Moscow Art Theater

Moscow Art Theater, most influential theater group of the 20th century, located in Moscow, Russia. The Moscow Art Theater is the birthplace of highly influential theories on modern acting and directing developed by actor-director Konstantin Stanislavsky. The company achieved international prominence during the first decades of the 20th century through its devotion to truthful emotion on stage, contemporary European drama, historically accurate scenery, and ensemble acting (emphasizing the performers as a group rather than as individual stars). The teachings of Stanislavsky and his actors later helped establish the foundations of training for actors in Russia and the United States.

Conceived in 1897 by dramatist Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and Stanislavsky, the Moscow Art Theater began as an artistic and commercial venture to lift the status of Russian theater and acting. The two theatrical idealists saw themselves as “knights of culture” in promoting new literary and political ideas then current in western Europe. For them, the company was to be a vehicle of pure art and ethical responsibility, and the dramatic creations it staged would not be dependent on the frivolous tastes of theatergoers.

During the summer of 1898 Stanislavsky drilled his company of young actors in rehearsals for Tsar Fyodor, a melodrama set in the 1600s. Stanislavsky emphasized visual authenticity in staging as well as truthful behavior in acting. He insisted that performers discover within themselves the feelings and thoughts of their characters. When the Moscow Art Theater presented the play after several months of rehearsal, skeptical critics were astounded. The production’s thoughtful treatment and unbroken sense of historical accuracy enveloped its audience in an environment of tsars and bickering nobility, sustained by the rhythms and minutia of everyday life.

Productions of works by Russian playwrights Anton Chekhov and Maksim Gorky proved even more successful. Beginning with Chekhov's The Seagull (1898), Stanislavsky extracted from his actors the melancholic and anxious mood of Russia's gentry and middle classes. Beneath the seemingly petty activity and dull chatter of Chekhov's characters, the performers uncovered a swamp of human emotion, which they expressed in pauses, vacant stares, and half-completed gestures.

The disturbingly real and restless mood created by the group in their productions of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya (1899), The Three Sisters (1901), and The Cherry Orchard (1904) touched the soul of Russian audiences. The Moscow Art Theater became a center for Russia's intelligentsia and a showcase for modern theater practice. Stanislavsky added classical and experimental plays to his company’s repertoire, in an attempt to demonstrate the universality of his performance theories and techniques.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Communist leaders of the newly formed Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) decided to support the nonpolitical Moscow Art Theater, partly to assure the outside world that some liberal elements of Russia's past would be maintained. Also, the Moscow Art Theater enjoyed an international reputation. Its tour of Europe and North America in 1922 and 1923 inspired countless theater practitioners, including the future founders of the Group Theater and Actors Studio.

During the 1920s, while Stanislavsky experimented with exercises to school his actors in relaxation, emotional memory, and textual understanding, the Moscow Art Theater was ordered to expand its seasons to include pro-Soviet dramas. As repression against artistic experimentation intensified in the early 1930s, the company found its realistic approach to staging enthusiastically promoted. Both Stanislavsky's system of actor training and the Moscow Art Theater were sanctioned as the favored and official theater components of Soviet culture.

After the dissolution of the USSR in the early 1990s, the Moscow Art Theater experienced a severe crisis in leadership, resulting in dissension and resignations. Today, it has regained its status as the largest and best-known theater in Russia.