Vsevolod Meyerhold and Set Designers

5/20/2018 Vsevolod Meyerhold and Set Designers

1/21

VSEVOLO

N SET

M E Y E

RHO t

ES IGNERS

B Y A LLA M IK H A ILO V A

Every human being is a problem.

Meyerhold is a super-problem.

Mikhail hekhov

Meyerhoid .... A towering and bizarre personality, shrouded in legends and

myths, an object of both hatred and veneration. A giant f igure that is alternately

hidden from view or brought into sharp focus as history takes a new turn. A man

of genius cannot take his destiny into his own hands, he is borne with it. In our

case, a brilliant exponent of the Silver Age of Russian art was destined to

become the first Communist director of the Soviet stage.

Meyerhold earned worldwide renown in his lifetime, but his end was that of

a martyr. Twentieth-century theatre is unthinkable without Meyerhold and is

greatly indebted to him.

He liked to be in the limelight, to engage in fierce debates and could brave

any scandal. He was the butt of more feuilletons, accusatory articles and

acrimonious press notices than any other stage director. Meyerhold was in his 2 M eye rh o ld , p I. 1 , p . 69 .

own element as long as the debates were free and fair; he lashed out at enemies,

often lost friends and made himself an easy target.

Stanislavsky, too, was the butt of many crit ical darts until he was beautified

still in his lifetime. He, however, preferred to steer clear of debates. He was able

to ignore the hustle and bustle around him and to live for the sake of art.

Meyerhold, on the contrary, needed an extra dimension to supplement art. He

threw himself into the vortex of life, whatever course it was taking at the

moment. My work is a reflection of our troubled times 1: he made this prophetic

statement in the early years of the century. He was never content with reality and

had a longing for the new, for something that had never been tried before. He

joined the Art Theatre company because that theatre was blazing the trail for

new developments in art. It soon transpired, however, that the Art Theatre's

concept of the new was different from his own concept. Meyerhold started by

falling in love with Victor Sim'ov's seenery for

Tsar Feodor loannovich

at the Art

Theatre. He expressed his enthusiasm, saying that the scenery was top-level in

its originality, beauty and authenticity. One can contemplate it for hours without

getting bored. Bored indeed

The

scenery grows on you as if it were something

real. 2 The enthusiasm, however, proved to the short-lived.

As he left the Art Theatre te i set up his own company in Kherson (1902),

Meyerhold was still under the spen of Simov's principles. He would be

dominated by them for a long enough period (when we say long we proceed

from his own, compressed pereeplion of time). His stagings followed the Art

Theatre patterns, but an irresistible yeaming for a different kind of theatre was

growing in his heart.

On several occasions Meye~hold, voiced the opinion that a new kind of

theatre would be brought into t6~ world by a new kind of literature, and not vice

versa. It was Alexei Remizov w h o iifcl.trocrucedo Meyerhold the Symbolist drama.

Remizov, who later became a we:I ::.kf;tfJwnriter, was the literary consultant of

the Kherson company, directed~y :M~~eJ'holdand Kosheverov. This is the view

which Remizov took of his o w n ' fW t P t l tl 'o n in the Kherson company much later in

life: a perverse and defiant

t # ) : f ; ) : e r g .

A very capable tuner, too. He lured

Meyerhold into the world of SymftJi)oil i strama as successfully as he had drawn

the erstwhile lanky high-school :~(;J '~e:ntInto the world of socialist ideas during

his enforced sojourn in Penza (M'eyerl'lold's home town) as a political exile.

And so Meyerhold got btl$,y $taging plays by Strindberg, Schnitzler,

Wedekind, Przybyszewski and H'fi lflsUn. Of course he was handicapped by the

pressure of the early-century tt:le~~re routine in the provinces: fifty or more

premieres in a season; he only ha :Q)l loe average set designer (Mikhail Mikhailov),

who hastily furnished the stage)$:'ft~t;Meyerhold's plans.

But Meyerhold was destined sii>.:Q~

0

meet people who completely changed

his view of the stage director's

W o : r k : n d

theatre art as such.

5 0

1 V. E . Meyerho ld , S t at yi . P i sm a . R e c h,

8esedy [ Ar ti cl e s. L e tt er s . S p e ec h es .

T al ks ]. in tw o parts, M o s c o w , 19 68, p I. 1

p.

7 7 .

H e re af te r r ef er re d to a s : M e ye rh o ld

3 Lette r by A.M. R em izo v to Yu . B.

Y ela gin , 2 O cto be r 1 95 2, in : Y ur i Y el ag in

T y om n y i g e ni i:

2 nd ed ., Londo n, 1982 , p

41 8 .


2/21

Meyerhold was very fond of music; a fairly competent violinist, he had once

thought of turning professional. He also had a good measure of literary talent, as

evidenced by his book O n T he atre , his articles and letters. Anton Chekhov

himself believed that Meyerhold should consider writing in earnest. He was

a most proficient actor. When he played bits of scenes at rehearsals to directthe

actors, all those present were invariably impressed by his brilliant improvjsation.

Yet the decisive influence on Meyerhold's progress as stage director was

undoubtedly exerted by artist-designers. This may have been due to his keen

visual perception: he used to say that vision was his greatest natural endowment, ------

that he was able to see a play in his mind's eye before he could hear it. He loved

painting and was a top-level connoisseur, a familiar figure at art exhibitions and

artists' studios. According to the playwright Alexander Gladkov, monographs

devoted to visual art and large-size portfolios of reproductions, engravings and

etchings took up a lot of space in Meyerhold's private library. 4 Looking at

pictures , pondering over them was one of his favourite pastimes. Stored in his

memory was a vast number of works, compositional schemes and critical

expertise. His own articles and the shortstenographic records of his rehearsals

contain endless references to works by Giotto, Perugino, Pietro Longhi, Borgog- 6 M e ye rho ld , p I. 1 , p . 1 0 4 .

noni, GiorgiQne, Durer, the Holbeins, Memling, Brueghel, Vrubel, Serov, Fedo-

tov, Maillo , Puvis de Chavannes, Picasso, Leger. . . . This, of course, isa far from

complete list. In addition, he made frequent references to studies of art history.

He kept urging actors, including his own students, to visit art exhibitions and

museums, and look at pictures . Many of them followed this advice to great

advantage. The scenery for Meyerhold's productions was designed by artists like

Nikolai Sapunov, Sergei Sudeikin, Alexander Golovin, Leon Bakst, Vasily De-

nisov, Boris Anisfeld, Konstantin Korovin, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Vladimir Dmit-

riev, Nikolai Ulyanov, Kazimir Malevich, Lyubov Popova, Varvara Stepanova,

Alexander Rodchenko, EI Lissitzky, Alexander Deineka, Victor Shestakov, Alex-

ander Tyshler, the Kukryniksy group, and Vladimir Stenberg.

Meyerhold followed closely the latest developments in visual art and was

eager to work with its trend-setters. He delighted in bringing on stage someone

who had never had anything to do with the theatre. A good example is Lyubov

Popova. It is said that he once complained to the architect Alexander Vesnin

about being fed up with artists and asked him to find a couple of bright

students majoring in architecture for designing the set of Alexander

Bezymensky's comedy T h e S h ot.

s

Vesnin obliged, recommending two third-year

students of Vkhutemas (Higher Art-Technical Studios) - Victor Kalinin and

Leonid Pavlov, and they provided the set design for T h e S h ot.

Meyerhold's relations with his artist-designers ran a wide gamut of feelings.

Some parted from him in deep mortification. Others were never given a second

chance to work with him. Still others stayed with him for years as faithful

executors of his own plans of set design. On his own admission (made in the

introduction to his book On T h ea tre , 1912), two names would forever stay in his

memory: those of Alexander Golovin and the late Nikolai Sapunov, with whom

I had so happily experimented in Th e S how booth , D on Jua n and Columbine s

Veil;

l ike myself, they possessed a key to the secret door of Wonderland. 6 These

lines were written four months after Sapunov drowned in a tragic accident at the

age of thirty-two. As to Golovin, Meyerhold continued to work with him at the

Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg and struck up a lasting friendship with

this well-known artist. He looked up to Golovin as one of his teachers, regarded

their unclouded cooperation as a happy phase in his career, and he never forgot

that Golovin's recommendation had helped him to secure his post at the Imperial

Alexandrinsky Theatre after his dismissal from the Theatre of Komissarzhevskaya.

He continued to hold Golovin in the highest esteem, and their correspondence

continued till the latter's death in 1930. Yet the two men never worked together

on the same project after Meyerhold left St. Petersburg in 1919. (It must be said

in all fairness that Golovin was offered to design costumes for Griboyedov's Woe

from W it, which offer he declined because the stage set had been commissioned

from another artist; he also asked Golovin to be the consultant of the production

of Gogol's T h e In sp ec to r G e ne ra l but this did not come about due to Golovin's

illness.' In actual fact, the wind of change had swept the theatre world, and

Meyerhold became immersed in the innovative art trends.

4 A le xa nd er G la dk ov , M e y e r h o l d , vol.

2 , M o sc ow , 1 9 90 ,

p.66.

5 F ro m t h is a u th o r's c on v er sa tio n w i th

V . V. K a l in i n o n

1 1 O c to b er 1 9 9 1.

7 O n t he jo in t v en tu re s o f G olo vin a nd

M e y e rh o l d , s e e : M . P o z h a r sk a y a ,

A l e xa n d e r G o l o v in , M o s co w , 1 9 9 0.

5 1


3/21

VS E VOLOD M E YE R HOLD AN D S E T D E SIG N E R S

5 2

His friendship with artists resulted in a series of portraits. He sat for Boris

Grigoriev, Alexander Golovin, Nikolai Ulyanov, Pyotr Williams and Pyotr Kon-

chalovsky. Of the total of Meyerhold's contacts with artists and their combined

influence upon him, one instance clearly stands out, for it was crucial in his

progress as stage director. This contact occurred in the spring of 1905. The

venue was the workshop of the Art Theatre in Kamergersky Lane, which

manufactured scale mock-ups. Stanislavsky decided to bring together several

budding painters, who were to provide the scenery for his new Theatre Studio,

and Meyerhold, whom Stanislavsky had engaged as stage director. Meyerhold's ------

conviction that a full-fledged avantgarde theatre must move in step with the 8 Meyerho ld , p I. 1 , p . 9 0.

tempestuous progress of contemporary 'new' drama and painting 8 was born

there and then.

Paradoxically, this episode, which undoubtedly affected the future of theatre

art as a whole, produced no tangible results at that time. The Theatre Studio on

Povarskaya Street was closed before it had released a single play or sold a single

ticket. On the surface, its opening was wrecked by the first Russian revolution of

10 Ibid.,p. 52.

1905, which reached its climax in. Moscow. Barricades went up in the workers'

district of Presnya, the army was called in, shots rang in the streets. One is

tempted to point to the fatal part which the revolutionary events in Russia had

played in Meyerhold's life. The second revolution, in February 1917, broke out

two days after the premiere of Masquerade ; the third, in October

1917,

provided

him with a starting-point for a new rise but eventually crushed him ruthlessly,

despite his wholehearted devotion to it. There will be further occasion to speak

of this. At this point let it be said that the root cause of the closure of the Theatre

Studio before it opened its doors to the public was Stanislavsky's strong

premonition that his own concept of breathing new life into the Art Theatre was

incompatible with Meyerhold's vision.

Let us now go back to May 1905 and the Art Theatre workshop where

Meyerhold met Sapunov, Sudeikin, Ulyanov and Denisov (the other participat-

ing artists were Ivan Gugunava and Feodor Golst). This month of May proved to

be very important in Meyerhold's life, because he came into direct contact with

artists who helped him to comprehend things previously incomprehensible ; he

felt that a new world arose in his soul .9 He became fully aware of the

enormous expressive potential of a production's visual sequence; this awareness

stayed with him for the rest of his life. It was his first face-to-face encounter with

painters who had a perfect command of colour and a strong sense of style, who

were eager to achieve something that had never been tried on the stage before.

They were the ideal recipients of the formula which he set down in a letter to

Stanislavsky during that period: For the time being let us bring in the wrong

new, rather than have the right c H d . 1 0

It was the Art Theatre milieu that made the word nas troyeniye (mood,

atmosphere) a regular stage term. Its early interpretation came from Stanislavsky

and Simov: imagine the cosy light of a table lamp leaving the corners of the room

in semi-darkness; one can hear the banging of a loose window shutter and the

creaking of floor boards; bluish smoke rises from a cigarette crushed in an

ashtray under the lamp; somebotdy is playing the piano in the next room, etc.

Meyerhold realized that a totaHydifferent atmosphere could be conjured up

by means of a musical rather thafl realistic approach. The desired audience

response could be elicited by the aetion's rhythm, by vocal timbre, strategic

pauses, the actors' movements and poses, the coloration of scenery and cos-

tumes, lighting effects and music. His first essay was Maeterlinck's

La M orte d e

Tintagiles,

and he brought this

p lay

to the point of dress rehearsals.

. . .The shallow playing-space the relief stage) was dominated by colour and

lighting. The statuesque blocking of actors was accompanied by delicate vocal

harmony. Sudeikin used bluish greens for the the first three acts, while Sapunov

opted for a palette of purple-and-'grey in acts four and five. A front curtain of

scrim was hung across the stal Je to soften the outlines, helping to merge the

actors' figures and the colour patches of the painted scenery. There are many

descriptions of the row which br)keout at the final dress rehearsal of Tintagiles,

when Stanislavsky decided that

th e

lighting was too dim and cried out, Light ,

thus effectively ruining the production. The protests of Sapunov and Sudeikin

were of no avail. As soon as fu'll light was turned on, the whole setting was

9 V.E . M ey erho ld , P e r e p i s k a [Corre-

s p o nd e n ce ] , M o s co w ,

1 9 7 6 ,

p.

6 0 .

Hereafter:

P e r e p i s k a .

~ - -


4/21

VS E VOLO D M E YE R HO LD AN D S E T D E S IG N E R S

ruined, the painters' work was separated from the figures that were in conflict

with them. Stanislavsky got up, and so did the audience. The rehearsal broke off.

The production had failed to win approval. 11

But Meyerhold and his artist-designers were convinced that painting - its

coloristic unison and leit-motifs, its harmoniouS treatment of light - must

hereafter be the key element of the scenery.

Later Meyerhold will try to puzzle out the problem of harmonizing the

three-dimensional bodies of actors and two-dimensional painting. For a while he

will be captivated by the idea of bas-relief stage, which was suggested to him by ------

the work of Ludwig Tieck; he will be guided by the concep,ts of Georg Fuchs, 1 1 N . P . U lya no v,

M o i v s t r e c h i .

Moscow .

ponder over the ideas of Adolph Appia and welcome Gordon Craig's book On 1 9 52 . p . 1 3 6.

th e Art of th e Th ea tre . We are not concerned with the problem of who was the

author of the idea of bas-relief stage. Meyerhold's contribution was the practical 1 2 M ey erh old , p t 1 .

implementation of that idea. The new concepts of stage space which he pp . 109-110 .

formulated in his book O n T he atre have a sound theoretical footing. but they ------

a' ttractedhim because of their practical value. 1 3 L ette r to O .M . M ey er ho ld , 3 1 J an ua ry

The Theatre Studio on Povarskaya Street did not have a single premiere, but 1 90 6 , in : M e ye rh o ld , p I. 1 , p . 9 3 .

the six months which Meyerhold had devoted to it became a turning-point in his

creative career; this experience is evident in many

of

his future productions. He

began to experiment with the principle of relief. and bas-relief stage (these two

trends should be distinguished) a year later, working at the Theatre of Komissar-

zhevskaya. Another principle, which he evolved when rehearsing Hauptmann's

S ch luc k a nd Ja u (designed by Ulyanov) at the Theatre Studio also had a lasting

effect. Meyerhold defined it as the principle of stylization, stressing that its

purpose was to bring out by all expressive means the in-depth synthesis of

a given period or phenomenon, to reconstitute their latent characteristic fea-

tures. 12 This reconstitution, let us add, was achieved with very laconic means

(something that for a long time to come would be the main demand made by

Meyerhold on his set designers). With the passing years he acquired an

impeccable mastery of style.

The production of S ch luck and Jau was dominated by an explicitly

non-realistic approach, which was sustained by all the components of stagecraft

and by an all-embracive rhythm, on the magic of which Meyerhold would

forever rely. His recognition of the dominance of musical canons was another

asset inherited from the Theatre Studio.

The dissolution of the Theatre Studio before it had given a single perform-

ance and the rift with Stanislavsky was a serious setback, even a disaster, for the

ambitious young director. Yet the incident brought to the surface one of

Meyerhold's salient characteristics: after each setback, however disastrous, he

was able to make an amazingly quick comeback, to find fresh energy and

creative power. He demonstrated this after the dissolution of the Theatre Studio

and, again, in 1907, when he had to leave the Theatre of Komissarzhevskaya.

Finally, when his own theatre was closed down in 1938, the veteran stage

director never lost heart. making plans for the future and consoling himself with

the thought that he had started from scratch before. At the end of 1938 and the

beginning of 1939 he conducted rehearsals at the Stanislavsky Opera Theatre in

Moscow in a mood of happy inspiration.

To go back to 1906: three months after the collapse of the Theatre Studio he

wrote in a letter to his wife: Something new has sprung to life in my soul,

something that will sprout and bear fruit; when it matures, my life will be

beautifully, generously fulfil led .... 13

He admitted later that Stanislavsky was right when he dissolved the Theatre

Studio on Povarskaya Street, because his own experiments with scenery and

staging were (and had to be) at variance with Stanislavsky's Method School of

acting, based on the aesthetic principles of the early Art Theatre.

In this context one should mention still another principle on which Meyer-

hold relied when dealing with set designers: the scenery had to be in accord with

the system of acting, which must sustain the design and give it its r a is o n d e t re .

Before 1917 he inevitably had to work with actors whom he did not choose

himself, be it at the Theatre Studio. the Theatre of Komissarzhevskaya or the

Imperial Alexandrinsky stage. His shadow creative efforts in 1909-1917 (his

St. Petersburg studios) enabled him to indulge in experiments (which, as he

53


5/21

VS E VOLO D ME YE R HOLD AN D S E T D E S IG N E R S

kn ew o nly to o w e ll, w a s im p o ss ib le

on the Imperial stage) and also gave him

a chance to train his own actors, or at least to elaborate training methods.

A theatre of his own, with his own acting system and specially trained actors,

came within Meyerhold's reach only in the Soviet period.

At the turning-point of 1905, after the collapse of the Theatre Studio on

Povarskaya Street, Meyerhold had to move to

P o / t a v a .

Before

th at h e h ad

spent

tw o m o n th s in T ifl is, G e o r g ia , w he re h e tried to c ar ry o n h is stu dio e x pe rim e n ts.

H e w a s a ble

to

a ch ie v e so m e th in g a lo n g th e lin e s o f th e n o n -r e a listic a pp r o a ch ,

e n h a n ce d m u sic a l p e rce ptio n a n d a tm o sp h e re .

But we

k n o w

from one of his ------

later letters that it was his work in Poltava that gave him a new outlook. In the

1 4 S ee letter to O . M . M ey erhol(

summer of 1906 his Cooperative of New Drama was on tour in that Ukrainian

7 M a rc h 1 9 0 8 . i b id ., p . 9 7 .

town, and he intended to put to the test some of his new ideas there.

14

In Poltava Meyerhold discovered the

v a l u e

of the proscenium. The town's

playhouse had an enormous orchestra pit, which the average speaking

v o i c e

could hardly negotiate. (At the moment he was directing Ibsen's

Ghosts

in

which he also took the part of Osvald. An exponent of unaffected acting, he

hated the idea of shouting at the top of his voice.) Meyerhold had a brainwave.

He told his designer Konstantin Kostin (it was his second season with Kostin) to

have a wooden platform put over the orchestra pit for the next night's perform-

ance. Kostin and his carpenters did the job; the result was a spacious, wide

proscenium, projecting to the first row of the seats. The front curtain was

dispensed with, so that the audience could see the scenery

Ghosts

was

a uni-set production) before the performance began. The acting was blocked out

mainly on the proscenium. After

Ghosts

the same technique was used to play

Ibsen's

Hedda Gabler,

Schnitzler's

Cry of Ufe,

Osip Dymov's

Cain

and

Maeterlinck's

Le Miracle de Saint-Antoine.

This occasional improvization resulted in a discovery: Meyerhold was able to

see the magic of the proscenium; he experimented with several arrangements

and realized that he had struck a gold mine. Free improvization with space gave

him confidence and an anticipation of new horizons. The pressure of work,

however, was the same as in Kherson. The likeable, obliging Kostin continued

hastily to provide the necessary furnishings. Experiments with the proscenium

were the only pledge of future triumph.

When Vera Komissarzhevskaya offered Meyerhold the post of director in her

St. Petersburg theatre that very summer, he was in top form. One of his projects

for the future - which eventually proved only too short-lived - was to

implement the new ideas and principles of directing which had come to him at

the Theatre Studio, but had not been put before audiences. During his one year

with Komissarzhevskaya he directed fifteen plays; he became the founder of

Symbolism on the stage and created a distinctive new idiom of stagecraft, which

was taken up by numerous imitators. His first move was to engage the artists

with whom he had worked on the Symbolist plays at the Theatre Studio:

Sapunov, Sudeikin and Denisov. Meyerhold's favourite was Sapunov, and he

chose him for his own debut at Komissarzhevskaya's: Ibsen's

Hedda Gabler.

Most of the theatre critics were unanimous in appreciating the incredibly

beautiful scenery. They were eqLJallyunanimous in assert ing that it had nothing

to do with Ibsen. (One of the reviews was entitled

Ib s e n o r

Sapunov?)

Implemented in this production were many of Meyerhold's tentative discove-

ries made at the Theatre Studio. A playing-space of limited depth. Blocking

arranged along the entire rim of the stage. Emphatic colour symbolism of both

settings and costumes. Accessories and furniture giving no sign of everyday

living. Careful matching of the shape and colour of the appurtenances and the

painted pictorial backcloth. Meyerhold and Sapunov strove to create on their

small stage (about 10 metres wide and 3.5 metres deep) the illusion of

a pale-blue, chil ly, fading vastness ,

Hedda Gabler

was immedi.ately followed by Maeterlinck's

Soeur Beatrice

with Sudeikin as designer. In this production Meyerhold was able to bring the

concepts of the sculptural and bas-relief stage to their climax (gauged, naturally,

on the aesthetic scale of the period). Critical reviews began to bristle with the

names of artists - all the way f roF l l Giotto to Puvis de Chavannes - as they

discussed the play's scenery and the actors' groupings and movements. This was

not to Meyerhold's liking. He declared that his source material was limited

5 4

T '

-q - o f -


6/21

VS E VOLOD M E YE R HOLD AN D S E T D E S IG N E R S

strictly to the early Renaissance artists. He further insisted that, far from copying

the compositions of concrete painters, he borrowed merely the Old Masters'

mode of expression; the characters' movements and groupings, the accessories

and the costumes showed but a synthesis of the lines and colour schemes that

can be seen on Primitivist paintings. 15 Grouping the nuns on the stage, he

strove for multiple uniformity, which was enhanced by their costumes; the

well-defined unrealistic gestures of each group did not break up the overall

homogeneity; the mise-en-scenes were deliberately arranged along the edge of

the stage. The settings were mounted close to forestage, which became the ------

acting-area; Meyerhold employed these devices to prod.uce the illusion of 1 5 N ote s to lis t o f M ey erh old 's

a Gothic cathedral chancel. Conveying this illusion, however, was not Meyer- p ro du cti on s, ib id ., p . 2 47 .

hold's only concern; he wanted to move the actors as far away from the pictorial

backdrop as possible.

This two-dimensional scheme re-emerged in Stanislaw Przybyszewski's

The

Eternal Fairy Tale (designed by Denisov), which followed Soeur Beatrice. The

ground plan was very simple, but the carpeted stairs, the backdrop, the

prak-

tikabli

( prepared places assigned to actors; Meyerhold's term. -

A.M.)

and

the furniture were all covered with exquisite and bizarre patterns.

The Eternal Fairy Tale

may have brought to an end Meyerhold's experiments

with sculptural and bas-relief effects and the pictorial backcloth as the basic

17 P e r e p i s k a . p . 8 2.

components of scenery, but it was by no means the end of the company's

involvement with Symbolist drama. It was emphatically sustained in Leonid 1 8 M ey er ho ld , p I. 1, p . 103.

Andreev's The Life of Man premiered in February 1907. This was the first

instance when Meyerhold figured on the playbill as author of stage design

(avtor oformleniya), while his designer Victor Kolenda was defined as the

executor of his plans (Meyerhold's rough sketches, exactly reproduced by

Kolenda's drawings, have been preserved). In his memoirs Kolenda said that he

had provided only several watercolour drawings and did not claim the rights

because there were no proper stage settings. 16 Indeed, there were none of the

traditional kind. Instead there was an unorthodox (in terms of the period)

treatment of space, which encompassed the full depth of the stage. The general

impression was that of a boundless expanse dissolving into grey murkiness. Each

object on stage was moulded by lighting in such a way as to give it an

exaggerated, slightly repulsive enlargement, to use Meyerhold's own expression.

It was the first instance when lighting was u'sed on the Russian theatre stage to

construct space and to be the main style-forming element of the show. Meyer-

hold defined it as area lighting , because only one source of light was used for

every individual episode (e.g. the lamp behind the sofa, the green-shade lamp

over the round table, the chandelier at the ball, the lamps over the tables in the

Drunkards' scene). For the sake of your play I got rid of stage sets and did away

with footlights and sidelights. I got rid of all the things against which I struggled

in vain throughout the winter and which crumbled so easily the moment your

work came into the world : this confession from Meyerhold to Leonid Andreev.

17

The theatre does not create plays, it is the play that creates the theatre,

Meyerhold was fully justified in affirming this. Almost two months before the

opening of

The Life of Man

he produced a play which proved to be crucial to his

career then and also later: The Showbooth by Alexander Siok. In the introduc-

tion to

On Theatre

Meyerhold openly admitted that the primary impulse towards

defining the course of his art came from the happy discovery of ground plans

for Blok's wonderful

Showbooth. 18

In point of fact, the play and the show both

revealed an ironic downgrading of Symbolism, which was effected by two of its

exponents (in belles-lettres and in the theatre; perhaps it was more like an act of

cleansing, of removing the sticky, vulgarizing stamp of current fashion). In the

typically Russian manner, this happy discovery was quite simple and extremely

sophisticated at the same time. The simplicity lay in the fact that Meyerhold, for

the first time on the Russian stage, gave the audience an open demonstration of

his stage device. Moreover, he built the aesthetic design of the performance on

this device.

The simple, archaic theatre, which would henceforth be Meyerhold's

passionate and multiform concern, encompassed commedia de/tarte, the tradi-

tional Japanese stage performance and the old theatres of Spain and England.

Pride of place was given to the theatre of masks - of familiar formalized

1 6 V .K . K o le nd a, M o ya r a b a ta v t e a t r e

V . F . K o m i s s a r z h e v s k o i , C e n tr al R e se a rc h

l ib ra ry o f

S T D R

F [ S o uy z T e a tr a ln y kh

D e y a te l ei R o s si ys k oi

F ed er ats ii - U n io n o f T he atr e W o rk er s o r

t he R u ss ia n F e de ra ti on ]. m a n us cr ip ts

sect ion, p . 24 .

55


7/21

VS E VOlOD ME YE R HOLD AN D S E T D E S IG N E R S

5 6

characters - based on improvization and heavily dependent on actors. They had

to possess simple but consummate acting techniques.

The Showbooth

was at

the same time sophisticated theatre, because it was so essentially Russian and

designed by an artist of Sapunov's stature. This is how the theatre historian

Konstantin Rudnitsky put it: Sapunov fascinated Meyerhold by the extraordi-

nary combination of azure skies (under which Harlequin and Columbine were

once born) with a touch of Russian philistinism and stagnation, which forced its

way into the composition and linked it to contemporary life ... , Brought

face-to-face in Sapunov's

Showbooth

were Shabolovka (a street on the out- ------

d A

M) d 1 9 K . R u dn its ky .

N ik o la i S a p un l

skirts of Moscow where Sapunov had spent his childhoo years. - . . an S o v e ts k iy e k h u d oz h n ik i t ea t r a i

Florence, suburban Moscow and Tuscany, Russia and Italy. The ensuing 'alter- Moscow. 1 9 81 . p p. 2 37 .2 38 .

cation' with reality was bound to capture Meyerhold's imagination. 19

The h appy discovery of ground plans for The Showbooth was the 20 Q u o te d f ro m : A Gladkov. O p

theatre-within-the-theatre , with a naive but artful demonstration of this stage 2 . p, 311,

device. The two acting-spaces were drawn into a fanciful exchange.

Meyerhold must have realized for the first time the full potential of the 21 A. Gr ip ic h. Uchi t el s t seny . in :

deliberate exposure of theatrical illusion.

s M e y e r h o l d o m M o sc ow , 1 9 67 ,

The play's framing scenery - a backdrop and side-drops of blue - was

non-realistic. Still more unrealistic was the set: a small theatre complete with

stage platform, drop curtain, prompter's booth, portals and borders. Only the

teaser was missing, leaving the usual stage machinery exposed.

On this small stage Sapunov mounted a three-walled box stage, where the

conference of the mystics took place. When it came to a close, the scenery was

flown up together with the bench and the pedestalled Cupid figure; the

colonnaded ballroom set was lowered, also in full view of the audience. It

provided the setting for Meyerhold's first harlequinade.

The Showbooth

was the root source of the grotesque pantomime

Colum-

bine s Veil (1910), the magazine Love of Three Oranges (which Meyerhold

published under the pseudonym of Doctor Dapertutto) and all the experiments

which he conducted in his St. Petersburg studios; there he endeavoured to train

actors proficient in all the techniques of the vintage-period theatre . Today we

rather tend to see Meyerhold as an innovative director

par excellence,

whereas

the theatre critics of his own time (S. Mokulsky,

A .

Gvozdev, P. Markov) kept

pointing to his traditionalism.

The breakthroughs achieved in the 1906 production of

The Showbooth

were

carried further in the 1914 double-bill production of

The Showbooth

and

The

Unknown Lady (also by Blok). In this casethe designer and co-director was Yuri

Bondi. whom Meyerhold later prohounced to be the founder of Constructivism

on the stage .20

The Unknown Lady

was the first play in which moving sections

were used to form an arched bridge in full view of the audience. The spatial

arrangement was adapted to the shape of the Tenishev School auditorium on

Mokhovaya Street. Seats were removed from the auditorium to create

a semicircle on the floor between the small stage and the sleeply riSing

amphitheatre, and it became d,e principal playing-space. The masked servants

of the stage were an important element of the show. Clad in light kimono-style

tops over Oriental trousers (all in blue-grey), they paraded before the audience at

the start of the play; they threw White gauze veils over the actors - a sign that

the night was snowy; one of them carried a long bamboo pole with a sparkler

attached to it to mark the course o,f the falling star. When the 'star' came down,

after a full arc over the dsrkenea hall, a 'servant' swiftly ran across the arena with

a gilded vessel in his outstretched arms to catch the falling star....

21

Before the tavern scene servants of the stage raised a grey-green curtain

between two poles to serve

as

a wall, along which the bar, the chairs, small

tables, etc., were placed (the furniture and the properties were brought on stage

by the actors in the semidarkness). When the Poet announced that the skies

had opened, the servants inclinec;l this backdrop curtain so as to cover up the

entire tavern (the actors had just enough time to slip away, taking with them

all the trappings). The curtain had a white lining, which represented a snowed-in

expanse; an arched bridge rose Over it; the servants then raised between their

poles a midnight-blue curtain sewn with gold sequins for stars.

The semicircular floor of the Tenishev School auditorium, from which the


8/21

seats had been removed, was used in lieu of a proscenium, but it was more like

the orchestra of the archaic Greek theatre, which Meyerhold regarded as the

ideal theatre: 'The archaic theatre with its simplicity, its horseshoe-shaped

audience seats and its orchestra is the only one capable of accommodating

a repertory of the desired variety ....

22

At the start of his career, at the Theatre of

Komissarzhevskaya, he had plans of staging Feodor Sologub's play

T h e . G ift o f

W is e B e e s, using the principle of theatre in the round - that is, of seating the

audience around the orchestra. This project of seat arrangement, however, was

not sanctioned by the authorities. Meyerhold flew into a rage and urged Feodor ------

Komissarzhevsky, the company's manager, to obtain the necessary official

2 2 M e ye rh old ,

p I.

1,

p .

1 4 2 .

approval: ... Here in Russia the first words to be uttered are always 'no way'. 23

The project had to be abandoned, but Meyerhold always kept it at the back of his 23

P e r e p i s k a ,

p. 8 9.

mind; he wanted to build the production of Sergei Tretyakov's I Want a C h i l d on

this principle (to which he and his designer, EI Lissitzky, intended to add

2 4

A .

G la dk ov , O p . c it . , p . 2 0 4 .

a vertical dimension). As before, he could not obtain official authorizat ion. It was

the ground plan of the Greek theatre that inspired the stage-and-auditorium

arrangement in the new TIM building, the project for which was drawn up by

Mikhail Barkhin and Sergei Vakhtangov. Meyerhold was arrested and made

away with before the new building was ready,

The plays which Meyerhold produced at the Theatre of Komissarzhevskaya

and his studio productions gave him the status of the founder of Symbolism in

the theatre, Let us stress that this trend had plenty of theorists in both Western

Europe and Russia, but Meyerhold was its true practitioner and developer. As

soon as the features of Meyerhold's Symbolism became sufficiently defined,

theatre critics started to accuse him of following the Art Nouveau trend which

was then the general vogue. They claimed that the scenery designed for his

productions brought to the mind the wallpaper, vases and etageres that adorned

the waiting-rooms of expensive dentists. Meyerhold, in his turn, accused Max

Reinhardt of using scenery that reproduced il lustrations from J u g e n d and T h e

S t u d i o .

Alexander Gladkov was right when he wrote that Meyerhold did not

need to follow the current vogue: he was always ahead of it, but fashion was

occasionally able to catch up with him. 24 Gladkov attributed Meyerhold's quick

break with Symbolism precisely to the popularity of this style. Stil l, the desire to

dissociate himself from all-too-popular trends could hardly have been the driving

force of Meyerhold's creative development which sometimes proceeded at

a hectic pace. No one could have predicted that Meyerhold's cooperation with

the Theatre of Komissarzhevskaya would endure for just one year. No one could

have imagined that after several months on the rpad, touring the western and

southern provinces of Russia with a company of actors, he would start the 1908

season as stage director of the Imperial Theatres of S1. Petersburg. In his mature

years Meyerhold used to say that the crucial part in this turn of his fortunes was

played by Alexander Golovin, who was able to persuade Vladimir Telyakovsky,

the Imperial Theatres' administrator, to employ him. Golovin, however, wrote in

his memoirs that Meyerhold owed his engagement to Telyakovsky (which

coincided with the latter's own account), But Golovin certainly had a lot of

influence in his milieu both as an artist and as a person.

Before he joined the staff of the Imperial Theatres Meyerhold had not had

any professional contacts with Golovin, though the two had first met in 1907

and Meyerhold was a frequent visitor to Golovin's studio. They subsequently

staged together sixteen operas and dramas on the Alexandrinsky and Mariinsky

stages. For Meyerhold it was a unique case of long and unclouded cooperation.

For his part, Golovin had never worked with a director endowed with such

driving power. He now had a fully committed and extremely ingenious partner,

capable of conceiving a total unified design of the show and setting very

concrete targets to the artist-designer. Oddly enough, Maestro Golovin did not

seem to mind it.

Meyerhold steered an unexpectedly prudent course on the Imperial stage.

Mindful of his reputation of a Decadent and Symbolist trouble-maker, hebegan by

issuing a statement aimed at assuaging the doubts of the actors and the

administration: A complete rift : would it not amount to a very grave crime against

the ancient traditions, whose graceful decline must be carefully sheltered, ,.

This is how I see it: just as we need picture galleries and museums, so we


5 7


9/21


58

need these Empire-style theatres and their stage veterans, the bearers of tradi-

tions initiated by actors like Mochalov, Shumsky, Shchepkin and Karatygin. If

the hackneyed scenery, which the house-painter decorators of the old school

have so often provided for plays by Ostrovsky, Griboyedov and Gogol, were

replaced by the creations of a true master, harmonizing with the gilded decor of

the playhouse, with the rich velvet of its stalls and boxes, and, above all, with

echoes of the old acting school ... then the Grand Theatre would sparkle with

new colours. 25 Meyerhold was able to fulf il this promise with the assistance of

Golovin. The amazing thing about it. for which Meyerhold takes full credit, is ------

that he remained committed to innovation: as he cultivated and revitalized the

old, he discovered the new.

There was the innovative revival of archaic theatrical principles in a way that

was compatible with modern acting techniques (more accurately, with the

classicizing school). There was the innovative phenomenon of uniting audience

and stage with the help of architectural devices, scenery and atmosphere. One

more innovation was the principle of bringing actors to the fore while providing

lavish decorative surroundings for them.

As regards the techniques of stagecraft, Meyerhold and Golovin should

probably be credited with just two breakthroughs: turning the proscenium into

the acting-area and introducing sets of allusive curtains. They also introduced

special portals (or portal structures) intended to bridge the gap between house

and stage. Paradoxically, their endeavours gave rise to the trend that is best

described as traditionalism.

Meyerhold was a commanding director, capable of imposing his own terms

on the entire production team; he had a total, unified concept of a play long

before the first rehearsals with actors and working sessions with his set designer.

When he joined the Alexandrinsky Theatre, he had worked on the theatre stage

for only ten years, his acting years included. Golovin was his senior by ten years:

a well-established painter who had also won distinction in applied art and stage

design. The two men obviously had very different ratings. What, then, was

Golovin's reaction to the targets set by the new stage director?

Some eighteen months before the premiere of Moliere's

Don Juan

(1910)

Golovin received from Meyerhold a detailed assignment put into writ ing, which

covered everything, from the period and style to the handling of the stage space,

the employment of the proscenium and even the furnishings and lighting.

A special section was devoted to costumes, listing how many of these were

needed for each actor or actress. Added to this were excerpts from Moliere's own

directions about the personages' costumes and a list of the required furniture and

accessories.

The renowned set designer was not at all ruffled by such an assignment. First

of all, it did not come as a surprise, for the period in which the play would be set

(the reign of Louis XV) had been agreed upon previously, as well as the basic

staging principles (the proscenium as the acting-area and the painted pictorial

backdrops). Secondly, Meyerhold gave his designer some leeway (the number

of pieces of furniture and their appearance, detailed costume design). There is

every reason to believe that this stretch of free space was sufficient for

Golovin. On his own later testimony, the staging of

Don Juan

went on smoothly

from start to finish.

This successful cooperation is probablv attributable not only to the accord

between the two partners but also to Golovin's ability to make a contribution of

his own: his mastery of colour and his famous ornamentalism; his superb

composition; his unerring perception of the depth of stage, which he skilfully

enhanced with delimited planes; his impeccable feeling of style, which he was

able to reconstitute with the help of various stage appointments (let us bear in

mind that Golovin never copied real objects; he created the furniture, costumes

and accessories). He was able to enrich Meyerhold's schemes, to materialize

them as unique artistic entities.

Meyerhold's attitude to Golovin, his appraisal of Golovin's contribution to the

visual sequence of the stage show and his basic ideas of director-designer

cooperation (as Meyerhold saw them in the early 191Os) can be gleaned from

the article Gluck's

Orpheus:

Artist Alexander Golovin and Director Vsevolod

Meyerhold Speak About Their Plans . It contains this statement: Preparatory

25 V.E . Me yerho ld , 0

t e a t r e

(Vtor

chast :

1 1 d n e v n ik a .

T he e x ce rp t c it e

d ate d in 1908), in : M eye rho ld , p I .

1 7 1 , 1 7 3.


10/21

VS E VO LO D M E YE R HO LD AN D S E T D E S IG N E R S

work for any stage production claiming a degree of accomplishment takes a very

long time if the artist and the director are concerned not merely with handsome

colour patches (the former) and the grouping and free movement of figures (the

latter); it takes a very long time if both of them seek to bring all the component

parts in line with a single creative concept. ... Their cooperation is so very

difficult because they have to work out a unified design of the production, to

define a guideline for every scene and to weld the artifice of every scene i o the

chain of the artist's integral concept. 26 Meyerhold went on to emphasize that

the director and the choreographer should be willing to comply with the main ------

target of the artist , that it was the artist who set the keynote to the players'

movements, the groupings of the chorus and the dancers in

Orpheus.

This

insistence on the paramount role of the artist was most probably attributable to

Golovin's superb achievement in

Orpheus

and not to the situation in which

Meyerhold found himself at the moment (he was at odds with the opera's

choreographer Mikhail Fokin). The enthusiastic reviews that appeared after the

premiere, as well as Golovin's sketches of stage sets and costumes, all testify to

his triumph.

2 6 R G A LI [ R os s ii sk ii G o su d ar st ve n ny

A r kh i v L it er a tu r y i I sk u s st va - R u ss i an

S ta te A rc h iv e o f L ite r at ur e a n d A rt ], f un d

9 9B , f ile 1 , s to ra ge u nit 2 40 , p p. , - 2.

59

2 7 V . E . M ey erh old , K p o s t an o v k e D on

Zh u a n a M o / y e r a , in : M ey er ho ld , p I. 1 , p .

1 9 4 .

The emphasis on the proscenium as the playing-space, which was especially

pronounced in

Don Juan,

is evident also in several other productions (Hamsun's

At the Imperial Gates, Orpheus and Lermontov's Masquerade). Meyerhold

would revert to it later, for he always wanted to make the actor the focus of his

lavish stage displays. The proscenium is like a circus arena, which is ringed in

by seats; its projection into the audience ensures that not a single gesture,

movement or grimace made by an actor should be obscured by the dust of the

wings. 27

Meyerhold gave a remarkable explanation of why the main curtain should be

dispensed with in

Don Juan.

Before the actors came on stage and started

playing, the audience was supposed to take in the air of the times , contemplat-

ing the uncurtained stage lit by shimmering candlelight. Two years after the

premiere of

Don Juan,

when Golovin and Meyerhold began to work at Lermon-

tov's

Masquerade,

the air of the times was conveyed by a magnificent set of

curtains. The two men wanted to create a non-realistic method of stagecraft.

They challenged the premise of the fourth wall and the routine of the Art

Theatre by establishing a special relationship between stage and house, by

steering the audience towards perception couched in musical terms.

In

Masquerade

the curtains were intended to play the part of an overture, of

orchestral interludes and a tragic coda. The first curtain in black-and-red, with

the emblems of playing cards, introduced the performance before it actually

began; the three other curtains served to sustain the play during the intermissions,

creating the desired mood; the fifth curtain, a black net, fel l at the end, veil ing the

scenery like mourning crepe. The explicitly theatrical decor (the screens, furni-

ture, accessories and costumes) was a natural ingredient of the tragic stage

show, which affirmed the inevitabili ty of the characters' fate.

Masquerade was Meyerhold's last production in pre-revolutinary Russia: its

opening night, as noted above, fell on February

25, 1917.

When Meyerhold launched his programmatic post-revolutionary productions,

one of their salient features was the absence of curtains of any kind.

It was not the first time in Meyerhold's career that he had to start from scratch.

Interestingly, he was always able to retain the same fundamental approach,

however sudden and drastic the twists of his fortune appeared to be. One of his

creative impulses was the drive towards discovery and experimentation. Another

was his unflagging interest in avantgarde art trends and the desire to cooperate

with innovative painters, designers and architects.

In 1918 Meyerhold asked Kazimir Malevich to do the set design for

Mayakovsky's Mystery-Bouffe. His choice for ,verhaeren's Les Aubes was

Vladimir Dmitriev. A student of both Meyerhold and Kuzma Petrov- Vodkin, this

young designer was obviously influenced by the work of Vladimir Tatlin, by his

counter-reliefs.

In 1921 Meyerhold paid a visit to the exhibition 5 x 5

= =

25 , launched by

the Moscow Constructivist school. It was a history-making visit. The set design,


11/21

VS E VO LO D M E YE R H O LD AN D S E T D E S IG N E R S

subsequently provided by Lyubov Popova, one of the exhibition's contributors,

for Crommelynck's

The Magnanimous Cuckold,

and Meyerhold's staging of this

play marked the arrival of Constructivism on the theatre stage as a trend of

worldwide importance.

Included in this book are articles by Ivan Aksenov and Nikolai Tarabukin

(they appear only in the Russian language), probing into the origin, early

development and principal features of Constructivism on the stage.28We there-

fore can dispense here with a serious discussion of this phenomenon, which it

undoubtedly deserves. ------

Constructivism was the third trend which Meyerhold developed on the stage.

2 8 O n C o ns tr uc tiv is m in th e th ea tr e

f I a ls o : J o hn

E .

Bowlt ,

R u s s k o y e

The Master and his younger followers regarded Constructivism as a power u t e a t r a ln o . d e k o r a t s io n n o y e i s k u s s tv o .

instrument in bringing down the old theatre ( to create while breaking up was 1 8 8 0 . 1 9 3 0 , in : K h u d o z hn i k i r u s s k og ,

Meyerhold's motto in his early years). The physical act of clearing the stage t e a tr a . 1 8 8 0 1 9 3 0 , S o b ra n iy e N i k it y i

platform for the premiere of The Magnanimous Cuckold can therefore be L o ba n o v yk h R o st o vs k ik h , M o s co w ,

accorded a symbolic meaning. The actor Nikolai Mologin, who took part in this 1990) :

Marjorie L Hoover,

M e y e r ho ld a n d n

event, recounts that the stage of the Nezlobin company (in the building of the S e t D e s ig n e r s , N e w Y or k, 1 9 8 8

former Zon Theatre) was crammed with stage junk . The night before the

premiere Meyerhold and his GVYRM students (abbreviation for the Higher State

Workshop for training stage directors) went into action.

The stage trap was already open. The Nezlobin scenery was being dis-

mounted with remarkable vigour. '

'What's this? Plush furniture set? Down it goes '

'And this one? Empire furnishings for

Psyche?

This way Come on, get

going ', commanded a ringing young voice.

Everyone tried to do the job of ten.

It was morning before a space large enough to accommodate Popova's set

had been cleared .... 29

A bare stage, the hallmark of Meyerhold's post-revolutionary theatre, con-

tinued to outrage audiences for a long time to come (one outraged spectator was

the famous novelist and playwright Mikhail Bulgakov).

The typical features of Constructivist set design, formulated in

The Magnani-

mous Cuckold, have been described many times: the three-dimensional prin-

ciple, functionality ( a machine for acting ), an emphatically constructionist

scheme. The principal, albeit promptly forgotten concept, was that the set was

independent of all the usual stage equipment. While working on The Magnani-

mous Cuckold

Meyerhold's company had no permanent base of their own, and

so Lyubov Popova designed a set unit that could be mounted on any platform or

indeed on any street corner.

30

Here again one should point to Meyerhold's extraordinary though not too

obvious consistency. Let us recall that he toyed with the idea of performances

that did not need a properly equipped theatre stage back in 1907 and 1908: The

productions can be reduced to the deg.ree of minimal ism that would enable

actors to go out into the street and perform without any dependence on the

scenery and accessories that can be mounted only on a theatre stage. 31To the

best of our knowledge, The Magnanimous Cuckold was never played outdoors,

but we know that Meyerhold did demonstrate the possibi lity of dispensing with

the stage box when Earth Rampant (Marcel Martinet's La Nuit) was performed

in this fashion in Moscow and Kharkov - all,egedly, to great advantage.

The idea of performing in the street was feasible and realistic, as distinct from

Meyerhold's claim that a performance could be turned into a free, spontaneous

show in which the working people would engage in their leisure time. 32 This

statement was one in the series of social utopias which the early post-revo-

lutionary years had proliferated. This peri'od was dominated by the idea of

raising people of a new mould , which would be achieved by the union of

technology and ideology. The mechanistic foundation of this social utopia

resulted in a warped outlook, which persrsted for a long time to come; and the

seemingly pragmatic trends of artistic endeavour which it bred, proved to be the

most fantasizing. The ideas of social engcineering captivated many minds.

Changing the run of everyday life - something that was especially durable

- was believed to be a feasible task. The country lay ravaged by war and

revolution, but its architects produced projects of new factories and socialist

cities - neat models, offering plenty of light and fresh air, and the latest

60

,

~

,

j;,

i ,

f

l,

2 9 N , Mo lo gin ,

I z

v o s p o m i n a n i i , in :

T e a tr a ln y O k ty a br , 1 , L e ni n gr a d-

M oscow , 1 9 2 6 , p. 1 5 6 .

3 0 M os t lik ely , t he g en er al p la n o f t h l

u n it f or T h e M a g n a n im o u s C u ck o ld d

n ot b elo ng to ly ub ov P ap ov a. T he re

s om e e vid en ce p oin tin g to th e f ac t th ,

M e y er h o ld o r ig in a ll y c o m m is s io n e d

V la d im ir L yu ts e , o n e o f h is W o r ks h op

students,

to

w ork o n th e d es ig n. T o

s ti m u la t e t he s tu d e n t' s i m a gi n at io n a n

d is p en s e w it h v is u al i ll us io n is m ,

M e ye rh o ld s u gg e ste d th a t t he b as ic

e le m en t o f th e s et u nit s ho uld b e

b or ro w ed f ro m th e f ra m e o f a w o od en

w in dm ill ( a c as e o f r ea rr an gin g a m a te

e ntity ). ly uts e d re w u p a p ro je ct, a nd

b ec a m e th e b as is o f P o po v a' s s c he m e '

( Ka ta lo g v y st av k i 5 I e , M o sc o w,

19

p . 9 ). T he h is to ry o f th e s et u nit fo r

T h

M a g n a n im o u s C u c ko ld is a l so to ld b y I'

A ks en ov in tw o o f h is a rtic le s ( se e

A p pe n di ce s to th is b oo k ),

M ey er ho ld s po ke in h ig h te rm s o f

P o p o va 's w o r k . C f . h i s l e tt er p u bl is h e d

t he n e w s p ap e r

I z v e s t i y a

a f o rt ni g ht a l tE

t he p r e m ie r e : E s t ee m e d C o m r a d e E d i t(

th e n o ti ce r ev ie w in g th e p ro d uc ti on o f

I

F re e W ork sh op , o f w hic h I a m th e h ea l

c a rr ie d b y I z v e s t i y a o n 2 6 A pr il, b re ak s t

ru le s o f b oth fa ir p la y a nd c om m on

p ra c ti ce : i t m a k es n o m e n ti on w h a ts o e~

o f th e n a m e o f t he . a rt is t d e si gn e r w h o

c o ns tr uc te d th e s e t u n it a n d a ls o d e si gn

th e

p r o z o d e z h d a

( a k in d o f w o rk er 's

c o ve ra ll s w o rn b y th e a c to rs . -

A M ) . t ho u gh b oth a re d is cu s se d a t s o r

le ng th in th e re vie w. It is m y d u ty to p oi

o ut th at th e c on tr ib utio n m a de to th e

p ro d uc ti on b y P ro fe s so r L P o po v a o f

G V TM h a s b ee n u n de re s ti ma te d b y y o ul

r ev ie w er . T he m o de l o f th e s et w a s

s ubm itte d b y h er a nd a pp ro ve d b y m e

b ef or e th e b lo c ki ng o f a c to rs b eg a n, a n e

th e g en er al te no r o f th e p ro du ctio n o w e

m u ch to th e c on str uc tio n o f th e s et. S i ne

I h av e n o o th er w ay o f a ffirm in g th e re al

c o n tr ib u ti o n m a d e b y t he a r ti st de s ig n e r

to th e s uc ce ss o f m y p ro du ctio n a nd in ,

fa ir ne ss to th e tr uth , I h ere by a sk y ou to

p u b li sh t hi s l e tt e r l z v e s t i y a [Moscow].

n o. 1 01 , 9 M ay 1 92 2).


12/21

engineering facilit ies, with emphasis on physical training, rationally organized

labour and an equally rationalized daily life. The architect Konstantin Melnikov

explained that his culture clubs were conceived not as mere building projects: I

was working on a general project of future happiness .... 33

By 1929, however, Alexander Rodchenko was ready to offer a sardonic

interpretation of this sanitated future happiness in his set design for

Mayakovsky's

The Bedbug. .

Perhaps it is a universal truth that utopias are best disproved by attempts at

their implementation. But in the early 1920s the people's minds were still fuelled

by their faith in the future. The rise of Constructivism was a logical development.

Equally logical was Meyerhold's speedy rejection of i t.

In 1927 the magazine Afisha TIM (no. 4) carried a programmatic article

Constructivism and the Naturalistic Theatres (it was unsigned, but since

Meyerhold was the magazine's editor- in-chief, it was bound to express his own

viewpoint). If one dispenses with the inevitable class-struggle phraseology of

the times, the essence of the article amounts to the fol'lowing.

Far from being a new set-design style, Constructivism was conceived as

a means of breaking up the old naturalistic theatre. Its main purpose was to do

away with stereotyped audience expectations, and this was successfully

achieved. In its finest and purest form Constructivism was practised at the

Meyerhold Theatre. Other theatres were quick to realize that a Constructivist

stage set ensured (a) a full house, (b) the safe-conduct of a revolutionary

production . In their adaptation of Constructivism bourgeois theatres like the

Moscow Kamerny simply reduced it to a new style of stage decor. The theatres

that rejected the naturalistic principle (the TIM above all) were consequently

f d b h

d'l I k f C . . I . 3 1 Me ye rh old , pt . 1 , p . 1 41 .

con ronte y t 15 Iemma: to 00 or a neo- onstructlVlst sty e or to give up

Constructivist design as such because it had been adopted by the naturalistic

theatre, 34 The categorical judgements of Afisha TIM did not at all mean that 3 2 Ibid ., p . 4 7.

Constructivism on the stage failed to affect the subsequent evolution of the art of

set design. An accurate selection of materials, emphasis on real objects, laconic

architectural structures with clearcut constructive schemes - such were the

carry-overs of Constructivism in the later TIM productions and, indeed, on the

stage worldwide. Even this modicum sometimes met with opposition. Malevich,

for one, was insistent in persuading Meyerhold to do away once and for all with

34 A fi s h a T IM 4 , M os co w , 1 '9 27 , p . 2 0.

the legacy left by Constructivism. 35

Despite Meyerhold's inherent consistency there was something in his inner-

most cast that caused him to abandon his own discoveries. Thus, he discovered,

together with lIya Shlepyanov, the principle of kinetic scenery - the famous

moving screens in DE [Dayosh Evropu] - and left it there. He invented the

scenery with audio-impression - the hanging bamboo rods in Bubus the

3 6 In tr od uc tio n to : Y u. Y ela gin , O p. c it. ,

Teacher - and dropped this idea. All the time he had to explain, to motivate or, p.16 .

on occasion, to provide justification for his sudden change-overs from

Prozodezhda (a kind of coveralls for actors) to authentic period costumes; from

3 7 Q u ote d fro m th e a nth olo gy :

e o

a taboo on facial make-up to its extensive use.;from a bare stage to one furnished V a k h t a n g o v M os co w , 1 98 4, p . 3 33 .

with scenery. He tried to play this down, saying, for example, that he had just

used a bit of bamboo as scenery for Bubus the Teacher. Something was

perpetually driving him on. In the words of the actor Mikhail Chekhov, he could

not bear to wait, something inside him kept urging him on. 36 Evgueny Vakhtan-

gov wrote (in a private diary entry of 26 March 1921): Here is a stage director

of genius, the greatest of the living and of all who came before him. Each of his

productions is in itself a new theatre, each could generate a new trend. 37 But

something kept him from making a halt, going in-depth and creating these new

trends. In this he was not unlike Picasso, who said jokingly that he regarded

Meyerhold as a rival.

38

In the 19205 the pace of his progress reached almost a fever pitch. Meyerhold

seemed to be hard pressed for time. Yet there were plays the production of which

he kept putting off. It was his longtime ambition to stage Hamlet, and he had

Picasso's promise to do the set design, but this was never realized. He made two

attempts at staging Pushkin's

Boris Godunov,

but neither came to a conclusion.

The pace of his movement was visibly slackened in the early 1930s. It looked

as if Meyerhold was suffering from lack of air. In fact, there was an atmospheric

change throughout the country. The grip on him became tighter.

V S E V O LO D M E Y E R H O L D A N D S fT D E S IG N E R S

T he re is a s eq ue l t o th e s to ry . In 1 97 9

V la d im i r S te n b e rg s ta te d i n a n i n te r vi e w

th at th e ba sic p la n o f th e s et u nit o f

T h e

M a g n a n im o u s C u c ko ld w a s c o nc e iv e d b y

h im , h is b ro th e r G e o rg h i S te n be rg a n d

K o ns ta n ti n M e du n et sk y , a ll o f w h o m

M e y e rh o l d h a d o r ig i na l ly c o m m i ss io n e d t o

d e si gn t hi s p la y ; th e y e x pl ai ne d t he ir p la n

to M ey erh old , bu t d id n ot g et d ow n to

w o rk , d id n ot b uild a m o de l, e tc . V la dim ir

S te n be rg i ns is te d th a t th e i de a o f

a tw o -l ev e l c o ns tr u ct io n w i th r am p s a n d

p ar ts o f a w in dm ill b elo n ge d to h im , t o h is

b ro t he r a n d M e d u n et sk y ; M e y e rh o ld

s u bs e qu e nt ly p a ss e d t h e p la n to P o po v a

a s h is o wn . (S ee : S o v e ts k iy e k h u d o z h ni k i

t ea t Ia i k in o - 7B M o sc o w , 1 9 81 ,

pp.218-220.)

61

3 3 K .S . M e ln ik ov , A r kh it ek tu r8 m o e i

z h i z n i M o sc o w , 1 9 85 ,

p .80 .

3 5 Q u o te d f ro m : Y e o Ov s ya n ni ko v a,

K a z im i r M a le v ic h t radi ts iyakh

i nova t o rst ve , A r k h i te k t u r a ; s t ro i te l s tv o

M o s k v y n o. 6 ,1 98 9, p . 1 7.

38

S e e

le tte r b y Z .N . R a ik h o f 1 6

D e c e m b e r, 1 9 2 8 , T e a t I (M os co w) n o. 2 ,

1 97 4, p . 3 4.


13/21


Meyerhold's plans of his productions' scenery were remarkably feasible in terms

of technology. They might be hard to handle but never impracticable. He was

wef( versed in stage engineering

as it

was

practised

both

in Russia and Western

Europe. He was able to find and employ fine professionals like K. Soste, who

headed the scenery mounting section, or the engineer I. Maltsyn. In his own

words, a stage director must also be a playwright, an actor, a set designer,

a musician, a fitter and a tailor. 39 Meyerhold liked to uphold this statement by

references to Stanislavsky, who had studied couture in Paris so as to be able to

correct his costume makers, or to Gordon Craig, who had enough professional

know-how to stand up to his lighting directors or joiners.

Strictly speaking, the platforms that rolled actors forward to stage edge in

Meyerhold's production of

The Inspector General

were not his own invention:

4 0 Y uri An ne nko v, Dnev n ik mo i kh

roller platforms (wagon stages) had long been in use on stage. Meyerhold vstrech . Tsykl tragedi i , Vol. 2,

p.

80

thought of employing them for instant scene-changes as early as 1911, when

staging Tolstoy's

The Living Corpse

with artist Constantin Korovin. For

The

Inspector General, however, the wagon stages were, for the first t ime ever, used

to carry not only the furnishings but also the actors. The artist Yuri Annenkov,

Meyerhold's friend of long standing, helped to fit the sets of The Inspector

General

to the stage of the Montparnasse Theatre during Meyerhold's 1930 tour

of Paris. Annenkov described the sensation caused by the large platform that

rode from the dark backstage area towards the audience at the start of every

scene, carrying luxury furniture, accessories and actors. At the end of a scene

the platform with the actors rolled backwards and disappeared in the dark only to

be rmmediately replaced by another one, carrying a new setting .... The general

impression was that the audience was every time offered a new serving dish with

a lavish assortment of food. 40 The impression must have been very strong

indeed to make Annenkov, himself an established artist, speak of large plat-

forms . In point of fact, the trapezoid wagon stages, slightly raked, were not

large, measuring 3 x 4 metres (the broad base was closer to the audience). The

spectacular effect was achieved by the opulence of costumes and objects, the

perfect grouping of actors and objects and the close-up effect. Let it be said

that in addition to close-ups and fade-ins Meyerhold employed other cinematic

devices, including captions, e.g. the titles of episodes that appeared in TheForest

and the political slogans of

E

These were clearly analogous to the titles of the

silent movies. In fact, the relationship between Meyerhold's stage directing and

film art is a subject that merits specialized study.

The production of

The Inspector General

was dominated by choice lUXUry

articles, a point that was stressed both by the champions and the opponents of

the production. The sparkling of transparent blue cut-glass, the shimmering of

heavy silk .... Pieces of honey-dew melon, dripping with juice, placed in a silver

bowl. Spell-bound objects floating, swaying gently in the hands of mesmerized

servants. Fine overstuffed sofas, resembling mahogany elephants, immersed in

decorous slumber .... 41

It was not the first nor the last time that Meyerhold used objects to impress

audiences. We do not have in mind the trick circus machines designed by

Varvara Stepanova for The Deilth of Tare/kin (1922), a classical play by

Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin. Her stools, chairs and tables, albeit proclaimed to

be purely Constructivist functional objects, were stage props

par excellence.

What we have in mind are the authentic articles with which Meyerhold

became concerned in his latest, post-Constructivist period; objects that had been

used in real life and were givefi. a new lease of life on stage. In this respect the

forerunner of

The Inspectar General

and

La Dame aux camelias

was

Earth

Rampilnt

(1923). This Meyerhold production of earlier times had given rise to

his own definiton veshchestvennoye oform/eniye (material setting). Here is the

inventory compiled by the play's designer Lyubov Popova: A coff in, a red pall,

a light machine-gun, bicycles, weaponry, a field kitchen, 2 portable telephone

sets, 1 camp bed, 1 field pack, 1 large table, geographical maps, 2 typewriters,

2 airplanes .... 42 The play had to be produced without airplanes, but it did feature

a motor car and motorcycles on stage.

In the theatre world things often happen by chance. The strictly authentic

material setting of

Earth Rampant

may have been due to the fact that in those

years the theatre had no meafiS whatsoever. Box-off ice receipts could barely

6

39 A Gladk ov , O p. c it ., v o l. 2 , p. :

41

S e rg e i R a dl ov , R e vi zo r u M e ye .

q uo te d fr om : K . Rudni t s k y . R e z h i s s

M e y e r h o l d . M os c ow. 1969, p. 35 4

4 2 l.P o p o v a , M o n t i ro vk a s p ek ta A

Ze mly a d ybom , in : R GALI, fu nd 9 6

s to ra ge u nit 3 24 ,


14/21

VS E VOLOD ME YE RHOLD AN D SE T D E SIG N E R S

cover the lighting and heating bills and the wages of auxiliary personnel. There

was no money for the production of new plays. The stage set of the preceding

premiere, the famous

M a g n a n im o u s C uc ko ld ,

had cost only 200 roubles, but it

left nothing in the theatre's purse. Still , E a rth R a m p a nt had to be released for the

coming anniversary of the Red Army. The theatre, anxious to retain the Red

Army's sponsorship, regularly performed for its units. The actor Nikolai Mologin

recalls that it was Trotsky who came to the rescue: By his order we were issued

many things as well as uniforms ....

43

Meyerh01d dedicated the play to the Red

Army and to Lev Trotsky, the first Red Army man of the Russian Federation . ------

Soon enough Trotsky became enemy no.

1

of the Soviet Communist party,

4 3 N . Mologin, op cit., p . 1 62.

and Meyerhold was obliged to write off icial explanations about this dedication.

It also figured in the criminal case brought up against Meyerhold - as proof of 44 B. Alpers,

T e a t r a /n i y e o c h e r k ;,

vo l. 1 ,

his affiliation to Trotskyism. Mo sco w, 1 97 7. p p. 5 4-5 5.

In

E a r th R a m p a n t

objects were charged with their proper functions: tele-

phones rang, guns went off, bicycles rode forward, etc. In the next-season

premiere, T h e F o re s t, objects were assigned a new, purely theatrical (sometimes

circus-trick) role. They became the actors' playmates without losing their

everyday functions. Washing was smoothed with roller and beetle, the giant

stride swung the young lovers higher and higher, water was fetched in a basin.

But that did not detract from the objects' importance in producing purely

theatrical effects. Boris Alpers, who saw and reviewed T h e F o re s t, has left this

imaginative description: Doves were released from a dovecote. Fruit, pumpkins,

glass jars, basins, jugs, tables, garden benches, pianos and mirrors were brought

on stage or carried away in full view of the audience ... Objects were in 4 6 V.E . M ey erh old ,

D o k / a d

Revizore,

perpetual motion; passing through the actors' hands, they seemed to lose

In :

M ey erh old , p t. 2 , p p. 1 40 -1 41 .

weight, like objects manipulated by a circus juggler ' Smaller articles, e.g.

a fishing rod, a kettle, a handkerchief, a pistol, were drawn into this circuit of

objects revolving around the actors from the very beginning of the play to its

end. The impression was of a magic ribbon manipulated by a conjurer. 44

In

T h e F or e st

the objects' quality, their conformity to the highest standards

has not yet become a matter of primary concern. In the later productions,

B u b u s

th e T e a c h e r , th e M a n d a te , T h e In sp e cto r G e n e r a l

and

W o e to W it

(Meyerhold's

version of the proper title W o e fr o m W it) historically allusive objects of the

highest quality became a permanent feature. The pinnacle of this approach came

in L a D am e a ux ca m elia s

(1934).

We know that Meyerhold was not pleased with the quality of objects used in

staging

T h e M a n d a t e, 45

but he achieved his purpose in

T h e In sp ec to r G e n e ra l,

where objects added a distinctive note to the orchestration of the performance:

I think that every object is animated by its own dynamic, it springs to life as if it

were endowed with nerves, backbone, flesh and blood. 46

T h e In sp e cto r G e n e ra l

was premiered in December 1926, just four years after

the advent of Constructivism to the theatre, but l ife in the country had undergone

radical changes. The years of war communism were over. The New Economic

Policy (NEP) was gaining ground. On occasion Meyerhold still appeared in his

Red Army uniform (he liked to change his image); still, he could not but realize

that people wanted to live their own real lives instead of dreaming about life in

the future. The austere style of Constructivism was ill suited to Meyerhold's

dynamic progress.

Two fundamental concepts, two aesthetic systems came face-to-face in the

production of Griboyedov's W o e to W it (1928), for which the scenery was

designed by Victor Shestakov and Nikolai Ulyanov. Ulyanov resumed his

cooperation with Meyerhold after an interval of twenty-odd years. Though their

relationship continued on a personal level and the artist painted two portraits of

Meyerhold, they had no joint venture after S ch lu ck a n d J a u. (Stanislavsky, for

his part, sought Ulyanov's cooperation at less prolonged intervals.) Looking

through the sketches of coStumes and props for

W o e to W it,

one can see that

Ulyanov poured into them his pent-up desire to work with Meyerhold once

more. These are not showpieces but practicable, down-to-earth designs: rapid

but accurate .f lotations that epitomize the spirit of Griboyedov's times, but also

hint at contemporary costume design. The colour schemes are superb, the cut is

original. There are many unexpected details, e.g. the patchwork quilt in which

the drowsy valet is draped, or Famusov's house jacket. Charming watercolour

63

45 In

T h e M a n da te

fu rn itu re is th e w ea k

s p ot . . ..

T h e M a n da te

i s a ll a bo ut e ve ry da y

life , a bo ut th e u gly e ffe cts o f th e fo rm er

life -s ty le to da y. T ak e th e d in in g- ro om , th e

table - w hat k ind of a din ing-room is

th is? The table could have co me out o f a n

a rm y o ffice .... (N ote s ta ke n by M.

Ko re ne v, in : C en tra l R es ea rch Libra ry o f

S T O R F , m a nu sc ri pts s ec ti on ).


15/21


miniatures show some of the accessories: the purse of the old princess, Chatsky's

travelling-bag and writing-set, a perfume bottle. The designs possess remarkable

stylist ic unity, like playing cards taken out of the same pack.

Ulyanov had the greatest success with costume designs for Sotya, the

heroine of the play. He was able to manipulate the high-waisted Empire

silhouette into contrasting images. We see Sotya in a blue riding-habit complete

with top hat and riding-crop; in morning dress and ruffled cap, holding a mirror;

in capeline and long bluish-green overcoat; visit ing a shooting-gallery, rif le in

hand; leaning against a blue ballroom column; wearing a mock-Oriental outf it (a ------

red, green and yellow turban, a very low-cut orange dress, a white shawl 4 7 L e is ti k o v 's s ke tc h e s f o r L a D a n

c a m e l i a s d o n o t in c lu d e a s in g le c o

patterned in marron and slippers of bril liant green). One cannot help feeling that d e s ig n fo r M a r g u e r it e G a u ti e r . N e i t l

the designer had in mind not only Griboyedov's heroine but also the theatre's th e r e a s in g le s k e tc h o f th e le a d in g

leading lady who, moreover, was the director's wife: Zinaida Raikh. She who c os tu m e a m o n g th o s e d o n e b y L e i

often quarrelled with costume designers,47 was understandably pleased with fo r

A L is t o f A s s e ts .

a p la y b y Y u ri (

UI

'k h

h . f h d h T Z d R 'kh w h e r e R a ik h p la y e d th e p a r t o f E le r

yanov

S

s etc es. n t e_testimony

er aug ter atyana, mal a al G o n ch a ro v a . A c lu e h a s b e e n p ro v i l

was not over-fond of this role; but the straight-cut dresses of Griboyedov's a R G A L I r e c o rd : w h e n d is p le a se d b

t imes probably suited her better than the magnificent robes of Anna Andreevna d e s ig n e r 's w o rk . R a ik h w o uld t a k e

in T h e In sp ec to r G e ne ra l. 4 8 m a tt e r in h e r o w n h a n ds ( p ro b a b ly

So much for the costumes. Things went less smoothly with regard to the M e y e r h o ld 's a s sis ta n c e ) . S e v e r a l s h l

construction unit designed by Shestakov. The first version of Woe to W it is one s t r o ng r o ug h p a p e r ( t h e k in d u se d I

c o s tu m e r s t o c u t o u t p a tt e r ns ) h a ve

of the few instances when Meyerhold was quick to admit that the set design was

d is c o v e r e d in t h e a r c h iv e . b e a rin g t l

a failure. True. he was not fully responsible for this because Shestakov had been in s t r uc tio n s g iv e n b y t h e le a d in g la l

given full rights to the scenery.

L a D a m e a ux c am e li a s

to th e th e a tl l

Shestakov was one of the major Constructivist stage designers. He confirmed d r e s sm a k e rs . w r it t e n in h e r o w n la r

v ig o ro u s h an d : M a r g u e r it e m u st b t

his allegiance to this trend shortly before the opening of Woe to W it promising s lim m e r th a n a ll t he o th e r s . g e n t le r '

a uni-set construction, major transformations of the stage platform's shape and m o s t a n d m o r e s o b e r ly d r e s se d . . .

outlines, as well as diverse dynamic devices. 49 On eye-witness testimony, all of T a il - c oa t to p s . . . A m p le b o w s t i e d (

this was notoriously absent. Instead, there was a ponderous, over-elaborate b a c k . .. L ig h t a n d t r im . b u t d r e s s y t

t t

. h' h d th b k d f t' th th 't d' t t h a t s h o u ld b e s e t lo w . .. . .. e t c . w i t

cons ruc Ion w IC serve as e ac groun 0 ac mg ra er an as I s Irec i n c r e a s in g ly s p e c if ic d e t a ils 5 s h e e l

framework. In keeping with the Constructivist credo, a stage set had to be a ll ) ( T sG A L I . f un d 998 . f i l e 1 . s t o r a g

utilitarian above all; the next requirement was that it should serve as a machine 3648 .

pp.

4 - 8 ) .

for acting . Shestakov broke both rules, probably because he felt Meyerhold's

disil lusionment with Constructivism as such. The abstract set of Woe

to

Wit was 48 T . Y e s e n in a . D o m n a N o v in s k (

not used to block the actors; no use whatever was made of the construction's

b u l v a r e .

Sog/asiye,

n o .

4 , 1 99 1,

p.

top level and its promising large side parts. As a matter of fact. it was mounted

on stage shortly before the dress rehearsals began. For Meyerhold to rehearse

a play without the stage set was somethi'ng without precedent.

4 9

V . S h e s ta k o v.

0

v e s h c h e s t v e n l

o f o r m l e n i i .

S ov re m e nn y t e a tr .

n o .

1

1928 .

p.222.

Meyerhold believed that a stage director should have dictatorial rights. At the

outset of his career he became convinced that the director's mission was to 5 0 V . E . M e y e r h o ld . C h e rn o v iy e z a

ensure the artistic cohesion of the production, He also realized that this was not 1907 /8 g g . , T e a t J . n o . 2 , 1974 . p.:

entirely in the director's power, because too much depended on the play, the

cast, the lighting director and even on the events taking place outside the 5 1 Ib id .

domain of the theatre. One of the main links

In

this chain of the director's

dependence was his stage designer.

5 2 Ib id . p . 3 0.

Meyerhold's idol was Gordon Craig, who was proficient both as director and

designer. Meyerhold, who lacked this double competence, had to solve the

painful problem of how to mak~ up for the absence of professional drawing and

painting skill. The obvious s'Qlution was for the stage director to work in

complete unison with the designer, as if they were one . To achieve this,

director and designer had to possess an affinitive world perception .50 Finding

such a designer was not an easy task.

None of my plans will be realized on stage in their true dimensions until

I become my own decorator. 51 These words have the ring of a solemn pledge.

One must always be a mad king, an arrogant master, sustained by the flame of

creativity. 52 As soon as Meyer-hold had his own theatre, of which he was the

only master, he began to style himself author of the production .

This is not to say that he 100k credit for what was done by others. He was

able to form a mental imag,e of the future production as an integral whole,

including a clear image of the visual sequence. Before he began to work on

a play he had in his mind a certain spatial arrangement, concepts of scenery and


16/21

style, engineering schemes and, occasionally, a colour gamut. But he could not

commit his vision to paper properly, nor could he determine the proper scale and

balance with the help of models, even though his ground-plan sketches were

accurate, sensible and sometimes appealing, From 1924 onward the TIM

playbills carried this unwieldy but accurate formula: The targets of the author of

the production concerning the material setting have been exec

Date post:	10-Oct-2015
Category:	Documents
Upload:	zajaczajac2012
View:	39 times
Download:	0 times

Vsevolod Meyerhold and Set Designers

Documents