T here has been long discussion in the theatre, brought to a head in recent times by the writings of Gordon Craig, about the relative importance of the actor and the director: whose contribution is the essential one? In looking about the Moscow field in an effort to find some sort of basis for dividing it, I was reminded of the two points of view, for there the theatres obviously fall into three groups: those which exist for and are created by the actor, those which exist for and through the director, and those which exist for the actor but are created by the director in closest association with the actor. On this basis, it seemed to me, was the satisfactory way for me to divide my theatre study. The division into Left, Center and Right theatres which Huntly Carter and others use has an ideological and historical basis and I was seeking a working one. I shall try to explain what I mean by the divisions and why I consider them the logical ones in a consideration of method.
The Moscow Art Theatre is one of the chief supporters of the idea of a theatre of the actor, by the actor and for the actor. One of its principal tenets has been the supremacy of the ensemble at the expense of all individual creative exhibitionism (in its best sense), including regie . Its director, Stanislavski, was first and foremost an actor himself. The system which he worked on for so many years was a system of acting for actors. The reputation which
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the Art Theatre, through its foreign appearances, made for the Russian stage abroad was one based on the supremacy of acting.
I do not wish to imply that the Art Theatre does not have able directors; Stanislavski is one of the greatest living directors today, and some of his assistants, the younger men and women who now actively direct at the MX AT , 1 are excellent. But their position in the picture is rather that of a combination wet-nurse and doctor. Their presence and assistance at the birth of the play is essential, but the play is actually given birth to by the actor; the pangs are his—or hers!
In 1897 Constantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko met to lay the plans for a theatre which would attempt to satisfy the need which both felt for a new kind of art in the theatre and a new approach to its functioning. Their meeting in a Moscow restaurant where they spent the whole day and most of the night (a typically Russian procedure) discussing their beliefs and outlining their plans, is a famous incident in theatrical history. Both were dissatisfied with the existing theatre which had become commercialized and vulgarized during the latter days of the nineteenth century. It seemed to them to have become what they called a "theatre of performances.” By that they meant a theatre devoted to representation of outward form, one in which the artists studied the period of the play, its history, conditions, modes of life, in order to reproduce its appearance correctly, but solely from the standpoint of onlookers.
Both Stanislavski and Nemirovich wanted a theatre in which truth would supplant the artificialities which had
1 MX AT are the initials used commonly in Moscow to identify the Art Theatre: Moskovski Khudozhestvenny Akademicheski Teatr. The X is the character used in Russian to indicate the kh sound which does not exist in English. I shall use MXAT often hereafter as an abbreviation for "Moscow Artistic Academic Theatre.”
grown up in the stage of that day, in which perfection of the ensemble would replace the uneven and unpredictable intuitive genius of a few stars and the conventional hokum of the time, in which beauty would be achieved through simplicity. In their theatre the actor must put himself in the place of the hero. They called theirs the "theatre of inner feeling.” In the theatre of performances the director could do a good measure of the actor’s work for him, could describe to him the elements he was to reproduce; in the new theatre he could not. JHere it was the actor who must place himself in the position of the character, the actor who must experience the inner feeling and he alone. The director could only help him to discover the character and urge him on to experience the inner feeling. Stanislavski and Nemirovich immediately began the foundation of a permanent company, a step significant in itself, for at that time the theatres formed their casts from season to season by that general hit-or-miss bargaining process which New York enjoys today.
A strong influence upon Stanislavski, who directed the productional side of the new theatre while Nemirovich controlled the literary, was that of the Players of the Duke of Meiningen whose work became known to Stanislavski when they visited Moscow. They emphasized attention to revealing the meaning of the text of the play, to reproducing historical details with exactitude, and the importance of ensemble acting. The first production of the Art Theatre was Alexei Tolstoy’s "Tsar Fyodor” which took place in October, 1898, after some seventy rehearsals— quite a contrast to the half-dozen rehearsals which the Maly, with modern stock company speed, was then devoting to its new light Frenchy fare. In this production Stanislavski showed the effects of the Meiningen influence and began to lay the foundations of the theatre’s style: simplicity of speech and action, use of actual things to sur-
round the actor, the truthful and exact portrayal of emotions. His idea, he said, was "to chase the theatre from the theatre.”
The second production of importance was Chekhov’s "The Sea-Gull,” and with its performance the theatre began an artistic alliance with Chekhov which was as important for the development of its character as was the alliance of the Maly Theatre with Ostrovski. "The Sea- Gull” was a play in which the action and dialogue were of secondary importance—the thought of the dramatist was in the underlying meaning. In all the subsequent plays of Chekhov the Art Theatre continued to be occupied with revealing the play that lay beneath the text. It was in this way that it came to its emphasis upon the study of man’s inner experiences and feelings.
In the repertoire of the Moscow Art Theatre several other trends were manifested. There were plays of history and manners; there were plays in the spirit of the fantastic, revealing the poetic side of the theatre. The line of symbolism and impressionism was early present in the theatre in the works of Ibsen (excepting "The Enemy of the People”), Maeterlinck, Hamsun, and later, Andreyev. Into the field of social and political drama also, the Art Theatre entered with its production of Gorki’s plays, "The Enemy of the People,” and Tolstoy’s "The Power of Darkness.”
It was along that other line, "the intuition of feelings” as Stanislavski calls it, that the theatre was most successful. All the plays of Chekhov, most of Hauptmann, Turgen- yev, Dostoyevski, and Griboyedov’s classic, "Woe from Wisdom,” were plays in which the outward form cloaked an inner and far deeper meaning which the artists of the Moscow Art Theatre seemed able to catch and bring to life. In many of these plays that inner problem was, for the Russian intellectual of the first days of the twentieth
century, his own. Therefore with such a repertoire, including also the Gorki plays, the Art Theatre became the theatre of the advanced intellectuals; it was the revolutionary theatre.
Not only intellectually but artistically the theatre devoted itself to all that was new. It was a period of untiring experimentation in novel scenic forms. Anything was worth trying so long as it had not been done before and so long as it was in line with the theatre’s principle of truth to life. The life-like sounds of crickets, frogs, birds, mosquitoes, filled the air, whole scenes were played by actors sitting with backs to audience, long and empty silences were the vogue; dozens of other tricks were tried.
Then came the Revolution of 1905. The Moscow Art Theatre went abroad for the first time and its beauty founded on simplicity and truth became appreciated by western Europe. When the theatre returned from its tour it entered upon the second period of its existence, a phase dominated by the tendencies then powerful in the art of western Europe—symbolism and mysticism. It was then that Dostoyevski, Hamsun, Andreyev, Maeterlinck, replaced in the repertoire the healthier and more social Ibsen, Chekhov, Gorki. The Art Theatre gave itself over to preoccupation with abstractions, negation of life, the meaning of death, and its stage was filled with strange music, darkness, and the "smoke of mysticism.”
The progressive intellectuals found this theatre less to their taste, although its popularity with the great body of the bourgeoisie remained unchallenged, and when the Revolution broke, the Moscow Art Theatre had ceased to be revolutionary and was considered reactionary. Indeed, the Communists like to insist that the Art Theatre was in a state of irreparable decay and that these last preoccupations indicated a decadence which would have plunged the the-
atre to its destruction had not the cleansing and invigorating wind of the proletarian Revolution arrived to blow it back into sunny safety. It is true that the theatres of western Europe cannot be said to have recovered from the decadence of the early twentieth century. They remain today in a woefully pallid state, but it is doubtful whether the Moscow Art Theatre would have suffered their fate had it been allowed to pursue its artistic way untouched by the Revolution. Its art was too right and its leaders too wise for that.
The Moscow Art Theatre stood comparatively still creatively during the first period of the Revolution. Unable to apply the Marxian interpretation of art in the creation of new drama, it preferred to serve the Revolution by conserving its past for the service of the future. Of course, after the Revolution the Art Theatre might have changed its style. It could have much more quickly expressed the things which were wanted of it in the new society if it had been content to deal only with the externals—to perform as onlookers. But it refused to abandon its belief in a theatre of inner feeling. It preferred to wait until its actors could understand the psychological basis of these new feelings, for the Art Theatre remained an actors’ theatre.
During this time, therefore, it occupied itself chiefly in pedagogical pursuits. Then the Theatre made its second trip abroad—to Europe and to America. When it returned it entered upon the final stage of its development. The Revolution had by this time been understood and accepted, at least by the younger generation which had grown up in the Theatre, and it was able to grasp the inner feeling of the new man with the same understanding with which it had penetrated into the heart of the life of Chekhov’s landed gentry of thirty years before.
2
I have made several references to the Stanislavski system of acting, but I have not yet given more than generalized definitions of it. I cannot pretend to be able to offer a thorough analysis of the system, nor is it my desire to do so, for Stanislavski has himself been in the process of writing a book about it for the past five years, and it is that book alone which will be able to open it up properly to the understanding of the outsider. But it seems to me as important for a person watching the Art Theatre at work to know what the theatre expects of its actors as for him to understand the language it is speaking. The reader need not go through the ordeal of learning Russian, for I have, in a sense, done that for him; but he should know something about the system. Let me therefore make a very brief effort at exposition. ' f ,
The Stanislavski system is really only a conscious codification of ideas about acting which have always been the property of most good actors of all countries whether they knew it or not. Its basis is the work of the actor with him - " self in order to master "technical means for the creation of the creative mood, so that inspiration may appear oftener than is its wont.” That is what Stanislavski was seeking when he began to formulate his thoughts into a system. "This does not mean,” he wrote in his Life in Art , "that I was going to create inspiratipn by artificial means. That x would be impossible. What I wanted to learn was how to create a favorable condition for the appearance of inspiration by means of the will, that condition in the presence of which inspiration was most likely to descend into the actor’s soul.” Before proceeding further in an examination of the methods of production of the Art Theatre, I think it would be worth while to set down a few notes on the subject.
1. This work of the actor with himself is first expressed in physical development. Stanislavski is fond of saying to his pupils, "As a painter has his canvas and his paints, so an actor has his body and his voice.” The actor must be master of all movement and all the senses. It is this dictum which is largely responsible for the attention paid in the curricula of all the theatre schools and technicums in Moscow to physical and voice culture, those courses in gymnastics, rhythmics, dancing, voice production, singing. One of the regisseurs of the MXAT told me that Stanislavski even now, in his seventy-fifth year, exercises his body and voice daily. How many actors in New York one-third his age and of one-tenth his experience consider such exercise necessary for themselves?
2. \Work with the actor’s personal psychology. This involves self-control of the nervous system. The first requirement of acting is muscular freedom. Nervousness must be overcome; there must be relaxation. The actor must be able to control his attention. For this the MXAT has a favorite expression: "the circle.” In order that the actor may never be distracted from his playing he must put himself within an imaginary circle from which he cannot step as long as he is acting. This is a most important and difficult thing. Nemirovich-Danchenko, I am told, accomplishes this by looking at his cuff links; one actress closes her eyes for a minute, after that she is "within the circle” and nothing exists but the world of the stage. This is more than the erection of a "fourth wall” to shut out the audience from the actor’s consciousness, for it is designed to protect him as well from distractions within that fourth wall, that is, on the stage itself.
3. Development of imagination and fantasy. These are the actor’s most important weapons. The two words mean almost the same thing but not quite. Let me illustrate the difference. Suppose an actor must pretend that he is stand-
ing at a street corner watching a funeral procession pass by. He can, no doubt, recall a time in the past when he has done this. So now he recalls his impressions, re-creates the situation in his imagination and reenacts it. But suppose that he must pretend to be climbing a palm tree in northern Africa in chase of a monkey. If he has never climbed a palm tree, never been in Africa and never chased a monkey, he will be unable to use his memory to reconstruct the situation. Instead he must try to imagine what it would be like to do this. That would be called employing "fantasy.” For the development of these two there are exercises which the actors and apprentices of the MX AT do. There is one, for instance, in which three words are chosen at random, "mountain,” "shoe,” "snow,” let us say. The actor then creates a story around these words which he acts out. This develops his imagination and at the same time strengthens his powers of concentration.
4. "Offered circumstances.” By this phrase is meant the situation presented by the author. The actor must learn how to master these circumstances, and this takes the most time. Let me illustrate with the "business” of writing a letter. The actor must know how to convince the audience that he is actually writing a letter, but he must be able to do more than that. The act of writing a love letter differs from that of writing a business letter. They are the performance of the same physical action: the body seated, pen and paper employed, the hand moving, the mind concentrated on the writing; yet there must be a different expression. Then if, in the offered circumstances of the playwright, the actor is required to write a love letter, he must not convey to the audience that he is writing a business letter, or that he is writing just any kind of letter. He must know how to fulfill only the required demand—he must write the love letter so that there can be no mistaking what it is.
5. Naivete. The actor must be naive—he must believe in what he does and says. Children believe in what they create in play. Actors should watch children and do likewise. There are exercises also for the strengthening of this naivete and, in the production of "The Blue Bird” in particular, much attention had to be given to its development. This is almost the root of the whole system. Stanislavski has written:
1 came to understand that creativeness begins from that moment when in the soul and imagination of the actor there appears the magical, creative if. While only actual reality exists, only practical truth which a man naturally cannot but believe, creativeness has not yet begun. Then the creative if appears, that is, the imagined truth which the actor can believe as sincerely and with greater enthusiasm than he believes practical truth, just as the child believes in the existence of its doll and of all life in it and around it. From the moment of the appearance of if the actor passes from the plane of actual reality into the plane of another life, created and imagined by himself. Believing in this life, the actor can begin to create.
6 . Contact. In life, contacts between people are always dictated by a logical purpose. The actors must discover this purpose on the stage and bear it in mind. There the contact is necessarily repetitious, but this fact must be forgotten. Talk to your partner-actor’s eyes, not to his ears, says Stanislavski. The person who talks produces a kind of rays; the person addressed absorbs these rays.
7. Memorizing of emotions. This is closely connected with the third point^A conscious effort to memorize certain emotions, both in large and small details, gives great strength to the imagination when the actor is called upon at some future time to re-create the emotion. The more the
actor can depend on the recollection of previously experienced and memorized emotions, the less he will have to resort to the uncertainties of ''fantasy,” and the more accurate will be his performance.
8. Rhythm. This must be developed in rehearsal and not by the actor independently, for rhythms must be based on the various "offered circumstances.” Stanislavski used to use ten rhythms in a fractional arrangement. In rehearsing every movement was marked. The normal rhythm was 5. Rhythm 1 was that of a man almost dead, 2 that of a man weak with illness, and so on progressively to rhythm 9 which might be that of a person seeing a burning house, and to 10 when he is on the point of jumping out of the window. Tempo and rhythm must not be confused, for tempo comes from outside whereas rhythm comes from within. There may be one general rhythm of the whole stage while individual rhythms differ. The fractional system is no longer in use at the MXAT , but the principles of rhythm and the actor’s understanding of their use are still a fundamental part of the system.
9. This is the final stage in the preparatory phase of the system and the word in Russian which is used to signify it is translated in our word "grain,” the grain of the role. It means the collection of all the individual characteristics which make up the person. We might do better to call it the "kernel.” It includes the internal qualities of the character as well as its external form. When this kernel is grasped by the actor, the character becomes real and there only remains to add to it
10. The aim. The aim gives motivation to the characterization. If one is conscious of the aim, all else is forgotten; there Is no more consciousness of self, for the actor as the character can answer the questioii, "What do I want and why?”
There are half a dozen more notes on the Stanislavski system, but they are concerned with problems which arise during the period of the play’s preparation—points such as "mastery of the role,” "selection of the aim,” "superproblem of the role,” "perspective of the role,” etc., and we would do better to talk about them when we are actually in rehearsal and can watch the master actors of the Art Theatre working them out. Then they will mean much more to us. A final admonition to the Stanislavski actor, not a part of the system but significant of its attitude toward the art of acting: never imitate your own good performance. The actor is not a machine and standardization is bad.
Many of these points seem exceedingly simple and obvious, almost childish. So, I might say, are scales in music; yet all musicians 'must know them and great artists practice them for years. Apropos of that, I should like to emphasize that this system of Stanislavski’s is not something which beginners in Moscow learn and then forget. The exercises based on it are practiced constantly by even the great artists of the MXAT. Every week there is a class held at the Art Theatre to strengthen imagination, naivete, contact, concentration and all the other things. The class is attended by Honored and People’s Artists of the Republic; some of them have been acting for thirty years. Scales and etudes are as important as concertos.
3
The only way to understand the system and this Russian terminology is to go to some rehearsals, in fact, to many of them, watch a production evolve from beginning to end, and see whether and how these things actually work out. In watching this evolution at the MXAT we are at a disadvantage because of the time element. Many productions
there are in rehearsal anywhere from eight months to a year and a half, and unless one can give that much time to it one cannot be said to have observed properly.
This time element was something I was particularly anxious to understand. In New York a play is rehearsed for four weeks—perhaps six, if it is taken for a short trial run out of town before opening. In Moscow I was told they rehearse from three months to eighteen. What happens in all that time? The discouraged tourist who has experienced Russian ways, will nod a wise head and reply, "Nothing,” putting it down as just another example of the Russian’s famous procrastination, to his inability to put anything through on time. If it takes the telephone operator in your hotel half an hour to get you a number, no wonder it takes a stage director half a year to give you a play. The Russians postpone all their openings—the "Metro” was two or three years overdue.
If that were the whole answer we could dismiss the time element forthwith, but I have concluded that it is not. The Russian temperament does have something to do with it; procrastination and the Russian’s love of talk do enter in, but rather more important is another facet of his temperament: his attitude toward workmanship. The Russian artist says, "Nothing short of perfection is satisfactory. I shall not, of course, attain it, but I shall work until I am as close to it as possible.” The end is everything and time loses its meaning in the attainment of it. In many ways the Russian seems closer to the East than to the West, and his point of view is essentially Eastern. An Indian, I am told, may carve away at a small piece of ivory for a year or years until its form and pattern seem to be in every way just what he wants. The aesthetic pleasure he derives from perfect completion he shares with the Russian. It is shocking to the Russian director to hear that a New York producer will allow a play to open before he is completely
satisfied that there is nothing more that could be done with it. But how often does that happen? Simonov once said to me, in answer to the question, "When” (the interrogative most frequently on the lips of foreigners visiting the U.S.S.R.), "when will your play open?”—"My play will open when it is ready, when it is ripe, so to speak, not before.”
There is a story told at the Art Theatre which illustrates this nicely. Stanislavski’s illness in recent years has prevented him from doing much actual direction, and plays are prepared by the under-regisseurs under the supervision of either Stanislavski or Nemirovich-Danchenko, who come in at the last rehearsals to polish them off. Two or three years ago a new production of "Talents and Admirers” by Ostrovski was in preparation. Stanislavski had been ill and saw 'no rehearsals until the regisseur of the production felt that after three or four months of work he had done all he could with it and that it was ready, at least for the master’s final touch. A run-through in costume and sets was arranged for the tenth of December and Stanislavski was brought to the theatre to see it. He was delighted; he saw very little that needed to be done. They could schedule full dress rehearsals for the fourteenth and fifteenth, an invitation performance for the eighteenth and open on the twentieth. Everyone went home much relieved —Constantin Sergevich, as he is known to his colleagues, was pleased. At the dress rehearsal on the fourteenth he returned. This time .it was a different story. Quite a good deal seemed to him worse than before. Parts of the set were not perfect and needed correction. But they need not worry. While they worked on the set, he, Constantin Sergevich, would rehearse with the cast in his home—for ten days perhaps. They would postpone the opening only until the thirty-first of December. Stanislavski started his work with the actors at home. For the ten days they re-
hearsed. He thought of other things with the set which were not right. He found other things wrong with the cast. "We must postpone it a little longer,” he said. "Talents and Admirers” opened the following September!
They tell another story of doubtful authenticity in Moscow about an Art Theatre production of several years ago in which the play opens with the hero’s servant entering to shave his master’s beard. For six months they rehearsed the opening line, "Shall I shave you now, sir?” and got no farther. Finally the play was abandoned because the actor could not learn to say the line correctly!
This is doubtless not true, but it very well might have been. I remember an afternoon in Stanislavski’s study where I watched a rehearsal of "Carmen.” It was the last act and the words Carmen utters when she comes in to find herself alone and face to face with Escamillo are, "Ty zdyes?” (You here?) For fifteen minutes Stanislavski and the Carmen discussed and repeated these two words, trying all the possible inflections and accents to discover the perfect one. The conclusion I want to draw from these instances is that time means nothing. No Moscow director ever said in my hearing, "We haven’t time to do or to try that.” Instead the two words one hears most in Moscow rehearsals are, "yeshcho raz ”—once more.
The working of the repertory system also has an effect upon this time element in rehearsal. In New York the company is usually devoting its energies exclusively to rehearsal of the play in preparation. Rehearsals are often carried on for eight hours a day—sometimes all day and then far into the night. The schedule becomes stiffer as the dress rehearsal period arrives. In Moscow this is impossible, for many of the actors are performing every night and at matinees and in a different role at each performance. The demands of this system upon an actor are great. Therefore, even up through the final dress rehearsal he can only spend
a certain part of his day in rehearsal on the new production; there must be time to prepare for his current evening performances.
My first-hand experience began in the rehearsals of Gorki’s "Enemies.” From most standpoints this production is a good example. It is an old play, almost a semi-classic, so that it is like much else that the Art Theatre has in its repertoire from point of view of text; that is to say, it is not a new Soviet manuscript. At the same time the Art Theatre has never tackled a production of it before. It is a deeply psychological play—there is little action. Therefore it is a good play for this actors’ theatre. The actors who are cast are among the greatest in the company: Knipper-Chekhova, Kachalov, Tarkhanov, Tarasova, a dozen others. The director is Kedrov, perhaps Stanislavski’s most able pupil. They should be a perfect group to interpret the theatre’s principles of work.
We arrive for our first rehearsal at eleven o’clock in the morning. At the administrative entrance is a typed list of the rehearsals for the day. There may be as many as six or eight different plays being rehearsed at different hours in different parts of the theatre, for there are two other new plays besides "Enemies” to be done this season, rehearsals are already under way for a couple of next season’s productions, and parts of the plays currently in the repertoire are constantly being rehearsed, either to familiarize an understudy or to keep the play fresh when it seems to be drying up. To guard against this latter, some member of the theatre’s staff sits out front at every performance, whether the play has been in the repertoire for a week or for twenty years, to note any slips or any let-down which may be apparent.
We have arrived a few minutes ahead of schedule, so we must wait in the vestibule until the director comes, for
ACTORS AT WORK 67
no one not a member of the theatre is allowed to enter beyond without special permission. I have spent a good many hours sitting in that vestibule waiting for various officials and I have never failed to enjoy what I saw. It matters not what hour of day or night one is there; there is a constant procession of actors, regisseurs, young apprentices, business administrators, technicians, assistants, charwomen, and people who come to confer with them all (except with the charwomen). But we must remember that this theatre has almost one thousand people working in it. It is, I believe, from point of numbers, the largest dramatic organization in the world, excluding operas. There are three or four door-men always on duty at this entrance, and they seem to know everything that is going on in the complicated organization. Almost every artist that enters shakes hands with these door-men who address them all by their two first names. Then the actors pass within. The entrance does not lead directly to the stage, but through a garde-robe into the foyers of the theatre.
Now the director has come and we go in with him, leave our coats with an attendant and pass on to the first floor foyer where behind closed doors the rehearsal will take place this morning. As each member of the cast arrives he shakes hands carefully and formally with every other person in the room; the men kiss the hands of the women. We are in a theatre of actors, every one of whom carries himself with dignity and respects everyone else. There is an air of refinement and cultivation about the quietly and tastefully dressed company. No "Broadway stuff” here and none of the superficial earmarks of the proletariat either. This is a gathering of aristocrats of the Soviet Union!
Rehearsals of "Enemies” have already been in progress for about two months, but they are still in the first act anc( today they are just beginning to "walk” a section of ft. Even in this early rehearsal all the props are at hand.
The tea table is completely set, including a cloth and all silver; there is even some real food. The actor is placed in as real or natural an environment as possible from the beginning. But there is a further value: the presence of the props at all rehearsals gives him a chance to make mechanical those little things which should properly be so.
The rehearsal is carried on very quietly. A low conversational tone is used, sometimes dropping almost to a whisper, as though the actors were but thinking aloud with each otherbThe director does not remain long in his seat by the green felt-covered table, but, leaving the script with the assistant stage manager who sits there too, and who prompts fairly constantly at this stage in the same pitch of voice as the cast, he stands in the group of actors. He talks with them quietly as they rehearse; he walks at their sides as they move tentatively about the extempore stage. We have difficulty in discovering when they are reading lines of the play and when discussing some mooted point with each other, for it is all done equally naturally and with equal quiet, and our Russian is too sketchy to understand remarks made sotto voce . We have to watch carefully. They are rehearsing only a small scene, perhaps six pages long, and they go over it again and again. There is a good deal of discussion, then the rehearsal is finished; it is only two o’clock, we discover. Setting six pages of script has been this one day’s work, and we feel when it is over that those pages are only tentatively set, at that!
The rehearsal concluded, we come out into the rest of the theatre. Here the quiet of the rehearsal room is intensified. The Art Theatre is probably the quietest spot in Moscow. All speech in the heavily carpeted halls of the theatre is in whispers, for on the stage and in other foyers and rehearsal rooms other rehearsals are in progress. In the buffet some actors enjoying an interval in rehearsal are drinking tea and conversing quietly. Others, finished for
the day, go downstairs to the dining room for dinner. The heavy meal for actors and for most Russians, for that matter, is served in the middle of the afternoon. We leave to ponder over the meaning of what we have just seen, and to consider how the morning’s work fits into the plan of production which Kedrov, the director, has explained. Before attending another rehearsal perhaps it would be wise for me to discuss this plan and explain what has gone before in these two months of rehearsals.
4
What I have just given you has been an impression of the outward appearance of a Moscow Art rehearsal—a journalist’s view; but it is the whys and wherefores, particularly in this theatre, which count. The play was begun two months ago with two or three readings. These readings differed from the usual New York first reading in that the play was read to the actors and they did not participate in the reading themselves. The Art Theatre considers these first readings very important. It feels that the moment when the actor is introduced to the person whom he is about to become is a most solemn one. The impression which he first receives is apt to influence his attitude very strongly toward the play and the role. Therefore these readings are taken slowly and are designed to arouse the interest of the actor.
After a while the actor is given his script, but the MX AT believes there should be no hurry about this. Then follows a period in which the regisseur stimulates enthusiasm for the play. The actor must fall in love with it; otherwise he has no faith and his work will not carry conviction. Stanislavski, they say, sometimes used to fall back on the trick of unreasonably criticizing the author’s work as a result of which the cast would run to the playwright’s de-
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MOSCOW REHEARSALS
fense, discussion would ensue, the actors in supporting the author would discover for themselves good things in the play to assist their arguments, and the interest which the regisseur wished the actors to take was aroused. This introduction over, they were ready to proceed to the next step.
The analytic period which follows is the first main division in the evolution of the production and it may take a month’s work or, in the case of a great classic, much more. First there is an examination of the "sub-text.” This simply means study of the lines taken up one by one and discussion of the meaning beneath each. The stage directions of the author are disregarded, for they sometimes lead one away from the true meaning of his words. But if the play is a new Soviet one, the author may be present at these round-table discussions to reveal his meanings.
From the interpretation of individual lines, the analysis passes to a consideration of the "superproblem”: what the theatre wants to tell the world in this play. Then there is study of the "grain” of the play as a whole: examination of the period, its conditions, environment, tastes. Historical and scientific research and biographical study are part of this work. After that the cast returns to the text of the play. The regisseur has divided the act into a number of small pieces, or rather, he has taken up a short sequence of lines and grouped them together to create a small scene. Each fragment, kusok, has its place in the building of the act. It may be composed of four or five lines or it may be two or three pages long. The length is dictated solely by the unity of thought expressed therein. These ktiski are definitely marked and numbered in the script and, during this analytic period and even into the period of rehearsal which follows, it is the rehearsal unit.
One might liken this dissection of the act to an analysis of a musical composition. Each speech is a measure which has its individual notes, here words; measures grouped to-
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7i
ACTORS AT WORK
gether in sequence form phrases. Each phrase has perhaps its own tempo, its own little melody, its own meaning. It must be practiced separately over and over again to be mastered. But it is only a phrase and in the composer’s mind has no meaning if cut off from the phrases which precede and follow it. The long chain of phrases becomes a movement to which we may liken the act of a play. When all the movements are played, the sonata is completed, our play is finished. The right division of an act into small pieces is very important, for, like improper phrasing, if incorrectly done it may destroy the melody and balance of the act.
This division of an act into minor scenes is not unknown in American production and I do not wish to hail it in the Russian theatre as an innovation. But there is a difference in its application. Usually the American director makes the divisions on the basis of action: a scene may run from entrance to exit; often he picks up a new one at the entrance of a character, using the physical act of entrance as a motivation for the announcement of a new scene. When repetition in rehearsal is necessary, the customary direction is, “Go back to your entrance.” The Art Theatre’s divisions are much smaller and more frequent because they are based not so much on movement as on unity of thought and emotion. Each new facet of thought or feeling requires separate treatment; often an entrance of a character has nothing to do with his train of thought or that of others upon the stage. A scene played across a table between two characters who sit there quite still for ten minutes would in all likelihood be rehearsed with us as a single scene just because there is no break in action. In the Art Theatre these ten actionless minutes might contain six scenes, divisions being made every time a new chain of thought or a new emotional reaction is established between the two characters. It is very rare that two
people will converse for ten minutes without passing through many changing attitudes toward each other. Each of these with the Art Theatre becomes a separate entity requiring separate rehearsal and adjustment. This explains to us the meaning of that first rehearsal which we attended when only six pages of script were covered. Those six pages perhaps contained ten scenes, and looked at in this way one can see that really a good deal was accomplished.
In the period which follows this analysis, the actors work to master their roles and then to "incarnate” them. Now comes practice of the final parts of the Stanislavski system. In mastering his role, the actor must first say, "All this has happened to me and therefore it is inevitable.” This, of course, cannot be accomplished at once but bit by bit. Stanislavski himself likens the process to the passing of a day. As morning follows dawn, is succeeded by noon and it by afternoon and on to evening and night in inevitable progression, so the actor must feel that the life and action he creates on the stage has the same inevitability of sequence. "Remember the line of the day,” says Stanislavski in rehearsal.
Next comes the "selection of the aim”—what I do and why. It is at this point that we come to realize that the Art Theatre and opprobrious "naturalism” are not exactly one, although in the mind of the casual student of the theatre they are linked. Naturalism is photographic reproduction. Pure naturalism and the camera both show you things as they are, but make no effort to show you why—you are left to draw your own conclusions. The camera does not reflect upon the meaning of the scene it reproduces and the naturalistic actor and regisseur when they become absorbed in that style are also apt to forget the "why.” Naturalism tends to destroy inner profound emotions in its effort to mirror the outer manifestations of them. The selection and retention of an aim helps to define the action
as well as the emotions and that is why it is considered of such importance at the Art Theatre.
Again sequence of action comes up, this time to help unfold the aim. ''Let us suppose,” says the regisseur to me, "that you want to go to Leningrad to see a play which they are performing there. You will pack your suitcase, you will board a tram to take you to the station, you will buy your ticket there, you will go out onto the station platform, when the train arrives you will board it, you will seek a vacant place and having found it you will seat yourself. When you reach Leningrad you will disembark, you will seek a hotel in which you may be comfortable, you will go to the theatre to make arrangements to see the play, when the time comes you will go to the theatre, enter, take your seat and proceed to watch the play, which has been the aim you had from the moment you started to pack your suitcase and which has continued to be your aim through the chain of actions that followed.
"If I am a naturalistic actor I shall be content to imitate these isolated movements of yours one after another and let it go at that. If I am an actor in the Art Theatre, I must know your aim, I must bear it in mind as I follow your movements. I must remember as I pack the suitcase, as I go through the action of buying the ticket, as I get off the train, that every act is part of my final purpose, which is to get me to see the new play in Leningrad. There is a reason for each thing I do and that reason is part of my final aim. For the purely naturalistic actor, it would be quite as possible to reproduce the action of buying the railroad ticket and then follow it with an imitation of you boarding the tram that would take you to the station. The Stanislavski actor could not do this because he would thus be destroying the logical sequence of events which lead to the accomplishment of the ultimate aim, and this he must know and remember at every step.”
This simple little theory (but really quite fundamental and not always so simple as in this ABC illustration) has its name too. It is called the krug> which means circle, and Stanislavski suggests that it is like a necklace of pearls. No pearl is by itself a necklace, only when placed in a strand with others does it make one, and the necklace is only complete when all the pearls are there. It reveals that the physical and psychological problems of acting are one and must be solved at the same time, not divided as they were before the system.
In the production of ''Enemies” which I studied, an experiment in this relation between the physical and psychological elements of acting was being made. They called it simply the "theory of physical action ”—physicheskoe deistviye —and for the Art Theatre it represents a definite change of methods. Instead of coming to the incarnation of a role by thinking about it and arousing emotions about it, it is suggested to the actor that he try certain actions and then, from the doing of them, he discovers their meaning, their cause, and the truth therein. This is not really a departure from the beliefs of the Art Theatre, for the purpose remains the same—to arrive at an understanding of the psychology of movement.
Stanislavski is also making this experiment in the opera rehearsals he conducts. Before the first rehearsal of "Carmen” which I saw at his home, he explained to me what I was about to see. He now believes, he said, that the actor cannot get at the true psychology by thinking in terms of psychology. A hunter who is after a bird must try to decoy it out into the open, he must whistle gently and persuasively, coax it forth, then bag it. If he jumps at it rudely \ * he has little chance of catching it. So the actor must be gently drawn out, whistled at, as it were, for the capturing of emotional truth is a subtle and difficult thing. Suggest to the actor what to do, then when he has done it,
ask him why he did it. Make sure, of course, that he understands why, else the point is lost. If you say to him, "Your psychological state at this moment should be fear. Make movements to express it,” you will doubtless be given action which is artificial or exaggerated, even though the actor may be approximating within himself the proper feeling. But if you suggest that he make certain movements and then ask him to feel as those movements dictate, you will perhaps arrive at a truer combination of psychology and action.
After the psychology of movement is grasped, the actor passes to the "superproblem of the role,” to the dominant purpose in the life of the person he represents. To this he must carry a "perspective of the role.” He must know how to apply his forces. The jealousy of Othello, the expression of which is perhaps the "superproblem” of that role, must not be spent in the early scenes but must be saved and built up for the climax.
Then comes the "incarnation of the role” which is the peculiar study of the Art Theatre. All the rest of the system ascends to this point. When the actor has found the nature and origin of his emotions, then he must say, "I am this person.” There can be no separation between the actor and his part. It is in this final step in the system that the Art Theatre passes beyond other theatres. Upon arrival at this stage one comes to grips with the spiritual values of the play. Stanislavski says that we cannot relate things which we cannot see. We must, therefore, have our own spiritual vision. And if the actor sees into the spirit, then the audience will. Finally, when he has grasped the image in its physical, mental or psychological, and spiritual aspects, there remains only to work with his own will power, to will himself to act as the image would. Then is his character complete.
The effort to achieve the incarnation of the role occu-
pies all the second period of rehearsals and it is here that the most time is required, perhaps two or three months, before the actor can lose his own personality in the personality of the character he is creating. We have seen that the expression of psychology in movement is an important part of this development. Therefore, when the actor begins to feel the need to move about in adding to his part, the round-table is dropped and the rehearsal moves to the stage. But it is the cast and not the director who will decide when the time has come.
It was at this point that we arrived in rehearsal. The period of analysis is over, the actors understand the meaning of what is being said; it is now their task to express these meanings. In doing this the rehearsal by small pieces, kuski, continues. All the pieces of one act are mastered separately and then put together before rehearsals begin on the next one. For five weeks I attended rehearsals of only the first act of "Enemies” before a full run-through of it took place and they passed on to the second. During the first part of these five weeks, rehearsals took place in a foyer or a rehearsal room and some were with action, some without; then the rehearsals were moved to the big stage where an approximation of the form of the set was provided. 1
At the Moscow Art Theatre there is more work done with individuals, the director and a single artist rehearsing alone together, discussing lines and trying movements, than at other Moscow theatres or than most New York directors do. Where the production is based on the principle of a collection of harmonized individual creations, with every part considered as important as the whole (the perfection of the whole, being attainable only when every part makes its own perfect contribution), as opposed to the principle of the solo creation of the master regisseur who regards the perfect creation of the whole as attainable only through
Banquet scenes as Stanislavski and Meierhold stage them, dead souls at the Moscow Art Theatre; woe from wisdom at the Meierhold Theatre
Meierhold today: la dame aux camelias at the Meierhold Theatre
Meierhold in 1922: masse-mensch
his own ability, such practice is quite inevitably necessary.
When rehearsals are held on the stage the director is constantly there with the actors; he does not sit out front. Throughout this period he seems only to be trying to help the actors. He walks about with them on the stage, whispers suggestions to stir their imaginations. If the actor wishes to make movements of which the director does not approve, he is allowed to try his way; perhaps he will eventually be led back to the director’s way if it is best; but he is never forced at this point to do anything which is not comfortable for him.
Movement is now very slow in becoming set. At every rehearsal I used to see a slight variation of action tried by the actor as he felt his way toward what was "right.” The director continues to watch the individual actor. A kusok may be repeated as many times as there are performers in it, the director concentrating on each actor in turn. Then on to the next kusok. when every actor and the director feel that the "incarnations” of the roles have been accomplished in that bit. So far there is no effort to bring all these individual performances together in outward form beyond the physical contacts provided in the action.
This process includes every actor on the stage, even to the supernumeraries who may have no lines. Every actor in a mob scene has his individual contribution, his own "incarnation,” and the director helps them all. Each super must be a part of the crowd, understand its mob psychology and also reason out his own individual reactions which have made him part of it. All this takes time (another reason why plays are in rehearsal so long) but the end, convincing mob action, seems to justify it.
The middle stage in the production of the play the Art Theatre likens to the preparation of a bouquet of flowers. One can make a bouquet of artificial flowers very quickly —wire, paper, scissors, glue, and the thing is done. But if
one is to have real flowers, then one must wait while they are planted, watered, sunned and tended before they will bloom. Only real flowers are acceptable to the MXAT, and the regisseur there becomes a sort of super-gardener-florist who must attend to all this. When the flowers are blooming he will pick them and arrange the bouquet.
It is the arrangement of the bouquet which becomes the third and final part of the rehearsal period. Stanislavski used to work out a very careful regisseur’s plan which contained all the mise-en-scene 1 arranged in advance. Some directors continue to use this plan, but Stanislavski discarded the method some time ago and the director of ''Enemies,” Kedrov, uses none. This does not mean, however, that the production is allowed to take its own course. All during the preceding period he has had in mind the pattern of his play; he must have thought out all problems of movement and emotion in advance if he is to be of any help to his actors at all. All this he carries in his mind, however. There is nothing on paper. Incidentally, the prompt book of "Enemies” contains no stage directions or notes written in during rehearsal period. In other words, the mechanics of play production are cut to a minimum. During rehearsals no actor writes any business or directions in his "sides.” Business is carried out and crosses are made, not because the actor has memorized them as he has his lines, but because they become necessary and unavoidable adjuncts to his processes of thought and feeling. For that matter, even in learning lines the actor is not rushed as ours must be. He has time to assimilate the lines as he examines their meaning over such a long period, and he scarcely has to make a business of conscious memorizing at all. Again the effort is to keep his work away from everything that is mechanical.
1 Mise-en-scene in the Russian theatre means the pattern of action and "business” and does not refer to the decor.
During the analytic period and the rehearsals devoted to the incarnation of the roles which followed, the director has worked from the rear of the line, he has not led the attack. He has been making constant suggestions, throwing out stimulating questions, indulging in discussions about meanings, and the actors have been free to speak their minds. But he has given few orders, it has been the actors’ show. Now with the final stage in the rehearsal period, the director leaves the stage, drops his whisper, goes out into the house and becomes at the same time audience and full-voiced master. He must now give the performance unity and form. The danger which the "group of actors” theatre runs is that it may not recognize that eventually it will reach a point where it must yield its democracy to autocracy. Collective creation in art without a finally dominating hand is impossible and the Art Theatre knows it. When I have suggested that the MXAT is a theatre of actors, I have not intended to convey the idea that it is a theatre of actors alone and unled. What is significant about it is that the leadership serves the actors instead of the actors serving the leadership.
In this final period of rehearsal much will be changed in the appearance of the performance. There will be changes of tempo and rearrangements of movement and business. There will be a little cutting of the script perhaps. The director’s word is now law and the actor’s comfort is little thought of. But the point is that these rehearsals are begun only after the actor has become so completely established in his role that changes in the outward form of the play make no essential difference to him. There is, in this last series of rehearsals, very little tampering with characterization. If you, as an actor, have a complete understanding of the person whom you represent, if you are able to go so far as actually to think that he and you are the same, then externals can make little difference to you. That is
why the actor’s assumption of the character is the long and important process and why, once it is achieved, the director can in a fairly short time add shape to the performance and not disturb the actor in so doing.
When the director is satisfied with the pace of the performance, with its visual composition and its aural rhythm, when he feels that he has arranged the bouquet as adequately as the flowers he works with will allow, he is ready to turn it over to one of the two master directors of the Art Theatre. Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko are both elderly men, but they remain the final authority on all matters within their organization. It is true that much of the detail work is shouldered by a small committee, composed, in 1934-35, of regisseurs Sudakov and Kedrov and the actor Podgorny—Sudakov concerned most with administration, Kedrov with production, while Podgorny represents the company. No production is presented at the Art Theatre, however, without being looked over by either Stanislavski or Nemirovich-Danchenko. There is no definite way of determining which will supervise which production; they decide informally between themselves and once the decision is made the other has nothing to do with the play. Usually comedy or fantasy will be under Stanislavski’s eye, for his comedy sense is one of the finest in the world; Nemirovich is more apt to supervise drama or tragedy. I
It is impossible to state definitely how much this supervising director will do in the production. During the season I was in Moscow, Stanislavski and Nemirovich took only a perfunctory part in the plays. They attended not more than half a dozen rehearsals of "Pickwick Club” and "The Storm,” for which each was respectively responsible. Unfortunately I was unable to stay through the production of "Enemies” to see how much revision Nemirovich
i
would do. Had I been there I should have seen an old and very distinguished-looking gentleman with the appearance of a Western ambassador wearing a very distinguished white beard, sitting quite quietly in the house. At the end of an act I should have heard some quiet remarks, perhaps suggestions about more effective staging, questions designed to make the actor consider a forgotten quirk of his character’s nature. If there were many suggestions or many questions the director might go on rehearsing along these new lines for another month or so; if not, dress rehearsals would begin.
The dress rehearsal in Moscow is a much less feverish ordeal than in New York. This is chiefly because everyone is ready for it. It usually begins at the genteel hour of ten or eleven o’clock in the morning and is over by four or five in the afternoon, perhaps earlier. None of the all-day, all-night, intensive and frantic push to get a show on. In fact, the cast has probably been rehearsing for some time in various parts of the set as they were completed. There are six or eight dress rehearsals over which the work of our two or three can be spread. These are usually followed by three private performances, invitation dress rehearsals. The first is attended by the Repertcom which is the name of what amounts to the Board of Censorship of the government; the second is called "The Papa-and-Mamma,” and the guests are the families and friends of the cast; the third is for various distinguished guests of the theatre. They are all held at twelve o’clock noon (the usual matinee hour in Moscow). At these rehearsals the director and his assistants, the designer and technical director of the theatre and usually one or two members of the Repertcom sit at a long table covered with a green felt cloth, which is set halfway back in the house. In all other respects they are like the regular performances to follow.
5
Before concluding this chapter, I wish to give you a short account of my first visit with Stanislavski. Space does not permit me to describe other visits, but because the first one left perhaps the most vivid impressions, and because few of my generation in the American theatre have had this privilege, and few others will doubtless be allowed it in the years that remain to this great man, I should like to make some record of it.
Stanislavski is no longer well and is compelled to remain at home most of the time, with a nurse in constant attendance. He is by no means easy of access and it took the combined direct and indirect influence of Mrs. Norman Hapgood, Mr. Philip Moeller, Mr. Lee Simonson, the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Ambassador to the U.S.S.R., the Ogpu (Gay-pay-oo), and my own untiring blandishments to secure from the charming but redoubtable secretary who protects him an invitation to a rehearsal at Stanislavski’s house.
He lives on a quiet side street not far from the Art Theatre which he so rarely visits in person any more, in one of those large Russian Empire calsomine-tinted houses with which old Moscow is filled. One enters on the first floor the lobby from which opens the studio where the Stanislavski Opera Theatre presented performances in its early days. At the end of the cloakroom, across the lobby from the studio, is a tiny locked door. Miss Tamantseva, his secretary, had come over from the theatre to introduce me and my interpreter-secretary whom I had brought along, for Stanislavski speaks no English. She led me through this little door into a hall which led on down to further rooms, but we stopped before a late nineteenth century Gothic doorway and were
ushered through it into Stanislavski’s study, a huge high- ceilinged room with four long windows looking out onto the street. The room seemed filled with bookshelves and books and with small stage models, but there was room for a concert grand piano, half a dozen tables and chairs and a large divan besides. On the walls were a few pictures, an original drawing of Gordon Craig for ''Hamlet,” produced for the Art Theatre almost twenty-five years ago.
The room and its furnishings fade into insignificance beside the man who stands at the far end and comes forward to greet us. He is the most leonine figure I have ever seen, well over six feet tall, perfectly erect, with snow- white hair and heavy white bushy eyebrows, large strong- featured face which seems to have incorporated into its permanent composition the characteristics of all the roles which its owner has ever played, with hands like those with which one imagines Michelangelo to have chiseled his Moses.
There are a few people whom one meets in the course of a lifetime, if one is lucky, whose greatness one feels directly one is brought face to face with them. I knew that Stanislavski was such a man. His regal bearing is combined with an ineffably gentle smile and completely understanding eyes. You instinctively wish to bow before him, and yet at the same moment to stand erect and smile back into those eyes. He was most gracious, put himself and his entire theatre at my disposal while I was in Moscow. I had come into the room emptied of my usual verbosity. For me to ask this man questions about his "work” would have been impertinent. I could only say, "I have come six thousand miles to see you and now that I am here, I have nothing to say.” He understood, patted me like a little dog, and started to talk. Much of what he said I have paraphrased in earlier parts of this chapter.
After half an hour, a stage manager came to say that
the opera rehearsal was waiting. We crossed out of his study through the lobby into the large brightly lighted studio room. It was crowded with all the principals and chorus of "Carmen” assembled there. When Stanislavski entered, all stopped talking and rose to their feet. He shook hands with the principals with that same ancien regime formality I had observed at the Art Theatre, presented me to the company, then seated himself in a large armchair with the regisseur on one side of him and the conductor beyond; a stenographer sat ready to record everything that he said, and the rehearsal began. For two and a half hours it lasted, the maestro completely lost in the work. As the action progressed his whole body was thrown into the action—he leaned forward in his chair, his hands alternately clutching its arms and relaxing, his face working with excitenlent. When the scene had been sung through, he talked with the cast, asked questions, showed them bits of movement, then abruptly rose and left the room. I followed and we returned to his study for tea and biscuits and jam and more conversation. Then after a little respite the rehearsal began again. This time the principals came into the study, sat about in a semi-circle before him, and work on another scene without its action began.
It was six o’clock and the Russian night had fallen when the score was closed and the singers bowed themselves out of the room. My first afternoon with Stanislavski was over. One often wonders whether the things whose grandeur one has always heard about will be as grand as he has imagined when he finally comes face to face with them. One approaches the Parthenon for the first time with a little trepidation lest one may be disappointed. The Parthenon is no disappointment. Neither is Constantin Sergevich Stanislavski. Neither, I may add, is the Moscow Art Theatre.
CHAPTER FOUR