Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in this book. The book provides an overview of Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin's thinking from 1919 to 1975. It examines the questions of theatre that arise from a dialogue between the early writings of Bakhtin and Konstantin Stanislavsky. The book explores how these questions are developed, reframed and answered by Vsevelod Meyerhold and Jerzy Grotowski. Bakhtin argues that people have two perspectives on being a human in the world, the first is the subjective and embodied centre from which they perceive the world; the second is the perspective of other people and their activity in the world. The themes of realism and revolution criss-cross in a very interesting way throughout the period of Bakhtin's lifetime. Socialist Realism was declared to be the official cultural policy and a version of Stanislavsky's approach to acting and theatre production was adopted as part of this policy.