ABSTRACT
Beginning with the Moscow Art Theatre’s 1923 American tour, the Stanislavsky System, its teachers, and Russian acting in general, were subjects of parody in Manhattan nightclubs and popular Hollywood comedies. With the mad Viennese psychotherapist, the coquettish French chambermaid, and the prancing Italian gigolo, the nutty Russian acting coach entered into the nation’s gallery of wacky comic ethnic stereotypes. The Russian teachers mainly came in three waves in 1922-24,
1925-26, and 1935-39, a consequence of defections from Soviet or Russian émigré touring companies. These displaced actors sought new stage and films careers in the United States but were soon reduced to teaching. To a large degree, they mimicked what they had learned in their Moscow studios initially, and then quickly adapted their regimens to suit their personal strengths and the vastly divergent “American tempo.” Interestingly, each migration corresponded to one of the three separate
schools of Stanislavsky Technique in Russia. The first were the ChauveSouris performers and MAT actors who remained in New York after Stanislavsky’s 1924 tour. Stanislavsky and Sulerzhitsky at the First Studio had personally tutored most of them. A handful had left Mother Russia during the Civil War or just after and spent time in Europe before their American arrival. The Vakhtangov-trained performers were stragglers from the 1926 Habima tour. Some stayed with the messianic hope to build a Hebrew-language theatre in the United States. The last set of teachers emerged from Michael Chekhov’s troupe, the Moscow Art Players in 1935, or the Michael Chekhov Studio. The bulk of the Russian instructors were little known during their life
times. Their classes were small and existed mostly through word-of-mouth
enrollment. Yet the influence of the émigrés was as significant as that of the American Lab and the Group. Two generations of American actors, many of them future Hollywood stars, were exposed to the Stanislavsky System under their mentorship.
