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. Demidov was 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’s Work (known as An Actor Prepares). 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. After Stanislavsky’s death, the disciples of Stanislavsky did everything in their power to keep Demidov’s work from entering the public domain, including preventing him from publishing his many writings.
The Demidov Organic Acting Technique was introduced to the English-speaking world by Professor Andrei Malaev-Babel. In 2016, he published a collection of Demidov’s books in one volume, which he edited and translated with Margarita Laskina, entitled Nikolai Demidov: Becoming an Actor-Creator. Since 2008, Professor Malaev-Babel has been practically recreating the Demidov School of Theatre in his graduate acting studio at the Florida State University/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training in Sarasota, Florida, where he is Head of Acting and Director of the School. It is because of Professor Malaev-Babel that Demidov’s work is now available through our studio.
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. He was also a serious yoga practitioner and made a serious study of certain Eastern and Western esoteric practices. 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 led straight to his or her subconscious creativity, which contains everything the actor needs, and in the process gaining increasing faith in their own instincts and talent. Trust and faith in one’s own talent are what we cultivate in the Demidov School.
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 recognise 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 any director. The work will introduce actors to certain foundational principles of the Demidov School: creative freedom; faith; creative calm; passivity; surrender; trust in one’s own instincts.
Demidov Etudes
WWhile 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 most significant of which are the Demidov Etudes; improvisational exercises with text that are very different from Stanislavsky’s approach and from what we typically think of as improvising. These Etudes are the foundation and the apex of the entire Demidov School. Demidov also created what he called the ‘actor’s scales’, exercises to be worked on daily by the actor, in the same way a musician commits to daily practice. This in itself was a revolution for the actor’s work.
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 consistently access and facilitate their intuitive creative process.
The creative individuality of the artist
‘In the end, pedagogical experience and practice supplied the answer. They showed that instead of waiting for freedom to grace us with its presence – at the end of lengthy and highly qualified directorial work, it must be cultivated as one of the chief creative qualities from the get-go, beginning with the first lesson. Apparently, it can be cultivated so strongly that the actors’ presence onstage, as well as their very entrance – the crossing of the stage threshold – would already serve as stimuli for freedom. These observations revealed that freedom, spontaneity, and the creative state are inevitably tied together, and that they inevitably coexist; that this freedom is always present already in a simple, even simplest creative event; moreover, that freedom is the very essence of creativity and an integral part.’
– Nikolai Demidov: Becoming an Actor-Creator.