acting
In the twentieth century the process of acting underwent more thorough analysis and experimentation than at any other time in the history of Western theatre. Previously, written reflections on the ...
Aleksandr Afinogenov
(1904–41)Russian/Soviet dramatist. His best play, Fear (1931), staged at the Moscow Art Theatre, deals understandingly with problems experienced by intellectuals of an older generation in coming to ...
Aleksandr Galin
(b. Alekseyevka, Matveye-Kurgansk district, Rostov region, Russia, 10 Sept. 1947)Playwright. His first play to be performed, by fellow students at Leningrad University's Student Theatre, was Here Fly ...
Aleksandr Gelman
(1933– )Soviet/Russian playwright. Gelman is best known for his ‘production dramas’ of the 1970s and 1980s, which set industrial themes against the psychological investigation of characters. Minutes ...
Aleksandr Griboedov
(1795–1829)Russian dramatist and poet whose reputation rests on a single play, Gore ot uma, most commonly translated as Woe from Wit. The play owes a debt to Molière's The ...
Aleksei Popov
(1892–1961)Russian/Soviet director whose career began at the Moscow Art Theatre First Studio (1912–18) before he took up a director's post at the Vakhtangov Theatre in 1923, staging plays by ...
Aleksei Tolstoy
(1817–75)Russian writer. Well known for his short stories, poetry, and a novel, he retired from the civil service in 1861 to concentrate on literary work. Several ‘dramatic ballads’ were ...
Aleksei Tolstoy
(1882/3–1945), Russian novelist.He wrote The Golden Key, or The Adventures of Burattino (1935), the Russian version of Pinocchio, far more famous in Russia than the original. Instead of the ...
Alexander Blok
(b. St Petersburg, 28 Nov. 1880; d. Petrograd, 7 Aug. 1921)Poet and playwright. His first book of poetry was published in 1904, and he became the leading figure in ...
Alexander Gelman
(b. Dondyushany, Moldavia, 25 Oct. 1933)Playwright. Previously a construction worker and a fitter and later a journalist, he was 40 when he started writing plays. In 1989, in the ...
Alexandre Benois
(b St Petersburg, 4 May 1870; d Paris, 9 Feb. 1960)Russian painter and designer. One of the key figures of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Like Diaghilev he studied law at the University of St Petersburg ...
Alla Nazimova
(b. Yalta, Crimea, 22 May 1879; d. Los Angeles, 13 July 1945)Actress. Played a season at the Moscow Art Theatre before a tour of Europe and America, where she ...
American Laboratory Theatre
Training school and production company founded in New York in the 1920s by Richard Boleslavsky (1889–1937) and Maria Ouspenskaya (1876–1949). They were both former members of the Moscow Art Theatre ...
Anatoly Lunacharsky
(1875–1933)Russian/Soviet dramatist, critic, and the Soviet Union's first cultural commissar (1917–29). Lunacharsky's tastes were cosmopolitan; in a book of essays (1908), he rubbed shoulders with ...
Anatoly Vasiliev
(1942– )Soviet/Russian director. Vasiliev worked at the Moscow Art Theatre during the 1970s. His production of Slavkin's A Young Man's Grown-up Daughter (1979) at the Stanislavsky Theatre was ...
Anton Chekhov
(1860–1904), playwright.The great Russian writer of stories and plays did not achieve American recognition until nearly twenty years after his death. The earliest performances of his works in the ...
biomechanics
Practice for training actors developed by Meyerhold in 1922. Deriving from mime and the commedia dell'arte, it sought to generate emotion and ‘reflex excitability’ from physical exercises.Terry ...
Boris Livanov
(1904–72)Russian/Soviet actor who joined the Moscow Art Theatre in 1924, appearing in a number of contemporary Soviet plays and as Cassio in Othello (1930). He continued to make an ...
Boris Zakhava
(1896–1977)Russian/Soviet actor, director, and teacher, whose first acting experience was with Vakhtangov at the latter's Mansurov Studio and then at the Moscow Art Theatre's Third Studio, where he ...
Century Theatre
(New York).The playhouse on Seventh Avenue at 59th Street had almost as many names as it had tenants. It opened as Jolson's 59th Street Theatre in 1921, and over ...
