The words and wisdom of Constantin Stanislavski:
I had dreamed that the actor who grew up in [our Studios] would make his first timid steps in a small room which was built so as not to violate the inner creative life of the beginning artist. With this aim in mind the auditorium of the Studio was built in a private apartment and seated between one hundred and one hundred and fifty spectators, who were arranged in an amphitheatre that rose upward from the stage. . . . The actors were separated from the public by a simple cloth curtain. This created an altogether exceptional intimacy, and it seemed to the spectators that they were sitting in the very place where the action of the play was going on, that they were not spectators, but accidental witnesses of a strange life. (MLIA)
