Naturalism – moscow arts center – the seagle assignment

It would appear to be more of a melodramatic story about love and murder and betrayal, and suicide brought on by conscience. A pair of lovers commits murder in order to be together. The focus is seemingly on the nature of the consciences of Laurent and Therese. In the third act we see the mounting remorse of the two conspirators. But the final scene is pure melodrama: Mme. Raquin enters, overhears their confession of Camille’s murder and is stricken with paralysis. The last act returns to exploration of their consciences and it is conscience and exposure that drive them to their suicides.

The play ran only nine performances. ‘ [2] Even though Therese Raquin wouldn’t be considered completely naturalistic it was the first real venture into naturalism and it is hard to have a play that is completely naturalistic even today. Therese Raquin was on for nine performances after that Zola ended up with a lot of followers who were passionate about his new style of theatre. When naturalism first came about there was a lack of good naturalistic plays which could were able to incompise all of its principles. Henri Becque captured the essence of naturalism in two of his plays, The Vultures (1882) and La Parisienne (1885).

Zola was greatly influenced by Claude Bernard’s Introduction to Experimental Medicine. It was study of the effects of environment on bodily organs and changes in body chemistry on behavior. In Zola’s The Experimental Novel he tried to apply Bernard’s methods to literature. He compared the writer to the doctor, who seeks the causes of disease so that he can cure it-not hiding infection, but bringing it into the open where it can be examined. In like manner, the dramatist should seek out social ills and reveal them so they can be corrected. There should no longer be any school, no more formulas, no standards of any sort; there is only life itself, an immense field Where each may study and create as he likes… ” [4] He believed that a dramatist should never allow his own prejudices to intrude, but only observe, record and experiment and that way a playwright would be able to look at any subject and get to the truth of it. And there are a number playwrights, some often overlooked, who contributed greatly to the movement, some consciously, some unconsciously, among whom are Ibsen and Strindberg.

Anton Chekhov and the first production of The Seagull Anton Chekov was the son of a grocer and the grandson of a serf. He was born on January seventeenth 1860 in Taganrog, a provincial town on the Sea of Azov in southern Russia. To be a serf in Russian was the same as being a slave you would be sonsidered the lowest of the low. Chekhov was the third son of Pavel Egorovich Chekhov and Evgeniya Yakovlevna. When Chekhov was sixteen, his father fled to Moscow to escape debtors he owed for his failed grocery business.

This is where he started to get his skills as a director, stagecraft and at the same time develop what would soon become the Stanislavski System. The Stanislavsky’s System focused on the development of realistic characters and stage. In 1897 he decided to create a professional company, he was by now one of the leading actors and directors around. He wanted to create a new style of theatre and at the same time two new styles were emerging which fit into the reforms he wanted to bring about for the actor, Raelism and Naturalism. He was contacted by Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko who was a leading dramatist and critic who shared his ideals.

Together they created the Moscow Art Theatre. Its purpose was to establish a theatre of new art forms, with a fresh approach to thatre. Stanislavski was to have control over stage direction while Nemirovich-Danchenko was assigned the literary and administrative duties. The original ensemble was made up of amateur actors from the Society of Art and Literature and from the dramatic classes of the Moscow Philharmonic Society, where Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko had taught, they were also influenced by the German Meiningen Company.

Lunacharsky, intervened to protect them from any harm. In 1922 the Art Theatre toured Europe and the United States, garnering critical acclaim wherever it performed. Returning to Moscow in 1924, the theatre continued to produce new Soviet plays and Russian classics until its evacuation in 1941. In 1922-24 the theatre went on tour to Paris and to the United States where it caused a huge impact especially to American acting. It presented plays by Tolstoy, Gorky, Tchekhoff and other Russian dramatists in their own language, and they appeared in a large group, more than fifty in all.

The American Defense Society protested against their entrance on the theory that they were Communist propagandists, to which Stanislavski answered: ‘ It is not so. We have no connection with the Soviet Government. We are interested only in art. It is our art that we have come to bring you, not politics. ‘[7] After two successful tours of London in the late 1950s and early ’60s the theatre reestablished its preeminence in world theatre. The Art Theatre had a very big influence on theatres all over the world.

Research ??? The rise of Naturalism ??? The Moscow Arts Theatre ??? Anton Chekhov and the first production of The Seagull. By Aslan Wheeler ———————– [1] Social Environment and Theatrical Environment, The Case of English Naturalism 1977 [2] Notes on naturalism in the theatre. com [3] Therese Raquin notes on naturalism [4] Therese Raquin notes on naturalism [5] Letter to A. F. Koni, 11 November 1896. Letters of Anton Chekhov. [6] Benedetti, Stanislavski: An Introduction, p 16-25 [7] TheNewYorkTimesOnTheWeb. com [8] Moscow arts theatreArt Theatre School History. htm