Teaching the Politics of Theatricality: Case Study, Meyerhold

Abstract

This chapter argues the case for a materialist understanding of the value of an engagement in practical theatre as a method of learning. The model is based on Meyerhold’s sense of ‘theatricality’ as a mode of political theatre and will argue the case for ‘praxis’ in learning, as opposed to the concept of a transcendent ideological neutrality through ‘practice’. Employing Meyerhold’s work as the vehicle, the chapter examines the potentiality of both a material and a materialist argument for ‘doing’. An engagement with the context and meaning of the politics of theatricality should offer an opportunity to challenge those forms of theatricality that rest upon a sense that ‘doing’ is innocent of ideology.

Training! Training! Training! But if it’s the kind of training which exercises only the body and not the mind, then no thank you! I have no use for actors who know how to move but cannot think.

(Vsevolod Meyerhold, 1934)