The release of “Stanislavsky and the Russian Theatre” is now a few months in the past and the process of distribution is now becoming more actual. There are a number of posibilities on the horizon but as yet its too early to talk about them until there is some kind of concrete proposal or development. For the time being there are two distribution outlets which are working quite well. The first is Amazon which most people know about. Here the DVD can be purchased or the film downloaded or rented. However the second is a new internet platform for film makers -Dynamo Player. It allows users to sell their film on the internet for a limited period of time for competitive rates. It also allows the film maker to add any amount of additional material associated with the film, for instance interviews background footage etc. which can add value to the original film and give the project a wider perspective. The player itself can be embedded on any web page or blog so feel free. There is now a dedicated web page for the Stanislavsky film where the extended interviews with Jean Benedetti (Honory Patron of The Stanislavski Centre) and Anatoly Smeliansky (Dean of the Moscow Art Theatre School). Here is the link: http://copernicusfilms.narod.ru/dynamostan1.html or click on the player below:
Click on the “playlist” to see all the options.
To download “Stanislavsky and the Russian Theatre click the button below:
Director Michael Craig speaking after the premiere of "Stanislavsky and the Russian Theatre"
This post is more in the way of a report on the premiere of the film “Stanislavsky and the Russian Theatre” which took place on 14th April 2011 at the Barn Theatre at the Rose Bruford College in London. Included as part of this post are a few clips of the event. The event was held during the college’s annual symposium so there were a lot of events happening simultaneously. On the evening in question we were competing with a rock band just outside in the grounds of the college. The beat of the music could be clearly heard inside the Barn Theatre and Paul Fryer of The Stanislavski Centre who organised the screening for the film was worried it might distract the audience. He had asked that the music be toned down for the duration of the screening but it didn’t seem to have any effect. However he need not hav worried because as he himself pointed out almost everyone was deeply engrossed in the film. In fact so was I even though I had actually made the film and had already watched it hundreds and hundreds of times during editing and post production. This was the first time I had seen it on a large screen and together with a public audience, an experience which is exhilarating and nerve-racking all at the same time. When the film came to an end there was a short question and answer session.
Paul Fryer,director of The Stanislavski Centre at the Rose Bruford College of Theatre & Performance
Several points were made, in particular how Stanislavsky and Gordon Craig’s collaboration on the Moscow Art Theatre’s production of Hamlet was a watershed in Theatrical history and the film brought this home to one member of the audience. Another point which came up was that there is a tendency to portray Stanislavsky as this Grandfather figure in theatre and that the film did not emphasis the more authoritarian tendencies of Stanislavsky’s personality.
This is a genuine point but not within the scope of this film. The film concentrates on the humanistic thrust of Stanislavsky’s system. It does not set out to portray Stanislavsky as a good person or as a bad person or to portray his struggles with Soviet authority. Stanislavsky’s personal traits are to some extent beside the point in this discussion (although interesting in themselves).
On this it’s important to recap of how the film “Stanislavsky and the Russian Theatre”came about. I had made a film about Meyerhold “Meyerhold Theatre and the Russian Avant-garde” and met with Paul Fryer and Andrew Eglinton of the Stanislavski Centre who were interested in screening the film at the Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance. In the process of the discussion they told me about the existence of the Stanislavski Centre at the college and the Stanislavsky archive which is kept there. The idea was mooted of making a film about Stanislavsky in a similar vein as the Meyerhold film. I wasn’t sure at first but after being shown the extensive archive and the quality of material I knew that a film would be possible. This is how I came to the Stanislavsky film – through Meyerhold and my work on the film series about the Russian avant-garde. I had already touched on the perceived differences between Meyerhold and Stanislavsky in this earlier film and this centred on the theme of the collision of ideas and epochs which was evident at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth.
“Stanislavsky and the Russian Theatre” attempts to highlight Stanislavsky’s humanism, arising from his background and how his views were formed by the social context into which he was born, and his subsequent difficulties in developing his system during a time when the avant-garde tendencies of theatre and the avant-garde itself appeared to devalue the human in culture. This was not a feature solely of the Russian avant-garde or of Russian society itself but was the result of the cultural and technological changes which made representation in art and individual biography almost an absurdity. However, here was Stanislavsky championing the autonomy of the actor – the individual moral being, as a prerequisite of the theatrical experience. The avant-gardists questioned this approach altogether in a modern society which was becoming mechanised and a culture which had as its defining characteristic a mass nature.
This situation in many ways defined Stanislavsky’s fate and is characterised by his opening statement at the beginning of his autobiography, “My Life in Art”. ”I was born at the junction of two epochs”. Stanislavsky was carrying out a balancing act. On the one hand, he was trying to preserve values which he considered eternal and sacrosanct and at the same time trying to adapt his art to an increasingly changing and malleable world. Added to this was the violent and stormy political climate in which he had to operate.
This touches another question which was asked, concerning the relevance of Stanislavsky to contemporary theatre. My answer would be, apart from the system itself and its perceived merits as an acting method, is Stanislavsky’s humanism, the placing of the human individual at the centre of his system. Humanism in the first half of the twentieth century was in a state of crises. In the first half of the twenty first century the question might be restated : does humanism have a place in the theatre today in the sense of the autonomous and free individual actor and how would Stanislavsky answer this question?
A tentative answer, I believe, can be found in Professor Anatoly Smeliansky’s book about Mikhail Bulgakov and his relationship to Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre,“Is comrade Bulgakov Dead”. Bulgakov was commissioned to write a play based on Gogol’s book “Dead Souls”. He had devised numerous theatrical innovations which included requirements for the set design and the appearance of Gogol as one of the players in the drama. All these innovations were to enhance and bring out the diabolic elements of the play and the vast emptiness of the Russian interior which acted as metaphors for the plays main themes. The preparations for the play were slow and difficult with Stanislavsky becoming more and more involved as time went by. Eventually he jettisoned Bulgakov’s innovations. He wanted only the actors to carry the grand themes of “Dead Souls” – its demonic elements and the empty lives of the characters underlined by the sweeping emptiness of the Russian interior. To paraphrase Stanislavsky; the vast emptiness of the Russian landscape should only be expressed by the light in the eyes of the actors and their mutual interaction with each other. We are not simply talking about emphasising the psychological in drama above grandiose set design or theatrical tricks. What Stanislavsky was postulating was something far more powerful and radical for its time and maybe even today. Stanislavsky was proposing that the entire narrative of “Dead Souls” could be carried simply by the emotional narrative of the actors, through their speech and the inner power of their personality. This is a testament to what Stanislavsky envisaged for the system, both in its potential and scope to give an actor the possibility to deliver a performance which could express complex and profound meaning.
Finally, after much tweaking and adjusting, the documentary film “Stanislavsky and the Russian Theatre” has been released on DVD after a successful launch and premiere at the Barn Theatre of the Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performence. The premiere took place a few weeks ago but I will be posting information about the premiere and the film a little later. The film is available in both NTSC and PAL formats. Check your countrys’ broadcasting standard system and formats to see which is the correct one for your country.
The premiere of “Stanislavsky and the Russian Theatre” will take place at the Barn Theatre at the Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance in London on 12th April 2011. The film is being presented as past of the colleges annual symposium which runs for all this week. We will be travelling from Moscow tomorrow to present the film. Its taken a long time to get to the point of release due to several circumstances but its been worth the effort. Master discs are now with the manufacturers and a release date will be announced shortly. We will keep more updates coming as things develop and progress. Things have been quiet here and on all the various social media outlets due to the race to get the film finished in time. Now we hope to get the word out about this new film.
The first annual Routledge/Stanislavski Centre Lecture will take place at the Rose Theatre, Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance, on Tuesday 22nd March.
This major event which will form part of the College’s 60th anniversary celebrations, will be the first in a series of high-profile lectures presented by the College’s research centres in 2011. Anatoly Smeliansky will deliver a lecture entitled Stanislavski and the Contemporary Theatre. Professor Smeliansky is Dean of the Moscow Art Theatre School, and Associate Director of the Moscow Art Theatre. He is a Visiting Professor of Rose Bruford College, and a member of the Stanislavski Centre Advisory Board.
Anatoly Smeliansky has participated in the forthcoming film due to be released in the next few weeks “Stanislavsky and the Russian Theatre”.
So where are we with the film “Stanislavsky and the Russian Avant-garde”? Quite far on. We had hoped to get the film released for the end of February but that as it turned out was slightly optimistic. In principle it’s possible but there are several things I want to add into the edit and that will take a little extra work but hopefully not too much time. Most of the work now involves mixing the sound track consisting of music , narration and the interviews with Anatoly Smeliansky, the deputy director of the Moscow Art Theatre and Jean Benedetti, writer about and translator of Stanislavsky’s work.
At this stage of the film its worth adding those extra ingredients to give the film that final bit of colour and finish which it deserves. For instance, I discovered some new archive footage which was made available to me late on in the editing process. Excellent archive footage which will dovetail neatly into the film. All these touches make the film better. All in all a release date is imminent and will be announced as soon as the film is ready.
Entering the final stages of the editing process on the documentary film about Stanislavsky “Stanislavsky and Russian Theatre”. Still much work to do but I am starting to think about a release date sometime in late February, perhaps before. I’m always wary of announcing a release date but in light of the interest people are already beginning to show I feel as if I ought to put people in the picture. There may be unexpected hitches or problems which might cause delays and put back the release a little but at this stage I don’t see anything major coming up. All the material is assembled and its now a question of mixing and ironing out any difficulties in the mixing process.
I will keep people up to date on twitter as to progress and make more announcements about the status of the film throughout January here as well.
Into the final stages of editing this film. For the last few weeks we have been working with the actor James Langton in completing the narration. After a brief interruption over the holiday it can now be announced that this part of the film is complete and the narration is fully recorded and can now be added to the rest of the material for sound mixing. This was a major piece of work and I feel fortunate that I found James who has done an excellent job. The whole recording was carried out over the Internet with James in new York and me in Moscow. With much backward and forwards across the net we have manged to produce something of very good quality. This is largely due to James’s professionalism and good feel for the material. As I explained to him; I know speed, diction and rhythm are important but the most important thing for me is a feeling for the material and what one is reading or narrating. That doesn’t necessarily mean emotion or expressiveness – its more about appreciation and understanding – its a thing difficult to define. James has a very good feel for the material and this comes across in his reading.
The most complicated part of recording narration in this way is pronunciation of difficult place names or names of people. This is particularly true of anything to do with Russia. However we managed to find a phonetic system whereby I was able to convey the sound of Russian words which were difficult to pronounce.
For my part I have started working through the edit on a systematic basis working with sound and images simultaneously. There is no set timescale but I am looking to the early part of this year to be able to get the project finished and released.
All the trees in Moscow are covered in ice after it rained steadily a few days ago and then the temperature dropped and ice formed clinging to the branches of the trees which are falling all over the place. I walked through our local park in the centre of Moscow with trees and bushes glittering like crystal glass reflecting the neon light in the winter night.
Almost all the material for completing the film “Stanislavsky and Russian Theatre” is now in place. There are one or two locations to finish but these are additional to the film and are not absolutely necessary. If they come off the way I would like, then they will be welcome additions to the film and included in the overall edit. All the archive footage has now been acquired. This is a major hurdle in any documentary film, getting permissions and acquiring rights etc. Having managed to solve the problems with acquisition of these elements leaves the way open for the final stages of editing. That doesn’t mean there will not be further obstacles or there bare no loose ends to tie up but it really is a significant step in the whole process.
It appears that we have settled for the title “Stanislavsky and Russian Theatre”. After going through several permutations, this seems like the most appropriate title. It describes the content and main focus of the film. Its not exclusively concerned only with Russian theatre but its where the main focus lies.
