Konstantin Stanislavski: A Influential Russian Theatre Practitioner

Konstantin Stanislavski was a well- renowned Russian-born seminal Russian Theatre practitioner. He was born on January 17, 1863 in Moscow, Russia. Growing up, Stanislavski had a very privileged life. He grew up in one of the wealthiest families of Russia, the Alekseievs. He used much of his inherited wealth towards his acting and directing pursuits. As a young child his however, his family didn’t really support much of his acting, yet he still had hopes in making a name for himself. At the tender age of 14, he joined a theatrical group organized by his family, and he soon gained attention by it. He slowly began to develop his theatrical skills over time, and he began to gain more experience by performing with other acting groups. In 1885, he decided to give himself the stage moniker of “Stanislavski”- after the fellow actor he’d met. Three years later he married the love of his life, Maria Perevoshchikova, and she

In this teaching he specified that this requires that the actor recreates a distant past in order to re-create the same ‘feelings’ experienced at the time. He also emphasized that the actor on a stage lives a “repeated” experience not a “primary” one. What he means by this is that in order to evoke passionate emotion, the actor has to have experienced it. The only way an actor can make it seem real is if they truly can take themselves back to that moment they initially felt that way. However, there were a few limitations that occurred with emotional memory. The actors felt exhausted after recalling these strong emotions, producing negative results such as tension and hysteria. Also, he came to an understanding that unconscious feelings needed to be coaxed rather than forced out of the actor. In order to achieve this method, Stanislavski would find an “instrument” that would respond to the actor’s wishes without the ‘fickleness of emotions’ or the ‘inhibitions of