Meyerhold and Mayakovsky

Collaborated on two productions of Mystery Bouffe (1918 & 1921), but not again until 1929.

Meyerhold claimed his work on classical plays had "cleared the way" to Mayakovsky.

Mayakovsky attended rehearsals - made changes according to Meyerhold's suggestions.

Trotsky (usually unenthusiastic): Mayakovsky was "organically connected to October"

Not "unravelling / of miniature souls" - "strip such individuation / of its robes. / Make art / from all / for all!"

Prologue to Mystery Bouffe: "life that's real . . . transformed by the theatre into a spectacle most extraordinary!"

"Set up a searchlight,
so the footlights will fade,
Bright,
so the action
crackles, doesn't bask.
The theatre
is not a reflecting mirror
But -
a magnifying glass."

Mystery Bouffe (2nd ver.) - first piece of 'epic theatre' as we now understand the term.

The Bedbug in 1928 - matched (disgraced) Trotsky's call for new realistic revolutionary repertory of Soviet comedy (Literature and Revolution)

The Bathhouse more pertinent - praise from Lenin for poem satirizing bureaucracy. Meyerhold thought it his best play. Compared its lightness with Moli�re.

The Bathhouse: resonant title. Word means place where one is cleansed, a brothel, and a place where one receives just reprimands ("to give someone a bath" similar to "to give them a roasting"). Controversy - divided its audience. Meyerhold brought pieces of the action into the auditorium. e.g., Phosphorescent woman appears on built platform at top right of arch ceiling. Similar to The Bedbug, where peddlers enter and exit through the audience.

Mayakovsky insisted that characters have "no biographies". "Everything must be understandable. No psychologizing."

Actor's performance created through solving of series of physical problems.

Style derived from 'little genres' of circus, variety stage, music hall.

Asked of the actor ability to change genre of his performance constantly: a singer, a dancer, an acrobat, a dramatic actor, etc.

Not only able to effect these transformations, but also required not to be what he is showing, but to create an exaggerated parody of it.

Hence purpose of biomechanical training.

Mayakovsky on Mystery Bouffe's language: "The verse of Mystery Bouffe is found in the slogans of meetings, the cries of street vendors, the language of the newspapers."

Meyerhold and Mayakovsky both shared this interest in the 'little genres.' Mayakovsky had worked with famous clown Vitaly Lazarenko before the revolution - played small part in Mystery Bouffe. Last work, directed by Radlov, for Moscow State Circus (Moscow is Burning [1930]).

Igor Ilinsky - initial success as Menshevik in Mystery Bouffe (1921): played him as red-haired circus clown - fall guy, buffoon who gets slapped, running hither and thither trying to compromise where none possible, whacked, knocked down, browbeaten, made fun of, yet always returning for more.

Same period as Mayakovsky was making propaganda window posters for ROSTA - Ilinsky's performance similar: clean, dynamic, hilarious one-dimensional howl of laughter, but also with subtler reverberations. Ilinsky played Prysipkin in The Bedbug. Modelled his character on Mayakovsky himself, though exaggerated and turned nasty. Monumental flunky and bore. Result comical, unpleasant, and uncomfortably close to home. Makes laugh and disturbs at same time.

Specific moments treated as 'turns.' Lascivious dance with bride at wedding, with dance of black-gloved hand down & around her dress; unfreezing, with long series of quasi-scientific orders resulting in whirrs, buzzes, flashing lights, etc. until Pryskpkin awakes lazily, peers round, and says matter-of-factly "Where am I?"; chase of bedbug and attempt to befriend it; aged waiter at wedding, bent-double and groaning grumpily.

Unpsychological acting calls for particular kind of set. Indicates Meyerhold's conception of contribution of mise en sc�ne. Malevich designed Mystery Bouffe (though Meyerhold thought too painterly); in 2nd production, mediated with influences from ancient popular theatre (to match that influence in the writing). C20th mystery play, with cubist modernist influence.

Costumes crude, popular style, like ROSTA designs. Unclean wore first attempt at prozodezhdy (stage-work clothes); influenced typical costumes of Blue Blouse agit-prop groups, who were arising then.

Meyerhold and Mayakovsky invited artists to design The Bedbug. One group for first half (Kukriniksy team) and Rodchenko for second, ensuring complete contrast for look of two time-periods. First, fairly conventional, dressed with artefacts bought in Moscow but deployed to create a "nightmare effect". Second, all severe shapes and symmetrical lines. Contrast heightened by use of lighting: first, warm reds and yellows; second, white and blues, with Ilinsky in harsh spotlight. At Prysipkin's recognition and plea to audience, all house-lights on.

The Bathhouse more inventive and challenging. Designed by Meyerhold and Vakhtangov, but budget couldn't stretch to fulfil plans (time machine is invisible, and vomiting out of bureaucrats at end done off-stage). Set as 'machine for acting' - series of staircases and platforms, stretching out in a dynamic appearance of upward thrust. Juxtaposed with bright, light-coloured walls (laboratory) covered in diagrams; at other times, large banners with slogans. All this contradicted by heavy leather armchair and solid, sinking comfort of bureaucrat's office.

Music for The Bathhouse by Shebalin: influences of folksong and popular music. Shostakovich's for The Bedbug: Mayakovsky requested it be like firemen's bands. Meyerhold described text as having rhythmic modulations in shifts from one episode to another and compared to Shakespeare. Used Shostakovich's music to help achieve this. Bayan plays smoochy foxtrot during wedding scene. Picked up by off-stage band, becoming stormy and grotesque and effecting transition to the future. Music not just used for transitions, though, but an 'attraction' in its own right.

Meyerhold's direction: built as a montage of attractions. Absence of psychology. Action proceeds via shocks and merrily. Harsh, coarse laughter of social activist. Rudninsky argues that five years before Eisenstein's concept, Meyerhold directs Mystery Bouffe as a montage of attractions as well. Method of playwrighting virtually invented by Mayakovsky. Technique influenced by Meyerhold's productions up to that point. But also development of Mayakovsky's poetry.

Effects from interplay between sound and rhythm, like a poetic montage. Trained and practising artist as well, encouraging arresting visual effects. Dialectical procedure of creating vivid moments (each stimulating in its own right) gaining richness from being set beside one another.

Mayakovsky on Mystery Bouffe: "the action of the crowd, the conflict between classes, the struggle of ideas - the world in miniature within the walls of a circus"

In The Bathhouse, infinite series of cross-references and paradoxes, esp. in Act III. Characters from play enter from audience and discuss the drama and their own reality & probability in it (out-Pirandellos Pirandello). Meyerhold used it to display whole gamut of styles of theatre, from naturalism through dance to agitprop. Each serves as an attraction in itself, but as a sequence becomes a stinging challenge to critical / ideological / political complacency. Startling kind of defamiliarisation.

Mayakovsky's use of the future in his plays. Mayakovsky played Person of the Future in 1918 Mystery Bouffe. Concealed from audience, climbed five metres up ladder behind LHS proscenium, attached to length of leather. On cue, impelled headlong into the action, skimming above the crowd of the Unclean on the ark. Awakening of Prysipkin as memorable turn by Ilinsky in The Bedbug. Entry of Phosphorescent Woman in The Bathhouse, with glittering black helmet and glossy white space suit, one of Meyerhold's coup de thŽ‰tre.

Not effects for own sake. Provide perspective from which to view present as historically-specific, rather than universal and inevitable.

Mayakovsky's futurism: way of comprehending present in relation to future, rather than more usual relation to past. Futurism views here and now not as culmination of what's gone before, but as springboard for what is to come. For Mayakovsky, suggests itself as natural bedfellow of communism, which is similarly interested in future. Precise form of future less important.

Some critics suggest depiction of future in The Bedbug indicating disillusionment with communism. But play is a 'fairy comedy' - not to be read literally. Mayakovsky needed the perspective of the future on the present. Shostakovich and Tairov suggested terrified vision of future was that of a petty-bourgeoisÕ parody of communism. Brecht developed similar perspective of future in some of later plays, but without the imagination or urgency.

Mayakovsky as only writer to have complemented and challenged to develop further Meyerhold's work. Both learn from each other.