The Routledge Companion to Vsevolod Meyerhold

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.

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 TechniquesMarcelo 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