Mikhail Shchepkin

(1788 - 1863), an actor from the serf estate who revolutionized acting styles with his realistic portrayals.

Born in Ukraine into a family owned by Count G. S. Volkenshtein, the young Mikhail Shchepkin began performing in the private theater maintained on the estate. Indeed, many nobles used their serfs' skills for entertainment, and Shchepkin represented an important source of talent for the professional stage. Especially gifted, by 1800 he was allowed to participate in amateur productions in nearby Kursk. Though still a serf, he joined several provincial touring companies as he rose to stardom. Finally, in 1822, one of his noble fans, Prince N. G. Repin, persuaded his owner to free him. Later that year Shchepkin made his debut in Moscow, and in 1824 he began his legendary rule at the imperial Maly Theater, where he dominated in comedy and drama, including William Shakespeare's corpus, for the next forty years. From his theatrical base in Moscow, he also toured the provinces and appeared on St. Petersburg's imperial stage.

Shchepkin's artistic significance lies in his influence over the transformation of acting styles, developing multi-dimensional characters instead of simulating the single stereotype. His breakthrough came in 1830, in his characterization of the fatuous Muscovite nobleman Famusov in Alexander Griboyedov's Woe from Wit. Six years later, Shchepkin's rendition of Khlestakov, the petty bureaucrat mistakenly identified by corrupt provincial officials as one of the tsar's investigators in Nikolai Gogol's The Inspector General, assured the move toward realism.

His great talent, and popularity on stage, gave him access to Russia's highest literary circles, where he helped novelist Ivan Turgenev write for the stage. Ironically, though, he surrendered his place at center stage when he refused to modify his style to accommodate the next level of realism, plays written in colloquialisms by Russia's historically most popular playwright Alexander Ostrovsky from the 1860s.

Bibliography

Senelick, Laurence. (1984). Serf Actor: The Life and Art of Mikhail Shchepkin. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

—LOUISE MCREYNOLDS

Mikhail Shchepkin

Mikhail Semyonovich Shchepkin (Russian: Михаи́л Семёнович Ще́пкин, November 6, 1788 – August 11, 1863) was the most famous Russian actor of the 19th century.

As his father was a serf, Shchepkin's freedom had to be bought by his admirers in 1821. Three years later, he joined the Maly Theatre in Moscow, which he would dominate for the next 40 years—it became known as the 'House of Schepkin'.^[1] Schepkin was the first to play Famusov in the Woe from Wit (1831) and the Mayor in The Government Inspector (1836). His acting was acclaimed by Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Alexander Herzen, and Ivan Turgenev for its subtlety, with much attention given to realistic detail and understatement.

Schepkin argued that an actor ought to get into the skin of a character, identifying with their thoughts and feelings; observation of life and the actor's knowledge of their own nature provide the source for an actor's work.^[1] In 1848 he wrote:

“

It is so much easier to play mechanically—for that you only need your reason. Reason will approximate to joy and sorrow just as an imitation approximates to nature. But an actor of feeling—that's quite different. [...] He just begins by wiping out his own self [...] and becomes the character the author intended him to be. He must walk, talk, think, feel, cry, laugh as the author wants him to. You see how his efforts become more meaningful. In the first case you need only pretend to live—in the second you really have to live.[2]

”

Schepkin's distinction between the 'actor of reason' and the 'actor of feeling' influenced the formation of the ideas about acting contained in the 'system' devised by Constantin Stanislavski.

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} Benedetti (1999, 16).
2. ^ Quoted in Benedetti (1999, 16).

Bibliography

• Benedetti, Jean. 1999. Stanislavski: His Life and Art. Revised edition. Original edition published in 1988. London: Methuen. ISBN 0413525201.
• Senelick, Laurence. 1984. Serf Actor: The Life and Art of Mikhail Shchepkin. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood P. ISBN 0313224943.

External links

• "Shchepkin, A Founding Father of the Russian theater". Russian culture navigator. http://www.vor.ru/culture/cultarch46_eng.html. Retrieved February 6, 2006. 

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