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NEWSNOTES on SoviET ard EAsT EuROPEAN DRAMA end THEATRE
Volume 4, Number I March, 1984
DEAR READERS
This issue commences our fourth year of publication. Looking
back, we have grown from a four-page mimeographed flier to, what
the readership tells me, is a respectable publication which has
actually transcended its initial format of a short Newsletter and
has developed into something resembling a short periodical journal.
I hope that we can continue to grow.
We continue to look for items of interest for publication. Of
course we shall always publish news about performances,
bibliographical data, announcements of conferences, etc. But we
would also like to expand our section containing short articles. If
you have written one of reasonably short length, or if you have
presented a paper which you think worthy of publication, please do
send it to me.
L.H.
f\EWSNOTES 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, Graduate Center, City
University of New York with support from the National Endowment for
the Humanities and the Graduate School and the Department of
Foreign Languages and Literatures of George Mason University. The
Institute Office is Room 801, City University Graduate Center, 33
West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036. All subscription requests and
submissions should be addressed to the Editor of I'EWSNOTES: Leo
Hecht, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, George
Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030. Proofreading Editor: Prof.
Rhonda Blair, University of Kentucky.
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ANNOUNCEMENTS The Southeastern Theatre Conference (SETC), the
largest conference of its
kind in the United States, will hold its annual convention in
the Washington, DC area, at the Crystal City Hyatt-Regency, 7-11
March, 1984. One of the panels to be chaired by Thomas Jones will
be held on March 10, and will be entitled "Constantin Stanislavsky
and the Moscow Art Theatre."
The Southern Conference on Slavic Studies will hold its annual
conference in Richmond, Virginia, from October 11-13, 1984. One
panel, to be chaired by Leo Hecht, will be on "East European Drama
and Theatre." Should you wish to participate, please send your
proposal to me as soon as possible.
The next Annual Convention of the American Association of
Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL) will be
held at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC. December 27-30,
1984. Leo Hecht will be chairing a panel on "Stanislavsky and the
Moscow Art Theatre." Anyone interested in participating, please
send your proposal to me AS SOON AS POSSIBLE since the program for
this major convention has to be established rather early. In this
connection, let me call your attention to an
UPPORTUNITY TO PUBLISH: The AA TSEEL Conventions of 1983 and
1984, and the SETC Convention of 1984 will all have had panels on
Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre. I intend to compile the
best papers into an anthology, with a strong introduction, and a
number of other articles previously not presented as papers.
Although I can give no assurances, I am quite optimistic that I can
have it published. Therefore, if you have given a paper, are about
to give a paper, or are in the process of writing an article on
this subject which you would like to submit for consideration, by
all means do it. (MLA style; end notes). Please send it directly to
me (Leo Hecht).
Prof. Timothy Connors at Northern Arizona University would like
to share the following experiences with us: "You might be
interested to know that in November 1983, I directed a production
of Aleksandr Vampilov's LAST SUMMER IN CHULIMSK at Northern Arizona
University. The production was well received, but a number of
people in the audience commented on how 'unusual' the play was-they
were (for lack of a better word) 'upset' by the ending of the play
which they perceived as inconclusive. I think they wanted a clearer
statement from the play regarding the future lives of the
characters, especially Shamanov and Valentina. Also, in October of
1983 I delivered a paper on the plays of Aleksandr Vampilov at the
European Studies Conference in Omaha (also presenting material at
the conference were Bill Kuhlke, Rhonda Blair and Ron Engle)."
The University of Connecticut will be conducting a Polish
Language and Culture study program at the Jagiellonian University
in Cracow from July 9 to August 17, 1984. Topics to be covered in
instruction include Polish Contemporary Theatre and Film and Polish
Modern Music. For further information and application forms please
contact Professor Borys Bi lokur, The University of Connecticut,
U-57, Storrs, CT 06268 or call (203) 486-2144.
In late December, 1983, a modified version of Fiddler on the
Roof opened in Moscow. It contains new lines, a new name, three
additional musical numbers
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and a modified ending (the characters ascend a staircase to a
symbolic promised land rather than to the United States). Many
references to Jewish culture, including religious life, were
retained. Some of the prayers are even pronounced in Hebrew. The
director, lurii Sherling, is a former dancer of the Bolshoi ballet
company. He intends to take the musical on tour to other Soviet c
ities if permitted.
"Theater in the Soviet Union," a tour for theatre professionals,
will take place March 19 to April 2, 1984. The program is arranged
by the Citizen Exchange Council of New York which is a
nonpolitical, nonpartisan and nonprofit organization, according to
its brochure, which seeks to foster mutual learning and
communication between American and Soviet citizens. For further
information please contact Elena Prischepenko, 26 St. Marks Place,
/14RE, New York, NY 10003, (212) 254-8123, or write to Citizen
Exchange Council, 18 E. 41st Street, New York, NY 10017.
On 24-26 May, 1984, the Ohio State University Theatre History
Conference will take place. The topic will be "The Stanislavsky
Heritage." Featured speakers will include Sonia Moore, President of
the American Center for Stanislavski Theatre Art, and Laurence
Senelick of Tufts University. Those interested in participating or
attending, please contact Alan Woods, Director, Theatre Studies,
Ohio State University, I 089 Drake Union, Columbus, Ohio
43210-1266.
Thanks to support from the U.S. Department of Education, the
Russian and East European Center, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, 1208 West California Avenue, Urbana, IL 6180 I,
will again offer its Summer Research Laboratory on Russia and
Eastern Europe. Associateships will be available for periods of one
to eight weeks. For further information and application forms,
write to the Center directly.
The Ninth Annual Meeting of the American-Hungarian Educators'
Association will take place in Columbus, Ohio May 3- 6, 1984. For
further information please contact Martha Pereszlenyi Pinter,
Department of Romance Languages, 248 Dieter Cunz Hall, The Ohio
State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Annotated Bibliography of Polish in Translation includes all
modern Polish plays written since World War II which are available
in translation--plus the dramas of Witkiewicz, Gombrowicz, and
Szaniawski. In addition to providing a plot summary for each of the
more than one hundred plays, and information as to the number of
characters, settings, date and place of production and publication,
the Bibliography lists all translations available, both published
and unpublished. It also contains a selected bibliography of
articles and books on Polish drama and theatre for the period
covered. The Bibliography can be obtained by mail for $3.50 ($4.50
outside the U.S.) to cover the cost of handling and mailing. Send
check or money order to Annotated Bibliography, CASTA lnstitutue,
Rm. 80 I, Graduate Center, 33 West 42nd Street, New York, New York
10036.
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I would also like to remind you that the companion volume, the
Annotated Biblio ra h of Soviet Pia s in Translation, is still
available from the CASTA Institute for a charge of '4.00. Both
Bibliographies are a vital research source for anyone seriously
interested in Polish and Soviet theatre and drama.
Russian Satiric Comedy, ed. and trans. with an introduction by
Laurence Senelick. (New York: Performing Arts Journal Press, 1983).
This anthology includes The ivHIIiner's Shop (Modnaya lavka) by
Ivan Krylov; The Headstrong Turk (Oprometchivy turka) by "Kozma
Prutkov"; The Fourth Wall [Chertverta a stena) by Nikolay Evreinov;
Sundown (Zakat) by Isaak Babel; The Power of Love Silnoe chuvstvo)
by llf & Petrov; and Ivan Vasilievich by Mikhail Bulgakov.
Serf Actor: The Life and Art of Mikhail Shchepkin by Laurence
Senelick (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1984). This is the first
fu 11-length biography in any language other than Russian (and the
most compendious biography in any language) of the "father of
Russian realistic acting." It sheds light on his relations with
Gogo!, Belinsky, Turgenev and other major figures in Russian
culture, and serves as a history of the Russian theatre in the
first half of the 19th century.
The Poetic Avant=garde in Poland, 1918-39, by Bogdana Carpenter,
has just been published. (University of Washington Press, Box
85569, Seattle, WA 98145). It contains a lengthy discussin of
Polish Futurism and the Cracow Avantgarde.
POLISH FILM POLITICS A SHORT REVIEW
The Polish filmmakers' association has been forced into a
compromise that some directors feel leaves them open for future
repression. "Our future looks black, judging by what the
authorities are proposing," says one documentary filmmaker whose
last four movies have ended up "on the shelf," banned from public
showings by the state distribution monopoly. The association is one
of the few creative guilds not dissolved by the communist
government after the military crackdown against the independent
Solidarity labor federation three years ago. Waldemar Swirgon, the
Communist Party secretary dealing with culture, declined to detail
the authorities' plans for the film industry.
The filmmakers recently held their first congress since the
martial law crackdown of 1981 and now they expect the government to
follow up with a "reform" of the industry that they believe will
give the authorities even greater power to censor scripts and block
distribution of films. As part of the agreement to preserve the
association, which offers filmmakers some protection and such
social benefits as food ration cards, the authorities insisted that
the internationally known director Andrzej Wajda resign as
president of the I ,300-member union, association sources say.
In early May, the government dissolved Wajda's "Studio X," one
of the I 0 Polish film groups. During the Solidarity era, the
studios were relatively free in preparing scripts and producing
films, but severe limitations were introduced under martial law and
are expected to continue after the film industry is reorganized.
Wajda has strongly defended filmmakers whose works have been
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shelved by the censor. One of his films, Man of Iron, which
portrays the rise of Solidarity in August 1980, has also been
shelved, and Wajda has concentrated his directing talents on
theatre productions and movies made abroad in cooperation with
non-Polish studios.
Five hundred association members, meeting Dec. I 1-12, blocked
the election of the Communist Party candidate, Jerzy Hoffman, and
instead named as president Janusz Majewski, a respected but
outspoken director of comedies. "Wajda was known around the world,
and traveled widely, speaking out everywhere in our defense," says
one Warsaw filmmaker who has been banned from making further
movies. "What will happen now is that the misfortunes of Polish
filmmakers will become a purely local problem," said the flimmaker,
who asked not to be identified.
In the weeks leading up to the congress, Deputy Culture Minister
Jerzy Bajdor announced relaxation of "criterias for allowing films
to be screened" after the lifting of martial law last July 22. He
released 23 of 30 films the authorities said were shelved under
martial law. Militant filmmakers claim that the number of banned
films is as high as 60, and say that many of those reportedly taken
from the shelf are shown only once or twice at limited-attendance
film festivals, or severely cut before screening.
IMPORT ANT NOTICE
As I have informed you before, the $2.00 annual contribution to
NEWSNOTES, which I have asked you to send, is to cover postage and
handling only. My university has been generously paying the major
expense of word processing and printing. I must, however, justify
this expense by showing the degree of interest generated by the
publication. The only way I can do this is by listing those who
find the periodical sufficiently informative to contribute a
nominal mailing fee of $2.00 a year.
I wish to thank those of you who have expressed their continued
interest in this manner. There have, however, been many who have
not. Therefore, one-third of the non-contributors have been
eliminated from the mailing list of this issue. An additional
one-third will be eliminated from the June issue. By the time of
the October issue, we will be sending NEWSNOTES only to those who
have actively expressed their interest.
THE THREE SISTERS --"AT THE ARENA
Leo Hecht
In a previous review I have stated my conviction that the Arena
Stage in Washington, D.C. is a national treasure. I know of no
ensemble theatre which can surpass it. Other Russian and East
European plays in the repertoire, including those by Gorkii,
Erdman, Vampilov, Orkeny, Mrozek and others, were consistently
superb productions. The Three Sisters, performed on the Arena Stage
January through February, 1984, certainly continues this tradition
of excellence. What
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many consider to be Chekhov's best play was directed by Zelda
Fichandler, the Producing Director of the Arena Stage, using
Randall Jarrell's translation. She shows her fine, sensitive hand
indeed. Although the play is rather long, it was consistently
captivating. The director certainly adheres to the playwright's
intent of a strong sub-text and non-dramatic action. She also shows
the mighty impact of the Stanislavskii conception of a true
ensemble theatre. There is no star in this production. The major
figures are all equally significant. They are played off against
each other like instruments in a fugue. Natasha is fully as
important as Masha, although the latter was conceived to be
performed by Chekhov's wife, Olga Knipper. Vershinin and
Chebutykin, Olga and Irina, Tuzenbach and Solenyi, all have leading
roles which do not overshadow one another. The Arena ensemble
showed its great versatility in casting for these roles. Ms.
Fichandler not only displayed an understanding and appreciation for
the personalities portrayed by the cast, but also did the research
which was fundamental to Stanislavskii's self-imposed rules. For
example, although this would escape most American audiences, the
actor portraying Solenyi is made up so that he strikingly resembles
the poet Lermontov, and adopts the latter's pose as a Russian
"Childe Harold."
An additional area of the production which merits discussion are
the settings. This was accomplished by invisibly dividing the
(arena) stage into an indoor area where the table scenes take
place, an outdoor lounging area, and even a river with a small dock
and rowboats. The settings were by Alexander Okun, certainly no
stranger to those who have frequented performances in Moscow. Mr.
ukun was the art director of the Moscow Art Theatre and a senior
lecturer on stage design at its drama school. He also worked as art
director at Moscow's Ermolova Theatre, for television and for the
Moscow Circus. In 1981 he emigrated to the United States and was
appointed an Associate Professor of Scenic Design for the School of
Theatre Arts of Boston University. Since then he has been designing
settings at Boston University, Harvard, and for theatres in Chicago
and New York City. He is now working on set designs for The Cherry
Orchard. The costumes, designed by Ann Hould-Ward who has done most
of her work for the Guthrie Theatre, were period-authentic, simple,
and therefore highly effective.
L.H.
SOVIET THEATRE - A POLICY STATEMENT
In the past several numbers of NEWSNOTES there were three short
items which discussed what the future of Soviet theatre is expected
to be under Andropov. Initially there were some highly optimistic
voices which forecast another "Thaw." By May, 1983, many of these
voices were stilled since there were constant rumors of the
impending reimposition of severely restrictive measures and a
return to the narrowest interpretation of Socialist Realism. By
popular request I have translated a policy article which appeared
on the front page of Pravda on September 10, 1983, and filled the
entire left double column. Ubviously it concerns itself not only
with drama and theatre, but with all the arts, and has resulted in
abject pessimism which affected most courageous and innovative
artists. Let us hope that this is only a temporary setback and that
the Soviet authorities will soon realize that such a stifling
artistic atmosphere is detrimental to their own best interests. (My
italics)
L.H.
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"The Repertory of the Theatre"
Just our acquaintance with the repertory playbill - this
"visiting card" of the theatre - may tell us a great deal about the
creative aspirations of the collective, about its genre and
stylistic predilections, about the level of professionalism and its
ability to perform. Particularly the repertory, with its distinct
aspects, reflects the individuality of creative features of the
theatre and of its position in society. Therefore the problem of
the repertory is the key to the functioning of every stage
collective.
The Leninist Party, which has placed at the top of its
activities the education of the new man, has always allocated great
importance to the ideological direction of theatre arts, and to the
correct formulation of the repertory. Not by coincidence was so
much serious attention directed toward these matters at the June
1983 Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union, which incisively posed the questions about the
responsibility of the artist, about the necessity for the
exploitation by the arts of socially meaningful themes, and about
the Party approach to the comprehension of the fundamental trends
of the contemporary world. "The Party," as comrade Iu. V. Andropov
declared from the rostrum of the Plenum of the Central Committee,
"supports everything which enriches science and culture, and helps
to educate the workers in the spirit of the norms and principles of
developing socialism. The Party protectively and respectfully
concerns itself with the talent and with the creative search of the
artist, without interfering with the form and style of his work.
But the Party cannot be indifferent to the ideological contents of
art. The Party will always guide the development of art so that it
may serve the interests of the people."
The past years brought to the boards of our stages much which
was fresh and interesting. It is gratifying that, as before, the
foremost position was occupied by Soviet plays. There was a
successful continuation of the c ultivation of Leninist,
historico-revolutionary themes, and themes of the exploit of the
Soviet people against Hitlerite fascism. There was a revival of
research into the publicistic play based on materials concerning
life abroad. The interest of theatres and playwrights in
moral-ethical problems, in investigating the spiritual world of our
contemporaries, has not abated. On the repertory playbills,
together with acknowledged masters, the names of gifted authors who
just yesterday were unknown or little known to the general public
are becoming established. In the best works of these young writers
there is a noticeable striving towards the interpretation of new
facets of our reality.
Nevertheless, the present conditions in theatre affairs and the
current repertory of stage collectives in no way give cause for
complacency and placidity. Pravda has already written that by far
not all theatres, even including some in the capital, are operating
full strength, are fulfilling their planned repertory, or are
achieving high quality in new productions. There are sti II many
collectives which have been unable to find a true path to the
audience. Thus, in Azerbaidzhan, Turkmenia and Tadzhikistan, not
even half of the theatre seats were occupied.
The viewer has a right to expect from the masters of the stage
and the playwrights, including the younger ones, a deeper,
artistically fuller reflection of
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the major positive elements which define the progressive
movements of our society, and which attest to the advantages of the
Soviet way of life and the power of our collective morality.
Rather, the main idea of many productions is to present all forms
of disorders in life, and the spectator's attention is directed
towards characters who falsely depict spiritual misery, who are
unnerved, in pain, and unable to find their place in life.
The noble mission of the theatre arts is to mold and elevate the
spiritual requirements of man and actively to influence the
idealistic, political and moral cast of his ersonalit From this we
rec nize the vital necessit to create the tmage o a posttive,
socially active hero, capable of captivating the spectator with his
example of how to live correctly.
Proper supervision of the creative authority of the theatre, the
concordance of interest between dialog and spectator, the greater
satisfaction of his aesthetic questions, entails guaranteeing the
diversity of theme and genre in the repertory, and the harmonic
combination within it of the production of both classics and the
works of contemporary authors. We must strive to make certain that
. the playbill reflects the multinational character of Soviet
dramaturgy and makes prov isions not only for the adult spectator,
but also for stages of children and youths.
The organic characteristics of the theatre, born with t he
October Revolution, personify the living receptivity for the best
in world-wide dramatic literature. Many foreign classical plays are
presented on our stages today. Every year a considerable number of
new works by foreign authors, including those from capitalist
countries, are translated. Unfortunately, many such plays which are
produced and widely distr ibuted obviously do not deserve such
attention. Not at all by chance was there a demand from the rostrum
of the June Plenum to approach the selection of foreign
philosophical products more carefully and to bar access to our
legitimate and variety stages to those works which are
characterized by lack of ideology, banality and lack of artistic
soundness. Here our primary method of approach must be a political,
not a commercial one. Under the present circumstances of extreme
intensification of ideological conflicts, it is totally forbidden
to forget this.
Life bears witness that, as a rule, things are going well for
those theatres where the tone for everything is set by communists
and where questions of repertory and the activities of the artistic
council are reviewed at Party meetings and at sessions of the Party
Buro. (At the present the reporting process by, and the election of
primary Party organizations are under way.) For the communists in
the theatres, this is a good opportunity to discuss how well the
plays being staged today meet the demands of the times, and to
analyze exactingly the planned repertory for the future. It is
incumbent upon every collective to draw practical conclusions from
the Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union, "Concerning the Work of the Party Organization of
the Belorussian Government Academic Theatre Named After I.
Kupala."
The search for effective organizational methods to strengthen
the cooperation between theatres and playwrights, the long-range
perfection of a system for distribution of new plays, the
formulation of repertory--all this must
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become the vital concern of the organs of culture, creative
union organizations, and theatrical societies.
One after another, stages are disseminating notices concern ing
the opening of the new theatre season. It is a matter of honor for
all collectives and for each theatre worker not to betray the
expectations and hopes of the spectator, and clearly to express in
the language of art the uniqueness of our times, the present
problems of social development, the great progess of the Soviet
people.
AATSEEL PANELS
At the national convention of the American Association of
Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL) which took
place in New York 28-30 December 1983, there were five panels on
the performing arts. They were as follows:
Russian Drama: Past and Present
Chairperson: Dorothy H. Brown, Loyola Univ., New Orleans "He Who
Gets Slapped: Andreyev's Search for Ethical Truths"
-Anthony Lola, Loyola Univ., New Orleans "Of Time and the River:
Lorca's House of Bernardo Alba and Chekho\{1S. The. Three Sisters"
.
-NIIclietle Cevy, Xav1er Un1v., New Orleans "Tragedy as
Ideology: D.S. Merezhkovsky's Paul I"
-C. Harold Bedford, Univ. of Toronto, Canada "Nikolai
Yevreinov's The Chief Thing"
-Spencer Golub, Univ. of Virginia, Charlottesville
Post-World War II Slavic & East European Drama
Chairperson: Alan Smith, San Antonio, TX Secretary: Theodosia S.
Robertson, Indiana Univ. "Boleslaw Lesmian's Newly Discovered
Pantomime Plays and the Stylized Drama by Aleksandr Blok: A
Comparison"
-Rochelle H. Stone, Univ. of CA at Los Angeles "The Drama of
Harijs Gulbis: Reflections of Change"
-Biruta Cap, Allentown College, PA "Cynicism, Faith and
Disillusionment in Two Dramas of Aleksandr Vampilov"
-Bela Kiralyfalvi, Wichita State Univ., TX
Soviet and East European Cinema
Chairperson: Nancy Condee, Wheaton College "Film as Inner
Speech: The Theory of Boris Eikhenbaum"
-F.W. Galan, Univ. of Texas "Dovzhenko's Earth and Soviet
Collectivization"
-Vance Kepley, Univ. of Wisconsin
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"Ideology and Censorship in Soviet Cinema" -Ronald levaco, San
Francisco State College
"Masters of Soviet Cinema: Cripplied, Creative Biographies
(Pudovkin, Vertov, Eisenstein, Dovzhenko)"
-Herbert Marshall, Center for Soviet Studies, Southern IL
Univ.
Contemporary Polish Drama: From the Page to the Stage
Chairperson: Rhonda Blair, Univ. of Kentucky Secretary: Robert
Pevitts, Kentucky Wesleyan "The Hunger Artist Deports: A Comparison
of Kafka and Rozewicz"
-Jerrold Phillips, Northeastern Univ., MA "After Hamlet: Two
Perspectives"
-Mihail Kobialka, Graduate Center, CUNY "The Private Theatre of
Biolyszewski"
-James Roney, Univ. of Kentucky Discussant:
-Daniel Gerould, Center for Advanced Study in Theatre Arts,
Graduate Center, CUNY
Stanislovsky and the Moscow Art Theater (Fifth Ave. Suite)
Chairperson: Leo Hecht, George Mason Univ. "Stamslavsky's
Return: 'Novel Theatre' or a Theatrical Romance with Narrative"
-Martha Hickey, Harvard Univ., MA "Stonislavsky Revisited, or
What Did He Say His Method Was?"
-Thomas E. Jones, Univ. of South Carolina "The Curious
Publication History of Stanislavsky's Books" "N . -Sharon. M.
Car,l)ickeuCftlumbio, Univ., NY
emJrov1cn-uancnenK.o m no ywooa -Michael Heim, Univ. of
California, Los Angeles
Please feel free to establish your own dialogue with any of the
choirs and panelists.
RUSSIAN SYMBOLIST DRAMA AND THE VISUAL ARTS
This excellent paper by Daniel Gerould was presented in a
section of the AATSEEL Convention not included in those listed
earlier. Dr. Gerould has kindly permitted us to reproduce it in
NEWSNOTES:
Like their Western European counterparts, the Russian symbolists
considered music the highest art to which all others should aspire.
"Music creates the world," Alexander Blok maintained, "In the
beginning was music." As pure movement, Andre Bely argued, music is
the art furthest removed from reality and closest to the secret of
being. Unlike music and poetry, theatre and painting, which are
visual and tangible, cannot ovoid appearances and ore therefore
lower
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forms, less favorable to symbolism. For these reasons the
Russian symbol ists voiced doubts about the desirability of
performance in the theatre and had an ambivalent attitude toward
the stage. "The theatre kills the dream," Blok stated.
It is clear that for the symbolists theatre and painting are
closely re lated. Symbolist drama is pictorial in conception; it
consists of autonomous visual images to be judged for their own
sake, and not simply on the basis of their fidelity to reality.
Because of symbolism, the stage picture became an independent
composit ion made up of shapes and colors.
Furthermore, symbolism quite literally brought painting to the
stage. As a European movement, it had as one of its aims to create
a new scenic art and to involve painters in the theatre. As a
result, visual artists became interested in the theatre, designed
settings and costumes, and took subjects for their own works from
the stage. The most active period of symbolist drama in
Russia--from 1905 to 191 a-coincided with the period in which the
painter-stage designer played the greatest role.
I propose to explore relationships between drama and the visual
arts in the case of Russian symbolism. My purpose is to discover
shared approaches and to locate dramaturgical equivalents of
pictorial concepts (symbolist painting antedated symbolist drama by
a few years). Since I am more concerned with affinities and
correspondences between the two arts than with direct influence or
transmission, my examples from the visual arts will be drawn primar
ily from Western European symbolist painters, as well as from
Russian artists.
Before turning to these general affinities and correspondences,
let me briefly establish supportive historical evidence; Russian
symbolist playwrights and d irectors did in fact often model their
work directly on painting. That "most p ictorial of playwrights"
Maurice Maeterlinck provided a precedent, drawing on Rossetti's
Morte d'Arthur for Pelleas and Melisande and specifying that the
costumes used in the first production (at the Theatre de !'Oeuvre)
should be based on Hans Memling's painting of Saint Ursula.
In a similar spirit, for his production of Maeterlinck's The
Death of Tintagiles Meyerhold went to the art of II Perugino, and
for his staging of the Belgian playwright's Sister Beatrice he
modelled poses and complete groupings on reproductions of works by
Memling, Botticelli, and the Pre-Raphaelite painters.
Leonid Andreyev found pictorial inspiration for The Life of Man
in woodcuts by Albrecht Durer which he saw in Germany (perhaps the
cycle The Life of Maria). I should say parenthetically that
although Andreyev was not accepted by the Russian symbolists as one
of their own and although he did not consider himself a symbolist,
The Life of Man was admired by Blok and Bely and was given two
symbolist productions in 1907, one by Stanislavsky at the Moscow
Art Theatre, the other by Meyerhold at the Kommissarszhevskaya
Theatre in Saint Petersburg. It can be called a quasi-symbolist
work, illustrating in a more popular form the pictorial techniques
of Russian symbolism. For The Life of Man Andreyev also drew upon
Russian folk art, using the figure of Petrushka as depicted in
Rovinsky's Russkiye narodnye kartinki, and he called the five
sections of the play, not acts, but "pictures." A third visual
source was the graphic work of Goya, and in his production of The
Life of Man Meyerhold created Goyaesque chiaroscuro effects on
stage.
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So much for the general pictorial orientation of Russian
symbolist drama; I now wish to turn to five techniques
characteristic of symbolist painting and graphics that we also can
find in the dramatic art of Sologub, Blok, Bely, Briusov, and
Andreyev. These are I) flatness, 2) dominant color, 3) immobility,
4) duplication, and 5) spatial indeterminancy. These visual effects
are important aspects of the symbolist pictorialization of
drama.
I) Flatness By leaving out an element of reality--depth and
roundness--the symbolist
painters created a single unifying plane and focused on a flat
pictorial surface and its organization. The omission of a dimension
moved symbolist art towards stylized simplification and
abstraction. Through shallow relief, Puvis de Chovannes recreates
the ornamental flatness of primitive wall decorations. Gustav Klimt
flattens out forms in the interest of mosaic design; his arabesque
backgrounds are based on mural patterns of early Greece and the
early Middle Ages. Maurice Denis declared: "A picture before being
an anecdotal subject is essentially a flat surface covered with
colors arranged in a certain order." Commenting on Byzantine
painting, which for many symbolists was an ideal, Mikhail Vrubel'
observed: "Its whole essence lies in the ornamental arrangement of
form which emphasizes the flatness of the wall."
The aim of this subtractive method was to filter out accidental
particularity-"to eradicate every ephemeral and superfluous
element," in Meyerhold's words, in order to arrive at the universal
and eternal. Two-dimensionality evokes the permanent, the immanent,
the numinous. Contraction of perspective and flattening out of
represented space resulted in stress on rhythmic line,
frontilization of image, and suppression of detail. Flatness led to
Byzantine incorporeality and decorativeness; characters were freed
of fleshy solidity and commonplace manifestations of sex and
personality. Lack of spatial recession imparted timelessness to the
picture.
Striking instances of Byzantine flatness in Russian symbolist
drama and theatre con be found in Meyerhold and Sologub. In
Meyerhold's staging of Maeterlinck's Sister Beatrice, the figures
were grouped as in a bas-relief. According to znosko-Borovsky, "All
dressed as one, with completely identical gestures, with slow
restrained movements and following one another precisely, they
moved the whole time in profile in order to maintain the repose of
a bas-relief; they passed before you like a wonderful design on the
grey stone of an ancient cathedral."
In The Triumph of Death, Fyodor Sologub makes original
dramaturgical use of pictorial flatness. The title itself comes
from medieval art, the "triumph of death" being a subsidiary
category of the dance of death. In a characteristic symbolist
inversion, Sologub shows that it is not death to be feared, but
rather life in all its banality, meanness, and stupidity that is
the true death of the spirit--paradoxically, in death there is
life. At the conclusion of the drama, Malgista tells her beautiful
daughter Algista (who has returned to life after being beaten to
death and thrown to the dogs) to consign the insensitive King
Khlodoveg to the petrified realm of soullessness that is the true
image of his kingdom: "Bewitch him with terrible words, consecrate
him to eternal immobility." Algista (who realizes that "In this
terrible hour only the dead are alive") addresses Khlodoveg
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and says, "Turn to stone, King." In s striking coup de theatre,
the characters on stage become sculpted figures in a wall frieze. A
dispassionate choral voice declares: "Behold--they stand like
statues hewn out of stone. Behold--a spectacle of life turned to
stone has become a flat picture."
In his theoretical essay, The Theatre of One Will, Sologub
advances his view that drama should be two-dimensional and the
actors should resemble sculpture. "The stage should be arranged in
one plane," Sologub states. "The spectacle should resemble a
painting, so that the spectator would not be able to look behind an
actor, into some other realm where something externally-concealed
may be discovered. The spectator must look for that which is
clearly seen: through what is being acted, willed and contemplated
before his eyes."
In symbolist painting, flatness emphasized the essential nature
of the two-dimensional medium and called attention to painting as
painting, rather than as an imitation of reality. In the drama and
theatre, flatness made a three-dimens ional medium appear to be
two-dimensional; it made dramatic art take on characteristics of an
allied art, painting, and opened up unexpected possibilities for
abstraction and compositional design.
2) Dominant color Symbolist artists explored the expressive
power of colors. A dominant
color could be used to permeate an entire composition, define
its mood, and convey a dreamlike quality.
Blue plays an important role in symbolist aesthetics; it was the
modernist color par excellence. Goethe had said of blue that it
"arouses anxiety and nostalgia." For the symbolists it was the
color of art and artists, of dreams and dreamers. Blue was used
evocatively and emotionally not only by Picasso in the early years
of the 20th century, but also by Puvis de Chavannes, Munch, Jean
Delville, and Vrubel'.
Alexander Blok makes similar use of color in his play The
Stranger, wh ich is composed and unified through different
tonalities of azure and blue set against the darkness of the night.
One of the personae of the poet-hero is named Goluboi (Azure), the
Stranger herself is, in Blok's words, "a diabolic fusion of blue
and lilac," not unlike Vrubel's demon. Another of her
manifestations is as a figure from an icon. Blue is the traditional
color of the Madonna; in the Russian folk theatre the Virgin wears
blue. The falling snow is blue. But the surrounding universe is
enshrouded in darkness, except for the light given off by the
Stranger, a star who has fallen to earth-- fiery and radiant--in
the encroaching black night.
Somber tonalities of black were used by the symbolists to
represent spiritual states of mind. Speaking of his compositions
done in charcoal, which he called his "noirs," Odilon Redon said,
"Black must be respected. Nothing adulterates it . It does not give
pleasure to the eyes and awakens no sensuality. It is an agent of
the mind far more than the fine color of the palette or prism."
Symbolist artists like the Belgian William Degouve de Nuncques (in
his Angels in the Night and Peacocks) compose nocturnes in which
they explore what Maeterlinck called "those meanings inhabiting
darkness." Night is magical, mystery-laden, promising revelations.
It is a time for dreaming and hallucination. Blok called the three
nocturnal scenes of The Stranger "Visions."
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"Night looks in through the windows" in Andreyev's Life of Man;
the entire play is plunged in "profound darkness," "gloomy
blackness," "deep and fearsome endlessness." For the production at
the Moscow Art Theatre in 1907, Stanislavsky created a black velvet
background "which, like a piece of black paper, could give the
stage the appearance of having only two dimensions, width and
height." "The third dimension would disappear entirely, and the
velvet would pour itself into one plane." "On such a tremendous
black sheet one could draw in various paints and lights all that
the human mind could conceive." People would "appear unexpectedly
on the forestage and disappear in the endless space of the darkness
in the background." In this fashion, night became a compositional
element in the drama.
For symbolists committed to nighttime associations and dream
logic, responses to the sun and light of day are mixed or
ambivalent. Puvis de Chavannes writes, "The sun fatigues my sight
and troubles my soul." In Villier de l'lsle-Adam's proto-symbolist
drama, Axel, the hero, preparing to commit double suicide with his
betrothed, tells her to shut out the light of day: "Drop those
hangings, Sara: I have seen enough of the sun." As the source of
those shadowy appearances amongst which humanity is condemned to
live in the phenomenal world, the life-giving sun is a threat to
the eternal world of the spirit.
Russian symbolist plays in the apocalyptic mode are dramas of
darkness and radiance. In Bely's fragment of a mystery, The Jaws of
Night, battle is engaged between forces of darkness (the work Mrak
is often capitalized) engulfing the world and feeble strivings
towards spiritual illumination. A sect of primitive Christians, cut
off from the rest of the world and posed above the abyss, is lost
in perpetual cosmic night. They await the coming of the Saviour,
but fear the ubiquitous presence of the Anti-Christ. The play
abounds in strange optical effects, pulsating intensities of light,
reduplicated luminous images of the Prophet, Christian women
radiant with inner light. The tonal harmonies and correspondences
among the white-robed figures, the cliffs, the cypresses, and the
dark, gloomy sky recall Arnold Bocklin's Isle of the Dead (which
Bely himself wrote about).
Valerii Briusov's The Earth is an apocalyptic drama about the
last days of mankind, which takes place in an enclosed city of the
future cut off from all contact with the light of day and the world
of nature; even the air is artificial. As the water supply
dwindles, one group seeks to disclose the sun, for many generations
shut out by a huge dome, hoping to discover in its rays the source
of rebirth and vitality; others worship Death as the deliverer,
opposing inner light to the gross rays of the sun. Scenes take
place in partial or total darkness. The dark rays of Death are an
eternal frame for the petty radiance of the sun. When the dome is
finally swung open and sunlight floods the hall, the inhabitants
are at first blinded, then killed by the total absence of any
atmosphere in the void outside. Briusov's stage directions create a
pictorial image of the Last Judgment: "The entire hall, now
silenced, turns into a cemetery of motionless wizened bodies upon
which there shines through the open dome the deep sky and, like an
angel, blowing a golden trumpet, the blazing sun." The Italian
symbolist artist Alberto Martini did an engraving, The Destruction
of the Earth, as an illustration for the final scene of Briusov's
play.
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3) lmmobi I ity The turning to stone of all the characters in
Sologub's The Triumph of
Death and the transformation of the city of the future into
motionless bodies in Briusov's The Earth brings us to a third
technique of symbolist art: the immobilization of life. The
symbolists show a preference for frozen gesture, arrested motion,
statuesque poses, expressionless masks, and suspended action at
moments of highest drama or passion. Instead of an ever accelerated
pace (as is the case with drama of external action), symbolist
theatre slows down and reaches a point of excruciatingly intense
and motionless stillness. At crises movement becomes minimal.
In Puvis de Chavannes, bodily action and facial expression are
eliminated. In Gustave Moreau's Apparition, Salome is mesmerized by
the vision of John the Baptist's head, a mosaic encircling his
face. The rigid dancer stands suspended in mid-air, in Huysmans's
words, "nailed to the spot, balanced on the tips of her toes."
Speaking of Michelangelo's figures, Moreau praises the "Beauty of
Inertia" and says that they "seem to be frozen in gestures of an
ideal somnambulism." In Fernand Khnopff's Portrait of His Sister,
the door behind the figure is closed on an unknown world, a secret
sanctuary of the self; she is enclosed within herself, frozen in a
mantic stance, lost in a dream, embracing her own image. Another of
Khnopff's evocations of silence and stillness is titled, "I Lock My
Door Upon Myself" (a title taken from a poem by Christina
Rossetti).
By a process of retardation-or ritardando to use the musical
term-the symbolist artist creates maximum tension as outer action
and movement approach stasis, while the inner drama is enacted
behind the placid mask, the closed door. We might call this
somnambulistics: the aesthetics of sleep-walking, the trance,
congealment and petrifaction. The sleeper does not awaken, but
becomes possessed by the dream. "I see myself as an onlooker taking
pleasure in silence," wrote Khnopff. As chronological time slows
down to an eternal present, dimensions of the daydream unfold.
Interiority, the glance turned inward, the deepest contemplation of
the self are achieved in the pauses and silences, in the
interstices between moments of action, as in Vrubel's Muse and
Redon's Silence, William Butler Yeats saw in the drama of
immobility "the intensity of trance/' "life trembling into
stillness and silence," and "the celebration of waiting." Instead
of the confrontational and histrionic, symbolists prized moments of
ecstatic expectancy and hushed waiting--most often for something
that never comes. One of the innovative discoveries of the
symbolists was the dramatic power of waiting.
Of the Russian symbolist dramatists, Blok most fully illustrates
the aesthetics of sleepwalking and the immobilization of life. It
has been said that Blok did not live his lives and loves, but
dreamed them. In The Stranger the verb dremat'-to drowse-serves as
a refrain. The silent ships in the river drowse; Azure dozes in the
pale light, then half falls asleep covered from head to foot with
falling snow, finally disappearing in immobility. The Stranger
grows congealed (zastyvat' is the verb here) by the railing of the
bridge. "Like a statue, she waits and waits." Turning into a
statue, the contemplator with hieratic gesture enters into the
private worlds of the self.
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4) Duplication
The splitting of the contemplated self or alter ego into parts
results in doubling and duplication-another striking effect of
symbolist art and drama. "The sense of mystery," wrote Odilon
Redon, "lies in always being in the equivocal, in double and triple
aspects." In The Three Young Women on the Seashore by Puvis de
Chavannes, we perceive three aspects of the same woman at three
different moments of her being. By flattening out time spatially,
the artist creates an impression of eternity. Another example of
such dupl icat ion much favored by the symbolists is The Three
Stages of Woman by Edvard Munch.
The double may also recur in different works by the same artist.
Throughout Khnopff's work, there are two opposing yet strangely
similar female types, both based on his sister Marguerite: the
demonic sphinx and the angel-muse. Symbolist woman has a dual
nature, benign and malevolent. These doubles --sisters, demons,
angels-are all projections of the self: the wandering soul in quest
of its twin.
In Khnopfrs Memories, partitions within the self are carried to
the higher power of the magic number seven. Seemingly a picture of
seven young English sports women, racquets in hand, the figures are
identical despite different clothes and varied attitudes.
Multiplied by the power of dreaming, living in solitude and memory,
outside of temporality, the errant self is apart from its other
selves. The private worlds are incommunicable. Each figure exists
within its own psychological and physical space, withdrawn into
contemplation of the world with in and totally oblivious of
everything external.
Once again, Alexander Blok is a self-proclaimed exemplar of the
double-r idden Russian symbolist poets and playwrights.
Doppelgangers haunt his life and work. Perception of doubles in
Blok's case apparently ran in the family. His mother wrote to her
sister: "In me there are five persons, and perhaps more." The first
entry in Blok's diary reads: "I have divided in two." Starting in
1902, Blok began to project doubles on to archetypal figures such
as Pierret and Harlequin, the rich man and Lazarus, the Blessed
Virgin and the Anti-Christ. The poet himself declared: "In each
person there are several people, and they are all fighting among
themselves."
In Blok's drama, doubling takes place both from one work to
another and also within a single work. In the preface to his three
Lyrical Dramas, Blok explains that the three heroes are "different
sides of the soul of one man"--referring to Pierret in Balaganchik,
the poet in The King in the Square, and the poet in The Stranger.
Their longings are the same. "They all seek a beautiful, free,
bright life, which alone can relieve them of their doubts and
self-contradictions and drive away importunate doubles."
Each of the individual lyrical dramas is a monodrama in which
the characters are themselves projections of doubles. In
Balaganchik, innocent, pensive, child-like Pierret and his
anti-face, the joyous, sceptical, audacious Harlequin are different
experiences of the same soul. Colombine is likewise double. She is
Pierret's betrothed or death. Given the linguistic double meaning
of koca in Russian, her braid is also a scythe. The pictorial
inspiration for the depiction of death as a woman with long hair
and a scythe may come from the
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Italian Triumph of Death at Pisa (the fresco of Campo Santo)
which shows such a figure; in the traditional Russian folk theatre,
death is an emaciated old woman on an equally emaciated old horse,
as can be seen in Aleksei Remizov's The Devil Show (Besovskoye
Deistro).
In The Stranger, not only are the principal characters doubled,
but the entire play abounds in duplicated dialogue, structure, and
detail. The first and third visions, in the low-life tavern and in
the fashionable literary salon, are inverted mirror-images of each
other. Forever splitting in two, the Stranger herself is double,
half star, half woman she is the Eternal Feminine, the ideal of the
Madonna, and a common harlot, the ideal of Sodom. Forever divided,
the figure of the Stranger calls forth ambivalent responses of
faith and disbelief, adoration and blasphemy. In such a dualistic
universe, ultimate reality is defined by antithetical pairs of
polar opposites. Coincidentia oppositorum or the unity of opposites
is the mystical method by which the symbolists maintain in a state
of unresolved tension conflicting realities. The Poet in The
Stranqer is doubled by Azure, his far-off spiritual self, and by
the Astrologer, an earthly materialist and his anti-face; and all
three find an antipodal double in the Gentleman in the Derby-a
cynical man of the world and the double of Harlequin in
Balaganchik. Out of such dualistic encounters The Stranger and all
of Blok's dramas are composed.
5) Spatial indeterminacy Finally and most briefly, a word about
the new stage space envisioned by
the Russian symbolist dramatists. It is a visionary landscape
that opens out onto infinity and eternity. This magical space is
not an imitation of the external world of reality, but invented
space belonging to the subjective vision. It is the projection of
states of mind and of what Odilon Redon called "the world of the
indeterminate." This capacious arena is expressive both of the
boundless expanse of the universe and of the human consciousness
which is its mirror and counterpart. Compositions and sonatas of
the Lithuanian artist Mikolai Ciurlionis can serve to illustrate
the pictorial equivalent of the infinite and inward space of the
symbolist stage.
The Russian symbolist dramatists carried on the general program
of symbolist artists everywhere-it was truly an international
movement. They opened up the drama and stage to a new pictorial
concept, a theatre of images, in which shape, color, pattern, and
design play an almost abstract role-an ideal which has only started
to be realized in our own day.
Daniel Gerould
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NOTES ON THE SOVIET THEATRE
The past year and a half has seen a marked change in the
cultural climate in the Soviet Union. In an effort to shed some
light on how this change has affected the theatre, I'd like to go
back and outline briefly some of the events that have taken place
during the period following the death of Leonid Brezhnev in
l'\jovember 1982.
In reviewing the 1982-83 season, one Moscow critic put it very
well when he said that the season seemed to break down at midpoint,
losing momentum like some automobile that can't quite make it to
the top of the hill. It was a season which in ivloscow, at least,
was marked by the absence any new work by many of the major
playwrights, directors and actors. Clearly it was also a season
characterized by uncertainty and false starts as the change in
leadership and the Party directives that followed forced the dropp
ing of some productions and a reevaluation of many others. As it
turned out, what happened to Vladimir Arro's Look Who's Come at the
Mayakovsky Theatre in late November 1982 proved to be symptomatic
of much that was to follow.
In this update of The Cherry Orchard a famous writer's widow dec
ides to sell the dacha which had belonged to her husband and is now
occupied by his relatives. Completely humiliated by the trio of
nouveaux riches (a hairdresser, bartender and bathhouse attendant)
intent on buying it, one of the relatives, a scientific worker,
commits suicide. This, at least, is how the play ends as published
(Sovremennaia dramaturgiia, No. 2, 1980), and as first staged. In
the revised version now being performed, the suicide (never an
acceptable solution for a Soviet hero) has been replaced by a phone
call from the widow informing the family that she has no intention
of selling the dacha and that they should have nothing to do with
such riff-raff. As Viktor Rozov notes in a recent article, this
ending "turns a serious subject into a farce," and leaves the
audience wondering, "what all the fuss was about?"
Other signs of a chill in the cultural climate soon followed,
including the refusal (still in effect) to allow Yurii Liubimov's
production of Boris Godunov to premiere, and the withdrawal of a
number other productions already on the boards-some temporarily to
make adjustments, and others to be relegated to more permanent
oblivion.
The appearance in early February 1983 of an editorial in Pravda
entitled "The Theatre and its Repertoire" gave the first concrete
signal of the ideological crackdown that was to follow. While
praising the appearance of a large number of new playwrights, it at
the same time criticized many of them for creating more colorful
and interesting "antiheroes" than positive ones, frequently leading
to the "seeming triumph" in theatrical productions "of injustice
and dishonesty over justice and law." The editorial also criticized
the practice of plays being staged simultaneously at more than one
theatre in a city, calling attention in particular to the three
productions of The Cherry Orchard at the Malaia Bronnaia,
"Contemporary" and T aganka Theatres, "all of them far from
perfect." And why, it asked, with the wealth of foreign plays
available, should there be five productions ofT ennessee Williams
in Moscow?
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A Central Committee directive in February 1983 "un the work of
the Yanko Kupala Belorussian State Academic Theatre" gave the first
official signal of the new leadership's position vis-a-vis the
arts, and the theatre in particular. Although the directive was
aimed at a specific theatre, its message was clearly intended as a
program of action for theatres throughout the Soviet Union.
What gave the directive major significance was the fact that it
not only exhorted the theatre's Party organization to play a more
active role in the moral political education of the theatre's
troupe, but also to "exert greater influence on the creative
process, the activities of the artistic committee, the organization
of the theatre troupe and the diligence of the actors, on the
selection of plays and their ideational-artistic realization on the
stage." In terms reminiscent of the heyday of Socialist Realism,
the directive also called for a return to more theatrical
productions "in which are reflected clearly and truthfully the
basic Leninist principles of Party spirit (partinost') and national
character (narodnost')."
In theory, the functions outlined in the directive have always
been the prerogative of the Party organization in each theatre.
However, in recent years, particularly in those theatres with a
strong-willed Chief Director, and Yurii Liubimov is the prime
example, there has been considerable flexibility as to just how
much of a direct voice the Party would have in artistic affairs. In
those cases where the Party activists have taken over control of a
theatre, as happened with the Leningrad Theatre of Comedy in the
mid-seventies, the results have been fatal, not only in terms of a
general decline in the quality of theatrical productions, but also
in the loss of talented actors and directors.
The theatre repertory itself came under renewed attack in April
in a speech by Pyotr Demichev, the Minister of Culture (Sovetskaia
kul'tura, April 16) in which he stated:
There are on the stages of our theatres still many mediocre and
colorless productions which are shallow and engrossed in the
details of everyday life. Theatres are staging too many foreign
plays, while some key problems of our social development are not
being reflected on our stage. There are not enough plays about the
problems of the scientific-technological revolution, few gripping
productions about the intelligentsia, its concerns, its objectives.
The industrial theme is not being developed and broadened.
Demichev's message was further developed in an article published
in
Literaturnaia gazeta entitled "Come Uut from Behind the
Draperies." In a slap at what he called "the new realism" the
author, Vladimir Bondarenko stated that these plays depict "too
many people who consciously stand on the sidelines of life." He
also complained that in plays such as Viktor Slavkin's The Grown-Up
Daughter, this new reality is depicted without revealing the
playwright's attitude toward it. "There must not only be a concrete
picture of life," he pointed out, "but also a lofty social-ethical
ideal."
Other articles soon followed also calling for a return of the
positive hero to the Soviet stage who, when confronted with a
crisis, fights back rather than retreating behind the draperies.
Too many of the new plays are turned inward, these writers pointed
out. It's not simply that the action takes place in a domestic
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setting, whether an apartment or a dacha, but that it never
breaks out of that setting.
Finally, in his speech at the plenary session of the Communist
Party Central Committee in June, Konstantin Chernenko left little
room for doubt that the Party was indeed taking a considerably
tougher attitude toward the arts than it had in 1981 . Reaffirming
the artist's responsibility for "actively influencing the
ideological, political and moral make of the indiv idual,"
Chernenko criticized those writers who "give prominence only to
unhappy lives, to life's troubles and to effete and whining
characters." He went on to state that people, especially the
younger ones, need heroes "who embody the nobleness of life's
goals, ideological conviction, love of work and courage.
Acknowledging that political considerations must also take
priority in the selection of foreign films, plays, publicat ions
and music, Chernenko also called for greater vigilance against
those imports "characterized by a lack of ideological content,
vulgarity and artistic bankruptcy."
Typical of the plays that came under public attack for being
shallow and non-committal were Simon Zlotnikov's A Man Came to a
Woman at the Pushkin Theatre and The T earn at the "Contemporary"
Theatre. The latter play, about six members of a girl's handball
team and their coach, was specifically singled out in an article in
lsvestia (May 24, 1983) for its failure to condemn the spiritual
emptiness of people who sacrifice everything in pursuit of athletic
success. The writer of the article, G. Dobysh, also called the
theatre to task for its lack of judgement in deeming the play
stageworthy.
Turning to the current season, it is still too early to tell how
it will shape up overall, especially in view of yet another change
in leadership. If the 1982-83 season was characterized by its large
number of contemporary plays, this season, thus far, seems to be
concentrating on the classics or historical themes. Some of the
product ions worthy of note at midpoint include a new staging of
Gogel's The Inspector General at the "Contemporary" Theatre which
has evoked some strong responses both pro and con. For the
theatre's first encounter with Gogo I, director Valerii Fokin has
combined his comedy with the playwright's "Un Leaving the Theatre
after the Performance of a New Comedy" and the rarely performed
monolog "The Denouement of The Inspector General." The production
stars Valentin Gaft as the Mayor, Vasilii Mishenko as Khlestakov,
and Galina Volchek as Maria Antonovna, the chief director's first
major role in sixteen years.
At the Lenin Komsomol in Moscow, a new production of
Vishnevsky's The Uptimistic Tragedy has also made its debut.
Directed by Mark Zakharov, it diverges in a number of ways from the
traditional approach to this 1933 attempt to create a new genre of
Soviet tragedy. In a refreshing departure from Vadim Ryndin's
much-imitated spiral stage design for the original production,
Zakharov makes use of enormous moveable screens which shift about
to create the barracks and the deck of the ship. The Commissar sent
to tame an anarchistic batallion of sailors is played by lnna
Churikova. The complete antithesis of Aliso Konen's
leather-jacketed "iron lady" in the original production, Churikova
arrives on board ship wearing a white dress and large hat, and
carrying a parasol. The production sees her subtle transformation
from a graceful and defenseless innocent to a forceful leader who
is able to establish her authority over the anarchistic
batallion
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of sailors. As usual, Zakharov has assembled an outstanding cast
including Evgenii Leonov as the wily Leader and Oleg Yankovsky as
Bering.
Roshchin's adaptation of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, finally
premiered in the fall at the Vakhtangov Theatre directed by Roman
Viktiuk. And Mark Rozovsky's staging of Amadeus has opened at the
Moscow Art Theatre with Oleg Tabakov as Salieri. At the Malaya
Bronnaya, Anatoly Efros had directed a production of the Austrian
playwright Ferdinand Bruckner's 1936 play Napoleon I with Mikhail
Yulianov from the Vakhtangov Theatre in the leading role. In
Leningrad, the Gorky Theatre has premiered a musical based on
Sukhovo-Kobylin's The Death of T arelkin directed by Georgii
Tovstonogov and featuring Valerii lvchenko, an actor new to that
theatre, as T arelkin.
Lev Dodin's much-awaited interpretation of Saltykov-Shchedrin's
Judas Golovyev at the Moscow Art Theatre is about to, or has
already had its premiere with lnokenty Smoktunovsky in the role of
the greedy hypocrite, Judas. And after a long absence, Ibsen's
Hedda Gabler can again be seen on the Moscow stage at the
fv'1ossoviet Theatre in a production directed by Kama Ginkas with
Nina T eniakova as Hedda and Sergei Yursky as Tesman.
At the Mayakovsky Theatre's Little Stage, Mark Rozovsky's play
Mayakovsky Begins has finally premiered, directed by Genrykh
Cherniakhovsky, although apparently in a somewhat different form
than its original conception. In it ially entitled The Tall One
{Vysokii), it was to have included, in addition to iv\ayakovsky's
own poetry, excerpts from the works of Shakespeare, Cervantes and
Dostoevsky. According to Rozovsky, the objective wasn't merely to
illustrate the poet's verses, but to recreate the poet himself, by
combining elements from his biography with his feelings and ideas,
all brought to life through the introduction of literary characters
such as Hamlet, Raskolnikov and Don Quixote. In an effort to bring
the production more in line with the Party call for depicting more
"men of action" on the stage, these famous literary f igures have
apparently been dropped.
This season theatres seem to have been especially responsive to
the call for a change in the kind of foreign plays being performed,
many of which have recently been characterized as frivolous and
lacking in philosophical content. The Mossoviet Theatre, for
example, has just premiered The Trial of the Judges, a somewhat
free adaptation of Stanley Kramer's film Judgement at Nuremberg.
And as a further sign of the times, the Maly Theatre is currently
rehearsing an anti-war "documentary" written by G. Shakhhazarov and
Rachiia Kaplanian, Chief Director of the Erevan Dramatic Theatre,
who is also directing the production. Tentatively entitled The
Bomb, it is about the development of the atomic bomb. Among the
characters in the play are Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer,
Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
Turning to contemporary works, the picture seems much less
clear. A number of productions that premiered last season continue
to be highly praised for their portrayal of positive heroes of
action. Among them are The Stove on Wheels at the Mossoviet's
Little Theatre and Chervinsky's My Happiness ... at the Soviet Army
Theatre. (It is also at the Stanislavsky Theatre under the title
The PaTer Record Player.) Other productions have fared less well,
among them Galin's he Garden whose main protagonists one critic
characterized as "indulging in starry-
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eyed philosophizing," and Gurkin's Love and Doves whose
characters are "petty, uninteresting people."
Among productions still "in the works" are the Lenin Komsomol
Theatre's staging of Petrushevskoyo's Three Girls in Blue,
Roshchin's Mother of Pearl Zinaida at the Moscow Art Theatre and
Edvard Radzinsky's Theatre in the Time of Nero and Seneca at the
Moyokovsky Theatre where it is now in its third season of
preparation.
The current season still has several months to run before it
closes in June. It will be interesting to watch what additional
productions premiere and what effect the current change in
leadership has, if any, on shaping the season's outcome.
Alma H. Law
LIUBIMOV
Video recordings of Yuri Liubimov's major Moscow productions ore
available for showing to interested scholars in theater and
literature. They are:
THREE SISTERS (Chekhov) MASTER AND MARGARITA (Bulgakov) PUGACHEV
(Esenin) THE EXCHANGE (Trifonov) CRIME AND PUNISHMENT THE DAWNS ARE
QUIET HERE MOTHER (Gorky) FIVE STORIES BY BABEL LISTEN!
(Moyokovsky) TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD (John Reed) WOODEN
HORSES (Abramov)
The recordings are a variant of VHS journalism and do not
represent a professional television production. The recordings were
filmed under trying conditions and they are unedited. The topes ore
only for academic use and cannot be shown for paid admission. A
rental fee of $100.00 per tape1 per week should accompany each
request to the following address:
NJR VIDEO I 0 Skylark Lane Stony Brook, NY I 1790
Newsflosh: Liubimov has been discharged from his position as
director of the T ogonko Theatre.
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Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures
George Hason University Fairfax , Virginia 22030
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