ABSTRACT
The work of an actor and director, as people understand it here, is a painful process, not merely some abstract 'joy of creativeness' that one hears so much empty talk about from the ignoramuses in art. In short the author come back to the ideas of Gogol and Shchepkin about the theatre, words you have already heard many times from me and probably will hear more than once again. He wants one to learn again in practice what is called the 'Stanislavski Method'. To the ordinary man in the street the most 'joyous' jobs might be the dance of the prima ballerina in Don Quixote or Swan Lake. He does not know how much physical effort, concentrated attention, sheer work Madame Geltzer had to put into the preparation of her famous 'pas de deux' in those ballets, or what she looks like when she is in her dressing room after the dance is over.
