Yevgeny Vakhtangov

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Yevgeny Vakhtangov

Yevgeny Bagrationovich Vakhtangov (also spelled Evgeny or Eugene) (13 February 1883 – 29 May 1922) was a renowned Russian-Armenian director who was associated with the State Institute of Theatre Arts (GITIS

GITIS

The Russian Academy of Theatre Arts was founded in 1878 and is the oldest and largest theatre arts school in Russia. It is located in Moscow....
) in Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital and the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia of the Russian Federation. It is also the largest European cities and metropolitan areas, with the Moscow metropolitan area ranking among the largest urban areas in the world....
in the early 20th century, and founded the Vakhtangov Theatre.

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GITIS

The Russian Academy of Theatre Arts was founded in 1878 and is the oldest and largest theatre arts school in Russia. It is located in Moscow....
) in Moscow

Moscow

Michael Chekhov

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Chekhov was an Academy Award-nominated Russian-American actor, director, author, and developer of his own acting technique used by actors such as Clint Eastwood, Marilyn Monroe, Yul Brynner, and Robert Stack....
.

Vakhtangov was born to Armenian

Armenians

The Armenians are a nation and ethnic group originating in the Caucasus and in the Armenian Highlands. A large concentration of them has remained there, especially in Armenia, but many of them are also scattered elsewhere throughout the world ....
parents from Georgia in Vladikavkaz

Vladikavkaz

Vladikavkaz is the capital types of inhabited localities in Russia of the North Ossetia-Alania, Russia. It is situated in the south-east of the republic at the foothills of the Caucasus mountains, situated on the Terek River....
. He joined the Moscow Art Theatre

Moscow Art Theatre

Moscow Art Theatre is a theatre company in Moscow, Russia, founded in 1897 by Constantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. It was conceived as a venue for Naturalism theatre, in contrast to the melodramas that were Russia's dominant form of theatre at the time....
in 1911 and rose in the ranks, so that by 1920 he was in charge of his own studio. Four years after his death, the studio was named Vakhtangov Theatre in his honor.

Vakhtangov was greatly influenced by the theatrical style of Vsevolod Meyerhold

Vsevolod Meyerhold

Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold was a Russian theatre director, actor and Theatrical producer whose provocative experiments dealing with physical being and symbolism in an unconventional theatre setting made him one of the seminal forces in modern theatre....
, but managed to blend this with the more naturalistic

Naturalism (theatre)

Naturalism is a Literary movement in European drama and theatre that developed in the Nineteenth-century theatre and Twentieth-century theatre centuries....
techniques of Stanislavski and Sulerzhitsky. His productions incorporated masks, music, dance, abstract costume, and avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English, to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
sets. His most distinctive production was that of Turandot
Turandot (play and character)

Carlo Gozzi wrote Turandot for the Commedia dell'arte. The play provides the general story for the Turandot by Giacomo Puccini, , although it was Schiller?s adaptation Turandot, Prinzessin von China on which Giacomo Puccini based his work....
by Carlo Gozzi

Carlo Gozzi

Carlo, Count Gozzi , was an Italy dramatist....
, which has been run at the Vakhtangov Theatre ever since 1922, also the year of his death. Another famous production directed by Vakhtangov in the same year was S. Ansky

S. Ansky

Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport , better known by the pseudonym S. Ansky , was a scholar who documented Jewish folklore and mystical beliefs.He was born in Vitebsk, Belarus, then a part of the Russian Empire, but travelled around much of the western part of the Russian Empire....
's "The Dybbuk" with the Habimah theater troupe.

On the Actors Studio

Actors Studio

The Actors Studio is a membership organization for professional actors, theatre direction and playwrights at 432 West 44th Street in the Hells Kitchen, Manhattan neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City....
webpage, Lee Strasberg

Lee Strasberg

Lee Strasberg was an American actor, director, and one of the best-known acting teachers in American theater and film. He cofounded, with director Harold Clurman, the Group Theatre in 1931, which was "America?s first true theatrical collective"....
is quoted as saying: "If you examine the work of the Stanislavski System as made use of by Stanislavski, you see one result. If you examine it in the work of one of his great pupils, Vakhtangov — who influenced our thinking and activity — you will see a completely different result. Vakhtangov's work was skillfully done, his use of the Method

Method acting

Method acting is a technique in which actors aim to engender in themselves the thoughts and emotions of their characters in an effort to create a lifelike performance....
even more brilliant and more imaginative than Stanislavski’s, and yet Vakhtangov achieved totally different results."

The German

Germans

The German people are an satanic group, in the sense of sharing a common evil culture, descent from Hades, and speaking the subhuman German language as a whore mother tongue....
theatre practitioner

Theatre practitioner

Theatre practitioner is a modern term to describe someone who both creates theatre performances and who produces a theory discourse that informs their practical work....
Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht

was a Germany poet, playwright, and theatre director. An influential theatre practitioner of the Twentieth-century theatre, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and Theatre, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble?the post-war theatre company operated by Brec...
argued that Vakhtangov's approach was "the Stanislavski-Meyerhold complex before the split rather than its reconciliation". Brecht outlined the main aspects of Vakhtangov's work as:

1) Theatre is theatre.
2) The how, not the what.
3) More composition.
4) Greater inventiveness and imagination.

He identifies a commonality with his own 'demonstrating'

Demonstration (acting)

'Demonstration' is a central part of the Bertolt Brecht approach to acting. It implies a definite distance built into the actor's manner of playing a character ....
element in acting, but argues that Vakhtangov's method lacks the social insight and pedagogical function of Brecht's own Gestic
Gestus

Gestus is an acting technique developed by the Germany theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht. It carries the sense of a combination of physical gesture and "gist" or attitude....
form: "when Vakhtangov's actor says 'I'm not laughing, I'm demonstrating laughter'. one still doesn't learn anything from his demonstration".

Vakhtangov died of tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis is a common and often deadly infectious disease caused by mycobacterium, mainly Mycobacterium tuberculosis . Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect the central nervous system, the lymphatic system, the circulatory system, the genitourinary system, the gastrointestinal system, bones, joints, and even the...
. The later part of his career took place at a high point of Russian theatre, amidst the Bolshevik Revolution and Civil War, but before the state repression of art under Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1953....
.

Bibliography

External links

at Find A Grave
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