudnitsky (1981, 27-48) and Leach (2004, 55).
  10. ^ Rudnitsky (1981, 45).
  11. ^ Braun (1995, 29), Magarshack (1950, 267), and Rudnitsky (1981, 56).
  12. ^ Benedetti gives the size of the theatre as 1,200 seats, whereas Rudnitsky gives its size as 700 seats; see Benedetti (1999a, 156) and Rudnitsky (1981, 56). Magarshack writes that the Theatre-Studio cost Stanislavski more than 50,000 roubles (1950, 274). See also Braun (1995, 29).
  13. ^ Benedetti (1999a, 154-156), Braun (1995, 27-29), Magarshack (1950, 267-274), and Rudnitsky (1981, 52-76). Stanislavski presented a proposal for the MAT to develop a network of theatres at a meeting with colleagues on 25 February [O.S. 13 February] 1905, but Nemirovich scuppered the idea. Stanislavski would return to the idea again in 1918 in the wake of the October Revolution; see Benedetti (1999a, 247-248).
  14. ^ Stanislavski speaking at the first meeting of the Theatre-Studio members on 17 May [O.S. 5 May] 1905; quoted by Rudnitsky (1981, 56).
  15. ^ Rudnitsky (1981, 54).
  16. ^ Benedetti (1999a, 156), Braun (1995, 30), and Magarshack (1950, 270).
  17. ^ Quoted by Rudnitsky (1981, 57).
  18. ^ Leach (1989, 104).
  19. ^ Leach (2004, 56).
  20. ^ Benedetti (1999a, 159) and Magarshack (1950, 272). The stone barn that had been converted into a small theatre for the studio's rehearsals was not the same one in which the MAT had rehearsed some years earlier; see Magarshack (1950, 269).
  21. ^ Benedetti (1999a, 161) and Magarshack (1950, 272-274).
  22. ^ Meyerhold, quoted by Rudnitsky (1981, 74). See also Benedetti (1999a, 161) and Magarshack (1950, 273-274).
  23. ^ Benedetti (1999a, 161), Leach (2004, 1) and Rudnitsky (1981, 73). Rudnitsky observes that "Stanislavski at that time still believed in the possibility of 'peaceful coexistence' for Symbolist abstractions and the live, physical and psychological realization of completely credibly acted characters. Stanislavski's subsequent Symbolist productions showed his ineradicable striving toward realistic justification and prosaic circumstantiality of Symbolist motifs" (1981, 75).
  24. ^ Stanislavski, quoted by Rudnitsky (1981, 75).
  25. ^ Benedetti (1999a, 156) and Braun (1995, 29).

Sources[edit]

  • Benedetti, Jean. 1999a. Stanislavski: His Life and Art. Revised edition. Original edition published in 1988. London: Methuen. ISBN 0413525201.
  • ---. 1999b. "Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre, 1898-1938." In Leach and Borovsky (1999, 254-277).
  • Braun, Edward. 1982. "Stanislavsky and Chekhov". The Director and the Stage: From Naturalism to Grotowski. London: Methuen. ISBN 0413463001. p.59-76.
  • ---. 1995. Meyerhold: A Revolution in Theatre. Rev. 2nd ed. London: Methuen. ISBN 0413727300.
  • Carlson, Marvin. 1993. Theories of the Theatre: A Historical and Critical Survey from the Greeks to the Present. Expanded ed. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801481546.
  • Gauss, Rebecca B. 1999. Lear's Daughters: The Studios of the Moscow Art Theatre 1905-1927. American University Studies ser. 26 Theatre Arts, vol. 29. New York: Peter Lang. ISBN 0820441554.
  • Golub, Spencer. 1998. "Meyerhold, Vsevolod (Emilievich)." In The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Ed. Martin Banham. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 728-729. ISBN 0521434378.
  • Leach, Robert. 2004. Makers of Modern Theatre: An Introduction. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415312418.
  • Leach, Robert, and Victor Borovsky, eds. 1999. A History of Russian Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ISBN 0521432200.
  • Magarshack, David. 1950a. Stanislavsky: A Life. London and Boston: Faber, 1986. ISBN 0571137911.
  • Rudnitsky, Konstantin. 1981. Meyerhold the Director. Trans. George Petrov. Ed. Sydney Schultze. Revised translation of Rezhisser Meierkhol'd. Moscow: Academy of Sciences, 1969. ISBN 0882333135.
  • ---. 1988. Russian and Soviet Theatre: Tradition and the Avant-Garde. Trans. Roxane Permar. Ed. Lesley Milne. London: Thames and Hudson. Rpt. as Russian and Soviet Theater, 1905-1932. New York: Abrams. ISBN 0500281955.
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