We did it. We caught up the chapters with our episode numbers. We all lived happily ever after, in Moscow, with Trigorin, and the Cherry Orchard is continuing to bring us residual income. Huzzah.

This week Dan and Patrick talk about Chapters 2 and 3 of Isaac Butler's The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act. We'll cover some of the early productions of the Moscow Art Theatre (originally the Moscow Open Art Theatre), headaches, trials, tribulations, and successes, and the rudiments of what would become Stanislavski's "system" for actors. We also talk about a little play by Anton Chekhov that would place him among the titans of the dramatic canon like William Shakespeare, Lillian Hellman, and Tommy Wiseau.

Episode art is taken from the 1898 Moscow Art Theatre production of The Seagull, directed by Konstantin Stanislavski & Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. Pictured are an unknown performer as Yakov, Vasily Luzhsky as Sorin, Vsevolod Meyerhold as Treplev, Olga Knipper Chekhova as Arkadina, Konstantin Stanislavski as Trigorin, and Maria Alekseyeva as Masha.

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