Comparing Modern Theatre And Stanislavski's Art Form

In the year 1898 Stanislavski, along with Nemirovich Danchenko, founded the Moscow Art Theatre. Bartram and Waine (1982) write that, “both men Stanislavski and Nemirovich Danchenko both disliked the contemporary theatre in several of its aspects: its lack of seriousness and artistic integrity, it’s ‘star’ system, it’s neglect of adequate training for actors and rehearsal for plays, and it’s moribund repertoire.” Therefore, Stanislavski set out to build a theatre of a new and unique art form. Bella Merlin states that, “His plays were not melodramas and vaudevilles with recognizable forms; if they were to be performed with the beauty with which they were written, they would require actors with a similar understanding of the laws of balance, rhythm, conciseness, and control.” (Which came first?) Theatre produced by Stanislavski follows a more realistic and naturalistic approach to writing and acting. “Stanislavsky’s primary concern was with the actor, and in particular with the methods by which the actor could attain a ‘truthful’, convincing performance.” (Margaret Eddershaw) He then worked on finding a way in which he

Emotion memory is whenever an actor will think back to a situation in their life that may be similar to the situation of their character and recall how they were feeling at that time then use this to play the emotion of their character. Or they will think of a time whenever they felt an emotion that is similar to the emotion they think their character would be feeling. This then helps them to play the emotion of their character in a naturalistic and realistic way. Both of these techniques of the Stanislavski System are techniques that actors would have already used whenever playing emotion on stage. However, “Stanislavsky was stressing the importance of training and practice to sharpen the actor’s ability to do this accurately and well, and to repeat it at will.” (Margaret