Materialism, Metaphysics and Theatrical Truth: Glikeriia Fedotova and Polina Strepetova

The history of the Russian theatre as it has been told in the West is largely the history of the Moscow Art Theatre and reactions to the Moscow Art Theatre. Although the collapse of the Soviet Union has allowed Western historians unprecedented access to Russian archives, libraries, and museums, Western theatre historians still tend to focus dogmatically on a narrow range of mostly male celebrities. Headed by Stanislavskii, this informal list consists primarily of those canonical figures deemed worthy of serious academic study by Russian scholars themselves, few of whom are familiar with critical theories of gender, class, race, and ethnicity that have facilitated revisionist history in the West. Surely it is no surprise, then, that the lacunae in the narrative of Russian theatre history are wide and deep. Indeed, until very recently, the casual student of Russian culture might well think that there was no theatre in Russia worth speaking of until 1898 when benighted Russians emerged from the bog of theatrical rubbish in which they wallowed to experience the cockcrow of enlightenment in the House of Chekhov--an institution born, like Athena from the head of Zeus, without precedent and with two male parents.

This tendency to reduce Russian theatre to the achievements of a few great men who worked during the late Imperial and early Soviet periods is unfortunate. Although the historical significance of the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT) is beyond question, innovations attributed to its founders were not without precedent; the MAT marked the culmination of trends in Russian dramatic literature, theatrical production, and acting theory and practice, the origins of which are located in the middle of the nineteenth century. Indeed, long before Stanislavskii and Nemirovich-Danchenko embarked on the MAT experiment--the participants of which professed a "new" concern for truth in the Russian theatre--progressive actors, directors, and playwrights were responding thoughtfully to a rapidly changing social, scientific, and aesthetic context. During this period, two starring actresses, Glikeriia Fedotova and Polina Strepetova, were central [Begin Page 499] to the debate that arose among practitioners and critics over the relative merits of social and scientific truth in the theatre.

From the middle of the nineteenth century, two tendencies in acting theory and practice were predominant among actors in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the provinces: inspired (vdokhnovennyi) naturalism and scientific (nauchnyi) naturalism. The first approach, which relies for its effect upon the spontaneous emotional "genius" of the individual performer, proceeded from Pavel Mochalov, the melancholic exemplar of Russian romanticism, through Polina Strepetova and Vera Kommissarzhevskaia. The second approach, which can be traced from Mikhail Shchepkin through Glikeriia Fedotova to Stanislavskii, is based on the conviction that acting is a skilled profession, the secrets of which can be discovered, learned, perfected, and reproduced through training and disciplined commitment to craft. Although the genius of an akter-samorodok (natural actor) never ceased to fascinate audiences, tolerance for unschooled intuition waned after 1860 as actors began to reevaluate the artistic and professional viability of an approach that consisted of an elusive creative genius manifested in occasional emotional virtuosity. The increasing popularity of bytovaia dramaturgiia (plays of everyday Russian life), along with growing interest in the social and natural sciences, encouraged theatre artists to explore alternative approaches to the art and practice of theatre--which, in turn, produced a long series of rhetorical skirmishes in the theatrical press over the relative merits of systematic actor education and training. Although many actors clung to familiar ways, the more progressive among them sought strategies by which to demystify, systematize, and thereby professionalize their craft. Between approximately 1861 and 1890, Fedotova and Strepetova were the purest and most prominent representatives of the two approaches. For that reason, their experiences in the profession and views on the form and function of theatre help to illuminate dominant trends in Russian theatre in the late Imperial period.

Strepetova relied upon impulse and intuition; Fedotova relied upon system and study. Despite significant differences...