Meierhold: The Drama of the Red Karabas

The name of Vsevolod Emilievich Meierhold is celebrated in the history of Russian theater. He journeyed from a provincial youth taking his first steps on stage to a famous director embodying the ideas of "theatrical October" in his work. Meierhold's discomfort for the authorities and his inability to make compromises led to the closure of his theater and later to his death in the basements of Lubyanka. A self-loving, capricious, vain genius, a virtuoso director-inventor, an ingenious fabricator, an excellent actor, haughty, hot-tempered, autocratic, at times a cynical dictator and an eternal disturber of the peace - this is how Vsevolod Meierhold is portrayed in the new book by cultural scholar Mark Kushnirov.