Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Although it might seem surprising, Teatr.doc appeared in similar circumstances
to the way the Moscow Art Theatre was born in the grim days of a crisis, a theatrical crisis.
It was prompted by exactly the same things, the same system.
If the Moscow Art Theatre had a network of shareholders,
Yes, of course I use the Stanislavski system, it is very close to Teatr.doc.
In fact, you could say, it is actually considerably closer to us than most people might think.
What is Teatr.doc, in fact? And why was it needed?
The main reason it was needed was to bring some semblance
of reality back to theatrical performances.
Because classical and academic theatre had already gone off into being ballet
an extremely conventional kind of art, they were calling it psychological theatre.
And in fact, they still call it that!
That is why Stanislavsky, for us , in fact, is the main guiding principle.
They are more important than their own theatrical ability.
It takes way too long to teach it all to them.
By the way, Stanislavski had a great moment when they staged The Power Of Darkness.
They bought a female farm labourer from the Tula Region
she took part in the rehearsals, and had a strong belief in what she was doing.
But at that time it was not realistic to allow her out onto the stage
because everyone would have gone nuts.
And another reason was that she used the most terrifying vocabulary of swear-words.
There was nothing she could do about it , it was her native speech,
and for her it was just her usual way of expressing herself.
But the most striking example was The Lower Depths.
The author Gilyarovsky was involved in staging the show,
and he kept dragging the actors off to Khitrov Market, to talk to people there, and watch them.
It was practically the same kind of verbatim interview technique that we do today
with the real hobos of his time.
I am not even sure they had the word hobo back then, but they were the same people.
It was a way of developing a theatrical role that was very productive and worthwhile
and it is something we use strongly at Teatr.doc.