Realism born... no, really

Chekhov, through the Moscow Art Theatre, made realism the new style.
During one of the rehearsals for "The Seagull", Chekhov had the note that
the actors were acting too much and they needed to start acting like real
people: "They act too much. It would be better if they acted a little more
as in life." Sounds so simple, but that is exactly what I have been
striving for through out my studies. How do I know the words, the
character(s), and the world of the play enough so that the words seem to
be coming from my own thoughts and feelings? To act vs. to be.
Stanislavsky was fasinated by this idea of embodying a play versus doing
an interpretaion. Chekhov wrote his plays about real people and the inner
struggle that all people HIDE from each other. Society tells us that our
personal struggles are too messy to share with others and so we keep them
inside. I think Chekhov explores what keeping our troubles inside can do
to a person, a relationship, a family.
Stanislavsky: "What is so wonderful about Chekhov's plays is not what is
transmitted by the words, but what is hidden under them, in the pauses, in
the glance of the actors, in the emanation of their innermost feelings."
Boom shakala! The words are not the hard part; they are there to help us.
The text of Chekhov is never the subtext.


"The Stanislavsky Heritage. Its Contribution to the Russian and American
Theatre" by Christine Edwards