Vasily Ivanovich Kachalov, was one of Russia's most renowned actors. He worked closely and often with Konstantin Stanislavski. He led the so-called Kachalov Group within the Moscow Art Theatre. It was Kachalov who played Hamlet in the Symbolist production of 1911.
Kachalov in 1935
Kachalov's portrait by Kazimir Malevich
Kachalov and Olga Knipper in Hamlet (1911)
The Moscow Art Theatre (or MAT; Russian: Московский Художественный академический театр, Moskovskiy Hudojestvenny Akademicheskiy Teatr was a theatre company in Moscow. It was founded in 1898 by the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski, together with the playwright and director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. It was conceived as a venue for naturalistic theatre, in contrast to the melodramas that were Russia's dominant form of theatre at the time. The theatre, the first to regularly put on shows implementing Stanislavski's system, proved hugely influential in the acting world and in the development of modern American theatre and drama.
Interior of the "Old" MAT in Kamergersky Lane, originally Lianozov Theatre, as rebuilt in 1900-1903 by Fyodor Schechtel with contribution by Anna Golubkina and Ivan Fomin.
The Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre today (Kamergersky Lane, exterior by Fyodor Schechtel).
From left to right: Ivan Moskvin, Konstantin Stanislavski, Feodor Chaliapin, Vasili Kachalov, Saveli Sorine, in the US in 1923.
Playwright Maurice Maeterlinck, whose play The Blue Bird, made its worldwide debut at the theatre