Theater students journey
to Russia to ‘reconnect
with artistic lineage’

by Mark McGowan

Sixteen students from the NIU School of Theatre and Dance are in Moscow this month, living and breathing the legendary teachings of Konstantin Stanislavsky – and presenting a play on a stage quite familiar to the master.

Two performances of “The Birds,” a 2,500-year-old work by Aristophanes with a modern script by NIU professor Robert Schneider, take the spotlight during the school’s second summer in Russia to the prestigious Moscow Art Theatre School that Stanislavsky helped to found a century ago.

NIU sent 15 students on the maiden voyage last June, when Professor Alex Gelman declared their visit was only the beginning.

“The hope is that it’s an annual event – with different students,” said Gelman, director of the NIU School of Theatre and Dance since 2001. “It’s for the same reason we start over every September.”

Staging a play for a Russian audience topped his goals for the relationship between NIU and the Moscow Art, which has ties with only two other U.S. universities.

Gelman said “The Birds,” which he is directing, will play June 16 and 18 on a stage at the Moscow Art. NIU’s actors are speaking in their native tongues, although Gelman figures most audience members either know the classic play well or know English.

The play will come to campus as the first production of the fall season in the Players Theatre of the Stevens Building. It tells the story of two men who tire of their lives and decide to seek a Utopian ideal among birds.

“Professor Schneider’s adaptation is very modern,” Gelman said. “It makes local and topical references, which is very much in the Greek tradition.”

A second difference for this summer’s travelers came in February, when Adolf Shapiro, among Russia’s leading directors of the legitimate theater and most-esteemed teachers of actors, enjoyed two weeks on the NIU campus.

Shapiro observed theater classes and spend considerable time with the 15 students he and his colleagues have taken under their wings in Russia.

Their reunion on Shapiro’s turf will include the opportunity for NIU students to watch his production of Anton Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard.” The play – Chekhov’s last – debuted 100 years ago on the Moscow Art Theatre stage, where it lives again for its centennial celebration.

But the real work comes during the day, when the young Americans will receive an intensive training in theater.

Considered the father of actor training in the Western world, Stanislavsky (1863-1938) 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.

“This is one of the top acting schools in the world,” said Gelman, a native of St. Petersburg who negotiated the relationship. “To hear there the same and similar methods as they get from our faculty will remind them of the level of the training they get here.”

As their time in Moscow progresses, he said, they will discover “ways in which everything is based on Stanislavsky’s method.”

Like the professors in the Stevens Building, the Muscovite teachers will push the NIU students, sometimes through interpreters and often through wordless gestures, to harness everything their bodies could do with acting, singing, movement and dancing.

The students will analyze material through the actions of the characters and work to think, act and react as the characters would. They will release tension through stretching. They will come to realize it is acceptable for a director to “show” an actor how to play a part, an occasional taboo with U.S. actors but a more common practice elsewhere.

Each student will earn three credit hours of independent study through the Study Abroad office.

“They were treated with respect,” Gelman said of last year’s group. “They were treated as artists in training, not little children coming to worship at anyone’s feet – and these were some substantial feet.”

Gelman initiated talks with Anatoly Smeliansky, his counterpart at the Moscow Art, and forged ahead after gaining the support of an NIU performance faculty committed to the “international making of actors.”

“It’s crucial that our student reconnect with our professional roots and with our artistic lineage,” Gelman said. “For many, this is their first trip abroad. They’re broadening their horizons.”

To follow the students as they absorb their Russian experience, log onto http://niumoscow.blogspot.com.

6-14-04