SUMMARY OF YOUR WORK:
Actor of the Moscow Art Theater. He leaves the company because he disagrees with naturalism and
psychological realism. (An artist must make people uncomfortable) Modern theater director. He changed the
layout of the room, altering actor-audience relations. He experimented in scenography. He modified the stage
space. Precursor of the happening using elements of the circus, music hall and cinema. He experimented with
musical rhythm.
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BIOGRAPHY:
His mother, who was inclined towards music and the atmosphere of the city where he lived in his early years,
which was an artistic center, influenced his artistic hobbies.
Meyerhold is attracted to symbolism and experimentation, seeking to bring his theories to reality.
He sets up a company, the New Drama Society.
Unlike Stanislavski, whose characters had their own face and movement, Meyerhold sought for his groups to
have a unique rhythmic movement aided by plays of light to replace the sets.
Meyerhold had been assigned a workshop called Studio where he had to prepare his actors for a montage, but
Stanislavski, seeing that the way Meyerhold developed it was far from his teachings, closed the Studio.
Meyerhold had ideas such as the search for a frontal arrangement of the characters, new diction, research with
sets and experiments with music.
He is interested in the circus and music hall. He is attracted to movement, spectacle and partying.
Meyerhold's postulates sought a functional and utilitarian beauty which led to his theory of biomechanics.
To investigate biomechanics, Meyerhold eliminated all ornamentation, stage machinery, residue of the Italian
stage. Disappearance of the curtain, of the sets. He expanded the stage to the maximum. Its foundation was the
rationalization of the actor's movements on the scene. The actor had to, through a series of gymnastic
exercises, take care of the mechanics of his own body so that the gestures and folds of his body fulfilled a
precise scenic drawing. The artistic creation had to be a plastic creation. Meyerhold's actor had to have a little
bit of everything: a clown, an acrobat, a dancer, a minstrel. All this based on the perfection and precision of the
movement technique of the biomechanical game.
In 1924 the Party Congress asked for works that reflected everyday life. Three years later, the Conference on
Theatrical Questions called for dramaturgy to be given priority over staging. A year later, the decisions of the
Central Committee caused the working-class youth theaters to be dissolved, as they were accused of being
leftist associations, and in 1933 the same thing happened with the Association of New Stage Directors, of a
Meyerholdist nature.
The result of the activity of the Soviet Government against the freedom of artists proclaimed socialist realism as
the only and true art.
In 1939, the Pan-Union Congress of Stage Directors called on Meyerhold to express the errors of which he was
accused, but he responded by asking if a master did not have the right to experiment with his creative ideas. He
also responds by saying that socialist realism has nothing to do with art. Three days later, Meyerhold is arrested
and deported. It is not known how he died but it is said that he died deported.
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THEORETICAL WRITINGS OF MEYERHOLD (1906 TO 1913):
•Stanislavsky's Studio Theater: It was a company that never opened its doors to the public, organized by
Stanislavsky to be directed by Meyerhold towards a new artistic world, renouncing ready-made forms, given
the dramas that required different staging and interpretation.
The only theater representative of a certain period of the existence of the bourgeoisie has been the Moscow
Art Theater, because its actors, despite being devoid of technique, knew how to impose their interpretation of
Chekhov on imitation because their own state of soul was in line with that of Russian intelligence at the time.
Where did Meyerhold's idea of talking about conventions come from?
Naturalistic theater: exact reproduction of nature. Everything in the scene is real: roofs, chimneys, stoves, etc. A
real rain of water falls on the scene. In historical plays, naturalistic theater transforms the scene into an
exhibition of museum objects. It has the procedure of copying historical styles.
Naturalistic theater sees the face as the actor's main means of expression and abandons the rest. He ignores
the charms of plastic arts and does not force his actors to undergo physical training.
Naturalistic theater has created actors capable of metamorphosis but who use makeup, accents and even
dialects. Consequently, they acquire the ability of an amateur photographer to observe everyday details.
Naturalistic theater has removed the power of mystery from the stage. It seems to deprive the audience of that
power to dream and complete the work, which they have by listening to music.
The meticulous analysis of Ibsen's dialogues transforms the playwright's works into burdensome, monotonous,
doctrinaire. The naturalist director loses sight of the whole, passionate about detailing the scenes, he risks the
balance and harmony of the whole.
Too much attention has been demanded from the spectator for too little, he is already tired by the time of the
main scene.
Criticism of the montages of Chekhov's works: "the secret of being boring is saying everything..." The director of
the Art Theater has explained how harmony can be broken in an act.
The desire to show everything transforms theater into an illustration of the author's words.
Stylized theater: The scene does not create the literature. Rather the scene retards the literature. It is in
literature where the new theater takes its roots. It is she who breaks the old dramatic molds. Chekhov wrote
The Seagull before the Moscow Art Theater appeared, which was going to stage it.
The actor, reciting, seeks new means of expression. All this work seeks to give resonance to the text.
The difference between the old and the new theater is that, in the second, the visual arts and the word are
each subordinated to their own rhythm; the two rhythms do not always coincide (explanatory hands).
Therefore, a design of the stage movements is necessary to place the spectator in the situation that allows him
to guess the emotions of the characters.
Painting: In one of his works he looked for a decoration that would concentrate all the viewer's attention on the
movements. He came to the conclusion that the decorative panel is not worth more than the aerial
decorations, among which the movements are diluted, instead of being fixed and precise. The actor, being the
central object in the theater and having three dimensions, must resort to the findings of plastic art and not to
painting. The decorative panel must be dispensed with. What is intended is an architectural model and not a
pictorial one, as in the old theater (pieces of fabric painted blue that simulated the sky, the clouds. The two
dimensions of the painting break with those of humans and objects that have three)
Conventions :
Intimate theater (divided into genres, various currents) hinders the revival of popular art. Convention theater
aims for intimate theater to once again have a unitary character to accommodate the most diverse currents in
the same theater. The convention theater frees the actor from the scenography (decorations), creating a three-
dimensional space with a statuary plasticity (props, setting). The word will easily change into a scream or
melodious silence thanks to the diction and movement of the actors based on rhythm.
The director of this theater limits himself to guiding the actor instead of directing him, to being a bridge
between the soul of the author and that of the actor. The actor frees himself from the director as he frees
himself from the author. The director does not take into account the author's instructions except for technical
contributions and externalizes his internal dialogue in the actor's rhythm of diction and visuals.
The fourth creator will be the spectator, who is forced by the new staging to complete the allusions contained Theater and film director.
in the scene with his imagination. Director of the Royal Opera House.
He became interested in Asian and African theater, forming a research center in Paris.
The technique of conscious convention fights against the procedure of illusion. It does not seek the variety of He is considered one of the great innovators of contemporary theater.
interpretations like naturalistic theater but aspires to dominate the lines, the composition of the groups, the
color of the costumes and their immobility, expressing movement better than naturalistic theater. Well, it is not
the displacement that creates the movement but the distribution of colors and lines and the art of combining
them and making them vibrate.

The new theater:

He wants to destroy the sets located on the same plane as the actor and the props.
It subordinates the actor's interpretation to the rhythm of diction and plastic movements.
Proclaims the rebirth of dance.
It drags the viewer to take part in the action.

In theaters where the grotesque reigned (opposition of background and form), scenery played an important
role (Japanese theater). Not only the environment, architecture of the scene and the room were decorative but
the mimicry, the movements, the gestures, the poses of the actors and the decorative accentuated the
expression. Only dance can subordinate a grotesque conception to a scenographic task.

The body, its lines, its harmonious gestures, sing by themselves in the same way as the sounds.

TECHNIQUE OF STAGE MOVEMENTS:

The role of stage movement is more important than any of the other theatrical elements. The actor and his art
of movement, the actor's gestures and physiognomic interpretations are what inform the viewer about his
thoughts and impulses.

The paths of the film actor and the Studio actors are separated: on screen: the object appears due to its
usefulness, while in the Studio (pantomime) it serves to show the actor's virtuosity to amuse or sadden the
viewer. The main purpose of cinema is to move the spectator about the subject; in pantomime, on the contrary,
the spectator is interested in the events thanks to which the actor expresses his impulses freely. The actor's
only desire is to dominate the stage space that he has prepared, attracted by his impressionistic inventions.

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Meyerhold gives examples of works, attends lectures

Theater never seeks the illustration of anything. Like all art, it is self-sufficient. This is why an authentic
playwright creates a world that is unacceptable outside the stage space. When the spectator forgets that he is
in the theater and that it is a performance, when he believes he is witnessing life itself, the audience stops
coughing, blowing their nose, talking, no outside force breaks the intimacy. The actor's memory in this theater
retains perfect gestures, but never rhythmic movement skills.

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Biomechanics : it is not necessary to experience a feeling (fear) but rather to express it on stage through a
physical action.
These procedures should not be transferred to the stage but rather serve to give us the pleasure of conscious
movement on stage. Learn to calculate your movements, make them rational and coordinate them with your
companions. Help future actors move in the stage space more freely and with greater expressiveness.

Meyerhold founded biomechanics on the rational and natural nature of movements. Gupran attributed value to
the expressive body. "It was necessary to know your body too well to know exactly what it expresses at that
moment" (quality of the self-mirror actor)

Biomechanics allows the actor to direct his performance, coordinate it with the spectator and his colleagues,
and understand the possibilities offered by the performances to expressive movements.

PETER BROOK:
Biography: