ABSTRACT
Vsevolod Meyerhold never travelled to Australia, nor did any work or companies that he directed. Today, in Australia, Meyerhold’s work is discussed mainly at a secondary school level – if it is discussed at all. Despite this, some high-profile practitioners and producing companies – most notably Peter Evans of national touring company Bell Shakespeare – cite the (in)direct influence of Meyerhold on their work. In this chapter, we set off in search of the lineages of Meyerhold in Australia. Throughout, we argue that Meyerhold’s influence in Australia has always been felt at a remove from the original – a series of nesting dolls that lead back to the source, but always with intermediate layers. In this way, while we observe that much work has been produced in Australia with a Meyerholdian aesthetic, his influence on these creators has always passed through an intermediary. The same is true of performance practices, which have similarly been developed through response and influence from an original already at a remove from Meyerhold’s work itself, and are read as an aesthetic strategy rather than a coherent philosophy of training.
