Vsevolod Meyerhold: Life in the Rhythm of Epochs

Abstract

This article deals with the personality of V. E. Meyerhold as a multifaceted national genius, whose legacy remains an inexhaustible source of knowledge about theatre art. The stages of his more than forty-year creative path still require attention and study. The author’s aim is to draw a human and creative-professional portrait of him against the background of the social changes of the period, the development of his directorial ideas, which were his real life (the idea of the studio, stage constructivism, the combination of horizontal and vertical movements, the actor’s progression from gesture and movement to image). The author’s task is to determine the peculiarities of his public position after October 1917, to highlight the most significant events in Meyerhold’s life and creative work in the 1920s and 1930s, and to explain the reasons for the harsh criticism to which he was subjected. The author of the article uses the method of historical reconstruction of the theatrical process in connection with his personal fate.