Stanislavski's production of "A Month in the Country" (1909) was a watershed in his artistic development, constituting, according to Magarshack, "the first play he produced according to his system." Breaking the MAT's tradition of open rehearsals, he prepared Turgenev's play in private. The cast began with a discussion of what Stanislavski would come to call the "through-line" for the characters (their emotional development and the way they change over the course of the play). This production is the earliest recorded instance of his practice of analysing the action of the script into discrete "bits".