G enius is a word to be used carefully. Enthusiasts are in danger of over-populating their world with geniuses and of confusing Allah with Mohammed. Other reluctant souls, their opposites, would deny the appellation to any living man. I shall not have occasion to employ the term often in this study, but when introducing a personality so monumental in Soviet art as Meierhold, I think it best to say at the start that here, I believe, is a man of genius. Like most of them, he has aroused a storm of criticism and misunderstanding. He has had his share of debunkers who view him only as an artistic charlatan, he has had blind worshipers who foresee a future theatre which will contain nothing that is not "pure Meierhold,” and he has confounded critics and disciples alike by the intricacy of his movement. His development is not easy to follow.
The name of Vsevolod Meierhold appears on the program of the Moscow Art Theatre’s original production of "The Sea-Gull” opposite the role of Treplev. Considered in retrospect, no other Russian artist could have more appropriately delivered that fine rebellious speech which was Chekhov’s own battle cry:
To my mind the modern theatre is nothing hut tradition and conventionality . When the curtain goes up, and by artificial light, in a room with three tvalls, these great geniuses, the devotees of holy art, represent how people eat,
85
dr inky love, move about, and wear their jackets; when from these commonplace sentences and pictures they try to draiv a moral—a petty moral, easy of comprehension and convenient for domestic use; when in a thousand variations I am offered the same thing over and over again —1 run away as Maupassant ran away from the Eiffel Tower which weighed upon his brain with its vidgarity. ... We need new forms of expression. We need new forms, and if we can’t have them we had better have nothing.
The Art Theatre itself was running away from the old forms, but young Meierhold ran farther and faster. Very quickly he found himself passing beyond the Moscow Art Theatre and as his demands for more freedom were greater than the Art Theatre’s ensemble could grant, he fared forth alone.
For a time thereafter we find him directing and acting in the south of Russia; thence he went to St. Petersburg where he managed the theatre of Kommissarzhevskaya. Here he worked on Maeterlinck’s ''Sister Beatrice,” Alexander Blok’s "Gypsy,” Andreyev’s "Life of Man,” in an effort to translate the new literary tendencies of the day into some sort of parallel scenic form. Then he was appointed stage director of the Imperial Opera, the Marin- ski Theatre, and the Imperial Dramatic, the Alexandrinski Theatre. In opera he produced "Tristan and Isolde,” the "Electra” of Strauss, creating plasticity of movement in a composition which became part of the music. At the Alexandrinski he produced his famous "Don Juan,” and on the night of the February Revolution in 1917, the last and magnificent art expression of the old regime, his equally famous "Masquerade.”
Probably the most profound influence on Meierhold during these years was that of the French symbolists who led him to his belief that the actor should become on the
stage a sort of visible symbol of poetic thought. This is far removed from Stanislavski’s belief that the actor should portray actual human experience: symbol versus representation, poetic thought versus human experience. To find the appropriate medium of expression for this symbol of poetic ideas was Meierhold’s task. He turned for inspiration to the conventionalization of the Commedia dell’ Arte, of the Oriental and Medieval theatres, of the marionette, of the Greek theatre. Some kind of stylization was necessary. His whole career seems to have been a search for a style which would completely satisfy him. He has never found the perfect form.
Throughout his life, Meierhold has been powerfully influenced by painters and by decor. Just as in the post-war years he was the first and the most strongly to be influenced by the constructivists, so in the early twentieth century he was affected by the mystic and symbolist painters among whom were Soudeikin, Anisfeld, Bakst, Korovin and Golovin. From them probably as much as from elsewhere he took on a mystic coloring. Komisarjevsky, who was also working in St. Petersburg at that time, believes this and further writes, "Whether he was dealing with 'Tristan and Isolde’ or with a play by Pinero, or Lermontov’s 'Masquerade/ or with a Harlequinade, a somber mysticism pervaded all his productions and the symbolic artificiality of the acting and mises-en-scene was their important feature.” 1
Meierhold’s second preoccupation brought him into still closer contact with designers: the solution of the problem of space on the stage. Dissatisfied, like many other artists at about the same time, with the picture-frame, box stage, he sought ways of bringing action out of it and of fusing it more with the auditorium and the spectators. His work with the spatial stage has continued through the period of
constructivism which was in one way an attempt to solve this, and is finally embodied in his plans for the Meierhold Theatre which is about to be built according to his specifications. Here there will be no architectural barriers between spectators and actors. There will be no proscenium arch and no wing space. The stage will be set in the middle of the space and the audience banked around it. The actors will emerge from their dressing rooms directly into the view of the spectators where they will remain until the time for their performance arrives.
In every conventional theatre, when the spectator accepts the spirit of the conventions he is automatically received into a sort of conscious alliance with the artist. The artist plays directly to the spectator, bearing in mind always that he is a spectator. The spectator watches, always bearing that in his mind too. It is rather like a circus. The clown talks to the audience. His white face and red circles for cheeks are not supposed to be his natural complexion. The audience is not asked to imagine that it is. So, likewise, the conventional theatre asks you to remember that that is what it is and all it is.
All theatres up until the late Romantic period—practically up to the time of Antoine, to be precise—have been of this kind. Meierhold, in seeking for conventionalization on the stage, has therefore really been looking for a way back to the theatre of the ancients, of the East, of the Middle Ages and of the Renaissance. He has been seeking a way to create a form of new theatre from the forms of the old.
Meierhold wished to invent conventions which would go beyond making the spectator simply a conscious witness to the self-conscious creation of the artist, to a point where he would be drawn into closer emotional contact. Stanislavski said that this could be done only by destroying both conventions and self-consciousness, by making both
REGISSEURS AT ¥ORK 89
spectator and artist forget that their emotional experiences were being created artificially in a theatre. Meierhold disagreed with this and was seeking another way when the Revolution came. At once he plunged eagerly into its eddying stream. The rebel was awakened in him to its full strength. Early he became a Communist. He seemed to understand the demands of the Revolution as no other artist in the theatre did at that time. He was placed in charge of the Theatre Section of the newly created Commissariat of Education.
In the first five years or so of the Revolution Meierhold held full, although not always undisputed, sway in the Soviet theatre. The academic theatres were neglected and the populace thronged to his playhouse. It was a marvelous opportunity for Meierhold to experiment with his artistically revolutionary theories. It gave him a theatre where he could hurl artist and spectator together under the most emotionally stressing circumstances. It gave him a public unacquainted with all formal theatre expressions and therefore untouched by the previously prevailing naturalistic style of the theatre. He used the opportunity to deal a strenuous blow from the left at the Moscow Art Theatre.
It is doubtful whether his audiences in those early proletarian days had the slightest conception of the aesthetic revolution which they were witnessing, but in these same performances Meierhold was laying the foundations of a theatre revolutionary in form as well as in content. The Revolution had destroyed, as far as he was concerned, not only tsarism but every vestige of theatrical realism—a destruction he had long been trying to accomplish single- handed. His appeal to the audience was at once direct and indirect. He addressed it frankly as spectators, as really more than spectators—as a living force in the drama which it took the whole of his playhouse, stage and auditorium, to create. But at the same time he appealed to his audience
not by the direct words of literal translation of life, but through the indirect medium of suggestion, of emotion conjured up through symbol, of intelligence provoked by abstractions.
With actors in blue denim, as I saw in "The Magnificent Cuckold,” without benefit of footlights or curtain, he talked straight to his hungry but excited audience in the words which were on its own lips. In those days there were propaganda posters and slogans on his walls, the action of the play was interrupted from time to time by announcements of news from the civil war front. Certainly at that time life needed no heightening. But Meierhold took the drama of the hour men were living in and, heated through by the fire of his genius, turned back to the people their own experiences etched in sharper and more vivid strokes. At such moments life and the theatre were one; the spectator was the actor—it was his own drama.
In this new theatre for the new masses, let us turn away from all that the theatre of the old regime offered us, said Meierhold. The MXAT asked its bourgeois audiences to forget that they were in a theatre and to imagine that they were living through the experiences with the artists. We ask you to remember always that you are in a theatre. Since we don’t for a moment imagine that we are living through these experiences which we depict on the stage, there’s no reason for you to imagine it either. See: this is the back brick wall of the stage; this is the way we change our scenery—for this is only scenery, don’t think for a moment it’s real. We have thrown away our curtain especially so that you may see that, and so that we may feel that you are close to us—no barriers here. We actors are not extraordinary beings apart, we are people like yourselves. We dress as you are dressed. We are just as concerned as you are in what is going on outside this building. When we hear any fresh news from Samara or Odessa,
we’ll let you know. Now let us get on with the play, for we have some exciting things to tell you. We exist, you know, only to talk to you and to help you face this new life we share together. And by the way, that is not sunlight that floods our stage; you know as well as we do that it is night outside and that the light is only electric. Therefore you see? This is where it comes from. There’s no point in hiding it and pretending, is there?
At one blow Meierhold had destroyed the naturalism of the Art Theatre, had brought in a stylization, had created what seemed to be a proletarian theatre, and had bridged the gulf between actor and spectator as he had so long wanted to do.
It has been said that every production of Meierhold creates a new theatre and this is true, so that it is hard to trace his path without stopping to consider his accomplishment with each play which he undertook. But time forbidding that, I may say in a word that Meierhold’s role since the Revolution has been that of arch-destroyer of all that is old in Russia. Not only old theatrical conventions have been laid low under his scythe, but the old society has had in him its most brilliant critic and its most vitriolic condemner. The later 1920’s saw him advancing from the early agitational plays, through a phase of poetic Revolutionary tragedy, to a genre of production which made him the scenic Voltaire of the Soviet Union. With marvelous comic genius he lifted the old Russia to heights of ridicule and absurdity and hurled it with cruel and bitter force upon the rocks of his poetic and social disillusionment. His power was devastating, and into his famous productions of "Woe from Wisdom” and "The Inspector- General,” he threw all the weight of his satire and the beauty of his artistic formalism.
It is difficult to divide Meierhold’s work into periods, but if it were possible, then we might say that the first
period after the Revolution, which began with a production of Verhaeren’s "Dawn” in 1921, is marked by the development of constructivism, dynamic action, and a movement toward simplification. The very use of these three terms suggests that Meierhold continued to work in abstractions and this was true. Constructivism, the scenic essence of abstraction, had been tried in the theatre, as a matter of fact, before the Revolution. In 1914 Meierhold produced Alexander Blok’s "The Unknown” with a setting that held the seeds of it. But it was the Revolution that gave it its significance. Meierhold is sometimes thought of as its creator but this is not true, for constructivism existed in art before it was adapted to the theatre. It was he, however, who introduced it to the stage, for he appreciated that there was a style which would make a complete break with all previously existing scenery.
This scenery, with its ladders and scaffolds, its ramps and steps and slides, its colorless backgrounds, based on abstract form which would provide it own meaning (abstract in the sense that it was non-representational), paralleled his attempts to create the same kind of art with actors and their movements. It was apparent to him that it would be this sort of scenery only which could complement his actors. However, constructivism did not accept pure form empty of function; it must be part of the action. A slide, if it was to be used, must be on the stage in order to help the actor express a special meaning, like the slide in "The Magnificent Cuckold.” Since Meierhold had long sought unity between actor and setting, he was further delighted with the dynamic constructions of this new art which were in closest harmony v/ith his theories of bio-mechanical movement, for bio-mechanics bears the closest possible relationship to functional movement.
Constructivism has been considered by some writers to be an attempt to depict a mechanical era in scenic form.
W/M ■ ■
the optimistic tragedy. Designed by Ryndin for the Kamerny Theatre
designed by Ryndin for the Kamerny
Egyptian nights. Model of setting Theatre
This is perhaps true in part—particularly true in the German theatre—but I do not believe that it was in Meier- hold’s mind at the beginning. His use of it in plays like Ostrovski’s "The Forest,” which have nothing to do with the machine age, indicates to me that he used constructivism first because of its non-representational functions and only later did he come to use it to suggest the mechanization of society or as a symbol of the modern Soviet materialistic mind.
As constructivism developed it became more and more absorbed in the function of materials. This was an obvious preoccupation for art in a country which was passing through such a materialistic phase. The constructivists sought new uses for various metals, wood, glass, in forms which expressed their use. These elements had never been so employed before in the Russian theatre. Meierhold became interested in the emotional effect which certain raw materials might produce, and we may trace the movement away from the first bare scaffoldings and uncovered runways through the decor for plays using these various raw materials, which were created almost entirely of corrugated metal, for instance, or of wood, or bamboo, until we reach "The Inspector-General,” wherein Meierhold, as Komisar- jevsky puts it, "almost gave up constructive ideas and followed, partly the methods of the German expressionists, partly the old picturesque and naturalistic methods of other pre-war and modern producers.” In this play jumpers were banished and his people wore period costumes; a few tables and chairs appeared, but on a stage still without curtain or proscenium, in a sort of permanent setting composed mainly of a semi-circle of a dozen doors. In this production he used also a smaller moveable stage which advanced toward the audience in the full light and with the actors and props in place upon it.
The use of dynamic movement in abstract rhythms to
arouse emotions and convey ideas is as old as art. The primitive origins of the theatre in aboriginal dances and ceremonies, where movements are symbolic and yet direct in their appeal to the spectator, are based on it. Biomechanics is a partial return to that kind of art, but with modern interpretations derived from Taylorism and from the reflex action theories of Pavlov which alter it. In so far as it attempts to substitute mental or nervous motivation of action for emotional it is something new in the theatre. The Art Theatre actor had said, "I make these movements because my feelings force me to. ,, The biomechanical actor says, "I make these movements because I know that, by making them, what I want to do can be most easily and directly done.”
The practice of such a theory of movement leads quite obviously to the simplification which was Meierhold’s third early revolutionary characteristic. By removing what he considered to be all the mumbo-jumbo of emotionally dictated movement, he got down at last to bare action which had no relation to the traditional, emotionally explicable action. It was entirely rational and physiological. When a person pricks his finger or sits on a tack, he jumps. He does not do this dictated by his emotions. It is a nervous reaction and that only. A tiger springs not in answer to its emotions but because it instinctively knows that its spring will bring it at once to its prey. Observation of these facts, of behaviorism, led Meierhold to his new system.
By the adoption of such a theory Meierhold came to what were abstract Marxian principles in art—the substitution of rational, functional, utilitarian creation for emotional, intuitive processes, and it was at this point that Meierhold came closest to being a revolutionary leader in both senses of the word. The reason I do not think that he was—a point which I shall develop later—is that he arrived at this as a result of his purely aesthetic experiments and
was not using it as a motivation for the development of them. If in the process of applying Marxian principles to art, he had found his bio-mechanical theory, then I might be mistaken, but the knowledge which we have of his previous searches for abstractions leads me to believe that his aim was to discover an aesthetic convention, and that he came first to his bio-mechanics and then discovered that it coincided with a Marxian attitude.
In contrast to this first period when his devotion was to movement, Meierhold’s second period is static. Now he works for conventionalization of pose to replace conventionalization of action. His great production of "The Inspector-General,” which may be taken as the high-point of this period, was designed as a series of poses, one blending into another, but the whole composition essentially static. When movement is used the principles of biomechanics direct it, but the greater influence is now the Commedia dell’ Arte again. With it Meierhold returns to a kind of symbolism. There is reintroduction of real details in setting to replace the constructive, and great attention is paid to the sensuous effect of various materials and objects, but they are used with an intellectual purpose. Things are used to arouse emotional reactions by their associative power, and, by their effect on the senses, to stimulate rational reflection. A cigar or a fan in the hand of an actor is no longer simply a cigar or a fan, but a symbol for all the qualities which the observer can associate with those objects and their users. The Moscow Art Theatre, with all its attention to the subconscious in its acting, yet makes its appeal solely to the consciousness of the spectator. Meierhold, with all his emphasis on the rational, appeals directly to the subconscious.
Meierhold’s characters also are symbols. Although dressed now in realistic costumes of period, but with some exaggeration of detail and a definite exaggeration of make-up,
they continue to be as they have been since the Revolution, completely depersonalized representatives of type. He wipes all expression from their faces, except the permanent stamp which their make-up gives to them. They are empty masked automatons. Here the Sovietized Commedia dell’ Arte is most apparent.
When the earlier period of destruction was over, and the old regime had been "liquidated,” there remained no need to worry the dead rat. But the line of march of the Revolution Meierhold has seemed unable to follow. The new socialistic realism has no expression in his repertoire. In 1934 and 1935 he still looked backward—to Dumas, Chekhov, Pushkin. Good Communist critics say Meierhold’s day is past. So long as the Revolution needed a winnowing sword, Meierhold wielded it, but now the call is for plowshares and pruning hooks, and they mournfully predict the spear he continues to carry will eventually be thrust into himself.
2
This champion of proletarian art is for me, paradoxically enough, a complete aristocrat. Although Meierhold may never have borne a title—I neither know nor care about his birth—he has the tastes, inclinations and temperament which, for want of better definition, we call aristocratic. Soviet critics are, I suspect, just beginning to realize this as they become aware that a theatre for the proletariat, which is what Meierhold’s is, is not at all the same thing as a theatre of the proletariat. Now that real proletarian art, by which I mean art created by proletarian artists, is just beginning to appear, it is plain to see how far from being proletarian Meierhold’s art is and always has been.
By retracing the career which I have just outlined I can show what I mean. First there was Meierhold’s break with the Art Theatre which was always essentially bour-
geois. The latter’s preoccupation with commonplace domestic life—portrayed in a realism that closely approached naturalism—its lesser success when it essayed symbolism, expressionism, and other sophisticated intellectualities, its great popularity with the intelligent theatre-going public which was essentially middle class in the days before the war, all this points to that bourgeois tendency in the Art Theatre.
When Meierhold left the Art Theatre he cast off his tie to bourgeois art and its literalness. But where did he turn? He forsook Moscow, the merchant city, for St. Petersburg, the imperial city. There he found himself more in sympathy with and better understood by the artists of the Mir Iskusstva ("'World of Art”) school and their sophisticated and aristocratic following. He became devoted to the theatrical forms of those remote times and places when the theatre was either clerical or aristocratic. His best work before 1917 was done at the imperial theatres. He has never been particularly popular with the bourgeoisie, nor with the proletariat either, after the first hysterical days of the Revolution. Nowadays he is adored by certain sophisticated and acutely sensitive artistic spirits, of whom there are a few among the Russians and a few more among foreigners in Russia.
The middle class in Russia was never strong, perhaps partly because it appeared so late. By the middle of the nineteenth century it was just beginning to rise and with it the realism of Ostrovski appeared. By the first years of the twentieth century it was in its short-lived ascendancy and the Art Theatre created in those days an art which was its true expression. In doing this it did more than Meierhold has ever done; he has never created an art which was the expression of his society or age: in the pre-war days, as in the post-revolutionary ones, his constant desire has been to escape from the theatre of a material and utili-
tarian present. The Art Theatre is like bread: simple, fundamental, not too imaginative, necessary. Meierhold is like olives: piquant, a little bitter, unnourishing, appetizing and stimulating to the palate, unnecessary. The enjoyment of his work is definitely an acquired taste.
Meierhold is not the artist of the masses because he is a complete individualist. That he greeted the Revolutionary hour with enthusiasm seems to me more an act of opportunism than of welcoming a long-awaited Messiah. It gave him the chance to legitimatize and give tremendous impetus to the revolution in the theatre which he wanted, and because of his dynamic personality and through liberal use of Communist terminology, he could make the two seem one. He played with the idea of a Mass Theatre because, like Max Reinhardt (who uses the term in a different sense), through the use of the Mass Theatre his own egoism could be exalted. But he is no charlatan; if in his theatre he expresses Meierhold and not a proletariat, he does what any strong artist or poet has to do. I consider it no slander to suggest that he is more aristocratic than bourgeois or proletarian. A man must be as his temperament dictates. Furthermore, I do not deny that it is possible for an aristocrat to be a Communist. His personal political views I do not question; I do not say that he is a bad Communist. All I contend is that, given sympathy, his kind of art could have developed wherever and in whatever society Meierhold had found himself.
The Moscow Art Theatre is essentially a prose theatre. When it has essayed poetry it has given empty vestment to the poetic scheme and decorations of Gordon Craig for “Hamlet,” or of Alexander Benois for “Boris Godunov.” It has rhythm certainly, but it is the rhythm that is found deep within great prose. Meierhold lacks a conception of what we might pompously call the “rhythm of life,” and that the Art Theatre has. But for sheer expression of
poetry in all its other implications, Meierhold has a sensitivity that the Moscow Art has always lacked.
When we study the development of the Meierhold Theatre we study only one person, Meierhold himself. He is his theatre, and this cannot be otherwise considering his attitude toward the stage. Previously I stated that his earliest influence, that of the French symbolists, required that he consider actors as symbols. Only the individual creator of the whole scheme of expression can invent the symbols —“the symbols cannot invent themselves. A theatre of conventions and stylization—unless the conventions are traditional—can scarcely conceivably be a collective theatre. Even if it is so, when it comes to practice its conventions, it is the regisseur who, putting himself in the position of the observer, must give form to the production. The individual actor may understand his own emotions and in a theatre like the MXAT where he is called upon to act in accordance with them, he may need only guidance from the director. But in a theatre where outward form is the important factor, the actor by his very physical position on the stage is unable to see the form of the whole and must depend upon the man who sits in the auditorium to tell him how and when to fit into the picture.
It seems to me therefore quite natural that the Meierhold Theatre and likewise the Kamerny Theatre, which is also a theatre of outward form, should be dominated by a master who creates with actors who serve only as animate clay for his modeling.
3
The production of Meierhold’s which I studied in Moscow was hardly typical, but then no production of his ever is. This one was called a Chekhov Vaudeville, and it consisted of three one-act plays of Chekhov, "The Proposal,” "The Bear,” and "The Jubilee,” which Meierhold was
putting together in a triple bill and presenting in the manner of the French eighteenth century vaudeville.
The first rehearsal of the plays took place on the stage of the Meierhold Theatre, for, as I have said, there is little space in this makeshift playhouse and no rehearsal room is available. The stage was crowded, for almost all of the members of the company were present and all the apprentices. Meierhold sat in the center at a large table. His stooped shoulders give his head a slightly forward thrust which adds prominence to his prominent nose. His thinning gray hair stands on end, apparently held in that position by the electric current generated within him. His movements are rapid, his speech is voluble. In rehearsals he appears to be almost in a state of spontaneous combustion! This first rehearsal simply consists of a talk by him on his ideas for the production.
"Two things are essential for a play’s production, as I have often told you,” Meierhold begins. "First, we must find the thought of the author; then we must reveal that thought in a theatrical form. This form I call a )eu de theatre and around it I shall build the performance. Mo- liere was a master of )eux de theatre: a central idea and the use of incidents, comments, mockery, jokes—anything to put it over. In this production I am going to use the technique of the traditional vaudeville as the jeu . Let me explain what it is to be. In these three plays of Chekhov I have found that there are thirty-eight times when characters either faint, say they are going to faint, turn pale, clutch their hearts, or call for a glass of water; so I am going to take this idea of fainting and use it as a sort of leit-motif for the performance. Everything will contribute to this jeu ”
Meierhold reads the script to the company, pointing out his thirty-eight illustrations. The designer, Victor Shestakov, is called in and he draws on the blackboard
his tentative idea for the set which in plan looks like a biologist’s enlarged drawing of an eye with just a suggestion of a tear dropping from either end of it. Meierhold suggests that the music must be reminiscent of Chopin. "In fact, we shall use Chopin in rehearsals,” he declares. Now that he has stated this basic idea about the production he adjourns the rehearsal.
As a prelude to our study of the methods of production at the Art Theatre, it seemed wise to consider the system of Stanislavski, which was the preparation of the actor for his work. In the Meierhold Theatre we do not study a system of acting, for all that he asks of his actors we have already discovered in the statement of his under-regisseur. Instead, we must study Meierhold’s personal preparation for his work, for here it is the director’s work which is important.
Meierhold has a little notebook which he has had for a good many years. Throughout that time he has noted down in it various plays which he would one day like to do. Whenever he has seen a performance of one of them, he has made further notes about that production which he did not like, changes he would make. He was spurred to his recent production of Chaikovski’s "Queen of Spades” through his indignation at the way it used to be produced.
Meierhold prefers to read a play only once at first, for thus he feels that his interpretation is clearer and his judgment surer. He believes firmly in the correctness of his first impressions. Then he allows these first impressions to ferment in his mind. He takes no notes. He ponders long over the thought of the author. He tries to penetrate the playwright’s meaning, he tries to decide what he himself would have meant if he’d written such a play. In the end, he may give to the writer by such a practice a false meaning, but it is a meaning never inconsistent with Meierhold. In his production of, let us say, "The Inspector-General,”
he has tried to express the thought of Gogol. He has tried to show what he believes to be Gogol’s disgust at the hypocrisy of the time, Gogol’s ridicule of the provincial government of early nineteenth century Russia, Gogol’s condemnation of the middle class’s watery morality. Whether he has succeeded, or whether Gogol even intended these things, no one but Gogol, dead these hundred years, could say; but that Meierhold has definitely succeeded in expressing his own thought through "The Inspector- General” there can be no doubt. This effort to get at the meaning behind the word of the dramatist is one cause of his drastic rearrangement of texts. If only half the lines of "The Inspector-General” express what he considers to be the author’s purpose, then the other half he cuts or else revises so that they may become part of that same purpose.
Once he decides actually to produce the play and has determined the motivating idea, he starts to plan the mise- en-scene , again in his head. He does not write out his mise- en-scene at any time, or any of his definite ideas of a production, because he seems to feel that in the writing they lose their purity. "A thought once uttered becomes a lie,” he remarks. At any rate, an idea written out loses its charm for him. Meierhold puts the play into rehearsal still without any notes in writing. He declares that as he works he must take the physical qualities and abilities of his actors into consideration, and if a set plan were created before he started, it would only have to be changed when he faced the material at his hand. For he uses actors, as he himself says, as a sculptor models his clay, working with them to get various textures which will create various effects, as does the sculptor. Therefore the actor who is most malleable becomes his best actor. Ilinski, for instance, is considered by most people to be Meierhold’s best actor today. Ilinski is to my mind not a great actor at all; he simply has a remarkably pliable face and body with which Meier-
hold may do what he pleases, a perfect "dead pan” which the director may fill with meaning or empty at will. Of course, he must have some more subtle sympathy for Meierhold’s style than the other actors there, since he can grasp more quickly and fully what the director wishes him to express, but without Meierhold’s direction, he would be only a very mediocre actor.
Meierhold’s company of actors is rather like a collection of rubber balls. He throws them and they must be able to bounce; if they cannot, he has no use for them. But that a ball should bounce itself is impossible. An intelligent rubber ball is unheard-of nonsense; so is individual intelligence in the Meierhold Theatre. The maestro supplies all the intelligence just as he supplies all the artistry. But there are many actors—all the good ones—who do not want to be rubber balls, to be thrown about by no matter how good a player, so naturally Meierhold has difficulty in keeping a good company.
Meierhold is a profoundly well-informed, intelligent, and sensitive musician and he not only sees his production but hears it. The laws of musical construction and of musical contrast, the effects of sound and tempo, are all applied by him in working out a play. "The Inspector- General” was built as a sonata. "La Dame aux Camelias” was composed as follows:
ACT I
i. After the Grand Opera and strolling at the Fete
i. Andante
Allegro Grazioso Grave
2. One of the Nights 2. Capriccioso
Lento (trio) Scherzando Largo e mesto
3. Adagio
Coda. Strepitoso
3. The Meeting
104
MOSCOW REHEARSALS
ACT II
1. Dreams of a Rural Idyll i. Allegretto
Tenerezza
Intermedietto
2. The Money of the Count 2. Moderato. Secco
de Girey Agitato
3. Confession of a Courtesan 3. Lamentoso
Molto Appassionato
ACT III
1. Bougival 1. Giocoso
2. Bourgeois Morals 2. Freddo
Dolce
Impetuoso
Lacrimoso
3. Shattered Dreams 3. Lento con dolore
Inquieto
ACT IV
1. Olympe’s feast 1. Tempo vivo
Tempo di hallo
2. Again in the role of a Cour- 2. Tempo di valse
tesan Allegro agitato
3. Parole d’honneur 3. Espressivo
Piu mosso Lugubre
ACT V
1. Abandoned 1. Tempo commodo
Largo e mesto
2. A late returning 2. Amoroso
3. "And life goes on” 3. Coda. Spianato
The right-hand column was not taken from a musical score played behind the scenes or in an orchestra pit as an accompaniment to the action. Indeed, there is little music played in the whole production. It is rather a key to the movement, to the timbre and pitch of voices, to the tempo of action, and, of course, when there is music, to its quality. In fact, a sensitive impressionist artist could light the production from study of this column, and as Meier- hold is such an artist he uses this column as a key to lighting and to color in sets and costumes as well.
The left-hand column illustrates another characteristic of Meierhold’s method: his division of a play into many short episodes. In "La Dame aux Camelias” there were but fifteen; in "The Inspector-General” there were many more internal episodes, although the program announced but eleven. These scenes are not like those into which the Art Theatre divides its acts, either in purpose or in effect. At the MXAT these kuski are segments of text which are rehearsed separately but when performed flow without a break, so that one is aware only of the continuity of the act. Meierhold divides the act into small episodes so that each idea of the dramatist (or each Meierholdian interpretation of an idea of the dramatist), or else each example of the jeu de theatre , may have individual expression. Each kusok , as we see, has its own title; sometimes it will be played as a separate scene in performance with a pause before and after it, sometimes with music to introduce it, sometimes even with its own setting (none of this specified by the author, be it understood). Sometimes, on the other hand, the scenes will blend one into another so that the audience, as at the MXAT, does not realize that a new scene has begun. Thus the whole production becomes like an "improvisation” or "variations on a theme.” Meierhold, taking a few lines of text, sometimes only a stage direction, will build up a whole pattern of action, usually
io 6 MOSCOW REHEARSALS
pantomime, which develops the idea therein. One line may become the motivation for five minutes of cadenzas which the virtuosity of Meierhold will have invented, before the theme—that is, the text of the play—is continued. In ‘'The Proposal,” for instance, the simple direction, "He drinks a glass of water,” becomes a small scene. Ilinski breaks off his speech, clutches his heart with one hand, his coat lapel with the other. The father rises, steps back a pace and holds out both his arms, as though Ilinski were about to swim to him. The maid in the background raises her broom and holds it poised in mid-air over her head. There is a pause. The Chopin music begins to play. Ilinski, still holding his lapel, reaches out with the other hand for the glass on the table. He holds it at arm’s length from his mouth; his eyes grow bigger; the music plays louder. The father and the maid stand motionless. With a quick jerk Ilinski draws the glass to him and downs the water. The music stops, the maid returns to her sweeping. Ilinski carefully smooths his lapel and returns the glass to the table. The father continues with the next line.
Since I have made such a point of the fact that Meierhold works without pencil and paper, the reader may wonder whence that double column of notes on the "Dame aux Camelias” production. The answer will draw forth another contrast with the Art Theatre and further point to this being a theatre of the regisseur. To assist Meierhold in rehearsals and in the routine of the production generally, is what is known as a "Regisseur Brigade” which consists of from eight to fifteen under-regisseurs. These are what we should call in America stage managers, for their work is only to a very slight degree creative. Their chief concern is the preparation of a sort of super-prompt book which shall be a record of Meierhold’s work on the production. The brigade divides itself into three groups: one which works on lines, records line changes, inflections,
tempo of speeches, all the vocal side of the production; one which records business; one which handles all other notes on production which Meierhold makes in the course of rehearsal. At the end of each rehearsal the brigade meets and its work is compiled into what is practically a stenographic record of all the creation of the director. The result is probably the most elaborate and detailed prompt book which is made anywhere in the world today.
When Meierhold is absent from rehearsal the regisseurs, one of whom always acts as a sort of assistant director, can carry on his work with perfect exactitude by reference to this book. But no effort is made to create anything new which Meierhold has not done. As we study the work in rehearsals further we shall see how necessary such a record is, whereas at the Art Theatre a prompt book was only of use if the actor had an unfortunate lapse of memory.
In composing a play Meierhold builds not only a musical but a pictorial structure. He applies the laws of space in his theatre. I have talked about his preoccupation with space before but it has been in a general sort of way. Now I mean the actual spatial composition within a particular play. This is one of the chief problems of painting, and Meierhold makes a careful study of it as well as of music. He is particularly fond of the Italian primitives, a predilection which is quite understandable, since we know his love of conventionalization of emotion, of a sort of combination of mysticism and symbolism, all of which he can find in the early Italians. Giotto is his favorite because, as Meierhold says, "He knows the art of not filling in the empty spaces.”
In producing "La Dame aux Camelias” he tried to infuse the quality of Manet and of Renoir into his stage pictures. This pictorial influence has appeared only in his later revolutionary period; it helps to explain the recent static quality and the constant use of posing. It shows how far he
108 MOSCOW REHEARSALS
has moved from the early dynamic and constructivist days and it suggests that he is closer to his still earlier period of intimacy with the painters of the Mir Iskusstva when together with Golovin he created almost entirely through the medium of sensuous stage pictures. When he moves into his new theatre, however, he will doubtless be influenced less by painting than by sculpture. He has always accepted his actors three-dimensionally, but at times he has tried to make them two-dimensional and fit into two-dimensional scenery; at other times he has tried, like the painters, to make a two-dimensional medium appear three- dimensional; again, he has looked for the day when he could create with actors who would appear only three- dimensionally in empty space.
Even his pictorial compositions have been geometric. This is the hold-over of the constructivist influence which was of course entirely geometric. In "La Dame aux Camelias” he used diagonal lines almost entirely. I have described the stage as being divided into two principal parts by the use of a curtain which worked diagonally from lower right to upper left hand corner instead of parallel to the front edge of the stage. His pieces of scenery were arranged along diagonal lines either running parallel to this central line or intersecting it. This forced the furniture into diagonal positions and all this finally brought the actors into diagonal compositions, which was the end he had in mind. This geometric use of space was only apparent on analysis, like the geometry in a Leonardo painting, and it was, in this period of his development, so subordinated to the pictorial effect that one is scarcely conscious of it.
The next rehearsal of Chekhov’s "Proposal” which I attended was a reading of the play by the cast. I sat in a
front row of the auditorium with the rest of the company who were not performing and with the apprentices. On the stage sat Meierhold facing the actors. "Let us begin!” he ordered. The opening line was read by Chubukov, or rather only the first four words.
"Wait!” said Meierhold. "You must read the line this way,” and he illustrated. Chubukov read the line again.
"Stop,” said Meierhold. "You are not giving it quite the same reading as I did. I wonder if you know why you are saying those words? To read it the way I just did, you must understand what sort of a character I want Chubukov to appear.”
Then Meierhold started in on a brilliant dissection of the line, of the juxtaposition of words and sounds that made up the line, of the meaning of it, of the characterization, of the style of the play as it would be set by that opening speech. "The sort of character I want Chubukov to appear.” Not the sort of character which the actor visualized, nor his interpretation of his part at all. Instead, "Watch me! This is the expression Chubukov must wear to point his absurdity. My expression now. . . . Do you see? Now you try it.”
Again and again the actor repeated the line. Each time Meierhold’s keen ear detected some slight variation from his preconceived idea of the way the line should sound. Finally he was satisfied. "Proceed,” he directed. And the next speech was read. Again came the same explanations and the same repetitions. Stanislavski, in the "Carmen” rehearsal, had worked for fifteen minutes with the actress to find the correct reading of a single line. But he had been simply trying to help her find the reading which came most easily and truly from her. He did not know himself what was needed until she gave what sounded true to him. Meierhold is not searching for a reading that will satisfy the actor, as was Stanislavski, but for one that
is as close as possible to the way he would read the line. He knows in advance the exact speed and intonation of each word; it simply takes time for the actor to catch it exactly.
For three hours this continued and not more than a dozen pages of one of the one-act plays were finished. But when finally the play had been read through, it seemed to me that it was already set. All this was so different from the Art Theatre. Here there was no seeking the underlying meaning, no discussion of the real thought or emotions which some speech conveyed, no feeling the way. Meier- hold had analyzed it all out in advance. 1 He was leading his actors along a brilliantly lighted path, pointing out all the curves and pitfalls and bringing the cast swiftly around them all. They had only to follow. Once they reached the end, they were through; they must memorize the route they had taken and then they could present the performance. Of course, there must be a few more line rehearsals to help this memorizing process and to give polish to the flow of dialogue. But in almost no time at all—at least compared to the MX AT —we are at what is the final stage of the Art Theatre’s production plan, at the point where the director begins to give the play its outward form.
The next rehearsal I attended was devoted to setting "business.” The stage was crowded. The center part of it was set for the action. Meierhold sat at one table at the edge of it; his assistants sat at two other tables; the usual crowd of onlookers filled the wings and footlights. The actors took their places for the opening scene. "Let us begin!” said Meierhold. The first two speeches were read. Meierhold was at once on his feet.
"As you say Tvan Vassilyevich!’ the second time, clap
1 A verbatim stenographic report of Meierhold’s directions in a rehearsal of "The Inspector-General” appears in the appendix to this volume. It might interest the reader to turn to this for comparison at this point.
your hands—so,” he directed. "And you, Ivan, turn your head slightly to the left . . . just a little further. The audience must see only the tip of your ear coming out from under your hat. A little further. . . . There! And at the same time, distend your neck. Watch me do it. . . . That’s it! Now let us try it again. . . . That was better. Only your handclap, Stepan Stepanovich, must be more affectionate. Place your wrists directly opposite each other as you clap, instead of side by side. That will make a smoother, more sliding clap. . . . That’s the way. And you, Ivan Vassilyevich, will be having a hat that is slightly too large, although it will not appear so at first to the audience. You are a country bumpkin and you have borrowed your father’s best hat to pay this call in; his head is a bit bigger than yours. Then when Chubukov claps, you will allow the hat to slip down and cover your ear as though it were involuntarily coming to the assistance of your weak heart. That is why the audience must see a little more of your ear under the hat than it did the first time just now. And let your eyes—just your eyes, for your head must not move again now—let your eyes rove the room hunting for the glass of water, and when they find it, rest upon it. That is the first suggestion of fainting which will accompany the clapping at once here in the first speech. There will be a pause when your eyes find it, so that the audience observing the direction in which your eyes are turned, will follow and see the glass and decanter of water. After a count of two, so: one—two—there will be a gentle minor chord played on the piano, no more, as though sight of the water brought that music with it. That will be the first musical sound. Then when two speeches later you reach for the glass the first time, the music will begin to play again, picking up the same chord as before. But we shall work that out when we come to it. Now let us try that sequence once again. But
before we start, will the pianist give me a chord. . . . No, that is too low. Its top note should be E flat, I think. . . . There, that’s it. Now while we repeat this business, see if you can be finding a Chopin prelude that has a theme beginning with that chord, or at least in that key. Now repeat the action once again, please.”
All this direction is on but the first two lines of the play, you must remember. The work proceeds in this fashion for an afternoon. At the end of it, three pages have been finished. But they have been completely set, every movement, every flicker of an eyelash, every chord of music, every prop or article of costume that will be part of those three pages has been indicated. The play could be presented tomorrow in finished form up to the top of page four! That is all for today. Tomorrow another three pages and the next day three more. Finally the entire play will have been gone through once.
In integrating music with his production, Meierhold is guided by his episodic divisions of the play of which I have spoken, and seeks to find a musical expression for each. In the Chekhov, as we see, every reference to fainting becomes a music cue, and because each reference is a variant of the same theme, the music is in the same key. The pianist brings to rehearsal a great pile of music. Meierhold hums the sort of thing he wants, the pianist leafs through his sheets and tries to find it; in this play it is either Chopin or Chaikovski. When all the music is collected, it is turned over to the composer of the production who has been carefully listening at rehearsals, and he works out a score from the assembled material and according to the musical pattern which Meierhold has indicated by his choice.
These rehearsals at which business is created are perhaps the most interesting in the whole evolution of a production at the Meierhold Theatre. Meierhold seems to know what
every position and every movement is to be. He knows the inner reason for it, the outward effect of it, the audience’s reaction to it. All these he explains to the actor and then proceeds to show him how to do it. Step by step, gesture by gesture, he builds up the action. The actor remains standing perfectly still until Meierhold gives him a movement; then, as in the reading of lines, he makes his approximation of Meierhold’s example.
From the first rehearsal Meierhold has had a vision in his mind of the completed production, the vision of what the audience will see, and this he holds always before him. As Huntly Carter puts it, ''Stanislavski told the actor he must forget that he is on the stage. Tairov told him he must remember nothing else. Meierhold told him he must remember that he is one of the audience.”
Since Meierhold is constantly looking at the stage picture as a whole, he creates all the characters in rehearsal simultaneously and does not work with each actor individually for more than a speech or two. The speed with which ideas pour out is such that one understands how a dozen stage managers can be kept busy making notes of them. For in the creation of business Meierhold is a master. He must be, in a theatre based on externals. His business seems to be invented entirely on the spur of the moment. In fact, all of Meierhold’s work seems to be inspirational, although we know that he works out a great deal in his own mind in advance. I am told that during the production of "La Dame aux Camelias” rehearsals would advance for two or three weeks without a word from Meierhold, and then suddenly just when the cast was getting most discouraged, a long and complicated idea would come out in full form.
It is this inspirational work of his that makes Meierhold’s rehearsals so engrossing and so valuable to his students. He could never give them formal lectures about his methods,
he could never set down a system like Stanislavski (although he once did attempt to formulate some of his theories in a book called The Journal of Dapertutto). All that is done for him, and sometimes incorrectly, by his commentators. But by watching him work his students can learn about acting and directing and pantomime—a very great deal about pantomime—and something about painting and music and mathematics too. In the course of every rehearsal, often perhaps in his final bit of directing, he will compose some piece of business so remarkable that it brings a round of applause from the apprentices and the attendant company. I shall never forget one of the later rehearsals of "The Proposal.” Meierhold had been inventing a dozen pieces of business to point his jeu, the fainting-water-drink- ing motif. Ivan Vassilyevich had done as much with the glass and carafe of water as seemed possible. Finally, as the rehearsal drew near its close, Meierhold rose suddenly. "Watch me and do likewise,” he ordered. Then he read the line: "If it were not for these terrible agonizing palpitations, Madam, if it were not for the throbbing in my temples—” He paused, looked about him wild-eyed, seized the carafe, held it in his outstretched hand a moment, then lifted it and emptied its entire contents over his head! With his hair and nose streaming water, he finished the line: "I should speak to you very differently!” The apprentices and cast cried, "Bravo!” Meierhold bowed, wiped his face and head and adjourned the rehearsal.
It is a pity that Meierhold never appears in any of his performances any more, for he is, in my opinion, the greatest actor in Russia today. He is great because he gives to his outward forms, which are superb, the inner spiritual meaning which his actors many times cannot give but which must be there if his theatre is to be of any dramatic force at all. The emptiness which so many of his performances have is because the soul of Meierhold is missing
REGISSEURS AT WORK 115
and only the body has been reproduced. Whenever his performances are moving it is because somehow his actors have caught up the whole of their master-creator and have arrived at his spiritual subtlety; but this rarely happens. His rehearsals are such exciting experiences not only because Meierhold is ever the showman but because in them he himself acts every character, combining the virtuosity of Heifetz with the soul of Kreisler.
When the Chekhov play had been in rehearsal six weeks or two months, Meierhold had not yet chosen his final cast of three characters. Every week or so he tried a new actor as the father or the daughter. (Ilinski seemed set as Ivan Vassilyevich.) Such a procedure would be possible in no other theatre, but here, so long as he has an actor to work with, Meierhold can go on with creation unimpeded. The regisseurs have made a detailed record of the progress so that if one actor finally dissatisfies him and he changes to another, the new one may learn what has already been done from the prompt book and go on from there.
Although I have said that Meierhold has the finished production in his mind at the first rehearsal and always thereafter, I do not mean that the play takes its final form at once and is never changed. After the long period during which all the details of action and movement are created, there follows another when Meierhold leaves the stage and goes to the auditorium to begin his revisions and additions from there. For a time he makes constant interruptions and is continually dashing up the runway to the stage from his seat by a little table in the center of the house. All this time he is building, adding new movements, new pieces of business. Then he begins to run an entire act, in this case the whole short play, without interruption. He is working now for the tempo of the whole and its form. There are many more run-throughs here than we saw at the MXAT, two or three times through the one-act play
ii 6
MOSCOW REHEARSALS
at one rehearsal. Between run-throughs Meierhold talks with the actors and his corps of regisseurs about business and tempo, drinks tea and eats a sandwich—then back to it again.
At this point the lighting begins. American theatre workers light a play only after the setting is on the stage. To Meierhold, however, light has its own part in the production aside from illuminating scenery and actors, and it must be orchestrated into the performance just as is the music. Consequently it can be begun whenever he is ready to turn his attention to it. A month before its opening I attended one of his rehearsals of "Queen of Spades’’ at the Maly Opera in Leningrad. None of the scenery that would be used in the production was on the stage, the actors were without costume or make-up, but while the rehearsal with full orchestra went on, Meierhold devoted his entire attention to lighting. He went from spotlight to spotlight adjusting and focusing each one himself, returned to his center aisle seat to relay cues from there to the operators, and to observe the effects of his experiments with colors and intensities of beam. Meierhold does not look upon light naturalistically. He considers that in the theatre it has only aesthetic value; that there is an emotional power from light whose extent if explored is far greater than that to be derived from the use of amber gelatine for sunset effects or steel-blue in night scenes. Sources of light need not be natural either and the pattern of light beams against darkness is often part of his visual composition. For these reasons he need not wait until the set is in place before creating and rehearsing his light plot. It can quite as well be done in a bare theatre with only his actors and music to guide him.
As Meierhold is sometimes practically the author of the piece, as he is to a great extent the composer of its score, as he enacts all the roles by creating everything for his
REGISSEURS AT WORK 117
actors, as he invents the lighting, it is only natural to suppose that so also he has a hand in the designing of the scenery. This is quite true. In the constructivist days it was more or less necessary, for the setting and action had to be one. In his later productions he has continued to have a hand in devising the decors , for he believes that he himself must still correlate them with the action. As his complete domination of his theatre has prevented the best actors from joining him, so the most original designers are not eager to work in the Meierhold Theatre where they would be little more than master-draughtsmen.
Thus it is that Meierhold reigns supreme in his domain. Just as he is responsible for its weaknesses, so its greatness springs from him alone. Meierhold is as completely bound to the past as is the Art Theatre—the latter to the bourgeois conceptions of a literal art of the days of its foundation, Meierhold to the past in art which stretches from the beginnings of the theatre up to the Russian Revolution, but no further. But the Art Theatre has this advantage: it may carry its past into the future because it is a collective adventure in art and the descendants of Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko are as much a part of the collective as are the generation that dies with them. They may change it eventually from bourgeois forms to proletarian ones. They are already on that way. Meierhold’s adventure into art has been solitary; when he is gone there will be no one to succeed him. His contribution was that of providing the impetus to theatrical revolution, and it is a contribution which has been completed. The influence of his style will certainly continue and perhaps in expressions more adequate to the needs of a proletariat whom he may have represented but one of whom he never was. At any rate, the American theatre has had no Meierhold and that, I think, is a pity.
118 MOSCOW REHEARSALS
4
The Kamerny Theatre is another autocratic theatre in which Tairov and his consort and leading actress, Alice Koonen, hold undisputed dominion. It is as impossible to imagine the Kamerny without Tairov as to imagine the Meierhold Theatre without Meierhold. If my belief that a theatre built on external form must always be a one-man theatre is correct, then that explains this second theatre of the regisseur in Moscow. For Tairov has constructed a formalism of his own creation and the practice of it requires his personal direction and interpretation.
The Kamerny Theatre was founded by Alexander Tairov in 1914. Economically speaking, Tairov chose a difficult time to found a theatre. Just on the eve of the Great War money for new artistic ventures was scarce; aesthetically, however, Tairov felt that the time was ripe. The Art Theatre was becoming constantly more petit- bourgeois and its naturalism and its symbolism alike revolted him. Stanislavski had said that it was his aim "to chase the theatre from the theatre.” Tairov wanted to bring the theatre back into the theatre: a theatre theatrical. Kamerny means "chamber.” The new group was to be a theatre intime . It did not expect to be a theatre with a wide public appeal; it demanded a sophisticated audience. A certain small group of intellectuals and students, of the type which usually supports new ventures in aestheticism, acclaimed Tairov’s excursion.
With what was Tairov to replace naturalism? The young director knew more definitely what he did not want than what he did. It seemed to him, however, that instead of a theatre of everyday life, his should be a theatre of heroics. His aim would be the exaltation of the hero. This hero was to lift the audience above the realms of life into a region of pure aesthetic harmony. His plays would be
heroic plays; hence in the center of his performance would be the actor, but now a "new actor equivalent to the full meaning of the word.” By that he meant that his actor was always to remain an actor; he was not to fuse his personality with that of the character he was portraying—a fundamental conception of the Stanislavski method. Stanislavski had told his actor to forget that he was on the stage; Tairov told his actor always to remember that he was on the stage.
Tairov then began to create new keys for this new kind of actor to play upon. The aesthetic harmony he sought could be found only through the development of new rhythms. Movement became formalized by him into aesthetic abstractions which were to strengthen the rhythms and lend them that unreal color which he sought. He developed a system of intoned speech which heightened what he felt to be the abstract definition of heroics. He created gestures which by their formal and unreal rhythms would further heighten the theatricality. It is probable that Tairov had in mind the Greek theatre, where the outward paraphernalia of heroism were the mask, the high-heeled buskin, the formalized gesture and intonation. He wished to re-create its theatrical monumentality. This technique of the new actor began to minimize the importance of the role as attention was diverted from the play to the actor. In this Tairov made his greatest departure from Stanislavski.
In its search for a pure formalistic style, the Kamerny necessarily discarded naturalistic decorations, and innovations in lighting and scenery were made. Futurism and cubism entered the theatre and constructivism as well, but a constructivism based on form and not on function. Herein it differed from that which Meierhold made use of.
"Salome,” by Oscar Wilde, has been considered to be the masterpiece of the early days of the Kamerny Theatre. I
was privileged to see a performance of it on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary celebration of the Theatre in January, 1935; it is no longer in the regularly performed repertoire of the Theatre. Its artistic composition is exquisite and it rightly takes its place among the chief museum pieces of the Russian theatre—but that is all it is today. With its original performance the Theatre received the recognition of the Soviet government, now come into power, and it became a state theatre. At the same time it became influenced by the aestheticism of Wilde which caught the artistic imagination of the Theatre and probably did as much as anything else to retard its progress along the line of the Revolution.
The Kamerny, like the other theatres founded before 1917, found difficulty in accepting the implications of the proletarian Revolution. In fact, it was particularly hard for Tairov because his art was by its very nature devoted to the cultivated taste of a small group of people. To comply with the demands of the new audience he would have to concern himself with the Revolutionary message and content of plays, and to do that he would have to change his belief that the play is only a pretext for the art of the actor. Such a profound change was very difficult for this theatre. A couple of the new Soviet dramas were tried but both were failures. The playwrights were too naturalistic to suit the style of Tairov, and to accept naturalism and abnegate his artistic principles was unthinkable to him.
It was necessary, however, that he produce some contemporary drama, so Tairov turned to foreign authors. He tried Shaw, G. K. Chesterton, then Eugene O’Neill. In O’Neill he found what he needed. O’Neill was not a revolutionary, it is true, but certain of his plays brought out labor problems and race problems which, although not solved from an orthodox Marxian point of view, were yet near enough to the required social approach. To these plays
Tairov did not need to apply the principles of pure naturalism. Encouraged by his success with O’Neill, particularly when he went on tour abroad ("The Hairy Ape,” "All God’s Chillun Got Wings,” "Desire Under the Elms” were the plays he chose), Tairov went further in the field of American drama and produced Sophie Treadwell’s "Machinal” and Dos Passos’ new "Fortune Heights.”
In the production of these plays Tairov gradually discarded certain elements of his previous formalism and approached a neo-realism which, while far from naturalism, yet made it possible for him to produce Vishnevski’s "Optimistic Tragedy,” the first Soviet play with which he has had any eminent success. With its performance the Ka- merny claims to have arrived at the line of the Revolution. Tairov says, "Our theatre is still the theatre of heroics, but the conception of a hero differs. Now he is the natural son of his environment.” His present purpose is to "take the heroic elements of this new hero and create a great scenic whole,” a something which, with the Russian love for high-sounding titles, he will call "synthetic realism.”
How far the Kamerny Theatre has succeeded in understanding the Revolution is uncertain, for in spite of its recent declarations, this theatre seems to stand outside the main stream. Its earlier years of Wildean aestheticism, its later excursions into foreign material, have given it a stamp which is not purely Russian. It is quite the most cosmopolitan theatre in Moscow, which perhaps is one reason why most foreigners are attracted to it, and also perhaps why many Muscovites distrust it artistically. Excellent in its own field—and its field is a broad one, for in building what he calls a synthetic theatre, Tairov has created a company which can present equally well, within its own style, comedy, tragedy, pantomime, light opera, and a curious kind of musical revue—and led by a master of unquestionably great artistic feeling, it is, I feel, essentially
sterile. Is it a coincidence that no theatre in Moscow claims the Kamerny as its direct progenitor?
My study of Tairov’s methods was limited because of this conviction of mine that his work lay outside the typical line of the Moscow theatres, and because the particular production in which he was then engaged, "Egyptian Nights,” was, because of its magnitude, so atypical even of him that observation would be of little value in discovering his normal practices. "Egyptian Nights,” which was a production based on a combination of Shaw’s "Caesar and Cleopatra,” Pushkin’s poem, "Egyptian Nights,” and Shakespeare’s "Antony and Cleopatra,” was in rehearsal off and on for three years and I arrived in Moscow for only the final three months of preparation. Therefore I could get little idea of Tairov’s methods except second-hand. Here I shall record only my few firsthand impressions.
The rehearsals of "Egyptian Nights” which I did see were exceedingly interesting. About six weeks before the scheduled opening—the actual opening took place a month late—I went to my first rehearsal there. The production was beginning to be assembled on the stage after months and months of work on small scenes with small groups of actors. There must have been one hundred in the cast, and Tairov, working personally on the stage, was correlating the movements of the crowds with the individuals. This is the part of production at which he excels. In any Tairov performance the mass movement is superb. Where Meier- hold takes a single character and puts into his features and his movement generalizations which make him the symbol of a mass, Tairov takes a group and, galvanizing it into unity, makes it move and seem as one.
Although Tairov tells us that his theatre centers about the hero, when it comes to actual performances, I find his
supers more effective than his heroes. The great scenes of "Optimistic Tragedy” and of "Egyptian Nights” are scenes of mass movement or when the mass and an individual are set in juxtaposition. The memorable moments are ones like that in which Cleopatra sits at the apex of a pyramid of steps; below her stand or recline her court and attendants, first distinguishable on a dark stage by the points of light which are their glowing torches; like the fleeting scene when two ships are joined in the battle of Actium and the fighting legions overrun the stage—the finest staging of Shakespearean "alarums and excursions” I have ever seen; or like the moment when Cleopatra’s terrified attendants fleeing from her presence, scurry down long narrow flights of steps in seemingly endless number, and make of the whole stage an agitated anthill of movement.
In comparison with these mass effects, scenes of dialogue between two or three characters become weak and watery. Tairov seems to have become bored. This contrast to Meierhold may be explained, I think, by the fact that Meierhold brings the actor’s eye to the theatre and Tairov does not. Meierhold lavishes creative inventiveness on individual performances because he thinks in terms of the actor’s technique. He must project himself into the performance and this he has to do through the medium of each actor. Tairov, not feeling this urge, considers the scenic whole more objectively and so creates more telling ensemble stage pictures.
I was particularly pleased, therefore, to see this rehearsal where, on a stage set with the skeleton of the scenery and with all the steps and levels in place, Tairov worked with his mob. Coming from the Meierhold rehearsals where the regisseur is constantly acting himself, Tairov seems passive. He does little acting, only once in a while shows an actor a move. Instead he walks about, talking his directions, beckoning or pulling his crowds into position. Although
standing within a few feet of a battalion of Roman legionaries, he seems able to visualize the effect they will produce from a distance as well as though he were sitting beside me two-thirds of the way back in the house. He treats the mob as one person, regulates its movement and tempo as though it were but one, and it reacts to his directions like one man.
Tairov was already synchronizing the Prokofiev music with the mass movement and was watching that the time which the crowd took to perform certain action did not drag beyond a definite cue in the score. This time there was only a piano accompaniment but by the next rehearsal which I attended five days later, there was a full orchestra in the pit. There was also the beginning of lighting, for the dress rehearsals were soon to be upon them. At them Tairov sits at a little table set in the first row of the orchestra with his staff of assistant regisseurs beside him. There are numerous interruptions and the dress rehearsals are far from being smooth run-throughs yet. Later Tairov will move his table back to the center of the house, run the acts without pause, taking notes during the action and criticizing and changing at the end. The multiple changes of scenery which must be accomplished during a certain number of bars of music and on a darkened stage with the curtain raised, are rehearsed for about a month so that when the first night comes the shifts may be as smooth as the performance.
If rehearsals like Meierhold’s have never been seen on Broadway, the Kamerny dress rehearsals, at least in Tairov’s present mood, are technically carried on very much like our own, and if the Russian language only sounded a little more like English one could easily imagine himself in a theatre on Times Square!
CHAPTER FIVE