Moscow Art Theater

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Celebrating its centennial anniversary in 1998, The Moscow Art Theater (MAT) represents a twentieth-century bastion of theatrical art. MAT insured the dramatic career of Anton Chekhov, introduced European trends in stage realism to Russia, and solidified the role of the director as the artistic force behind dramatic interpretation and the united efforts of designers. MAT also significantly reformed the procedures by which plays were rehearsed and set new standards for ensemble acting that ultimately influenced theaters around the world. The majority of its productions created realistic illusions, replete with sound effects, architectural details, and archeologically researched costumes and sets.

Following the 1882 repeal of the 1737 Licensing Act, which had made Russian theater an imperial monopoly, playwright Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (head of Moscow's acting school, the Moscow Philharmonic Society) and actor Konstantin Stanislavsky (founder of the renowned theater club, The Society of Art and Literature) founded MAT as a shareholding company. Nemirovich instigated their first legendary meeting in 1897. The enterprise opened in 1898 as The Moscow Publicly Accessible Art Theater, its name embracing the founders' idealistic hopes of providing classic Russian and foreign plays at prices that the working class could afford and fostering drama that educated the community. The first company comprised thirty-nine actors - Nemirovich's most talented students, notably Olga Knipper, later Chekhov's wife; Vsevolod Meyerhold, the future theatricalist director; and Ivan Moskvin, who still performed his popular 1898 role of Tsar Fyodor on his seventieth birthday in 1944 - joined with Stanislavsky's most successful amateurs, including his wife Maria Lilina and Maria Andreyeva, the future Bolshevik and wife to Maxim Gorky.

Within a few seasons, financial difficulties and lack of governmental funding forced the founders to raise ticket prices, to drop "Publicly Accessible" from their name, and reluctantly to accept the patronage of the wealthy merchant Savva Morozov. In 1902 Morozov financed the construction of their permanent theater in the art nouveau style and equipped it with the latest lighting technology and a revolving stage.

Following the 1917 revolution, MAT's realistic productions attracted support from the liberal Commissar of Enlightenment, playwright Anatoly Lunacharsky, and Lenin (who was said to have especially admired Stanislavsky's performance as the fussy Famusov in Alexander Griboyedov's Woe from Wit). In 1920, MAT became The Moscow Academic Art Theater, its new adjective betokening state support. At this time, Lunacharsky also intervened on behalf of the destitute Stanislavsky in order to secure for him and his family a house with two rooms for rehearsals.

During the 1930s, Stanislavsky strenuously objected to the appointment of Mikhail Geits (1929) as MAT's political watchdog and to governmental pressure to stage productions with insufficient rehearsal. Believing in Stalin's good intentions, Stanislavsky naively appealed to the Soviet leader, winning a pyrrhic victory. Stalin placed MAT under direct governmental supervision in 1931, changing its name to The Gorky Moscow Academic Art Theater one year later, despite the fact that none of Maksim Gorky's plays had been staged since 1905. Under Stalinism, MAT received special privileges denied other artists, in return for public proof of political loyalty. Because of its past dedication to realism, MAT's history could easily be seen as constituting the vanguard of Socialist Realism. Stalin thus turned the company into the single most visible model for Soviet theater, and Stanislavsky's system of actor training, purged of its spiritual and symbolist components, into the sole curriculum for all dramatic schools. Press campaigns ensured this interpretation of MAT's work, even as Stanislavsky's continuing evolution as an artist threatened the view. Given Stanislavsky's international renown, Stalin could not afford the public scandal that would result from his arrest. Instead, Stalin "isolated" Stanislavsky from his public image, maintaining the ailing old man in his house, the site of his internal exile (1934 - 1938).

Nemirovich and Stanislavsky administered the theater jointly from its inception until 1911 when Stanislavsky's experimental stance toward acting and his growing interest in symbolist plays created unbearable hostility between them. Thereafter, Nemirovich managed the theater until his death in 1943, and Stanislavsky moved his experiments into a series of adjunct studios, some of which later became independent theaters. Stanislavsky continued to act for MAT until a heart attack in 1928, to direct until his death in 1938, and to influence MAT from the sidelines, as he had in 1931. He administered MAT only in Nemirovich's absence, most notably in 1926 and 1927, when Nemirovich toured in the United States. Among the theater's subsequent administrators, actor and director Oleg Yefremov (1927 - 2000) had the greatest impact on the company. He had studied with Nemirovich at the Moscow Art Theater's school, and founded the prestigious Sovremennik (Contemporary) Theater in 1958, and spoke to the conscience of the country after Stalin's death. He reinvigorated MAT's psychological realism in acting while he relaxed its history of realistic design. When he took charge of MAT in 1970, he found an unwieldy company of more than one hundred actors. In 1987, with perestroika ("reconstruction") occurring in the Soviet Union, Yefremov decided to reconstruct the company by splitting MAT in two. Yefremov retained The Chekhov Art Theater in the 1902 art nouveau building, and actress Tatyana Doronina took charge of The Gorky Art Theater. While Yefremov focused on reviving artistic goals, Doronina made The Gorky a voice for the nationalists of the 1990s. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the Art Theater and all of Russia's theaters struggled to survive. Not only did the loss of governmental subsidies create extraordinary financial instability, but the traditional audiences, who looked to theater for subversive political discussion, deserted theaters for television news. In 2000, Yefremov's student, actor-director Oleg Tabakov, took reluctant charge of the theater's uncertain future.

In its first twenty seasons (1898 - 1917), MAT revolutionized theatrical art through the production of a repertoire of more than seventy plays. The theater opened in 1898 with two major works: Alexei Tolstoy's Tsar Fyodor Ionnovich, which brought mediaeval Russia vividly to life with archeologically accurate designs, and Chekhov's The Seagull, which added psychological realism in acting to illusionistic stage environments. MAT premiered all of Chekhov's major plays between 1898 and 1904, with Stanislavsky's staging of The Three Sisters (1901) hailed as one of the company's greatest triumphs. Realistic productions, characterized by careful detailing in costumes, properties, sets, and acting choices, predominated. MAT produced more plays by Henrick Ibsen than by any other playwright, with An Enemy of the People (1900) providing Stanislavsky with one of his greatest roles. Even Ibsen's abstract play, When We Dead Awaken, was directed realistically by Nemirovich (1901). For Gorky's The Lower Depths (1902) MAT used representational detail to create a social statement about the underclass. Nemirovich especially furthered the cause of stage realism, often overburdening plays with inappropriate illusion. His unwieldy realistic production of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (1903) garnered much criticism.

Stanislavsky's growing interest in abstracted styles led to MAT's production of a series of symbolist plays. Notable among these were Stanislavsky's stagings of Leonid Andreyev's The Life of Man (1907), which featured stunning stage effects developed by its director, and Maurice Maeterlinck's fantasy, The Blue Bird (1908), as well as Gordon Craig's theatricalist production of Shakespeare's Hamlet (1911). 1907 saw the two MAT styles collide uncomfortably when Nemirovich presented his overly naturalistic version of Ibsen's Brand alongside Stanislavsky's abstracted production of Knut Hamsun's The Drama of Life. When Stanislavsky began to apply his new ideas about acting to Ivan Turgenev's A Month in the Country (1909), he utilized abstraction both in the symmetrical set design and in the actors' use of static gestures in order to focus on inner states. This production caused a permanent rift between Stanislavsky and the company.

Although MAT greeted the 1917 revolution optimistically, it lost economic viability. Its first postrevolutionary production was Lord Byron's Cain in 1920, interpreted by Stanislavsky as a metaphor of the postrevolutionary civil war. MAT struggled to find the necessary funds and materials to realize the production. In order to survive financially, half of the company toured Europe and the United States from 1924 to 1926 with their most famous realistic productions, among them Tsar Fyodor Ionnovich from 1898 and Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard from 1904. This tour solidified the international fame of Stanislavsky and MAT. In the late 1920s, MAT participated in the general theatrical trend toward a Soviet repertoire. Stanislavsky staged Mikhail Bulgakov's controversial view of White Russia in The Days of the Turbins (1926) and Vsevolod Ivanov's Armored Train 14-69 (1927). During the 1930s and 1940s, under the yoke of Socialist Realism, MAT's work lost its verve, its productions becoming undistinguished. In the 1970s, Yefremov reinvigorated the company by employing talented actors and revived its repertoire by staging new plays, such as Mikhail Roshchin's portrait of young love in Valentin and Valentina (1971) and Alexander Vampilov's Duck Hunting (1979), in which Yefremov played the fallen hero.

Bibliography

Benedetti, Jean. (1988). Stanislavsky [sic]: A Biography. New York: Routledge.

Carnicke, Sharon Marie. (1998). Stanislavsky in Focus. London: Harwood/Routledge.

Leach, Robert and Borovsky, Victor. (1999). A History of Russian Theatre. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Rich, Elizabeth. (2000). "Oleg Yefremov, 1927 - 2000: A Final Tribute." Slavic and East European Performance 20 (3):17 - 23.

Worrall, Nick. (1996). The Moscow Art Theatre. New York: Routledge.

—SHARON MARIE CARNICKE

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Interior of the "Old" MAT in Kamergersky Lane, originally Lianozov Theatre, as rebuilt in 1900-1903 by Fyodor Schechtel with contribution by Anna Golubkina and Ivan Fomin.

MKHAT (Moscow Art Theatre), Kamergersky Lane, exterior by Fyodor Schechtel

The Moscow Art Theatre (Russian: Московский Художественный Академический Театр, МАТ) is a theatre company in Moscow that the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Constantin Stanislavski, together with the playwright and director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, founded in 1897. It was conceived as a venue for naturalistic theatre, in contrast to the melodramas that were Russia's dominant form of theatre at the time. The theatre quickly became famous when it staged Anton Chekhov's four major works, beginning with its production of The Seagull in 1898. This production was so successful that the theatre adopted the seagull as its emblem. The theatre also staged the dramatic work of Maxim Gorky, although in 1904, following a disagreement with Nemirovich, he terminated his relationship with the organisation.^[1] The theatre continued to thrive after the October Revolution of 1917 and was one of the foremost state-supported theatres of the Soviet Union, with an extensive repertoire of leading Russian and Western playwrights. Mikhail Bulgakov wrote several plays for the MAT and satirised the organisation mercilessly in his novel Black Snow. Isaac Babel's Sunset was also performed there during the 1920s. A significant number of Moscow Art Theatre's actors were awarded the prestigious title of People's Artist of the USSR. Many actors became nationally known and admired thanks to their film roles. In 1987, the theatre split into two troupes: the Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre (artistic director Oleg Yefremov) and the Gorky Moscow Art Theatre (artistic director Tatiana Doronina). Oleg Tabakov has been the Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre's artistic director since 2000. The theatre is presently located just off Tverskaya Street, within walking distance of Red Square.

Contents 1 See also 2 References 3 Sources 4 External links

See also

• The MAT production of The Seagull (1898)
• The MAT production of Hamlet (1911-12)
• Studio Six Theater Company

References

1. ^ Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko had insulted Gorky with his critical assessment of Gorky's new play Summerfolk, which Nemirovich described as shapeless and formless raw material that lacked a plot. Nemirovich's behaviour prompted Savva Morozov to resign from the MAT's board and to withdraw his financial support (though he maintained his initial investment in the theatre of almost 15,000 rubles). Gorky returned to Nizhny Novgorod to establish a theatre of his own, for which both Stanislavski and Morozov were to provide financial support. Stanislavski saw in Gorky's new venture an opportunity to develop the network of provincial theatres that he hoped would reform the art of the stage in Russia, of which he had dreamed since the 1890s. He sent some pupils from the Art Theatre School—as well as Ioasaf Tikhomirov, who ran the school—to work there. By the autumn, however, after the censor had banned every play that the theatre proposed to stage, the project was abandoned. Despite Stanislavski's attempts to persuade him otherwise, in December 1904 Gorky refused permission for the MAT to produce his Enemies and declined "any kind of connection with the Art Theatre." See Benedetti (1999, 149-150).

Sources

• Banham, Martin, ed. 1998. The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521434378.
• Benedetti, Jean. 1999. Stanislavski: His Life and Art. Revised edition. Original edition published in 1988. London: Methuen. ISBN 0413525201.
• Braun, Edward. 1982. "Stanislavsky and Chekhov". The Director and the Stage: From Naturalism to Grotowski. London: Methuen. 59-76. ISBN 0413463001.
• Bulgakov, Mikhail. 1996. Black Snow: Theatrical Novel. Trans. Michael Glenny. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1967. London: Collins-Harvill, 1986, 1991, 1996.
• Magarshack, David. 1950. Stanislavsky: A Life. London and Boston: Faber, 1986. ISBN 0571137911.
• Stanislavski, Constantin. 1938. An Actor’s Work: A Student’s Diary. Trans. and ed. Jean Benedetti. London: Routledge, 2008. ISBN 9780415422239.
• Whyman, Rose. 2008. The Stanislavsky System of Acting: Legacy and Influence in Modern Performance. Cambridge: Cambrdige UP. ISBN 9780521886963.
• Worrall, Nick. 1996. The Moscow Art Theatre. Theatre Production Studies ser. London and NY: Routledge. ISBN 0415055989.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Moscow Art Theatre

• Official website of the Moscow Art Theatre
• "The Moscow Art Theatre: A Model", a 1917 article by N. Ostrovsky.

Coordinates: 55°45′36″N 37°36′48″E / 55.76°N 37.61333°E / 55.76; 37.61333

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