Vakhtangov rose in the ranks at the Moscow Art Theatre, and by 1920 he was in charge of his own theatre studio. Four years after his death, the studio was named
Vakhtangov Theatre in his honor.
Technique Vakhtangov was greatly influenced both by the theatrical experiments of
Vsevolod Meyerhold and the more psychological techniques of his teachers,
Konstantin Stanislavski and
Leopold Sulerzhitsky, and the co-founder of the MAT
Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. His productions incorporated masks, music, dance, abstract costume,
avant-garde sets as well as a detailed analysis of the texts of plays and the psychological motivations of its characters. On the
Actors Studio webpage,
Lee Strasberg is quoted as saying: "If you examine the work of the
Stanislavski System as made use of by Stanislavski, you see one result. If you examine it in the work of one of his great pupils, Vakhtangov — who influenced our thinking and activity — you will see a completely different result. Vakhtangov's work was skillfully done, his use of
the Method even more brilliant and more imaginative than Stanislavski’s, and yet Vakhtangov achieved totally different results." The
German theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht argued that Vakhtangov's approach was "the Stanislavski-Meyerhold complex
before the split rather than its reconciliation". Brecht outlined the main aspects of Vakhtangov's work as: • Theatre is theatre. • The how, not the what. • More composition. • Greater inventiveness and imagination. ´s
Princess Turandot, performance by Yevgeny Vakhtangov (1922) He identifies a commonality with his own
'demonstrating' element in acting, but argues that Vakhtangov's method lacks the social insight and pedagogical function of Brecht's own
Gestic form: "when Vakhtangov's actor says 'I'm not laughing, I'm demonstrating laughter', one still doesn't learn anything from his demonstration".
Notable productions His most notable production was
Princess Turandot, based on
the play Turandot by
Carlo Gozzi, which has played at the Vakhtangov Theatre ever since 1922 (the year of his death). Another famous production directed by Vakhtangov in the same year was
S. An-sky's
The Dybbuk with the
Habimah theater troupe. ==Death and legacy==