Moscow Art Theater

Moscow Art Theater, most influential theater group of the 20th century, located in Moscow, Russia. The Moscow Art Theater is the birthplace of highly influential theories on modern acting and directing developed by actor-director Konstantin Stanislavsky. The company achieved international prominence during the first decades of the 20th century through its devotion to truthful emotion on stage, contemporary European drama, historically accurate scenery, and ensemble acting (emphasizing the performers as a group rather than as individual stars). The teachings of Stanislavsky and his actors later helped establish the foundations of training for actors in Russia and the United States.

Conceived in 1897 by dramatist Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and Stanislavsky, the Moscow Art Theater began as an artistic and commercial venture to lift the status of Russian theater and acting. The two theatrical idealists saw themselves as “knights of culture” in promoting new literary and political ideas then current in western Europe. For them, the company was to be a vehicle of pure art and ethical responsibility, and the dramatic creations it staged would not be dependent on the frivolous tastes of theatergoers.

During the summer of 1898 Stanislavsky drilled his company of young actors in rehearsals for Tsar Fyodor, a melodrama set in the 1600s. Stanislavsky emphasized visual authenticity in staging as well as truthful behavior in acting. He insisted that performers discover within themselves the feelings and thoughts of their characters. When the Moscow Art Theater presented the play after several months of rehearsal, skeptical critics were astounded. The production’s thoughtful treatment and unbroken sense of historical accuracy enveloped its audience in an environment of tsars and bickering nobility, sustained by the rhythms and minutia of everyday life.

Productions of works by Russian playwrights Anton Chekhov and Maksim Gorky proved even more successful. Beginning with Chekhov's The Seagull (1898), Stanislavsky extracted from his actors the melancholic and anxious mood of Russia's gentry and middle classes. Beneath the seemingly petty activity and dull chatter of Chekhov's characters, the performers uncovered a swamp of human emotion, which they expressed in pauses, vacant stares, and half-completed gestures.

The disturbingly real and restless mood created by the group in their productions of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya (1899), The Three Sisters (1901), and The Cherry Orchard (1904) touched the soul of Russian audiences. The Moscow Art Theater became a center for Russia's intelligentsia and a showcase for modern theater practice. Stanislavsky added classical and experimental plays to his company’s repertoire, in an attempt to demonstrate the universality of his performance theories and techniques.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Communist leaders of the newly formed Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) decided to support the nonpolitical Moscow Art Theater, partly to assure the outside world that some liberal elements of Russia's past would be maintained. Also, the Moscow Art Theater enjoyed an international reputation. Its tour of Europe and North America in 1922 and 1923 inspired countless theater practitioners, including the future founders of the Group Theater and Actors Studio.

During the 1920s, while Stanislavsky experimented with exercises to school his actors in relaxation, emotional memory, and textual understanding, the Moscow Art Theater was ordered to expand its seasons to include pro-Soviet dramas. As repression against artistic experimentation intensified in the early 1930s, the company found its realistic approach to staging enthusiastically promoted. Both Stanislavsky's system of actor training and the Moscow Art Theater were sanctioned as the favored and official theater components of Soviet culture.

After the dissolution of the USSR in the early 1990s, the Moscow Art Theater experienced a severe crisis in leadership, resulting in dissension and resignations. Today, it has regained its status as the largest and best-known theater in Russia.

Contributed By: Mel Gordon

The actor is the creative artist most identified by audiences with their experience of theater. Actors portray their characters’ wants and needs through believable personal behavior that mirrors the characters’ psychological and emotional lives within the world of the play. British actor Sir Laurence Olivier once said that acting " is an everlasting search for truth." [2]

B3 The Performers

The actor is the creative artist most identified by audiences with their experience of theater. Actors portray their characters’ wants and needs through believable personal behavior that mirrors the characters’ psychological and emotional lives within the world of the play. British actor Sir Laurence Olivier once said that acting " is an everlasting search for truth." Acting begins with an individual's talent, imagination, discipline, the need to express, and the process of observation through the sensory organs—eyes, ears, skin, tongue, nose. Reduced to its simplest terms, the actor's goal is to tell the character's circumstances within the story of the play. Through years of training with skilled coaches and through meticulous homework and long rehearsals, the actor is able to convey the psychological and emotional truth of the character's behavior within the context of the play. The successful actor combines inner belief in the role with learned technique to create a sense of life taking place on stage as if for the very first time.

Throughout the ages, performers have been jugglers, mimes, minstrels, puppeteers, acrobats, clowns, singers, dancers, and amateur and professional actors. The first performers were most likely singers and dancers, as the first performances had no spoken dialogue. Of the earliest actors nothing is known, but in ancient Greece they were men who were participants in religious ceremonies. Attitudes toward the acting profession have varied greatly depending on the culture. Some actors have enjoyed praise and been celebrated as national treasures, while others have been excluded from religious participation or labeled vagabonds and rogues and denied the rights of citizenship. It was not until the 19th century that actors in England achieved a respected social status that culminated in 1895 when Henry Irving received the first knighthood bestowed upon an actor.

Women have had a more difficult history as performers. They did not perform in ancient Greece at all, and only prostitutes were permitted to appear on stage in ancient Rome. Some records suggest that women may have appeared as Eve in biblical dramatizations during medieval times. The professional actress first appeared in Italy in the commedia dell'arte, a form of improvisational theater that originated in the 16th century, and women began appearing on the French and English stages in the 17th century. The profession remains today a challenging one for both men and women.

Most professional stage actors in the United States are members of Actors’ Equity Association, the actors’ union. In the United Kingdom, the union is called British Equity Association. Although the great majority of union actors remain unemployed (as performers) much of the time, their chances for acting work are improved if they have an agent to represent them. Agents work through casting directors, who seek actors for auditions in order to cast them in productions or companies. The majority of acting jobs in the United States are found in regional theaters located across the nation. See also Acting.