The Russian Pre-Theatrical Actor and the Stanislavsky System

246 Pages·2009·1.23 MB·English

The Russian Pre-Theatrical Actor and the Stanislavsky System

by

John Wesley Hill

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
(Theater and Drama)
In The University of Michigan
2009

Doctoral Committee:

Associate Professor Mbala D. Nkanga, Chair
Professor Valerie Ann Kivelson
Professor Leigh A. Woods
Lecturer Martin W. Walsh
In some cases, a children’s game, a folk game, or a village dance brings us closer to
answering to the question of what is theater and what it should be than the work of a
great playwright.
A.I Beletskii
Copyright John Wesley Hill 2009
To Leta, Lydia, and Vladimir

ii
Acknowledgements

Thanks to: Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Michigan,
Lauren Atkins, Wojciech Beltkiewicz, Myra Bertrand, Jeffrey Blim, John Carnwath,
Stratos Constantinidis, Janet Crayne, Kate Elswit, Jody Enders, Rachel Facey, Karen
Frye, Jay M. Gipson-King, Maurice and Barbara Hill, Olga P. Ignateyva, Claudia Jensen,
Mary-Allen Johnson, Valerie Kivelson, Boris Katz, Bonnie Kerschbaum, Sam Kinser,
Natalie Kononenko, Ann Kushkova, Alaina Lemon, Irina Lewandowski , M.A. Lobanov,
Ewa Małachowska-Pasek, Holly Maples, Rosalind Martin, Predrag Matejic, Pat McCune,
Anna Meerman-Bader, Vitalii Mikhailovich Miller, A.F. Nekrylova, Mbala Nkanga,
Linda Norton, D Ohlandt (Ross), Ingrid Peterson, Irakli Pipia, Greg Poggi, Henry
Reynolds, Talia Rodgers, Svitlana Rogovyk, Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby, Suleyman
Sarihan, Becky Seauvageau, Eric Schinzer, I.I. Shangina, Mila Shevchenko, Stephen
Siercks, Daniel Strauss, Hellen Sullivan, Maeve Sullivan, Marina Swoboda, A.L.
Toporkov, Igor’ Ushakov, Bisera Vlahovljak, Martin Walsh, EJ Westlake, Erica Wetter,
Steven Whiting, Faith Wigzell, Leigh Woods, and the staff of Interlibrary Loan at the
University of Michigan.

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Table of Contents

Dedication………………………………………………………………………….……..ii

Acknowledgements............................................................................................................iii

Abstract...............................................................................................................................v

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….…1

Chapter One. The Holiday Complex……………………………………..…………...…19
Chapter Two. The Actor and Imaginary Worlds of Play….……………..……………....45
Chapter Three. Acting and the Collective in Traditional Culture………………..……..103
Chapter Four. Collectivity, Ensemble, and the System:
Stanislavsky, Sulerzhitsky, and the First Studio………………….…….………144
Chapter Five. Image of Action…………………………………………………….……186
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………….......……219
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………….……...230

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Abstract

The present study juxtaposes the “pre-theater” of Russian mummery and ritual
sequences to Stanislavsky’s “System” of actor training. This approach affords an
alternative perspective on the place and meaning of traditional performance in Russian
theater history. The resulting narrative is based not on “evolution” and simplistic
convergences such as the proposition that certain types of performance, such as those
bearing a superficial resemblance to proscenium type presentations (mummers’ shows at
Yuletide), were more “advanced” than less contained manifestations of traditional
performance such as ambulatory rituals. Instead, continuity exists in structural and
processual links between pre-theater and the System present in shared techniques for
creating and inhabiting a character and the effects on this process of an actor’s
relationship to fellow performers, audiences, and his community’s system of beliefs and
practices.
While pre-theatrical performance is not analogous to the System acting,
traditional performers share many aspects of their approach with System actors. In this
study, functional and structural features of each illuminate the other, such as applying
Stanislavsky’s concept of “playing the self in given conditions” to describe the
participant performer’s work as an actor in the traditional wedding sequence, and
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comparing the phenomenon of collective action in traditional performance to the genesis
of the System and its transmission in the classroom.
Applying Stanislavsky’s System to pre-theater provides a useful theoretical model
for mapping a comprehensive description of an actor’s process onto certain aspects of
performance in traditional communities. This model privileges the role of individual
creation as a key factor in the dynamic process of challenging and reinforcing cultural
continuity. As such, this study offers an alternative to accounts of traditional culture
where impersonal social and cultural processes predominate.
In terms of theater history, this research represents both an alternative to
“evolutionary” accounts of Russian theater history and a consideration of the
fundamental cultural roots of the System, those aspects of actor training and approaches
to embodied performance which transcend not only 20th century acting theory but all of
Russian theater as a national variant of the European stage-play tradition.

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Introduction
At the center of this dissertation is a notion about the relationship between
traditional Russian popular performance, or folkloric “pre-theater,” and some of the
most important aspects in modern Russian theater and contemporary acting techniques,
specifically Stanislavky’s System for actor training. If thought of as “chapters” in the
history of Russian theater, these two phenomena represent extremes or book-ends.
Otherwise, they are typically seen to have little in common, at least when considered
chronologically. This sort of “evolutionary” model of Russian theater historiography
guarantees that materials are organized and interpreted in certain ways. This approach
thus automatically excludes from scholarly consideration a number of other questions,
hypotheses, and theorems about the nature of Russian theater and the relationship
between certain of its manifestations.
What if, however, rather than being placed at opposite ends of a time-line,
pre-theater and the System are considered synchronically? What if we dispense, at least
for the sake of argument, with all evolutionary connections between the two and focus
instead on commonalities based on the actor’s process in the context of society and
culture? I accepted this challenge and the present dissertation is the result of where such
a “perverse” notion brought me.
A synchronic consideration of pre-theater and the System appears unorthodox
at first glance in the light of conventional approaches in Russian theater historiography.
1
Surveys of Russian theater history begin with a chapter or two on folk theater:
mummery, wedding rites, and calendar and family cycle festivals, along with very
speculative accounts of the skomorokhi1 as the reified “face” of Old Russian
performance. Then this thread breaks off and another begins with the “importation” of
the Western stage play in the late 17th century. This importation was certainly a
watershed. The European theatrical tradition was brought by Westerners like the
German Pastor Gregory, who staged Russia’s first theatrical performance in 1672 for
Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich (with German actors).2 When Muscovy annexed the
Ukraine in the mid 1600s, Jesuit-style School Theater came along with the new lands
and subjects. Intriguingly, the Tsar’s court theater arrived within a few decades of
edicts against manifestations of native popular-performance culture. As Russell Zguta
has written,
[I]n December of 1648 Aleksei issued two famous gramoty outlawing
the skomorokhi, along with a host of other “pagan” traditions and
practices. The long and colorful history of Russian minstrels was thus
officially brought to an end. (63)3

While “pagan” practices like mummery, holiday revelry, and rites such as the very
theatrical traditional “wedding drama” survived into the 20th century, the skomorokhi,
at least “officially,” vanished as a class. Once the Tsar had “adopted” the model of the
European stage-play, the work of Russian actors, directors, and dramatists would
henceforth be understood and evaluated in terms of imported models. “Theater” in

1 Russia’s popular performers or “minstrels” of the medieval and early-modern era.
2 See I. M. Kudriavtsev’s introduction to Artakserksovo deistvo: Pervaia p’esa russkogo teatra XVII
v. Moscow-Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo akademii nauk SSSR, 1957, and chapter one of L. Starikova’s
Teatral’naia zhizn’ starinnoi Moskvy. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1988.
3 The gramoty are reproduced in Akty, sobrannye v bibliotekakh i arkhivakh Rossiiskoi Imperii
arkheograficheskoiu ekspeditsieiu imperaterskoi akademii nauk, Vol. 4: 1645-1700. St. Petersburg,
1836, 138-139.
2