1898 - Theater, Film

Theater, Film

Theater: The Dream of a Spring Morning (Sogno d'un mattino di primavera) by Gabriele D'Annunzio 1/1 at Rome's Teatro Valle; Trelawny of the "Wells" by Arthur Wing Pinero 5/27 at the St. James's Theatre, London; Drayman Henschel (Fuhrmann Henschel) by Gerhart Hauptmann 11/5 at Berlin's Deutsches Theater; The Wild Beasts' Banquet (La Comida de las fieras) by Jacinto Benavente 11/30 at Madrid's Teatro de la Comedia; Ghetto by Herman Heijermans 12/24 at Amsterdam's Hollandsche Schouwburg.

The Moscow Art Theater (initially the Moscow Art and Popular Theater) opens October 26 (October 14 Old Style) with a performance of Aleksei Tolstoy's Czar Fyodor Ioannovich under the direction of Russian actor-producer Konstantin Sergeievich Stanislavski (K. S. Alekseev), 35, who will head the theater for 40 years. Playwright-novelist-director Vladimir Ivanovich Nemirovich-Danchenko, 29, has recognized the need for reform in the Russian stage, cofounded the theater, given Stanislavski his ideas, and will serve as producer and literary adviser. Observing that the cast has merely imitated his own gestures, intonations, and character conceptualization, Stanislavski urges his actors to probe their own psyches and project their feelings in a way that will affect audiences (his original company of 39 players includes Olga Leonardovna Knipper, 29, who makes her debut as Irina in Czar Fyodor Ivanovich and will marry playwright Anton Chekhov in 1901, taking the name Knipper-Chekhova. The production of Chekhov's The Sea Gull that Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko mount in December is the play's the first effective performance, and although it failed dismally 2 years ago at St. Petersburg it is now a brilliant success, dissuading Chekhov from his plan to give up playwriting. Stanislavsky's "method" will revolutionize acting with infusions of genuine emotion.

German-born theatrical agent William Morris, 25, opens a New York office in 14th Street and obtains bookings for vaudeville acts at a 5 percent commission. He will help to build shows for vaudeville house managers and by the time of his death in 1932 will have made his firm the world's leading talent agency.

French film pioneer Léon Ernest Gaumont, 34, opens a London office in Cecil Court. English film pioneer Cecil Hepworth, 23, builds a 10-foot by six-foot studio in his garden at Walton-on-Thames.

Cameraman Billy Bitzer films the Spanish-American War for publisher William Randolph Hearst (see 1896). He becomes the first motion-picture photographer to cover a war.