volume 13. no.

3
fall 1993
SEEP (ISSN II 1047-0018) Is a publication of the Institute for Con-
temporary Eastern European Drama and Theatre under the auspices
of the Center for Advanced Study In Theatre Arts (CASTA), Graduate
Center, City University of New York. The Institute Office Is Room
1206A, City University Graduate Center, 33 West 42nd Street, New
York, NY 1 0036. All subscription requests and submissions should
be addressed to the Editors of SEEP: Daniel Gerould and Alma law,
CASTA, Theatre Program, City University Graduate Center, 33 West
42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.
EDITORS
Daniel Gerould
Alma Law
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
Patrick Hennedy
Lisbeth Herer
Jay Plum
ADVISORY BOARD
Edwin Wilson, Chair
Marvin Carlson
Leo Hecht
Martha W. Coigney
CAST A Publications are supported by generous grants from the Lucille
Lortel Chair in Theatre and the Sidney E. Cohn Chair in Theatre Studies
in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the City University of New York.
Copyright 1993 CASTA
SEEP has a very liberal reprinting policy. Jownals and newsletters which
desire to reproduce articles, reviews, and other materials which have
appeared in SEEP may do so, as long as the following provisions are met:
a. Permission to reprint must be requested from SEEP in writing before
the fact.
b. Credit to SEEP must be given in the reprint.
c. Two copies of the publication in which the reprinted material has
appeared must be furnished to the Editor of SEEP immediately upon
publication.
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Slavic and East European Performance, Vol. 13, No. 3
Editorial Policy
From the Editors
Events
Books Received
TABLE OF CONTENTS
"The Year of the Actor in Moscow"
John Freedman
"Grossman, Macharek, Schorm: The Loss of Three
Major Czech Directors of the Late Twentieth Century''
J. M. Burian
"Jerzy Grzegorzewski: The Power of Images"
Elwira M. Grossman
"The Wheel of Misfortune: Intrigue and Love
at the Bolshoi Dramatic Theatre," St. Petersburg
Maria Ignatieva and Joseph Brandesky
"Creating the Dramatic Space:
Blind Sight by the Yara Arts Group," New York
Irina Miller
"Ivanov and Others," Moscow
Elizabeth Swain
REVIEWS
"The Bedbug," Lehman College, New York
Dana Sutton
"Pinokio Theatre Drak (Czechoslovakia)
at the Joseph Papp Public Theatre," New York
Shari Troy
"Chekhov at the Festival des Ameriques,
Montreal May/June 1993"
Jane House
5
6
7
12
14
31
37
40
44
49
51
54
3
Contributors
Playscripts in Translation Series
Subscription Policy
58
60
62
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Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No. 3
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 Gogol but we cannot use original articles discussing
Gogol 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 Style should be followed.
Transliterations should follow the Library of Congress system.
Submissions will be evaluated, and authors will be notified after
approximately four weeks.
5
FROM THE EDITORS
Moscovites called the uprising on October 3 and 4, "the event,"
a curiously innocuous word for the bloodiest confrontation to occur in
Moscow since the Revolution. Even as it was taking place, people treated
the storming of the White House more as a live television show or the
shooting of a movie, ignoring the fact that those were real tanks and real
bullets, and, incidentally, real blood.
Meanwhile, nearby on the old Arhat, as snipers shot into crowds
from the roofs in the vicinity, the Vakhtangov Theatre presented its
regular Sunday evening performance, that night, a comedy. Even after
President Y eltsin declared a ten-day curfew, Moscow theatres continued
to adhere to their regular performance schedules, substituting where
necessary shorter productions so that their audiences could get home
before the 11:00 curfew.
Thus not only in Moscow this fall, but elsewhere in the former
Soviet republics as well as in the East European countries, the show goes
on. Perhaps this is because there's a greater need today than ever for
theatre, not to provide veiled commentary on life outside the auditorium,
but as an escape, if only for a couple of hours, from the depressingly grim
reality of the world around it.
On a personal note (Alma Law speaking), I might add that it's
one thing to watch live coverage of the Moscow uprising on CNN from
a safe vantage point in the U.S., and quite another to see those same
pictures while sitting in a Moscow apartment only a few miles from where
it was all happening. Looking back it makes a great story to tell of
stepping off the plane at 6:30 on Sunday evening, October 3, and being
greeted by the words, "Welcome to the Revolution." And to tell of
hearing the rumble of tanks on a nearby highway through that first night.
But only in retrospect .. .
In this issue we welcome many regulars as well as newcomers to
our pages. We encourage readers of SEEP to submit articles and
welcome contnbutions by new authors who have not yet appeared in our
pages.
The feature Publications which we announced in Vol. 13, no. 1
appears in the current issue with a listing of a number of recent books.
We are pleased to provide this information about newly published works
dealing with twentieth-century Slavic and East European performance.
We ask contributors to include the publisher, price, and a two or three
sentence summary of the contents.
- Alma Law and Daniel Gerould
6
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No.3
EVENTS
STAGE PRODUCfiONS
From January to May 1993, the Appalachian State University and
the National Honorary Dramatic Society played host to visiting artists from
Poland including director J6zef Czemecki and sceoographer Anna Franta.
Two plays were produced in a two-part series. The first part took place in
January and featured SJawomir Mroi.ek's Out At Sea, a play about three
shipwrecked men who must decide who will become dinner for the others.
The second part occurred in May and featured Tadeusz R6i.ewicz's The
Hunger Artist Departs, a play based on Kafka's story about a man who
makes an art of fasting and must resist numerous temptations to abandon his
art. lhe first performance was dedicated to President Bill Clinton, and the
second to Julian Beck and Judith Malina.
From July 28 to August 8, The Inner-Space Theatre in New York
produced two plays from Caroline Thomas's Total Theatre Lab: Going To
Poland and Goddess Of Art. These plays, written by Thomas, tackled
currently relevant issues such as the prevailing attitude of Americans toward
the Bosnia crisis, the historically changing roles of women, and the
experience of East Europeans in the United States.
The Phoenix Ensemble, in association with the Russian Academy
of Theatre Arts (GITIS), premiered The Bathtub, a new American
adaptation of Vladimir Mayakovsky's The Bathhouse. The play ran from
September 22 until October 17 at New York's Theatre for the New City.
The play was adapted by Paul Schmidt, who has worked on translations for
The Wooster Group and Robert Wilson.
Through October 1, The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis staged
Aleksandr Ostrovsky's Too Clever By Half, directed by Garland Wright.
Brooklyn College opened its mainstage season with Anton
Chekhov's Three Sisters, October 14-24. David Garfield directed the
production.
From October 14-30, the Great Lakes Theater Festival in
Cleveland presented Gerald Freedman's production of The Cherry Orchard
by Chekhov.
7
From October 19 through November 13, the Indiana Repertory
Theatre in Indianapolis also staged The Cherry Orchard. Libby Appel
directed the production.
From November 4-14, New York's La MaMa E.T.C. featured
Voldya/Russian Hero, a new play about the words and music of Vladimir
Vyssotsky, the famous Russian bard and actor, known affectionately as
"Voldya." This play was co-written by Walter Jones and Sue Harris. The
production was directed by Walter Jones and choreographed by Rod
Rodgers.
The University of Rochester's Theatre Program performed the
American premiere of a new adaptation of Dostoevsky's The Brothers
Karamazov at La MaMa Theatre Annex, November 4-14. It was written
by Irish actor/playwright Gerard McLarnon. Directed by Mervyn Willis,
the adaptation came to La MaMa after performances by Rochester students
on their Russian tour to Moscow, St. Petersburg, Ufa, Novosibirsk, and
Kemerovo.
New York's Players Forum produced staged readings of Maciej
Wojtyszko's The Revival (October 25) and Samuil Alyoshin's Theme and
Variations (November 15) at the Players Club. Gregory Abels directed.
November 21-27 was American Drama Week at the Zagrebian
Theatre for Youth in Zagreb, Croatia. The week was organized to promote
the publication of Sanja NikCevic's Anthology of American Drama. This is
the first American Drama anthology published in Croatia and will include
playwrights such as O'Neill, Miller, Inge, Albee, and Fornes. There will
be performances (including Fefu and Her Friends), lectures, exhibitions,
and videos throughout the week.
The Yara Arts Group workshoped Yara 's Forest Song at La MaMa
First Street Workshop Space in New York, December 3-5. The piece
combined Virlana Tkacz's and Wanda Phipps's translation of Lesia
Ukrania's Forest Song with fragments of contemporary American poetry,
pagan myths and songs, and an original musical score by Genji Ito.
From January 8-29, 1994, the Ariwna Theatre Company in Tuscon
will produce The Seagull, by Anton Chekhov, translated by Tori Raring-
Smith, and directed by Olympia Dukakis.
From January 12 through March 6, the American Conservatory
8
Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol.l3, No.3
Theatre in San Francisco will present Chekhov's Uncle Vanyo. The
production will be directed by Artistic Director Carey Perloff.
CONFERENCES
The University of East Anglia (Norwich, England) conducted a
Polish Drama Conference, October 8-9. On Friday evening, the featured
topics were "Staging the Polish Imagination,'' "Romantic Drama,'' and
"Wyspianski, Edward Gordon Craig, and Symbolist Theatre." On
Saturday, the presentations included Daniel Gerould's "Witkiewicz,''
Zbigniew Osinski's "Grotowsk.i," and Halina Filipowica's "R6i.ewicz as
Dramatist.''
This conference coincided with The Norwich Arts Festival which
took place October 12-17. On October 12, the Rough as Guts Company
offered Tadeusz R6i.ewicz's The Card Index on a double bill with the
Krakow Zenkasi Theatre's presentation of Madmn Eva, Ave Madmn. The
Zenkasi is a Polish theatre of the disabled that believes that ''no other actor
is able to express human existence better than a person in a wheelchair."
On October 13, Ralph Yarrow directed R6i.ewicz' s The Trap at the Sewell
Barn Theatre.
On October 23-24, Miami University's Department of Theatre
hosted the Miami University International Theatre Festival in Oxford, Ohio.
The focus of this conference was Eastern Europe. The conference sessions
featured: Helena Albertova, President of the Czechoslovak National Centre
of the International Theatre Institute; Nikolina Gueorguieva and Verguinia
Pavlova, Directors of the National Academy Puppet Company, a student
performance group; Ladislav Lajcha, theatre historian and author of The
Development of Slovak National Theatre, 1920-1938 and Slovak
Contemporary Scenography; Mikhail Mokeev, director, teacher at the
School-Studio at the Moscow Art Theatre, and chair of the theatre lab at the
All-Russian Creative Workshops; Hristo Roukov, Rector of the National
Academy for Theatre and Film Arts, Sofia, Bulgaria; Peter Scherhaufer,
Artistic Director of Theatre on a String, Brno, the Czech Republic; Eva
Sormova of the Czech International Theatre Institute; and Jan Zavarsky,
scenographer, Bratislava, Slovakia.
The topics of the conference sessions were ' 'The Artist as Mirror
to Society;" "Current Western Influences on the Arts of Eastern Europe;"
and "Eastern Europe's Emerging Identity: Future Collaborations. "
Several East European companies were showcased as part of the
conference as well. The Bulgarian National Academy Puppet Company
9
perfromed Light and SluuUJw, September 30 to October 2. From October
7-10, Howard Blanning's interpretation of MroZek's Tango was produced.
A Russian Cabaret, created by and featuring Svetlana Eframova, was staged
October 12-13. The Theatre on a String from Bmo, Czech Republic,
staged Exercises in Style and Justine, October 21-24. Helena Albertova's
The Parlor Room was presented October 28-31, and Bedrich Smetana's The
Bartered Bride was performed November 11-14 ..
From May 18 through November 7, an exhibition in the Miami
University Art Museum featured "European Perspectives." From
September 14 through November 12, programs that examined East
European theatre artists were presented as well.
From October 1-3, MIDFEST International (in collaboration with
Miami University Theatre Department and the Cincinnati-Kharkv Sister City
Project) held a community celebration of arts and culture of the Czech
Republic, Slovakia, and Ukraine.
FILM
Eighth Day Theatre was presented as part ofMTV's Human Rights
Film Watch in New York, May 7-20. Distributed by the Swedish Film
Institute, this film documented the Eighth Day Theatre company's journey
out of Communist Poland. In 1986 this theatre group was forbidden to
pursue its profession in Poland and thus chose to leave Poland and perform
in Western Europe. It would take years for the entire group to be reunited,
and it is this time period, during and after their exodus, that filmmakers
Joanna Helander and Bo Persson recorded. It was described as "a
remarkable depiction of theatre as life and life as theatre." Judith Malina
of the Living Theatre said, "It is particularly meaningful to a theatre
company like the Living Theatre to see the scope and courage of the work
of a group that insists on speaking truth through beauty under the most
forbidding of circumstances. "
Films of Slavic origin or about Slavic themes were among the
numerous films screened during the festival: A Day in the Death of
Sarajevo, by Thierry Ravalet, Alain Ferrari, and Bernard-Henri Levy;
Dismissed From Life, by Waldemar Krzstek; Hear My Cry, by Maciej
Janusz Drygas; The Katyn Forest, by Marcel Lozinski and Andrzej Wajda;
Kiev Blue, by Heather MacDonald; Liberators Take Liberties: War, Rape,
and Children, by Helke Sander; Serbian Epics, by Pawel Pawilkowski;
Videogram of the Revolution, by Harun Farocki and Andrei Vjica; and A
View of Bosnia, by Arthur Kent.
10
Slavic and East European Performance Vol.13, No. 3
During the month of October, the Film Society of Lincoln Center
presented a series of films based on the works of Fedor Dostoevsky,
including: Crime and Punishment, directed by Lev Kulidzhanov, Russia
(October 17-30); Dostoyevsk:y's The Idiot, directed by Ak.ira Kurosawa,
Japan (October 19-27); Raskolnilwv, directed by Robert Wiene, Germany
(October 23); Crime and directed by Ak.i Kaurismaki, Finland
(October 24); The Idiot, directed by Georges Lampin, France (October 24-
27); and Crime and directed by Piere Chenal, France (October
25-27); The Brothers Karamazov, directed by Richard Brooks, US (October
26-27); Crime and Punishment directed by Josef von Sternberg, US
(October 28-30); and The Brothers Karamazov, directed by Ivan Pyriev,
Russia (October 29-30).
- prepared by Lisbeth Herer
11
BOOKS RECEIVED
Gans, Sharon and Jordan Charney. A Chekhov Concert. New York:
Samuel French, 1993. pp. 62. $5.00 (Acting Edition).
This dramatization combines characters and scenes from
Chekhov's The Seagull, Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, and The
Cherry Orchard.
Jackson, Robert Louis, ed. Reading Chekhov's Text. Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1993. pp. 258. $49.95 (Cloth).
Although primarily concerned with Chekhov as a prose writer,
this anthology of nineteen essays includes two on Chekhov as a
playwright. Laurence Senelick's "Offenbach and Chekhov; or La
Belle Elena" examines the influence of Offenbach on Chekhov's
dramaturgy, concluding with a comparative reading of
Offenbach's La belle Helene and Chekhov's The Wood Demon
and Uncle Vanya. Uncle Vanya is central to Gary Saul Morson's
essay, "Uncle Vanya and Prosaic Metadrama," as well. Morson
explores the influence of Tolstoy's prosaic aesthetic (i.e., the
notion that "it is not the dramatic events of life that matter,
either for individuals or for societies, but the countless small,
prosaic events of daily life") on Chekhov's work.
Kantor, Tadeusz. A Journey Through Other Spaces: Essays and
Manifestoes, 1944-1990. Edited and translated by Michal
Kobialka. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. pp.
430. $50.00 (Cloth) and $20.00 (Paper).
The anthology contains Kantor's major manifestoes in English
translation as well as a comprehensive analysis of Kantor's
theatre by Kobialka.
The Mayakovsky Centennial: 1893-1993. Edited by Anne D. Perryman
and Patricia J. Thompson. New York: Lehman College, 1993.
As part of its celebration of the one-hundredth anniversary of
Vladimir Mayakovsky's birth, Lehman College hosted an
academic symposium organized around four sessions:
12
"Mayakovsky the Man: Biographical Perspectives;"
"Mayakovsky: World Literature Perspectives;" "Mayakovsky and
His Contemporaries;" and "Re-examining Mayakovsky's Poetry
and Theatre." Of particular interest to theatre scholars are
Jonathan Kalb's reading of The Bathhouse, "Mayakovsky's Tragic
Slavic and East European Performance Vol.13, No. 3
Comedy," and Katherine Lahti's discussion of the influence of
Greek dithyrambs on Mayakovsky's dramaturgy, "Vladimir
Mayakovsky: A Dithyramb."
Segel, Harold B. Twentieth-Century Russian Drama: From Gorky to the
Present. Rev. ed. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press,
1993. pp. 51:7. $65.00 (Cloth) and $19.95 (Paper).
The updated version features a new chapter and bibliography on
Russian drama from 1979 to 1989. Segel focuses on the "leading
and/or more interesting dramatists of the period."
Svoboda, Josef. The Secret of Theatrical Space: The Memoirs of Josef
Svoboda. Edited and translated by J. M. Burian. New York:
Applause Books, 1993. pp. 143. $49.95 (Cloth).
Burian suggests that Svoboda's memoirs are like the man
himself: scientific and poetic, descriptive and analytical,
reminiscent and visionary. More than 150 photographs are
featured in this oversize book, as is a complete listing of
Svoboda's productions.
Witkiewicz, Stanislaw. The Witkiewicz Reader. Edited and translated by
Daniel C. Gerould. Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1993. pp. 400. $59.95 (Cloth) and $22 . .50 (Paper).
This anthology gathers excerpts from Witkacy's novels, plays,
letters, essays, and manifestoes. A chronology, biographical
notes, biographical notes, and numerous illustrations are also
included.
13
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Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No. 3
THE YEAR OF THE ACI'OR IN MOSCOW
John Freedman
The commercially-oriented 1992-1993 season in Moscow showed
several clear tendencies: melodramas (as in the copies of the Latin-
American soap operas flooding Russian television) were in; pseudo-
American musicals were in; Ostrovsky (nearly twenty new productions)
and Chekhov (five new productions of Uncle Vanya alone) were in; and
the absurdists and other authors perceived as "experimental" were out.
Naturally, in a city with an estimated four hundred theatres, studios, and
theatrical groups, no single trend could possibly define the overall state
of affairs. Still, one development carrying over from the previous season
began to look like a possible sign of the future. After a century of almost
total o n t r o ~ Russian directors are clearly ceding primacy to actors. This
phenomenon unquestionably remains more quantitative than qualitative,
but it is no coincidence that two of the year's best productions, The
Possible Meeting. or the Four Hand Dinner at the Chekhov Moscow Art
Theatre and the Bogis Agency's production of Nizhinsky, were very much
actor-centric. Nizhinsky was essentially staged without a director at all.
The reappearance in recent years of independent production
companies has sharply altered the face of theatre in Moscow. Various
organizations, such as David Smelyansky's Russian Theatre Agency, the
Bogis Agency, the Whole World International Theatre Center, the Anton
Chekhov Theatre, the Roman Viktyuk Theatre, and the OK Theatre
began mounting productions outside the confines of the repertory theatre.
Several actors, dissatisfied with the state of repertory theatres, formed
their own companies. Sergei Yursky founded ACTors ARTel, Oleg
Borisov founded the Oleg Borisov Enterprise, and Aleksandr Kalyagin's
EtCetera Theatre debuted in February 1993 (the latter two have yet to
prove they are capable of creating quality productions). With the sole
exception of the Viktyuk Theatre, the major attraction in all cases was the
presence of big-name actors who, for the first time since the Revolution,
were signed to contracts for specific productions. In order to compete
with the independents, traditional repertory theatres also began luring
spectators with stars.
1
The Possible Meeting is a perfect case in point.
Nizhinsky, on the other hand, is an independent production mounted by
the new Bogis Agency ("Bogis" is an acronym for the agency's founders,
Galina Bogolyubova and Larisa Isaeva).
The Possible Meeting, by the German playwright Paul Barz, brings
together composers George Frederic Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach,
who never met in real life. Fittingly, the production reunited two of
15
Russia's most brilliant actors who seldom perform together anymore:
Oleg Yefremov and Innokenty Smoktunovsky.
The year is 1747 and the occasion is Bach's entrance into the
German Society of Musical Sciences. a n d e ~ the society's only other
honorary member, bursts into a luxurious room just off the auditorium
where Bach can be heard performing for an appreciative crowd. Drunk
and irritable, Handel locks horns with his secretary, Johann Schmidt
(performed with fastidious dry humor by Stanislav Lyubshin). "Listen to
that music," coos Schmidt: "It's genius!" The grousing Handel corrects
him darkly: "It's talent."
From his first moments on stage, Y efremov creates a Handel
who is driven from within by his powerful personality, his prodigious
talent and his ambiguous attitude towards his legendary fame.
(Yefremov's own reputation rests, in part, on his having been the moving
force at the Sovremennik Theatre in its heyday and on his position as the
Moscow Art Theatre's officially-lauded artistic director, whose attempts
to reform that moribund venue have met with little success.) Rough as
sandpaper, Yefremov's Handel is consumed with a brash self-confidence
that hints at an underlying sense of doubt. He denigrates Bach to the
dismay of his secretary, grumbling that he should never have agreed to
this pointless meeting. But, as Bach makes a painfully timid entrance,
Handel instantly dons a saccharine smile, throws his arms open wide and
exclaims just a bit too jubilantly: "My dear man!"
Innokenty Smoktunovsky is an actor of sublime grace who, at his
best, commands a breathtaking range of subtle shadings. His intellectual
approach, his understated voice, his softly nervous gestures, his
penetrating eyes and his disarming, almost otherworldly smile have made
him the most celebrated Russian actor of the second half of the twentieth
century. His performance of Bach gently shifts all of that into an unusual
key. This Bach is shy, amusingly awkward, and certain of only one thing:
his own genius.
The "meeting" takes forever getting underway as the two
composers, like schoolboys playing games in the same sand box,
stubbornly refuse to engage one another. Bach wants to play the
clavichord; Handel wants to down a bottle of wine. Handel reminisces
about his father's doubts that anything would ever come of him, as the
poverty-stricken Bach, who has never seen such delicacies as are served
up by Schmidt, becomes preoccupied with eating artichokes. The play is
an entertaining examination of the vastly different personalities which can
be inhabited by genius. The performance is a celebration of the play's
theme by two actors who need have no illusions about their own prowess
and know it.
18
Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol. 13, No. 3
The Possible Meeting, or the Four Hand Dinner
Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre
19
The teasing interplay between theatre and life in this
performance is undeniable. Like the characters they play, two great
actors are locked in a sparring match. It is a battle from which everyone
emerges a winner, and the young director Vyacheslav Dolgachyov was
wise to stand back and let two masters go about their business.
2
Slowly, as fat chunks of wax begin dropping from the candles on
the chandelier above them, the barriers separating the two giants begin
to fall. Handel's jealousy of his guest gives way to grudging respect, while
Bach, uncharacteristically seduced by worldly desires, admits he is
"burning with envy" at Handel's fame, quickly adding, however, that he
is "the greater genius of the two." Handel is overjoyed. "That's the best
compliment of my life," he exclaims. For a while, the tipsy, newfound
friends even start making grandiose plans for collaborations.
Margarita Demyanova created an elegant old-world set, with a
strange, absent back wall consisting of a curtain of light which frequently
changes in density and color. In effect, it positions the characters with
one foot in this world and one foot on the road to eternity. As the
performance ends, the "wall" opens up and the two rivals disappear
beyond it together. U eternity makes "enemies" of these very different
artists, as Handel observes with no little delight, it is also the common
ground on which they meet.
Nizhinsky, too, is an exploration of the nature of genius, although
its focus is substantially different from The Possible Meeting. First-time
author Aleksei Burykin based his play on the diaries of Vaclav Nizhinsky,
the great Polish-Russian dancer whose career was cut short at the age of
thirty by schizophrenia. The result is a view of genius from the inside,
wherein it slowly becomes clear that true genius is a gift from God,
existing independently of the person whom it visits. It can be understood
or misunderstood. It can be revealed or it can become veiled over, as it
is in this case by madness. Burykin distilled Nizhinsky's divine and mortal
elements into two theatrical characters who are as inextricable as they are
at constant odds.
Oleg Menshikov gained international fame in 1992 by playing
Sergei Yesenin opposite Vanessa Redgrave's Isadora Duncan in the
award-winning London production of When She Danced. He brings the
same poetic grace to his performance of Nizhinsky's intuitive half.
Charming, boyish and coy, he isn't at all interested in remembering his
glorious days as the star of Sergei Diaghilev's Russian Seasons.
Aleksandr Feklistov built his considerable reputation performing
in several acclaimed production at the "Chelovek" TheatreStudio before
moving on to the short-lived Moscow Art Theatre Fifth Studio. As
Nizhinsky's cerebral half, he comes across early as a rational psychologist
20
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No.3
Ni1ftinsky, a production of the Boris Agency
21
whose task is to draw the impetuous Menshikov out of his sublime
estrangement from reality. But, as Menshikov deftly spins away from
each attempt to make him defme himself, Feklistov loses his confident
facade. And, involuntarily, we realize that we are witnessing the mystery
of an internal process.
Befitting a performance devoted to a great dancer, the actors's
movements, interaction and even inner thoughts are choreographed with
taut precision. The action progresses in ebbs and flows as control of the
situation passes back and forth between the characters. Concrete images
from the past occasionally materialize in the silent form of a young boy
and girl who are dressed in costumes from Nizhinsky's most famous roles.
Their appearance seems to awaken something in Menshikov's character:
he can't help but recognize what they mean, but he either cannot or does
not want to acknowledge that. In rare revelatory moments, his memory
of the past merges with his awareness of the present and he unexpectedly
becomes the dancer once again, executing graceful, balletic leaps and
gestures. But such moments are fleeting. Usually he is possessed of a
pristine, child-like detachment. The tone of the performance moves
lightly from the eerie (as when an effigy of Menshikov's character
suddenly comes to life), to mock tragedy, to lyrical comedy (as in a
marvelous two-man Chaplin imitation).
Feklistov's rather plodding, troubled persona repeatedly returns
to one of the questions which interests him most: "Pronounce your
name," he demands of his alter-ego. It is to no avail. Menshikov lists
everything he represents-a man, a god, a red-skinned Indian, a black-
skinned African, an Egyptian, a foreigner, a stranger, and a
Chinaman- but he refuses to say who he is. Eventually Feklistov is
forced to abandon his efforts: "I know who I am," he says, "but I'm not
saying." His almost unnoticeable descent into the sometimes disturbing,
but, more often, liberating world of the irrational is a stunning
achievement.
Although three different directors took part in the early stages of
rehearsals, none of them met the approval of the actors or the designer,
Pavel Kaplevich. The trio completed the production on their own. The
performances take place in the small, ornate hall of a children's music
school, a location that evokes beautifully the spirit of the Nizhinsky age.
Kaplevich added a series of inflatable pseudo-marble columns which
increase the stateliness of the environs, while giving it the fragility of
sanity: all that is needed for the columns to collapse in a heap are a few
swipes of the hand.
Illuminated with a wide-eyed sense of wonder and humor,
Nizhinsky is proof that theatre, too, can soar in a state of perpetual
22
Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol. 13, No.3
23
suspension-as legend has it Nizhinsky himself did in Le Spectre de Ia
Rose. Imitating the finale of that famous ballet, Nizhinsky ends as
Menshikov takes a flying leap out a window in the stage-left wall.
If the triumph of The Possible Meeting had the feel of an "old-
fashioned" actors's showcase, Nu:hinsky created the distinct sensation of
innovation. Two of the best young actors in Moscow (together with one
of the most respected young designers) molded a powerful performance
around their own needs and capabilities, rather than merely executing the
demands of a director.
3
Meanwhile, the vast majority of last season's productions
eschewed unconventional approaches and merely sought to enact play
texts. Some did so with talent. A stand-out in this regard was Mark
Rozovsky's production of Uncle Vanya at the Nikita Gates Theatre-Studio.
Rozovsky repeatedly stated that his primary purpose was to return to the
basics of classical drama, and indeed Vanya contained few of the showy
tricks this director is apt to employ. Instead he gave a crystal-clear
reading of Chekhov's text- bringing out its tragedy and humor in equal
doses- while leaving his actors ample room to provide their own
interpretations. Especially effective were Mikhail Dolinsky, who fashioned
a unusually comical, sympathetic Professor Serebryakov, and Viktoriya
Zaslavskaya, who, at moments, gave Sonya's failed stab at love the chilling
aura of a confrontation with the devil. The result was a deeply moving
performance whose sense of freshness was couched in a deceptively
traditional veneer.
Most productions showing a strong director's hand were
disappointing. Velemir Khlebnikov's Zangezi (directed by Aleksandr
Ponamaryov for the Chyot-Nechet Theatre), Pirandello'sAs You Desire
Me (directed by Vladimir Sedov for the Novy Drama Theatre), and
Ostrovsky's The Abyss (collated with Victor Ducange's Thirty Year.r of a
Gamester's Life by director Sergei Zhenovach at the Malaya Bronnaya
Theatre) all bogged down in pretentiousness, obscurity, or both. Yuri
Lyubimov's production of Sophocles's Electra at the Taganka seemed
rather trifling, if somewhat hysterical, while his "musical parable" based
on Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago was so busy it seldom had the time to achieve
coherence. Roman Viktyuk dashed off two painfully empty productions:
Sergei Kokovkin's A Mystery Play About an Unborn Child, an Unrealized
Mother and the Almighty Father at the Mossoviet Theatre, and Edward
Albee's dramatization of Nabokov's Lolita, a production of the Viktyuk
Theatre. At the Hermitage Theatre, Mikhail Levitin staged a clever Don
Juan, based on plays by Moliere and Tirso de Molina, but his real secret
to success was Viktor Gvozditsky's performance of one of the
production's two Don Juans. Several prominent directors, Kama Ginkas
24
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No.3
among them, produced nothing at all. A telling moment was the
Mayakovsky Theatre's revival of Ferdinand Bruckner's Napoleon I,
originally staged by the late Anatoly Efros a decade ago. Director
Tatyana Kazakova did an admirable job of resurrection, but the
performance clearly owed its success to Mikhail Filippov and Olga
Yakovleva in the roles of Napoleon and Josephine.
Three productions provided the kind of provocative vision one
expects from an auteur director. Yuri Pogrebnichko's adaptation of
Gogol's The Maniage at the Krasnaya Presnya Theatre, retitled When I
Wrote I Saw Before Me Only Pushkin, was a quirky, mystical meditation
on Russian claustrophobia. At the Malaya Bronnaya Theatre, Sergei
Zhenovach rebounded from the disastrous Abyss with a rousing,
folkloristic production of Aleksandr Ablesimov's eighteenth-century comic
opera, The Miller W7w Was Wuard, Cheal, and MaJchmaker. And, finally,
Pyotr Fomenko produced a spectacular, intimate version of Ostrovsky's
Guilty Without Guilt at the V akhtangov Theatre. The first act was
performed by a group of young actors as a prologue in a tiny room
overlooking the theatre's elegant foyer. The remaining three acts were
performed in the adjacent third-floor buffet by established members of
the V akhtangov troupe. In keeping with the spirit of the season as a
whole, Fomenko couched the meticulously-constructed performance in a
loose, improvisational atmosphere that facilitated maximum contact
between the audience and a uniformly strong cast of actors.
Clearly, it would be an overstatement to start talking about the
death of the director; the tradition spawned by Stanislavsky, Meyerhold,
and Tairov has been too strong and too productive simply to fade away.
Nonetheless, it would seem that we are on the threshold of some
realignments in the priorities of the Russian theatrical process. At any
rate, the lion's share of last year's triumphs in Moscow belonged to
actors.
1
In the 1991-1992 season, The Bald Brunette featured a popular
rock star, The Gamblers-21st Century featured an all-star cast, and What
Aro You Doing in a Tux? featured two of Anatoly Vasilyev's former actors
and a popular singer. For details about these productions, see "Some
Moscow Premieres: The 1991-1992 Season" Slavic and East European
Perfonnance 12 {1992): 10-19. Another example was Aleksandr Galin's
Sorry, directed by the renowned filmmaker Gleb Panfilov for the Russian
Theatre Agency and starring Inna Churikova and Nikolai Karachentsov.
After two previews in June 1992, it entered the repertory at the Lenkom
Theatre in the 1992-1993 season. I found this performance, which
received mixed reviews, to be an excellent treatment of the problems
25
separating and unifying m i g r ~ and indigenous Russian culture. Whatever
the case, critics and packed houses were unanimous in their praise of the
actors's work.
2
A comparison of two other productions involving Dolgachyov
and Yefremov emphasizes the new dependence of directors on actors.
Using a cast of inexperienced actors, many still students, Dolgachyov
staged a drearily busy, eminently forgettable version of Carlo Gozzi's One
of the Last Nights of the Carnival at the Pushkin Theatre. At the Chekhov
Moscow Art Theatre, Yefremov the director tried turning Woe From Wit
into something of a love story but succeeded only in overwhelming
Griboedov's sparkling wit with banality.
3
Even the origins of the project were unorthodox as Nizhinsky
was written at the request of Menshikov, who was unhappy with the roles
being offered him.
26
Slavic and East European Pcrfonnancc Vol. 13, No. 3
GROSSMAN, MACHACEK, SCHORM: THE WSS OF THREE
MAJOR CZECH DIR.ECI'ORS OF THE LATE 1WENTIETH CEN11JRY
J. M. Burian
The death in February 1993 of director Jan Grossman, Vaclav
Havel's chief collaborator in the 1960s at the Theatre on the Balustrades
(Divadlo na zabradlQ, was but the latest severe loss to Czech theatre in
the present era of reorganization and reorientation following the Velvet
Revolution. It came two years after the death of Miroslav Macharek, a
major actor and director at the National Theatre since the 1950s, and only
a little more than four years after the death of Ewald Schorm, freelancer
and youngest of this triad of significant theatre directors. Although they
never quite achieved the world-class reputation of their countrymen
Alfred Radok and Otomar Krejbt, these three directors nevertheless
helped to create and keep alive the high standards of Czech theatre
before and after the Prague Spring of 1968. A brief survey of their
careers is a reminder of the range and quality of Czech theatre in the
second half of the twentieth century, when the arts were heavily
subsidized, but ideologically and bureaucratically restricted by the
Communist regime.
Originally an important literary critic, theorist, and editor,
Grossman (b. 1925) entered the world of theatre shortly after World War
ll as a reader at the National Theatre in Prague. Later, after working a
few years as a dramaturg at the State Theatre in Brno, Grossman
returned to Prague in the early 1950s as a dramaturg and occasional
director for the celebrated prewar theatre artist E. F. Burian in the
latter's revived D34 theatre. But Grossman's most significant theatrical
activity occurred first as dramaturg and then as director and head of
drama at the Theatre on the Balustrades in Prague from 1962-1968, years
when the nation moved from the restrictions of a rigid Communist system
to the enlightened Prague Spring of 1968 and its motif of socialism with
a human face.
Grossman brought a sense of literary and theatrical discipline and
structure to the theatre, formulating an artistic policy that gave the
theatre a special identity. In this he had the good fortune of working with
Vaclav who was resident playwright and later dramaturg under
Grossman. Grossman's program at the Theatre on the Balustrades
created a theatre of conscious "appeal" to its spectators. The productions
were carefully conceptualized and theatrically inventive models of
political, and psychological behavior that confronted the audiences with
implicit questions regarding the society in which they lived. The plays,
which tended toward absurdist satires, were mostly original works
27
(Havel's first three full-length plays: The GQI'den Party; The
Memorandum, directed by Grossman; and The Increasing Difficulty of
Concentration); or Grossman's provocative adaptation and direction of
works like Jarry's Ubu cycle and Kafka's The Trial. All these productions
brought the theatre sustained success at home, international attention, and
tours abroad.
Both Grossman and Havel resigned from the Balustrades theatre
for nonpolitical reasons even before the Soviet-led invasion and
occupation of August 1968. Nevertheless, for the next twenty-one years,
because of his implicitly critical, liberal artistic profile, Grossman was
restricted to directing abroad or in peripheral but progressive Czech
theatres to which he brought his distinctive style. A patient, gentlemanly
intellectual, but painstakingly persistent in his staging demands, his work
was marked by a thorough, philosophically slanted analysis of the text, a
selection of telling stage images, and a precisely defined mise-en-scene
that sought to reveal the socially relevant motifs of the play rather than
Grossman's subjective "take" on it.
In the spring of 1989 he was allowed to return to the Balustrades
theatre as a guest director of Moliere's Don Juan, which proved to be the
outstanding production of the season. Fact became more dramatic than
fiction when, after the Velvet Revolution swept the previously jailed
Vaclav Havel to the presidency of Czechoslovakia at the end of 1989,
Grossman staged Havel's previously banned Largo Desolalo at the
Balustrades in April 1990, even persuading President Havel to provide a
recorded voice-over narration of the stage directions as part of the
performance. Later that same year, Grossman became head of drama at
the theatre, and in the summer of 1991 he was named its artistic director,
although not before an internal power struggle with the actors, who
wanted the theatre to adopt a more commercial orientation in the post-
Communist era. Before his death he directed three more plays at the
Balustrades: Karel Steigerwald's Alas, Alas, Fear, the Noose, and the Pit,
a new play by the theatre's resident playwright (1990); Havel's Temptation
(1991); and Alan Bennett's Kafka's Dick (1993), his last work.
Like Jan Grossman, Miroslav a c h a ~ e k and Ewald Schorm
endured various forms of restriction if not oppression during the
Communist years, primarily in being prevented from working steadily at
their art and craft because they would not adapt to various pressures and
demands from the authorities. Macharek (1922-1991), a major actor as
well as a director, was banished from work in Prague during the 1950s
and then prevented from directing during most of the 1980s. Schorm
(1931-1988) was restricted to itinerant and intermittent work in the
theatre after his successful career as a film director (e.g., Enough Courtlge
28
Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vo1.13, No.3
for Every Day (1964]) in the Czech New Wave era was terminated as part
of the purging of liberal forces following the crushing of the Prague
Spring. Despite these forced gaps in their creative efforts, each made his
mark on Czech theatre.
MachArek worked in several provincial theatres as well as in
Prague's Municipal theatres before joining the National Theatre in 1959
as both actor and director. His most notable productions for the National
Theatre included Oedipus Rex (1963), l:apeks's Insect Comedy (1965),
Henry V (1971), The School for Scandal (19'n), the Czech classic, Our
Hotheads (Naif Furimati (1979]), and Hamlet (1982), a straightforward but
powerfully affecting production that remained in the repertoire for six
years. MacMrek also acted in some of these productions (including the
Tramp in Insect Comedy and the First Player in Hamlet). Luka in Lower
Depths, Shakespeare's Henry IV, Macbeth, and Tybalt were some of his
other major roles. A choleric, intense, often sarcastic and goading
personality, MacMrek was above all an actors's director who sought out
the passionate core of a drama's conflicts. Not inclined toward avant-
garde experimentation in staging, he nevertheless worked fruitfully with
Josef Svoboda, infusing the latter's often abstract, metaphoric sets with a
richly textured humanity in the give and take of the actors' performances.
MacMrek's uncompromising, fierce commitment to the spirit of
independence led logically to his becoming the chief spokesman for the
Prague actors and ensembles who played a central role during the
turbulent demonstrations, strikes, and debates of the Velvet Revolution.
His last work in the theatre was as Serebriakov in the National Theatre's
production of Uncle Vanya in 1990.
Ewald Schorm's personality and directing style were the opposite
of MachArek's. A handsome, tall man, quiet, reticent, and gentle, he
worked best by indirection. Rather than exhort his actors like MachArek,
or provide subtle analyses like Grossman, he would seemingly throw up
his hands and declare he didn't know what a given moment meant or how
to handle a difficult sequence, thus appealing to the actors for a special,
intimate artistic collaboration, to which most responded enthusiastically.
Again unlike Macharek, most of whose work was for a single company
(the large institutional National Theatre), Schorm worked primarily with
a number of relatively small studio theatres, such as the Drama Club
(tinohernf Klub), the Balustrades Theatre, Ypsilon Theatre, Theatre on
a String (Divaldo na ProvUku) of Brno, and the theatre in Ustf on the
Elbe. All these ensembles and other even smaller groups keenly
anticipated his stints as guest director, for he seemed to bring a breath of
simplicity and purity with him, a disarming modesty that hid the intense,
perceptive study be devoted to each project. Among his outstanding
29
productions for studio theatres were his own adaptations of novels such
as Crime and Punishment, his frrst stage work, for the Cinohernf Klub,
(1966), The Brothers Karamazov (1979), and Macbeth (1981), each of
which revealed a taste for stylized experimentation, such as the Kabuki
elements in the costuming and acting of Othello.
Schorm's work was not restricted entirely to small-scale studio
work, however. His most lasting affiliation was with the Laterna Magika
theatre ensemble headed by Josef Svoboda, who saw in Schorm's film
expertise as scenarist and director an ideal contribution to the complex
mixed media form of Latema Magika. The most successful of Schorm's
six productions at Laterna Magika were The Magic Cirrus (1977), Ni17U
Rehearsal (1981), a probing critique of eroding ethical values in
Czechoslovakia during that era, and the lavish spectacle of Odysseus
(1987). He also directed a number of opera productions, including some
with Svoboda, chiefly abroad. Nevertheless, it is as a director of more
intimate, psychologically-centered works drawing on the actors's
personalities that Schorm will probably be longest remembered.
As the Czech theatre reformats and reorients itself in the 1990s,
these three artists, among the few remaining survivors of the high-water
mark of the Czech theatre of the 1960s, will surely be missed.
30
Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol.13, No.3
JERZY GRZEGORZEWSKI: THE POWER OF IMAGES
Elwira M. Grossman
During my one-month stay in Poland, I managed to see three
performances staged by Jerzy Grzegorzewski: Uncle Vanya; The Death
of Ivan Ilych; and Caught (Zlowiony). Grzegorzewski's stage versions of
three different literary genres (a play, a short story, and two poems with
corresponding themes), reveal his interest in aeating images that can
convey the meaning of any literary text he selects. Grzegorzewski neither
ignores given textual directions nor treats them with blind obedience.
Instead, he reads them anew and concentrates on elements either ignored
or consciously rejected by other readers or performers. Grzegorzewski
is as much a playwright and designer as he is a director. Yet he always
remains faithful to the spirit of a literary source. His final products
appear quite stimulating. Often desaibed by critics as eccentric and
controversial, as well as interesting and challenging for both actors and
audiences; his direction results in thought-provoking and moving
performances.
In his staging of Uncle Vanya, Grzegorzewski concentrates on the
elements of Chekhov's technique that prove to be the very origin of the
Theatre of the Absurd. His directing focuses on the rejection of
traditional concepts of plot and character with a lack of logical motivation
for characters's behavior, devaluation of dialogue and language itself, and
use of "indirect dialogue," just to name the most important dramatic
devices revealed in this production.
At the beginning of Act I, when the daily tea time starts, Marina
(Wieslawa Niemyska) and Astrov (Wojciech Malajkat) move the samovar
in very slow motion from one edge of a big table to another. They both
take turns lifting the opposite sides of the table while remaining silent or
uttering single sentences with long pauses as if they were waiting for
something to happen or for someone to interrupt them. The slow pace
of the action and their movements stirs the viewers's curiosity. At the
same time it prepares them for the upcoming uneventful plot with its
moments of psychological tension and anxiety, but without climaxes. This
introductory scene puzzles the audience and makes them suspicious about
the objective nature of the reality presented. The spectator asks "what
is happening?" instead of ''what is going to happen?"
The organization of the stage space, which appears wide open
and unusually deep, also assures the viewer that what one sees is not the
illusion of nineteenth-century Russia but an exclusively subjective reality
of the characters' minds and psychic projections. There is a stage door
31
to the right and to the left. The forestage is broadened by removing a
few front rows of seats. There are a few chairs, a bench, a piano, and a
tree-lined walk in the back indicating an autumn landscape.
Grzegorzewski's design for the setting fits Serebriekov's space description
very well: "I detest this house, it's a perfect labyrinth . . . twenty-six
enormous rooms, everybody scattered where you can't find them." When
Ivan Voynitsky-Vanya (Zbigniew Zamachowski) paces nervously as if he
could not break the vicious circle of everyday routine and predictable
events, his presence acquires a symbolic dimension. For him the reality
behind all doors always seems the same. Trapped in a world that offers
no solutions for a monotonous and painful existence, Vanya devotes his
time to monologues and philosophical discussions. If his behavior puzzles
the spectator at the beginning, it appears quite convincing at the end.
Zamachowski creates a profound character whose interior world becomes
a part of the fragmented setting: visibly present but difficult to grasp and
arrange in a logical way.
As the performance progresses the staging slowly unfolds its
psychological and existential dimensions; it deepens the loneliness of the
characters and makes their emotional distance more visible.
Grzegorzewski's theatrical language appeals to the spectator's imagination
partly by visualizing psychological aspects of Chekhov's dramatic world.
What can potentially be sensed in dialogue through an attentive reading
becomes accessible to the viewer much faster through the theatrical signs
that Grzegorzewski carefully chooses.
Two scenes are particularly striking: the conversation between
Sonya (Aleksandra Justa) and Yelena (Joanna Trzepieciflska) in Act III
and, resulting from it, the mutual exchange of views between Astrov
(Wojciech Malajkat) and Yelena. Although the conversation between
Sonya and her stepmother begins quite innocently, its importance
becomes clear after Sonya confesses her deep love for Astrov. Unaware
of her stepmother Yelena's own affection for him, Sonya asks her to
speak to Astrov in order to learn his true feelings. In her innocence and
naivete, Sonya does not realize that Yelena's concern is politely
conventional and obviously false. The idea of having two women speaking
to each other through a glass top of a table (with Sonya sitting on the
floor and Yelena looking at her from above it) creates an appropriate set-
up for this scene and comments on the women's relationship in a truly
revealing fashion.
Apropos the "glass table" scene, the undertones and sexual
innuendos present throughout Yelena's and Astrov's chat are masterfully
indicated through a "picture-taking" episode. This scene involves a lot of
body posing, different facial expressions, and provocative gestures in both
characters' behavior. There is also a lengthy moment when the characters
32
Slavic and East European Performance Vo1.13, No. 3
gaze into each others eyes, having as an obstacle an imaginary camera
lens. As a result the scene creates a fascinating psychological game of
manipulation, uncertainty, and secret passion.
In addition to these effective scenes, there is a memorable
moment when Serebriakov (Wlodzimierz Press) announces his decision
to sell the house. At this time all of the characters are sitting in a line of
chairs facing each other's back. Intentionally or not, they create a human
train of different generations, temperaments, and philosophical views.
They are a family that lives together but is really apart, a family that looks
in the same direction but knows no destination. While they all want to
believe that they move straight ahead, their train seems to be going in a
circle because they always arrive at similar observations and the same
philosophical conclusion: "life is dreary, dull, and . . . suffocating." As
Vanya's fmal lines confirm, nothing can destroy their numbing daily
routine: "You'll get the same amount as before-sent regularly.
Everything shall be as it was." It does not come as a surprise that the
point of arrival in the action of the play is only slightly different from its
point of departure-another essential feature of an absurdist play's
structure that inspired this very appealing and stirring interpretation of
Uncle Vanya.
The music composed by Stanislaw Radwan also becomes an
important foreshadowing element. A consistently repeated motif helps to
create the quiescent and somberly lyrical atmosphere of this performance.
The music also corresponds to the obsessive themes of Astrov's and
Vanya's monologues concerning the senselessness of human existence, the
humdrumness of life, and time and its impact.
Grzegorzewski's attempt to stage Chekhov as "our
contemporary'' by focusing on the recognizable devices of the Theatre of
the Absurd creates a highly successful production. The director owes part
of this success to .the group of actors from the Studio Theatre who
commendably render his vision.
The Death of Ivan I/ych has become an important theatrical event
for theatregoers in Poland. Since its premiere in 1991, it has acquired a
few detractors and many admirers which proves Grzegorzewski's effort
worthwhile and Polish theatre still alive. Because the narration and long
inner monologues constitute the major part of Tolstoy's text, and its
dramatic texture is reduced to the minimum, the idea of staging The
Death of Ivan Ilych itself appears quite a challenge. In order to meet this
challenge, Grzegorzewski incorporates poetic pieces by Tadeusz R6:lewicz,
jeopardizes certain parts of the story, totally sacrifices some others, and
manages to translate a few astonishingly well. The performance does not
satisfactorily explain the criteria for his choices. To this, however,
33
Grzegorzewski himself responded during the meeting of the International
Theatre Festival "Kontakt '93" in Torun: "If I understand everything
from my own performance, it means that something is wrong."
2
The setting for the scene of Ivan's wake makes the spectators
participate in the imaginary ceremony as passive onlookers. Ivan's friends
(Stanislaw Brudny, Andrzej Butruk, Jacek Jarosz, Tomasz Taraszkiewic:z,
and J6zef Wieczorek) deliver speeches from a kind of carriage moved in
between the rows of seats. At the same time Praslmvya Fedorovna
(Wieslawa Niemyska) sobs on the stage in an exaggerated manner that
makes her feigned sorrow more visible to the audience. When the guests
at the wake exit, Ivan (Jan Peszek) remains on the stage alone and his
admirable acting keeps the audience's attention for the rest of the play.
Peszek communicates the protagonist's thoughts, pain, fear,
anxiety, and total loneliness in an unforgettable way. Concentrating on
Ivan's inner life, Peszek adopts different and often symbolic solutions: he
stands on his head, waves his arms and legs, jumps up and down in a
frantic way. He conveys the message of Ivan's desperate will to live.
Peszek's acting also convincingly illustrates Ivan's inability to communicate
his pain and his strong desire to be treated by his family sincerely and
naturally.
One of the most surprising and original ideas of this performance
is the introduction of a scene with dancing girls which recalls the many
balls and parties that Ivan attended before his illness. When the group
of dancers enters the stage, the contrast between their young healthy
bodies and Ivan's evident weakness astonishes the audience and forces it
to reflect. This marks one of the most poignant moments that makes
Ivan's suffering undeniable and convincing.
Ivan's recognition of the real nature of his success and his
previously "healthy'' life is reached when he becomes aware that the real
direction of his existence leads him down, not up; although the movement
is fast, it is no longer forward but backward. Ironically, Ivan's illness
begins at the peak of his career. He then falls while trying to hang a
curtain in his luxurious house. This meaningful moment in the story is
symbolized on the stage by the setting. In the background there is a
vertical platform in the shape of a trapeze onto which Ivan frequently
climbs during the performance. In the last scene the same platform
moves apart, and Ivan's dead body appears in a bright stream of gray
light, creating a stirringly beautiful and powerful image.
With R62:ewicz's poem "I dreamed of Leo Tolstoy,'' recited by
Peszek as part of his role, the performance acquires a different
dimension. The death concerns not only a literary character but becomes
verifiable by the biography of the writer himself. In terms of literary
style, R62:ewicz's language adds a poetic touch to Tolstoy's dry and
34
Slavic and East European Pcrfonnance Vol.l3, No. 3
deceptively simple narrative. It changes the story from a chronicle of
events to a more private and personal confession.
Although full of beautiful and moving images, the spectacle left
me with one major question: if one had not read the story before, would
one have known much about Ivan besides his illness and death? What
kind of important "discoveries" does this sickness bring to his life? There
are a number of possible answers to these questions in Tolstoy's text, but
none of them seem to be suggested in Grzegorzewski's stage version.
Ivan's philosophical divagations on the falsity of human behavior,
especially his family's, are excluded from the acting and Peszek's
monologues. There is no motivation for Ivan's close understanding with
the peasant Gerasim who, representing Nature, can view Ivan's condition
exactly as be wants: with full acceptance and natural sincerity.
According to Tolstoy's version, only a deadly illness can wake
Ivan from his artificial, shallow, and success-oriented existence to a life
rich in spiritual values and philosophical reflection, a life that ends with
a full acceptance of death as its natural component. This important turn
in Ivan's consciousness is never communicated onstage, neither is his
hatred for family members because of their false behavior towards him.
Why Grzegorzewski decides to omit such evidently theatrical aspects of
the story is unclear.
Caught (Ziowiony) is a loosely connected chain of poetic images.
This time Grzegorzewski creates a performance inspired by the poems
"Et in Arcadia Ego" and "Caught" ("Zlowiony'') by Tadeusz R6iewicz.
Grzegorzewski's theatrical version of poetry that seeks the meaning, place,
and role of Roman and Greek cultures in contemporary life appeals more
to the audience's imagination and fantasy than to their emotions or
inteUectual reflection. Some of the rich poetic images actualized through
the stage language seem to lose their appealing power because of the fact
that what is subtly suggested through poetic verses becomes too explicit
and one-dimensional on stage. In other cases, the images performed
often evoke a completely different feeling from the one in the original text
and leave the spectator confused with no sense of direction for possible
interpretation. For example, reflective scenes and flashbacks from a visit
to Italy do not seem to be connected with scenes that foUow soon after
and are performed backstage and on the ftrst balcony simultaneously.
Among these intricate images, only single moments such as the
monologue to a dead mother have a profound effect on the audience. An
old woman, dressed in a shroud, appears between the rows of seats
carried on someone's back. Her return to the life, imagination, and
memory of the narrator (Olgierd Lukaszewicz) seems very natural, and
a deeply reflective mood settles on the viewers. However, the mood shifts
35
very quickly and other forms different in their visible action, symbolic
meaning, and poetic climate ensue.
The performance Caught serves as convincing proof of the
assertion that Grzegorzewski belongs to the Dionysian type of theatre
artists who rely on artistic intuition and irrational impulses first and
foremost. This and other presentations establish him as a theatre maker
who rejects outside stimuli of a political or social nature and who
penetrates his imagination as well as different literary works that affect
it.
1
A concise and insightful description of Grzegorzewski's directing
style can be found in Malgorzata Sugiera, "Poetyka Grzegorzewskiego,"
Dialog 2 (1990}: 144-154 and Dialog 3 (1990): 108-119; also see ElZbieta
Morawiec, Powidoki TeatiU (Krak6w: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1991),
especially pp. 283-295.
~ h meeting with Jerzy Grzegorzewski and Jan Peszek took
place on May 28, 1993 in the Wilam Horzyca Theatre in ToruD, Poland.
36
Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol.l3, No.3
THE WHEEL OF MISFOR1UNE:
INTRIGUE .AND LOVE AT THE BOLSHOI DRAMATIC THEATRE
Maria lgoatieva
Joseph BnmdeskJ
St. Petersburg audiences have a long standing affinity for
Georgian directors. Georgy Tovstonogov, the late artistic patriarch at the
Bolshoi Dramatic Theatre (BOT), introduced spectators to his particular
view of the classics for nearly forty years. Recently a number of other
Georgian directors and theatre artists have distinguished themselves.
Chief among this group is Robert Sturua, whose productions of Richard
III and The CallCasian Chalk Circle have attracted international acclaim.
After Tovstonogov's death in 1989, the search for a new artistic leader at
BOT led to another Georgian director: Temur Chkheidze. The latter's
production of Obryv (Precipice) had been performed in Tbilisi and was
subsequently staged at the Moscow Art Theatre at the invitation of Oleg
Efremov. Chkheidze's cruel masterpiece portrayed the systematic
degradation of a peasant and his wife by a rich neighbor. In a series of
coldly realistic scenes, the peasant, a dreamer I philosopher, is transformed
into a nonentity. Like Mother Courage, neither the peasant nor his wife
is capable of understanding what is happening to them, thus they are
steamrollered by societal forces that seem to view them as little more
than expendable pawns. The performance aesthetic used by Chkheidze
exists on a highly esoteric plane; in Obryv there is no limit to the
humiliations coldly and methodically forced by one human onto another.
The victimization and its results are portrayed in clear, precise terms.
Chkheidze uses a similar aesthetic in his production of Friedrich
von Schiller's Intrigue and Love at BOT in April1993 (SEEP vol. 13, no.
1, Spring 1993). As we enter the auditorium, a spinning wheel is slowly
turned in the midst of a small middle-class dwelling of the early
nineteenth century. It looks like a museum exhibit, complete with two
figures facing each other while seated on opposite sides of the room.
Before the performance begins, we are drawn into an atmosphere which
has all the animation of an archive. We learn that the two seated flgures
are the lovers, Luisa (Elena Popova) and Ferdinand (Mikhail Morozov).
Their movements are slow, deliberate, and precise; their costumes are
light-colored, their makeup decidedly pale. These two look like escapees
from Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, and as such they are portrayed
with a single passion. At ftrst their deliberately static blocking gives the
impression of a chess match. Ferdinand, an aristocrat, moves like a black
37
knight while he struggles to attain the white pawn, Luisa, a commoner.
But as opposing pieces, their happiness is impossible from the start.
Knights move only in L-shaped directions while pawns move one square
at a time. Consequently, the lovers in this production almost never come
into close proximity with one another; they always appear to be separated
by two or three squares. Obstacles like the table in Luisa's home help
maintain the distance. The rules of chess also allow a pawn to become
a queen under certain circumstances. Luisa is given the opportunity to
marry Worm, the President's secretary (Andrei Tolubeev), and rise to the
court just as Ferdinand can marry Lady Milford and rise as well. But the
lovers refuse to play the game by the rules-those dictated by life and
fate-and thus they fall.
Paradoxically, this production is not about love but rather about
intrigue and those who represent it. A key to Chkheidze's conception of
the play is contained in the title. Schiller's Kilbale und Liebe is
consistently translated as Kovarstvo i liubov' in Russian; but English
versions vary, and sometimes, as in the case of Coleridge, the title is
translated as Love and Intrigue. While an emphasis on true, idealistic
"love" may seem consistent with the historical notion of Sturm und Drang
romanticism, it runs contrary to Chkheidze's approach to the play. In this
production "intrigue" is an indomitable force that corrupts and ultimately
crushes all idealism. Chkheidze invites his audiences to watch the
characters play symbolic chess with one another as they try to anticipate
and outguess their opponents.
Unlike the lovers, the intriguers are portrayed with life, wit, and
ingenuity; everything they do is permeated with the irresistible scent of
intrigue. At times Chkheidze allows several of the intriguers the
opportunity to reveal a sense of their lost ideals. Lady Milford (Alisa
Freindlikh) has such a moment in the second act; after she tries to bribe
Luisa, Milford agonizingly begs for forgiveness. But, for most, the thrill
of intrigue dominates every action. True gamesmanship is enthusiastically
pursued by President von Walter (Kirill Lavrov) and Worm (a "telling
name" in the truest sense), dual masters of intrigue. In their last scene
together, where the final tragic snare is set for Ferdinand, von Walter
removes his wig in tired frustration; Worm then removes his wig and
warns von Walter that he could blackmail the President. Von Walter
reasserts his power over Worm by taking the latter's wig as he forces him
into the intrigue and reinforces the image of his power by thro:wing the
wig back to Worm at the end of the scene.
Throughout the course of the performance, the characters project
a sense of inner intensity without resorting to bombast and false "tom
curtain" passion. The variance between the emotions being discussed and
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Slavic and East European Performance Vol.13, No. 3
the stoic reserve of the performance creates a fascinating, cool tension.
The audience vicariously plays along with the chess masters and
experiences the drama and passion from an engagingly intellectual
perspective.
Luisa's father, Miller, is portrayed by one of Russia's best lyrical
actors, Valery lvchenko. Miller is neither an idealist nor intriguer; he is
a very reasonable middle-class musician who knows the rules but does not
exploit them. He is passionately opposed to Luisa's tryst with Ferdinand
and does everything he can to convince, cajole, or otherwise force his
daughter to abide by his decisions in the matter. Ivchenko's impressive
portrayal of Miller through expansive and fluid vocal and physical work
brightens and balances the quietly intense mannerisms of his counterparts.
Most importantly, through lvchenko we see Miller's heartbreak.
Visual and musical counterpoint enlivens the numerous scene
changes and catapults pent-up tensions from one scene into the next.
Artist Georgy Aleksi-Meskhishvili uses a series of white, diaphanous
curtains; one set moving horizontally, the other verticaUy. The vertical
curtains are weighted and when lowered, float like a fme veil of snow.
The freefaU illusion is used effectively, always in concert with a very loud,
synthesized score composed by David Turiashvili. It is clear that the
deliberate juxtaposition of rather static scenes with extremely dynamic
transitions is meant to stimulate a tempo-rhythm that, though unexpected,
supports the overaU production concept. But the scenic metaphor that
best expresses Cbkheidze's philosophy is the spinning wheel used during
key moments of the performance. The wheel is lit by a mysterious blue-
gray light and turns slowly to the accompaniment of a quaint melody.
Cbkheidze challenges audiences to discover the rules of play for
each of his productions. Intrigue and Love is a stimulating mixture of
black and white, manipulation and idealism, passion and stoicism. There
is no lofty, romantic beauty in the deaths of Ferdinand and Luisa.
Chkheidze seems to be saying that the history of humankind mitigates
against SchiUer's lovers, but we still need to experience their (and our)
idealism in the face of immortal intrigue.
39
CREATING THE DRAMATIC SPACE:
BLIND SIGJn' BY THE YARA ARTS GROUP
Irina MiUer
Blind Sight, a new artistic experiment by the Yara Arts Group, a
resident company at La Mama E. T.C. in New York, explores the
dimensions of intercultural contact in a theatrical form. The production's
creators, Virlana Tkacz (director), Wanda Phipps (dramaturg), and Watoku
Ueno (set and lighting designer), were inspired to take up the extraordinary
life of V asyl Y eroshenko. A native Ukrainian, Y eroshenko (b. 1890), who
had lost his sight at the age of four, left his village to study in Moscow and
London and then traveled to Japan where he eventually wrote and published
stories in Japanese. Returning to Moscow in 1924, he was later arrested in
the Great Purges, only to emerge from the camps in 1952 and die shortly
thereafter.
The literary "body" of the performance is drawn from fragments
of Yeroshenko's prose and his diary as well as from pieces of various
Ukrainian, Japanese, and American poems. But the poetic and documentary
texts are just two of the artistic elements in the production; together with
lights, music, song, sounds, movements, and gestures, they elaborate the
production space. As a result of the collaboration of these elements, the
stage becomes the poetic space of Y eroshenko' s life and his search for light
lost to blindness, but found in his spiritual vision.
The space of the performance is constantly changing, assuming
different meanings and images. But the principal movement is from the
small, tight "box" of Vasyl's fear of darkness in which his consciousness
has been caught since childhood toward the broader expanse in which be
attains liberation. The hero's fear finds its scenic representation in the
niche of the downstage wall where the young Y eroshenko hides from the
unknown and dangerous external world full of hostile sounds. This small
place had been measured by Vasyl (Andrew Colteaux) in precise numbers
of steps and is entirely familiar. It takes times before he can find the
courage to leave it.
It is the blind bandura player (Mykola Shkaraban) who first cajoles
Vasyl into broadening his horizons. The image of the blind Ukrainian
bandurists, who wandered the world describing it in their songs, portends
V asyl' s own journey. With the musical sound of the ancient instrument, the
darkness on the stage gives way to blue light, symbolizing the birth of
Vasyl's inner vision. Yeroshenko's acquaintance with Anna (Richarda
Abrams), an extravagant Russian woman who became an enthusiast of
Esperanto, gives further direction to his quest. It is she who succeeds in
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Slavic and Eallt European Performance Vol.l3, No. 3
Blind Sight, Yara Arts Group, New York
41
convincing Vasyl to enter the Royal Musical Institute for the Blind in
London. With her enchanting words in this new international language
delivered while turning vigorously about the stage in her wheelchair, the
space of the performance gains wider scope and a faster dynamic in its
development. Inspired by the idea of a language that can unite people of
different races and nationalities, Y eroshenko decides to set out on his
odyssey through the world. The niche in the downstage wall is transformed
into the railway car that speeds the hero on his journey through Europe to
London. On a dimly lit stage that suggests the atmosphere of London's
notorious fog, the director and the actors create the image of the helpless
blind man lost in a big city. Against a cascade of simultaneously uttered
words in English and Ukrainian, as if hammering in the hero's head,
Y eroshenko struggles to escape from an imaginary horse, which almost
throws him, but his disorientation in the unknown space is such that he is
unable to avoid the accident.
A Japanese melody sung in the closing moments of the London
scene moves the action to Tokyo. Forced to leave the Institute, Yeroshenko
decides to go to Japan, a place the hero believes to be full of sun and
beautiful colors. And indeed, if the darkness and harshness of the outside
world surrounded the hero in the previous scenes, the stage for the Tokyo
scenes is brightly lit and the actors's costumes burst with color; Yeroshenko
finds himself in a warm and friendly atmosphere. Guided by a voluble
Japanese girl, Toshiko (Shigeko), Vasyl takes his first steps in his
acquaintance with the new culture, repeating after Toshiko unfamiliar
Japanese words, learning how to use chopsticks and to sit on the floor, legs
crossed, in Japanese style. Virlana Tkacz creates the space of the Japanese
scenes in two ways. The documentary, almost naturalistic, scenes build on
fragments from Yeroshenko's diary and facts from his biography; the poetic
scenes describe or symbolize his inner life, his emotions and feelings, and
are created from Yeroshenko's prose and various poems. The biographical
scenes are filled with intellectual discourse between Y eroshenko and his new
friends on different subjects: race, culture, religion, art, and women's
emancipation. We hear the Bahai religion's view of racial equality that
"there is no race in the heart," a belief that Vasyl shares along with other
liberal social and political ideas current in the first two decades of the
twentieth century.
The entire stage becomes too small to embrace Yeroshenko's
experience in his new country. As a result of this, the space continues to
expand. The part of the downstage wall above the bench in the niche
moves apart and opens as a window, opening up additional space. Here
Virlana Tkacz creates a theatre within the theatre, staging a scene from
Fedor Sologub's The Triumph of Death (which played in Japanese theatres
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Slavic and East European Performance Vol.l3, No. 3
at the time). This play within the play presents a Japanese view of
Sologub's text, yet another theatrical reference to the theme of intercultural
contact developed in Blind Sight. Whereas Yasyl "sees" the Japanese spirit
in the production of the Symbolist play, the Japanese playwright Ujaku (Ian
Wen) insists that the production conveys the play's Russian essence as well.
Yeroshenko's search for light in the outside world finds its
culmination in his love for Ichiko (Jennifer Kato), a Japanese journalist.
The theme of love is expressed both in realistic dialogues between the hero
and Ichiko, emphasizing their mutual interest in eACh other, and in Yasyl's
"Tale of a Paper Lantern," theatricalized on the stage in the process of his
telling the story. The latter scene takes place in the "space" of the hero's
creative imagination where Ichiko assumes the role of the tale's heroine,
Geisha, who is in love with the blind foreigner. As in the fiction, in which
the heroine cannot "see" that the man loves her, so in reality Ichiko is
blinded by her fear, doubts, and prejudices.
The dramatic love experience turns Yeroshenko's search for light
in the outside world into a search within himself, where he finds his
complete liberation in creative work. The stage's boundaries are once again
expanded in order to reflect the scope of the hero's spiritual life. This time
the "window" in the downstage wall serves as a "close-up" of Yasyl's
inner voices; three actors read Yeroshenko' s prose poem "Land of
Dreams," in two languages: Ukrainian and English. This poem speaks in
a metaphorical form of an Island of Bliss where the hero "sees" Eternal
Love and Friendship, Faith, Trust, and Liberty under the sky with the sun
of Truth, the moon of Justice, and the stars of Art.
The final scene represents a park in which the actors physicalize
trees swaying in a light breeze. Here Yeroshenko learns from Ujalru that
his "Tale of a Paper Lantern" has been published in a Japanese journal; yet
Y eroshenko is already indifferent to the public success he has absorbed in
his inner life. As the hero walks toward the audience with his hand
stretched to the sky, semi-darkness engulfs the stage. The boundaries of the
stage space seem to disappear, expressing the immense night in which the
hero has not only made peace with darkness but also found his eternal light.
Blind Sight is a wonderfully creative work by a company that
occupies a unique place in contemporary theatre practice. Blind Sight
works to find a dramatic means to establish dialogues between the past and
the present and between different cultures. In the end, it emphasizes that
mutual understanding is what unites people. Like Yasyl Yerosbenko, the
Y ara Arts Group is seeking light in life and art with the aim of overcoming
our human "darkness": racial, cultural, and social prejudices.
43
WANOY AND OTHERS
Elizabeth Swaia
The most exciting new production I saw on a recent visit to
Russia was of Chekhov's Ivanov at the Moscow Youth Theatre, directed
by Henrietta Y anovskaya. The production opened on September 10,
1993, but I was able to see a special dress rehearsal in June before the
company's summer hiatus. I was in Russia with a group of theatre
professionals and teachers, under the auspices of the National Theatre
Institute. We visited theatre training schools, met with teachers,
designers, directors, and other professionals, and attended the theatre.
We met Yanovskaya the day after seeing the performance and
learned that she will entitle the production Ivanov and Othus. She saw
in the original, somewhat melodramatic play, the seeds of Chekhov's four
major plays and added fragments from them to fill out her production.
Her stated aim was, "to create the feeling that Ivanov was written by the
Chekhov we know." In the sense that the production ranked with the
most exciting Chekhov I have seen, she succeeded. But her production
was so strikingly original that I was reminded of my reactions on seeing
Andrei The Cherry Orchard. It too had an emotional and visual
vibrancy, a humor, and a startingly unexpected setting.
The designer, Sergei Barkhin, established a world at odds with
Chekhov's suggested two drawing rooms, a study, and a garden. Barkhin
gives us a series of rusty metal poles of varying circumferences that run
from the leaf-strewn floor to a rusty filigreed metal roof. The three sides
of the stage, each with three entrances cut in, are made of the same
filigreed rusty metal. Two huge, thick poles are laid horizontally at angles
across the stage, like fallen tree trunks. The downstage pole later serves
as a food-strewn table. The effect is of a dry, barren, burnt-out pine
forest, yet at the same time, the metal suggests rotting armaments or a
junk yard. In a discussion the day after the rehearsal, Barkhin said he
wanted "an image of stinlc.ing gas tanks that the people still pretend is
paradise." The setting is completed by three oversized rockers and a
samovar. The set seems to have a life of its own at times: the metal
pipes make noises when "sounded"; they bend and shake and move when
leaned on or swung around. At one point a chair rocked, seemingly of
its own volition. At times the world seemed threatening and hostile, at
other times quite silly.
Into this "forest" wanders a man merrily making bird calls. Then
a second man despondently skirts the periphery trying to fmd a quiet
place to read. As he settles into a chair, a servant brings a bowl of water
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Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol.13, No.3
Ivanov and Others, Moscow Youth Theatre
45
for him to cool his feet in. We feel he has been trudging around forever,
trying to find peace and quiet. Soon the stage comes alive with people
darting in and out from all directions, weaving around the "trees" and
moving in a strange mechanical way, rather like wind-up dolls. We see
it through the eyes of Ivanov as he tries to find some refuge in what
seems to be a cacophony of meaningless movement, humans flailing
around, a world that can't keep still, but is going nowhere.
Henrietta Y anovskaya, the artistic director of the Moscow Youth
Theatre, has directed her actors at this intense pace for most of the
evening's three and a half hours. It is often said that Chekhov's
characters are tired of life. In this production they 611 every moment with
manic activity. Ivanov's tubercular wife, Anna, is forcefully played by
Victoria Verberg. Her performance is in complete contrast to that of the
late Vivien Leigh whose soft vulnerability and weakening physical
condition, as I remember, brought great pathos. This Anna will not let
go of life. She has a raw energy and passion driving her. She is wired,
taut, in danger of snapping, but she fights to the end. In Act m, when
she confronts Ivanov with his betrayal of her, her rage is terrifying. She
then runs to him and gently puts her arms around him. He seems not to
resist and she brings her legs around to straddle him as she is aroused to
the sexual passion he has long denied her. She embraces him and tries
to kiss him but he hurls her to the ground in an act of terrifying brutality.
Moments later he tells her she is dying-a moment that transcends even
the previous one in the sheer horror it evokes as she silently absorbs the
news which then engulfs her whole being in paroxysms of pain.
It is in the many such extended beats of wordless action that the
brilliance of Yanovskaya's production lies. The immensely detailed
moments, the seemingly effortless spontaneity, the imaginative risks of the
whole production, exemplify the artistic possibilities of long rehearsal
periods and a company that knows and trusts each other. The first time
we seen Ivanov and Anna together, she takes his hands and holds them
forcefully against her cheeks as though trying to recreate the times before
he tired of her. No words could have the same impact. There is a
hilarious drinking scene at the top of Act m between Shabyelsky, Borkin,
and Lebedev, which culminates in the three of them making yet another
toast. As they knock back their vodka their three rocking chairs tip back,
leaving the trio with their feet stuck in the air. They are rescued by the
trusty servant who follows Lebedev throughout the play with a giant bottle
of vodka always at the ready. The betrothal scene of Shabyelsky and
Babakina is turned into a commedia lazzi between them and the
matchmaker, Borkin. In Act IV, as Sasha prepares to marry the widowed
Ivanov, her worried father tries to discourage her. He looks at her, picks
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Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol.13, No. 3
her up as though she were still a child, sets her on a high perch, lifts her
down, still unable to speak. Then she runs off to return clutching a box
of her childhood toys, puppets,and dolls. As Sasha takes them out she
silently weeps, a child again. Now he can ask her not to marry Ivanov.
The toy motif recurs throughout the play: a colorful ball bounces
onto the stage, interrupting a serious scene; the rocking chairs are nursery
furniture; in the party during Act II the guests run around with lit
sparklers; a catherine wheel is lit and whirls uncontrollably just before
Sasha's declaration of love to Ivanov and Anna's discovery of them; a
servant dons roller skates as the pace builds in Act ill and Ivanov does
the same as he gets ready for his wedding. Wearing only one skate, he
limps and slides around the stage while arguing with Sasha about their
future. The effect is to underscore the triviality of the characters's lives.
Even Ivanov's suicide at the end takes on little significance. In fact, the
two deaths in the play are each followed by someone running around the
outside of the stage holding a flaming firework which splashes red light
and bizarre shadows through the filigree walls- perhaps in perverse
celebration that something has happened.
The lighting was designed by Kama Ginkas, and it too was rarely
still, casting shadows, creating eerie half-light, and fleeting bursts of
clarity. In Act II, lightning bugs flashed all over the stage heightening the
party's festivities. Barhkin's costumes added to the surprise of the
evening. There were no attempts at period accuracy. Ivanov's white suit
was distinctly modem. Anna's pale and flowing dresses allowed her a
free sensuality coupled with her wound-up energy. The colors were
dominantly earth-tone, in harmony with the rust of the set, but three
servants or guests appear in odd deep green outfits looking rather like
dolls in strange national costume. We see a world unable to defme itself,
even it its dress.
The world that Y anovskaya creates suggests the undercurrents of
the more familiar Chekhovian melancholy. Her vital physicalization of
the play makes the impossibility of real human communication all the
more poignant. The constant, frenetic activity underscores the
unanswered Chekhovian question, "What can I do?" As Ivanov, played
to perfection by guest artist Sergei Shakurov, argues with Anna's doctor,
Lvov, about his cruelty to her, he is on his way to empty a bucket of
water. He makes false exit after false exit, bucket in hand, as his
irritation with Lvov keeps pulling him back. Every intense dramatic
moment is undercut in similar ways. Other examples are the ball
bouncing in on the Ivanov-Sasha scene and the repeated interruptions of
people stomping through in the Ivanov-Anna scene in Act III. In no way
can these people control their lives, but we see them unwilling to give up,
47
reaching out in their estrangement with a stubborn, surreal vitality, never
with the naturalistic ennui so many productions have given us. The
essence of Y anovskaya's work is its marriage of organic reality with a
blazing theatricality. It is pure poetry of the theatre.
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Slavic and East European Performance Vol.l3, No.3
THE BEDBUG, LEHMAN COLLEGE, NEW YORK
Dana Sutton
Lehman College-CUNY commemorated the one-hundredth
anniversary of Vladimir Mayak:ovsky's birthday with a celebration of his
life and work, April 30 and May 1, 1993. A variety of activities were
scheduled, including film screenings, photograph and book exhibitions, a
poetry reading by Yevtushenko, and an academic conference where the
keynote address was delivered by Mayak:ovsky's daughter, Patricia J.
Thompson.
One of the delights of the Mayakovsky Centennial was the production of
The Bedbug. Presented in the college's black-box Studio Theatre by the
Department of Speech and Theatre and directed by B. D. Bills in six
performances from April 28 through May 2, the vivacious and agile cast
gave a remarkably impassioned performance on Friday evening, April 30,
to a capacity crowd of parents, students, and theatre enthusiasts.
The stage was turned into a multi-tiered constructivist set,
appropriate for Mayakovsky's play but ironically unlike its first production
in the Soviet Union where a more traditional set was used for the first act.
The stage itself was flanked by perialaoi (three-sided revolving prisms)
which were used not only to frame the nine changes of scene but also to
hold placards for explanatory words at appropriate times. The fire scene
in the first act as well as the scene with the time machine in the second act
made ample use of special effects, including strobe lights. A generous
supply of furniture, including a piano, enhanced the visual setting. Scene
changes were noted more for the care with which they took place than for
their alacrity.
The second act began with a remarkable, slow-motion, robot-like
portrayal of the Orator by Duane Ferguson. The slow, mechanical
beginning assisted the audience in its comprehension of the fifty-year
transition. After the transition, the director continued the play at a faster
pace. Among the actors who made the most of this difference was Audrey
Moore, who portrayed Zoya and aged fifty years by donning a lab coat and
changing her shoes. All the rest of her remarkable aging was done through
the demeanor of this talented actress who is in her first year of college.
The several ensemble players who played Prisypkin's comrades in the first
act became extremely amusing elderly persons in the final scene where they
were given a chance to argue about the validity of their distant memories
and to observe the bedbug normalis and bourgeoisius vulgaris. Although
many of the actors's words were lost in the cavernous space of the theatre,
the well-directed acting made the play completely comprehensible. Even
49
though it was written in 1928, the play seemed timely and evoked an
appreciative response from the audience.
The production was enhanced by recordings of Dmitri
Shostak:ovich's original incidental music to 1M Bedbug, Jau Suites, and
selected Russian folk tunes.
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Slavic and Eaat European Perfonnance Vol.l3, No. 3
PINOKIO, THEATRE DRAK (CZECHOSLOVAKIA) AT THE
JOSEPH PAPP PUBLIC THEATRE, NEW YORK
Shari Troy
Czech puppetry was splendidly represented at the First New York
International Festival of Puppet Theatre by Theatre Drak's Pinokio. In its
United States premiere, this dark interpretation of the famous story of
Geppetto the master craftsman and his wooden puppet astonished adults by
its eloquence and children by its ability to surprise. Directed by Josef
K.rofta, this version of the Pinocchio story begins with three men pushing
an oversized mechanical contraption on stage. This curious invention is
nothing we easily recognize. Its two towering wheels might make it a
vehicle of sorts, its platform resembles a stage, the handles make us think
of a larger-than-life serving cart. Indeed, the adaptable moving construction
is all these things and more, as Pinokio unfolds in, on, around, over, and
under its appendages.
Pinokio focuses on the developing and deepening relationship
between Geppetto, the wood carver, and Pinokio, his creation. In this
adaptation for family audiences, Pinokio is the only puppet in a theatre
company comprised of humans. Rejecting his role as performer, the
rebellious wooden figure bites one of the actors and flees. Geppetto,
concerned for the well-being of his creation, follows. Together they
undergo a series of adventures which pit them against sea dragons, raging
fire, and other dangers. Both puppet and creator risk death in order to save
each other, learning finally that the value of life resides in their deep love
for one another.
The technical achievement of this production is remarkable. The
wooden Pinocchio puppet which stands perhaps five feet tall is a versatile
figure that is animated in a variety of ways throughout the production.
Looking curiously like a little wooden boy, the puppet is a "live" stick
figure, with arms and legs with seemingly rubber joints. The puppet bends
and contorts, creating the illusion of gymnastic flexibility. The round little
head boasts a large jutting nose, a reminder of this character's original
namesake.
Whether manipulated by strings that can or cannot be seen, by an
actor's hands or by other devices, the puppet constantly moves in ways we
do not expect. At one point the object, arms and legs extended, seems to
glide on a tightrope. Later, leaning on a sheet pulled taught all around him,
Pinokio is animated by someone behind the fabric. As a result, we see no
strings, only the puppet moving effortlessly against the cloth background.
Still later, during a scene in which Geppetto maintains constant physical
51
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Slavic and East European Performance Vol.l3, No. 3
contact with Pinolrio, we hardly notice that the live performer is
simultaneously interacting with and animating the puppet. This feat depends
on a combination of fine technical and acting skills from puppeteer cum
actor Vaclav Poul. As a result of the seemingly infinite ways this puppet
can move, we begin to half-believe that Pinokio is an autonomous creation,
more "boy" than "puppet."
At a panel discussion during the festival , Dr. Krofta, artistic
director of the renowned Orale company since 1970, stated that if the puppet
and actor are to be on stage simultaneously, there must be some drama
between them. In Pinoldo, Krofta creates such an intense relationship
between the puppet and other characters that the theatregoer is drawn deeply
into the world of the play. Both adults and childral alike believe in the 80ul
of the puppet. Indeed, the figure truly becomes animated, almost human
in our view. Krofta, who also directs the School for Open Forms and
Puppet Theatre in Prague, believes that even a cup on the stage can be more
powerful than an actor, provided the actor/manipulator can imbue the object
with a sense of life. When Pinokio catches fire during the production, we
hold our collective bresth. During the curtain call, Pinokio bends his knee
ever so slightly and we marvel at the little boy' s grace and agility. Even
months after the show, Krofta's Pinokio remains in our memory as a living
entity.
The production credits list an extended family of artists who
assisted the director in cresting this innovative, complex, and rich theatre
offering. The fine production itself attests to the high standards of artistry
and esprit tk corps of the Theatre Dralc company.
1
1
A version of this review was published in the American
Alliance for Theatre and Education' s Youth Journal 7 (1993).
53
lhree Sisters, Krasnaya Persnaya Theatre, Moscow
56
Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol.l3, No.3
Having said all this in admiration of this splendid young company,
which obviously is dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in the theatre, let
me also add that Lemieux takes certain liberties with the text by pushing it
into farce, particularly in the last act which he sets in a school room replete
with an empty closet. And yes, one of Platonov's four amours ends up in
the closet and hears what she should not; the gun, which showed up earlier,
eventually goes off; and the irrepressible Platonov finally dies. Soon
thereafter, in the final tableau, he revives, and in a nice touch, all the actors
take their curtain call laughing.
1'1lrr Sislen, Krasnaya Persnaya Theatre of Mosww. This
company, headed by Yuri Pogrebnichko, attempted to tum a masterpiece of
naturalistic theatre into a surrealist or a cubist work, perhaps following in
the footsteps of Robert Wilson's interpretation of Hamletmachine by Heiner
Muller. This was a director' s not an actor's showcase. A rope was strung
between the set and the audience to remind us that we were viewing a
museum piece. We saw a faded drawing room with two pianos at one end
and a fireplace at the other. A long table took up the bulk of a very
shallow (ten feet deep) stage. Irina used it as a platform for a number of
her speeches. Under the table were some plaster heads of famous authors;
behind it was suspended a log which served as the dead branch the Baron
refers to in Act IV. I could not help thinking of Magritte and Chirico. The
set (Yuri Kononenko) and costumes (Nadezhda Bakhvalova), unchanged
throughout, seemed frozen in time, adding to the dreamlike effect. There
were untraditional interpretations of some roles: Olga, in a shapely black
lace dress, smoked cigarettes from a long black cigarette holder and seemed
intimate with Kulygin; Anfisa revealed a wooden leg and kept tripping on
her exits. An unidentified character (was he supposed to be a museum
employee?) kept ducking in and out of the fireplace; in Act IV, he poured
sand on Chebutykin's boots several times and waved to the audience. The
Russian dialogue was spoken dispassionately; the nature of the production
was such that the actors could make no investment in their parts. Despite
some clever ideas, the production was too cerebral. It never came near
Chekhov's soul.
57
CONTRIBUTORS
JOSEPH BRANDESKY is an assistant professor of Theatre at the Ohio
State University's Lima Campus. He is currently coordinating an
international exchange of theatre designs by Boris Anisfeld for exhibits in
St. Petersburg and Columbus, Ohio.
J . M. BURIAN is professor emeritus in the Department of Theatre at the
State University of New Yorlc at Albany. He has authored many studies of
modem theatre, including The Scenography of Joseph Svoboda and
Svoboda: Wagner. Professor Burian is currently visiting the Cm;h
Republic on an IREX Grant, completing research on a study of Cm;h
theatre from 1945 to 1960.
JOHN FREEDMAN is the author of Silence's Roar: The Life and r a m t ~
of Nikolai Erdman (Mosaic Press) and the editor/translator of The Major
Plays of Nikolai Erdman (forthcoming from Gordon and Breach Science
Publishers). He lives in Moscow where he is the theatre critic for the
Moscow 1imes.
ELWIRA M. GROSSMAN is a doctoral candidate in the Ph. D. Program
in Comparative Literature at the Pennsylvania State University. She also
teaches courses in Polish, Russian, Contemporary Slavic Drama, and Polish
Culture and Civilization in the Department of Slavic and East European
Languages at Penn State.
JANE HOUSE is preparing an anthology of Italian drama for Columbia
University Press. She edited Political Theatre Today and Sacred Theatre.
She is a professional actress and teaches theatre courses at New Yorlc
University and Lehman College.
MARIA IGNATIEV A is a former assistant professor at the Moscow Art
Theatre School-Studio, now teaching and directing at the Ohio State
University's Lima Campus. She has lectured on Russian and Soviet theatre
at Harvard, Ohio State, and the University of Texas and currently writes
essays for American and RUssian periodicals.
IRINA MILLER, a native Russian, is a doctoral student in the theatre at
the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New
York.
58
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No. 3
DANA SUlTON is a doctoral student in theatre at the Graduate School and
University Center of the City University of New Yolk.
ELIZABETH SWAIN is chair of Barnard College's Theatre Department.
Her visit to Russia was made possible by a Barnard College Faculty
Research Grant.
SHARI TROY is a doctoral student in theatre at the Graduate School and
University Center of the City University of New York. Her reviews have
appeared in Theatre Journal, Theatre Week, and Youth Theatre Journal,
among other publications.
Photo Credits
The Possible Meeting, Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre
Mikhail Guterman
Niz}linsky, A Production of the Boris Agency
Mikhial Guterman
Blind Sight, Yara Arts Group
Watoku Ueno
Ivanov and Others, Moscow Youth Theatre
Victor Bazhenov
Pinoldo, Theatre Orale
Josef Ptacek
Three Sisters, K.rasnaya Persnaya Theatre
Preobrazenslci
59
PLAYSCRIPTS IN TRANSLATION SERIES
The following is a list of publications available through the Center for
Advanced Study in Theatre Arts (CASTA):
No. 1 Never Part From Your Loved Ones, by Alexander Volodin.
Translated by Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No. 2 I, Mikhail Sergeevich Lunin, by Edvard Radzinsky. Translated by
Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
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adaptation by Zygmunt Hubner; English version by Earl Ostroff
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$5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No. 8 The Trap, by Tadeusz R6rewicz. Translated by Adam
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Soviet Plays in Translation. An Annotated Bibliography. Compiled and
edited by Alma H. Law and C. Peter Goslett. $5.00 ($6.00
foreign)
Polish Plays 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)
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Slavic and East European Performance, Vol. 13, No. 3
Polish and Soviet Theatre Posters Volume Two. Introduction and Catalog
by Daniel C. Gerould and Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
Eastern European Drwna 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
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33 WEST 42nd STREET
NEW YORK, NY 10036
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