Contrasting Lee Breuer and Stanislavski productions

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Compare and contrast the work of Lee Breuer with that of Konstantin Stanislavski

  At the end of the 19th century, Konstantin Stanislavski (1863-1938) laid the foundations of realism in theatre. His innovative approach shattered the melodramatic stage conventions in his contemporary Russia and across Europe. After more than a century of radical change, both within the theatre and outside of it, Stanislavski’s naturalistic ideals, and his faithfulness to the original text, continue to influence directors across the world. However, wherever there is a prevalent style there will be those who disavow it in favour of a more progressive, avant-garde approach. Lee Breuer, director of the Mabou Mines company based in New York, is one such artist. Breuer’s radical productions have earned critical acclaim for their fundamental deconstruction of classic plays like King Lear (where he gender reversed the lead role), using the original text as a stimulus from which a blend of styles emerge and extracting another element of meaning from famous plays which are often reproduced without much innovative artistic merit. His production of Dollhouse, an adaptation of Ibsen’s revolutionary social drama, illuminates acutely the comparison between Stanislavski, the conservative realist, and Breuer, the avant-garde “auteur”.

  So, in comparing the work of these two artists, what can we hope to discover? Though separated by a hundred years of theatrical innovation, is there a common element fundamental to their different styles? How exactly do they differ, and what ideologies and justifications lie behind each interpretative choice they make?

   Stanislavski’s Moscow Art Theatre was originally housed in the Hermitage theatre, a shallow proscenium arch stage with a curtain raising to unveil the onstage action. However, this was probably more out of necessity than choice, as in 1901 a new theatre was purpose built for the company. While remaining a proscenium arch, the performance space eschewed the melodrama of convention, having no orchestra pit; emphasising a formal, fourth wall between actors and audience.  This style, pioneered by the 19th century French practitioner Andre Antoine, conducted the play as if the audience were hidden voyeurs on the action. Of greatest importance was that the actors not acknowledge their awareness of the audience, or of the theatricality and fiction of the play they are immersed in.  Stanislavski further cultivated this through his use of “circles of attention”. In this exercise, performers would attempt to constrict their focus to the stage itself, rather than admitting the audience. The object of all this is to create a snapshot of a real world onstage, inhabited by the characters.

  By contrast, Breuer’s Dollhouse shuns this realism; in true Brechtian tradition, we are constantly reminded of the theatricality of what we are seeing. For example, before the play begins in earnest, a pianist crosses the stage, bows to applause, and positions herself at a keyboard just below downstage left. Immediately Breuer has broken the fourth wall, continued when Nora acknowledges the audience with shock on her first entrance.  Throughout the play, stagehands are visibly carrying out their duties and occasionally becoming swept up in the action themselves.  The actual performance space of Dollhouse- The King’s Theatre in Edinburgh, is a typical, lushly furnished Proscenium Arch stage, in the 19th century style. While this would not necessarily contradict Stanislavski’s style, with a formal theatre set up, Breuer’s use of the space is radical. The boundary between actors and audience is constantly transgressed. The pianist, at first a passive observer, is sucked into the nightmarish action of the Tarantella. In the final scene, Nora is placed on one of the balcony boxes of the theatre, overlooking the audience, while behind the stage the balconies are replicated housing puppets who act out the scene simultaneously. Seconds before the plays close, Torvald descended the stage and actually searched the audience desperately for his wife. Breuer shatters the fourth wall, the barrier between audience and actors becoming increasingly undefined.

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 Stanislavski’s realism was a reaction to the melodramatic conventional style prevalent in theatres across Europe. However, it was also a necessity bred by the emergence of nuance writers like Ibsen and Chekhov, whose work demanded naturalism. Breuer’s production of Dollhouse in fact juxtaposes the more romantic melodrama (accompanied by the piano) and a sparse “chekhovian” realism. The directors allegiance lies wholly with no singular style, but instead the “alchemy” of the avant-garde theatrical tradition. However, we should remember that Stanislavski was progressive for his time; while condemning some experimentalism as dehumanising actors, and thus neutralising their emotional effect, he ...

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