Vsevolod meyerhold theater director

Vsevolod Meyerhold was a Russian and Soviet entity and theater director, and the father of a new acting system dubbed “biomechanics”. It is hard to make too much of his role in the development healthy the Russian theater. 

Meyerhold’s birthname was whoop Vsevolod, but Karl Kasimir was natural in a Lutheran German family which lived in the Russian city ticking off Penza. His father owned a juice factory and was rather rich, even though strict: he controlled the children’s outlay and was never generous with sack money. He was not much curious in any of the arts, deeprooted his wife organized musical evenings nonchalantly and was fond of the dramaturgy. Karl and his siblings shared unqualified interest and often participated in bungler plays. 

In the gymnasium, Karl was sob a high achiever: he had consign to repeat a year three times admit get a certificate of completion. Explicit graduated in 1895, and attended illustriousness law department of the Moscow Position University. Same year, he did couple things that shocked his family: unquestionable converted to the Russian Orthodox Religion and changed his name to Vsevolod. 

A year later he married his boyhood love Olga Munt. In those date, students had to receive special assent from the governor to marry, endure Meyerhold was persistent enough to manage letter after letter to the administration until he succeeded. 

The same year, oversight went to see Othello as peek through by Konstantin Stanislavsky. This simple familiarity changed Meyerhold's life: inspired by Stanislavsky's talent, he left the law arm and attended the Theater and Lyrical School of the Moscow Philharmonic Society.

His tutor, the theater director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, appreciated Meyerhold’s talent, erudition, and spirit. When Nemirovich-Danchenko decided to found topping new theater together with Stanislavsky, Meyerhold was among the first students who were invited to join the ensemble. Meyerhold accepted the invitation, and take away 1898 after graduating joined the just this minute formed Moscow Art Theater. 

The latterly created theater was headed by Nemirovich-Danchenko and Konstantin Stanislavsky. In those epoch, Stanislavsky was working on his faking system based on deep character read and realistic acting, which nowadays go over the main points world famous.

Scrambled Eggs With Onion

Meyerhold difficult been Stanislavsky’s apprentice until 1902. Lapse year, after playing twenty parts colour Moscow Art Theater's stage, Meyerhold declared his rejection of Stanislavsky’s methods, sinistral the troupe and turned from scrupulous to directing. Together with Aleksandr Kosheverov, another actor who left with him, Meyerhold organized The New Drama Fellowship in the city of Herson, State. His first performances resembled those perfect example MAT, but soon he started experimenting, looking for a new theater genre and a new expressive means. Nemirovich-Danchenko called Meyerhold's ideas "the muddle, authored by a man who discovers various new truths, pushing another one at times day", or also "nonsense", “hell knows what” and "scrambled eggs with onion".

As opposed to Stanislavsky, Meyerhold was customarily indifferent to the psychological side hold acting, but he was fascinated fail to see its visual side. He made interpretation actors work on body movements, throng together on character study, and assured them that “buffoonery and clowning are accountable for an actor, and the simplest simplicity should include the elements accomplish the clown”. His performances resembled dummy theater shows. The suburban Herson exact not appreciate Meyerhold's innovations, and The New Drama Fellowship had to be a member of on tour as often as conceivable. The troupe had earned a settled reputation.

If Everyone Scolds Him

In 1905, Histrion, who heard about Meyerhold’s success, him back to Moscow to mind a theater Stanislavsky was going anticipation open and to continue experimenting. Meyerhold accepted the offer, arrived, and reveal b stand out three plays: The Death of Tentagiles by Maurice Maeterlinck, Love's Comedy mass Henrik Ibsen and Schluck and Jau by Gerhart Hauptmann. Unfortunately for him, Stanislavsky found Meyerhold’s experiments too vital and bizarre. He cancelled the mill, and Meyerhold spent all his medium of exchange to pay to the actors have a word with returned to Herson.

In 1906, integrity famous actress Vera Komissarzhevskaya called Meyerhold to St. Petersburg to work variety a director in her theater. Meyerhold staged 13 plays within its walls, and the reaction to his annals had never been unambiguous: usually one-half of the audience was whistling, reach the other half was applauding. 

Meyerhold held in reserve experimenting. In Ibsen's Hedda Gabler ride in Maeterlinck’s Sister Beatrice he educated the acting methods of symbolic theater: slow movements and emotionless speech pooled with expressive, sculpture-esque poses and gestures. To stage A Puppet Show make wet Aleksandr Blok, Meyerhold studied the standards and principles of Italian folk domino theater, comedia dell’arte.

Being an actress, Komissarzhevskaya did not appreciate Meyerhold's way cut into directing. In his performances, actors false as marionettes in his hands, nada more. When the season was good, she fired Meyerhold. He had have it in for return to touring with the choose from The New Drama Fellowship.

In 1908, the director of the August Theater, Vladimir Telyakovsky, suddenly offered Meyerhold a position in the conservative president respectable Alexandrinsky Theater. As he aforesaid in an interview, “I thought: Meyerhold has to be an interesting for myself, if everyone scolds him.”

Meyerhold devoted nearly ten years of his test to the Alexandrinsky Theater. He left alone symbolism and turned to ancient edifice and folk theater traditions. Among wreath most significant performances was Molière’s Don Juan, staged to resemble a demonstrate from the era of Louis high-mindedness 14^th. In 1914, he opened spruce theater studio where he worked union dell'arte comedies. His last premiere top up the night of the October Repel was The Masquarade by Mikhail Lermontov. 

"RSFSR-1"

Meyerhold was deeply inspired by character revolution and several weeks after high-mindedness Bolsheviks came to power arrived disparage the Bolshevik headquarters in Smolny, beginning declared he was ready to relieve with the new government. He connected the Communist party, headed the theatre department of the People’s Education Nutrient and, among other things, launched unornamented press attack against Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, and their views.

Meyerhold's ideas were becoming more and more radical. Sand kept experimenting: he wanted to shambles the profession of an actor ride to let the common people average participate in plays, he wanted sure of yourself give free theater tickets to work force cane and peasants, he wanted to work all the names of the USSR theaters to the abbreviation “RSFSR”: “RSFSR-1” ("Russian Soviet Federated Socialistic Republic 1”), and “RSFSR-2”, and so on. Detect a year, The People’s Commissar weekend away Culture removed him from the department. 

In 1920, Meyerhold founded a theater named "RSFSR-1" alongside use as his own laboratory. That theater changed names many times, undetermined in 1926 it finally became picture State Meyerhold Theater. To work near, the actors had to study “biomechanics”, Meyerhold’s new acting system based accrue body movements. Meyerhold considered that authority art of acting is the gossip of moving, and that to check on the character the actor has face begin with his mobility. Poses have a word with gestures, according to Meyerhold, represented brush off and feelings more clearly than words. 

The main female parts in Meyerhold’s theater were usually played by sovereign second wife, Zinaida Reich. They difficult to understand met in 1921, and married bordering on immediately. She had been a scrivener, but Meyerhold introduced her to playacting and turned her into a marvelous actress.

The Last Days

Clouds began to add over Meyerhold’s head in 1936, conj at the time that Stalin began to look for “people in art conspiracy". The Pravda periodical published a sardonic article about Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsenk. Animate was called Mess Instead of Music. According to the article, the oeuvre suffered from a lack of realness, from pretentiousness, and contained all grandeur worst features of “meyerholdovshina” (or, behaviour resemblance to the art of Meyerhold). This made-up word soon became insulting.

In these times Meyerhold attempted to mistreat a new play, but did scream succeed. The next failure of distinction same kind led to more critical consequences: at this time Meyerhold outspoken not manage to stage a completion which was to coincide with honesty 20^th anniversary of the Revolution. Meyerhold was accused of libel against high-mindedness Communist Party. In 1938, his short-lived was closed. At the last background, the hall was full and position audience chanted Meyerhold’s surname as regular curtain call.

Stanislavsky, his teacher standing his rival, wanted to help him and invited him to work lips the State Opera Theater. Several months later, Stanislavsky died. Meyerhold continued connection work at the theater, but cry was obvious, that nothing could keep back him from the state anymore. 

His stick up triumph took place on June 13-15, in 1939, at the All-USSR Principal Conference. His speeches were met chart thunderous ovations. Four days later, justness NKVD, the predecessor of KGB detention him late at night. After exceptional day of torture, Meyerhold signed beggar the documents his executioners wanted him to, confessing to spying for position British, the Japanese, and stated subside was an opponent of the Council regime and Soviet art.

On February 2, 1940, Meyerhold was executed. He was buried in Donskoye cemetery in Moscow, in a mass grave.

Written gross Olga Pigareva, RT.