The Vakhtangov Sourcebook ed. by Andrei Malaev-Babel, and: Yevgeny Vakhtangov: A Critical Portrait by Andrei Malaev-Babel (review)

To begin unpacking the marvelous significance of The Vakhtangov Sourcebook, turn to page seven. There, Andrei Malaev-Babel begins a discussion of Stanislavsky’s teaching — or, rather, Stanislavsky’s teachers — for, in the words of Nikolai Demidov (1884–1953), director of Moscow Art Theatre School in the 1920s, “Stanislavsky didn’t teach” (8). Stanislavsky, Demidov recalls, taught only in the context of rehearsal; he had no time for the classroom. It was thus left to the faculty of his many studios and schools to test Stanislavsky’s theoretical work in practice: Leopold Sulerzhitsky, Yevgeny Vakhtangov, Demidov, and others. And those theories, stresses Demidov, succeeded or failed not purely on their own merits, but on the merits of those who applied — and transformed — them in practice.

This discussion of Demidov at the opening of Malaev-Babel’s introduction to Vakhtangov’s life and work provides crucial context. To fully appreciate the rich documentation gathered here, we must approach Vakhtangov not only as a self-contained artistic force, but relationally: a particularly resonant voice within a particularly exciting artistic conversation.

Vakhtangov forged a theatre and an acting pedagogy distinctly his own, and his influence was far-reaching, if — as with all of the artists of the Soviet period — mis-historicized. He was also a central force in the development of the First, Second, and Third Studios of the Moscow Art Theatre, a teacher of Stanislavsky’s System, and a transformer of that system, in ways that would in turn inform and transform Stanislavsky’s own investigations. And he was an incisive observer of the theatre of his age, identifying in the work of his mentors and colleagues — Stanislavsky, Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, Michael Chekhov, Alexander Tairov, Vsevolod Meyerhold — unresolved problems and underdeveloped principles, which, in his practical research, he set out to resolve and develop, as a foundation for a theatre of the future. The Sourcebook, then — together with Malaev-Babel’s companion work, Yevgeny Vakhtangov: A Critical Portrait — holds a triple significance: as a study of Vakhtangov’s work; as a crucial piece in the shattered historiography of Stanislavsky’s methods; and as a lens through which to view, close-up, Russian and Soviet theatre at the moment of its flowering.

The creative ferment of Russia’s theatrical golden age, from 1897 to 1928 (from the founding of the Art Theatre to the acceleration of Russia’s cultural revolution following Stalin’s accession to power) is a conversation to which we are only now gaining access. Take Demidov: a master teacher of Stanislavky’s System during the height of its development, he wrote a four-volume treatise on actor training, which, for reasons of politics and professional territorialism, did not appear in print in Russia until after 2000 (the fourth volume came out in 2009). And yet, writes Malaev-Babel, “Without his witness, and without the awareness of his methods, one cannot fully comprehend the development of Stanislavsky’s views on [...] actor training” (7). It is a breathtaking reminder that even 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, we are still struggling to construct — in any language — a clear understanding of Russia’s artistic past. Reading through the documents in this thrilling book, I am caught short again and again by how immersed we still are in excavating the traces of Russian modernist and avantgarde theatre; it is striking how many of Malaev-Babel’s archival source materials appeared, unexpurgated, in print in Russian for the first time in 2011. As to translations: nine decades after the director’s death, The Vakhtangov Sourcebook is the first comprehensive collection of Vakhtangov’s writings in English.

A founding member of the First Studio, Vakhtangov studied, then worked, with Stanislavsky from 1911 to 1922. In 1914, Vakhtangov opened a...