| Vsevolod Meyerhold |
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LIFE AND WORK Meyerhold was born in Penza on 28 January ( 9 February ) 1874 into the family of a Russian-German wine manufacturer Emil Meyerhold. After completing school in 1895 he began the study of law at the Moscow University which he never completed. On his 21st birthday, Meyerhold converted to Orthodox Christianity , and accepted "Vsevolod" as an Orthodox Christian name. His acting career began when he became a student of the Moscow Philharmonic Dramatic School under the guidance of Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko , co-founder of the Moscow Art Theatre where Meyerhold later served as an actor. Having left the Moscow Art Theatre in , Valery Bryusov , and Georgy Chulkov . Meyerhold continued his search for theatrical innovation in 1907 - 1917 , while working with imperial theatres in St. Petersburg , introducing classical plays in an innovative manner, and staging works of controversial contemporary authors like Fyodor Sologub , Zinaida Gippius , and Alexander Blok . In their plays Meyerhold tried to return to acting in the traditions of Commedia Dell'arte , rethinking them for the contemporary theatrical reality. His theoretical concepts of the ‘conditional theatre’ were elaborated on in his book '' On Theatre '' in 1913 . 's portrait of Meyerhold.]] The Russian Revolution Of 1917 made Meyerhold one of the most enthusiastic activists of the new Soviet Theatre. He joined the Bolshevik Party in 1918 and became an official of the Theater Division (TEO) of the Commissariat Of Education And Enlightenment , forming an alliance with Olga Kameneva , the head of the Division in 1918-1919. Together, they tried to radicalize Russian theaters, effectively nationalizing them under Bolshevik control. However, Meyerhold came down with Tuberculosis in May 1919 and had to leave for the south. In his absence, the head of the Commissariat, Anatoly Lunacharsky , secured Vladimir Lenin 's permission to revise government policy in favor of more traditional theaters and dismissed Kameneva in June 1919See Robert Leach and Victor Borovsky. A History of Russian Theatre, Cambridge University Press, 1999, ISBN 0521432200 p. 303.. After returning to Moscow, Meyerhold founded his own theatre in 1920, which was known as ''’s ''Mistery-Bouffe'', Fernand Crommelynck 's ''Le Cocu Magnifique'', and Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin ’s ''Tarelkin’s Death''. Mayakovsky collaborated with Meyerhold several times, and it is said that Mayakovsky wrote '' The Bed Bug '' especially for him; Meyerhold continued to stage Mayakovsky's productions even after the latter's Suicide . The actors participating in Meyerhold’s productions acted according to the principle of Biomechanics , the system of actor training that was later taught in a special acting school created by Meyerhold. Meyerhold inspired revolutionary artists and filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein , whose films employed actors who worked in Meyerhold’s tradition. His acting technique was opposite to Konstantin Stanislavski 's Stanislavski System and Lee Strasberg 's subsequent Method Acting . Where method acting melded the character with the actor's own personal memories to create the character’s internal motivation, Meyerhold connected psychological and physiological processes and focused on learning gestures and movements as a way of expressing outward emotion. He argued that people feel physically before they feel emotionally, so that by practicing and assuming poses, gestures, and movements, emotions will automatically occur. He developed a number of body expressions that his actors would use to portray specific emotions and characters. An example of his style of acting can be found in the films of Eisenstein, who cast actors based on what they looked like and their expression, and who followed Meyerhold’s stylized acting methods. In ''Strike!'', which portrays the beginnings of the Bolshevik Revolution , the oppressive bourgeois are always obese, drinking, eating, and smoking, whereas the workers are athletic and chiseled. Meyerhold was strongly opposed to Socialist Realism , and in the beginning of the 1930s , when Joseph Stalin clamped 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 1938 , and a year later Meyerhold was arrested and imprisoned. He was brutally tortured and forced to make a confession, which he later recanted before the court. He was sentenced to Death By Firing Squad on 1 February 1940. The date of his death is unclear; some sources say he was Executed on 2 February 1940 . The Soviet government cleared him of all charges in 1955 , during the first wave of Destalinization . NOTES SEE ALSO
BIBLIOGRAPHY in English: Texts by Meyerhold
Works on Meyerhold
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