Tcherkasski Sergei Dmitrievich

Tcherkasski Sergei Dmitrievich
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Born	(1957-02-26) February 26, 1957 Leningrad, USSR
Nationality	Russian
Citizenship	Russia
Occupation	Director acting teacher researcher

Tcherkasski Sergei Dmitrievich (February 26, 1957, Leningrad, USSR) – Russian theater director, acting teacher, theater researcher. Ph.D., D.Sc. (Theatre Studies), laureate of the Stanislavsky International Prize, Honored Artist of the Republic of Buryatia. Professor and Head of the Acting Studio at the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts (St. Petersburg Academy of Theater Arts, est. 1779). Internationally recognized expert on actor training and Stanislavsky System (conducted master classes in more than forty theater schools in almost twenty countries).

Biography

Sergei Tcherkasski was born in Leningrad, USSR in a family of Dmitry Tcherkasski (1924-1989), colonel-professor of Pushkin Higher Military Engineering and alumni of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) Conservatory (composers’ department, 1951) who was also a devoted balletgoer (his book Letters of the Balletgoer: Fifty Years in the Stalls of Kirov Theatre was published in Moscow, ART,1994) and Elena Griboyedova (1927-1960), physician, PhD.

His grandfather - Adrian Sergeevich Griboyedov (1875-1944) – disciple of Vladimir Bekhterev, a prominent Russian and Soviet pediatrician, neurologist and child psychiatrist, pedologist, Doctor of Medicine, professor. One of the founders of the Leningrad school of children's medical psychology; organizer of several research institutes, Rector of the Petrograd Pedagogical Institute for Social Education of a Normal and Defective Child; organizer of children's health care in Leningrad. Great-nephew of the playwright and diplomat Alexander Griboyedov (1795-1828), author of Woe from Wit - one of the conerstones of Russian playwriting.

Early years and education

In 1974 he entered the Leningrad State University, the Faculty of Physics, Department of Theoretical and Applied Molecular Spectroscopy.

He started his work in theater in 1975 in a crowd scene at the Kirov Theater (took part in the operas Don Carlos, The Decembrists, The Pskovite Woman, the ballets Spartak, Swan Lake, etc.)

In 1977 he joined the Student Theater of Leningrad State University where he worked under directing of Alexander Galin, Andrei Tolubeyev, Vadim Golikov, and performed leading roles Two Arrows by Volodin and three plays of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya

In 1980 he graduated from the Leningrad State University (MSc in Physics, diploma with honors) and was invited to work at the prestejious Ioffe Institute (Physical-Technical Institute Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences). But in the summer of 1980 he spent more than a month at the rehearsals of Anatoly Efros (Summer and Smoke at the Malaya Bronaya Theater). Artistic encounters with Anatoly Efros finally prompted Tcherkasski a change of profession. And in 1980, he entered Leningrad Institute of Theatre and Cinematography (now Russian State Institute of Performing Arts) in the Directing Studio of Prof. Mar Sulimov (who in the 1930s studied at GITIS under Valentine Smyshlyaev and Ivan Bersenev, direct students of Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko).

In 1985 he graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Theater, Music and Cinematography (MFA in directing, diploma with honors).

Director

Tcherkasski has directed many classical and modern Russian plays (Dostoevsky, Ostrovsky, Griboyedov, Erdman, Shukshin) as well as Shakespeare, G.B. Shaw, P. Shaffer, T. Wilder, J.B. Priestly, A. Musset and J. Anouilh in St. Petersburg and leading regional theatres (Rostov, Ekaterinburg, Smolensk, etc.). He has been Artistic Director of one of the foremost Russian companies – the Pushkin Drama Theatre (Krasnoyarsk); Director at the Liteinyi Theatre in St. Petersburg and the Mossoviet Academic Theatre in Moscow. Two of his productions – Dangerous Liaisons and Great Catherine – were running in St. Petersburg for twelve and sixteen years respectively.

His other productions include Measure for Measure by Shakespeare and Our Town by T. Wilder (2004-06) as well as an adaptation of Shukshin’s stories Open Hearts (2009-12), an original dance piece We Dance to Paintings (2011-12) and Time and the Conways by J.B. Priestley (2011-12), The Good Hope by H Heyermans (2015-16), The Catcher in The Rye by J.D. Salinger, Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare and Three Musketeers by A. Dumas (2018-2020) all staged at the Academy Theatre.

International credits include Flight by Bulgakov (2010) at NIDA (The National Institute of Dramatic Art, Sydney), Duck-Hunting by A. Vampilov (2007) and Great Catherine by G.B. Shaw (2000) at RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London), The Inspector General by N. Gogol at the National Theater “I.L.Caragiale”, Bucharest, Romania (2002), Etudes on Hercules at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Centre’s National Theatre Institute, US (2003), Dear Elena Sergeevna by L. Razumovskaya at Stover Theatre, USA (2001), and scenes from The Lamb by N. Ptushkina at the Royal Court Theatre International Summer School, London (1997).

Teaching

Sergei Tcherkasski is a Professor of Acting and Directing and Head of the Acting Studio at the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts (St. Petersburg State Theatre Arts Academy), the largest theatre educational institution in Russia, est. in 1779. Tcherkasski’s students have become award-winning actors and directors including the nominees and winners of the Golden Mask Award (the highest National Theatre Award in Russia). Tcherkasski himself had received the title of Honoured Artist of Buryatia for training actors. Nowadays his students are working in leading Russian theatre companies – Moscow Art Theatre, Taganka Theatre, Lenkom Theatre in Moscow and Maly Drama, Alexandrinsky Theatre, Baltic House, Saint Petersburg Lensoviet Theatre, Akimov Theatre in St. Petersburg; they are performing leading roles in the productions of such different and renowned directors as Lev Dodin, Luk Perceval, Valery Fokin, Yuri Lyubimov.

Since 2018 Prof. Tcherkasski also leads MA Directing/Teachers of Acting program and his students already got awards of Moscow Festival of Theatre Schools at the Shchukin Theatre Institute/ Vakhtangov Theatre.

Additionally, since 2009 Tcherkasski leads a course on collaboration of directors and set designers for students of the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts (Repin State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture).

International teaching

Prof. Tcherkasski has taught, lectured and directed in more than forty leading theatre schools of the world. He led his workshops and delivered lectures in the US, UK, Australia, Italy, Sweden, Finland, South Africa, China, Japan, South Korea, Turkey, Poland, Romania. For 8 subsequent years (2004–2011), he was visiting teacher at the Danish National Theatre School – Statens Teaterskole.

Prof. Tcherkasski has also led many workshops for professional actors and directors: “The Seagull” in the Mirror of Stanislavsky System for international actors at CIFAS, Brussels (2005); a workshop on acting/directing for the Sweden Directors Guild (2005), for the Japan Directors Association, Tokyo (2006) and at the SUBARU Drama Company, Tokyo (2007, 2008); a laboratory on Beckett and Stanislavsky for Italian actors of the Teatro de Sardegna and Teatro Metastasio di Prato (2006); EXCEL program for professional actors at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (2010), workshops with Japanese actors (Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Kyoto 2015, 2017, 2019).

He delivered lectures for the ITI-Japan at Setagaya Public Theatre, Tokyo (2015, 2017, 2019). He had lectured/led workshops at Odin Theatre due to the personal invitation of Eugenio Barba as well as in the Grotowski Institute in Wroclaw (Poland, 2014), and LaMaMa Umbria (2015).

He also lectured and have led workshops for ELIA (the European League of Institutes of the Art) (2003–2005) and at ITI–UNESCO World Festival of Drama Schools (Mexico, 2004). Together with Jean Benedetti, renowned translator of Stanislavsky, Prof. Tcherkasski co-chaired the colloquium Stanislavsky Technique in Britain and Russia for the teachers of the Conference of Drama Schools of the UK (2007) and led a workshop and delivered a paper at the Stanislavsky in Finland Colloquium (2009).

Prof. Tcherkasski regularly speaks about his research and leads workshops in UK (at Royal School of Speech and Drama, RADA, LAMDA, Drama Centre, Rose Bruford College of Performance, Kent University, Royal Scottish Conservatoire) and in the US (Yale, NYU, The Strasberg Institute, William Esper Studio, Fordham University, Neighbourhood Playhouse Theatre School).

In 2019, as a part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute (New York), he had staged there Stanislavsky’s original production plan of The Three Sisters.

In 2020 he had led a ten-day workshop on Chekhov at the renowned Actors Studio, NYC.

Translator

Tcherkasski translation of The Long Christmas Dinner by T. Wilder is currently running in two theatres in St. Petersburg and Samara.

Researcher of theatre

Prof. Tcherkasski’s list of publications includes over fifty titles. His books include:

• Acting: Stanislavsky – Boleslavsky – Strasberg. History, Theory and Practice. St.Petrsburg, RGISI, 2016 (National Prize for the Best Theatre Book’2016),
• "The Good Hope" on Mokhovaya Street — 100 years later: Reconstruction of Actor Training at the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre. St.Petersburg, Baltic Houce, 2016.
• Stanislavsky and Yoga. St. Petersburg, SPbGATI, 2013 (also in English: Routledge, 2016; in Japanese, 2015; and Portuguese, 2019)
• Stanislavsky and Yoga. St. Petersburg, RGISI, 2018 (second edition)
• Sulimov’s School of Directing. St.Petersburg, SPbGATI,2013,
• Valentine Smyshlyaev – Actor, Director and Teacher. St.Petersburg, SPbGATI, 2004.

Three latter books form a kind of trilogy representing Tcherkasski’s professional family tree which grows from Stanislavsky to Smyshlyaev (member of the First Studio of Moscow Art Theatre, director of Hamlet with M. Chekhov) and than to Sulimov (one of the leading teachers of directing at the St. Petersburg Theatre Arts Academy in the second half of the 20 century).

Publications available in English

Books

• Sergei Tcherkasski. Stanislavsky and Yoga. London – New York – Holstebro – Malta – Wrocław: Routledge / Icarus, 2016 – 126 p.
• Tcherkasski, Sergei セルゲイ・チェルカッスキー (Stanislavsky and Yoga). Tokyo: Miraisha, 2015. 147 + (13) p.
• Tcherkásski, Serguei. "Stanislávski e o Yoga". San Pаulo: E Realizacoes Editora, 2019.126 p.

Book Chapters

• Tcherkasski S. Twofaced Giovanni Grasso and his great spectators, or What Stanislavsky, Meyerhold and Strasberg Actually Stole from the Sicilian Actor – chapter in the book ‘The Italian Method of La Drammatica, Its Legacy and Reception’, Mimesis/Eterotopie, Milan, 2014. pp. 109–132. http://mimesisedizioni.it/the-italian-method-of-em-la-drammatica-em.html
• Tcherkasski Sergei. Richard Boleslavsky’s Lessons in Acting: From the 20th to the 21st Century Siergiej Czerkasski. Lekcje mistrzostwa aktorskiego Ryszarda Bolesławskiego – wiek XX, wiek XXI //Ryszard Bolesławski. Jego twórczość i jego czasy” in Richard Boleslawski – his work and his times/ Ed. Barbara Osterloff. Warsaw: Akademia Teatralna im. Aleksandra Zelwerowicza, 2018. P. 293–355.
• Michajlova, Irina and Tcherkasski, Sergei. ‘Towards a History of Russian Translations of Dutch Literature. Herman Heijermans and his play The Good Hope in Russia’ in Dutch and Flemish Literature as World Literature. Edited by Theo D’haen. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. P. 161-182.
• Tcherkasski Sergei. ‘Mar Sulimov’s School of Directing: A Case Study of the Production "Shoo, Death, Shoo!"” in Russian Theatre in Practice. Ed. By Amy Skinner. London: Methuen Drama. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. P. 141– 160

Journal Articles

• Tcherkasski S. Fundamentals of the Stanislavski System and Yoga Philosophy and Practice // Stanislavski Studies: Practice, Legacy, and Contemporary Theatre. Volume 1, 2012 - Issue 1, P. 7-42
• Tcherkasski Sergei. Fundamentals of the Stanislavski System and Yoga Philosophy and Practice, Part 2. // Stanislavski Studies: Practice, Legacy, and Contemporary Theatre. Vol 1, 2013 – Issue 2, p. 190–236
• Tcherkasski, Sergei. The System Becomes the Method: Stanislavsky – Boleslavsky – Strasberg // Stanislavski Studies. Volume 2, 2013 - Issue 1. P. 92-138
• Tcherkasski, Sergei. Inside Sulimov's Studio: Directors Perform a Play // Stanislavski Studies Volume 2, 2014 - Issue 2. P. 4–25 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/20567790.2014.11419722
• Sergei Tcherkasski. Forward – to early Stanislavsky! or Reconstruction of Actor Training at the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre // Stanislavski Studies: Practice, Legacy, and Contemporary Theater. Volume 5, 2017 - Issue 1. Pages 85-110
• Tcherkasski, Sergei. Boleslavsky – Stanislavsky: who is the first? Development of the Stanislavsky System in the American lessons of Richard Boleslavsky// Stanislavski Studies: Practice, Legacy, and Contemporary Theater. Volume 6. Issue 1. 2018. P. 43– 50.

Awards and honors

Honoured artist of Byriatia,

laureate of International Stanislavsky Award

Filmography

Tcherkasski directed film Khmelita and was a screewriter and MC for Stanislavsky and Yoga

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