Constantin Stanislavski
Konstantine Stanislavski
Born
Konstantine Sergeievich
Alekseiev
January 5, 1863(1863-01-05)
Moscow, Russian Empire
Died
August 7, 1938 (aged 75)
Moscow, USSR
Occupation Theatre director · Actor ·
Theatre theorist
Literary
movement
Naturalism · Psychological
realism · Socialist realism ·
Symbolism
Notable
work(s)
Founder of the Moscow Art
Theatre
An Actor’s Work
My Life in Art
Spouse(s) Maria Petrovna Perevostchikova
(stage name: Maria Liliana)
Influences
Meiningen Ensemble · André
Antoine · Russian formalism ·
Yoga · Ivan Pavlov · Théodule-
Armand Ribot · Alexander
Pushkin · Nikolai Gogol · Leo
Tolstoy · Mikhail Shchepkin ·
Anton Chekhov · Vissarion
Belinski · Maurice Maeterlinck
Influenced
Vsevolod Meyerhold · Yevgeny
Vakhtangov · Michael Chekhov ·
Richard Boleslavsky · Maria
Ouspenskaya · Stella Adler · Lee
Strasberg · Sanford Meisner ·
Joan Littlewood · Jerzy Grotowski
Constantin
Sergeyevich
Stanislavski
(Russian:
Константин
Сергеевич
Станиславский) (17 January [O.S. 5 January]
1863 – 7 August, 1938), was a Russian actor
and theatre director.[1] His innovative contri-
bution to modern European and American
realistic acting has remained at the core of
mainstream western performance training
for much of the last century. Building on the
directorially-unified aesthetic and ensemble
playing of the Meiningen company and the
naturalistic staging of Antoine and the inde-
pendent theatre movement, Stanislavski or-
ganized his realistic techniques into a coher-
ent and usable ’system’.[2] Thanks to its pro-
motion and development by acting teachers
who were former students and the many
translations of his theoretical writings, Stan-
islavski’s system acquired an unprecedented
ability to cross cultural boundaries and de-
veloped an international reach, dominating
debates about acting in the West. That many
of the precepts of his ’system’ seem to be
common sense and self-evident testifies to its
hegemonic success. Actors frequently employ
his basic concepts without knowing they do
so.
Stanislavski