Meyerhold and Mayakovsky — mutual influence in Mystery-Bouffe

In his numerous commentaries and revisions to Mystery-Bouffe, Vladimir Mayakovsky inserts into his text the possibility of variation, much as if it were the basic scenario (canovaccio) used for improvisation in the commedia dell’arte. Reliable information about how familiar he was with the principles of commedia dell'arte has not been preserved, but it is quite possible that he absorbed some of the vast creative experience that Vsevolod Meyerhold had accumulated in the commedia alla maschera by 1918, when he and Mayakovsky co-directed the first theatrical production of Mystery-Bouffe. According to Konstantin Rudnitsky, Mystery-Bouffe was important in that collaboration be- cause it led Meyerhold to use the “montage of attractions” avant la lettre and, moreover the idea of montage moved from playwriting onto the stage — thus from Mayakovsky to Meyerhold — and only after their collaboration was Meyerhold able to gather notable quantities of “attractions” and to juxtapose them in different ways. This paper explores how Mayakovsky and Meyerhold influenced one another through their collaboration in Mystery- Bouffe, each bringing an element (respectively, techniques from the commedia dell’arte and the montage of attractions) that proved crucial to the further evolution of this drama.