Stanislavski's Contributions To The Theatre

1. Konstantin Stanislavski was born in Moscow, Russia in 1863. He was born into a theater

loving family and his maternal grandmother was a French actress and his father created

a personal stage on the families’ estate. Stanislavski started acting at the age of 14 in

the families own drama circles. He then honed his skills in other groups over time.

Then in 1888 he founded the Society of Art and Literature in which he

performed and directed in for close to ten years. Then in June 1897

he and director/play write Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko opened

the Moscow Art Theater. In 1898 they produced Tsar Fyodor

Ivanovich by Aleksey K. Tolstoy and then the production of the

Seagull is another landmark production of the Moscow Art Theater.

2. Konstantin Stanislavski disagreed with the method of

melodrama theater which was most used in the 1890s the is a

type of theater with very exaggerated characters and exciting events which appeal to

people’s emotions. He believed that story line should be believable and based on true

events while also portraying real emotion and feeling. The actors were asked to use

their pasts to portray more authentic emotions. This method soon came to be one of

the most common methods in theater.

Stanislavski’s disregard for melodrama led him to create his own method of theater which

come to be known as method acting or the Stanislavski method which is a method of acting

which strives to show believable natural people, events