Meyerhold on Theatre

Edward Braun

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781474230209
• eBook ISBN: 9781474230223
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

Meyerhold on Theatre brings together in one volume Vsevolod Meyerhold's most significant writings and utterances, and covers his entire career as a director from 1902 to 1939. It contains a comprehensive selection from all published material, unabridged and translated from the original Russian, updated and supplemented with a critical commentary relating Meyerhold to his period and eye-witness accounts describing all his productions. The book is illustrated with photographs of Meyerhold's designs and productions. Within this diverse collection of sometimes dense, sometimes lyrical, and always fascinating writings, Meyerhold emerges from this book as a forerunner of such directors as Brecht, Piscator, Planchon and Brook, a relentless enemy of naturalism and a supreme exponent of total theatre whose influence continues to be felt throughout the theatre of today. This fourth edition features a new introduction by Prof. Jonathan Pitches, which helps to demystify some of the terminology Meyerhold and his associates used, and indicates the fundamental connection between culture and politics represented in his life and art.

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Title
• Contents 
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Introduction
• PART ONE THE SEARCH FOR NEW FORMS (1902–1907)
• 1 The Naturalistic Theatre and the Theatre of Mood
• 2 The New Theatre Foreshadowed in Literature
• 3 The Theatre-Studio
• 4 First Attempts at a Stylized Theatre
• 5 The Stylized Theatre
• 6 Notes on Productions
• PART TWO AT THE IMPERIAL THEATRES (1908–1917)
• 7 Tristan and Isolde
• 8 Dom Juan
• 9 Orpheus at the Marinsky Theatre
• PART THREE DOCTOR DAPERTUTTO (1908–1917)
• 10 The Fairground Booth
• 11 Notes on Productions
• 12 The Meyerhold Studio
• PART FOUR OCTOBER IN THE THEATRE (1917–1921)
• 13 On the Contemporary Theatre
• 14 Inaugural Speech to the Company of the R.S.F.S.R. Theatre No. 1
• 15 On the Staging of Verhaeren’s The Dawn
• 16 Speech at an Open Debate on The Dawn
• 17 The Solitude of Stanislavsky
• PART FIVE BIOMECHANICS – CONSTRUCTIVISM – ECCENTRISM – CINEFICATION (1921–1925)
• 18 Biomechanics
• 19 The Magnanimous Cuckold
• 20 Pre-acting
• PART SIX THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR (1926)
• 21 Observations on the Play
• 22 Meyerhold at Rehearsal
• PART SEVEN ‘AN ALIEN THEATRE’ (1927–1940)
• 23 The Reconstruction of the Theatre
• 24 The Lady of the Camellias
• 25 The Queen of Spades
• 26 A Reply to Criticism
• 27 At the Stanislavsky Opera
• PART EIGHT THE CINEMA
• 28 The Picture of Dorian Gray
• 29 Chaplin and Chaplinism
• Select Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright