Meyerhold was one of the foremost Russian directors of the stage and was considered by many to be the equal of Stanislavski. With a critical commentary by the editor these writings are essential reading for anyone studying Russian drama and culture.

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.

A major reissue of a book which is used by students of Meyerhold across the world This was the first collection of Meyerhold's writings and utterances to appear in English and covers his entire career as a director from 1902 to 1939. These are supplemented by a critical commentary, relating Meyerhold to his period and containing descriptions, based on eye-witness accounts, of all his major productions.

Vsevolod Meyerhold began his career in theatre as an actor with the Moscow Art Theatre before founding a new experimental studio for Art Theatre. This book takes us through Meyerhold's extraordinary life of experiment and discovery.

Vsevolod Meyerhold considers the life and work of the extraordinary twentieth-century director and theatre-maker. This compact, well-illustrated volume includes: a biographical introduction to Meyerhold’s life a clear explanation of his theoretical writings an analysis of his masterpiece production Revisor, or The Government Inspector a comprehensive and usable description of the ‘biomechanical’ exercises he developed for training the actor. As a first step towards critical understanding, and as an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners offer unbeatable value for today's student.

This book traces the career of the Russian revolutionary theatre director, Vsevolod Meyerhold, from his early years as a founding member of the Moscow Art Theatre with Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, through his Symbolist period, his experiments with commedia dell'arte and other popular forms, to his demise in the Stalin era. Leach describes in detail Meyerhold's 'system' of theatre: his attitude to the audience, the place of the fore stage, 'biomechanics' and actor training, and the importance of the mise-en-scène. Finally, Leach explores Meyerhold's legacy, which can be detected in the work of Brecht, Eisenstein, Peter Brook and others.

“Not a mirror but a magnifying glass”—such, in the poet Mayakovsky’s words, was the theater of Vsevolod Meyerhold. The first to insist on the primacy of the director’s role, indeed the first to conceive of it as a role, this passionately dedicated Russian director tore down the fourth wall and forced the actors and audience together into one inescapable community of experience. Yet Meyerhold recorded few of his theories in writing, and the intensity and brilliance of his work must be recaptured through the actors and artists who helped create the performances. Focusing on Meyerhold’s postrevolutionary career, Paul Schmidt has assembled in this book journals, letters, reminiscences, and, of special interest, actual rehearsal notes that build a fascinating, intimate picture of Meyerhold as a theorist and as a man. Included are Meyerhold’s frantic notes to his teacher, friend, and bête noire Stanislavsky; detailed descriptions of how he trained his actors in “biomechanics”; and memories by such students as Eisenstein and such friends as Pasternak and Ehrenburg. One chapter deals with Meyerhold’s never-realized conception of Boris Godunov, while another describes his direction of Camille, which starred Zinaida Raikh, his wife, and which played its 725th and last performance on the day Stalin’s government liquidated Meyerhold’s theater. Paul Schmidt’s introduction and headnotes enhance our understanding of Meyerhold as a pioneer of modern theater.