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Given the nature of Russian cultural life at the turn of the twentieth century, it was inevitable that Konstantin Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theatre — which rapidly gained prominence as the triumphant exponent of a theatrical realism that some called naturalism — became, equally rapidly, the target of anti-naturalistic broadsides. So vocal was this opposition that there came a time when Stanislavsky himself felt that it could no longer be ignored. Yet his efforts to accommodate the anti-realist trends within the Art Theatre have provided some of the least impressive pages in the history of that illustrious institution. When, in 1904, the director had allowed himself to be persuaded by Anton Chekhov to stage a triple bill of plays by Maurice Maeterlinck (Les Aveugles, Intérieur and L"Intruse),¹ the result was disappointing. The productions were unimaginative and served only to demonstrate the unreadiness of the Art Theatre to join the Symbolist avant-garde. But such was Stanislavsky's resolve to maintain the primacy of his theatre in contemporary Russia, that he was prepared to experiment again, even at the price of "novelty for novelty's sake".² Thus it was that he hit on the notion of establishing the Theatre Studio, an experimental mini-theatre to be attached to the main Art Theatre, and of recalling Vsevolod Meyerhold to the capital from the provinces, where he had been attempting to enlighten theatre audiences with his "Fellowship of the New Drama".

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-20749-7_3

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