Meyerhold on Theatre

by Edward Braun, Jonathan Pitches (Introduction)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474230223
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	01/28/2016
Series:	Theatre Makers
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	432
File size:	10 MB

About the Author

Edward Braun is Emeritus Professor of Drama at the University of Bristol. He edited the pioneering English-language selection from Meyerhold's writings, Meyerhold on Theatre, in 1969, and in 1979 published his major critical assessment, The Theatre of Meyerhold. His The Director&the Stage was first published in 1982.

Jonathan Pitches is Professor of Theatre and Performance and Director of Research in the School of Performance and Cultural Industries at Leeds University. He is the author and/or editor of four books, three of which relate to actor training and is the founding co-editor of the Routledge journal, Theatre Dance and Performance Training.
Edward Braun is Emeritus Professor of Drama at the University of Bristol. He edited the pioneering English-language selection from Meyerhold's writings, Meyerhold on Theatre, in 1969, and in 1979 published his major critical assessment, The Theatre of Meyerhold. His The Director&the Stage was first published in 1982.
Jonathan Pitches is Professor of Theatre and Performance in the School of Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds, UK. He specialises in the study of performer training and has wider interests in intercultural performance, environmental performance and blended learning. He is founding co-editor of the journal of Theatre, Dance and Performance Training and has published several books in this area: Vsevolod Meyerhold (2003), Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting (2006/9) Russians in Britain (2012) and Stanislavsky in the World (with Dr Stefan Aquilina 2017). He is currently working on two new book projects, Great Stage Directors Vol 3: Komisarjevsky, Copeau, Guthrie (2017) and Performing Landscapes: Mountains (2018), supported by the AHRC.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations     9
Preface     13
The Search for New Forms (1902-1907)
Introduction     17
The Naturalistic Theatre and the Theatre of Mood     23
The New Theatre Foreshadowed in Literature     34
The Theatre-Studio     39
First Attempts at a Stylized Theatre     49
The Stylized Theatre     58
Notes on Productions     64
At the Imperial Theatres (1908-1917)
Introduction     75
Tristan and Isolde     80
Don Juan     98
Orpheus at the Marinsky Theatre     106
Doctor Dapertutto (1908-1917)
Introduction     111
The Fairground Booth     119
Notes on Productions     143
The Meyerhold Studio     146
October in the Theatre (1917-1921)
Introduction     159
On the Contemporary Theatre     167
Inaugural Speech to the Company of the R.S.F.S.R. Theatre No. 1     169
On the Staging of Verhaeren's The Dawn     170
Speech at an Open Debate on The Dawn     173
The Solitude of Stanislavsky     175
Biomechanics - Constructivism - Eccentrism - Cinefication (1921-1925)
Introduction     183
Biomechanics     197
The Magnanimous Cuckold     204
Pre-acting     205
The Government Inspector (1926)
Introduction     209
Observations on the Play     219
Meyerhold at Rehearsal     221
'An Alien Theatre' (1927-1940)
Introduction     233
The Reconstruction of the Theatre     253
The Lady of the Camellias     274
The Queen of Spades     278
A Reply to Criticism     289
At the Stanislavsky Opera     298
The Cinema
Introduction     303
The Picture of Dorian Gray     305
Chaplin and Chaplinism     311
Select Bibliography     325
Index     328

Editorial Reviews

... This fourth edition of a seminal work compiled by Edward Braun will present as good and wide a portrait of the great man as anyone could wish for.
British Theatre Guide

Meyerhold on Theatre is an important, many-faceted book. Meyerhold was a great director - the greatest in my experience as a playgoer . . . Braun has rendered the field of theatre knowledge an invaluable service.
The Nation

It is rare that books can capture the spirit in which productions happen, but Edward Braun's anthology . . . does transmit not only the swiftly changing contexts in which Meyerhold worked, but the still-relevant impulses which his work embodied, and which have sown the seeds of so much that the modern theatre still grapples with.
Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher

Meyerhold on Theatre is an important, many-faceted book. Meyerhold was a great director - the greatest in my experience as a playgoer . . . Braun has rendered the field of theatre knowledge an invaluable service.

The Nation

It is rare that books can capture the spirit in which productions happen, but Edward Braun's anthology . . . does transmit not only the swiftly changing contexts in which Meyerhold worked, but the still-relevant impulses which his work embodied, and which have sown the seeds of so much that the modern theatre still grapples with.

Times Literary Supplement