Stanislavski's Legacy

Description

This handbook is a companion volume to Stanislavski's three teaching books, "An Actor Prepares", "Building a Character" and "Creating a Role". It is a selection of articles, speeches, notes and memoirs written between 1898, when the Moscow Art Theatre opened, and his death in 1938. Among the items are a series of letters on the interpretation of "Othello", the long and affectionate article "Memoirs of Chekhov" and a final section in which Stanislavski envisages the theatre and actors of the future.

Constantin Stanislavski (1863-1938) was a Russian director who sought 'inner realism' by insisting that his actors find the truth within themselves and 'become' the characters they portrayed. His work brought international fame to the Moscow Art Theatre, which he had co-founded with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko in 1897. During his early years at the Moscow Art Theatre, he directed the first productions of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya (1899), Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904) as well as a series of celebrated versions of Shakespeare. Stanislavski toured America with the company in 1923. After World War II, the US edition of Stanislavski's treatise An Actor Prepares (1926) became a bible of the Method school of acting., Constantin Stanislavski died in 1938 and is the most influential person in actor training to date. As co-founder of the Moscow Art Theatre, he developed his theories of acting.