ABSTRACT
In the watershed years of the decade before Russian revolution and the Great War, a parallel experiment to those in Florence and Moscow was taking place in Paris. Jacques Copeau, who had admired Craig’s writings for some years, read Alexander Bakshy’s The Path of the Modern Russian Stage in 1916. Unaware of Meyerhold’s work till then, he noted in his diary his sense of amazement in finding:
all my own ideas, my central and most insistent preoccupation (the pre-eminence of the actor and of the actor’s role) in Meyerhold, with all the consequences that point of view entails.
…The actor, once placed in the position of the conjuror, must use his skills to the fullest extent. Through every movement in his body, every change in vocal intonation, he will try to communicate innumerable aspects of humanity to the spectator, and the vast world which lies hidden in stock types and their expressions. It is not surprising that the world which is being passed to us from this new movement is: ‘Back to the booth and the commedia dell’arte’. One cannot imagine a greater coincidence of views. But how do we go about getting back? 1
