History
Nikolai Demidov – the Demidov Organic Acting Technique
Nikolai Demidov (1884-1953), was Stanislavsky’s closest associate, for over 30 years, the founder of the Fourth Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT), the founding director of the MAT School, and the original editor of Stanislavsky’s An Actor Prepares. He was also one of the first three outstanding teachers of the System, recognised by Stanislavsky. At the time of his death, Stanislavsky considered Nikolai Demidov to be ‘his only student who understands the System’. Nikolai Demidov’s School of Acting is Russian Theatre’s best-kept secret. Until the first decade of the 21st century, the name of Nikolai Demidov was known only to a narrow circle of specialists. Several high-ranking Stanislavsky disciples prevented Demidov’s practices from surfacing for half a century following the master’s death. In Russia today, the Demidov heritage is slowly making its way onto the curriculum at some of the country’s top acting conservatories. One of Russia’s foremost contemporary teachers of acting, Professor Veniamin Filshtinsky of the St. Petersburg Theatre Academy, refers to Demidov’s methods as the “pedagogy of the future”.
Demidov’s incredibly forward-thinking processes not only continued his teacher’s pioneering work, but also solved the problems of an actor’s creativity that Stanislavsky never conquered. Demidov’s contribution to actor training was recognised by Stanislavsky himself, but also by Moscow Art Theatre’s co-head Nemirovich-Danchenko and key 20th Century Russian theatre practitioners, such as Alexander Tairov and Vsevolod Meyerhold. In the US, Lee Strasberg studied Demidov’s writings and praised his approach.
Demidov combined the gift of a researcher, psychologist and physiologist, with knowledge of the theatre and the art of the actor. For the first time in the history of the “school of experience” (the Russian tradition of psychological theatre), he discovered the hidden mechanisms of the actor’s creative process and developed internal acting techniques that revealed the secrets of the great tragedians — Mochalov, Ermolova, Duse. The time will soon come when the name of Nikolai Demidov will take its rightful place among the great reformers of the theatre – Schepkin, Lensky and Stanislavsky.
For almost 70 years, those of Stanislavsky’s followers who misconstrued the relationship between Stanislavsky and Demidov did everything in their power to discredit the new technique, and to prevent Demidov’s books from publication. During the last decade, however, this historical injustice has been corrected. Several volumes of materials from the extensive Demidov Archive have been published both in Russian and English, with new materials being prepared for publication.
