Meyerhold

Background

Vsevolod Meyerhold is considered one of the most 20th Century's greatest theatres innovators. He was born in Russia and studied law for two terms at Moscow Uni. He had a wife and three daughters. He became an actor at Moscow Art School Theatre between 1898 and 1902, and was in a few of their performances.

He then became a stage director and was very successful as he was a stage director for 37 years. He earliest work was a lot to do with the realism that had started to become successful. In 1905 he changed completely from realism and had a completely unique style of performing. He was the first Russian to develop a symbolist style of theatre representation. Many of his plays went completely in the opposite direction of realism.

Meyerhold started to use Commedia Dell'Lartes work, and then adapt it into the symbolistic approach therefore it is similar to Commedia Dell'Larte. He also started combining art with theatre, having artists such as Alexander Golovin and Leon Bakst create striking sets for his productions. Meyerhold also started to direct opera's, he developed new nd distinctive ideas for masterpieces such as Wagner and Gluck.

In 1912 he also produced in Paris, therefore going outside Russia. 

He was arrested in Russia because of his so called 'anti-government political activities' and was executed.

Meyhold believed in, 'every reaction had a reaction'.

What is Meyerhold like?

Meyerhold is like commedia because of the big gestures, there is also hardly any props... Like mime..
Meyhold is also like mutuality as it is like reaction and action... You have to know your partner really well for this to work. 

Meyerhold is also similar to Mime as you are basically creating a mime except you are reacting to each other, rather than props, and yourself. Therefore lots of facial expressions is used in Meyerhold, again similar to Mime.

What did we do during the lessons?
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we worked with sticks, one of meyerholds techniques, so that we could understand the concept of reacting to every action. For the lesson I was in, we used a story given to us by. Andy, with four characters, and we had to react to the actor who was acting in an exaggerated way.. I found the first lesson really difficult because the concept of acting to every action was very difficult for me to get my head around.

- in another lesson of meyerhold we learnt some of his techniques including the shake, the slap and the tap dance. In these excersizes we worked in partners and I worked with Hayley. By learning these techniques we got to understand meyerholds ideas and get to grasp with them... I found that they were very choreographic and so the people who had natural rhythm understood it more... 

- in another lesson we got given our meyerhold stimuli, and andy told us we had to act using meyerholds techniques scene 2... This scene was about the main character being given money, we focused on the different money rather than the types of reaction to the main character reacting, again. I found this lesson really tough to get my head around the concept of meyerholds ideas.

- the final lesson of meyerhold we again went through the different techniques of Meyerhold, then went into groups and this time we got to choose which scene we were going to perform and choose how we were going to do it. We decided to do the scene were the main character gets drunk, and we included lots if reacting with the acting of the main character. This was the first lesson I felt that I understood meyerholds techniques and why he used them. However, in some circumstances, I felt that this could be used in other dramas, but this type of drama wasn't for me. 

Bibliography

http://www.meyerhold.org/