The Center for Slavic Culture presents a lecture by Anastasia Arefieva
Vsevolod Meyerhold: the price of free thinking
When? June 3rd 2025 at 6:30pm
Where? Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura Universidad de Granada. Salón de Grado (Plaza Campo del Príncipe s/n)
What was Vsevolod Meyerhold really like — a failed violinist, a talented actor, and a great director who, in many ways, invented twentieth-century theatre? How did this aesthete of pre-revolutionary, tsarist Russia—this modernist of the Silver Age — become the leading Soviet avant-gardist, only to be later convicted and executed for so-called treason? And how does his fate resonate with what is happening in Russia today?
This lecture will trace his life as an artist, a citizen, and a private individual, using examples from his major productions. It will also draw on recently published, crucial documents: his public speech delivered four days before his arrest, as well as transcripts from his court case, including his interrogations and his letters to the prosecutor, to Molotov, and to Beria. Furthermore, there will be a special mention of Meyerhold's great interest in the Spanish theatre of the Golden Age and especially in the religious and philosophical dramas of Pedro Calderón, on which he worked extensively in the pre-revolutionary period.
Anastasia Arefeva, Brussels-based independent PhD theatre researcher, curator of theatre exhibitions, lecturer in European theatre history, and author of the upcoming book “Images of Spain: Dramas of the Golden Age on the Russian Stage.”