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NEWSNOTES on SoviET ond EAsT EuROPEAN DRAMA end THEATRE
Volume 2, Number l March, 1982
EDITOR'S NOTE
This issue marks the beginning of our second year of
publication. It is my pleasure to report to you that we have grown
to more than five hundred institutional and individual subscribers
and, most assuredly, considerably more readers who share the
NEWSNOTES with subscribers. It appears that we are meeting a
long-neglected need in a discipline which is considerably more
popular than we imagined. It is therefore doubly gratifying that
the Summer Institute will be repeated in 1982 (see page 2).
I would like to thank many of our readers for their
encouragingly complim_entary letters. Please do let us know what
you would like to see ir. this publication. Of course this will
require your contributions of material, e.g., reviews,
bibliographic and instructional materials, and short articles of
special interest. It is understandable that Soviet theatre and
drama will continue its tendency to overshadow material from other
Eastern European nations. It is therefore to be hoped that more of
you will submit items of interest to our readers concerning Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria. We wish you a most
productive year.
NEWSNOTES is a publication of the Institute for Contemporary
Eastern European Drama and Theatre under the auspices of the Center
for Advanced Study in Theatre Arts with support from the National
Endowment for the Humanities and the Graduate School and the
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures of George ~ason
University. The Institute Office is Room 801, City University
Graduate Center 33 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036. All
subscription requests (no charge) and submissions should be
addressed to the Editor of NEWSNOTES: Leo Hecht, Department of
Foreign Languages and Literatures, George Mason University,
Fairfax, VA 22030.
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CITY UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL ANNOUNCES 1982 HUMANITIES
INSTITUTE ON
CONTEMPORARY EASTERN EUROPEAN THEATRE
The Center for Advanced Study in Theat re Arts of the Graduate
School and University Center of the City Universi ty of New York
has received a second National Endowment for the Humanities grant
to repeat its six-week Humanities Inst itute on "Contemporary
Eastern European Drama and Theatre: Poland and the Soviet Union,"
from June 13 to July 24, 1982, in New York City. Applications for
participation are now being invited.
The Institute, which was held for the first time in the summer
of 1980, will explore new ways of integrating the study of Polish
and Soviet dramatic literature into American university curricula
by developing innovative cross-disciplinary programs incorporating
the teaching of foreign languages, drama and theatre.
Twenty college and university teachers of Slavic languages. and
literature, comparative literature, drama or theatre arts, and area
studies in the social sciences will be chosen to participate in the
Institute which will be held at the City University Graduate
Center, 33 West 42 Street in Manhattan. As part of the Institute's
program, each participant will prepare a new course incorporating
the study of Polish and/or Soviet drama and theatre to be taught at
his or her own institution in 1982-83.
The success of the first Institute indicated a continued need to
provide opportunities to study further the historical and cultural
roots, content, structure and techniques of Eastern European and
Soviet dramatic literature and theatre. Given the general
inaccessibility of information from this region, knowledge about
its drama and theatre tends to be severely limited and out-of-date.
Efforts to study the genre on American college and university
campuses have been further limited by a lack of formal training
among faculties in these areas. Yet, despite these limitations,
there col}tinues to be a remarkable strong--and growing--interest
in this field.
The Institute will feature morning seminars devoted to the study
of contemporary Polish and Soviet drama and a comparative analysis
of the two so that common features can be identified and unique
problems isolated. Afternoon sessions will focus on the theatre in
relation to the distinctive cultural traditions of these two
countries. The program will emphasize how the dramatic text comes
to life in Polish and Soviet theatres and how the practices and
traditions of
Ea~tern European theatre shape its dramaturgy.
Institute faculty will include: William Kuhlke, Professor of
Speech and Drama/Slavic and Soviet Area, University of Kansas;
Boleslaw Taborski, theatre critic, translator and a recognized
authority on Polish drama; Kazimierz . Braun, Artistic Director and
General Manager of Teatr Wsp&czesny, Wroclaw, Poland and
Professor of Theatre at Wroclaw University and t he National School
of Drama in Cracow; and Victor Rozov, playwright and Professor of
Drama at the Gorky Institute of Literature, Moscow.
Deadline for applications is March 15. Candidates must have a
full-time teaching appointment at a university or college in the
U.S. Preference will be
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given to those candidates who have not attended an NEH-funded
Humanities Institute, Summer Seminar or Residential Seminar within
the last two years. A stipend of $2,500 to cover living expenses
and round trip transportation to New York will be provided.
For further information, contact Alma H. Law, Institute
Director, CASTA, Room 801, City University Graduate Center, 33 West
42nd Street, New York, NY 10036. Telephone: (212) 790-4249 or
4464.
RUSSIAN CONSTRUCTIVIST THEATER AT GUGGENHEIM
In conjunction with the exhibition Art of the Avant-Garde in
Russia: Selections from the George Costakis Collection, The Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum presented four performances of The Magnanimous
Cuckold: An Evening of Russian Constructivist Theater, December
10-13, 1981. Selected scenes from this farce by Belgian playwright
Fernand Crommelynck have been recreated from Vsevolod Meyerhold's
1922 Moscow production and were performed on the Guggenheim's
reconstruction of the original Constructivist stage set designed by
Liubov Popova. Directed by Alma H. Law and Mel Gordon, the program
also included introductory comments about the play, a demonstration
of Meyerhold's Biomechanical exercises and reminiscences by actress
Stella Duff-Ogonkova, who appeared in the 1922 production.
Meyerhold's staging of the play is regarded as one of the
seminal productions of 20th-century avant-garde theatre, and the
Guggenheim presentation was based on his unpublished notes and
prompt-book for that production. Popova's set marked a milestone in
the history of Russian theatre and profoundly influenced stage
design. Popova also designed the simple, loose- fitting blue "work
uniforms" worn by the performers, recreated for the Guggenheim
production by art historian and designer Erika Hofmann-Koenige.
The Evening of Russian Constructive Theatre will also be
performed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, on March 25-28.
Information about the performances can be obtained by calling (713)
526-1361 or by writing to the museum, 1001 Bissonnet, Houston,
Texas 77265.
SUMMER RESEARCH LABORATORY AT ILLINOIS
The Russian and East European Center at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will offer in 1982 its tenth annual
Summer Research Laboratory on Russia and Eastern Europe. The
program is designed for scholars who wish to use the resources of
the University Library. Graduate students doing dissertation
research are also eligible. Associateships will be available for
any period of time between June 14 and August 7. In addition to
full library privileges, Associates will be offered free dormitory
lodging for up to fourteen days, and are welcome to stay longer at
their own expense, at a cost of about $45 per week.
In addition to carrying on independent study, Associates will
have the opportunity to meet with their coJleagues for the
presentation of papers and the discussion of current research.
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Application forms and additional information are available from
Dianne Merridith, Russian and East European Center, University of
Illinois, 1208 West California, Urbana, Illinois 61801.
REPORT
The following report was submitted by one of our subscribers,
Helen McMahon. We are grateful to her for sharing her experiences
with us. In addition she informed me that, during her stay in
Poznan, Poland, she became friends with the cabaret group "Tey,"
superb and extremely popular performers of satirical drama. If
anyone is interested in getting in touch with Ms. McMahon, you may
contact her as 8355 Alvord Street, McLean, VA 22102.
"My year, September 1980 - June 1981, of teaching English and
American drama at the English Language Institute of the Adam
Mickiewicz University in Poznan encompassed activities beyond the
classroom exercises. I had hoped to produce, through the efforts of
my student drama club, an evening of theatre at the end of the
semester. So, to utilize all fifteen of my interested students,
mostly freshmen and sophomores who have a lighter academic load
than upper-level students, I chose to work on scenes from three
different plays.
"My premise for undertaking this project was based on the belief
that drama affords a student of English as a Second Language a
dynamic vehicle to better his command of the language. Plus, an
introduction to American works and acting techniques is beneficient
in itself.
"After Christmas break, lines were to be memorized and the
nitty-gritty of putting the scenes together began. However, the
political events taking place in Poland at that t ime were
eventually to involve the students' world. The students held a
three-day strike; their demands were very well deserved. More
importantly, the formation of the student Solidarity Union took
time away from the drama club. THe club disbanded, students were
hard-pressed for time, with most of it being spent waiting in
lines. A collection of American plays rests on the shelves of the
institute's library; it is to be hoped that soon the students'
Poland will be at peace and the dust on the books will be gone
forever."
NEW BOOKS
Professor Larissa Onyshkevych, formerly at Rutgers, has received
a grant from the Shevchenko Scientific Society of New York for
completing the editing of a publication preparation for an
Anthology of Modern Ukrainian Drama (in English translation). The
translations were accomplished by several persons. The list of
plays includes those by Lesya Ukrayinka, Mykola Kulish, Volodymyr
Kolomiyets, Eaghor Kostetzky and Bohdan Boychuk. For further
information, please contact Professor Onyshkevych at the Institute
for Advanced Study (310 Olden), Princeton, NJ 08540.
***
The University of Texas Press has just published .Russian
Dramatic Theory from Pushkin t o the Symbolists, edited and
translated by Laurence Senelick. This anthology includes pieces by
Pushkin, Gogel, Belinsky, Sleptsov, Chekhov, Be1y,
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Bryusov, Blok, Andreev, Ivanov, Evreinov, Meyerhold and
Annensky, many of them appearing in English for the first time.
There is a lengthy introduction on the history of dramatic
criticism and theory in Russian, and copious annotation.
***
Michigan Slavic Publications, The University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor, Michigan 48109, has published Russian Formalist Film Theory
by Herbert Eagle. It contains translated articles by Eikhenbaum,
Jakobsen, Kazanskii, Mikhailov, Moskvin, Piotrovskii and Tynianov.
ISBN 0-930042-42-5. $7 .00.
***
The Twayne Theatrical Arts Series has published Grigori
Kozintsev by Barbara Learning, ISBN 0-8057-9276-7. This is the
first book in English on one of the greatest directors of the
Soviet cinema and additionally affords the reader an insight into
the evolution of Soviet film through several decades.
FILM REPORT
The Soviets have recently completed their own version of a
segment of the life of John Reed. It is called Insurgent Mexico and
is based on Reed's reportage of the Pancho Villa revolution of
1915. It was directed by Sergei Bondarchuk who may be remembered
for his six-hour version of War and Peace. The Insurgent Mexico
film is 2 1/2 hours long and is a Soviet-Mexican-Italian
co-production. It is due to open in Rome in early March, 1982.
Production is also drawing to a close on another John Reed film,
also directed by Bondarchuk. It is titled Ten Days That Shook the
World, after Reed's book, and will be approximately three hours
long. It should be quite impressive, considering that 10,000 Soviet
soldiers are being used as extras.
Both films star Franco Nero as Reed, Sydne Rome as Louise Bryant
and Ursula Andress as Mabel Dodge, the American heiress with whom
Reed had a stormy love affair before he met Bryant. The principal
language of both films in English. Once the second film is
completed, Bondarchuk will edit them together into a seven- or
eight-hour television mini-series called Red Bells which will be
syndicated world-wide. There will even be several nude scenes which
will be edited out for Soviet audiences.
EVENTS IN POLAND
The following letter written by 5rawomir Mrozek appeared in the
International Herald Tribune on December 18, 1981:
What It Was Not
Everyone knows what happened in Poland during the night of
December 12 to 13, 1981. But not everyone seems to realize that it
was neither "the declaration of a state of emergency in compliance
with the Polish Constitution," as the official version put it, nor
a coup d'etat or military putsch, as critics of the official
version put it. What happened that night was not exceptional.
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The notion "exceptional" implies that what went before had been
normal. But nothing has been normal in Poland since 1939--from the
German occupation through the Soviet imposition by force of a
Communist system with the acquiescence of the Western powers. What
is happening in Poland now is in perfect continuity. It is not
exceptional, although it is abnormal. The current anomaly is in its
36th year.
The novelty is that what had been going on continuously under
cover of lies-the lie, for example, about the existence of a
parliamentary system in Poland--carries on now in naked truth. That
is, as sheer violence. We are back to the point of departure, a
full circle in 36 years.
It is not true that the Polish Army is a third force between the
Communist Party and Solidarity. Solidarity represents the
population, the society, the nation. Simply, the party became too
weak to continue its dictatorship over the nation without calling
in the army.
Announcing the arrests of former party leaders, long since
discarded, at the same time that Solidarity leaders were arrested
was a master stroke of propaganda, as well as of garbage recycling.
Only if Gen. Jaruzelski arrests himself as the leader of the party
will the notion that the army is a third force be credible.
S.tawomir Mrozek Paris.
SOVIET FILMS
The following Soviet films are presently available for rental.
Those interested should directly contact Corinth Films, 4-10 East
62nd Street, New York, NY 10021. Telephone: (212) 421-4770.
Borodin: Anton Chekhov:
Fyodor Dostoyevsky:
Nicolai Gogol: Khachatur ian:
Nana Mchelidze:
Prince Igor (110 minutes) 1972 An Unfinished Piece for a
Mechanical Piano (100
minutes) 1977 Belated Flowers (100 minutes) 1972 The Seagull (99
minutes) 1971 The Shooting Party (105 minutes) 1977 Uncle Vanya
Crime and Punishment (220 minutes) 1970 The Brothers Karamazov
(154- minutes) 1972 The Idiot ( 120 minutes) 19 58 The Gambler (95
minutes) 1978 White Nights (95 minutes) 1959 The Overcoat (78
minutes) 1960 Pavlova in the World's Youngest BaJlet (70
minutes)
1970 Spartacus (95 minutes) 1977 First Swallow (80 minutes)
1976
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Mussorgsky: Boris Godunov (105 minutes) 1954 Jamilya (78
minutes) 1970 The Cranes Are Flying (94 minutes) 1957 The Twelve
Chairs (160 minutes) 1971 White Bird With a Black Spot (102
minutes) 1972
Ballet Films With Maya Plisetskaya:
Prokofiev: Shakespeare: Andrei Tarkovsky: T chaikovsky:
Leo Tolstoy: Ivan Turgenev:
Anna Karenina (81 minutes) 1974 Plisetskaya Dances (70 minutes)
1964 Stars of the Russian Ballet (80 minutes) 1953 The Little
Humpbacked Horse (85 minutes) 1961 Romeo and Juliet (95 minutes)
1954 King Lear (140 minutes) 1971 Andrei Rublev (185 minutes) 1966
Eugene Onegin (106 minutes) 1958 Sleeping Beauty (92 minutes) 1964
Swan Lake (90 minutes) 1968 The ueen of S ades (102 minutes) 1960
Father Sergius 99 minutes) 1977 A Nest of Gentry (106 minutes) 1970
Asya (97 minutes) 1977 The Blackamoor of Peter the Great 1977 The
Youth of Peter - Part I 041 minutes) 1981 The Youth of Peter - Part
II (137 minutes) 1981
CULTURAL NEWS FROM BULGARIA
Those interested in Bulgaria may want to subscribe to the News
Bulletins of the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency free of charge by
writing B T A, Sofia, 4 9 Boulevard Lenin. The following is an
article from a recent issue. The English is that of the
original:
Club of the Artistic Intelligentsia
The organization of the creative activity of youth is an
original Bulgarian experience. Many guests from foreign countries
come here to become acquainted with this experience.
All the creative Unions in Bulgaria have youth sections attached
to them. Thus, for instance, the Union of Bulgarian Writers has a
Studio of the Young Writer, the Union of Bulgarian Composers - a
Studio of the Young Composer, etc. Every Studio has a statute of
its own. Membership of a Studio requires that one should have a
work appreciated by the public and the critics.
These studios ensure public performances for their members. At
the same time they help young people to acquire greater mastership,
provide them with aid and contracts, offer them courses for
improving their education, and for studying foreign languages, and
ensure travel in foreign countries and holidays in special bases
for them.
Besides being members of their creative unions young people can
become members of the county clubs of the young artistic and
creative intelligentsia. All the county centres have such dubs.
They are governed by the National Club of
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Young Artistic and Creative Intelligentsia, chaired by Mr. Ivan
Slavkov, Director General of the Bulgarian Television.
The Sofia Club of the Young Artistic and Creative Intelligentsia
has a membership of 3,000 working in the capital. These are
representatives of all kinds and genres of art. United in the
Studios attached to the Creative Unions, young people are also
united through membership of the Clubs of the Young Artistic and
Creative Intelligentsia. The aim is for these young people not to
become confined to their artistic ambitions alone, but to become
better acquainted with each other and thus enlarge the sphere of
their contacts. Thus some years ago the Chamber Stage of the Young
Creator came into being and has since been staging performances
once every month. On this Chamber Stage the young creators recite
their latest works to audiences.
The Club of the Young Artistic and Creative Intelligentsia was
set up ten years ago. The age limit in it is 35 years.
The Club also helps its members financially. It arranges
contracts for them and ensures proper conditions for working,
living, creating and holidaying. These young creators are employed
by the respective state institutions, editorial offices, the radio
and the television, the cinematography, the theatres, the state
orchestra and the philharmonic orchestras. There they receive
salaries in addition to the remuneration for their performances.
The Club is a voluntary organization. It however does not duplicate
the functions of the respective trade unions.
The Club of the Young Artistic and Creative Intelligentsia has
the right to recommend young talents to the state departments for
inclusion in international festivals, exhibitions, concerts, etc.,
and for state and other awards.
REVIEW
Professor Joseph Troncale, Director, Russian Area Studies,
University of Richmond, has kindly sent us the following review of
Wajda's new film Man of Iron:
As one might suspect, ripples from the Solidarity movement in
Poland did not have to travel very long or very far to reach the
hearts of Polish filmmakers who have always poignantly and with
penetrating immediacy conveyed their keen sense of the spiritual,
social, and political dilemmas facing the Polish people. Imprisoned
under the recently imposed martial law, Andrzej Wajda, the
president of the Polish Filmmakers' Association, has been
unequivocal in expressing the PFA's desire and need for
liberalization in its field. Backed by Solidarity, the PFA has
established its own group toward that end, the Committee to Save
National Cinematography. Among its chief aims are to gain control
of film distribution beyond the uncensored havens of Warsaw,
Gdansk, and Cracow to audiences in theaters throughout the country
and to have a greater say in financial and distribution decisions
as well as artisic freedom in its own self-management. Evidence of
the progress made was the Eighth Festival of Polish Feature Film
held in Gdansk last September under the shadow of the nearby
constitutional convention of Solidarity. Low-keyed compared to
Cannes, the Festival was completely dominated by a sense of the
newly won freedoms of the workers' movement. There were many
politically pertinent films; some authored by
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Solidarity itself, others on the Stalinist period by filmmakers
still trying to end his grasp on them once and for all. Also
screened were films that had been confiscated by the censors over
the last decade. But clearly towering above them all was Wajda's
film, Man of Iron.
His last film before being arrested in December, the 1981 Cannes
Festival Grand Prix winner, Man of Iron is Wajda's rousing and
compelling docudrama about the stirring growth of the flame of
freedom in Poland during the last 12 years. The timely release of
the film by United Artists in America undoubtedly contributes to
the films overwhelming appeal among Americans. Through the life of
a fictional hero, Maciek T omcyzk, the film chronicles the
development of a unified workers' effort to establish free trade
unions in Poland. The period covered is from 1968 to 1980,
including the recent bargaining during which the significant gains
of Solidarity were achieved.
We gain access to the movement's ideals and to the characters of
the film through the reluctant efforts of a T.V. journalist (Mr.
Winkiel), assigned by unsavory politicos to defame the ringleader
(Maciek Tomcyzk) of the strike in Gdansk thereby weakening the
movement's public support. Deeply indebted to the party, Mr.
Winkiel is in a painful double bind; his frustration and futile
writhing clearly convey a sense of the fundamental predicament of
the media in Poland that gives rise to the people's general
distrust of the media. His hatchet-job carefully planned and
documented by the local police, Winkiel begins interviewing
Tomcyzk's acquaintances for corroboration he knows he will not
find. His investigation reveals, instead, T omcy~k's almost
saint-like character which develops after the death of his father,
Mateusz Birkut, the fallen worker hero of the 1970 massacre, and
inspires his fiancee (Agnieszka Hulewicz), his former college
roommate, and, eventually, Winkiel himself.
Total involvement in the movement and belief in its ideals have
a liberating effect on Wajda's heroes. Maciek and Agnieszka
fearlessly pursue that freedom which knows no bounds. For such
dedication and determination, naturally, the price is high.
Imprisoned, blacklisted, and subjected to frequent party
recriminations for their activities, Maciek and Agnieszka are
forged into suitable vessels of iron to meet the demanding
standards of the movement. Given Wajda's own deep dedication to the
movement, his hagiographic depiction of Maciek and Agnieszka is not
surprising. Nonetheless, they both remain human beings deeply
sensitive to the vicissitudes not only of their own lives but also
of the lives of those all around them. For example, Agnieszka's
final commitment to Maciek's struggle and their uncertain future
comes only after several heartrending scenes in which she is
painfully wrenched from all the familiar secure moorings of an
"inoffensive" life.
Against a stark backdrop of black and white actual footage of
the movement's critical moments in 1970 and 1980, Wajda depicts the
development of faith in the struggle in his central characters,
thus neatly juxtaposing defeat and victory and the characters'
journey between these two points. Wajda's characters come alive
only when they become infected by the vitality of the movement.
Their relationship to the movement determines their worth and the
depth of their inner qualities. The ironclad rationale of this
alignment is Wadja's own ironic reversal of Stalin's unequivocal
"Those who are not with us are against us". Poetic justice has
never tasted so sweet.
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In the film's opening frames, the enchanting Maya Komarowska
solemnly intones the gripping portentous words to the effect that
entry into the world's secret garden of hope is forbidden to the
Polish people. Thus, Wadja establishes the difficulties of the
quest facing his promethean hero. His men of iron rise to the
challenge. In the closing frames, however, Winkiel's taskmaster
reappears to dampen the victory of Solidarity by telling him not to
be lulled into a false sense of security; accords signed under
duress are illegal. The men of iron must be vigilant! The film
closes with a song that is presumably Solidarity's battlecry.
Boldly declamatory and piercingly staccato, the song with its
pounding beat leaves little doubt of the relentless resolve of the
movement and the endless battle it will wage to achieve and secure
its ideals.
REVIEW
The following is a review of Chekhov on the Lawn submitted by
Professor Jerome Katsell, Department of Germanic and Slavic, SUNY
Stony Brook, NY 11794:
The stage of Theatre East, an Off Broadway theatrical company
located at 211 East 60th Street in New York City, is dark, enclosed
in three-quarter round by some seventy-five chairs occupied by the
audience. As the lights come up, there he is: long buttoned-up
frock coat, brushed-back hair, high turned-back collar, loose
trousers, pince-nez, moustache and scruffy goa tie, slender,
unassuming: Chekhov. The time is April 17, 1900. We are on the lawn
of Chekhov's villa in Yalta. We, the audience of this one-man show
admirably petformed by William Shust and written and directed by
Elihu Winer, are, in fact, the actors and directors of the Moscow
Art Theatre touring the Crimea and come to perform for and visit
with our beloved playwright Anton Pavlovich.
Shust-Chekhov is set off by a dark backdrop and a few stage
properties. The odd bench and suspended birch branch, a portable
table with manuscripts upon it to which the actor refers from time
to time complete the scene on Chekhov's lawn. Shust looks out into
the audience, perhaps at you or me, and begins: "Gorky, stop
arguing and sit down." He continues, pacing and gesturing and
occasionally placing or replacing his pince nez, in the course of
two forty-five minute acts, to relate incidents from Chekhov's
life, retail ironic Chekhovian anecdotes based on correspondence
and the writer's notebooks, and retell a series of Chekhov stories
that illustrate the writer's views and sense of life.
All this is well and good, and Shust adroitly accomplishes a
tour de force of Chekhovian gesture and mood. The personal
reminiscences, insights, and sketches are brief, telling and keep
the audience's unflagging interest. In each instance, as with the
portrayal of "Oysters," "Grief," "Death of a Government Clerk," and
the tender and sad Chekhovian jest "Shutochka," Shust is able to
portray Chekhov recounting ~is fictional characters in a manner so
convincing as to allow us to suspend our disbelief.
Yet it is clear that no attempt was made by writer-director
Winer to present a full dramatic portrait of Chekhov. The stories
featured in Chekhov on the Lawn all fall in the early period of his
writing career. They do present Chekhov's sensitivity, compassion,
comic gift and light touch. They do not, however, begin to touch on
the mastery of psychological portraiture, textured
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artistic structure, and deep insight into the nature of man's
profound need for inner freedom and self-knowledge characteristic
of Chekhov's mature prose and drama. The Chekhovian excerpts
presented in Winer's play are suitable to a one-man show format,
more so, undoubtedly, than such stories as "Ward No. 6," "The Lady
with the Dog," "The Bishop," or "In the Ravine" would be. Only one
reference to Chekhov's major plays is made throughout the
production. The opening exchange in The Seagull between Medvedenko
and Masha is quoted: "Med. Why do you always wear black? Mash. I'm
in mourning for my life." Shust-Chekhov recites these lines first
in a heavy oppressive tragical manner, and then as light-hearted
banter between two young people. This is done to show Chekhov's
opposition to Stanislavski's gloomy interpretation of his dramatic
intentions, to illustrate Chekhov's approach to the comedic. More
elements along these lines would have deepened the portrait of the
artist and his work. In its present form, Chekhov on the Lawn is an
effective and at times delightful theatrical conceit. It is an
introduction, fine within its limitations, but far from a fully
developed theatre presentation of the life, personality, and
writings of Chekhov.
SPECIAL FEATURE
This highly interesting interview was sent to us by Professor
Nicholas Rzhevsky, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures,
University of Illinois, Urbana. Dr. Rzhevsky was, of course,
himself the interviewer. The interview was conducted two years
ago.
Yurii Liubimov is the best known of contemporary Russian theater
directors--the most likely heir to Stanislavsky, Meyerhold,
Vahtangov. His Tanganka Theater has been widely acclaimed in the
West, and his witty, often daring pronouncements on the state of
the arts in the U.S.S.R. have regularly suggested the innovative
and irrepressible Russian culture. Liubimov's reputation is firmly
linked with his country's socio-political condition. His recent
dramatic work, "A Tale of Inspection," concludes with a horrifying
scene in a mental hospital taken from Gogel's "Diary of a Madman."
At the curtain the director comes out to take his bows led on stage
by two psychiatric ward attendants, reminding his audience of the
present-day issue, of the threat to the unorthodox, and the
precarious situation of his own theater.
The Taganka often hovers, in this fashion, on the borderline
between the Aesopian and the forbidden. Tickets are priced below
two roubles, but typically for life in Moscow, it is impossible to
purchase them without either knowing someone or queuing for an
inordinate length of time. A good part of the repertoire consists
of dramatic adaptations of classical Russian poetry and prose.
Censorship, psychiatric wards, and utilitarian materialism are
questioned on stage, but in the nineteenth-century words of
Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoevsky. The historical-classical frame
permits a great deal to be said that scarcely would be allowed in a
modern Moscow setting.
Recently, however, Liubimov went on a new version of the Queen
of Spades for the Paris Opera, only to be denounced in Pravda and
the Moscow Literary Gazette for a' supposed injury to T
chaikovsky's classical canons. Permission to travel to Paris was
withdrawn and the entire Franco-Soviet cultural exchange program
was thrown into jeopardy. Other invitations to work in Germany,
Italy,
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England, and the United States have been held up by Soviet
authorities. The death of -Vladimir Vysotskii and plans to
commemorate him on the Taganka stage have created new tensions
which have prompted Liubimov to threaten resignation.
In the course of our conversation the intense in-fighting
required to survive in Mosco..y became abundantly clear. Liubimov's
reminiscences of the closing of Moscow Art Theater Two and of Yurii
Olesha's famous 1934 speech--a last anguished gasp of the Russian
intelligentsia before the terror set in--served as a reminder of
the continuity of this struggle in the arts. For Liubimov, however,
society and politics are only a part of a complex theatrical
aesthetic which incorporates the topical issues of
dramaturgy-questions of narrative voice, of temporal and spatial
organization, of acting technique and training, of the dramatic
uses of music and dance-as well as moral impulses extending back to
the Russian traditional sources: the land, the people, and
Orthodoxy. Such basic cultural attachments are frequently filtered
out in the political prism-if the bewilderment with which
Solzhenitsyn and other emigres have been received in the West is
any measure. Mr. Liubimov remembers with affection his
grandparents, a bright mixture of peasants and gypsies. His
memories of his grandfather's village-of a large garden full of
apples, gooseberries, raspberries, of the grandfather himself, a
man of firm religious convictions--are particularly strong. A
recurring motif in our conversation, a point of departure,
apparently, in shaping intellectual directions, was Russian
literature. We spoke backstage in the Taganka after the premiere of
A Tale of Inspection.
***
Q. Yurii Petrovich, many of your plays begin off-stage, in the
foyer, or even in the entrance to the theater. Allow me to begin in
the same way--what did you read in your youth, before you started
on you stage career?
A. I read a great deal . well, all of Russian literature from an
early age. My father liked books, books, on history especially.
Mother was a teacher, although she was half Gypsy. My grandfather
on my mother's side was a gypsy-a pure-blooded gypsy but one who
had settled down, not out of a caravan or nomadic.
Q. Did you have favorite authors?
A. I liked Dostoevsky from the very first. And I do not
understand--there are many people who say, oh that Dostoevsky is so
heavy, he oppresses my soul, I do not want to live. While, on the
contrary, he always provided me with answers to some, many
questions that always worry man. Fyodor Mihailovich. And it is not
by accident that I got the idea--well, if I have some life left in
me--to put on Dostoevsky. I already staged Crime and Punishment in
Budapest, and it is now in rehearsal here in my own theater. Then I
will do The Devils, The Brothers Karamazov, several plays, then an
"aggregate" play such as the one based on Gogel's works.
Q. How did you get involved in the theater? A. It is hard to
say
Q . You did not come out of a theatrical family.
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A. No, it is strange, even my mother used to tell me how she
once came home--1 must have been about five then, I remember it
hazily-and she said that I was wriggling and dancing about the
room. I used to love to dance and invented dances myself. And she
asked 'What are you dancing, Yura?' And I said, 'I am dancing the
hair dance, hair. You know, you curl your hair with a curling iron
and it goes round and round and that is how I am curling I am
wriggling in the same way and dancing.' So I used to be asked to do
the hair dance. When I had already begun my studies Isadora Duncan
was all the rage, there were plasticity study groups. I was sent to
school.
Q. Of dance?
A. Yes. I was a little boy, a complete child, but one's youth is
always a huge influence. I remember also that it was a great joy
when I was accepted into the theatrical studio of Moscow Art
Theater Two. It was closed down; unfortunately theaters are often
shut down here, or they die a natural death, well, like people.
Theaters grow old, are born, die, a new one grows up, and so on. I
was accepted into MAT Two, and I only remember a boundless joy. I
would jump on trolleys then jump off and run because it seemed to
me to be going slower than I. I could not sit down, I was so caught
up in the tremendous joy of being accepted. My reception was a bit
strange because I read Yurii Olesha's speech to the First Congress
Writers and the members of the examining committee were surprised
that I picked that and read it for my test. I was very young. They
did not want to accept me because they did not know what I would
turn out to "be.
Q. That was about 1935?.
A. Yes, probably. Most likely in '34. I finished intermediate
school. Then I was an electrician. I finished the theatrical school
early, and, in general, I began to act early. I was studying and
already acting. When MAT Two was closed down I went over to the
Vakhtangov Theater. I graduated from the studio before the war.
Then I wound up in the army, then there was the Finnish War. I was
a soldier for eight years.
Q. Your major theatrical work began in the Vakhtangov Theater
where you played leading roles.
A. Many roles. Pasternak's Romeo--! made Boris Leonidovich's
acquaintance there. From the theater today I am going straight to
the dacha of Andrei Voznesensky, whom I met there also. I was
always interested in poetry. I write verse for myself but have
never publised it.
Q. Why?
A. I do not want to. Andrei knows some of my work and even
embarrassed me once. He went out to the T chaikovsky Concert Hall,
read some of my short verse, and said that he valued me not only as
a director, but as a poet. Which elicited the audience's
bewilderment. Andrei wanted to write a poem on an interesting
incident. I was once playing Romeo and in fencing a piece of the
foil flew off and hit the chair where Pasternak was sitting. It
pierced the chair, between Pasternak and Voznesensky.
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Q. Quite an opportunity to work out a metaphor. A. Yes.
Q. What influence did that basic work in the Vahtangov Theater
have on you? A. You know, I was not acquainted with Vahtangov
personally. He died a long
time ago. But I have been very fortunate, I think, in one
regard. That in my life fate has brought me into contact with
creative, interesting people. With wonderful people of tremendous
talent, with Eisenstein and Pasternak, and wonderful writers. And
now I am on friendly terms with marvelous musicians. They all
played a role, beginning with my brother who is four years older.
He was very involved in painting-a talented person, in my opinion,
then things changed and he abandoned it-well, he used to take me
along when I was very young and he would go out to paint. He
developed the love of nature in me, the ability to see, feel, love
nature. To see light, mood. That is why, perhaps, I like to work so
much with light in staging. When I became an actor I always felt
results, form very strongly. And when a director would suggest the
wrong mise en scene, I would always get very nervous; it would feel
clumsy to me, I would argue. Because of this I was an unbearable
actor for directors. And it is probably not an accident that I
changed professions at forty-five, and began to work-first as a
teacher, and then totally as a director. Even now, in most cases, I
do most of the staging myself, the working copies of scripts. I
myself make up the text. That is, for me it is always more
interesting to be the author of the play. Of course, I work with
scenarists, with artists, composers, at times with a choreographer.
But I always write out the entire play in my head, create it in my
head as if by film frames.
Q. At what point do you plug in the music, let's say? A. You
know, often ideally, I try to come out on the stage to the actors
when I
can already show them the basic mise en scene, even play the
music for them. I try to go through a long preparatory period
before coming into space, and starting to solve space.
Q. Along with Vakhtangov there are portraits of Meyerhold,
Stanislavsky, and Brecht in the foyer of your theater.
A. These are the great reformers, revolutionaries of the
theater, of the thousand-year old stage art. That is why they are
there.
Q. Is this a mark of your esteem in a general way, or are there
specific theatrical devices, theatrical ideas?
A. Yes, there is an indication of respect here. They are all
great men who are very individual and very different. But each is
very interesting to me, curious, and each has had a great influence
on me and provided me with a great deal. I am grateful to them as
teachers, but as symbolic ones, so to say, since I did not work
with any one of them. It is true that when I was a very young
actor-student, I was playing some pantomine and Meyerhold saw me. I
appeared amusing to him and he asked Simonov, the director of
the
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Vahtangov Theater, to call me over. Simonov beckoned for me to
come off stage, and I remember Meyerhold's profile, his huge nose
not unlike Cyrano's. He said, 'Do not ever give up plastid ty,
always train your body if you want to be a master-actor.'
Q. You did not stop on any particular theatrical tradition? A.
What sense is there in that? I simply try to find something that is
my own,
evolving out of certain things.
Q. Immediately after your first play, The Good Woman of Setzuan,
your theater already showed its own ''Taganka" style.
A. Yes, of the square, a theater of buffoonery.
Q. With the participation of Voznesensky you create a theatrical
work out of his verse. What was it that attracted you to
Voznesensky?
A. The bright individuality of his poetic talent. My own
creative search interested him from the first Brecht play and I
tried to entice him into the theater. Boris Leonidovich used to say
'Read him, he is a very interesting, original young man; he will be
a major poet.' It seemed that it would be a curious experiment.
Afterward we did a whole series of plays based on poetry, on a
poetic foundation. Theater without poetry is unimaginable. Take
Dostoevsky. We worshipped Shakespeare, Homer, Pushkin. There can be
no theater without poetry.
Q. There is a clean break in your repertoire away from the
classical. Your main scripts are based on poetry, novels, short
stories.
A. That is because we have absolutely no interesting plays. If
there was some unique, engrossing play, of course, I would put it
on. Why do you think I search out so painfully how to transmit
prose to the stage? On the other hand, it does give me more
freedom; my hands are not tied. I am not tied to dramaturgy and
can, with greater freedom, construct my own dramaturgy for an
aesthetics of the given theater That is, for how I myself imagine
things. When I arrive at the basic idea why I am taking a certain
work and what I want to say to my contemporaries today, I begin to
fantasize the performance, the music, and the light, and the form
of the staging. And it seems to me that I am not alone in my
interest in certain problems. Thank God, fate has not tricked me
yet. The theater goer, after all, continues to come to us all these
fifteen years and it is hard to get in to see us. So that what
troubles me must be of some interest to a number of people.
Q. In regard to that unfortunate affair in Paris with The Queen
of Spades. Although you encountered a great deal of boorishness in
people who think that it is specifically all and only they who know
how to interpret a work, there is a fundamental question for
directors and, in general, for the interpretation of an art work
hidden (although rather deeply) within their criticism. That is,
where are the boundaries and standards of any
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interpretation? How does one establish such boundaries, or is
everything allowed?
A. No, of course everything is not allowed. That is, everything
should be allowed but life will bring its own corrections. A
production can elicit no response from the audience, only
bewilderment and irritation. It can be entirely rejected. But,
after all, why suspect another person of some scoundrelly act such
as Zhiuraitis suspects us three? (A.M. Zhiurai tis, conductor of
the Bolshoi Orchestra, wrote the principal letters attacking
Liubimov and his colleagues in the Soviet Press. NR) It is tactless
and ugly. There is such a thing as professional relations, after
all, especially since it was Genadii Rozhdestvensky who accepted
him into the Bolshoi Theater. He could have asked him, 'Is it
possible that the composer Schnitke will rewrite something? Is it
possible that you are thinking of deforming Pyotre Illich's score
was preserved. Not one note was changed!
Q. I think your idea, as well, was that the text itself should
sound better?
A. Oh God, about that there is so much. In Tchaikovsky's own
letters he writes 'never perform my chorus alone.' We allowed
ourselves to make some cuts that seemed appropriate to the core
theme for us. And the libretto, his brother's, is mediocre, so that
we tried to bring it closer to Pushkin's story.
Q. What other plays would you like to put on?
A. I will be doing Dostoevsky in this theater; the rehearsals
are already in progress. Yesterday we had the last rehearsal for
Crime and Punishment. The novel is horribly misunderstood,
especially by the young. It is read diametrically opposite .
Q. Raskolnikov as a positive hero.
A. Yes, yes. Once, a positive hero; and two, that he is crushed
by the environment, and that it is a revolt against the
environment. In general, this links up with the wave of extremism
and terrorism which has engulfed the world. It is a prophetic work,
and it is understood incorrectly, in a fabricated way.
Q. One often senses a strong moral thread in your work, in the
classical sense of Russian literature and drama.
A. I try, to the extent of my capabilities, to continue our
great literary tradition, which is entirely based on a deep, moral
source.
Q. In the nineteenth century this moral impulse was provided by
religion--Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gogo!, of course-while in the
twentieth century religion is impossible either for you, or for us.
Is it not?
A. It is hard to say. Look, Lev Nikolaevich, who had all his
moral beginnings, and who, by the way, used to give Gogo! grades
and always an "A" for moral behavior. With a bit of irony, or
course. He liked "The Carriage" best of
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all, but even when he criticized Gogel he always gave him an "A"
for his moral premises. Look at the paradox. Coming entirely out of
Christian principles, Lev Nikolaevich was anathemized by the
official church. Everyone, after all, believes in his own way.
Everyone has his own world of ideals, and his own moral world. But
there is some minimal norm that is indispensible for our existence
on earth. There are norms of behavior and if the world does not
follow them, then our life, our earthly life, becomes unbearable.
And all the mishaps occur because we continually upset these moral
canons, these moral norms, moral code, if you like. Where am I
indeed to search for moral foundations if not in our literature? It
is so deeply respected by the entire world because of its profound
aesthetic, but also thanks to its deep spirituality, the profundity
of its moral core. Thanks to its profound honesty, and its service
to the people. Sick Chekhov goes off to Sakhalin, himself mortally
ill. Lev Nikolaevich leaves home in search of the truth. All our
great writers always tired to understand the pain and suffering of
our people.
Q. Is such a moral gesture possible today? A. Without this
gesture it will be harder and harder to live. And not only for
us. Look how frightening that wave is, what goes on in Italy.
Each day one grabs one's head, not unlike Gogel in Andreev's shrewd
statue; he sits, sad, and presses his hands to his face.
Q. A more practical question. It is often written in the West
that the theater must be supported by the government, by financial
subsidies. Can a complex, experimental theater exist without such
financial support?
A. There have always been patrons of the arts. One just wishes,
God willing, that they be educated, cultured, really support art. I
think real talent is always of benefit to man; I scarcely know any
damaging talents. Puskin used to say that genius and villainy are
imcompatible. Life is so set up that patrons were always found, and
I think, they will continue to be found. It is important only, that
there be some minimal conditions which make it possible for art to
develop. That there be no drought.
Q. The government should support theater?
A. Of course. It must, it seems to me, provide support because
art invigorates the government. Only a near-sighted ruler there is
a frightening saying that a smart tyrant will never quarrel with
the arts.
Q. A director's heritage can appear to be impermanent; it is not
something in concrete form such as a book, a printed story. What
would you like to leave behind in your aesthetic legacy?
A. Well, if I keep on living I .will write a book; I have always
wanted to. A strange book. I would like to write down what my
memory has preserved during my life beginning from the earliest
age. Why has memory held on to certain things? Precisely these and
no other? For decades it holds on to bits of novels, some
reminiscences that penetrated my mind in minute fragments, and sit
there, and allow no peace. There will be a lot of visual
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material, photographs, my verse, how it was put together,
developed, and my observations, my meetings with people who
inspired me and to whom I am indebted.
Q. As a director?
A. No, in a more general sense, in a human sense. My
observations, my thoughts. But not memoirs. Everyone is writing
memoirs now.
Q. I have noticed in rehearsals that you often tell actors they
must study.
A. Not study as much as re-learn.
Q. In what sense? Specifically what should they learn?
A. Everything changes-man, time. The theatrical art is ancient.
Now you have radio, film, television, phonographs, video-tapes,
video-recordings. There is a great flow of things and the adjacent
arts influence the theater. In their own time, let us say, new
forms of verse appeared: five-foot iamb, blank verse, ballad,
sonnet, and so on. Each new form demands its own mode of
presentation. A new form of poetry appears and Pushkin writes in
his diary 'God, why are our famous actors unable to read verse?'
They did not grasp the form yet; they read in the old manner and
the verse did not sound right, it dissipitated. That is why the
actor too must revitalize his technique. Look how hard it is to
stay in the game for a long time. And why? Because the technique is
not brought up to date; they do not train. Drama is the most
dilletante of arts--it may seem that anyone can act. A pianist
recognizes that he must practice; a violinist understands that,
while the actor is himself an instrument. And the instrument is
often left neglected. Voice is not practiced insufficiently,
plasticity, diction, musical sense. That is why actors fade away so
quickly at times. It is a talent that spoils easily. And then the
coach must be a good one, just as in sport. Although to score goals
is a God-given talent. Simonov used to say often 'What's the use of
teaching him; he won't score. He can't score goals anyway. You'll
just waste your time.'
Q. There is an interpretation of the Taganka's popularity that
we can call the "forbidden fruit" theory.
A. Well that's all you know, everything is said about us here.
Before it was said that there are no actors in our theater, that
they are. puppets. Then it was said that we are only a fad that
will soon pass. But if a fad has held out for fift~en years, then
maybe it is not just a fad but something else.
Q. There is an old tradition in the American theater of staying
up after a premiere to read the early morning reviews.
A. That tradition has been rejected here for a long time. It
does not exist. Q. How does one determine if a play is a success or
not?
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A. Critics are different, in intelligence and in their creative
sensibilities. There is an 'official' criticism which often reminds
me of the word ofitsiant (waiter, NR). 'Your order is served, sir!'
officiality. The newspapers, it seems, do not express themselves,
their own opinion. Instructions are given. Maybe this has something
to do with the complex atmosphere around the theater and around my
name.
Q. Do you think your theater has been damaged in result?
A. No. It is all the same to me as long as they do not interfere
with my work. It is damaging when they stop one from working, as
with The Queen of Spades. The saddest thing is that the opportunity
to work was taken away. The work perished. Three of us worked,
worked, and then it is stopped. Why? The job is left undone. That
is what is disgraceful.
SPECIAL NOTICE
The Bibliography of Polish Plays in Translation is now in
preparation. Anyone interested in assisting in the writing of
summaries and compiling of entries, please contact Professor Daniel
Gerould through the office of the Institute for Contemporary
Eastern European Drama and Theatre.
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