Vsevolod Meyerhold

Meyerhold began acting in 1896 as a student at the Moscow Philharmonic Drama School under Vladimir Nemirovich-DanchenkoVladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, co-founder of the Moscow Art TheaterMoscow Art Theater along with Konstantin StanislavskyKonstantin Stanislavsky. At the Moscow Art Theatre, Meyerhold played 18 roles, such as Vasily Shuisky in Tsar Feodor Ioannovich and Ivan the Terrible in The Death of Ivan the Terrible (both plays by Alexei Tolstoy). In 1898, in the first successful production of Chekhov's first play, The Seagull, Meyerhold played the lead male role, opposite Chekhov's future wife, Olga Knipper.

Career under communism

On the day when the February Revolution broke out – on 25 February, under the old style calendar then used in Russia – Meyerhold's production of Masquerade by Mikhail Lermontov had a dress rehearsal at the Alexandrinsky Theatre, in front of an audience that included the poet Anna Akhmatova. That evening has been described as "the last act of the tragedy of the old regime, when the Petersburg elite went to enjoy themselves at this splendidly luxurious production in the midst of the chaos and confusion.". Sergei Eisenstein, who was then a teenager but would later be a world-renowned film director, desperately wanted to see the production, having heard that it featured clowns, but having made his way across the city that was in the throes of a revolution was disappointed to discover that the Alexandrinsky was closed.