Nikolai Demidov School of Acting
A Contemporary of Stanislavsky
Nikolai Demidov (1884-1953) has been called Russian theatre’s best kept secret. A close associate of Stanislavsky for more than 30 years, he was one of the three original outstanding teachers of Stanislavsky’s System. Stanislavsky said of Demidov that he was the only student who really understood his System. Contrary to popular understanding, Stanislavsky never taught his System in any of the Moscow Art Theatre School Studios: he developed it in rehearsal with his actors. In the course of teaching Stanislavsky’s techniques, Demidov kept stumbling into what he considered to be Stanislavsky’s mistakes, and went on to disagree with Stanislavsky’s methods. They agreed on the destination – the art of living and experiencing on stage – but not on the way to get there.
Demidov and the Creative Process
Demidov was a trained psychiatrist from a theatrical family, and as such had a keen insight into the nature of the actor’s psyche and creative process. One of his major disagreements with Stanislavsky was the latter’s overly analytical approach to what Demidov saw as a truly organic process – breaking up the actor’s creative process into separate elements to be learned individually: object, task, relaxation, communion, grasp, attention, concentration, imagination, public solitude, superobjective, throughline of action, tempo-rhythm, etc. A process which is still taught in various forms to this day in various permutations of Stanislavsky.
For Demidov, this division of the creative process left actors trying to juggle several balls at once and kept actors in their heads, thwarting any possibility of true experiencing on stage. Not only was it harmful to the creative process, but it was completely unnecessary. Demidov set about over many years systematically developing his own technique – or rather school – of acting, facilitating the actor’s sense of freedom, spontaneity and creative individuality. He believed that rather than artificially dividing up an organic process, from the first day of training the actor should be accessing his or her subconscious creativity, which contains everything the actor needs, and in the process gaining increasing faith in their own instincts and talent.
The Culture of Creative Freedom
The Demidov Organic Acting Technique is rooted in the culture of creative freedom. As founding director of the Moscow Art Theatre’s School, and one of the three original teachers of the Stanislavsky System, Demidov uncovered the professional secrets of the great tragedians, such as Eleonora Duse, Tommaso Salvini and Ira Aldridge. The Demidov Organic Acting Technique puts actors in touch with their own creative individuality by teaching them to recognize and follow their artistic instincts. Improvisational text etudes, at the heart of the technique, stimulate spontaneity and emotional richness in actors, instigating the free flow of subconscious creativity. The Demidov technique is aimed at developing independent actor-creators, capable of generating their own work, and serving as an equal collaborator to the director. The work will introduce actors to basic principles such as freedom, emptiness, faith and creative calm.
Demidov Etudes
While acknowledging the tremendous power of the actor’s creative nature, Stanislavsky also considered it fickle, and therefore not fully reliable. Demidov who was the only professional psychologist among the masters of the Russian theatre, took a different approach. He discovered the means to remove those obstacles standing in the way of the actor’s subconscious creativity, thus clearing the path for Creative Nature itself.
Additionally, he created unique exercises – the Demidov etudes; improvisational exercises with text that are very different from Stanislavsky’s approach and from what we typically think of as improvising. Demidov also designed what he called the ‘actor’s scales’, to be worked on daily by the actor, in the same way a musician commits to daily practice.
These exercises give the artist the capacity to cultivate specific qualities, and pave the way for the actor’s sustainable creative state. Moreover, Demidov pioneered an organic acting technique that enables actors to access and facilitate their intuitive process.
The creative individuality of the artist
The Demidov organic acting technique was introduced to the English-speaking world by Andrei Malaev-Babel. In 2016, he edited and translated a Routledge Demidov collection titled Nikolai Demidov: Becoming an Actor-Creator.
For the last decade, Professor Malaev-Babel has been developing the Demidov School of Theatre at the Florida State University/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training in Sarasota, Florida. Since 2010, he has been introducing the organic approach to his rehearsal methods. In the last few years, he has been presenting lectures and master-classes in the Demidov Technique in the US, UK, Italy, France, Russia, Ukraine, Brazil and China. His work inspired groups of actors, directors and teachers in the UK, Brazil, Russia and Ukraine to become enthusiastic followers of the Demidov School, and to establish Demidov-based training. In 2018, his experimental Demidov-based production of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard premiered at the Stanislavsky House-Museum in Moscow. This production introduced Russian theatre professionals and scholars to the practical use of the Demidov organic technique in rehearsal and performance.
