ABSTRACT
This essay is a research report. In 1980 a tiny ‘fringe’ company (TNT/The New Theatre) was formed and since then it has been a practical experiment in combining ‘popular’ and ‘experimental’ theatre forms, inspired by scholar Edward (Ted) Braun’s teachings about the director Vsevolod Meyerhold. In this essay two of the company’s founders – Artistic Director Paul Stebbings and Company Dramaturg Phil Smith – describe the effects of the company’s practical application of Meyerhold’s principles and techniques: Symbolist-like ritual art, ‘tragedy with a smile on its lips’, the techniques of the cabotin, judicious mixing of styles, vaudeville grace, poetic and allusive imagery and extreme grotesquerie. The essay also describes how Meyerhold’s practice and writings informed TNT’s entanglement with cultural/political upheavals: from touring Poland in 1989 as the Berlin Wall falls (with a manifesto performance about art and Stalinism) to recent productions of Shaw’s Pygmalion for the #MeToo generation, and Free Mandela about the defeat of Apartheid for audiences in countries where racism has been on the rise.
