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 recognize 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 the director. The work will introduces actors to basic principles such as freedom, emptiness, faith and creative calm.
While 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 Demidov etudes, improvisational exercises with text that are very different from Stanislavsky’s approach and from what we typically think of as improvising. Demidov also designed what he called the ‘actor’s scales’, to be worked on daily by the actor, in the same way a musician commits to daily practice.
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 access and facilitate their intuitive process.
The Organic Technique has also proven successful in accessing the heightened emotional spheres. This breakthrough was made possible due to Demidov’s insight into professional secrets of the great tragedians, such as Eleonora Duse and Ira Aldridge. Above all, the Demidov Technique is aimed at developing independent actor-creators, capable of generating their own work, and serving as equal collaborators to their fellow directors. In contrast to modern theatrical and cinematic trends, those based on spectacle and special effects, the Demidov School gives preference to the creative individuality of the artist.
The Demidov organic acting technique was introduced to the English-speaking world by Andrei Malaev-Babel. In 2016, he edited and translated a Routledge Demidov collection titled Nikolai Demidov: Becoming an Actor-Creator. For the last decade, Professor Malaev-Babel has been developing the Demidov School of Theatre at the Florida State University/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training in Sarasota, Florida. Since 2010, he has been introducing the organic approach to his rehearsal methods. In the last few years, he has been presenting lectures and master-classes in the Demidov Technique in the US, UK, Italy, France, Russia, Ukraine, Brazil and China. His work inspired groups of actors, directors and teachers in the UK, Brazil, Russia and Ukraine to become enthusiastic followers of the Demidov School, and to establish Demidov-based training. In 2018, his experimental Demidov-based production of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard premiered at the Stanislavsky House-Museum in Moscow. This production introduced Russian theatre professionals and scholars to the practical use of the Demidov organic technique in rehearsal and performance.