Join Pushkin House and Stage Russia from 16th-20th June for an online screening of a new documentary on the master of stagecraft and father of modern acting, Konstantin Stanislavski. Then, watch an exclusive Zoom Q&A discussion with director Yuliya Bobkova, as well as theatre director Declan Donnellan, writer Anatoly Smeliansky, Hollywood acting teacher Ivana Chubbuck, and academic Michael Earley.
Yuliya Bobkova’s Stanislavski. Lust For Life (2021, Russian with English subtitles) is an in-depth investigation into the working process of Konstantin Stanislavski, who managed to maintain his inner freedom and true artistry within the harsh boundaries of the Soviet system, all thanks to the power of his prodigious talent. The best and brightest of Russian and British theatre, including Kirill Serebrennikov, Yury Butusov, Marina Brusnikina, Declan Donnellan, Katie Mitchell and Lev Dodin, express their inexhaustible admiration for Stanislavski and his continuing influence on their day-to-day work, while simultaneously trying to come to grips with his relevance in modern theatre. In the end, the connecting thread is, of course, the human being.
Yuliya Bobkova was born in Krasnodar, Russia in 1995. In 2018, she graduated from the Russian State University of Cinematography named after Sergei Gerasimov in the Documentary Filmmaking department (workshop of Sergei Miroshnichenko). Her first film in 2017, The Last Waltz was premiered at the Moscow Film Festival and won the Best Debut Film Prize at the Rossiya Documentary Film Festival. Subsequent films include Alexander Solzhenitsyn.The Repentance, War and Peace of Mikhail Kalashnikov and Superapp. Stanislavski.Lust for life, Yuliya’s 4th film, will be distributed in cinemas across the US and UK this summer.
Image credit: Johan Persson
Declan Donnellan is joint Artistic Director of Cheek by Jowl, with his partner, the designer Nick Ormerod. They formed Cheek by Jowl in 1981, for which they have created over 40 productions, performing in over 400 cities, across six continents. Throughout the 1990s, the Chekhov International Festival regularly invited Cheek by Jowl to perform in Moscow, and these ties were strengthened further when they commissioned Donnellan and Ormerod to form their own company of Russian actors in 1999. The resulting production of Pushkin’s Boris Godunov was performed for 11 years in Russia. Soon it was joined by productions of Twelfth Night, The Tempest, and Three Sisters. Cheek by Jowl’s co-productions with the Pushkin Drama Theatre - Measure for Measure and The Knight of The Burning Pestle are still being performed in Russia and across the world, and have collectively received the Crystal Turandot, the Moskovskiy Komsomolets and five Golden Mask awards. Donnellan’s book, The Actor and the Target, was originally published in Russian (1999), and has since appeared in 15 languages, including French, Spanish, Italian, German, Romanian and Mandarin. The third French and fourth English editions were published in 2018.
Anatoly Smeliansky is a leading Russian theatre writer, scholar, and critic. He joined the Moscow Art Theatre (MXAT) in 1980 as Literary Director and was appointed Associate Artistic Director in 1996. Dean of the MXAT School for Academic Studies since 1986, he became the head of the school in 2000. Dr. Smeliansky is also Editor-in-Chief of the new edition of the Complete Works Konstantin Stanislavsky and The Moscow Art Theatre Encyclopedia. He is the author of Our Collocutors: Russian Classics on Stage, Bulgakov and the Moscow Art Theatre, Is Comrade Bulgakov Dead? He has extensive experience lecturing on Russian and Soviet theatre in the United States (Columbia, Carnegie Mellon University, Georgetown, Harvard, Princeton, Yale), France (the Sorbonne), and England (Cambridge and Oxford). Dr. Smeliansky, as Secretary of the Board of the Russian Union of Theatremakers and founding member of the American-Soviet Theatre Initiative, has represented Soviet and Russian theatre at various international symposia and conferences all over the world. He is the recipient of several national awards for artistic excellence, including Distinguished Artsmaker of Russia.
Michael Earley is Academic Adviser for Stage Russia. He is writing a new book about the relationship between Russian theatre directors and revolutionary innovators Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vsevolod Meyerhold. Currently, Michael is Dean of Performing Arts and Professor of Drama and Theatre at LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore. He was previously Professor of Drama, Principal and Chief Executive Officer of Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance in Sidcup. An American by birth, Michael had an extensive career in the United States where he was Assistant Professor and Director of the undergraduate Theatre Studies Program at Yale University and on the faculty of the Drama Department at the Juilliard School and also at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. As Chief Producer of Plays for BBC Radio Drama he directed over 50 productions for broadcast over Radio 3 and Radio 4.