Platon Kerzhentsev and his theories on collective creation

Abstract

The name Platon Kerzhentsev carries infamous tones in the annals of theatre history as he precipitated the closure of Vsevolod Meyerhold’s theatre in January 1938. His attack on Meyerhold had been building since the early 1920s, but the major blow came in the wake of the work on One Life, the production that Meyerhold’s theatre was preparing in late 1937 to coincide with the twenty-year anniversary of the October Revolution. Kerzhentsev was particularly critical of the production. A second attack was made shortly afterwards in the pages of Pravda, in an article called “An Alien Theatre.” It was here that Kerzhentsev adopted a bitter tone to elucidate every shortcoming in Meyerhold’s practice. His criticisms included Meyerhold’s choice of repertoire, the distortion of the classics through formalistic approaches, the staging in a positive light of the pre-revolutionary bourgeoisie, and his theatre’s detachment from Soviet life. According to Kerzhentsev, “Meyerhold’s Theatre has become a complete political failure.