Ukrainian Theatre: With and Without Stanislavski

Abstract

The paper attempts to reconstruct the principles of leading theatre schools of Ukraine in the 19th–20th centuries, the stages of implementation of Stanislavski’s ideas, of the aesthetics of his theatre, and his method in the Ukrainian theatrical culture. Despite the myths that since the very beginning of the Soviet rule total adherence to Stanislavski’ssystem and his method was imposed, the paper reveals no less dramatic though different theatre history and the point of no return: August 22nd, 1950, when the campaign for the advanced and the in-depth study of the System by Ukrainian theatre and Ukrainian theatre pedagogy started. Despite the vast media campaign, the study of the System and the practice ofstage art differed significantly: since the 1960s the System was taught by the masters who had some other basic education than theatrical. Thus, depending from this education and being rooted in some other methodology, these mentors distinguished the elements and techniques applicable to their personal experience within the System: for instance, the disciples of Les Kurbas (Mykhailo Verkhatskyi, Marian Krushelnytskyi, Volodymyr Skliarenko, and others) and Vsevolod Meyerhold (Volodymyr Nelli) predictably accentuated the method of physical action. The repertoire policy of Soviet authorities in Ukraine in general and in Ukrainian theaters, in particular, featured a combination of dominant music drama theaters and the traditions of the theatre schools of the 19th century (with the theatre school of Ukrainian Galicia tending to a synthetic actor, while the rest of Ukraine clearly preferred “gut acting”). This produced the acting styles that go beyond both the categories of Stanislavski (theatre of imitation / theatre of feeling) and the categories of Kurbas (theatre of accentuated influence / manifestation) or other masters. Being neither synthesis nor eclecticism, these styles were determined by the traits of a particular theatre director and the traditions of his theatre.