One of the most influential theoreticians of modern drama, Stanislavski did more than anyone else to define and establish the role of the modern director. He provides an example of how the most important theoretical work may be quite inseparable from the practice out of which it springs. In the course of his life he developed a ‘system’ passed on by example and by word of mouth to theatre people all over the world. Its influence was particularly strong in America, where it became the basis for the ‘Method’ of the Actor’s Studio and had a powerful impact on playwrights, actors, directors.

The purpose of Stanislavski’s system was to liberate the actor, psychologically as well as physically. Zola had called for truth-to-life on the modern stage; Stanislavski’s major contribution was to concentrate on the actor as much as on the setting, giving body and shape to this notion of truth by developing a theory of ‘interior realism’ and a system for achieving it. According to Stanislavski’s theory, actors must contrive to ‘live their characters’ by drawing on their own inner resources, letting themselves be guided by their own subconscious, their own emotions, their own previous experience. When this psychological truthfulness is achieved, the effect on an audience combines both emotional force and intellectual conviction: ‘Only such art can completely absorb the spectator and make him both understand and also inwardly experience the happenings on stage’ (Stanislavski, 1937, p. 16). The major difficulty he encountered in putting this theory into practice was that the subconscious does not function to order, and so the greater part of his system was devoted to developing ways of stimulating the actor’s subconscious, activating his emotional memory and showing how this may find expression in realized action. One of his most important contributions was to show how the profoundest levels of psychic experience may manifest themselves in the simplest actions, as in the example he gave of Lady Macbeth’s hand-washing. He made a crucial contribution to the understanding of Chekhovian naturalism by showing how the simplest action or statement may reveal a profoundly complex truth. His grasp of this principle allowed him to make a success of The Seagull in 1898, when it had already proved a flop in a less innovative production.