Meyerhold's "D. E.

"
Author(s): Llewellyn H. Hedgbeth
Source: The Drama Review: TDR, Vol. 19, No. 2, Political Theatre Issue (Jun., 1975), pp. 23-36
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1144943
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Theatre. Based primarily on Ilya Ehrenburg's novel, Trust D.E., it also drew heavily on
Bernard Kellermann's The Tunnels and touched upon novels by Pierre Hamp and Upton
Sinclair.
A 1927 program offers a synopsis of the play, as well as the order of the episodes.
Two world powers, the falling bourgeoisie and the rising proletariat, are juxtaposed in
short theatrical sketches. Three American millionaires-Jubs, Twist, and Hardayle, who
are in search of new markets-accept a proposal by Jens Boot, an international adventurer, to form "D.E.," an organization whose aim is to destroy Europe, without boycotting American products or disseminating Socialistic ideas. Their ultimate goal is to
claim Europe as an American colony. When this plot is discovered, the Soviet Comintern
creates Radio Trust U.S.S.R. and calls on the proletariat of the Soviet Union and the
displaced Westerners fleeing their fallen countries to work together. Secretly, they
arrange to build a transatlantic tunnel, joining Leningrad with New York. It is through
this tunnel that the International Red Army is to travel to America. While the work
continues, D.E. destroys Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Scandinavia, changes France
into a desert, and brings the English to cannibalism, but it cannot subdue the Soviet
Union. The Russian workers are too strong to allow D.E. to conquer. The organizers of
D.E. are forced to abandon their attempt to conquer the Soviet Union through economic means and annex it as a colony. Once the tunnel is completed, the American
proletariat stages a spontaneous uprising, which is aided by the International Red Army,
and captures D.E. The International Proletariat is victorious.
The novels merged for this play had varying literary styles and were difficult to
piece together. Students of the Higher Military Pedagogical Institute made suggestions
to Mikhail Podgaretsky, who compiled the original text. Then, Meyerhold's National
Theatrical Workshop made comments and reworked the scenario. Throughout its run,
the play was often revised because of the reaction and suggestions of spectators.
Ehrenburg, from the beginning, was not pleased with Meyerhold's notion of
adapting Trust D.E. into a stage play. But Meyerhold had clear ideas about the production and was determined that he alone could do it justice. In his memoirs, Ehrenburg
detailed their argument:
In the summer of 1923, I was living in Berlin. Meyerhold arrived, and we
met. He suggested that I should adapt my Novel Trust D.E. for his theatre,
saying that the play should be a mixture of a circus and a propaganda
pageant. I did not feel like adapting the novel; I was beginning to lose
my enthusiasm both for the circus and for Constructivism; had a passion
for Dickens just then; and was writing a sentimental novel with a complicated plot, The Love of Jeanne Ney. I knew, however, that it was
difficult to oppose Meyerhold and said that I would think about it.
Shortly after that an article appeared in a theatrical journal published by
Meyerhold's supporters. This article, which took the form of a fantasy
tale, described how I had been 'stolen' by Tairov, for whom I had
undertaken to turn my novel into a counter-revolutionary play.
(Many times in his life Meyerhold suspected Tairov, that kindest and
purest of men, of a desire to destroy him by no matter what means. It
was part of that suspiciousness that I have already mentioned. Tairov
never had the slightest intention of putting on Trust D.E.)
Returning to the Soviet Union I read that Meyerhold was preparing to
stage a play called Trust D.E. adapted by a certain Podgaretsky 'from

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novels by Ehrenburg and Kellermann, I realized that the only argument

which might stop Meyerhold would be for me to say that I wanted to
adapt the novel myself for the theatre or the cinema. In March 1924, I
wrote him a letter beginning 'Dear Vsevolod Emilyevich' and ending
'with heartfelt greetings': 'Our meeting last summer, and in particular
our talks about the possibility of my adapting Trust D.E., allow me to
believe that your attitude to my work is one of friendship and esteem. I
therefore venture, first of all, to ask you-if the newspaper report is
correct-to give up the idea of this production. After all, I am not a
classic but a living man.'
The reply was terrifying-it contained all the frenzy of which Meyerhold
was capable-I should never mention it if I did not love the man with all
his extremes. 'Citizen I. Ehrenburg! I fail to understand on what grounds
you address a request to me to 'give up the idea' of producing Comrade
Podgaretsky's play. Is it on the grounds of our talk in Berlin? Surely that
talk made it clear enough that even if you were to undertake an adaptation of your novel, you would turn it into a play that could well be
in my theatre, which serves
staged in any of the cities of the Entente....
and will continue to serve the cause of the Revolution, we need tendentious plays, plays with one aim only: to serve the cause of the Revolution. '
There is some discrepancy about whether or not Ehrenburg ever saw the production. Yelagin stated that Ehrenburg forced a change of costumes and make-up several
times before the show opened, but Ehrenburg claimed never to have seen the play.
I did not go to see the play; according to friends' reports and articles by

critics who supported Meyerhold, Podgaretsky made a poor job of it.

The production was interesting. Europe perished amidst a great deal of
noise, the panels of the set were hustled off the stage, the actors changed
their make-up in a hurry, and a jazz band played deafeningly. To my
surprise Mayakovsky stood up for me: at a debate on the production of
Trust D.E. he said of the adaptation: 'The play D.E. is an absolute
zero ... Only a man who stands on a higher level than the authors-in
this case Ehrenburg and Kellermann-can adapt a work of fiction for the
stage.' However, the production enjoyed some success, and the Java
tobacco factory issued a brand of cigarettes called D.E. But as a result of
this silly business I did not meet Meyerhold again for seven years.

SCENIC ELEMENTS
The set is probably the single most important element in this production. Meyerhold had been thinking for some time in terms of outdoor performances, and Craig's
1909 experiments with screens may well have influenced him to adopt the use of
moving walls. In use were eight to ten flat wooden screens twelve feet long and nine feet
high, as well as several screens of smaller dimensions, moved on small wheels by stagehands behind each one. These walls were made of a special wood used for freight cars
and were painted a dark red brick color. Ilya Shlepyanov executed the walls, whose
position could be changed rapidly to totally alter the background. A lecture hall was

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The moveable walls for D.E., 1924.

quickly transformed into a street with an endless fence, the street became a chamber of
Parliament, the Parliament hall changed within a few seconds into a stadium. These
changes were often effected by the addition of some simple object, like a lantern, or a
poster, as well as by the actual change in configuration.
In addition to the moveable walls, Meyerhold used a series of screens. A standing
screen was used for projections during some scenes, but Meyerhold employed three
screens-one large center screen and two smaller side screens flown in and out of the
flies-for most of the episodes. The titles of the episodes, the location and characters
involved in each episode, and the attitudes of the director toward the onstage action
were projected on the large center screen. The side screens were used to communicate
information about the two opposing forces, such as the political appeals of the "Association for Chemical Defense," catchwords of Communist propaganda, portraits of
party leaders, and quotations from Lenin's and Zinoviev's speeches and writings. The
propaganda was straightforward: "Hands Off China!," "White Immigrants!," appearing
after pictures had been projected of the enemy forces and maps of faltering Europe.
General stage lighting was accomplished by instruments hung at the rear of the
auditorium and special lighting came from projectorsthung both at the rear of the
auditorium and at the side of the stage. Rather than being used to create specific colors
or moods, the lighting became a more functional part of the show. At times, flickering
lights and weaving beams of light produced an intense dynamism of action as movement
changed from one part of the stage to another, or from episode to episode. Many
characters were dressed in an' exaggerated manner-fright wigs, large shoes, floppy bow
tie, pork-pie hat-more reminiscent of clowns than of actors. With other characters,
entire scenes were built about bright colorful costumes that gave attention to fine
details. Only the stagehands were in the traditional Meyerhold costumes of blue-flared
pants and blue shirts made from a light material.

ACTING STYLES
Each episode had some connection with the central theme of the play. However,
only two or three scenes were tied together by the same heroes. Each episode had its
own acting style. The result of this was a jerkiness established as each scene broke off

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and was transformed into a new place with new people. Parades of actual Soviet mariners and athletes were contrasted with the scenes of moral dissolution in Europe.
Meyerhold portrayed the European scene in a satirical and sometimes farcical manner,
but the audiences obviously enjoyed the dancing girls and the beautifully dressed ladies
from the West.
Whether or not he was successful, Meyerhold hoped that, when shown entertainments copied from popular Western theatre as only a small part of the agit-prop
spectacle, the audience would acknowledge the superiority of Soviet theatre. This
theatre could match the achievements of the West and add its own theatricalism as well.
Difference of tempo was essential to this comparison. While the decadent bourgeois
representatives danced indolently in the nightclub, the Russians, the hope of the future,
did brisk biomechanical exercises. Boris Alpers claimed that "those belonging to the
bourgeois world were treated in the manner of sharp social grotesque-the theatre of
masks; the Soviet personages-people of the Socialist world-were played simply and
naturally, strictly according to real life."
In D.E. there were ninety-five roles for forty-five performers. Meyerhold's major
production problem was the transformiation of the actor. One actor playing many roles
had been often used to hide the fact that there were too few actors, but Meyerhold used
it on a large scale here, declaring it on the posters that announced the play's opening. He
hoped the audience would be able to look at the artistic talent of the actor and to
recognize the irony involved in the same men playing roles involved with two opposing
forces. Tovaritch Bogooshevski suggested that the episodic transformations be presented
as dreams. This suggestion was adopted. Several actors ran behind the walls to change
into new costumes and reappeared at once as quite different characters.
Detailed pantomime also came to the fore in this production, even more than in
Meyerhold's earlier efforts. There were several episodes that lasted ten to fifteen minutes
and contained an insignificant amount of speech but a lot of pantomime.
There was an actor's chase in D.E. in which a fugitive fled, was hemmed in by
moving walls, disappeared behind one of them, and was spirited offstage. As the actor
began to run, the spotlights rushed about, and all the walls began to move in different
directions, creating a dynamic picture.
Garin, Zakhava, and Okhlopkov were three of the most notable actors involved in
the review. Erast Garin was the Great Transformer who, within one fifteen-minute
scene, performed seven different roles. At one point, Meyerhold had a peephole made in
one of the walls and, as old-time vaudeville music was played, the audience watched
Garin's changes and viewed his character ironically, as an artifically created person.
Boris Zakhava, now the head of the Vakhtangov Theatre School, played an English
lord and a French parliamentarian in D.E. When he first read the play, he did not like it
and told Meyerhold so. Meyerhold released him from one part, but he still played a large
role as the Chairman of the French Parliament. Zakhava felt confident in this role, and
the gestures came to him easily. In this role, he rang a large bell for the Fascist deputies
and a small bell for the Communist deputies. They expressed the feelings of the chairman toward the political groups. But Zakhava was uncomfortable using them. He felt
the bells were actors playing his part. In his view, the actor hardly seemed necessary.
(Zakhava later wrote: "I am capable of expressing satirical theatre more brightly and
fully than the very best marionette with ten bells." When he was certain that the
audience accepted him, he decided on an experiment. In one performance, when Meyerhold was not present, Zakhava hid the large bell behind the podium and worked with
only one bell. The audience accepted this innovation. When Meyerhold saw it, he
accepted it, too.)

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The differing tempos set up in comparing the two political enemies in D.E. were
carried out effectively in Okhlopkov's tempo acting. He emphasized varying rhythms
within his own body, allowing his face, hands, legs, back, etc., to act independently. He
talked very slowly, for example, as his foot tapped a quick rhythm. Slowing motion
down, or speeding it up according to actual counted beats for each part of an action
allowed him to make clear separations.

MUSIC AND DANCE

The music in D.E. was illustrative and closely tied to the dramatic rhythm of the
piece. For instance, the music of a Western foxtrot was quickly contrasted with a march
of the proletariat. An orchestra at times played bits and pieces of traditional symphonies or well-known songs such as "Boldly, Comrades" and the "Internationale," but a
jazz band with saxophones, xylophones, pianos, violins, contra basses, bass and snare
drums was the major attraction. The songs were popular hits-"My Baby," "Rose,"
"For I Love You Happy," "Clap Hands," "California," "Suez," "Chong," "Sandman,"
"For Me and My Gal," "Sphinks," [sic] "Monte-Carlo," "Sunflower," and "Indian
Flower."
Everything European in the performance was parodied in time to jazz, new dance
steps, or Capitalists madly conversing as they rocked in bentwood rockers. Europe was
seen as a merry, magnificent farce, while the Soviet Union was depicted as a wellordered land assured of final victory. Various tempos and rhythms, earlier explored in
Biomechanics, led Meyerhold to the use of tempo acting, musical timing, etc., as he
presented an ironical utopian sketch in which the lavish West enjoyed a languid life as
destruction knocked at its door.
Meyerhold asked Sofia Parnok to organize the Soviet Union's first jazz band for the
performance. Once the news of Parnok's leadership became known, good musicians
were attracted to the band and Gabrilovitch and Kostomolotsky, men well known in the
music field, sat among the players. The party critics objected to Parnok, who had just
returned from Paris, and to his "degenerate" music, but the audiences loved it.
When Sidney Bechet and his jazz quintet visited the Soviet Union in 1925, he gave
two concerts a day for several months to capacity houses. This was Moscow's first taste
of genuine American jazz. The audiences went wild. They stamped their feet, shouted,
and applauded in a frenzy. Meyerhold asked Bechet and his group to perform in D.E.,
and for some time the visitors to the Meyerhold Theatre were thrilled by the group's
artistry. The passionate interest of Soviet citizens in jazz began here.
Ihe choreography was created by Kasyan Goleizovsky, Sofia Parnok, and Kostomolotsky. In the first episode, Parnok choreographed and performed while Kostomolotsky directed the dance of "the floors of hieroglyphics" and the dance of the
"giraffe-like stiff person." Goleizovsky, a member of FEKS, the Factory of the Eccentric Actor, choreographed the Biomechanical etudes and the acrobatic polka of episode
six. In the seventh episode, he brought to the Soviet stage the foxtrot, tap dancing, the
tango, and the shimmy. Kostomolotsky produced and performed his own eccentric
dance in the same episode.

EPISODES
The titles of the episodes were taken from the 1927 program. There was relatively
little description of the action within the episodes. Working from existing photographs
and from written accounts, it has sometimes been possible to reconstruct a skeleton
outline of the episode. More often, only a phrase, an important character or action,
helps to identify the scene.

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Act I-Episode l-"The Projectof the GrandioseRuination"

This episode took the form of a lecture hall scene. In it, Garin played the roles of
seven different inventors. Though not identified as such, this scene may well be depicted
by the picture of a circus-like fat man atop a circular platform backed by a comic
caricature appearing on a standing screen. He held one statue and, with a pointer,

pointed to a second placed on a large circular podium beside him. A Charlie Chaplin
figure, illustrative of Meyerhold's interest in mime and physical training, sat at the fat
man's left, staring at a female statue.
With a hoarse, screaming voice, Garin plays the fifth inventor whose crippled leg-a
character on to itself-inadvertently, kicks the millionaire interviewer. Eventually a kick
lands the millionaire on the floor as his secretary writes in a slate, "No. 5, a scrapper."
Episode 2-"Multiply Wisely"

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Episode

Project

This episode, which was concernedwith electricity being used for the first time in
the Soviet Union, was representedby a Moscowstreet scene. Four walls placed on their
sides end-to-endcreated a straightdiagonalacross the stage and representedthe street's
fence. A swinginglamp was dropped in from the flies and was met by a post moved in
from one side, thus creatinga lamppost. A kiosk ten feet tall and about three feet in
diametercame out from one of the wings. It was coveredwith signsand posters.

Episode4-"Enough of Peace"
The French Parliamenthall episode divided the deputies of Parliamentinto the
place of the left and the place of the right. Eight large screens and one small one were
used for this scene. Two walls stood on end next to each other and were furthest
upstage; on either side of them were placed, a little further downstage, two walls on
their sides. Another wall on its side led back from the vertical walls at about a 145?
angle. In front of the two sets of walls on their sides were two smallerwalls, both with
side returns. The smallest of these created the chairman'spodium. On the far sides of
the stage were large lettered signs, indicatingthe places of the left and right. Presiding
over the Parliament was its chairman, who stood at the center podium. When the
Communistdeputies on the right made a noise, he smiled nicely and rang his bell, but
when a noise was made by the left-handFascist deputies,he rangthe bell and looked at
them very severely.

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evening
palace
episode
a drunken brawl and a bombing. Mikhail Zharov played Pan Tsheteshevsky in this
episode, where he sang a song and danced a mazurka with Jenya Bengis. She was short
and he tall, and that difference made their dance a very comic one.

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Episode 6-"D.E."
A Soviet stadium was created by the use of a fence set across the front of the stage;
a sign in an arch in the center of the fence read "Navy Men." In front of the fence, sat a
man, well-lit by a lamp from the side wall, who played the accordion as the men behind
him sang and marched. The Bolsheviks triumphed in this scene, which included Biomechanical routines and energetic sports exercises performed by Meyerhold's students,
actual sailors from the war fleets, and komsomols. They engaged in a real soccer game
and danced an acrobatic polka. In this propaganda finale to the first act, the Red Army
appeared tunneling its way through to America to free the world from D.E.

Act II-Episode 7-"The Fox-TrottingEurope"

Berlin was attacked by the French, but the celebrants at the Cafe Rome were
untouched by the violence. The scene took place at the side of the stage, the night
club's name strung between the stage wall and one of three upright screens on the right
of the stage. Two screens on their sides angled toward the rear wall, and a vertical screen
with a low window attached to it was at the rear of the actual playing space.
Men dressed in tuxedoes and officers and captains of the Imperial Navy sat at the
cabaret tables with beautiful girls dressed ir the latest Paris fashion: knee-length backless dresses. They all sipped cocktails through straws and looked at the stage where girls
in long stockings and embroidered panties did tap dancing and the Charleston. Mikhail
Zharov played the master of ceremonies and introduced the stage acts as the decadent

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Westerners danced the shimmy and the popular fox-trot. (The fox-trot was viewed in
the Soviet Union as an evil to the world proletariat.) When Zharov found himself bored
by his role, he recited foreign movie titles with no special meaning as asides to the
audience. He also enjoyed the chance to improvise daily with fresh topicalities.

Courtesyot HarvardTheatreCollection.

Episode8-"Comintern"
Having been thwarted in his attempts to take over the Soviet Union, Jens Boot fled
the country.

Episode9-"The Dollarand DynamiteIs UnderstoodEverywhere"

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Episode 10-"The Dinnerof the Lords"

A table covered by a white tablecloth and laden with food was at center stage atop
a Persian carpet. Behind it was a man dressed in white. Around him four bourgeois
English gentlemen sat, smoked, conversed, and rocked in bentwood rockers. Each lord
devoured another until the last died of repletion.

Episode 11-"Revolution in Ethnography"

Five lords, led by the President of a geographic organization, raced about the stage
as the Scottish Lord Hagg rested on his walking stick.

Act Ill-Episode 12-"This Is WhatHas RemainedFrom France"

Cybil, played by Zinaida Raikh, Meyerhold's wife, fell in love with Hardayle.

Episode 13-"The Steel Hand"

A New York Communist newspaper was attacked in the name of law and order.

Episode 14-"De Jure andDe Facto"

Episode 15-"An Unexpected Dividend"
Workmen went out on strike at the American Twist factory.

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CRITICISM
Despite the antipathy of some of the stricter party critics and their warnings about
the ills of risque dances and loud music, D.E. was an undeniable success with the general
public. There were problems for Meyerhold, though, when audiences found the depiction of the Communist world deadly boring in its opposition to the glittering, sinful
pleasures of the West. Throughout the Soviet scenes, the audience yawned and coughed
as huge sailors in tee shirts did gymnastics and commisars gave boring speeches. Their
eyes lit up, however, as they watched the temptations of the Capitalist world. The press,
though interested in the critical combination of revolutionary content and new theatrical form, was disappointed by Meyerhold's skepticism. They felt the pictorial descriptions of the achievements of the October Revolution had disappeared and were instead
expressed in this picture of a Communist world that was unpleasant because of its
grayness and sameness. Meyerhold was accused by many of "urbanism," and of being
fascinated with life in a bourgeois city, or of "infantile leftism," a dangerous misunderstanding of the world situation that could certainly encourage complacency.
On the other hand, Boris Gusman, in one of his reviews, praised this new type of
political spectacle that united sharp agitation, content, and theatrical form. For him,
there were three new elements in the production that made it outstanding. First, there
was the simplicity of the exterior make-up, the set. Instead of old-fashioned painted sets
that had been changed to cubes and later to constructions, Meyerhold used moveable
walls that took part in the stage action and were well within the reach of worker's
theatrical clubs. Secondly, Meyerhold used agitational posters to a great extent. Actual
political slogans, citations, and portraits were introduced without slowing down the
action. Again, this was a method already being used in the worker's clubs. Thirdly, the
traditional theatrical platform had been overcome. Meyerhold had proven that theatre
could employ almost a cinematic tempo with its rapid change of scenes.
Mologin, the man instrumental in revising D.E. in 1930, argued that Meyerhold in
D.E. applied "a new method of treating the text. The text is almost like that of a
newspaper, by no means theatrical; however, with the aid of a great variety of theatrical
forms and by putting tremendous dynamics into the action, this text becomes light and
convincing."
Other critics praised Meyerhold's contemporaneity and his didactic abilities. Werner
called Meyerhold's work in D.E. "the synthesis and the ruin of 'theatre,' in the best
meaning of the words, and characteristic of the present Russian situation and its future
possibilities." Kvasman was amazed at the agitation strength of the play. "More workers
should see it. We have to propagandize it. Here every actor is both an agitator and a
propagandist of world revolution .... Thank you, comrades."
Gusman, writing again in "On the Threshhold," an article in Theatrical October,
defined D.E. as a deepened agitation play of the period moving through NEP towards
Socialism. The form, as well as the content, advanced the cause. "The artistic event can
only be harmonious and impress the viewer when the content is organically undivided,
melted in with the form, when this is like an organic whole. It is understood that any
composition of art can be as strong a weapon of class struggle as our others, but it is
necessary to understand that the form of this composition bound together with the
content agitates in the same way as the content." Gusman explained that Meyerhold did
not build on thin air in creating a newly acclaimed proletariat theatre. Instead, he
worked through a provisionary period, borrowing from the richness of bourgeois culture, from the sources of ancient and modem theatre.

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John Dos Passos, in a review of the production in The New Republic as it neared
the end of its run, proclaimed it the theatre of the future. "The whole production plays
on every conceivable sort of theatrical method with an absolutely hair-raising ingenuity:
Chinese theater, Kabuki, American burlesque, French vaudeville, Chatelet melodrama,
Reinhardt mob productions, social satire a la Shaw and Ibsen, musical comedy.... The
result is the whole possibilities of the theater packed into one evening. I felt that the
thread of the story was too flimsy to carry this tremendous exhibition of versatility, but
as a school for directors, 'D.E.' ought to hold the same position that the famous
Michelangelo cartoon of soldiers bathing held for Italian painting. If there is going to be
any more theater, the future of it lies in that production."

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