Vsevolod Meyerhold
Vsevolod Meyerhold
Early Career * Meyerhold was a founder-member of the Moscow Art Theatre, est. 1898. * He registered for an acting class at the Moscow Philharmonic Society’s Music and Drama School, in the course of Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, co-founder of the Moscow Art Theatre. * He was accepted into the troupe of the Moscow Art Theatre where he would act from 1898 to 1902. * He performed in many plays including: The Seagull (Treplyev), The Three Sisters (Tuzenbach), Antigone (Teiresias) and The Death of Ivan the Terrible (Ivan the Terrible).
Interesting Information * He was widely recognized as a driving force in the Russian Symbolist movement, along with Stanislavski. * He was heavily influenced by the work of Stanislavski. The two were close friends although they quarrelled, because of their different approaches to theatre. * Stanislavski never actually allowed his plays to be performed, he hated Meyerhold’s work.
Meyerhold’s Methods * He explored theatre as a kinaesthetic spectacle where an actor understood the inner and outer rhythm of the character. * Much like Stanislavski, Meyerhold was uninterested in the naturalistic theater of the 19th century, he preferred a theater that could reveal “inner dialogue by means of the music of plastic movement.” * He saw movement, gesture, space, rhythm, and music as the true “language of the theater,” focusing on the “form” onstage.
Key Principles
The key theoretical principles of Meyerhold's anti-illusionistic theatre and approaches to acting are: * non-naturalistic theatre * stylisation * rhythm and music * the mask * the grotesque * biomechanics * Chaplin and montage (adapted from Pitches, 2003, p.46).
Biomechanics * acquiring the skill of expressive movement: to improve awareness of tension- relaxation; to subordinate movements to rhythm; to shift the balance; to fix positions – foreshortening (which Meyerhold called
Early Career * Meyerhold was a founder-member of the Moscow Art Theatre, est. 1898. * He registered for an acting class at the Moscow Philharmonic Society’s Music and Drama School, in the course of Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, co-founder of the Moscow Art Theatre. * He was accepted into the troupe of the Moscow Art Theatre where he would act from 1898 to 1902. * He performed in many plays including: The Seagull (Treplyev), The Three Sisters (Tuzenbach), Antigone (Teiresias) and The Death of Ivan the Terrible (Ivan the Terrible).
Interesting Information * He was widely recognized as a driving force in the Russian Symbolist movement, along with Stanislavski. * He was heavily influenced by the work of Stanislavski. The two were close friends although they quarrelled, because of their different approaches to theatre. * Stanislavski never actually allowed his plays to be performed, he hated Meyerhold’s work.
Meyerhold’s Methods * He explored theatre as a kinaesthetic spectacle where an actor understood the inner and outer rhythm of the character. * Much like Stanislavski, Meyerhold was uninterested in the naturalistic theater of the 19th century, he preferred a theater that could reveal “inner dialogue by means of the music of plastic movement.” * He saw movement, gesture, space, rhythm, and music as the true “language of the theater,” focusing on the “form” onstage.
Key Principles
The key theoretical principles of Meyerhold's anti-illusionistic theatre and approaches to acting are: * non-naturalistic theatre * stylisation * rhythm and music * the mask * the grotesque * biomechanics * Chaplin and montage (adapted from Pitches, 2003, p.46).
Biomechanics * acquiring the skill of expressive movement: to improve awareness of tension- relaxation; to subordinate movements to rhythm; to shift the balance; to fix positions – foreshortening (which Meyerhold called