NEWSNOTES

on
SoviET and EAsT EuROPEAN DRAMA cndT HEATRE
Volume 3, Number 2 June, 1983
DEAR READERS
Many thank$ .for your. .complimentary -letters about this
publication. Your continued evaluation and helpful hints for the future are of
great interest to us.
I am now starting to put together the fall issue of NEWSNOTES and would
be happy to receive material for publication from you. As previously, this would
.include announcements, calls for papers, bibliographic data, book and performance
reviews, and short articles on relatively contemporary matters connected with
Soviet and East European theatre and drama. The countries whose theatre and
dramatic arts we are primarily concerned with include the USSR, Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia.
Leo Hecht, Editor
1\E.WSNOTES 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 80 I, City University Graduate Center 33 West 42nd
Street, New York, NY 10036. All subscription requests and submissions shou ld be
addressed to the Editor of I'EWSNOTES: Leo Hecht, Department of Foreign
Languages and Literatures, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030.
CALL FOR PAPERS
I shall be chairing a new panel on "Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art
Theatre" at the National Convention of the American Association of Teachers of
Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL). The Convention will take place
in New York City December 26-29, 1983. Since this is the first time this panel
will be organized, I would like it to be of particularly high quality. I provisionally
envision one paper on the historical background of the Moscow Art Theatre and
early influences on Stanislavsky; one paper on his theories of directing; one paper
on his theories of acting; and one paper on the impact he has had on Soviet/East
European theatre. If you are interested in presenting a paper, I would appreciate
receiving your one-page abstract (proposal) as soon as possible. If it is accepted, I
shall need to have your completed paper by November IS. Please send your
proposals and inquiries to: Prof. Leo Hecht, Chairman, Russian Studies, George
Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
During the first six weeks of the fall 1982 semester, the Wichita State
University Theatre hosted guest artist Jaroslav Stremien. Mr. Stremien is Polish
born. He earned his actor's diploma in Poland and was a professional actor for ten
years in the Polish National Theatre system. In 1970, after I 0 years of study in
France, . he came to the U.S., earning his M.F.A. in directing at Yale. He is
on the theatre .faculty at the University of Connecticut at .
WhUe at Wichita State, Mr. Stremien taught a scene study workshop,
. performed his one-man show, "Three by Chekhov" and directed the University
Theatre's production of Slawomir Mrozek's Vatzlav. (A play that until last spring
had not seen a production in Poland.) The Wichita production received favorable
responses, although the allegorical script itself got mixed reactions. The
production and Mr. Stremien's work was very well received. The following quote
from one reviewer, Judy Dansby, in the Sunflower campus newspaper perhaps best
reflects the general reaction to the production-which was performed Sept. 30,
Oct. I and 2:
Vatzlav, a shipwrecked slave, is washed ashore in a strange land. He
thanks providence and begins the task of understanding the workings of his
new home-a truly confusing task.
The audience, mentally adrift in contemporary Polish philosophy,
can identify with his confusion.
Vatzlav is clearly an allegory and a political satire; there is a
message in it. But its meaning remains just beyond mental grasp, evading
understanding.
It is fortunate that this elusive meaning doesn't diminish the humor
or finesse of the production.
Vatzlav contains a wide array of humor-some of which occurs when
it is least expected.
2
There is the subtle humor of its word play and incongruities, the
broad humor of its slapstick action and the bawdy humor of its liberation
army leader.
The production is well staged. Stremien has guided his able cast
through action ranging from stylized, almost dance-like movement, to a
fast-paced chase scene complete with an attack by imaginary dogs.
Vatzlav, played by Larry Kerr, is both philosophical and practical in
his intent to make the best of life in a foreign land. His side-show lecture
on personal and political liberty, accompanied by an unusual display of the
assets of Justice, provides the ultimate blend of these two qualities.
Justice, also known as Justine, is played by Belinda Cargill, who
brings a charming naive quality to the role.
Mr. and Mrs. Bat, played by Bill Gutshall and Susy Pollock,
exemplify the corruption of the land's ruling. class. Pollock vamps her way
through the play with an amusing coquettishness, while Gutshall provides a
strange, stern ruler the audience can dislike.
Arden Weaver's set and Joyce Cavorozzi's costumes heighten the
sense of being stranded in a world that is alien to our understanding.
Bela Kiralyfalvi
. .
Laurence Senelick's book Gordon Craig's Moscow Hamlet: A
Reconstruction (Greenwood Press), a study of the seminal production created by
Stanislavsky and Craig at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1912, has been awarded a
George Freedley Award by the Theatre Library Association, as one of the best
works on the theatre to be published in 1982. The award was officially presented
in May in New York by the actor Alfred Drake.
BOOK REVIEWS
Alfreds Straumanis, ed. Baltic Drama. A Handbook and Bibliography. Prospect
Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1981,$35.00.
Baltic drama, little known in the West, is relatively young with most of the
major works having been written in the past one hundred years. It began under the
Russian tsars and continued to grow during the period of Latvian, Lithuanian and
Estonian independence between the two world wars. It continues to be written
and produced in the Soviet Baltic republics, as well as abroad. Many plays by
Baltic authors can be seen in Russian translation on the stages of Moscow and
Leningrad, including Enn Vetemaa's Monument, a rather pungent allegory about
the artist and society, which was presented at the "Sovremennik" Theatre in 1978,
directed by Arkadii Raikin. Certainly more of these plays deserve to be known in
the West.
For anyone interested in Russian and Eastern European Drama this
handbook is an essential reference tool. It lists all Latvian, Lithuanian, and
3
Estonian plays published or produced up to 1980, including plays for children and
the puppet theatre. It contains over four thousand six hundred titles; six hundred
synopses of the most popular plays; biographies of sixty major playwrights and a
very useful and enlightening survey of Baltic drama. Also included are
chronological tables of major Baltic dramatists; tables identifying the plays by
subject: folklore, history, social change, children; and a bibliography of source
materials. In 1973, the handbook is one of the fruits of the Baltic Drama Project,
established under the guidance of Alfreds Straumanis at Southern Illinois
University, Carbondale. It was funded in part by a grant from the NEH.
A.L.
Laurence Senelick, trans. and ed. Russian Dramatic Theor from Pushkin to the
Symbolists: An Anthology. (University of Texas Press Slavic Series, 5 Austin:
University of Texas Press, l981, $37.50. .
This anthology offers a selection of Russian critical writing on the drama
and theatre from 1820 to 1914, most of it published for the first time in English.
The nineteenth-century selections include writings by Pushkin, Gogol, Belinsky and
Sleptsov. They are important and revealing as a reminder that many of the social
and ethical concerns that play so important a part in Soviet drama and theatre
have their roots in a much earlier period.
The anthology is particularly for the light it sheds on .the heated
debate in the decade between 1904 and 1914 over Symbol ism and Naturalism. in
the theatre as reflected in the polemical writings on the subject by Bely ("The
Cherry Orchard"), Annensky (''Drama at the Lower Depths") and Bryusov ("Realism
and Convention on the Stage"). Also included are Evreinov's "Introduction to
Monodrama," Ivanov's "The Essence of Tragedy," and Andreev's "Letters on the
Theatre." Senelick prefaces his anthology with an extensive and very useful
introduction to both Russian drama and criticism. The select ions are well-
translated, judiciously striking a balance between reflecting the idiosyncracies of
the individual authors and making them comprehensible to the modern reader.
There are detailed notes for each of the selections and a selected bibliography.
A.L.
Andre Levinson. Ballet Old and New. Tr.. Susan Cook Summer. New York: Dance
Horizons, 1982, $11.50 (paperback).
Andre Levinson was born in St. Petersburg in 1887 and grew up in the world
of artistic ferment that made this Paris of the North the- center of pre-
Revolutionary cultural life. An extremely prolific writer, he began writing on the
dance in 1909, the same year Diaghilev opened his first Saison Russe in Paris.
When Revolution broke out, Levinson, like many other artists and writers, fled
westward. In 1921 he arrived in Paris where he soon established himself as a
major voice in French literary and artistic circles and became the first real dance
critic in France.
Levinson wrote this collection of articles (Staryi i novyi balet) in I 918; it
4
was his last work to appear in Russia. Included in it are his landmark critiques of
Diaghilev's "Saisons Russe," as well as his critical assessments of the ballet
masters Fokine and Nijinsky, and of Isadora Duncan's innovative achievements. Of
particular interest to the theatre practitioner are Levinson's evocations of such
famous productions as Sheherazade, Firebird, and Le Sacre du Printemps, and his
discussions of painting and music in the ballet theatre.
A.L.
OTt-ER PUBLICATIONS
Laslo Tikos, Universitiy of Massachusetts, has just published his translation
of Yuri Krotkov's Napoleon and the Shark, a comedy in three acts and an
epilogue. The play has been entered in a University of Massachusetts Summer
Theatre Contest and, if selected, that theatre would have the initial rights to
perform it. The play has been published under the auspices of the Program in
Soviet and Eastern European Studies-Occasional Papers Series No. 10, and may be
ordered (cost: $1 0) through Dr. Tikos, Department of Slavic Languages and
Literatures, Herter Hall 438, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 0 I 003.
Holub, Miroslav, Interferon, or on theater, tr. by Dana Habova and David Young.
Field Translation Series/Oberlin College, 1982. 158p (The Field translation
series, 7) 82-082128. I 0.95 ISBN 0-932440-12-6; 5.95 pa ISBN 0-932440-13-4.
CIP. .
Miroslav Holub is a unique combination of eminent scientist and
distinguished poet in his native Czechoslovakia. The present collection, translated
in close collaboration with the author, shows Holub to be unusual in yet another
way: the "Field Translation Series" usually does not present the same writer in
more than one volume; this is Holub's second. It contains an impressive
combination and interplay of two principal categories of imagery drawn from
laboratory science and the theater. Yet countless other metaphors appear as well
in the short occasional poems and in the longer and formally more theatrical
pieces constituting the collection. A masterful introduction by David Young
focuses on Holub's basically impersonal style curiously combined with
reminiscences of events in his personal life, on the author's use of metaphor as
hypothesis, and on the poet's place among the mid-twentieth-century Central and
East European writers whose work was shaped by the disasters of WW II. Though
not easy to read or understand, Interferon has the potential of being enjoyed and
appreciated by both literati and natural scientists. This in itself is no mean
accomplishment. Appropriate for libraries serving students at upper-division
undergraduate level and above.
RUSSIAN STAGE DESIGN
The following "Gallery Notes," by John Bowlt were published for an exhibit
of Russian stage design which originated at the University of Mississippi, and
traveled to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Phoenix Art Museum and the
University of Texas-Austin. It is also scheduled for exhibition in New York.
Professor Bowlt has kindly given us permission to reproduce the Notes here.
5
Introduction to the Exhibition
Russian Stage Design: Scenic Innovation 1900-1930, consisting of 235 set
and costume designs by 73 Russian artists, documents one of the most creative
eras in theatre and dance design. During the early decades of the twentieth
century an extraordinary ferment swept through the arts of Europe, and nowhere
more strongly than in Russia. Pre-revolutionary and revolutionary Russia
witnessed not only some of the boldest and most radical movements in the history
of Western art but also, as illustrated by the exhibition, a remarkable
efflorescence of collaboration between the visual and the performing arts. The
names of Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes, of Nijinsky and Massine, of Ida
Rubinstein immediately leap to mind, as do those of Stravinsky, of Benois and
Bakst, of Larionov and Gontcharova. Moreover, as represented in the exhibition,
independently of Diaghilev, brilliant cadres of avant-garde talents-e.g. Malevich,
Lissitzky, Exter, Popova, Rodchenko, Tatlin, and Stepanova-were revolutionizing
art and theatre and leading them into uncharted and radical directions.
In addition to presenting the "high" arts (ballet, drama, film) in Russia and
abroad, the exhibition also features the "low" arts (circus, cabaret, music hall,
puppet theater) and designs for the mass spectacles instituted under Lenin, which,
staged outdoors, employed casts of thousands.
The exhibition is drawn from the noted collection of Mr. and Mrs. Nikta D.
Lobanov.-Rostovsky. The ctlrrent exhibition was org<lnized by the Missi.ssippi'
Museum of. Art in collaboration with the Institute of Modern Russian Culture at
Blue Lagoon, Texas and t.he Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery of the University of
Texas at Austin. Funding for the exhibition was provided by Mississippi Ballet
International, Inc., and the National Endowment for the Arts. The Elvehjem
showing was made possible by funds from the Knapp Bequest Committee.
Preamble-Modern Russian Stage Design
The more we study 20th Russian stage design, especially that of the so-
called Silver Age (ca. 1900 - ca. 1920), the more we recognize its diversity and
creative potential. One critic wrote in 1925: "The entire Russian theater has
changed into a vast laboratory."
The dominant tendency in Russian and European theater in the second half
of the 19th century was Real ism. Theater served more as a commentary on
everyday life, rather than as a source of vision and fantasy. However, Russian
theater did avoid some of the excesses of the Victorian stage, partly because
Russian theater, like Russian visual arts, was comparatively young. It had
acquired its professional status only in the 18th century largely because of
Catherine the Great, who collected European works of art. Russian aristocrats
were converted to Catherine's taste, especially to French art, and before 1789,
they spent as much time in Paris as in St. Petersburg. And thus conditions
conspired to orient Russian theater toward the West.
Russian theater did not wholly escape Victorian trends, especially the
concept of dominance of a star, whose success or failure determined a
production's fate. Even with the experimental dramaturgy of Anton Chekhov and
6
the productions of Konstantin Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theater (founded 1898),
the actors still overshadowed the decor. Stanislavsky saw stage design as
documentation for his actors.
As the 19th century drew to a close, producers, patrons and designers began
to question Stanislavsky's concept of two-dimensional surface decoration and a
move began toward three-dimensional sets that would orchestrate the efforts of
dramatist, composer, actor, and artist. The designer's function would become
dynamic, instead of static.
Neo-Nationa I ism
The new attitude arose in part from the Neo-Nationlist or Neo-Russian
movement stimulated by the art colonies of Abramtsevo (founded in the 1870s)
and Talashkino (founded in the 1890s). Artists there collected traditional peasant
artifacts; they recorded and illustrated Russian fairy-tales and legends. This
evocation of peasant culture persisted throughout the Silver Age, and its influence
was evident in the sets and costumes for Diaghi lev's Ballets Russes ( 1909-1929).
There were others before Serei Diaghilev who sought to refurbish Russian
decorative arts. They believed in Russia's own culture; they disliked French art.
Mikhail Vrubel (not in this exhibition) of the Abramtsevo group transcended
conventional barriers and pushed the boundaries of painting and design farther
than his contemporaries. Perhaps only in Leon Bakst did he find kinship. Bakst's
use of form, color and sound evoked an emotional. sensuous force almost as
astonishing as Vrubel's. Bakst thought of the stage as a relief and the human body
as the principle organizational element on stage. His costume designs exposed the
body at key points and extended its action outward with trousers, pendants,
feathers, etc., as functional devices. He emerges cis a transitional figure who
belonged to both the 19th and 20th centuries.
The World of Art
Journals played an important role in the rebirth of Russian art early in this
century, the most influential perhaps being the World of Art. The artists, critics
and esthetes who supported this magazine were known by the same title. Among
them were Bakst, Alexandre Benois, Ivan Bilibin and Konstantin Somov.
The organizational force behind the group was Diaghilev, who became
known in the West as director of the Ballets Russes. Much has been written about
him by Western and emigre critics. Despite the long prestige he has enjoyed in
the West and despite the fact that he was totally Russian, he has still to take his
rightful place in his own country.
One of the foremost members of the World of Art was Alexandre Benois.
Very erudite and very moderate, he remained outside of the avant-garde
movements. He had a passion for the French 17th century (especially Versailles),
which was reflected in his designs. However, like Diaghilev, he knew the French
expected some "barbarism" from Russia. Diaghilev satisfied this desire with
"Petrouchka" ( 1911) and "Le Sacre du Printemps" (1918). Stravinsky's music for
"Le Sacre du Printemps" set off a riot when it was first performed in Paris, while
Benois' stage designs for "Petrouchka" revealed a spontaneous side, far removed
7
from his usual traditional work.
Toward a New Esthetic of Stage Design
Bakst, Benois and their World of Art colleagues produced remarkable sets
and costumes for the Ballet Russes. According to a critic, however, World of Art
artists were basically picture-makers. The Symbolist group known as the Blue
Rose applied new concepts to stage design. For example, a background of a single
curtain provided a rather narrow stage. In such a scenic framework was an
attempt to "burn the outmoded devices of the naturalistic stage." It took a new
generation of artists to move stage design from surface to space; among these
were Alexandra Exter and Alexander Rodchenko.
Neo-Primitivism
The Symbolist theater declined under a new artistic and literary
movement: Neo-Primitivism, which existed between 1908 and 1913. It involved
the use of primitive forms and subjects. It has kinship with French Fauvism and
German Expressionism. Neo-Primitivism was reflected in "The Firebird"
production of 1926 with designs by Natalia Gontcharova the backdrop for Scene 2
is a vision of the Christian City and reflects the Neo-Primitivists' and especially
Gontcharova's debt to the design of the ancient Russian icon. Here costume plans
for the unrealized liturgical ballet "Liturgie" also recall icons.
At this point Gont.charova's life-long <;ompani'on Mikhail Lorionov must be
mentioned. He was another .leader in the Neo-Primitivist movement. He also
used the icon and the lubok, a handcolored broadside with bright, flat coloring, and
an overall decorative quality, cis bases for his designs. Under the spell of artists
working in Paris he developed a non-objective art called Rayonism. He knew the
work of Cubists and was impressed by the dynamic quality of Italian Futurism.
Alexandra Exter
As a pioneer in the move from "idealist esthetics" to "consistent artistic
materialism," Alexandra Exter merits attention. She moved from the confines of
the pictorial plane to the broader space of theater and cinema. She managed to
transcend the conventions of painting and to organize real forms in real spaces,
developing the principles first alluded to by Vrubel and Bakst. Exter modulated
forms in space, striking a perfect balance between mass and space through her
complex of horizontal planes and verticals. For example, one observer described
her initial project for "Romeo and Juliet" ( 1917) this way: "The box of the stage is
full up from top to bottom with bridges, platforms, mirrors flash (later to be
replaced with tinplate). The platforms and ladders expand the box of the stage."
Exter's ideas for stage design were expanded in the Constructivist theater of the
1920s.
Vladimir Tatlin and Kazimir Malevich
More iconoclastic than Paris-trained Exter were Malevich and Tatlin,
"these hooligans of the palette" who turned from the West toward indigenous
inspiration. A major influence on Tatlin's work was the icon. In icons of the 15th
8
and 16th centuries he found the spiralic and S-form compositions which he used as
a structure in many of his designs. Malevich attempted a new artistic language
when in 1913, as a backdrop for the opera "Victory Over the Sun," he used simply a
square within a square, the inner one divided diagonally in two areas: one white
the other black. He used other unorthodox geometric devices: cylinders, cones,
spheres on the stage and lighting to create abstract forms.
A distillation of the geormetric forms introduced by Malevich may be seen
in Lissitzky's costumes for puppets in the 1920 production of "Victory Over the
Sun.". In Lissitzky's costumes, which were never produced, the central axis has
been destroyed completely and assymetry dominates.
The October Revolution
The Bolshevik coup of 1917 naturally exerted an effect on Russian art,
although, in some cases, ideas that seemed radical had their real origins before
1917. Cultural life was confusing after the Revolution. The central question was
what kind of art would reflect the aims of the Revolution. The notion of a
proletarian art was discussed. The new artist must be freed from his cultural
heritage to work closer to the factory. Proletarian culture must be international,
dynamic and mobile.
Constructivism became manifest in theater designs in the 1920's.
Precedents for Constructivist had been established in the teen's by such
artists as Exter. Multi-faceted constructions and platforms the whole
space of the stage, and mechanically moving components characterized
Constructivist productions. Lissitzky, Liubov Popova, Alexander Rodchenko,
Goergii and Vladimir Stenberg, Varvaro Stepanova (nos. 232-234), and Tatlin are
among the best-known artists in the Constructivist movement who worked for the
theater.
However, the austerity of the productions was alien to many theater-goers;
what they wanted was either melodrama or an epic movie. They wanted
distracting entertainment. By the late 1920s, Soviet stage design had returned to
decoration, from space to surface. There were exceptions, of course, but these
experiments did not halt the progression back to the classical tradition.
Expanding the Concept of Theater
One of the remarkable developments after 1917 was the trend away from
conventional theater to the cinema, cabaret, vaudeville, circus, and open-air mass
activities. Many designers turned their talents to these less-esteemed media.
Suddenly everyone wanted to laugh and enjoy the spontaneity of the cabaret, the
circus, and the variety theater.
The Decorative Revival of the 1920s
Like all Soviets arts of the 1920s, stage design was affected by the mass
emigration of artists, critics, and patrons to Berlin, Paris and New York, and by
the increasing orientation of the state apparatus toward a simple narrative form
that was known as Socialist Realism. Neither in the East nor in the West did
Russian artists and producers maintain the elan of the 191 Os and the 1920s.
9
Rather, they restored the decorated surface to the stage.
For the Russian artist at home, his enforced dependence upon the political
machine and the code of Socialist Realism, was an inevitable and irreversible
process. As Bolshevik power consolidated, private enterprise ended and formal
experimentation came under attack as a relic of bourgeois consciousness; it was
anti-proletarian and had to be eliminated. With the proclamation in 1934 of
Socialist Realism as the universal style of Soviet culture, stage design returned to
the picturesque decoration of the 19th century: narrative and obvious.
SERBAN'S THREE SISTERS
This article on the production of Chekhov's play at the American Repertory
Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from November, 1982, through February,
1983, was submitted by Professor Jerrold A. Phillips, Northeastern University,
Boston, Massachusetts. We are grateful to him for this excellent review.
Andrei Serban, continuing to work his way through the Chekhov canon,
directed a provocative and controversial Three Sisters for Robert Brustein's
American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Using a lively new
translation by Jean-Claude van ltallie, it is played with one intermission between
the second and third acts of Chekhov's text.
The most striking element _of the production is the. fluid way in which
Serban uses the Loeb Promo Center stage. Employing few props and very little
furniture, the. stage essentially remains a large, open space through which actors
are continually moving. The first three acts represent various interiors in the
Prozorov house, and for these Beni Montresor, who designed the settings, lights,
and costumes (much of Montresor's work in the past has been for opera), provides
variations of a basic setup of a mirrored floor (made up of what appeared to be
four by four foot panels of mirrored mylar covered by a rigid clear plastic sheet of
the same size) and a brilliant scarlet velour curtain that defines the back of the
acting space. A bank of white lights is placed on the floor on either side of the
stage, perpendicular to the front, defining the sides of the acting space, and
forcing entrances from the sides to be made either far upstage or far downstage.
A black masking curtain extends from each bank of lights to the flies. Upstage of
the scarlet drapes is a large backdrop, realistically painted to represent a cinder-
block back wall of a theatre. In addition to providing a means of upstage exit and
entrance for the actors who could disappear around the side of the backdrop (the
scarlet drape, which was not always present, did not mask the entire upstage area
even when it was used), the cinder-block backdrop also suggested the artificiality
of the theatrical presentation.
The setting for the first act has the scarlet curtain extending across
approximately two-thirds the width of the stage. Hung from a plainly visible iron
pipe, it is not extended to its full height, bunching up in small folds at the
bottom. There are two rows of seven simple bentwood chairs facing each other,
one row running diagonally from down left center to up left, and the other
diagonally from down right center to up center. At various points in the action
actors remove chairs from their original positions and carry them to some other
place on stage, where they proceed to sit on them. A large, gold-painted
10
gramophone sits on the floor, stage right, with its horn pointing toward center
stage. A piano, up left, completes the stage picture.
As the lights dim, military music is heard, and the voices of the three
sisters reading the opening lines of the play are broadcast over the house sound
system. The sisters enter up right, Masha in black, Irina, carrying flowers, in
white, and Olga, in royal blue, also carrying flowers. They hold a pose, a
brilliantly lit image, the stage all glittering primary colors with black and white
contrasts. Olga begins speaking her lines over the taped dialogue. The sisters
move to the front of the stage, where they line up, facing the audience, and begin
speaking as the taped sound fades away.
Serban takes full advantage of the open stage space by having actors
continually dispersed throughout it. For example, a few moments after the play
begins Irina and Masha are sitting in chairs on stage left, Solyony and Tuzenbach
are standing right, Vershinin is seated center in one of the bentwood chairs he has
carried there, and Chebutykin is upstage, about equally distant from Vershinin and
the Solyony-Tuzenbach group. This practice of arranging the characters about the
entire playing area results in their being constantly involved in long crosses to
speak to another character, providing the stage with constant movement and
energy. It also helps to suggest an isolation in which each character exists in this
play, each one vitually in a separate world. When characters are grouped
together, the grouping is frequently a stylized one, often held as a tableau. Many
times two actors speaking to each other are downstage, both facing the
audience. There are few times when actors are grouped casually and reali.stically,
and even these instances, such as one in which Masha is kneeling next to a seated
Vershinin, strike us a ~ "stagy," because they appear : posed, because of their
contrast with the isolation and .frontal groupings that predominate, and because
they are frequently held for long, turning into a tableau.
Two examples will illustrate how Serban uses his stage. The first involves
the handling of the end of Chekhov's first act. Serban has solved the problem of
where to put the dining room by simply dispensing with it. Two actresses,
servants dressed in black dresses with aprons enter and cross to the center of the
scarlet drape, where the curtain is split. Each grasps one side of the split and
walks about five feet towards the side of the stage she is closest to, holding the
curtain up, forming a graceful, curved opening at the center of the scarlet
curtain. Olga invites everyone to dinner, and the actors exit through this opening,
leaving Tuzenback and Irina alone on stage for a short scene together. Soon
Natasha, in a brilliant pool of light, appears in the opening of the scarlet curtain.
Everyone returns, soon forming a straight line across the back of the acting area.
Fedotik and Roday enter down right with a large camera, everyone reassembles in
the curtain opening as two photographs are shot. Fedotik gives Irina her present,
a top, which she kneels down and begins playing with. The scarlet curtain slowly
rises until it disappears into the flies, leaving the cinder-block-painted drop as the
back of the stage space. All of the characters are in a line at the back of the
acting area; most of them are teasing Natasha. Then, with the exception of
Natasha, they cross right and exit behind the backdrop. Natasha comes to the
front of the stage, where she sits on one of the bentwood chairs; Andrei enters,
approaches Natasha, and grabs her around the neck from behind. A lively folk
song begins to be sung behind the backdrop, providing a background for Andrei's
proposal to Natasha. Andrei and Natasha embrace and sustain a long kiss as all of
II
the characters enter, sti II singing, and cross in a line from the stage right end of
the backdrop, across the front of the backdrop and off stage left, each actor
smiling as he or she gazes intently at the rapt, wrapped in each other, and
oblivious Andrei and Natasha. It is a beautiful, vibrant, and richly comic moment.
The other illustration occurs in the fourth act, which takes place outside
the Prozorov house. In this act there is no scarlet curtain, as the cinder-block
backdrop defines the upstage limit of the acting area; the mirrored floor is now
largely covered with brown, red, and yellow leaves, as if trees has been
surrounding the acting area and had shed their Autumnal foliage. Solyony and
Tuzenbach have gone off to their duel; a gunshot has been heard but the
characters on stage are not aware of what has happened. Military music is playing
in the background, as it was at the beginning of the play. Irina, Masha, and Olga
are on stage, up center, lined up in a row next to each other facing the front.
Chebutykin runs on from down left, he crosses to Olga, who has crossed left to
meet him. He whispers something to her, they both rush offstage, quickly
followed by Masha. Irina is left alone, the whole stage to herself. Chebutykin
yells, from offstage, "The Baron has just been killed in a duel." Irina weaves and
collapses to the floor, lying in a fetal position. Masha and Olga rush in, kneel next
to her and try to console her as the diaglogue, once again tape recorded, comes
over the theatre's sound system. In this production, which has continualy
projected images of isolation, Serban has cleared the stage at this point so that
the full isolation of Irina's experience can be emphasized. It is a very powerful
and strikig moment.
The in the production is very interesting. It appears as if each
performer has sought . to identify and a .particular aspect of the
character he or she is playing. In this production Olga (Marianne Owen) plays self-
pity, weeping frequently and dragging herself around, head buried in her chest;
Irina (Cherry Jones) plays youthfulness, easily enthused, fascinated by the gift of a
set of crayons; Masha (Cherly Giannini) seems to be working off of ennui, unable
to pay attention to anything anyone is saying. Vershinin (Alvin Epstein) is
pompously lecturing all the time, infused with a gleeful optimism about the
future; Tuzenbach (John Bottoms) works on hesitancy and indecision with a sing-
song voice; and Solyony (Tony Shalhoub) on playing weirdness, with strange smile
and intense stare sustained throughout. Kulygin (Richard Grusin) plays at
convincing everyone, including himself, that he is happy as he lumbers about,
awkward in movement and intonation. Andrei (Thomas Derrah) is a barrelful of
frustration and remorse, speaking to himself and glaring at everybody; Natasha
(Karen MacDonald) is all arrogance and stupid haughtiness, storming around and
losing her temper at the slightest provocation; Chebutykin (Jeremy Geidt) plays a
weariness and hollowness that animate the entire range of his activities, from the
puckish affection he lavishes on the sisters to the drunken babbling with his pants
fallen down around his ankles during Act Ill. There seems to be considerable work
directed towards each character focusing on himself or herself rather than
relating to others, and there emerges from the production an impression of so
many spoiled children, each isolated in his or her own concerns.
Not everyone found the production to his or her liking. Kevin Kelley, critic
for the Boston Globe, for example, found the production terribly wrongheaded, and
placed it on his list of the ten worst plays of the year, sharing the opinion of a
portion of Boston's rather conservative theatregoing audience. But the production
12
found its audience and was selling out by the end of its run; many younger or less
tradition-bound spectators found Serban's work on Three Sisters very exciting.
Serban's production reflects themes traditionally associated with the play.
The relentless passage of time is suggested, for example, by highlighting such
moments in the text as that in Act Ill when the drunken Chebutykin steps to the
front of the stage, raises up a ceramic clock in front of him with both hands, as if
showing it to the audience, and then quite deliberately drops it to the floor,
watching it smash into a hundred pieces. Serban also presents this idea by such
devices as projecting shadows of a virtual forest of leaves on the scarlet curtain
at the beginning of the play; these are the leaves that cover the floor in the last
act.
Serban, however, goes beyond traditional approaches to this play, and uses
his stage and the various elements of the production to add new levels of meaning
to the play. With all of its images of isolation, in space and characterization, with
the obvious theatricality of its setting, with the frontal arrangement of actors and
continued use of tableaux, there is a sense that the text has been broken down into
small, discrete units, rather than the seamless web that is the tradition of
Stanislavsky. And it is in finding meaning in these individual units, in the way
they are related to one another, and in the associations they evoke that the play
takes on rich new dimensions. I found Serban's Three Sisters an extraordinary
work, beautiful to watch, brightly inventive and imaginative without ever being
gimmicky, and fascinating to contemplate. Serban gives us the gift of being able
to see Chekhov freshly once qgain.
. .
Tl- ARENA, lSTV AN ORKENY AND ScREENPLAY
The Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., is certainly one of the finest
ensemble theaters in the United States. Both the staging and the quality of the
performers are superb. Guided by its Producing Director Zelda Fichandler, the
Arena has consistently presented a mixture of the traditional and avant-garde
which has never failed to satisfy even the most demanding theatergoer. Its
performances abroad, including the Soviet Union, have brought the company
aditional acclaim and an international reputation.
Fortunately for us, Ms. Fichandler has a strong interest in Soviet and East
European theatre and drama. During recent years the Arena Stage has presented
a variety of such plays at both the Arena On-the-round) and the Kreeger
theaters. Among them were outstanding, innovative productions of Gorky's Lower
Depths; Vampilov's Duck Hunting; Mrozek's Enchanted Night, The Police and
Emigres; Erdman's The Suicide; and Aitmatov's Ascent of Mount Fuji.
Now let us get to the main subject of this article. Istvan Orkeny's
university education, in deference to his father's wishes, was in fields quite
remote from his true love-literature. He received degrees in pharmacology and
in chemical engineering. After World War II, in which he served, he was
imprisoned in the Soviet Union. It was therefore not unti I he reached middle age
that he could turn to writing as a full-time profession. He soon became one of
Hungary's leading writers of novels, short stories, plays and theatre criticism of
the post-war period. He was especially loved by the Hungarian readers for his
13
subtle sense of humor, his political sensibility and for his humanity. He died in
1980, just a few days after having completed Screenplay. Zelda Fichandler
introduced Orkeny as a playwright to the American public by producing his The
Tot Family at the Arena in 1975. Two years later she produced the American
premiere of Orkeny's Catsplay which was subsequently also shown at the Guthrie
Theater and the Manhattan Theater Club.
In 1981 Screenplay was first produced by the Vigszinhaz Theater in Hungary
and is still in their repertoire. In the summer of 1982, Ms. Fichandler and Arena's
Development Director Elspeth Udvarhelyi went to Budapest to see Screenplay
(F orgatokonyv) and to discuss the play with the playwright's widow, Susan Orkeny
and with the company. The play went into in rehearsal at the Arena in December,
1982, and premiered in March, 1983. The adaptation by Gitto Honegger and Zelda
Fichandler was from a literal translation by Eniko Molnar Basa and was directed
by Zelda Fichandler herself. For a true understanding of her approach it is
necessary to quote from her remarks to the assembled Arena company on the first
day of rehearsal, December 21, 1982:
The largest point and the most resonant dialectic suggested by the play,
and I am sure sensed either consciously or unconsciously by Orkeny, has to
do with the nature of invented human systems in general, and of our
capacity (or incapacity) for truth and freedom. The final paradox might be
posed this way: in order to understand anything, you have to refuse final
knowledge. Knowledge, or dogma, or any Ism, is not truth, it is merely
agre.ement. You agree with me, we agree with someone. else, we all have
knowLedge, put we get no closer to the truth of the stars. You cannot
understand by making defin.itions or programs, only by turning over the
possibilities. It is called thinking. If I say I know, I stop thinking; but so
long as I think, I come to understand, and I might approach some truth
The "duo," duality, dialectic at the root of the play, gives it its
hallucinatory, absurdist oscillating tone. The universe that is created is our
own, universally-perceived modern universe, a schizoid world where the
individual feels threatened and alienated by outward reality and falls back
upon such devices as the creation of a false self-system (role-playing), the
splitting of selves, or denial mechanism and repression of knowledge about
oneself. It is the torment of Barabas not to be able to maintain a constant
philosophical or even moral position, and not to be able to feel whole about
whom he loves and what he is loyal to; it is a position that anyone in the
modern world can understand. In fact, all our modern art springs from this
sense of the divided (dual, "duo") self. As the Peruvian poet puts it:
"Everything has a master above, everything is locked with a key." We feel
powerless, not whole.
But now to the play itself. The original title The Barabas Trial, is quite
clear in its implications. The title was later changed by Orkeny to reflect the
"Screenplay Trials" or "Show Trials" which occurred throughout Eastern Europe in
the early fifties. The audience is immediately faced with a series of historical
events which are definitely not common knowledge among the vast majority of
American theatergoers and which require rather extensive program notes. Alas,
all too many people to read failed before a performance. It was therefore quite
possible for many in the audience to have missed many of the central ideas the
play was proposing. It concerns itself with a central character, aptly named Adam
14
Barabas, who is loosely patterned after Laszlo Rajk, the Hungarian Foreign
Minister who became the primary defendant in the show trials of 1949. Barabas,
the Hero of the Revolution, an underground fighter during the Hitler period and
presently the ambassador to France, is brought back to Hungary for a special, one-
time performance of the Grand Circus, which turns out to behis own trial in the
circus arena-the staging in a theatre-in-the-round is, of course, ideally suited.
Armed soldiers, clowns and acrobats, quite capable of political flip-flops, are
abundant. The trial judge is the hypnotic "maestro"-the circus ringmaster in full
regalia, who can change the configuration of any concrete or abstract entity in his
domain with a crack of his whip. He is the symbol of power, in total undisputed
control of his world. His pronouncements are law, no matter how distorted or
ludicrous. The trial proceeds. Barabas is accused of treason against his
underground comrades during the fascist occupation. The action shifts from 1949
back to the period of 1944 and then abruptly forward to the short-lived Hungarian
uprisings against Soviet occupation in 1956. The shifts are sometimes not too
perceptible and require a great deal of concentration by the audience. In the
words of one clown: "I told you that art was unpredictable!"
The surrealistic circus setting, the oversized alligator and the bears
suspended in mid-air, the dream-like atmosphere accentuated by poisonous greens
and ironic pinks, give the stage a Kafkaesque theatricality which is further
underlined by hoisting the performers into the air on swings at unlikely monents,
where they defy both gravity and logic. It is outstanding theatre and fascinating
in both form _and contel")t. The findings of one theatre critic, that "it's not very
en.tertainin_g-but it sure gives you a lot to think about" is only half true. The
ending, for example, is beautifully contrived. In keeping with the circus motif,
Barabas is finally shot down by a firing squad from.a trapeze . He lurches to the
ground. which opens up and swallows the body. His presence has been wiped from
the earth. He has become a non-person-simply the end of just one of many circus
performances.
The political implications of the play are quite clear, but there is a deeper
meaning. In the words of David Richards of the Washington Post:
Orkey's precise historical allusions are largely lost on American audiences,
but his greater point is not: There is no Truth in this society, merely a
succession of temporary, continually revised truths. In such a climate, man
cannot only be led to doubt others, he can be forced to doubt himself.
Special mention must be made of Stanley Anderson who was truly
outstanding in the role of Barabas. His passage from extreme confidence, to
insecure befuddlement, to total resignation, is sharply disquieting. The maestro,
as played by John Seitz, is similarly impressive. He is just the right mixture of
hypnotist, humorist, sadist and incisive intellectual who bombards us with
convoluted logic. All in all it was a superb performance, beautifully staged. It
created great controversy among Washington newspaper and television critics
ranging from rave reviews to abject panning. I shall resist references to the
parable "Pearls before Swine," which would be a bit harsh. I must say for myself,
however, that although the evening was mentally exhausting, I enjoyed it
immensely. I must also express my admiration for Zelda Fichandler who, no
doubt, was expecting mixed reviews, for her courage and commitment to bring
this new, fresh material to her audience. Finally, I believe it only fitting to close
IS
..
with a quotation from Istvan Orkeny himself:
What guilt could bring on the wrath of Olympus--except, perhaps, the guilt
of being born in an absurd age, an impossible moment of history for the
intellect to grow to full flower. A time when the only choices were to
become a rebel, or to become Sisyphus.
Leo Hecht
GROTOWSKI'S AKROPOLIS ON FILM
This film records what is now a classic performance by Jerzy Grotowski's
company, the Polish Laboratory Theatre. A powerful rendering of the
concentration camp phenomenon, Akropolis will remain an important milestone in
Grotowski's creative work. The film is essential viewing for anyone interested in
the Holocaust or in the history of experimental theatre.
Grotowski devised his play from Stanislaw Wyspianski's drama of the same
title, performed in Wawel Cathedral in Cracow in 1904. Seeing the cathedral as
"the burial place of the tribes," a holy and haunted ground, Wyspianski sought to
evoke from it the essence of European history, to call up personages from Greek
epic and the Bible who would re-enact their fata l deeds, persons whose struggles
determined who we . are, who remain somehow present in us. Grotowski,
.influenced also .by Tadeusz Borowski, the Polish post of Auschwitz, tranferred
Wyspianski's mythic scenes from. Wawel to what he ironically considered the "holy
ground" of our century, a concentration camp. The action of his olay consists of
inmates building their crematorium and in the end disappearing into it.
Throughout the play they turn from their tasks to enact parts of the stories of
Jacob and Esau and the Fall of Troy.
Grotowski manages to provide the viewer with the sense of a present,
totally perverted world. He accomplishes this through the highly stylized
movement and voices of the master-craftsmen who are his actors: It is a
spectacle in which human beings-mere bodies in genderless, coarse tunics, heavy
boots and berets-accept their subservience to the objects-a metal tub, a pair of
wheelbarrows, several tin pipes-which become the means of their destruction.
When the significant myths of our civilization are acted out by these figures, the
result is a highly unnerving type of theatre-within-theatre.
The piece is performed on and around a small platform with chairs for the
audience grouped here and there on different levels within the acting area. At the
beginning the materials and implements are piled on the platform, with a pattern
of ropes strung overhead. One of two gangly cloth dummies-corpses-lie about.
After a perfunctory announcement by one of the actors, the inmates stomp into
the playing area, carrying two wheelbarrows. At the end of the play the pipes
have been attached to the wires in a crazy pattern. As they hurry about their
tasks or slip into their myths, the prisoners converse, sing and chant lyrically or
grotesquely. The distorted Polish is only summarily translated in occasional
"voiceovers." (The piece communicates powerfully to viewers unschooled in
Polish.) The inmates carry corpses-dummies-about, sort the hair of the dead--
rolls of rumpled clear plastic-interrogate one of their number, his questioners
16
shoving him back and forth between them, then tumbling him into a tub. They
also pray and make love.
Many of the play's most powerful effects derive from the spectacle of
human bodies in some unusual distortive relation with objects, especially when the
human beings whose bodies are so transformed go on expressing such normal
human experiences as love, lust, and hope. A man kneels praying in a crude metal
tub shaped like a bathtub, with its rounded end pointing up, suggesting a chapel. A
woman rubs her back to his, urging him to hold her. The tub falls, and the man is
held prone inside. The woman mounts the tub's rounded end on her knees
awkwardly, chanting to the prostrate figure below her. Suddenly they are
together in the tub, back to back and trembling, suggesting the act of love. From
time to time both human actors and dummies hand on the horizontal ropes. The
inmate-Jacob twists his torso into the u-shaped support of a wheelbarrow and
kneels, the barrow seeming strapped to his back. The inmate-Angel lies in the
barrow, and their wrestling and dialogue proceeds in this posture, the Angel
thudding his heavy heels against the barrow's lip, Jacob tilting the barrow
repeatedly to strike the Angel's head against the floor.
The disturbing quality of this work is hard to trace, but doubtless some of it
comes from the inmates' pathetic acceptance of the crudest objects as focal
points for meaningful human emotions. In the wedding of Jacob and Rachel,
inmates form a procession led by Jacob who lovingly carries a bent pipe to which
he holds the end of a long train of crumpled plastic, others in the procession
lifting this "veil," chanting joyously in to Jacob's lead, halting and
bowi"ng, winding among the spectators beneath the crossing cords.
The who1e spectacle. is delicately varied in mood. Paris and Helen (both
played by male inmates) sit side by side, arms inside their tunics, speaking of love,
jeered at by the others. Casandra sings a haunting lyric, the camera holding
steady on her dreaming face. A raucous violin (sometimes playing a theme from
Sigmund Romberg) divides segments of the Jacob story. Quiet moments between
inmates are cut short by sudden returns to work, boots clattering. The whole
range of moods climaxes with the final procession: The crematorium is finished;
chanting slowly the inmates begin filing round, almost joyous in their relief,
following their leader, who holds a limp dummy aloft. They mount the platform,
remove the trap and disappear. The trap closes. After a long pause the audience
starts to disperse.
At the beginning of the film, before the performance is shown, Peter Brook
discusses Akropolis, commenting especially on Grotowski's challenge in rendering
in theatre so extreme a phenomenon as the concentration camp. During the
performance the camera shifts between general views of the acting area and
closeups of actors' faces (often contorted into masks), their hands grasping
wheelbarrow handles or bent backward over the ropes or their heavy boots
thudding the floor. Spectators are visible throughout the performance, alien
among the ritualistic actions occurring at their elbows. Given the interspersing of
players and audience, a moving camera was inevitable.
The readiest sources of information on the performance are in T adeusz
Burzynski and Zbigniew Osinski, Grotowski's Laboratory (Warsaw: lnterpress,
I 979) and Grotowsk i, Towards a Poor Theatre (New York: Simon & Shuster,
17
1968). The film is available by purchase or rental from Arthur Cantor, Inc., 33
West 60th Street, Penthouse, New York I 0023; (212) 664-1290. _
Addison Bross
SIBERIADA
The 1978 Soviet film Siberiada which won a prize at the Cannes Film
Festival, was recently released in New York, and is now being shown in a number
of cities in the United States to excellent reviews. The film, which has English
subtitles, was directed by Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky, one of Russia's best
directors. He is particularly effective in an area which is one of the weaknesses
of Soviet contemporary film art-lighting techniques. His color shifts, fades and
glows; his mystical lights conjure up a fantastic realm of the senses.
As Rita Kempley, a film critic of the Washington Post, so well describes,
Siberiada is filled with symbols and sounds. Woods whisper to a road laborer who
pets each tree he fells to build a wooden road to Central Russia. There is a
menagerie of mataphor: starving baby chicks, mating swans, flying geese and a
reappearing brown bear who comes to sniff the progress on the road.
The story takes place in Elan, a remote hamlet in the vast tundra. It is an
elegy which spans a period of 60 years of civil and scientific disruption. The
plotline follows the development through the generations of two families with
opposing philosophies cind idealogies: the Ustiuzhanins, woodsmen and wayfarers;
and the Solomins, and gentry, who seem to be doomed to marry, murder
and misunderstand one another since before the Ci_vll War. The film is broken into
four parts, each focusing on a single character.
The enduring metaphor is the Eternal Grandfather, the ancient S_iberian
sage, a sorcerer with birds in his hair, who allegorically acts as a catalyst to the
occasionally viscious, occasionally highly sensual encounters between the Solomins
and the Ustiuzhanins. This is a poetic film which obviously required the total,
personal commitment of its director who, incidentaly, himself co-authored the
script with Valentin Yezhov.
The romantic, allegorical mood, which is sustained throughout most of the
three-hour-long film, is somewhat shattered near the end. A modern oil-driller,
extremely well portrayed by the director's brother, Nikita Mikhalkov, comes to
Elan to pump its wealth away. The end is shocking in that it destroys the
romantic mood and makes one hunger for the sentimentality so well expressed in
its earlier reels.
L.H.
OF ANDRZEJ WAJDA AND OTI-ER PURGES
Andrzej Wajda is certainly the best known film director not only in his
native Poland, but has similar acclaim throughout the western world. Among his
best-known films which were shown prominently in most major cities of the
United States and other western countries were Man of Marble and Man of Iron
18
which were highly critical of the Polish political system and totally supportive of
Solidarity, and which won several prizes at international film festivals. He was
the head of the highly prominent Warsaw film group "Zespol X."
On May 3, 1983, the Polish Government announced the dismissal of Wajda
and of two of his closest associates, Managing Director for the past II years
Barbara Pec-Siesicka and Literary Director Boleslaw Michalek. The official
reason given for Wajda's termination was that his studio "demonstrated a
significant concentration of activities which were inconsistent with the policies of
a socialist state." Government spokesman Jerzy Urban further stated that a
significant number of films produced by the group, which includes many of
Poland's most prominent directors, were not suitable for distribution in Poland.
He added that "this does not mean that the film group itself will be dissolved.
This only means a change in its leadership."
The 57-year-old Wajda was also charged with spending much too much of
his time outside the borders of Poland, particularly in the West, instead of
attending his duties at home. Wajda spent a great deal of time in Paris in 1982
where he filmed his latest release ''Danton." He is now in West Germany directing
the filming of a love story.
Wajda's dismissal is a further manifestation of a hard line against Poland's
key cultural, intellectual and artistic organizations and movements. In February
of this year the Polish Communist Party ordered the Writers' Union to see. to it
t ~ t its members openly pledge their loyalty to the Communist system and purge
their. organization of subversive elements and foreign spies. The Writers' Union
had been suspended in December, 1981, and was thus given no.tice that it could
only be ressurrected if it followed these orders. The Union has approximately
I ,300 members of which only about 270 are party members.
In April, 1983, the 12,000-member Artists' Union was suspended for
refusing to recant resolutions in support of Solidarity, appealing for a general
amnesty for politcal prisoners, and criticizing the government for actions against
other cultural bodies.
Other former hotbeds of Solidarity supporters such as Associations of
Journalists and Student Organizations were dissolved under martial law and were
recently reconstituted in tamer forms.
Wajda chairs the Filmmakers' Union. It is unclear at the present time
whether he has also been deprived of this function. We also have no knowledge
what Wajda's plans are for the immediate future.
REPORT ON TI-E SOVIET TI-EATRE
1\EW PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHTS
L.H.
(This is the second part of a two-part article written by Dr. Alma Law for
NEWSNOTES. The first part appeared in the March 1983, issue.)
19
Aleksei Kazantsev, whose The Old House (Starii dom) was such a hit several
seasons ago, has a new play, And the Silver Cord Will Be Broken (I porvetsia
serebrianyi shnur), currently on the little stage of the Mayakovsky Theatre,
directed by Evgeny Lazarev. The play is set at the dacha of a famous writer who
during the Stalinist period "wrote what he had to write" and who wishes now to
write the truth, but finds that he has lost the ability to do so.
Although on the surface Silver Cord gives the appearance of being a
domestic drama, Kazantsev himself warns that this is not the case. Just as with
the The Old House, he has structured the play on two levels with the past,
symbolized by the dacha, built in the early thirties by a high party official, serving
as a background against which the problems of contemporary life are worked out.
At the center of the play are Aleksei, the old writer's grandson; Nina, a prostitute
Aleksei has picked upon the suburban train, and Aleksei's friend and colleague,
Markushev. There's also a younger grandson and a neighbor boy who is dying.
None of the many themes touched upon in the play is original with Kazantsev
(disaffected youth, bureaucratic chicanery, dying writer who now wants to write
the truth, alcoholism, prostitution). In fact the playwright has been accused by at
least one critic of merely putting together a pastiche of ideas taken from other
playwrights.
Nevertheless, Silver Cord presents an extremely thoughtful, albeit overly
wordy, and quite revealing picture of life among the privileged by someone who
knows that world from the inside. It's not surprising that the play has evoked
strong reactions ever since it was firSt read at Arbuzov's Studiq for new
p'laywrights in 1979, 'and that' it has taken considerable effort on Kazantsev's part
to get it staged. According to Vera Maksimova in her perceptive article "The
Fate of First Plays" (Sovremennaia dramaturgiia No. 2, 1983), after plans for ci
production at the Leningrad Gorky Theatre were dropped, Silver Cord was next
offered to the "Contemporary" Theatre where it was again abandoned, this time
midway in rehearsals when one of the actors fell ill. Only then was it finally
accepted for staging at the Mayakovsky.
A promising playwright, Liudmila Razumovskaia, has recently appeared.
Her play, Dear Elena Sergeevna (Dorogaia Elena Sergeevna) has been staged by
numerous theatres, including the Lenin Komsomol in Leningrad where it can be
seen on their newly-opened Little Stage. It is about four graduating high school
students who go to visit their teacher, Elena Sergeevna, to wish her a happy
birthday. Two of the students have something else on their minds, however, to get
the key to the safe containing their failing exams so that they can replace them
with passing ones. Razumovskaia also has a second play, A Garden Without Soil
(Sad bez zemli) in rehearsal at the Gorky Theatre directed by G. Egorov.
The works of another relatively young playwright, Victor Merezhko, are
also being well-received. Among them are: Ni httime Entertainments (Nochnye
zabavy), Beavers (Bobry), and The Windmill of Happiness Mel'nitsa schast'ye).
The latter was staged last season by Arkady Kats at the Theatre of Russian Drama
in Riga. It enjoyed considerable success when shown in Moscow during the
theatre's visit last summer. Set in the country during the immediate post-
Revolutionary period, this herioc comedy depicts the conflict between Stepan
Bobyl, who builds a windmill of happiness which is supposed to work forever
"without wind, water or fuel," and the kulaks who, in order to protect their
20
interests, kill Bobyl and burn down the windmill. The play is also in rehearsal on
the Little Stage at the Moscow Art Theatre.
The Georgian playwright Aleksandr Chkhaidze has contributed a number of
plays to the Soviet repertory in recent years. His drama about young people, A
Free Topic (Svobodnaia tema), has been staged in numerous theatres. It explores
the consequences when a girl takes at face value a teacher's invitation to her
students to write an exam essay on a subject of their own choosing. Chkhaidze's
From Three to Six (S trex do shesti) and The Chinar Manifesto (Chinarskii
manifest) have also received wide distribution. The latter is about an eighteen-
year-old lad, totally without experience and a non-Party member as well, who
applies to the regional Party secretary to become the new chairman of the Chinar
collective farm.
In the first issue of Sovremennaia dramaturgiia, a Belorussian playwright,
Aleksei Dudarev, makes his debut with Threshold (Porok), a drama about the moral
rebirth of an alcoholic, Andrei Buslai, who is rescued from a snowbank by a writer
of fairytales. There are some very humorous episodes, for example, the opening
scene when Aleksei insists he is a "professional alcoholic," or when he returns to
his village and is taken for a ghost by his parents who have just finished burying
what they thought was his body. (Aieksei had loaned his coat containing his
passport to another drunk who wasn't rescued before freezing to death.)
Unfortunately, we never see Andrei's moral transformation take place, we only
hear about the long night spent with -the writer (whom we also. don't see) which
somehow did the trick. Threshold is scheduled for producton this season at t h ~
Gorky h e t r e ~ directed by Vladimir Portnov. Dudarev has two other plays,
Evening (Vecher), and The. Choice (Vybor), about a tank driver who sacri-fic.es.the
lives of his crew to save a child who is in the way of the tank.
Also in the same issue of Sovremennaia dramaturgiia is Eduard Volodarsky's
Run, Run Evening Star (Begi, begi vecherniaia zvezda) about a talented
mathemtician and a gambler.
Vladimir Maliagin is an interesting and very original playwright whose NLO
(Unidentified Flying Object) has been in the repertory of the "Sovremennik"
Theatre for several seasons. He has a number of new works awaiting production,
among them Day of Mercy (Den' miloserdiia) and a couple of Volodin-style parable
plays. The Gorky Theatre in Leningrad has included A. Chervinsky's Paper
Recordplayer (Bumzahnyi patefon) in its repertory plans for the current season.
Chervinsky is a very young, beginning playwright, and his plays have received good
reports. Paper Recordplay is also scheduled for production at the Malaia Bronnaia
Theatre, directed by Aleksandr Dunaev, and his My Happiness (Schast'e moe) has
recently opened on the Little Stage of the Theatre of the Soviet Army.
Nina Semenova, a new playwright from Smolensk, is making her Moscow
debut on the Little Stage o.f the Mossoviet Theatre where Boris Shchedrin has
staged her Stove on a Wheel (Pechka no kolese). Frosia, the heroine of this
contemporary comedy is a harrassed, but indomitable, young married woman with
a drunken husband and five children who tends veal calves on a collective farm.
When a young soldier arrives in the village, having fallen in love with Frosia after
hearing her voice on the radio, the husband burns down the house and takes a
bulldozer to Frosia's legendary stove in order to force her to move the family to
21
the city. Mention should also be made of a new woman playwright from Minsk,
Elena Popova who made her debut with the staging at the Moly Dramatic Theatre
in Leningrad of Quiet Inhabitant (Tikhii obivatel'). The title refers to the heroine
of the play, Olga Oreshko, whose well-ordered life is disrupted when her brother, a
famous scholar, brings home his young assistant, Aleksandr Prokhorov.
Anna Rodionova is another promising woman playwright who, like Liudmila
Petrushevskaia and Olga Kuchkina, is a graduate of Arbuzov's Studio. Her play,
Excursion Around Moscow (Ekskurssiia po Moskve) was staged several seasons ago
at the Lenin Komsomol Theatre in Leningrad. After writing a number of film
scenarios, including the very popular School Waltz, she has returned to the theatre
with a new play entitled, The Cultural Stratum (Kul'turnyi sloi).
Other new playwrights include V. Gurkin, whose comedy Love and Doves
(Liubov' i golubi), has been staged, though not too successfully, at the
"Sovremennik" by Valery Fokin. A. Kravtsov, a Moscow playwright, has writen
Housewarming in an Old House (Novosel'e v starom dome). Set in on old
communal apartment in Leningrad, it is scheduled for production this season at
the Komissarzhevsky Theatre. Also lined up for this season at the Lensoviet
Theatre in Leningrad is Mironer's play, Who's Knocking at Our Door (Kto v dver'
stuchitsio k nom).
Not all of these plays will find their way into the repertory this season.
Some will be quietly dropped for one reason or another; others will be held over
for another season. But even if only a small percentage of them st)rvive, it will
still mark a banner year for new plays and
* * * * *
The American theatre is frequently criticized by Soviet officials and in the
Soviet press for its failure to present more Soviet ploys, especially in the light of
the Iorge number of American plays in performance in the Soviet Union.
This charge warrants closer examination, particularly right now on the
tenth anniversary of the U.S.S.R.'s accession to the Universal Copyright
Convention which took effect May 27, 1973.
At the present time according to Soviet reports there are about 40
American plays being performed in theatres all over the Soviet Union. By far the
most popular American playwright is Tennessee Williams. Virtually all of his ploys
written prior to 1973 have been staged, and this past season has seen no less than
eight of Williams's works on the boards in Moscow alone: A Streetcar Named
Desire (Mayakovsky Theatre), The Glass Menagerie (Theatre of Young Spectators),
The Rose T ottoo {Moscow Art Theatre), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof {Mayakovsky
Theatre), Sweet Bird of Youth (Moscow Art Theatre), Summer and Smoke (Molaia
Bronnaio Theatre}, Orpheus Descending (Theatre of the Soviet Army) and The
Kingdom of Earth. (Though the latter was recently pulled out of the repertoire of
the Mossoviet Theatre where it has been playing since the 1977-78 season).
Next in popularity is Eugene O'Neill, many of whose works were first
staged in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. Edward Albee is also very popular and
most of his pre-1973 ploys are being, or have been performed, including Who's
22
Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Zoo Story, both of which were first done in Riga
several years ago. Arthur Miller has also been consistently popular, particularly
The Price, The Death of a Salesman and The Crucible.
Neil Simon's pre-1973 works are now making their way into the repertoire
with several of them, including The Prisoner of Second Avenue and The Sunshine
Boys either already in performance or scheduled. William Gibson's Two for the
Seesaw has been a popular staple at the "Sovremennik" Theatre for many years.
Other playwrights represented include: Clifford Odets (Golden Boy), Richard Nash
(The Rainmaker), Paul Zindel (The Effect of Gamma Ra s on Man-in-the-Moon
Marigolds}, and Thornton Wilder (Our Town. Among recent premieres are Dale
Wasserman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Colin Higgin's Harold and
Maude which after a long struggle finally opened at the Theatre of Comedy in
Leningrad.
Added to this Jist are the adaptations of prose works, among them Mark
Twain's Huckleberry Finn and The Prince and the Pauper, Bel Kaufman's Up the
Down Staircase and Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. And finally, there are the
American musicals, which have become repertory staples ever since My Fair Lady
and West Side Story first premiered in Russian productions in the 1960s. Current
favorites include Man From La Mancha, Kiss Me Kate, Hello Dolly!, How to
Succeed in Business Without Even Trying and Promises Promises.
One thing all of the above works share in common is that they are pre-
1973 .. In other words, they are not covered in the Soviet Union by the copyr.ight
convention. This means that there is no legal obligation to obtain permission from
the playwright to translate and stage them, or .to pay royalties.
The picture is quite different when one begins looking for recent American
plays on the Soviet stage, that is, for plays written in the last decade and hence
protected by copyright. And it should be pointed out that the Soviet Union has
been diligent in its observation of the copyright convention. While Soviet
directors, actors and translators have expressed a continued interest in
contemporary American plays (and indeed, many of them circulate in Russian
translation), only one play written in the past ten years, D. L. Coburn's The Gin
Game, has actually been mounted. Following the December 1981 Soviet tour of
the American production starring Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn, The Gin Game
was staged at both the Gorky Theatre in Leningrad and the Mayakovsky Theatre in
Moscow. Since then, other productions of this popular two-character play have
also sprung up around the country.
Why haven't more plays from the 1970s been purchased? There are two
reasons. The first is undoubtedly financial. Few American playwrights have
expressed an interest in earning rubles for their plays. This means that royalties
must be paid in dollars. Understandably, purchasing plays must rank very low on
the priority list of necessary goods for which hard currency will be spent. Second,
there is the matter of obtaining rights, not only for performance, but also for
making changes in the text, a crucial factor in the Soviet theatre, where plays and
productions are carefully scrutinized for their ideological and moral suitability. It
is instructive, for example, to examine what has happened to Tennessee Williams
plays when they have been transferred to the Soviet stage. It's hard to imagine
any playwright willingly accepting the happy ending of A Streetcar Named Desire
23
at the Mayakovsky Theatre in Moscow, in which Mitch rescues Blanche from the
doctor and nurse who are taking her away to the asylum and carries her off; or to
the omission of the sailor from a Leningrad production of The Rose Tattoo; or to
the inclusion of a monologue on the importance of art which was plugged into the
production of Sweet Bird of Youth at the Moscow Art Theatre. Nor has Tennessee
Williams been the only victim of this kind of tinkering.
In contrast to this sorry picture of only one new American drama staged in
the Soviet Union during the past decade, a total of eleven Soviet plays from the
same period have been purchased for American productions. This is a point that is
unfortunately all too often overlooked in discussions by Soviets, and even by some
Americans, about the relative number of American and Soviet plays being staged.
In spite of the ups and downs of Soviet-American relations during the past
ten years, interest in Soviet plays among American theatre practitioners has not
diminished. On the contrary, as the level of Soviet dramaturgy has improved, and
there is no question but that it has, this interest has increased, particularly when
seen in the light of the limited number of contemporary foreign plays from any
country staged in American theatres.
The list of Soviet plays purchased for American productions in the past
decade includes Aitmatov and Mukhamedzhanov's The Ascent of Mount Fuji
(1973), produced at Arena Stage in 1974; Mikhail Roshchin's Echelon (1975), staged
at the Alley Theatre in 1978; Aleksei Arbuzov's, An Old-Fashioned Comedy (1975)
staged in several in this country under the title DO You Turn
Somersaults?; Aleksei Arbuzov's Light (1974), perfo'rmed at the University
Theatre, University . of Kansas, iii"'T982; Liudmila Petrushevskaya's one-act plays, .
. Love ( 1979) and Come Into the Kitchen (I 979), both of which were staged in New
York in 1982, and her monologue, Nets and Traps (1973) which has recently been
performed in festivals of one- act plays at two universities. Mark Rozovsky's
popular Strider, the Story of a Horse (1975) has also had several productions since
it was first successfully staged in New York in 1979.
In addition, at least two other productions of Soviet plays are currently in
the works: Borshchagovsky's The Ladies Tail or ( 1980) to be done in New York
under the title Before the Dawn, and Alexander Galin's Retro ( 1980), scheduled for
production next season at the Missouri Repertory Theatre. It should also be noted
that several other Soviet plays would have been staged had rights been made
available by the Soviet Copyright Agency. For example, in spite of Joseph Papp's
best efforts in 1980-81, and the desire of the playwright to see his work done in
the United States, rights could not be obtained for a production of Viktor Rozov's
The Nest of the Woodgrouse at the Public Theatre in New York, nor has
permission been given for other productions of this play since then. Requests over
the past several years for performance rights to Liudmila Petrushevskaya's plays
Cirizano and Smirnova's Birthday have also been denied. One can only speculate as
to the reasons for refusing to allow productions of these plays, all of which have
been staged in the Soviet Union. No official reason is ever offered aside from the
rather weak excuse that "the playwright is still working on the play."
Looking ahead, one can only hope that ways will be found to increase the
number of new American plays staged in the Soviet Union. It would be
unfortunate indeed if the signing of the Copyright Convention ended up being, as
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many predicted, a means of restricting the access of Soviet theatregoers to the
enjoyment of new American dramatic works. It is also hoped that ways will be
found to make it easier for American theatre directors to obtain the rights to
those Soviet plays they are anxious to stage. In the past decade, both the Soviet
Union and the United States have produced a whole generation of new playwrights,
many of them very talented. Their works deserve to be seen, not only for artistic
reaons, but because of what they can tell us about the lives of people today in
each other's countries. As Stanislavsky pointed out many times, "Theatre is the
best means of communication between nations, the best way to reveal and
understand their innermost feelings."
Alma H. Law
25
Department of Foreign
Languages and Literatures
George Mason University
Fairfax, Virginia 22030
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