The most famous expression of Stanislavsky. Director Stanislavsky: "I don't believe" - ​​the phrase that made him quoted

January 17, 1863 was born a Russian theater director, the creator of the famous acting system, which for over 100 years has been very popular in Russia and in the world, People's Artist of the USSR Konstantin Stanislavsky. He owns the world-famous phrase "I do not believe!", Which he used as a director's technique. On the birthday of Konstantin Stanislavsky, we have collected twenty of his most striking quotes about theater, art and life.

About the theater

"There are no small roles - there are small actors."

“An actor must learn to make the difficult habitual, the familiar easy, and the easy beautiful.”

“Good scenery for amateurs is salvation. How many actor's sins are covered with picturesqueness, which easily gives the whole performance an artistic shade! It is not for nothing that so many acting and director mediocrities are hard at work hiding on the stage behind the scenery, costumes, colorful spots, stylization, cubism, futurism and other “nems”, with the help of which they try to shock the inexperienced and naive viewer.

“When you play good, look for where he is evil, and in evil look for where he is good.”

"He thought he was a complete actor, but it turned out he was a complete actor."

"The theater begins with a hanger."

"There is only one reason for an actor not to appear in a performance - death."

"The house is laid brick by brick, and the role is stacked by small actions."

“Playing in front of a full and sympathetic audience is the same as singing in a room with good acoustics. The viewer creates, so to speak, spiritual acoustics. He receives from us and, like a resonator, returns to us his living human feelings.

“It is the law of a cheap, provincial theater - to jump up and down for every winning phrase. In the old days, actors used to say: “Oh, and I’ll give a candle to this phrase,” that is, I’ll jump so that the whole audience will gasp! Well, some grasshoppers were jumping on the stage! Who is higher, who jumps sharper!

About art

“Art is a reflection and knowledge of life; without knowing life, it is impossible to create.

“What is talent? - Soul".

"Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art."

“For children, you need to write the same way as for adults, only even better.”

"There is no art that does not require virtuosity, and there is no definitive measure for the fullness of this virtuosity."

About life

“Every day in which you have not replenished your education with at least a small, but new piece of knowledge for you ... consider it fruitless and irretrievably lost for yourself.”

"First convince, and then convince."

“While we are young, we must arm ourselves with a toothbrush and go wherever our eyes look. Laugh, do crazy things, cry, go against the system, read as much as it seems to fit in your head, love with all your might, feel. Just live".

"Learn to listen, understand and love the harsh truth about yourself."

“For those who do not know how to dress, fashions have been created.”

75% of what is done in rehearsal is usually not included in the performance.

The actor must learn to make the difficult habitual, the familiar easy, and the easy beautiful.

The will is powerless until it is inspired by desire.

Inspiration is only on holidays. Therefore, some more accessible, trodden path is needed, which the actor would own, and not one that would own the actor, as the path of feeling does. The path which the actor can most easily master and which he can fix is ​​the line of physical action. Once these physical actions are clearly defined, the only thing left for the actor to do is physically perform them. (Note that I say - to physically perform, and not to experience, because with the right physical action, the experience will be born by itself. If you go the opposite way and start thinking about the feeling and squeeze it out of yourself, then immediately there will be a dislocation from violence, the experience will turn into acting, and the action will degenerate into a tune).

The house is laid brick by brick, and the role is laid down by small actions.

Long lived. I saw a lot. Was rich. Then he got poor. I saw the world...
Had a good family, children. Life has scattered all over the world. Looking for fame. Found. I saw honors.
Was young. Gone old. You have to die soon.
What is happiness on earth?
In knowledge. In art and in work, in comprehending it. Knowing the art in yourself, you know nature, the life of the world, the meaning of life, you know the soul - talent! There is no greater happiness than this.
What about success? Frailty.

To live is to act.

Every day in which you have not replenished your education with at least a small but new piece of knowledge for you ... consider it fruitless and irretrievably lost for yourself.

Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art.

Either you (the director) are the initiator of creativity, and we (the actors) are simple material in your hands, simply artisans, or, conversely, we create, and you only help us. Otherwise, what will happen?

We hate the theatrics in the theatre, but we love the theatrics on the stage. This is a huge difference.

You can't spit at the altar and then pray there, on the spit on the floor.

I do not believe! (his directorial technique)

But, as luck would have it, I was tall, clumsy, ungraceful, and tongue-tied in many letters. I was distinguished by exceptional awkwardness: when I entered a small room, they hurried to remove figurines, vases, which I touched and broke. Once, at a big ball, I dropped a palm tree in a tub. Another time, while courting a young lady and dancing with her, I stumbled, grabbed the piano, whose leg was broken, and together with the piano fell to the floor.

To understand is to feel.

Let the old wisdom guide the youthful vigor and strength, let the youthful vigor and strength support the old wisdom.

Earlier, I answered that the director is a matchmaker who brings the author and the theater together and, with a successful performance, arranges mutual happiness for both. Then I said that the director is a midwife who helps a performance, a new work of art, to be born. By old age, the midwife sometimes becomes a healer, knows a lot; By the way, midwives are very observant in life. But now I think that the role of the director is getting more and more difficult.

The scene needs to be made and then acted.

Talent is the desire to work, and secondly, efficiency.

Theater begins with a hanger. (oral quote attributed to him)

Learn to listen, understand and love the harsh truth about yourself.

Good scenery for lovers is salvation. How many actor's sins are covered with picturesqueness, which easily gives the whole performance an artistic shade! It is not for nothing that so many acting and director mediocrities are hard at work hiding on the stage behind the scenery, costumes, colorful spots, behind stylization, cubism, futurism and other “isms”, with the help of which they try to shock the inexperienced and naive viewer.

Feelings cannot be captured.

What is talent? - Soul.

This is the law of a cheap, provincial theater - to jump up and down for every winning phrase. In the old days, actors used to say: “Oh, and I’ll give a candle to this phrase,” that is, I’ll jump so that the whole audience will gasp! Well, some grasshoppers were jumping on the stage! Who is higher, who jumps sharper!

Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky: "I don't believe it!" Only Mayakovsky's expression about Lenin and the party can be compared with this combination. If you slightly paraphrase it, you get the following - you just have to hear two words about distrusting something, the name, patronymic and surname of the founder immediately sound in your head

Phrase Popularity

If a person knows absolutely nothing about this director, about his world-famous System, he will still easily supplement the first phrase with the second. Because "Stanislavsky" and "I don't believe" are twin brothers. This biting phrase Konstantin Alekseev (this is the real name) used in the lessons on skill and rehearsals of performances. The phrase did not make him famous, recognition brought him talent, she made him famous and quoted all over the world, outside

Memories of the director

Alekseev is a surname known in Tsarist Russia. Father - a major industrialist, cousin - the Moscow mayor, the family was related to the Tretyakovs and Mamontovs - well-known patrons. It was indeed the "flower of Russia", which, as you know, did not have its own prophets. One can only wonder how a representative of the nobility and the industrial elite managed to avoid persecution. However, he received all state awards, the title of academician and people's artist. Streets in dozens of cities are named after him, commemorative medals have been issued, there are prizes named after him - the MIFF award “I Believe. Konstantin Stanislavsky. For several years there have been seasons of his name. These are theatrical festivals, which bring the world's best performances. The unforgettable phrase of people who question something: “I don’t believe it, as Stanislavsky said,” became winged. Its first part, said separately, sounds rude and even insulting. But complete with a surname, it caresses the ear with tolerance and hints at the erudition of the interlocutor.

Foundation of the Moscow Art Theater

In 1898, at the age of thirty, Konstantin Sergeevich, together with Nemirovich-Danchenko, founded a new one. Before them, the question of the reformation of the performing arts sharply arises. And Stanislavsky proceeds to create his famous System, the purpose of which is to achieve the “truth of life” from the actors. The super-task, the main idea of ​​this theory, required not to play a role, but to fully get used to it. The assessment of the work of the actors at the rehearsals was the phrase that Stanislavsky threw: “I don’t believe it.” Documentary footage of such a running role has been preserved. There is a rehearsal of the play "Tartuffe", the last production of Konstantin Sergeevich, and he gives advice to the theater actress V. Bendina, who plays Dorina, to lie on stage, as she herself would lie in life. Unique footage. The year is 1938, the year of the death of the brilliant director. Even Nemirovich-Danchenko, with whom relations were completely broken for many years (their friendship-enmity is very well described in M. Bulgakov's Theatrical Novel), said the famous phrase: "Orphans." Stanislavsky died. “I don’t believe” no one else said to the actors.

Mastery Secrets

But the school remained, the System of Konstantin Sergeevich remained, which formed the basis of Russian theatrical skills. Its postulates are fully described in the books "My life in art" and "The work of an actor on himself." The rehearsals of two famous Moscow Art Theater performances were described in detail by the most talented actor of the theater Toporkov and are a vivid documentary evidence of the director's work with the performers.

The performance of any American actor cannot be compared in intensity of passions and truthfulness with the skill of Russian artists, dead and alive, such as Plyatt, Popov, Makovetsky, Efremov. They just have other supertasks. Most of the series, both foreign and domestic, are not discussed at all. In this case, it’s even too lazy to pronounce the phrase: “As Stanislavsky said, “I don’t believe”,” because it still refers to “high art”, actors play well or badly.

The extraordinary talent of Stanislavsky

As a talented person, Konstantin Sergeevich was talented in everything. In his younger years, he worked for a long time at his father's factory and rose to the rank of director. The products manufactured by the enterprise were not far from the world of beauty - they produced the finest gold and silver wire - the basis for the production of brocade. All evenings were devoted to amateur acting in the Alekseev Theater. Love for acting, as is obvious, and Stanislavsky's talent came from his grandmother, the French actress Marie Varley. Later, Konstantin Sergeevich studied plasticity and vocals, and sang well. One of the best musical theaters in the country bears his name and the name of Nemirovich-Danchenko. A famous talented theorist and reformer of theatrical art, Stanislavsky was a very gifted actor. A number of his famous roles entered the world's treasury of acting works (for example, the Old Man). He was noticed from the first professional productions. However, in 1916 he completely stopped his artistic activity. An exception was made only once - forcedly, on tour of the theater abroad. For everyone, the abrupt cessation of performances on stage, and after brilliant rehearsals, including the general one, remained a mystery. It was the role of Rostanev from Dostoevsky's The Village of Stepanchikovo, on which he worked for a year. One has to assume that Konstantin Sergeevich first uttered such a later famous phrase, referring to himself: “Stanislavsky, I don’t believe it.” But he did not leave directing and scientific work until the end of his life. After his death, one of the best theaters in the world, his famous System, his school of theatrical skills, talented students and brilliant books remained. And forever remained the phrase, a symbol of doubt in something or distrust - "I do not believe."

K.S.Stanislavsky did not leave a special book dedicated to directing art. Meanwhile, he was not only a brilliant director - he created a whole trend in the art of directing. The reform of the director's art, carried out by Stanislavsky, is based on a new understanding of the essence of this profession, an understanding arising from the "system" and therefore organically connected with it.

In his directing practice, K.S. Stanislavsky widely used all the means of expression at the disposal of the director, invariably subordinating them to a single goal - the embodiment of the idea of ​​the play. But of all these numerous means, he considered the acting art of the "school of experience" to be the main, decisive one. The ability to correctly understand the play, that is, the ability to discover its ideological content in unity with the conflict developing in it, with the plot; the ability to recreate on stage the struggle arising from the dramatic conflict of the play and forcing the actors to “genuinely, productively and expediently act according to the through action of each role, the ability to unite the team around creative tasks and the ability to properly educate it” - all this underlies the skill of directing in understanding K.S.Stanislavsky.

The practice of K.S. Stanislavsky and documentary records of the process of his directorial work provide the richest material for studying the directing skills of K.S. Stanislavsky - his ability to find directorial decisions of plays, scenes, images that are amazing in depth and accuracy and the ability to embody these decisions in the art of actors.

The directing skills of K.S.Stanislavsky are recorded with the greatest completeness in the books: “Director's plan for Othello”; Gorchakov. directing lessons; Toporkov. Stanislavsky at the rehearsal.

With thoughtful reading, these books can give a clear idea not only of the variety of his techniques, but also of the features of the unified creative method of Stanislavsky the director.

It can be very instructive to compare the "Director's score for The Seagull" with the "Director's Plan for Othello". With such a comparison, the development of the director's method of K.S. Stanislavsky is revealed. If in the directorial score of The Seagull Stanislavsky captures mise-en-scenes, then in the directorial plan of Othello he captures the specific development of conflicts and offers the actors a score of actions, always relying on a creative analysis of the play and rigorously striving to realize the most important task.

The problems included in the section should help clarify all of the above.

1. What is directing?

"What is a director?"

“I used to answer that the director is a matchmaker who brings the author and the theater together and, with a successful performance, arranges mutual happiness for both. Then I said that the director is a midwife who helps a performance, a new work of art, to be born. By old age, the midwife sometimes becomes a healer, knows a lot; By the way, midwives are very observant in life.

But now I think the role of the director is getting more and more difficult.”

(Gorchakov. Directing lessons. - P. 42; see also p. 39-42.)

On the requirement of criteria for evaluating the work of the director.

(Ibid. - S. 94.)

"Director's Intention".

(Ibid. - S. 397-401.)

"Director's Notes".

“It is necessary that from one<…>run to another performance grew in all its lines. First of all, along the line of the formation of the idea laid down by the author in it and the greater and greater development of a cross-cutting action in it - the struggle of forces, that is, actors, for the idea and against it. Therefore, the director, leading these runs of the rehearsal “under the pencil”, should note the main defects in the formation of the performance along the indicated lines, and not individual trifles.

(Ibid. - p. 490; see also pp. 405-411.)

"Director's show"

(Ibid. - S. 414-419.)

“Here you are, Vasily Grigorievich [Sakhnovsky], you are very good at “showing” the actor. You certainly have acting talent. You should try to play. But “showing off” to an actor rarely achieves the goal. It is important to be able to create “decoys” for him. This is the art of the director-teacher. There are actors who have a good imagination, which you just need to be able to direct in the right direction, and there are actors whose imagination must be awakened all the time, toss them something that they will develop and multiply. Do not confuse these two types of actors by applying the same methods to them. Nothing can be given to an actor ready-made. Let him come to what you need. Your job is to help him by placing teasing calls on his way. You just need to feel who, what and under what circumstances you can tease.

(Toporkov. Stanislavsky at the rehearsal- S. 90)

"Director's Secrets".

(Gorchakov. Directing lessons. - S. 435-444.)

“Good scenery for lovers is a lifesaver. How many actor's sins are covered with picturesqueness, which easily gives the whole performance an artistic shade! It is not for nothing that so many acting and director mediocrities are hard at work hiding on the stage behind the scenery, costumes, colorful spots, stylization, cubism, futurism and other “nemes”, with the help of which they try to shock an inexperienced and naive viewer.

(My life in art. - S. 137.)

“Let us be taught to speak simply, sublimely, beautifully, musically, but without any voice graces, acting pathos and tricks of stage diction. We want the same in movements and actions. Let them be modest, not expressive enough, not very scenic - in the acting sense - but they are not false and are humanly simple. We hate theatricality in the theatre, we don't like the theatrical on the stage. This is a huge difference.

(Ibid. - S. 154.)

2. The embodiment of the director's intention in acting.

“The main thing is in the hands of the actors who need to be helped, who need to be directed in the first place.”

“We had to transfer the center of gravity of the performance to the production itself. The need to create for everyone created directorial despotism.”

(My life in art. - S. 131.)

Examples of two types of directors.

(Toporkov. Stanislavsky at the rehearsal. - P. 61-67; see also p. 84-89.)

About the unrealizable "dreams of the director".

“A talented director tried to cover up the artists, who in his hands were simple clay for sculpting beautiful groups, mise-en-scenes, with the help of which he carried out his interesting ideas. But in the absence of artistic technique among the actors, he could only demonstrate his ideas, principles, searches, but there was nothing to implement them, no one with whom, and therefore the studio’s interesting ideas turned into an abstract theory, into a scientific formula.

(My life in art. - S. 285.)

About turning a rehearsal into a lesson.

“If the participants in the performance are true connoisseurs and masters of their art, then the stage direction will not have to constantly turn the rehearsal into a lesson, as it has to do now.”

(Article, speeches, conversations, letters. - S. 321.)

About the director's tasks that are too much for an actor.

“It is necessary that the director take great care that his tasks do not exceed the creative means of the artist himself, but the director in the overwhelming majority of cases does not take into account the creative forces and capabilities of the artists ...”

(Ibid. - S. 479-480.)

On creative and craft directing.

“Either you [the director] are the initiator of creativity, and we [the actors] are simple material in your hands, simply artisans, or, on the contrary, we create, and you only help us. Otherwise, what will happen? You will pull in one direction, that is, in the direction of the theatrical external spectacle, and we will pull in the direction of psychology and spiritual deepening. In this case, we will only mutually destroy each other. Turn our acting into a craft, and create art yourself. Such a combination is possible. Understand that directing, as you see it, has nothing to do with acting, and especially with our direction, which requires continuous experience. Your staging and our acting art are fatally destroying each other. When you create on the plane of art, we must go on the plane of craft and forget about our own initiative. And woe to you if we, artists, want to create ourselves. Then there will be nothing left of your production, mise-en-scene, scenery, costumes. We will demand something else, what our feeling wants, and you will have to give in to us, of course, except in the case when you succeed in igniting us and leading us.”

(Ibid. - p. 500; see also pp. 497-503.)

On the director's plan of the play.

“Director's productions, bold in concept, but not justified by the actor, his skill, not mastered, not lived in, were categorically rejected by him. Better something smaller, simpler, something the actor can do than a fruitless rush to the top with useless means.

The director's plan, not embodied by the means of the actor, remains a plan, not a performance.

(Toporkov. Stanislavsky at the rehearsal- S. 127.)

3. The director is the educator of the creative team and the teacher.

Examples of pedagogical techniques of K.S.Stanislavsky.

(My life in art. - S. 158, 197-199, 347-350; Gorchakov. Directing lessons. - S. 79-87, 288-289.)

About the art of “eliminating acting ailments” (on the example of M.P. Lilina).

Toporkov. Stanislavsky at the rehearsal. - S. 109-114.)

About fostering unity in the team.

“Educating young actors, K.S. Stanislavsky demanded that all the youth of the theater be present at large responsible rehearsals, in which actors of all generations were involved, as he wanted the whole group to master a single method of working on a role, on a play.

These rehearsals were wonderful lessons for us, in which we could observe how Stanislavsky with great perseverance translated his directorial idea into the concrete actions of the actors.”

(Gorchakov. Directing lessons. - P. 50.)

On the educational work of the director.

“... I think that it is more important for me to bring up another change of youth than to put on a new performance.”

(Ibid. - p. 110.)

"I believe in the actor."

“Fewer diapers that limit the actor’s creativity, fewer helpers and those boxes on wheels in which overly cautious nannies and parents like to put a booty who is not yet quite firmly on his feet.”

(Ibid. - S. 491.)

SECTION FOUR. AESTHETIC BASES OF THE SYSTEM

1. About the ideology, content, social purpose of art, about the educational tasks of the theater.

"The business of an actor is to educate the public."

“I will develop a game based on<…>the absence of imaginary, theatrical gestures. I'll improve this part. Perhaps someday they will appreciate it, but no ... so I will leave the scene. Otherwise, it's not worth playing."

(Artistic notes. - S. 112.)

“The audience goes to the theater for entertainment and imperceptibly leaves it enriched with new thoughts, sensations and requests thanks to the spiritual communication with the authors and artists from the stage.<…>

Possessing great power of spiritual influence on the crowd, the theater acquires great social significance if lofty thoughts and noble feelings are preached from its stage.

He can bring great harm to society with the same force, if from his stage they show the crowd vulgarity, lies and prejudice.

(Articles, speeches, conversations, letters. - S. 165.)

“Let's not say that the theater is a school. No, theater is entertainment.

It is unprofitable for us to let this important element out of our hands. Let people always go to the theater to be entertained. But then they came, we closed the doors behind them, let in darkness and we can pour whatever we want into their souls.

(Ibid., p. 228; see also p. 228-230.)

On the tasks of the theatre.

“Do not forget that we strive to illuminate the dark life of the poor class, to give them happy, aesthetic moments in the midst of the darkness that has covered them. We strive to create the first reasonable, moral public theater, and we dedicate our lives to this lofty goal.

Be careful not to crush this beautiful flower, otherwise it will wither and all the petals will fall off it.

The child is pure in nature. The environment instills in him human shortcomings. Protect him from them - you will see that a being more ideal than us will grow between us, which will purify ourselves."

(Speech before the opening of the Public Art Theater on June 14, 1898 // Ibid. - P. 101.)

The actor is a preacher of beauty and truth.

(Ibid. - S. 117-118.)

“It’s not enough to understand and experience, you still need to make the author’s idea your idea and be able to translate it into an extremely faithful stage image. All taken together - understanding, experiencing and embodying the idea - these are parts of one whole, it is a movement forward, towards harmony of form and content, towards ideological and artistic synthesis in art. In the theater it is most difficult, because of its specificity, to come to this synthesis. In music and painting it is easier. Once found, it remains fixed on the composer's music paper and on the artist's canvas.

In the theater, everything changes every day, every evening.”

(Gorchakov. Directing lessons. - S. 503-504.)

2. About realism in theatrical art, about truth.

About the fight against routine, about the truth.

“Routine is called theatricality, that is, the manner of walking and speaking somehow especially on the stage. If so, then one should not confuse routine with the necessary conditions of the stage, since the latter undoubtedly requires something special, which is not found in life. This is where the task lies: to bring life to the stage, bypassing the routine (which kills life) and at the same time preserving the stage conditions. This is the main and, perhaps, one of the last difficulties for the actor.<…>If you manage to climb through this gorge - between the routine, on the one hand, and stage conditions, on the other, you will get on the real road of life.

This road is endless, it has a lot of interesting things, a lot of room for choice, in a word, there is where to roam and develop talent.”

(Artistic notes. - S. 115.)

On the pursuit of genuine artistic truth.

(My life in art. - S. 212.)

Natural, normal, natural state on the stage is the basis of the work.

(Ibid. - S. 212-213.)

About "internal realism".

“The line of intuition and feeling directed us towards inner realism. From it we naturally, by ourselves, came to that organic creativity, the mysterious processes of which take place in the realm of artistic superconsciousness. It begins where both external and internal realism ends. This path of intuition and feeling - from the external through the internal to superconsciousness - is not yet the most correct, but possible.

(Ibid. - S. 225-226.)

About truth and faith.

“But here comes the creative “if”, that is, the imaginary, imaginary truth, which the artist knows how to believe just as sincerely, but with even more enthusiasm than the real truth. In exactly the same way as a child believes in the existence of his doll and all life in it and around it. From the moment the “if only” appeared, the artist is transferred from the plane of real real life to the plane of another life, created, imagined by him. By believing her, the artist can begin to create.

The stage is the truth, what the artist sincerely believes in; and even outright lies must become truth in the theater in order to be art<…>It turns out that a sense of truth, just like concentration and muscular freedom, can be developed and exercised.

(Ibid. - pp. 304-305; see also pp. 315-316.)

"Realism of everyday life" and "realism of the inner truth of the life of the human spirit."

(Articles, speeches, conversations, letters. - S. 419.)

"About the actor's empty eye, motionless face, muffled voice."

(The work of an actor on himself. - P. 251.)

About melody, about playing with feelings and actions.

“Usually actors act differently. Some, artisan actors, care about action, but not about human life, but about acting, theatrical, in other words, about the melody. Other actors, intuitions and feelings, care not about the action and not about the text, but certainly about the subtext. They squeeze him out of themselves if he does not come himself, and from this violence, as always, they fall into trickery and craft.

So let the actor create the action plus actionable text and not care about subtext. It will come by itself if the actor believes in the truth of his physical action.”

(Director's plan "Othello". - S. 232-233.)

3. On dramaturgy as the basis of the theatre.

“The creative process of an actor begins with deepening into the drama.”

“The actor must, first of all, independently or through the director, reveal in the play being performed its main motive - that creative idea characteristic of the given author, which was the grain of his work and from which, like from a grain, it organically grew. The content of the drama always has the character of an action unfolding before the viewer, in which all its characters, according to their character, take part in one way or another, and which, consistently developing in a certain direction, seems to strive towards the final goal set by the author.

(Articles, speeches, conversations, letters. - S. 486.)

The embodiment of the play "in the juiciness and subtlety of the actor's performance."

(Toporkov. Stanislavskaya at the rehearsal. - P. 89.)

SECTION FIVE. ISSUES OF ETHICS OF THE ACTOR

The article by K.S. Stanislavsky “Ethics” (M.: Museum of the Moscow Art Theater, 1947. - S. 7-47) is the most complete presentation of the topic. The article was reprinted in a slightly modified edition in Sat. “Articles, speeches, conversations, letters” under the title “Notes on Ethics” (pp. 332-354).

An extremely large place is occupied by questions of the ethics of the actor in the book Conversations in the Bolshoi Theater Studio.

1. About the super-super-task and the artist's super-task.

(Articles, speeches, conversations, letters. - S. 330; Toporkov. Stanislavsky at the rehearsal. - S. 173.)

Super-super-task binds the whole team together.

(Christie. The work of K.S. Stanislavsky- S. 216.)

2. About the collectivity of theatrical art, about the attitude to art, to the theater, to fellow workers.

“Learn to listen, understand and love the harsh truth about yourself.”

(My life in art. - S. 109-110.)

Conditions for fruitful collective work in the theatre.

“Mutual compliance and certainty of a common goal are necessary. If the artist delves into the dreams of the artist, director or poet, and the artist and director into the desires of the artist, everything will be fine. People who love and understand what they create together should be able to come to terms. Shame on those of them who do not know how to achieve this, who begin to pursue not the main, general, but personal, private goal, which he loves more than collective creativity itself. This is the death of art, and we must stop talking about it.”

(Ibid. - S. 332.)

The strength of theatrical art is in collectivity.

(Ibid. - p. 373; see also: Articles, speeches, conversations, letters. - p. 287.)

About indifference to the matter.

“You claim that you are ready to perform any work in the theater. Most often pronounced - ready to mop the floors!

But as soon as you meet halfway, two or three years do not pass, and you see you already tired, bored, disappointed, and not for washing the floor, but in creativity, on stage. This is terrible! This has no name! This is death to all our art!”

(Articles, speeches, conversations, letters. - S. 274.)

“Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art.”

“Learn to love art in yourself, not yourself in art. If you exploit art, it will betray you; art is very vindictive. I repeat to you once again: love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art - this should be your guiding thread. The theater does not exist for you, but you for the theater.

There is no higher pleasure than work in art, but it requires sacrifice.”

(Ibid. - p. 327, 326-331, 390-392; see also: Conversations in the studio of the Bolshoi Theater. - p. 131.)

Respect for the person and courtesy in the work of the actor.

(My life in art. - P. 156-157; Conversations in the studio of the Bolshoi Theater. - P. 28.)

"The theater is a beehive."

(Gorchakov. Directing lessons. - S. 99-100.)

About the strength of the team.

“If the shuttle breaks on the first wave, and does not break through it in order to go forward, it is not seaworthy. You must understand that if your team is not strong enough and will be broken by the first wave that is approaching you, then the sad fate of the case is predetermined. Therefore, let your mutual artistic and comradely ties grow stronger and be shackled. This is so important that for the sake of it it is worth sacrificing self-esteem, and whim, and bad character, and nepotism, and everything else that cuts like a wedge into the collective mind, will and feeling of people and dismembers, demoralizes and kills the whole in parts. It's all about getting you organized, and that's where I'll help you."

(Christie. The work of Stanislavsky K.S.- S. 161)