ABSTRACT
It was through the American Laboratory Theatre that the Stanislavsky System, both its theoretical foundations and practical exercises, finally came to the New World. Chiefly because of Stanislavsky’s celebrity status and the unanticipated success of the Moscow Art Theatre’s American tour, the Lab Theatre generated much newspaper publicity in New York during its seven-year struggle from 1924 to 1930. The major theatre reviewers, however, found the Lab’s productions uneven, sometimes brilliant, more often disappointing. The press questioned why the Lab could not achieve on the Broadway stage what the Russian professionals – with their assured continuity of acting skill and theatricality – had already displayed in 1923 and 1924. If anything, the most regrettable feature of the American Laboratory
Theatre was in its mainstream American notions of financing, subject to the whims of impatient financiers and the fluctuations of marketplace aesthetics. The Lab also suffered from its dual function as a theatre school and producing outfit. Yet few critics placed the blame on the prodigious efforts or talents of its Russian founders, the cosmopolitan bon vivant Richard Boleslavsky or the diminutive and idiosyncratic Maria Ouspenskaya.
