Konstantin Stanislavski

Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski, born Alekseyev (17 January 1863 to 7 August 1938, old style 5 January), was a Russian and Soviet theatre practitioner, a celebrated character actor and one of the leading stage directors of his generation. His lasting fame rests on his system of actor training, preparation and rehearsal technique, which asks the performer to search for inner motives and to define what a character wants at each moment, and which he later extended into a more physical rehearsal process known as the Method of Physical Action. At the age of 33 he co-founded the Moscow Art Theatre with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, and its productions of The Seagull in 1898 and Hamlet in 1911 and 1912, together with tours of Europe in 1906 and the United States in 1923 and 1924, made his reputation. He promoted the new Russian drama of Chekhov, Gorky and Bulgakov and shaped later practitioners including Meyerhold, Vakhtangov and Michael Chekhov. A heart attack on stage in 1928 ended his acting, but he kept directing, teaching and writing, and his manual An Actor's Work appeared in 1938. He was the first to receive the title People's Artist of the USSR.