Vsevolod Meyerhold - Biochemical techniques.

Meyerhold was born in a Lutheran German family which lived in the Russian city of Penza in 1874. He attended Moscow state university to study law however it was at the university where he began acting in 1896 as a student of the Moscow Philharmonic Dramatic School under the guidance of Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. It was during this time that he met Stanislavski, both men though having similar core values about the ideas of theatre “theatre is a changeable human construct” had very different views on how this should be achieved. Where Stanislavski believed in the (what if) ideas and using personal experiences and feelings to create a character (go to Brecht vs Stanislavski page for more information) Meyerhold had his own theatre practice that he created called biochemics. Biochemics is a system of actor training where the purpose was to widen the emotional potential of a theatre piece and Meyerhold believed it represented futurism and symbolism.

photo of Stanislavski 

“If the actor remains on the bare stage, the greatness of the theatre stays with him.”  When we discussed this quote as a class we had come to the conclusion that the meaning is that the actor is the theatre. Biochemics emphasized the “elementary laws of reflexes”. Meyerhold spent over 35 years of experimenting and exploring but most importantly play. Meyerhold theorized that an actor could create a character from the outside in starting with movement, unlike Stanislavski.

Meyerhold's plays relied on the physicality of his actors with set and costume being minimal so all the focus is on what the actor is doing.

-Youtube video of short lips from Meyerhold’s play dead bug.

After Meyerhold was becoming more and more successful he reunited with Stanislavski where he invited Meyerhold to join his theatre, unfortunately, Stanislavski found Meyerhold’s experiments too radical and bizarre. He canceled the studio, and Meyerhold spent all his money to pay to the actors.

Plays staged by Meyerhold at Stanislavski theatre.

The Death of Tintagiles by Maurice Maeterlinck,

 Love's Comedy by Henrik Ibsen

 Schluck and Jau by Gerhart Hauptmann.

His career continued moving from theatre to theatre as he was hired and fired due to how experimental he was. Vladimir Telyakovsky once said in an interview I thought: Meyerhold has to be an interesting person if everyone scolds him.”

Photo of Brecht

photo of Meyerhold

Inspired by the revolution and several weeks after the Bolsheviks came to power arrived at the Bolshevik headquarters in Smolny where he joined the Communist party, given his willingness to join the party he became the head of the theatre department of the People’s Education Commissariat and, among other things, launched a press attack against Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, and their views. As the revolution went on Meyerhold's ideas were becoming more and more radical as he kept experimenting, he had new ideas about wanting to abolish the profession of an actor and to let the common people participate in plays. He wanted to give free theatre tickets to workers and peasants, he wanted to change all the names of the USSR theatres to the abbreviation “RSFSR”: “RSFSR-1” ("Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic 1”). However, in 1936 things took a turn for the worse as Stalin began to look for (people in the arts conspiracy)  a conspiracy were government officials believed that some creators within the arts where using their creations to publish anti-communist content. The Pravda newspaper with a focus on publishing communist propaganda came up with the word “Meyerhold ivshina” which became insulting to any performance. Meyerhold was accused of libel against the Communist Party and in 1938 his theatre with he worked so hard to create was closed. Once Stanislavski heard of this he wanted to help him and invited him to work at the State Opera Theatre. Several months later, Stanislavsky died. Meyerhold continued to work at the theatre, but it was obvious, that nothing could save him from the state anymore. In 1939 the KGB arrested Meyerhold After days of torture, Meyerhold signed all the documents his executioners wanted him to, confessing to spying for the British, the Japanese, and stated he was an opponent of the Soviet regime and Soviet art. On February 2, 1940, Meyerhold was executed. He was buried in Donskoy cemetery in Moscow, in a mass grave.

https://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/cinema-and-theater/vsevolod-meyerhold/  For more information about Meyerhold’s life click the link.