Meyerhold On Theatre

By (author) Edward Braun; By (author) Braun Edward; Introduction by Pitches Jonathan
Description:

Meyerhold on Theatre brings together in one volume Vsevolod Meyerhold''s most significant writings and utterances, and covers his entire career as a director from 1902 to 1939. It contains a comprehensive selection from all published material, unabridged and translated from the original Russian, updated and supplemented with a critical commentary relating Meyerhold to his period and eye-witness accounts describing all his productions. The book is illustrated with photographs of Meyerhold''s designs and productions.

Within this diverse collection of sometimes dense, sometimes lyrical, and always fascinating writings, Meyerhold emerges from this book as a forerunner of such directors as Brecht, Piscator, Planchon and Brook, a relentless enemy of naturalism and a supreme exponent of total theatre whose influence continues to be felt throughout the theatre of today.

This fourth edition features a new introduction by Prof. Jonathan Pitches, which helps to demystify some of the terminology Meyerhold and his associates used, and indicates the fundamental connection between culture and politics represented in his life and art.

Review quote:
Meyerhold on Theatre is an important, many-faceted book. Meyerhold was a great director - the greatest in my experience as a playgoer . . . Braun has rendered the field of theatre knowledge an invaluable service.
Review quote:
It is rare that books can capture the spirit in which productions happen, but Edward Braun''s anthology . . . does transmit not only the swiftly changing contexts in which Meyerhold worked, but the still-relevant impulses which his work embodied, and which have sown the seeds of so much that the modern theatre still grapples with.
Review quote:
... This fourth edition of a seminal work compiled by Edward Braun will present as good and wide a portrait of the great man as anyone could wish for.
Biographical note:

Edward Braun is Emeritus Professor of Drama at the University of Bristol. He edited the pioneering English-language selection from Meyerhold''s writings, Meyerhold on Theatre, in 1969, and in 1979 published his major critical assessment, The Theatre of Meyerhold. His The Director & the Stage was first published in 1982.

Jonathan Pitches is Professor of Theatre and Performance and Director of Research in the School of Performance and Cultural Industries at Leeds University. He is the author and/or editor of four books, three of which relate to actor training and is the founding co-editor of the Routledge journal, Theatre Dance and Performance Training.

Promotional headline:
Meyerhold on Theatre brings together in one volume Vsevolod Meyerhold''s most significant writings and utterances, and covers his entire career as a director from 1902 to 1939. This edition in the Theatre Makers series features a new introduction by Professor Jonathan Pitches.
Description for collection:
Methuen Drama’s Theatre Makers Series celebrates and draws together the work of many of the most seminal theatre makers. Titles within the series comprise of diaries, letters, essays, and first-hand accounts by, as well as interviews with, the most influential theatre practitioners throughout history, past and present. Together, they provide an unprecedented insight into the philosophies and methods of the practitioners that have shaped – and continue to define – what theatre is today.
Feature:
This edition in the Theatre Makers series offers up new strategies for approaching the work of Meyerhold for a whole new generation of readers, identifying ways of navigating the material and of appreciating its impact on British theatre history and practi