Alexander Gelman

NIU theater students study in Russia

by Mark McGowan

A shiver seems to dance along Chris Hibbard’s spine when he speaks of Konstantin Stanislavsky, the legendary Russian trainer of actors, or of studying in the master’s home.

Hibbard’s lack of breath is easily explained: He and 14 other students in the NIU School of Theatre and Dance are indeed taking some acting classes this month in Stanislavsky’s Moscow home, now part of the century-old Moscow Art Theatre School that Stanislavsky helped to found.

“It’s a pilgrimage for an actor,” says Hibbard, a graduate student on the month-long trip that began June 1. “It’s the Mecca of our craft.”

Stanislavsky (1863-1938) is considered the father of actor training in the Western world, and his influence is great in the United States. He spent several weeks in 1925 working with American actress Stella Adler, his only American student, who later would impart his teachings to such screen legends as Marlon Brando, James Coburn and Robert DeNiro. Stanislavsky’s work also deeply influenced Sanford Meisner, whose technique for training actors is used at NIU.

“We’re all a bit giddy,” says Alexander Gelman, director of the NIU School of Theatre and Dance. “There’s no Russian theater student who wouldn’t want to study at the Moscow Art. Few get the chance.”

Gelman, who hopes to make the summer term in Moscow an annual activity, says “the Moscow Art has relationships with only three U.S. schools: Harvard, Wayne State University and now NIU.”

This month, he says, “it’s just our students and the Russian teachers.”

NIU’s group – five graduate students, five seniors, one junior and four sophomores – will take acting classes during the day. Some of the teachers speak English, while others will use translators.

Although the U.S. students will not stage a production for an audience, they will have the opportunity to tour Moscow, visit museums and see at least eight plays. Also, many of their meals will take place in the commissary of the Moscow Art Theatre amid working Russian actors enjoying lunch and dinner breaks.

Each student will earn three credit hours of independent study through the Study Abroad office. Five of the students won USOAR (Undergraduate Special Opportunities in Artistry and Research) grants to help fund their travels.

“A lot of us don’t know what to expect. We’re just going to give it all we can and take in the entire experience of it all,” Hibbard says. “Moscow is, in my opinion, the top. They’re very active in theater and, culturally, it’s important for students to experience that. A little European approach isn’t such a bad thing for an American actor.”

Gelman is equally hard-pressed to predict what his students will gain, likening the training of actors more to gardening in hopes something will bloom rather than building from a blueprint with bricks and mortar.

“It’s like being asked how large and what color the rose will be and how high the bush will grow,” he says, “and the truth of it is, we just don’t know. A lot of what this experience will bring will not surface in one actor or situation for years, and surface immediately in others.”

He also compares the process of actor training to cooking: more spices to choose from means more versatility and more options.

“Actors are their own instrument,” he says. “Every class they take is a combination of how to play the instrument and how to build it. There is something so fabulously mystical about the whole thing.”

Gelman, a native of St. Petersburg who is returning to his homeland for the first time in 30 years, negotiated the new relationship.

He initiated talks with Anatoly Smeliansky, his counterpart at the Moscow Art, in the summer of 2001 during his first day on NIU’s campus – “Having the conversation in Russian didn’t hurt,” he says – and forged ahead after gaining the support of a performance faculty committed to the “international making of actors.”

Planning for the trip required overcoming many obstacles, most notably the October terrorist attack in a Russian theater, the recent war in Iraq and new visa requirements enforced in March. Some students did not obtain visas until three days before they were to leave, Gelman said.

But now that he, the students and NIU performance professor Christopher Markle have reached Moscow, Gelman is eager to explore what opportunities the relationship might bring:

• He would like to bring young Russian directors to NIU to stage plays. Tamas Fodor, a legendary Hungarian director, successfully staged “The Virgin, The Corpse, The Bishop and The Knives” here in the fall of 2001.
• He would like to take a production to Moscow. “It is one of the theater capitals in the world. I would love to stage something American for a Moscow audience.”
• He would like to bring Russian actors to NIU, who no doubt would appreciate its proximity to Chicago, “possibly the U.S. capital (of theater) … there is such a thing as a Chicago actor. There also is such a thing as a Moscow actor.”
• He is hoping that students of dramaturgy and students of theater design and technology can join the group to study Russian theater.

“This is just a beginning,” he says, “of many more dreams and plans coming together.”

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