Salvaging Strasberg at the Fin De Siècle

Abstract

In June 1997, the Moscow Art Theatre organized an international conference to celebrate its centennial. Robert Brustein, on his first visit to Russia, described the atmosphere as more like a peace conference than a theatre conference. Brustein writes: ‘[T]he whole complicated affair had been carefully engineered by the theatre’s brilliant and personable literary director, Anatoly Smeliansky—an expert ironically enough, on Mikhail Bulgakov, one of Stanislavskys most unforgiving critics.” Recognizing that many of the old rivalries were represented at the conference— including Yuri Lyubimov, former director of the Taganka Theatre and a follower of Meyerhold—Brustein concludes: “The chorus of praise for Stanislavsky and the ecumenical atmosphere of the proceedings were somewhat surprising—considering how many present had broken off into radically different theatrical directions.”¹ In short, the conference became a forum for unity between Stanislavsky and those who diverged from his Russian System.