Biomechanics of Meyerhold. Actor. Doll Automatic translate

February 22, 2024 Gallery on Shabolovka of the Moscow Exhibition Halls Association together with the Museum of the Puppet Theater named after. S. V. Obraztsova opens an exhibition dedicated to the phenomenon of biomechanics of Vsevolod Meyerhold, considered in two theatrical dimensions: a living actor and a puppet. The project is dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth of the innovative theater director.

Meyerhold, conceiving an ambitious program for the reconstruction of the theater, needed new actors who skillfully mastered words, voice, and body. Meyerhold pointed out the bi-ba-bo doll as an example of maximum expressiveness. Put on the fingers, the doll, with the same frozen facial expressions of the mask, can show joy expressed with outstretched arms, sadness with a lowered head, and pride with a thrown back head.

By developing a system of theatrical exercises, “specific training,” the director wanted to achieve mathematical accuracy and precise movements from the actor, but not to turn the actor into a puppet, as many believed then, but to open up new artistic horizons for him. Meyerhold was attracted not by the theatrical puppet itself, but by the mystery inherent in it: how can a puppet, controlled by a human hand hidden in it, perform various movements, while remaining independent and alive? Like a doll playing on stage and at every moment aware of its “puppet-ness,” the great master wanted to achieve this ability to “mirror himself” from the actor.

The exposition of the exhibition is built as an artistic and research “laboratory of the puppet genre”, where, in the context of Meyerhold’s biomechanical quests on materials from the Puppet Theater Museum. S. V. Obraztsov demonstrates in a historical retrospective innovative searches, discoveries, artistic and technical breakthroughs in the field of puppet making, modification of control systems, mechanics, new synthetic materials used, interaction between a doll and an actor on stage.

Among the exhibits of the exhibition will be presented a wooden Pinocchio, made for the filming of the film “The Golden Key” (1939), a bi-ba-bo doll, a portrait of Meyerhold with a dedicatory inscription to Sergei Obraztsov, glove and cane puppets of the 1930s-40s from the collection of the Puppet Theater Museum them. S. V. Obraztsov, drawings of the inventor of the biomechanical doll Viktor Schwemberger (1934), Boris Tuzlukov, Valentin Andrievich, sketches and dolls of contemporary artists Elena Lutsenko, Viktor Nikonenko, Viktor Antonov. The exhibition will include those provided by the Theater Museum. A. A. Bakhrushin unique newsreel footage and photographs of the late 1920s, in which Meyerhold’s students demonstrate biomechanical sketches, as well as a book about puppeteers, brought from Prague by Meyerhold to Sergei Obraztsov from the rare book collections of the Central Scientific Library of the STD.

The exhibition will include curatorial excursions, lectures on the theatrical quests of Vsevolod Meyerhold and Sergei Obraztsov, screenings of films and video recordings of performances from the golden fund of the Puppet Theater named after. S. V. Obraztsova, master classes with dolls and meetings with theater actors.

Curators of the exhibition: Yulia Baldina, Galina Shirokova, Gordiy Saltykov.

Ticket price: 250 rubles, 125 rubles (preferential), schoolchildren with a card enter for free. Age limit: 6+