ABSTRACT
In the chronicles of the Russian stage there are numerous cherished examples of the masters who build magnificent stage characters using the art of the word as their foundation. Since the art of ‘singing the word with one’s heart’ is so much harder and more complex than the art of false pathos, artificial declamation and bombastic rhetoric, the history of the evolution of the Russian theatre’s realist movement was a quest for and reflection on the truthful delivery of the word onstage, and the clearing of the way that led to it. For Shchepkin the realistic interpretation of the author’s text onstage was possible only if it stemmed from the essence of the person portrayed, from ‘the character’s inherent nature’. The Stanislavski system, having come into being at the beginning of the 20th century, underwent a complicated creative evolution in the Soviet period. Stanislavski’s whole life was a living embodiment of the continuous evolution of his teaching.
