Comrades: As there is very little time I shall try to be as brief as possible in explaining my basic views. The theme of this play is extraordinarily simple. You needn’t think profoundly about the lines; the idea is obvious: the socialist method of educating people—conditions of work organized on a socialist basis—reforges, remakes everyone, even hardened criminals. But it does not follow that this inevitable rule applies to everyone. Not all who were sent to the White Sea Canal were made over. There are many instances of failures. Often men have been heroic, and completely conscious of what they were doing and yet in the end relapsed into their old way of life. Nevertheless, the fact remains that an enormous number of people have turned to the true, human way of living. How that happens, it is up to us to show in this play.
It is all simple, clear and intelligible. That should be the point of departure in explaining the idea of the production. I believe that the form of the play should be simple, clear and intelligible. The directors would make a great mistake by being too figurative. In parenthesis, let me say that several days ago R. N. Simonov, K. J. Mironov and I went to an interrogation in a criminal proceeding. We watched a very moving scene between a bandit and his mother. He was threatened with being shot. This he was aware of and yet when the prosecutor said, “You will be
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shot/’ he retorted, "Go ahead and shoot. Why play around with me?”
Afterwards we compared our impressions. Before his mother was to come in to the room, we were all much excited because we were to be witnesses of a great event. It was a little embarrassing because there we were studying real human beings just as we study animals. But the most remarkable impression that I carried away was that nothing happened in the way I expected it to. The whole scene was striking in its unexpected and extraordinary simplicity. Simonov, in our conversation after this visit, also remarked that there was no similarity between what happened there and what takes place in the theatre. Therefore when I speak about simplicity of the forms that must be put into this play, I am speaking about a simplicity which is difficult to achieve, difficult to find—I mean the simplicity of living truth.
I do not want to have any theatricality in this play. To a certain extent there must be some, that we are agreed on—on that the Vakhtangov Theatre is based. But I would like to concentrate the attention of the actors in this production on a deep comprehension of simple truths. I feel that I am giving you a great and difficult task. To give this play, we can use the lines in various ways. It will draw; there will be applause; it will make an impression. But that is not what I am after. I want more than that. To achieve this greater objective I have tried to arrange our work to run smoothly. I have talked with many people. I have heard the tales of real witnesses. I want to see movement put into this production. There must be action in everything—in the psychological development of the images, in the external conception of the play, in the scenery, the costumes and finally in the music. Everything must have movement in it. Of what does this consist?
I shan’t go into detail about the music or the external
form of the production but shall try to speak of it as a whole. How does the play begin? It begins with a musical introduction, which is very loud, played behind the drawn curtain. After the first few bars the curtain rises. In the overture there should be strains of ancient folk songs from the Karelian North. In these you will sense the struggle with nature, the struggle of the people who find themselves in its grip. Therefore our point of departure is the characteristics of the Karelian North: pines, stone, dampness, rain, a heavy sky. This is what the audience sees when the curtain rises.
The curtain goes up. It is raining, a wet red flag flaps limply in the wind. This is the only indication that the play is in our time. There is pantomime to the music. A crowd gathers, some with umbrellas, some with knapsacks; those worst off have no overcoats. They stop, wait for some others to catch up with them, then they go on by. Everything is very quiet; only occasionally you hear the voice of a guard yelling, "'Get a move on!” When the curtain rises again, we see the place these people have come to, a government office, where they are to be checked in. First of all, the impression must be made that they have come to a concentration camp, not a holiday resort. They are dejected, morose, feeling intense resentment. They have come here and do not know what awaits. They have come to hard labor, to terribly hard labor, and they haven’t the slightest conception of what is to become of them. Therefore the point of departure for each actor who is playing one of these people who are to be transformed, should be to be as vivid as possible in order to create an immediate impression that under no circumstances can anything be done with them. This will heighten the effect made later on. Therefore, too, it would be a great mistake for any actors to show any faith in what is going to happen. They must not know what is in store for them.
They must expect hard labor, acting like wild animals who will bite, protecting and defending themselves. Suddenly they will find that they are not to be treated as they thought. It seems to me that here in this place to which these people have come, we do not want the usual type of heroes in the theatre. Everything must be done with precision, in silence, glumly and naturally. From this images will proceed. There will be development in the external shaping of the play and in the music.
What is this development? We have before us chaos, overwhelming nature. Gradually the preponderating forces will be severity, clearness, precision, intelligence. This must be part of the external form of the production and it must be in the soul of everyone participating in it. The music should be made up of these elements: folk melodies from Karelia, street tunes, and church music. The composer’s job is to see that all this sounds integrated. I see the scene as follows: a barracks. As Kostya Kapitan comes in and says, "Howdy, Urki,” and the orchestra plays snatches of street music, perhaps in a gay strain, the people are lying around and thinking about their past. The music should play an important role. When Kostya produces extraordinary variations on his harmonica it would be hopeless to reproduce these variations just on a harmonica. One person couldn’t possibly do that. The orchestra must do it. Just as in "Egor Bulichev” the impression would have been totally different if one man had blown his horn, so here the orchestra must play the harmonica. The music must rise to the heights of "pathetique.” Out of this music, the folk melodies of Karelia and street tunes, we should have a welding together of moments out of which should grow "pathetique” music to sound like the third movement in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. At least it should approach that in some measure. It will be an ode, a con-
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temporary ode like Schiller’s "Ode to Joy.” That is what I wish to have happen.
This note should carry into the costumes as well. I imagine that a year goes by. We shall start the play in the autumn and end it under a spring sky, because it is necessary for us to show the hardness of work in winter. We must show how difficult it is for people to live in these parts, and to work under the conditions which surround them. We must find colors in which to paint this difficult picture, these hard conditions of work, and therefore it must be winter. They come to this place in highly individual clothing. All these clothes are worn out, are all shabby. A tie sticks out or a scarf, but in general in this scene all these bandits look alike. Then in the end (this I look upon as the third stage) individual costumes will come into the picture again. And here, comrades, it will be necessary to put certain demands up to every one of you, as this is a most important point. Each production calls for a certain accent or emphasis. That is to say, in every production there must be everything that an actor’s inner technique requires. But in different productions the accent is struck at different times. Remember how we worked on Gorki. We said that we must learn to think on the stage and to reproduce that image as truly as possible. We didn’t need to "act” in that production but we had to learn to live with those feelings. We all succeeded in being earnest and therefore there was life in our lines. That question is the one I always put to myself at the beginning of a piece of work and I put it now. This play is based on the fact that certain people are in strange circumstances. They appear from an entirely other world. Now they have come out into the fresh air. These people are unusual, the conditions are unusual; life is extraordinary, everything here is extraordinary. This creates a great difficulty—the difficulty that we cannot appreciate, evaluate the facts. Imagine peo-
pie going into a concentration camp. They have passed the gates, beyond those gates is their life, their country, and now the gates have been closed with barbed wire and there is no possibility of getting out.
I went down to the Volga Canal Camp. At the gate stood the guard to check us all so that no extra people came out. At that moment my feelings were unpleasant and fearful. Think of the far north and of those people who have come to stay ten years. What must they experience as they pass those gates, how must they carry themselves, how must they feel, what must their inner emotions be? Just this presents a vast difficulty. The play is made up of episodes; there is no regular unfolding of action, no sequence of acts. You have an event and the actor is immediately galvanized into complete tension; he is instantly required to be in action, he has the spotlight on him. He reaches a point of tension that obliges him to mobilize his capacity to do what we call evaluate, to sense circumstances, and as these circumstances are extraordinary, the roles in this play present great difficulties. Consequently, what should an actor be thinking about, what should he mobilize? He should remember how he prepared sketches during his first year in training.
Suppose that I come into the room. I open the door, I go in. Everything which I have has been stolen. I must experience and weigh that fact. Or suppose that I am sitting reading a newspaper. I hear a bell; I receive a telegram. I open it and read that my father has died. We know very well that that is a most difficult thing to accept. To receive the unexpected and to weigh it truthfully from the point of view of the exactions I have already mentioned—that is what I want.
It is difficult to say anything about the external form of the production, the scenery. I have asked V. F. Ryndin, our designer, to create an external form which will sug-
gest harshness, severity, logic and simplicity, and with this in mind, I invite you to look at his model.
Another point about this harshness and about people who live under harsh conditions: they find themselves becoming harsh, apathetic; they lose all interest in life—and that is what really happened.
Now if you put together these monumental demands on you with what I said about the third movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and about the simplicity of living truth, then, it seems to me, you should get a conception of the production as I dream it and as I wish to create it.
That, comrades, is the exposition of my idea in general terms. There are many questions that could be put about the breadth of the performance. There are comic parts, melodramatic and dramatic parts and there are even places which rise to the tragic, to "pathetique” heights, but it is not worth while to take up here the justification of what the fundamental type of this play is. It may be necessary to discuss individual images, but I think that we can talk about that in rehearsals, otherwise it would take up too much time.
II
AT THE REHEARSALS OF "THE INSPECTOR-GENERAL”
A Stenographic Report of Meierhold’s Work with the
Actors 1
Meierhold {to the actor playing the part of the Mayor): The whole entrance is effected before you come to the lines. Once we have agreed to carry the role through at a certain tempo, it is up to me, as a technical expert, to do what I can to lighten the work of the actor and to think of putting him in circumstances that will be easy for him. The actor must be freed from everything that creates weight on him. Forget about talking like an old man. Let the make-up show a man of fifty, but in speech, be young. We shall discuss the reason for this too. It seems to me that among this museum piece collection of idiots—even the superintendent of schools is an idiot, and Luke Lukich, and the judge are idiots, the postmaster is an idiot—among all these completely stick-in-the-mud and the-devil-knows- what kind of creatures, the Mayor stands out in relief. He is more clever and more intelligent and is a man with a certain polish. It is possible that this mayor was yesterday in some other town. Not in the capital, of course, but if this is a district town, he was in the chief city of a province. He has come here after having been elsewhere. All the directions indicate that he is head and shoulders above all the others. In the Mayor you see traces of some sort of external polish, it would be difficult to call it education. You see it in what he says about teachers, in that he knows something about history, and in his orders—to put up a monument of some sort—in all this there is a quasi-culture;
1 Acknowledgment of permission to reprint this report in translation should be made to the Soviet journal "Theatre and Dramaturgy.”
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of course, what kind of culture! But when he talks, he controls his tongue, he knows how to form phrases a great deal better than Bobchinski or Dobchinski. Their brains work hard but he has a kind of adaptability which makes it possible for him to find his way around as soon as he is on good terms with people. He is an orator, sui generis , he can recite a monologue. It is necessary to give him a youthful aspect. To have a characteristic mode of speech would not be of advantage, it would be difficult. It would be better to forget it. It would be better for him to have a mobile diction. Why is it that up to now he has always been played by old actors with great ponderousness? Mak- sheyev, for instance, and Vladimir Nikolayevich Davydov played him when they were getting on in years, and when younger actors took the role they played under Davydov and imitated him. I don’t know how Vladimir Nikolayevich played the Mayor when he was young, when he was still at the Korsh in Moscow, but it is possible, according to tradition, that even he played him as an old man. That is why all these gestures and intonations have accumulated and waxed strong, because they were used by people who played according to the example of older men with big names.
Inasmuch as you are young—because you must be twenty, or at least fifteen years younger than I am—forget all about talking like an old man. Fire away with completely free, clear-cut diction. Don’t try any groans for the present, not until later when we have straightened out things a bit. Perhaps we shall give you, even during rehearsals, a big easy chair—to sit in, to think, to get ready, to begin. Until he puts on his uniform the Mayor is always in his dressing gown. Perhaps he takes a nap after midday dinner, then he receives the letter before he has gotten up and gives orders to send for all the heads of departments, and then is taken ill himself. Give him that easy chair out
of "The Forest.” Let him sit there, like an invalid. Give him a glass of boiled water.
The Mayor: Perhaps he would read the letter with spectacles on?
Meierhold: No. No use making him heavy. Read the letter without spectacles. They will hold a candle in front of him.
Question: That means that the action takes place in the evening?
Meierhold: Yes, in the evening. We want to make it evening.
Dobchinski: After dinner, Bobchinski and Dobchinski will have been running around town the entire day.
Meierhold ( to Hibner) : This is what the doctor has to do. (Is that clean water? Answer: Yes.) Interfere with him; give him some water from time to time in a teaspoon. You bother him, but he is obliged to take it. He takes it, sometimes he pushes it aside, sometimes he drinks it, then he takes the glass in his hands and takes several swallows, finds it is something one can drink by the tumblerful. You should say your lines in German so that your lines will get mixed up with his. This will help him slightly to get rid of his difficulty. You will set the pace. This will be the first obstacle, and you will help him to increase the pace. In direct proportion to the obstacles will arise the desire and the necessity to get rid of them. You can even speak loudly, never mind if the public hears. Keep talking constantly. He’s a kind of perpetuum mobile . You speak in German. You see, you come from Germany. Has anyone a handkerchief or a shawl? (He binds tip the Mayor's head.) There. You must keep near him. Tap his chest, put mustard plasters on the soles of his feet to draw the blood away from his head. Can you manage some German? Keep repeating any old sentences.
All in the foreground—over there. All are seated. The
Mayor comes in. But we shall begin quietly, after he has settled himself in his easy chair. He groans. You ( Hibner ) get ready his glass of medicine and all sorts of things. As soon as he has spoken a few lines, begin to make him drink. When they all say, "What, an Inspector-General?” they must do it all alike. Some must stagger the syllables— In-spec-tor. There should be a variety of logical accents, and also some should pronounce it briefly while others drawl it out.
"Well, for God’s sake!” etc., very quick. The reaction must be quick and they do not say this in character. The public won’t know anyhow who is saying what. They all sit in a crowd on the sofa, perhaps ten of them. You must soft pedal characteristics. The public won’t know which is Amos Fyodorovich, or Artemus Philipovich or Luke Lukich—they all talk at once. They must blow off steam. Avdotya takes part in this. She is on her knees wiping her soles. Mishka holds a candle and the letter. Perhaps the Mayor has told him to bring him a candle and the letter.
(To the Mayor) : Groan. Groaning will help to heighten the tone, and immediately after you groan, say, "So that’s the situation.” The Mayor is in the armchair. Mishka, Avdotya, Hibner, are standing around him. This will give him the air of a generalissimo. He is a sort of tsar in this town.
(To Amos Fyodorovich) : "I think, Anton Antonovich, that there is some fine . . .’’You should give more intonation to the expression "in your ear.” I don’t know how this will be on the stage. But we should have a more confidential tone, more of a word-in-your-ear effect. Nothing pensive about it, but confidential. Then you can set the tempo.
(To Hibner) : Each time excitement affects the doctor. He calms the Mayor by saying, "Seien Sie ruhig!” and he makes gestures to restrain the persons talking. Excitement
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is bad for a sick man. I don’t know what you will say, but say something to them and to him. This annoys the Mayor and his irritation toward the doctor gives him a chance to set the pace. The doctor has a word of admonition to each one of them and continues to fuss over the Mayor. Here we have a complication. An instructor must be called in. "Warum sprechen sie so?” or something of the sort. Hibner has a tremendous role. It is even bigger than the Mayor’s.
(To the Mayor) : Make your remarks to the judge with a great deal of irritability; that will bring up the tempo. ‘'Moreover, I just mention this . . . God will protect him” we will cut. It holds back the tempo. It’s good but it’s too literary. We’ll do it this way. We will place you (the Mayor ) so that you will be half-turned toward the others. Whenever you can free yourself from the ministrations of Hibner, you can be turning to someone: "And now you, Luke Lukich”—"Especially with regard to the teachers. . . .’’You raise yourself up, you get up on your knees in the chair. You are all set up and on fire with expression. The fine shadings will come along by themselves here. While you are sitting up, Hibner takes advantage of your position to unfasten your trousers and apply a mustard plaster. I give you all this to help jack up the tempo.
"One of them . . .” to be said not too loud, quickly so that it will be light, and more transparent. Luke Lukich responds to the tempo. The Mayor talks but Luke Lukich does not keep silent; he says, "But what am I to do,” or something of the sort. As to the inspector of schools: station yourself so that we can see the Mayor. The Mayor speaks irritably. He is annoyed that they have gone wrong. Instead of standing up in the face of what’s happened, they laugh. They have become, as it were, disorganized. The Mayor not only takes the Postmaster aside
but he raises himself up or leans on him and on the doctor. He talks confidentially, but quickly and loudly, so that he can be heard. You understand, he speaks confidentially but terribly hurriedly.
(To the Mayor) : You take hold of him (the Postmaster) and choke him. Then it will be easier for him to struggle out of your grasp, and all the while the doctor will be grumbling, "Dieser Postmeister ,, . . . "Gott!”
(To the Postmaster) : "'Now then, wait a minute, wait a minute!” He digs in his pockets. There are letters in every one. He is a walking cupboard.
Why are you lagging in tempo? Keep moving, keep moving. Let him have quantities of letters at rehearsal so that he can keep taking them out, keep rummaging around in them, sorting them, until he finds the one.
(To the Mayor) : For the surprise it is better to stand on your feet; you go out, leaning on the doctor, and then later you appear on the stage without compresses. The doctor will help enormously and make it possible to sustain the tempo. That’s much better. That’s perfectly clear.
(The end of the rehearsal)