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Vakhtangov's Musicality: Reassessing Yevgeny

Vakhtangov (1883–1922)

Vera Gottlieb

To cite this article: Vera Gottlieb (2005) Vakhtangov's Musicality: Reassessing

Yevgeny Vakhtangov (1883–1922), Contemporary Theatre Review, 15:2, 259-268, DOI:
10.1080/10267160500119077

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 Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol. 15(2), 2005, 259 – 268
Vakhtangov’s Musicality: Reassessing Yevgeny
Vakhtangov (1883–1922)
Vera Gottlieb
In ‘Some of the Things that can be Learnt from
Stanislavsky’, Brecht made notes not only on
Stanislavsky, but also on Meyerhold and Vakh-
tangov: ‘Viewed dialectically, Vakhtangov is the
Stanislavsky–Meyerhold complex before the split
rather than its reconciliation later.1 For those
who know Vakhtangov’s work, I have begun this
introduction to one of Russia’s greatest directors
with a cliché but like most clichés, the validity lies
in its commonplace truth. Brecht makes it clear
that Vakhtangov offered something different
from both Stanislavsky and Meyerhold; that what
he provided was a combination of the best
of both ‘schools of theatre’, and ‘schools of
acting’.
It is often more illuminating to read one brilliant
practitioner on another, and Brecht’s analysis is
written with a sense of both the historical and the
theatrical period of the productions of his fellow-
1. See John Willett (ed. and trans.), Brecht on Theatre (London:
Methuen, 1964), p. 238.
2. Ibid, p. 237. Brecht was being both politically and artistically
‘tactful’ here since at other times he referred to the MAT as ‘a
museum’ and in other writings certainly does not give the
impression that Stanislavsky’s ‘naturalism’ was either useful by
the 1920s and 1930s – or innovatory. In fact, the MAT was
struggling in the early years after the Revolution. In a letter
Stanislavsky wrote to Nemirovich-Danchenko when on tour
with the MAT in 1923, he expressed his own dilemma, as well
as that of other artists or intellectuals who did not identify
directly with the Revolution, and Marxist–Leninism: ‘During
this tour, everything has become glaringly obvious to me. No
one has any thought, or idea, or big aim any longer. And
without that, no intellectual enterprise can exist’. (Collected
Works in 8 Volumes [Moscow: Isskustvo, 1961], Vol. 8, p. 41).
Contemporary Theatre Review ISSN 1048-6801 print/ISSN 1477-2264 online
# 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/10267160500119077
practitioners and with an understanding of the
kinds of theatre which were, in effect, less divergent
than some critics would have it. Thus, earlier in the
essay, Brecht wrote: ‘The Moscow Art Theatre
never rested on its laurels. S. [Stanislavsky] invented
new artistic methods for every production. From
his theatre came such important artists as Vakhtan-
gov, who in turn developed their teacher’s art
further in complete freedom’.2 Brecht could have
mentioned Stanislavsky’s other great pupil, Vsevo-
lod Meyerhold, but when this was written in 1952
it was unlikely to have been published given the
horrors of Stalinism and the dangers of overt praise
for a ‘cosmopolitan’, ‘decadent’, ‘formalist’ or
‘anti-Communist’ artist who had ‘disappeared’ in
1940 (executed the day after his ‘trial’), the full
details of which only came to light in 1990.
Brecht’s earlier comments and analysis, written in
the 1930s, make some fascinating comparisons
between Stanislavsky, Vakhtangov and Meyerhold
and their different directorial methods. Brecht
wrote:
The bourgeois theatre has reached its limits.
Progressiveness of Stanislavsky’s method.
1. The fact that it’s a method.
2. Closer knowledge of man, the private element.
3. Psychological contradictions can be portrayed
(end of the moral categories good and evil).
4. Allowance for influence of the environment.
5. Latitude.
6. Naturalness of portrayal.
260
Vakhtangov’s method.
1. Theatre is theatre.
2. The how, not the what.
3. More composition.
4. Greater inventiveness and imagination.
Meyerhold’s method.
1. Against the private element.
2. Emphasis on virtuosity.
3. Movement and its mechanics.
4. Abstraction of the environment.
The meeting point=Vakhtangov, who embraces the
other two as contradictory elements but is at the
same time the freest. By comparison, Meyerhold is
strained, Stanislavsky slack: the latter an imitation
of real life, the former an abstraction. But when
Vakhtangov’s actor says ‘I’m not laughing, I’m
demonstrating laughter’, one still doesn’t learn
anything from his demonstration.3
Limitations of space do not allow for detailed
exploration of Brecht’s meaning or the refuta-
tion of some of his points – inevitable given the
historical hindsight we have at the beginning of
the new millennium, as opposed to his politi-
cally awkward positioning in 1952, and indeed
in the 1930s. It is also inevitable that Brecht,
one of the greatest ‘plagiarists’ since Shake-
speare, is not entirely frank or perhaps conscious
of how some of his own methods evolved – but
there is no doubt that Vakhtangov and Meyer-
hold both influenced Brecht’s theatre. Thus,
looking only at the first two points relating to
Vakhtangov above, it is now a commonplace
that Brecht’s ‘theatre is theatre’, and that in his
playwriting as well as his production methodol-
ogy, the emphasis is indeed on ‘the how, not
the what’ – on process, not result, and on
demonstrating – not disguising. Equally, his
theatre was profoundly anti-naturalistic not only
because naturalism is seen as ‘bourgeois’, but
because Brecht wanted to tear down theatrical
illusion in order to demonstrate and illuminate
social reality. In his terms, Vakhtangov did not
go far enough.
Equally, any student of Meyerhold’s work
would justly accuse Brecht of both over-
simplifying and under-estimating Meyerhold –
and his own indebtedness to such aspects as
Meyerhold’s use of oriental and folk conven-
tions of performance, of the scenic picture and
its relation to montage, to Meyerhold’s creation
3. In Willett, Brecht on Theatre, p. 238.
of theatre techniques which evolved a new way
of story-telling, and a process of reaching
audiences for whom theatre was a new experi-
ence, as well as finding dramatic – and some-
times epic – means of staging new revolutionary
plays such as Mayakovsky’s Mystery–Bouffe – a
Heroic, Epic and Satiric Representation of Our
Era (2nd Version, 1921), or his Bedbug – a
Fantastic Comedy (1928–9).
Brecht’s categories offer an immediate, if not
altogether accurate, insight into the historically-
bound analysis of theatre work – an art which exists
in its own present time, but which may and does
influence those who follow by taking an idea or
element further than its originator contemplated.
The converse is that the ‘reproduction’ of the
directorial process, even as laboratory experiment,
can never truly recreate the conditions of its
original performance.
It is not, however, my intention to attempt
anything other than a provocative glance of
comparison – via Brecht – between Stanislavsky,
Meyerhold, and Vakhtangov. The emphasis is
on Vakhtangov’s work, and thus on a director
who is both little-known outside Russia and,
crucially, under-estimated. One aspect, however,
must be mentioned before moving on: had
Vakhtangov, born in 1883, not died of cancer
at the tragically early age of 39, it is most
unlikely that he would have survived Stalinism
any more than did Meyerhold. Even in the
early 1920s Vakhtangov’s productions were
called ‘formalist’ by some critics, while in the
1930s Meyerhold was not only ‘a formalist’, not
only suffering from ‘Meyerholditis’, but was also
‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘decadent’. Vakhtangov’s
unique mix of what may be called ‘expression-
ism’, ‘symbolism’ or ‘stylisation’, would have
been sufficient ammunition without also adding
the fact that he worked for some years with the
Jewish (Hebrew-speaking) Habimah Theatre in
Moscow where he directed one of his greatest
productions: The Dybbuk.
Born in Vladikavkaz (Ordzhonikidze, after
the Revolution in the Republic of Armenia) he
was the son of a wealthy tobacco manufacturer.
Vakhtangov broke off all relations with his
oppressive father at an early age. His introduc-
tion to theatre was in a school production of
Gogol’s ‘absolutely incredible incident in two
acts’, Marriage (1883), in which he played the
part of the much-wooed Agafya Tikhonovna.
From his admission in August 1903 to the
Natural Sciences Faculty of Moscow University,
he became increasingly involved with student

theatre. In August 1903 he directed his first
production, with the amateur Vladikavkaz Stu-
dents’ Workshop, of Hauptmann’s Das Frie-
densfest (variously translated as Sick People or
The Festival of/Holiday of Peace). In this
production, as with many subsequently, he also
acted – so his approach to directing was also
that of an actor, and his work as an actor was
informed by his directorial role. Stanislavsky also
acted in many of his own productions, but it
may be seriously argued that he was a much
greater actor and educator than interpreter of
plays – particularly given his constant misinter-
pretation of Chekhov’s plays.4 Meyerhold also
began his career as an actor – in such Chekhov
roles as Konstantin in the MAT premiere of
Seagull and Tusenbach in Three Sisters, but
although he acted earlier in his career and in
his own productions, his last major role was in
1908, perhaps needing the conductor’s baton or
magician’s wand rather than splitting the
different functions. But it is significant that all
three approached their directorial function as
actors, whilst Brecht approached it as playwright
– both a very different means of control and of
interpretation.
In the same month, August, Vakhtangov
started to attend the Law Faculty of Moscow
University. From January, 1905 to August
1909, he worked both as a director and actor
in his own productions of several Russian plays,
whether with the Vladikavkaz Student Associa-
tion (Gorky’s Lower Depths in July 1908, in
which he also played the Baron), or the Drama
Circle of Moscow University Students (for
which he directed Gorky’s Summerfolk [Dachni-
ki], playing Vlas). In October 1905 he married
Nadezhda Mikhailovna Baitzurova and in Jan-
uary 1907 they had a son, Sergei, who became
an architect but who also – significantly –
designed at the Meyerhold Theatre between
1929 and 1931. In August 1907 Vakhtangov
wrote the first of several articles on theatre for
the Vladekavkaz newspaper, Terek, and in July
1909 directed Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya for the
Vladikavkaz Art–Drama Circle, in which he
played Astrov.
4. These misinterpretations related to the major issue of tragedy
and/or comedy; to casting; to extraneous or excessive sound
effects, to misunderstanding particular roles – such as
Ranevskaya; to the mise en scéne; rhythm, or Chekhov’s
contrapuntal structure. For further analysis of these points, see
Edward Braun, The Director and the Stage (London: Methuen,
1982), pp. 59–76 and Vera Gottlieb, Chekhov in Performance
in Russia and Soviet Russia (Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey,
1984), pp. 16–34.
261
Finally, in August 1909, he gave up all
pretence of being a lawyer or scientist – and
joined the Adashev School of Drama in
Moscow – run by the MAT actor Alexander I.
Adashev and where, amongst others, he was
taught by the famous theatre artist Leopold
Sulerzhitsky (1872–1916) – a teacher who had
considerable influence on Vakhtangov’s approach
to the arts of acting and directing, and who
was a devout believer in both Stanislavsky’s
‘System’ and Lev Tolstoy’s moral teachings. On
1 March 1911 Vakhtangov was interviewed by
Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, and then, 10
days later, by Nemirovich’s co-director of the
Moscow Art Theatre, Konstantin Stanislavsky.
Graduating from the Adashev School on 12
March, he was then accepted by the Moscow
Art Theatre which he joined 3 days later. His
first major responsibility for the MAT came in
May of that year when he led a group of young
actors on tour to perform Suderman’s play, The
Fires of Saint John’s Night. In August he began
teaching Stanislavsky’s System to a group of
young MAT actors; on 3 September he began
to teach Stanislavksy’s ideas and, increasingly,
his own ideas to Sofya Khalyutina’s Drama
School (until 1915). Later in September of
the same year he was given his first part at the
MAT in the production of Lev Tolstoy’s Living
Corpse, and in 1912 went on the MAT tour to
Petersburg, Warsaw, and Kiev, with Living
Corpse, playing a Gipsy, and the Player-Queen
in Hamlet. The parts he was given at the MAT
are surprisingly ‘small’, given the rapidity of his
advance whilst a student, and given the major
responsibility of teaching several classes Stani-
slavsky’s System and his own interpretation of
acting theory.
This introduction to Vakhtangov’s early
career is deliberately detailed and dated since
it indicates from the beginning Vakhtangov’s
characteristic ability to work simultaneously with
a number of different studios, theatres and
companies – thus in one day in 1918, he
would be working: ‘For the First Studio,5
Second Studio, My [Vakhtangov’s] Studio,
Habimah, Gunst, People’s Theatre, Proletcult,
Art Theatre, Lessons, Performance for
5. Vakhtangov worked with the First Studio of the MAT from
1911 to 1920, sharing it with Richard Boleslavsky and Boris
Sushkevich. See Vendrovzkaya Lyubov and Kaptevera Galina
(eds), Evgeny Vakhtangov, trans. Doris Bradbury (Moscow:
Progress Publishers, 1982), pp. 197–202.
262
November Celebrations . . . just ten of the
organisations making demands on my waking
hours.’6 But from 1918 onwards, he underwent
two major operations (in October and Decem-
ber) for stomach cancer, with further surgery in
March 1919 when part of his stomach was
removed, a punishing schedule for someone
who was slowly dying and in constant pain.
Against this personal history the tumultuous
events in Russia were unfolding: the 1905 Revolu-
tion, and then the October and November
Revolutions of 1917. Vakhtangov’s radicalism had
hitherto been confined to theatrical radicalism, and
his political views influenced by Tolstoyan morality
rather than Marxist economics or dialectical mate-
rialism. Some Soviet critics have claimed him as
active in the Revolution as Meyerhold, but his
‘stance’ is indicated by a significant comment he
made in the discussion with his two students,
Xsenia Kotlubai and Boris Zakhava, just before his
death: ‘The theatrical means we are using now in St.
Anthony – ‘‘exposing the bourgeoisie’’ – coincide
with life’s demands, today’s demands. But this time
will pass. The need to expose people will no longer
exist, because socialism is not a society of the
proletariat, but a society of equal, satisfied, well-fed
6. Quoted in Nick Worrall, Modernism to Realism on the Soviet
Stage – Tairov – Vakhtangov – Okhlopkov (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 102. The First and
Second Studios were of the Moscow Art Theatre, the Third
Studio became known as Vakhtangov’s Studio (or the
Mansurov Studio – given its location on Mansurov Lane)
although still under the large ‘umbrella’ of the MAT. The
Habimah was the Jewish (Hebrew-speaking) Theatre, 1918–
26, and for which Vakhtangov directed his major production
(in Old Hebrew) of Solomon Ansky’s The Dybbuk, a
production which toured Europe and America for forty years.
Also see note 9, below. The actor, Anatoly Gunst (1859–
1919), opened a studio in 1917, and a year later asked
Vakhtangov to take over its management. With Gunst’s death
in 1919, Vakhtangov merged it with his own (Third) Studio.
Proletcult (Proletarian Culture) 1917–1920 was the cultural,
educational and literary organisation that was formed at the
time of the October Revolution. Its aim was to encourage and
support amateur proletarian culture, and to provide a
collective for working-class culture. The People’s Theatre,
which opened on 17 November 1918, was the name given to
Vakhtangov’s Studio, formerly the MAT Third Studio.
7. Quoted in the discussion on 10 and 11 April 1922, with his
students, Xsenia Kotlubai (1890–1931, an actress and
director), and Boris Zakhava (1896–1977, an actor, director,
and author of several major works on acting theory),
Vakhtangov, and Meyerhold. The conversations took place in
his flat in his last months. See Lyubov and Galina, Evgeny
Vakhtangov, 10 April, p. 154. A full stenographic record was
kept of the two meetings with his students on 10 and 11 April
1922 (see Zapiski, Pisma, Stati, Iskusstvo, Moscow, No. 40,
pp. 254–62). The translation used for this article is my own
but for the full English version, see Lyubov and Galina, Evgeny
Vakhtangov, pp. 151–62. Subsequent references will be to this
edition.
people’.7 This is scarcely in line with ‘the dictator-
ship of the proletariat’, and unlike Meyerhold,
Vakhtangov never called himself a Marxist, Bol-
shevik or Communist. With the tragic and dreadful
irony characteristic of that period, it was only
Meyerhold, sincerely dedicated to the Revolution
as a Communist and Marxist – who was executed,
whilst Stanislavsky, from a wealthy background and
nonplussed by the Revolution, was ‘taken up’ and
very much in favour under Stalin – a source of
support which Stanislavsky himself found hard to
handle.
In 1918, however, Vakhtangov demonstrated
explicit commitment to the Revolution – and to
people’s theatre – the name in fact given to his
Third Studio of the MAT. His wish to call it the
People’s Art Theatre met with objections from the
Moscow Art Theatre, but it was from the Vakh-
tangov Studio that The People’s Theatre evolved,
opening on 17 December 1918.8 In February 1919
the Theatrical Department of the People’s Com-
missariat for Education and the Arts (under the
refined and pluralist guidance of Anatoli Luna-
charsky (1875–1933), himself a playwright) offered
Vakhtangov the management of its Directors’
Section. Initially accepting, he then had to resign
given health problems, but in the immensely
fruitful years before his death in 1922, he mounted
six particularly influential and renowned produc-
tions.
These productions are singled out given their
innovatory features and influence on contempor-
aries. On 23 April 1918, Vakhtangov premiered his
production of Ibsen’s Rosmersholm for the First
Studio of the MAT, in which he played Ulric
Brendel, a production in which the lighting took
on a manifold and stylised function – as, for
example, through the constant highlighting of the
Rosmersholm ancestral portraits. In September
1918 he opened Maeterlinck’s The Miracle of St
Anthony at his own – Vakhtangov – Studio. In
October of the same year, he directed several one-
act plays for the newly opened Habimah Theatre; in
December his Studio became the People’s Theatre
and opened with a dramatisation of Maupassant’s
The Port, Octave Mirbeau’s The Thief, and Lady
Gregory’s The Rising of the Moon. Over the next
eighteen months he was touring, teaching, and
doing other productions, but in September 1920
he opened his first version of Chekhov’s one-act
The Wedding in the Vakhtangov Studio. In
September 1921, the Vakhtangov Studio officially
8. See Worrall, Modernism to Realism on the Soviet Stage, pp.
100–2.

became the Third Studio of the Moscow Art
Theatre – a particular form of recognition and
protection.
In January 1921 he re-directed a revised version
of The Miracle of St Anthony for the Third Studio;
in March he directed the Russian premiere of
Strindberg’s Eric XIV (1922) for the First Studio
(planning to alternate the playing of Erik with
Michael Chekhov, but his illness made this
impossible); in September he revised and redirected
Chekhov’s The Wedding for his Third Studio. In
1922, the year of his death, he premiered Solomon
Ansky’s The Dybbuk (in Old Hebrew, which of
course he did not know, but which he found
musically attractive, given its rhythm) for the
Habimah Theatre.9
In February he premiered Carlo Gozzi’s Princess
Turandot, again in his Third Studio. Both Vakh-
tangov and Meyerhold were profoundly influenced
by Carlo Gozzi (1720–1806) who, in the eight-
eenth century, had revived the declining commedia
dell’arte ‘with fairy-tale plays which combined the
conventions of the literary and the improvised
theatres’.10 It is to Gozzi that we owe the survival
of such characters as Harlequin or Arlecchino,
Pierrot, Pantalone, Colombine and other ‘stock’
commedia types. For both directors, this ‘rough’
theatre took them back to indigenous Russian folk
theatre, which, combined with some elements of
commedia, relied on the audience’s knowledge of
plot, character – and improvisational scenes. It
contained music, sound effects, and sometimes
‘political’ commentary slipped in during perfor-
mance. And of greatest interest to both Meyerhold
and Vakhtangov – it was consciously ‘theatrical’,
often a combination of the ‘stylised’ and ‘realistic’,
opening up a wealth of theatrical devices and
9. The production was subsidised by a government grant and
ironically supported, as it transpired, by Stalin, who
subsequently closed down the Habimah. His early support was
in spite of protests from the Department of National
Minorities, from which some of the Bolshevik Revolutionary
Jewry considered the Habimah to be Zionist, and so counter-
Revolutionary. Zionism was, in fact, a motivation behind the
formation of the company – as was the use of Old Hebrew.
The Dyubbuk’s author changed his name from Solomon
Rapoport to Solomon Ansky (1863–1920). Significantly
different was the State Jewish Theatre (GOSET), under the
brilliant directorship of Alexei Granovsky (student of Max
Reinhardt), which played in the currently spoken Yiddish, and
attracted artists of the calibre of Chagall (who designed the
costumes for Granovsky’s Three Jewish Jewels) and Isaac
Rabinovich (set designer for the same production). Their
1935 King Lear starring Solomon Mikhoels in the title role,
and directed by the Ukrainian Les Kurbas (not Sergei Radlov
who ‘claimed’ it), amazed Moscow’s theatre world, and is
mentioned in all theatre histories of the period.
10. Quoted in Edward Braun (ed. and trans.), Meyerhold on
Theatre (London: Methuen, 1969), p. 116.
263
languages. It is also interesting that it seemingly
reversed the ‘progressiveness’ referred to by Brecht
on Stanislavsky: it brought back the ‘moral
categories of good and evil’, or heroes, heroines,
and villains.
Stanislavsky was influential on both directors,
but each also recognised his limitations. Thus, as
Vakhtangov put it:
Meyerhold knows nothing about the actor. Meyer-
hold doesn’t know how to provoke the necessary
emotion, rhythm, and theatricality in the actor.
Nemirovich and Stanislavsky know how to do this –
more accurately, Nemirovich knows how to analyse
the role and the play psychologically and produce
various emotions in the actor. Stanislavsky has very
little knowledge of psychology, structures it intui-
tively . . . he knows the actor to perfection . . . .
Stanislavsky has no sense of theatrical form in the
best meaning of the word. He is a master of roles
and unexpected ‘interactions’ between characters,
but he knows very little of the form of theatrical
productions. That is why he has made the theatre
so banal, dispensing with the festive curtain, doing
away with actors’ entrances, the orchestra, and all
theatricality.11
We are fortunate in having detailed descriptions
from Vakhtangov’s student, the actor and then
subsequent director of the Third Studio, Ruben
Simonov (1899–1968), who has left us a detailed
analysis of Vakhtangov’s productions of Chekhov’s
The Wedding; of Maeterlinck’s The Miracle of St
Anthony, and Gozzi’s Princess Turandot.12 Vakh-
tangov’s theatrical radicalism was stated by him in
very clear terms – whether in relation to current
theatrical forms and theories, or exploring the
theatre of the future, a theatre which he had a
major hand in shaping, albeit without the recogni-
tion outside Russia which Stanislavsky and Meyer-
hold (posthumously) have now received. In a diary
entry on 26 March 1921 (while in a sanatorium)
Vakhtangov wrote a much-quoted statement:
11. From Vakhtangov’s Notebook, No. 9, 26 March 1921, in
Lyubov and Galina, Evgeny Vakhtangov, p. 141. See also the
letter to Nemirovich-Danchenko, 8 April 1922, pp. 149–50.
12. To be found in English, translated and adapted by Miriam
Goldina, under the title Stanislavsky’s Protégé: Eugene
Vakhtangov, by Ruben Simonov (New York: DBS
Publications), 1969. Subsequently referred to as Simonov/
Goldina, Stanislavski’s Protégé. See also Worrall, Modernism
to Realism, and Konstantin Rudnitsky’s Russian and Soviet
Theatre, Tradition and the Avant-Garde, Lesley Milne (ed.),
trans. Roxane Permar (London: Thames and Hudson,
1988). The latter has both brilliant commentary and
illustrations on Vakhtangov’s Erik XIV, The Dybbuk, The
Wedding, and Princess Turandot, pp. 52–5.
264
Let naturalism in the theatre die. Oh, how can one
direct Ostrovsky, Gogol, Chekhov? . . . I would like
to direct Seagull theatrically, as Chekhov wrote it. I
want to present Pushkin’s Feast in Time of Plague
and Chekhov’s The Wedding in one evening. In The
Wedding there is a ‘feast in time of plague’. Those
infected by the plague are not even aware that there
is no more plague, that humanity has been
liberated, and that people no longer need ‘generals’
at their weddings . . . .13
Implicitly this expresses much of what motivated
Vakhtangov as director, actor, and teacher. His first
production of The Wedding had already taken place
(September 1920), and from the available detailed
accounts could never be described as ‘naturalis-
tic’.14
Instead, the ‘language’ of Gogol, and of Blok,
the language of the grotesque, more appropriately
indicate the style and tone of each of the six major
productions, albeit to varying degrees. But this in
turn arises from the content of the plays. The
Wedding is one of a long line of classical Russian
works, whether literary or dramatic, which paro-
dies, satirises or exposes ‘poshlost’. This single
Russian word is hard to translate: it relates to a
milieu, a society, a world, of the banal, the petty,
the narrow-minded, the philistine, and the med-
iocre. One immediate example is the row which
erupts in The Wedding when Yat starts talking
about electricity: feeling inadequate, his hosts react
furiously – and comically – in their ludicrous
refutation of electricity and it is their over-reaction
which exposes their philistinism, not the subject
itself. Describing both his content and form,
Chekhov called it ‘the sad-comicality of everyday
life’.
Vakhtangov’s statement above would seem to
indicate that Stanislavsky and he stood on opposing
sides of theatrical style: for Stanislavsky as actor and
director, Chekhov’s plays were naturalistic, and he
‘padded’ his productions – aided by his designer
Viktor Simov – with additional sound effects,
action and psychological details to create the
impression of the naturalist ‘slice of life’.
Neither Vakhtangov nor Meyerhold could ever
imagine their work in so paralysed or static a form.
Thus Meyerhold wrote:
The naturalistic director subjects all the separate
parts of the work to analysis and fails to gain a
13. Simonov/Goldina, Stanislavski’s Protégé, pp. 7–8.
14. Simonov/Goldina, Stanislavski’s Protégé, pp. 1–79, and
Rudnitsky, Russian and Soviet Theatre, p. 54.
picture of the whole. He is carried away by the
filigree work of applying finishing touches to
various scenes, the gratifying products of his
creative imagination, absolute pearls of verisimili-
tude; in consequence, he destroys the balance and
harmony of the whole.15
Under the heading of verisimilitude come two
organically different styles, approaches and philo-
sophies: naturalism – and realism. Thus it is realism
which allows for symbolism, for the heightened or
distorted, for an expression of perception which
might be consciously subjective, for the staging of
dreams, fantasies, nightmares, madness – which
stylistically may encompass much more than is
allowed by ‘the depiction of that which is’, some-
thing which Chekhov explicitly rejected in a much
quoted-letter of 25 November 1892 to his publish-
er Alexei Suvorin. Vakhtangov aimed to take the
best from Stanislavsky of psychological depth, of
what Brecht had called ‘the private element’ –
brought together with styles and forms which
allowed for ‘fantastic realism’ or ‘imaginative
realism’:16
In the theatre there should be neither naturalism
nor realism, but imaginative realism. Correctly
found theatrical methods impart genuine life to
the play on the stage. The methods may be learned,
but the form must be created. It has to be
convinced by one’s imagination. That is why I call
it imaginative realism. Such a form exists and
should exist in every art.17
Earlier, Vakhtangov seemingly takes Brecht’s view
(quoted at the beginning of this article) further by
demonstrating the differences:
Meyerhold understands theatricality as a perfor-
mance during which the audience does not for a
moment forget that it is in a theatre. Stanislavsky
required the exact opposite: that the audience
forget that it is in a theatre, that it comes to feel
itself living in the atmosphere and the milieu
inhabited by the characters of the play. He rejoiced
in the fact that the audience came to the Moscow
Art Theatre to see Three Sisters, not as if coming to
a theatre – but as though invited to the Prozorov
15. Quoted in Vera Gottlieb, Chekhov and the Vaudeville, a
Study of Chekhov’s One-Act Plays (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1982), p. 2.
16. In earlier translations, called ‘fantastic realism’, but recently
and more accurately, translated as ‘imaginative realism’.
17. See Lyubov and Galina, Evgeny Vakhtangov, p. 158 (11 April
1922).

house. This he considered to be the highest
achievement of the theatre.18
Vakhtangov explains that Stanislavsky was, in
turn, reacting against the ‘theatricality’ of his
time, prior to the new methods and realism and
credibility of the MAT, but that in doing so ‘and
ferreting out vulgarity, Stanislavsky also removed
a genuine, essential theatricality, and this genuine
theatricality consists of presenting theatrical works
in a theatrical style’.19 And a little later in the
same conversation, Vakhtangov clarifies his view
of the ‘contradictory elements’ to which Brecht
referred:
Meyerhold is the only one, amongst all Russian
directors, who has the feel of theatricality. He was a
prophet . . . and not accepted. He was ten years
ahead of his time. Meyerhold did the same as
Stanislavsky. He too destroyed theatrical banality
but he did it through theatrical means. In his
enthusiasm for real truth, Stanislavsky brought
naturalistic truth to the stage. He searched for
theatrical truth in the truth of life. Meyerhold,
carried away by theatrical truth, removed the
truthfulness of feelings, and there must be truth
in both – the theatres of Meyerhold and Stani-
slavsky.20
It was Meyerhold whom Vakhtangov addressed as
‘Master’, called a ‘genius’ and acknowledged as
the soulmate from whom he could learn. But
Vakhtangov also gives a very clear explanation
and formulation of his own theatre, of his own
style:
A perfect work of art is one in which there is a
harmony of content, form and material . . . I am
searching in the theatre for modern methods of
solving the problem of direction in a form which
has a theatrical ring to it. Let us take, as an example,
the problem of locale, of setting. I am trying to
solve this in a different way from that of the
Moscow Art Theatre – so not by reproducing the
locale on stage, by giving it the truth of life. That
method . . . does not create artistic works because
creativity is missing. There can only be a refined,
skillful, sharpened result of one’s own observations
of life. I should like to call the work I do on the
stage ‘imaginative realism’.
18. Ibid, p. 151 (but 10 April 1922).
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid, p. 153 (10 April 1922).
265
In that same discussion, on 11 April 1922
(Vakhtangov died on 31 May), he takes further
that crucial word quoted above – harmony:
Why was Turandot a success? Because harmony was
achieved in it. The Third Studio performs an Italian
fairy story by Gozzi on 22 January 1922. The
methods are modern and theatrical. The form and
content harmonize like a musical chord. It is
imaginative [fantastic] realism, a new trend in the
theatre.21
Vakhtangov describes the ‘muddle’ of the old and
the new – the MAT production of Gogol’s The
Government Inspector in which Michael Chekhov
(Chekhov’s actor nephew) played Khlestakov in the
style of the new ‘imaginative realism’ – the use of
the exaggerated, the grotesque – while Volkov,
who took the role of Osip, played his character
‘naturalistically’. The result, inevitably, was without
harmony, discordant, even accidentally atonal. For
Vakhtangov, music was an essential – and his
‘imaginative realism’ both included music as an
organic element (in The Wedding, in The Dybbuk, in
The Miracle of St. Anthony – and Princess Turandot)
and at other times as a seemingly external
commentary on the action. Limitations of space
inhibit a fall exploration of Vakhtangov’s musical-
ity, but – at the risk of over-simplifying – he usually
had a live orchestra for the productions (which had
to come from the School or Studio’s resources –
hence the instrumental use of combs, and pots and
pans), which allowed for improvisational experi-
ment with music as with the acting. Music was used
to punctuate (or a musical ‘silence’ took on the
particular significance of a pause); like the lighting,
and often in harmony with light, music was used to
create mood and atmosphere (familiar to us today
through film, and familiar to Oriental forms of
theatre); music was also used to satirise a character
on stage – and even to parody Isadora Duncan in
Princess Turandot.22 In this production alone,
Vakhtangov had a Turandot waltz’ as a refrain, or
leitmotif weaving in and out of the action, some-
times with similar instrumentation, at other times
simply done by the actors tapping spoons on
glasses; there was a polka, use of a tune from
Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sadko; a danse macabre for the
torture scene, with pots and pans sound effects; the
Sages’ procession was accompanied by Chinese
21. Ibid, p. 158 (11 April 1922).
22. See Braun, Meyerhold on Theatre, p. 142. Isadora Duncan
first performed in Russia in 1904. Meyerhold, who saw her in
1908, gives an interesting reaction to this modern dancer
and her aim of bringing joy back into people’s lives.
266
national music, using flute and percussion; dis-
cordant music for the ‘zanni’ by means of a wild
chord – before they vanished. Or a scene of strong
feelings, such as the ‘rage scene’, was undercut by
the music – leaving characters looking ridiculous.
The end of the play was created musically by a soft,
gentle ‘galop’ that was then picked up by everyone
on stage, speeding up the tempo.
Likewise, The Wedding started with a brisk
quadrille, and ended with the same quadrille played
sadly and softly, fading out as the characters stood
with backs to the audience looking after the
departed captain. Throughout The Wedding, music
played an essential role as it did in all of his
productions.23 Vakhtangov’s musicality took the
form of character music, worked with or against the
rhythm of action; helped to suggest and create
locale – as with the Chinese music, and was used
also to punctuate or undercut a spoken phrase.
Instrumentation worked comically – or sorrowfully,
while the general function of music, as well as the
modern parallel with lighting, owed much to the
use of music in commedia dell’arte, in pantomime,
in old vaudeville, and the other rich source, that of
Russian folk theatre in which the divisions between
verbal language and musical language were fluid
and fluent – and also created a ‘dialogue’. The
teaching syllabus for actor/director training re-
quired weekly music classes and many of his actors
played instruments. It was also a characteristic of
Vakhtangov’s generation, and a continued feature
of training throughout the Soviet period, that
directors were also expected to act.
It may be argued that the real originator,
whether of Vakhtangov’s imaginative realism or
Meyerhold’s theatricality (including his own not
dissimilar use of music, albeit taken farther), was
the symbolist poet and playwright, Alexander Blok
(1880–1921) whose ‘symbolist’ The Fairground
Booth – or Balaganchik (The Puppet Show, also
translated as The Puppet Booth), was staged by
Meyerhold in 1906,24 a work very much of its time,
relating partly to Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Petrushka
(1911), or to Prokofiev’s The Love of Three Oranges
(composed in 1919, premiered in Chicago in
23. For a detailed description of Vakhtangov’s The Wedding in
English, see Simonov/Goldina, Stanislavski’s Protégé,
Gottlieb, Chekhov and the Vaudeville and Worrall,
Modernism to Realism on the Soviet Stage.
24. For a description of Meyerhold’s production, and its
significance to his own development and those of other
artists, see Braun, Meyerhold on Theatre, pp. 21, 70–1, 113–
5, 139–40, 141 and the same author’s Meyerhold, A
Revolution in Theatre (London: Methuen, 1995). See also
Worrall, Modernism to Realism, pp. 2, 5, 26, 128–39, 153,
191–2.
1921), but a major influence on Vakhtangov. As
Meyerhold put it: ‘with one wave of his magic wand
Blok was able to create an atmosphere of true
theatricality’.25 These balagans or clown shows
came from Russian folk theatre, mentioned earlier,
and were essentially touring productions played at
fairs and markets, relying on the ‘stock’ figures –
indigenous but also with commedia influences – of
Colombine, Harlequin and Pierrot, partly pre-
served by Carlo Gozzi’s scripts.26 The significance
is manifold: it ‘tuned in’ to the kind of ‘rough
theatre’ utilised to attract the largely illiterate
population after the Revolution; it mixed tragedy
and comedy; took elements of so-called ‘low-
comedy’, and enabled fantasy, fairy-story, and the
grotesque to enter the contemporary theatre.
Improvisation was a natural approach to the
balagan (played by Meyerhold’s ‘cabotin’, or
strolling player, with absolute technical mastery)
while it also broke down the hitherto static
categories of theatre by mixing music, dance,
mime, clowning, physical dexterity – and fun!
Thus the element of risk, even of failure, organic to
improvisation and playing ‘off’ the audience (as
Chekhov’s Nyukhin does in On the Harmfulness of
Tobacco) added to the ‘joy’ which Vakhtangov
wanted to create. The aim was to entertain – and
also to educate. By mixing genres, it also lent itself
readily to the use of symbolism – and the
grotesque.
The grotesque has been defined by Mikhail
Bakhtin in these terms: ‘The grotesque is most
frequently peculiar to those works which reflect
essentially profound, vast changes in periods of
world history, and is relevant to those writers who
are concerned with the incomplete reconstruction
of a world still held by the corruption of the past
and the as yet unformed future’.27 This view is not
dissimilar from that expressed by Gramsci in
Selections from the Prison Notebooks: ‘The great
masses have become detached from their traditional
ideologies and no longer believe what they used to
believe previously . . . . The crisis consists precisely
in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot
25. Quoted in Braun, Meyerhold on Theatre, p. 121.
26. See Ibid, pp. 144–6 for a description of Meyerhold’s
Harlequin, The Marriage Broker, and the more recent revised
Meyerhold, A Revolution in Theatre, containing new archive
material from the post-Gorbachov ‘perestroika’ period.
Several sections are invaluable in clarifying Meyerhold’s use
of commedia dell’arte – and the differences and similarities to
Vakhtangov, not the least of which was Vakhtangov’s short
life.
27. Quoted in N. I. Smirnova, Yevgeny Bagrationovich
Vakhtangov (Moscow: Znaniye, 1982), p. 19. This author’s
translation.

be born; in this interregnum a great variety of
morbid symptoms appear.’28
In his Doctor Dapertutto 1908–17, Meyerhold
writes about ‘the grotesque’ in 0 Teatre:
The grotesque has its own attitude towards the
outward appearance of life. The grotesque deepens
life’s outward appearance to the point where it
ceases to be merely natural. Beneath what we see of
life there are vast unfathomed depths. In its search
for the supernatural, the grotesque synthesizes
opposites, creates a picture of the incredible, and
invites the spectator to solve the riddle of the
inscrutable.29
Meyerhold refers to Blok, Fyodor Sologub and to
Wedekind’s Earth Spirit, Pandora’s Box and Spring
Awakening since ‘they have achieved unusual
effects within the boundaries of realistic drama by
resorting to the grotesque’. He also refers to Edgar
Allen Poe, to E.T.A. Hoffman, to Gothic archi-
tecture where ‘a miraculous balance is preserved
between affirmation and denial, the celestial and
terrestrial, the beautiful and the ugly, so the
grotesque parades ugliness in order to prevent
beauty from lapsing into sentimentality . . . .’ In the
same article, Meyerhold gives the example of
Arlecchino – ‘The injured clown with his convulsed
body hanging across the footlights cries to the
audience that he is bleeding cranberry juice’.
Meyerhold examines the question in relation to
The Fairground Booth – and in the context of
historical epochs. ‘Hoffman’s doll complains that
she has a clockwork mechanism instead of a heart’,
and he later writes: ‘The art of the grotesque is
based on the conflict, between form and content’ –
referring earlier to Pushkin’s definition as ‘stylised
improbability’.
Vakhtangov’s The Dybbuk was a ‘grotesque
folklore’ – and in turning its back on naturalism,
it became a theatre free of convention in which
lighting, music, ritual, mystery, were all ‘natural’
ingredients of the production, a production often
described as ‘Expressionist’. Influencing Vakhtan-
gov was also the art of Goya, of Daumier – and
Chagall. By utilising the ‘verisimilitude’ of ritual
and folklore, it enabled the staging of subjective
perceptions, leading to distorted angles, night-
marish contrast between light and dark, mass scenes
in which the movement and action were choreo-
28. From Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks,
Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (eds and trans.)
(London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971), p. 276.
29. See Braun, Meyerhold on Theatre, pp. 128–43 for the whole
analytical article.
267
graphed by Vakhtangov as a musical score of
gesture. It liberated such brilliant artists as Isaac
Rabinovich to create a subjective mise en scène – and
not the naturalistic ‘truth’ of life outside the
theatre. Vakhtangov describes the extra effort
required by working with the Habimah actors
where he himself had to demonstrate exactly what
he wanted, as distinct from his usual improvisatory
approach and ‘free’ rehearsal methods with his
more experienced actors. It was this production
that he claimed destroyed his health, but he
produced a superb performance of a mystery play
– about life and death, about the crossroads of
change in a society. Starting with darkness and a
long silence, the first sound was a single violin
playing in the distance, coming closer. The chants,
ritual movements, light and dark – all means were
utilised by Vakhtangov in staging this ‘mystery
play’. The director Nikolai Evreinov wrote about it
in these terms:
I am happy to testify under oath that such an
achievement is possible in the present-day theatre.
. . . To take this folklore, all this humour of Jewish
life, and make of it an integrally, deeply moving,
organic part of a mystery play, calls not for ability,
but – and I say this without hesitation – genius.30
Similarly, his Erik XIV was about life and death and
– with dreadful prophetic irony – about madness on
the throne. It was also about a philosophy of
history – and a death factory. This production and
his Dybbuk were both criticised for ‘formalism’;
since productions of Hamlet were virtually banned
throughout the Stalin period, it is all too easy to
guess the fate that Vakhtangov avoided with his
early death. As with Meyerhold, so with Vakhtan-
gov: the use of the grotesque related to their
(historical) epoch, and not only to theatrical
experiment, but to their search for means of
expressing content. The difference between the
two directors lies in the extremes and in Meyer-
hold’s brilliant analytical ability to explain or
theorise his practice and ‘place’ it in relation to
world theatre and theatre methodologies.
This is where the ‘return’ to older forms of
theatre enabled the ‘truth’ of the overtly theatrical
where the characters would step forward and
converse with the audience, change costume on
stage, and so constantly remind them that they
were in a theatre – a major political and artistic aim
of Brecht’s. Thus the balagan, brought together
with elements from Japanese No and Kabuki
30. Quoted in Worrall, Modernism to Realism, p. 127.
268
theatre and Chinese Opera, particularly in Meyer-
hold’s work, and Blok’s other work, freed the artist
of all restraint except that which ‘worked’. It is
relevant that some of the greatest directors have
gone back – in order to go forwards – to ‘popular’,
and ‘folk’ theatre – Peter Brook’s ‘rough theatre’,
or Joan Littlewood’s Oh! What a Lovely War!
(1963).
This, in turn, leads directly into the kind of
acting theory which Vakhtangov propagated: ex-
tracting only the psychological element from
Stanislavsky as well, of course, as the concept of
‘methodology’ in itself, Vakhtangov required an
actor very different from the majority of MAT
actors or from his contemporary theatre – the
major exception being Michael Chekhov, and, of
course, those actors who worked with Meyerhold,
such as Igor Ilinsky, Erast Garin or Maria
Babanova. The requirement was an actor with the
skill of an acrobat, a confident physicality and thus
complete physical control, improvisational skills, an
understanding of music and the musicality of
performance, with the confidence to demonstrate
to an audience – rather than disguise or mystify.
Vakhtangov’s actor (and, indeed, Meyerhold’s)
needed vocal dexterity and the ability to sing;
ability to change tempo and rhythm, and move in
an instant – like a clown – from tragedy to comedy,
and vice versa. The actor of the new theatre also
needed a value system, not a ‘system’ in Stanislavs-
ky’s sense but rather a value system of morality, of
‘truth’ in a given situation, of shared ‘reality’ in a
mass grotesque whilst contributing as an individual
– as, for example, in several scenes in The Dybbuk.
Work in Vakhtangov’s Studio, and in all his
productions, contained the whole range of expres-
sive acting techniques and devices, worked out in
rehearsal and in classes: exactly what the actor may
do with vocal timbre, articulation, diction, gesture,
rhythm, the varied rhythms of inter-action given
the tempo-rhythm of each actor, rapid changes of
tempo and tone, and physical plasticity, mime,
blank verse, period movement and gesture working
with the period costume, and a sense of ‘self as an
actor creating, with other actors, a tableau, vision,
image or symbol. The use of the mask, of gesture,
movement and plot took the ‘theatrical’ directors
back to the most basic elements of theatre. It is
characteristic that Vakhtangov brought in the
Italian conductor of the Moscow Circus to help
with Princess Turandot, with the use of masks,
music, and the nature or tone of Italian comedy.
The difference, as with Meyerhold, is the difference
between an actor and a performer.
Vakhtangov’s ‘theatricality’ also meant ‘musi-
cality’: find the rhythm of the play – and one finds
the key to structure, style, and thus content. And
any given external stage form required internal
motivation. As he put it: ‘Thought is action too’.
This is where Vakhtangov and Meyerhold empha-
sise different elements: Vakhtangov never took
away the emotional element, but he considered that
Meyerhold did remove the emotional – although it
must also be added that Meyerhold was motivated
by ideological factors approximating more to
Brecht than to Vakhtangov. As the latter stated
with great clarity: ‘Stanislavsky never felt ‘‘tomor-
row’’, he only felt ‘‘today’’ – while Meyerhold
never felt ‘‘today’’ but he felt ‘‘tomorrow’’’. And
about his own theatricality, he said: ‘We need to
feel, however, ‘‘today’’ in ‘‘tomorrow’’ and ‘‘to-
morrow’’ in ‘‘today’’’.31
31. From the discussion with Xsenia Kotlubai and Boris Zakhava,
10 April 1922, in Lyubov and Galina, Evgeny Vakhtangov, p.
154.