June, 1897. At a historic eighteen-hour session in the Slavic Bazaar, a restaurant in Moscow, Stanislavski and Nemirovich- Danchenko agreed to pool their acting companies and form the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT). Stanislavski wrote:

If the symbol was a hard nut for Stanislavski to crack, so is Lee Strasberg, symbolically and literally, a hard nut for anyone, friend or foe, to crack. Certainly it is easy to take an emotive view of him whether you admire him or not. In a most remarkably simple-minded way, his friends and disciples adore him while his enemies detest him. He is one of those figures who, like a supreme politician as opposed to an expert statesman, invites no middle ground, no neutral view. He suggests, as much by his nodding silences as by his little attentions, a classically formed love-hate relationship. But when the nut is there to be cracked, it almost always comes out melting love or towering hate, rarely both together.

First, acknowledge the talent of so many American actors. Why, then, is their acting so bad? Between talent and its expression on stage stands an Establishment which brutally uses its people, even while improving the theatre. Earlier still, the actor in training is confused and misled, over-worked and under-trained, frustrated and stunted. Training is so isolated, haphazard, and contradictory that it is hard to discuss it, almost impossible to evaluate it with anything but blanket condemnation. In no other profession is there so little agreement about standards and methods, so little active contact among those doing the work.