Meyerhold and His Set Designers

Meyerhold and His Set Designers
Author: Marjorie L. Hoover
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
Total Pages: 292
Release: 1988
Genre: Drama
ISBN:

The Russian theater director Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874-1940) has since his «repression» under Stalin resumed his rightful place alongside Stanislavsky as a founder of twentieth-century «director's theater.» But he has been simplistically stereotyped as a radical of the bare stage and biomechanical gymnastics for actors. Marjorie L. Hoover, who surveyed his whole forty-year career, official as well as experimental, in her Meyerhold: The Art of Conscious Theater - nominated for a National Book Award in 1975 - now concentrates in Meyerhold and His Set Designers on his collaboration with many great artists. For with Leon Bakst and Alexander Golovin, among others, he pioneered the modern «designer's theater, » staging both drama and opera in painterly luxury before 1917, and thereafter he led a revolution in theater art together with several designers, among whom, El Lissitzky, Popova and Rodchenko.

The Great European Stage Directors Volume 2

The Great European Stage Directors Volume 2
Author: David Barnett
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2021-10-07
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1474259898

This volume surveys and assesses the contributions of Vsevolod Meyerhold, Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht to theatre-making, which richly exemplify the range of ways that directors address dramatic material, theatrical space and their audiences. Their directorial work marks an unmistakeable interest in developing the political potential of theatre in the early 20th century, although each director offered more to their actors, collaborators and spectators than simply the staging of politics and the political.

Vsevolod Meyerhold

Vsevolod Meyerhold
Author: Robert Leach
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 1989
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780521318433

This book traces the career of the Russian revolutionary theatre director, Vsevolod Meyerhold, from his early years as a founding member of the Moscow Art Theatre with Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, through his Symbolist period, his experiments with commedia dell'arte and other popular forms, to his demise in the Stalin era. Leach describes in detail Meyerhold's 'system' of theatre: his attitude to the audience, the place of the fore stage, 'biomechanics' and actor training, and the importance of the mise-en-scène. Finally, Leach explores Meyerhold's legacy, which can be detected in the work of Brecht, Eisenstein, Peter Brook and others.

The Routledge Companion to Vsevolod Meyerhold

The Routledge Companion to Vsevolod Meyerhold
Author: Jonathan Pitches
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 681
Release: 2022-11-09
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1000764567

The Routledge Companion to Vsevolod Meyerhold brings together a wealth of scholarship on one of the foremost innovators in European theatre. It presents a detailed picture of the Russian director’s work from when it first emerged on the modern stage to its multifarious present-day manifestations. By combining an historical focus with the latest contemporary research from an international range of perspectives and authors, this collection marks an important moment in Meyerhold studies as well as offering a new assessment of his relation to today's theatre-making. Its dynamic blend of research is presented in five sections: Histories enlarges on more conventional subjects like the grotesque and Biomechanics, to overlooked topics such as Meyerhold's ‘failed’ projects and his work in film; Collaborations and Connections extends understandings of Meyerhold’s well-known collaborative capacities to consider new cultural influences and lesser known working relationships; Sources engages with hitherto untapped material in Meyerhold’s oeuvre by reproducing and contextualising previously untranslated primary sources on his work; Practitioner Voices offer lively, on the ground, testimony of the contemporary impact of Meyerhold's practice; Meyerhold in New Contexts maps the routes of his practice across continents and examines ways in which his work is being applied in a number of contemporary scenarios, such as motion capture, computer-based 3D visualisations, and the ‘new normal’ of digital pedagogy. This is a key resource for students and scholars of European Theatre, acting theory, and actor training, as well as for those more broadly interested in the socio-political impact of theatre.

Fifty Key Theatre Designers

Fifty Key Theatre Designers
Author: Arnold Aronson
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2023-11-21
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1000992748

Fifty Key Theatre Designers looks at the history of theatrical scenography by examining the work and contributions of fifty ground-breaking set, costume, lighting, and projection designers since the Renaissance. Developments of scenic design are traced from the introduction of perspective painting to create illusionistic scenery in Renaissance Italy to the use of digital projection in the twenty-first century. The book also discusses important landmarks in the evolution of costume and lighting design, as well as the introduction of film and video technology to stage design. A broad range of work is explored, including opera, dance, Broadway and West End commercial theatre, avant-garde performance, and even Olympic spectacles. Each chapter features one designer, including basic biographical information and a discussion of that artist’s style, aesthetics, and contributions. Designers covered include Sebastiano Serlio, Ferdinando Bibiena, Richard Wagner, Adolphe Appia, and Edward Gordon Craig, amongst many other notable individuals. Each chapter also includes references to other significant designers with similar aesthetics or who made similarly important contributions to the development of that aspect of scenography. This book is ideal for undergraduates and graduates of scenography, theatrical design, and theatre history.

Meyerhold on Theatre

Meyerhold on Theatre
Author: Vsevolod Ėmilʹevich Meĭerkholʹd
Publisher:
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2018
Genre: Theater
ISBN: 9781474230230

Meyerhold was one of the foremost Russian directors of the stage and was considered by many to be the equal of Stanislavski. With a critical commentary by the editor these writings are essential reading for anyone studying Russian drama and culture.

The Director & The Stage

The Director & The Stage
Author: Edward Braun
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2014-03-10
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1408149257

Beginning with the triple impulses of Naturalism, symbolism and the grotesque, the bulk of the book concentrates on the most famous directors of this century - Stanislavski, Reinhardt, Graig, Meyerhold, Piscator, Brecht, Artuaud and Grotowski. Braun's guide is more practical than theoretical, delineating how each director changed the tradition that came before him.

Theatre and Performance Design

Theatre and Performance Design
Author: Jane Collins
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2012-10-02
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1136344527

Theatre and Performance Design: A Reader in Scenography is an essential resource for those interested in the visual composition of performance and related scenographic practices. Theatre and performance studies, cultural theory, fine art, philosophy and the social sciences are brought together in one volume to examine the principle forces that inform understanding of theatre and performance design. The volume is organised thematically in five sections: looking, the experience of seeing space and place the designer: the scenographic bodies in space making meaning This major collection of key writings provides a much needed critical and contextual framework for the analysis of theatre and performance design. By locating this study within the broader field of scenography – the term increasingly used to describe a more integrated reading of performance – this unique anthology recognises the role played by all the elements of production in the creation of meaning. Contributors include Josef Svoboda, Richard Foreman, Roland Barthes, Oscar Schlemmer, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Richard Schechner, Jonathan Crary, Elizabeth Wilson, Henri Lefebvre, Adolph Appia and Herbert Blau.

A Companion to Russian Cinema

A Companion to Russian Cinema
Author: Birgit Beumers
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 676
Release: 2016-05-17
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1118424735

A Companion to Russian Cinema provides an exhaustive and carefully organised guide to the cinema of pre-Revolutionary Russia, of the Soviet era, as well as post-Soviet Russian cinema, edited by one of the most established and knowledgeable scholars in Russian cinema studies. The most up-to-date and thorough coverage of Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet cinema, which also effectively fills gaps in the existing scholarship in the field This is the first volume on Russian cinema to explore specifically the history of movie theatres, studios, and educational institutions The editor is one of the most established and knowledgeable scholars in Russian cinema studies, and contributions come from leading experts in the field of Russian Studies, Film Studies and Visual Culture Chapters consider the arts of scriptwriting, sound, production design, costumes and cinematography Provides five portraits of key figures in Soviet and Russia film history, whose works have been somewhat neglected