Meyerhold's Approaches Of Stanislavski And Nemirovich

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By 1905 both Stanislavski and Nemirovich also felt that the MAT needed to explore new approaches. Stanislavski invited Meyerhold back to Moscow, to lead experimental work, free from the pressures of production, at the newly opened First Theatre Studio. Pitches makes the point that Stanislavski – ever open to new approaches – sounds more like Treplev than Trigorin when he wrote about this period in ‘My Life Is Art’, first published in 1924:
[Meyerhold sought for something new in art, for something more contemporary and modern in spirit. The difference between us lay in the fact that I only strained toward the new, without knowing any of the ways for reaching and realising it, while Meyerhold thought that he had already found new ways and methods which he could not realise partly because of material conditions, and partly due to the weak personnel of the troupe… I decided to help Meyerhold in his new labours, which as it seemed to me then, agreed with many of my dreams at the time. (Pitches, 2003: 9).
What were Meyerhold’s ‘new ways and methods’ which so intrigued his old teacher, and what were some of the sources of influence and inspiration for Meyerhold at this time? One influence – although it should be noted that Meyerhold was already developing his ideas independently before he came across them - was that of the …show more content…

He accepted and embraced the fact that theatre is an artificial construct, and his goal became to achieve what Whyman calls ‘a stylised theatricality; the rejection of what he said was Stanislavski’s naturalism and the need to find another way to achieve the theatre of mood. He had a different approach to motion than that envisaged by Stanislavski’s emphasis on the subconscious, emotional memory, and the feeling of truth. He wanted the actor to be a trained and conscious artist, rather than one hypnotising and hypnotised by feeling.’ (Whyman, 2008:

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