Mikhail Aleksandrovich – Michael - Chekhov, a nephew of the playwright whose work was so closely associated with that of Stanislavski, was auditioned by the latter in April 1912. Stanislavski immediately invited him to join the MAT, and noted to Sulerzhitsky that he considered the young actor to be ‘one of the real hopes for the future’ (Benedetti, 1988: 207). Chekhov, like Vakhtangov, began as an enthusiastic, if somewhat mischievous student of Stanislavski. Gordon cites a revealing story about the two men:
‘Asked by the teacher to enact a true dramatic situation as an exercise in Affective Memory, Chekhov recreated his wistful presence at his father’s funeral. Overwhelmed by its fine detail and sense of truth, Stanislavski embraced Michael,…show more content… It may be the case, however, that Chekhov might not have fully appreciated how Stanislavski’s ideas had developed in the years since Chekhov had worked with him. Chekhov’s most direct and intensive experience of working with Stanislavski was in the years just prior to the 1917 Revolution, when Stanislavski was using, perhaps crudely, Affective Memory and working with a more limited view of the working and creative potential of the imagination than he would later encompass. By 1928, as the following extract from a piece Stanislavski wrote for the Encyclopaedia Brittanica the following year shows, he was viewing the relationship between experience and imagination and creativity in much more sophisticated terms. The passage is of crucial importance, I would say, in understanding thesophistication and complexity of Stanislavski’s view, and as such is worth quoting from at some…show more content… In this way, the images of our fantasy, flaring up in us without any effort on our part find a response in our affective memory and evoke in it the sounds of corresponding feelings. This is why creative fantasy is the fundamental gift the actor needs…There is widespread published opinion that the method I practice in the artistic training of the actor, as it appeals to the stores of his / her affective memory; that is, his personal emotional experience, via the imagination, will by the same token result in reducing the range of his / her creativity to the limits of his / her personal experience and will not allow him / her to play roles which are dissimilar to him / her in terms of psychological mould. This opinion is based on a very simple misunderstanding, since those elements of actuality from which our fantasy shapes its imaginary creations are also drawn by it from our limited experience and the wealth and variety of these creations is achieved only through combinations of the elements drawn from experience. The musical scale has only seven basic tones;
