Trivia

Originated the Stanislavski's System of acting from which stemmed many acting schools across the world.

Founder of the Moscow Art Theatre with his partner Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko.

His principal fame and influence, however, rests on his "system" of actor training, preparation, and rehearsal technique.

He was a seminal Soviet Russian theatre practitioner, and was widely recognized as an outstanding character actor.

The many productions that he directed garnered him a reputation as one of the leading theatre directors of his generation.

He collaborated with the director and designer Edward Gordon Craig and was formative in the development of several other major practitioners, including Vsevolod Meyerhold (whom Stanislavski considered his "sole heir in the theatre"), Yevgeny Vakhtangov, and Michael Chekhov.

Stanislavski (his stage name) performed and directed as an amateur until the age of 33, when he co-founded the world-famous Moscow Art Theatre (MAT) company with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, following a legendary 18-hour discussion. Its influential tours of Europe (1906) and the US (1923-24), and its landmark productions of The Seagull (1898) and Hamlet (1911-12), established his reputation and opened new possibilities for the art of the theatre.

At the Moscow Art Theatre's 30-year anniversary celebrations in 1928, a massive heart attack on-stage put an end to his acting career (though he waited until the curtain fell before seeking medical assistance).

By means of the MAT ( Moscow Art Theatre), Stanislavski was instrumental in promoting the new Russian drama of his day-principally the work of Anton Chekhov, Maxim Gorky, and Mikhail Bulgakov-to audiences in Moscow and around the world; he also staged acclaimed productions of a wide range of classical Russian and European plays.

From late 1936 onwards, Stanislavski began to meet regularly with Vsevolod Meyerhold, with whom he discussed the possibility of developing a common theatrical language. In 1938, they made plans to work together on a production and discussed a synthesis of Stanislavski's Method of Physical Action and Meyerhold's biomechanical training. On 8 March, Meyerhold took over the rehearsals for Rigoletto, the staging of which he completed after Stanislavski's death.On his death-bed Stanislavski declared to Yuri Bakhrushin that Meyerhold was "my sole heir in the theatre-here or anywhere else". Stalin's police tortured and killed Meyerhold in February 1940.