volume 21, no.

3
Fall 2001
SEEP (ISSN # 1047-0019) is a publication of the Institute for Contemporary
East European Drama and Theatre under the auspices of the Martin E. Segal
Theatre Center. The Institute is at The City University of New York Graduate
Center, 365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016-4309. All subscription requests
and submissions should be addressed to Slavic and East European Perfor!llance:
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, Theatre Program, The City University of New
York Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016-4309.
EDITOR
Daniel Gerould
MANAGING EDITOR
KurtTaroff
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
Kimon Kerarnidas
CIRCULATION MANAGERS
Lara Shalson
ASSISTANT CIRCULATION MANAGERS
Jill Stevenson
ADVISORY BOARD
Edwin Wilson, Chair
Marvin Carlson Alma Law
Martha W. Coigney Stuart Liebman
Leo Hecht Laurence Senelick
Allen J. Kuha.rsk.i
SEEP has a ve.ry liberal reprinting policy. Journals and newsletters that desire
to reproduce articles, reviews, and other materials that have appeared in SEEP
may do so, as long as the following provisions are met:
a. Permission to reprint the article must be requested from SEEP in writing
before the fact;
b. Credit to SEEP must be given in the reprint;
c. Two copies of the publication in which the reprinted material has
appeared must be furnished to the Editors of SEEP immediately upon
publication.
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Edwin Wilson
DIRECTOR
James Patrick
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Publications a.re supported by generous grants
from the Lucille Lortel Chair in Theatre and the Sidney E. Cohn Chair in
Theatre in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the City University of New York.
Copyright 2001 Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
2
Slavic and East EuropeatJ Peiformance Vol. 21, No.3
Editorial Policy
From the Editor
Events
Books Received
IN MEMORIAM
TABLE OF CONTENTS
"Norris Houghton: 1909-2000"
Edwin Wilson
ARTICLES
5
6
7
12
13
"The Olympiad-A Challenge to the Russian and European Theatre" 14
Dubravka V rgoc
"Nadezhda Ptushkina: A Star of the Russian Theatre" 22
Elisabeth T. Rich
"A Little Orchestra of Hope: Sergei Ansybashev" 37
Maria Ignatieva
PAGES FROM THE PAST
"Alexander Tyshler"
Alia Sosnovskaya
"Glasnost in Film-In Retrospect''
Leo Hecht
REVIEWS
53
65
"King, Queen, !Vtave at the Lensoviet Theatre in St. Petersburg" 69
Vreneli Farber
"The Prore of the Transsiberian and of the Utt/e Joan 74
of France: Czech Puppets at La Mama"
Edmund Lingan
3
"EPE,a B/{BOEM I Delirium for Two: 80
The Cold War Theatre Project"
Lars Parker-Myers
"Silence Silence Silence Speaks Louder Than Words: 83
Theatre Mla<linsko at La Mama"
Kurt Taroff
Contributors 88
Publications 90
4
Slavic and East European Performanre Vol. 21, No. 1
EDITORIAL POLICY
Manuscripts in the following categories are solicited: articles of no
more than 2,500 words, performance and film reviews, and bibliographies.
Please bear in mind that all submissions must concern themselves either with
contemporary materials on Slavic and East European theatre, drama and film,
or with new approaches to older materials in recently published works, or new
performances of older plays. In other words, we welcome submissions
reviewing innovative performances of Gogo! but we cannot use original
articles discussing Gogo! as a playwright.
Although we welcome translations of articles and reviews from
foreign publications, we do require copyright release statements. We will also
gladly publish announcements of special events and anything else which may
be of interest to our discipline. All submissions are refereed.
All submissions must be typed double-spaced and carefully
proofread. The Chicago Manual of S!Jie should be followed. Trans-literations
should follow the Library of Congress system. Articles should be submitted
on computer disk, as Word 97 Documents for Windows and a hard copy of
the article should be included. Photographs are recommended for all reviews.
All articles should be sent to the attention of Slavic and East European
Performance, c/o Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, The City University of New
York Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016-4309.
Submissions will be evaluated, and authors will be notified after approximately
four weeks.
You may obtain more information about Slavic and East European
Performance by visiting out website at http/ / web.gc.cuny.edu/ mestc. Email
inquiries may be addressed to SEEP@gc.cuny.edu.
5
FROM THE EDITOR
The Fall Issue 2001 is devoted primarily to Russia. Edwin Wilson
commemorates an expert on Russia, Norris Houghton (1909-2001), who was
one of the important pioneers in introducing and interpreting Soviet theatre to
the English-speaking world. The vitality and diversity of the current Russian
theatre is reflected in a broad panoply of articles. Dubravka V rgoc reports on
the Moscow Theatre Olympiad, a vast festival celebrating the city's many
contributions to the performing arts. Elisabeth Rich looks at the work of a
dynamic woman playwright, Nadezhda Ptushkina, while Maria Ignatieva
explores the career of a highly individualistic director, Sergei Artsybashev. In
the first section of PAGES FROM THE PAST, Alla Sosnovskaya studies the
work of Alexander Tyshler. In the second section Leo Hecht reconsiders
three Soviet films from glasnost days. Reviews by V reneli Farber of an
adaptation of a Nabokov novel in St. Petersburg, Edmund Lingan of Czech
puppets in New York, Lars Parker-Myers of Ionesco in a Russian-American
production in the Berkshires, and Kurt Taroff of a Slovenian performance at
La Mama complete the volume.
6 S /avic and East European PeiformatJce Vol. 21, No. 3
STAGE PROOU010NS
New York City
EVENTS
Hanged Man's Lover, a performance of songs to the provocative poems of
Polish outlaw Rafal Wojaczek, was presented by Theatre Vigoda for Fringe NYC at
The University Settlement, August 18 to 25.
The 7" Annual Festival of The Magic of Czech Puppetry presented The White
Doe by The C:r,echoslovak-American Marionette Theatre directed by Vit Horejs at
Charas/EI Bohio Cultural Center, The Bohemian Hall & Garden, and Bohemian
National Hall from October 4 through November 4.
The third annual Chekbov NOW Festival, celebrating the works of Anton
Chekbov, was presented by the LITE Co. (Laboratory for International Theatre
Exchange) from October 31 to November 18 at the Connellly Theatre. Information
available at www.chekhovnow.org. Performances included:
Anno, from A'!)11ta, adapted and directed by Peter Campbell,
November 8 to 14.
Aunt Vmrya, An Ant Farm Production directed by Karl Lee, October
31 to November 17.
The Block Monk, adapted by Lisa Milinazzo and Dallas Brennan,
directed by Lisa Milinazzo, November 2 to 10.
Canon in 3d M'!for II, from Three Sisters, adapted and directed by
Sonoko Kawaha.ra, November 7 to 18.
High Maintenance, from A Joke, adapted by Matt Bardin, directed by
Passion, November 7 to 18.
The (low life) Cherry Orchard, adapted and directed by Brian Rogers,
performed by theatre et al, November 1 to 18.
Pigeon, from The SeoguU, adapted by Leah Ryan, directed by Edward
Cheetham, November 8 to 14.
Plotonicov, from Plotonov, adapted and directed by Natalia de Campos,
November 7 to 18.
Rt1nemberonce, from Mari d'eUe, adapted by Judythe Cohen, directed by
Alfredo Galvan, November 7 to 18.
7
Rina, from Three Sisters, adapted and directed by Christopher Shorr,
November 8 to 14.
Teatr Nacionalc Chekhovia's The Proposal and The jubilee, directed by
Adam Melnick, November 1 to 16.
U1rcle Vmrya, translated by Paul Schmidt, directed by Cynthia Croot,
November 3 to17.
Witold Gombrowicz's Ferdydurke, was performed (in Polish as well as in an
English translation by Allen Kuharski) in a collaboration between the Provisorium
Theatre and the Kompania Theatre of Poland at La Mama, from November 8 to 25.
Family Stories: Belgrade by Biljana Srbljanovic, translated by Rebecca Rugg and
directed by Wieslaw Gorski was presented at Live from the Edge at the POINT C.D.C.
in the Bronx. A reading on October 16 was followed by performances on November
29 and 30 and December 1.
Family Stories Belgrade by Biljana Srbljanovic was also presented in New York
Theatre Workshop's reading series, translated by Rebecca Rugg and directed by
Rosemary K. Andress, on October 30, 2001.
Zen Pomo by Milena Fuchedzieva was performed by Snezhina Petrova and
directed by Desislava Shpatova in a reading at La Mama on November 17. Petrova and
Shpatova are the founders and directors of the flrst non-profit, non-state supported
theatre in Sofia, Bulgaria.
In-diffomtce, a theatre, music and media project about Serbian, Croatian, and
Bosnian exiles from former Yugoslavia directed by Andrea Paciotto, will be presented
from January 24 to February I 0, 2002 at La Ma.t\!la.
The Two-headed Calf, in association with Otrabanda company, will perform
Tumor Brainiowicz by Stanislaw lgnacy Witkiewicz, translation by Daniel Gerould,
directed by Brooke O'Harra, music by Brendan Connelly at La MaMa from February 28
to March 10, 2002
STAGE PRODUCTIONS
Regional
The Trapdoor Theatre in Chicago presented two plays by Stanislaw Ignacy
Witkiewicz at the Chicago Cultural Center: The Crazy Locomotive, directed by Andrew
Krukowski, was performed on February 4, 7, 11, 13, and 18, and The Shoemakers,
8 Slavic and East European Peiformatrce Vol. 21, No. 3
directed by Beata Pilch and Sean Marlow, was given from October 25 to December 8,
2001.
The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov, directed by Bonnie Monte at The New
Jersey Shakespeare Festival, and ran from July 10 to 29.
Teatr Wielki-Opera Narodowa from Warsaw performed Giacomo Puccini's
Madama Butteif!y directed by Mariusz Trelinski at the Kennedy Center Opera House in
Washington, D.C. on October 27and 30 and November 2, 5, and 8, 2001.
The Goodman Theatre o f Chicago will present Drowning Crow, an adaptation
of Chekhov's The Seagull by Regina Taylor directed by Kate Whoriskey, from January 6
to February 10, 2002.
San Francisco's American Conservatory Theatre has commissioned a new
version of Maxim Gorky's The Mother (Vassa Zheleznova) by Constance Congdon. The
production, directed by Carey Perloff and starring Olympia Dukakis, will from May 9 to
June 9, 2002.
STAGE PRODUCllONS
International
An opera version of Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters, composed by Peter
Eotvos and directed by Ushio Amagatsu, was performed in November at Theatre du
Chatelet, in Paris.
London's Brit-Po! Theate included in its \.'V'mtcr 2001 and Spring 2002
programs the following:
FILMS
New York City
New Voices in Polish Theatre, a playreading of Fa"ago by Lidia
Amejko, was presented on November 25 at The White Bear Theatre.
Polish Women Poets, a poetry rearling by Tina Jones of works by
Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, Halina Poswiatowska, Wislawa
Szymborska and Ewa Lipska with music by Warren Wills. Readings
took place on December 3 and 4.
The Card Index by Tadeusz R6:i:ewicz will be performed at the
Battersea Arts Center from March 12 to 28.
From October 5 to 15, 2001, The Museum of Modern Art held a
retrospective of the work of Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr. The following films were
9
shown: Fami!J Nut (1977), Hotel (1978), The 011t.tider (1979-80), The Prifab People
(1982), Macbeth (1982), Almanac of Fall (1983-84), Donmation (1987), The Lost Boat (Part
of Lift) (1989), Satantango (1991-94), Joumey 011 tht Ploi11 (1995), and Wtrekt11tister
HamJOIIits (2000).
The Third Annual New York Festival of Russian Films took place from
October 14-21 at the Ziegfeld Theatre and Clearview Cinemas. The program included
Nikica Mihalkov's Barbtr of Sibtria and Alexander Sokurov's Ta11ros as well as over 15
new Russian feature films , several documentaries and short films.
The Anthology Film Archives and New York Festival of Russian f'iJms
presented Experimental Films from Russia at the Turn of the Century. The fums
shown were: Andrey Velikanov' s God With Us (1994), Tatiana Detkina's The Bats (1995),
Olga Stolpovskaya and Dmitry Troitsky's Bmner'l Trial (1998) and Subscribers (2000),
Olya Darfi's Lo/Jyrinth (2000), Leonid Tishkov's Snowangel (1998), Olga Yegorova and
Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya's Notes for on Ideal Swttlhtort (1999), Platoo Infaote-
Arana's Homo11rbon (1997), Andrey Silvestrov's Fate (1997), and Alexander Roytburd's
Psychtdtlic lnvtr.tion of tht Ballluhip Potemkin into Sugti Eiunsttin's Tolltological Hallllcinolion
(1998). All showings were on October 20.
BAMcinematek in partnership with the Czech Center New York presented
Bohemian Fin-De-Siecle: New Czech Films. The film series included Dividtd We Fall
(Musimt .ti pomtihol) ( 2000) directed by Jan lliebejk on November 2, Loners (Samottifz)
(2000) directed by David Ondilcek on November 3, Wild Flowm (Kytift) (2000) directed
by F. A. Brabec on November 3, Angel Exit VJ.ndil Exit) (2000) directed by Vlad.irnic
:Michalek on November 4, and B11ttonm (l01ojiikim) (1997) directed by Petr Zelenka on
November4.
FlLMS
United States
In November, Polish fil.m festivals occurred in three major American Cities.
Chicago celebrated its thirteenth annual Polish Film Festival, running from November 3
to 18, and at the opening night gala screened Jerzy Kawalerowicz's film Q11o Vadis. The
Polish Consulate of Los Angeles also screened Q11o Vadis at the opening night gala of its
third annual Polish Film Festival, which ran from November 6 to15. Houston, Texas
held its fifth annual Polish Film Festival from November 2 to 4.
OTI TER EVENTS
The Croatian C"nter of lTI-UNESCO, Zagreb held a forum on Theatre
Publications Today f.rom October 17-21, 2001. Events included a seminar for young
Croatian critics, the launching of Croatian and international theatre books and
rnagazrnes, and performances by Croatian theatre companies in Zagreb and Dubrovnik.
10 Slavic and East Europeo/1 Pifomlance Vol. 21, No.3
A sympO$ium "Dancing llistory: Poland and Dance," was
hosted by the Dance and Theatre Studies Program at Swacthmore College from
November 2 to November 4. The symposium, in honor of the work of Jacek Luminsk.i
included performances by his company, the Silesian Dance Theatre, which presented
one of 1ts works Diary of a Df!Jdrtam, as well as a reconstruction of Polish choreographer
Pola Nicenska's 1946 piece Lammi (also known as Dif!,t.) Papers were presented on the
the history and development of modern dance in Poland and other Eastern European
countries. A critics panel discussed Luminsk.i's work and the development of his
choreographic style.
The Graduate Center for Study of Drama at the University of Toronto is
calling for papers to their conference on Theatre and Exile. The broad focus of this
international cross-disciplinary conference will be on phenomena that have played a
significant role in the theatrical and political history of the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries: exile and emigration, the reconfiguration of boundaries, and the significance
of place. Proposals should be double-spaced, not more than 300 words, and submitted
before December 15. They may be emailed to: exile_conference@yahoo.com or may
be sent by mail to Conference on Theatre and Exile, Graduate Center for Study of
Drama, 214 College Street, Toronto, ON MST 2Z9, Canada.
- Compiled by Kirnon Kcramidas
11
BOOKS RECEIVED
Notatnik Teatralf!Y, 20-21, 2000. Special Grotowski Number. 276 pages.
Includes many pictures of Grotowski and of his productions, his last will, 26
articles (4 by Grotowski), and a summary of the table of contents in English.
Puzyna, Konstanty. Witkaq. Ed. by Janusz Degler. Warsaw: Oficyna
Wydawnicza Errata, 1999. Includes an introduction by Degler, 9 articles by
Puzyna and 3 interviews with him, 1 portrait ofWitkacy, 1 painting by
Witkacy, 24 production photographs, and an index.
Skwara, Marta. Motyu:y szalenstwa w tworczoici Witkacego i Conrada. Studium
porriwnowcze. (The Motifs of Madness in the Writing ofWitkacy and Conrad: A
Comparative Study). Wrodaw: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrodawskiego,
1999. 288 pages. Includes 12 illustrations, bibliography, index of people,
index of characters in Witkacy and Conrad, and summary in English.
Trzos, Joanna. W posif4kiwaniu Dzjwnofci Istnienia: Rzecz o Dramatach Witkacego
(In search of the Strangeness of Existence: About Witkacy's Plays). Cracow:
EJB, 2000. 138 pages. Includes 15 drawings and 1 painting by Witkacy, and a
bibliography.
Witkiewicz, Stanislaw Ignacy. Regulomin jimry portretowe_;: Het reglement van de
portrettmjirmo. Edited and translated by Karol Lesman. Amsterdam: Huis Clos,
2000. 64 pages. Includes 2 photographic portraits of Witkacy and 15 pastel
portraits by Witkacy reproduced in color, a photographic reproduction of the
Polish text, a Dutch translation and an afterword by Lesman.
Websites:
http:/ /www.witkacy.hg.pl/
A Witkacy web site (in Polish), hosted by the National Museum in Warsaw.
http: / /www.polishculture.org.uk/ index.html
The website of the Polish Cultural Institute in London. Contains information
on the institute, as well as on events related to Polish culture in the U.K. and
throughout Western Europe.
http:/ / www.czechcenter.com/
The website of the Czech Center in New York. A clearinghouse for all things
Czech in New York and throughout the United States.
12 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 21, No. 3
NORRIS HOUGHTON
1909-2001
Edwin Wilson
Norris Houghton was not only a gentleman through and through, he
was a man for all seasons in the American theatre. Having graduated from
Princeton in 1931, he immersed himself in theatre in every way he could. He
was a designer, director, author, producer, and educator. In the 30s, 40s, and
50s he designed eight Broadway shows and directed four. Ever eager to get
wider experience, he traveled to Russia in the 30s to gain experience at the feet
of the master, Stanislavsky. His time there, recorded in his book, Mo!cow
Rehearsal.r, was the platform, the background, from which sprang everything
else in his career.
Io 1953 he co-founded, with T. Edward Hambleton, the legendary
Phoenix Theatre-the first, and in its time, the most important off-Broadway
theatre. While he was affiliated with the Phoenix it produced nearly seventy-
five productions, of which a number were not only memorable, but highly
significant in presenting worthwhile dramas from around the world with
outstanding artists. But for the Phoenix, these plays would not have been seen
in New York.
After his days at the Phoenix, Norris served as head of drama at
Vassar, and then in the same capacity at the New York State University at
u r ~ 1se. He was the author of several important books, including a first-rate
autobiography, Entrances and Exits. Throughout his ninety-two years he never
lost his immense love of theatre, nor his great capacity for friendship.
Bibliographical note:
Norris Houghton's two extended visits to the Soviet Union, in 1934-35 and in
1960, resulted in the following books:
Moscow Rehear!al.r: An Account of Methods of Production in the Soviet Union. New
York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1936.
Return Engagement: A Postscnpt to Moscow Rehear!al.r. New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, 1962.
13
THE OLYMPIAD-A CHALLENGE TO THE RUSSIAN AND
EUROPEAN THEATRE
Dubravka Vrgoc
After Greece and Japan, Russia was the third country to host the
International Theatre Olympics whose originators in 1995 were Robert
Wt.!son, Heiner Muller, Yuri Lyubimov, Wole Soyinka, Tadashi Suzuki, and
Nuria Espert. The Olympiad was born with a new awareness of belonging to
the same world, of sharing the common roots of theatre experience in
different traditions, that flourished in the period of growing post-cold-war
optimism of the nineties. If, by choosing Greece as the first host, the founders
expressed admiration for the ancient Greek origins of western theatre, and if
by choosing Japan for the second Olympiad, they paid homage to the amazing
eastern traditions, Russia, as the third host, represents an emblematic synthesis
of twentieth-century theatre experience.
In Delphi in 1995, the various possibilities of interpreting ancient
Greek models tn modem ways were studied through the motto: "ancient
drama in the modem world." In 1999, The Japanese town of Shizouki
gathered together more than thirty world theatres, in order "to create hopes,"
according to the motto of the Second Theatre Olympics. Moscow 2001-
theatre achievements at the threshold of two centuries and two millennia-was
held under the motto, 'Theatre for the People." The official program of the
Moscow Theatre Olympics states: "The Olympics will become the
demonstration of theatre development in the twentieth century in a broad
variety of forms: from the experiments of the avant-garde to folk street shows.
By showing the crowning achievements of the world stage, by showing the
modem theatre at Olympic heights we are helping the national theatre, first
and foremost the young generation of theatre practitioners who will take hold
of the twenty-first century stage, to measure their art against the world pattern
of theatrical evolution."
The Russian cycle opened at the high level represented by Chekhov's
theatre and the famous method of Konstantin Stanislavsky who exerted such
profound influence on all the performing arts of the last century. However, the
opening of the cycle was also marked by the unique avant-garde experiments
of V sevolod Meyerhold which, despite the subsequent political repression, had
put Moscow at the center of world theatre.
From this perspective, the Third Olympiad was also an opportunity
to showcase Putin's new Russia which, in spite of many political ambiguities, is
14
Slavic and EaJI European Vol. 21, No. 3
stnvtng to create an optimistic image of a country whose basic values are
positive, where substantive achievements are valued, and where the privileged
status of art is maintained, whatever the chaos of market conditions. In Russia,
theatres are not closing, since attendance is, compared to European averages,
incredibly high despite rather expensive ticket prices. Despite economic
difficulties, the Russian government continues to finance culture to a
considerable degree. The lack of material resources of the theatre in Russia
compared to western models is in inverse proportion to the status enjoyed by
artists. This is probably the reason for the healthy and exceptionally potent
theatre life of Moscow with its large repertory theatres, national, city, and
private theatres and theatre schools. The aim of organizing the Theatre
Olympics, whose preparation also included the participation of one of the
most significant festivals in Moscow, the Anton Chekhov International
Theatre Festival, was to further stimulate the modernization of the Russian
theatre and the rejuvenation of its repertory consisting mainly of Russian and
world classics, and to present new production models and solutions.
The Theatre Olympics, held in Moscow from 21 April to 29 June,
was divided intO four programs. The first program presented the performances
of the great world directors of the second half and end of the twentieth
century. These theatre artists with their bold stage experiments managed to
change the face of the contemporary world theatre and move it in new
directions. The Piccolo Theatre from Milan presented the celebrated cult
performance of the late Italian director Giorgio Strehler, based on Carlo
Goldoni's text, Arlecchino, S eroant of Two Masters. The Vmetian Twins by Goldoni
was staged both by the ensemble of the Piccolo Theatre from Milan and by
world-renowned Italian director, Luca Ronconi. The British director Declan
Donnellan, who established one of the most prominent and popular British
theatre groups of the nineties, Cheek by Jowl, staged Pushkin's Boris Godunov
with Russian actors. Another great European director in the last decade of the
twentieth century, the German Peter Stein, explored the resilience and
versatility of theatre language by staging Shakespeare's Hamlet with Russian
actors.
The Lithuanian Eimuntas Nekrosius, a duector who has been
sweeping all before him on stages throughout Europe, has become a welcome
guest at many European festivals. Nekrosius was recently awarded the prize
for the new European theatre reality in Taormina, and at the Olympiad, he
revealed his conception of Shakespeare's Othello, performed by the Meno
Fortas theatre from Vinius.
Robert Wilson also appeared at the Olympiad with a Swedish
export-Strindberg's A Dream Plrg, performed by the Stockholm City Theatre.
In another staging of Shakespeare's work in Moscow, the oldest Georgian
15
theatre, the Shota Rustaveli Academy Theatre from Thilisi, performed the
comedy As You Like It, directed by the weU-know Georgian director, Robert
Sturu. The Japanese director, Tadashi Suzuki, in the production of the
Shizuoka Performing Arts Center, presented Sophocles's Oedip11s Rex.
Euripides's Bacchae was the focus of the Greek director Theodoros
Terzopoulos who staged this tragedy at the Olympiad in a performance by the
members of the Artis Theatre. Last in the program of foreign performances
was the Viennese Burghtheater with Chekhov's The Seagull directed by the
former enfant terrible of European theatre, and today one of the most
appreciated European directors, Luc Bondy.
For the non-Russian festival audience, perhaps the most interesting
part of the program was the one devoted to Russian theatres and theatre
groups. A glance at the choice of texts, directors' conceptions and the ways of
treating the stage material all show the controlled variety of the Russian theatre
which, in most cases, still leans towards the traditional, but shows a willingness
to take chances with modern interpretations the classics, both Russian and
foreign. Among the repertory of the Russian theatres performed at the Third
Theatre Olympiad were Mikhail Bulgakov's A Theatrical Novel directed by Yuri
Lyubimov, Pushkin's Eugene Otugin directed by Aaatoly Vasilyev, Chekhov's
The Black Monk directed by Kama Ginkas, Nikolai Kolyade's The Old-World
Love directed by Valery Fokin, Goethe's FallS/ directed by Boris Yukhananov,
Boris Vakhtin's One Absolute!J Happy Village directed by Pyotr Fomenko,
Gorky's The Lower Depths directed by Adolf Shapiro, Rostand's Cyrano de
Bergerac directed by Vladimir Mirzoev, and Daniil Kharms's White Sheep
directed by Mikhail Levitin. All of these are artists who are not completely
unknown to the European and world stage.
What determines the performances of Russian repertory theatres is
the great confidence they still have in the text and a reluctance to deconstruct
the model in their interpretations, to remain within the frame of conventional
stage expression, but to couple this with exceptional acting energy and
inspirational performances realized by the impressive presence of Russian
actors on stage. In fact, these performances are devoid of the flashy effects
which have for years held sway on the stages of Western European theatres,
but instead make architectural decor subservient to the overriding conception
of the director, and find their point of reference in the concentration of the
internal magnetism which is felt through the actors on stage. The Russian
performances are interesting precisely thanks to this amazing acting potential
and to the resources of the actor who transfers to the audience not only the
story line, but also the subtlety of all those interrelationships which give shape
to the drama.
16 Slavic and East E uropean Performance Vol. 21, No. 3
17
Here the actor is the moving force of events, the most significant,
and sometimes the only link in the chain, the central point from where one
sets out on the adventure of theatrical experimentation. In the Russian theatre,
there is the utmost trust in the actors, because they are still more important
than the decor or the director's conception. It is the actors themselves who
present the sequence of events and bridge the gap between the text and the
director's reading of this text; it is they who are finally most open to the
challenges which will eventually shatter the conventional image of the Russian
theatre. Today this theatre seems most concerned with solidifying the
accomplishments of the twentieth century stage, by making the past and the
present come together, not by putting them face to face in a way that would
result in unusual and novel views, but in a continuity of development which,
nevertheless, ultimately proves that the past is more powerful than present
reality.
Different, more daring theatre studies were presented in the third,
experimental part of the Moscow Theatre Olympics devoted to the new
theatre. Among the European directors with the current reputation of being
the most attractive authors of theatre experiment were Romeo Castelucci, who
presented one of the last daring experiments of the controversial Italian theatre
group, Societas Rafaello Sanzio, Genesis-from the Museum of Dreams; the
German director Heiner Goebbels, the winner of this year's European award
for new theatre reality, who shifted theatrical borders with the production
Hashirigaki, staging Gertrude Stein's text The Making of Americans; and the
Danish director Pippo Delbono who, with the members of the Emilio
Romagno Theatre, staged the hallucinatory images taken from his own text
entitled The Result. With the actors of the Moscow School of Contemporary
Theatre, a director of the mid generation, Joseph Reikhelgauz, studied the
dramatic twists in Chekhov's The Seagull, trying to stage it from an angle that
has not been seen before, in broken images without a center in which the
fragments of an old, well-known story can only just be recognized. In a similar
manner, by drawing on the theatre past in his experimental project and bravely
highlighting conventions, the Russian director Boris Yukhananov staged Denis
Fonvizin's text The Minor with the ensemble of The Russian Drama Theatre of
Lithuania.
A significant space in the Third Theatre Olympics was devoted to the
interaction of western and Russian theatre. The artistic leader of this part of
the program was director Anatoly Vasilyev. As part of the Arms of Poetry
project, four subversive works of European dramaturgy of the second part of
the twentieth century were presented to the Russian audience. These were
18 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 21, No. 3
dramas by Jean Genet, Bernard-Marie Koltes, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Heiner
Miiller, directed by four young international directors. Among these four was
also the Croatian director, Ivica Buljan, who set Pasolini's Pigsty on the stage of
Anatoly Vasilyev's School of Dramatic Artists. With the actors from the
school of director and drama teacher Pyotr Fomen.ko, he connected the
tradition of Russian acting, characterized by strong realistic influences, with
Pasolini's theatre of words. This is how an interesting stage project was born,
simultaneously presenting both France at the time of the riots of '68 and
Russia today at a time of transition, burdened by its totalitarian past and
uncertain future.
The Pigsty was the first text by Pasolini to be translated into Russian,
especially for this occasion. I was interested to see how the Russian audience
would react to Pasolini's criticism of the bourgeois society and to the relation
between conforming on the one hand and the necessity for change on the
other hand. The Pigsty seemed particularly interesting in the Russian context,
because it questioned the relationship of two generations towards the
totalitarian system, consumer society, and the issue of personal and collective
freedoms. "The Russian theatre with its discontinuity of modernist tendencies
is an utterly new field for Pasolini's poetics," noted director lvica Buljan. In his
Russian production, Buljan shows the antagonisms between Pasolini's
dramatic writing and the reality of the Russian theatre, and through this
connection, stresses Pasolini's poetry, simultaneously highlighting the key
motives in the meeting of the hero, twenty-five year-old Julian, with the world.
The energy and emotional power of the Russian actors gave new perspectives
to Pasolini's text. This was not just the staging of a poetic-political drama on
the weaknesses of the bourgeoisie and the diseases of capitalism, but a brave
dramatic examination of a particular view of the world. It was also a case of
specific dramatic structure confronting another theatre language and a foreign
context. The minimalism in the language of the actors' gestures and the
abstractness of the form of expression in Pasolini's drama coming together
with the emotional openness of the actors led to a performance that shifts the
borders of both Pasolini's theatre and Russian theatre practice. Consequently,
The Pigsty offered the audience in Moscow a polemical and exciting journey
both into Pasolini's worlds and into Russian reality at the beginning of the new
millennium.
Tius experimental part of the Olymp1ad, which familiarized the
audience with the European, modem-day dramatic classics, included not only
the presentation of the West and its theatre, but also of the East. Thus, a
varied expenence of ntuals was shown: from Tibetan Buddhists, Japanese and
19
N
0
Goethe's Faust, directed by Boris Yukhananov, performed by the
"Positive" Producing Company and A-Media Holding of Moscow
Indian theatres, Slavic rituals, to the still existing studio of the Polish theatre
magician Jerzy Grotowsk:i. What also contributed to the spectacular
impression of the Moscow Olympiad was the luxuriant presentation of
carnivals, street theatres, happenings, performances, artistic cucuses ... all
taking place at different locations.
A collision of the world's most varied theatrical expenences that
pointed to the similarities of human existence, while at the same time
highlighting differences, the Russian Theatre Olympics, in addition to its
undeniable cultural interest, was also a huge commercial success. Instead of
the traditional image of an enclosed and self-indulgent culture, it presented the
idea of Moscow as a cosmopolitan center, a modem metropolis which offers
alternatives to the world, but which is also prepared to adopt new global
achievements. Ultimately, the event showcased the Russian capital as a space
for theatre gatherings which might perhaps, at the uncertain beginnings of the
century, outline a frame for new theatrical works of art.
21
NADEZHDA PTUSHKINA: A STAR OF RUSSIAN DRAMA AND
THEATRE IN THE NEW MILLENIUM
Elisabeth T. Rich
During a recent trip to Russia, I visited the Leningrad-born
playwright Nadezhda Ptushkina,
1
whom I first became acquainted with in
1997, at her Moscow apartment. I sat drinking coffee at the kitchen table,
while Ptushkina, bent over the stove and a blender, made soup (a concoction
of white wine, chicken broth, and onions), as she talked at length about her
career and new developments in post-Soviet Russian theatre and drama.
At a glance, it became clear that Ptushkina's apartment is nothing less
than a shrine to her two greatest passions: animals (in addition to a crow, she
has two dogs named Dika and Tuzik and three cats named Maksa, Tuchka,
and Kosoj, all of whom have free rein over her apartment) and Jane Austen (a
newly translated complete collection of her works was on the bookshelves).
"Jane Austen," Ptushkina told me, pointing at the collection, "is my favorite
writer. She is able to reveal the most varied emotions in the most ordinary
characters." But Ptushkina discovered Austen late in life; in fact, Ptushkina
read Austen for the first time only in 1991, at the age of forty-two, when a
friend loaned her a copy of Gordost' i pmiubezhden[ya (Pride and Prejudice) to read.
In pre-perestroika days, Austen's books, while not officially banned, were not
accessible to the Russian public-a fact Ptushkina attributes to Austen's
investigation into "petty, private life." "Before perestroika you couldn't find
her books," Ptushk.ina explained. "This was probably because the Soviet
regime viewed all displays of private life and private feelings in a negative way.
Instead, our priorities had to be ideological-a type of patriotism, as it were."
Since the mid-1970s, when she trained under the late director Oleg
Yefremov at the Moscow Art Theatre's School-Studio, the extremely prolific
Ptushk.ina has written some seventy plays,
2
although more than half of them
still have not been produced. '1 don't have an agent," she said, shrugging,
"and I cannot be involved in the dissemination of these plays ... I do not have
the time." Typically, she writes comedies, farces, and melodramas, which
include, among others, the two-act farce PizansJu:ya bOJhna (The Tower of Pisa),
the two-act comedy Pri chuzhikh svechakh (By the Light of Others' Candles) and
Prikhodi i uvodi (Come and Go), the three-part vaudeville Poka ona umirala (While
She WOJ Dyin!), and the two-part melodrama Monument zhmvam (A Momtment to
Victims). But it was with Mossovet's production of Ovechka (The Small Sheep), a
drama that mixes eroticism with the biblical story of Jacob and Rachel, that
Ptushkina skyrocketed to fame.
3
This play was deemed so scandalous when it
22
Slavic and East Europw1 Perfor71!allce Vol. 21, No. 3
Nadezhda Ptushkina with her cat, Kosoj
23
24
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 21, No.3
The Small Sheep at the St. Petersburg State Dramatic T11eatre
t1")
N
premiered during the 1996-1997 theatrical season that some Russian critics
argued that Ptushkina should be excorrununicated by the Russian Orthodox
Church. Since then, The Small Sheep has been translated into several languages
beyond Russia's borders, including in France and Egypt, where, the playwright
told me, it exists in Arabic as a popular samizdat, or underground, publication.
4
Ptushkina, though, prefers for her plays not to be pigeonholed in one
specific genre; in fact, she says, her favorite genre is when " there is no one
genre." "I have always gravitated towards using many genres in one play," she
explained. "But whereas before I would write the first act in one genre and
the second act in another genre, I now understand that it is necessary to mix
genres all the time." Here Ptushkina alluded to her recendy fmished Vse, chto
ya znqju ob etikh muzhchinakh i zhenshchinakh (Everything That I Know About These
Men and Women), a play that, by offering a compelling melange of farce, satire,
melodrama, tragedy, and drama, bears her distinct authorial signature.
Ptushkina also regards this "collision of genres" (her words) as the genre of
the twenty-first century.
As for her thematic orientation, Ptushkina's primary concern is the
human struggle to acquire personal dignity and to fight for oneself and one's
own personal happiness, a theme that strikes a new chord for most Russians; it
is also the credo by which Ptushkina lives both her professional and her
private life. "In Russia," she explained, "you were supposed to fight for either
an idea or an unfairly wronged social category of people, like the sick and the
old. But to fight for yourself, this was always considered very unseemly. To
have a feeling of personal dignity was always called "Ya," the last letter in the
alphabet." Usually Ptushkina brings this theme to the forefront against the
backdrop of love (or lack thereof), as happens in Plachu vpered (I Pay in Advance).
In this two-act comedy, Olympiada (Lipa) Sidorova, a wealthy middle-aged
woman, who seemingly lives by the philosophy that "money can buy
anything," tries to buy the love of Mikhail Raspyatov, a theatre and film star
with whom she has been in love for the better part of her adult life. Her
proposition to Mikhail, which is degrading at best, goes roughly as follows: If
he will divorce his present wife, the celebrated actress Polina Ametistova, and
become her husband for a period of one year, she will pay him a million
dollars "in advance." But in the play's final pages Lipa's dignity and self-
respect are returned to her, as we learn how her love for Mikhail is in fact quite
remarkable and uplifting-a love that was shining for her her entire life "like a
guiding star."S Deciding early on that she had to become "a someone" to win
his love, Lipa becomes, among other things, a "heroine" who spends three
years in incarceration, an actress, the wife of a Russian millionaire and later the
wife of a black African prince with seventeen wives, a "sister of charity" who
26
Slavi<" and East European Performamf Vol. 21, No.3
helps the fallen and downtrodden and about whom the Russian people even
begin to create legends, the wife of an American millionaire with whom she
lives for a wlule in the United States, and finally a patron of the arts. Buying
Mikhail, she admits at the end, was only a final desperate act. "My love for
you," she tells him, "gave me the entire world ... It taught me to love life and
to respect and value myself."
6
Still another example is Ptushlcina's vaudeville
While She Was Dying, where the heroine Tatyana, a sixty-year-old self-
proclaimed "staraya deva" (old maid), preserves the feeling of personal dignity
her entire life by refusing to marry without love, regarding loneliness as
dostoynie ("more worthy"). "I didn't consent to marry without love at the age
of twenty," she declares at one point, "and even more so at the age of si.xty."
7
Since the fifty-two-year-old Ptushkina made her debut on the Russian
stage only in 1994, when her plays Mazhor (Major Kry) and Nenormal'nqya (An
Abnormal Woman) were produced in St. Petersburg at the Eksperiment Theatre,
she is generally considered a representative of the "young" post-Soviet
generation of Russian dramatists. In fact, it was only in 1995-when her play
By the Light of Others' Candles premiered in Moscow at the Stanislavsky
Theatre-that Ptushlcina turned full-time co what had previously been only a
"hobby'': playwriting.s Shortly after graduation from Moscow Art Theatre's
School-Studio, Ptushlcina was compelled to spend years at home caring for her
two ailing parents. "In sum," she recalled, "I flew away from the theatrical
world, and did not return there anymore." Years later, in the early 1990s,
when business ventures in Russia were still in their infancy, she became the
owner of a firm that set up cultural programs for private business enterprises,
or predprryat!J(I--work that entailed arranging excursions, trips abroad, and
evenings at the theatre for their employees. Ptushkina, though, found it
increasingly difficult to pursue this line of business, and at one point even
resorted to selling cars. "I did not know the slightest thing about cars," she
confessed. "I simply knew at what price to sell them."
But Ptushkina certainly does know a thing or two when it comes to
drama. In fact, as a leading figure of post-Soviet Russian drama, who as
recently as 2000 was awarded the prestigious literary prize Severnaya Pal'mira
for her plays, she has indisputably helped to revitalize and broaden the
parameters of contemporary Russian theatre and dramaturgy. Not only has
Ptushkina introduced to the Russian public a new kind of comedy- a comedy
that targets human foibles instead of a satire that ridicules the shortcomings of
a regime-but she is also to be credited as one of the first playwrights in the
post-Soviet era to write melodrama. "The Soviet regime did not colerate
melodrama," Ptushkina declared, "because melodrama dealt with private life;
27
28
S/avir and Bast EPropean Peiformam-e Vol. 21, No.3
29
at its foundation there was always a melodramatic story. Private life is always
shown as the large plan, which means it acquires the character of priority. In
totalttarian Russ1a, private life could never be a priority, and hence there was
no melodrama as a genre."
Ptushkina also brings to the theatre a new mentality and mind-set.
First, she openly call her plays "commercial," adhering to the tenet that "any
kind of art is good except for boring art." "When a thousand people come [to
a play] and then are bored," she insisted, "irs boorishness on the part of the
dramatist . .. simply boorishness." By extension, she also views the stage not
so much as a forum for fundamentally moral ideas, but as a ~ l i s h h e ("show")
and place of entertainment-a viewpoint that direcdy contradicts and derails
the former Soviet position that theatre in Russia was traditionally a "temple,"
or a place that provided only "spiritual nourishment."
"My plays are generally funny," she told me, "although I do pose
serious questions in them. I think that serious questions arc better suited for a
philosophical treatise; theatre, it seems to me, should give its audience
enjoyment ... not vulgar entertainment like drinking beer, but entertainment
of the kind like a Beethoven symphony." She then went on to say that it is not
the theatre's task to educate its spectators, as it was once expected to do in
Soviet Russia. "Let people be educated in school, with books and by life's
experiences," she maintained. "I believe that it is necessary to give everyone
who pays money whatever they want." This stance explains to a large extent
why her plays have elicited controversial, if not downright hostile, reviews
from snobbish Moscow critics who often dismiss comedy as a lowbrow genre.
"One critic wrote that if you see the title of a play by Ptushkina on a
billboard," she told me, "you would be wise not to go and see it. Another
wrote that my success is not as harmless as it may seem to everyone, because
in the shadow of my mediocrity all the best Russian dramaturgy has perished."
Still, Ptushkina's plays are staged-all over Russia, in fact- which is certainly
more than she could have hoped for in pre-perestroika days.9 "Before
perestroika," she reflected, "it simply didn't occur to me to show my plays to a
director . . . My plays were not of use to the Communist regime, because they
dwell on the private lives of individuals and there is no ideology in them
anywhere. Therefore, I knew that they would never get past the censors."
In terms of her own creative development, Ptushkina admits to
having been influenced largely by foreign writers and playwrights, usually
American or Engltsh. At the top of the list 1s Neil Simon, to whom she claims
to be indebted for the precision of his cues and for what she refers to as his
"moral influence." "Simon," she told me, "taught me to understand that it is
indecent to write a boring play, even if it is for only one second, and to write
30 Slavic and East European Peifor"mance Vol. 21, No.3
dishonestly. Neither Americans nor Russians value him as they should . .. But
I love him madly, especially his Poslednfj pylko vg'ublennyj (Last of the Red-Hot
Lovers), which I consider to be nothing less than a masterpiece. He is of
course a great, gifted, dazzling playwright." Ptushkina is also indebted to
Oscar Wilde for "the precision of an idea's expression" and "brilliant style,"
although she acknowledged that he is a "cold dramatist'' who does not affect
her on an emotional level; to Jane Austen for her "humanism," "rules about
love," and "subtlety of psychology''; and finally to Agatha Christie for her
methods in constructing a detective story. "Agatha Christie," she began, "has
taught me how to write a detective story-to build a plot so that there are
twists and turns in it, so that it is not boring." According to Ptushkina, there
are no other present-day Russian dramatists who incorporate elements of
detective story writing into their plays. "At the fonndation of all of my plays,"
she told me, "is a line of intrigue; it's compulsory for me. This kind of writing
takes no particular effort on my part; it is my nature and I simply cannot
construct a play in a different way. I deceive people, I mislead them, and this
is what makes my plays interesting for them."
As for the Russian classics like Anton Chekhov, Ptushk.ina has only
the highest regard. "As a reader," she stated emphatically, "I adore Chekhov."
In fact, when she was eighteen years old, she even wrote a play about him that
was originally called Belletrist-a term that applies to fiction writers who earn a
livelihood with their literary works; it was also the term that Chekhov applied
to himself. "Although Che.khov's dramatic techniques are light-years from
me," she told me, "his Weltanschauung is close to mine. I, too, believe that the
writing profession is ordinary work and that the writer should not be singled
out in society." Later she changed the title Belletrist to I drognet konets tsepi (And
the End of the Chain Is Shakinj), a quotation from Chekhov's famous short story
"The Student" (1894) that, to quote Simon Karlinsky, argues for "the
importance of religious traditions and religious experience for the continuation
of civilization."
10
But Ptushkina admits that the new title has little to do with
her play. "I simply took this title from faintheartedness. The word ' belletrist'
seemed too boring and ineffective."
According to Ptushk.ina, And the End of the Chain Is Shaking is a "very
bold play ... the kind you can write only when you are eighteen." Isaak
Levitan, the celebrated painter and one of Chekhov's closest personal friends
during his university years, is a character in it, as are Lydia (Lika) Mizinova, a
colleague of his sister's and casual friend, and Yevdok.ia (Dnnya) Efros, the
Jewish woman he had wanted to marry at twenty-SL"'<. "It took a certain
boldness to portray real people," Ptushkina admitted, "but there were also
drawbacks .. . These are real people-people who have their own biography
31
and a certain historic 'image'-and I felt certain constraints from this." The
play, styled after a Chekhov play, also has a minimum of dramatic action.
As for its thematic content, And the End of the Chain Is Shakitrg is
essentially about a writer's quest for truth and " the price he pays for his fame
and recognition ... The quest for ultimate truth carries a heavy price tag," she
told me. "It is paid for with life, it is paid for with health-and it is here that
we find the sacrifice of the Russian writer. Like Christ, a great artist must be a
Messiah, and he cannot refuse the chalice." Ptushkina sets her play on April
21, 1890, the day of Chekhov's long and arduous journey to Sakhalin, one of
Russia's most terrible penal settlements-a pilgrimage that, as Donald Rayfield
so aptly puts it in his book Understanding Chekhov, he set out on in order "to get
at the roots of the evil and misery which beset him [the artist] on earth."
11
In
the play, as in real life, Chekhov was 33-years old at the time. His resolve to
undertake this journey came at great personal sacrifice, though; Chekhov was
already showing symptoms of tuberculosis, from which he would die fourteen
years later at the age of forty-four, and this expedition undoubtedly
exacerbated his condition. "When I talk about Chekhov," Ptushkina told me
sadly, "I start to shiver. I feel a tremendous amount of pity for him. I can well
imagine how he traveled in an unsprung covered wagon and then across
perilous seas to reach Sakhalin, and what an ordeal it was for him." To date,
And the End of the Chain Is Shaking still has not been produced, although
theatres, including the Vakhtangov Theatre, have approached her about the
possibility of staging it.
Although Ptushkina's proclivity for dramatic denouements, "turning
points," and "direct action" are sharply at odds with Chekhov's indirect or
concealed action, Ptushkina concedes that she has nonetheless been influenced
by him in a significant way. "I can't say that I took one thing or another from
Chekhov, but I think that he has influenced me with what I call 'pure sound.'
There is no falseness in Chekhov ... only pure rhythmical melody." With 1.his
in mind, Ptushkina looks for rhythm and melody when she has finished a play
and is reading the final product. "There may be a superfluous letter
somewhere in the play, such as the preposition v [which translates as "in" or
"at'1 being inserted in the wrong place. I can really agonize over the smallest
preposttion, and I can't rest until I've found the problem. This makes me
angry with myself because I realize that no one will notice it; the actors will say
it as it should be said. But 1.his is the way I am. Sometimes I even let a play lie
around for a year because I'm dissatisfied with the rhythm. It's like the
princess on the pea: somewhere there is a pea in the pages of a play, which
makes the entire play awkward."
32
Slavic and East Europea11 Vol. 21, No.3
A Monument to Victims at the St. Petersburg Academic Theatre
<'"'>
<'"'>
"When you remove a trifle that is disturbing a play," she continued, "it is
analogous to painting a picture. Some great artist goes up to a picture and,
with two strokes of his brush, the picture is completely transformed. It's the
same thing with a play-when you take away a trifle, the entire play comes to
life. I think that my awareness of rhythm and melody, and my efforts to
exclude all false notes from my work, comes directly from Chekhov-and I
really value this."
Ptushkina's creative talents, though, are by no means confined to
playwriting. Since the age of eighteen, she has been writing rasskazy, or short
stories, a few of which (i.e., "N.I.") have appeared in the Russian edition of
Cosmopolitan, after being solicited by its editor. Her other long-term ambitions
include writing a "novel about this epoch," now that the twentieth century has
come to an end, and finishing a book that deals with the upbringing of
children. "I started this book a long time ago," she told me, "when my
children [a son and two daughters] were still growing up ... I don't want to
write a culinary book, although I really love to cook. I don' t especially like
raising children, but I still want to write a book about it." In 2001 Ptushkina
also made her debut in Moscow as a professional director, staging her own
play Knrova (A Cow) at the Pushkin Theatre. Reflecting the author's profound
devotion to animals, this play is a tragicomic love story in which the heroine,
Katya, destroys herself and her sense of identity by taking back her unfaithful
ex-husband Vadim and then allowing him to promptly dispatch her beloved
cow to a sanatorium-a cow that had (as unbelievable as it might sound!) lived
in the same apartment with her; in sum, she betrays the cow for a man who
has betrayed her. Still other plays she has written and would like to direct for
the stage include I Pcry in Advance ("I want to stage it simply because I want
to") and By the Light of Others' Candles, whose multiple productions have in her
opinion failed. "I want to direct it not because it lies close to my soul,"
Ptushkina explained, "but because it is offensive to me that it is not properly
illuminated onstage. There is more to it than how it is currently being
produced." On the other hand, there are plays that she would never direct,
such as The Small Sheep, which she believes has been fully "realized" in its
numerous and varied stage productions, and The Tower ofPisa, which, under the
direction of Boris :tvfilgram, premiered in 1999 at the Stanislavsky Theatre. "I
don't think anyone on earth could have done a better job staging [1/;e Tower of
Pisa] than :tvfilgram, " she declared. "I don' t want to direct it because I would
do it worse."
12
Ultimately, though, Ptushkina would prefer to make her mark as a
director by producing plays other than her own. "Now the entire country
summons me to direct my own plays," she told me. "Theatres offer me a
34 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 21, No.3
great deal of money to come and do this; that's interesting for them. But for
me to go somewhere like Krasnoyarsk to sit and direct one of my own plays-
I don't want to."
And how does Ptushkina see her place in the new millennium? Does
she have, as her first name might suggest, "hope" for the coming years? "I
have hope for myself," she spoke warmly, without the slightest hesitation. "In
contrast to earlier times, when everything lay in the hands of censorship and
the government, the situation today rests entirely on the bidding of each
creative personality."
NOTES
t In post-Soviet Russia, as women are being offered more opportunities for
professional advancement, female dramatists have come increasingly to the forefront.
The more successful Russian women playwrights today include
Elena Gremina, Ksenia Dragunskaya, Olga Mikhailova, Maria Arbatova, and Olga
Mukhina, whose Ta11ya-Tarrya has been running for more than five years.
z Although Ptushkina writes the first draft of a play quickly, she is extremely meticulous
when it comes to editing and making revisions, sometimes doing as many as a dozen
more drafts. "It is impossible for me," she told me in 1997, "to hand over a play [to a
director or a theatre] in its first draft." Unfortunately, she added, this does not seem to
be the case with other contemporary playwrights. "I see the gift of other dramatists at
a glance, but I also see that their plays have not been brought to completion . .. This
laziness is everywhere in dramaturgy and at the factory; this is the Soviet legacy."
3 Ptushkina's Ovechka is based on the biblical account of Jacob at Paddanaram, where
his uncle Laban lives and where he seeks refuge afte.c tricking his father Isaac into
giving him the blessing intended for Esau, his older twin brother. In addition to
introducing into her play biblical subject matter, an area that had been off-limits to the
Russian public during the Soviet era, Ptushkina makes ample use of another former
Soviet taboo: eroticism. In the more intimate scenes between Jacob and Rachel, for
example, the text is permeated with erotic language and sensual detail. It is hardly
surprising, then, that Ovechka sparked such controversy and heated discussion when it
fust premiered in Moscow in 1996.
35
Owchlea and other plays by Ptushkina have been trnnslated into English by Michael M.
Naydan, a professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Penn State University, and
Slava Yastremski. These translations are included in a collection entitled Rocht!t Flnte
and In Somebot!J Elte't Candklight, which has not yet appeared in print. Rocht!t FMc (their
trnnslation of Owchka) is also forthcoming in the journal G/01.
s Nadezhda Ptushkina, Plach11 vpmd!, in Dramatmg 8 (1997), 217.
6 Ibid., 217.
7 Nadezhda Ptushkina, Ovechka i drugie p'esy (Izdatel'stvo A i B, 1999), 222.
s Until1993, Ptushkina disseminated her plays only to her immediate circle of
acquaintances, relatives, and children.
9 In Moscow, during the 1999-2000 theatrical season, Rozhdettvtntkiegnzy (Chrittm01
Dnanu Ia retitling of Ptushkina's play Polea ona 11mirala)) was staged at the Moscow
Chekhov Art Theater, Pizantkaya b01h'!Ja (Tht Tower of Pita) at the Stanislavsky Theater,
Owchlea (The Small Sheep) at the Art Club XX1, while the following year her Korova (A
Cow) premiered at the Push kin Theater. Ptushkina's plays have also been staged in the
more remote regions of Russia, including, among others, NovosibirSk, Arkhangelsk,
Murmansk, Novgorod, Rostov on the Don, Penza, Smolensk, and Omsk.
10 Simon Karlinsky, Chekhov't U.ft andTho11ght: Selected Ltttm and Commentary (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1973), 13.
II Donald Rayfield, Understanding Chekhov: A Critical S turfy of Chekhov s Prost and Drama
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), 93.
12 What makes these comments especially noteworthy is the fact that Milgram
eliminated her finale, choosing instead to replace the text of her play with visual effects.
"He still succeeded in creating a finale that adequately expressed what l intended," she
told me. "I understood that for this director the text of this play's f10ale was not
needed ... that Milgram created visual effects that are much dearer to the theatre."
36
Slavic and E01t E11ropea11 Peiformance Vol. 21 , No. 3
A LITTLE ORCHESTRA OF HOPE:
SERGEIARTSYBASHEV
Maria Ignatieva
Recognized as one of the best contemporary Russian directors, Sergei
Artsybashev has received the State Prize twice, once from Boris Yeltsin, and
most recently from Vladimir Putin in 2000, and has been showered with
awards in France, Egypt, Poland, and Germany. Artsybashev is loved by the
crowd and trusted by authorities. The .Ministry of Culture of the Russian
Federation, which long ago lost its ideological control, has been funding
Artsybashev for the last ten years. In 1998, Oleg Efremov, the Artistic
Director of the Moscow Art Theatre (until his death in 2000), invited
Artsybashev to sit next to him at the theatre' s one-hundredth anniversary
celebration. Andrzej Wajda, the great Polish director, called Artsybashev "the
real hope for a renaissance of Russian theatre."
But Artsybashev remains convinced that he is "not really appreciated
by the Moscovites."
1
He still sees himself on the periphery of mainstream
theatre. Is this insecurity the result of the various fears and complexes that
have accompanied him to Moscow from the Russian provinces?
Admittedly, he iJ provincial, although far from being a weakness, this
constitutes his strength and his difference. Here we find the roots of his
creativity. During the late 1990s and in into the ea.rly twenty-first century,
Russian theatrical life has been unusually eventful, and the Moscow repertoire
has featured productions by the likes of legendary Yurii Lyubimov, Alexander
Dodin, Kama Ginkas, and Geta J anovskaya. Among them, Artsybashev
occupies a special place of honor. In this article I shall provide a general
overview of Artsybashev's career, interlaced with personal reminiscences,
based upon twenty years of professional friendship.
Sergei Artsybashev comes from a family of Russian kuhk.r-wealthy
peasant-farmers who were sent to the labor camps as capitalists in the late
1920s. The Artsybashevs lived in the village of Kalya (spelled by mistake
Kolio-a male suntame-on Artsybashev's passport), two hundred miles from
Svcrdlovsk (recently renamed Ekaterinburg). Artsybashev {born in September
1951) earned his first professional diploma from a little college in Sverdlovsk,
which qualified him to direct at the community theatre level. By age twenty,
he had developed a passion for Stanislavsky and the System. He even named
his ftrst son Konstantin (Kostya), which, when added to his patronymic,
created Konstantin Sergeevich, replicating Stanislavsky's names.
37
<
?-
N
......
Artsybashev alongside Russian President Vladimir
Putin, as Putin awards him the State Prize in 2000
In 1976, Artsybashev arrived in Moscow and became a student at the
State Theatre Institute (GITIS), studying both acting and directing under
Maria Knebel. In her late seventies, still lively, sharp, and always ready for a
joke, Knebel was a former student of Stanislavsky and l\1ichael Chekhov. A
brilliant teacher, Knebel never oppressed her students, and responded to the
individual needs of their talents. She took Artsybashev under her wing and
became his theatrical godmother. Like Artsybashev, Knebel maintained
throughout her entire life a sacred belief in Stanislavsky and his System, which,
as Artsybashev stated in one of our numerous conversations, "opens paths for
the unlimited self-discoveries through theatre." Knebel died in 1985, four
years after Artsybashev's graduation.
In 1981, Artsybashev directed a production based on three pieces: a
short story by Alexander Volod.in, and two one-act plays: Two Poodles by Semen
Zlotnikov and Love by Ludmila Petrushevskaya. Artsybashev also played the
leading male part in all three, co-starring with a young actress, Nina
Krasilnikova, who played the three female leads. To find a home for their
production, Sergei and Nina auditioned for every professional theatre. To
their stunned surprise, they were accepted by the famous Taganka Theatre.
Yuri Lyubimov gave his personal pennission to include their little show in the
Taganka repertory. So started Artsybashev's theatrical career, which would
develop according to a popular Russian proverb: "Moscow doesn't believe in
tears."
In the early 80s, the Moscow theatre scene fell under the powerful,
although officially denied, influence of young directors from the Russian
provinces, most of whom were in their early thirties. Overshadowed by their
more successful elders, these provincials brought along with them their
dialects, styles, themes, and theatrical devices. Most of them were
impoverished, wore hand-knit sweaters, and lived in dorms or communal flats.
Most lacked a propisko (pennit to live in Moscow), which made them extremely
dependent on the good will of the theatre administration and district militia.
Some of them drank heavily and were chain-smokers.
Their productions were usually staged U1 some type of black box
theatre, called a malqya slsena (small stage). Nevertheless, in the early 80s their
shows became the hits of the seasons. Among the most conspicuous were:
Sergei Kokovkin's Five Comers, directed by Kama Ginkas and Lully Rassebah's
Premiere, directed by Mark Vail at the Mossovet Theatre; Mrozek's Emigris,
directed by l\1ichael Mokeev and Petrushevskaya's Chinzano, directed by
Roman Kozak at the Chelovek-Studio; and Vampilov's The Elder Son and
Chekhov's Seagull, directed by Yuri Pogrebnichko at the Krasnaya Presnia
Theatre. Their productions shared commonalities, as did their lifestyles. They
39
were deliberately "poor" in scenery and props; classic drama was always mixed
with contemporary details; acting featured a mixture of eccentricity and
intimate intonations.
Artsybashev belongs to this generation of provincials, which followed
the well-known directors of the Thaw in the 60s. The Thaw generation
consisted of bright people who wanted to work as a team, and dreamed of
purifying the ideals of fraternity, liberty, and equality. Their ideals and illusions
were crushed at the end of the 60s; they remained friends, supporting each
other in political and ideological struggle against Soviet oppression.
The next generation (born in the 1950s and coming of age in the
80s), never had any revolutionary ideals or clear social beliefs, either good or
bad. They withdrew from the political and social arena, allowing them to
avoid membership in the Communist party in order to maintain their
professional work. They became private people who nurtured their intimate
hopes, discoveries and passions, and looked deeply within themselves. They
took no responsibilities, but neither were they given any. They lived in a
crumbling world, which had lost its wholeness, and they sought to make their
art reflect the mixed layers of their existence. It would take them nearly a
decade to cement their own little studios and theatres; in the early 80s, they
were "theatreless" and "homeless." When they tried to adjust to life at the
established theatres, they failed. Thus, Artsybashev and Pogrebn.ichko did not
survive at the Taganka; Kama Ginkas and Gennady Trostenetskii left the
Mossovet Theatre; and Mikhail Mokeev failed to prove himself at the Moscow
Art Theatre, his alma mater.
Artsybashev titled his first production A Little Orchutra of Hope, a
quote from a popular song by Bulat Okudzhava, which for the Russian
intelligentsia had contained a code message. The song was about hard times,
deceived expectations, and a little orchestra of hope, conducted by love.
Artsybashev's A Little Orchestra of Hope had no chance of being a Taganka
production, aesthetically or thematically. In Lyubimov's poetical and political
theatre, an ordinary man was never shown neutrally: the Taganka always
placed commoners in extraordinary circumstances where they would become
either traitors or heroes.
Artsybashev's aim was to defend the commoner, to justify the rights,
modest hopes, and insignificant lives of those little men (malen'kie ludz).
Artsybashev wanted his audience to share the sadness of the little man' s
attempt to be understood, to be moved and touched. AJthough he recognized
the difference in conception from his own, Lyubimov was open to
experimentation and invited Artsybashev to his theatre. Hope became quite
40
Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 21, No. 3
popular, being shown sometimes three times a day on weekends. It toured the
USSR and the Moscow suburbs.
A big bed was placed in the center of the stage; a dozen suspended
pillows swayed in the air, serving as the unchangeable set for the entlre show.
A group of men in worn jeans and leather jackets came downstage with
guitars. They sang Okudzhava's song, which functioned as an epigraph. Then
a girl stepped on stage, looking as if she were embarrassed for the small space
she occupied in life. So began the dramatized version of Alexander Volodin's
short story, A Woman and Children. This very insignificant woman wanted a
family and children. All the men she dated were as insignificant as she was.
Artsybashev played these various men who, one by one, left her. Then she
decided to conceive a child. The image of the Madonna and child, shown with
the help of a slide projector, accompanied by "Ave Maria," sentimentally
ended the first episode. The whole action revolved around a big bed with a
heavy metal frame, upon which even their sexual exploits looked as poor and
unimaginative as their whole lives.
The second story was Semen Zlotnikov's Two Poodlu. Again, a man
and a woman, desperately lonely, with their black and white dogs, were trying
to start a conversation. She was an old spinster, a librarian, while he was a
worker: their different social stations (she was from the intelligentsia)
prevented them from "clicking" with each other.
The third story was the play Love, a masterpiece by Petrushevskaya,
was the culmination of the whole production. All of Artsybashev's theatre
would grow out of Love. The play portrayed Soviet life, ugly to its very core,
which irreversibly twisted people. Painful realities, which Artsybashev himself
had confronted in Moscow, included residency permits ("propiska"), housing
problems (one-room flat with a single bed where somehow three people were
supposed to live), multiplied by personal insecurities in a hostile environment.
While the first and second episodes of A Little Orchestra of Hope were
elegantly and sincerely performed, the third one revealed the characters'
passionate narures. Artsybashev and Krasilnikova profoundly lived the lives of
their characters, the newlyweds, Tolya and Sveta, guiding the audience through
the maze of their hurt feelings and the indignities they suffered.
Like any well-known repertory theatre, the Taganka bad its share of
intrigue that could break the will of all but the strongest. Yuri Lyubimov was a
strong willed director who artistically and personally showed little mercy.
Oppressed from above, the actors took out their resentments on the less
popular members of the company. Artsybashev was not lughly respected,
both because he lacked power, and also because he was not quite "the Taganka
thing." Such was the diagnosis of an untreatable disease. No one could ever
41
explain exactly what it meant to be "the Taganka thing," but everyone in the
troupe knew when someone clidn't fit it.
Artsybashev rehearsed several productions in his spare time, such as
a poetic composition based on Marina Tsvetaeva's life and poetry, and Music
Lessons by Ludmila Petrushevskaya. Yuri Lyubimov clid not allow Artsybashev
to continue worlcing on the Tsvetaeva production, engaging him as his
assistant in Bon's Godunov. After Lyubimov stayed abroad, Music Lessons was
banned by Nikolai Gubenko, who explained to the Taganka Artistic Council
that the latter production "wasn't a Taganka show at all." As a result, Andrei
Goncharov, the Artistic Director of the Mayakovsky Theatre, accepted Music
Lessons in his repertory.
Artsybashev went through hell at the Taganka. Once, while
Lyubimov was abroad, Artsybashev invited the whole Taganka Artistic
Council to listen to his dramatization of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a
Death Foretold. He asked me to attend this meeting in order to have a critic and
friend by his side. With sadistic sarcasm, the stars of the Taganka described as
worthless and insignificant the literary and theatrical potential of the work.
Artsybashev kept silent and at the end quietly thanked the Artistic Council for
their consideration.
Artsybashev's "kulak" genes helped him to survive such an attack. In
1990, Artsybashev, who meanwhile had become a successful movie actor, was
finally given his own theatre: the Moscow County [Oblastnoz] Drama Theatre, a
touring company without any reputation, and the most provincial theatre in
Moscow. The greatest drawback for Artsybashev was that his theatre clid not
have a stage. It was an old building, containing a few dressing rooms and a big
rehearsal room. Although it was situated near the Square of the Three Train
Stations, it was almost impossible to find: a little building hidden behind a row
of pre-Revolutionary townhouses. Artsybashev moved in, literally and
metaphorically because he had no place to live. The Pokrovka Theatre became
his new home.
2
He spent days and nights in the theatre, waiting for the
government to assign him to an apartment, which the position of Artistic
Director required.
In the new theatre, Artsybashev turned the big rehearsal room into
his stage. In fact, the room served two purposes: the company rehearsed and
performed there. Fortunately, Artsybashev clid not need much scenery, since
there was no space.
Artsybashev started his company with about ten actors who had been
waiting for such an opportunity for ages. To his surprise, he also found a
younger group of actors (between twenty-six and forty) willing to take all kinds
of risks.
42 Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 21, No.3
Artistically starving, they gratefully and enthusiastically followed their
new director. They were rewarded beyond their expectations: in just one
season the new theatre became the toast of the town.
In Russia, in the most difficult times, the intelligentsia would always
sacrifice to feed their guests. In 1991, when Artsybashev directed Three Sisters,
Moscow had deficits and food lines. Three Si!lers opens with Irina's birthday,
where the guests eat and drink together joyfully. Artsybashev could not
morally sanction having his actors eat in the same room (remember, he did not
have stage!), while others watched hungrily, therefore, he mixed actors and
spectators at one long table where everyone ate and drank together. The
actors, at such unbelievable proximity, performed Three Sisters. Artsybashev
ordered the actors to cook at home and to bring the dishes for every show.
In the next act, the sobering up occurred. The chairs were moved to
a comer, alienating the audience from the performers and the performers from
each other. But the spiritual bond between actors and spectators grew even
stronger. In this empty room with a few chairs and a small table, with the
dome of Elokhovsky Cathedral visible through the open windows, the three
sisters poured out their longing. In Moscow, they longed for the real Moscow.
Their cry matched that of the Muscovite spectators, who had lost the Moscow
of their youth, their hopes, and their dreams. The production reached its
climactic point when the sobbing Masha (Elena Starodub, the leading actress
of the theatre) threw herself at Vershinin's feet the last hope was gone.
Artsybashev's Chekhov was very passionate, and characters' unhappiness was
not reflective, but intensely active and full of life. In this production, the
subtext did not exist in the traditional understanding of " flowing thoughts and
emotions, not expressed in dialogues. At the end, the three sisters, together
near an open window, looked at 800 years of the Moscow skyline and breathed
a sigh of hope.
The success of Three Sisters assured Artsybashev that his "life" in
theatre had at last begun. The authorities promised a new building with a
stage, foyer, and fancier dressing rooms. He finally got his own municipal
apartment. Now his actors feared his anger the way he had feared Lyubimov's
at Taganka.
He was hungry to work: Gogo!, Turgenev and Ostrovsky were next
on his list. Is there a serious director who can establish himself in Russia
without his own interpretations of Russia's classical repertory?
By 1993, the face of Russia was slowly changing: people started
openly making money, ignoring the misery of others. Beggars clogged the
subway, and suicides increased. Alcoholism became a national disaster. Thus,
Russia celebrated the very first stage of "barbarian capitalism."
43
Artsybashev set The Inspector General (1993) in rehabilitation facilities
where chronic alcoholics are treated. The play was interpreted as a specifically
Russian national nightmare, in which awakening is worse than the worst of
dreams. The senile brains of the patients created the phantom Inspector.
KhJestakov was played by the young actor Sergei Udovick, who closely
resembled Michael Chekhov from Stanislavsky's famous production. He
diddled, spat his words, spun round in circles, constandy transforming himself
into something new. Was he an undercover doctor playing with the alcoholics
in order to infiltrate their ranks? Was he a new Russian? Or the devil himself?
The mayor's wife and daughter ate bananas and lusted after him. At the
denouement, there was another shock for the spectators: during wordless
tableau the entire cast standing naked in the doorway stared at the audience.
No Russian director staging Turgenev's A Month in the Country, as
Artsybashev did in 1993, can possibly ignore the fact that Stanislavsky directed
this play. Artsybasbev read every account of Stanislavsky's production in
order to avoid unnecessary "quotations." The most direct influence on
Artsybashev's production came from Anawly Efros and his Month in the
Country (1977), with its key metaphor: a litde teahouse in the garden seemingly
made from metal lace, which was disassembled at the denouement.
Artsybashev, who interpreted A Month in the Country as a drama of criminal
passions, also used a central metaphor in his production. At first it was
mistakenly taken for a country bench, then for a cart without wheels. At the
end of the play, when all the passions were played out and the women
(Natalia-Elena Starodub, Vera-Natalia Grebenkina) were doomed, men
were placed on the cart, and it was pulled offstage by women.
Artsybashev was exploring the dark side of human nature. Turgenev
and Chekhov, under his directions, suddenly developed commonalties not in
the delicate nuances of inner feelings, but in their raw portrayal of passionate
female natures. Artsybashev explained his approach in my conversation with
him in 1994:
44
Do you want to know how I define the difference between the
System as it exists, and the way I use it? Stanislavsky used to ask his
actors to leave their pettiness and domestic concerns behind when
they enter the sacred institution of THEATRE. No, I don't need
them to leave anything behind. I want them to bring everything here
and display it. I want them here completely, just as they really are,
with a mixture of low and high, Apollonian and Dionysian, cultured
and barbarian. I don't "edit" them in my productions, I include all
they have.
Slavic and East European Peiformam"/1 Vol. 21, No. 3
Elena Starodub as Natalia and Natalia Grebenkina as Veza in Turgenev's A
Month in the Country, directed by Artsybashev
In 1992, the Pokrovka theatre, with the financial support of the l\1in.istry of
Culture and private sponsors, started to build its own theatre. Actually, the
existing building (on Pok.rovka Street where it crosses the Boulevard Circle)
needed to be rebuilt. But because of inflation, it became a long and tortumus
process. Every time the builders were nearly finished, the prices would rise,
and the theatre would need another infusion of cash. It would requil:e several
months to amass enough rubles, but by that time, further inflation would
render that sum insufficient. For three years, they circled in panic, chas10g their
own tails.
Still in his old building, in 1993 Artsybashev successfully directed
Ostrovsky's Talents and Admirers using a central metaphor again-a big pre-
Revolutionary kiosk for theatrical posters-around which the action revolved.
One of the great successes of Maria Knebel in the past, Ostrovsky's play
elaborated on the endless sacrifices that theatre has always demanded of its
practitioners. The young heroine Negina (Natalia Grebenkina) again played a
passionate and irillocent actress who became corrupted by a wealthy lover.
The new Pok.rovka Theatre opened in 1994, with a seating capacity of
eighty people, an attractive foyer, and a buffet (absolutely necessary for
Russian spectators). Faithful to his ideals, Artsybashev did not build a platform
stage, instead retaining a black box with moveable seats in raked rows. In 1994,
Artsybashev directed a contemporary play by Maria Arbatova, Trial Interview on
the Theme of Freedom, and Ingroar Bergman's Scenes From a Marriage. Though
both shows were done professionally, they were not theatrical eye-openers in
either the acting or directing.
Help came from outside, when for Gogol's Marriage (1996), he cast
two well-known actors from the Mayakovsky theatre, Igor Kostolevsky and
Mikhail Fillipov. Artsybashev's Marriage was counter-influenced by Anatoly
Efros's production. While Efros staged this comedy as tragedy in 1975,
Artsybashev created a folktale. He included Russian songs and rituals,
emphasizing the lyrical undercurrent of the play, which had often been
ignored. Only the singing and dancing were brilliantly performed with
aplomb. Artsybashev's Marriage belonged to the category of well-made
productions, and it sought to benefit the actors. The show wanted to please
both the audiences and the actors: an atypical artistic goal for Artsybashev.
By 1997, Artsybashev himself reached new heights: he was now a
celebrity, had his own apartment and a new Toyota Corolla, got a cell phone,
and carried a gun for self-protection. In these new times, Artsybashev's
longstanding ambition to stage and play Hamlet became reality for the grand
reopening of the Pok.rovka theatre.
46 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 21, No.3
For Hamlet (1997), Artsybashev invited the internationally recognized
Russian designer, Eduard Kochergin, who had worked with Georgii
Tovstonogov. The era of the "home-made" design was over; Artsybashev
needed style, and multi-dimensional ideas. Kochergin built revolving doors
draped in fabric, which heightened the effect of sudden appearances and
treacherous eavesdroppmg. They also suggested labyrinths of infinity.
Denmark was a prison, which had no exit: the revolving doors led back on
stage.
Kochergin dressed the actors stylishly in leather. Verbal exchanges
were portrayed as fencing matches where actors not only "look daggers," but
also speak with them. Gertrude (Elena Starodub) and Ophelia (Natalia
Grebenkina) fenced as well.
Artsybashev, who had also performed in prior productions, now
played the second Hamlet. The first Hamlet (Evgeny Buldakov) was a young
man; in the scene with the Ghost, they would trade places.
For the first time, Artsybashev let his authoritarian ideas dictate his
artistic interpretation. The young actor was certainly capable of aging
spiritually and depicting Hamlet's maturation from angry innocence to a
philosophical estrangement from mundane pettiness. Artsybashev chose to
play the role because the play roused his personal ghosts. For him, the play
explored hwnan survival in a world of treachery and injustice. When
Artsybashev re-entered as Hamlet, he spoke to the audience and gazed into
their eyes, sharing his own secret pains and tragic discoveries. Sitting in the
first row as a spectator, I refused to meet his eye. I found aU the actors
convincing except for him. Perhaps, his own personal sincerity and his real
pain lacked adequate artistic expression. Like many other directors,
Artsybashev cannot tolerate criticism. Playfully, but with a defensive note in
his voice, he assured me that, unlike "normal" spectators, critics had not
grasped the essence of his Hamlet, and that I would never again deserve a
front row seat, "to dishearten the cast with disbelieving eyes."
In 1998, Artsybashev directed a political farce by Andrei Maksimov,
entitled The Shpherd, about Vladimir Lenin. He played Lenin himself. The
farce speculated that Lenin sold his soul, along with his ability to love, to the
Devil. Nina Krasilnikova, Artsybashev's ex-wife and still a Taganka actress,
was invited to play all the female parts, such as Nadezhda Krupskaya, Inessa
Arman, and Lenin's other loves. Though stale in ideas, the performance was
politically spicy and sharp, much like the perpetual debates about moving
Lenin from his Red Square Mausolewn and burying him. Impenetrable for
foreigners, the play juggled with all the formerly sacred cliches from Lenin's
works. In the autumn of 1998, the democratic wing of the Russian Parliament
47
Artsybashev as Hamlet
48
Slavic a11d East Europea11 Peifonnante Vol. 21, No. 3
Vladimir Scherbakov as Claudius and Elena Starodub as
Gertrude in Artsybashev's Hamlet
(Duma) attended the production. The group burst into laughter many times
and gave the cast a standing ovation.
At the same time, Artsybashev revived A Little Orchestra of Hope in his
new theatre. He played the three leads again, with Krasilnikova as a guest star.
It was quite obvious that like his "kulak" grandparents, Artsybashev did not
part easily with his "belongings." Such a step made me wonder whether
Artsybashev was experiencing an artistic crisis and taking refuge in past
achievements. In 1999, he was obviously looking for something new. He
thought about directing The Seagull, but postponed it. Perhaps, the artistic
resources of Pokrovka theatre did not inspire him anymore. Maybe the actors
could not "catch up" with his personal and professional growth. Artsybashev
obviously was not certain about his plans himself.
Artsybashev' s latest productions obviously prove the existence of the
two tendencies in his repertory policy: he features both "well-made shows"
where he invites famous actors to star, and also lyrical confessional
productions, which reveal the depths of his most sacred thinking. Thus,
Quarantine (about Alexander Pushkin, composition by Artsybashev, 1999) and
Moliere by Mikhail Bulgakov (2000), belong to the second trend. Artsybashev
plays the leads in both. Both revolve around the most sacred questions for the
Russian mind, such as the relationships between artist and authorities, between
inspiration and the limits for its realization, between evotion and bettayal.
These productions express Artsybashev' s personal views more completely than
his Hatnlet.
Moliere (2000) is staged in a room enlarged to eternity by walls
decorated with mirrors reflecting mirrors reflecting mirrors. Limited in set and
props, with a throne, screens and candles, it scrutinizes each step of the
humiliation that Moliere suffered -- the artist' s degradation and death. The
King, a brilliant creation by Evgeny Buldakov, charms spectators in the same
horrifying way that Stalin used with his victims. A chameleon by nature, he
transforms sweet smiles instantaneously into threats, and his whispers are
followed by hysterical accusations. While the King is irresistibly charming,
Moliere (Artsybashev) is unattractive and weak .. He irritates, and sometimes
disgusts-his genius seems at odds with his mundane personality. Artsybashev
provokes his audience by seeming to ask, W o u ~ d you, could you love this
Moliere?" Moliere exists without dignity, humiliated and betrayed, although
his suffering eyes occasionally shine through his bad manners.
When the Pokrovka Theatre was about to open, the authorities
suggested to Artsybashev that it be called Artsybashev's Theatre. He decided
against it for fear of seeming pompous. T oday he regrets that decision. The
Pokrovka Theatre became so obviously HIS in terms of its acting and
50
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 21, No.3
directorial style as well as its repertory policy. Artsybashev's method is based
on lus devotion to the Stanislavsky System in his own interpretation. His
maxim is to "live the life" of the human spirit "here and now" on stage in its
wholeness. For Artsybashev, as for Stanislavsky, the System is not associated
"with any particular artistic style."
3
Elaborating on des1gn, or freely returning
to the "poor theatre" of his youth, Ansybashev has remained faithful to the
core of the Russian psychological theatre based upon living characters'
emotions.
At the beginning of the new century, the Pokrovka Theatre celebrates
its 10th anniversary; in September 2001, Artsybashev will turn fifty. As with all
anniversaries, numbers provoke the first summary and generalization. Is
Artsybashev content? The answer is "yes" and "no"-no Russian director
would ever admit that he is happy, or completely satisfied. Happiness and
satisfaction are forbidden among artists in Russia, for the real artist should be
perpetually discontent and in search of new forms. According to the common
view, happiness causes the death of creativity: every Russian artist is merely
Faust, rather than Goethe. In our conversation of July 1999, Artsybashev
explained:
The Stanislavsky System helps me to build channels
between actors and the spiritual life of the spectators. I intend to
create an impalpable contact between them, and this two-way energy
becomes part of our productions.
Look at my actors. They are content, pleased, happy. They
all have titles (Honored Artists of the Russian Federation),
recognition and prestige. They don't want to grow anymore. They
think that they are "there there." Bullshit! I engaged a new group of
young actors, who have just graduated from theatre schools. This
digital generation is so unlike us, unlike the way we were at their age.
They tell me 'they are happy.' Happy! I tell them: 'If you are happy,
why the hell have you become actors? To show me your pretty faces
and petty feelings? Give me your guts, your real inside! Don't give me
soap opera; give me tragedy, real drama!' Well, they are young, some
of them are promising, and I am working on them ...
He rehearses a new play by Vladimir Maliagin, In Silence, which he
chose for the youngsters. The play depicts provincials trying to find their place
in the new Moscow. The stage is almost empty, just a few mattresses, and
windows through which the real Moscow appears.
51
N01ES
t From our conversation in July 1999.
2 (l call it the Pokrovka Theatre though in Russian it is called Teatr na Pokrovke [Ttolr
No Pok.rovkt.). It rcAects better the idiomatic Russian: Poihli 11 Pokrovky no "Gamltlo."
3 Sharon M. Carrucke. StaniJiavsky in Focus (Amsterdam: HaiWood Academic Publishers,
1998), 28.
52
Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 21, No.3
ALEXANDERTYSHLER
Alia Sosnovskaya
Alexander Tyshler (1898-1980) was a painter, graphic artist, and
stage designer who began his career under the influence of Cubism, Cubo-
futurism, and Constructivism- the dominant avant-garde movements in early
twentieth-century Russia.
1
However, his earliest independent series of
watercolors on the Civil War and the Revolution resemble Goya's etchings
with their fantastic world of monsters and cruelty. This aspect of Tyshler's
artistic work accounts for his special attraction to the theatre, which offered
him an opportunity to embody fantasies in theatrical form. ''Tyshler is too
much of an individualist to represent anyone ... Tyshler is by nature a stage
designer . . . his drawings are dreams for the staging of theatrical
performances."2 These words, written when the first production based on
Tyshler's design was staged, would prove to be prophetic. Tyshler's fantastic
designs appear to be constructed out of randomly found materials. They give
no indication of the time and place of the action, as in the realistic theatre, nor
do they provide clues to the characters and moods, as in symbolist theatre.
Rather, Tyshler's sketches depict a strange world of domestic objects
magnified to fill the stage, creating a bizarre contrast between the micro- and
macro- worlds, a materialization of fantasies and dreams.
As early as 1927, in his first production-Lope de Vega's Fuente
Ovduna, staged by the State Jewish Theatre ofByelorussia-the Spanish village
was represented by a gigantic many-storied cone-like basket where the motif of
peasant wickerwork produced the impression of a kind of constructed hut.3
The scenery was based on this single motif, which acquired further dimensions
as the performance developed and the actors made themselves at home in the
various stage spaces.
Tyshler believed that an everyday object could be used as the basis
for the scenic visual image, like the basket in his design for Fuente Ovduna. It
was not the basket itself only it's form or details that provided the artist with
inspiration; the spatial concept should have no specific temporal or regional
characteristics. For Tyshler the time of the action is eternity, while the place of
the action is everywhere. Thus, a peasant's basket-the eternal symbol of
labor and itself the result both of this labor and of a tradition that incorporates
the experience of generations-becomes a universal symbol.
This approach to spatial imagery in the theatre remained a principle
for Tyshler throughout his life. When he found a theatre and director whose
views coincided with his own, an extremely interesting production was likely to
53
emerge. When he worked in less compatible conditions, his ideal theatre
remained on the page, and he produced vast numbers of sketches of scenery
and costumes, with the words "not staged" inscribed below. Tyshler created
his best stage designs for the productions mounted by Solomon Mikhoels at
the Moscow State Jewish Theatre.
4
After the theatre was closed, Tyshler
continued to work as a painter and graphic artist, preserving theatricality as the
intrinsic quality of his paintings.
One of the major factors that determined the specific world of his
sketches was his joint work with Mikhoels in the staging of plays in Yiddish.
Yiddish was for Tyshler, as for many Jews of his generation, not simply the
language of his childhood and his family, but also the language used in the
restricted area of the Pale of Settlement
5
, the shtetl. This language,
representing the borderline between "one's own people" and "strangers," was
the sign of recognition, a kind of a password. Russian and Ukrainian were
used for official, outside communication, while Yiddish was reserved for
internal, familial , and unofficial interaction. This small world of Yiddish and
of Yiddish-based culture had its own boundaries, invisible from the outside
but very clearly delineated. The small and restricted shtetl was a place of
comfort, joy, and anxiety, with a strong sense of shared community and
culture.
For Tyshler, the production of King uar directed by Sergei Radlov at
the Moscow State Jewish Theatre in 1935 became the embodiment of his
artistic system (Fig. 1), while for Mikhoels it was his highest achievement as an
actor. For this production, Tyshler created two different spaces, two places of
action: the larger one, not defined by any external borders, and the smaller
one, closed within a small space from which the characters stepped out into
the larger world. Folk art formed the bridge that connected Shakespeare's
characters to the world of the small Jewish town so familiar to the artist.
The constant difficulty of keeping their national identity intact, while
living within the framework of an alien culture, together with the necessity of
interacting with that culture at a domestic level, while reducing to a minimum
the influence on their inner, spiritual life, in large measure shaped the specific
nature of Jewtsh culture in European countries in general. In the Russian
Empire, however, where the Jews were deprived of the nght of free
movement, any act that reached beyond the narrow framework of the shtetl
was regarded as a major event.
Consequently, a special system of relations with the outside world
gradually developed, both at the level of everyday life, and at that of mutual
relations and influences in the spiritual sphere. The post-revoluti<? nary
freedoms and the appearance of a numerous group of Jewish painters among
54
S !avic and East E11ropea11 PerfomJalltt Vol. 21, No. 3
Figure 1. Model for King Lear at the Moscow State Jewish Theatre
the European avant-gardists of the first three decades of the twentieth century
enlarged the range of art available and influenced the integration of Jewish
culture into European culture, but this process was not as profoundly felt in
artists' works for the theatre as it was in the same artists' paintings and
sculpture. "Nationalist Jewish tendencies survived longer in Yiddish and
Hebrew theatre than in plastic arts. The theatres were founded after the
Revolution with the express intention of preserving and expanding Jewish
national consciousness."6
In Tyshler's design for King Lear at the Moscow State Jewish Theatre,
a second smaller stage was placed within the stage proper. This smaller stage
consisted of a box supported by caryatids - pillars in the form of female
bodies. Such caryatids belong to the architecture of classical antiquity, but in
their form and clothing Tyshler's caryatids resembled more the sculptural
figures that are found in medieval cathedrals. These figures supported a box
stage much like that used by itinerant puppet theatre performers. The action
began in the box stage. The box represented the theatre and its stage ("All the
world' according to Shakespeare), and the characters emerged from the box
into the space of the larger stage, in other words, into the real world. The
relationship between the two spaces-the one small and enclosed, the other
large and open- became a visual expression of the relations between the small,
familiar, shtetl-bound world and the larger outer world, in which people
became alienated from their habitual ties and relationships. Within the small
stage, the actors seemed unnaturally big and powerful, appearing to be equal in
size to the caryatids, but once they entered the space of the large stage, they
became small and pitiful. It is quite possible that Tyshler himself experienced
this feeling after he left his shtetl and went on to the city of Kiev. His stage
design was a visual representation of the relativity of our ideas about ourselves
and our world.
But it is also noteworthy that this interplay of scale is also one of the
principles of Jewish calligraphy which, having no capital letters, emphasizes the
main idea or word by enlarging the size of letters of a particular word or group
of words. A page of text in a prayer book does not consist of text only, but it
also includes a peculiar spatial layout of the primary and secondary ideas,
which are expressed in the typography and the arrangement of the text. The
spatial layout of the page serves to orientate the person praying; it directs his
or her attention towards the crux of the prayer and makesit possible to grasp
the idea of the entire page at a glance, while still maintaining the secondary
elements within the field of vision.
Applied to stage design, this principle of Jewish typography brought
unexpected and added resonance to Shakespeare's play. Mikhoels's King Lear,
56
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 21, No.3
Figure 2. Sketch for King Lear at the Moscow State Jewish Theatre
as the ruler of his palace and his kingdom, is secure in his familiar domain, but
once he emerges from his own territory and accustomed relationships, he
becomes increasingly confused in the larger world.
Tyshler drew his sketches in black and white, leaving the
development of the color spectrum to the lighting designer. His sketches
represented the spatial idea in its pure form. But almost thirty years later,
when Tyshler did a sketch for an exhibition about the 1935 production of /(jng
Lear (Fig. 2), he used colors and turned the small stage at an angle to the line
of footlights on the full stage. Yellow and blue in 1963 replaced the black and
white spectrum of the 1935 sketch. The colors were subdued, as if they had
been covered by a light patina of time. The crowd on the stage had grown
bigger, and banners and coats of arms hung above the stage. An unstable
ladder, upon which stood the figure of a woman, connected the floor of the
stage proper with the small box stage, which as before, was supported by
caryatids. The figure of a dancing jester appeared in the foreground of the
sketch. This later sketch is no longer merely a design for a theatrical
production; rather it represents the performance itself, played out by the artist
who preserves in it the same perception as before of a confrontation between
an alien, external world and the world of the familiar community.
At the same time that /(jng Lear was being staged by the Moscow
State Jewish Theatre in 1935, Tyshler was preparing sketches for Shakespeare's
Richard III at the Maxim Gorky Bolshoi Dramatic Theatre of Leningrad (Fig.
3-4). In this case, too, a stage built upon a stage was the main artistic motif.
The symmetrical composition consisted of three acting areas, or sub-stages, all
of different heights and connected by rickety ladders. A comparison between
the sketch and the stage model makes it possible to follow the development of
the artist's ideas. The massive medieval towers depicted in the sketch gave
way to theatrical partitions, which create boundaries around the small sub-
stages. The model lacks the massive walls shown in the sketch, and the
heaviness of the stone constructions is nowhere apparent, but the structure's
massive forms that rest upon slight unstable supports is kept intact, and these
tower-like forms are crowned with monsters that embody the nightmare taking
place within the play.
The leitmotif of this design is a massive form, topped by monsters,
supported by an unstable base. It is interesting to note that, just as Tyshler
later redesigned /(jng Lear, the artist made a second set design for Richard III in
1964. In this sketch, which is not bound by the conditions of an actual stage,
Tyshler created his own artistic theatre. His sketch shows a larger red-brown
space, within which is a round stage resembling a scaffold. Small ladders that
58
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 21, No.3
59
connect this elevated round stage to the stage of the theatre strengthen the
resemblance to scaffolcling. Bridges or ramps lead down to the elevated stage
in two zigzags. Standing on these ramps are strange beings, whose outlines
resemble that of people, but each figure is a vertical rectangle, with opened
sides simultaneously suggesting both wings and open coffins. At first glance,
the monsters' heads mounted on sticks resemble the heads of the executed on
street lanterns. The objects and strucrures have multiple meanings, as in
nightmares.
This impression is strengthened by the fact that there is indeed an
open coffin in the center of the elevated scaffold, and two figures stand near it.
This image represents the meeting of Richard and Lady Anne by the coffin of
Henry VI, which takes place in the second scene of Act I.
Here, as in the redrawing of King Lear, Tyshler is not restricted by the
requirements of an actual performance, by the need to comply with the
director's wishes, or by concern for the technical aspects of set production.
Free from such practicalities, he has built a phantasmagoria and staged his own
nightmansh performance.
Tyshler's concept of the play as a separate world that exists accorcling
to its own fantastic laws can also be seen in his designs for Shakespearean
comedy. In the design for Twe!fth by the Leningrad Pushkin
Theatre in 1951-Tyshler changed the form of the stage portal by building a
large arc inside its traditionally rectangular form (Fig. 5). Inside the arc there
were several acting areas interconnected by stairs and steps, upon which action
also took place. The acting areas were united in a single symmetrical
composition by motifs from both the animal and plant worlds, a composition
that resembled- both in its form and in its artistic intent-the Jewish marriage
certificate, the Ketuba. In the center of the Ketuba, the text of the marriage
agreement was placed inside a decorative frame. The Ketuba is both a festive
and a solemn document. Its form is perfectly suitable for a festive comedy
whose plot ends in three simultaneous wedding celebrations.
A comparison of Tyshler's sketch and stage model for Twelfth
reveals two aspects of the artist's creative process: the sketch is the expression
of a plastic idea and is more ornamental than the model (Fig. 6). In the sketch
the proscenium arc is supported by caryatids, and the acting area-elevated as
always in Tyshler's stage design- is supported by angels below and hanging
from hovering birds above. The smaller elevated stage appears to hover in
space above the stage proper. In the model, however, which is closer to real
stage conditions and takes into account technical limitations, the hovering
form becomes a solid mass resting on the backs of horses. The birds
disappear, but another clement, connected with the Ketuba ornamentations,
60 S!avit and EaJt E11ropean Peifomlance Vol. 21, No.3
Figure 5. Sketch for Twelfth Night at the Leningrad Pushkin Theatre
62 S /avic and East European Peiformance Vol. 21, No. 3
appears in the model; isosceles triangles, fringed with jagged teeth on their
sides, decorate the edges of the arcs. These are amulets for protection against
the evil eye. Such amulets are believed to prevent mishaps and are a traclitional
wedding decoration in the marriage ceremonies of various cultures, but an
amulet in the form of a triangle is a specific ornamental motif of the Ketuba.
Despite the variety of themes and elements, there is one common
central feature in all Tyshler's designs for Shakespeare's plays: a separate
elevated stage, supported by an unstable base and detached from the
comparatively neutral full stage. This creates an impression of instability,
which is stressed either by elements of the scenery (for example, a lower acting
area hanging from the beaks of hovering birds) or by the relation of the
massive upper form to the fragile supporting structure.
Tyshler's activities were certainly not limited to staging Shakespeare's
plays, but it was precisely these plays that provided him with an opportunity to
go beyond the actual circumstances of the play, to stretch its limits by using
artistic elements that express his particular perception of the world.
"Masquerade is, in general, Tyshler's favorite element."
7
His masquerades are
both comical and tragic. People, objects, and symbols, the historical and the
contemporary are equally represented. They are resurrected or die, or become
tragic or comic depending on the artist's wish.
Tyshler was connected to the theatre all of his life, but this was above
all an internal connection, not always reflected in actual work for a theatre
production. Shakespeare's plays made it possible for him to create a vision of
the world from the viewpoint of an artist who had managed to keep intact, at
the level of the subconscious, the perceptions of a man who had recendy left
behind the shtetl, the Pale of Settlement, and plunged himself into a different
world, a world both wonderful and frightening, exciting and insecure.
63
NOTES
t Alexander Gngoryevtch Tyshler was born in Melitopol (Ukraine). He studJed at the
Art School of Ktev (1912-1917). During the first post-revolutionary years, he took
part in festive decorative work for the mass demonstrations held on holidays. He
started working for the State Jewish Theatre of Byelorussia in 1927 ::md worked for
various theatres in Russia, Byelorussia, and Ukraine until the end of his life.
2 Yakov Tugenhold (1882-1928), "Iskusstvo i sovremennost" in Revoliltlsia i 11
(1928): 63-69. Reprinted in Yakov Tugenhold, Izbranie sla!Ji i ocberki (Moscow:
Sovetskii Khudozhnik, 1987), 213.
3 Ibid.
-1 Solomon Mikhocls 1948), a Jewish actor, joined the Jewish Drama Studio in
Leningrad, which later moved to Moscow and became the Moscow State Jewish
Theatre. M.Jkhoels headed the theatre from 1927 until1948 when he was killed by the
Soviet secret police. The theatre was closed down after his death. See Mel Gordon
article "Mikhoels in Amenca," SEEP, Vol19, No.2 (Summer 1999).
5 The Pale ofSenlement was the arbitrary border in Russia before the October
revolution that ran through the Ukraine, Byelorussia, and South Russia. Jews were
forbidden to cross this line without a special license.
6 Avram Kampf, jewish Experience in the Arl of the Twentieth (Philadelphia: Jewish
Publicauon Society, 1984), 36.
7 Alexander Kamensky, Vemisazhi (Moscow: Sovetskii Khudozhnik, 1974), 327.
64
Slavic and East European PeifomTance Vol. 21, No. 3
GLASNOST IN FILM
IN RETROSPECf
Leo Hecht
Soviet filmmakers who played a "wait and see game" during the first
months of Gorbachev's leadership finally committed themselves, with varying
degrees of enthusiasm, to the new era of artistic freedom which they called
'The Spring of 1986." This coincided with the Fifth Congress of the Union of
Cinematographers held in Moscow in May when the reactionary Soviet film
czar, Lev Kulidzhanov, and the entire secretariat were voted out by the union
members. Film director Elem Klimov, a non-conformist and defender of
artistic freedom, was elected First Secretary. His initial acts were the creation
of a review committee for previously banned films. He was also strongly
supportive of artistically innovative, outspoken films which were in various
stages of production at that time. The three major films I shall discuss all fall
within this category. Two were released in Moscow to great acclaim; the third
was quickly withdrawn and released only for foreign consumption.
The first film, completed in 1987 and quickly distributed throughout
the USSR and the West, was Cold Summer of 1953 (Kho/odnoe /eto piatdesiat'
t"tego), directed by Aleksandr Proshkin, with a strong cast of Khrushchev
veterans and some new faces. The events take place in a remote Siberian
village immediately after Stalin's death. The small settlement houses a number
of families and individuals who are effectively characterized. A well-to-do
shopkeeper is interested only in his own economic welfare; a widow lives with
her buxom teenage daughter who is the apple of her eye, her only reason for
existence, and for whom she has grandiose plans. There is also a local
policeman who is honorable and compassionate, and the official responsible
for the river pier, a petty bureaucrat who acts only in accordance with specific
written instructions. The most interesting characters are two labor exiles, one
middle-aged and one elderly, who have been transferred from the camp to
which they had been sentenced for no specific reason whatsoever. Both were
officially exiled to Siberia for the rest of their prison term.
They have given up hope for a decent future when the news arrives
that Beria, the head of the NKVD, has decreed an amnesty for all criminals,
except for those who had been sentenced for political reasons. All these true
felons (urlet) banded together into a mob whose major talents were robbery,
rape and murder. Five of these felons had taken over the village, killed the
policeman and several others, and are now using the settlement as a base for
robbery and murder along a shipping route. They are totally ruthless.
65
The only village residents willing to do anything about this dilemma
are the two labor-camp exiles. They are successful in killing four of the
murderers; the older of the exiles also dies in the process. The leader of the
felons is killed right after he has murdered the adolescent girl who had been
the symbol of the village's aspirations for the future. The film ends on a note
of despair. There is no hope for the future. This is not simply a propaganda
film to support the post-Stalin changes, but an intensely human, moral film,
which stresses individual values and ethics.
The second film, Commissar, is the most controversial of the three. It
was directed by Alexandr Askoldov, who also wrote the screenplay based on a
short story by Vassily Grossman.
The strongest and most surprising element of the film is its superb
cast. The title role, Klavdia the Commissar, is portrayed by Nonna
Mordyu.kova, an acclaimed leading actress. The role of the military leader of
the unit is portrayed by the superb writer and actor Vassily Shukshin.
However, the film is stolen by the outstanding actor and film director Rolan
Bykov who plays the role of Efim Magazanik, the personification of the East
European Jew. His language and mannerism are reminiscent of Tevye in
Fiddler on the Roof
The film opens with the sentencing to death of a deserter from a Red
Army unit during the Civil War. Klavdia's commitment to the cause is made
clear at the outset by her involvement in the execution. She is in her last
month of pregnancy, a fact which she has successfully hidden due to the fact
that she is hugely fat. She finally confesses her condition to her commander,
who arranges for her to stay at the poverty-stricken home of Magazanik, his
wife and six children. The Magazaniks' close family life deeply affects Klavdia.
When she gives birth, she has to choose whether to stay with her newborn or
to abandon it in order to continue fighting for the triumph of Communism.
There is really no suspense about the choice she will make. The end of the
film shows Klavdia running at full speed to catch up with her unit, to the
overwhelmingly blaring strains of the "lntemationale." The last frame of the
film is a cameo on a hilltop where she and her troops pose in a ludicrously
heroic manner to martial music.
Although the film has many weaknesses and was the object of derision
both in the USSR and abroad, it should not be completely ridiculed. It does
include a number of worthwhile statements. Two scenes in the film are
particularly poignant. In one, the Magazanik boys create a mock pogrom
during which they tie their frightened sister to a swing and call her a "dirty
yid," while she is swinging back and forth in slow motion. In another
sequence, while the Magazanik family are happily dancing, Klavdia imagines
66 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 21, No. 3
them weanng yellow stars of David and slowly movmg towards a Nazi
extermination camp.
The film was produced at the Gorky Studios in Moscow. The camera
work, in black and white with its chiaroscuro technique, is strongly reminiscent
of Eisenstein. It frequendy uses a stationary camera with the action moving
towards it and away from it. Many in the West received the film with open
arms as proof that glasnost had really arrived. However, in the USSR it was
shelved immediately after its initial opening, as punishment for "Promoting
Zionism and Imperialist Chauvinism." The actual reason was that the film was
released a few days before Israel occupied the Sinai Peninsula. At the same
time the USSR was trying to establish a close relationship with Israel's Arab
neighbors.
The last film in my analysis of the period is A Dead Man's Letters (Pisma
mertvogo che/oveka), which was released by Lenfilm in 1986, at the very beginning
of the glasnost era when the Soviet Union was trying to portray itself as a
peace-loving nation. The film's director, Konstantin Lopushansky, wrote the
script together with the top Soviet science fiction authors Viacheslav Rybakov
and Boris Strugatsky. According to the Soviet press release, "this science
fiction film is dedicated to the main task of our times-the prevention of
nuclear war."
The action takes place in an unnamed industrialized, mechanized
country. The film opens during a nuclear catastrophy, caused by a computer
error, which is in the process of bringing about the complete destruction of
the entire globe. The central idea that nuclear war, with its consequences,
cannot be allowed to happen, is revealed through the story of the principal
character, a scientist portrayed by Rolan Bykov. He voices his inner
convictions in the letters he writes to his son, who is already dead. He cannot
accept the possibility of the total destruction of the planet, and he preserves
his belief that human intellect and goodness must prevail. As he dies, he
passes on his testament to a group of young orphans. The message is quite
clear. A nuclear holocaust can be prevented only through bilateral nuclear
disarmament. Otherwise, even if there is no war, the world is in danger of
total destruction by accident.
The camera work by Nikolai Pokoptsev is excellent, as is the art
direction by Elena Amshinskaya and Victor Ivanov. Special effects (e.g.
nuclear explosions) are monumental. Beautiful shooting includes close-ups of
dirty, suffering mankind, the last refugees in cellars, and small children in a
desolate landscape wearing protective clothing and gasmasks. Although the
film was positively accepted by Soviet audiences, the film was not well received
in the United States. In fact, attendance was minimal.
67
Films in the glasnost era shared certain common traits. Older films
that had been hidden "in the drawer" for years were re-released. Although
some of them were excellent, others were of uneven quality and contain
contradictory messages. Big, new productions, which were strongly supported
by the government as propaganda vehicles for glasnost and perestroika, were
also of uneven artistic quality and were created principally for political, rather
than artistic purposes. Nevertheless, some of the most talented and
courageous directors, under the superficial banner of glasnost, started to
produce films that dug more deeply into the human condition and psyche and
transcended the banality of the propagandistic didacticism to which Soviet
audiences had previously been subjected.
68
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 21, No.3
KING, QUEEN, KNAVE AT THE LENSOVIET THEATRE
IN ST. PETERSBURG
Vreneli Farber
Just as Vladimir Nabokov attempted to find new narrative techniques
in King, Queen, Knave, so Vladislav Pazi engaged in thearrical experimentation in
staging Aleksandr Getman's play based on this novel. In an interview with me
on May 30, 2001, Pazi, artistic director of the Lensoviet Theater in St.
Petersburg, said that he was greatly attracted by the creative challenge of
finding a theatrical equivalent for Nabokov's style. The task interested him
because few Russian authors wield stylistic devices with Nabokov's skill and
because prose is a "verbal fabric" that one cannot transfer to the stage literally.
Pazi had to find another way of making the transition from novel to theatre;
his solution makes use of choreography.
Pazi's production of King, Queen, Knave, which premiered
simultaneously in St. Petersburg and Samara on December 12, 1997,
constitutes the first treatment in the Russian theatre of Nabokov's novel, his
second, completed in June, 1928. Adaptations of the novel are still
infrequently staged, and Pazi said he knows of only four productions: the two
already mentioned, one in Saratov, and one in Moscow, neither based on
Getman's play. Pazi and Getman worked together extensively on the latter's
dramatization, which does not slavishly follow the novel, but rather tries to
capture its sptot. The result of their efforts is a highly engaging evening of
theatre, both original and Nabokovian.
The elements of artifice and the undermining of realism that one
finds in the novel are conveyed in the play by a semi-realistic set (designed by
Mariya Bryantseva), which juxtaposes aU of the story's locales in a row from
one side of the stage to the other, and by a trio of dancers whose mime and
dance movements occur throughout the show. When the play begins, the
audience's attention is focused on center stage where minimal set pieces on a
rolling platform, lights, and music suggest the interior of a train compartment.
Subsequently, this platform is wheeled away, revealing the large door leading
into Dreyer's home, the foyer and living room of which occupy stage left.
This central area-in front of and to the right of the door-serves later as the
department store where Dreyer employs his nephew, Franz. Still later the
central area and part of stage left become the seashore where Martha, Dreyer's
wife, conceives of murdering her husband by drowning him. The room that
Franz rents is situated on stage right These areas do not render naturalistically
69
-...J
0
Konstantin Khabensky, Margarita Aleshina, and Andrei
Zibrov in King, Queen, Knave at the Lensoviet Theatre
Andrei Zibrov and Konstantin Khabensky
in King. Queen, Knave at the Lensoviet Theatre
.......
r--
the rooms or locations they represent, but rather suggest the places through
actual pieces of fumitu.re, various realistic props, and many doors. On stage
the multiple doors convey a sense of the many facets of reality, providing a
theatrical equivalent for Nabokov's toying with different levels of reality.
Dance is the device Pazi employs to communicate the elements of
parody in Nabokov's work. To paraphrase Pazi, Nabokov takes a deliberately
banal situation, a story of adultery, and turns it into something entirely original,
ironic, and unexpected. Pazi uses a trio of dancers, two men and one woman
(Andrei Zibrov, Konstantin Khabensky, Margarita Aleshina), to parody the
three main characters. The sequences they perform are highly controlled and
expressive, reflecting all the changes that occur in the lives and relationships of
the main characters. This function of the dancers successfully recalls the
metaphors of mirrors and reflection in the novel. The first time the dancers
perform occurs when two of them step out of a showcase in Dreyer's
department store; they are mannequins that come to life. In this way, the play
concisely refers to important elements in the novel without fully elaborating
them: the "auto-mannequins" designed by an inventor whom Dreyer supports
and the automaton theme.
Subsequent dance sequences include the woman, thereby echoing the
triangular relationship of Dreyer, Martha, and Franz. The trio of dancers also
introduces a strange atmosphere, sometimes of fantasy, sometimes of the
grotesque. Carefully selected music and effective lighting enhance this
atmosphere, which in tum communicates the many excursions into visions and
dreams that occur in the novel. The device of choreography (created by ballet
master Nikolai Reutov), then, creates a visual contrast with the picture of
poshlost' (philistine vulgarity] we witness in Martha and Kurt Dreyer's life.
Franz appears as a compliant figure, manipulated by the other two.
The actor who plays Franz, Mikhail Porcchenkov, does a brilliant job
of portraying an unsophisticated young man from the country, shy and unsure
of himself in the presence of his urban relatives. Likewise, he and Elena
Komissarenko, who plays Martha, skillfully perform the gradual seduction of
Franz by Martha. She is intent on gaining her goal, he is flattered and willing,
but reluctant because it is his uncle whom he cuckolds. Dmitri Barkov also
turns in a fine performance as Dreyer, the non-stereotypical successful
businessman who is oblivious to his wife's affair. Besides the artistic problem
of finding a theatrical equivalent for Nabokov's prose, Pazi was drawn to the
novel by the characters, whom he finds interesting, and by the challenge of
embodying them on stage. It is not an easy task, for Nabokov holds his
characters in contempt and, as Pazi pointed out in the interview, it is difficult
for actors to play personages they do not like. Nevertheless, Pazi said, each
character has a degree of charm along with the shadow of decay. The actors'
72 Slavic and East Europwr Peiformame Vol. 21, No.3
job in this production was to convey all aspects of the characters' personalities,
as well as to capture the mood of the novel. The entire cast (those already
named, and Aleksandr Sulimov as Enricht, and Irina Bala.i as Frieda) succeeds
admirably in fulfilling this assignment.
Critics of Nabokov's novel usually comment on the process of
dehumanization that occurs with the main characters in the course of the
novel as they become enslaved by their obsessions. Pazi's production treats
this issue from a different angle. In our interview, he stated that King, Queen,
Knave is a novel about love-more accurately, the absence of genuine
reciprocal love- without exploring social issues, although there is a
presentiment of fascism. The novel scrutinizes the idea, which fascism later
extended to the realm of national politics, that one can deprive another of life
in order to achieve one's own happiness. For Pazi and his fellow artists, it was
important to hint at this proposition, which leads to the dehumanization of the
individual. In both the novel and the play, much space is given to Martha's
relentless scheming to murder her husband.
The predominant image in Pazi's production is that of the train, not
of playing cards, which the title suggests and which could be used as a visual
metaphor. The play begins on the train to Berlin, and Dreyer has an electric
train, of which he is both proud and fond, that runs along the circumference
of his elegant living room, until it reaches the side of the "room" containing a
trellis surrounded by plants and leading to the "front door." Behind the train
image lay Pazi's wish to capture the atmosphere of Berlin where trains run
right through the center of the city and electric trains travel overhead all the
time. Furthermore, Franz Jives near a railroad track. Finally, the train forms a
link with the same imagery in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, which Nabokov
parodies through distortion of the adultery motif.
Pazi's production infuses more humor into the story of adultery than
Tolstoy's opus, where there is none, and less contempt than Nabokov's ironic
parody. The play ends on a lighter note than the more somber conclusion of
the novel with its suggestion of madness lurking in Franz's frenzied laughter.
After Martha's death, Franz meets with Dreyer in the latter's home. Dreyer
takes a small pistol from his desk, Franz begins an abject apology which the
audience understands, but which Dreyer interprets as sorrow over Martha's
death, and then Dreyer lights his cigarette with the pistol-lighter. Franz leaves
the house and jumps jubilantly into the air at center stage as the lights go out.
An mteresting and attractive semi-realistic set, carefully selected and
appropriate period music, colorful period costumes, effective lighting design,
brisk pacing, excellent staging, brilliantly conceived and executed
choreography, and impressively talented acting enable Pazi and his co-workers
and cast to create a memorable rendition of Nabokov's early novel, which
contains in embryo, to paraphrase Pazi, most ofNabokov's mature power.
73
THE PROSE OF THE TRANSSIBERIAN AND OF THE LITTLE
JOAN OF FRANCE: CZECH PUPPETS AT LA MAMA
Edmund Lingan
The trio of jazz musicians wore aged yet elegant clothes that looked
like souvenirs from a bygone era. Jemeel Moondoc, brandished a saxophone
and donned a grey tuxedo jacket with a wide black lapel. Pianist Stephanie
Stone wore a black pillbox hat, a long black dress that reached to her ankles,
and a lace shawl over her shoulders. John Voigt stood behind his upright bass
with a derby hat on his head. As the trio began to play the avant-garde jazz
score composed by Moondoc for The Prose of the Tran.f.fibenan mrd of the Lillie
Joan of France, barefoot dancers-some in white blazers and others in white
capes-wearily pushed crates and carried suitcases onto the stage. The
dancers slowly stepped forward and then backward, as if walking was a
complicated struggle. Finally they put down their bags and luggage. Suddenly,
wooden body parts loudly jiggled within the crates. Several wooden puppets
resembling little human beings then crawled out of the crates, followed by the
puppeteers. Like the musician's costumes, these wooden marionettes also
looked like relics from a bygone era.
Thus began the April 22 performance of The Prose of the Transsiberian
and of the Little Joan of France that was undertaken jointly by the Czechoslovak-
American Marionette Theatre (CAM1) and Contemporary Dance Wyoming.
Vit Horejs of CAMT directed the production, which ran between April 5 and
April 22 at the Annex Theatre of La Mama E.T.C. in New York City. The
Prose of the TranJJiberian was based upon the 1913 poem in prose, ''La Prose du
Transsiberien et de Ia Pettite Jehanne de France," by Blaise Cendrars. In
writing this poem, Cendrars was inspired by a disturbing journey via the
Transsiberian railroad in 1905, during which he viewed the devastation of
Siberia and Manchuria that resulted from the Russo-Japanese war. The
descriptions of wounded soldiers and women "with crotches for hire"
contained in Cendrars's poem, which was translated into English by Horejs
and recited during the performance, describes an ominous military presence
hovering over an overturned society that has been reduced to a state of chaos,
decay and uncertainty. Horejs chose to adapt this poem to the stage and direct
the production because he also lived through a period of upheaval before he
moved from Prague to the U.S. in the late 1970s.
A mixture of both antique and newly designed puppets was employed
by the CAMT in order to visually portray the atmosphere of physical and
74 Slavic a11d East European Peiformatrte Vol. 21, No. 3
emotional anguish that characterizes Cendrars's poem. One antique puppet
used 10 the play resembles an old man with a long, bald head, a large mustache,
big ears, sinister and widely spaced teeth and deep, dark circles under his
sunken-in eyes. Tlus puppet, which loudly knocked about in a traveling crate
during simulated puppet sex with a prostitute marionette, appeared to be worn
out from traveling and from the debilitating effects of his debauchery.
Designed by Vaclav Krcal, the female prostitute puppet was composed of
cloth and wood. This large breasted and heavily made up marionette was
dressed in a lace corset, a frilly girdle, a garter, a jeweled choker and high heel
shoes. Still other puppets were presented naked, exposing the moveable joints
and the beautiful scars of carving tools that mark these hand shaped bodies.
Some of the little wooden bodies were not whole. Two marionettes, for
example, were divided vertically down the middle. Nevertheless these split
characters moved about the stage with ease, in spite of the fact that each had
only one leg.
The lack of uniformity in physical shape characterizing the ensemble
of puppets employed in the production reinforced the descriptions of broken
bodies and motley groupings of travelers described in Cendrars's poem. These
travelers were described as a diverse spectrum of downtrodden wayfarers
moving from one place to another in difficult circumstances. However, the
marionettes did not mimic the actions verbally described in the poem on a
word-for-word bas1s. Rather, the movement of the dancers, puppets and
puppeteers seemed to accentuate the emotional content of Cendrars's piece.
The puppeteers, who were costumed and remained in full view of
the audience, demonstrated with non-verbal performance the emotional and
physical states of the marionette characters. In a game of cards played on a
small suitcase between three marionettes, the puppeteers put on neutral poker
faces. In another scene, appearing weary after days and days of traveling, the
puppeteers stretched themselves limply across the crates on the stage, with the
marionettes sprawled across their comparatively gargantuan bodies. With their
heads thrown back, their bodies still and their eyes wide open, the still, silent
puppeteers bore a striking affinity to the motionless marionettes with which
they rested. Both the human beings and the puppets on stage seemed
exhausted by perpetual travel.
The members of Contemporary Dance Wyoming (based in Jackson
Hole) also treated the theme of arduous travel by moving across the stage in
unconventional and complicated ways. During one episode, for instance, the
dancers, who were flat on their backs, slid toward their suitcases using only
their legs and feet as a source of locomotion. After reaching the suitcases, the
dancers left the stage by rolling side over side into the wings. The dancers
simulated crowded and confusing traveling conditions by linking hands and
75
The Prose of the Transsiberian and of the Little Joan of France by Vit
Horejs and the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre
The Prose of the Transsiberian and of the Little Joan of France by Vit
Ho!ejs and the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre
77
forming a mobile, human knot. The eventual addition of puppets and
puppeteers increased the complexity of this entanglement.
The Prose of the Transsiberian was a collage of media. The mixture of
dance, non-verbal performance, live experimental jazz, recitation of poetry and
puppetry, made it impossible to label this production as a pure puppet show.
Indeed, the puppets were often not the central focus of the production.
Sometimes times the puppeteers drew more attention to themselves through
facial expressions and movement. The jazz trio's melancholy tones and
unpredictable rhythms or an interesting phrase from Cenruars' s poem read by
the narrator often encouraged the audience to hear the performance rather than
simply see it. At other times, the dancers, on stage alone, danced to the
dolorous tones of Moondoc's music. Although this collection of media is
diverse, it did not seem mismatched or jumbled. Rather, like the diverse
collection of marionettes, this mixture of art forms emphasized the variegated
patchwork of people and places described in Cenruars's poem.
In The Prose of the Transsiberian, human touch was a life giving force.
For instance, the human hand brought Russian and Japanese armies to life in
the form of tiny connected rows of wooden figures. A puppeteer produced
the sound of miniature platoons marching in Lilliputian streets by rhythmically
tapping the stage floor with these puppet armies. Even the aged crates and
suitcases that served as the primary scenery for the play seemed to live as the
dancers interacted with them. By simultaneously writhing in a manner that
indicated a fearful struggle for life and subdy sliding herself into a long crate
laying horizontally on the stage, one dancer gave the impression that the
luggage had eaten her. At times, crates and boxes danced to the live jazz, with
only the feet protruding from the bottom of the receptacle belying the
presence of a hidden dancer. Thus, the interchanges between people and
inanimate objects in The Prose of the Transsiberian always involved the
transference of movement and life from human beings into motionless
physical things.
As the puppeteers walked their puppets off stage and the dancers
danced their luggage and crutches into the wings in what might be described as
a parade of the wounded, the final moments of The Prose of the Transsiberian and
of the Little Joan of France once again visualized the agonies of perpetual travel in
a war-torn land. This final scene added physical imagery to the poignancy of
Cendrars's references to war, sordid living conditions and a decaying society.
The issues of uncertainty and suffering treated in The Prose of the Transsiberian
transcend the time when Cendrars wrote his poem, as well as the geographical
boundaries of the beleaguered Manchurian and Siberian lands, which initially
inspired the composition of the poem. It is the persevering relevance of
78 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 21, No. 3
Cendrars's poem that prompted Horejs to make it the cornerstone of this
production. The Prose of the Transsiberian and of the little Joan of France reminded
its audience about the human destruction and displacement that continues to
accompany war. By serving this purpose, this CAMT production can be
viewed as a successful theatrical effort that was motivated by and deeply
expressive of many concerns that continue to trouble humanity.
79
SPEA BABOEM /DELIRIUM FOR TWO:
THE COLD WAR THEATRE PROJECT
Lars Parker-Myers
On a snowy winter evening in Western Massachusetts the audience
climbs the icy stairs to the second floor of the East Street Studios to see the
inaugural project of The Cold War Theatre Project- a cleverly adapted, bi-
lingual staging of Eugene Ionesco's Delirium for Two. In this semi-rural setting
half-way between Amherst and Northampton we are transported to an
absurdly comic world of desolation, miscommunication, terror, regret and
contradiction. She complains that He is always hot when She is cold. He
argues that, on the contrary, She is always cold when He is hot and She is hot
when He is cold. She maintains that a snail is the same thing as a turtle
because they both have shells. He argues that they are certainly not the same
thing because a snail has horns. Had they never met he could have been a
poet. I I ad they never met she would be in a respectable marriage with
children. The soldiers are going up the stairs. No, they are going down the
stairs. One thing is certain (perhaps): they will spend the rest of their lives
trying to leave the room they have been trapped in for who knows how long,
wondering when the war raging outside will end, wondering why there is a war
in the first place, and having no one but each other for comfort.
Ionesco's tragicomic play, written during the height of the Cuban
missile crisis, is an apt choice for a theatre company whose mission is to
examine the impact of the Cold War on Uruted States/ Russian relations. The
play depicts two characters, She and He, who are the victims of a mysterious
war-they live in a no man' s land between two warring factions-ducking for
cover at each explosion, peeking outside to see if they can detect troop
movements, and sighing with relief when they hear that the soldiers have taken
the neighbors away rather then themselves. Yet they are also the instigators of
conflict, picking away at the regrets of a relationship gone sour and repeating
the same absurd arguments as the world around them collapses. Choosing to
present the play in Russian and English highlights the continued difficulties of
understanding between Russia and the United States even in the post-Cold
War era. Fortunately, the play has not been treated as a one-dimensional
allegory of U.S./Russian relations but has been staged 111 a way that retains the
vagueness of the characters and setting, allowing for multiple readings. This
could be any confuct, marital and/ or global.
The Cold War Theatre Project was founded by the married team of
Lisa Channer, a Northampton native, and Vladimir Rovinsky, a native of St.
80
Slavic and East Europea/1 Peiformallce Vol. 21, No. 3
Petersburg, with the idea of creating artistic connections between Russian and
American theatre. The two met while working on The .Meyerhold Project at
Yale University (see SEEP 18:2), which formed a base for many of the choices
the two have made in the organization of The Cold War Theatre Project-
wanting to foster cross-cultural exchange and using many of Meyerhold's
artistic precepts. Delirium for Two is directed and performed by Channer, who
plays She, and Rovinsky, who plays He. Both utilize a highly physical style of
acting that draws upon the slapstick elements of Biomechanics to produce
visually interesting characters and many comic moments. Both actors work
well together and there is a definite sense that they are sharing the
performance with the auclience, although they do not break the fourth wall.
Meyerhold's influence is also noticeable in that the production is
both a performance and commentary of Delirium for Two, with many revisions
and emendations. The overall production has the feel of Meycrhold's "musical
realism" utilizing aural and visual elements to punctuate many of the moments
in the piece. The opening of the play has the two emerge, childlike, from a
steamer trunk in the middle of the skeletal and cage-like room. They
encounter each other as if for the first time, recognize their surroundings, and
set the stage for the opening of the play as a mysteriously worded Paolo Conti
song plays-"Chips, chips. Ya-de-da-de-do. Chi-boom. Chi-boo-boom."
The song ends and the two stand in the center of the stage, rocked with
spasms as a series of thumping sounds like irregular heartbeats apparently
shock them into life. Several minutes elapse before the first line of the play,
He hunting down a bug while She rubs her feet. She then delivers the first line
after squashing the bug he was so franticly hunting: "When I think of the life
you promised me." And the battle ensues.
She speaks most of her lines in English while He speaks most of his
in Russian. His first line is delivered in Russian, but is punctuated by being
repeated in English. Th.is pattern continues throughout the play so that there
are only a few lines that are not repeated in English either by He or in reply by
She so as to make the question obvious. The characters understand one
another more or less, but the idea that they speak a different language and are
therefore never in agreement with each other is made literal. Even for those
who clid not understand Russian, there were few times when the meaning of a
line was completely indecipherable. There was also the chance to enjoy the
lyrical quality of Rovinsky's lines rather than ignoring its patterns and cadence,
which often comes from famili arity with a language.
During the show several items are lowered into the space from
above--a microphone, a ladder-as if an outside power was playing a hand in
the characters' existence. Their emergence from the trunk could be read as
81
their awakening from storage, the puppets in a cruel game. The explosions
seem to come during the times when the characters are bickering the most,
relating the outside violence to the conflict inside their home. Yet the
dramatic emphasis is upon the fact that the two of them cannot end their own
cycle of violence and mistrust. When there is an opportunity to flee for some
chance of a better existence they are unable to leave, whereupon the
recriminations resume, generating a wailing of sirens, guillotine sounds, and
babies screaming. Three wonderfully bizarre and macabre glowing baby-doll
heads descend-a symbol of Judgement Day? At a loss for what to do, She
and He pull the steamer trunk into the center of the room. When they open it
the noises disappear, replaced by the Paolo Conti song from the beginning of
the show. Sitting on the rim of the trunk they alternately laugh and cry until
the lights fade.
Are they retreating into their own snail shell? Or is it a turtle shell?
Or is it something completely different? Delirium for Two does not provide too
many answers, leaving plenty of open-ended questions for the audience to
continue ruminating on. Ionesco (1909-1994), who immigrated to France
from Romania in 1938, may have written the play as a parable of his own
family. His father, a lawyer and police inspector, collaborated with every
repressive regime that held power in Romania (Averesco, Codrianu, the Iron
Guard, the Nazis, and later the Communists), divorced Eugene's mother, and
married a woman who disliked Eugene and his sister Marilina, eventually
driving them out of their home. What is certain is that Channer and Rovinsky
successfully combined the dark, tragicomic view associated with an Eastern
European sensibility with the ebullient quirkiness of the "American" character
to create an entertaining and adventurous piece of theatre.
82 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 21, No.3
SILENCE SILENCE SILENCE
SPEAKS LOUDER THAN WORDS:
THEATRE MLADINSKO AT LA MAMA
KurtTaroff
"It's so difficult to talk about these things. When you turn them into words, they just don't
mean mrything mrymore. "
-Vito Tau fer, director of Silence Silence Silence
The above quote from Vito Taufer was uttered at a talkback session
following a performance of Silence Silence Silence at the La Mama Experimental
Theatre. And although Taufer was responding to an audience member's
question about the war in Yugoslavia and how it has impacted his work,
Taufer could just as easily have been discussing Silence Silence Silence. In a truly
remarkable piece that has won nearly universal praise throughout Europe,
Taufer's work, performed by Slovenia's Theatre Mladinsko from Lubljana,
indeed eschews words to allow image and movement to convey a startling
range of thought and emotion.
It is worth noting that the title is somewhat misleading. While devoid
of words, Silence Silence Silence is anything but silent. The sound designer, Silvo
ZupanCic, creates a unique and often jarring montage of sound, using means
that are as inventive as they are surprising. The sounds of paper, foil, and
plastic crinkling and styrofoam bricks hitting the floor are all artfully
manipulated through well-placed microphones, leaving the audience
wondering how such sounds could possibly have been made, as well as
marveling at how such familiar objects could be made to seem so completely
foreign.
Indeed, this defamiliarization may be seen as the key to the
performance's impact. In five scenes, Taufer utilizes movement, sound,
setting, and costume to create images that exude a sense of the primordial, the
otherworldly, and the mythical.
Almost immediately, the audience is made to realize that the
performance will deviate sharply from theatrical convention. The first piece,
performed by Janja Majzelj, opens on what seems to be a rocky desert with
Majzelj barely discernible as she tightly embraces one of the three rocky
columns which complete the setting. The figure, clad in a crinkled paper
costume with stone-like goggles, giving her a distinctly alien appearance,
moves between the columns and out towards the audience emitting shrill
83
shrieks and yells (eerily distorted by ZupanCic), at once both bizarre and
distancing, yet at the same time strangely seductive. Perhaps it is the very
otherness of the figure that is seductive, or perhaps the figure maintains (or
more precisely, Majzelj imbues her with) just enough feminine humanity to
avoid complete alienation.
The next scene opens oo a vast web that covers the entire stage
space. Soon, we notice a human figure Qanez Skof), his head a cocoon,
performing a complex dance, slowly manipulating and altering the web. We
wonder, is he trapped in the web, or is he himself creating it? As the scene
continues, the figure struggles mightily within the web, seemingly tearing it
down, even as it manipulates him, the strands of the web causmg his head to
spin around as he sits silently. As the scene draws to a close, leaving most, but
not all of the web torn, and the figure io a state of seemingly peaceful repose,
we wonder if the figure will be victorious in his struggle, or if he has already
accepted his position within the web.
The third scene introduces us to a man whose bare humanity (he
wears only a loin cloth) leaves us all the more distanced as we try to see him
through the expressionless mask oo his face. Gesturing towards us with body
and arms, and with small, barely audible grunts and whimpers, the mao (Uros
Macek) seems desperate to communicate with us. Rendered wordless and, due
to the mask, expressionless, the figure is nonetheless able to convey to us this
sense of longing, this basic human (if that is indeed what he is) need to
connect with the outside world-to be something 9ther than alone.
The next scene is one of incomparable beauty, emotionally affecting
and visually striking. A disheveled and greasy strongman roughly pushes a
large wooden box across the stage, tumbling it end over end. Suddenly, io the
middle of the stage he stops and opens the box to reveal what appears to be a
giant ball of crinoline. The man unrolls the ball, revealing a woman, but so
still is this woman that she must, we think, be a doll. The man lifts the doll
atop the box, placing the peg of her altered ballet shoe into a groove in the
box. Slowly he begins to tum the dancer, and, with each click of the groove in
the box, she takes another step in her dance, becoming the living ballerina of a
music box. The man continues to turn the woman until he looks up to see her
face staring into his, her arms outstretched, seemingly longing to touch her
keeper. Just as the beautiful ballerina reaches out to him, he quickly turns
away, moves to her foot and returns her to her original position and back into
the box, resuming his manual labor of pushing the box across the rest of the
stage. As the man and woman (Natasa and Ravil Sultanov) have performed
their mechanical pas de deux, deep in the background a podium has slowly
crossed the stage on which three barely visible men view the spectacle. We
84 S/avi.- and EaJt European Vol. 21, No. 3
Janja Majzelj in the opening scene of Silence Silem-e
Silence, directed by Vito Taufer, Theatre Mladinsko
tr)
00
CONTRIBUTORS
VRENELI FARBER is an Associate Professor of Russian at Oregon State
University, where she is the Assistant Chair of the Department of Foreign
Languages and Literatures. She is the author of The Playwright A/eksandr
Vampilov: An Ironic Observer (2001) and is currently working on a book on the
subject of actor training in post-Soviet Russia. Farber has also been an actress
for thirty years and has five years experience directing Russian-language
productions of Russian classics performed by native speakers.
LEO HECHT is Professor and Coordinator of Russian at George Mason
University. He teaches Russian literature and cultural history. Dr. Hecht is
one of the founders of Slallic and East European Peiformance.
MARIA IGNATIEVA is Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre,
'The Ohio State University (Lima Campus). Before coming to the US, she was
Assistant Professor at the Moscow Art Theatre School Studio. She co-
organized and catalogued (with Joseph Brandesky) an International Exhibition
of the Theatre Designs of Boris Anisfeld (1994-97), served as consultant on
the exhibition, Spectacular St Petersburg, at the Columbus Museum of Art
(1999), and published an essay, 'Three Hundred Years of Theatrical St.
Petersburg" in the CD-Rom catalog for the exhibit. She is currently working
on The Era of Stanis/avsky and Female Creatillity, co-authored by Sharon Carnicke.
EDMUND LINGAN is a doctoral student in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at
the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a Gradate
Teaching Fellow at Baruch College in New York City. He will be writing his
dissertation on theatre and the occult.
LARS MYERS is a doctoral student in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the
Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is writing his
dissertation, "Domestic Performance: The Home as Theatrical Venue."
ELISABETH T. RICH is Associate Professor of Russian at Texas A&M
University. She has published essays and reviews in The Nation, The Washington
Post, and Cillilization/The Maga!(jne of the !Jbrary of Congms, as well as in many
leading Russian and American scholarly journals. She is a frequent contributor
to SEEP.
88
Slavic and Eat/ European Puformance Vol. 21, No. 2
ALLA SOSNOVSKAYA was born in Kiev and stuclied at the Theatre-Art
Institute in Tashkent. She bas published articles in joumals in Moscow and
Tashkent, as well as two albums and one book on stage des1gn. In 1990 she
moved to Israel where she lectures at Haifa and Jerusalem Universities, and
has published articles in Russian, Hebrew, and English.
KURT TAROFF teaches theatre at Baruch College and Marymount
Manhattan College. He is a doctoral student in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre
at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he is
writing his clissertation on applications of Nikolai Evreinov's theory of
monodrama.
DUBRA VKA VRGOC is a theatre critic for Vjesnik, the main daily newspaper
in Zagreb. Her articles and reviews have appeared in national and international
theatre journals and cultural magazines. She works as dramaturg and translator.
Photo Credits
Moscow Olympiad
Dubravka V rgoc
Ptushkina
Elisabeth Rich
Viktor Vasiliev
Artsybashev
V. Akhtomova
Tyshler
Bakhrushin Central Theatre Museum, Moscow (King Lear, Richard III)
Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg (Twelfth Nigh/)
King, Queen, Knave
Viktor Vasiliev
Prose of the Transsiberian
Jonathan Slaff
Silence Silence Silence
Goran Bertok
89
PUBLICATIONS
The following is a list of publications available through the Martin E. Segal
Theatre Center:
Soviet Plt!JS in Translation. An annotated bibliography. Compiled and
edited by Alma H. Law and C. Peter Goslett. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign) .
Polish Plqys in Translation. An annotated bibliography. Compiled and
edited by Daniel C. Gerould, Boleslaw Taborski, Michal Kobialka, and Steven
Hart. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign).
Polish and Soviet Theatre Posters. Introduction and Catalog by Daniel C.
Gerould and Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign).
Polish and Soviet Theatre Posters Volume Two. Introduction and Catalog
by Daniel C. Gerould and Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign).
Eastmr European Drama and The American Stage. A symposium with
Janusz Glowacki, Vasily Aksyonov, and moderated by Daniel C. Gerould
(April 30, 1984). $3.00 ($4.00 foreign).
These publications can be ordered by sending a U.S. dollar check or money
order payable to:
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER
THEATRE PROGRAM
THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK GRADUATE CENTER
365 FIFTH A VENUE
NEW YORK, NY 10016-4309
web.gc.cuny.edu/ mestc
90