Sentenced to death by firing squad on 1 February 1940, he was executed the next day. In 1939, Meyerhold was arrested and accused of anti-government political activities. His theatre was closed down in January 1938. Meyerhold was strongly opposed to socialist realism, and at the beginning of the 1930s, when Stalin was clamping down on all avant-garde art and experimentation, his works were proclaimed antagonistic and alien to the Soviet people. He developed a number of body expressions that his actors would use to portray specific emotions and characters. Meyerhold connected psychological and physiological processes and focused on learning gestures and movements as a way of expressing emotion outwardly. The actors participating in Meyerhold's productions acted according to the principles of biomechanics, a system of actor training that was later taught in a special school created by Meyerhold. Meyerhold fiercely confronted the principles of theatrical academism, claiming that they were incapable of finding a common language that could reflect the new reality. He founded his own theatre in 1922, which was known as The Meyerhold Theatre and lasted until 1938. The Russian Revolution of 1917 made Meyerhold one of the most enthusiastic activists of the new Soviet Theatre. The following passage is sourced from Andrey Smirnov, Sound in Z: Experiments in Sound and Electronic Music in Early 20th-century Russia, London, 2013, p 117.
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