3. Stanislavsky: Uncensored and Unabridged Sharon Marie Carnicke (1993) [P.28-39]

P.28 Stanislavsky

• a grandfatherly teacher in a pince-nez who reveals the secrets of great acting to insecure young students.
• a strict disciplinarian who demands total commitment to art.
• a great realistic director who harnesses the truths embedded in plays and in actors' souls.
• P.30 The circumstances which created Stanislavsky's portrait as a theatrical god of realism in the USSR trace a single but tragic trajectory.
• In the Soviet Union, censorship and growing governmental control over the arts culminated in the establishment of Socialist Realism.
• In 1934, four years before Stanislavsky's death, all writers were united into a single union and were forced to adopt a single style.
• Socialist Realism was intended to make the arts widely accessible to a largely uneducated populace and to depict an idealized reality that viewed the establishment of communism as the logical and teleological goal of history.
• The newspaper writer who hailed Stanislavsky in his 'battle' for realism also reminded his readers that 'Realism cannot be genuine, profounded, or logical if it attempts to promote a false idea, if it attempts to go against the historical tendencies of social development.
• By the 1940s, bezkonfliktnost (conflictlessness) was advanced as a necessary formula for drama. Writers were told that conflict was not good for drama. the only real conflicts that exists are those between 'better' and 'best'.
• By the time of his (Stanislavsky's) death, his theatre had become the legal pattern for all theatres in the Soviet Union, and his System the exclusive curriculum for all theatrical institutes.
• His more experimental ideas were stifled; any spiritual and psychological techniques that challenges Marxist were either downplayed or suppressed; his early realism and his Method of Physical Actions were exalted.
• In 1932, when the government decided to create a model acting school as adjunct to the Moscow Art Theatre, An Actor works on Himself, over which Stanislavsky was then agonizing, become less a private endeavor.
• P.32 Stanislavsky may have compromised his theatre to Stalin, but he defended his book, An Actor Works on Himself.
• Stanislavsky retained 'idealistic' aspects of his System within the texts; even with deletions and changes made during the first printings, he successfully sidestepped the censor. These Russian books still serve as one of the best keys to his actual concerns about art.
• The Moscow Art Theatre's tours to the U.S. in 1923 and 24, the indirect transmission of information about his System to American actors, and the English publication of his books all contributed.
• Stanislavsky brought his oldest and most realistic productions with him when he toured the US.
• U.S. theatre professionals, Lee Strasberg, 'We were fortunate, in seeing not productions but works of art......not just the successes of that year, they brought to us the successes of their entire career.'
• P.33 Stanislavsky chose to publish his first two books in English, a language which he did not speak or read, before he published them in Russian. He was in desperate need of hard currency.
• P.34 In 1930, Stanislavsky signed a legal agreement with Hapgood giving her publication and translation rights to all his current and future books in all languages, including Russian. (He also included recording and movie rights.) This extraordinary agreement was designed to ensure U.S. and international copyright projection for all his writing.
• P.36 Lee Strasberg said that [Stanislavsky's] books give a wrong impression, that the books are partially wrongly translated into English, ..... that the American editions are edited editions, edited not by Stanislavsky, but by the translator, who has made herself responsible, so to say, for the presentation of the Stanislavsky material in a form that she considers to be suitable.