Memory of the director
Alekseevs is a surname known in Tsarist Russia. His father was a major industrialist, his cousin was a Moscow mayor, the family was related to the Tretyakovs and Mamontovs, famous philanthropists. This was truly the “flower of Russia,” which, as we know, did not have its own prophets. One can only wonder how a representative of the nobility and industrial elite managed to avoid persecution. However, he received all state awards, the title of academician and people's artist. Streets in dozens of cities are named after him, commemorative medals have been issued, and there are awards named after him - the MIFF “I Believe” award. Konstantin Stanislavsky." There have been seasons named after him for several years now. These are theater festivals that bring the world's best performances. The unforgettable phrase of people who question something: “I don’t believe what Stanislavsky said,” has become popular. Its first part, said separately, sounds rude and even insulting. But when combined with the surname, it caresses the ear with tolerance and hints at the erudition of the interlocutor.
Foundation of the Moscow Art Theater
In 1898, at the age of thirty, Konstantin Sergeevich, together with Nemirovich-Danchenko, founded the new Moscow Art Theater. They are faced with the acute question of reforming the performing arts. And Stanislavsky begins to create his famous System, the goal of which is to obtain the “truth of life” from the actors. The super task, the main idea of this theory, required not to play the role, but to completely get used to it. The assessment of the actors’ work during rehearsals was the phrase that Stanislavsky threw out: “I don’t believe it.” Documentary footage of such a run-in of the role has been preserved. There is a rehearsal for the play “Tartuffe,” Konstantin Sergeevich’s latest production, and he gives advice to the theater actress V. Bendina, who plays Dorina, to lie on stage, as she herself would lie in life. Unique shots. The year is 1938, the year of the death of the brilliant director. Even Nemirovich-Danchenko, with whom relations were completely severed for many years (their friendship and enmity are very well described in M. Bulgakov’s “Theatrical Novel”), said the famous phrase: “Orphans.” Stanislavsky died. No one else said “I don’t believe it” to the actors.
To live is to act: 25 of the most famous quotes by Konstantin Stanislavsky
Russian theater director, actor and teacher, theater reformer.
Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky is known for creating his famous acting system. For 100 years it has been extremely popular in Russia and in the world.
Stanislavsky became the first People's Artist of the USSR.
Today marks the 156th anniversary of the birth of the outstanding director. He was born on January 17, 1863 in Moscow. There, 75 years later, in 1938, his life’s journey ended.
We have collected 25 of the maestro's most famous quotes.
- The will is powerless until it is inspired by desire.
- To live means to act.
- An actor must learn to make the difficult familiar, the familiar easy, and the easy beautiful.
- We hate theatricality in the theater, but we love theatricality on stage. It's a huge difference.
- The house is laid brick by brick, and the role is added by small actions.
- Good scenery is a salvation for amateurs. How many acting sins are covered up by picturesqueness, which easily gives the whole performance an artistic touch! It is not for nothing that so many acting and directorial mediocrities are strenuously hiding on stage behind scenery, costumes, colorful spots, stylization, cubism, futurism and other “isms”, with the help of which they try to shock an inexperienced and naive viewer.
- You cannot spit in the altar and then pray there, on the spit-covered floor.
- Either you (the director) are the initiator of creativity, and we (the actors) are simple material in your hands, simply artisans, or, on the contrary, we create, and you only help us. Otherwise, what will happen?
- To understand means to feel.
- Let old wisdom guide young vigor and strength, let young vigor and strength support old wisdom.
- Every day on which you have not replenished your education with at least a small, but new piece of knowledge for you... consider it fruitless and irrevocably lost for yourself.
- Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art.
- Talent is the desire to work, and secondly, the ability to work.
- Theater begins with a hanger. (oral quote attributed to him)
- 75% of what is done in rehearsal usually doesn't make it into the performance.
- The feeling cannot be recorded.
- The scene needs to be done and then acted.
- I do not believe! (his directorial touch)
- Learn to listen, understand and love the brutal truth about yourself.
- This is the law of cheap, provincial theater - to jump up from your seat at every winning phrase. In the old days, actors would say: “Oh, and I’ll give a candle to this phrase,” that is, I’ll jump so much that the whole audience gasps! Well, some grasshoppers were jumping on stage! Who is taller, who will jump faster!
- But, as luck would have it, I was tall, awkward, ungraceful and tongue-tied in many letters. I was exceptionally awkward: when I entered a small room, they rushed to remove the figurines and vases that I touched and broke. Once at a big ball I dropped a palm tree in a tub. Another time, while courting a young lady and dancing with her, I tripped, grabbed the piano, whose leg was broken, and fell to the floor along with the piano.
- Inspiration comes only on holidays. Therefore, we need some more accessible, well-trodden path that would be owned by the actor, and not one that would be owned by the actor, as the path of feeling does. The path that the actor can most easily master and which he can fix is the line of physical action. Once these physical actions are clearly defined, the actor will only have to physically perform them. (Note that I say physically perform it, and not experience it, because with the correct physical action, the experience will be born by itself. If you go the opposite way and start thinking about the feeling and squeezing it out of yourself, then immediately a dislocation from violence will occur, the experience will turn into acting, and the action will degenerate into acting).
What is a director?
- Previously, I answered that the director is a matchmaker who brings the author and the theater together and, with a successful performance, arranges the mutual happiness of both. Then I said that the director is a midwife who helps the performance, a new work of art, to be born. In old age, the midwife sometimes becomes a healer and knows a lot; By the way, midwives are very observant in life. But now I think the director's role is becoming more and more difficult.
- What is talent? - Soul.
- He lived a long time. I saw a lot. Was rich. Then he became poor. I saw the light... Had a good family, children. Life has scattered everyone around the world. I was looking for fame. Found. I saw the honors. I was young. Got old. I have to die soon. - What is happiness on earth? In knowledge. In art and in work, in comprehending it. By experiencing art in yourself, you get to know nature, the life of the world, the meaning of life, you get to know the soul - talent! There is no higher happiness than this. What about success? Frailty.
Quotes taken from Wikiquote.org
Photo: spb.kp.ru
Secrets of mastery
But the school remained, the System of Konstantin Sergeevich remained, which formed the basis of Russian theatrical mastery. Its postulates are fully described in the books “My Life in Art” and “An Actor’s Work on Oneself.” The rehearsals themselves for two famous Moscow Art Theater performances were described in detail by the theater’s most talented actor, Toporkov, and represent vivid documentary evidence of the director’s work with the performers.
The performance of no American actor can compare in intensity of passion and truthfulness with the skill of Russian artists, dead and living, such as Plyatt, Popov, Makovetsky, Efremov. They just have different super goals. Most TV series, both foreign and domestic, are not discussed at all. In this case, it’s even too lazy to say the phrase: “As Stanislavsky said, “I don’t believe it”,” because it still refers to “high art,” whether the actors play well or poorly.
Stanislavsky Quotes
Prepared by: Dmitry Sirotkin
I present to you a selection of quotes from director Konstantin Stanislavsky .
Author of the famous Stanislavsky system, theatrical innovator.
Quotes are summarized by topic: Stanislavsky's system, theater, life ethics, art, director, about oneself, about life, actor, talent and desire.
About the Stanislavsky system
I do not believe!
The house is laid brick by brick, and the role is added by small actions.
The scene needs to be done and then acted.
Inspiration comes only on holidays. Therefore, we need some more accessible, well-trodden path that would be owned by the actor, and not one that would be owned by the actor, as the path of feeling does. The path that the actor can most easily master and which he can fix is the line of physical action. Once these physical actions are clearly defined, the actor will only have to physically perform them. (Note that I say physically perform, and not experience, because with the correct physical action, the experience will be born by itself).
An actor must learn to make the difficult familiar, the familiar easy, and the easy beautiful.
It is painful not to be able to accurately reproduce what you feel beautifully inside yourself.
The feeling cannot be recorded.
To understand means to feel.
A thought, before it became a thought, was a feeling.
The authenticity of things must be replaced by the authenticity of feelings.
75% of what is done in rehearsal usually doesn't make it into the performance.
We hate theatricality in the theater, but we love theatricality on stage. It's a huge difference.
Good scenery is a salvation for amateurs. How many acting sins are covered up by picturesqueness, which easily gives the whole performance an artistic touch!
This is the law of cheap, provincial theater - to jump up from your seat at every winning phrase. In the old days, actors would say: “Oh, and I’ll give a candle to this phrase,” that is, I’ll jump so much that the whole audience gasps! Well, some grasshoppers were jumping on stage! Who is taller, who will jump faster!
About the theater
Theater begins with a hanger.
There is not the worst theater or actor in the world that does not have its fans.
The only king and ruler of the stage is a talented artist.
Beautiful is not something that blinds and intoxicates the viewer in a theatrical way. What is beautiful is what elevates the life of the human spirit on stage and from the stage, that is, the feelings and thoughts of artists and spectators.
Never forget that the theater lives not by the brilliance of lights, the luxury of scenery and costumes, spectacular mise-en-scenes, but by the ideas of the playwright.
The flaw in the idea of the play cannot be covered by anything. No amount of theatrical tinsel will help.
Playing in front of a full and sympathetic audience is the same as singing in a room with good acoustics. The viewer creates, so to speak, spiritual acoustics. He receives from us and, like a resonator, returns to us his living human feelings.
Russian people, like no other, are infected with a passion for spectacle. And the more it excites and captures the soul, the more attractive it is to him. The ordinary Russian viewer loves a drama where you can cry, philosophize about life, listen to clever words more than a rollicking vaudeville, after which you leave the theater with an empty soul.
About life ethics
Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art.
Learn to listen, understand and love the brutal truth about yourself.
First make sure, and then convince.
There is no one more blind than the one who does not want to see.
Every day on which you have not replenished your education with at least a small, but new piece of knowledge for you... consider it fruitless and irrevocably lost for yourself.
Why is the human mind so inventive when it comes to the means by which one person kills others in war, or where it comes to the bourgeois conveniences of life? Why is the same mechanics so crude and primitive where a person strives to satisfy not bodily and animal needs, but the best spiritual aspirations emanating from the purest aesthetic depths of the soul?
You cannot spit in the altar and then pray there, on the spit-covered floor.
Let old wisdom guide young vigor and strength, let young vigor and strength support old wisdom.
About art
Art is a reflection and knowledge of life; Without knowing life, you cannot create.
Art should open eyes to the ideals created by the people themselves.
The true art of all peoples and centuries is understandable to all humanity.
Not all truth is beauty, but all beauty is truth.
You can do a lot in art, as long as it is artistically convincing.
There is no art that does not require virtuosity, and there is no final measure for the completeness of this virtuosity.
You need to write for children in the same way as for adults, only even better.
Fantasy, like imagination, is necessary for an artist.
By the way, quotes about art and quotes about creativity
About Me
But, as luck would have it, I was tall, awkward, ungraceful and tongue-tied in many letters. I was exceptionally awkward: when I entered a small room, they rushed to remove the figurines and vases that I touched and broke. Once at a big ball I dropped a palm tree in a tub. Another time, while courting a young lady and dancing with her, I tripped, grabbed the piano, whose leg was broken, and fell to the floor along with the piano.
Happiness is in knowledge. In art and in work, in comprehending it. By experiencing art in yourself, you get to know nature, the life of the world, the meaning of life, you get to know the soul - talent! There is no higher happiness than this. What about success? Frailty.
He lived a long time. I saw a lot. Was rich. Then he became poor. I saw the light... Had a good family, children. Life has scattered everyone around the world. I was looking for fame. Found. I saw the honors. I was young. Got old. I have to die soon.
About the director
It is not easy to raise adults who want to be independent and teach others.
Previously, I answered that the director is a matchmaker who brings the author and the theater together and, with a successful performance, arranges the mutual happiness of both. Then I said that the director is a midwife who helps the performance, a new work of art, to be born. In old age, the midwife sometimes becomes a healer and knows a lot; By the way, midwives are very observant in life. But now I think the director's role is becoming more and more difficult.
Either you (the director) are the initiator of creativity, and we (the actors) are simple material in your hands, simply artisans, or, on the contrary, we create, and you only help us. Otherwise, what will happen?
About life
To live means to act.
The basis of all human life is the rhythm given to each of his natural breath.
The most terrible enemy of progress is prejudice: it slows down, it blocks the path to development.
While we are young, we should arm ourselves with a toothbrush and go wherever our eyes lead us. Laugh, do crazy things, cry, go against the system, read as much as you can’t seem to fit into your head, love as much as you can, feel. Just live.
By the way, quotes about life
About the actor
There is only one reason for an actor’s absence from a performance – death.
There are no small roles, there are small actors
He thought that he was a complete actor, but it turned out that he was a complete actor.
An actor must first of all be cultured and understand, be able to reach out to the geniuses of literature.
Without data and talent, there is no need to go into drama.
When you play the good one, look for where he is evil, and in the evil one look for where he is good.
About talent and desire
What is talent? - Soul.
Talent is the desire to work, and secondly, the ability to work.
If you have skills worth a hundred thousand francs, buy another five sous.
The will is powerless until it is inspired by desire.
About miscellaneous
Fashions have been created for those who don't know how to dress.
Hiding a feeling inflames it even more.
So, almost all of Stanislavski's quotes focus on the themes of theater and acting. From these it is difficult for us to form an impression of his views on a wider range of human issues.
Quotes about Stanislavsky
- F. Ranevskaya: I am Stanislavsky’s miscarriage. (by the way, quotes from Faina Ranevskaya)
- I. Bunin: However, the Art Theater is now called the Gorky Art Theater. This theater became famous first of all and most of all for Chekhov - after all, even to this day there is a seagull on its curtain, but they ordered it to be given the name of Gorky, the author of the popular and completely false "The Bottom", and Stanislavsky and Nemirovich meekly accepted this order, although once Nemirovich Solemnly, publicly, for all of Russia to hear, he said to Chekhov: “This is your theater, Anton.” How the Kremlin knows how to intimidate! (by the way, quotes from Ivan Bunin)
- M. Bulgakov: By the end of the third week of classes with Ivan Vasilyevich [K.S. Stanislavsky] despair overwhelmed me. There were three reasons for it. First, I did the arithmetic calculation and was horrified. We rehearsed for the third week, and still the same picture. There were seven paintings in the play... The second reason for despair was even more serious... I doubted Ivan Vasilyevich’s theory! Yes! It's scary to say, but it's true. Sinister suspicions began to creep into my soul by the end of the first week; by the end of the second I already knew that this theory was apparently inapplicable for my play. Patrikeev not only did not become better at presenting a bouquet, writing a letter or declaring his love. No! He became somehow forced and dry and not funny at all. And, most importantly, I suddenly fell ill with a runny nose. (“Theatrical novel”) (by the way, quotes from Mikhail Bulgakov)
Next, you can move on to other collections of quotes:
- Shakespeare quotes
- Comenius quotes
- Pushkin quotes
- Chekhov quotes
- Vysotsky quotes
- quotes from Zhvanetsky
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The extraordinary talent of Stanislavsky
As a talented person, Konstantin Sergeevich was talented in everything. In his youth, he worked for quite a long time at his father’s factory and rose to the rank of director. The products manufactured by the enterprise were not far from the world of beauty - they produced the finest gold and silver wire - the basis for the production of brocade. All evenings were devoted to amateur acting at the Alekseev Theater. Stanislavsky, as is obvious, got his love for acting and talent from his grandmother, the French artist Marie Varley. Later, Konstantin Sergeevich studied plastic arts and vocals and sang well. One of the best musical theaters in the country bears his name and the name of Nemirovich-Danchenko. The famous talented theorist and reformer of stage art, Stanislavsky was a very gifted actor. A number of his famous roles have entered the global collection of acting works (for example, The Old Man). He was noticed from the first professional productions. However, in 1916 he completely stopped his artistic activities. An exception was made only once - forcedly, during the theater's tour abroad. For everyone, the abrupt cessation of performances on stage, after brilliant rehearsals, including the dress rehearsal, remained a mystery. It was the role of Rostanev from Dostoevsky’s “The Village of Stepanchikovo,” which he worked on for a year. We have to assume that Konstantin Sergeevich first uttered such a later-famous phrase, addressing himself: “Stanislavsky, I don’t believe it.” But he did not give up directing and scientific work until the end of his life. After his death, one of the best theaters in the world, his famous System, his school of theatrical excellence, talented students and brilliant books remained. And the phrase remained forever, a symbol of doubt about something or distrust - “I don’t believe it.”
