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Moscow and Monodrama: The Meaning of the Craig-Stanislavsky Hamlet

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Laurence Senelick
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Extract

If the ordinary student of theatre remembers anything at all about the production of Hamlet conceived by Gordon Craig in 1909 and staged by Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1912, it is that the screens fell down. This aspect of the design, a series of folding screens on casters, arranged in such a way that they might be reversed and alternated, thus changing the scene before the eyes of an audience to create a sense of abstract monumentality, was in fact poorly realized by the plain wood-and-canvas flats that proved to be the most viable medium. And they did indeed fall down, although not in performance, but at a special technical run-through on the afternoon before the opening, when they required rapid repairs and trays of ballast to stabilize them. As a result, the quick-change in full view was replaced by a traditional scene-shift behind closed curtains. Craig had not been at that calamitous rehearsal and knew nothing of the accident; when he read about it, twelve years later, vividly recounted in Stanislavsky's My Life in Art, he reckoned the story a lie and a libel, and, fearful of the mockery to which his ingenuity would be subjected, threatened to sue unless Stanislavsky cut the offending episode. Not until confronted by a sworn affidavit from the stage hands and master carpenters who had been present did he subside into a grumbling quiescence.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , Spring 1981 , pp. 109 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1981

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References

Notes

1. Sologub, Fëdor, ‘Teatr odnoj voli’, Teatr: kniga o novom teatre (St Peterburg, 1908), p. 185.Google Scholar

2. Kugel, A. P., Utverždenie teatra (Peterburg, 1923?), p. 55.Google Scholar

3. Quoted in Senelick, Laurence, ‘The Craig-Stanislavsky “Hamlet” at the Moscow Art Theatre’, Theatre Quarterly VI, 22 (1976), p. 57.Google Scholar

4. op cit., p. 79.

5. Znosko-Borovskij, E. A., Russkij teatr načala XX veka (Praga, 1925), p. 205.Google Scholar

6. Mejerxol'd, Vs., ‘Edward Gordon Craig’, in O teatre (St Peterburg, 1913), p. 91.Google Scholar

7. 29 April 1909. Quoted in Senelick, , op. cit., p. 74.Google Scholar

8. ‘Concerning Hamlet’, The Page (London, 1898).

9. Craig, E. G., Index to the Story of My Days (London, 1957), p. 162.Google Scholar

10. Craig, Edward, Gordon Craig (N.Y., 1968), p. 259.Google Scholar

11. Senelick, , op. cit., pp. 86–7.Google Scholar

12. Letter dated 13 February 1909 to Lilina-Stanislavskaya. From original now at Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.

13. ibid.

14. ibid.

15. Evrejnov, Nikolaj N., Vvdenie k monodramu (St. Peterburg, 1909), p. 8.Google Scholar

16. op cit., p. 16.

17. Quoted in Stanislavsky, K. S., My Life in Art, tr. Ivanov-Mumjiev, G. (Moscow, 1953?), p. 496.Google Scholar

18. Craig, E. G., On the Art of the Theatre (N.Y., 1960), p. 99.Google Scholar Craig's italics.

19. Senelick, , op. cit., p. 80.Google Scholar

20. ibid., p. 79.

21. ibid., p. 86.

22. ibid., p. 87.

23. ibid., p. 97.

24. ibid., loc. cit.

25. Craig, , Index, p. 157.Google Scholar

26. Quoted in Senelick, , op. cit., p. 70.Google Scholar

27. ibid., p. 120.

28. ibid.

29. ibid., p. 70.

30. Kozintsev, Grigori, King Lear: the space of tragedy. The diary of a film director. Tr. Mackintosh, Mary (London, 1976), pp. 156–7.Google Scholar