THEATRE Mayerhold

sort of society Trotsky believed must come unless the proletarian revolution occured in the near future? ® All of Trotsky's writings in 1938-1939, as in every stage of his political life and in his dying moments, are suffused with revolutionary optimism of Marxism, of the proletariat and its historical mission.

When he presents the dangers from the continued existence of capitalism, it is entirely in the service of the preparation of the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat.

For this, Hallas can substitute the neurotic fantasy of Trotsky insisted that the conditions of defeat and the world war in 1939 did not mean the rejection of the revolutionary perspective. As the events in Italy were to show, communist partisans entered the towns to the applause of the working class. often pointed out that an economic upturn was sometimes necessary to restore to the proletariat a basis for its confidence and unity. "

Lenin's book 'Imperialism" is the foundation-stone of the Marxist analysis of 20thcentury capitalism. The 'state capitalists' long ago rejected Lenin's view of the nature of the epoch, concluding that capitalism has proved that it still has possibilities of growth as a social system.

When Lenin said that imperialism is 'moribund' (dying) capitalism he meant that humanity had arrived at one of those junctures analysed by At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces society come into conflict with the existing relations of production, or-what is but a legal expression for the same thing —with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the pronationalized and socialized production of humanity is what Marxists mean by the 'fetter' on the development of productive forces, or what Trotsky called 'stagnation'. (Transitional Programme.)

Revisionists like to hold up against this analysis the so-called "technological revolution' of the period between the Second World War and the 1960s, which, according to them, is associated with a new period called 'neo-capitalism'.

But does the Marxist theory of capitalism's opposition to the development of the productive forces means that improvements in the technique of production are excluded?

On the contrary. It was a Stalinist distortion, accepted by the revisionists, to identify 'forces of production' with reduction or implements of In 1847 Marx wrote:

'Of all the instruments of production, the greatest productive power is the revolutionary class itself. The organization revolutionary elements as a class supposes the existence of all the productive forces which could be engendered in the bosom of the old society? 12 Lenin insists precisely that the production developed and carried out for profit by the capitalists in the period of imperialism is carried out under conditions where it 'becomes a hundred times heavier, more burdensome and intolerable' for the workers of the whole This did not at all mean that productivity in technique would not improve. Lenin indeed writes:

'Competition becomes transformed into monopoly. The result is immense progress in the socialization of production. In particular, the process of technical invention and imimprovement becomes SOcialized.' 13 Parasitism Naturally, under capitalism such technical progress will be introduced into production only under conditions where capitalists actually gain from it an increase in surplus value and accumulated capital. Thus, 'TAT from Stalin.

ing surplus value was still, in means de THE ENGLISH stage has always resisted any discussion on a theory of the theatre.

Like true pragmatists a sort of suck - it - and - see method has predominated; everything is down to flair, individual talent; the play's the thing and we don't want to get bogged down in boring dogmatic theory.

Poor old Gordon Craig, the only serious theoretician, come to think of it the only theoretician that the English theatre has produced, was always treated like a nutcase ana ignored at home, whereas abroad in less Philistine and anti-intellectual cultures, in Germany or France, his reputation is and was enormous.

The worst aspects of the British bourgeoisie, insular, unimaginative, suspicious, tasteless (their aesthetic needs are really satisfied by dogs and horses, they don't aspire to anything more than that) have hitered into the theatre in the form of the vulgar creed of 'show biz'.

The spectrum extends from the provincial bars of ailing reps, where the bored wives of businessmen massacre art over gin-and-tonics, through the heady heights of the National Theatre, where culture-hungry librarians sip coffee and nibble liver sandwiches in the intervals between 'artistic' assaults of mediocrity in bronze and russet, to the stripped pine and spotlighting of the coterie of avant-gardism at the ICA.

In this context of course the basic question What is theatre?' is never asked, unless in the form of the gossip interview — Well, Sir John, what is theatre in your view?' And pace the last two weeks of canonization of Noel Coward, who has had more to say about nothing in particular than almost anyone on record, the theatre is not 'the wellmade play' either.

With this sterility of bourgeois theatre it becomes more imperative that a theoretical discussion on content, form, styles of presentation be taken An important contribution to such a discussion is the recent publication of 'Meyerhold on Theatre' (Translated and edited with a critical commentary by Edward Braun, published by Methuen).

This is an invaluable book and makes available in English for the first time all his writings on the theatre.

Meyerhold was a remarkable Russian genius of the theatre, one of the few who unequivocally joined the ranks of the Bolsheviks immediately after the October 1917 Revolution and remained its defender till he fell foul of the Stalinist purges and died in prison in 1940.

In his early pre-revolutionary days, Meyerhold was a bitter opponent of the naturalistrealist school of theatre.

At that period his work was full of polemic against the naturalism of the Moscow Art Theatre, against the meticulous clutter of set and props that went into the attempted representations of real life on stage so that the play itself became earthbound, pedestrian, locked within the heavy dimension of stage machinery.

Production became merely an assembly of minutiae and detail so that the totality of the play was lost, the essence of the whole was submerged.

"The urge to show everything, come what may, the fear of mystery, of leaving everything unsaid, turns the theatre into a mere illustration of the author's words. "There's a dog howling again," says one of the VIET One of the experiments in stage design carried out in the Mayerhold theatre.

characters, and, without fail, a dog's howling is reproduced. The spectator concludes the departure, not only from the retreating sound of the harness bells, but from the thundering hooves on the wooden bridge over the river as well. You hear the rain beating on the iron roof; there are birds, frogs, crickets.' Although the struggle against naturalism superficially takes on the search for new forms, new set designs, lighting, stages, etc., underlying this struggle is a more important philosophical question.

Naturalism concerns itself with the surface impressions, understands life as a continuity of unrelated experiences.

In seeking to discover the underlying tensions and forces, to grasp the world and experience as a whole, Meyerhold turns albeit unconsciously to dialectical materialism.

And it is after the triumph of October that Meyerhold is able consciously to synthesize his quest for form with the real social demands of the revolution.

He threw in his lot passionately with the Bolsheviks at a time when most other theatre people were maintaining a discreet silence, waiting to see the outcome of the civil war.

Not so Meyerhold, joined the Party in 1918, was arrested by the White Guard in 1919 and was almost executed for alleged subversive activities.

Lunarcharsky appointed him to take charge of the Theatrical Department for the entire Soviet Republic, which he immediately transformed into a military headquarters and declared the advent of the Revolution in the theatre.

He worked furiously to set up Red Army theatres, propaganda pieces for the troops and savagely attacked the other uncommitted stage companies.

His production of the 'Dawn' coincided with the third anniversary the Revolution. Each night, at a point during the play, a herald would arrive with the latest news from the front.

On the night when the herald announced a decisive victory the Crimea, audience spontaneously and sang the International.

Meyerhold's work was not always orthodox and he was often criticized for some of his productions. is' a measure of the Revolution at that period that he was given full support and encouragement by Lunarcharsky. The same freedom was not granted him ten years later.

In his productions he strove to clarify the underlying reality of class forces. For him the theatre was a spectacle which used burlesque, placards, screens, acrobatics, music, rhythmic, controlled movewhich he called biomechanics.

Performances were for him demonstrations where the actors themselves comment on the characters the are playing to reveal their social essences.

In this respect, of course, he is a precursor of Brecht.

In Meyerhold's words:

'The actor-tribune acts not the situation itself, but what is concealed behind it and what it has to reveal for a specifically propagandist purpose.' This spirit of criticism, this fight for proletarian position was to be his downfall, for with the rise of Stalin and the bureaucracy came the dictate that art should depict real life, for satire harmed the "cause tioned the position ofquese of socalism' or rather bureaucracy.

In 1930 Meyerhold produced Mayakovsky's "The Bath House, vicious lampoon against the bureaucracy. It was not regarded favourably by the Central Committee for Repertoire Control, nor did 'Pravda' take to it kindly.

And no wonder. In the third act of the play the bureaucrat Pobedonossikov tells the director what the theatre ought to be:

'In the name of every worker and peasant, I beg you not to disturb my piece of mind. An alarm clock? Perish the thought. Your job is to beguile my eye and ear, not assault them..• 'We need to rest after the discharge of our official obligations. Back to the classics.

the accursed past, geniuses of Study the great This was absolutely a description of the official line. And they stuck to it. The play was forced out of the repertoire. Mayakovsky committed suicide. Meyerhold spent ten years of uncertaintly and constant criticism.

Yet he never wavered his initial position.

Finally he attended in 1939 the All-Union Conference of Stage Directors, presided over by a well-known director of lies ad illusions, a showman and actor of a certain skill, vice-president of the Soviet of People's Commissars, Andrei Vyshinsky.

Reputedly Meyerhold's last public words were as folows:

"The pitiful and wretched thing that pretends to the title of the theatre of "socialism realism" has nothing in common with art. ... People in the arts searched, erred, and frequently stumbled and turned aside, but they really created, sometimes badly and sometimes splendidly. Where once there were the best theatres in the world now— by your leave-everything is gloomily, well-regulated, averand murderous in is lack of talent. Is that your aim? If it is-—oh-you have done something monstrous. In hunting down formalism you have eliminated art.' He died in prison some months later.

His words are a fitting and still accurate description of Stalinism and the arts.

They are the eloquent testimony of a brave and gifted man.

They provide starting-point.