ABSTRACT
If there were a robust sector of theatre history based on stories of what might have been, the thwarted collaborations of Michael Chekhov and Vsevolod Meyerhold would surely have figured strongly. Two of the most celebrated artists to emerge from the Stanislavsky tradition, their paths were forcibly diverted from one another by cultural and political developments in Moscow after the Russian Revolution in 1917. Chekhov left Russia eleven years later; Meyerhold, as is well known, was never allowed to follow him, although he is reported to have rejected one opportunity to emigrate whilst on tour in Berlin in 1930, claiming his return was a “matter of honour” (Braun 1991: 261). The most tantalizing of these might-have-been alliances is sketched by Chekhov himself in his autobiography, Life and Encounters:
Meyerhold had often invited me to act in his theatre during my time in Moscow. I had always wanted to work on a role under his direction. This time he made a new proposal. Knowing my love of Hamlet, he told me that he intended to stage the tragedy on his return to Moscow. He started to tell me his plan for staging it, and seeing that I was listening so intensely, he stopped, and looking askance at me slyly over his large nose, he said: “I won’t tell you, though. You’ll steal it. Come to Moscow and we will work together.”
