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volume 1 0 no. 2
summer 1990
soviet and
east european performance
SEEP (ISSN # 1047-0018) is a publication of the Institute for
Con-temporary Eastern European Drama and Theatre under the auspices
of the Center for Advanced Study in Theatre Arts (CASTA), Graduate
Center, City University of New York. The Institute Office is Room
1206A, City University Graduate Center, 33 West 42nd Street, New
York, NY 10036. All subscription requests and submissions should be
addressed to the Editors of SEEP: Daniel Gerould and Alma Law,
CASTA, Theatre Program, City University Graduate Center, 33 West
42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.
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EDITORS Daniel Gerould Alma Law
ASSOCIATE EDITOR , Edward Dee
ADVISORY BOARD Edwin Wilson, Chairman Marvin Carlson Leo Hecht
Martha W. Coigney
CASTA EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Richard Brad Medoff
Copyright 1990 CASTA
SEEP has a very liberal reprinting policy. Journals and
newsletters which desire to reproduce articles, reviews, and other
materials which have appeared in SEEP may do so, as long as the
following provisions are met:
a. Permission to reprint 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 Editor of SEEP immediately
upon publication.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Editorial Policy ....................... ,
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............................................ 4
From the Editors
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Events
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6
"R K . . B " 10 eport on aztnuerz raun .... .. ...
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"Arpad Goncz Elected Interim President of Hungary
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"Hungarian Playwright Attacked"
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"The Polish Puppet Theatre: A Report from the UNIMA Conference"
Jane McMahan ............................. .. ..
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14
"Czechoslovak Theatre During the Velvet Revolution" Olga F.
Chtiguel.
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21
"Compensation: A Liturgy of Fact" Alma Law
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"New Life for an Old Idea: The Reappearance of Moscow's Bat"
John Freedman ...........................
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"Red Fish in America" Alma Law ..........
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PAGES FROM THE PAST "A Moscow Letter--May 7, 1922" Nikolai Y
arovoff .............. ............................
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Contributors ............. :
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Playscripts in Translation Series
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54
Subscription Policy .....................
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EDITORIAL POLICY
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 of submissions must
concern themselves either with contemporary materials on Soviet and
East European theatre, drama and film, or with new approaches to
older materials in recently published works, or new performances of
older plays. In other words, we wel-come submissions reviewing
innovative performances of Gogol but we cannot use original
articles discussing Gogol as a playwright.
Although we welcome translations of articles and reviews from
foreign pub-lications, 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. The Chicago Manual of Style should be followed.
Transliterations should follow the Library of Congress system.
Submissions will be evaluated, and authors will be notified after
approximately four weeks.
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FROM THE EDITORS
Soviet and East European Performance has a new look.
Readers of the first Issue of 1990 will already have noticed
that we
are now including photographs to illustrate the reviews and
articles.
We urge you to send us two or three pictures with your
submissions,
preferably showing the staging of a production or the nature of
an
ensemble rather than close-ups of individual performers.
Wherever
possible we shall use appropriate Illustrative photographs.
In this issue we continue the emphasis on the extraordinary
developments in Eastern European theatre brought about by
the
social and political changes following upon the end of the cold
war.
Articles and reports on the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia,
Hungary,
and Romania reveal more of the involvement of theatre and
theatre
artists in the remarkable transformations occurring in those
countries--transformations that sometimes produce heroic
responses, but may be fraught with tragic consequences. Actors
as
leaders of revolution and playwrights as heads of state are
aspects of
"performance" in Eastern Europe that warrant serious
attention.
Theatre is still of the utmost importance in the other half of
Europe--
the new freedoms have not yet reduced it to the role of mere
entertainment.
Daniel Gerould and Alma Law
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EVENTS
CURRENT AND UPCOMING PRODUCfiONS
, As part of the Goodwill Games in Seattle, the Moscow
"Sov-remennik" Theatre will be performing two plays, Chekov's Three
Sisters (June 29-July 22) at the Intiman Theatre, and Krotoi
Marshkut (The Steep Route) by Aleksandr Getman, based on Eugenia
Ginsburg's Into The Whirlwind (July 25-August 5) at the Bagley
Wright Theatre. This production features a cast of 5 men and 55
women. Both productions are directed by Galina Volchek.
The Seattle performances will not be the only opportunity to see
the "Sovremennik" in the United States. They will also present
Kmtoi Marshkut at the New York International Festival in June 1991,
and at George Mason University's new Theatre of the First Amendment
where Ginsburg's son, Vassily Aksyonov is a writer in
residence.
Also at the Goodwill Arts Festival, The Empty Space Theatre will
be presenting a series of rehearsed readings of newly commissioned
translations of three Soviet plays: Paul Schmidt's translation of
Vladimir Mayakovsky's The Bathhouse; Oleg Anotonov's Egorushka,
translated by Elise Thoron, and Michael Heim's translation of
Alek-sander Buravsky's The Body Shop. The readings will be on
Sundays and Mondays from July 15 until July 30.
A one-man show by Andrew Harris, Rapping with Repin, with David
Coffee, about the 19th century painter, Tiya Repin, will be
pre-sented at the Dallas Museum of Art as part of an exhibition on
the "Wanderers" of 19th century Russian realist art. The play will
also be performed in Dallas and Fort Worth schools during October
and N evember 1990.
A Light From the East, which had a workshop performance in
March, 1990, will be given a full production at the La Mama E.T.C.
from November 23 to December 10, 1990. The production conceived and
directed by Virlana Tkacz is based. on the experiences of Les
Kurbas, innovative Ukranian director of the 1920s. It uses the
poetry of Taras Shevchenko and Pavlo Tychyna, selections from
Kurbas' diary and memoirs of his actors. It will be presented in
English and Ukrainian by the Y ara Arts Group, a new group that
sponsors perform-ing arts events with a special focus on the
East.
The Moscow Experimental Theatre-Studio, under the direction of
Vyacheslav Spesivtsev, is attempting to present a dramatization of
Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. The production which was
developed
6 Soviet and East European Performance Vol.lO, No.2
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without Solzhenitsyn's consent is currently being performed for
invited audiences at "rehearsals", in the hope that the author will
eventually agree to public performances.
NOTES OF PAST PRODUCfiONS
The John Houseman Studio Theatre in New York presented a pair of
one-acts collectively titled "By and For Havel" that opened March
8. The plays were Vaclav Havel's Audience in a production that was
staged in Prague in January and Catastrophe by Samuel Beckett,
which was dedicated to Havel and inspired by his imprisonment. The
production was directed by Vasek Simek.
The Circle in the Square presented Mikhail Bulgakov's Zoya's
Apartment, directed by Boris A. Morozov, resident director of the
Maly Theatre in Moscow. The American premiere of Zoya'a Apartment
took place in 1978 at the Gene Frankel Workshop Theatre, directed
by Earl Ostroff. In a review of this production by the New York
Times, Richard Eder said, "If the production does not do full
justice to the work, it does it the essential justice of conveying
its excitement. Mr. Ostrow has dis-covered "Zoya" for us, and that
is a lot."
Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky's only opera produc-tion,
Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov for The Royal Opera, was presented at
the Kirov Opera in Leningrad in the first joint production of the
Kirov and Royal Operas. Tarkovsky was recently awarded the Lenin
Medal posthumously.
Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle directed by Slobodan Unkovski
opened May 11 at the American Repertory Theatre in Cam-bridge,
Massachusetts. Also at ART, Andrei Serban directed The King Stag by
Carlo Gozzi in a translation by Albert Bermel. It ran from May 15
to June 10.
From April16-May 6 the Vakhtangov Theatre Company pre-sented
Mikhail Shatrov's docudrama The Peace of Brest-Litovsk, directed by
Robert Sturua, at the Civic Center for Performing Arts in
Chicago.
The State Youth Theatre of Lithuania presented The Square, a
vivid tale of a love affair that is stronger than the jackboots of
a repres-sive society, and Chingiz Aitmatov's A Day Lasting Longer
Than A Century, both directed by Eimuntas Nekro~ius at the
International Theatre Festival of Chicago. Performances ran from
June 28 to July 1.
Also at the International Theatre Festival of Chicago was
the
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Katona J6zsef Theatre from Hungary, making its U. S. debut with
Nikolai Gogol's farce, The Government Inspector. The performances
were from June 18-26 at the Blackstone Theatre.
FILM As part of its recent New Directors/New Films series,
the
Musuem of Modern Art presented the winner of the 1989 Cannes
Film Festival Camera D'Or (best debut film) My 20th Century,
directed by Ildik6 Enyedi of Hungary, and it also showed Bogdan
Dziworski's short film A Few Stories About a Man.
At the Cannes Film Festival this year, the Polish actress,
Krystyna Janda was voted best actress for her performance as a
prisoner in The Inte"ogation, recently released but held up by the
censors since it was made in the early 1980s. Soviet director Pavel
Lungin won best director for his first film, Taxi Blues, while the
Camera D'Or was given to Vitaly Kanevsky's popular Soviet film
Don't Move, Die or Come Back to Life. A lower-level jury prize was
also given to The Mother, Soviet director Gleb Panfilov's epic film
about the rise of Communism. Polish director Andrezj Wajda's film
Korczak, set during World War II, about an orphanage filled with
Jewish children and the man who took care of them, while not in
competition was given a commendation by the prize jUry.
The 4th American Film Institute Los Angeles Film Festival, which
ran from April 19 to May 3 had as its centerpiece,"Hollywood
Glasnost," a group of 47 movies from the Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe, with more than a dozen of them making their American
premieres. Among the films shown were Zero City, by Soviet director
Karen Shakhnazarov, Hungarian director Gyula Gazdag's Standoff and
Czech director Jiri Menzel's Larks on a String.
CONFERENCES, LECTURES AND ORGANIZATIONS
The University of Washington announced its summer program,
Preparing the Acting Teacher: East European Theatre from July 16
through July 27, 1990. The faculty will include Joachim Tenschert,
Intendant of the Berliner Ensemble, Oleg Tabakov of the Mosxow Art
Theatre, and Igor Kvasha of the "Sovremennik" Theatre of
Moscow.
As part of their exhibition Russian Painting 1965-1990: The
Quest for Self-Expression, on October 12 and 13, 1990, the Columbus
Museum of Art, in conjunction with The Ohio State University, will
host a symposium to provide students and a general audience with an
over-view of the state of the arts in the Soviet Union, as
developed over the last twenty-five years. Keynote addresses will
be by Dr. Frederick Starr
8 Soviet and East European Performance VoJ.lO, No.2
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of Oberlin College and Dr. Maria Carlson of the University of
Kansas, Lawrence. Other speakers include Dr. Vassily Aksyonov, Dr.
Anna Lawton, Dr. Alma Law and Anna Kisselgoff.
The University of Ottawa Department of Modern Languages and
Literatures is sponsoring a symposium entitled, "Slavic Drama: The
Question of Innovation" from May 1-4, 1991. For information write
to Professor Andrew Donskov, Department of Modern Languages and
Lit-eratures, University of Ottawa, 550 Cumberland, Ottawa,
Ontario, Canada, K1N 6N5 (613) 564-6529.
New York University held an Eastern Comparative Literature
Conference on May 5. The topic was, "Culture 'As Ir: Literature and
Politics in Central Europe."
ANNOUNCEMENTS
The Leningrad State Institute of Theatre, Music and
Cinematography (LGITMiK) has announced a program enabling for-eign
students to receive an education in the following areas of
con-centration: acting, puppet theatre (both 4-year programs),
directing, scenic design, and the theory and history of theatre
(teatrovedenie) (all three 5-year programs). A knowledge of Russian
is obligatory.
Tuition and housing are $2,500 per year. The academic year
begins September 1. The Institute also offers a four-month
preliminary course (Russian language and the basics of the chosen
concentration), beginning February 1, at a fee of $1,250.
Applications and requests for further information should be
addressed to: Prof. V. Ivanov, Dean for Foreign Relations, 34
Mokhovaya Street, 191028 Leningrad, U .S.S.R.
Beginning in January 1990, the R.S.F.S.R Union of Theatre
Workers is publishing a new monthly magazine entitled Plotlines
(Syuz-hety). Each issue will contain two or three new plays along
with a brief description of each.
According to Aleksandr Gelman, prominent playwright and
secretary of the R.S.F.S.R. Union of Theatre Workers, P/otlines is
dedi-cated to helping young new playwrights. "We will try to
publish original and unusual plays in an effort to open the way to
experimental forms of dramaturgy. One of the objectives of our
publication is to acquaint theatres with the new dramaturgy--to
give impetus to creative innova-tion and to encourage unexpected
bold concepts. It seems to us that the times are ripe for such an
undertaking."
Additional information on the monthly, Plotlines, can be
obtained by writing to the Department of Dramaturgy, R.S.F.S.R.
Union of Theatre Workers, Gorky St. 16/2, Moscow 103009,
U.S.S.R.
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REPORT ON KAZIMIERZ BRAUN
The Polish director, author and theatre historian Kazimierz
Braun has been working in the United States since 1985. Because of
his involvement with Solidarity and his opposition to the military
government of Jaurzelski, in 1984 he was dismissed from his
position as manager and director of the Contemporary Theatre in
Wroctaw and not allowed to continue as a professor at the
University of Wroctaw.
Braun has lectured at many American universities. Since 1987, he
has served as Professor and Head of the Acting Program at the State
University of New York (SUNY), Buffalo. He has been a visiting
direc-tor at a number of theatres, staging Ionesco's Rhinoceros at
the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, Witkiewicz's Shoemakers at the
Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles, and Roiewicz's The Hunger Artist
Departs in Buffalo. Most recently he directed two productions in
Ireland: in Celtic, Bullai Mhartain, a dramatization of Irish short
stories, and in English, Braun's own play, The Immigrant, about the
Polish-American actress Helena Modjeska, starring Teresa Sawicka
from Poland.
Braun has continued his work as a scholar and theatre
his-torian. His novel Pomnik (The Monument) has just been published
in Paris. As the political situation has evolved in Poland, so has
Braun's status. In the spring of 1989 his play about Modjeska,
under the title Pani Helena, was given at the Stary Theatre in
Cracow, directed by Jan Maciejowski and starring Anna Polony. At
the end of 1989, the new Ministry of Culture and Art offered Braun
the position of manager and artistic director of the Teatr Polski
in Wrocraw, the city's largest theatre. The entire Polish theatre
is in a state of transition. New principles affecting the
organizational and financial operation of the theatre are being put
into effect. There has been a decrease in the number of spec-tators
as a result of the rising cost of tickets. Unemployment among
actors has increased. Yet theatre continues to occupy an essential
place in society.
Braun has declined the offer to undertake the management of the
Teatr Polski. Given the present status of his own work, he is more
interested in directing, writing and teaching. Therefore he has
decided to remain as a professor at SUNY, Buffalo. But he will
return to Poland as a guest director from time to time. He plans to
direct his own adaptation of Jerzy Andrzejewski's novel Miazga (The
Pulp) in 1991 at the Teatr Polski. He will also direct Orwell's
Animal Farm at the University of Buffalo. The recipient of a
Guggenheim Fellowship, Braun is presently writing The History of
the Polish Theatre after 1944.
10 Soviet and East European Performance Vol. 10, No.2
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/ ,; .. ARPADGONCZ
ELECTED INTERIM PRESIDENT OF HUNGARY
kpad Goncz, the new interim President of Hungary was born in
1922 in Budapest, where he studied law, receiving his Doctor of
Laws degree in 1944. During this period, he was a member of the
Hungarian underground and was wounded by German troops in 1944.
After the war, Goncz was a lawyer in an agricultural bank in
Budapest and managing editor of the Smallholders Party youth
weekly. The Inde-pendent Smallholders Party was a left-center
oppposition party which won the last free elections in Hungary in
1945.
After the Communist takeover, Goncz became a pipefitter and
returned to college at Godoll6 University of Agricultural
Engineering where he studied soil reclamation until the Hungarian
uprising of 1956. Sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in
the rebellion, Goncz taught himself English in prison and
translated the speeches of John F. Kennedy for the Ministry of the
Interior. At the same time, he began translating John Galsworthy's
Forsyte Saga, smuggling it out of prison. Released in the general
amnesty of 1%3, Goncz worked as a free-lance writer and translator.
Among the authors he has translated are: E. L. Doctorow, William
Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, William Stryon, John Updike, Edith
Wharton and Thomas Wolfe.
Mr. Goncz resumed his political work as president of the
National Writers' Association, president of Hungarian PEN,
vice-president of the Hungarian section of the International League
for Human Rights. He was also a founding member and vice president
of the Alliance of Free Democrats, a left-center social party
founded in 1987. On May 2, 1990, the new Hungarian Parliament
elected Mr. Goncz the interim president.
Mr. Goncz, winner of the J6zsef Attila Literary Prize and the
Wheatland Prize, has published five plays, as well as a novel and
numerous short stories. His most successful play is Magyar Medeia
(A Hungarian Medea) (1978) which has been performed in Poland,
Romania, Yugoslavia, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and the U.S.S.R.
as well as Hungary. His other plays are: Racsok (Iron Bars), 1978;
Sarusok (Men of God), 1978, and Pesszimista Komedia (A Pessimistic
Comedy), 1989. He has also written two radio plays: Perszephone
(Per-sephone), 1989 and Mer/eg (Balance), 1989.
English translations of A Hungarian }fedea and Iron Bars are
available in Voices of Dissent: Two Plays of Arpad Goncz,
translated by Katherina M . Wilson and Christopher C. Wilson,
published by Associ-ated Universities Pressej. In July, Garland
Press will bring out Plays and Other Writings of Arpad Goncz, also
translated by Katherina M. Wilson and Christopher C. Wilson.
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HUNG~PLA~GHTATTACKED
According to a press release issued by the New York based
Hungarian Human Rights Foundation, the prominent Hungarian writer
Andras Stito was attacked on March 19 by pitchfork-wielding ethnic
Romanian nationalists during an anti-Hungarian pogrom in his
hometown of Tirgu Mures (Hungarian: Marosvasarhely), Romania. Mr.
Stit6, who has consistently advocated reconciliation among the
vari-ous nationalities of Transylvania, was attending a meeting
with approxi-mately 70 other members of the Hungarian Democratic
Union of Romania at the organization's local office when it was
besieged by an armed crowd of hundreds of anti-Hungarian
attackers.
As a result of the beating he received, Mr. Stito suffered a
detached retina and an internal cut in his left eye. He underwent
eye surgery on April 3, at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary
in Boston.
Transylvania, which had been under Hungarian sovereignty since
the tenth century, was transferred to Romania by the peace treaty
of World War I in 1920. As a consequence, over two million ethnic
Hungarians now live in Romania. The Ceau~escu regime's brutal
repression of Hungarian identity in Transylvania took a severe toll
on the region's Hungarian schools and other cultural institutions,
on the public use of the Hungarian language, and on the ethnic
compactness of Hungarian settlements such as Tirgu Mures. Many
Romanians came to regard the Hungarian presence in the country as a
threat to Romanian national unity and purity. Thus the pogrom of
March 19 grew out of hostility toward ethnic-Hungarian strivings
for restoration of linguistic rights and cultural autonomy.
In an interview with Hungarian television in Budapest after the
attack, Mr. Stito described the scene:
"We tried our best to hide the fact that we were up in the
attic. We decided not even to show our faces at the window for
whenever someone in the crowd outside got even a glimpse of us, he
immediately cried out: 'There they are! Bring them out so we can
hang them!' We were caught totally by surprise by this screaming,
frenzied mob of Romanians, entirely beside themselves with rage,
demanding our blood and our deaths. Some of them were from Tirgu
Mures; some were from the countryside, especially Romanian peasants
bused in from the Gorgeny Valley, who armed themselves with
pitchforks, slashing and cutting weapons, and chains, which they
obviously intended to use on someone. As it turned out, they used
them on us . . . "
Despite several calls for assistance, army officers did not
respond for about five hours. Soldiers then led the first four of
the cornered victims out of the building and into an uncovered army
truck, but failed to protect them from being attacked by the
screaming mob.
Andras StitO, regarded as the leading Hungarian writer
living
12 Soviet and East European Performance Vol. 10, No.2
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outside of Hungary, was born into a Transylvanian peasant family
in 1927. By the early 1950s, his dramatic and poignant stories
about peasant life had established him as an important literary
stylist. In 1970, he won critical acclaim and wide popular
attention for his highly original novel, My Mother Promises
Untroubled Sleep. In the 1970s he estab-lished himself as a major
Hungarian playwright with The Palm Sunday of a Horse Dealer (1974),
Star at the Stake (1975) and Cain and Abel (1977), dramas that
examine the confrontation of the individual with the
identity-threatening forces of arbitrary authority. Mr. Siit8's
dramatic subjects, which are often historical or mythological,
convey the playwright's concern for communal survival and spiritual
self-preservation.
In Hungary, Mr. Siit5's works have always enjoyed frequent
exposure in print and on the stage. In Romania by contrast, during
the last decade of its rule, the Cealliescu regime imposed a total
ban on his works. Although he was subjected to increasing
harassment, he chose to stay in Transylvania and confront the
hostility of the Ceau~escu regime. On November 9, 1989, Mr. Siita'
was placed under house arrest where he remained until the
revolution the following month. The tragic irony of his fate in the
post-Ceauescu era is, therefore, all the more poignant.
NOTE
Two of AndrAs Siit~s plays are available in English translation:
Star at the Stake in Modem International Drama, Vol. 13, No. 2,
(State University of New York at Binghamton: Max Reinhardt
Archive, Spring 1980).
The Palm Sunday of a Horse Dealer will appear in the upcom-ing
anthology Drama Contemporary: Hungary (New York: P AJ
Pub-lications, 1980).
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Growing Up with Baby Arlekin Puppet Theatre, Lodz, Poland
14 Soviet and East European Performance Vol. 10, No.2
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THE POLISH PUPPET THEATRE: A REPORT FROM THE UNIMA
CONFERENCE
Jane McMahan
"The Language of the Puppet," a conference co-sponsored by UNIMA
USA (the American Center for the Union Internationale de la
Marionette) and the Tears of Joy Puppet Theatre, took place on May
2-5, 1990, in Vancouver, Washington. Scholars, directors and
puppeteers from around the world presented papers, participated in
panel discus-sions and viewed performances by companies from Japan,
Finland, the United States, the Soviet Union and Poland.
Among the speakers were Henryk Jurkowski, president of UNIMA,
noted author on puppet theatre, and professor at the Higher School
of Drama at Warsaw and Bialystok; Jan Wilkowski, actor, playwright,
director and professor at Warsaw's State Higher Academy of Theatre;
and Wojciech Wieczorkiewicz, director and playwright at the puppet
theatre Arlekin of wdz (Poland).
The performing groups included the Moscow Shadow Puppet Theatre,
the Kiev State Puppet Theatre, and Arlekin. By far the most
involving performance for both adults and children was Arlekin's
"Co z tego wyrosnie" (Growing up with Baby), performed in English
transla-tion.
The play is a composite of sequences in the life of a theatre
couple, Arlekin an Arlekina, confronting the experience of a new
baby. Their reactions, trials and fantasies are presented in a
touching, humorous and at times dramatic way, as they search for
meaning and understanding. The stylistic mode is a fluid
interchange of mime, vari-ous forms of puppetry and straight,
spoken acting.
At first, Arlekin and Arlekina enact a playful mime episode
leading to the conception of a baby. The mood is playful and
gentle. Arlekina seductively winds a snake-like ribbon around her
wrist. Her hands gracefully shape a heart. Baby cries emerge from a
large (preg-nant) drum. In spite of the preliminaries, the advent
of the child is per-ceived by the couple as a shock, and they are
unprepared for the con-sequences. But soon, Arlekina is holding her
new son lovingly in her arms (likened in the text to "the wings of
a bird"), and Arlekin is dither-ing about.
A cradle is evoked by a bunched-up draping of cloth high on the
center of the backdrop, an open triptych. On either side is
projected a larger-than-life photographic portrait of the actors.
They are Jerzy Stasiewicz and Joanna Ignaciuk, who themselves form
a couple and have provided much of the material for this play from
their own experience. Both actors give an honest and evocative
performance. Ms. Ignaciuk's singing voice is particularly appealing
and Mr. Stasiewicz's buffoonery is neatly timed. However, a more
tightly structured pantomime style
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would have given the piece a more forceful beginning. The child
puppet, a stuffed cloth form, is well-designed to
articulate life-like motions. It is manipulated not only by
Arlekin and Arlekina but also from behind the screen by a hidden
actress, Liliana Ochma6ska, who does the baby vocalizations with
complete authenticity and a wide range of vocal expression. The
fact that this infant moves around without strings or any other
visible devices, seems to underline his overwhelming independence,
already achieved.
In an effort to stem the endless crying, the parents try to
amuse their son with a mock bullfight. An allusion is being made
here to more traditional Polish puppet theatre, in which Joseph
clowns around with animals in the manger. Total frustration is
evident in the more con-temporary reaction of Arlekina as she
repeatedly tosses the baby in the air while Arlekin luckily catches
him.
This section becomes sheer slapstick: the couple tries to feed
the baby a string of frankfurters before stuffing a bottle in his
mouth, and Arlekin blindfolds himself with a diaper before they are
most graphically peed on. Exhausted, Arlekin says, "He's far from
being a real man. Am I far from being a real man? How far?"
Arlekina crypti-cally answers: "A meter of time."
The words of the text come as occasional droplets, falling among
exclamations and silences, sometimes in short phrases or in simple,
stream of consciousness style with the audience expected to make
the associations and connections. The director and author,
Wiec-zorkiewicz, has taken much of his material from the writings
of the poet Krystyna Mifob~dzka.
In the next section, the text and indeed the whole mood changes.
Using ingeniously devised cloth marionettes on a miniature set
improvised with oversized books and a clothesline of diapers, our
com-media protagonists now enact three action-packed scenes from
the worrisome, projected future of their child. They imagine him
first as Faust, then as Don Juan and finally as Don Quixote. The
dialogue for this section is composed of fragments from traditional
Czech puppet plays and Evgeny Shvart's Don Quixote delivered in
exaggerated parody form. An indistinct red shadow figure and a
shadow butterfly argue Faust's fate. Still manipulated in full view
by Arlekin and Arlekina, the puppets enact a courtship, love
triangle and duel. Sword gestures are timed to coincide with chords
as music from Don Giovanni and Man of La Mancha blares in the
background and shadow images streak across the screen. Diabolical
laughter and scary shadow hands accompany the moralistic voice from
above.
The play returns to its original simplicity as Arlekin and
Arlekina, hearts beating in trepidation, give their child a loving
send-off to fmd his own way.
I was fortunate to be able to speak with Wojciech
Wiec-zorkiewicz immediately after the performance. He communicated
with
16 Soviet and East European Performance Vol. 10, No.2
-
the same finesse, charm and directness that is evident in his
artistic work. He explained that the play "is constructed on the
principle of commedia dell'arte to provoke the actors to improvise
and introduce new ideas. The performance is based on the idea of
permanent change."
In the panel discussion on "Directing the Puppet Stage,"
Wiec-zorkiewicz outlined the changing role of director during his
forty years of work in theatre. In the 1950s the director was
virtual dictator and the actor-puppeteers were called "puppet
carriers." In the 1960s, everyone became involved. This led to the
"theatre of the liberated actor" of the 1970s and changed concepts
of "styles, space, partnership." "This is why the puppeteer is now
visible, the word 'actor' is used more, and space is changed to an
open stage." In the 1980s, what has become important is "the
expression of the actor's concept" with the director helping "like
an obstetrician. . . to liberate the unconscious." Wieczorkiewicz
described his own role not only as "guardian of the puppet, but of
the actor as well. I work to assure the actor a feeling of
security, to care for the whole person. I am an instrument working
on an instrument working on an instrument."
When I asked him how important it had been for him to pre-sent
traditional Polish theatre, Wieczorkiewicz answered: "There was a
time in my life when I both wanted to and was obliged to do Polish
theatre. Now I think it is most important to come close to
children's minds with human values, not Polish values, but general
human values." When asked if he saw this as the function of the new
freedom, he ans-wered, "I think that the Polish theatre has been
talking about general human values for many years, and the changes
that have happened in Poland are a result of this."
Asked if he had been hampered by politics, Wieczorkiewicz
replied, "Never hampered, but I wasted part of my life when I
wanted to do political theatre. Now I think politics in puppet
theatre has no mean-ing. . . . A theatre used for propaganda has
little in common with real art." He sees the future of art in a
liberalized Poland as "a process within a process." Asked if the
new era of freedom came as a shock, he said, "No. We take it for
granted. We deserve it. We look at the Czechs dancing in the
streets with surprise. For us, it was our will that was
realized."
Wieczorkiewicz is optimistic about the future of puppet theatre
in Poland, in spite of the inevitable diminished subsidies and the
dangers of commercialization. "You will see Polish artists using
dif-ferent forms of expression, meanings, ideas, values to their
fullest."
As to his own work, the director sees his future mostly in terms
of his students. 'This is a difficult question for someone who has
a past and is not sure about the future. I have been working for
forty years in theatre." When probed further, he said, "I'll tell
you a secret. There will be a continuation to this very story: how
Arlekin and Arlekina build a
17
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18 Soviet and East European Performance Vol. 10, No.2
-
home--not a house, but a home for themselves as a family." I
also talked with Jan Wilkowski, whose work in puppet theatre
has had an enormous impact both on the stage and on television.
He is described by his daughter Kaja Perkowski, who served as
interpreter for the interview, as the "grandpa of Polish TV puppet
theatre," akin to Mr. Rogers in this country in popularity.
Although the creative conditions were "very comfortable," Wilkowski
says he left television because "the censors blocked our work,"
requiring that it be "very patriotic." "Now all that is changed,
but the times in which we live are very hard. We have freedom now,
but we will have to pay for it with economic poverty. We have to
rebuild all the structures destroyed in 1939. The actors and
theatres are rebuilding Polish art. Puppet theatre was big and
rich. Now there will be smaller companies of two or three people.
This will correspond better with our economic situation, but the
period of transi-tion will be very difficult.''
In his conference presentation, Wilkowski stressed that "it
becomes a problem if the use of words destroys the true elements of
puppetry: the juxtaposition of shape and movement. Acknowledging
the double language of the puppet implies avoiding rich but clumsy
writ-ten drama that does not offer intensive action for the puppet.
Each art has its limitations and conventions. Puppet theatre loses
its meaning when word dictates action. We must split them so they
can work polyphonically, with words and gestures meeting
contrapuntally from time to time."
This coming year Wilkowski is certain to have an impact on
American puppet theatre. He will be living in Oregon and will be
guest director at the Tears of Joy Puppet Theatre, a company of
seven actors directed by Reg Bradley based in Vancouver,
Washington. He sees his contribution as, "sharing my knowledge and
my own experience. Not that it's better, but different. I would
like to encourage a more dramatic theatre. Many American theatres
have too much show and entertain-ment. This is completely different
from the Polish theatre. We have no entertainment," he said with a
smile.
Wilkowski will be directingA/addin and his Lamp at Tears of Joy
as a gift for his grandson, who lives in this country. This, he
says will be his last production. At 70 (a fact that he mentions
significantly, as though to make some sense out of it for himself),
Jan Wilkowski seems outrageously young, bristling with
uncontainable creative energy and innovative ideas. It is
unthinkable that this could be his last perform-ance.
In a conversation with Dr. Henryk Jurkowski, who is currently
working on an English translation of his three-volume history of
puppet theatre, he spoke of puppetry in the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe as an art of enormous importance within the official
state-controlled system of culture. "In the Soviet Union you have
120 puppet theatres; in Poland 27; in Czechoslovakia 20; and in the
German Democratic
19
-
Republic, 17. They are all state theatres. What does this mean?
Each has its own building, its own auditorium, its own
administrative staff. The average puppet theatre in Poland has 60
to 80 employees. Of course there was censorship, but in the end
they were able to develop quite freely."
I asked him to comment on the Arlekin performance. Was there
anything about it that he found to be distinctly Polish in its
sources?
"In Europe we have accepted commedia dell'arte. I wouldn't say
that there is something typically Polish in the material. It is the
thinking that is Polish--combining tradition with contemporary
observa-tions of life. Wieczorkiewicz asks us about the future of
all of us, espe-cially those who are young, and his answer, his
anthropological answer, is to go back to archetypes. Don Giovanni
and Don Quixote, they are the most popular European archetypes. In
this respect, it is stylistically European, but Polish in its
intellectual construction."
Asked what drew him to puppetry and what he considers to be the
inherent artistic possibilities of the art form, Dr. Jurkowski
theorized, "Puppetry can be an art of important intellectual
content. It is less linked with the need for personal expression.
The one who thinks, who feels, is more objective in his expression
because he is speaking via objects, via props, via artificial
items. It is just this that I most like in puppetry, this
intersection of the ancient animistic object and contemporary
intellectual concepts. Besides, puppetry is an art form that is
open to the whole poetic experience. In the human theatre you have
a kind of unity. When you see an actor, when you see one ele-ment,
it is there to represent this element or a group of elements. But
when you see two elements together, animate and inanimate
juxtaposed, there is a chance of evoking new meaning. So I think
that the puppet theatre--this mixing of different elements--is an
art which holds great promise for the future."
20 Soviet and East European Performance Vol. 10, No.2
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CZECHOSLOVAK THEATRE DURING THE VELVET REVOLUTION
by
Olga F. Chtiguel
For Czechoslovak actors, the November rebellion against the
Communist regime was an unprecedented event. In support of the
stu-dents who had been beaten by police during a demonstration on
November 17, 1989, actors, directors and technical crews walked
onto the stages of their theatres and declared a strike. The
theatre buildings, nonetheless, did not fall silent. On the
contrary, the applause which resounded in theatres in Prague, Brno,
Bratislava and the provinces will never be forgotten. It was
theatre artists who awakened the nation from the nightmare of its
history.
When the students commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the
murder of Jan Opletal by the Nazis marched on National Avenue
(Narodnf tlfda), they were greeted by the actors of The National
Theatre (Narodni divadlo). The meeting had powerful historical
resonances. In 1881, while under Austrian rule, the Czechs
completed construction of the National Theatre where plays in the
Czech language were to be performed. Due to circumstances never
fully explained, the theatre caught fire and was severely damaged
two months after its provisional opening. Within two years the
theatre was rebuilt with money donated by the Czech people. Since
that time, the National Theatre has been the pride of the nation in
its struggle for self-determination.
Under the Communist regime, the National Theatre went through a
series of ideological and artistic upheavals which affected the
style of its three ensembles: drama, ballet and opera. Withstanding
pressures from the Ministry of Culture and the internal unit of the
Communist Party in the theatre, Milan Luke~, head of the drama
ensemble, sought to create artistically and intellectually valid
produc-tions. As a consequence, he and a few outstanding actors,
including Jana Hlava
-
breathtaking. Defying the stubborn refusal of the director, Ji1i
Pauer, to open the buildings of the National Theatre, the actors,
opera singers,
dam~ers and technical crews organized opposition rallies on the
street in front of the theatre buildings.
Shortly after passing the historic National Theatre building,
the demonstrators were brutally attacked by the police. Angered by
these terrifying events, the students of the Theatre Academy of the
Arts (Divadeln1 Akademie Mmiclcych Umtm') headed from National
Avenue
directly to the Theatre of Realism (Realisticke divadlo). Their
bloodied faces and torn clothing were in stark contrast to the
festive atmosphere of the opening night of Mary'Ja, a Czech
classic. The students then went back to their schools. By the next
morning, they had transformed it into student strike headquarters
and had written a short declaration, includ-ing a demand for an
investigation of the police action and a call for a general strike
on November 27, 1989.
In another part of Prague, in an auditorium named the Junior
Club on Hop-Garden (Junior klub Na Chmelnici), two theatres from
Brno--the Theatre on a String (Divadlo na provazku) and the Theatre
of Hana (Hanacke divadlo)--were performing Rozrazil (Veronica) .
This collaborative performance, called a "stage journal," was
conceived as a protest against the oppressive regime and a call for
democratic political changes. A student from Brno, beaten in the
demonstration on National Avenue, came to the Junior Club that
evening. In a powerful fusion of life and art, he was immediately
included in the second part of the performance so that he could
share his experiences with the hor-rified audience.
The following day, theatre artists from both mainstream and
off-mainstream theatres gathered at the Theatre of Realism to
for-mulate their response to the events of the previous night.
Arno!t Gold-flam, director of Ha-Theatre, and Petr Oslzlf,
dramaturg of Theatre on a String, were the first artists to declare
a strike in their theatres. Gold-flam recalled in an interview for
BBC, "There was a rather simple, yet very intense, reaction from
one participant that for forty years we have performed like idiots.
If we do not react today, then we will perform like idiots for
another forty years".l The session concluded with
"Prohla~eni leskych divadelnikt\" ("The Declaration of Czech
Theatre Artists"), calling for a theatre strike and support of the
students' demands. In the afternoon, Milan Mejstlik, a student from
the Theatre Academy, announced in Wenceslas Square that the actors
and students were on strike. The Velvet Revolution was born.
The following day, on November 19, at the Drama Club (~inoherni
Studio), a group of intellectuals headed by Vaclav Havel organized
Civic Forum (Ob~anske f6rum). In the intimate space of the Drama
Club, Grossman and Havel, as well as Ladislav Smo~ek, J aroslav V
ostry and Jan Ka~er, sought to appeal to the civic consciousness of
Czech citizens. In the 1960s, the repertory of both theatres
included
22 Soviet and East European Performance Vol. 10, No.2
-
classics, modern Western plays of topical relevance and
contemporary Czech drama explicitly criticizing the neo-Stalinist
regime in Czechos-lovakia.
After the Soviet invasion of 1968, the artistic and intellectual
standards of both theatres deteriorated as a result of ideological
purges. Only with the arrival of Evald Schorm, a director banned
from the filin studios, did the Balustrade re-emerge as a
politically engaged theatre of high artistic standards. Smolek
tried to revive the Drama Club despite the fact that Vostry and
Ka~er were forced to work in the provinces. After years of
subordination to bizarre censorship by the Ministry of the
Interior, it came as no surprise that the ensembles of both
theatres immediate?' joined the opposition. During the first days
of the revolu-tion, Oslzly of the Theatre on a String, Jifi
Bartotka of the Balustrade, and Jil'i ~epek of the Drama Club
emerged as leading figures in Civic Forum. On Monday night, all
Prague theatres except the National Theatre opened their doors for
public discussions. People who had never attended a performance now
eagerly stood in long lines in freez-ing temperatures. Hundreds who
could not get into the theatres remained on the streets or in the
lobbies in order to listen to the per-formances and discussions
through loudspeakers. Workers, students, farmers, economists,
journalists and priests shared the stages with the artists in
creating history. Stormy applause and happy laughter repeatedly
exploded in the auditoriums and on the stages of Czechos-lovak
theatres.
Throughout these revolutionary days, theatres were turned into
political tribunes where, after years of repression, spectators and
actors now freely expressed their hope and fears. In
semi-improvised evenings, actors conducted interviews and
discussions with guests and spectators. Some of these were
broadcast by the newly-liberated television network. In a program
called Dialogue, the members of Studio Ypsilon appeared together
with Vlra ~aslavska, a gymnastic star of the 1968 Olympic Games in
Mexico City (subsequently an adviser to Havel and proposed
ambassador to Japan) and Vaclav Klaus, an economist (subsequently
Finance Minister in the new government).
In the Theatre on the Vineyards (Divadlo na Vinohradech), as _in
other theatres, actors gathered onstage and recited short poems and
proverbs, performed short excerpts from plays and even read from
Marx's writings. Between the performances and songs (presented on a
set designed for Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita) the actors
carried on a discussion with invited experts, Civic Forum members
and journal-ists. At the Balustrade, one evening was devoted to a
meeting with Jan Trefulka, LudvHc Vaculik, Ivan Klima and Milan
Jungman, all writers banned after the 1968 invasion. Another
evening, the spectators greeted Pavel Landovskf, an actor of the
Drama Club, who had lived in Vienna for the past ten years. A
signatory of Charter 77, LandovsicY had been stripped of his
citizenship and prevented from returning home after a
23
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two-year engagement at the Burgtheater in Vienna. The Theatre of
Ji~l Wolker (Divadlo JiYiho Wolkera), whose
repertory is oriented toward a young audience, prepared a series
called What Is Not in Textbooks. These semi-educational
performances con-sisted of discussions for high school students
with invited experts on law, sociology, ecology, aesthetics,
philosophy, psychology, political science and history. The Theatre
of Realism also scheduled mid-day perform-ances for discussions
with high school students.
V aclav Havel sometimes appeared at the theatres, at least for a
few moments, to greet spectators and answer their questions. During
his short talk at the first discussion evening at the National
Theatre, he quipped, "I apologize for not wearing appropriate
attire for attendance at a theatre, but I did not know I would be
here .. . I am glad, however, that I am slowly moving from the
squares toward the theatre". Whether on the stage of his "domestic"
Balustrade or at the National Theatre, Havel always expressed pride
in his fellow theatre artists. He reminded spectators that the role
of actors in Czech history goes back at least to the beginning of
the 19th century when travelling companies revived the Czech
language in the heavily Germanized country. Talking about Civic
Forum's activities, Havel joked, "Suddenly the media works so
perfectly that it often knows something even before I do."
At one theatre, however, the spectators did not come to listen
to the actors. The spectators were both foreign and Czech
journalists who hoped to learn about the rapidly changing situation
from the mem-bers of the coordinating committee of Civic Forum.
Civic Forum's headquarters was established at the Magic Lantern
(Laterna magika), whose celebrated founder, Alfred Radok, had been
a repeated victim of political changes in Czechoslovakia. As a
radical experimenter after World War II, Radok fell into disgrace
during the years of Socialist Realism. His short-lived fame during
the 1960s came to a sudden end after the Soviet invasion in 1968.
Radok emigrated to Sweden where he died in 1976.2 Except for a few
moments of former glory, the once innovative Magic Lantern
degenerated into a tourist attraction. In 1989, the theatre,
literally overnight, gained a world-wide audience. The his-tory of
Czechoslovakia was "performed" amidst the set for Diirenmatt's
Minotaurus. 3
In reaction to the controlled media's false reports about events
in Prague, actors and students began their trips to factories and
cooperative farms on November 20. The Communist regime had for
years "bribed" actors with high salaries to perform in the
state-owned television network and film studios. In an ironic twist
of fate, these same actors now turned into revolutionaries. The
nation, long con-demned to a television culture of feeble-minded
soap operas, was awakened from its agony by the very practitioners
of the official culture. Television "characters" stepped out of the
television screens and appeared in the yards of the factories to
convince workers that every-
24 Soviet and East European Performance Vol. 10, No.2
-
thing they had seen on the screen was a lie. The government
feared the actors' influence on the workers.
On December 1, at the Congress of the Agricultural Cooperatives,
the Communist Party distributed brochures to the participants
listing the salaries of prominent actors. Despite the government's
efforts to dis-credit the aristic community, demonstrators shouted
in unison, "Long live the actors!" As they listened on Wenceslas
Square or to their radios and television sets, the people gave
their trust to Havel, the playwright, and Miroslav Macha~ek, the
harassed director of the National Theatre, who became the spokesman
for all theatre artists.
In Brno, the Moravian capital, the opposition was immediately
strengthened by the activities of the Ha-Theatre and the Theatre on
a String after they returned from Prague. Subsequently, the State
Theatre (Statnf divadlo) opened its doors to public discussions. At
the Maben's Theatre (Mahenovo divadlo), the spectators met with
Milo~ Hy~, a leading Brno theatre artist in the 1960s. Like many of
his colleagues,
Hyn~'t, a director and professor, had been forcefully silenced
for the twenty years. In Slovakia, Milan Kna~ko, an actor at the
National Theatre of Slovakia, organized the Public Against Violence
(VeYejnost proti nasih'), a sister organization to Civic Forum. In
other cities, too, theatre artists followed the example of their
Prague colleagues. Because many of the theatre buildings were built
on centrally located town squares, demonstrations naturally took
place there. Indeed, as he travelled around the country, Havel,
banned from the stage for two decades, delivered speech after
speech inside and outside many theatre buildings.
After the final blow to the Communist regime, and the eleva-tion
of Havel to the Presidency, many actors continued their political
work. Oslzly and Kna:lko became Havel's close advisers; Magda
Va~aryova, an actress from the Slovak National Theatre, was
designated ambassador to Austria. Luke!, who resigned from the
National Theatre in protest over Pauer's decision, ~~s named
Minister of Culture. Others, like Macha(ek, Barto~a and Cepek,
returned to their theatres.
With censorship and blacklisting abolished, the Czech theatre is
now free from the bonds of Marxism-Leninism. Theatre artists are
now able to make their own intellectual and aesthetic choices.
Still astonished by the swift changes, they are eagerly
restructuring their repertories, ensembles and administrative
structures. For a long time to come, theatre auditoriums will
resound with echoes of the historic applause of those late November
days of 1989.
25
-
NOTES
lTen Days, a BBC broadcast in the Czech language, also
broad-cast by Civic Forum in its program on Czechoslovak Radio,
Prague, December 11, 1989.
2Radok developed with Josef Svoboda, a renowned designer, the
concept of the Magic Lantern from the ideas and practice of
Miros-lav KouE'il, a designer, and E. F. Burian, an avant-garde
director. Burian, himself a Communist, led the Czech avant-garde of
the 1930s. After he returned from Dachau at the end of World War
II, he actively participated in building socialist culture in the
newly born Communist state. Shortly before his death Burian
manifestly rejected Socialist Realism and returned to his pre-war
concept of a poetic theatre.
3See Timothy Garton Ash, "The Revolution of the Magic Lantern"
in The New York Times Review of Books, January 14, 1990.
26 Soviet and East European Performance Vol. 10, No. 2
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COMPENSATION: A LITURGY OF FACT
Alma Law
"On April 26, 1986, at 1:24 a.m., massive explosions ripped
through the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, one of the newest and
most powerful nuclear power plants in the U.S.S.R. A ball of flame,
accompanied by clouds of black smoke rose into the sky. The wind
carried the deadly cloud, 10 times more radioactive than the atomic
bomb dropped on H iroshima, to the northwest, sowing panic in the
Soviet Union and Western Europe alike."1
Only now, four years later, is the Soviet government beginning
to disclose fully the tragic scope of this nuclear disaster, both
in terms of the size of the contaminated area and the number of
people directly affected by Chernobyl's fallout, now estimated to
be as many as 3 to 4 million, most of whom are still living in
dangerously contaminated regions of the Ukraine and
Byelorussia.
For audiences who have attended performances of Compensa-tion
since it opened a year ago in January 1989, at the Moscow
Theatre-Studio "On the Boards" (Na doskakh ), these new revelations
will come as no surprise. For this production, subtitled "A Liturgy
of Fact," pre-sents in very human terms the terrible consequences
of the nuclear dis-aster at Chernobyl. Contrary to the
frequently-expressed opinion that political theatre is a dead issue
in the Soviet Union now that glasnost allows virtually any subject
to be aired in the press, this production--and the audience
response to it --suggests that there is still plenty of room for an
unflinching examination on the stage of important political and
social questions.
Headed by Sergei Kurginyan, a self-styled wunderkind with
degrees in math and physics as well as theatre, "On the Boards" has
made a speciality of staging controversial productions that leave
few audience members indifferent. Their program, aimed at what
Kurginyan calls the "lumpen intelligentsia" proposes "silent
meditation" between stage and auditorium in the context of "poor"
theatre, seeing it as a counterbalance to the extravagant spectacle
of the professional theatre. And to insure that he attracts a
serious audience, Kurginyan refuses to sell is tickets through the
theatre kiosks located around Mos-cow. If one wants to attend a
performance one must go to the theatre itself, presently located in
the club attached to the Moscow Con-servatory on Malaia Gruzinskaia
Street near the zoo.
The performance of Compensation that is described in the
fol-lowing account took place on March 4, 1989.
By 7:00p.m. curtain time, all seats in the auditorium are
filled, extra chairs have been brought in, and there are people
standing along the sides. Prior to the beginning of the
performance, Sergei Kurginyan
27
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Compensation Theatre "On the Boards," Moscow
28 Soviet and East European Performance Vol. 10, No.2
-
speaks to the audience, explaining that the production is called
"a liturgy of facts." He adds, "It's not so much about what
happened at Chernobyl as what its meaning is." The performance runs
for one hour and twenty minutes.
"There will then be a brief intermission," Kurginyan announces,
"during which the audience members can watch a video documentary on
Chernobyl out in the lobby. Following the intermission there will
then be a discussion with the audience." He goes on to explain that
Adolf Kharash, the psychologist whose material--interviews and
rsychological studies--on Chernobyl forms the basis of the
production, will be pre-sent for the discussion along with a
journalist and a medical specialist on radiation sickness who
examined the ftremen after they were brought to Moscow following
the blaze at Chemobyl.
The cast consists of a Psychologist-narrator and five
"liquidators" garbed in white from head to foot. The performance
takes place on a starkly bare set. In the center is a table on
which is lying one of the victims of Chernobyl. The floor is
covered with shiny metallic discs which in the finale will be
gathered up as part of the ritual. To one side is a doll, an
"angel" with a candle, also dressed in white. The music for the
performance is that of a church liturgy, its beauty providing a
striking counterpoint to the stark horror of the facts
presented.
The narrator begins speaking, setting the context for the
liturgy by quoting from Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, Walt Whitman. The
man on the table rises up.
"April 26, 1986 .. . It was Saturday. No one knew anything ... "
"When we heard the rumors about the accident, no one paid
any attention--ther~'d been rumors before. No one was even
frightened. "
"The worst part was the total absence of information ... " "We
kept waiting for some kind of announcement. But none
came . . . " In rapid vignettes one gradually comes to
understand the
nightmare of average people not being informed, of not
understanding the terrible consequences for them of the explosion
that had occurred at 1:23 a.m. that morning at the Chemobyl nuclear
power station.
"The streets were full of people. They were selling ice cream
everywhere. I even bought and ate two bars . . . "
"We went to the beach. It was a warm day and the entire family
lay in the sun."
A woman speaks, "My kitten acted strangely. It kept trying to
hide."
"The children were checked and pronounced in good health. It was
only in autumn that their hair began falling out."
"Some said to drink wine to drive out the radiation, but now
it's hard to get wine ... " "Eat more carrots . . . " "Melons will
provide 'living gl ' " ucose ....
29
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30
~ 8 1/) 0 :E
G) 9
~ i G)
.&:. 1-c 0
i c G)
E 8
Soviet and East European Performance Vol. 10, No.2
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Question: "Will it happen again?" Answer: "The system remains as
before." The figures in white lift the mirrored board from the
table.
The white powder covering it falls like snow. One man wipes it
clean and shows it to the audience.
"Forgotten people, we turned to God." "I don't believe in
anything any more." "Give us help. We carried out our duties.
Where's the social
justice?" "People who suffered radiation in the first days will
receive as
compensation 40 rubles a month." There is no sickness, it's all
radiation phobia." Husband: "If something happens to me, the State
will help
you." Wife: "But I don't believe it." Narrator: "Some lost their
Party membership because they
protested." The refugees from Chernobyl, rather than being met
with
sympathy and help, were shunned. People shouted, "Let all the
Chernobyl victims be crushed!" Victims who received new housing
were told by their new neighbors, "We'll wait. In another year
you'll all be dead and then the apartments will be ours!"
A banner hanging over the town: "Your life is in your hands."
"Enough! Enough, I said!" After the intermission the radiation
specialist is the first to
speak. "How much did Chernobyl cost?" someone asks. "150 billion
rubles," he answers. He goes on to say that Chernobyl affected
nearly half of Byeloru.ssia, in all, several million people. Worst
of all, it's a region of young people.
"When Mikhail Sergeevich (Gorbachev) went to the Ukraine earlier
this month, there was not a single medical question, no doctors
were along, not even the Minister of Health."
"llin and Co. (Leonid Ilin--Vice-president of the U.S.S.R.
Academy of Medical Sciences, the man who is regarded as the most
responsible for the cover-up] are now trying to hold back Threshold
(Porog), a film made about Chernobyl. It's time for glasnost."
"What about Moscow?" someone asks. "The radioactive cloud went
to the west and north, bypassing
Moscow," the specialist answers. A woman in the audience asks,
"Is it safe to have children?"
The specialist answers, "Such a nuclear catastrophe doesn't pass
without effect. Mutations have already begun to appear. They will
increase."
The specialist tells how "Ilin and Co." allowed the refugees
from Chernobyl to take with them family photographs and whatever
mementos they wanted, even though these things were
radioactive.
31
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32
~ 0 0 U) 0 ~
G) ..c. -c
9 G)
~ G)
..c. t-c 0 ~ U) c G)
E 8
Soviet and East European Perfonnance Vol. 10, No.2
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Thus the radioactivity spread by indirect means. He tells of one
official coming to Moscow and of the clothes he was wearing being
tested for radioactivity. They were contaminated and had to be
destroyed. The official objected, "No, I'll take them to the dry
cleaners." "I had to explain to him that those clothes would then
touch and contaminate clo-thing belonging to other people,
including children."
Someone asks about the hazards of atomic testing. The
spe-cialist answers, "I'm not allowed to say."
Kharash takes the floor. He begins by addressing the question of
radiation phobia observing that one of the main causes of it was
the "factor of the unknown." He goes on to express his concern that
it's also being used as a cover-up for social problems. "Many
sacrificed their health in vain," he says. "One-fifth of the
population stayed behind until June 5. They knew nothing of their
fate."
By the time it's the journalist's turn to speak, the audience is
totally engaged. Someone brings up the cover-up of the Cheliabinsk
catastrophe. "It was only years later that the public began to
learn the truth.3 If Chernobyl hadn't been discovered by Western
monitoring sta-tions (and a big point is made of the fact that the
West knew well before the Soviet people were told), would it also
have been covered up?"
A man raises the question of the Crimean Atomic Plant. When the
medical specialist explains that the Soviet experts have pronounced
it safe and that now a committee of Western experts are to look at
it, the response he gets is very heated. "Why should we trust the
Western experts ... The West has their own political program ....
How do we know that their answer isn't a way of sabotaging us?"
From this it's only a short step to questioning whether experts
in general can be trusted. Someone quotes Einstein, "The history of
science is one of experts' mistakes." "Can we trust what the
government tells us?" another voice asks. A chorus of voices
responds, "Shouldn't the people be the ones to decide?" One man
shouts out, "Why don't they put an atomic plant on Red Square if
they're so safe!''
Someone in the back of the room stands up and starts defend-ing
atomic energy. Kurginyan asks him to identify himself. It turns out
he's an engineer from the Atomic Energy Commission. (I'm told later
that they've begun sending someone to each performance to defend
their position.) A wave of laughter runs through the audience. The
spe-cialist jumps up and asks, "Why did six firemen die? Because
the cement burned! That was your responsibility!" Again the
question of inviting foreign experts comes up.
Kurginyan leaps in. He gets very excited and at one point calls
the A.E.C. fellow "a coward," words he later apologizes for using.
Kurginyan broadens the focus of the discussion by expressing his
overall concern about middle-level bureaucrats, cautioning that as
the level of competency drops, cruelty and indifference to human
concerns will increase.
33
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The audience is quiet as it walks out. For many, the evening has
given them much to think about.
NOTES
1Pytor Mikhailov, "The Chemobyl Syndrome," Soviet Life, May
1990, p. 34.
2See the two-part article by Kharash: "Zagadochnyi sindrom, ill
Chego boytsia chemobyl'tsy?" Nauka i religiia, No. 9, 1988, pp.
26-30; Nauka i religiia, No. 10, 1988, pp. 18-21.
Yrhis person probably had in mind the Urals nuclear disaster in
autumn 1958 which occurred in the Chelyabinsk ob/ast. Reports of it
first began turning up in the West within a year. But it was the
account by exiled Soviet biochemist Zhores Medvedev in 1976 that
really brought to the attention of the West the full scope of this
catastrophe. By then, although information had still not been
published in the Soviet press, according to Medvedev, "everybody in
Russia knew about it." See James E. Oberg, Uncovering Soviet
Disasters: Exploring the Limits of Glasnost, New York: Random
House, 1988, pp. 211-228.
34 Soviet and East European Performance Vol. 10, No. 2
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NEW LIFE FOR AN OLD IDEA: THE REAPPEARANCE OF MOSCOW'S BAT
by
John Freedman
Posters in Moscow advertising a new
"performance-divertissement," The Reading of a New Play, state
that, "The theater-cabaret Bat, which left Russia in the 1920s to
shine in Paris and on Broadway in New York has reopened in Moscow
after an intermission of 69 years." The performance, according to
the posters, consists of "political satire; parodies, musical
numbers, tragifarcical scenes, dance miniatures and circus
sketches." It comprises seven scenes, plus a prologue and an
epilogue that are loosely unified by the theme of an imagined
reading of a play by the troupe of the original Bat on the eve of
its departure for Europe in 1920.
Nikita Baliev founded the Bat in 1908 as an off-shoot of the
Moscow Art Theatre. The Bat's performances grew out of that
pecu-liarly Russian phenomenon of the kapustnik--a blend of parody,
topical satire, song, improvisation and variety show--that
originated as actor-initiated performances for the celebration of
holidays. The perform-ance of a kapustnik is still the most common
manner of marking notable dates in the Russian theatrical
calendar.
During the 1980s, Grigory Gurvich, who studied directing under
Maria Knebel at GITIS (State Institute of Theatre Arts), often
staged kapustniki at the Union of Theatre Workers (STD),l and
acquired a reputation as a talented interpreter of this traditional
form.
One such performance took place at a New Year's Eve celebra-tion
in 1984. "The hall was packed with stars," Gurvich told me
recently. "Bella Akhmadulina, Mark Zakharov, Andrei Mironov, Oleg
Tabakov, Bulat Okudzhava all attended. We were the only non-famous
people there. We had set up a cabaret atmosphere with long tables
stretching out from the stage, and we put on this kapustnik-parody.
The effect was totally unexpected. Throughout the performance,
these venerable members of the elite were continually shouting,
whistling, and clamor-ing. Afterwards, Mark Zakharov approached me
and said, "Listen, you ought to reopen the Bat."
Gurvich did not take the idea seriously at the time. Despite
Zakharov's continued encouragement at chance meetings, he attempted
to fmd a place for himself in the Moscow theatre world in more
tradi-tional ways. He staged plays at the Yermolova Theatre, the
Mayakovsky Theatre (performances were banned), and Konstantin
Raikin's Satirikon, but none of these efforts brought him great
satisfac-tion. More often than not, his temporary alliances lead to
conflicts of artistic interest, and in 1988 he began to consider
seriously the idea of
35
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opening his own theatre. After researching the history and
aesthetics of the Bat, Gurvich
became convinced that more than just a clever idea, the notion
of re-opening the cabaret was supported by solid aesthetic
principles as well. "When I learned that in addition to
kapustnik-type shows and revues, Baliev put on Chekhov, Pushkin,
Gogol and the like, I became intrigued. Style, after all, doesn't
limit the freedom of art. The important thing is to find your own
style. Baliev's audience trusted that his staging of, say, The
Queen of Spades, would be unique."
Moreover, the principles which lay at the heart of Baliev's
pro-ductions not only corresponded to Gurvich's own conceptions of
theatre, but to the style of today as well: the huge influx of
information and the rapid change that Soviet society is now
undergoing have clear parallels to the situation that existed in
Russia between the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and in the
immediate post-revolutionary period.
Referring to Eisenstein's formula of the Montage of
Attrac-tions, Gurvich notes that "when a society is inundated by
information and itself begins to resemble a montage of attractions,
this notion becomes very timely for its application to theatrical
form. It is no coin-cidence that the two most popular television
shows are Vzglyad (View) and Do i pos/e polunochi (Before and After
Midnight). A tragic story about the Afghanistan war, a rock video,
a meeting with a prostitute, a story about AIDS, music
again--everything develops eclectically. It makes for engrossing
viewing. I find that as soon as I've grasped the essence of a
story, I want to get on to the next. If I can guess what they're up
to, I get bored. Theatre has to be like that, too. You have to keep
your audience guessing.
"When I was a student at Baku U Diversity in the late 1960s, I
had the impression that I went into a lecture hall, fell asleep,
and woke up five years later. Of course there were the occasional
challenges, but the overall atmosphere was one of boring, frozen
time. And that's how directors staged plays then: long, drawn-out
and boring. The tempo of today makes a director's life far more
difficult.
The reliance on small-form theatre in Russia--and later in the
Soviet Union--on paradox, satire and topical themes, has often
caused it to be unfairly accused of being light -weight in
substance. In reality some of Russia's best actors--Vladimir
Davydov, Vasily Kachalov, Igor Ilinsky--at one time or another
worked in small-form theatres, while playwrights such as Nikolai
Evreinov, Nikolai Erdman and Vladimir Mayakovsky used these
theatres as workshops for their ideas. Gurvich's philosophy is very
much centered in this tradition.
While he is unwilling to talk about the production he is now
preparing, Gurvich said that in the future he would like to stage
Twelfth Night. He sees in the aesthetics of the Renaissance a kind
of general-ized theatricality which is close to his own concept of
theatre. "Twelfth Night", Gurvich notes, "has never been staged in
a way that enables an
36 Soviet and East European Performance Vol. 10, No.2
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audience to believe in the mystification that lies at its heart.
ICs got to be staged so that nobody can figure out who any of the
players are. Find a pair of twins or doubles to play Viola and
Sebastian--! have in mind two sisters I want to invite for these
roles. There are lots of things you can do like that. What a great
thing it would be to stage Twelfth Night for the first time in
history the way it was written! You can't tell these people apart,
and that's that."
Playfulness and mystification are central to The Reading of a
New Play. Gurvich, the play's author, took as his point of
departure the last known photograph of Baliev's troupe showing the
members gathered around an actor perhaps reading from the script.
The per-formance of The Reading begins with a visual recreation of
this photograph. This masquerade revives onstage a moment that
unites the original Bat with the new. The result is a sort of
"twelve actors in search of a play," in which the twelve actors of
the new Bat slip in and out of various roles, occasionally playing
members of the original troupe, occasionally playing characters
from the play that never was.
The troupe also relies on the audience to play a part in the
development of the action onstage. At one point, the actor
Aleksandr Razalin saunters out into the audience and asks if anyone
can identify Matilda Kshesinskaya. He trades barbs with members of
the audience until someone provides the answer that is needed to
send the perform-ance into its next episode, "Kshesinskaya's
Residence". While most know that she was a famous ballerina, it
usually takes awhile before someone recalls that she was the last
mistress of Nikolai II. Once this response is achieved, attention
is returned to the stage where a ninety year old Kshesinskaya sits
seemingly half-dead, wrapped in shawls, and impervious to the
efforts of her bustling servant (performed by lnna Ageeva) to
engage her in conversation. But once she is left alone, the old
woman transforms into a beautiful young ballerina (performed by
Natalya Somonova) who dances out her memories until she is carried
away by soldiers of the Red Army.
One of the play's most effective sketches, "Between Earth and
Heaven," portrays the fate of Valeria Barsova, one of Baliev's
actresses who elected to remain in the Soviet Union and later
became a famed opera star and political functionary. This scene, in
which Barsova is interpreted beautifully by Natalya Godunova,
portrays with humor and lyricism the fate of an actress who stepped
on the throat of her own song.
The final episode, "Children of Freedom," is performed as a
circus sketch. The actor Igor Ugolnikov, exhibiting an unfailing
sense of timing, delivers topical one-liners, punctuating the punch
lines by kick-ing balls into the audience, which, in turn, tosses
them b~ck onstage. The violation of the "fourth wall" by physical
interaction often leads to more substantial interaction, as
improvisational exchanges arise between actor and audience.
Ugolnikov's mad antics form a fitting coda
37
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to the play's hodge-podge style. The entire performance is
accompanied by live music provided
by seven musicians from the Stanislavsky and
Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theatre, while transitions between
scenes are facilitated by a shadow theatre on the back stage-wall,
which plays out farcical inter-ludes that often slip into lyrical,
and occasionally even tragic vignettes.
Like the formation of a new theatre anywhere, the Bat has had
its financial ups and downs, although it would appear to have been
more fortunate than most of the small theatres which have opened
(and just as often, closed) in the last few years in Moscow. After
an abortive attempt to work out an affiliation with an established
theatre, Gurvich took advantage of the new economic atmosphere and
found initial pri-vate funding in late 1988 from a young man by the
name of Aleksei Savchenko-Belsky. With a backing of 80,000 rubles,
he spent three months hand-picking his troupe of twelve actors and
support crew of ten. All of the actors--graduates primarily of
GITIS and the Moscow Art Theatre school who had worked
professionally for several years--had participated with Gurvich in
the past in his kapustniki at the Theatre Union. With these
organizational problems solved, his next task was to fmd a theatre
in which to perform. Through contacts at GITIS and the Theatre
Union, he contracted for six performances in May and June 1989 at
the GITIS student theatre on Bolshoi Gnezdikovsky Lane, located in
the center of Moscow just off Gorky Street. As fate would have it,
this was the very theatre built expressly for the original Bat in
1915. However, Gurvich was told by the theatre administration that
he could not count on remaining there beyond the six agreed-upon
per-formances.
Since it is almost unheard of for young theatres to fmd such a
prime location, and all the more because of the historical--one
might even say spiritual--ties in this case, Gurvich still harbored
hopes that he might find a way to remain as a resident in the old
theatre. Although they only began rehearsing A New Play in March
1989, it was imperative for them to use the offered six
performances to make an impact. When the premiere date of May 26
arrived, the troupe still faced a host of unresolved problems.
"We simply weren't ready," the 32-year-old Gurvich now
reminisces. "The actors were in a trance. They thought I had gone
out of my mind. I thought I had gone out of my mind. We can't do
this, I thought. It's too early. My set designer, Boris Krasnov,
screamed hysterically that I had ruined everything. He told me,
'You're going to have a full house tonight and they're going to see
a piece of crap. In a month no one will remember you.'"
"I knew that if we slipped even the slightest, we would be just
another in the crowd. No matter how much I lied to the audience
that this was only a dress rehearsal, that we could change what
needed changing, I knew this show would. decide our fate. But the
response
38 Soviet and East European Performance Vol. 10, No. 2
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from the audience was incredible. When the performance ended, I
heard wild shouting and applause. When they called me onstage, I
thought, 'God, maybe we've pulled it off.'"
In fact, the new theatre's frrst outing was an amazing success.
The select audience of actors, directors, artists and
journalists--not unlike the invitation-only audiences attending
Baliev's Bat in the early years--gave Gurvich and his troupe a
welcome he could only have dreamed of. Within days, news about them
had spread by word of mouth throughout theatre circles. Despite
occasional lapses (I attended the second performance at the urging
of actor friends), the troupe's inspired theatricality easily
overshadowed any shortcomings of a techni-cal nature. And whatever
rough edges existed in those frrst days have since been smoothed
out without any loss in the spontaneity which marks their style;
they continue to perform to full houses seven to ten nights a
month. The theatre was recently invited to perform at festivals in
Germany and Poland, and numerous articles have appeared about them
abroad as well as in the Soviet Union.2
The success of the first performances made it possible for
Gur-vich to pressure GITIS officials to allow him to remain in the
building for the 1989-1990 season. At present he has an agreement
by which he has access to the hall for the indefinite future,
although--despite the obvious advantage of the historical
connections contained in the present location--he hopes one day to
find his own building. The old Bat theatre is no longer suitable
for the genuine cabaret atmosphere Gur-vich one day hopes to
revive.
Aside from the logistical problems the theatre faces, it is also
confronted by a lack of dramatic texts suitable to its needs.
Everyone these days is bemoaning the lack of modern plays, but the
unorthodox Bat is, perhaps, even more handicapped than most
theatres. Gurvich's dissatisfaction with contemporary playwrights
has led him to search for potential authors in film writers and
journalists. Thus far he has found nothing that suits him. Until he
does, he will continue to write his own plays or stage classics in
his own evolved style.
As for The Reading of a New Play, Gurvich says, "No one could
have written the kind of play I wanted--a sort of psychological
happen-ing. Not that the audience would actually participate in the
perform-ance, but that they would be invited to take part in a
revelation about a theatre that once existed here and then left.
For that reason I come out every night and tell them, 'This theatre
existed right here.' The audience begins to feel that connection
and to grasp our sense of play-fulness. Each performance is, in
effect, a reopening and rediscovery of the Bat."
In fact, it is much more. It is also one of the most lively and
innovative theatres in Moscow today. There is nothing small-scale
in the so-called small-form aesthetics that form its basis. Its
theatricality is matched only by a handful of other Moscow
theatres, and its manner of
39
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responding to the changing world in which it exists is more
effective than a hundred new plays on "contemporary themes."
Despite its unquestioned popularity among a small circle of
influential admirers, Baliev's Bat was never more than a star in a
firma-ment of suns. It is true that one play does not make a
theatre. But assuming that the new incarnation of the Bat is able
to develop freely, it has the potential of linking small- and
large-form aesthetics in a way that could make a genuine
contribution to the development of Russian and Soviet theatre.
NOTES
1Until1987, the All-Russian Theatre Society (VfO). 2See: Bernard
Genies, "Cabaret," Nouvelle Observateur, No. 15
(1989); Natan Eidel'man, "V podvale doma svoego," Moskovskie
novosti, No. 26 (1989); Francis Klines, "Russian Life is a Cabaret
Again: With New Chums," New Yorlc Times (August 16, 1989)(Reprinted
as "Glas-nost is a Cabaret" in the International Herald Tribune
[August 19-20, 1989]); Anatolii Smelianskii, "Cabaret? Kabare!"
Moskovskie novosti, No. 33 (1989); Cicilia Bertolde, "Rossiia
noch'iu," Amika, No. 39 (1989); "Spustia vosem'desiat odin god,"
Teatral'naia Moskva, No. 35 (1989); Katia Gliiger, "Die Rettung
liegt im Lachen," Stem, No. 49 (1989); Alek-sandr Minkin, "Kabare,"
Ogonek, No. 11 (1990).
40 Soviet and East European Performance Vol. 10, No. 2
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RED FISH IN AMERICA
Alma Law
On April 21 and 22, the Collective for Living Cinema in New York
offered American audiences their first opportunity to see the work
of young, independent film and video artists from the Soviet Union.
Curated by Marie Cieri of the Boston-based Arts Company and Mos-cow
independent filmmaker, Igor Aleinikov, it presented ftfteen works
by thirteen artists, all dating from the period 1985-1990.
Following its New York showing, the program traveled to eleven
other cities during a month-long tour of the United States.
A part of the new youth culture, the parallel cinema movement,
as it is known in the Soviet Union, has up until now worked
entirely out-side the State film production and distribution system
which does not recognize either 16 mm film or video as legitimate
art forms. As Boris Yukhananov, perhaps the leading theoretician of
the movement, has explained, "We're neither for nor against the
official system of film making; that's why we reject the term
underground which suggests some kind of protest. We merely want to
be free to work on our own terms, nothing more."
This small, but growing band of young media innovators (most of
them are under thirty) has been working since the pre-glasnost days
of the early 1980s. At the first festival of parallel cinema held
in Mos-cow in March 1987, some twenty-five film and video artists
from Mos-cow, Leningrad, Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius took part. By
the time they held their second festival in March 1989 the number
had grown to fifty. Some sense of the radical change in attitude
toward this form of art over the past several years is evidenced by
the fact that while the first festival brought accusations of
"damaging the state monopoly on cinematic pro-duction," the second
festival was held in the Union of Cinematog-raphers' Dom Kino and
was sponsored in part by the Leningrad Kom-somol which footed the
bill for the participants' travel and living expen-ses.
The representative selection of 16 mm films and videos included
in the U .S. exhibition reveals a wide-ranging exploration of
styles and subject matter ranging from music videos (represented by
Latvian video artist, Ilze Petersone's Damn It (1989) featuring the
Lat-vian punk rock group Zig Zag) to the freewheeling Leningrad
style of "scratch animation" as in Supporter of 0/f (1987) by Inal
Savchenko, Evgenii Kondratyev, K. Mitenev and A. Ovchinnikov.
Among the best known of the independents are the Leningrad
founders of nekrorealizm (deathly realism), twenty-nine year old
Evgenii Yufit and Andrei Mertvyi (mertvyi is the Russian word for
"dead"). Their films, filled with images of violence and death,
represent some of the most vivid and extravagant manifestations of
parallel cinema. They
41
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are represented in the program by Yufit's first ftlm,
Orderly-Werewolves (1985) and Yufit and Mertvyi's Spring (1987), a
nightmarishly humorous tale reflecting the brutality of former
Soviet regimes.
The Aleinikov brothers, Igor (28) and Gleb (24), who are
accompanying the program on its tour around the United States have
been making 16 mm films together since 1986. Their film, Tractors
(1987), one of the most interesting of the works shown, co-opts one
of the icons of Soviet cinema, the tractor (Eisenstein's The Old
and the New is the classic example), and presents it parodistically
using the swollen rhetoric and overblown style of the typical
Soviet documentary, in much the way that Sotsart parodies the
conventions of classical Socialist Realist painting and
sculpture.
Central to the film is the narration which starts out with an
account of the history of the tractor and an explanation of how it
works. Up to this point one could easily mistake this for the
typical Soviet documentary. But as Tractors takes off into flights
of rhetoric, the voice of a tractor operator is heard enthusing
over how she "leaps out of bed in the morning, quickly gulps down
her breakfast and rushes out to her dear tractor." This paean to
the tractor culminates in a song likening the tractor to a space
ship: "Our own dear Chelyabinsk tractor /Is in orbit as high as the
moon,/ And at night, next to the sun's partner /The best metal in
the world makes me croon."
Video and theatre director Boris Yukhananov (33) is represented
in the program by excerpts from two of his works, Game of HO (1987)
and Crazy Prince Kuzmin, Part II ''Actor" (1989). Yuk-hananov's
videos have for good reason been called "slow," and at times even
that's an understatement. Crazy Prince Kuzmin, Part II ''Actor",
for example, is a single chapter from an extended work in progress
ambitiously titled, "Video Novel on a Thousand Cassettes."
Working very much in the style of "cinema verite," Game of HO is
built, as Yukhananov explains, on an inductive game which his
per-formance group Theatre-Theatre invented in the mid-1980s. The
game, whose rules are made up in the course of play, and which has
no winner or loser, is based on the two letter-symbols comprising
its name--"H," in Russian "X" (pronounced "kh"), combining the
meaning of the crossing out of life, the symbol of the cross and
the multiplication sign, and "0," representing the meaningless of
the life crossed out.
In its uncut version Game of HO runs for three hours, focusing
mainly on the interaction between the youth culture of the eighties
and the dissident culture of the seventies as seen th