Vsevolod Meyerhold

The comedy The Government Inspector was the first of its kind. It was a comedy made up of realistic characters meant to comment on society and promote change. The front page of Nikolai Gogol’s work begins with a popular saying, “If your face is askew don’t blame the mirror.” This quote sets up his purpose and message quite aptly. Gogol wanted his play to be a reflection of real life in Russia so his audience could see the skewness of Russian life. As a scholar once noted about Gogol, “His is the theater of destruction, distortion and hyperbole, and it is also a moral and angry theater in that it teaches, through tragic-comic slapstick, a lesson in shattered complacencies.” This is an accurate depiction of The Government Inspector, which Gogol makes clear over the duration of the five acts. Gogol expertly uses the device of distortion in The Government Inspector. Distortion is defined as, “the action of giving a misleading account or impression.” This is the main plot device for The Government Inspector. A man from St. Petersburg is passing through town on his way to see his father in a nearby province; the Mayor, expecting an Inspector from St. Petersburg thinks this man, Khlestakov, is that government inspector. Khlestakov does not realize this at first but soon comes to take advantage of the Mayor and the whole town. When the Mayor and Khlestakov first meet, Khlestakov thinks he is in trouble for not paying his bill at the end. He does not want to go to jail so he…

Stanislavski’s work has not only helped people to become better actors, but also have helped others to become better people by helping them understand themselves. He has provided a system to help actors process of characterization which can also be applied to one’s everyday life. The first way Stanislavski’s work that stood out to me was the first proposition he makes for having actors become like the characters. He mentions how one must believe that that he or she is convincingly in the same…

Developing his ideas in a politically charged and impoverished historical context shaped the course of his research throughout his life. By exploring and taking ideas from practioners like Stanislavky, Meyerhold and Vakhangatov, he researched many aspects of theatre. By trying to remove all that was uncessary in performance he and his actors strived for complete physical involvement in action. Investigating Grotowski’s ideas has allowed me to intergrate his theory with his practice and consider…