Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold

Short Biography

Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold (1874-1940)

Russian theatre director, whose work inspired revolutionary artists and filmmakers of his era. He was born in Penza, Russia. In 1905 Meyerhold established his own studio, which promoted Symbolist plays, in which the actors moved like stylized puppets under the authoritarian controls of the director.

Over the next decade, he experimented with improvisational, comic, and conventional forms of theatre, such as commedia dell’arte and Peking opera.

By the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917, Meyerhold was considered the leading avant-garde director in Russia. His most celebrated productions were eccentric and radical productions of Russian and European classics.

Beginning in 1932 the Soviet regime under Joseph Stalin ended all forms of avant-garde innovation. In 1936 Meyerhold lost his theater, and four years later, after months of imprisonment and torture, the Soviet internal police secretly executed him.