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List of productions directed by Konstantin Stanislavski

This article offers a chronological list of productions directed by Konstantin Stanislavski. It does not include theatrical productions in which Stanislavski only acted.

Until he was thirty three, Stanislavski appeared only as an amateur onstage and as a director, as a result of his family's discouragement. When he was twenty five, he helped to establish a Society of Art and Literature, which aimed to unite amateur and professional actors and artists. His professional career began in 1896 when he co-founded the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT) with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. Later in his life, he created a series of studios whose aims were primarily pedagogical but which also presented public performances. This list of productions directed by Stanislavski includes amateur, professional, and studio productions.

When the sources disagree about the exact date of a production's première, that given in the most recent biography of Stanislavski—Jean Benedetti's Stanislavski: His Life and Art (1988, revised and expanded 1999)—is listed here, with the alternative date detailed in the footnotes. Prior to 14 February 1918, the Julian calendar was in use in Russia, after which the Gregorian calendar was introduced. The details of productions staged before that change are given in both Old Style and New Style dates.

Productions at the Society of Art and Literature

Productions at the Moscow Art Theatre

  • 1898: The Mistress of the Inn by Carlo Goldoni. Opened on . Scenic design by Viktor Simov. Cast included Stanislavski as Ripafratta, Vsevolod Meyerhold as the Marquis of Forlipopoli, and Sergey Tarasov as Ripafratta's servant. A special performance for factory workers on 1899 provoked a summons by the Chief of Police, Dmitri Trepov, for failing to seek the approval of the censor who oversaw productions for working-class audiences; as a result, the company abandoned its original name as the "Moscow Public-Accessible Theatre" and its aim to provide an "open" theatre, settling instead on Anton Chekhov's suggestion, the "Moscow Art Theatre."
  • 1898: The Seagull by Anton Chekhov. Opened on . Directed by Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. Cast included Stanislavski as Trigorin and Vsevolod Meyerhold as Konstantin, Olga Knipper as Arkadnia, Maria Lilina as Masha, Maria Roksanova as Nina, Yevgeniya Raevskaya as Polina, Ioasaf Tikhomirov as Medvedenko, Vasily Luzhsky as Sorin, Alexander Vishnevsky as Dorn, and Alexander Artem as Shamrayev. The production ran for 57 performances in the 1898—99 season, 13 in the next, and 9 in the 1900—01 season. Chekhov disliked Roksanova's performance so intensely that he demanded that she should never be allowed to act in his plays again. For more information on this production, see the article on the MAT production of The Seagull.
  • 1899: Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen. Opened on . Scenic design by Viktor Simov. Cast included Stanislavski as Løvborg, Maria Samarova as Aunt Julia and Maria Andreyeva as Hedda. It played for only eleven performances. Reflecting on the production years later, the critic Nikolai Efros regarded Stanislavski's performance as the best of an Ibsen character he had seen.

Opera Studio productions

Posthumous productions completed by others

See also

Notes

Sources

  • Benedetti, Jean, ed. and trans. 1991. The Moscow Art Theatre Letters. London: Routledge. .
  • Benedetti, Jean. 1999a. Stanislavski: His Life and Art. Revised edition. Original edition published in 1988. London: Methuen. .
  • Benedetti, Jean. 1999b. "Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre, 1898–1938". In Leach and Borovsky (1999, 254–277).
  • Braun, Edward. 1982. The Director and the Stage: From Naturalism to Grotowski. London: Methuen. .
  • Braun, Edward. 1988. Introduction. In Plays: 1. By Maxim Gorky. Methuen World Classics ser. London: Methuen. xv-xxxii. .
  • Braun, Edward. 1995. Meyerhold: A Revolution in Theatre. Rev. 2nd ed. London: Methuen. .
  • Carnicke, Sharon M. 1998. Stanislavsky in Focus. Russian Theatre Archive Ser. London: Harwood Academic Publishers. .
  • Gauss, Rebecca B. 1999. Lear's Daughters: The Studios of the Moscow Art Theatre 1905–1927. American University Studies ser. 26 Theatre Arts, vol. 29. New York: Peter Lang. .
  • Gottlieb, Vera, ed. and trans. 2005. Anton Chekhov at the Moscow Art Theatre: Archive Illustrations of the Original Productions. London: Routledge. . Reproduction of original journal ed. Nikolai Efros, published in Moscow, 1914.
  • Innes, Christopher, ed. 2000. A Sourcebook on Naturalist Theatre. London and New York: Routledge. .
  • Leach, Robert. 1989. Vsevolod Meyerhold. Directors in Perspective ser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. .
  • Leach, Robert. 2004. Makers of Modern Theatre: An Introduction. London: Routledge. .
  • Leach, Robert, and Victor Borovsky, eds. 1999. A History of Russian Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. .
  • Magarshack, David. 1950. Stanislavsky: A Life. London and Boston: Faber, 1986. .
  • Marker, Frederick J., and Lise-Lone Marker. 1989. Ibsen's Lively Art: A Performance Study of the Major Plays. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. .
  • Marsh, Cynthia, ed. 1993. File on Gorky. Writer-Files ser. London: Methuen. .
  • Rudnitsky, Konstantin. 1988. Russian and Soviet Theatre: Tradition and the Avant-Garde. Trans. Roxane Permar. Ed. Lesley Milne. London: Thames and Hudson. Rpt. as Russian and Soviet Theater, 1905–1932. New York: Abrams. .
  • Senelick, Laurence, ed. and trans. 2013. Stanislavsky—A Life in Letters: The Missionary in the Theatre. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. .
  • Solovyova, Inna. 1999. "The Theatre and Socialist Realism, 1929–1953." Trans. Jean Benedetti. In Leach and Borovsky (1999, 325–357).
  • Stanislavski, Constantin, and Pavel Rumyantsev. 1975. Stanislavski on Opera. Trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood. London: Routledge, 1998. .
  • Vakhtangov, Evgeny. 1982. Evgeny Vakhtangov. Compiled by Lyubov Vendrovskaya and Galina Kaptereva. Trans. Doris Bradbury. Moscow: Progress.
  • Worrall, Nick. 1996. The Moscow Art Theatre. Theatre Production Studies ser. London and NY: Routledge. .