VSEVOLOD

AND SET
M E Y E RHO t D
DESIGNERS
BY ALLA MIKHAILOVA
Every human being is a problem.
Meyerhold is a super-problem.
Mikhail Chekhov
Meyerhoid .... A towering and bizarre personality, shrouded in legends and
myths, an object of both hatred and veneration. A giant figure 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 Meyerhold, pI. 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 critical 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. Hewas 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 tei 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 who iifcl.trocruced to Meyerhold the Symbolist drama.
Remizov, who later became a we:I!::.kf;tfJ wn writer, was the literary consultant of
the Kherson company, directed~y :M~~eJ 'holdand Kosheverov. This is the view
which Remizov took of his own'fWtP tltl'on in the Kherson company much later in
life: "a perverse and defiant t#):f;):er"g. A very capable tuner, too. He lured
Meyerhold into the world of SymftJ i)oili!st drama as successfully as he had drawn
the erstwhile lanky high-school $:~(;J '~e:ntInto the world of socialist ideas during
his enforced sojourn in P enza (M'eyerl'lold's home town) as a political exile.
And so Meyerhold got btl$,y $taging plays by Strindberg, Schnitzler,
Wedekind, P rzybyszewski and H'filflsUn. Of course he was handicapped by the
pressure of the early-century tt:le~~re routine in the provinces: fifty or more
premieres in aseason; he only ha:Q)lloe average set designer (Mikhail Mikhailov),
who hastily furnished the stage)$:'ft~t;Meyerhold's plans.
But Meyerhold was destined sii>.:Q~ 10 meet people who completely changed
his view of the stage director's Wo:rk:"& nd theatre art as such.
50
1 V. E. Meyerhold, Statyi. Pisma. Rech,
8esedy [Articles. Letters. Speeches.
Talks]. in two parts, M oscow, 1968, pI. 1
p. 77. Hereafter referred to as: Meyerhold
3 Letter by A.M. Remizov to Yu. B.
Yelagin, 2 October 1952, in: Yuri Yelagin
Tyomnyi genii: 2nd ed., London, 1982, p
418.
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 On Theatre, 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, P erugino, P ietro Longhi, Borgog- 6 Meyerhold, pI. 1, p. 104.
noni, GiorgiQne, Durer, the Holbeins, Memling, Brueghel, Vrubel, Serov, Fedo-
tov, Maillo!, P uvis de Chavannes, P icasso, Leger. . . . This, of course, is afar 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 P opova, 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
P opova. 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 The Shot.
s
Vesnin obliged, recommending two third-year
students of Vkhutemas (Higher Art-Technical Studios) - Victor Kalinin and
Leonid P avlov, and they provided the set design for The Shot.
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 Theatre, 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 The Showbooth, Don Juan and Columbine's
Veil; like 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. P etersburg 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. P etersburg in 1919. (It must be said
in all fairness that Golovin was offered to design costumes for Griboyedov's Woe
from Wit, 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 The Inspector General 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 Alexander Gladkov, Meyerhold, vol.
2, Moscow, 1990,
p.66.
5 Fromthis author's conversationwith
V.V. Kalinin on
11 October 1991.
7 On the joint ventures of Golovin and
Meyerhold, see: M. P ozharskaya,
Alexander Golovin, Moscow, 1990.
51
VSEVOLOD MEYERHOLD AND SET DESIGNERS
52
His friendship with artists resulted in a series of portraits. He sat for Boris
Grigoriev, Alexander Golovin, Nikolai Ulyanov, P yotr Williams and P yotr 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 Meyerhold, pI. 1, p. 90.
tempestuous progress of contemporary 'new' drama and painting"8 was born
there and then.
P aradoxically, this episode, which undoubtedly affected the future of theatre
art as a whole, produced no tangible results at that time. The Theatre Studio on
P ovarskaya 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 P resnya, 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 cH d."10
It was the Art Theatre milieu that made the word nastroyeniye (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 essaywas Maeterlinck's La Morte de
Tintagiles, and he brought this play 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!J eto 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 the 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. Meyerhold, Perepisk a [Corre-
spondence], Moscow, 1976, p. 60.
Hereafter: Perepisk a.
- ~--- ------- - ---
VSEVOLOD MEYERHOLD AND SET DESIGNERS
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, 11 N. P . Ulyanov, Moivstrechi. Moscow.
ponder over the ideas of Adolph Appia and welcome Gordon Craig's book On 1952. p. 136.
the Art of the Theatre. 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 12 Meyerhold, pt 1.
implementation of that idea. The new concepts of stage space which he pp.109-110.
formulated in his book On Theatre have a sound theoretical footing. but they ------
a'"ttractedhim because of their practical value. 13 Letterto O.M. Meyerhold, 31 J anuary
The Theatre Studio on P ovarskaya Street did not have a single premiere, but 1906, in: Meyerhold, pI. 1, p. 93.
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
Schluck and Jau (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 Schluck 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 fulfilled .... "13
He admitted later that Stanislavsky was right when he dissolved the Theatre
Studio on P ovarskaya 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 raison d'etre.
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. P etersburg studios) enabled him to indulge in experiments (which, as he
53
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - .........
VSEVOLOD MEYERHOLD AND SET DESIGNERS
knew only too well, was impossible 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
P ovarskaya Street, Meyerhold had to move to Po/tava. Before that he had spent
two months in Tiflis, Georgia, where he tried to carryon his studio experiments.
He was able to achieve something along the lines of the non-realistic approach,
enhanced musical perception and atmosphere. But we know from one of his ------
later letters that it was his work in P oltava that gave him a new outlook. In the 14 See letter to O. M . M eyerhol(
summer of 1906 his Cooperative of New Drama was on tour in that Ukrainian 7 March 1908. ibid., p. 97.
town, and he intended to put to the test some of his new ideas there.
14
In P oltava Meyerhold discovered the value of the proscenium. The town's
playhouse had an enormous orchestra pit, which the average speaking voice
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. P etersburg 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 eqLJ allyunanimous in asserting that it had nothing
to do with Ibsen. (One of the reviews was entitled Ibsen or 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, chilly, 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 froFll Giotto to P uvis 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
54
T'
"'-q -of-
VSEVOLOD MEYERHOLD AND SET DESIGNERS
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 P rimitivist 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 15 Notes to list of Meyerhold's
a Gothic cathedral chancel. Conveying this illusion, however, was not Meyer- productions, ibid., p. 247.
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 P rzybyszewski'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 Perepisk a. p. 82.
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 18 Meyerhold, pI . 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'sedon 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 J apanese stage performance and the old theatres of Spain and England.
P ride of place was given to the "theatre of masks" - of familiar formalized
16 V.K. Kolenda, Moya rabata v teatre
V .F. K omissarz hevsk oi, Central Research
library of STD RF [Souyz Teatralnykh
Deyatelei Rossiyskoi
Federatsii- Union of Theatre Workers or
the Russian Federation]. manuscripts
section, p. 24.
55
VSEVOlOD MEYERHOLD AND SET DESIGNERS
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 19 K. Rudnitsky. N ikolai Sapunl
skirts of Moscow where Sapunov had spent his childhoo years. - . . an Sovetskiye khudoz hniki teatra ik
Florence, suburban Moscow and Tuscany, Russia and Italy. The ensuing 'alter- Moscow. 1981. pp. 237.238.
cation' with reality was bound to capture Meyerhold's imagination."19
The "happy discovery of ground plans" for The Showbooth was the 20 Quoted from: A Gladkov. Op
"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. Gripich. Uchitel stseny. in:
deliberate exposure of theatrical illusion. s Meyerholdom, Moscow, 1967,
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 V eil (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. P etersburg 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".20The 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,fthe 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 P oet announced that the skies
had opened, the "servants" inclinec;l this backdrop curtain so as to cover up the
entire "tavern" (the actors hadjust 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
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 The.Gift of
Wise Bees, 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 22 Meyerhold, pI . 1, p. 142.
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 Perepisk a, p. 89.
mind; he wanted to build the production of Sergei Tretyakov's I Want a Child on
this principle (to which he and his designer, EI Lissitzky, intended to add 24 A. Gladkov, Op. cit., p. 204.
a vertical dimension). As before, he could not obtain official authorization. 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 illustrations from Jugend and The
Studio. 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. Still, 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. P etersburg. 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
seemto 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 avery 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
VSEVOLOD MEYERHOLD AND SET DESIGNERS
57
VSEVOLOD MEYERHOLD AND SET DESIGNERS
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 fulfil 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. P aradoxically, 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 writing, 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 191 Os) can be gleaned from
the article "Gluck's Orpheus: Artist Alexander Golovin and Director Vsevolod
Meyerhold Speak About Their P lans". It contains this statement: "P reparatory
25 V.E. Meyerhold, 0 teatre (Vtor
chast: 1 1 dnevnik a. The excerpt cite
dated in 1908), in: Meyerhold, pI .
171, 173.
VSEVOLOD MEYERHOLD AND SET DESIGNERS
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 io 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.
26 RGALI [Rossiiskii Gosudarstvenny
Arkhiv Literatury i Iskusstva-Russian
StateArchive of Literature and Art], fund
99B, file 1, storage unit 240, pp. , -2.
59
27 V. E. Meyerhold, K postanovke Don
Zhuana Mo/ yera, in: Meyerhold, pI. 1, p.
194.
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, fell at the end, veiling 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 inevitability 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 P etrov- 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,
VSEVOLOD MEYERHOLD AND SET DESIGNERS
subsequently provided by Lyubov P opova, 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. 28 On Constructivism in the theatre
f I also: J ohn E. Bowlt, Russk oye
The Master and his younger followers regarded Constructivism as a power u teatralno.dek oratsionnoye isk usstvo.
instrument in bringing down the old theatre ("to create while breaking up" was 1 880 .1 9 3 0 , in: K hudoz hnik i russk og,
Meyerhold's motto in his early years). The physical act of clearing the stage teatra. 1 880 1 9 3 0 , Sobraniye Nikity i
platform for the premiere of The Magnanimous Cuckold can therefore be LobanovykhRostovskikh, Moscow,
accorded a symbolic meaning. The actor Nikolai Mologin, who took part in this 1990):
Marjorie L Hoover, Meyerhold and n
event, recounts that the stage of the Nezlobin company (in the building of the Set Designers, New York, 1988
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? P lush 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 P opova'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 P opova 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."31 To the
best of our knowledge, The Magnanimous Cuckold was never played outdoors,
but we know that Meyerhold did demonstrate the possibility of dispensing with
the stage box when Earth Rampant (Marcel Martinet's La N uit) 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"
I'
l,
29 N, Mologin, Iz vospominanii, in:
Teatralny Oktyabr, 1, Leningrad-
Moscow, 1926, p. 156.
30 Most likely, the general plan of thl
unit for The Magnanimous Cuck old d
not belong to lyubov P apova. There
some evidence pointing to the fact th,
Meyerhold originally commissioned
Vladimir Lyutse, one of his Workshop
students, to work on the design. "To
stimulate the student's imagination an
dispense with visual illusionism,
Meyerhold suggested that the basic
element of the set unit should be
borrowed from the frame of a wooden
windmill (a caseof rearranging a mate
entity). lyutse drew up a project, and
became the basis of P opova's scheme'
(Katalog vystavki "5 Ie!", Moscow, 19
p. 9). The history of the set unit for Th
Magnanimous Cuck old is alsotold by I'
Aksenov in two of his articles (see
Appendices to this book),
Meyerhold spoke in high terms of
P opova's work. Cf. his letter published
the newspaper Iz vestiya afortnight altE
the premiere: "Esteemed Comrade Edit(
the notice reviewing the production of I
FreeWorkshop, of which I amthe heal
carried by Iz vestiya on 26 April, breakst
rules of both fair play and common
practice: it makes no mention whatsoe~
of the name of the.artist designer who
constructed the set unit and also design
the proz odez hda (a kind of worker's
coveralls worn by the actors. -
A M ). though both arediscussedat sor
length in the review. It is my duty to poi
out that the contribution made to the
production by P rofessor L P opova of
GVTM has been underestimated by youl
reviewer. The model of the set was
submitted by her and approved by me
before the blocking of actors began, ane
the general tenor of the production owe
much to the construction of the set. Sine
I have no other way of affirming the real
contribution made by the artistdesigner
to the success of my production and in ,
fairness to the truth, I hereby askyou to
publish this letter" (lz vestiya [Moscow].
no. 101, 9 May 1922).
engineering facilities, 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. .
P erhaps 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 it.
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 . 31 Meyerhold, pt. 1, p. 141.
con ronte y t 15 I emma: 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 32 Ibid., p. 47.
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 TI M 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 Afisha TIM 4, Moscow, 1'927, p. 20.
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
36 Introduction to: Yu. Yelagin, Op. cit.,
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
Proz odez hda (a kind of coveralls for actors) to authentic period costumes; from
37 Quoted from the anthology: Y eo
a taboo on facial make-up to its extensive use.;from a barestage to one furnished V akhtangov, Moscow, 1984, p. 333.
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 P icasso, 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 pressedfor time. Yet there were plays the production of which
he kept putting off. It was his longtime ambition to stage Hamlet, and he had
P icasso's promise to do the set design, but this was never realized. He made two
attempts at staging P ushkin'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.
VSEVOLOD MEYERHOLD AND SfT DESIGNERS
There is a sequel to the story. In 1979
Vladimir Stenberg stated in an interview
that the basic plan of the set unit of The
Magnanimous Cuckold was conceived by
him, his brother Georghi Stenberg and
Konstantin Medunetsky, all of whom
Meyerhold hadoriginally commissioned to
design this play; they explained their plan
to Meyerhold, but did not get down to
work, did not build a model, etc. Vladimir
Stenberg insisted that the idea of
a two-level construction with ramps and
parts of a windmill belonged to him, to his
brother and Medunetsky; Meyerhold
subsequently passedthe plan to P opova
as his own. (See: Sovetskiye khudoz hniki
teatIa i kino-7B, Moscow, 1981,
pp.218-220.)
61
33 K.S. Melnikov, Arkhitektur8 moei
z hiz ni, Moscow, 1985,
p.80.
35 Quoted from: YeoOvsyannikova,
"Kazimir Malevich 0 traditsiyakh
i novatorstve," Arkhitektura ; stroitelstvo
Moskvy, no. 6,1989, p. 17.
38 See letter by Z.N. Raikh of 16
December, 1928, TeatI (Moscow) no. 2,
1974, p. 34.
VSEVOLOD MEYERHOLD AND SET DESIGNERS
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 P aris 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: 40 Yuri Annenkov, Dnevnik moik h
roller platforms (wagon stages) had long been in use on stage. Meyerhold vstrech. Tsyk ltragedii, 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 time 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 P aris. 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 DE 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 .... P ieces 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 P opova: "A coffin, 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-office receipts could barely
6 2
39 A Gladkov, Op. cit., vol. 2, p. :
41 Sergei Radlov, Revizor u Meye.
quoted from: K. Rudnitsky. Rez hiss
Meyerhold. Moscow. 1969, p. 354
42 l. P opova, Montirovk a spek taA
Zemlya dybom, in: RGALI, fund 96
storage unit 324,
VSEVOLOD MEYERHOLD AND SET DESIGNERS
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 Magnanimous Cuckold, had cost only 200 roubles, but it
left nothing in the theatre's purse. Still, Earth Rampant 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, 43 N. Mologin, op cit., p. 162.
and Meyerhold was obliged to write official explanations about this dedication.
It also figured in the criminal case brought up against Meyerhold - as proof of 44 B. Alpers, Teatra/ niye ocherk ;, vol. 1,
his affiliation to Trotskyism. Moscow, 1977. pp. 54-55.
In Earth Rampant objects were charged with their proper functions: tele-
phones rang, guns went off, bicycles rode forward, etc. In the next-season
premiere, The Forest, 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 The Forest, 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 46 V.E. Meyerhold, Dok / ad 0 Revizore,
perpetual motion; passing through the actors' hands, they seemed to lose I n: Meyerhold, pt. 2, pp. 140-141.
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 The Forest the objects' quality, their conformity to the highest standards
has not yet become a matter of primary concern. In the later productions, Bubus
the Teacher, the Mandate, The Inspector General and Woe to Wit (Meyerhold's
version of the proper title Woe from Wit) historically allusive objects of the
highest quality became a permanent feature. The pinnacle of this approach came
in La Dame aux camelias (1934).
We know that Meyerhold was not pleased with the quality of objects used in
staging The Mandate,45 but he achieved his purpose in The Inspector General,
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
The Inspector General was premiered in December 1926, just four years after
the advent of Constructivism to the theatre, but life in the country had undergone
radical changes. The years of war communism were over. The New Economic
P olicy (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 Woe to Wit (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 Schluck and Jau. (Stanislavsky, for
his part, sought Ulyanov's cooperation at less prolonged intervals.) Looking
through the sketches of coStumes and props for Woe to Wit, 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 .flotations 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 The Mandate furniture is the weak
spot. ... The Mandate is all about everyday
life, about the ugly effects of the former
life-style today. Take the dining-room, the
table - what kind of a dining-room is
this? The table could have come out of an
army office .... " (Notes taken by M.
Korenev, in: Central Research Library of
STO RF, manuscripts section).
VSEVOLOD MEYERHOLD AND SET DESIGNERS
miniatures show some of the accessories: the purse of the oldprincess, Chatsky's
travelling-bag and writing-set, a perfume bottle. The designs possess remarkable
stylistic 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; visiting a shooting-gallery, rifle in
hand; leaning against a blue ballroom column; wearing a mock-Oriental outfit (a ------
red, green and yellow turban, a very low-cut orange dress, a white shawl 47 Leistikov's sketches for La Dan
camelias do not include a single co
patterned in marron and slippers of brilliant green). One cannot help feeling that design for Marguerite Gautier. Neitl
the designer had in mind not only Griboyedov's heroine but also the theatre's there a single sketch of the leading
leading lady who, moreover, was the director's wife: Zinaida Raikh. She who costume among those done by Lei!
often quarrelled with costume designers,47 was understandably pleased with for A List of Assets. a play by Yuri (
UI
'k h 0 h . f h d h T Z"d R 'kh where Raikh played the part of Eler
yanov S s etc es. n t e_testimony 0 er aug ter atyana, mal a al Goncharova. A clue has been provil
was not over-fond of this role; but "the straight-cut dresses of Griboyedov's a RGALI record: when displeased b
times probably suited her better than the magnificent robes of Anna Andreevna designer's work. Raikh would take!
in The Inspector General."48 matter in her own hands (probably
So much for the costumes. Things went less smoothly with regard to the Meyerhold's assistance). Several shl
construction unit designed by Shestakov. The first version of Woe to Wit is one strong rough paper (the kind used I
costumers to cut out patterns) have
of the few instances when Meyerhold was quick to admit that the set design was discovered in the archive. bearing tl
a failure. True. he was not fully responsible for this because Shestakov had been instructions given by the leading lal
given full rights to the scenery. La Dame aux camelias to the theatll
Shestakov was one of the major Constructivist stage designers. He confirmed dressmakers. written in her own lar!
vigorous hand: "Marguerite must bt
his allegiance to this trend shortly before the opening of Woe to Wit promising slimmer than all the others. gentler'
a uni-set construction, "major transformations of the stage platform's shape and most and more soberly dressed...
outlines, as well as diverse dynamic devices."49 On eye-witness testimony, all of Tail-coat tops ... Ample bows tied (
this was notoriously absent. Instead, there was a ponderous, over-elaborate back ... Light and trim. but dressy t1
t t
. h' h d th b k d f t' th th 't d' t that should be set low ...... etc. wit
cons ruc Ion w IC serve as e ac groun 0 ac mg ra er an as I s Irec increasingly specific details (5 sheel
framework. In keeping with the Constructivist credo, a stage set had to be all) (TsGALI. fund 998. file 1. storag
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
disillusionment with Constructivism as such. The abstract set of Woe to Wit was 48 T . Yesenina. "Dom na Novinsk(
not used to block the actors; no use whatever was made of the construction's bulvare". Sog/ asiye, no. 4, 1991, 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.
49 V. Shestakov. "0 veshchestvenl
oformlenii." Sovremenny teatr. no. 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 50 V.E. Meyerhold. "Chernoviye za
ensure the artistic cohesion of the production, He also realized that this was not 1907/8 gg.," TeatJ. no. 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 51 Ibid.
domain of the theatre. One of the main links In this chain of the director's
dependence was his stage designer. 52 Ibid.p. 30.
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
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 executed by
so-and-so," As a rule, the targets were executed by stl::ldentsfrom Meyerholtl's
Workshop (which was variously known at different p.eriods as GVYRM, GITIS,
GVYTM and GEKTEMAS): lIya Shlepyanov, Vasily Fyodorov, Vladimir Lyutse, ------
Sometimes he employed young "outsiders" like Sergei Vakhtangov, the Kuk-
ryniksy trio or Alexander Deineka,
Meyerhold was no draftsman, but he would start his working sessions with
his intern directors or designers pen in hand,53 He tried to give the budding
directors at his Workshop a chance to learn the skills which he himself missed so
much: draftsmanship and the craft of scale model-making, He had a longtime
ambition of training future directors and artist-designers together - a logical
sequel to his idea of "unison" between director and designer. He tried to find
some way of bringing together the two callings. Thus, in the summer of 1917 he
was one of the founders of the Union of Masters of Theatre P roductions. His
partners were Fyodor Komissarzhevsky, Nikolai Yevreinov and Alexander Tairov;
their declared purpose was "to imbue all the elements of a theatre production
(acting, settings, lighting, etc.), with a single artistic concept."54
In the summer of 1918 Meyerhold launched in P etrograd (St. P etersburg)
"Courses of Instruction in the Art of Theatre P roductions", He elaborated
a programme of "co-education" of stage designers and directors, and himself 54 Perepiska, p. 187.
offered a course in "stage arrangement" (stsenovedeniye) aod stage directing, In
his lectures he insisted that a director had to possess a degree of drawing skill 55 Quoted from: N. Chushkin,
and a command of stage space, so as to be able to provide a general plan of the "Formirovaniye printsipov izobrazitelnoi
f h
rezhissury", Teau, no. 9, 1979, p. 100. On
scenery; he or she had to be versed in "the appointments 0 t e acting-platform, the co education of directors and
the actors' attire" and stage engineering.
55
Future directors and artist-designers designers in P etrograd, seealso: A .
attended the same classes and were instructed in the same subjects: stage Gripich, Op. ci t.
directing, drawing, model-making, stage engineering, decorative painting, on-
stage motion, etc. When these two-month courses came to a close, another
project was launched: "Courses in the Art of Theatre P roductions" (KUR-
MASTsEP ), which had a more solid footing; for example, drawing lessons were
given by Kuzma P etrov-Vodkin.
Many alumni of both courses became professional stage designers, e.g.
Vladimir Dmitriev (whom Meyerhold engaged in 1920 for Verhaeren's Les
Aubes), Elizaveta Yakunina, Moisei Levin, Boris Erbshtein and Evgheniya Slov-
tsova. They were all endowed with what is known as stage-director mentality
and is believed to constitute one of the greatest assets of a set designer.
In 1921 Meyerhold launched the Higher State Workshop for Training Stage
Directors. Among the first-year students were Sergei Eisenstein, Sergei Yut-
kevich, Vasily Fyodorov, Vladimir Lyutse, Zinaida Raikh, Erast Garin and Khesya
Lokshina. One of the next-year entrants was lIya Shlepyanov. Upon graduation
they received the diplomas of "Director-Constructor". Instruction in visual arts
was offered by recognized masters: the course in "material setting" was given by
Lyubov P opova; Nikolai Tarabukin taught the history of fine arts. Shlepyanov,
who had h'ad some previous schooling in the arts, was subsequently able
successfully to work with Meyerhold as the developer of his schemes of set
design. He eventually left the TIM to become a full-fledged stage designer. But
the stagecraft magic of Meyerhold proved too strong, and Shlepyanov finally
gave up stage design to become a competent opera director.
Relying on an entourage of obliging "executors" of his plans, Meyerhold on
occasion seemed to pay little attention to their professional standards. For
example, he staged three plays with Ivan Leistikov, a modestly endowed
designer, to say the least: Yuri Olesha's A List of Assets, 1931, Yuri Gherman's
Prelude, 1933, and La Dame aux camelias, 1934. Unable to add anything to
Meyerhold's general plan, Leistikov must have been an easy working partner.
It should nolbe forgotten, however, that Meyerhold appointed a whole team
to execute his plans for La Dame aux camelias. (He had a habit of applying
military terms to the theatre's administrative matters, forever setting up "teams"
VSEVOLOD MEYERHOLD AND SET DESIGNERS
53 Cf. Boris Zakhava's account of the
production of P ushkin's Boris Godunov as
planned by Meyerhold: "He opened our
first interview with a discussion of the set
design and promptly sketched on a piece
of paper the ground plan of the
construction which he wanted to be its
basis" (Boris Zakhava, V ospominaniya.
Spektakli i roli. Statyi, Moscow, 1982, pp.
146-147). Cf. also Alexander Tyshler's
testimony that Meyerhold "would at once
start drawing, complaining all the while
that he could not do it properly (indeed,
he had no drawing skill)" (Khudoz hniki
teatra 0 svoyom tvorchestve, Moscow,
1973, p. 262).
6 5
VSEVOLOD MEYEFtHOLD AND SET DESIGNERS
and "headquarters". He carried this oddity to the point of creating the job of
"performance commandant".)
Meyerhold decided to set the scene of La Dame aux camelias in the 1870s
instead of the 1840s. His "team" was therefore charged with the job of finding
suitable pictorial motifs in French painting of the period, in the P arisian fashion
magazines of the later 1870s and the drawings of Guis and Farin. The hand-
picked materials were presented to the Master, who selected those which were
worth being photographed or put on tracing-paper. They were used when the
costumes, wigs and accessories were made, and consulted when purchasing the ------
requisite furniture and bric-a-brac in antique-shops. Leonid Varpakhovsky, one 56 See: L . Varpakhovsky, N ablYI
of the "team", subsequently published some of these photographs from P arisian analiz , apyt, Moscow, 1978, p. 6!
magazines next to the photographs of the objects purchased for the play. The
similarity is striking. A" the furniture, carpets, vases, wineglasses, umbrellas, fans 57 RGALI, fund 998, storage uni
and canes that appeared on stage were authentic.
56
11.
One of Meyerhold's statements contains this significant reference: "I nearly ------
left out the main thing: we are going to look upon the world presented to us by
Dumas-fils through the eyes of Edouard Manet .... "57
In other words, the Master defined his avera" approach to the play's visual
sequence by naming his link-man, his starting-point in dealing with the play-
wright, the cast and the audience. The director's choice of link-man was, of
59 N.M. Tarabukin, Analiz Reviz,
course, especially important for the designer. RGALI, fund 963, storage unit 51
Meyerhold was a brilliant practitioner of this approach. Whether he divulged
the names of his "links" or whether he kept the theatre-goers and critics
guessing, he invariably strove to create a cluster of historical and cultural
associations, to steep the audience in the aesthetically-charged ambience of the
period, to enlist the emotional potential of great work of art.
The aura of qiotto and Memling in the stage picture of Soeur Beatrice was
variously described by both Meyerhold and the theatre critics, but the imprint of
Velazquez' art on the production of lIya Selvinsky's Army Commander no. 2 was
identified only by the artist AlexanderTyshler. He was one of the candidates for
designing the set for this play. During his first interview with Meyerhold it
transpired that the Master had already conceived a plan of production. He asked
Tyshler if he could recall Velazquez' The Surrender of Breda with its array of
troops and lances. Later, when Tyshler saw the play, he realized where Meyer-
hold had taken his guidelines from: "It was Velazquez' painting that had
prompted Meyerhold his key groupings of actors and the general composition of
the play."58 In some cases the identity of the "link" painter was beyond any
doubt. In others, there were several of them. Sometimes the names of painters
did not occur either in the Master's programmatic statements or in his conversa-
tions with actors. Yet the analytical mind could discover the compositional
schemes of Renaissance painters in almost every major episode of The Inspector
General.
59
The materials pertaining to the production of this play help us to
gauge Meyerhold's contribution to the creation of its set design and understand
the nature of that contribution. ,
His first designer was Vladimir Dmitriev, a former student of the 1925
two-month courses in St. P etersburg. The first working sessions on The Inspec-
tor General were held at the TIM in early October 1925. By this time a model of
the set was ready, but correc.tions continued to be made. On the strength of
notes taken by the intern director Mikhail Korenev, Meyerhold in his interviews
with Dmitriev on October S' aflli t 9 kept referring to the points which had been
previously agreed upon, notably the treatment of space (Meyerhold wanted to
focus the audience's attention on small areas of the stage, which should be "very
crowded") and dynamic action (objects riding forward on wagon stages), 60
There was also mention of the doors that later produced such a sensation ("wall
panels swivelled on their axes").81 Meyerhold spoke of the overall colour scheme
of the scenery and the colour range of the costumes as a matter on which he and
Dmitriev had agreed long befo'r9, and which only needed practical implementa-
tion: "The litter and dust, the grey murkiness of provincial life must be conveyed,
it's like faded fish swimming i,na murky aquarium .... I've asked Dmitriev to find
various combinations of shades within a single gamut of greenish-brown."62
When Meyerhold explained the set to his troupe ten days later he and the
designer had obviously reaelled the final decision: "The stage wi" be of almost
66
58 A. Tyshler, Tri vstrechi s Mey
dam, in: Khudaz hniki teatfa a svo
tvorchestve, Moscow, 1973,
pp. 260-261.
60-61 Meyerhold in conversatiOi
discussing the material settings of
production of The Inspector Gene
Omitriev (designer) and Korenev I
director). From the notes taken b~
Korenev (RGALI, fund 998, stora(
185).
62 Meyerhold in conversation wi
actors, 17 November 1925. From
notes taken by M.M. Korenev (ee
Research Library of STO RF, manl
section). Later on the outlook on
costumes was changed: "To show
'swinish' in things impressive and
beautiful, to discover 'the pig stair
elegant surface of life such as Bm
painted it .. " (In the anthology: (
and Meyefhald, Moscow, 1927, p
Karl Briullov (1799-1852), well-kl
Russian painter, especially of P Ortl
beautiful women and children.
oval form, its space delimited and projected i M O the audience. The set will be
provided entirely by polished panels of mahogany facing the audience ... Eleven
doors opening out of these polished surfaces .. ~Thebackdrop panel will open to
allow a fully furnished platform to ride out perlllendicularly towards the audience
after the method of The Mandate - with the setting complete ... The system
will involve the alternation of two platforms, whi'Ghbackstage will take ei,ther of
two directions - like streetcars turning into opposite streets."63
There are no authentic records of the eafHest, and most important, dis-
cussions held by Meyerhold and Dmitriev. We haveno reliable information about ------
Dmitriev's contribution to Meyerhold's general plan, but Dmitriev was un- 63 Meyerhold, pt. 2, p. 110.
doubtedly capable of adding quite a lot both to the execution of the plan and to
its essentials. We do not know which of Dmitriev's suggestions were appro-
priated by the Master (which he did as a matter of fact, oblivious of the
designer's rights; let it be said that hejealously guarded his own rights). We only
know that at the end of 1925 their cooperation was broken off because Dmitriev
failed to submit the necessary sketches before the deadline.54 He was replaced by
lIya Shlepyanov, who did quite a number of sketches of oostumes, furniture and
properties, and worked on the blocking of the play's final tableau (the famous
"mute scene") with the help of life-size mannequins. Yet in August 1926, at
a routine conference devoted to the production, costume designs were discussed
with Mikhail Zandin. Shlepyanov's name was not even mentioned; this rupture
proved final.
65
The playbill of The Inspector General gives the name of Victor
Kiselyov as the "executor" of Meyerhold's plan, though he joined the project
only shortly before the premiere.
Dmitriev, however, could not get over his enforced retirement (though he
unreservedly admitted having been at fault). He continuecl. doing sketches for
The Inspector General, which he forwarded to Meyerhold alter Shlepyanov had
left the TIM. These sketches, which by now have become quite famous, present
groups of characters. Dmitriev concentrated on the relationships of colour and
linear design, opting for maximum simplicity and laconicism. He offered the
Master his unerring flair for colour, for the pageantry of theatre and life, in the
hope of making a comeback. But Meyerhold was adamant. He did engage
Dmitriev's cooperation in 1927, when he began to work on P rokofiev's opera
The Gambler (after Dostoyevsky; the project was not implemented). Their next
joint venture was an adaptation of Andrei Bely's novel Moscow, for which they
developed a sophisticated spatial scheme: a very complex winding composition
made up of details of Moscow's lanes, doorways and apartments.
Dmitriev was positively burning to work with the Master. This is what he
wrote in a letter to him: "The prospect of working with you is at present my only
hope of salvaging myself as an artist and a self-respecting individual, for I don't
want to go on working for any other theatre, where all I see is affectation,
falseness and total lack of the straightforward clarity which is my credo and my
only goal. In easel painting I have P etrov- Vodkin ... in the theatre world I had
you as an ally, but now I lost yoU."66 Dmitriev continued to hold the Master in
the highest esteem to the end of his life.
What, then, was Dmitriev's stand with regard to Meyerhold's intrusion into
the domain of the set designer and to the stage director's rights? 66 Letter byV.V. Dmitriev, 16 September
"Meyerhold is the author of the entire production, and the designer becomes 1926, in: Perepisk a, pp. 253-254.
immersed in his creativity, giving the production his very best - however,
without totally suppressing his own self. Other stage directors wish to be in the
shadow of the author of the play, the designer or the cast ... "67 Very likely, this
is the correct formula of cooperation with Meyerhold: the designer had to
comprehend his plan, adopt it as his own (whithout any claim to the Master's
rights), immerse himself in his creativity and give the production his very best.
The phrase "author of theatre production", which Meyerhold chose to apply
to his work, may be variously interpreted. In point of fact, it fits very well any
outstanding director of our day. In terms of art history, this professional
self-appellation has contributed to the proper recognition of the status of the
director, who alone can ensure the artistic cohesion of the production and is
entitled to choose an original and commanding interpretation of the play.
VSEVOLOD MEYER HOLD AND SET DESIGNERS
64 At a working sessionheld at the TIM
on 29 December 1925 Meyerhold gave
vent to his anger: "There's no way for
Dmitriev to staywith us. Under the terms
of the contract we could havecancelled it
long before. We havepaid him too much
money, have allowed himto carryon too
long - a grave miscalculation on the part
of the theatre and the finance section. As
to the produce, the first model was
unreservedlyrejected. The second model,
developed together with me at the Hotel
Yevropeiskaya (in Leningrad. - A.M.)
and subsequently built by Yevseev,was
brought to Moscow, to Novinsky
Boulevard (to Meyerhold's apartment. -
A.M.); it was again found defective and
discarded, and the third model was
authored entirely by myself (Korenevwill
confirm this). There's no way for Dmitriev
to claim any rights." (From the notes
taken by M.M. Korenev, in: Central
ResearchLibrary of STD RF, manuscripts
section).
65 On 5 August 1926 the newspaper
V echernyaya Moskva carried a letter by
Shlepyanov, which among other things
contained the following statement:
"P lease bring it to the public's notice
through the newspaper of which you are
the Editor, that I handed in my resignation
to the board of the theatre's working
collective on 1 May of the present year,
stating that I would no longer work for the
TIM." Shlepyanov was joined by the
director Vasily Fyodorov, the actors
Mikhail Zharov and Sergei Mayorov and
by several others. The conflict was over
Fyodorov's rights to the staging of
Tretyakov's play Roar, China.
67 Letter by V.V. Dmitriev to V.Va.
Stepanov, October 1934, in: K hudoz hnik i
teatra 0svoyom tvorchestve, p. 132.
67
VSEVOLOD MEYERHOLD AND SET DESIGNERS
68
Meyerhold's legacy is unique in the imaginative diversity of the treatment of
space. He must have had a natural capacity of experiencing space. With his
heightened space perception he saw the expanse of physical space as an
emotionally charged compositional entity. We have, for example, his description
of Moscow by night during the first Russian revolution, when "the desire to see
the world in transformation" led him into the streets. He was particularly struck
by one visual impression: "I still remember a city square which seemed to slope,
. because there was a single street lamp burning on one of its corners. The
square's dark side seemed to crumble, its edges disappearing in the dark, where ------
a single white bell-tower could be distinguished .... "88 68 Letter 10O.M. Meyerhold, 3
1906, in: Meyerhold, pI . 1, p. 9:
The scenery which held him spellbound for the very first time was quite
realistic, but its treatment of space was as ingenious as the aesthetic standards of
the period would allow. We mean, of course, Victor Simov's scenery for the
earliest productions of the Moscow Art Theatre. The revolution which Meyer-
hold wrought in the theatre began when he challenged the Simov-type scenery
with the "shallow stage", the painted pictorial backcloth, the bas-relief principle
of blocking actors. Then, sensing the discord between the three-dimensional
figures of actors and the two-dimensional painting, he started to experiment with
depth, going from the floodlights backstage. In TheLife of Man he fully achieved
the illu~ion of unlimited space. He then decided that emphasis on the actual
depth of the stage was more promising than experiments with illusory space.
"The happy discovery of grounds" in TheShowbooth, developed in several later
stagings, held his imagination for a long time. He created "the
theatre-in-the-theatre", opposing the small theatre to the physical stage space,
and orchestrated this confrontation with remarkable ingenuity, playing up all the
unusual, opposed and interlinked angles.
Meyerhold was able to pinpoint this problem as early as in 1909: "Whenever
an animate human image is reduced to a plastic entity there arises the problem of
a new stage (architecturally new, that is)." At that time he did not have in mind
a new theatre building; referring to architecture he meant the composition of
onstage volumes; those who were able "to arrange the entire stage space into
a harmonious whole" w~te its architects.
59
Here we find the key to Meyerhold's
work: he never regarded actors otherwise than "plastic entities".
But Meyerhold needed more ground to enact his spatial fantasies than the
proper areaof the stage. Hi,sfirst experiments with vertical space came during his
directorship at the Theatre 9'f Komissarzhevskaya, when he devised a three-level
stage for Spring's Awakening by Wedekind (with Denisov, in 1907). Strong
vertical accents became I;fna;tmost permanent feature of his post-1917 produc-
tions, beginning with the Moscow premiere of Mayakovsky's Mystery-Boutte
(1921, with Victor Kiselyov, Anton Lavinsky and Vladimir Khrakovsky), which
unfolded on three levels; the top level was quite close to the theatre grids. Next
came the two-level Constructivist set of Crommelynck's The Magnanimous
Cuckold (1922, designed by P opova) and the vertical accents in Martinet's Earth
Rampant (1923, also designed by P opova). The latter production featured a tall
wooden rostrum and a construction-crane model, whose truss was used for
blocking actors. The Master W aS fond of steep ramp bridges with their energetic
upward sweep, e.g. The Fillest (1924, designed by Vasily Fyodorov) and
Selvinsky's Army Comm(l(1[der0 0 . 2 (1929, designed by Sergei Vakhtangov).
Faiko's Lake Lyul (1923, c;te~fJ 'nedby Victor Shestakov) was fitted with working
elevators; in Mayakovsky's .. tl1ti Bathhouse (1930, designed by Sergei Vakhtan-
gov and Alexander Deineka)t~e set incorporated openwork tower constructions.
" One of Meyerhold's cher~hed concepts of space was theatre in the round: an
arena stage encircled by ani)mphitheatre for the audience (it emerged initially as
a plan for the unrealized "'~.Qductionof Sologub's play The Gift of Wise Bees,
1907). The term "theatre .. ttl the round" occurs in the volume Architecture et
dramaturgie (P aris, 1950), Which contains the materials of a discussion held in
1948. It includes a papet b-v ,~tienne Souriau ("Le cube et la sphere") on the
cube and the sphere as two,kinds of stage space. The paper drew comments
from Le Corbusier, Andf$.8f~sac, Charles Lallot, Claude Autant-Lara and J ean
Vilar. Significantly enol:.lg,li\i;Souriau made several references to the "Rus-
sian-type theatre in the rottnc::l"and to "Soviet plays produced on a central stage
69 V.E. Meyerhold. K postanol
Trislana i Izoldy na Mariinskom
ibid" pp. 151, 156.
VSEVOLOD MEYER HOLD AND SET DESIGNERS
with irradiation from mid-point."70 Meyerholc;fs name came up during the
discussion. though not in the immediate context of theatre in the round.
Let us turn our attention to the matter of "Russian-type theatre in the round".
Meyerhold did not manage to demonstrate this principle in any of his
released productions. but he developed two proiects based upon it. One was
Sergei Tretyakov's play I Want a Child (with EI L!$sitzky; five versions of the set's
model were built in 1926--1928). The other was the architectural projec(of th~
TIM's new building (with Mikhail Barkhin and Sergei Vakhtangov), which was
originally scheduled to be built in 1932. ------
The model for I Want a Child was a materialization Qfthe concept of theatre 70 Architecture et dramaturgie, P aris,
in the round. The audience was seated in a stadiumI~~e Ivai of risers, to which 1950, pp. 67, 76.
the multiple-level arena set was linked by two bridges so as to give the audience
access to the stage area. The top-level platform had a kind of central arena
- a transparent circle with lights under it. At the edge of that platform was
a miniature openwork tower encompassing a spiral staircase to be used by the
cast and possibly by audience members; the performanoes were intended to
include public debates, with speakers from the audience taking the floor both
during and after the play,
One of Meyerhold's oddities was his haunting fear that his discoveries might
be usurped. Rumour had it that he would lock the room where EI Lissitzky's
model was closeted, with his own hands and never parted with the key. Other
models were also kept secret.
71
Despite these precautions, several years later
theatre critics were able to recognize some of Meyerhold's schemes in the
productions of the Realistic Theatre, directed by Nikolai Okhlopkov: the arena
stage (The Mother, 1933, and The Aristocrats, 1935) and suspended act-
ing-platforms (The Running Start, 1932). Theatre critic Samuil Margolin, for
one, wrote that Yakov Shtoffer who designed the set of The Running Start did
away with "the demarcation of stage and house, USing Meyerhold's long-time
idea of a new spatial arrangement of stage action."72 In fact, Shtoffer could have
had first-hand knowledge of Meyerhold's project, for in the 1920s he worked at
the TIM's production section. In the early 1930s the concept of theatre in the
round re-emerged at the Realistic Theatre of Okhlopkov, a former TIM actor.
In all fairness let it be said that the concept of the arena stage is as old as the
theatre itself and Meyerhold was not the only one to be fascinated by it. It is
certainly not a copyright matter. But why did the participants of the 1948 P aris
discussion speak of "Russian-type" theatre in the round? Did some of them see
the productions of the Realistic Theatre or hear about the model of I Want
a Child? P erhaps the term was applied to productions with a projecting
proscenium? Meyerhold employed the rounded stage in his "portal" produc-
tions. Suffice it to mention the half-oval of hanging bamboo rods in Bubus the
Teacher, the curved mahogany back wall of the stage with the famous doors in
The Inspector General, the jutting-out proscenium in The Mandate.
These devices were needed to bridge the gap between house and stage in the
building of the former Zan Theatre, the TI M's base from 1922 to 1931: this
playhouse had a strongly projecting semicircle of balconies opposite the stage.
Experiments with rounded acting-areas were of necessity abandoned when the
TIM had to move into the Arcades building on Tverskaya Street, which had
a wide and shallow stage and an incredibly long rectangular auditorium. In this
playhouse Meyerhold began to develop diagonally orientated plans of stage
space so as to enhance the depth of the stage and present an axial view to the
audience (or to change the audience's viewpoint). '
At one time Meyerhold made frequent use of the playhouse as a playground
with sideshow effects: actors dashed to the stage from the floor, motorcars and
motorcycles drove up ~Iong the aisles, which, as well as the lower boxes,
became acting-groun ~In the later-day productions he gave up such trans-
gressions in the hope _at the innovative architectural venue of the new TIM
building, then in constru~ n, would enable him to realize the best of what he
had discovered and tried out in the course of his long creative career.
In the late 1920s Meyerhold discussed the project of the new TIM building
with two young architects, Mikhail Barkhin and Sergei Vakhtangov, to whom he
explained his main targets. His purpose was to do away with traditional
theatrical attributes like the footlights, the grids, the side-scenes, the division of
69
71 There is a memo written by V .
Stepanov, headof the TIM Museum, with
the following message: "I have been
informed by the designer V.I. Shestakov
... that I must urgently receive from him
the model (classified) for the play V era
Z asulich." (RGALI, fund 963, strorage
unit 1147, p. 206).
72 Samuil Margolin, "Khudozhniki teatra
za 15 let," ISk usstvo (Moscow), no. 1/2,
1933, pp. 147148.
VSEVOlOD MEYERHOlD AND SET DESIGNERS
70
the playhouse into different "prestige areas". The audience would be seated in
a steeply rising amphitheatre, enclosing on three sides the jutting-out stage
platform, which would be level with the first-row seats. One of the paramount
tasks was to achieve a full-fledged axonometric projection of the figures of
actors and their groupings. This, in sum, was the Master's cherished dream of
theatre in the round. The stage, jutting out shaprly into the auditorium, was to be
fitted with two circular platforms; the one backstage was to have a diameter of
15 metres; the other, of 10metres. The two revolving arenas could go down for
a change of scenery or go up to accommodate vertical arrangements of stage ------
. Md' . , . h d '1 73 M. Barkhin, S. Vakhtangov,
action. oreover, it was planne to fit the ceiling 'Wit a curve monoral to N ez avershenny z amysel. in: V strechl
regulate the height of acting-platforms and suspend them from different parts of s Meyerholdom,
the playhouse."73 The semicircular wall opposite the stage was to be fitted with p.574.
pull-out balconies which would provide additional acting-ground.
74
The semicir-
cular wall behind the stage was meant to perform several functions. The upper
part was to accommodate the orchestra. The lower was to have a row of doors
(not unlike those in The Inspector General) to enable actors to enter the stage
directly from their dressing-rooms, which were arranged on two levels. Meyer-
hold wanted his actors to hear and see without effort all that was happening on
stage. Large gates at right and left, on stage-floor level, were to afford passage to
motor cars or massive groups of people. At intermission the round act- 75 Yu. Annenkov, Op. cit.,
vol. 2, p. 85.
ing-platforms could be cleared of the scenery and set at floor level for the
audience to promenade in the stage area rather than spill into the foyer.
76 Today this building houses the
The Master was captivated by the idea of bringing together ("mixing") house Chaikovsky Concert HaiL
and stage. Thus, he told the artist Yuri Annenkov that he could visualize his new
stage both rotating and moving right through the auditorium and out into the
court, or still further, into the crowded street.
75
The two architects were able to fit both the new building of the TIM and the
premises for its workshop into the narrow space between the walls of the former
Zan Theatre. The new structure was to be vertically dominated by a highrise
- "the creative tower" with premises for stage directors, set designers, com-
posers, playwrights and research sections. The tower's fa!;ade was to be
decorated with mosaic compositions reproducing scenes from Meyerhold's key
productions. A contractor office in charge of the project was set up, the P eople's
Commissariat for Education allotted the necessary funds, and the Barkhin
- Vakhtangov project began to be cast in concrete and stone.
The year 1933, however, .brought alarming news: the Moscow City adminis-
tration developed a strong dislike to the appearance of the new building. At that
point in time Soviet architecture began to adopt the Neo-classical style, oriented
to the traditions of classical Rome and the Renaissance. The projects of public
buildings favoured colonnades., arcades, over-embellished fa!;ades, sculptural
and bas-relief compositions, etc. These "innovations" were much in evidence in
the rival projects offered for the fa!;ades of the new TIM building. In February
1933 the Artistic Council of Moscow's Chief Department of Architecture and
P lanning considered three prejects submitted by three groups of architects. The
Barkhin-Vakhtangov project was notoriously absent. The crucial architectural
expertise was provided by Academician Alexei Shchusev; he was officially in
charge of all construction on Tverskaya, one of whose corners was unfortunately
occupied by the TIM building site.
76
The original Barkhin - Vakhtangov project
was charged with being u~tFa-rationalist, minimalist, etc. Meyerhold put up
a fierce defence of the project, 81rguing that a theatre's architecture should be in
line with its aesthetic principles, but to no avail. He had to make concessions
with regard to the fa!;ade, takil'lg comfort from his critics' indifference to the
theatre's interior structure. Yet the pace of construction slackened progressively.
The pressure on the Master was growing stronger.
Meyerhold wanted his new theatre to epitomize his long creative quest. He
wanted the new building to represent his own concept of the Theatre, which he
had worked so hard to arrive at.
No one can know how many spectacular new ideas the Master may have
bestowed on the theatre world In his later years if his life had been spared.
But we know full well that people of genius cannot be the arbiters of their
own destiny.
74 Cf. stenographed record of moo
held at the P eople's Commissariat 0
Economiy on 15 February 1932 (ad
made by M.G. Barkhin), in S.M. Bar
archive, p. 17.