Soviet

and
Bast-Buropean
Drama, Theatre
and
Film
Volume 8, No. 1
May, 1988
SEEDTF is a publication of the Institute for Contemporary East Euro-
pean and Soviet Drama and Theatre under the auspices of the Center
for Advanced Study in Theatre Arts (CASTA), Graduate Center, City
Uni versity of New York.The Institute Office is Room 1206A, City
University Graduate Center, 33 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
10036. All subscription requests and submissions should be addressed
to the Editors of SEEDTF: Daniel Gerould and Alma Law, CASTA,
Theatre Program, City University Graduate Center, 33 West 42nd
Street, New York, NY 10036.
EDITORS
Daniel Gerould
Alma Law
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Richard Brad Medoff
ADVISORY BOARD
Edwin Wilson, Chairman
Marvin Carlson
Leo Hecht
Martha W. Coigney
PRODUCTION STAFF
Alan Hemingway
J . Kathleen Curry
Copyright 1988 CAST A
SEEDTF has a very liberal reprinting policy. Journals and newsletters
which desire to reproduce articles, reviews, and other materials which
have appeared in SEEDTF may do so, as long as the following provi-
sions are met:
a. Permission to reprint must be requested from SEEDTF in writing
before the fact.
b. Credit to SEEDTF must be given in the reprint.
c. Two copies of the publication in which the reprinted material has
appeared must be furnished to the Editor of SEEDTF immediately
upon publication.
2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Editorial Policy .................................................. ............................................. .4
Upcoming Events ............... .... ....... .................................................. ................ 5
,;US-USSR Commision on Theatre and Dance
Meets in Princeton." Marvin Carlson ................. ........................................... ?
"1987 -88 Season: A Survey of
Productions." Alma Law ................................................................ ............... 10
"! Shall Never Return: A Manifesto."
Tadeusz Kantor .............................................................................................. 16
"Abandon All Hope?--Tadeusz Kantor's Vision of An Artist's Role in
Modern Society."
Michal Kobialka ............................................................................................. 22
"Ion Sava, The First Promoter of Re-theatricalization in Romania."
Bogdan Mischiu ............................................................................................. 28
"The American Film Festival
in Moscow." Leo Hecht .............. ........ .... ...... .... ............................................. 31
Reviews
"'Pure Form' is Pure Fun in Witkacy's Country House."
Judith Brussell ................................................................................................ 33
"Theme." Jeff Bronc ....................................... ............................................... 36
Contributors ..................................................................... .................... .......... 38
Playscripts in Translation Series ................................................................. .39
Subscription Policy ...................................................... ......... ........................ .41
3
EDITORIAL POLICY
Manuscripts in the following categories are solicited: articles of
no more than 2,500 words; book reviews; performance and film
reviews; and bibliographies. Please bear in mind that all of the above
submissions must concern themselves either with contemporary
materials on Soviet and East European theatre, drama and film, or with
new approaches to older materials in recently published works, or new
performances of older plays. In other words, we would welcome sub-
missions reviewing innovative performances of Gogo! or recently pub-
lished books on Gogo!, for example, but we could not use original arti-
cles discussing Gogo! as a playwright.
Although we welcome translations of articles and reviews from
foreign publications, we do require copyright release statements.
We will also gladly publish announcements of special events,
new book releases, job opportunities and anything else which may be of
interest to our discipline. All submissions are refereed.
All submissions must be typed double-spaced and carefully
proofread. Submit two copies of each manuscript and attach a stamped,
self addressed envelope. The Chicago Manual of Style should be fol-
lowed. Transliterations should follow the Library of Congress system.
Submissions will be evaluated, and authors will be notified after approx-
imately four weeks.
All submissions, inquires and subscription requests should be
directed to:
Daniel Gerould or Alma Law
CAST A, Theatre Program
Graduate Center of CUNY
33 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036
4
UP COMING EVENTS
Theatre
In San Francisco at The One-Act Theatre Company A Private
View by Vaclav Havel and translated by Vera Blackwell will run March
25-April 24.
The Jester Queen, a mime piece by Czech clowns Bolislav
Polifka and Sharlott Povkis, will be presented at the Los Angeles
Theatre Center April 10-June 5.
Dramatic Risks will be presenting Cinzano by Luidmila
Petrushevsakya as part of their Staged Brunchtime Readings at Phebe's
Place in New York on April 2. See Alma Law's article for details on an
interesting production of this play in Moscow.
Ostrovsky's play Diary of a Scoundrel translated by Erik Brog-
ger will be performed at the Dallas Theatre Center April 21-May 15.
The State Theatre of Lithuania from Vilnius will be visiting the
United States in May and performing Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and the
play Pirosmani, Pirosmani by V. Korastylev based on the life of Nikolay
Pirosmanashvili. May 10-22 they will appear at the Alley Theatre in
Houston before moving on to the International Theatre Festival of
Chicago May 25-29.
The First New York Festival of the Arts celebrating interna-
tional music, dance, theatre, film, and television June 11-July 11 will
include Tadeusz Kantor's Cricot 2 presenting the American premiere of
I Shall Never Return at the LaMaMa Annex Theatre June 14-June 26
and Gardzienice will perform Avvakum directed by Wlodzimierz
Staniewski at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine June 14-June 25.
From April 22 to May 14 The Film Forum 2 in New York will
be showing seven films by Tarkovsky. All the following information is
reprinted from their flyer for the event.
April 22-24:
1. Nostalghia (1983). A Russian expatriate wanders wintry
Italian landscapes while returning in memory to his homeland, as an
inspired madman finds the fate of the world hanging on a candle's flight
across a dry pool.
2. The Steamroller and the Violin (1960). A shy, young violin
student, unaccepted by his peers, is befriended by a steamroller driver.
5
April 25-26:
1. The Mirror (1974). His real father's poems studded
throughout the soundtrack and some locations the actual ones of his
childhood, this is Tarkovsky's most personal and autobiographical film,
moving back and forth between three time frames with the same actress
playing both the protagonist's mother and wife
2. Ivan's Childhood (1962) His first feature film.Tarkovsky's
vision is already bursting the bonds of his genre in this portrait of a 12-
year-old runner and spy whose only life has been war. The religious
imagery was noted imediately; but the eye-popping black and white
photography, surrealistic episodes, and juxtaposition of nature and
carnage are precursors of the uniquely personal works to come.
April 27-28:
The Sacrifice (1986). Shot in Sweden, Sacrifice at first evokes
Bergman with a small group of familiar players in a tense isolated situa-
tion; but soon it expands to Tarkovsky's cosmic view, as faced with
nuclear holocaust, a mystic sacrifice must be offered to restore the
world.
April 29-May 1:
Stalker (1979). Tormented seekers venture into a forbidden
region called The Zone, guided by a licensed "Stalker." Based on a story
by the Strugatsky brothers.
May 2-4:
Andrei Rub/ev ( 1965). An epic of medieval times as icon
master Rublev observes the ambiguities and horrors of his era until a
novice's attempt to cast a monstrous bell restores his faith in life and
art. Shelved for seven years, then released cut, this showing will be of a
complete version.
Reminders (previously listed productions)
April 29-June 5 Lucien Pintele directs The Cherry Orchard at
Arena Stage, Washington, D.C.
April 15 Laurence Senelick's new translation of The Cherry
Orchard opens at Ensemble Repertory Theatre in Los Angeles.
March 26-May 8 Growacki's Hunting Cockroaches at the Alley
Theatre, Houston.
6
US- USSR COMMISSION ON THEATRE AND DANCE MEETS IN
PRINCETON
by Marvin Carlson
While much of the world's attention was focused during the
week of December 7, 1987, on the summit meeting in Washington, an
important if far less publicized Soviet-American meeting was being held
at Princeton with a much more immediate relevance to those interested
in scholarly exchange between the two nations. Representatives from
the Theatre Union of the USSR and the American Council of Learned
Societies drew up a Protocol to establish an ongoing US-USSR Com-
mission on Theatre and Dance Studies. This Protocol, which was signed
on DeC:ember 11, established a program of collaboration for 1988-1989
which included the following items:
1. A) The first in a series of annual conferences in Theatre and
Dance Studies will be held in the USA in the late fall of
1988 in connection with the 125th anniversary of the birth of
K.S. Stanislavsky. The subject will be "Stanislavsky Our
Contemporary." The sides will also examine the possibility
. of holding a Soviet exhibition on Stanislavsky concurrently
with the conference. On the American side, the coor-
dinators are Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of
Drama, Tufts University, and Adrian Hall, Artistic Director,
Dallas Theatre Center and Trinity Repertory Company. On
the Soviet side, the coordinator is Anatoly Mironovich
Smeliansky, Assistant Chief Director for Repertory and
Prorector of the Drama School of the Moscow
Art/Secretary of the Board, Theatre Union of the USSR.
B) A conference on "Theatre and Dance Studies Today:
Methods, Problems, and Perspectives " will be held in the
USSR in the late Spring of 1989. Seven American special-
ists will travel to the USSR for up to 10 days. The coor-
dinators on both sides will be determined at a later date.
2. A working meeting will be held in the USSR in the Spring of
1988 to plan a joint exhibition and other activities dealing
with Diaghilev and the Contemporary Dance Theatre. Fur-
ther working meetings may be scheduled if necessary. The
American coordinators are Selma-Jeanne Cohen, Editor- in-
Chief, International Encyclopedia of the Dance, and Bruce
Marks, Artistic Director, Boston Ballet. On the Soviet side,
the coordinator is Elizaveta Yakovlevna Surits, Senior
Researcher, All-Union Institute of Art Studies.
3. The sides will begin the exchange of materials relevant to
the performance heritages of the USA and the USSR with a
7
view to possible joint publication. Both sides look forward
to further discussion of this project during the conference
on "Stanislavsky Our Contemporary." On the American
side, the coordinator of these first discussions is Laurence
Senelick and on the Soviet side, the coordinator is Anatoly
Mironovich Smeliansky.
4. A program of exchange of specialists in theatrical history
and dance will be initiated with the travel to the USSR of
two American specialists for 3-4 weeks in I 988 and of two
Soviet specialists to the USA for 3-4 weeks this same year
for work in history and/or contemporary study and practice.
Two further exchanges will take place the following year,
coordinated by members of the Commission on both sides,
and the sides will examine the possibility of expanding this
activity in the future.
5. Both sides will seek to facilitate the participation by theatre
and dance specialists in the national conferences of the
other country.
This Protocol was signed by Kalman A. Burnim, President of
the American Society for Theatre Research on behalf of the American
Council of Learned Societies, and by Aleksei Bartoshevich, the Secre-
tary of the Board, for the Theatre Union of the USSR.
This Protocol was in turn authorized by the signing of an
Agreement on Cooperation between the ACLS and the Theatre Union
of the USSR on the same date. This agreement established an on-going
joint Commission on Theatre and Dance for the development of con-
tacts between specialists in these fields in the USA and the USSR. The
Commission is to have as its main tasks the establishment and imple-
mentation of co-operation in the fields of theatre studies and practice,
dance history, dance theory and criticism, and in particular conferences
and symposia, group and individual research projects, study of con-
temporary performance and training, exhibits and publications.
The Soviet Delegation at these meetings was composed of
Aleksei Vladimovich Bartoshevich, a theatre critic, Head of Sector of
the All-Union Institute of Art Studies and Secretary of the Board of the
Theatre Union of the USSR; Valery Gershovich Khazanov, Chief of
International Department of the Theatre Union of the USSR; Georgy
Davidovich Lordkipanidze, a director and the First Secretary of the
Theatre Union of the Georgian SSR; Konstantin Lazarevich Rudnitsky,
a theatre critic and Senior Researcher of the All-Union Institute of Art
Studies; Mikhail Filippovich Shatrov, a playwright and Secretary of
Board of the Theatre Union of the USSR; Anatoly Mironovich
Smeliansky, theatre critic, Assistant Chief Director of Repertory of the
Moscow Art Theatre, Prorector of the Drama School of the Moscow
Art Theatre, and Secretary of the Board of the Theatre Union of the
8
USSR; Robert Robertovich Sturua, Chief Director of the Rustaveli
Theatre and Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of Georgian SSR; and
Elizaveta Yakovlevna Surits, Dance critic and Senior Researcher of the
All-Union Institute of Art Studies. Students of contemporary Soviet
Theatre will be interested to see that the delegation included both the
author (Shatrov) and the director (Sturua) of The Brest Peace , whose
production at the Vakhtangov Theatre in November and publication in
Novy Mir last spring, has been one of the key events in glasnot as it has
affected the Russian theatre. (See Alma Law's article in this issue for
further comments on this production.) Mikhail F. Shatrov continues to
test the boundaries of g/asnot through the portrayal of Stalin in his latest
play Onward ... Onward ... Onward.
The American Delegation at the meetings was composed of
Kalman A. Burnim, President of the American Society for Theatre
Research and Fletcher Professor of Drama Emeritus of Tufts
University; Martha W. Coigney, Director of the International Theatre
Institute of the USA; Adrian Hall, Artistic Director of the Dallas
Theatre Center and the Trinity Repertory Company; Bruce Marks,
Artistic Director of the Boston Ballet; Marvin Carlson, Distinguished
Professor of Theatre and Comparative Literature of the Graduate
School of the City University of New York; Selma-Jeanne Cohen,
dance historian and Editor-in-Chief of the International Encyclopedia
of the Dance; Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama of Tufts
University; and Wesley A. Fisher, Secretary to the Commissions with
the USSR of the ACLS and International Research and Exchange
Board.
The Princeton meetings were held in the William Seymour
Theatre Collection at the Princeton University Library through the
courtesy of Mary Ann Jensen, the Curator.
9
1987-88 Season: A Survey of Productions
by Alma Law
"What's worth seeing in Moscow this season?" There was a
time when that question could easily be answered by naming certain
theatres, the Taganka, the "Sovremennik," The Malaia Bronnia (for
Efros's productions), in the sure knowledge that one would almost
certainly be seeing the best Moscow had to offer. Today, that's no
longer the case. Good theatre still abounds (in spite of everyone's com-
plaints to the contrary), but it's more likely to turn up almost anywhere
from a basement to a cafe on the edge of town than on the boards at
one of the thirty-five established professional theatres. Though here,
too, there are notable exceptions such as Getta Yanovskaya's produc-
tion of Bulgakov's A Dog's Heart at the Theatre of the Young Spectator,
which continues to be one of the hottest tickets in town.
From a recent marathon of theatre going in the Soviet Union,
I've chosen ten Moscow productions as some of my favorites, and
because they reflect what seems to me to be a new spirit of improvisa-
tion and experimentation sweeping through the Soviet theatre today.
Soviet theatre is in a period of transition, not only because of
the reforms launched by Mikhail Gorbachev, but also because of the
transfer of artistic leadership in the theatre to a new generation. As
younger directors search for ways to return theatre to its spiritual and
ritualistic roots, style is replacing utilitarian propaganda and improvisa-
tional freedom is shaking up the rational exposition of prescribed forms.
Actually, the artistic experimentation we're seeing now, as
exemplified by many of the productions mentioned below, has little to
do with current reforms other than making visible experimental work
that have been around for some time. Anatoly Vasilyev, whose direct-
ing in my view perhaps best exemplifies the new wave, has made it very
clear in interviews that he has always worked experimentally, both
organizationally and artistically. And as director Mikhail Mokeev com-
mented when asked what effect the reforms had had on him, "Well,
before no one could talk about our work, now they can."
1. Six Characters in Search of an Author, directed by Anatoly
Vasilyev at his School for Dramatic Art, is the kind of production one
could watch over and over again and never tire of. (In fact, I saw it three
times.) The combination of visual effects, music and movement alone is
so rich in detail that each viewing is yet another voyage of discovery. It's
also a production that defies description, at least in just a few sentences.
Vasilyev staged Six Characters with his fifteen students from the
Theatre Institute, all of whom are actors and directors from the
provinces. Through improvisation, repetition, duplication of roles,
Vasilyev out-Pirandellos Pirandello in examining just what is theatre,
what is art, and where is the borderline between life and art, questions
the director considers key to all of his work. The performance takes
place in the large white-painted basement room at 20 Vorovsky Street
10
where Vasilyev's School is presently located and it's tailor made for
drawing the audience into this Pirandellian world as well. Though per-
haps seduction would be a better word, as I don't think I've ever seen an
audience more willing to go along with everything from finding the seat-
ing arrangement all jumbled following each intermission, to being
drawn into active participation in Vasilyev's "game." Not surprisingly,
this production has excited considerable international attention; it has
been invited to virtually all of the major European festivals this summer
and fall.
2. Italian Vermouth Without an Intermission marks Roman
Kozak's debut as a director at the Liudmila Roshkovan's "Chelovek"
[Man] Theatre Studio on Skatertnyi Lane in the center of Moscow. The
plot line of Liudmila Petrushevskaya's one-act play, Cinzano, on which
the production is based, is simple enough. Kostya and Valya turn up at
Pasha's apartment to pay back the money one of them owes him.
There's vermouth on sale downstairs, and instead of repaying the
money, this trio of drinking buddies spends it on vermouth and proceeds
to get roaring drunk.
In a conversation following the performance, Kozak said that
he wanted to present this play written in the early seventies from the
point of view of today's young people. In all, he and his actors spent
four months developing the production, first through improvisation and
musical etudes around the idea of a "noise concert," and only later put-
ting in the text and selecting those improvisational segments that would
remain in the finished production. The result is quite extraordinary, as
the world of non-verbal communication Kozak has created expressed
the camaraderie and pain these three men share far more effectively
than words alone.
3. The Emigres, also at the Theatre-Studio "Chelovek, " intro-
duces Polish playwright SHlwomir Mrozek to Moscow audiences. Direc-
tor Mikhail Mokeev has wisely avoided the trap of staging this two-
character play as merely a picture of emigre misery. Nor does he turn
these two alienated men into caricatures of an intellectual, AA, and a
worker XX. What he does offer the audience is a gripping, at times
hilarious, power struggle between polar opposites whose lives are locked
together by self -hatred and a desperate need to destroy each other.
This "game," played out on New Year's eve, fascinates as the two
expatriates strip away each other's illusions, the duel shifting back and
forth, at times reaching an impasse, a kind of musical pause, before one
of them initiates the next round. The setting is wonderfully naturalistic:
ugly old beds, a table, two chairs, heating ducts and noisy plumbing.
And yet this production is anything but naturalistic kitchen sink drama,
rather it is poetry on the highest level.
4. Columbine's Apartment, directed by Roman Viktiuk, com-
bines four of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya's one-act plays (Love, The Stair
Landing, Andante, and Columbine's Apartment). In spite of its flaws,
Viktiuk's experiment here with trying, in his words, "to unite
Petrushevskaya's pictures of life in the U.S.S.R. with the aesthetics of
11
Ionesco and Beckett" is well worth seeing. For while it doesn't always
work, the production nevertheless offers a salutary antidote to treating
Petrushevskaya's dramaturgy as tape recorded life and sociological com-
mentary. There's much in all of Lyudmila's writing that is very funny,
and here for a change this certainly comes through.
The lead in all four plays is taken by a twig of an actress, Liia
Akhedzhakova, a Russian Lily Tomlin with an extraordinary gift for
timing. She's at her best in Andante, where she turns the tables on a
drug-taking menage a trois home on diplomatic leave, and in Colum-
bine's Apartment, in which she plays a predatory aging actress who gives
acting lessons to young actors at her apartment. The farce, done as
commedia dell-arte, is broad and delicious. The high point comes when
Pierrot (the young actor) emerges from the bedroom dressed in a tutu
just as Columbine's director husband, Harlequin, walks in.
All four plays are acted on a tiny elevated stage, to the
accompaniment of live music. The audience is in a wonderful mood by
the end of the performance, and everyone applauds rhythmically and
happily, giving the actors countless curtain calls. Clearly this is what
Moscovites are looking for when they go to the theatre these days--some
clever acting, lively music and colorful atmosphere.
5. Phaedra, at the Taganka offers another intriguing look at
Roman Viktiuk's experimentation with performance. Viktiuk has spent
two years working on this production, much of the time taken with
training the actors, with the help of several ballet instructors, including
one from the Bejart company, to move like dancers. In fact, the produc-
tion is almost more ballet than dramatic theatre, and in that respect,
very reminiscent of Tairov's productions in the teens and twenties.
The poet Marina Tsvetaeva wrote Phaedra in 1928 as the sec-
ond part of an unfinished trilogy of plays in verse entitled, Aphrodite's
Rage. In presenting this drama on the Soviet stage for the first time
(perhaps for the first time anywhere), Viktiuk builds his production
around the play's autobiographical themes of life, love and death-suicide
by including Demidova's voice delivering excerpts both from Tsvetaeva's
diary and from the actress's own writings, including an account of the
visit she and Vladimir Vysotsky made to Elubuga to find the house
where Tsvetaeva lived and where she committed suicide in 1941. The
leitmotif from Tsvetaeva's diary repeated over and over is, " ... I don't
want to die, I want not to be .... "
The production is performed in the new theatre at the
Taganka, using only the brick wall and windows of the bare stage as
decor. The only props are a piece of rope, a newspaper--the identifying
sign for Tsvetaeva's husband, Sergei Efron, and four stoles: gold lame
(Phaedra), natural linen, red and black. It's a brilliant lesson in how
little is required to create genuine theatre.
6. The Boat and The 0 fficia/ Letter at the Theatre-Studio
headed by Aleksei Levinsky can currently be seen in the "Brown Room"
at the Ermolova Theatre where Levinsky and his actors will be working
for the next two years. Levinsky stages these two short dramas as expe-
12
riments in trying to preserve the original concept of "folk" theatre as a
combination of improvisation and singing around a series of archetypi-
cal situations, very small story fragments out of which one could develop
an entire play if one desired. The Boat, about a band of brigands
travelling down the Volga, is one of those popular Russian folk plays
that emerged in various versions in the nineteenth century and was
eventually preserved in written form. The Official Letter, based on a
well-known children's story from the 1930s, tells of a young Bolshevik
soldier on a mission during the Civil War to deliver an envelope con-
taining military orders. The young soldier loses the envelope when his
horse drowns, but he continues on to deliver the message verbally.
When he is caught by the Whites, he discovers to his horror that he
hadn't lost the envelope after all, it had slipped down into his trousers.
In desperation he decides to eat it, leaving only a blue tongue as evi-
dence.'
Levinsky notes that his main challenge in doing this kind of
"non-dogmatic performance" (his words) is to avoid on the one hand the
stereotypical notion of what folk theatre is, and on the other the dual
problem of "What's the message?" and the charge of mocking the narod
(the people). Levinsky works with professional actors, training them in
everything from Biomechanics to commedia dell'arte. He also has the
help of an eminent voice coach (who also happens to be his mother) in
teaching his actors the traditional forms of Russian folk singing.
7. Pushkin and Natalie is a chamber production about the Rus-
sian poet and his future wife, Natalia Goncharova. Director Kama
Ginkas calls it a performance of "interaction" between the text, the
theme of love, and the actor in which the audience, depending on its
makeup and receptivity, also plays a greater or lesser role. It has been
performed in all sorts of spaces, including a kitchen and there is always
a great deal of improvisation making use of the physical context of the
particular performing space. The evening I saw it, for example, at one
point the actor yanked open the window of the rehearsal room where
the performance was taking place, and stepped out on the ledge, walk-
ing along it and looking back through the glass at the audience as he
continued speaking.
The performance opens with Viktor Gvozditsky, the actor,
transforming himself into Pushkin, all the while quoting from descrip-
tions of the poet by his contemporaries. It's all done very comically, and
the audience's laughter helps to break down the barrier between it and
the performer.
There follows an hour of segments from letters, both Pushkin's
own and ones he received, in part relating his problems with his censor,
others commenting on everyday life. The central focus, though, is on his
love for Natalia Goncharova, and on the decisive period of his life from
1830 to the beginning of 1831 when he married her. Also present, sit-
ting to one side, is a chorus of peasant girls who sing the traditional
song-chants (pesnopenie) that would have been appropriate among the
peasants in Pushkin's day.
l3
8. Ward No. 6, one of Anton Chekhov's most brilliant prose
works, provides the basis for an extraordinary experiment in improvisa-
tional directed by Yurii Eremin at the Theatre of the Soviet Army.
Clearly influenced by Grotowski and Mikhail Chekhov, Ere min and his
actors have taken the themes of this grim story and used them as the
framework for a ninety-minute improvisation etude. According to
Eremin, there's not a word of Chekhov's text in the production, all the
dialogue is made up, each actor-character responding to the situation as
it unfolds.
The performance takes place in a room somewhere high up in
the huge labyrinth of the Theatre of the Soviet Army (the largest theatre
in the world). The audience, numbering about fifty, gathers in a room
off the stage entrance, and at 7:45 p.m. an orderly in a hospital uniform
leads everyone through underground corridors, up a winding staircase,
floor after floor, through more corridors until they reach a grim cham-
ber with a wood-slatted "room," the ward, in the center of it. Around it,
chairs are placed facing the ward, chalked numbers on the slats indicat-
ing where everyone is to sit. Inside the ward--more like a cage--five
patients are sitting and lying on the floor on filthy pads. One of the
patients comes around begging kopeks from the audience members
which he surrenders to Nikita, the brutish orderly.
Dr. Ragin, who has been in charge of this ward for many years,
lives entirely in his alcohol-hazed world of ideas, totally blind to the
squalor around him. When he discovers that one of the patients in the
asylum is educated, someone with whom he can carry on serious dis-
course, he begins asking, "Why is he in there and I'm out here?" The
doctor's naive idealism is no match for the new young doctor, Andrei
Kholstov's, pragmatism. Dr. Ragin is doomed from their first encounter.
Although the performance may not be as improvised as Eremin
claims, its effect is no less disturbing and emotionally draining. Chek-
hov understood better than anyone the nature of man's capacity for
brutality, and the uselessness of blind idealism in the face of it. Eremin
succeeds admirably in translating this into vivid theatrical language.
9. The Brest Peace, directed by Robert Sturua at the
Vakhtangov Theatre, is about Lenin's struggle in January 1918, to win
support for dropping out of World War I. The production rates as one
of the political sensations of the current season. But in the hands of the
eminent Georgian director, it is more than just that. Sturua very neatly
solved the problem of how to stage Mikhail Shatrov's "cut and paste"
historical docu-drama, by throwing out half of the text and using what
remained as a pretext for a brilliant spectacle,' at times verging on
vaudeville, punctuated by violent thrusts of music provided by composer
Giya Kancheli.
Mikhail Ulianov, who is himself a man of powerful emotions,
makes an extremely dynamic and non-traditional Lenin, one who does
everything from cradling a baby and flopping down on the floor, to
throwing a chair and falling on his knees before Trotsky. It's Ulianov's
show from beginning to end, the other actors faring less well by having
14
to bring to life historical personalities, including Trotsky and Bukharin,
whose names until only recently couldn't even be mentioned in the
press, much less on the stage. Vladimir Koval, as Stalin, is on surer
ground, and the ominous image of his brooding presence provides one
of the production's most vivid impressions.
Sturua is the first of a series of directors being invited to stage
productions at the Vakhtangov. Next in line will be Pyotr Fomenko who
at this writing should already be in the middle of rehearsing Sukhovo-
Kobylin's The Case. The idea is to invite directors from different direct-
ing "schools" to help bring back to life this theatre that has been virtually
destroyed by internal conflict in the last few years. Clearly, Sturua is
going to be a tough act to follow.
10. The Fruits of Enlightenment at the Mayakovsky Theatre
provides an enjoyable evening of highly professional acting in a well-
made play. In Pyotr Fomenko's witty staging of Leo Tolstoy's comedy,
every role is a cameo performance, from Nemolaeva's hypochondriacal
Anna Pavlovna, Leonid Fedorovich's wife, to Varganov's virtuoso
caricature of the pompously dogmatic doctor.
Fomenko uses the stage revolve to give a full view of life in this
eccentric household, from the front door to the kitchen. The actors's
gestures are exaggerated and precise, the movements broad--the direc-
tor even uses the auditorium to great effect when the doctor takes off on
one of his theoretical pronouncements, turning the auditorium into a
lecture hall. The tone of Tolstoy's comedy about high society's fascina-
tion with spiritualism is light-hearted as is appropriate for that genre, a
reminder for us not to take ourselves too seriously. Soviet audiences
could use more such light-hearted evenings in the theatre; it's too bad
that genuine comedy continues to be in such short supply.
15
I SHALL NEVER RETURN: A MANIFESTO
by Tadeusz Kantor
For me the notion of truth is not only a moral one but also the
condition of a work of art.
I am talking about my personal attitude toward truth, as
opposed to "philosophical," "social," "historical" truths, all of which
belong to a sphere which does not necessarily give me a guarantee of
the "real truth." By the "real truth" I understand my own, individual
truth, so that I can speak about myself in a way that can be called truth.
I have been preoccupied with this problem for some time, as I have
done a number of theatrical productions based on Witkiewicz's written
text (and not my own). And Witkiewicz's truth is not my truth. I hap-
pen to live fifty or sixty years later than he did, so I approach Wit-
kiewicz's truth in a purely semantic sense trying all the time to convey
my own truth.
Truth as the action
My truth is the action itself, which is independent from the text
(by Witkiewicz). I used to say that we do not play Witkiewicz, but that
we play with Witkiewicz. Witkiewicz had his own cards (the texts) and I
had mine--so the game was played between two truths. I was the author
of the performance and during the very process of shaping it, I tried to
put in the action my convictions and discoveries and thoughts; the text
of Witkiewicz's play was but one element of the performance, naturally
an element fully respected and treated with loyalty as a semantic text.
The point of transition
It took place in 1975, the year I started to stage performances
which were not based on a pre-existing literary text. Those were
entirely my own works, so the question of truth manifested itself dif-
ferently. I have come to understand that only I can tell the truth about
myself, i.e. about my life. My life belongs to me and no one has the
right to meddle in it or interpret it. Those works are not sustained nar-
ration or autobiography, as some historians might think. They are a
record of the functioning of my memory. The mechanism (apparatus) of
memory functions in a very special way. I call it a system of frames,
which have one common characteristic: they do not move, they contain
no action, they are still pictures, which we extract from the card file of
our memory. The images tend to p p ~ r and disappear as long as we
are in the process of reconstructing our past. It is a vain process--the
past cannot be fully reconstructed. However, it is a very fascinating
process, set in motion by our nostalgia, our colossal passion and longing
for a return to the past. Ultimately, our longing must be sufficient. The
sheer impossibility of capturing the past endows a work of art with an
enormous appeal. ;:he functioning of memory, this constant flow of
appearing and disappearing pictures, this pulsating repetitious quality is
16
one of the most important methods in the structuring of my perform-
ances, starting with The Dead Class and culminating through IVielopole.
Wielopole and Let the Artist Die.
The method of the frame
The frame must be a real one,it cannot be aesthetically con-
trived; it must be lodged in our memory in order to be reconstructed.
An example: the figure of my Father appeared in my memory as fol-
lows: his boots, the yellow of his trousers, nothing more, and then his
voice as he came home on leave from the front. During his visit he used
the crudest language imaginable so as to make a proper impression on
the local bourgeoisie. I utilized that language in the production.
The replacement
Here is another aspect (shall I say a trick?) of my method: the
replacement of a given reality by another reality. An example: the his-
tory of my family, the members of my family (Wielopo/e, Wielopole).
The point of departure is a real one (my actual family, and not an
illusory narrative artificially constructed) but this given reality has been
replaced on the stage by another one during the rehearsals, by me and
my actors, i.e. it is represented. (The verb to represent has a somewhat
dishonest ring to it for me. To represent means to show something that
existed prior to a performance. I want to avoid the verb and the func-
tion that it implies, since I want to "represent" in the performance what
is taking place exactly at that very moment before our very eyes, regard-
less of its reference to the past and to a preexisting text.)
So during the rehearsals of Wielopole we conducted extensive
research about the environment of the lowest social strata: pimps,
whores, drunks, the mentally unbalanced, hysterical women, etc. We
were, so to speak, creating that environment, in an almost literal sense,
through the use of improvisational situations and bits of slang. At a
certain moment this environment started to enact the story of my family . .
The members of my family had merged, so to speak, with the types of
the lowest social rank. In this way I achieved, I think, a certain truth, by
means of some mystifications (which are the base of art), and avoided a
theatre in which illusion battles with reality. (A total avoidance of illu-
sion in the theatre is impossible--except in a happening, which we also
know to be impossibl e. At the most we can hint that reality is vic-
torious, but we cannot exclude illusion totally.) So the truth which I
have achieved is a truth by mystification.
A defense of the Kantor archives
For some time now I've experienced a growing inner need for
documentation--it can be attributed to advanced age, a period when one
wishes to summarize one's life and protect oneself against any future
interpretations by historians. Besides, it is one of the strongest obses-
sions of my life: the need to put on file all that pertains to my work and
creativity. Documentation is an analysis of one's creative work and its
17
processes, enabling us to see the recurring ele ments and thus assisting
in our development. Besides, I am afraid that a work of art alone has
no chance of survival in my own country. I am not bound tO my works
emotionally. I dislike, for example, to see my paintings hanging on the
walls. What I am concerned about is the preservation of the discovery
of an idea and the ways of presenting it. Since 1975 I have resolved to
make an increasingly personal confession: i. e. preset: ting the source of
my interior world (paintings, forms of theatre) and salvaging it from
certain death: forgetting.
(The Dead Class rests on nostalgia for my childhood, for all the
problems t hat I haven't solved as yet, et c. IVielopole is the recreating of
my childhood and my f amily, of the house, by weaving into its fabric the
greatest achievement of our culture--the Gospels; Let the Artist Die is a
courageous delineation of my creative work and a return to the asylum
of night and to the world of outcasts--the world of Frans;ois Villon--the
world which is slowly being transformed into the cell of death--and
which ends on the barricade with fi ghti ng f or the right of individual
expression.)
My latest work
It begins with a small cricotage initially presented at Kassel and
Milan (35 minutes), and in its final form I intend to open myself totally
without any inhibitions in order to tell the truth about myself. The pro-
ducer of the work is the Centro Di Ricerca Per Il Teatro in Milan
(director Franco Leira), and it is entitled La machina del amore e della
morte (The Machine of Love and Death)- -which was to be shown at a
planned festival (which it seems will not take place after all), the topic of
which was to be the machine in art--a topi c very close to me as I have
created a lot of machines during my creative life: an erotic machi ne
(The Cuttlefish, I 955); a funeral machine (In a Small Country House,
1961); The Madman and the Nun, 1963--the aneantisational machine--
which was the entire stage and played the crucial role in the destruction
of the performance; the torture machine for The Water Hen; and the
family machine for The Dead Class. Then the camera i n Wielopole ,
Wi elopole transformed into a machine gun--the camera, preserving a
given image--and its opposite, the gun which destroys. So I am far from
being a newcomer as far as machines are concerned. In accepting the
invitation to the festival , I said that I am disponible--after all, back in the
1930s while a student at Cracow Academy of Fine Arts and working on
a production of Maeterlinck (The Death of Tintagiles), I constructed a
death machine (I was then under the influence of the Bauhaus,
primarily the pure abstractionism of Oskar Schlemmer) which served
the Queen-murderess in spreading death.
So when I got an invitation from Kassel, everything clicked. I
thought and looked back t o the thirties and realized the time lapse--
exactly 50 years--since my sacrilegious t reatment of a typically symbolist
piece (Maeterlinck) and now 1987, when I seem to be more and more
inclined toward symbolism, a different symbolism, to be sure, from that
18
of 1937.
I am still talking about machines, but what I should be talking
about is my newest piece which I intend to work on during this year; it
is tentatively entitled I Shall Never Retum (that is, to Cracow), in which I
plan to reveal the truth about myself in a way I have never attempted
before.
On the question of avant - garde
At a press conference in Kassel , I was asked whether the avant-
garde exists anymore. I am convinced that although the avant-garde has
seen its better days, the phenomenon will always exist and that the tri-
umphant march forward will continue forever. The problem is what
could be called avant-garde nowadays.
Characteristics of the avant-garde are as follows:
1) it is rare (confined to an elite).
2) it discovers and creates what is actually forbidden.
Nowadays everything is allowed; therefore, the present world of art is
one huge avant-garde. At some point I maintained that it could be state
sanctioned and financed--an absolutely absurd notion. A vant-garde
cannot encompass the entire world of art. Further, I was challenged
during the same conference that while teaching in Hamburg I sub-
scribed to the precepts of Andre Breton to the effect that everyone can
be an artist- -and that since then I have betrayed the conviction which I
was teaching to my students, as I seem to maintain that the condition of
being an artist is quite unique--independent from any social order, in a
word , it is a special mission. It may sound metaphysical, mystical--but I
deeply believe that this is the way it is (the truth for today).
So I asked in turn what could be forbidden nowadays. There
was no answer. During the work on the Kassel cricotage, I kept asking
myself--what is still forbidden?--and I came to the conclusion that there
is such a sphere: a profoundly personal confession is still regarded as a
taboo. When subsequently I tried to implement my idea literally during
the try-outs of a few scenes from my new endeavor (! Shall Never
Return) with the producers from Paris and Milan present, someone
expressed the opinion that what I had presented is shameful. That
pleased me enormously- - to do something that is regarded in art as
shameful is absolutely great- - it means that I have crossed the borders of
taboo, or convention (of the traditional, societal type of convention in
art and which if embodied in conceptual art results in mediocrity and
stupidity). So I have decided to be untactful and I have no intention of
holding back anything from my life- - including the most secret regions. I
will raise the curtains (figuratively speaking, I don't recognize ~ h
curtain in theatre at all) and I shall present myself in such a way that I
shall become the work of art.(I have been deeply influenced by and torn
between, so to speak, the two great currents present in our culture--
antiquity (Homer, etc.) since the years of my classical gymnasium days,
and the Bible--all the great characters cried out openly about their most
intimate experiences, conflicts, love betrayals--the classic example being
19
o b ~ So similarl y l intend to cry out. I shall speak about the inmost
emotions, something that bourgeois mentalit y wouldn't have dreamed
about. I fact, it will be a kind of surgery performed on myself. Just as
drama is an art form performing surgery on societ y, so I'll be a
dramatist performing surgery on myself. In order to do so, one has to
be extremely courageous; it is an act by which we judge whether a work
of art can be termed avant-garde to not: i.e. whether it belongs to a
sphere forbidden by traditional cultural conventions.
Now I would like to read a fragment from my personal diary,
the systematic writing of which helps me in the courageous endeavor
that I have undertaken. This is an entry describing the descent into the
Inferno, the most favored place in my antique imagination, my "home."
The descent into the Inferno! What a notion! Yet I think it is the only
place that remains for me, it is my home. Out there. Only while being
there am I capable of accomplishing anything. That is why I always
come back to that place. But being in the Inferno means that I have to
accept the worst not those Bosch-like, horrible Satanic images that we
know from religious teachings, but much, much worse: those who dis-
regard me, pass me by, shrug their shoulders, tap their foreheads, wave
their hands in distaste, while the "henchmen" of the Grand Satan
sprawled behind their writing desks rub their hands in delight, saying:
"He talks incessantly about misfortune, so now he has finally gotten it."
But "they" do not know that I have been talking and am now talking
about Death. And Death stands between the Inferno and heaven, free
and grand. Only against Death do I proudly measure the dimensions of
my opus, and, as one of the actors in The Machine of Love and Death
puts it , "I am waiting for Her." For the Inferno is here on earth: out
there is absolute silence and the void so highly revered by me.
Recapitulation
In Kantor's opus, two words are crucial: love and death. In the
course of my life I have stood several times at the gate of the beautiful
virgin (in Gordon Craig's formulation) who is death. I talked to her
constantly in all my performances. And about love. When one loses
one's beloved--the only way out is death, which at that point becomes
truly grand and tangible. Especially in our times when presenting a case
of tragic love is met with derogatory laughter. That is the price that I
am willing to pay for presenting my own tragedy--tragic love--played out
not by the characters of a drama--as it is practiced in the traditional
genres--but by myself. The theme of tragic love has been over-utilized,
while my attempt (being the creator of the performance, the author of
the text)- - and my person is known throughout the world as are my
autobiographical tendencies- -is an act whose sense escapes the precepts
of our traditional mentality, but which guarantees that by daring to show
my ancient tragedy, I'll create a great work. Moreover, being a "forbid-
den" subject, outside all conventions, it will be a truly avant-garde,
authentically profound work. I dare to be "indiscreet" (just think what it
means to be "discreet" in our fal se culture). What cynicism--t o use one's
20
tragic and painful situation in order to create an avant-garde piece!
Perhaps the word "cynicism" that I used is not the right one--it
is something more--perhaps it is a sacrifice, if not of blood, then of suf-
fering great personal suffering throughout my entire life. This work
becomes the only way out, like death. But death in a situation like that
is too banal. My endeavor actually means stepping beyond the bound-
aries of the sanctioned morality which guides any creative processes.
What a radical approach! At last I feel I am a member of, nay more, I
am the leader of Fran9ois Villon's band. For many months, during long
nights of the most profound suffering, I've been cynically creating fur-
ther scenes of my performance--"cynically" seems to be the right word
for this feverish creative outburst which so resembles death. Yet I knew
it didn't count at all as far as the performance and its reception is con-
cerned. I knew that I had to make one more sacrifice and transform it
into my personal cry, face to face with the indifference of the spectator
and his laughter. I knew it was not for nothing that I had called my
theatre a fairground booth and circus. I knew that it is the only place
where I can expose myself to ridicule. And that I have to become a
clown, reversing my usual role: that of a silent witness who sits
modestly and shyly at the door. Now I shall become a clown dressed in
an ascetic black jacket, trousers with suspenders and scarf artistically
draped around my neck.
Cracow, July 17, 1987
21
Abandon All Hope?--Tadeusz Kantor's Vision of An Artist's Role in
Modern Society
by Michal Kobiatka
In the process of developing his own theory of a work of art,
Kantor's definition of theatre has undergone considerable transforma-
tion which expresses his unrelenting desire to break tradition. While
putting together Wielopole, Wielopole in 1980, he defined theatre as "an
activity that occurs when life is pushed to its final limits where all
categories and concepts lose their meaning and right to exist, where
madness, fever, hysteria, and hallucinations are life's last barricades
before the approaching troupes of death and its grand theatre."
1
This
definition of theatre, as an activity at the borderline between life and
death as defined by time-space continuum between reality and eternity,
is Kantor's significant contribution to the theory of criticism. More
importantly, it is his attempt to provide a solution to today's theatre
which according to him, has been impregnated by conformity. So per-
ceived, modern theatre is, for Kantor, nothing more than an organiza-
tion which ultimately leads to the stultification of the creative process
and, as a corollary of it, "turns living forms into dead props." .
Kantor's response to artistic stultification is to introduce the
concept of the autonomous theater, that is, one which is not a reproduc-
tive mechanism intended to present an interpretation of a piece of liter-
ature on stage, but a mechanism which has its own independent exist-
ence. The term, "independent existence," stems from Kantor's
understanding of a work of art as the process and the manifestation of a
human spiritual activity, rather than as an acquired occupa-
tion/ commodity which is then presented on stage.
How ridiculous and obsolete seems to be the convention, in
which the act of creativity, this unique journey of mind and
spirit is merely used to produce an object. How ridiculous and
obsolete seems to be the convention which hides the object
behind rigid interpretations, only to reveal it to the world, pre-
sent it to the public, expose it to the ambiguous process of
interpretation and finally simply sell it.
2
Kantor's attack on the commercial aspects of theatre organiza-
tion has surfaced in numerous manifestos. For example, in "New
Theatrical Space" in 1980, he notes:
Theatre is one of the most anomalous institutions. The actual
auditorium made of balconies, loges, and stalls- -filled with
seats--finds its parallel in a completely different space. This
"second lurking" space is the space in which everything that
happens is FICTION, illusion, artificial, and produced only to
mislead or "cheat" a spectator . . . . What he sees are only
22 .
mirages of landscapes, houses, and interiors. They are mirages
because this world, when seen from backstage, is artificial,
cheap, disposable, and of "paper-mache."3
Accordingly, Kantor rejects any privileges, which come with the
acceptance of the official and institutional status of theatre as an organi-
zation. He creates his own theatre--the Market Square Booth, the
Theatre of Emotions, which, like its medieval counterpart is not
restrained by any laws or regulations. Its sole function was and is to be
a mirror of artistic inner activities, rather than to abide by any rules set
up by the place itself or by its fundamental characteristics. To Kantor,
the essential meaning of theatre ought to be to reveal "the traces of
transition from the world of beyond into our life," rather than to impose
stringent interpretations upon performances.
Such an attitude toward both the meaning of theatre and
theatre itself made Kantor perceive an artist in a new light. It is his
belief that theatre began with acting, that is, when "a man looking like
'them' stood opposite those who stayed on the other side . . . . Though
he looked deceptively similar to them, he was eternally different, shock-
ingly alien, as if dead, cut off by an invisible barrier--no less horrible and
inconceivable, whose real meaning and threat appears to us only in
dreams."" Thus, acting and theatre did not originate in a ritual, but in
separate activities that were, as he calls them, "illegal" and in contradic-
tion to ritual. This notion of "illegal actions," which are directed against
religion, politics, social order, and the establishment delineates the very
nature of theatre and the actor. Since theatre is nothing else but an
anomalous institution supporting "legal actions," Kantor's actor cannot
possibly function within the boundaries of such an organization. His
actor, a living participant in the performance, is a person who reveals his
clumsiness, poverty, and dignity to the spectators, a person who appears
without safety shields in front of the audience, and is a shameless exhib-
itionist who simultaneously "touches eternity and the garbage dump."
There is no place for such an actor in the theatre which imposes rigid
conventions and depends on commercial success.
When asked to describe the role of the artist in contemporary
society Kantor had recourse to a metaphor taken from Dante's Inferno,
he stated:
... I would say that the position of a "contemporary" artist has
always been illegal and suspicious, even though he may be
under the aegis of official patronage. That is why the Minister
of Culture can say "let the artists croak." It happened to me in
Poland in 1948. The Polish Minister of Culture said to the art-
ists, "abandon all hope," which was printed on the first page of
all newspapers. Abandon all hope is even worse than let the
artists croak. It is clear to me that if artists do not belong to or
are not sponsored by museums, cultural institutions, or private
funds, which, theoretically, are supposed to support them but,
23
practically, only use them, they cease to be artists in the eyes of
society. These autonomous artists are relegated to outlaw
status by society and are separated from that society to "croak"
among their own artistic creations. Once I wrote in one of my
manifestos that when I talk about art and artists I mean art
which is against rather then for the establishment and artists
who belong to the circle of artistes maudits rather then those
who enjoy official recognition.
5
This statement fully encapsulates Kantor's attitude toward both
actor/artist and the organization--art which is against rather than for
the establishment and artists who belong to the circle of artistes maudits
rather than those who enjoy official recognition.
These views found their artistic expression in Kantor's latest
production Let the Artists Die, created in 1985. As was the case with The
Dead Class and Wielopole, Wielopole, this production is a recapitulation
of Kantor's theories of theatre. He makes use of already introduced
concepts of the Market Square Booth Stage, The Room of Imagination,
the Theatre of Death, and the Negatives. Once again, the audience par-
ticipates in a journey into the depths of time and space. However,
unlike these previous pieces, Let the Artists Die containes an additional
element, an element of irony. This irony is contained both in the title
and in the concept. One of the recognizable characters on stage is Veit
Stoss, a fifteenth century sculptor born in Nurnburg who was the author
of a famous altar piece in one of Cracow's churches. As various his-
torical records indicate, a nail was driven through Stoss's cheeks on his
return to Nurnburg as a punishment for his debts . Kantor uses this
story as a metaphor in order to deal with the concept of the artist and
his situation in society. In the "Little Room of his Imagination," he
creates for Stoss an asylum which "gives shelter to beggars, Bohemian
artists, and cutthroats at night."
6
It is a place where "things are happen-
ing ( ... ) that are only possible in a dream. The only door in this place,
which is said to have some great secret meaning, begins to move in our
direction."7 In the third act, a guest "from the other side," Stoss, appears
and builds the altar that resembles his masterpiece, i.e., Cracow's Altar
to the Dormation of the Virgin Mary. However, in a world governed by
laws of reflection, reversibility, and death, the altar is transformed into a
prison cell, or a torture chamber. The characters in the asylum also
change--they become the convicts participating in the apocalyptic
theatre of death. In the fourth act , we are in a new place, the prison
cell, from which Stoss sends his message into the outside world. Silence,
a portent of lack of a response, reverberates in the space. The perform-
ance ends with the artist building his last work--a barricade.
In Let the Artists Die, for the first time, Kantor equates a prison
cell with the condition of an artist. Both an artist and a prisoner,
according to the Polish director, have something in common. They are
outlawed by society for having transgressed the accepted norms and
codes of behavior.
24
Prison. It is both a concept and it is a perfect, meticulously and
thoughtfully structured realization in the history of mankind. It
is undeniably a "product" of man and civilization. The fact that
prison is set up against man; that it is a brutal mechanism
established to crush man's free thoughts, happens to be one of
the grimmest absurdities. However, similar absurdities can be
found in abundance in history . . .. Prison ... a word which
sticks in the throat. There is something final about it; a feeling
that something has happened that cannot be undone or revoked
. . . . The gates of prison close behind a man, as the gates of an
open grave close over the dead who "walk" through them ....
The man who is already "on the other side" is setting off on his
journey. He is going to travel alone, left to himself, destitute
with nobody but himself to rely on .... Once again I see this
apparition, outlawed and tainted with madness, as able to con-
vey, by means of violence and change, the most dramatic
manifestation of ART and FREEDOM . . . . Prison is an idea
separated from life by an ALIEN impenetrable barrier. It is so
separate [from the world of the living] that if this blasphemous
likeness is permitted--it will be able to shape, somewhere in the
distance THE WORK OF ART.s
Although the concept of prison and prisoner as a metaphor for
art and artist appeared in his latest production, Kantor seems to have
held this view from the very beginning of his career. In 1942, during the
German occupation, he organized the underground experimental Inde-
pendent Theatre in Cracow at a time when such activity could have led
to a death sentence. Clandestine performances were held in private
homes. One of the productions, The Return of Odysseus was staged in a
simple room. After the war, Kantor was appointed professor at the
Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, but when the stringent rules of
Socialist Realism were imposed, he publicly refused to participate in
official cultural life. This act of "disobedience" caused his professorship
to be revoked in 1949. During the period of Socialist Realism ( 1949-
1956), his visual works were exhibited only in "underground" galleries
and Kantor survived by working as a stage designer.
9
During the period of the cultural and political "thaw" in 1956,
Kantor established his own theatre, Cricot 2 in an "accidental rather
than official place," that is, in the basement of one of the palaces in
Cracow. Because the government in Poland subsidizes only official
theatre institutions, Cricot 2 could not receive any financial assistance
from the state. From its earliest days, Kantor's theatre has always
existed outside or on the periphery of official political and cultural
organizations, forcing them, in time, to recognize Cricot's artistic sig-
nificance.
Kantor's philosophy of artistes maudits reveals a paradox which
may be possible only in Socialist countries. Since all theatrical institu-
25
tions in Poland depend upon support from the state, their artistic
activities are fully under the control and the censorship of the
government, as are directors and actors, who are supposed to be the
spokesmen for the regime. Refusal to cooperate with the state usually
leads to severe repercussions--subsidies are withdrawn, theatres may be
closed down, and theatre companies dissolved. Such a situation
occurred during the period of martial law from 1981 to 1983. Even
though they are aware of this situation, Kantor and Cricot 2 live by their
own principles. Perhaps they realize that their international reputation
allows them to function apolitically, as various critics have suggested, on
the fringe.
"Qu'ils crevent les artistes," let the artists croak, was the verdict
pronounced by a Parisian woman who objected to a redevelopment pro-
ject to expand a gallery space. There is no doubt that Kantor's concept
of the autonomous artist is an answer to the problem so succinctly
stated by the Parisian woman and people like her. As Kantor recently
observed:
Today, after having fought many battles, I see clearly the jour-
ney which I have accomplished. I understand why I have stub-
bornly refused to accept both official and institutional status, in
other words, why my theatre and I have stubbornly been
refused any privileges that are bestowed upon us by the
achievement of a certain social position. The only tangible ans-
wer to this is that my theatre has always been the Market
Square Booth Stage--the only true Theatre of Emotions.
10
26
NOTES
lMichal Kobiatka, "Let the Artists Die--An Interview with
Tadeusz Kantor," TDR 30, 3 (Fall 1986): 179.
2Tadeusz Kantor, The Work of Art and the Process," TDR 30, 3
(Fall 1986): 150.
3Tadeusz Kantor, "New Theatrical Space," TDR 30, 3 (Fall
1986): 158-159.
Tadeusz Kantor, "The Theatre of Death," TDR 30, 3 (Fall
1986): 145.
5Kobiatka, TDR: 178.
6Tadeusz Kantor, Guide to the Performance (Krakow
Drukarnia Narodowa, nd.), p. 9.
7
Ibid., p. 14.
8Tadeusz Kantor, "Prison," TDR 30, 3 (Fall 1986): 173.
9Jan Ktossowicz, "Tadeusz Kantor's Journey," TDR 30, 3 (Fall
1986): 101.
lOKantor, "New Theatrical Space," 161.
27
ION SA VA, THE FIRST PROMOTER OF RE-
THEATRICALIZA TION IN ROMANIA
by Bogdan Mischiu
To the seasoned Romanian theatre-goer the term "Re-
theatricalization" conjures up daring scenes from unorthodox produc-
tions. It was under this banner that many Romanian theatre directors,
including Liviu Ciulei, Lucian Pintilie, Radu Penciulescu and others
went on a crusade thirty years ago against stale conformism and bland
taste in the theatre. In the process they not only reaped the benefits of
international acclaim but also the bitter fruits of a protracted exile.
In examining more closely the fate of re-theatricalization in the
Romanian theatre, we find that, so far, it has had not one but two peaks,
of which the first was due almost exclusively to the activities of one man,
the director, designer, and playwright Ion Sava.
Born in 1900 to a petit bourgeois family, Sava grew up in the
beautiful and romantic city of Jassy, a major theatrical center of the
country. His interest in the theatre developed early, but under curious
and grotesque circumstances. As a child, he lived on Eternity Road,
near the cemetery and from his window he often watched the odd spec-
tacle of funeral processions. It is to this unusual experiences that later
in his life, he would trace the beginnings of his passion for caricature, a
passion which, in 1926, led him to abandon a career in law and start
working as a professional caricaturist and painter.
In 1930, at the suggestion of Aurel Ion Maican, a well-known
Romanian director of the time, Sava decided a third career change and
took up the job of director and scene-designer at the prestigious
National Theatre of Jassy. There, three years later, he scored his first
important success with a monumental production of Elmer Rice's Street
Scene, for which he used a cast of seventy-two and an elaborate natu-
ralistic set.
His morale boosted by rave reviews, Sava embarked upon his
first theatrical adventure in 1934: the establishment in a movie theatre
of the Teatrul de vedenii (The Theatre of Specters), modeled on the
notorious Theatre du Grand Guignol in Paris. But unlike its French
counterpart, Sava's company, which in addition to sheer horror also pro-
moted the tragic and the fantastic, was notably short-lived, coming to an
end in the same year. Deserving of mention, from its repertoire, is
Andre de Lorde' s The System of Doctor Goudron and Professor Plume.
Following the failure of the Teatru/ de vedenii, Sava continued
his experimental work with unconventional theatrical forms, this time at
the National Theatre of Jassy, and beginning with the 1938 season at the
National Theatre in Bucharest. In 1935, he attracted considerable atten-
tion with his production of 13 Comic Little Songs, a collage of dramatic
sketches by the nineteenth-century Romanian playwright Vasile Alec-
sandri. Inspired by traditional Romanian puppet coffers, Sava designed
for this production a large box to serve as the stage within a stage. On it,
28
thirteen characters in period costumes delivered little satiric songs and
monologues in the old-fashioned dialect used by Alecsandri. In keeping
with Sava's penchant for visual contrast, the settings, which changed
every time the character changed, were anything but old-fashioned.
They covered a broad range of avant-garde styles, from cubism to
expressionism and surrealism.
Less than a year later Sava carried his experiments in dramatic
satire even further when he wrote, directed, and designed Bimba Bimba,
an Aristophanic satirical revue about a fantastic visit to Jassy by a num-
ber of Olympian gods. The shocking spectacle of a cubist architect
being electrocuted, and the i n t r ~ u i n modus operandi of an "abstract
restaurant for the unemployed" constituted the high points of this
remarkable work.
The question of what makes theatre true to itself preoccupied
Sava from the early years of his directorial career. But it was not until
the late 1930s that he looked for possible answers in the two theatrical
forms that were to leave .the strongest mark on his theoretical work--
commedia dell 'arte and the Italian Renaissance court theatre. Under
their combined influence, he was soon to argue for the abolition of the
primacy of text, for the establishment of a "science" of directing, and for
a new form of dramatic writing, which he called "neocanovaccio" or
"neoargumento."
In the winter of 1942-43, Sava's strong ties to Italy--his wife was
Italian--finally brought him to Rome (his only trip abroad). There, he
made the acquaintance of his contemporary theatrical practitioner,
A.G. Bragaglia, with whom he discussed the need for theatrical reform.
The city of Rome and the conversations with Bragaglia greatly stimu-
lated his imagination. One night at the Colosseum, a truly revolutionary
idea occurred to him: to reverse the spatial audience-performer rela-
tionship so that the spectator, seated in the arena on a swivelling chair,
might watch the actors perform all around him on huge circular plat-
forms placed in the amphitheatre proper. Sava was never to abandon
this idea and, after the war, when Romania was in the grips of revolu-
tionary change, he tried, although unsuccessfully, to persuade represen-
. tatives of the new regime actually to build what he called a "round"
theatre. Equally unsuccessful with the Stalinist officials, was his program
for "the re-theatricalization of the theatre under the aegis of the
modern social mystery" so that the new Romanian theatre might
"encompass the vast realm of the imaginary, of modern fantasy."
Sava was at heart a theatrical iconoclast. But, given the con-
servative policies of the two theatres where he worked, he could seldom
carry out his innovative ideas to their fullest extent. The most notable
instance occurred in 1946, when he made theatrical history by producing
Macbeth with large, grotesque masks on the stage of the Saint Sava Col-
lege in Bucharest (where the National Theatre company relocated fol-
lowing the bombing of its theatre). "Legendary figures cannot tolerate
being treated as historical figures," said Sava in the program to the per-
formance, adding that "from a spectacological point of view, legendary
29
figures need to be amplified and expressed synthetically."
Anyone familiar with East European history might justifiably
ponder: How did someone like Sava cope with Socialist Realism, the
emerging aesthetic doctrine which was soon to stamp out all artistic
experimentation in Romania? Unfortunately, we may never know, for
Sava died of cancer in 1947. What we do know, however, is that at the
time of his death he was working on his dramatic masterpiece, The
President. This "tragic-comic social mystery" about a failed utopia was
composed of fifty-five short tableaux, involving simultaneous staging,
eurhythmic dancing in the nude, and numerous theatrical effects. The
play, deemed too unconventional for Romanian postwar tastes, has
never been performed, Despite Sava's lack of popularity with Romanian
critics, it is important to note that Liviu Ciulei--who, in 1947, acted for
Sava in the latter's production of Clifford Octets's Golden Boy at Ciulei's
Odeon Theatre--called him the first truly modern Romanian director.
30
The American Film Festival in Moscow
by Leo Hecht
During the decade of the pre-Gorbachev era, quite a number of
American .films were imported by the Soviet Union and shown in most
major cities on a highly limited, selective basis. Unfortunately, these
films were of extremely uneven quality. The Soviets explained that the
most popular, well-made contemporary American films were much too
costly and that the Soviet Union had more urgent needs for the limited
amount of hard currency available for non-technological purchases.
Only on rare occasions did they purchase high quality films such as
those which are still their favorites--Kramer vs . Kramer and West Side
Story (touted as depicting American urban life as it really is.) More
commonly, they were restricted to purchasing films such as Orca the Kil-
ler Whale or An American Werewolf in London. This, of course, was
also good propaganda for exposing to the Soviets the warped minds of
American film makers and film goers.
Under Gorbachev a number of modifications in cultural
exchanges between the USSR and the United States have been initiated,
including a major cultural agreement, which was signed in the summer
of 1986. Since then cultural exchanges in all the arts have increased
considerably. In this spirit, the United States agreed to send important
films for showing in the Soviet Union at somewhat less than the normal
renting costs, and Soviets agreed to show them to wider audiences. For
Gorbachev this was also important as a propagandistic display of his
glasnost campaign. Of course, the films to be sent from the United
States could not contain anything overtly political that might be con-
sidered as anti-Soviet or even anti-Socialist.
All these back-stage negotiations culminated in the second
American Film Festival in the Soviet Union which opened on February
19, 1988 and closed March 2, 1988. (The first festival occurred in 1959,
one year after . the first Soviet American cultural exchange agreement
was signed, and it included seven films and a visit by Gary' Cooper.) This
time thirty major American films were shown in seven motion picture
theatres in Moscow and Leningrad. The grand opening was held in the
"Rossiia" the largest movie theatre in Moscow. It was hosted by Alek-
sander I. Kamshalov, the Chairman of the Soviet State Committee on
Cinematography, the agency primarily responsible for film censorship
and approval. Besides the usual representatives from the USSR Minis-
try of Culture, several American performers also participated in the
opening ceremony, including actress Darryl Hannah, actor Richard
Gere and "muppeteer" Jim Henson. Also present was the American
festival spokesman Peter Fleischer who had been instrumental in the
organization of the festival and had worked with a number of American
entertainers and private cultural groups in selecting the films to be
shown.
31
The list of films shown included American classics such as The
Wizard of Oz, King's Row (of special interest to the Soviets because it
starred Ronald Reagan in what was probably the best role of his film
career), and Singin' in the Rain. There were also a number of excellent
recent films including A Chorus Line, Children of a Lesser God, and
Roxanne which appeared to draw the largest crowds. The average cost
of a ticket was $2.65--approximately three times the price of the normal
entrance fee.
The distribution system of tickets was a particularly heated
topic of conversation among Soviet film devotees. They had to operate,
as usual, strictly by word of mouth and by the rumor mill because
information was not made available as to which American film was to
be shown at what location. This is quite in character since, although all
Soviet films and performances are extremely well advertised throughout
the city considerably ahead of time, such advertising excludes certain
categories of entertainment such as films from "capitalist nations," and
Soviet-Yiddish theatre and musical performances. Secondly, they knew
quite well that the great majority of tickets was being withheld from
general purchase to be distributed either to persons with political clout
or through black marketeers for scalping purposes. A sign in front of
the "Rossiia" gave no indication as to when and where tickets would be
available, but did note how tickets would be distributed to the public: 45
percent would be sold in the many performance kiosks strewn
throughout the city (this gives the booth attendants the opportunity to
take care of their friends and to make extra money by black marketeer-
ing); 50 percent were to be distributed to unnamed organizations and
enterprises for further distribution among their membership; and the
last five percent were to be held for sale to war heroes and war invalids
at the theatre box offices. In front of the "Rossiia", starting an hour
before the scheduled performance, one could observe a number of per-
sons clandestinely selling tickets to desperate purchasers for at least
four times their legal cost.
The American Film Festival was extremely well received by the
Soviet viewing public who expressed their fervent hope that this event
would constitute a harbinger of many similar festivals in the future.
Lenin said that film was "the most important art." Only time will tell
whether this event and others like it will be viewed as having increased
or decreased this importance.
32
"Pure Form" is Pure Fun in Witkacy's Country House
A Review by Judith Brussell
The American premiere of Country House (A Ghost Story) by
the Polish playwright, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, adapted and trans-
lated by Daniel Gerould and directed by Paul Berman, was presented by
Theatre At Barnard in the Minor Latham Playhouse from March 2 to
March 9 of this year. The script, the adaptation, the direction, cast, set,
lights and costumes combined to make an electrically charged night in
the theatre.
Country House was written in 1921 and in it, the ghost of
Anastasia is called forth in a seance conducted by a poet and her two
young daughters. She confronts, untangles, and re-defines the relation-
ships between her and the three men in her life: husband, lover and
poet. Who loved her? Who killed her? Whom did she love?
The author takes us through combinations and permutations in
perspectives, inner thoughts and outer actions, codes and mores,
moralities and amoralities. Could this be what Witkacy called "pure
form?"--A current of energy, in perpetual motion, changing and trans-
forming?
The opening music, a selection from "The Golden Age Ballet"
by Shostakovich, was the perfect choice for the tone of the play. It was
whimsical and serious in its changing tonalities. The songs in the show
had music by Zbigniew Raj (from the Polish cabaret) and his wonderful
music was reminiscent of Weill and Dessau. The songs were delivered
in lusty cabaret style and were both funny and energetic.
Christopher Barreca's settings were spare and evocative. The
opening scene had furniture draped in off-white sheets, setting the tone
for a ghost story. The lights were so well-placed over each piece of
furniture that the stage appeared to be a still life rather than a stage set.
The lighting by Stephen Strawbridge was always articulate and aestheti-
cally balanced. Above stage hung sheet-banners with words in black
handwritten scrawl: "Everyone was seized by frightful grey anxiety--he
bit his nails and sobbed 100 x 80."
The director, Paul Berman, made consistently interesting
choices: he kept the quick pace of the play, inventively choreographed
the blocking, and riveted our attention with constant surprises. Stylized
gestures worked well and those that were repeated were put to good
comic use: such as the lover's mustache being ripped off at three dif-
ferent times. For Americans, there are many strange elements in Wit-
kiewicz' work but this production kept the "through line" of action clear
despite the eccentric and delightful sidesteps.
In the text as well as the direction, there were images that illu-
minated society's bizarre treatment of women (or women's ghosts). The
returned ghost of Anastasia insists she died of cancer of the liver but her
husband says he shot her. Even in death, a woman is not allowed to be
correct about anything.
33
Comments on women were pictorially interwoven into the pro-
duction by the director. There is a very funny scene with the husband,
lover and poet pointing guns at one another in front of the woman they
all loved. They are still competing, blustering and threatening for a
woman who's dead. In another scene, the husband and lover are pour-
ing through Anastasia's diaries to find good things about themselves.
The scullery boy picks one up and the lover yells "Give me back my
property!" Even the memories of women become men's property.
The costumes by Judith Dolan were alternately beautiful,
humorous and wonderfully outrageous--from flapper to elegant lace to
dollied-Victorian to the jodpurs of the comic lover. The two young girls
wore exaggerated high-empire style dresses and had their faces painted
like dolls and their hair in corkscrew curls a Ia Victorian-repressed-
female childhood ..
A workman, dressed in rubber boots, apron and blood-smeared
arms, repeatedly comes onstage to say, "All my thoroughbred bitches
are mongrelizing." At first, this is funny precisely because we have no
idea what this has to do with the play. Then it becomes apparent that
the humans are "mongrelizing" as well. Here, a kudo for the translator,
Daniel Gerould, must be given for the text is such a lively rendering in
English, including characters' names such as Jibbery Penbroke for the
poet and Wendel Poundwood for the comic lover/barley businessman.
We know, if we have been paying attention to the poet's poems,
that we will see what's to come in the stage action. This heralds the
beginnings of a new kind of dramaturgy, a kind of emotional and
metaphysical detective story in musical thematic form. Witkiewicz has
placed points of action within the poet's poems which the director has
concretized by having them written willy-nilly on the sheets above the
stage. The audience's discoveries of foreshadowing in the play may be
gleaned from clues onstage. (Or as the intelligent man sitting next to
me explained, "You see, it's like the handwriting on the wall ... the
Platonic idea of ideas in the air ... you borrow them and it's how you
put them together and they go back into the realm of ideas.")
Act III. A new tempo. Against the cream-colored slanted
walls and tilted floor with news print in large letters (post modern-
German-post- expressionism?) the two daughters in white nighties drink
emerald green liquid. We hear chimes and/or bells and the servant
walks by with a green-lighted lantern with a knowing look to the
audience. Suddenly, I felt as though we were at the end of a civilization.
This was not Medea, yet this scene felt Greek, felt tragic, which was a
long way to have travelled from satirical, farcical, Brechtian, surreal, etc.
theatre.
After the father sees the bodies, he goes offstage and we hear a
gunshot. He re-enters in a sheet, as a ghost. Now the family is reunited
in death. The image of the four of them in white in the light was very
commanding.
We were moved to another plane, another reality. A new
detective story presents itself. What was the real reason Anastasia's
34
ghost told her daughters to drink the green poison? Several answers are
offered but is it really the symbolic old order killing off the new? The
past destroying the future? Are we to be wary of ghosts and their
return?
I would gladly return for another ghost story at Theatre at
Barnard. Country House was one of the most arresting and most
brilliantly-directed productions I have seen for quite some time. The
acting was superb and fresh. Bravo Witkiewicz/Gerould/Berman and
Company! The show should go on!
35
Film Review: Theme
by Jeff Brone
Gleb Panfilov's 1981 film Theme is disarmingly simple and
effective. It is strongest in its truthfulness and lack of pretensions. An
entry at the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center last fall, it deals
with a famous contemporary Soviet playwright (named "Kim Yesenin")
who loses his excitement for life. He falls in love (or so he thinks) with a
younger girl who, in her sadness reflects his own waning creative spirit.
Through fine use of the camera, and excellent acting, we see how he is
deluding himself, and how the other characters are also fooled by self-
pity that passes as artistic suffering. Nevertheless, Panfilov's picture is
not a cynical one. It is a picture of everyday life, and the characters are
very real.
Panfilov opens the film with a long shot of a car traveling along
the winter countryside. Inside the car is Kim, his girlfriend and his
novelist friend Igor. The car is small, and almost part of the land around
it. In this way, Kim's problems are in perspective. He is only a tiny por-
tion of the world, and his depression is not a matter of huge importance.
We then cut to only the reflection of Kim's eyes in the car's rear view
mirror. We are distanced from him, as he is from himself and his needs.
Beyond the symbolism, the scenes are beautifully
photographed. There is an honesty to the shots that is consistent
throughout the film. As Kim has dinner at Igor's country house, and
becomes infatuated with Sasha, the medium angle point of view shots
enhance our involvement. Taken from the perspective of someone at the
table, close up shots of food and details of the dinner ritual are
delineated by the camera. The feeling of really being there is strong.
Here, Sasha's self -involvement and strangely gloomy attitude reflect
Kim's feelings, and this is clearly shown at their later meeting in a
cemetery. He learns that she does not love him when she unfeelingly
deserts him to be with her gravedigger boyfriend. The editing and cut-
ting accentuate his pain and realization.
If all this talk about cemeteries and depression makes the film
sound bleak, the film is just as often funny. Panfilov catches the humor
of the situations throughout the film, especially when Kim hides in
Sasha's apartment and hears her powerful, tearful and somewhat ugly
goodbye scene with her boyfriend. Panfilov's simple camera catches
Kim's discomfort and fear of being discovered at the most humorous
moments, as he hides in a comer of the kitchen. This approach is com-
mon in the film, and adds to it immensely. The editing of such scenes
should not be overlooked. Cutting at just the right moments creates the
strange feeling of pity and humor, while moving the film along seam-
lessly and effortlessly. I was reminded of a fine production of Chekhov,
where the mix of comedy and sadness is just right.
The acting is involving. Mikhail Yulyanov as Kim gives a per-
formance that as the character grows in his understanding of himself the
36
audience sees more of his true personality. His large face is full of
character and his "odd man out" manner carries off the comic moments
well. Inna Churikova is a strong Sasha. She is both troubled (in her life)
and troublesome because of her constant gloominess. Yevgeny Vesnik,
as Igor, is appropriately slovenly and full of good hearted common
sense. In fact, every performance is both well cast and well done.
This is a simple, intelligent movie full of ramifications and
reflections of life. Panfilov should be applauded.
37
CONTRIBUTORS
JEFF BRONE is a graduate student in the Ph.D. Theatre Program at
the Graduate Center of CUNY, has performed comedy on WIND radio
in Chicago, and writes film reviews for various journals.
JUDY BRUSSELL is a graduate student in the Ph.D. Theatre Program
at the Graduate Center of CUNY, playwright, and composer.
MARVIN CARLSON is a Distinguished Professor of Theatre and
Comparative Literature of the Graduate School of the City University of
New York and author of many books and articles.
LEO HECHT is on the Advisory Board of SEEDTF and is a Professor
in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at George
Mason University.
MICHAL KOBIA-t.KA is the author of several articles in numerous
journals, has translated An Altar to Himself by Ireneusz Iredyfiski avail-
able through CASTA, and teaches at Kent State University.
BOGDAN MISCHIOU writes on Romanian drama and theatre and is
a student in the Ph.D. program in theatre at NYU.
38
PLAYSCRIPTS IN TRANSLATION SERIES
The following is a list of publicati ons available through the Center for
Advanced Study in Theatre Arts (CASTA):
No.I Never Part From Your Loved Ones, by Alexander
Volodin.
Translated by Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No.2 !, Mikhail Sergeevich Lunin, by Edvard Radzinsky.
Translated by Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No.3 An Altar to Himself, by Ireneusz Iredyf1ski.
Translated by Michal Kobial'ka. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No.4 Conversation with the Executioner, by Kazimierz
Moczarski.
Stage adaptation by Zygmunt Hubner; English version
by Earl Ostroff and Daniel Gerould. $5.00
($6.00 foreign)
No.5 The Outsider, by lgnatii Dvoretsky.
Translated by C. Peter Goslett. $5.00 ($6.00 forei gn)
No.6 The Ambassador, by Slawomir Mrozek.
Translated by Stawomir Mrozek and Ralph Manheim.
$5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No.7 Four by Liudmila Petrushevskaya (Love, Come into the
Kitchen, Nets and Traps, and The Violin).
Translated by Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No.8 The Trap, by Tadeusz Rozewicz.
Translated by Adam Czerniawski. $5.00
($6.00 foreign)
Soviet Plays in Translation. An Annotated Bibliography. Compiled and
Edited by Alma H. Law and C. Peter Goslett. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
Polish Plays in Translation. An annotated Bibliography. Compiled and
Edited by Daniel C. Gerould, Boteslaw Taborski, Michal KobiaH<a, and
Steven Hart. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
Polish and Soviet Theatre Posters. Introduction and Catalog by Daniel
C. Gerould and Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
Polish and Soviet Theatre Posters Volume Two. Introduction and
Catalog by Daniel C. Gerould and Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
39
Eastem European Drama and The American Stage. A Symposium with
Janusz Gtowacki, Vasily Aksyonov, and moderated by Daniel C.
Gerould (April 30, 1984). $3.00 ($4.00 foreign)
These publications can be ordered by sending a U.S. dollar check or
money order payable to CAST A to:
. CASTA--THEATRE PROGRAM
GRADUATE CENTER OF CUNY
33 WEST 42nd STREET
NEW YORK, N.Y. 10036
40
SUBSCRIPTION POLICY
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for Contemporary Eastern European Drama and Theatre nt The Grad-
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scription pays for a portion of handling, mai li ng and printing costs.
The subscription year is the calendar year and thus a $5.00 fee
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individual professors and scholars. The $5.00 check should be made
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