SEEP - Vo.14. - No.3 - Fall 1994

volume 14, no.
3
fall 1994
SEEP (ISSN # 1047-0018) is a publication of the Institute for
Contemporary East European Drama and Theatre under the auspices of
the Center for Advanced Study in Theatre Arts (CAST A), Graduate
Center, City University of New York. The Institute 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 SEEP: 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 EDITORS
Patrick Hennedy
Jay Plum
ADVISORY BOARD
Edwin Wilson, Chair
Marvin Carlson
Leo Hecht
Martha W. Coigney
CASTA Publications are supported by generous grants from the Lucille
Lortel Chair in Theatre and the Sidney E. Cohn Chair in Theatre Studies
in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the City University of New York.
Copyright 1994 CASTA
SEEP has a very liberal reprinting policy. Journals and newsletters that
desire to reproduce articles, reviews, and other materials that have
appeared in SEEP may do so, as long as the following provisions are met:
a. Permission to reprint the article must be requested from SEEP in
writing before the fact;
b. Credit to SEEP must be given in the reprint;
c. Two copies of the publication in which the reprinted material
has appeared must be furnished to the Editors of SEEP
immediately upon publication.
2 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 14, No. 3
Editorial Policy
From the Editors
Events
Books Received
TABLE OF CONTENTS
"Moscow Trends: The 1993-1994 Season"
John Freedman
"Slava Polunin, President of the Academy of Fools"
Joel Schechter
"The Rustaveli Theatre Moscow Tour"
John Freedman
"IFTR Meets in Moscow"
Laurence Senelick
"Witkiewicz Conference in Slupsk, Poland:
September 16-18, 1994
Danield Gerould
"Polish Institute of Arts & Sciences of America
Panel Discussion on Yiddish-Language Theatre in Poland"
Nahma Sandrow
"Vladimir Frolov, 1917-1994"
Irina Miller
PAGES FROM THE PAST
"Lunacharsky and Melodrama"
Daniel Gerould
"What Kind of Melodrama Do We Need?"
Anatolii Lunacharsky
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60
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REVIEWS
"From Lower Depths to Mountain Heights"
Melissa T. Smith
Contributors
Playscripts in Translation Series
Subscription Policy
EDITORIAL POLICY
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Manuscripts in the following categories are solicited: articles of
no more than 2,500 words, performance and film reviews, and
bibliographies. Please bear in mind that all submissions must concern
themselves either with contemporary materials on Slavic 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 welcome submissions reviewing innovative
performances of Gogol but we cannot use original articles 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 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. 7be Chicago Manual of Style should be followed. Trans-
literations should follow the Library of Congress system. We encourage
submissions on computer disk. Submissions will be evaluated, and authors
will be notified after approximately four weeks.
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Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 14, No.3
FROM THE EDITORS
For our final issue of 1994, we have brought together a variety
of material on the Russian theatre ranging from John Freedman's lively
review of the 1993-1994 season to a translation by Dan Gerould of
Anatolii Lunacharsky's 1919 article promoting melodrama as the best
vehicle for propagandizing Communism in the new Bolshevik state. Also
included is an inspiring account of the Rustaveli Theatre's recent tour in
Moscow during which the Tbilisi-based company showed their three latest
productions along with their world-famous production of The Caucasian
Chalk Circle.
We are also pleased to publish accounts of conferences held in
Moscow; Slupsk, Poland; and New York. We hope these valuable reports
will not only prove informative, but will also encourage other readers to
contribute reports on conferences and meetings they have attended. We
also welcome information on forthcoming conferences that would be of
interest to our subscribers.
We continue to urge each and every one of you to send us
information on new books that would be of interest to our readers. We
remind you that if possible we would like to include the name and address
of the publisher and the price of the book.
As the year draws to a close, we hope that all of our readers can
look back on a productive and stimulating twelve months. Our hard-
working associate editors, Patrick Hennedy and Jay Plum, join us m
wishing each of you the very best for the New Year.
-Daniel Gerould and Alma Law
5
EVENTS
STAGE PRODUCTIONS
The New York Times reported that in July a Russian theatre
troupe transformed a battleship docked in the port of Sevastopol, Ukraine
into an art happening entitled "The Alchemic Surrender." Ten of
Ukraine's leading artists participated in the event billed as an escape from
the tensions between Russia and Ukraine over what used to be the Black
Sea Fleet.
Bonnie Monte directed Aleksandr Ostrovsky's Diary of a
Scoundrel at the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, August 17 through
September 4.
Act One of Spirits of My Dear Departed, a work-in-progress
directed and adapted from Czech author Eva Kanturkova's My
Companions in the Bleak House by Marcy Arlin, was offered as part of the
Tiny Mythic Theatre's American Living Room Series at the HERE
Theatre in New York, August 20-21.
Michael Grief's production of 1he Sea Gull, by Anton Chekhov,
played the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Williamstown, MA, August
3-14.
The International Festival of Puppet Theater at the Joseph Papp
Public Theater included among its productions 1he Adventures of
Ginocchio by the Peruvian-Bosnian company Teatro Hugo and Ines
(September 7-11) and a Polish stage adaptation of Bruno Schulz's prose
writings entitled Banialuka (September 13-17).
Lev Stoukalov adapted and directed Dostoevsky's 1he Gambler at
the Milwaukeee Repertory Theatre, September 8 through October 16.
Paul Schmidt translated.
Anne Bogart's latest piece, Small Lives/Big Dreams, which
premiered at Skidmore College on September 22, embodies Chekhov's five
major plays in several actors. The production will be restaged as part of
the "Classics in Context" Festival at the Actors Theatre of Louisville,
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Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 14, No. 3
January 27-29, 1995. This year's conference honors Bogart as a
renaissance artist of the American theatre.
Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard ran at Baltimore's Center Stage,
September 28 through October 30. Irene Lewis was the director.
The Little Rivermaid Rusalka, a performance in part based on
Antonin Dvorak's opera and staged by the Czechoslovak-American
Marionette Theatre, was among the highlights of the 1994 "Celebrate
Prague in New York" Festival. The production ran October 7-23 and
October 29.
The Harold Clurman Theatre in New York presented Frank
Galati's adaptation of Heart of a Dog, by Mikhail Bulgakov, October 7-23.
The production was directed and designed by Nicholas Keene.
The Wooster Group revived Brace Up!, "a new translation of
Chekhov's Three Sisters for the end of the millenium," October 13
through November 6.
A Polish Lesson, Anna Bojarska's portrayal of the last months in
the life of General Tadeusz Kosciuszko, had its first professional staged
reading by the Polish Theatre Institute at the Kosciuszko Foundation in
New York, October 19.
Antigone in New York, by Janusz Glowacki, was staged by the
Yale Repertory Theatre, October 20 through November 12. Liz
Diamond directed. For more about the play, see Jan Kott, "Antigone
Hangs Herself in Tompkins Square Park," SEEP 13.1 (Spring 1993): 44-
47.
John Chism's adaptation of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment
received a public reading at the T rocadero Cabaret in New York, October
24.
Bosendorfer, a one-act comedy by Ferenc Karinthy, was produced
by the Threshold Theater Company at the Hungarian Consulate in New
York, October 28. The production starred Richard Pruitt and Joan
Shepard, and was directed by Pamela Billig. Judith Sollosy was the
translator.
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The Polish Theatre Group presented The Jeweler's Shop: A
Pilgrimage for Love, by Karol Wojtyh Gohn Paul II), at the Polish
Consulate in New York, October 30.
Peter Kellogg's adaptation of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina closed
October 30 after a run at the Apple Tree Theatre in Highland Park,
Illinois. The production was directed by Eileen Boevers and featured
music by Dan Levine.
The Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival featured
the Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg performing Gaudeamus (The
Construction Battalion), based on the novella by Sergei Kaladin. It ran
November 2 and November 4-6. Lev Dodin directed.
Mother, Patricia Spears Jones's adaptation of Gorky's novel, closed
November 6 at La Mama Experimental Theater Club. It was staged by
Mabou Mines under the direction of John Edward McGrath.
Dickens's A Christmas Carol meets Gogol's The Inspector General
in Daniel Sullivan's Inspecting Carol, which will be produced by the
Capital Repertory Company in Albany, NY, November 10 through
December 11. The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis will also present
Inspecting Carol, November 30 through December 30.
Gogol's Diary of a Madman is being presented at La Mama
Experimental Theater Club, November 25 through December 4. The
Franko State Theatre of Kiev is co-producer.
Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard is being presented as part of the
repertory season at the Jean Cocteau Theatre in New York. The
production, directed by Eve Adamson, runs from November 26 through
March 3, 1995.
Theatre for the New City in New York will revive David
Willinger's production of Jean Claude Van Itallie's adaptation of Master
and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, December 15 through January 22,
1995.
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The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis will present The Brothers
Karamazov, Anthony Clarvoe's adaptation of the novel by Dostoevsky,
January 4 through February 3, 1995.
Temptation, by Vaclav Havel, will run at the Bathhouse Theatre
in Seattle, January 10 through February 18, 1995. Arne Zaslove will
direct.
Chicago's Goodman Theatre will present Chekhov's Three Sisters,
March 10 through April 15. The director will be Robert Falls.
Three Sisters, Their Brother, and an Intruder, an adaptation of
Chekhov's Three Sisters by Richard Schechner and Michelle Minnick, will
be staged by East Coast Theatre Artists at La Mama Experimental Theater
Club, April 13-30, 1995.
FILM
Anthology Film Archives screened several Czech films as part of
"Celebrate Prague in New York," October 4-8. Among the short and
feature-length films featured were: The Rendevous at the Mill; Crying and
Laughing; The Fairground Sausage Vendor and Poster Hanger; Rudi Fools
A round; Ahasver; Czech Castles and Chateaux; Prague Shining in the Lights;
We Living in Prague; The Light Penetrates the Dark; Aimless Walk; Prague
Castle; The Highway Sings; The Play of Bubbles; Black and White Rhapsody;
The Magic Eye; Rhythm; The Idea Seeking Light; May; Burlesque; Hands on
Tuesday; The Atom of Eternity; Autumn; Greasepaint and Gasoline;
Battalion; Visitor from Darkness; The World Belongs to Us; Erotikon; and
Crisis.
On October 18, The Film Forum in New York began a two-
week engagement of Bosna!, Bernard-Henri Levy's and Alain Ferrari's
investigation of the events leading up to the present crisis in Sarajevo.
Russian filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky's The Belovs was featured
as part of the Margaret Mead Film Festival sponsored by the American
Museum of Natural History in New York, October 19.
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Chekhov's classic Uncle Vanya has been adapted for the screen in
at least three international films which will be released during the next
several months. Vanya on 42nd Street, Louise Malle's film of Andre
Gregory's rehearsal of the play with Wallace Shawn as Vanya and Julianne
Moore as Y elena, opens October 21 across the country. (This may well
be the first Chekhov film adaptation to receive a PG rating, the need for
parental guidance being explained by the New York Times because of the
film's "mild profanity and a brief scene involving a gun.") Country Life,
director Michael Blakemore's version filmed on the Australian outback
with John Hargreaves as Vanya and Greta Scacchi as Yelena, will be
released early next year, as well a Welsh Vanya entitled August. Anthony
Hopkins, who is currently performing the title role in Wales, stars and
directs the film. Kate Burton co-stars as Y elena.
White, the second installment in Krzysztof Kie5lowski's "Three
Colors" trilogy, enjoyed limited engagements at art houses this summer.
The first part of the trilogy, Blue, was screened by New York's Alliance
October 24. Red was shown at the New York Film Festival in
September and is soon due for general release.
Mircea Daneliuc's surreal comedy about life in post-Communist
Romania, The Conjugal Bed, also enjoyed limited runs this past summer.
CONFERENCES
The Cracow Conference on Playwrighting was held April11-16,
1994. For details, contact Stage International at the Masbro Centre, 97
Masbro Road, London W14 OLR.
CORRECTION
Vol. 14, no. 2, p. 13: Beckett's Footfalls was produced at the
Garrick Theatre in 1994, not 1984.
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BOOKS RECEIVED
Europa, Europa: Das jahrhundert der A vantgarde in Mittel-und Osteuropa.
Curated by Ryszard Stanislawski and Christoph Brockhaus.
Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublick Deutschland,
1994.
Catalogue in four volumes for the exhibition in Bonn, 27 May to
16 October 1994. Volume one contains art, photography, and
video (479 pages); volume two architecture, literature, theatre,
film, and music (239 pages); volume three documents (367 pages);
and volume four biographies, bibliographies, index of works and
artists (199 pages).
Olczak-Ronikier, Joanna. Piwnica pod Baranami, czyli Koncert ambitnych
samouk6w. Illustrations selected by Kazimierz Wisniak. Warsaw:
Tenten Publishing House, 1994. pp. 332.
A beautifully printed and richly illustrated album tracing the
history of the famous Cracow cabaret "Piwnica pod Baranami"
from its beginnings in the mid-1950s to the present. Contains
photographs, cartoons, art works, graphics, and memorabilia in
color and in black and white. [See article by Teodor Zareba,
"Piwnica Pod Baranami-A Cabaret from Poland," SEEP vol. 7,
nos. 2 & 3 for an account of "Piwnica pod Baranami" in New
York at Alice Tully Hall and at the CUNY Graduate School in
1987.] Available from Tenten, 03-932 Warszawa, ul. Katowicka
11 A, Poland.
11
MOSCOW TRENDS: THE 1993-1994 SEASON
John Freedman
No single tendency manifested itself as the leader in Moscow last
season, although several proved that the Russian theatre capital remains
as diverse and active as ever. There were faint, but unmistakable signs
that theatres are on the verge of rediscovering that dinosaur, the
contemporary, homegrown playwright. In the favorite classic category,
Nikolai Gogol replaced Chekhov and Ostrovsky.
1
(Of five shows based
on Gogol, four would have easily made any expanded list of the year's
best). There were numerous experiments with unorthodox stage
environments, some quite effective. My choice for trend of the year
would be the interest in parody, of which three standout examples came
bunched at the end of the season.
The miscellaneous category had some major events. Peter Stein's
eight-hour Oresteia with Russian actors was the most waited-for and,
ultimately, most maligned production of the year. In fact, despite the
inevitable slow spots, it was a fascinating, often blistering interpretation
of Aeschylus's trilogy. Arguably the season's highlight was Pyotr
Fomenko's scintillating production of Fernand Crommelynck's 1he
Magnificent Cuckold at the Satirikon Theatre. With this multi-layered
work, about which more later, Fomenko reconfirmed his position as
Moscow's top director.
The interest in parody seemed to come suddenly out of nowhere,
but it had such a neat symmetry to it, one was tempted to see in it more
than coincidence. Three different shows exhibiting similar bold
irreverence to tradition treated a foreign classic, Moliere's 1he School for
Wives; a relatively modern work, Alexei Abruzov's What a Lovely Sight;
and a Russian classic, Gogol's 1he Marriage.
The first salvo came in April 1994 from the Mossoviet Theatre
when young Boris Milgram unleashed his deliriously campy version of
School for Wives. Moliere has been a frequent guest on Moscow stages
recently, but he is almost invariably done as a sitcom master in frilly
costumes. Milgram put a glorious end to that.
2
More than hinting at
Moliere-meets-La Cage aux Folles, the bewigged and berouged male
characters delighted in their sexual ambiguities. The head-spinning variety
of styles drew on vaudeville, song and dance, silent films, floor shows at
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old Intourist hotels, and those inept, unintentionally hilarious Soviet
musical movies of the 1970s. Stretches of dead-pan seriousness interrupted
the wacky, bumpy flow of mugging, dancing and singing, and then just
as quickly dissipated back into beautifully executed theatrical corn. The
point was not only to reclaim Moliere specifically, but to revive a creative
approach to comedy in general. Especially effective were Andrei Mizhulis
as a hilariously awkward Horace, and Valery Yaryomenko, whose purple
interpretation of Chrysalde brought the house down repeatedly. Alia
Kamenkova's set depicted a no-frills, provincial theatre stage and curtains
(all in tender yellow), while her costumes "evolved" from tradition period
attire at the beginning, to more severe contemporary duds in the middle,
and reached a flourish of outlandish, cartoon-like designs in the finale.
Even if this energetic, outre outing wasn't able to keep the momentum
rolling at full speed all the time, it was always innovative and fun.
The Malaya Bronnaya Theatre's W'hat a Lovely Sight came at the
end of May. Directed by Artyom Khryakov, another member of the
young generation, it was surely the year's weirdest entry. My baffled
response at intermission was that it was the worst show I had ever loved.
But the especially strong second act showed there was an impressive
method to the near total madness. Abruzov's "optimistic comedy,"
written in 1970 as the era of stagnation had already oozed into place, is
certainly more purposefully satirical than most had realized. On the
surface it tells of a bunch of wonderful, positive people, while a closer
look reveals a story about vulnerable, doubting people suffering acutely
from alienation. Khryakov went after it with a high-powered magnifying
glass, creating a wonderfully warped-and loving-travesty of images from
the Soviet 1950s and 1960s, for which there has been a rise in nostalgia
recently. Coming in for affectionate slaps were the old cliches about
youthful hope, familial duty, and social commitment. The production's
visual form sent up and imitated the epochal early creations of the
"Sovremennik" Theatre, and of such directors as the late, great Anatoly
Efros.
The story centers around Vasya, "a wonderful young man," who
dumped his first wife, gets dropped by his second, and doesn't quite notice
the neighborhood girl who is after him now. Arbuzov calls all the girls
"Milochka," more than hinting at the superficial monotony which covers
his world's myriad of hidden nuances. Khryakov cut two minor
characters, used unexpected speech intonations, shifted pauses, inserted
pantomimes and rearranged actors' entrances and exits. The entire
ensemble, from Vladimir Yavorsky's Vasya and Olga Sirina's Milochka II,
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W11at a Lovely Sight, Malaya Bronnaya Theatre, Moscow
15
to Tatyana Oshurkova's Milochka ill, poured on a thick sauce of sticky,
naive opttmtsm. Konstantin Kravinsky was superb as the television
announcer who was literally trapped in a television set, and who
unflappably ticked off agricultural achievements, delivered poetry lectures,
and gave aggressive gardening lessons. The result was a purposefully
overblown, often hilarious and deeply moving look at people trapped by
events and circumstances that are bigger than they are. Irina Akimova set
it all in an empty black box and dressed the characters in artfully
"tasteless" clothes. The costumes were lightly splashed in bronze paint,
suggesting that these people were either on their way to becoming
monuments or, on the contrary, that they were monuments in the process
of decay.
Vladimir Mirzoyev, who spends most of his time in Canada these
days, returned some life to the much-suffering Stanislavsky Theatre with
his unorthodox staging of Gogel's The Marriage in early June. Playing
heavily with overkill, facial mugging, exaggerated gestures, and sculptural
posing, he gaily pecked away at stereotypes and sought new approaches
to old traditions. His boldest move was to cast two actresses in each
female role. Agafya Tikhonovna, the fiancee, was played as an old/young
pair by Y elizaveta Nikishchikhina and Anna Isaikina, with the former
playing the character's spinsterly, yet soulful and dreamy side, and the
latter playing her beautiful, more superficial side. Agafya's aunt Arina
was a dual vamp with curly hair (Natalya Orlova and Natalya Antonova)
while Fyokla the matchmaker was a smirking, futuristic, twin sex-bomb
(Natalya Kashirina and Tatyana Maist). The Agafya actresses created
something of a split personality in which each alone usually took large
chunks of text. The others were daunting Hydras, trading snippets of
dialogue and snapping off the ends of each others' sentences. Aleksandr
Feklistov cut an eccentric, blustery Kochkaryov, who often used grotesque
body language to illustrate what he was talking about (children, barking
dogs, wifely caresses, etc.), and Vladimir Simonov's Podkolesin was as
quietly amazed by everything going on as he was skeptical about it.
Dmitry Alekseyev's metallic-looking set might have been the stylized
interior of a submarine or a space ship. As in Star Trek, walls parted to
let people in and out, and tables and chairs handily folded out of the
walls. Raucously comic, the production ultimately blossomed into a
compassionate and moving vision of people seeking human contact in
vam.
Aside from Mirzoyev's Marriage, the other shows based on Gogol
were Mikhail Levitin's adaptation of the same play as N. Gogo/'s Marriage
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Slavic and East Eurapean Performance Vol. 14, No. 3
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at the Hermitage Theatre, Sergei Artsybashev's 7he Inspector General at
the Theatre na Pokrovke, the Bogis Agency's adaptation of "The
Overcoat" as Bashmachkin (no director), and Valery Fokin's adaptation of
Dead Souls, called A Hotel Room in the Town of N, for the Meyerhold
Center. Only N. V. Gogo/'s Marriage, constantly interrupted by scenes
from an excellent but out-of place dramatization of "The Diary of a
Madman," was unsuccessful.
7he Inspector General, on the other hand, was a tour de force that
rode on alternating and competing atmospheric waves. Without
minimizing the abundant humor, it carefully descended into the strange
inner worlds of all the major characters. From the mayor's famous first
line (delivered by Yury Lakhin in a subdued, angst-laden tone) to his
genuinely moving admission of his stupidity in the finale, this production
was tinted with alarm and foreboding. Sergei Udovik created at
stunningly unexpected Khlestakov. Rubber-faced, lizard-like, and
strangely ambivalent, he passed instantly from fear to rage, from
innocence to foppery. At the mercy of his thuggish servant, he
confounded everyone else. Aside from the steamy, subterranean duel
between the governor's wife and daughter for the family's sexual bragging
rights, Artsybashev enhanced the play's quirky sexuality with four
beautiful, spectral women who silently waited on both the bureaucrats
and the small audience.
The Bogis Agency's Bashmachkin was the work of the same basic
team that created last year's acclaimed Nijinsky (SEEP vol. 13, no. 3, Fall
1993). As then, they tested several directors before opening with a
directorless program. That was more of a problem this time around, for
Bashmachkin was slightly too turned in on itself. Alexei Burykin's script
was genuinely touching, although it also suffered from some excess
sentimentality. (By skipping Gogol's ending with Bashmachkin's avenging
ghost, the story lost a good deal of irony.) But such criticism are minor.
Yegor Vysotsky's spare, unsettling music kept a cutting edge on things,
and Aleksandr Feklistov, despite some self-indulgence, was ultimately
superb as the odd, frightened, and at the same time stubborn clerk. Sergei
Yakunin's intricate, animate set stood on a small, revolving platform, one
side depicting Bashmachkin's scraggly apartment, the other his cramped
niche at his government office. The sea of tiny details-drawers, quills,
cupboard doors, a folding desk, a hanger for eye glasses-was constantly
in motion, giving the objects a magical, human feel. Through Feklistov's
attentive interaction with them, they even seemed to take on distinct
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personalities. Whatever shortcomings Bashmachkin had, it was still one
of the season's most imaginative and effective productions.
A Hotel Room in the Town of N returned Valery Fokin to
Moscow after a couple of years aborad, and showed he had picked up a
suitcase full of ideas on his travels. The director took Gogol's novel
about the adventures of the roguish Chichikov (A vangard Leontyev) and
cut out the adventures, showing instead only Chichikov's unguarded
moments before and after his forays into society. This shift in the novel's
focus created a wise, funny, and often sad glimpse of one of Russian
literature's most peculiar characters. Fokin's script made a minimum use
of words, providing Leontyev endless opportunities to capitalize on mime
scenes. It all was given brilliant form by Aleksandr Velikanov's stage
environment: a large box in a corner of Moscow's largest exhibition hall,
the former Manege, where performances were held. The interior depicted
a dim hotel room in which the audience was seated around the perimeter
and on a tiny second-floor balcony. Outside, musicians from the Mark
Pekarsky Percussion Theatre moved about freely as they performed the
eerie, silence-laden score by Aleksandr Bakshi. The result was that
Chichikov's room seemed to float in space. Occasionally, in comically
disturbing, dream-like scenes, the musicians and other supporting cast
members burst into the room through openings in the walls or furniture.
The action and lighting further expanded the "stage" to include spaces
beneath the floor and atop the ceiling.
The Fokin/Velikanov use of space was probably the season's
most complex and successful experiment, but it was not the only one.
Alexei Borodin's staging of Racine's Berenice at the National Youth
Theatre was set on the grand stairway leading from the theatre's foyer to
the third floor. The spectators were twice transplanted, giving them three
visual angles on the action. At first, they sat in the foyer, peering into
the tunnel of the stairwell as the actors ascended, descended, or cut across
the acting space from two other staircases leading to the sides. Then they
were led to the second floor and seated on the stage left staircase for the
central part of the performance. For the finale, they moved to the top of
the grand stairway where they peered down the stairwell and up at the
balcony above them. Within this innovative use of space, Borodin was
otherwise classically conservative. His actors wore conventional Roman
togas, spoke the verse text with regal intonations, and moved in a mildly
stylized manner that evoked the images of well-known Roman sculptures.
Another interesting use of space was to be found in the Valery
Sarkisov Theatre Group's adaptation of Dostoevsky's The Brothers
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Bashmachkin, a production of the Bogis Agency, Moscow
21
Karamazov, subtitled Tomorrow the Trial. Performed on and in front of
the tiny stage in Konstantin Stanislavsky's former apartment (now a
memorial museum), it was an ideal setting for this distilled dramatization
consisting mostly of dialogues and monologues by the three Karamazov
brothers and Smerdyakov on the eve of Mitya's trial. Besides a curtain in
the stage aperture, and a small courtroom balustrade-on-wheels, nothing
interfered with the strong mix of theatre and real urban life which the
location provided.
Two productions by Y evgeny Kamenkovich, a young director
affiliated with the new Fomenko Studio, were noteworthy not only for
their use of environments, but for showing that environment alone does
not make good theatre. His staging of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of
Being Earnest for the Fomenko Studio was held on the runway of Slava
Zaitsev's House of Fashion, while his production of Pyotr Gladilin's The
Car in Flesh for a Russian-French Theatre Center was set in a real car
showroom. Both, however, only highlighted the fact that neither the
director nor the actors really understood why they were playing in such
odd places. In Earnest, the young actors merely paraded up and down the
runway in Dmitry Cholak's outrageous costumes, burying Wilde's
comedy in tongue-tied attempts at rapid-fire speech. Flesh was intended
as a comeback vehicle for Y elena Koreneva, the former Soviet film star
who had returned to Russia after ten years in the United States. But she
could do nothing with Gladilin's amateurish play, consisting of little more
than a running spate of jokes that blur the lines between men, airplanes,
and automobiles. In any case, with the exception of one scene when
Koreneva "made love" to a real Mark VIII Lincoln by crawling all over
it, no real effort was made to capitalize on the setting.
The percentage of productions of new plays remained low,
although things are clearly changing. Aleksandr Galin (The Title at the
"Sovremennik") and Semyon Zlotnikov (Everything Will Be All Right As
You Wanted It at the Contemporary Play School) kept their familiar
names in the till, while Nikolai Kolyada sustained his popularity with
three productions based on two plays (Slingshot by the Roman Viktyuk
Theatre, and The Oginski Polonaise at the Malaya Bronnaya Theatre and
the Viktyuk Theatre). The Petersburg writer Oleg Danilov had his
Russian sitcom Color Dreams in Black and White produced at both the
Russian Army Theatre and at the Gorky Moscow Art Theatre (as Let's Go
See "Chapayev'j; the Laboratory Theatre staged Viktor Denisov's clever
"dramatization" of Salvador Dali's painting, Six Specters of Lenin on a
Piano; the Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre mounted Vladimir Gurkin's A
22
Slavic arui East European Performance Vol. 14, No.3
Berenice, The National Youth Theatre, Moscow
23
Measured Lament, about the degeneration of a small Siberian town after
World War II; and the Mayakovsky Theatre joined with the French
Theatre Vivant to stage Olga Mikhailova's Russian Dream, a witty modern
spoof of the Oblomov myth. But the season's most popular playwright
was Yelena Gremina. Aside from 7he Case of Cornet 0 (done at the
Pushkin Theatre as Russian Eclipse), she saw four different Moscow venues
produce Behind the Mirror, her intriguing treatment of a tragic affair
between an aging Catherine the Great and a young man in his early
twenties. The first of the four directed by Vyacheslav Dolgachyov at the
Chekhov Art Theatre and starring Galina Vishneyskaya as Catherine,
attracted its share of negative press. In actual fact, it was an impressive
example of matching a star to a suitable role.
The centerpiece of the season was certainly Pyotr Fomenko's 7he
Magnificent Cuckold at the Satirikon Theatre. Crommelynck's masterful
reversal of the theme of the Fall, in which a jealous husband forces his
faithful young wife into promiscuity in order to discover the lover he is
certain she must have, was handled with such inspiration and insight, it
will surely enter the history books alongside Meyerhold's 1922 staging (as
7he Magnanimous Cuckold).
Fomenko wrapped everything in a shimmering veil of evocative,
sensory effects that, like fine spices, highlighted every aspect of the
compelling drama. Tiny bells tinkled quietly when brushed against; fine,
scented powder billowed down in bursts from a narrow chute above the
stage; the actors cavorted in a bath, the water splashing up over the edges;
and they playfully sprayed misty clouds of water which, thanks to Andrei
Rebrov's superb lighting, hung like gossamer in the air. Staged in the
round, the action also took place on balconies above and behind the
spectators, as well as in the corridors outside the small hall. Stanislav
Morozov's warm, rustic environment was all hemp rope Qadders to reach
the balconies) and unvarnished wood. The only real decoration was a
curious windmill-like contraption hanging over an oversized washtub
center stage.
As the compulsive husband, Bruno, Konstantin Raikin ran the
gamut of emotions from playful tenderness to cruelty and lurid madness.
And as is characteristic of this explosively temperamental actor, even his
early, most loving moments were subtly streaked with the dark shadow
of what was to come. Meanwhile the young Natalya Vdovina played the
trusting and wronged Stella as a fragile child of nature. Her gradual
transformation from an unspoiled innocent into a troubled, experienced,
24
The Magnificent Cuckold, Satirikon Theatre, Moscow
25
and haunted woman was always colored by her wholesomeness, her
irrepressible energy, and her unshakable sense of right.
NOTES
1
The few Ostrovsky productions this season were not of special
note. Of several Chekhov productions, only Genrietta Yanovskaya's
excellent Ivanov and Others was successful. {See Liz Swain, "Ivanov and
Others," SEEP 13 [Fall 1993]: 44-48.) Sergei Zhenovach's The Wood
Demon at the Malaya Bronnaya Theatre added another question mark to
that sometimes-acclaimed director's uneven career, while Sergei Solovyov's
bombastic The Seagull for the Commonwealth of T aganka Actors did not
bode well for the actors who broke with Yury Lyubimov to create their
own theatre.
2
For instance, Mikhail Yefremov's traditional version of School for
Wives at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre looked reasonably pleasant
in 1992-1993. But his mirror-image of that show with The School for
Husbands at the Art Theatre in 1994 had the misfortune of coming out
simultaneously with Milgram's Wives. Next to Milgram's Moliere,
Yefremov's looked amnesic and sophomoric.
26
SLA VA POLUNIN, PRESIDENT OF THE ACADEMY OF FOOLS
Joel Schechter
No one is surprised by the "brain drain" occurring in Russia,
where scientists whom the state can no longer afford to employ leave for
private firms in Europe and America. But the "whiteface flight" of circus
clowns leaving Russia for the West is less widely discussed. In fact, I
hardly noticed the development myself until I visited the Montreal-based
Cirque du Solei! in San Francisco recently and met several of Russia's
most distinguished circus clowns.
One of them, Slava Polunin, was the head of Litsedei, the world
famous Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) ensemble of mimes and circus
artists. Polunin also led 150 clowns out of Russia in 1989 (at least
temporarily), when he co-directed Mir Caravan, a peace caravan of
circuses. In this project, ten circus troupes from different countries
travelled across what was then the Soviet bloc and into Europe, displaying
the kind of international cooperation and fun that politicians rarely
achieve. As the clowns paraded with Polunin through the streets of
Moscow, Prague, Warsaw, and Paris, their journey initiated a welcomed
alternative to state leaders, who are sometimes called clowns even if they
lack the professional training and physical comedy displayed by Polunin's
friends. For a brief period in 1989, the clowns became the leaders,
crossing cultural and national borders and celebrating the end of the Cold
War before it was officially declared over by the elected and Party-
appointed clowns. Polunin told me he began planning the caravan at a
time when he was unable to see the work of Western circus performers,
and they could not see Litsedei without some difficulty. The caravan,
which assembled, travelled, and disbanded before the Berlin Wall fell, may
well have contributed to the Wall's removal as its clowns performed in
West Berlin and left laughter where there had been mistrust and
bureaucracy.
Although most of the artists in the Peace Caravan returned to
their own countries after a few months, Slava Polunin and his colleagues
in Litsedei did not return to Leningrad. They now perform their acts and
conduct research in comedy at diverse locations including California.
Polunin, Dmitry Bogatriev, and Sergei Chachelev will be touring with
Cirque du Soleil's Algeria for the next few months. After their San
27
Slava Polunin
28
Francisco stop they go to San Jose, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, and Costa
Mesa.
Inside the circus tent, Polunin performs another act of flight
which is more personal and subtle than his street theatre. Wearing white
face paint, a red nose, red scarf, and yellow jumpsuit, he carries a huge
suitcase into the arena and mimes a surreal railroad journey. Rungs of a
stepladder serve as train tracks. Acrid smoke rises from the hole in his
stovepipe hat as if his head were the smokestack of a locomotive or he
was smoldering with emotions from a scene of farewell enacted moments
before. He mimes two friends, or at least their hands and coat sleeves,
separating. Polunin moves from smoking hat to big red-slippered feet on
ice. A fierce blizzard begins as a gale-force wind machine blows blinding
white confetti into the audience bringing with it a gale of laughter at the
comic storm. The audience brushes paper snow off its clothing and
watches the clown teeter in the wind. By turns amusing, sullen, and
poetic, Polunin's journey recalls his own departure from Russia and other
reports of exile all too common in our time. It ends happily, however, as
the clown chases a paper butterfly through warm, sultry light into the
circus audience.
Polunin's solo in Cirque du Soleil is part of a longer two-person
show he performed with Sergei Chachelev in London. Before the two of
them developed their comic scenes suitable for stage and circus, they had
been reviving the art of street theatre with the Peace Caravan. Litsedei's
contribution to that earlier tour, in addition to co-sponsorship of it, was
an outdoor event titled Catastrophe, a tragicomic evocation of
environmental disaster. A wheelbarrow-like machine driven by a
helmeted clown sets off a cloud of fiery orange smoke, joined by white
plumes from other machines. Comic stretcher bearers run off without the
accident victims they are supposed to rescue, and a firetruck hoses the
entire area with white foam. The playing field looks like a disaster area
after foam completely covers it. Some of Litsedei's clowns also become
covered by the white pall. The scene is an ecological, anti-nuclear
variation on the traditional circus act in which clowns hurl buckets of
white paint at one another.
Before creating Mir Caravan and then dispersing to other circuses
as guest artists, members of Litsedei had their own permanent stage for
pantomime and clowning which they acquired in 1981 in Leningrad. The
ensemble became well-known at mime and clown festivals around the
world. Their troupe represented a departure from earlier Russian
clowning, which took place in circuses between acts by high wire artists,
29
Slava Polunin
30
trained animals, gymnasts and Cossack horseriders. Polunin's company
danced comic choral numbers and presented a gallery of eccentrics in a
program devoted wholly to mime and clownery. Polunin contends that
earlier clown practices, developed in the 1950s and 60s, no longer speak
to contemporary audiences. Acts by Yuri Nikulin, Oleg Popov and
Leonid Yengebarov were innovative in the early years of the Cold War;
at a time when artists were not free to criticize the state, those clowns
mocked low-level bureaucracy, as well as idlers and incompetent doctors,
with state approval. (Nikulin became a famous film actor with his
character of the idler; he is currently director of the Old Circus in
Moscow.) The clowns of the post-Nikulin generation-at least those in
Litsedei-prefer to perform outside the circus ring, on theatre stages or on
the street, where their acts are more self-contained and not shortened to
fit between acrobatic and animal acts. Polunin and company determine
the length of their acts even if it means literally stopping traffic during
some street theatre events.
One earlier clown who offered great inspiration to Polunin was
Leonid Yengebarov. He died in 1972 after a relatively brief career, and
his acts remain almost unknown in the West. In one of Yengebarov's
most famous numbers he portrayed a lonely, melancholy man. (Were
such characters supposed to exist under socialism?) Elevating himself on
one hand and keeping his body horizontally suspended and stretched out
above the floor in a small pool of light, Yengebarov would survey the
dark landscape outside his lit circle. He placed his flat palm (from the
other, free hand) above his forehead as if looking for signs of life. For a
minute he floated alone, a foot above the world and not quite in it, as if
the thousands of spectators around the arena were not there.
Some comparable melancholic and surreal physical comedy
surfaces in Polunin's current act, with the smoking top hat and
Chaplinesque storm. In another bizarre number, Polunin enters with
several large wooden arrows piercing his body and dances an extended,
operatic death scene. His parody of a lonely man's final minutes propels
him into the audience as his character lurches across the backs of seats
without seeming to see anyone around him. When he takes his curtain
call for the scene, however, a second clown carrying the bow that shot the
arrows enters first to claim credit for creating the act. The clowns in
Litsedei do not die quietly or alone.
Polunin says he expects Litsedei's ensemble to resume projects in
St. Petersburg in the future. One of the first of these will be the
reinvention of the carnival tradition after a period of research on past
31
International Theatre Centre
SLAVA POLUNIN
32 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 14, No. 3
carnivals around the world. (fhis plan will give the troupe's clowns a
wonderful excuse to visit carnivals everywhere.) The clown troupe still
has an office, known as "The Academy of Fools, " in St. Petersburg.
Polunin is the President of the Academy. He and the other clowns can
be contacted by interested scholars and fools at Karavannaya Street, 12, St.
Petersburg, or by FAX at 312-20-63, 153-56-83.
33
THE RUST A VEU THEATRE MOSCOW TOUR
John Freedman
In 1915, when Sandro Akhmeteli was still pondering the steps he
would take to revolutionize the Georgian theatre, he described the visual
images which, to him, was most Georgian of all: "The Georgian," he
wrote, "walks exquisitely, his gait is light .... And he carries his whole
body freely and erect, barely swaying." Akhmeteli criticized his
contemporaries for "failing to grasp the Georgian gestures, [failing] to
sense the rhythm of those gestures, and [failing] to create on stage the
kind of movement that would capture the Georgian atmosphere. "
1
Although his experiments would last barely ten years before he was
murdered in 1937 by his enemy, Lavrenti Beria, Akhmeteli's brief stint as
the artistic director of the Rustaveli Theatre (1926-1935) had an enormous
impact on Georgian theatre in particular and Soviet theatre in general.
That could not be made any more evident than by the exhilarating month
of performances that the current incarnation of the Rustaveli put on in
Moscow in June 1994. Under the guidance of Robert Sturua, the
Rustaveli has become a world-class theatre by honing to perfection the
very principles Akhmeteli set forth eighty years ago.
It is impossible not to pause and say a few words about the
extraordinary courage and vigor of the Rustaveli's entire staff and troupe,
who for two years have continued to make theatre in the midst of bloody
civil war. Even now, as the shooting has moved out of Tbilisi, the actors
often spend the night at the theatre after rehearsals, since it is too
dangerous to go out on the streets after dark. For that same reason, the
theatre performs only Saturday and Sunday matinees. And yet, the
Rustaveli has not just survived, it has thrived. Of the four productions
brought to Moscow (shown in twenty performances), three were new.
Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol (directed by Otar Egadze and Levan
Tsuladze), Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan (directed by
Sturua), and David K.ldiashvili's Irene's Happiness (directed by Andro
Y enukidze) all opened in 1993 or 1994. Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk
Circle (directed by Sturua) has been in repertoire since the mid-1970s, but
it played as if it had just come off previews. All the shows brilliantly
reflected the forces now at work in Georgia. Irene's Happiness was a
scorching look at the explosive Georgian temperament, while the other
34
The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Rustaveli Theatre, Tbilisi, Georgia
1994 Moscow Summer Tour
35
three bore the stamp of almost belligerent, if occasionally despairing,
gaiety. The subtext in all of them was that life and theatre can hold their
own against death and destruction.
The tour fittingly opened with Chalk Circle, Brecht's parable of
love, selfishness, and selflessness set during a civil war in ancient Georgia.
Sturua's tremendous ability to blend and alternate sweeping, mass scenes
with intimate moments was signalled immediately. A man and a woman
entered through an oversized gate upstage and methodically made their
way across the dimly lit stage to the forestage. The woman sat down at
a piano at stage left, while the burly, dignified Storyteller (Zhanri
Lolashvili) ceremoniously announced what was to be performed. He then
sauntered back to the gate. Just as he was about to open it, a frenzied
crowd burst through it onto the stage. While they noisily danced and
caroused, the Storyteller led them in song as he, or others, would
subsequently do with regularity. Lolashvili, who served as something of
an emcee and "unseen" mover of the entire performance, epitomized
Akhmeteli's description of the Georgian gait as "exquisite, free, erect, and
light." Holding his head high and his torso erect, Lolashvili invariably
walked with slow, high strides that suggested the gait of a thoroughbred
horse, while his arms were always free and fluid. The movements of the
other actors were less rigidly stylized, although there was an element of
stylization everywhere, giving all the actors' performances the feel of
being parts of a unified whole.
The highly disciplined actors carefully kept within the limits of
their typecast characters without becoming stereotypes or losing their
humanity. As Grusha, the peasant woman who saves and raises the
murdered governor's baby boy, Tatuli Dolidze was sincerity and
commitment incarnate. Yet that didn't stop her from occasionally
wishing quietly that she were on her own again. As Grusha's fiance
Simon Chachava, the towering, square-jawed Kakhi Kavsadze was the
picture of reserved pride and dignity. His attempt to save Grusha in the
finale by claiming to be the boy's father came across as a humble yet
chivalrous gesture of love. Scenes involving Grusha's roly-poly brother
(Dzhemal Gaganidze) and her scrawny, deceitful husband Yussup (Ivane
Gogitidze) were presented and performed as sterling comic skits.
Meanwhile the third act was a rolling comic tour de force thanks to the
prodigious talents of the great Ramaz Chkhikvadze, who played Azdak,
the town-drunk-turned-judge, with the same volcanic power that he gives
his legendary King Lear. With his spectacular operatic voice, his uncanny
timing, and his bottomless well of energy, Chkhikvadze was a clown on
36
"
")
the loose, a madman looking for a wall to hit. What he hit was the
pinnacle of comic acting.
The set by Georgy Aleksi-Meskhishvili implied a forlorn outpost.
Battered fortress walls lined the large, empty stage, the center of which
often revolved, delivering or carrying away actors in statue-like poses. A
few artist's implements stood bunched at forestage right (the Storyteller's
"studio"), a messenger occasionally atop a kind of Trojan horse, and spare
props such as a bed, a wash tub or a scaffold in Act III were brought in
from time to time. But the stage was primarily an open platter that
served up the actors and the action.
Irene's Happiness, written by David Kldiashvili in 1897, and set in
a Georgian village in the early nineteenth century, tells the story of the
headstrong Abesalo, whose obsession with the beautiful Irene leads to
tragedy. Originally written as an exploration of social differences
(Abesalo is a noble, Irene the daughter of a commoner), director
Y enukidze deftly refocused the work into a stinging, probing expose of
the Georgian national character. The story's impact derives from its
simplicity. While visiting the relatives of a friend, Abesalo is smitten by
the young Irene whom he takes that very night. No one lifts a finger to
defend the half-horrified, half-fascinated girl (played with beautiful dignity
by Nino Kasradze), and when she becomes Abesalo's wife, she tries her
best to be obedient. That, however, only infuriates her husband, whose
wrath is soon turned on everyone.
Zaza Papuashvili was simply stunning as Abesalo, creating a
character whose sexual passion was merely a weakly veiled inclination
towards wanton violence and destruction (he first admits to having fallen
under love's spell while drunkenly brandishing a pistol). But Papuashvili's
triumph was to find in Abesalo's black, intoxicated fury such a
profoundly complex spirituality that he precluded anything so simplistic
as outright condemnation of his actions. His guilt was further shared by
Irene's father, who aided the abduction; by his friend and Irene's relative,
who turned a blind eye while admitting it was wrong; and even by Irene's
fiance, who protested only within the bounds of propriety.
The small audience for Irene was split into two separate blocks
and seated at the back of the stage, looking across Shmagi Sheklashvili's
set of a nineteenth century hut into the empty hall of the Vakhtangov
Theatre where all the tour's performances were held. The performance
began serenely as a woman read and an old man lay in bed. Irene sat
down to play the piano. Suddenly she hit a sour chord and the lights
went bright. With a terrible rumbling and screeching, the theatre's
38
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 14, No.3
massive fire wall came down, trapping the actors and the audience on the
stage. As the performance moved on, the sense of claustrophobia that
caused was quickly forgotten. Until the finale, at least. Then all the
characters scattered frantically while the frenzied Abesalo sought someone
to vent his rage on. Too old to run, Abesalo's servant fell murdered,
stabbed in the back. As the dead body lay at center stage, the fire wall
was lifted with the same deafening roar, revealing the entire cast spread
throughout the parterre and balcony. They stood and applauded the
audience who sat in stunned silence.
Irene's Happiness literally turned the audience around, making it
a part of the theatrical act and showing its complicity in the violence
depicted in the performance. Then by pulling the actors off the stage and
putting them in the traditional position of the spectators, it celebrated
theatre's ability to transform and transcend.
Sturua's production of Good Person was a natural extension, and
brilliant development of the devices that went into The Caucasian Chalk
Circle. Aleksi-Meskhishvili, with Miriam Shvelidze and Shota
Glurdzhidze, echoed the set from the earlier work, once again lining the
stage perimeter with battered walls, and using a revolving platform in the
middle of the essentially empty stage. A modest bamboo hut stood on
the extreme edge of the platform and a rickety elevator shaft ran up the
back left wall, allowing for the entrance and exit of the bumbling gods.
Like Chalk Circle, it also began with an "announcement," this time from
Wang, the water seller, and was followed by a horde of people pouring
onto the stage through the gate at the back. The entire cast raced to the
edge of the forestage in tiny, choppy steps, bid the audience hello and
goodbye, and then disappeared as quickly as they had come. That wave
of energy, motion, and good-natured irony was the preface to what lay
ahead.
Good Person carried the theatrical elements of Chalk Circle to an
entirely new level. It was an astonishing display of brilliantly modulated
music, movement, lighting, decor, costumes, make-up, and rhythmic
speech patterns. The lighting alternated between soft, smoky blue and
harsh, bright spots, while the spectacular music, scored by Glakancheli,
ranged from a thrilling version of Beethoven's Ode to Joy, to jazzy tunes
from the 1930s. The music, whose high volumes seemed to give it a
spatial quality, was used in choppy fragments that excited, teased, and
them frustrated when it was abruptly cut away to dead silence. The
make-up and costumes only occasionally hinted at the Chinese setting,
with some characters wearing heavily stylized clothes and make-up and
39
40
The Good Person of Setzuan, Rustaveli Theatre, Tbilisi, Georgia
others appearing in modern, casual dress. Once again, the "swaying,
rhythmic gestures" which Akhmeteli said characterized the Georgian
national image were at the center of everything. It seemed that hardly a
twitch or a blink had not been carefully choreographed-displaying
influences from Charlie Chaplin to, perhaps, Pina Bausch, and the
choreographed chaos of West Side Story-and yet Sturua's splendid
ensemble of actors make the whole performance look improvised. There
was Levan Berikashvili's slinking hunchback Wang; Baia Dvalishvili's
strange, puppet-like Mrs. Yang, with her darting eyes, squeaky voice and
hopping gait; and Nana Shoniya's elegant Shin, who invariably moved in
long, loping strides and angular, twisted torso movements.
Sturua displayed a masterful ability to shift control of the
performance from one character to another, creating the perfect approach
to Brecht's heavily populated play. Just as important, every one of his
actors, whether playing a lead or a cameo, was ready and able at every
moment to shoulder the responsibility of carrying a scene. But for all the
intricate teamwork and all the outstanding individual performances that
went into Good Woman, the show belonged to the young Nino Kasradze,
who was breathtaking as Shen Teh/Shui Ta. Agile and graceful, at once
smolderingly sexual and chastely wholesome, Kasradze was filled to
overflowing with a deep sense of humanity, compassion, and tenacity.
She seemed to have the taut reflexes of a hummingbird, while also
displaying nerves and will of steel. She moved in complete freedom
among Sturua's bouncing, skipping, and swaying motions, which ebbed
and flowed like the snippets of music, creating a riveting visual picture
with a profound emotional impact.
As Kasradze's chief partner, the grounded flier Yang Sun, Zaza
Papuashvili retained the same explosiveness he showed in Irene's Happiness,
but this time he colored it with dumb arrogance and irresistible romantic
charm. The latter was never more evident than in the final seconds of
Act I and the first moments of Act II, when Shen Teh and Yang Sun fall
in love. The actors' inspired tenderness and burning inner joy were a
sight to behold in Sturua's simple, but gorgeous handling of the scenes.
As Act I drew to a close, the pair stood almost hanging over the edge of
the stage, gazing into each other's eyes and holding each other in a light
embrace. But before one could register the image, they broke the spell,
sprightly stepped apart from each other and stared into the audience with
the slightly tired, but grateful look of two actors ready to take a twenty
minute intermission. The ease with which they stepped out of character
41
created a genuine theatrical shock; after all, it was played so beautifully
that you were left still believing it was all true.
Act II began with a reprise of the opening scene, only this time
it was just Shen Teh and Yang Sun, not a crowd, that raced the distance
from the back wall to the forestage. There, they briefly rubbed noses and
teased each other for having fallen in love. Kasradze flashed an impish
look at the audience and then they both went racing back to the gate in
the back wall, awkwardly throwing off their coats as they ran in leaping
bounds. Standing framed in the huge opening, and backlit in smoky blue,
they struck a long pose in a gracefully arched, back-bending embrace. It
was a spectacular duet that epitomized the theatricality, the warmth, and
the inspiration of this masterful production.
A Christmas Carol, in Shota Glurdzhidze's lovely design
telescoping a view of Scrooge's cluttered office in the open trap of the
forestage with scenes from snow-bound London in the back, was a
luscious, cream-filled pie that topped off the tour splendidly. Originally
staged as the Georgian civil war was escalating, directors Egadze and
Tsuladze may have chosen this guileless parable of wrong and right as a
talisman of hope. If so, it was a splendid choice, for it was exceptionally
beautiful and cathartic. And, as always, the Rustaveli troupe was at its
whirling, swirling best from top to bottom. Karlo Sakandelidze's Scrooge
traveled the road from a cruel, grumpy miser to a wonderfully kind, little
old man without missing a single transition or hitting a single false note.
Temur Chichinadze played a blustery, Napoleonic Ghost of Christmas
Past, while Lela Alibegashvili was an utterly delightful Ghost of Christmas
Present. A self-deprecating, would-be ballerina who constantly tripped
over her own feet, she emanated such kind generosity and believed so
sincerely in Scrooge's innate goodness, that even he fell head over heels
in love with her. Perhaps most characteristic of the entire Rustaveli
ensemble was Murman Dzhinoriya as Marley's ghost. On stage for only
a single, brief scene, Dzhinoriya poured so much concentrated energy into
his grandiose, lock-joint bucket of bones that his exit provoked a sustained
ovation from the audience.
Robert Sturua, relying in equal measure on his own spectacular,
innovative ideas and on the strength that tradition provides, has assembled
an extraordinary team of actors capable of effortlessly moving back and
forth between a whisper and a scream. Put simply, he has created what
is surely one of the great theatres of the world.
42
NOTE
1
Quoted tn Natela Urushadze, Sandra Akhmeteli (Moscow:
Iskusstvo, 1990): 34.
43
IFTR MEETS IN MOSCOW
Laurence Senelick
The Xllth World Congress of the International Federation for
Theatre Research was held in Moscow in early June, 1994. It is the first
time the Russian capital has played host to this organization. Some two
hundred participants came from all over the world, including, also for the
first time, representatives from Russia, the Baltic states, and Ukraine, all
of whom in the past had been constrained from attending by political and
economic reasons. A good deal of the financial support came from the
Russian Ministry of Culture, whose Deputy Minister, Mikhail Shvidkoi,
joked to the assemblage that in a "free" society, nothing was "free" and
ministers had no " free" time. It was a signal that the Cold-War origins
of IFTR were now to be put to rest; the obsequies were formalized by the
adoption of a new constitution. Its reforms expunged the plenary
committees and corresponding secretaries, legacies of the need for control
exercised by former Eastern bloc chapters.
The subject of the Congress was new directions in theatre
research. As usual, the keynote addresses were less stimulating than the
working sessions, except to reveal the strong cultural differences that still
exist. The American addresses were packed with fashionable jargon,
political correctness, and a kind of neo-Marxism that set the teeth of the
Europeans on edge. The Russian addresses ranged from Elena Poliakova's
lulling assurance that all research is good research to Anatoly Smeliansky's
fiery and entertaining polemic, which argued that Russian theatre had to
return to its meaningful place in Russian society. He especially scorned
the work that Russian directors were doing abroad, calling it "made-to-
order" theatre for a foreign public. In particular, he was bemused by Lev
Dodin's recent Parisian success, Claustrophobia, which, in Smeliansky's
view, does not represent the problems of contemporary Russian life but,
rather, what Europeans want to see as the problems of contemporary
Russian life.
In general, there was a feeling, voiced in the summing-up remarks
at the Congress's conclusion, that the breach between theorists and
empiricists was growing too large. In the words of Ron Vince (Canada),
the theorists regard the empiricists (whom they termed "positivists") as
44
fools and the empiricists regard the theorists as dishonest. He called for
more tolerant acceptance of a multiplicity of approaches.
Such a multiplicity was indeed apparent in the working sessions
which have grown from the two on historiography and performance
analysis initiated five years ago to nearly a dozen on scenography,
iconography, women's studies, acting, dancing and movement, audience
analysis, and the like. The participants from the former Eastern bloc
were particularly eager to communicate their ideas and to take in those
of their colleagues from the West and Near East.
There was a consensus on the part of Russian specialists that
theatre in Russia has greatly improved over the past couple of years,
especially now that the novelty of representative politics has lost its allure.
The one production which most members of the Congress attended was
Robert Sturua's version of The Good Person of Szechwan, playing a guest
run at the Vakhtangov Theatre. Sturua's earlier Brechtian effort, The
Caucasian Chalk Circle, had exchanged alienation for a Georgian folk
festival. Good Person was less self-indulgent, even though Sturua felt free
to cut all the songs, proliferate characters, and change their genders. He
also altered the author's metaphors freely, so that one extended episode
was staged as an orchestral concert, culminating in the "Ode to Joy."
Using the entire depth, width, and height of the spacious theatre, Sturua
choreographed the company so that every moment was illuminated by
movement. The gods made their entrance in an upstage elevator and
seemed to float across the floor into town. The parasites on Shen Teh's
bounty rolled, bounced, and careened like scabby clowns. The central
performance, the Shen Teh/Shui Ta of Nino Kasradze, was exquisitely
controlled and modulated, from her first appearance as a Suzy Wong in
a chimsang through her luminous love for a wannabe aviator to her
increasing despair. She actually managed to exude goodness without
sentimentality. Kakha Tavartkiladze turned Shu Fu the barber into a
Chaplinesque figure, a tonsorial M. Verdoux; while Zaza Papuashvili as
Yang Sun enacted the "compleat" louse. As is normal for most East
European productions these days, it lasted over three hours but longueurs
were not evident as the production sped along.
Although most Western observers enjoyed Sturua's exuberant
staging, it too evoked Smeliansky's displeasure. According to him,
Russians are tired of grandes machines with directors showing off their
skill at inventing metaphoric images-the kind of thing Lyubimov and
Efros had excelled at in the 1970s. Instead, there has been a return to
intimacy, to the exploration of private lives. Hence the proliferation of
45
classical revivals, almost an echo ofLunacharsky's call in the 1920s, "Back
to Ostrovsky!"
Ostrovsky was, by far, the most produced playwright in Moscow,
surpassing Bulgakov who had seemed to monopolize Russian stages only
a few years ago. A new production of Wolves and Sheep (Volki i ovtsy)
opened at the Maly during the Congress, while a lesser-known work like
The Abyss (Puchina) was still drawing audiences. However, the hottest
ticket in town was Petr Fomenko's production of Guilty Though Innocent
(Bez viny vinovatye), also at the Vakhtangov.
Ostrovsky's play is a melodrama of backstage life: in the
prologue a young actress is seduced and abandoned by a careerist, and
their bastard is believed to have died. Twenty years later, the child, now
a rising provincial actor, joins the troupe headed by his mother, a famous
star. The recognition scene is reserved, Terence-like, for the very end;
meanwhile, we are entertained with the mores of the provincial theatre.
This might seem to be unpromising material to speak to a
Russian public in the 1990s, but it does. Fomenko limits his audience to
about one hundred and fifty persons. The prologue, set in an inn, is
played out in a small balcony room overlooking the theatre's lobby. The
wide but extremely shallow space is conducive to the very detailed and
graphic nineteenth-century acting style at which the young performers
excel. The rest of the performance, with a different cast, takes place in
the theatre's large buffet, convened by chiffon curtains and large pouffes
into a spacious greenroom, with the audience scattered on three sides.
This use of space allows for a cinematic variation of closeups and long-
shots, depending on placement. The central role of the actress Kruchinina
is taken by Yuliya Borisova, who for years played the title role in the
mummified version of Vakhtangov's Princess Turandot. Although well
over seventy, she looks and behaves barely forty; and in the curtain-call
cancan, she exhibits legs that could vie with Dietrich's. Her lightness of
touch takes the curse off the more lurid aspects of the melodrama, and by
the time a medallion reveals the jeune premier to be her long-lost son, the
audience is in tears. Ostrovsky can be read as a forerunner of the
Mexican soap-opera that is currently enthralling Russian televiewers.
Fomenko is tactful enough not to try to make Ostrovsky's play
say more than is in it. More ambitious is a production of Gogol's Getting
Married (Zhenitba N. V. Gogolia), staged at the Hermitage Theatre, by
Mikhail Levitin. The Hermitage is a ramshackle playhouse lost amid the
weeds of an old pleasure garden. Again the actors played amid and to the
small audiences gathered in the first rows. Gogol considered his play a
46
Sla'Uic and East European Performance Vol. 14, No.3
farce, but Levitin subtitles it a "poema," an epic like Dead Souls. Without
altering the text, he interleaves it with "The Diary of a Madman" and
pads it out with folksongs and silent mimicry. Some of this works
beautifully. The romantic expectations of Podkolesin and Agafya are
cleverly caricatured by showing them reading the same mawkish novel,
whose dialogue is spoken by unseen actors in the balcony. Some business
is badly misjudged: on- and off-stage urination is becoming a directors'
cliche, especially distracting when the flow is of gargantuan proportions.
Viktor Gvozditsky, who plays the reluctant bridegroom
Podkolesin, is reputed to be the best actor in Moscow, famed for his
recent Eric XIV. He is a performer superbly in control, physically and
vocally the tiniest gesture tells, and he can force an audience's attention
with barely audible mumbles. It is a comic performance of great
resourcefulness and originality, and it far outshines the rather pedestrian
caricatures of the rest of the cast. As the madman Poprishchin, Boris
Romanov, one of Vasiliev's favorite actors, plays most of his scenes either
in a loft or amidst the audience. In his costume bristling with quill-pens,
like miniature angel's wings, he ranges from exaltation to megalomania.
He is so deeply entrenched in his fantasies that even the giggles and
unexpected responses from individual spectators inches away cannot
distract him.
The only other Russian production I had time to visit was
Ionesco's The Chairs played out in a rococo ballroom by the Moscow
Theatre School of the Modern Play. Since the Russians are only now
discovering the Theatre of the Absurd, I was curious to see how Ionesco
held up, even though Sergei Yursky, who both staged it and played the
old man, has a stronger reputation as an actor than as a director. As I
suspected, Ionesco's message of the meaninglessness of human existence
has a hollow sound, not aided by Yursky's divagation from the stage
directions. Instead of following the author who calls for the old couple
to commit suicide by jumping out the window into the sea, the characters
made their final exit up a ladder, a !a What the Butler Saw. This rather
reduces the bleakness of Ionesco's vision without providing a
compensating coda of meaning. Yursky's codger had a nice casualness to
him, unmatched by Natalia Teniakova's rather colorless old lady, but this
was not enough to redeem nearly two hours of uninterrupted blather.
At the old Moscow Art Theatre, the English company Cheek by
Jowl had settled in with its Measure for Measure, a very spare, wry reading
in modern dress. Because Declan Donnelan's staging was relatively
understated, although full of telling touches, the Russian audience had to
47
attend closely to the densely packed imagery of late Shakespeare. "This
will last out a night in Russia I When nights are longest there," got one
of the biggest, indeed one of the few, laughs that evening. No wonder a
third of the audience left during the interval, and a shaggy mass of
students migrated down to the good seats. They, at least, seemed to
appreciate the patent hypocrisy of authorities condemning the lust they
privately practiced, and the spectacle of wanton authority manipulating
citizens' lives with its mouth full of good intentions. Between them,
Shakespeare and Ostrovsky had taken the measure of the modern Russian
mind.
48
WITKIEWICZ CONFERENCE IN SLUPSK, POLAND:
SEPTEMBER 16-18, 1994
Daniel Gerould
To commemorate the fifty-fifth anniversary of the death of
Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, the Fine Arts Museum in Slupsk hosted an
international conference of scholars and specialists on the work of the still
controversial painter and playwright. Slupsk, a city of under 100,000 near
the Baltic between Gdansk and Szczecin, has become a center for the
study of Witkiewicz the artist ever since the Fine Arts Museum began
acquiring its collection of paintings and portraits in the 1970s. The
Witkiewicz holdings in the Slupsk Museum, now numbering over 200
portraits, are among the finest in the country and represent a priceless
treasure for admirers of the artist. The director of the Museum,
Mieczyslaw J aroszewicz, welcomed the conference participants and opened
a special exhibition of the "Witk.iewicz Portrait Firm." On display, in
addition to the permanent exhibit, were more than fifty portraits from the
storehouse of rarely seen masterworks.
During the conference, art historians Urszula Czartoryska,
Wojciech Sztaba, Anna Zakiewicz, and Maria Lewanska analyzed
Witkiewicz's imagery and iconography, drew analogies between his work
and that of Antonin Artaud and Malcom Lowry, and discussed
interrelations among the artist's creations in different media. Literary and
theatrical problems were the focus of the second day of the symposium.
Janusz Degler discovered new targets of the playwright's parodistic
techniques; Marta and Marek Skwar explored the sources of the demonic
woman; Anna Krajewska dealt with Witkiewicz and the absurd; and
Wlodzimierz Bolecki addressed the thorny question, "Was Witkacy an
anti-Semite?" Anna Micinska discussed problems of editing Witkiewicz
for the new collected edition being published by Panstwowy Instytut
Wydawniczy in 23 volumes; five have already appeared (the novels,
cultural criticism, and drug writings), and the plays and theater theory are
being prepared for the next four volumes. J6zef Tarnowski compared
Witkiewicz' s ideas of the end of history with those of Fukuyama. Daniel
Gerould gave a travelogue with slides illustrating Witkacy's journey to the
tropics and itinerary in Ceylon. Nelli Palczewska delved into the
theatrical life of St. Petersburg during the artist's service in the Tsarist
49
army, and Slawomir Smoczynski (formerly an actor with the Witkiewicz
Theatre in Zakopane) gave a dramatic accounting of the different versions
of Witkacy's last days.
In the evening the T eatr Rondo of Slupsk presented a
monodrama, Kalamarapaksa, composed and directed by Stanislaw
Miedziewski, and starring the British actress Caryl Swift who gave a
virtuoso performance (in Polish) of the later life of Winifred Cooper, the
English expatriate featured in Witkacy's Formist Theatre in the 1920s.
There was also a screening of Jacek Schmidt's 1988 documentary, Epilog,
introduced by the filmmaker, showing the grotesque Soviet-style pomp
and circumstance surrounding the bringing of Witkacy's remains from
Ukraine to Poland and the solemn religious internment alongside the
grave of his mother in the Zakopane cemetery. At the moment of
exhumation Witkiewicz experts knew from the full set of teeth that the
corpse was not the Polish artist but a Ukrainian peasant; however, the
authorities, anxious to honor "the great writer" (whose works they had
for years ignored or suppressed), quickly hushed all doubting voices. The
scandal, which broke shortly after the funeral accorded a national hero,
continues to this day. Kazimierz Dejmek, the minister of culture and an
outstanding director, has recently appointed a commission to re-open the
question and perhaps the grave with the thought of transporting the "false
Witkacy" back to the Ukraine. The ultimate position of Witkiewicz in
the world remains unknown.
so
POLISH INSTITUTE OF ARTS & SCIENCES OF AMERICA
PANEL ON YIDDISH-LANGUAGE THEATRE IN POLAND
Nahma Sandrow
In 1994, for the first time, the Polish Institute of Arts & Sciences
of America devoted a session of its annual meeting to Yiddish-language
theatre in Poland. The session focused on Yiddish theatre in Poland
between the two world wars, a period of great vigor and artistic
achievement. As was noted by one of the speakers, Dr. Faina Burke, this
program was a "continuation" of two events: the International
Conference on Jewish Theatre which took place in Poland in October,
1993 [see "International Conference on Jewish Theatre Held in Poland"
by Michael Steinlauf in SEEP vol. 14, no. 1]; and the publication of
Volume 41 of the Polish theatre journal Pami(itnik Teatralny, five hundred
pages devoted to Jewish theatre in Poland up to 1939.
The Institute's 52nd annual meeting, held in cooperation with
The American University at their main campus in Washington, D.C. on
June 3 and 4, was billed as a "Multidisciplinary Conference." Panelists
from several continents presented discussions of politics and economics,
science and medicine, poetry and sociology, culminating in an address by
the Polish Ambassador to the United States. However, the only session
related to theatre of any kind was the session on Yiddish theatre.
Dr. Nahma Sandrow of Bronx Community College, CUNY
spoke about Yiddish performers. She began by sketching the background
of professional secular Yiddish theatre, which had begun as recently as
1876 but by 1918 already enjoyed several generations of actors and
directors; playwrights and critics; audiences, amateurs, and organizations
for community support.
Interwar Warsaw boasted three premiere companies: WIKT
(Warszawer Idiszer Kunstteater); the Jung Teater (Young Theatre-so-
called because it began as the project of a group of young theatre-loving
working people); and the Vilna Troupe. There were also many smaller
companies, based in smaller cities or on the road. Great Polish Jewish
actors and directors committed themselves to Yiddish theatre. Moreover,
audiences could see Yiddish artists touring from other countries and even
Polish artists who learned their roles in Yiddish without really knowing
the language. The Yiddish actors' union was active. Amateur ventures
51
flourished. Many local clubs dedicated themselves to supporting Yiddish
theatre, which survived without patronage or government subsides.
Repertory ranged from new plays and Yiddish classics, to
translations of world classics and current hits from other languages.
Moreover it ranged from serious avant garde to popular. The repertory
also included sophisticated cabaret performance (kleynkunst). There were
companies dedicated to entertaining children', most notably the Youth and
Folk Theatre, and even marionette theatres. Finally, several good Yiddish
films were produced in Poland in this period.
All this activity was especially impressive considering the grim
situation of the Polish Jewish community. In addition to poverty, they
had to contend with persecution: first censorship and other forms of
harassment, and eventually terror and death. In 1939, with one Yiddish
company still performing and an actors convention scheduled, Yiddish
theatre and its audience were destroyed.
Faina Burko, author of a major study of Yiddish theatre in the
Soviet Union, concentrated on Yiddish repertory. Burko began by
quoting Tadeusz Kantor and expressed the hope that talking about
Yiddish theatre will at least "save it from oblivion."
Although Yiddish theatre in Poland has been described as having
a "shoestring existence," Burko pointed out that in 1931 alone it counted
over half a million spectators, not only more than Yiddish theatre had
anywhere else but also proportionately more than Polish-language theatre
had at the time. It survived with virtually no government support: only
by ticket sales and donations from the Jewish community.
Among the theatre world's thoughtful leaders, philosophies
differed as to the theatre's mission: universal art or relief and comfort of
a suffering community? Within these aims, Yiddish theatre in Poland
ranged from exuberant entertainments "like bright-colored toys," to
monumental classics like Halper Leivick's Golem and Shakespeare's The
Tempest, and to serious avant-garde treatments of Strindberg. (These last
were particularly popular with the Yiddish audiences.)
The Vilna Troupe was best known for Shloyme Anski's The
Dybbuk, created from Yitskhok Leybush Peretz's text Night in the Old
Marketplace. It was an outstanding expressionist production, combining
theatrical imagery and poetic realism in a manner akin to Wyspianski's
The Wedding.
The Jung Teater debuted in 1933 after three years of study with
Michal Weichert. This band of young workers presented experimental
dramas which commented on the current political situation, in an oblique
52
manner, in the hopes of avoiding censorship. Bernard Blume's Boston
(about Sacco and Vanzetti) and The Tanentsap Troupe were good examples.
By 1937, however, the Yung Teater had been outlawed.
WIKT presented the best of Yiddish and European drama, such
as works by Leonid Andreyev, Moliere, and Victor Hugo, often
employing innovative, new approaches. In September of 1939, they
realized how badly the community needed optimism, and when a bomb
finally landed on their theatre, they were presenting Shulamis and Bar
Kokhba, operettas set in a heroic period of Jewish history.
Dr. Maya Peretz, translator and chair of the panel (who also
lectured the next day on Polish women's poetry), analyzed Polish critics'
reviews of Yiddish theatre over the sixty years up to 1939. Very few
Poles went to Yiddish theatre, so the reviews do not reveal the total
spectrum of Polish attitudes. However, they are useful in reflecting
Polish-Jewish relationships, particularly the Polish images of Jews.
These visiting commentators included journalist, scholars, and
theatre practitioners. 'Generally they were favorably surprised by the
quality of Yiddish theatre. What some had expected was a "degraded"
entertainment on a low artistic and moral level, but what they often
discovered was outstanding entertainment despite a small production
budget.
One general pattern that emerges ~ that the more interested the
Polish commentator was in theatre, the better able he or she was to focus
on Yiddish theatre as theatre rather than as an expression of an alien
community. Leon Schiller, for example, loved it. Lev Kaltenbergh visited
Gimpel's Theatre and was impressed not by the repertory but by the
enthusiasm for theatre. "In Gimpel's Theatre," he wrote, "I learned that
literature is literature and theatre is theatre." Kaltenbergh further
observed that although Yiddish-speaking audiences varied widely, from the
intellectual to the baker's apprentice, all demanded "authenticity."
On the other hand, Maria Kuncewicz reacted very differently.
She was uncomfortable, surrounded by Jews in their own private-and to
her, exotic-world. She found their incivility distressing and devoted a
great part of her review to anxieties about the hostile thoughts that she
feared they were thinking about her as an outsider in their midst.
From the mid-20s on, the increasing paucity of material about
Yiddish theatre in the Polish press reveals a widening gulf between the
Polish and Yiddish communities-a gulf deplored by Tadeusz Boy-
Zelenski. For example, The Tempest, directed by Leon Schiller for the
53
Youth and Folk Theatre in 1938-9 and one of the great productions of the
era, was never even mentioned.
Peretz ended with an analogy between Yiddish and African-
American theatres. For their respective ethnic minority communities,
both fulfilled dreams of national dignity and identity.
''
54
VLADIMIR FROLOV, 1917-1994
Irina Miller
On April 17, 1994, one of Russia's leading theatre scholars,
Vladimir Vasilievich Frolov, died. Born on August 13 (26), 1917, a critical
year in Russian history, Frolov began working as a professional critic in
the late thirties after graduating with a degree in literature from the
Pedagogical Institute in the city of Gorky. Following World War II, he
moved to Moscow where he began publishing in major journals and
newspapers. In 1952, Frolov received his Doctor's degree from the
Academy of Social Sciences and began teaching at the State Institute of
Theatre Art (GffiS), where he stayed until 1958. He also worked as a
deputy editor of the journal, October (1958-1960). From 1962 until his
death, Frolov was affiliated with the Institute of the History of Art, the
major Russian institute for scholarly research in theatre, working as a
senior scholar in the theatre department and as chief editor of the
Institute's annual journal, Questions of Theatre. For the last ten years of
his life, Frolov also lectured at the All-Union State Institute of
Cinematography (VGIK.).
During the Cold War, Vladimir Frolov was one of the few who
managed to preserve his honesty and dignity in his professional and
personal life. Despite the prevailing obscurantism, he was always
supportive of talented new undertakings both in the scholarly work of his
young colleagues and in theatrical practice. He was, for example, one of
the leading patrons of the Theatre of Drama and Comedy at Taganka
from its very beginning, frequently against the tide of "official" criticism.
Frolov's major contributions to the theatre stem from his
theoretical writings on the genres of contemporary theatre. He is, in fact,
virtually the only Soviet scholar who has unceasingly cultivated this
underdeveloped field of scholarship. From his first book, On Soviet
Comedy (1954), to his very important later works, The Fate of Genres in
Dramaturgy: The Analysis of Genres in Twentieth-Century Russia (1979) and
The Muse of Fiery Satire: Essays on the History of the Soviet Comedy 1918-
1986 (1989), Frolov consistently demonstrated his interest in dramatic
genres. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that in his critical work,
Frolov prepared the ground for further scholarly investigation in this
particular sphere of theatre theory.
55
For those who knew and collaborated with Vladimir Frolov, his
death is a bitter loss. The memory of this remarkable man, talented
scholar, and respected teacher will remain in the hearts of his family,
friends, colleagues, and former students. His pioneering scholarly work
will retain its importance for future generations of theatre theorists and
practitioners.
56
PAGES FROM THE PAST
LUNACHARSKY AND MELODRAMA
Daniel Gerould
The Russian theatrical theorists of the early twentieth century
were the first to attempt a serious rehabilitation of melodrama and other
popular arts such as music hall and circus. With the publication of "What
Kind of Melodrama Do We Need?" in Zhizn iskusstva (The Life of Art)
on January 14, 1919 (no. 58, pp. 2-3), the New Soviet Commissar of
Education, Anatolii Lunacharsky, began his campaign for the acceptance
of a nineteenth-century bourgeois dramatic genre as the form best suited
to advance the new Bolshevik morality and Communist ideology. A
month and a half later, on February 28, 1919, the same journal ran an
announcement of a melodrama contest sponsored by the Petrograd
Theatre Section of the Commissariat of Education and designed to
encourage young playwrights to create new works in the old genre. The
notice (written by Maxim Gorky) contained the following specifications
that correspond closely to Lunacharsky's concept of the genre:
Since melodrama is based on psychological primitivism and on
simplification of the feelings and the interrelationships of the
chara.cters, it is advisable that the authors stress clearly and
explicitly their sympathies and antipathies toward the
protagonists and antagonists; it is also advisable that they include
in the text songs, rhymed couplets, duets, etc.
1
The jury consisted of Lunacharsky, Gorky, the operatic bass, Fyodor
Shalyapin, and two actors: Nikolai Monakhov and Yuri Yuriev.
Lunacharsky had long been a proponent of melodrama. As early
as 1908 in the collection, Theatre: A Book About the New Theatre (to which
Meyerhold and the symbolists also contributed), Lunacharsky had argued
for melodrama as the best vehicle for socialist drama. The theatre of the
future, he argued, would be a barbarian theatre:
The socialist artist-intellectual should create in the sphere
of the fantastic vividly, lushly, graphically, hyperbolically,
actively, in the spirit of the old melodrama. [ ... ]
57
It will be a powerful, energetic, courageous theatre of a
generation under the red banner, by the light of dawn, with the
cold and bracing breath of a pre-dusk wind; it will be a theatre
of rapid action, great passions, sharp contrasts, whole characters,
powerful sufferings, and lofty ecstasies. Yes, it will be an
ideological theatre. [ ... ]
The new theatre, if it is destined to arise, will be a
barbarian theatre. Yes, yes. It will rid itself of nuances, details,
and all the flavors needed by the refined and hysterical palates of
our "cultured" public. It will thunder, glitter, be noisy, rapid-
firing, and crude both for the nervous young ladies and the
soured "cream" of society. Its satire will strike one's cheek
loudly; its woe will make one sob uncontrollably. Its joy will
make one forget oneself and dance; its villainy will be terrifying.
[ ... ]
Lovers of half tones, those half alive people can rest
satisfied with their half theatres. We need a real theatre, even if
it is barbarian. The salvation of civilization is in its barbarians.
They are the bearers of real culture; they open the bright, long
paths, while the so-called cultured society rots.
2
Lunacharsky here voices the then widespread admiration of
Russian intellectuals for barbarism as a radical cure for the ills of a
decadent, dying society. After the Revolution, melodrama for
Lunacharsky becomes humanist, not barbarian. In 1919, the problem for
Soviet authorities in the field of culture was to provide politically
instructive yet entertaining art for the new mass audience. Lunacharsky,
who had spent three years in Paris, knew the tremendous appeal that
melodrama and other popular forms like music-hall had for working-class
audiences. The Bolsheviks had to wrest the genre away from the
capitalists, rid it of cheap, commercial values, and appropriate it for the
proletariat. The essay reflects Lunacharsky's concern in the early Soviet
years with the democratization of art and the bringing of culture to the
masses by the use of popular forms-such as melodrama, music hall, and
circus-purified of the dross of vulgar trash.
The concluding sections of the essay are cast in the form of a
narrative melodrama. Himself a playwright, Lunacharsky turns his theory
into a drama of a stolen child. Popular art is the young beauty kidnapped
by the capitalist pimp-entrepreneur who decks her out in tawdry finery
and garish make-up until she is hardly recognizable amongst all the thin
58
and refined false beauties of the "higher sphere." But the hero, the
people, recognizes true beauty beneath all the wretched attire and restores
popular art to her former simplicity and purity.
As Commissar of Education, Lunacharsky encouraged variety and
experimentation in the arts, but at the same time he was for conserving
the best of past European drama. He was an innovative traditionalist.
Soviet melodrama was to be new content in old bottles. Lunacharsky saw
its accessibility, ethical instruction, and theatrical simplicity and strength
as the great virtues of melodrama; he also stressed the genre's inherent
partisanship and polarization, which made it serviceable for propaganda
and vilification of enemies.
Lunacharsky's active promotion of melodrama led to some
interesting experiments in the Soviet theatre of the 1920s, but the genre
was eventually condemned as bourgeois and socialist realism became the
only acceptable dramatic formula.
3
NOTES
1
Quoted in Daniel Gerould, "Gorky, Melodrama, and the
Development of Early Soviet Theatre," yale/theatre vol. 7, no. 2 (Winter
1976), 34.
2
"Sotsializm i iskusstvo," in Teatrkniga o novom teatre (St.
Petersburg: Shipovnik, 1908), pp. 34, 35, 39.
3
Renewed interest in Lunacharsky as a theatre theorist is indicated
by the recent publication of his assessment of Ibsen: "The Last Great
Bourgeois: on the Plays of Henrik Ibsen" (1907), translated and
introduced by Edward Braun in New Theatre Quarterly, vol. x, no. 39
{August 1994), 223-241.
59
WHAT KIND OF MELODRAMA DO WE NEED?
Anatolii Lunacharsky
In his celebrated book on theatre for the people, Roman Rolland,
after having rejected with unmatched and excessive severity almost all the
values of the old theatre and, of course, having quite correctly passed
judgment on the maudlin spinelessness and inner emptiness of most
melodramas, nonetheless-for the reader, perhaps, suddenly-dwelt on this
form with tremendous partiality and frankly declared that, in his opinion,
the future of people's theatre was tied to a new development of
melodrama. The only people who could be surprised by Rolland's
unexpected conclusion are those unacquainted with the laws of social
psychology on the one hand and with the fundamental characteristics of
melodrama on the other, above all its social-psychological aspect. We
know only too well what a despicable kind of person chases after success.
Much ink has been wasted exposing, with an admixture of haughty
sneering and fiery indignation, all the vulgarity of so-called success with
the crowd. And conversely, unusual sympathy goes out to the supposedly
misunderstood genius who creates in an exceptional and subtle fashion and
is accessible only to the chosen few and so on and so forth.
As democrats, we ought to reassess this hierarchy of values. Yes,
success with a bourgeois public, with an idle and profligate public, very
often amounts to a connivance with the worst passions that cannot have
anything in common with the great concepts of democracy. And it is also
true that the broad masses are ignorant, their tastes are utterly unrefined,
and it is not difficult to sweep them off their feet with trumpery and
purely external effects. And it is an incontestable fact that private
entrepreneurs of various kinds, seeking to flatter the taste of the very
democratic street, achieve their goal by not disdaining to use any means
and in most cases corrupt the taste of the public, because instead of the
true soul of the people they imagine some yawning and heehawing hydra,
which in fact does not exist. All these circumstances have also prevented
many from grasping the inner meaning of what is called success with the
broad masses, although all the signs have always indicated that the people
highly esteem the plays of the classic repertory and respond with
astonishing seriousness to what is serious when it is shown to them.
They are deeply moved or joyously delighted by the sorrowful or the
60
Slavic arui East European Performance Vol. 14, No. 3
comic if it is well presented on stage. But such deference to the tastes of
the peasantry or the working class is shown only when these tastes have
seemed to coincide with the established tastes of what passes for the better
part of the intelligentsia. Where these tastes diverged, opinions also
immediately became divided and even went in the opposite direction.
What scornful aristocratic remarks won't you hear about the taste of the
boor who jumps so readily at the bait of film, cafe-chantant, and
melodrama "of the very lowest kind."
Instead of turning up their noses and averting their gaze, serious-
minded people should ask themselves what it actually is that draws the
crowd to such shows, and they should conduct the following experiment:
after having eliminated the intolerable crudity from all these forms of art
"for the people," they should try to retain what has nothing in common
with crudeness, but which may offend supposedly refined taste. Then
they will have to admit that film and melodrama have a fine, gripping
subject; next richness of action; character traits defined with colossal relief;
clarity and sharp expressiveness of all the situations and the capacity to
call forth undivided and total emotional reactions of compassion and
indignation; action connected to simple and therefore grand ethical
positions, to simple and dear ideological positions.
I dare say that if some one would try to construct a film or
melodrama according to these specifications, he would to his surprise
become convinced that through their correct use (if he were talented)
there would result, in essence, a true tragedy that was monumental,
simple, typical in its cast of characters and in its basic lines. Herein are
defined our demands concerning a new melodrama.
We are sometimes told: the writer should write as his innermost
god inspires him to, with total disregard for whom he is writing.
That may well be the right course for purely lyrical geniuses. So
be it, let them write for themselves, if they wish, without giving a
thought to success. But there are talents of a different sort, talents in
which the sermonizing bent is strong, social talents, which confront
directly and openly a certain problem: I wish to tell the truth in an
accessible and even strikingly emotional guise to my era and to my
people. In this situation one has to know for whom one is writing.
Therefore we have no objections whatsoever if the writer, who has set out
to create a melodrama, pictures to himself with absolute clarity his mass
audience, and if he writes for the people. If that means he must be
insincere, he would do better not to write at all. If he has something to
say to the people, then let him write in a form that is acceptable to the
61
people. And be certain that this will not be a simplified, vulgarized,
debased form, as the aesthetes think but will be a transformation of our
arbitrary, refined, hypercultural pursuits, of our satiety, of all that is
dictated by too much nervous agitation, into something healthy,
monumental, simple, clear, and strong. Have these concepts really
become alien to us? Are we really stuck in the rut of that decadent art
to which simplicity, clarity, and strength seem a bugbear and something
demeaning?
So, from the point of view of form we have nothing to fear from
melodrama. Melodrama simply as theatre is superior to other dramatic
genres. It is superior to realistic drama because it is free of the laborious
and quasi-photographic portrayal of everyday life, and of probing into
psychological minutiae, which quite simply is not suited to the stage and
invariably requires a more or less pronounced transition from a theatre of
the masses to an intimate theatre, and this in and of itself marks the
decline of the theatre. It is superior to symbolic drama because the latter
toys with the reader and sets him riddles. It is superior to tragedy because
tragedy-unless it is melodrama-is marked by a certain bombast and
purely literary poetic quality, pursues the goal of being noble and
impressive, sticks to the heights aspired to by the aesthetic avant-garde and
therefore quite frequently sins by being bookish. Musical accompaniment
of the more spectacular and pictorial actions enters into the concept of
melodrama. This is by no means a shortcoming. There is no reason to
think that musical drama, which was the basis of Greek theatre, cannot
be reborn in a truly magnificent form. I think that even tragedy (ancient,
romantic, Shakespearian, Shillerian, Pushkinian, and so on) should be
accompanied by suitable music.
A few words concerning the inner content of the desired
melodrama. As has been graphically observed, today's playwrights are
toothless and do not excite people, or rarely excite them, because
according to their ethical doctrine no one knows the nature of good and
evil. The playwright is almost always a skeptic. And since he cannot
preach from the stage with full clarity on the nature of good and evil, real
emotionality is absent from his work, because tragedy, in any case, is only
great when it contains a golden nugget of instruction ethically uplifting
for the spirit.
Undoubtedly there is much truth in this, if only we take into
consideration that it is, of course, a question not of copy-book good and
evil, but of these concepts in the broad sense. Schiller understood that the
strength of will and iron energy of the villain is the essence of good and
62
that we can make a tragic hero out of such a villain; he will be highly
sympathetic to the public, and the public will mourn his death precisely
because he appears as the desired type of hero, a man of will and strength.
Having posed such a question, we can say: the playwright who dares to
undertake melodrama, in our view the sole possible form of broadly-based
tragedy for the new age, should clearly take sides for and against. For the
melodramatist, the world should be polarized. At least while he writes,
he should cast off all skepticism and all doubt. On the melodramatic
stage there should be no place for doubts. As in frescoes, the colors must
be vivid and pure, the lines simple.
What must be done to put this into practice is, of course, in no
way the subject of the present essay, but the business of the writer
himself. In the final analysis it is worth remembering Maeterlinck's great
yet simple formula, which he was not the first or the last to express:
everything that furthers the growth of life is good, and everything that
opposes it is evil. Therefore choose any great force whatever that furthers
the growth of life in its struggle with anything that is detrimental to life,
and present this struggle as a matter of burning actuality, not stinting on
the episodes, revealing the conflict in the light of striking situations that
arouse anger and compassion in a simple soul capable of becoming
boundlessly angry and tearfully compassionate, and you will have the soul
for our dramatic work.
Here is not the place to talk about the other very important
aspect of art for the people-cafe-chantant, or music hall-which also
seems to us not only not to be some kind of trash bin but, on the
contrary, a shining pinnacle of art, at the present time occupied by
disgusting mountebanks. Here too it is necessary to understand what
constitutes the secret of success. You will see, as was the case with
melodrama, that if the crowd, the broad-based crowd, took a fancy to a
particular kind of work of art, it was not just because it was decked out
in the wretched splendor of finery, hung with trinkets and gaudily
painted, but because its forms were healthy and beautiful, its gait full of
strength and purpose, its voice resonant and entrancing. Take off the
filthy make-up which the hand of the pimp-entrepreneur put on her, and
then, laid bare, compare her, this beauty of the people, with the sickly
and refined beauties of your "higher spheres," and you will then
understand that the people were right, that they simply discerned the
forms of genuine art beneath all the frightful exterior of that art of the
third and fourth sort, which had been fed them.
63
Fear not, the people will also understand your art of the first
class, if you create for them something in the slightest degree equal to that
first class art of yours. But before you teach the people anything, learn
something from them yourselves.
-translated by Daniel Gerould
64
FROM LOWER DEP71IS TO MOUNTAIN HEIGHTS
Melissa T. Smith
Every summer Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont,
offers American students an intensive Russian-language immersion
program. On my visit this past July 30, 1994, I was delighted to discover
that the school also provides an intensive and authentic Russian
theatrical! cultural experience.
With a magnificent view of the Green mountains at their backs,
spectators moved past colorfully clad "a la Russe" street people, playing
guitars, hawking "bubliki," and passing out programs inserted in copies
of Russian and American theatrical journals. Once inside the hall, the
atmosphere was reminiscent of a Moscow theatre premiere, as a host of
Russian professors, poets, dramatists, theatre critics, and other theatre
buffs complimented the audience of Russian language students.
Director/dramatist/actor Sergei Kokovkin's production skillfully played
to both audiences: the first, for whom Gorky's text evoked mostly
negative associations with rote memorization in Soviet schools; the
second, for whom most of the words were unfamiliar in the most literal
sense. Among the Russians, I heard repeatedly that the mispronunciations
did not bother the listeners, as the scenic action and stream of language
has a musicality all its own.
In "translating" his Russian-language production to a stage
accessible to American students/actors, Kokovkin hit upon the notion of
Lower Depths as Beggar's Opera. A Brechtian style of direct address to the
audience broke down the time-worn Stanislavskian "fourth wall." The
curtains opened on a coat-rack on wheels converted into a multi-tiered
stage platform over, on, and under which the dwellers of Gorky's
flophouse sprawled, stretched, and bickered, briefly resolving their
differences in morning song. Neither John Gay's opera nor Kurt Weill's
compositions provided the musical inspiration, however; Russian
"romances" and folk songs were deftly interwoven in the best tradition
of the musical play genre, replacing windy Gorkian monologues with
lyrical numbers. The thief Vaska cleverly courted Natasha with "A
Snowstorm Sweeps the Streets," while pushing her around the stage on
a raised platform on wheels, pausing appropriately for the refrain: "Stop,
my beauty; let me stare at you to my heart's content." Later in the play,
65
the romantic escapist Nastya poured out her heart: "Only once in a
lifetime do you meet ... /while seated on the edge of the stage."
The indirect confrontation between Gorky's ideologues, Luka and
Satin, gave clear preference to the "harsh human truth" over the
"merciful lie," while reconciling the two through the production's
conscious theatricality. Robert Gardners's performance in the role of
Satin was especially outstanding. Seated center stage for a good ten to
fifteen minutes, he held the audience spellbound through the climatic
monologues, forcing all to share the dramatist's conviction that to be
"Human-sounds proud" (Chelovek-eto zvuchit gordo).
Musical and theatrical unity was provided by the device of a small
sleigh bell brought on stage by Luka and passed to the dying Anna, in
whose hands it becomes a death rattle. The bell was then picked up by
Kvashnya, who tossed it to the assembled cast in the finale, "In the
Shining Moonlight," with the slightly revised refrain: "Ding-ding-ding,
the bell rings, is it waking or dream?"
As I sat the previous evening through the rehearsal of the curtain
call, I speculated (a characteristically American speculation on my part) on
whether the applause by Norwich's small audience would last through the
number of bows planned at the end of the production. The finale
managed to sustain the dramatic tension-the characters filed on stage
during the chorus-and the lights faded to reveal the luminescent outline
of three alkonost (folkloric images). The curtain closed, the cast filed out
by twos, and concluded with the words of a Russian folk song now set to
the tune of "Mack the Knife."
It is a form of genius to bridge Russian and American, theatrical
and pedagogical cultures as successfully as this Russian Language School
production has done.
66
CONTRIBUTORS
JOHN FREEDMAN recently completed translating and editing Two
Plays from the New Russia: Bald/Brunet by Danil Gink and Nijinsky by
Alexei Burykin for Gordon and Breach Science Publishers. He lives in
Moscow where he is the theatre critic for the Moscow Times.
IRINA MILLER is a student in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the
Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New
York.
NAHMA SANDROW, author of Vagabond Stars: A World History of
Yiddish 7heater and Surrealism: Theater, Arts, Ideas, writes and lectures
about theatre, especially Yiddish and other ethnic theatres. Her Off-
Broadway musicals, Kuni-Leml and Vagabond Stars, were based on Yiddish
theatre materials. She is a professor at Bronx Community College,
CUNY.
JOEL SCHECHTER is Chair of the Department of Theatre Arts at San
Francisco State University. He is author of the recently published book,
Satiric Impersonations: From A ristophanes to the Guerrilla Girls and of the
monograph entitled 7he Congress of Clowns and Other Russian Circus Acts.
LAURENCE SENEUCK is Chair of Drama and Dance and Fletcher
Professor of Drama and Oratory at Tufts University. His most recent
books include Cabaret Performance: Europe 1890-1940 Gohn Hopkins
University Press) and Wandering Stars: Russian Emigre Theatre
(University of Iowa Press). He has just received an NEH grant to
research a documentary history of Soviet theatre.
MELISSA T. SMITH is Associate Professor of Russian the Department
of Foreign Languages at Youngstown State University. She is the author
of numerous articles on twentieth-century Russian playwrights and has
translated plays by contemporary playwrights Maria Arbatova, Elena
Gremina, Olga Mikhailova, Liudmila Petrushevskaia, and Liudmila
Razumovskaia. She also served as editor-in-chief of Ivan Elagin: In
Memoriam for Canadian-American Slavic Studies.
67
Photo Credits
Bashmachkin, A Production of the Bogis Agency, Moscow
Mikhail Guterman
Berenice, The National Youth Theatre, Moscow
Mikhail Guterman
A Hotel Room in the Town of N, The Meyerhold Center, Moscow
Mikhail Guterman
The Magnificent Cuckold, Satirikon Theatre, Moscow
Mikhail Guterman
The Marriage, Stanislavsky Theatre, Moscow
Mikhail Guterman
The School for Wives, Mossoviet Theatre, Moscow
Mikhail Guterman
What a Lovely Sight, Malaya Bronnaya Theatre, Moscow
Mikhial Guterman
Mikhail Guterman
The Good Person of Setzuan, Rustaveli Theatre, Tbilisi, Georgia
Rustaveli Theatre
68
PLA YSCRIPTS IN TRANSLATION SERIES
The following is a list of publications available through the Center for
Advanced Study in Theatre Arts (CAST A):
No. 1 Never Part From Your Loved Ones, by Alexander Volodin.
Translated by Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign).
No. 2 I, Mikhail Sergeevich Lunin, by Edvard Radzinsky. Translated by
Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign).
No. 3 An Altar to Himself, by Ireneusz Iredynski. Translated by Michal
Kobialka. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign).
No. 4 Conversation with the Executioner, by Kazimierz Moczarski.
Stage Adaptation by Zygmunt Hubner; English verstion by Earl
Ostroff and Daniel C. Gerould. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign).
No. 5 7he Outsider, by Ignatii Dvoretsky. Translated by C. Peter
Goslett. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign).
No. 6 7he Ambassador, by Slawomir Mrozek. Translated by Slawomir
Mrozek and Ralph Mannheim. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign).
No. 7 Four by Liudmila Petrushevskaya (Love, Come into the Kitchen,
Nets and Traps, and 7he Violin). Translated by Alma H. Law.
$5.00 ($6.00 foreign).
No. 8 7he Trap, by Tadeusz R6zewicz. 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, Boleslaw Toborski, Michal
Kobialka, and Steven Hart. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign).
69
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).
Eastern European Drama and The American Stage. A symposium with
Janusz Glowacki, 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:
70
CASTA-THEATRE PROGRAM
CUNY GRADUATE CENTER
33 WEST 42nd STREET
NEW YORK, NY 10036
SUBSCRIPTION POLICY
SEEP is partially supported by CAST A and The Institute for
Contemporary Eastern European Drama and Theatre at The Graduate
School and University Center of the City University of New York. The
annual Subscription rate is $10.00 ($15.00 foreign). Individual issues may
be purchased for $4.00.
The subscription year is the calendar year and thus a $10.00 fee
in now due for 1995. We hope that departments of theatre and film and
departments of Slavic languages and literatures will subscribe as well as
individual professors and scholars. Subscriptions can be ordered by
sending a U.S. dollar check or money order made payable to "CAST A,
CUNY Graduate Center" to:
CASTA
Ph.D. Program in Theatre
CUNY Graduate Center
33 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036
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