Meyerhold and Mayakovsky: Revolution and the First Soviet Play

Vsevolod Meyerhold and Vladimir Mayakovsky are two legendary names in the realm of Russian and international art frequently associated with the most turbulent period in Russian history, the beginning of the twentieth century, during which Russian society underwent a profound social and political change. This period (1900 – 1930) saw the October Revolution, the First World War, the Russian Civil War, and the beginnings of Stalinism. It is precisely during these times of turmoil that Russian Avant-garde flourished. It marked a clear break from the traditional naturalist theatre and moved towards a new and unprecedented development that came to be known as “leftist art.” The Soviet historian Vadim Kozhinov wrote in an article published in 1976, that Russian Avant-garde was closely associated with Russian Marxist aesthetics. This “leftist art,” however, was not necessarily Marxist from the onset. The end of the nineteenth century already saw a stir in the European artistic scenes that led to the development of new movements in the first two decades of the twentieth century, which sought a way to dispense with old preconceptions of the creative process and artistic meaning. In this respect, the Russian scene was no different. While Konstantin Stanislavski experimented with ideas that resulted from naturalistic drama, and consequently fathered “socialist realism,” or the Method, Meyerhold focused on an entirely fresh perspective of theatrical staging. By 1915, Vsevolod Meyerhold was already an established actor and theatre director. Despite his reputation as a traditionalist at the time, Meyerhold was already working on a series of new developments in the Russian theatre that were a clear departure from Stanislavki’s Method. His production of Lermontov’s Masquerade (1917) evidently shows Meyerhold’s new approach to staging, where he used his yet to sophisticate principles of “bio-mechanics.” Rudnitzky characterizes the acting style of the play as “ascetic, severe