The Azerbaijan State Translation Centre (AzSTC) is pleased to announce the launching of avant-garde Russian theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold’s book titled A Collection of Works.

The collection includes the author’s letters, articles, dairies, speeches, and notes.

The chapters, such as “On the History of Theatre and Actor-training Techniques ”, “Letters to O.M. Meyerhold”, “From the Dairy (1907-1912)”, “Storm”, “Masquerade”, “Notes on Theatre”, “The Noble Cuckold”, “Shaking Soil”, “Forest”, “Teacher Bubus”, “Mandate” and “The Government Inspector”, reveal the subtleties of art, such as the miraculous world of theater, its invisible sides, processes behind the scene, and secrets of directing art through deep analysis and research.

The translator of the selected works is Zahid Saritorpaq, and the editor is Farhad Abdullayev.

This edition is part of a translation grant program launched by the Russian Institute of Translation, with which AzSTC has cooperated since 2019.

Vsevolod Meyerhold

(1874–1940)

• He was born in Penza, Russia.

• The Russian and Soviet theatre director, actor, and theatrical producer of German descent.

• From 1907 until the October Revolution, was the main director of the imperial theatres of Alexandrinsky and Mariinsky. After the revolution he collaborated with various Russian theatres.

• He was one of the first avant-garde theatre directors in the Soviet Union.

•The greatest theorist and practitioner of the grotesque genre in theatre, developer of Biomechanics - a system of actor training (antirealistic system of dramatic production), and author of the famous programme “Theatrical October”.

• The director-producer of almost forty landmark productions, among others, The Government Inspector (N. Gogol), Don Juan (J. Molière), Hedda Gabler (H. Ibsen), The Mandate (N. Erdman), and Elektra (R. Strauss).

• Imprisoned during the years of repression.

• Executed in prison in 1940.