What did Bakhtin think about the theatre? That it was outdated? That is ‘stopped being a serious genre’ after Shakespeare? Could a thinker to whose work ideas of theatricality, visuality, and embodied activity were so central really have nothing to say about theatrical practice?

Bakhtin and Theatre is the first book to explore the relation between Bakhtin’s ideas and the theatre practice of his time. In that time, Stanislavsky co-founded the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898 and continued to develop his ideas about theatre until his death in 1938. Stanislavsky’s pupil Meyerhold embraced the Russian Revolution and created some stunningly revolutionary productions in the 1920s, breaking with the realism of his former teacher. Less than twenty years after Stanislavsky’s death and Meyerhold’s assassination, a young student called Grotowski was studying in Moscow, soon to break the mould with his Poor Theatre. All three directors challenged the prevailing notion of theatre, drawing on, disagreeing with and challenging each other’s ideas. Bakhtin’s early writings about action, character and authorship provide a revealing framework for understanding this dialogue between these three masters of Twentieth Century theatre.

巴赫金对戏剧有什么看法？认为它已经过时了？莎士比亚之后 "不再是一个严肃的流派"？一位思想家，其作品中的戏剧性、视觉性和体现性活动的观点如此重要，难道他对戏剧实践真的无话可说吗？

《巴赫金与戏剧》是第一本探讨巴赫金的思想与他那个时代的戏剧实践之间关系的书。在那个时代，斯坦尼斯拉夫斯基于1898年共同创立了莫斯科艺术剧院，并继续发展他的戏剧思想，直到他于1938年去世。斯坦尼斯拉夫斯基的学生梅耶荷德接受了俄国革命，并在20世纪20年代创作了一些令人惊叹的革命性作品，打破了他以前老师的现实主义。在斯坦尼斯拉夫斯基去世和迈耶霍尔德被暗杀后不到20年，一个名叫格罗托夫斯基的年轻学生在莫斯科学习，很快就用他的《贫民剧院》打破了这个模式。这三位导演都对当时的戏剧观念提出了挑战，他们相互借鉴，相互反对，相互挑战。巴赫金关于行动、角色和作者的早期著作为理解这三位二十世纪戏剧大师之间的对话提供了一个启示性框架。