Vsevolod Meyerhold
Meyerhold prepares for his role as Konstantin in the MAT production of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, Pushkino, 1898. | |
Born | February 9, 1874 |
---|---|
Died | February 2, 1940 | (aged 65)
Web | Wikipedia, Wikipedia-RU |
Collections | RGALI, Yale Library |
Vsevolod Meyerhold (Всеволод Эмильевич Мейерхольд, 1874–1940) was a Russian and Soviet theatre director, actor and theatre producer.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 made Meyerhold one of the most enthusiastic activists of the new Soviet Theatre. He founded his own theatre in 1922, which was known as The Meyerhold Theatre and lasted until 1938. Meyerhold fiercely confronted the principles of theatrical academism, claiming that they were incapable of finding a common language that could reflect the new reality. The actors participating in Meyerhold's productions acted according to the principles of biomechanics, a system of actor training that was later taught in a special school created by Meyerhold. Meyerhold connected psychological and physiological processes and focused on learning gestures and movements as a way of expressing emotion outwardly. He developed a number of body expressions that his actors would use to portray specific emotions and characters.
Meyerhold was strongly opposed to socialist realism, and at the beginning of the 1930s, when Stalin was clamping down on all avant-garde art and experimentation, his works were proclaimed antagonistic and alien to the Soviet people. His theatre was closed down in January 1938. In 1939, Meyerhold was arrested and accused of anti-government political activities. Sentenced to death by firing squad on 1 February 1940, he was executed the next day.[1]
Sets
Scene from Vladimir Mayakovsky's The Bath, directed by Meyerhold.
Scene from Sergei Tretyakov's The Earth in Turmoil, produced Meyerhold, 1923.
Writings
From Meyerhold on Theatre, trans. & intro. Edward Braun, London, 1969; rev. ed., 1998.
- The Search for New Forms (1902–1907)
- Introduction
- The Naturalistic Theatre and the Theatre of Mood
- The New Theatre Foreshadowed in Literature
- The Theatre-Studio
- First Attempts at a Stylized Theatre
- The Stylized Theatre
- Notes on Productions
- At the Imperial Theatres (1908–1917)
- Doctor Dapertutto (1908–1917)
- October in the Theatre (1917–1921)
- Introduction
- On the Contemporary Theatre
- Inaugural Speech to the Company of the R.S.F.S.R. Theatre No. 1
- On the Staging of Verhaeren's The Dawn
- Speech at an Open Debate on The Dawn
- The Solitude of Stanislavsky
- Biomechanics – Constructivism – Eccentrism – Cinefication (1921–1925)
- The Government Inspector (1926)
- 'An Alien Theatre' (1927–1940)
- Introduction
- The Reconstruction of the Theatre
- The Lady of the Camellias
- The Queen of Spades
- A Reply to Criticism
- At the Stanislavsky Opera
- The Cinema
Publications
- Meyerhold on Theatre, trans., ed. & comm. Edward Braun, London: Methuen, 1969, 336 pp; fully rev.ed., 1991, 336 pp; rev.ed., 1998. (English)
- O Teatro de Meyerhold, ed. & trans. Aldomar Conrado, Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1969, 244 pp. (Brazilian Portuguese)
- Nasledie. 1. Avtobiograficheskie materialy. Dokumenty 1896-1903, ed. O.M. Feldman, Moscow: OGI, 1998. 744 pp. [1] [2]. Review: Syssoyeva (TDR 2010 EN). (Russian)
- Meyerhold, et al., Meyerkhold i drugie [Мейерхольд и другие], ed. O.M. Feldman, Moscow: OGI, 2000. [3] (Russian)
- Lektsii: 1918–1919, ed. O.M. Feldman, intro. B.I. Zingerman, Moscow: OGI, 2000. 280 pp. [4] [5]. Review: Syssoyeva (TDR 2010 EN). (Russian)
- Nasledie. 2. Tovarischestvo novoi dramy. Sozdanie Studii na Povarskoi. Leto 1903–vesna 1905, ed. O.M. Feldman, Moscow: The New Publisher, 2006, 664 pp. Review: Syssoyeva (TDR 2010 EN). (Russian)
- Bibliography
- Bibliography, 1974. (Russian)
Literature
- Edward Braun, Meyerhold: A Revolution in Theatre, Methuen Drama, 1979; 2nd ed., rev. & exp., 1995, xi+347 pp. Reviews: Carnicke (MD 1996), Kiebuzinska (TJ 1996), Shannon (GLW 1999). (English)
- Alma Law, Mel Gordon, Meyerhold, Eisenstein, and Biomechanics: Revolutionary Acting in Soviet Russia, Jefferson, NC: McFarland Press, 1996, xi+282 pp. Review: Kiebuzinska (TJ 1996). (English)
- N.M. Tarabukin o Meyerkholde [Н.М. Тарабукин о Мейерхольде], ed. O.M. Feldman and V.A. Scherbakov, Moscow: OGI, 1998, 112 pp. [6] [7] Five previously unpublished texts on Meyerhold's performances of 1928-35. (Russian)
- Meyerkhold, rezhissura v perspektive veka. Materialy konferentsii. Vypusk pervyy [Мейерхольд, режиссура в перспективе века. Материалы конференции. Выпуск первый], eds. Beatrice Pikon-Vallin (Беатрис Пикон-Валлен) and Vadim Scherbakov (Вадим Щербаков), Moscow: OGI, 2001, 512 pp. Conference proceedings. [8] [9]
- Jonathan Pitches, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Routledge, 2003. (English)
- Oleg Aronson, "Teatr i affekt. Biomekhanika Meyerkholda vs. psikhotekhnika Stanislavskogo" [Театр и аффект. Биомеханика Мейерхольда vs. психотехника Станиславского], in Sovetskaya vlast i media [Советская власть и медиа], eds. Kh. Gyunter and S. Khensgen, St Petersburg: Akademicheskiy proekt, 2006, pp 296-305. (Russian)
- Julia Vaingurt, The Biomechanics of Infidelity: Range of Motion and Limits of Control in Meyerhold's Theatre", ch. 2 in Vaingurt, Wonderlands of the Avant-Garde: Technology and the Arts in Russia of the 1920s, Northwestern University Press, 2013, pp 54-83. (English)
Notes
- ↑ Andrey Smirnov, Sound in Z: Experiments in Sound and Electronic Music in Early 20th-century Russia, London: Koenig Books & Sound and Music, 2013, p 117.