Doctor Stockmann by Stanislavsky in the Light of Criticism and History

Abstract

This article overviews different views of critics and theatre historians on the Moscow Art Theatre production Doctor Stockmann. It was one of the first interpretations of Henrik Ibsen’s play An Enemy of the People in the director’s theatre era. It was directed by Stanislavsky, who was himself playing the main role at the same time (1900). In Stanislavsky’s interpretation it was a very special figure, considered more tragical than Ibsens’s one. Less satirical, more touching, this Stockmann became a new type of tragic hero. Not the big figure of previous times, but a person like each of us, only a bit more absurd and naïve. He tended to Dostoevsky’s type of tragic hero as an object of ridicule but still tragic. That means a new comprehension of tragic that is not only heroic any more. The type of non-sublime tragic hero became relevant again in the second part of the 20th century, after the catastrophes that placed every individual in the face of existential questions. There appeared a new type of hero, manifested in the songs of Vladimir Vysotsky and Bulat Okudzhava. While their images are very different from the hero of Ibsen-Stanislavsky, they correlated with him in this new comprehension of a hero as one of us. Soviet historians of the theatre illuminated Stanislavsky’s role in the spirit of the heroes of their days. The unexpected bonds appear between these phenomena. The comparison of the views of theatre critics of the beginning of the 20th century and the Soviet historians in terms of modern theatre studies helps to understand the essence of Stanislavsky’s interpretation of Doctor Stockmann.