1.
Russian Empire
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The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the decline of neighboring powers, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. It played a role in 1812–14 in defeating Napoleons ambitions to control Europe. The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its German-descended cadet branch, with 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics, ethnicity, there were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts, they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia. Economically, the empire had an agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways, the land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged and he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Tsar Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge empire into a major European power, Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. She expanded the state by conquest, colonization and diplomacy, continuing Peter the Greats policy of modernisation along West European lines, Tsar Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861. His policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and that connection by 1914 led to Russias entry into the First World War on the side of France, Britain, and Serbia, against the German, Austrian and Ottoman empires. The Russian Empire functioned as a monarchy until the Revolution of 1905. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917, largely as a result of failures in its participation in the First World War. Perhaps the latter was done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country, Poland was divided in the 1790-1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. However, this vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns, the class of kholops, close to the one of slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter I converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation
2.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
3.
Anton Chekhov
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Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short story writer, who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics and his best short stories are held in esteem by writers. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his career, Medicine is my lawful wife, he once said. These four works present a challenge to the ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a theatre of mood. Chekhov had at first written stories only for financial gain, but as his artistic ambition grew and he made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them. Anton Chekhov was born on the feast day of St. Anthony the Great 29 January 1860, the third of six surviving children, in Taganrog, a port on the Sea of Azov in southern Russia. His father, Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov, the son of a serf and his Ukrainian wife, were from the village Vilkhovatka near Kobeliaky. A director of the choir, devout Orthodox Christian, and physically abusive father. Chekhovs mother, Yevgeniya, was an excellent storyteller who entertained the children with tales of her travels with her cloth-merchant father all over Russia and our talents we got from our father, Chekhov remembered, but our soul from our mother. Despotism and lying so mutilated our childhood that its sickening and frightening to think about it, remember the horror and disgust we felt in those times when Father threw a tantrum at dinner over too much salt in the soup and called Mother a fool. Chekhov attended the Greek School in Taganrog and the Taganrog Gymnasium and he sang at the Greek Orthodox monastery in Taganrog and in his fathers choirs. In 1876, Chekhovs father was declared bankrupt after overextending his finances building a new house, to avoid debtors prison he fled to Moscow, where his two eldest sons, Alexander and Nikolay, were attending university. The family lived in poverty in Moscow, Chekhovs mother physically and emotionally broken by the experience, Chekhov was left behind to sell the familys possessions and finish his education. Chekhov remained in Taganrog for three years, boarding with a man called Selivanov who, like Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard, had bailed out the family for the price of their house. Chekhov had to pay for his own education, which he managed by private tutoring, catching and selling goldfinches and he sent every ruble he could spare to his family in Moscow, along with humorous letters to cheer them up. Chekhov also enjoyed a series of affairs, one with the wife of a teacher. In 1879, Chekhov completed his schooling and joined his family in Moscow, Chekhov now assumed responsibility for the whole family
4.
Actor
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An actor is a person who portrays a character in a performance. Simplistically speaking, the person denominated actor or actress is someone beautiful who plays important characters, the actor performs in the flesh in the traditional medium of the theatre, or in modern mediums such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is ὑποκριτής, literally one who answers, the actors interpretation of their role pertains to the role played, whether based on a real person or fictional character. Interpretation occurs even when the actor is playing themselves, as in forms of experimental performance art, or, more commonly, to act, is to create. Formerly, in societies, only men could become actors. When used for the stage, women played the roles of prepubescent boys. The etymology is a derivation from actor with ess added. However, when referring to more than one performer, of both sexes, actor is preferred as a term for male performers. Actor is also used before the name of a performer as a gender-specific term. Within the profession, the re-adoption of the term dates to the 1950–1960s. As Whoopi Goldberg put it in an interview with the paper, Im an actor – I can play anything. The U. K. performers union Equity has no policy on the use of actor or actress, an Equity spokesperson said that the union does not believe that there is a consensus on the matter and stated that the. subject divides the profession. In 2009, the Los Angeles Times stated that Actress remains the term used in major acting awards given to female recipients. However, player remains in use in the theatre, often incorporated into the name of a group or company, such as the American Players. Also, actors in improvisational theatre may be referred to as players, prior to Thespis act, Grecian stories were only expressed in song, dance, and in third person narrative. In honor of Thespis, actors are commonly called Thespians, the exclusively male actors in the theatre of ancient Greece performed in three types of drama, tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play. Western theatre developed and expanded considerably under the Romans, as the Western Roman Empire fell into decay through the 4th and 5th centuries, the seat of Roman power shifted to Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire. Records show that mime, pantomime, scenes or recitations from tragedies and comedies, dances, from the 5th century, Western Europe was plunged into a period of general disorder
5.
Moscow Art Theatre
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The Moscow Art Theatre is a theatre company in Moscow. It was founded in 1898 by the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski, together with the playwright and it was conceived as a venue for naturalistic theatre, in contrast to the melodramas that were Russias dominant form of theatre at the time. The theatre, the first to put on shows implementing Stanislavskis system, proved hugely influential in the acting world and in the development of modern American theatre. At the end of the 19th-century, Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko both wanted to reform Russian theatre to high-quality art that was available to the general public and they set about creating a private theatre over which they had total control. On 22 June 1897, the two men met for the first time at the Slavyanski Bazar for a lunch that started at 2 PM, while Stanislavski’s approach to theatre revolved around the acting process, Nemirovich was far more concerned with the literary, intellectual angle. Stanislavski interviewed all his actors, making sure they were hard working and 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. Stanislavskis system, in which he trained actors via the studios he founded as part of the theatre. The system played an influence in the development of method acting. This production was so successful that the theatre adopted the seagull as its emblem and he took with him Savva Morozov, one of the theatre’s main investors at the time. Now in dire straits, the decided to accept invitations to go on an international tour in 1906, which started in Berlin and included Dresden, Frankfurt, Prague. The tour was a success, gaining the theatre international acclaim. The tension between the two led Stanislavski to abandon his duties as a member and to relinquish all his power over policy decisions. Mikhail Bulgakov wrote several plays for the MAT and satirised the organisation mercilessly in his novel Black Snow, isaac Babels Sunset was also performed there during the 1920s. A significant number of Moscow Art Theatres actors were awarded the title of Peoples Artist of the USSR. Many actors became known and admired thanks to their film roles. However, the Civil War saw many of the actors being cut off from Moscow. The subsidies it had come to rely on were withdrawn and the theatre was forced to survive on its own profits, by 1923, the MAT was in $25,000 debt. The theatre experienced further blows through the end of the 1930s, a “red director” was appointed to the management by the government to ensure that the MAT’s activities were not counter-revolutionary and that they served the Communist cause
6.
Konstantin Stanislavski
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Konstantin Sergeievich Stanislavski was a seminal Russian theatre practitioner. He was widely recognised as a character actor and the many productions that he directed garnered a reputation as one of the leading theatre directors of his generation. His principal fame and influence, however, rests on his system of training, preparation. Its influential tours of Europe and the US and its productions of The Seagull and Hamlet established his reputation. At the MATs 30-year anniversary celebrations in 1928, a heart attack on-stage put an end to his acting career. He continued to direct, teach, and write about acting until his death a few weeks before the publication of the first volume of his lifes great work, the acting manual An Actors Work. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and the Order of Lenin and was one of the first to be granted the title of Peoples Artist of the USSR. Stanislavski wrote that there is nothing more tedious than an actors biography, at the request of a US publisher, however, he reluctantly agreed to write his autobiography, My Life in Art, though its account of his artistic development is not always accurate. Two English-language biographies have been published, David Magarshacks Stanislavsky, A Life and Jean Benedettis Stanislavski, His Life, Stanislavski subjected his acting and direction to a rigorous process of artistic self-analysis and reflection. His system of acting developed out of his persistent efforts to remove the blocks that he encountered in his performances and he also introduced into the production process a period of discussion and detailed analysis of the play by the cast. Despite the success that this brought, particularly with his Naturalistic stagings of the plays of Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky. Both his struggles with Chekhovs drama and his experiments with Symbolism encouraged a greater attention to inner action and he began to develop the more actor-centred techniques of psychological realism and his focus shifted from his productions to rehearsal process and pedagogy. He pioneered the use of theatre studios as a laboratory in which to innovate actor training, the system cultivates what Stanislavski calls the art of experiencing. In rehearsal, the searches for inner motives to justify action. Stanislavskis earliest reference to his system appears in 1909, the year that he first incorporated it into his rehearsal process. The MAT adopted it as its official rehearsal method in 1911, later, Stanislavski further elaborated the system with a more physically grounded rehearsal process that came to be known as the Method of Physical Action. Minimising at-the-table discussions, he now encouraged an active analysis, in which the sequence of dramatic situations are improvised, the best analysis of a play, Stanislavski argued, is to take action in the given circumstances. The Opera-Dramatic Studio embodied the most complete implementation of the training exercises described in his manuals, meanwhile, the transmission of his earlier work via the students of the First Studio was revolutionising acting in the West
