Stanislavsky's Second Thoughts on ‘The Seagull’

Abstract

Stanislavsky's first production of The Seagull is well documented in English, in The Seagull Produced by Stanislavsky, edited by S. D. Balukhaty in 1952. But little is known of his exploratory work on an intended second production almost two decades later amidst the turmoil of the revolutionary period, and the rehearsal notes made by Stanislavsky's assistant Pyotr Sharov remained unpublished even in Russian until 1987. Here, Laurence Senelick provides the first English translation of these notes, contextualizing them with an account of the difficulties under which Stanislavsky and the Art Theatre were working at the time. Laurence Senelick is Fletcher Professor of Drama and Oratory at Tufts University, and a long-time contributor to TQ and NTQ, which published his articles on the Craig–Stanislavsky Hamlet, serf theatre in Russia, and Wedekind and Lenin at the music hall. His last book, The Changing Room: Sex, Drag, and Theatre, won the George Jean Nathan award as the best work of dramatic criticism of 2000–01, and his previous book, The Chekhov Theatre: a Century of Plays in Production, won the Barnard Hewitt award of the American Society of Theatre Research. He is currently translating and editing the complete plays and dramatic fragments of Anton Chekhov for Norton Publishers.