Editing Konstantin Stanislavski (section)

==Amateur work as an actor and director==
[[File:Stanislavski Love and Intrigue 1889.jpg|thumb|left|200px|Stanislavski with his soon-to-be wife Maria Lilina in 1889 in [[Friedrich Schiller|Schiller's]] ''[[Intrigue and Love]]''.]]

By now well known as an [[Amateur theatre|amateur]] actor, at the age of twenty-five Stanslavski co-founded a Society of Art and Literature.<ref>Magarshack (1950, 52, 55–56). The society was officially inaugurated on {{OldStyleDateNY|15 November|3 November}} with a ceremony attended by [[Anton Chekhov]]; see Benedetti (1999a, 29–30) and Worrall (1996, 25).</ref> Under its auspices, he performed in plays by [[Molière]], [[Friedrich Schiller|Schiller]], [[Alexander Pushkin|Pushkin]], and [[Alexander Ostrovsky|Ostrovsky]], as well as gaining his first experiences as a director.<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 30–40) and Worrall (1996, 24).</ref> He became interested in the [[Aesthetics|aesthetic theories]] of [[Vissarion Belinsky]], from whom he took his conception of the role of the artist.<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 35–37). Belinsky's conception provided the basis for a moral justification for Stanislavski's desire to perform that accorded with his family's sense of social responsibility and ethics.</ref>

On {{OldStyleDate|5 July|1889|23 June}}, Stanislavski married [[Maria Lilina]] (the stage name of Maria Petrovna Perevostchikova).<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 37) and Magarshack (1950, 54), and Worrall (1996, 26).</ref> Their first child, Xenia, died of pneumonia in May 1890 less than two months after she was born.<ref name=b42>Benedetti (1999a, 42).</ref> Their second daughter, Kira, was born on {{OldStyleDate|2 August|1891|21 July}}.<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 43).</ref> In January 1893, Stanislavski's father died.<ref>Magarshack (1950, 81).</ref> Their son Igor was born on {{OldStyleDate|26 September|1894|14 September}}.<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 47).</ref>

In February 1891, Stanislavski directed [[Leo Tolstoy]]'s ''[[The Fruits of Enlightenment]]'' for the Society of Art and Literature, in what he later described as his first fully independent directorial work.<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 42–43), Magarshack (1950, 78–80), and Worrall (1996, 27).</ref> But it was not until 1893 he first met the great [[Realism (literature)|realist]] novelist and playwright that became another important influence on him.<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 46), Carnicke (2000, 17), Magarshack (1950, 82–85), and Roach (1985, 216). Tolstoy's ''[[What Is Art?]]'' (1898) promoted immediate intelligibility and transparency as an aesthetic principle. Stanislavski's concept of "experiencing the role" was based on Tolstoy's belief that rather than knowledge, art communicates felt experience.</ref> Five years later the [[Moscow Art Theatre|MAT]] would be his response to Tolstoy's demand for simplicity, directness, and accessibility in art.<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 54) and Roach (1985, 216).</ref>

Stanislavski's directorial methods at this time were closely modelled on the disciplined, [[Autocracy|autocratic]] approach of [[Ludwig Chronegk]], the director of the [[Meiningen Ensemble]].<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 40–43), Braun (1995, 27), Gordon (2006, 40–42), Magarshack (1950, 70–74), Milling and Ley (2001, 6), and Worrall (1996, 28–29).</ref> In ''[[My Life in Art]]'' (1924), Stanislavski described this approach as one in which the director is "forced to work without the help of the actor".<ref>Quoted by Magarshack (1950, 73).</ref> From 1894 onward, Stanislavski began to assemble detailed prompt-books that included a directorial commentary on the entire play and from which not even the smallest detail was allowed to deviate.<ref>Benedetti (1989, 23) and (1999a, 47), Leach (2004, 14), Magarshack (1950, 86–90), and Worrall (1996, 28–29).</ref>

[[File:Stanislavski as Othello 1896 edit.jpg|thumb|right|160px|Stanislavski as [[Othello (character)|Othello]] in 1896.]]

Whereas the Ensemble's effects tended toward the grandiose, Stanislavski introduced [[Lyric poetry|lyrical]] elaborations through the ''[[mise-en-scène]]'' that dramatised more mundane and ordinary elements of life, in keeping with Belinsky's ideas about the "poetry of the real".<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 35–36, 44).</ref> By means of his rigid and detailed control of all theatrical elements, including the strict choreography of the actors' every gesture, in Stanislavski's words "the inner kernel of the play was revealed by itself".<ref>Benedetti (1989, 23) and (1999a, 48), Leach (2004, 14), and Magarshack (1950, 80).</ref> Analysing the Society's production of ''Othello'' (1896), Jean Benedetti observes that:

<blockquote>Stanislavski uses the theatre and its technical possibilities as an instrument of expression, a language, in its own right. The dramatic meaning is in the staging itself. [...] He went through the whole play in a completely different way, not relying on the text as such, with quotes from important speeches, not providing a 'literary' explanation, but speaking in terms of the play's dynamic, its action, the thoughts and feelings of the [[protagonist]]s, the world in which they lived. His account flowed uninterruptedly from moment to moment.<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 44 and 50–51).</ref></blockquote>

Benedetti argues that Stanislavski's task at this stage was to unite the [[Realism (theatre)|realistic]] tradition of the creative actor inherited from [[Mikhail Shchepkin|Shchepkin]] and [[Nikolai Gogol|Gogol]] with the director-centred, organically [[Gesamtkunstwerk|unified]] [[Naturalism (theatre)|Naturalistic]] aesthetic of the Meiningen approach.<ref name=b42/> That synthesis would emerge eventually, but only in the wake of Stanislavski's directorial struggles with [[Symbolism (arts)|Symbolist]] theatre and an artistic crisis in his work as an actor. "The task of our generation", Stanislavski wrote as he was about to found the [[Moscow Art Theatre]] and begin his professional life in the theatre, is "to liberate art from outmoded tradition, from tired cliché and to give greater freedom to imagination and creative ability."<ref>Benedetti (1999a, 55).</ref>