“After the success of The Seagull and Uncle Vanya the theatre felt that it could not do without a new play by Chekhov,” wrote Stanislavski. “The fate of the theatre was in his hands: if he gave us a play we would have another season; if he didn’t the theatre would lose all its prestige.”

The Three Sisters was the first play Chekhov wrote especially for the Art Theatre; actually, on order from it. After a preliminary discussion, Nemirovich-Danchenko went abroad, so that the rehearsals were conducted by Stanislavski alone. His production plan (now in the MAT archives) clearly includes rehearsal changes, since Stanislavski finished it on January 8, 1901, and the first full run-through took place at the end of December, 1900.

Beginning with his introspective Finnish vacation in 1906, Stanislavski spent thirty-two years developing his work through speculation and experimentation. He was not a systematic thinker, and his books do not represent the consistent development of a single set of ideas; rather they are notes outlining the evolution of his methods. Stanislavski’s work is held together by its goal: to achieve excellence and truth in theatrical production. Because of the work of the American Lab and Group theatres, Americans are most familiar with Stanislavski’s early and middle periods. An understanding of his late work—his “method of physical actions”—would complete our grasp of his contribution.

“How does Brecht’s system differ from Stanislavski’s?” I have often heard this question asked, sometimes in exactly these words, and probably we shall all live to see the question appear in much this form on college examination papers. I recall, too, that as a young admirer of Brecht’s, nearly twenty years ago, I myself described an actor in one of his plays as having gone “beyond Stanislavski.” Will the acting profession soon be divided between Method actors and Brechtians?

I first saw Stanislavski’s work in 1922, when the Moscow Art Theatre presented in Paris The Lower Depths, The Brothers Kammazov, and The Cherry Orchard. I was carried away with admiration for The Cherry Orchard. The play is written in an impressionistic style that leaves room for silence and long pauses. Although it was bathed in a profusion of naturalistic detail, the production grew into a brilliant, comic, and moving spectacle. I felt that this was poetry—poetry without rhetoric, theatricality, or lyricism. Solely through the skill of the actors, everything became as true as life.

Stanislavski and Freud share many common features, not the least of which is that each is supported by violent partisans, is attacked by violent antagonists, and is the object of unproductive discussion. Whatever the ultimate fate of their doctrines, we shall never go back to our pre-Stanislavskian naivete about acting in the theatre or our pre-Freudian naivete about living in the world. It must be born in mind in the following discussion that each is a great man, and if either is subjected to less than favorable comparisons it should not obscure the fact that each is pre-eminent in his field. The problem will be to estimate in some judicious and productive manner the nature and importance of their contributions in the light of the problems of the theatre.