Moscow Art Theatre

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 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.

[4] 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.

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.

Stanislavski's heart attack onstage during a production of Three Sisters in 1928 led to his almost complete withdrawal from the theatre, while the Stalinist climate began to suppress artistic expression and controlled more and more what could be performed.

As Russia began a period of rapid industrialization, so too was the MAT encouraged to increase production at the expense of quality, with more and more hastily produced plays going up each season.

[6] Desperate not to lose support, Stanislavski tried to appease Stalin by accepting his political limitations on what could be performed while retaining his devotion to naturalistic theatre.

As a result, the mid-20th century incarnation of the Moscow Art Theatre took a stylistic turn towards Socialist Realism, which would affect its productions for decades.

Yefremov began to reinstate Stanislavski's traditions, including emphasizing the importance of the studio and of the system, as well as interviewing every single candidate with special emphasis and attention placed on work ethic.