My Life in Art

My Life in Art is the autobiography of the Russian actor and theatre director Constantin Stanislavski. It was first commissioned while Stanislavski was in the United States on tour with the Moscow Art Theatre, and was first published in Boston, Massachusetts in English in 1924. It was later revised and published in a Russian-language edition in Moscow under the title Моя жизнь в искусстве. It is divided into 4 sections entitled: 1-Artistic Childhood, 2-Artistic Youth, 3-Artistic Adolescence and 4-Artistic Adulthood.

This section, containing 11 chapters, begins with Stanislavski's birth in 1863 and ends in his early twenties. He first describes his family life and upbringing, discussing his early trips to the circus, the Italian opera, the ballet and his introduction to the Russian theatre. He describes the professional Puppet Show, which he and his siblings put on at home, as well as other events that shaped him early on as an artist. He describes his first experience acting, his experience as a director of the Moscow Musical Society and his brief and unsatisfying experience in the Maly Theatre drama school, from which he dropped out within three weeks.

In this very brief section, consisting of 3 chapters, Stanislavski describes his fleeting endeavors with an amateur theatrical group called The Alekseyev Circle (Alekseyev was Stanislavski's real last name) put together by him and his siblings in the summer of 1884. Their goal was to put on operettas which were very popular at the time in Moscow. These endeavors lead him on to the beginning of his acting career. In this section he also talks about his obsession with ballet and his ambitions to become an opera singer, which were both short-lived.

This is the largest section of his autobiography and consists of 41 chapters. It begins with the foundation of the Moscow Society of Art and Literature in the winter of 1888, which he founded at the age of 25 along with Russian director Aleksandr Fedotov and the group of actors Fedotov had put together, which included Stanislavski. Fedotov had directed Stanislavski in a play by Nikolai Gogol, called "The Players". Stanislavski considered Fedotov the first "truly talented director" he had ever worked with. In the first half of this section Stanislavski describes many of the plays put on by the group, beginning with their debut and ending with the events that led to the foundation of the Moscow Art Theatre on October 14, 1897. He discusses his breakthroughs in the art of acting that he achieved in those ten years, through his experience as an actor and a director. He also tells about his acquaintance and relationship with Leo Tolstoy. One of the events that led to the founding of the Moscow Art Theatre was Stanislavski's acquaintance with the theatre's co-director and co-founder Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, who at the time was a well-known Russian playwright and director of the drama school of the Moscow Philharmonic Society. Among the schools graduates in the class of 1898 were Olga Knipper and Vsevolod Meyerhold. At the Moscow Art Theatre Stanislavski was in charge of the directing side of all productions and Nemirovich-Danchenko was in charge of the literary side. At least they agreed that each of them would have the power of veto in their area of expertise, whenever an agreement could not be made on a particular subject.