The Moscow Art Theatre (or MAT; Russian: Московский Художественный академический театр (МХАТ), Moskovskiy Hudojestvenny Akademicheskiy Teatr (MHAT)) was a theatre company in Moscow. It was founded in 1898 (1898) by the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski, together with the playwright and director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. It was conceived as a venue for naturalistic theatre, in contrast to the melodramas that were Russia's dominant form of theatre at the time. The theatre, the first to regularly put on shows implementing Stanislavski's system, proved hugely influential in the acting world and in the development of modern American theatre and drama.
It was officially renamed the Gorky Moscow Art Theatre in 1932. In 1987, the theatre split into two troupes, the Moscow Gorky Academic Art Theatre and the Moscow Chekhov Art Theatre.
Contents
Beginnings
At the end of the 19th-century, Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko both wanted to reform Russian theatre to high-quality art that was available to the general public. They set about creating a private theatre over which they had total control (as opposed to trying to reform the government-operated Maly Theatre, a move which would have given them far less artistic freedom). On 22 June 1897, the two men met for the first time at the Slavyanski Bazar for a lunch that started at 2 PM and did not end until 8 AM the next morning.
Their differences proved to be complementary, and they agreed to initially divide power over the theatre, with Nemirovich in charge of the literary decisions and Stanislavski in charge of all production decisions. Stanislavski interviewed all his actors, making sure they were hard working and devoted as well as talented. He made them live together in common housing for months at a time to foster community and trust, which he believed would raise the quality of their performances. Stanislavski's system, in which he trained actors via the acting studios he founded as part of the theatre, became central to every production the theatre put on. The system played a huge influence in the development of method acting.
Stanislavski and Danchenko's initial goal of having an “open theatre,” one that anyone could afford to attend, was quickly destroyed when they could neither obtain adequate funding from private investors, nor from the Moscow City Council.
History
The Theatre's first season included works by Aleksey Tolstoy (Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich), Henrik Ibsen, and William Shakespeare, but it wasn't until it staged Anton Chekhov's four major works, beginning with its production of The Seagull in 1898, with Stanislavski in the role of Trigorin, that the theatre achieved fame.
After Chekhov's death in 1904, the theatre experienced a huge changeover; Chekhov had envisioned fellow playwright and friend Maxim Gorki as his successor as the Theatre's leading dramatist, but Nemirovich and Stanislavski's reaction to his play Summerfolk was unenthusiastic, causing Gorki to leave. He took with him Savva Morozov, one of the theatre's main investors at the time.
Now in dire straits, the theatre decided to accept invitations to go on an international tour in 1906, which started in Berlin and included Dresden, Frankfurt, Prague, and Vienna. The tour was a huge success, gaining the theatre international acclaim. However, the sudden change in fortune did not completely quell the company's internal strife; Stanislavski appointed friends to the theatre's management without consulting Nemirovich and opened studios attached to the theatre where he began to implement his acting system, cementing Nemirovich's fears that the theatre was becoming a mere extension of Stanislavski's own ideas and work. The tension between the two led Stanislavski to abandon his duties as a board member and to relinquish all his power over policy decisions.
The theatre continued to thrive after the October Revolution of 1917 and was one of the foremost state-supported theatres of the Soviet Union, with an extensive repertoire of leading Russian and Western playwrights. Although several revolutionary groups saw it as an irrelevant marker of pre-revolutionary culture, the theatre was initially granted support by Vladimir Lenin, a frequent patron of the Art Theatre himself. Mikhail Bulgakov wrote several plays for the MAT and satirised the organisation mercilessly in his Theatrical Novel. Isaac Babel's Sunset was also performed there during the 1920s. A significant number of Moscow Art Theatre's actors were awarded the prestigious title of People's Artist of the USSR. Many actors became nationally known and admired thanks to their film roles. However, the Civil War saw many of the theatre's actors being cut off from Moscow, and the support it received from the government diminished under Lenin's New Economic Policy. The subsidies it had come to rely on were withdrawn and the theatre was forced to survive on its own profits. By 1923, the MAT was in $25,000 debt.
Artistic directors
Konstantin Stanislavski (artistic director until 1934) and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (executive director and later artistic director until his death in 1943)
Nikolai Khmelyov (artistic director since 1943 until his death in 1945) and Ivan Moskvin (executive director since 1943 until his death in 1946)
Mikhail Kedrov (since 1946 until 1949, then chief director until 1955 when the post was abolished)
Artistic council of the theatre (since 1949 until 1955)
Viktor Stanitsyn, Boris Livanov, Mikhail Kedrov, and Vladimir Bogomolov (since 1955 until 1970)
Oleg Yefremov (since 1970 until the troupe was split in 1987)
List of productions
What follows is a full chronological list of MAT productions
1898
Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy
The Sunken Bell, by Gerhart Hauptmann
The Merchant of Venice, by William Shakespeare
The Seagull, by Anton Chekhov
1899
Antigone, by Sophocles
Hedda Gabler, by Henrik Ibsen
The Death of Ivan the Terrible, by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy
Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare
Drayman Henschel, by Gerhart Hauptmann
Uncle Vanya, by Anton Chekhov
Lonely People, by Gerhart Hauptmann
1900
The Snow Maiden, by Alexander Ostrovsky
An Enemy of the People, by Henrik Ibsen
When We Dead Awaken, by Henrik Ibsen
1901
Three Sisters, by Anton Chekhov
The Wild Duck, by Henrik Ibsen
Michael Kramer, by Gerhart Hauptmann
In my Dreams, by Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko
1902
The Philistines, by Maxim Gorky
The Power of Darkness, by Leo Tolstoy
The Lower Depths, by Maxim Gorky
1903
The Pillars of Society, by Henrik Ibsen
Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare
1904
The Cherry Orchard, by Anton Chekhov
Ivanov, by Anton Chekhov
1905
Children of the Sun, Maxim Gorky
1906
Woe from Wit, by Aleksander Griboyedov (reproduced in 1914)
Brand, by Henrik Ibsen
1907
Boris Godunov, by Alexander Pushkin
1908
The Blue Bird, by Maurice Maeterlinck
The Government Inspector, Nikolai Gogol
1909
At the Gate of the Kingdom, by Knut Hamsun
A Month in the Country, by Ivan Turgenev
1910
Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man, by Alexander Ostrovsky
The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1911
The Living Corpse, by Leo Tolstoy
Hamlet, by William Shakespeare
1912
Fortune's Fool, A Provincial Lady and It Tears Where It is Thin, by Ivan Turgenev
Peer Gynt, by Henrik Ibsen
1913
The Forced Marriage and The Imaginary Invalid by Molière
1914
The Mistress of the Inn, by Carlo Goldoni
Pasukhin's Death, by Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
1915
The Stone Guest, Mozart and Salieri and A Feast in Time of Plague, by Alexander Pushkin
1916–17
The Village of Stepanchikovo, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Note: When more than one play is listed on the same line, it means that they were produced and performed together.