1st Edition
The Routledge Companion to Vsevolod Meyerhold
The Routledge Companion to Vsevolod Meyerhold brings together a wealth of scholarship on one of the foremost innovators in European theatre. It presents a detailed picture of the Russian director’s work from when it first emerged on the modern stage to its multifarious present-day manifestations.
By combining an historical focus with the latest contemporary research from an international range of perspectives and authors, this collection marks an important moment in Meyerhold studies as well as offering a new assessment of his relation to today's theatre-making. Its dynamic blend of research is presented in five sections: Histories enlarges on more conventional subjects like the grotesque and Biomechanics, to overlooked topics such as Meyerhold's ‘failed’ projects and his work in film; Collaborations and Connections extends understandings of Meyerhold’s well-known collaborative capacities to consider new cultural influences and lesser known working relationships; Sources engages with hitherto untapped material in Meyerhold’s oeuvre by reproducing and contextualising previously untranslated primary sources on his work; Practitioner Voices offer lively, on the ground, testimony of the contemporary impact of Meyerhold's practice; Meyerhold in New Contexts maps the routes of his practice across continents and examines ways in which his work is being applied in a number of contemporary scenarios, such as motion capture, computer-based 3D visualisations, and the ‘new normal’ of digital pedagogy.
This is a key resource for students and scholars of European Theatre, acting theory, and actor training, as well as for those more broadly interested in the socio-political impact of theatre.
Part I: Histories
Part I: Histories
Introduction
Stefan Aquilina
1. Vsevolod Meyerhold and Cinema
Anna Kovalova
2. Meyerhold, the Musician
Nathan Thomas
3. Meyerhold in the 1930s: Language, Text, Performance
Anna Muza
4. Meyerhold’s Hamlet: An Unrealised Dream
Michelle Assay
5. Looking at Meyerhold’s Unseen Theatre
Amy Skinner
6. Performing Communism, or, What if we Took Meyerhold’s Politics Seriously?
Teemu Paavolainen
Part II: Collaborations and Connections
Introduction
Stefan Aquilina
7. Meyerhold and Stanislavsky: Forty Years of Cordial Disagreement
Marie-Christine Autant-Mathieu
8. An Unknown Legacy: Uncovering Traces of Savva Mamontov’s Work in Meyerhold’s Conditional Theatre
Donatella Gavrilovich
9. Meyerhold’s Female Collaborators
Stefan Aquilina
10. The Influence of Giovanni Grasso on Meyerhold’s Works, Theories, and Biography
Gabriele Sofia
11. Toward Conscious and Independent Action: Pyotr Lesgaft’s System of Physical Education as Inspiration for Meyerhold’s Biomechanics
Małgorzata Jabłonska
12. Meyerhold and Trotsky
Robert Leach
Part III: Sources
Introduction
Jonathan Pitches
13. The Commedia Dell’arte Origins of Biomechanics: Actor Training and Collective Creation at the Borodinskaia Street Studio
Dassia N. Posner
The Borodinskaia Street Studio: Documents on Actor Training and Collective Creation
Translated and edited by Dassia N. Posner
14. Fragments of a Creative life: Introduction to Five New SourcesStefan Aquilina
Letters to Anton Chekhov, 1899–1904
Comments by Doctor Dapertutto on ‘The Denial of Theatre’ by Yury Aikhenvald, 1914
Theatre Pamphlets I: On Dramaturgy and Theatre Culture, 1921
From Meyerhold’s Speech at the Discussion ‘Creative Methods at the Meyerhold Theatre’, 25 December 1930
On the Spatial Composition of Performance, 2 April 1936
Part IV: Practitioner Voices
Introduction
Jonathan Pitches
15. A Theatre Company as a Meyerholdian Experiment in Grotesque
Paul Stebbings and Phil Smith
16. The Evolution of Proper Job: Working with Meyerhold in the Contemporary British Theatre
James Beale, Franc Chamberlain, and Chloe Whitehead
17. Biomechanical diasporas: Practitioner Perspectives on the Transmission of Meyerhold’s Techniques
Marcelo Bulgarelli, Terence Mann (Chapman), Claudio Massimo Paternò, and Robert Reid
18. Transmission Impossible
Ralph Räuker
19. Decoding the Riddle: Applying Meyerhold’s Conception of the Director’s Explication
Bryan Brown and Olya Petrakova
Part Vi: Meyerhold in New Contexts: Transnational Migrations
Introduction
Stefan Aquilina
20. Meyerhold’s Influence on Twentieth-century Japanese Theatre
Min Tian
21. Nesting dolls: Sketches in Search of Meyerhold in Australia
Ian Maxwell and Chris Hay
22. An Unexpected Triangle: Politis, Meyerhold, and Karaghiozis in Interwar Greece
Antonis Glytzouris
23. Biomechanical Resonances in Turkey: The Working Method of Studio Oyuncuları
Burç İdem Dinçel
24. Meyerhold’s Influence on the Production Processes of PERFORMA TEATRO (Brazil) Arlete Cavaliere
Interdisciplinarities
Jonathan Pitches
Part Vii: Meyerhold in New Contexts: Interdisciplinarities
Introduction
Jonathan Pitches
25. Meyerhold in the 21st Century: The Meeting Points of Biomechanics and Postdramatic Performance
Diana Monteiro Toombs
26. The New Meyerhold Theatre: Visualising a Lost Architectural Experiment
Rachel Hann
27. Theatrical Biomechanics and Movement Science
Darren Tunstall
28. Biomechanics in Lockdown: Teaching Meyerhold in the age of COVID-19
Jonathan Pitches
Biography
Jonathan Pitches is Professor of Theatre and Performance and Head of the School of Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds. He specialises in performer training, ecocriticism, and blended learning. He is founding co-editor of the journal of Theatre, Dance and Performance Training.
Stefan Aquilina is a Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Malta and Co-Director of the Stanislavsky Research Centre. He has published extensively on modern theatre (especially Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, and amateur theatre), the transmission of embodied practice, and interdisciplinary performance.
“Hugely informative – and also huge in physical size – The Routledge Companion to Vsevolod Meyerhold is a most important publication that is exemplary in its expression of the strength and diversity of theatre studies internationally today.”
Patrick Lonergan, National University of Ireland in Galway, Stanislavski Studies, September 2023
