The method, p.46
The Method, page 46
Stanislavski as Trigorin in The Seagull, with Moscow Art Theatre company member Maria Roksanova as Nina.
An author photo of Richard Boleslavsky.
A picture of Maria Ouspenskaya, from the MAT tour of the United States.
The MAT visits the Broadway production of Hamlet, starring John Barrymore.
Stella Adler in her early days as an actor.
The 1935 Broadway production of Awake and Sing! Shown from left: Morris Carnovsky, John Garfield, Art Smith, Stella Adler, Phoebe Brand.
The Group Theatre in 1936. From back left: Art Smith, Walter Fried, Sanford Meisner, Ruth Nelson, Lee J. Cobb, Leif Erickson, Roman Bohnen, Morris Carnovsky, Lee Strasberg, Kermit Bloomgarden. Middle row: Luther Adler, Phoebe Brand, Eleanor Lynn, Harold Clurman, Frances Farmer, Robert Lewis, Elia Kazan. Seated in front: Irwin Shaw.
Marlon Brando and Jessica Tandy in A Streetcar Named Desire.
Elia Kazan raises his arms in the original production of Waiting for Lefty.
John Garfield testifies before Congress.
Kim Stanley, widely regarded as the greatest actress of her generation.
A young Paul Newman watches a scene at the Actors Studio, wearing its uniform.
Stella Adler teaching at her conservatory in 1989.
Sanford Meisner looking dapper in 1964.
On set for The Misfits. From left: Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe, Paula Strasberg.
Lee Strasberg teaching.
Ellen Burstyn and Lee Strasberg at an Actors Studio benefit.
Robert De Niro, after the weight gain that would prove so influential, in Raging Bull.
Burgess Meredith and James Baldwin working on Blues for Mister Charlie.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have had three great acting teachers in my life who together impressed upon me the value of Stanislavski’s teachings and set me on the long path that resulted in this book. Two of them, John Emmert and Nancy Paris, have sadly passed away. I wish they could have known of my gratitude toward them. To Joy Zinoman: Thank you for everything you’ve taught me about acting, directing, professionalism, and taking art seriously. Thank you as well for your memories of studying with Alvina Krause.
This book would not have been possible without the insight, knowledge, generosity, and resourcefulness of David Chambers and Robert Ellermann. I feel lucky to have joined them both on their quests for determining the actual teachings of Stanislavski and Lee Strasberg. David: Thank you for the many hours of conversation about the “system” and for never missing an opportunity to venture down a research rabbit hole wherever it may go. Bobby: Thank you for your time, and patience, and passion; for sharing your stories of Bobby Lewis and Kim Stanley; and for letting me sit in on your classes at the Lee Strasberg Institute. Thank you both for your many recommended readings, all of which informed this book. Sergei Tcherkasski, author of Masterstvo aktera: Stanislavskiĭ-Boleslavskiĭ-Strasberg, answered numerous questions about Stanislavski’s late “system,” and his book is an invaluable resource for the field of acting history that I hope will see translation and publication in the United States soon.
Thank you to Brian Herrera, Michael Kahn, Jacqueline Knapp, Marshall Mason, Farran Smith Nehme, Estelle Parsons, Austin Pendleton, Victoria Krane, Anna Strasberg, Tom Oppenheim, Kelly Nelson, Gordon Rogoff, Rory Schwartz, and Pamela Kareman for speaking with me and offering their memories and perspectives.
Thank you to Mark Harris for all your help in cracking the art of writing cultural history and for sharing material on Mike Nichols and Lee Strasberg. Thank you to R. Colin Tait for answering a million questions about Robert De Niro. Pippin Parker and Hal Brooks were invaluable sounding boards at various steps of this process as well.
Books like this one are only possible because so many have dedicated their professional lives to the preservation of historical documents. The librarians at the Library of Congress, the Harry Ransom Center, the University of Scranton, and the New York Library for the Performing Arts provided invaluable help with tracking down some of these documents and photographs, and I am grateful to them for their hard work in protecting the history of our culture.
Catherine Nichols’s enthusiasm for this project and her brilliant, careful notes on the manuscript as it developed informed this book in a million different ways. I am indebted to her galaxy-size brain and her stalwart friendship. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Mark Armstrong read and provided invaluable feedback on The Method, and his friendship, passion, knowledge, and generous humor over the last fifteen years mean the world to me.
Speaking of friendship … Jaime Green, Mike Daisey, J. Holtham, Dan Kois, Sam Adams, Jason Zinoman, Helen Shaw, Sam Thielman, Jeremy Barnett Reff, Amanda Marcotte, Marc Faletti, Darcy James Argue, Lindsay Beyerstein, Robin Varghese, Maeve Adams, Ryan McCarthy, Elisa Gabbert, Emily Adrian, Justin Taylor, Elissa Washuta, Mike Meginnis, Miranda Popkey, Steve Himmer, Adalena Kavanagh, Adam Price, Ben Voigt, Sally Franson, Jon Cotter, David Burr Gerrard, Ed Skoog, Alex Higley, Hilary Leichter, Dan Hornsby, J. Robert Lennon, Lauren Goldenberg, Sandra Newman, Sugi Ganeshananthan, Tracy Bowling, Willie Fitzgerald, Sebastian Castillo, Will Frears, and Uriah Melchizedek all provided much needed support over the course of writing this book. I am grateful to June Thomas, Cameron Drews, and Rumaan Alam for their great flexibility in working around this book’s needs, and in inspiring me to think and rethink my creative process every week.
Writing this book during the pandemic would not have been possible without my parents, Susan and Dixon Butler, and my mother-in-law, Patty Love. Thank you for all of your support, for letting us live with you, for help with childcare, and for watching so many movies with me so I could keep the work going even at night. Additional thanks to my parents for enrolling me at the Studio Theatre Acting Conservatory as a kid so that I could discover Stanislavski and for their inspiring love of the arts.
My research assistant, Rae Binstock, did incredible work helping to amass and keep on top of the voluminous research this book required. Vikram Murthi’s transcription help was essential. I’m also grateful to Emily Breeze for her childcare help, her deep knowledge of theater, and her keen bullshit detector. Emma Mathes leapt into whatever job the book or my life needed dozens of times. Thank you. Writing a history that spans a hundred years on two continents involves making a rather enormous number of factual claims. I am beyond grateful to Samantha Schuyler for checking those facts and making sure they were correct.
Thank you to my agent, Alia Hanna Habib, for her dedication and persistence, for whipping my proposal into shape, for her deep respect for and understanding of the kind of writer I want to be, and for answering a thousand questions as I navigated the process of selling, writing, and finishing the book. She makes everything about being a professional writer clearer, easier, and more fun.
At Bloomsbury: Thank you to Suzanne Keller for overseeing the production process with such rigor and kindness. Thank you to Emily DeHuff for the sensitive and thorough copyedit, to Paula Dragosh for her proofreading, and to Patti Ratchford for designing the cover. Thank you to Morgan Jones for all your help, especially with the complex and bewildering permissions process.
I could write a whole separate book explaining all the ways that Ben Hyman, the editor of The Method, impacted the book you have just read. The Method grew out of many conversations that the two of us had, beginning even before the proposal for the book was written. I’ve been so lucky over my first two books to work with an editor as smart, as kind, as funny, as precise, as honest, as knowledgeable, and as patient as Ben. Working with him to make this book the best version of itself was a joyous process that I learned a great deal from. Ben: Thank you!
This book is dedicated to my wife, Anne Love, but because I can’t resist a circular structure, let me end it with her as well. The family we have built together is the greatest gift of my life. Thank you for always being there, for always encouraging me, and for your interest, passion, and faith in this project. And also thank you for already owning A Dream of Passion and My Life in Art and not minding when I destroyed both books over the course of writing this one. We did it!
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
xii “the bottom line of it all” Frances McDormand’s quotes come from an interview conducted by Roger and James Deakins on their podcast Team Deakins.
xiv “is really affected with grief or anger” Plutarch, “Why We Delight in Representation,” in Cole and Chinoy, Actors on Acting, 13.
xv “so transported beyond himself” Plutarch, “Ancient Actors,” in Cole and Chinoy, Actors on Acting, 14.
xv “Extreme sensibility makes middling actors” Diderot, “The Paradox of the Actor,” in Cole and Chinoy, Actors on Acting, 165.
xv The symbolic style Rader, Playing to the Gods: Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, and the Rivalry That Changed Acting Forever, 10.
xv “lament and bewail” Plutarch, “Ancient Actors,” in Cole and Chinoy, Actors on Acting, 15.
CHAPTER 1: THE ONLY WAY TO SAVE ART
3 Are you in Moscow Benedetti, ed., The Moscow Art Theatre Letters, 5.
3 He was one of the most respected Stanislavski, My Life in Art, 292.
4 Everything was conventional Nemirovich-Danchenko, My Life in the Russian Theatre, 31.
4 Pick up girls Ibid., 44.
4 Even the Maly Ibid., 28–31. Nemirovich-Danchenko’s complaints about the Maly are detailed in many places, but the clearest summary of them appears here.
4 Seven hundred years old Rayfield, Anton Chekhov, loc 7746.
4 Either he could reform the Maly Nemirovich-Danchenko, My Life in the Russian Theatre, 73.
4 The addressee of his letter Ibid.
5 a conversation between Alekseiev and Chekhov Benedetti, Stanislavski: His Life and Art, 59.
5 The State exercised a near total monopoly Ostrovsky, “Imperial and Private Theatres,” 218.
6 No one seems certain Benedetti, Stanislavski: His Life and Art, 3.
6 The advent of the railroads Figes, Natasha’s Dance, loc 3613–23.
6 Konstantin’s parents were no exception Benedetti, Stanislavski: His Life and Art, 6.
6 tableaux vivants Shevtsova, Rediscovering Stanislavski, 23.
6 Within that private theater Benedetti, Stanislavski: His Life and Art, 14.
6 He worked to correct Stanislavski, My Life in Art, 123.
6 Through imitation Ibid., 129.
7 Fedotov impressed upon Konstantin ibid., 148.
7 “God knows who” Quoted in Benedetti, Stanislavski: His Life and Art, 24.
7 made Aleksandr Fedotov the representative Ibid., 149.
7 a windfall Benedetti, Stanislavski: His Life and Art, 27.
8 when you want something very badly Stanislavski, My Life in Art, 149.
8 Pushkin’s The Miserly Knight Ibid., 152–60. Stanislavski tells the story of playing—or rather failing to play—the part detailed here with great self-deprecating wit. The dialogue comes from his telling of the story.
9 Belinsky called for a kind of holy purpose Benedetti, Stanislavski: His Life and Art, 35.
9 “In all its truth and nakedness” Quoted in ibid., 36.
9 “better persons, better citizens” Quoted in Whyman, The Stanislavsky System of Acting, 259.
9 “witness to purity and truth” Quoted in Benedetti, Stanislavski: His Life and Art, 37.
9 “The truth concerning the passions” Quoted in Whyman, The Stanislavsky System of Acting, 44.
9 Instead of stage convention Ibid., 19–20.
9 one of the first director’s companies Booth, “Nineteenth-Century Theatre,” in The Oxford Illustrated History of the Theatre, 332.
9 marveling at the absolute control Benedetti, Stanislavski: His Life and Art, 41.
10 he prepared elaborate scores Ibid., 42.
10 unrelenting attention to detail Ibid., 51. Here, for example, is his opening stage direction for Othello from this period: “Curtain. Ten seconds. The distant chime of a bell or clock. A peal of bells. Five seconds. The distant splash of an approaching boat. Rodrigo and Iago enter right, in a gondola …”
10 his use of pauses Nemirovich-Danchenko, My Life in the Russian Theatre, 163.
10 “I am waging a fierce struggle against routine” Stanislavski, Konstantin Stanislavsky 1863–1963, 234–35.
10 his Othello required Benedetti, Stanislavski: His Life and Art, 51.
11 Nemirovich remembered Nemirovich-Danchenko, My Life in the Russian Theatre, 76.
11 two bears in a den Ibid., 106.
11 a noted Slavophile Lin, “Myth and Appropriation,” 24.
11 Stop chasing Western Europe Figes, Natasha’s Dance, loc 2637.
11 Nemirovich was unsure of Stanislavski’s character Nemirovich-Danchenko, My Life in the Russian Theatre, 75.
12 Stanislavski’s lone vanity Ibid., 81.
12 One of his nicknames Ibid., 105.
12 slaughter Ibid., 15.
12 peace conference Stanislavski, My Life in Art, 294.
13 Both entered the language Borovsky, “Russian Theatre in Russian Culture,” in A History of Russian Theatre, 6.
13 Russian was a hodgepodge Figes, Natasha’s Dance, loc 1117.
13 “privacy” and “imagination” Ibid.
13 serf theaters Borovsky, “Emergence of the Russian Theatre,” in A History of Russian Theatre, 61.
13 Shchepkin, the influential pioneer of naturalism at the Maly Ibid., 119.
13 the Maly had declined Magarshack, Stanislavsky: A Life, 145.
13 audiences had to rely on actors’ interpretive gifts Borovsky, “Emergence of the Russian Theatre,” 13.
14 sliding scale ticket prices Worrall, The Moscow Art Theatre, 37.
14 keep the ticket buying public interested Nemirovich-Danchenko, My Life in the Russian Theatre, 103.
14 In a matter of days Ostrovsky, “Imperial and Private Theatres,” 223–24.
14 popularized by the Meiningen company Worrall, The Moscow Art Theatre, 21.
14 actors learned … two weeks later Ostrovsky, “Imperial and Private Theatres,” in A History of Russian Theatre, 223–24.
14 Talented young actors Stanislavski, My Life in Art, 292.
14 Sets and costumes were as prefabricated as the performances Nemirovich-Danchenko, My Life in the Russian Theatre, 90.
15 would get the best facilities Stanislavski, My Life in Art, 297.
15 “seemed like a revolution” Nemirovich-Danchenko, My Life in the Russian Theatre, 88.
15 The Maly allowed audiences Stanislavski, My Life in Art, 90–94, 295–99. Nemirovich and Stanislavski’s many, many complaints about the Maly are discussed in detail; they were not the first people to share these complaints. Alexander Ostrovsky, the Shakespeare of Russia, had been trying to reform the Maly prior to his death in 1886 (Magarshack, Stanislavsky: A Life, 144).
15 a series of aphorisms Stanislavski, My Life in Art, 298–99.
16 “magnificent Eastern forests of superb, ancient gigantic firs and pines” Nemirovich-Danchenko, My Life in the Russian Theatre, 84.
16 Veto! Ibid., 107. Stanislavski’s version of the veto is from Stanislavski, My Life in Art, 295.
17 even claims co-authorship Nemirovich-Danchenko, My Life in the Russian Theatre, 58–59.
17 infecting each other Ibid., 107.
18 He remembered all this decades later Ibid., 108.
CHAPTER 2: NEW ANSWERS TO THE PROBLEMS OF LIVING
19 Three years … Philharmonic school Pitches, Vsevolod Meyerhold, 4–5.
19 Finally, Nemirovich pulled Meyerhold Knipper, Dear Writer, Dear Actress, 4.
19 At Pushkino, the train disgorged Meyerhold Benedetti, ed., The Moscow Art Theatre Letters, 21. This story is detailed in a letter from Meyerhold to his wife.
20 The space was rough-hewn Worrall, The Moscow Art Theatre, 42.
20 our temple of Melpomene Benedetti ed., The Moscow Art Theatre Letters, 21.
20 The speech he gave Stanislavski’s speech is detailed in Benedetti, Stanislavski: His Life and Art, 69.
21 art for art’s sake? Benedetti ed., The Moscow Art Theatre Letters, 22.
21 in March 1898, nine delegates Montefiore, The Romanovs, 509.
21 Shelaputin Theatre Worrall, The Moscow Art Theatre, 39.
21 he snatched it up, giving it to Nemirovich’s old friend Aleksandr Lensky Nemirovich-Danchenko, My Life in the Russian Theatre, 138.
21 Eugene Onegin and Gogol’s The Government Inspector Worrall, The Moscow Art Theatre, 43.
21 After their eighteen-hour meeting … Stanislavski refused Benedetti, ed., The Moscow Art Theatre Letters, 8–9.
