Chekhov and the Actors' Studio

Anton Chekhov the dear darling of poetic realism, or naturalistic poetry is one of the few best playwrights ever. I relish his dialogue as the ice cream of that famous Mansour Ice Cream Stall in Baghdad in 1980s near which Oday's attempted assassination took place in 1996. It was Dr Fekhri Qustandi, Egyptian university professor, drama critic and amatuer theatre actor who in the 1967-8 academic year introduced us to Chekhov thru his The Cherry Orchard. Chekhov has been a popular author, both as playwright and short story writer all over the world. He was a close friend of Tolstoy whom he paid visits to at his vast farm. They used to discuss elaborately football as Joyce and Beckett used to do! Oh, no, of course! They discussed human fate and the art of writing. Gorky was a great admirer of Chekhov whom he plagued with beautiful letters. Shaw wrote Heartbreak House under the influence of Chekhov, subtitling it "A fantasia in the Russian Manner". Chekhov and the director of his plays Constantine Stanslavsky were always disputing, Chekhov wanted his plays to be treated as comedies whereas Stanslavsky directed them as serious drama. The man was right, for how come The Seagull, ending with the suicide of the major character, and Three Sisters ending with the death in a duel of the major character can be treated as comedies! Let's not forget, though, that Chekhov meant comedy in the sense which stems from Shakespeare's King Lear and leads to Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Endgame, ie dark comedy which can be more hopeless than tragedy. In tragedy, the protagonist loses his life but retains his dignity, whereas in dark comedy, he loses both. From those disputes came two great books authored by Stanslavsky, Preparing the Actor and My Life in Art. It was thanks to these books that in the Actors' Studio in New York City in late 1940s, Elia Kazan introduced the Method--a style of directing the actors which gave us Marlon Brando, James Dean, Warren Beatty and later Al Pacino and Robert de Niro. Stanslavsky died in 1932 and in his last years after retiring, young directors sought his advice, but since he couldn't see them in person due to health reasons, he gave them his directions on the telephone