Anton Chekhov is widely considered to be one of the greatest dramatists of all time, and especially among theater professionals, he is considered the cream of the crop. A great deal of this has to do with his talents as a storyteller and dramatic writer, but also has to do with the rise of modernism in Europe in the 19th century, the work of acting teacher Konstantin Stanislavski, and in America, the birth of "method" acting.
Modernism, as a literary and artistic movement, sought to break with the classical and traditional forms to create more vivid and visceral forms. Chekhov, as he rose in popularity, became known for his evocative and at times heartbreaking grasp of human emotions and psychology. While his plays mirror the naturalistic flow of life, many scholars have credited him with pushing dramatic writing beyond the realm of realism into a more heightened depiction. A description of Chekhov's work in The New World Encyclopedia reads, "Chekhov is a modernist insofar as his impressionistic renderings of scene do not impose moral judgment as much as enlist the reader's subjective response." Chekhov's gift as a dramatist was to take the recognizable and render it all the more vivid and heightened.
Perhaps this attention to a psychological depiction that does not moralize is what made Chekhov so attractive to the prominent Russian acting teacher and director Konstantin Stanislavski. In 1897, Chekhov became a shareholder at the new Moscow Art Theatre, where he met Stanislavski, who was intent on staging Chekhov's first play, The Seagull. The success of this collaboration led the two artists to continue working together, though ironically enough, Stanislavski's investment in psychological acting did not always appeal to Chekhov's very unique vision.
Despite Chekhov's disapproval of certain of Stanislavski's philosophies about acting, Chekhov's work went on to be a cornerstone of acting training, and specifically, the Method, a technique derived from Stanislavski's training. Chekhov's posthumous success as a playwright was due in large part to Stanislavski's appreciation of his writing, and Chekhov's work went on to become some of the most important material for people like Lee Strasberg, a "Method" acting teacher who worked with countless American actors in the mid-20th century. Stanislavski once said of Chekhov's work, "Chekhov often expressed his thought not in speeches but in pauses or between the lines or in replies consisting of a single word….The characters often feel and think things not expressed in the lines they speak.”
