The Moscow Art Theatre Letters

Jean Benedetti

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135861490
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Artes escénicas

Moscow Art Theatre Letters tells the real story of the Moscow Art Theatre, from its origin at the turn of the century through its first forty years. Jean Benedetti presents the historical record first-hand in this collection of the letters of the main protagonists. Many are available in English for the first time--all will come as a revelation to Western readers.

PART ONE

PROLOGUE
1897

ONE

BEGINNINGS

In the spring and early summer of 1897 both Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko were at a turning point in their lives. Stanislavski was thirty-four and Nemirovich thirty-nine. After much soul-searching and encouragement from colleagues, Stanislavski had decided to form a professional theatre company. Already, as a so-called amateur, he had surpassed his contemporaries as an actor and director. It had been impressed on him that he was probably the one person in Russia who could set new standards for work and create a theatre to match the Maly in its days of glory and so carry forward the traditions that had been forged in the forty years Mikhail Shchepkin had worked there. His dream was also to take theatre to a wider, more popular audience but without the condescending disregard for quality which often accompanied notions of ‘popular’ theatre.

Nemirovich-Danchenko had similar concerns and saw himself too as someone who could reform the Russian stage. He had pursued a successful career as a dramatist, winning the Griboiedov prize for best play twice. In 1891 he had taken over the drama department of the Philharmonic School. Early in 1897 he submitted two plans to the government: the first for the creation of a popular or ‘open’ theatre, the second for the reform of the Maly which was in terminal decline. He was fully aware of the obtuseness and ineptitude of the government officials with whom he would have to deal and came to the conclusion that he might be able to realize his dreams through a private theatre – the sort of theatre that, as was common knowledge, Stanislavski was about to create.

In June 1897 Nemirovich-Danchenko attempted twice to contact Stanislavski whom he had never met but whose work he had reviewed favourably. Stanislavski had been abroad and then gone straight to his country estate in Liubimovka. It was only on a chance visit to his Moscow home that he picked up Nemirovich's second message. He replied by telegram. The result was the legendary meeting at the Slavyanski Bazar which started over lunch at two in the afternoon on June 22 and ended over breakfast at Liubimovka at eight o'clock the following morning.

The two men were strikingly different: Stanislavski tall (about six foot six), a member of the Russian haute bourgeoisie whose family fortune at this period equalled that of the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts and the Nobels; Nemirovich short, the son of a military family, with no other source of income but his pen; Stanislavski a heavy smoker but otherwise abstemious, essentially puritanical in outlook, frowning on heavy drinking and extramarital sex; Nemirovich with a taste for good living, for women other than his wife and for gambling. In the early years Stanislavski had more than once lent Nemirovich money to cover his debts. Yet the two men came together as soul-mates, discovering complete unanimity in their dream of a new theatre. The memory of that eighteen-hour meeting and the chemistry it produced were to sustain them through more than forty stormy years.

By the morning of the 23rd they had reached agreement on basic questions of policy and ideals, and had some idea of the composition of the new company: actors were to be selected not only on the grounds of talent but of capacity for work and dedication, what later came to be called the ‘ethic’. Yet many questions of a practical but nonetheless critical nature were left unsettled. These had to be decided over the summer, by letter, with Stanislavski at Liubimovka and Nemirovich several thousand miles away in Yalta. Both men had gone away from Liubimovka on the morning of the 23rd with tacit assumptions which did not in fact match. Over the next few months they reached a modus vivendi but their failure to explore certain problems in detail in the early days sowed the seeds of future conflict. On the other hand, had they known more about each other they might never have gone ahead at all.

The differences between the two men concerned both the financial and managerial structure of the new company and its artistic priorities. Nemirovich wanted to create a new company that would run itself in the provinces before confronting Moscow audiences. Stanislavski took it for granted that the new company would be an extension of his own company at the Society for Art and Literature, and that it would build on the work he had done over the previous ten years. Nemirovich on his side assumed that Stanislavski would create and finance a private theatre over which they would have absolute control; Stanislavski insisted on a public company. This meant bringing in other people, third parties. Nemirovich was in constant fear that one day aesthetic values would be sacrificed to commercial interests. He trusted Stanislavski's artistic integrity but was suspicious of anyone else from that class. This suspicion extended, in the first instance, to Savva Morozov, a railway magnate and friend of Stanislavski. Attempts to raise private capital for the new theatre had encountered a wall of hostility from the good bourgeoisie of Moscow. It was Morozov who put up a substantial proportion of the launch capital and subsidized the theatre over a period of five years. Nemirovich accepted this arrangement but detested it. He wanted his own relationship with Stanislavski to be exclusive at every level. He attacked anyone who might exercise any influence over Stanislavski and come between them artistically. He was violently antipathetic, for instance, to his own former pupil Meyerhold, to Stanislavski's personal assistant Sulerzhitski, and later to Stanislavski's more talented and rebellious students, Vakhtangov and Michael Chekhov.

The company structure was a constant source of argument but potentially less damaging than the basic disagreement over the nature of theatre which soon emerged. For Nemirovich, a writer, critic and dramaturg of genius, the theatre was the handmaiden of literature. It existed to serve the writer as literally as possible, as a kind of living illustration of text; actors were the instrument of his own perception and appreciation of the author. He regarded Stanislavski, too, as an instrument, a director of flair and imagination who would provide vivid stage images to express his own dramaturgical understanding. Stanislavski, on the other hand, came more and more to see the theatre as an art in its own right, a specific creative medium. He had great respect for authors but he demanded that what they wrote be theatrical, that they see their text as part of a wider process and allow the actor to make his own individual contribution to the final event out of the richness of his own personality.

In the basic agreement they reached at the Slavyanski Bazar the two men recognized the disparate nature of their gifts and imagined that they could avoid potential conflict by a simple division of power. Nemirovich was to have the last word, the veto, on all matters on the literary side and Stanislavski on the production side. This arrangement held good for their first two or three years but as each man developed it became increasingly meaningless. Nemirovich could not help but see literary considerations as first in the order of priority; everything else had to be subordinate. He saw himself, as emerges clearly from the correspondence, as the true artistic and intellectual centre of the new theatre. He regarded Stanislavski to a certain extent as a brilliant, wilful, wayward amateur who had to be kept under control in the interests of higher literary values. He did not realize that Stanislavski's wilfulness, waywardness and obstinacy were the moving forces behind his creative achievement and capacity for development and change.

Disagreements on these two basic issues led Nemirovich first to try and gain control of all essential management decisions, and then to try and maintain artistic control over Stanislavski as a director, monitoring his rehearsal methods. These two themes run like a thread through much of the correspondence.

1 Nemirovich to Stanislavski

Neskuchnoe Estate,¹

June 7 1897

Honoured Konstantin Sergeievich,

Are you in Moscow? I drafted a huge great letter to you but as I shall be in Moscow I shan't send it. [. . .] If this letter finds you out of Moscow then I'll send the long one I wrote earlier. But where to?

I shall be in Moscow between June 21 and 26.

VI. Nemirovich-Danchenko.

2 Nemirovich to Stanislavski

June 17 1897

Moscow

[Written on the back of a visiting card]

Did you get my letter?

I hear you will be in Moscow tomorrow, Wednesday. I will be at the Slavyanski Bazar at one – can we meet? Or let me know at the above address when and where. [. . .]

[According to Nemirovich's autobiography Stanislavski replied by telegram which read: ‘Happy expect you June 21 at 2 o'clock at Slavyanski Bazar’. The meeting in fact took place on June 22.]

3 Nemirovich to Stanislavski

July 12 1897

Yalta

[. . .]

It would be desirable to show our capitalists that our enterprise is not ephemeral but based not only on artistic but on commercial considerations. If things should drag on with our capitalist-shareholders then we should carry on for the first couple of years at our own personal risk. Our theatre will only really need capitalists in its third year.

4 Stanislavski to Nemirovich

July 19 1897

Moscow

[. . .]

You write further that should there be any delay in people taking up the shares we might run the business at our own personal risk. Remembering our agreement to speak our minds openly, I must spend some time on this point in your letter and state my views clearly and precisely. Bitter experience has led me to swear that never again will I take on a theatrical enterprise at my own risk, as I do not have the right to do so, partly because I am not rich enough (my capital amounts to some 300,000 roubles, all tied up in the business), and, secondly, because I have a family and am of the opinion that this money does not belong to me alone but to all the members of my family. How can I risk other people's money? Naturally, I will take up shares for 5 or even 10,000 and, under the circumstances, as shareholder in the business, am prepared to lose that amount if the worst comes to the worst. The losses of a private entrepreneur or business are always unpredictable. Apart from this, a private venture smacks of speculation in the public mind and that would lend a completely different character to our affairs. A public company is a social, educational venture; a private concern is just profit-making. That's how people will judge it in my view.

[. . .] Schultz, Barnay's impresario for the Lessing Theatre of Berlin, etc., came to see me today. He's renting the Paradiz Theatre for the winter, rebuilding it, i.e., renovating it, cleaning it up, putting in electric light. Réjane will be playing for him from October 14th to the 22nd, from the 22nd to November 15th the theatre is free, from November 15th to December 1st Coquelin is playing, from December 1st to December 12th the theatre is free, from the 1st to the 22nd the Lessing Theatre company is playing. From the 22nd onwards and during the festivities the theatre is free. Then, with gaps, Matkovski, Sonenthal and others are playing. He (Schultz) has offered the theatre to our society during the periods, indicated above, when the theatre is free; the conditions are very favourable to the society . . . At first glance one might imagine it was some kind of German trick [Schwindel], he's being too considerate, the conditions are too favourable, surely he's having us on. But he gave me a perfectly understandable explanation, namely: ‘It's bad business to put one touring company on straight after another with nothing in-between. You can wear the public out. So I asked myself whether to fill the gaps I couldn't invite Cherepanov's company, the Little Russian Theatre, or the second-rate operetta company that's just been thrown together? I have no alternative. But these flash-in-the-pan affairs are of no advantage and damage the theatre's reputation, as the whole touring system is only of interest to genuine audiences. That's why I am suggesting giving you the theatre with no advantage to myself because you will bring me the kind of audience I want to attract to my theatre and with the help of your Society I can give the whole affair an air of respectability’. . . He wants, among other things, to put on [Gerhart Hauptmann's] The Sunken Bell’ and The Assumption of Hannele’ with us. Our Society wanted to produce these two plays but had to hold off because the Sporting Club stage is so minute. It would be a good idea perhaps if, parallel to the productions at the Sporting Club, we were to stage the Hauptmann plays at the Paradiz (or the ‘International Theatre’ as it is to be known this year). Think it over, isn't this the place to begin? Shouldn't we engage actors like Petrovskaya and Kosherov to add to the existing core of the company of the Society? Shouldn't we turn the fact that we have the use of quite a good theatre, are under no obligation to perform every day, and can show a few well-rehearsed and directed plays for one winter only, to our advantage? – and at the same time kill three birds with one stone, 1) augment the core of the company with two very important members, an amateur and a dramatic actress who, perhaps, given the size of the theatre, can be properly paid; 2) prepare a repertoire of plays on the Sporting Club stage for summer tour; 3) demonstrate to the whole of Moscow how well we can produce and perform plays. It seems to me Moscow will be more impressed by this than by a success in the back of beyond about which they will only see scanty reports in the press and which, more than likely, they will find it difficult to credit, not having seen the productions themselves. Moscow's response will be: they've been successful in the provinces, yes, but here, that's quite another matter . . .

5 Nemirovich to Stanislavski

August 2 1897

Moscow

I cannot entirely agree with you (although I bow to your judgement without reserve) as regards ‘personal risk’ and ‘a shareholders’ company’. For the simple reason that what attracts me in this matter is the social, educational side, not a money-making concern. The fact is that on that side – the social, artistic side – I believe in myself and have found a man in whom I can also believe – you. But shareholders by their very nature carry with them the intrinsic notion of profit and I am afraid that a shareholding company, created initially for educational purposes, may ultimately degenerate into a purely commercial company . . .

If the undertaking starts (I am talking of the initial risks) as a shareholding company it will dictate the programme to you. But if it is launched by you then the company will be formed to support your initiative. The crucial difference is this, whether you set up a public company to launch a business or to support something that has already been started. You must understand that the character of the people who acquire the shares plays no part in this. It's a question of the shares themselves, which can change hands, not of people.

That's why the more I think about it, the more I incline towards an open and not simply an art theatre.

6 Stanislavski to Nemirovich

August 19 1897

Moscow

Respected Vladimir Ivanovich,

[. . .] The major difference between us, in my opinion, is that you are just embarking on something which is new for you whereas I have been active for ten years. You want to bring a company together and create an ensemble out of them. Possibly I am being carried away by my own enthusiasm but it seems to me that I already have a seasoned, if...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Editor's Note
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part One Prologue 1897
• One Beginnings
• Part Two The First Decade
• The First Season
• Three Uncle Vanya
• Four Three Sisters
• Five Petersburg
• Six Changes
• Seven Julius Caesar
• Eight The Cherry Orchard
• Part Three Dissension
• Nine Dissension
• Ten The Struggle for Control
• Eleven The Theatre and the System
• Part Four The Revolution and After
• Twelve America
• Thirteen Stalin
• Biographical Index
• Index