‘Slavyansky Bazar’: the first conversation about a future theatre

At 17 Nikolskaya Street, the eye lingers on a four-column portico and an arched carriage entrance. They belong to the street-facing building of the former Slavyansky Bazar Hotel. The restaurant stood further back on the property; its rooms have undergone alterations and suffered a fire, so the familiar street façade should not be mistaken for the room where the famous conversation took place. The address, however, is correct. Here, on 22 June 1897, Old Style, began the meeting to which the Moscow Art Theatre traces its origins.

At the Slavyansky Bazar, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko began discussing a theatre they would establish together. The invitation came from Nemirovich-Danchenko. Stanislavsky later recalled the conversation as an examination of their artistic convictions, the make-up of the company and each man's right to make decisions. For anyone strolling along Nikolskaya Street, the meeting has left almost no visible trace: the address remains, but what mattered happened behind the walls.

Today Nikolskaya Street is included on the ‘Dens of Iniquity’ tour route. The restaurant's name features among its stories of city life. The conversation between its two guests concerned the organisation of their future theatre and lasted all night. Later, they continued it in the countryside.

A Note and Two Theatrical Circles

Nemirovich-Danchenko was the first to propose a meeting. He sent Stanislavsky a note inviting him to the Slavyansky Bazar; Stanislavsky later explicitly acknowledged that his companion ‘was the first to find me, understand me and invite me’. The note was short; the task was immense. They had to establish whether two theatrical circles accustomed to different ways of working could be brought together as a permanent company with a shared programme.

One circle had formed around the school of the Moscow Philharmonic Society, where Nemirovich-Danchenko taught. Among the graduates he was counting on, Stanislavsky named Olga Knipper and Vsevolod Meyerhold. Stanislavsky, in turn, had the company of the Society of Art and Literature: amateur in status, it had already proved itself in public performances. Bringing these people together required more than a list of names. They needed to work out the terms on which they would perform together.

The meeting place had a complex history of its own. The property on Nikolskaya Street had previously belonged to the Synodal Printing House; in the 1870s, it was converted into a hotel and restaurant complex. An architectural assessment describes the restaurant hall as having private dining rooms around its perimeter. It was in one of these rooms that the conversation began. The memoirs do not preserve its exact appearance, but Stanislavsky recounted the substance of the meeting in detail.

He wrote that they seemed to be examining one another: they would name an actor and consider why that person was or was not suited to their future venture. This was a question both of the company and of artistic standards. Reputation, talent and a willingness to follow established theatrical conventions proved to be different things. They could not simply bring one man's students and the other's actors together under a single name and consider the work done.

The Right to End a Dispute

The discussion of people was followed by a discussion of who would have the final say. Nemirovich-Danchenko was a playwright and teacher; Stanislavsky was an actor, director and leader of his own theatrical circle. Their experience could complement each other's, but in rehearsal or when choosing a play, complementary views could easily turn into a dispute. So the future partners divided their responsibilities before the theatre came into being.

Stanislavsky recalled recognising Nemirovich-Danchenko's right to the final say on literary matters. For himself, he secured the same right over directing and artistic staging. According to his memoirs, the minutes of the meeting included the formula: ‘The literary veto belongs to Nemirovich-Danchenko, the artistic veto to Stanislavsky.’ This dry line set out how the two leaders could keep a dispute from continuing indefinitely.

Stanislavsky later wrote that they exercised their veto cautiously. On that day, it was above all a condition of their future collaboration. It came at a simple price: each had to accept that, within his own sphere, his partner could halt even a project dear to the other's heart. In the restaurant, they were testing whether they could work together day after day.

They also came to the question of money. According to Stanislavsky, they decided to seek investors among the directors of the Philharmonic Society and members of the Society of Art and Literature. He considered his own means modest: his circle's existing debts limited what he could contribute. Such a detail rarely finds its way into celebratory accounts of the theatre's founding, but without it the new company would have remained a set of intentions, however detailed the artistic plan.

Theatre Begins Backstage

Backstage conditions occupy a particularly large part of the recollection. Stanislavsky described the cramped, dusty, poorly equipped dressing rooms typical of theatres at the time. Audiences enjoyed foyers and comforts; actors sometimes lacked even a place to wait quietly for their entrance. For the two men, this was a matter of ethics: they could not demand discipline and respect for the work from the company without attending to the conditions in which that work was done.

They decided that the first funds spent on renovating their future building should go towards improving life backstage. Stanislavsky envisaged separate dressing rooms, washbasins, lighting, and space for books and rest. These were requirements and intentions recorded at the meeting, rather than a description of an existing theatre interior. The significance of the decision lies in that order of priorities: decent conditions for actors should precede new demands on them.

The conversation also covered relationships within the company. Stanislavsky listed their decisions on artistic ethics: a large role and a small one require the same conscientiousness; the work of the tailor, designer and actor serves the same production; lateness and failure to learn one's part harm the shared endeavour. These principles can easily read like a finished charter, but in June 1897 they were still rules for a theatre that had yet to be created.

The very idea of accessibility was to take a further turn. According to Stanislavsky's memoirs, at their first meeting they decided to create a people's theatre with aims close to those envisaged by Alexander Ostrovsky. They then discovered that people's theatres were subject to repertoire restrictions that limited their artistic scope. Their future theatre therefore came to be described as ‘open to all’. The change of wording signalled a different practical approach, rather than a retreat from their commitment to audiences.

Eighteen Hours and Two Addresses

Stanislavsky described their first meeting as lasting eighteen hours: it began at two in the afternoon and continued through the night. An anniversary publication by the Moscow Art Theatre adds to his recollection: in the morning, the two men left the restaurant and continued their conversation on the way to Stanislavsky's country house in Lyubimovka, and after arriving there. The entire conversation cannot, therefore, be placed on Nikolskaya Street. It had two settings and one purpose: to establish whether the two men could work together.

By morning, as Stanislavsky later wrote, they had reached agreement on the main questions. This did not yet mean the theatre was ready to open: recruiting the company, raising funds, finding premises, rehearsing and choosing plays still lay ahead. But the two men already had a programme that combined artistic principles with a division of authority and concern for the actors' daily lives.

The new theatre opened to the public only in the autumn of 1898. Theatre scholar Olga Kuptsova links the meeting on Nikolskaya Street to the beginnings of director-led theatre, in which a production is conceived as a unified work of art. That achievement should not be attributed entirely to the conversation in the restaurant's private room: that day they discussed a project that many people would later help bring to life. This makes the two men's contribution clearer: they agreed on principles that could outlast a single evening.

A Trace on Nikolskaya Street

The street-facing building of the Slavyansky Bazar has largely retained its historic appearance, though the ground floor has been altered many times. After the fire of 1993, only the masonry shell and fragments of decoration remained of the restaurant building. The room as it once was cannot be seen simply by looking into today's passageway. A different trace remains: the recollection of a conversation that began at a specific Moscow address and continued beyond the restaurant.

On Nikolskaya Street, they began with questions that a promise alone could not settle: whom to invite into the company, who would end a dispute over a play, where the actors would work and where the money would come from. They had to continue elsewhere. The next morning, the new theatre still did not exist. Their first shared achievement was a set of rules for it — rules they could take away from the restaurant and put into practice in rehearsal.

Sources

1. K. S. Stanislavsky on the meeting at the ‘Slavyansky Bazar’
2. 125 years since the founders of the Moscow Art Theatre met at ‘Slavyansky Bazar’
3. State historical and cultural assessment of the building at 17 Nikolskaya Street
4. Olga Kuptsova. Director’s Theatre: Stanislavsky, Nemirovich-Danchenko, Meyerhold