TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editorial Policy ... ........................................ ............................................ 4

From the Editors .............................. ............................... .................... ... 5
Events ............................................................................ ........................ 6
Zygmunt Hubner ................... ... ........................................................... 12
"Internat ional Workshop Honoring 110th
Anniversary of Meyerhold's Birth."
Marjorie Hoover ... ............................................................................... 13
Pages From The Past
"Petition." Vselovod Meyerhold ....................................... ....... .. 19
"Observations on the Moscow Theatre:
January, 1989." Marvin Carlson ................... ..................................... 23
"An Economic Appraisal of Soviet Theatre Today."
Marvin Carlson ...................................................... ............................... 27
"Yuri Lyubimov, can't."
Alma Law .......................................................................... ................... 29
"Alternative Theatre in Poland."
Kathleen Cioffi. ......................... ............... ................. ........ .......... ..... .... . 32
"Glasnost in Film."
Leo Hecht ........................... ................................. ................................ 38
Reviews
"A Providential Chekhov."
Jeannie M. Woods .... ............. ..... .................. ........................ .... 43
"Piatonov by Anton Chekhov
Hallie Anne White .............. .. ................................ ..................... 46
"Temptation by Vaclav Havel.
Richard Brad Medoff ............. ................................................... 49
3
volume nine number one
summer 1989
soviet
and
east european
performance
drama
theatre
film
SEEP is a publication of the Institute for Contemporary Eastern Euro-
pean 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
10036. 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 1 0036.
EDITORS
Daniel Gerould
Alma Law
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Richard Brad Medoff
ADVISORY BOARD
Edwin Wilson, Chairman
Marvin Carlson
Leo Hecht
Martha W. Colgney
Copyright 1989 CASTA
SEEP has a very liberal reprinting policy. Journals 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.
2
"Double Takes by Miklos Vamos."
Zsuzusa Berger ............................................................... ......... 52
Contributors ......................................................................................... 54
Playscripts in Translation Series ................. ......... ............................... 55
Subscription Policy ........... .. ................ .... ...... ...................................... 57
EDITORIAL POLICY
Manuscripts in the following categories are solicited: articles of no more
than 2,500 words; book reviews; performance and film reviews; and bibliographies.
Please bear in mind that all of the above submissions must concern themselves
either with contemporary materials on Soviet 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 would welcome submissions
reviewing innovative performances of Gogol or recently published books on Gogel,
for example, but we could not use original articles discussing Gogel as a playwright.
Although we welcome translations of articles and reviews from foreign
publications, we do require copyright release statement s.
We will also gladly publish announcements of special events, new book
releases, job opportunitiesand anything else which may be of interest to our dis-
cipline. All submissions are refereed.
All submissions must be typed double-spaced and carefully proofread.
Submit two copies of each manuscript and attach a stamped, self addressed
envelope. The Chicago Manual of Style should be followed. Transliterations should
follow the Ubrary of Congress system. Submissions will be evaluated, and authors
will be notified after approximately four weeks.
All submissions, inquires and subscription requests should
be directed to:
Daniel Gerould or Alma Law
CAST A, Theatre Program
Graduate Center of CUNY
33 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 1 0036
4
FROM THE EDITORS
As we begin our ninth year of publication, we are pleased to
introduce a newly-designed cover and a new, shorter title SOVIET
AND EAST EUROPEAN PERFORMANCE (SEEP). While we have
retained "Drama, Theatre and Film" as a subtitle, we feel that the
word, "performance," better expressed the primary purpose of our
journal which is to offer information about current events in the per-
forming arts as they relate to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
In the coming year there will be a great number of Soviet and
East European theatres taking part in festivals in the United States
and in Europe (some of which are listed in this issue). We urge those
of you who see these performances to share your impressions of
them with your fellow readers by sending us a brief report for pub-
lication in our next issue.
Daniel Gerould and Alma Law
5
EVENTS
THEATRE FESTIVALS
Belgium
Young Flanders Festival in Ghent will present MW 2 from
Poland September 17-20.
Canada
Festival of the Americas in Montreal will present the Soviet
Union's School of Dramatic Art's production of Pirandello's Six
Characters in Search of an Author as directed by Anatoly Vasilyev.
Germany
Theater der Welt in Hamburg will present two productions
from the Maly Theatre in the Soviet Union; Brothers and Sisters by
Fyodor Abramov and directed by Lev Dodin from June 16-19, and
Alexander Galin's Stars in the Morning Sky, also directed by Lev
Dodin on June 21. Theatre for Young Audiences from the Soviet
Union will also be represented with their production of Heart of a Dog
as adapted from Bulgakov and directed by Henrietta Janowskaya
from June 24-25.
Holland
Holland Festival in Amsterdam, June 1-July 1, will present
Uncle Vanya as produced by the National Theatre of Lithuania and
the Theatre of the Young Spectators production of Bulgakov's Heart
of a Dog.
Scotland
Edinburgh International Festival will present the Soviet
Union's Taganka Theatre's production of Pushkin's Boris Godunov
as directed by Yuri Lyubimov at the Leith Theatre from August 22-26.
United States
International Festival at the State University of New York at
6
Stony Brook will present Cinzano by Liudmila Petrushevskaya as
produced by Theatre Tchelovek of the Soviet Union from June 27-
July 1.
The last PepsiCo Summerfare at the State University of New
York at Purchase, July 6- August 6, presents the Soviet Union's
School of Dramatic Art's production of Pirandello's Six Characters in
Search of an Author as directed by Anatoly Vasilyev. The Pushkin
Theatre in Moscow will be represented by their production of Chek-
hov's Ward Six as devised by the director Yuri Yeremin and the
actors of the Pushkin Theatre. From the Stary Theatre in Poland
come two productions directed by Andrzej Wajda: The Dybbuk and
Hamlet IV.
The Actors Theatre of Louisville's Classics in Context Festival
1989 is entitled "Moscow Art Theatre: Past, Present, Future." This
festival includes four productions: The Seagull by Anton Chekhov
translated by Michael Frayn and directed by Jon Jury; Children of
the Sun by Maxim Gorky, translated by Aaron Levin and Zieka Der-
lycia, and directed by Gloria Muzio; Theatre Tchelovek's production
of Petrushevskaya's Cinzano as directed by Roman Kozak; and
Anton, Himself by Karen Sunde and directed by Frazier W. Marsh.
There will be two lectures; "A Theatre Finds Its People: Chekhov,
Gorky, and the Identity of the Moscow Art Theatre," given by
Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama at Tufts University,
and "The Visionary Sons of Stanislavsky: Meyerhold, Vakhtangov,
Evreinov," given by Paul Schmidt. A symposium will be held on "Mos-
cow Art Theatre: Past, Present and Future," whose panelists include
MAT artistic director Oleg Yefremov, literary manager Anatoly
Smelyansky, and an actor with MAT for over 40 years, Vladlen
Davydov. The festival will also contain two colloquia; "Theatre in the
Revolution and Revolution in the Theatre of Chekhov and Gorky," co-
chaired by Dr. Michael Katz and Daniel Gerould and "Stanislavsky
and the American Acting Tradition," led by Dr. Mel Gordon and
Robert Lewis. There will be the showing of a film, the 1928 adaptation
of Gorky's novel Mother directed by V.I. Pudovkin. Three exhibits will
be on display; "From the Czars to the Revolution, an annotated phot-
graphic display 6f Russian life from 1860-1917, "The Stanislavsky
Museum Exhibit," and "When All The World Was A Stage: Russian
Constructivist Theatre Designs."
UPCOMING PRODUCTIONS
Center Stage in Baltimore wil l be presenting The Increased
Difficulty of Concentration by Vaclav Havel and translated by Vera
Blackwell.
7
Another Havel play, Temptation, will be presented at the
Mark Taper Forum In Los Angleles, directed by Richard Jordan and
running July 13-Aug 27.
Hunting Cockroaches by Janusz Growacki, translated by
Jadwiga Kosicka, and directed by Sidney Lynch runs through June
11 at the PLayhouse on the Square in Memphis, Tennessee.
The New Theatre of Brooklyn (TNT) will be producing Jac-
ques and His Master by Milan Kundera on October 25-November
19.
NOTE OF PAST PRODUCTIONS
Temptation by Vaclav Havel as directed by Jiri Zizka opened
In New York at the Public Theatre and then was performed In
Philadelphia at Mr. Zizka's Wilma Theatre. (See review in this issue).
An Altar To Himself by lreneusz lredyflski, translated by
Michat Kobiafka with Liz Diamond, and directed by Vir1ana Tkacz ran
at New York's La Mama Theatre March 30-April16.
Hungarian playwright Miklos Vamos was represented in New
York with two one-act plays, Somebody Else and Mixed Doubles,
pdroduced at the Actor's Outlet Theatre under the collected title Dou-
bletakes. (See review in this issue)
The Paper Gramophone based on a screenplay by Alek-
sandr Chervinsky, adapted for the stage by Yuri Yeremin and Mr.
Chervinsky with an English translation by Mary-Helen Ayres was
staged by Yuri Yeremin with an American cast at the Hartford Stage.
Mariage Blanc by Tadeusz R6iewicz and translated by
Adam Czerniawski was directed by Spencer Golub ran February 23-
March 5 at the Isabelle Russek Leeds Theatre at Brown University.
Halina Filipowicz gave a paper relating to this production on March 2
"R6zewicz and the Contemporary Polish Theatre.
FILM
American Playhouse, a PBS series, has agreed to co-
produce two feature films in 1989 for release in 1990 in both Soviet
and American theatres and to be shown later that year on the PBS
series. Both films, which will be about American and Soviet citizens,
will be bilingual; characters will speak their own language, with sub-
titles int he other. The first, American Exhibition is about a young
American guide at the American Exhibition in Moscow in the mid
1950s who falls in love with a Russian Woman. The film is co-written
and co-directed by Tom Coles, an American writer who was a guide
8
at the exhibition, and Pavel Lungine, a Soviet film maker. The sec-
ond film, Odyssey, will be a fictional tale based on the true story of a
group of American auto workers who moved to the Soviet Union with
their families in the 1930s in the hope of building an automobile fac-
tory under the sponsorship of Henry Ford.
It has beena very interesting year for viewing Soviet films in
the United States. Along with the commercial release of Little Vera
there have been numerous other films entering mainstream theatres.
The Soviet film, Letters from A Dead Man, opened for a
limited run at the Public Theatre in New York. Directed by Konstantin
Lopushansky, the film depicts the aftermath of nuclear holocaust.
The film centers around a group of survivors living in a basement
bunker of a museum, sharing meals, reflecting on man's tragic fate,
dying and burying thier dead in the grimy soil of the cellar. and trying
to survive through self delusion in a "void under a cold sky." (See
related article by Leo Hecht in this issue). The Public also had show-
ings of Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice and Michar Leszczyruwski's 1987
documentary Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky.
The Biograph Cinema, a Manhattan Film revival house, has
started to include Soviet films in their regular schedule. In May they
showed Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky's 1971 film Uncle Vanya with
lnnokenty Smoktunovsky and Sergei Bondarchuk on a double bill
with The Inspector General as directed by Vladimir Petrov in 1952.
Later that month they showed Siberiade also directed by Mikhalkov-
Konchalovsky in 1979.
Gyula Gazdag's film A Hungarian Fairy Tale was shown at
the Film Forum 1 in New York. The film begins in a near-magical
note, with the romantic, wordless meeting of a beautiful young
woman and a handsome stranger at a performance of The Magic
Flute, that results in the birth of Andris. There is an Hungarian law
that requires that a birth certificate have a father's name and so the
mother along with the local clerk invent a name and an occupation
for the father. Years later, after the death of the mother, Andreis sets
out on a journey to search for his father. The journey on which
Andris embarks signals a departure from the mainstream, a break
with the restrictive culture. As the boy frees himself, the film breaks
loose in its own way. It becomes more and more dreamlike, progres-
sing in a breathless and sometimes briskly elliptical style.
CONFERENCES, LECTURES, AND ORGANIZATIONS
Alexandr Rubinshtein, Head of the Economics Lab of the
9
Central Institute of Arts Studies and Chief Economic Expert for the All
Union of Soviet Theatre Workers gave a lecture entitled, "How
Theatre Works in the USSR Today: A Pragmatic View," at the CUNY
Graduate Center on March 31. This was sponsered by the
American/Soviet Theatre Initiative in cooperation with The Brooklyn
College Arts Management Program, The CUNY Graduate Theatre
Program, and The Yale School of Drama on March 31. Introductory
remarks were made by Benjamin Mordecai, Managing Director of the
Yale Repertory Theatre. Other Soviet members of the Managers and
Producers Delegation of ASTI that were also present were: Felix
Demichev, Managing Director, Stanislavsky DramaTheatre; Peter
Polamarchuk, General Manager of the State Bolshoi Opera and Bal-
let Theatre (Kishinev) and Secretary of the Moldavian Theatre Union;
Mikhail u k a n ~ General Manager of the State Bolshoi Opera and Bal-
let theatre of the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic and member
of the Minsk City Council; Gatis Strads, Managing Director of the
Riga Operetta Theatre and Secretary of the Latvian Theatre Union;
and Gregory Nerseyan, Copyright Agency of the USSR, translator of
plays and Executive Director of ASTI.
As part of Brooklyn College's Alumni College Day on May 7,
the Film Department presented After the Revolution: Soviet Films of
the 1920s. The Moderator was Virginia Brooks, professor of film and
head of production at Brooklyn College, with the Panelists: Thomas
Barran, Visiting Assistant Professor -of Russian at Brooklyn College,
and author of articles on Russian and Soviet literature and culture;
Mark Liwszyc, professor emeritus of Slavic languages at Brooklyn
College; two film students Marc Monte, '91, and Vladimir
Solomyansky, '88; and Alexander Yanov, political scientist and
author of The Origins of Autocracy and The Russian Challenge in the
Year 2,000.
The Working Group on Cinema and Television (USSR and
Eastern Europe) held its second annual meeting November 19, 1988
in Honolulu in conjunction with the national convention of the
American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.
Among the resolutions adopted at the meeting: The WGCTV (for-
merly the Working Group for the Study of Soviet Cinema and Televi-
sion) intends to expand its membership to include those scholars
working in the area of East European cinema and television as well
as Soviet; Frantisek Galan (Vanderbilt University) and Richard Stites
(Georgetown University) were elected to the Executive Committee
with Anna Lawton (Purdue University) being appointed Treasurer;
The WGCTV and Amerikansk-Sovetskoe Kino, Moscow, intends to
establish a film exchange and members of the MGCTV subcommittee
for the exchange are Anna Lawton, James Hayn (University of Vir-
10
ginia), and Donna T. Seifer (Lewis and Clark College); and the group
voted to apply for affiliation with the AAASS and the Society for
Cinema Studies. For information on membership and other group
activities please contact the Chair: Denise J. Youngblood, Depart-
ment of History, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405; (802)
656-3180.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Benjamin Rifkin will be chairing the AATSEEL 1989 Conven-
tion's Panel on Russian Drama--Past and Present. He is trying to put
together a panel on Russian Drama of the last five years, but would
consider papers on any topic. He can be contacted at Benjamin Rif-
kin, Slavic Department, 3040 Modern Languages Building, Ann
Arbor, Ml 48109.
The University of South Carolina will be holding a conference
entitled Theatre USSR: Revolution and Tradition on December 1-2,
1989. The keynote speakers will be Laurence Senelick and Alma Law
and the events include papers, videos and films on early to con-
temporary Soviet/Russian theatre, as well as live performances. This
conference will be held jointly with the United States Institute of
Theatre Technicians-Southwest Conference. The latter will feature
the recent Prague Quadrennial Exhibition of international design
work. Soviet scene designer Danila Korgosky will lecture and lead a
workshop Dec. 1-3. They invite abstracts of two pages or papers of
eight to ten pages on the criticism, theory, performance, directing,
and design of Soviet or pre-Soviet theatre. They also welcome
papers dealing with cross-currents of theatre and film. The deadline
for all submissions is September 10. Please send abstracts, papers,
and enquiries to Sarah Bryant-Bertail, Department of Theatre and
Speech, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208.
CORRECTIONS
In Glenn Loney's article" Polish Theatre, 1988," we failed to
note that Ida Kaminski had died.
Though listed in the program, James Schlatter was unable to
give his paper at the "New Languages for the Stage" conference at
the University of Kansas.
11
h
Zygmunt Hubner
II
II
Zygmunt Hubner died on January 12, 1989 after a prolonged illness.
He was 59.
One of the most gifted and important figures in postwar Polish
theatre, Hubner was an actor, director, theatre manager, teacher,
and writer. He graduated from the State Theatre School of Warsaw
in 1952. He was artistic director of the T eatr Wybrzeze in Gdansk
from 1958 to 1960 and manager of the Teatr Stary in Cracow from
1963 to 1969. During this period the Teatr Stary became the out-
standing repertory theatre in Poland; its directors included Jarocki,
Wajda, and Swinarskl. From 1974 until his death Hubner was
manager and artistic director of the Teatr Powszechny in Warsaw.
Under his leadership, the theatre became one of the major Polish
theatres, featuring the modern repertory, both Polish and foreign,
attracting many of the finest actors and directors. A dean and
professor at the State Theatre School, Department of Stage Direc-
tion, Hubner served also as Secretary General of the Polish ITI Cen-
ter.
Important productions which Hubner directed include the world
premiere of Witkiewicz's The Shoemakers (Gdansk, 1957, closed by
the censor after one performance), the award-winning version of
Joyce's Ulysses (Gdaflsk, 1970), and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's
Nest (YVarsaw, 1977). He wrote a regular column for the drama mag-
azine Dialog, and his books include Conversations on Theatre
(1978), The Art of Directing (1985), and Theatre and Politics (1988).
As an actor Hubner appeared in Conversations with the Executioner
by Kazimierz Moczarski (which he adapted for the production at his
own theatre), and in the German film of Gunther Grass's The Tin
Drum. His play Caesar's Men (1987), has been widely played in
Poland.
Hubner was well known and admired in America. He served as guest
lecturer at the National Endowment for the Humanities Institute in
Contemporary Eastern European Theatre: Poland and the Soviet
Union, held at the Graduate School and University Center of the City
University of New York in the Summer, 1980. He was a good friend
to many of us, a complete man of the theatre, and a creative per-
sonality of great integrity.
12
INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP HONORING
110TH ANNIVERSARY OF MEYERHOLD'S BIRTH
(Penza & Moscow, 2o-25 February 1989)
Marjorie Hoover
Whatever the political, economic and sociological progress
of Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika. the Meyerhold
Conference in Penza and Moscow at the end of February 1989 alone
demonstrates the epoch-making cultural turnover already at work.
Thus the birth 110 years ago of the great Russian theatre director
Vsevolod Meyerhold was celebrated by the opening of a Meyerhold
Museum in the house, renovated for the purpose, in which he was
born in Penza, a city some five hundred miles southeast of Moscow.
The foreigners at the conference, about a third of around
thirty invited participants, while responsible each for his transporta-
tion to and from Moscow, had accommodations and transportation
within the USSR arranged and paid for, besides receiving a generous
daily allowance for further expenses. Many of the foreign
participants had attended a previous international Meyerhold con-
ference in Stockholm in 1981, to which, though, of the Soviet
delegates invited (Aieksandr Fevralsky and Konstantin Rudnitsky)
only one, Fevralsky, had managed to come. Now twice as many
Soviet as foreign delegates participated. All participants--academics,
archivists, teachers of drama and dance, professional actors and
directors, research scholars from institutes at home and abroad, a TV
and radio editor, an editor of an art and another of a film journal--
gave a twenty-minute report or demonstration. These workshop pre-
sentations in the small auditorium at the Museum were preceded with
an opening session in the Penza Hall of Political Enlightenment and
concluded by a commemorative evening in Meyerhold's last theatre--
until 1938--in Moscow, the Ermolova. In addition, two dance per-
formances and four of plays took place in Penza, and two excursions
were organized: a tour of Penza, on the river Sura, where Meyerhold
spent his first twenty-one years, and a trip to Tarkany, the estate of
the classic Russian author Mikhail Lermontov, whose play
Masquerade received Meyerhold's most luxurious staging.
The schedule of events at the Meyerhold Conference,
however, quite fails to reflect an intensity of participant involvement
and excitement such as in a lifetime of conferences I have never
before experienced. A tone of warm and friendly exchange was set
upon arrival in Moscow and again in Penza by assistance from repre-
sentatives of the Theatre Union, official sponsors of the workshop,
translators, and even from our fellow participants, many of whom met
13
us as we got off the overnight train in Penza. Our community of feel- -
ing arose, though, largely from a shattering experience. We were
given on arrival the February 16 number of Sovetskaia Kultura, the
arts and culture newspaper published three times a week by the Min-
istry of Culture; this number devoted a full-page spread (p. 5) to
Meyerhold's arrest, torture and execution, the facts of which had
long been rumored but never before published. We were particularly
affected by Meyerhold's two official petitions to Molotov, in which the
victim himself describes his torment and denies the confessions of
treason extracted from him by inhumanly calculating cruelty. We
saw three rows of black-and-white photos arranged in a vertical arc
from top to bottom of the page. Three serial photos, dated 1939, at
the upper left presented a smiling, vivid director gesticulating at a
rehearsal, dapper in his usual bow tie. In the photo at the center of
the page Molotov and Stalin appear together, stern, bust-length,
backed by three henchmen, dourly reviewing some ceremony. Two
photos toward the bottom of the page, gray, expressionless, are the
two mug shots: one profile, one full-face, of a rumpled, tieless
Meyerhold, numbered and marked with his birthdate, 1874, and his
name; they were taken on arrival at Lubianka Prison, Moscow, after
his arrest in Leningrad in June 1939. An article on the page by the
theatre historian David Zolotnitsky surveys Meyerhold's career under
the Soviets, especially his last activities and plans, and hints at the
bloody end of his wife, the actress Zinaida Raikh. A black-rimmed
box in italics in the center of the spread introduces Meyerhold's own
two documents. (See an English translation of them in the Pages
From The Past in this issue.)
The high style of the box author's first sentence continues
throughout his statement, as he writes, "The death of a genius
requires solemnity." Admitting that Meyerhold confessed treason, or
rather its synonym, "Trotskyism," after seven months of interrogation
and torture, the author quotes in old Russian the similarly hopeless
plea for mercy of the Christian martyr St. Gleb. Meyerhold's own two
petitions, though, are no tale of martyrs and miracles. Molotov, who
then headed the government, made no reply, and Meyerhold was
executed by the firing squad in Lefortovo Prison on February 2,
1940. The terrible accusation implicit in Meyerhold's account of his
imprisonment earned his chief interrogator (anonymous in
Sovetskaia Kul'tura) not dismissal, but promotion to the rank of gen-
eral.
The keynote speeches of the Conference in a large
municipal hall on the first Monday afternoon drew, beside the
participants, a Penza audience of school children, their teachers, and
a general public. Probably many were fans of the first keynote
speaker, the actor Oleg Tabakov, now of the Moscow Art Theatre,
who has played in films, notably in the title role of Oblomov after
14
Goncharov's classic novel, shown in the US. While Tabakov played
the role of an old man for a long run as Salieri in Peter Shaffer's
Amadeus at the Moscow Art Theatre, he has also kept the reputation
of his nimble youth at the "Sovremennik" Theatre and still trains
young actors with an emphasis on physical movement in his own
Moscow studio. This training made appropriate his mention of
Meyerhold's Biomechanics in his speech, "My Road to Meyerhold."
Under the one-meter enlargement of Yuri Annensky's cubist portrait
of Meyerhold which dominated the stage, a clearly popular Penza
Party politician crouched at the lectern cracking political jokes. Con-
ference participants were the next speakers: Anatoly Morozov,
theatre director, and Fausto Malcovati of the Universities of Pavia
and Bari, Italy. In conclusion, five of Meyerhold's biomechanical
exercises were demonstrated by pupils of the Moscow Theatre
Studio of Plastic Movement, directed by the Conference participant
Oleg Kiselev.
The lasting impression of the first day, however, was made
less by the speeches in the large hall than by the exhibits in the small
rooms of the Meyerhold Museum. The Museum display of objects
and photos related not only to Meyerhold's career, but also to a con-
text of theatre history during his lifetime. Much that was known to
exist but was not formerly allowed to be shown was now openly dis-
played. Thus, the Kukryniksi's porcelain caricature head of Meyer-
hold stood here in the colored version beside that of Stanislavsky at
the Museum entrance. Other material was shown which was not
generally known to exist complete. So Meyerhold's drawings in
colored crayons of the pose or outline (risunok) he prescribed for the
actor's body in Maurice Maeterlinck's The Death of Tintagiles
(Theatre Studio, 1905) proved what an amazing talent for drawing
and color the director possessed along with his well-known gifts for
movement and music. Of course, mainly visual material was dis-
played in cases and on walls, though the Museum is also equipped
for film and audio shows, and possess basement recreation and
rehearsal space.
While the Museum displays were quite properly historic, the
same adjective might unfortunately be used of the theatre produc-
tions shown at the Conference, for all lacked the contemporaneity
characteristic of Meyerhold's own stagings. Eugene Shvarts' politi-
cally allusive play, The Dragon, seemed outmoded, at least as per-
formed by the municipal Penza troupe. Nor did Samuel Beckett's
Waiting for Godot, acted by members of the Moscow Ermolova
Theatre on the same municipal stage, grip the contemporary
audiences in Penza. Aleksandr Ostrovsky's The Forest was well
chosen for its significance in Meyerhold's career; it was his most-
performed production of a Russian classic. To adapt it as if for an
amateur all-male cast of men in the military--hence its title Wanted: A
15
Dramatic Actress--accorded with his frequent "contemporization" of a
text from the past. But this staging by the Moscow Theatre Studio on
Krasnoi Presne failed to hold an ever-dwindling audience in the
Penza auditorium. The final production, especially staged for the
Conference in the small auditorium by the gracious, hospitable Direc-
tor of the Meyerhold Museum, Natalia Kugel, was The Fortress by
renowned Japanese playwright and novelist Kobo Abe. The con-
sistently mean characters, the overly schematic plot and the perform-
ance, too melodramatic for the small space, were negative traits of a
production which, nevertheless, proved the good will of the volunteer
cast and concretely showed off Museum facilities for doing theatre
on the premises.
Two demonstrations by dance studios claimed
Biomechanics as their source of inspiration. The some dozen mem-
bers of the Leningrad group "Terra Mobile" were already known to
the Conference from their daily clown and deadpan pantomime
pranks in elevators and at our meals at the Penza Hotel. Terra
Mobile's performance of difficult dance movements, including break-
dancing, climaxed in a core drama "Personal Life" (Lichnaia zhizn1,
which, despite its virtuosity, pleased Conference participants less
than our everyday contacts and improvisations with the dancers.
The Moscow Theatre-Studio of Plastic Improvisation members also
showed movements in their own, rather than a recognizably Meyer-
hold ian manner, though their director Kiselev defended the
provenance of their work from Biomechanics.
The invited participants at the Conference all spoke briefly,
though we had not all known in advance that we were to do so. At
least one report was read in proof form from a forthcoming issue of
Teatral'naia zhizn' (No. 5, 1989), which will be devoted to Meyerhold.
New publications and many phases of research related to Meyerhold
were covered in the reports. Irina Uvarova-Daniel, a contributing
editor of Dekorativnoe iskusstvo, spoke on commedia dell'arte, and
Professor Maia Turovskaia, on her biography of Maria Babanova. Dr.
Beatrice Picon-Vallin of the National Center for Theatrical Research,
Paris, informed us of the voluminous French doctoral dissertation on
Meyerhold she has just completed. Marina lvanova, professor of
theatre history at the Shchukin Drama School of the Vakhtangov
Theatre, Moscow, and co-editor of the recently published Litera-
turnoe nasledie (Literary legacy) of Mikhail Chekhov, indicated
points of tangency between Meyerhold and Chekhov.
Several participants reported the survival of material thought
to have been lost. Thus, Sachkurian, an editor of Moscow Radio,
announced the existence at the station of a recording of rehearsals
and a script for Rusalka, as directed by Meyerhold for radio in 1937.
He also maintained that there is at Harvard a transcript of
Dargomyzhsky's Stone Guest (Kamennyi gostj as broadcast under
16
Meyerhold's direction. According to Professor Anatoly Altshuler,
Leningrad Theatre Institute, a volume on Meyerhold's production of
Tchalkovsky's Queen of Spades (Pikovaia Dama) will be published
by the Institute. Olga Kuptsova of VGIK (National Institute of
Cinematography) mentioned some six subjects of her research,
among them Konstantin Derzhavin, director, scholar and Meyerhold
disciple. The richest research themes for further publication came
from Maia Sitkovetskaia, archivist at TsGALI (Central Government
Archive of Literature & Art). She is at work on the forthcoming six
volumes of Meyerhold's works, conversations, etc., and projects a
three-volume edition of the director's own letters, unlike the present
one volume of letters to and from Meyerhold. She said that TsGALI
holds unpublished letters of his actors including Verigina, Straukh,
and Garin. She also suggested the possibility of publishing recollec-
tions of Meyerhold, and stated that complete rehearsal records exist
for certain productions beginning with Bubus and systematically for
all Meyerhold's productions from The Inspector General on.
Professor Mel Gordon of the theatre faculty of New York
University showed slides and motion pictures taken by foreigners
during performance in the 1920s and 1930s--though photography
was forbidden--not only at Meyerhold's, but also at other theatres,
including, Tairov's Kamerny and the Habima. Professor Gordon
donated a complete copy of this material to the Museum.
Not all reports exclusively praised Meyerhold. Jerzy Koenig,
theatre critic, chief editor of television theatre, and dean of the
theatre history department, University of Warsaw, while unequivo-
cally placing Meyerhold first among the 1920s avant-gardists,
declared his political stance to have been a mistake. Professor
Koenig further cited as capital omissions in Meyerhold's career the
Boris Godunov and Hamlet he had rehearsed, but never finished.
Finally Koenig suggested that a Meyerhold conference be held every
two years to consider new theatre indebted to the master. Indeed,
participants at this gathering were asked to write letters in favor of
such a proposal and to suggest an amount of their own pledge and
other means toward its financial support.
The sponsors of this first USSR Meyerhold Conference
asked the participants each to send a copy of his or her report and
promised to send us a complete list of all who attended, an account
of the proceedings (which were both taped and stenographically
recorded throughout) and a communication about how further con-
ferences could be realized. A gathering in Moscow on February 2,
1990 was promised to commemorate Meyerhold's death.
The celebration of 110 years since Meyerhold's birth con-
cluded with an evening program at the Ermolova Theatre, Moscow,
on February 25, 1989. While the first of the evening's three parts paid
homage to the past, the other two parts showed contemporary
17
endeavors claiming the precedent of Meyerhold. Three speakers in
Part 1, who had to be assisted because of their advanced age to the
lectern, testified to a long collaboration with Meyerhold. Valentin
Pluchek, since 1950 director of the Moscow Theatre of Satire,
studied acting in Meyerhold's Workshop, where in his teens he
stepped into a non-speaking role in The Inspector General. Nikolai
Sokolov alone has survived of the three Kukryniksi, authors of the
porcelain caricature of Meyerhold and set designers of Scenes 1-4 of
Mayakovsky's The Bedbug. Alesha Kontsovsky was for many years
dresser at the Meyerhold Theatre.
Two important figures of a younger generation spoke. The
poet Andrei Voznesensky confessed his deep admiration for Meyer-
hold and recited his poem about him. Yuri Lyubimov, the former
director of the Taganka Theatre, recently invited back to Moscow to
re-stage his Boris Godunov, admitted to having met Meyerhold only
once, though a huge photograph of him, one of four such artistic
"icons," hangs in the Taganka lobby like a profession of faith. Two
admirably performed musical numbers had connections with Meyer-
hold: a piano solo by Tchaikovsky and a pascaglio for string trio by
Dmitri Shostakovich, who wrote the music for The Bedbug. (The
score of Shostakovich's Bedbug music, long said to be lost, is on
display at the Meyerhold Museum, Penza.)
The next two parts of the evening were devoted to new
directions in culture. A trio of horn-blowing comedians made
costume, pantomime, horn blasts, as well as the spoken word, con-
vey largely political jokes. They were followed by a deafeningly
amplified rock band. Younger poets then recited their work. One of
them, Lev Eisenshtein, used cliche word s--"so," "thank you," "at
first"--punctuated in staccato rhythm by frequent full stops. Another
poet, Eizenberg, made short pronouncements, now a colloquial
phrase, "No need to say more ... , " again a near axiom, Joy is
infinite ("Radost' neob'iatna"--with further connotations:
"incomprehensible," "unembraceable"). The matter-of-fact hammer-
ing of these two poets contrasted with the incantatory high rhetoric
half-sung by the poet who had preceded them.
The third and final part of the evening consisted of a per-
formance in Estonian entitled Poco a poco ma non troppo. By this
time most of the audience had departed, afraid, no doubt, that
without knowing the language they would not understand, though
they received a Russian summary of the action. Some remained to
see the visual art projected on two screens in the lobby by a young
Moscow artist, Bogdan Mamonov, who with two cleverly manipulated
sets of slides showed crumbling, gradually unfocussing, ever recur-
ring, then super-imposed, now black-and-white again neon-colored
images; altogether the show created a morbidly disturbing, near-
psychedelic experience. In sum, the new art in the celebratory eve-
18
ning had more to do with the freedom of glasnost than with Meyer-
hold.
Unmistakably, though, glasnost has opened up amazing
knowledge of Meyerhold's past, caused the revelation of materials
thought to be lost, brought about scholarly publicat ion and promised
more than was dreamed possible. Above all, the Meyerhold Museum
now stands as an accomplished fact in his birthplace. The con-
ference held there in February 1989 proved the heartwarming
cooperation that is possible between old and young, scholars and
theatre professionals, foreigners and Russians united in admiration of
Meyerhold's genius.
PAGES FROM THE PAST
To: The President of the Council of People's Commissars of the
USSR, Viacheslav Mikhailov Molotov.
From: The prisoner Vselovod Emil'evich Meierkhol'd-Raikh (b. 1874,
former member of the Communist Party from the year 1918,
ethnicity German).
PETITION
Butyrsky Prison, 2/1 & 13/1 1940
What people show themselves to be in a time of fear,
that is indeed FEAR. It is a crack in the acquired
conduct of a human being, and through this crack
one can see nature as it is.
--Nikolai Leskov
When the interrogators began using on me, the prisoner
under investigation, their physical methods
1
of persuasion, and
added to them their so-called "psychological attack," the two
together aroused in me such monstrous terror that my nature was
bared to the very roots . . ..
My nerves turned out to be altogether close to the surface,
and my skin, as tender and sensitive as a child's. My eyes (with this--
for me--unendurable physical and moral pain) proved capable of
shedding tears in streams. Lying on the floor face down, I showed a
capacity to twist, contort my body and squeal like a dog being
whipped by its master. The guard who led me away from such an
interrogation once asked: "Do you have malaria?"--such was the
nervous tremble of which my body showed itself capable. When I lay
down on my cot and fell asleep, only to go again an hour later to
interrogation after enduring eighteen hours of it before that, I was
awakened by my own groan and by being jerked up on the cot like a
patient dying of fever.
Fear arouses terror, and terror forces one to self-defense.
"Death (oh, surely!), death is better than this!" the prisoner
under interrogation will say to himself. I, too, said this, and launched
self-accusations in the hope they would bring me to the scaffold.
19
Indeed, that happened: On the last page of my finished "case," No.
537, the terrible numbers, Paragraph 581, Pts. Ia & II, of the criminal
code appear.
Viacheslav Mikhailovich, you know my faults. (Remember
what you once told me: "You're always up to some new and original
trick!") A man who knows another's faults knows him better than one
who admires his achievements. Say now, ean you believe that I am a
traitor to my country (an enemy of my nation), that I am a spy, that I
am a member of a rightist Trotskyite organization, that I am a
counter-revolutionary, that I furthered Trotskyism [adherence to the
theory of Leon Trotsky (1877-1940), who advocated worldwide
revolution, as opposed to socialism in one country] in my art, that I
consciously did the enemy's work in the theatre so as to undermine
the foundations of Soviet art?
I am charged with all that in my Case No. 537. Also in my
Case the word "formal ist" (in matters of art) is made a synonym of
Trotskyite. In my case No. 537 Ilia Ehrenburg, Boris Pasternak, lurii
Olesha (he's even declared a terrorist), Shostakovich, Shebalin,
Okhlopkov, etc., are named Trotskyites.
After my arrest in June I did not even partially recover my
balance until December 19. I wrote about what was going on in the
interrogations to L[avrentii] P. Beria and to the prosecutor of the
USSR [attorney general], stating in my complaint and petition that I
denied my previous statements made under duress. For example:
In my Case No. 537 l uri i K. Baltrushaitis, with whom I had been
friends since 1889 and whom I knew as a Russian poet who con-
sidered the USSR to be his country more than Lithuania, is called an
English spy, and I am charged with supplying him with materials after
he had recruited me as a spy.
In articulo mortis (at the moment of death)--here is my con-
fession, brief, as befitting the instant before death: I was never a spy.
I never joined a single Trotskyite organization (1, together with the
Party, cursed the Jew Trotsky!). I never took part in counterrevolu-
tionary act ivity. An arrant mole like Trotsky, capable only of
underhanded diversions and stabs in the back, who had no political
program, a cretin, could not give a program to people in the arts. I
shall finish my petition in ten days when I shall be allowed another
piece of paper. [Doubtless, official paper suitable for notarization,
such as must still be bought for a few pennies for use in documents
in some countries.]
Vs. Meierkhol'd
Petition continued, p. 2, 13/1 1940
20
My failure to endure physical pain, my loss of every control
of myself in my clouded, brain-washed consciousness was abetted
by one more terrible circumstance: Immediately after my arrest on
June 20, 1939, I was thrown into deepest depression by virtue of the
fixed idea, "This Is the way it has to be. I began to persuade myself
that it seemed to the government that the penalty decreed for me
(the closure of my theatre, the dispersal of my troupe, the seizure of
the new theatre building on Mayakovsky Square under construction
according to my plans) was sufficient for my sins, as declared before
the tribunal at the first session of the u p r ~ m e Soviet, and that I must
undergo further punishment, that which was now put upon me by
organs of the NKVD [People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, the
secret police]. "This is the way it has to be," l persuaded myself. And
my Self was split into two persons. The first began searching for the
crimes of the second, and when it did not find them, it began to
invent them. My interrogator appeared to be my good, experienced
helper in my case, and we began to create together in close alliance.
When my fantasy was exhausted, my interrogators paired off
(Voroni n and Rados, Voronin and Schwarzman) and prepared
protocols (several were copied three and four times). From hunger (I
could eat nothing), insomnia (for three months) and heart attacks at
night and hysteria (my tears poured in streams and I trembled as in a
fever) with the result that I aged some ten years--became bent and
gray--so that my interrogators were frightened. They began energeti-
cally giving me medical treatment, (I was then in "the inner prison,"
which has a good medical department) and giving me a rich diet.
But this helped only superficially--physically; my nerves were in the
same state, and my consciousness was as before, deadened,
clouded. For the sword of Damocles hung over me: The inter-
rogator insisted the whole time, threatening, "If you don't write (that
is, think up something!?), we'll beat you again; we'll leave your head
and right hand alone; the rest we'll turn into a piece of formless
bloodied mincemeat." And I signed it all by 16 November 1939. J
renounce my own deposition, which was thus beaten out of me, and
implore you, the head of the government: Save me, give me back
my freedof11. I love my country, and I will devote to it all the forces of
my last years of life.
Vs. Meierkhol'd-Raikh
21
ENDNOTES
1They beat me, a sick [Meyerhold had several times
undergone treatment at home and abroad for both heart and lung
disease], sixty-year-old man, put me face down and beat me on the
back and the soles with a braided rubber lash. While I sat on a
chair, they beat MY LEGS with the same lash in wide-swinging blows
of great force on places from the knees to the upper thighs. And on
the following days when these parts of my legs were discolored with
profuse internal hemorrhaging, they again beat with this lash on
these red, blue and yellow subcutaneous blood spots, and the pain
was such that it felt as if furiously boiling water were poured on these
painful, sensitive places. I screamed and wept from the pain. They
beat me on the back with the rubber lash. They beat me in the face
with wide swings from on high . . . . [Meyerhold again refers to this
same explanation in this endnote on "physical methods of persua-
sion in the continuation of his petition dated 13/1 1940.]
22
OBSERVATIONS ON THE MOSCOW THEATRE: JANUARY, 1989
Marvin Carlson
In an earlier issue of SEEDTF (May, 1988) I reported on the
first meeting of the US-USSR Commission on Theatre and Dance
Studies hosted by the ACLS and IREX at Princeton in December of
1987. Among the major on-going projects proposed at that meeting
are a series of conferences between Soviet and US scholars on sub-
jects of mutual interest to be held alternately in the two countries.
The first such conference, tentatively scheduled for the fall or winter
of 1989, is to take place in Moscow, and specific arrangements for it
were determined at a preliminary meeting in Moscow in January
1989, between Soviet and US members of the Commission.
Representing the US at this meeting were Kalman Burnim, US
Chairman and President of the American Society for Theatre
Research, and Marvin Carlson, a member of the Executive Board of
ASTR and Distinguished Professor of Theatre at the Graduate Center
of the City University of New York. Representing the USSR were
Aleksei Vadimovich Bartoshevich and Anatoly Mironovich
Smeliansky, both Secretaries of the Board of the Theatre Union of
the USSR.
The dates agreed upon for the upcoming conference were
October 22 to November 1, 1989. Its subject is to be "Theatre
Studies Today in the USSR and US: Methods, Problems, Perspec-
tives." The first day of the Conference is to be devoted to an
exchange of information on resource materials and general direc-
tions of research in the two countries. The following two days are to
be devoted to discussions of methodologies of theatre studies, the
next day to the education of theatre scholars, and the final day to a
discussion of possible cooperative publications and topics for future
conferences. Following the conference, the delegates will have two
or three days to visit, if they wish, another Soviet theatre center, such
as Leningrad or Tbilisi. Seven scholars will be selected to represent
each country, and a limited number of observers may also attend.
The sessions will be held in the All-Union Institute of Art Studies in
Moscow.
In addition to consulting about the upcoming conference,
Professors Burnam and I visited a number of archives and each eve-
ning attended the theatre. The productions we saw were about
evenly divided between those we asked to see and those most
warmly recommended by our hosts. Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog was
23
still considered the most exciting recent production in Moscow (see
SEEDTF, Vol. 7 Nos. 2&3, Dec., 1987, p. 17) but it was not presented
during the time we were there. Our hosts were almost equally
enthusiastic about Edvard Radzinsky's Jogging, now in its third sea-
son at the Ermolova Theatre and still one of the most popular offer-
ings in Moscow (see the articles on it by Alma Law and Lisa Partes in
the Dec., 1987 issue of SEEDTF) . With this as the key work, Rad-
zinsky continues to play a major role on the Moscow scene. During
the time we were there, only Ostrovsky was represented by more
works offered.
The old Moscow Art Theatre has finally reopened, restored
to its early twentieth century art nouveau elegance, with even the
auditorium chairs exactly reproducing those of the original theatre
(beautiful in line, but unhappily not very comfortable). This theatre,
directed by Oleg Efremov, is now known, we learned, as the "male"
Moscow Art Theatre, whi le the company directed by Madame
Tatiana Doronina is known as the "female" one. It is now in residence
at the theatre on Tverskoi Blvd. built for foreign companies until the
second Moscow Art Theatre is repaired. We heard warm praise for
Efremov's production of Bulgakov's Moliere and some scorn for the
Doronina Cherry Orchard (in each production the director also
played the leading role) but, in fact, found them both solid produc-
tions, though both a bit ponderous and very deliberately paced. The
Cherry Orchard offered detailed and beautiful, if traditional settings,
while Moliere offered a visually more experimental approach, with
much of the scenery created out of differing configurations of a stage
full of theatrical trunks.
Among the other productions we saw, three seemed to me
worthy of particular remark. A stage version of Dostoevsky's Notes
from the Underground was arousing mixed feelings of fascination
and revulsion in packed audiences at the Theatre for Young Spec-
tators. The play is an astonishing tour de force for its leading actor
V. Gvozditsky, since the first act is essentially a monologue, lasting
well over an hour, and the second provides him with a partner only
for about its first third. The range of moods, tempi, and physical
actions exhibited by this excellent actor keep the audience con-
tinually fascinated, but so do a series of the most grotesque and
revolting eating and drinking scenes I have ever witnessed and two
nude scenes at the beginning of the second act. Gvozditsky's very
attractive partner in these scenes is E. Yurevich, who is also appear-
ing as Armanda Bejart in the MXAT Moliere.
The small experimental South-West Theatre Studio is offering
a dynamic and powerful experimental production of Hamlet directed
by Valeri Belakovich, who plays Claudius, with Victor Avilov as Ham-
let. The setting is essentially an empty black space, with occasional
scenes played against the stone walls of this simple theatre. Most of
24
the action, however, takes place in downward shafts of light picking
up the individual characters. While Claudius remains in charge, he
and the other characters move together in a rapid rhythm reinforced
by a powerful musical score. As the actions of Hamlet begin to dis-
turb this imposed order, both the music and movement rhythms
become increasingly jagged and erratic. In the later scenes the
whole world of Elsinore seems to have gone mad. Ophelia is alone
on stage in her madness, the lines of others are shrieked at her in
tones far more mad than her own. The duels and deaths occur in
increasing darkness and the coming of Fortinbras brings not order
and tranquility, but only new noise, threats, and confusion.
Easily the most powerful and original production I saw in
Moscow was Lyubimov's Three Sisters, still in repertoire at the
Taganka. The director assumes a fairly intimate knowledge of the
play on the part of his audience as he uses Images and elements
from the entire play to illuminate or to wryly comment upon each
other throughout the production. The duel between the Baron and
Solyony, for example, is shown in an extended pantomime near the
beginning of the play, and elements of this pantomime are repeated
at appropriate moments elsewhere. In the middle of the stage is a
small internal stage, often with an audience of many of the characters
seated with backs to us as one or more of their fellows present lines
or actions as dramatic "turns." Ferapont, a young man in this inter-
pretation, serves as a kind of chorus, pointing out special things to
our attention, providing Kulygin with his classic quotations, offering
symbolic properties when appropriate. A rich musical score
accompanies the action, a good deal of it provided by Andrei, who
sits with his back to the audience at a floor level piano when he is not
on stage. Among the most memorable of the many brilliant touches
is the revelation near the opening of the play of the military band
(usually heard offstage only at the end). As they play, the stage wall
opens beyond them to reveal not the Moscow of the sisters' dreams
but the real Moscow as it actually exists--a grim and cluttered court-
yard, a clutter of roofs, and beyond, rows of grim apartment houses.
Nothing could more effectively undercut the folly of those dreams.
I should also mention that during January the Theatre Union
was collaborating with the Ministry of Culture of West Germany to
bring to the Soviet Union an astonishing festival of West German
theatre, lasting the entire month. More than 750 theatre artists from
West Germany were in Moscow, offering major productions by ten
leading companies, as well as lectures, symposia, room displays by
leading designers, and programs of videotapes. Some of the per-
formances also toured to Riga, Vilnius, Kiev, and Leningrad. Among
those companies participating were the Wuppertal Tanztheater,
directed by Pina Bausch, the Munich Kammerspiele, directed by
Dieter Darn, the West Berlin Schaubuhne am Lehniner Platz, directed
25
by Peter Stein, the Schauspielhaus Bochum, directed by Frank-
Patrick Steckel, and the Schauspiel Frankfurt, directed by Klaus
Michael Gruber. This astonishing project will be followed later this
spring by tours of a number of other leading West European com-
panies. Peter Brook is bringing his Cherry Orchard, Patrice Chereau
his Hamlet, and Ariane Mnouchkine her lndiade. There will probably
be no city in the world with so rich a selection of leading European
theatre productions available this winter and spring as Moscow.
26
AN ECONOMIC APPRAISAL OF SOVIET THEATRE TODAY
Marvin Carlson
On March 31, 1989, a group of representatives from the
Managers and Producers delegations of the American/Soviet
Theatre Initiative visited New York, among them Felix Demischev,
Managing Director if the Stanislavsky Drama Theatre, Peter Polamar-
chuk, General Manager of the Moldavian Opera and Ballet Theatre,
Mikhail Bukan, General Manager of the State Bolshoi Opera and Bal-
let Theatre in Byelorussia, Gatis Strads, Managing Director of ASTI,
and Alexandr Rubinshtein, Chief Economic Expert of the USSR
Union of Soviet Theatre Workers. Dr. Rubinshtein presented an
address at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York on
"How Theatre Works in the USSR Today: A Pragmatic View."
Dr. Rubinshtein began by observing that the theatre is tradi-
tionally a center of Russian intellectual life and a force for freedom,
so that the theatre is closely associated with the new, more open
spirit in the USSR. There are 650 state-supported theatres in the
USSR and about 150-200 studio-theatres, with more of them appear-
ing all the time. There are also many drama circles, essentially
amateur groups. The USSR sees perhaps 300,000 theatrical per-
formances a year, involving 150 million spectators and supported by
150 million roubles in state subsidy. Traditionally the subsidy is
unevenly distributed, so that theatres like the Bolshoi, the Maly, and
the Moscow Art Theatre in the capital get as much subsidy as per-
haps forty others, a pattern repeated in each republic. Though some
theatres get very large subsidies and others very small ones, t he
average subsidy makes up about 50% of the theatre's budget.
Theatres are very difficult to establish, but almost impossible to
terminate once established, and so it may happen that quite inferior
theatres gain large subsidies just to keep operating.
Few theatres find their subsidies adequate, even though
these have continued to grow. In one republic subsidies have
recently tripled, but the theatres became poorer, since the increases
were more than absorbed by the creation of new companies, the
opening of new buildings, increases in salaries, and increases in the
cost of materials. The Union is now attempting to establish a policy
of providing two roubles from the government for each rouble earned
by the theatre. (France now gives three francs for each franc.) The
Theatre Union, now comprising 51,000 members, has introduced a
program of pension funds and plans to introduce unemployment pay
27
as soon as a system of contracts can be established. These various
innovations are directed toward a major problem in the USSR--that
theatre companies, once established, are virtually permanent, and
there is no motivation to limit their size. The Moscow Art Theatre has
150 members, the Maly 109, and even a normal regional theatre
might have 60. Dr. Rubinshtein spoke of a much honored friend who
is a salaried member of the Moscow Art Theatre but who has not
appeared on stage there in five years. Increase of funding, better
utilization of artists, and less control over the operation of theatres by
those who give the money--these were the central concerns Dr.
Rubinshtein saw in the USSR theatre today. The audience was prob-
ably rather surprised to find how similar these basic concerns are to
those in America, under a totally different system of theatre organiza-
tion and funding.
28
YURI LYUBIMOV, cont'd
Alma Law
Yuri Lyubimov is back in Moscow again, this time on con-
tract with the Taganka Theatre where he will be working until the end
of the current season. Lyubimov, who spent ten days visiting his old
theatre a year ago in May, arrived in January, just in time to be pre-
sent for the performance at the Taganka of his production of Vladimir
~ s o t s y in celebration of the late poet-bard's birthday on the 25th.
Accompanied by his wife and son, who is attending the
American School in Moscow, Lyubimov immediately set to work
reviving his production of Alive, based on Boris Mozhaev's novella,
From the Life of FyocJr Kuzkin. Lyubimov first directed this produc-
tion in 1968, when it was banned by then Minister of Culture,
Ekaterina Furtseva, before it could be shown to the public. That
occasion also marked the second time Lyubimov was fired from his
post as chief director at the Taganka. Seven years later, in 1975,
after Furtseva's death and the appointment of Pyotr Demichev as the
new Minister of Culture, Lyubimov once again tried to get the pro-
duction passed. At first Demichev agreed to support Lyubimov, but
that was before the hard-liners rallied the collective farm lobby to
take part in what became one of the legendary post-performance
evaluations at the Taganka. As one writer observed at the time, "It
was like inviting all the mayors in Russia to judge Gogol's The
Inspector General." Now, twenty-one years later, and just short of
five years from the date when Lyubimov was fired from the Taganka
for the third time, Alive finally had its premiere on February 23.
For Lyubimov and his core of loyal followers, opening night
was both a moral and artistic triumph. Regarded by many as
Lyubimov's greatest production, Alive (with set design by David
Borovsky), is the story of a collective farm worker who find himself
thwarted by an ignorant and reactionary bureaucracy when he tries
to make ends meet by engaging in some free enterprise on the side.
In Lyubimov's view Alive is if anything more timely today than when it
was first staged. "It's sad that in all these years so little has
changed," he noted in an interview with this writer. Commenting on
the numerous gloomy faces in the audience at the performance the
night before, he explained, "That means those people are not suffi-
ciently restructured, and so they are afraid." And as testimony that
feelings still run high about this production, actor Valery Zolotukhin,
who plays Kuzkin, told of receiving a phone call after the premiere
telling him, ''Too bad they didn't put you in prison back then for Kuz-
kin!"
With Alive now ensconced in the repertory, Lyubimov
29
immediately began restaging with the Taganka actors his Stockholm
production of A Feast in the Time of the Plague, based on Aleksandr
Pushkin's Little Tragedies (seen by American theatre audiences at
the 1987 Pepsico Summerfare in Purchase, New York). As for his
future plans at the Taganka, "Probably Erdman's The Suicide will be
next, " he says, "and then a poetry production including works by
and about Pasternak, Mandelshtam, and Akhmatova." Lyubimov has
also mentioned Dostoevsky's The Possessed and Bulgakov's
Theatrical Novel as other productions he would like to stage at the
Taganka. He is also committed to directing Hamlet this year in
London, a production that according to him will tour both England
and Canada. In addition, Lyubimov will be going to Germany this
spring to complete negotiations to stage The Queen of Spades in
1990, in the version he was forbidden to direct at the Paris Opera in
1978, thus redressing yet another grievance against the past.
Meanwhile, the seventy-one-year-old Lyubimov is having the
time of his life in Moscow this spring playing the role of, as he put it,
"an Israeli citizen and foreign director." Never has he been in greater
form than when he spoke at the International Stanislavsky Con-
ference held in Moscow in February, at which he stated that he
rejects all systems including Stanislavsky's. Later he put on an
extraordinary show for the visiting directors and Stanislavsky special-
ists who attended an open rehearsal of A Feast in the Time of the
Plague. It began with the delegates being told by the Soviet guide
on the bus going to the Taganka, "Only 25 persons will be admitted
to the rehearsal since it is being held in a small room... The guide
went on to explain, "Lyubimov is on a very strict schedule since he is
here as a Western director being paid in hard currency, and therefore
every minute of rehearsal time counts."
But that proved to be just the set-up for what was to follow.
After far more than twenty-five people had jammed into the upstairs
buffet and the rehearsal had barely begun, Lyubimov suddenly
stopped to say that he understood there were another twenty people
waiting downstairs. "I can't leave them out in the cold," he
announced, "and so we'll have to move the rehearsal to the
auditorium where they can also be accommodated." About twenty
minutes were then taken up with moving down to the old Taganka
auditorium. Rather than sitting at his director's desk, Lyubimov now
took a position in front of the stage where he could both conduct the
rehearsal and play to an increasingly confused audience.
After telling the gathering that A Feast in the Time of the
Plague seemed to him a very appropriate title given the plague
taking place in the world today, he went on to explain that the feast is
set on an open square, with the plague all around the guests who
have gathered to await their death by each recalling his or her own
story. "Those," he announced, "are, in the words of the Stanislavsky
30
system, 'the given circumstances.'" Continuing to poke fun at the
Stanislavsky System, he next explained they had just begun working
on the production, and so they were still in the "at the table stage" (a
Ia Stanislavsky). Lyubimov noted that in his theatre that period is
always very short. "But," he added ironically, "since this production
takes place 'at the table,' we will nevertheless consider this an 'at the
table' rehearsal."
In the end, the rehearsal consisted mainly in the actors and
director listening to the songs Alfred Schnitke had composed for the
Taganka's production of Brecht's Turandot, in an effort to find some
suitable music for A Feast--thus providing ample opportunity for
much joking singing and dancing by Lyubimov and his actors. At
one point Lyubimov quipped to the audience, "We're not working
according to the System. Tell your organizers they sent you to the
wrong place!" Nikolai Gubenko, current head of the theatre, also
made his appearance fresh from the Dante Symposium in Italy. Join-
ing in the spirit of the occasion he announced with a laugh,
"Beginning tomorrow you'll have to pay to see the rehearsals. Every-
thing for money!"
In all, the rehearsal was vintage Lyubimov. As he com-
mented afterwards, "I really pulled a fast one on them," meaning on
all the curiosity seekers who had come to watch "the legendary
Lyubimov" rehearse, and who beat a hasty retreat when the dinner
break was announced. On leaving, one director noted in dismay,
"When do the actors prepare themselves!" and another commented,
"No one in the West could ever afford to have the actors sitting
around while the director decides what music he'll use!"
Lyubimov, who will be going on tour with the Taganka to
Greece before the end of the season, still dodges all questions as to
his future status at his former theatre. When asked in response to a
question about whether he "wished" to have his Soviet citizenship
restored, he answered, "It wasn't my 'wish' that I leave. If it had been
my 'wish' to leave then you could ask, 'Have you changed your
wish?' I was driven out. That means I hadn't planned to leave. I was
driven out, and if those people who did it now consider that it was
unjust, then it's up to them to restore my position here." He added,
"Probably there will be some decision. But so far I don't know .... "
31
ALTERNATIVE THEATRE IN POLAND
Kathleen Cioffi
In Poland, there is a great deal of controversy these days
about what is variously called alternative, student, or "young" theatre.
Everyone agrees that it is no longer as vital, active, and influential a
phenomenon as it was in the 1970s. Some even go so far as to
assert that Polish alternative theatre is dead. Others believe (or
maybe just hope) that it still lives and will continue to do so, but is in
a kind of re-grouping period, a period where it is groping for its
values and, in the case of several theatres, for the very ability to sur-
vive. Though the excitement of the 1970s about the alternative
theatre movement in Poland has clearly disappeared, some of the
theatres themselves still exist and are still doing very interesting
work. Clearly, however, the 1980s has been a period of crisis for the
alternative theatre movement in Poland. The history of this move-
ment reveals a theatre that has been engaged In a dialogue with
society throughout the entire period of its existence, and it is this very
fact which now threatens it.
The alternative theatre movement in Poland started in the
1950s as part of the amateur student theatre movement. This
beginning stage has been called the "first wave."
1
From the first,
these student theatres were experimenters, both aesthetically and
politically. The two most important theatres both starting in 1954
(two years before a worker's revolt in Poznatl brought about a new
regime in Warsaw dedicated to more cultural independence from
Moscow) were the Student Satirical Theatre (STS) in Warsaw and
Bim-Bom in Gdahsk. STS presented a kind of political cabaret,
ridiculing the absurdities of life in Stalinist Poland, especially those
aspect of life which most affected students. Bim-Bom, on the other
hand, was more ambitious. Though it shared the short skit form and
the political orientation of STS, the creators of Bim-Bom, the actors
Zbigniew Cybulski and BogumitKobiela (later to become famous in
Wajda's Ashes and Diamonds) and the writer Jerzy Afanasjew,
tended to value visual elements over textual ones. This idea was to
have great influence on many other later alternative groups in
Poland.
STS and Bim-Bom, like many other Polish groups around
1956 and like the Czechs in the 1960s, were anti-Stalinist but pro-
socialist. They believed in the possibility of "a better form of
socialism." Gradually, however, in the period between 1956 and
1968, student theatres became less interested in politics and more
interested in aesthetic issues. They introduced into the Polish
32
repertoire the first productions of many avant-garde Western
playwrights such as Beckett, lonesco, and Sartre. They also pro-
duced the post-war premieres of Witkiewicz and Gombrowicz, Polish
avant-garde playwrights who had written before World War II.
Then came the second wave of student theatre, which
started in 1968 with the regime's brutal suppression of student
protests and subsequent official anti-Semitic campaign. These
events opened the eyes of many of the young intellectuals of the day
to the duplicity of the official government line, and student theatres
began to be interested in politics again. According to Tadeusz Nyc-
zek, a theatre critic who wrote extensively about student theatre in
the 1970s, the new student theatre after 1968 turned against what
student theatres represented in the 1960s and against the formal
experiments of the era. Grotowski was a great influence on the stu-
dent groups, and they whole-heartedly adopted his idea of the "poor''
theatre. At that time, Polish student theatre became part of the world
wide alternative theatre movement. They took part in many alterna-
tive theatre festivals around the world, and were very popular at
these festivals, in part because they were neither anti-Socialist not
anti-capitalist, but were "independent theatres," sometimes even
called "free Communist theatres. "2
Many of the still-existing Polish alternative theatres started
during this period of what historian Timothy Garton Ash in his book
on Solidarity calls "a whole opposition counter-culture without paral-
lel in the Soviet bloc. "3 The Gierek regime was tolerant, perhaps
because it wanted to curry favor with the intelligentsia, perhaps
because it didn't want to antagonize the West on whom it was
dependent for enormous amounts of loan money, perhaps because
it just didn't think ideas were all that powerful. At any rate, alternative
theatre companies benefited from this flowering counter-culture.
Throughout most of the seventies, they were sponsored by SZSP
(the Socialist Organization of Polish Students), which also sponsored
huge alternative theatre festivals, at which there were tumultuous
public discussions lasting long into the night about the performances
and the whole function of alternative theatre in Polish society. The
prizes at these festivals were hotly competed for, and many journal-
ists and critics attended and wrote sympathetically about the move-
ment.
In an article in Index on Censorship, the author, a theatre
critic writing under a pseudonym, comments:
The second wave of student theatres produced
its best performances in the late 1960s and early
1970s--productions such as Teatr 77's Circle
Triptych, [Teatr] STU's Falling, and Polish
Dream-book, and In a Breath by Teatr 8 Dnia.
33
These were, without exaggeration, a moral guide
for that generation; an avant-garde which created
values in student society. And not only in stu-
dent society. After a performance of In a Breath-
based on the poetry of Stanislaw Baranczak, the
theatre's first literary director--a production which.
in dramatic form encapsulated the dramatic port
town upheavals of December, 1970, the following
comment was made: "It is not a play, it is an out-
cry ... an outcry against submissiveness,
against the frightening notion of 'drab
humanity. '"
4
Often these theatres would base their creations on great works of
Polish or world literature, sometimes works which were only pub-
lished underground in Poland, and develop the ideas in these works
through improvisations into something dramatic and uniquely excit-
ing for audiences.
Toward the end of the 1970s, many of these theatres
became "professionalized." This was good in a material sense for
theatres: the actors now began to receive salaries, they had equip-
ment, money for scenery and costumes, and sometimes even places
to rehearse and perform. But it had a disastrous effect on the artistic
output of some of the theatres. Most of them were placed under the
auspices of the United Companies of Entertainment (Polish initials
ZPR), the same organization which sponsors circuses and other
types of mass entertainment. Paradoxically, they were now the
financers of avant-garde theatre, and they wanted these theatres, like
their other ventures, to be popular." Therefore, some of the theatres
began to do performances which would earn them money but
weren't very artistically important.
The theatres faced some other problems in the late
seventies. One of them was a change in the perspective of the
actors. When they started, they were very young and they were stu-
dents; now they were older and professionals. They had to think
about being involved in this type of theatre for perhaps their whole
lives, they had to think about keeping their jobs, and most important
of all, they had to think about what a professional alternative theatre
actor should be like. Some of the theatres, like Teatr Kalambur (Pun
Theatre) from Wrootaw, Teatr 77 from..t:odz, and Teatr STU from
Cracow, solved these problems by becoming no different form regu-
lar professional theatres--they began to perform plays written by
others and to employ graduates from professional acting schooiS;-
Others, like Teatr Osmego Dnia (Theatre of the 8th Day) from Poznan
and Akademia Ruchu (Academy of Movement) from Warsaw tried to
develop their own aesthetic of alternative theatre. Only those
34
theatres which managed successfully to develop that aesthetic can
now still be called alternative theatres.
Then, too, in the late seventies, censorship started to get
tougher as the theatres got bolder in their critique of social problems.
Parts of plays or even whole plays themselves were forbidden. For
example, Our Sunday, by Lublin's Teatr Provisorium was banned in
its entirety in 1977, though they managed to perform it some thirty-
six times for small audiences of invited guests. Other companies,
such as the Theatre of the 8th Day, often had two versions of their
plays--one for the censors and the other "real" version with censored
parts restored, which they would perform in a given town after the
censors had okayed the de-politicized version. This sort of trickery,
though it won the 8th Day a special place in the hearts of their
audiences, stigmatized them as political and therefore subject to
harassment by the authorities.
In 1980, the Solidarity movement swept the country. Many
theatres suspended activities because what was happening in the
streets, the factories, and the shipyards was more interesting.
Others continued, but with mixed results. In the words of Jan
Brytbwski, writing in the Catholic monthly Temperance and Work:
Those who continued were giving up politics.
They were trying to create a more transcendent
reality, which nevertheless contained the actual
evolution of events. They realized the dangers of
simplification, of too short a distance, of the pres-
sure of emotions. They tried to set up a universal
perspective to "the present ." ... The audience
had different expectations--they wanted journal-
ism, simple messages, and especially, political
appeals and declarations. The theatres were not
able to cope with this situation ... . Alternative
theatre was no longer an exceptional
phenomenon. This was the price for working in
"normal" conditions.s
This dilemma was resolved for the theatres by the declaration of Mar-
tial Law on December 13, 1981 . Many of the participants in student
theatres were either interned or imprisoned for months: five of the
men from Teatr Provisorium, the entire troupe of TWA from Wroclaw,
and two of the actors from the Theatre of the 8th Day were silenced
in this way. During the Solidarity period, most of the theatres which
had not been professionalized had been taken under the wing of
NZS, the i n e p e n ~ e n t student union; when this union was banned,
they lost the foundations of their material existence, and many of
them lost their will to survive.
35
And now, there is the "third wave of Polish alternative
theatre. This third wave consists of some survivors from the second
wave who are, financially speaking, barely making ends meet, along
with a couple of newer groups, and a lot of very bad imitators of the
successful student theatres of the seventies. As the Polish theatre
critic Marek Miller says of the latter: "Some theatres believe that it is
enough to fall into a fit of convulsions, and shout 'tuck,' 'vodka,'
'informer,' and 'queue,' in order to get to the bottom of things, to
understand the essence. "6 On the other hand, the fact that so many
of today's student theatres in Poland feel an affinity with alternative
theatre is not ent irely without significance. As Lech Raczak, the
director of the Theatre of the 8th Day, points out:
One things seems important--and it is a new
phenomenon in Poland--and that is that these
youth amateur theatres . . . now have a com-
pletely different shape. They don't model them-
selves in the classical theatre where you play
nineteenth or early twentieth century stuff. Now
they do theatre the way we do it or the way other
theatres which are opposed to the official theatre
do it. Which means that our type of theatre has
been accepted by these young people as a
model. .. . It is meaningful at least in this sense,
that there is some wider feeling that the tradi-
tional theatre does not suffice as a means of
expression for cont emporary people in this
country.
7
Miller contends that this third wave of Polish alternative theatre
represents what he calls "the aesthetics of silence:" there are now
fewer festivals, fewer journalists interested In the movement, fewer
public discussions, altogether less hoopla and to-do. However, there
are still some interesting theatres, who quietly, perhaps so as not to
arouse the authorities, go about their work and who talk among
themselves and privately with interested audience members.
Many others, however, are not so optimistic. After the 1987
START Festival, which is a festival for student theatres making their
debut, an article appeared entitled "Student Theatre: It Isn't, It Isn't, It
Isn't. ... "8 A director of one of the student theatres which has sur-
vived from the 1970s told me that he thinks that if the alternative
theatre movement is going to continue to exist, the impetus for it will
have to come form some quarter other than the moribund student
theatres.
9
This already may be happening with the emergence of -
groups such as Gardzienice which have no connection with the stu-
dent theatre movement but which are decidedly "alternative" in out-
36
look.
In the current political climate, it is difficult to say what the
future prospects of Polish alternative theatre are. The most influential
of the theatres that I saw between 1984 and 1987, the Theatre of the
8th Day, has emigrated, and is now performing in Western Europe.
Several other theatres have not emigrated en masse but have lost
key personnel to emigration. The cultural and intellectual atmos-
phere which supported alternative theatre In Poland seems to be
draining away. Cynicism Is widespread, and the exhilaration that
people once felt at seeing and hearing the falseness of official
propaganda unmasked has given way to a feeling of hopelessness in
many quarters. On the other hand, the opposition to officialdom that
nourished alternative theatre in its heyday still exists, and is support-
ing an even greater number of countercultural publications and
artworks than in the late 1970s. Perhaps the movement can tap into
that reservoir of resentment and transform itself once again into a
lively cultural gadfly. One thing is certain: Polish alternative theatre
must find new ways to exist and develop if it is not to stagnate fur-
ther. I hope it will find those ways if we are not to lose one of the
most exciting alternative theatre movements in Europe.
NOTES
1 Marek Miller, "Trzecia Fa/a Czyli Estetyka Ciszy," Radar
37.17 {1986), 6.
2
1nterview with Tadeusz Nyczek, July 6, 1986.
3"fimothy Garton Ash, The Polish Revolution Solidarity {1983;
repr. London: Coronet, 1985), 18.
4Agnieszka Wbjcik, "Alternative Theatre," Index on Censor-
ship, Jan. 1985, 11.
5Jan Brytowski, o Mfodym Teatrze z Niezbyt Daleka,"
i Praca, Feb.-Mar., 1985, 15.
6Miller.
7
1nterview with Lech Raczak, May 5, 1985. Another portion
of this interview appears in The Drama Review, 30.3, (Fall, 1986), 81-
90.
8Natasza Zi6H<owska, "Teatru studenckiego nie ma, nie ma,
nie ma . . .. , " Radar 38.13 (1987), 4-5.
91nterview with Janusz Oprynski, June 25, 1987.
37
GLASNOST IN FILM
Leo Hecht
Soviet filmmakers, who were playing a "wait and see" game
during the first months of Gorbachev's reign, have committed them-
selves, with varying degrees of wholeheartedness, to the new era of
artistic freedom which they call the "Spring of 1986." This was the
time of the Fifth Congress of t he Union of Cinematographers which
was held in Moscow in May 1986. At that conference, the reaction-
ary Soviet film czar, Lev Kulidzhanov, and the entire Secretariat of the
organization were, amazingly, ousted by a strong vote of the union
members. Film director Elem Klimov, a notorious non-conformist
and staunch defender of artistic freedom, was elected First Secre-
tary. Among his first acts were the creation of a review committee for
films previously banned by the censors, and strong support for art-
istically innovative and controversially outspoken films which were
presently in various stages of production.
The three major Soviet films to be discussed in this article all
fall within these categories. They are said to personify the new era of
truth in art. Two have been shown in the Soviet Union to much criti-
cal and emotional acclaim; the third has, at this time, been released
only for foreign consumption. All three have very recently invaded a
select number of American movie houses in major cities. These
three examples differ considerably from each other in content and
artistic style; they warrant individual treatment.
The first film, completed in 1987, is highly controversial, but
is presently being shown throughout the Soviet Union and the West.
Entitled Cold Summer of 1953 (Kholodnoe leto piatdesiat tretego) , it
was directed by Aleksandr Proshkin and has a strong cast com-
posed of both veterans of the Khrushchev era and new faces. The
action takes place in a remote Siberian settlement in 1953
immediately after the death of Stalin. The small village houses a
number of families and individuals who are very effectively character-
ized. One is a well-to-do shopkeeper (Viktor Stepanov) who is only
out for his own economic welfare; another is a widow (Nina
Usatova). She lives with her buxom adolescent daughter (Zoia
Buriak), who is the apple of her eye, her only reason for existence,
and for whom she has the most grandiose plans. There is also the
local policeman, a man of honor and compassion; and the keeper of
the pier (the settlement is on a navigable lake/river system), a typical
38
petty bureaucrat who acts only in accordance with specific para-
graphs in written regulations. The most interesting denizens are two
former labor camp inmates, one middle-aged (Valery Priemykhov,
the star of the film), the other quite old (Anatoly Papanov), both of
whom have been exiled to Siberia for the remainder of their term of
servitude. It is made clear that both are totally innocent of any mis-
deeds. They were victims of Stalin's irrationality and have been
deprived of any hope for a decent future.
The news arrives that Valenti Beria, the Chairman of the
NKVD, has taken charge of the nation and has declared an amnesty
for all felons except political prisoners. There are rumors that gangs
of freed robbers and murderers are roaming the countryside plunder-
ing and killing. A gang of five "urki" under the leadership of a particu-
larly vicious criminal (Yuri Kuznetsov) invades the settlement. He
kills the policeman and several others and takes over control of the
village, intending to use as a base for further killing and robbery of
the shipping route. They are totally ruthless. The settlement appears
doomed and totally unable to cope with the five armed men.
Ironically, it is the two exiles who are the only ones capable
of action. They are able to eliminate four of the robbers and to
wound the leader. The older exile is killed in the attempt. The
wounded criminal commits the one overwhelming atrocity in the film:
he kills the adolescent girl before he himself is killed by the younger
exile. The scene of the mother finding the body of her daughter is
truly heartbreaking and ends on a highly pessimistic note. Any hope
for a better future for the village has died with this girl. Similarly, the
entire film ends on a feeling of hopelessness. The exile is back in
Moscow, walking the drab streets, with no real prospect for rehabili-
tation. He visits the wife and son of his co-exile who are apparently
members of the upper-middle class. The air is heavy when he brings
them the news of his friend's death. They have not seen or heard
from him in ten years. It seems as if he had not left any traces. The
son even expresses his uncertainty whether his father was actually
guilty of the crimes with which he had been charged.
In all respects, this is an outstanding film. Technically, it is
on a very high level. The photography is excellent, as is the cast. At
first glance, the script seems to be just another instance of NStalin-
bashing" and a reiteration of sins of the past. But it is not only that.
The film does not contain a single iota of optimism for the future.
This is its artistic strength. It is not simply a propaganda film to sup-
port the present changes, but an intensely human, moral film which
stresses individual values and ethics.
The second film to be discussed is the most controversial of
the three, namely Commissar. Completed in 1967, it was directed by
Al eksandr Askoldov, a man virtually unknown in film circles.
Askoldov also wrote the screenplay based on the short story, "In The
39
Town of Berdichev, by Vasily Grossman. It has a rather Ulustrious
cast: the title role is filled by Nanna Mordiukova; the role of her com-
mander, by the late Vasily Shukshin. However, the film is stolen by
Rolan Bykov, a superb actor and director (e.g. Scarecrow), who
portrays Efim Magazanik as the personification of the East European
Jew. His mannerisms and language are reminiscent of Tevye in
Fiddler on the Roof ..
The film opens with the condemnation to death of a deserter
by the political commissar of a Red Army unit during the Civil War.
The total commitment to the cause by Klavdia, the commissar of the
title, is made clear at the outset. Klavdia is in her last month of
pregnancy--a fact she has been successfully hiding from everyone
due to her immense endowment of body fat. She now confesses her
state to her commander who arranges temporary lodging for her
with the Magazaniks, the nearly destitute family of a Jewish tinsmith,
his beautiful wife and six children. The close family life the com-
missar encounters is something strange to her and deeply affects
her, although her character is rather poorly developed in the film.
She gives birth and is then forced to decide between caring for her
newborn or abandoning it in order to continue fighting for the victory
of communism. I shall not keep the reader in suspense about her
choice. She runs, at full speed, to catch up to her unit, to the over-
whelmingly blaring strains of the "lnternationale." The last shot of the
film is a cameo on a hilltop where she and her troops are posing in a
ludicrously heroic manner to martial music.
With all its faults, the film cannot be completely ridiculed.
The story is extremely weak, but there are a number of positive ele-
ments. At times, the film is quite poignant, particularly in two scenes.
In one, the Magazanik boys engage in a mock pogrom during which
they tie their frightened sister to a swing and call her "dirty yid" while
she is swinging back and forth in slow motion--the personification of
the eternal victim. In another sequence, while the Magazanik family
is happily dancing, Klavdia anachronistically sees them in her mind's
eye wearing yellow stars of David and slow1y moving towards their
extermination by the Nazis.
The most effective attribute of the film, which was produced
at the Gorky Studios in Moscow, is its camera work that is strongly
reminiscent of Eisenstein. It is in black and white using chiaroscura
technique. It frequently uses a static camera with the action moving
towards It and away from it, sometimes with extremely exaggerated
closeups. Some of the scenes are beautifully caught. The film is not
a complete loss, but it has more faults than blessings.
The West has received the film with open arms as one more
proof that "glasnost'' really works. For some reason, it has been
touted in American reviews as a film directed against Russian anti-
Semitism. This is an extremely difficult interpretation to support. Of
40
course, it peripherally does concern itself with anti-Semitism.
However, the perpetrators are either the Czarist adherents, with their
pogroms, or the Nazis in the 1940s, never the Soviets. In fact, the
relationship between Klavdia and the Magazaniks is quite good; con-
sidering their divergent backgrounds. Some critics have pointed out
that the Magazaniks refer to her as "the Russian," to differentiate her
from the Jews. It should be remembered that the film is set in the
Ukraine and that it was not at all unusual for a Ukrainian to have
referred to a Russian as a Russian. Why, then, was the film shelved
in 1967, right after it was made, for "Promoting Zionism and
Imperialist Chauvinism?" The answer is relatively simple: the film
was completed just a few days before the Six Day War during which
Israel occupied all of the Sinai Peninsula. This act brought about an
even more supportive relationship with certain Arab countries and a
general propaganda outcry against Israel which indirectly affected
Soviet Jewry in general. Askoldov was unfortunate in his timing.
A special congressional showing of both Commissar and
Cold Summer of 1953 was held in the Library of Congress on July 27
and 28, 1988. Simultaneous with the US screenings, members of the
Supreme Soviet of the USSR viewed E. T. and Coming Home in Mos-
cow. The first American public screening of the two films took place
on July 29, followed by two open discussions with the participation of
director Aleksandr Askoldov and his star Nanna Mordiukova, and
Proshin and his star Valery Priemykhov. The US
Congress-Supreme Soviet exchange was sponsored by the
American-Soviet Film Initiative, a non-profit, educational corporation,
and its Soviet counterpart, Amerikano-Sovietskaia Kinoinitsiativa.
The final film to be discussed, probably the least con-
troversial, is Dead Man's Letters (Pisma mertvogo cheloveka), com-
pleted by Lenfilm in 1986, at the very beginning of the "glasnost" era
when one of the basic propaganda initiatives was the attempt to
paint the Soviet Union as a peace-loving nation that dreads the pos-
sibility of nuclear war from a human, non-political perspective. It is
quite similar in intent to the American television production of The
Day After. The director of the film, Konstantin Lopushansky, also par-
ticipated in writing the script with the foremost Soviet science fiction
authors Viacheslav Rybakov and Boris Strugatsky. Lopushansky
came to film rather late, in 1980, at the age of 33. Previously, he had
been a concert violinist and had completed his doctorate in music.
His first film attempt was a short subject, Solo, 1980, which won
several foreign prizes. Dead Man's Letters Is his first full-length fea-
ture film.
In the words of the Soviet press release, "this science fiction
film is dedicated to the main task of our times--the prevention of
nuclear war." The action takes place in an unnamed, highly industri-
alized and computerized country. As the film opens, a nuclear
41
catastrophe, caused by a computer error, is in the process of finish-
ing its complete destruction of the world. The existence of all the
main characters is described as "living after their lives are already
over. The film's central idea, that nuclear war with its monstrous
consequences cannot be allowed to happen, is revealed through the
story of its main character, a scientist (Rolan Bykov). In the letters he
writes to his son, who has already perished, the scientist reveals his
inner convictions. He cannot accept the possibility of total destruc-
tion of the planet, and he preserves his belief that human intellect and
goodness must prevail in the end. As he dies, he passes on his
testament to a group of young orphans. The message of the film is
clear. The only way a nuclear holocaust can be prevented is through
bilateral nuclear disarmament. Otherwise, even if there is no war, the
world is in danger of total destruction by accident.
The camera work is in the able hands of Nikolai Pokoptsev;
Elena Amshinskaia and Viktor Ivanov are responsible for the art
direction. Many of the scenes are beautifully shot, for example, the
nuclear explosions, the closeups of dirty, suffering mankind, the last
refugees in cellars, and the line of small children on a desolate
landscape wearing protective clothing and gasmasks. Yet, although
the film is interesting and was positively accepted by the Soviet
audience, it seldom rises above banality (except for Bykov's acting
ability). It is frequently too slowly paced, bordering on the boring. All
scenes have a brownish hue, ostensibly to indicate nuclear fallout,
which becomes disconcerting. The propaganda message Is too
blatant. The film was shown only at a very few theatres In the United
States, and was not at all well attended.
In general, we can recapitulate the definition of the glasnost
film today. Actually there are three main categories:
a. Older films that had been shelved for years before glas-
nost and are now being released. Although some are excellent,
many are of uneven quality and should not be blindly accepted just
because they were not previously available to us.
b. The big productions which are strongly supported by the
government as propaganda vehicles for glasnost and perestroika.
They, also, are of uneven quality and were created principally for
political purposes.
c. Those films, which the more courageous directors are
producing under the guise of glasnost, that dig more deeply Into the
human condition and psyche, and are above the banality of
propagandistic didacticism.
In other words, not much has changed substantively in the
history of Soviet film-making, although the volume of interesting
material is considerably greater.
42
A PROVIDENTIAL CHEKHOV: A REVIEW
Jeannie M. Woods
The twenty-fifth season of the Trinity Repertory Company in
Providence, Rhode Island opened in September 1988 with a produc-
tion of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. The classic play held
special resonance for the artistic director Adrian Hall, his permanent
acting ensemble and the Providence audience. Since 1983 Hall had
divided his energies between Trinity Rep and the Dallas Theatre Cen-
ter in Dallas, Texas where he also held the position of artistic director.
However, after guiding the development of the Rhode Island ensem-
ble for a quarter of a century, Hall decided to depart from Trinity at
the close of the 1988-89 season, Thus, Chekhov's bittersweet tribute
to the passing away of the old order brought together a family of art-
ists who found themselves on the threshold of a new life. And Hall's
production resounded with the personal and professional implica-
tions of impending change.
Hall has successfully developed Trinity Rep from a small,
300-seat theatre in a church meeting hall to a $3.5 million institution
that has garnered national acclaim and even the 1981 Tony
(Antoinette Perry) Award for Best Repertory Theatre in America. But
Hall's real achievement has been the cultivation of a peerless
American acting ensemble which he has managed to keep together
against all odds. And it is this ensemble which was the heart and
soul of Hall's Cherry Orchard.
Hall's staging of the play was designed to focus on the
players. His setting, designed by his frequent collaborator Eugene
Lee, was spare and to the point. Persian rugs blanketed the dirt-
covered floor of the three-quarter thrust stage area. A couple of
chairs, a table and bookcase set the scene for the nursery. An
expansive two-story shuttered wall formed a backdrop which could
be transformed by opening up the three double-door entrances to
reveal lace-covered glass doors and windows. All scenes were set
by alteration of a few set-pieces. Even Hall's lighting was neutral,
serving to clearly illuminate the players, but not to impose an atmos-
phere. The sense of time, place and mood were created by the
actors and their text.
Hall's setting for The Cherry Orchard bore more than a pass-
ing resemblance to the setting used by Peter Brook in his production
of the same play (which was staged at Brook's Paris theatre, Les
43
Bouffes du Cord, In 1981 and in the New York area in early 1988 at
the Brooklyn Academy of Music.) This similarity will come as no sur-
prise to anyone familiar with the careers of these two directors. Peter
Brook and Adrian Hall belong to the same generation of stage direc-
tors and they both were influenced by the theory and practice of
Bertoli Brecht and Jerzy Grotowski. Brook and Hall have both
developed their styles of direction through experiments into the
essential nature of the theatre, disregarding the decorative or pic-
torial approach to staging. Moreover, both of these stage directors
have worked with designer Eugene Lee, who shares their minimalist
aesthetic. So the similarity of their stagings of Chekhov's play is not
the result of Brook's influence on Hall or Hall's influence on Brook,
but is derived from a shared perception of the nature of the theatre
event.
The sixteen actors and musicians in Hall's production
included many of Hall's key players. At the center of Chekhov's story
is Madame Ranyevskaya-here portrayed by Barbara Orson, who has
been with Trinity Rep since its inception in 1963. Orson is in her
prime as an actress and was a perfect choice for the contradictory
Lyuba, who loves too well and none too wisely. At her side was
Richard Kneeland, also a charter TRC member, as the brother,
Gayev. Daniel Von Bargen, now in his fourteenth season, played the
peasant-entrepreneur, Lopakhin. These artists all turned in bravura
performances, but they in no way eclipsed the smaller roles.
It is a credit to Hall and to his family of actors that each indi-
vidual character in the play came across fully-realized and particu-
larized. Ed Hall played Simeonov-Pischik, the out-of-pocket neigh-
boring landowner, with such verve and Imagination, one felt he really
was an old, old friend. He was complimented by Barbara Meek,
who, as the governess Charlotta, brought a sensuality to the role that
enhanced the mystery and ambiguity of the character. Cynthia
Strickland's coarse, sullen Dunyasha was wonderfully matched with
Richard Ferrone's brutish Yasha and William Damkoehler's hand-
some, hapless Yepikhodov. Anne Scurria played an off-beat Varya--
a whining prude with delusions of religious glory. In her refusal to
romanticize Varya, Scurria risked losing our sympathy, but in the final
departure scene she evoked deep pathos.
Hall's production was very much like a chamber music con-
cert. Each character struck his own rhythm and tone. The text was
illuminated and, as one Providence critic noted, Chekhov was
allowed to be Chekhov. In the scene transitions Hall purposefully
introduced a completely different rhythm to carry us into the next
beat: on the cue of a shrill whistle, the set was changed by a brigade
of servant factors who waltzed in new set-pieces for the next scene.
In this production Hall also imposed what is now considered
the "Trinity style" of performance. Intimate scenes were not played
44
tete-a-tete, with the spectator as voyeur. Instead, Hall's actors
played to the house, not really making eye contact, but opening up
their intimate moments to share them with us. After decades of
ensemble playing, this presentational style is subtle and true. The
spectator is made to feel he is sharing in the telling of the story.
The Trinity style was especially affective in the ballroom
scene, when Lyuba must accept that the cherry orchard and estate
are lost. Hall placed her almost centerstage as Lopakhin gyrated
about the room in drunken celebration. Orson, her hand clasped
over her mouth as if to stifle her grief, silently sobbed, gasping for air
and relief. The scene was brightly lit and the ball continued behind
the glass doors upstage but the focus was riveted on Lyuba's tear-
stained face. In that moment, the actress evoked great sympathy
and pity. This scene provides the pivot point for American theatre
members because we tend to sympathize with Lopakhin's practical
solutions rather than Lyuba's inability to act. But Orson's Lyuba
managed, through her combination of charm, shrewd self-
awareness, and frivolous abandon, to capture our sympathy and
understanding, It was a magical theatrical moment and Hall staged it
for full effect--giving Orson a "tight close-up"--that moved us deeply.
Hall made no attempt to Americanize Chekhov, but he took
no pains to make the production specifically "Russian" in style or
mood, either. Instead, he utilized the strength of his acting ensemble
to present very human characters, whose foibles and shortcomings
were universal. His minimalist staging suffered only in its inability to
capture the progression of seasons of Chekhov's play, which moves
from early spring to fall. Yet the production worked because it
strongly focused on the subtle interactions between each of Chek-
hov's imperfect people.
Hall achieved a cheerful warmth in this production, in spite of
the melancholy that lay beneath the surface. The humor stemmed
from accepting these characters as they are--knowing that Lyuba will
go on throwing money away and Gayev will continue making
speeches to bookcases and that's just the way life is. Even in the
greatest moments of loss, as the axes began to fell the trees, there
was a spirit of hope and new horizons--a job at the bank, the trip to
Paris. The spirit emanated from Chekhov's play and from the atmos-
phere at Trinity Rep. So, while real tears are being shed as Adrian
Hall makes his exit from Providence, Hall's Cherry Orchard focused
on the shared joys--past and present--of the family. One dares to
hope that the future will be as bright as the past for all the families
and friends involved.
45
Platonov, by Anton Chekhov. Adapted and directed by Liviu
Ciulei. English version by Mark Leib, from a literal translation by
Vlada Chernomordik. Set design by Liviu Ciulei. Costumes by
Smaranda Branescu. Lighting by Richard Riddell. Sound by
Stephen D. Santomenna. Presented by the American Repertory
Theatre, Loeb Theatre, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dec. 16,
1988-Jan. 22, 1989.
Hallie Anne White
It is easy to see how Anton Chekhov's unfinished, untitled
and unwieldy first play, here performed under the title Platonov,
would present an almost irresistible temptation to a director. The text
as it has come down to us appears to be nearly unstageable, espe-
cially in the first half. Characters come and go at a dizzying pace,
often pausing only for a short speech or exchange; the various
intrigues and subplots are extremely complex; the sheer number of
characters is daunting.
Unfortunately, many of the qualities which make Platonov so
challenging also render it an inferior work of dramatic literature,
especially when considered alongside Chekhov's later works. First, it
is simply too long. Liviu Ciulei's adaptation eliminates two characters
(Abram Abramovich Vengerovich and his son, Isaak Abramovich)
and some dialogue, but it follows Chekhov's original text remarkably
closely, and the production, even at its fast pace, runs nearly three
hours. Second, there are too many characters and too much action.
There is enough plot material here for two or three plays; midway
through the first act one begins to wish for a scorecard, or at least for
a flashlight to follow the program.
In the first half of this production, Ciulei is able to turn this
lack of focus to his advantage. The party at the Voynitsev estate,
wherein we are introduced to the characters--the inhabitants of what
Platonov refers to as "our contemporary zoological museum"--and
their various schemes and intrigues, is staged largely as a single
dramatic unit. Rather than orchestrate the action by entrances and
exits, Ciulei has nearly the entire cast on stage for most of the act,
focusing attention by means of moving set pieces and lighting. In
addition to the tremendous activity which results, this staging creates
an enormous amount of background noise. In fact, if statistics were
kept on such things, I would venture to say that this must be the
noisiest Chekhov production on record. The effect is stunning; the
sense of furious activity generated by stultifying boredom is over-
whelming, much more effective, in fact, than the characters constant
complaining about how bored they are.
46
The second half is considerably quieter and more sparsely
populated than the first. Here we see Platonov's decline and fall, his
futile and destructive affairs with the wife of his friend Voynitsev and
with Voynitsev's widowed stepmother. However, it is here that the
textual weakness of Platonov, its reliance on melodramatic effects,
also becomes evident. Also evident throughout, and especially In the
second half, is the cruelty of the play. Much of the dialogue is very
funny, and the actors play it for laughs, but the laughter is not healing
or affirmative. Here, we laugh as characters ruin one another's lives
simply because they have nothing better to do.
The size of the dramatis personae in P/atonov makes it diffi-
cult for director as well as audience to focus on the central character,
and it makes it nearly impossible to develop secondary characters in
any depth. This is ensemble acting in the fullest sense, and the ART
actors rise to the challenge. John Christopher Jones as Platonov
avoids the stereotypes of the oon Juan in the Russian manner." At
least in the first act, he shows a self-awareness and self-irony that
make him quite sympathetic; however, he does not generate, at least
for this reviewer, the magnetism that would allow us to believe that
he could be so fatally irresistible to the provincial ladies. As Voynit-
sev, Thomas Derrah provides an excellent foil for Jones. His child-
like helplessness is at first charming and later pathetic. Both Jones
and Derrah interact well with Sandra Shipley as Anna Petrovna, she
is extremely convincing in the difficult role of the woman who is
appreciably older than most of her suitors, yet still young enough to
be attractive to all of them.
The supporting actors must fashion individualized characters
out of fleeting and often fragmented bits of dialogue and action, and
for the most part they accomplish this task without falling into
exaggeration or caricature. The acting is free of the politeness with
which Chekhov is so often approached; it is vigorous. natural and
funny. Outstanding performances are given by Jerome Kilty, Jeremy
Geidt and Alvin Epstein as the representatives of the older gener-
ation, and by Bari Hochwald as Platonov's simple-minded but good-
hearted wife Sasha; only David Asher is wooden as Osip the thief. In
generat, the ensemble work is seamless. The actors function as a
unit; one wishes each one had more time as the focus of the action.
The set, designed by Ciulei (who was trained as an
architect), is an essential element in the success of the first act. Its
sliding platforms and walls allow Ciulei to focus attention on one or
another group of characters without the constant entering and exit-
ing that a more conventional staging might necessitate. In fact, the
set often seems more animate--certainly more graceful--than most of
the characters. Its faded yellows and browns (which also dominated
last season's production of Uncle Vanya--ART seems to have
decided that these are Chekhov's colors, and not without good
47
reason) create the proper atmosphere of decaying elegance, and the
requisite birch trees are effective but unobtrusive. The costumes, by
Smaranda Branescu, are the perfect complement to Ciulei's set.
Branescu has created suits and dresses that look like clothes for the
characters, not like costumes for the actors. There is no sense of
"period dress," no stiffness or self-conscious prettiness, i n
Branescu's costumes.
As always with ART, the production is outstanding in its
attention to detail. For example, when the actors make the sign of
the cross, they do it in Orthodox fashion, from right to left. More
important, Voice and Speech Coach Bonnie Raphael is to be com-
mended for her Oargely successful) efforts in achieving consistent
and plausible pronunciation of character names. The vast majority of
the audience will never know the difference, but the few Russian-
speaking members are spared the needless annoyance of hearing
"Mikhail" mispronounced for three hours.
This production, along with the New Stages production of
Uncle Vanya last season, offers convincing evidence that ART is
capable of presenting well-conceived, well-acted, and unsentimental-
ized versions of Chekhov's plays. In the case of Platonov, however,
one rather regrets seeing so much talent being used on an obviously
inferior text. Considering the shortage of well-staged, well-acted
Chekhov in the American theatre, one would hope that ART will set
its sights again on Chekhov in the near future.
48
REVIEW: Temptation by Vaclav Havel
Richard Brad Medoff
Temptation by Vaclav Havel, presented as a joint venture by
The Wilma Theatre and The New York Shakespeare Festival, is an
untelling of the Faust myth. The lead character, Dr. Henry Foustka
searches for a return to the natural, spiritual, spontaneous side of life.
His search leads him to an investigation of superstitions and black
magic.
The play begins in a scientific Institute which is populated by
cartoon characters, including a Deputy Director who keeps his secre-
tary /wife/mistress with him at all times in order to "yes" him (all the
women in the play are reflections of the needs of the men). The
laboratory becomes the place where science attempts to eliminate
superstition through truth. The first temptation in the play comes in
the guise of the Director who, in exchange for a homosexual affair,
offers Dr. Foustka advancement. Foustka plays along with the flirta-
tion.
The second scene takes place in Foustka's apartment where
everything has a double existence. A carpet when reversed has a
mystical chart on it; a table opens to reveal objects for devil worship.
The second temptation occurs when a street person, Fistula,
appears. His feet are wrapped and it is implied that the rags cover
cloven hooves. Fistula offers to get the virginal office gopher,
Marketa, into Dr. Foustka's bed through the use of black magic.
It is after this scene that the play changes. Though the
protagonist and his main antagonist resemble Dr. Faustus and
Mephistopheles, the plot is not so much involved with the Faust myth
or eventemptation (which the title would indicate) but with recanta-
tion. The third scene and all those that follow show the character of
Dr. Foustka twist and turn. We, as audience, come to distrust our
sense of what for Foustka is real and what is feigned. There is con-
stant confusion between reality and illusion, truth and lies. Dr.
Foustka makes his first recantation in his excuse for studying black
magic. Once he is found out at work, he recants his experimenta-
tion with the excuse that he. is acting as an investigator to try to learn
who is involved in the illegal practice and study of black magic.
The next scene takes place in his mistress's apartment.
Their sex play deals with acting out a scene of jealousy, rage, pas-
49
sion, and violence only to recant the reality of it and then recant the
playing of it. His mistress is a key to the lies. In the first scene at the
Institute, Dr. Foustka seems to lie to the Deputy Director to cover her
continual lateness--she continues the lie when she enters, leaving the
audience unsure of its truth as a lie.
The plot eventually leads to a trial where Dr. Foustka is
asked one more time to recant his experiments and his relationship
with Fistula and he does; however, truth Is what is on trial in this
play. Scientists are in search of truth, and yet in the labyrinth of lies
and deception truth disappears. It is nonexistent even in the
laboratory, the home of man's rational side, his science. Man's
humanity is illustrated through the invention and creation of lies and
the display of violence. In this production, during the trial, Foustka is
lighted from below lending a devilish appearance to his features. He
becomes a visible manifestation of the devil within man. As he
testifies and tries to shift the blame outside himself, the audience
sees that he is a reflection of what he is recanting.
As the play progresses Foustka appears to begin to feel the
passions and violence. Becoming more participant and less
observer /scientist, he loses control over his emotions when dealing
with his mistress and facing the fact that her other lover may be a
reality. Through the devil and the use of black magic he becomes
more human and this is dramatized through scenes illustrating the
awakening of the dark side of his personality.
The last scene of the play is a Witch's Sabbath in which the
other scientists are the celebrants and Dr. Foustka the sacrifice. The
costumes comment on the theme of creation with some of the
scientists dressed as forms of sea life and a woman scientist dressed
as a giant penis. The concept of temptation is visually realized with
the reappearance of a mute pair of naked lovers in the guise of Adam
and Eve with Fistula as the serpent between them. Fistula recants
his role as Devil by exposing the fact that he was the person hired as
the investigator of the black magic cult. Marketa has gone mad from
her grief at being deceived by Foustka; and in her quoting Ophelia's
lines she casts Foustka in the role of Hamlet, another deceiver or
player of roles.
This production was directed by Jiri Ziska, the Artistic Direc-
tor of The Wilma Theatre of Philadelphia. The Wilma is best known
for its multi-media productions such as 1984. This production is no
exception. The Laboratory is set with all the details of naturalism
including live rabbits and a clock with actual time. On one of the
machines hangs a sign 'Time Time Time Is Is Was Past which is very
reminiscent of 1984. Projections between scenes trace the develop-
ment of life from multi-colored sperm, to embryo, to signs of the
development of science and then back to primitive symbols. The
music, by Adam Wernick, starts as new age music and eventually
50
deconstructs to primitive drums. This production is so over-
whelmingly visual It tends to upstage the play. The play itself seems
too verbally complex for the actors though a valiant attempt is made
by David Schechter as Dr. Foustka. The role of Fistula went through
three actors before opening, not because of the usual artistic dif-
ferences but because of the actors leaving for more lucrative acting
jobs. It is possible that the play might have been better served by a
simpler production.
51
Double Takes by Miklos Vamos: A Review
ZSuzusa Berger
Miklos Vamos belongs to the middle generation of
Hungarian writers and is equally recognized for his numerous novels,
award winning television and film scripts, theatre and radio plays, as
for his witty essays that appear in the literary weekly in Hungary.
Two of his one-act plays for the theatre had their world premiere
engagement in New York at the Actors' Outlet Theatre from March 31
through April 22 under the uniting title Double Takes. The theatre's
artistic director, Ken Lowstetter directed Somebody Else, while
Pamela Karen Billig directed the second one-act, Mixed Doubles.
The two one-acts have a structure in common. Both of them
consist of four "etude-like" scenes separated by music and black-
outs. Both plays have one main and two subsidiary characters. The
plays involve the invasion of one character's "living space" by
another character with the first three scenes showing different
phases of their developing relationship and a final scene in which a
third character is introduced with whom the main character must
come to terms.
The characters in Somebody Else are trapped like animals in
a cage. Vamos dramatizes their desperate attempts to escape mid-
life crises by exchanging partners. L.ala, the main character is both
the victim and the instigator of the situation. He moves in with his
best friend's wife, Olga. In the last scene there appears a third
character, a nameless "Girl," who represents the bizarre and uncon-
trollable dehumanization caused by never-ending changes.
Ken Lowstetter, the director, built up comic tension by care-
fully orchestrating the characters's speech patterns and by
emphasizing the ambivalence of Olga's feelings towards the ever
frustrated Lala. The scenery was functional, consisting of a non-
descript living room. The gradual moving of the sofa indicated the
passing of time.
While Somebody Else is conversational in nature, Mixed
Doubles allows for more comic possibilities deriving from physical
action. This is mainly due to the fact that the characters are animals.
Vamos creates a delicate balance between the animalistic and
human behavioral patterns of the cnaracters, which Pamela Karen
Billig utilized with great skill in her delicate and playful staging of this
comedy.
Kornis, the Rhinoceros, was played by David H. Sterry, who
held the play together with his energetic and well-paced acting. His
physical interactions with Kid, the Goat, did not merely serve comic
52
possibilities. The back scratching, beard fondling, bathing, juggling,
and dancing were all parts of Kornis's transformation from a
miserable, frustrated, and unhappy rhinoceros into a happy, well-
balanced being, who eventually sets out to change the ever pes-
simistic turtle, Babe. The wood frame of the living room for Some-
body Else served as the bars of the cage, while objects such as a
swimming pool and an animal perch were placed on the otherwise
bare stage.
In spite of the differences between American and Hungarian
cultures, the production managed to present aspects of life that are
accessible to all audiences.
53
CONTRIBUTORS
ZSUZUSA BERGER, originally from Hungary, is a graduate student
at CUNY Graduate Center finishing her course work In the Ph.D.
program in Theatre.
MARVIN CARLSON is a Distinguished Professor of Theatre and
Comparative Literature at the Graduate School of the City University
of New York and author of many books and articles.
KATHLEEN CIOFFI is a doctoral candidate in the Educational
Theatre Program at New York University and an adjunct instructor in
the Communication Department at Central University in Ellensburg,
Washington. From 1984-87 she directed the English language stu-
dent theatre at Gdansk University In Poland. She has contributed to
The Drama Review, Theatre Journal, and various anthologies.
LEO HECHT is on the Advisory Board of SEEP and is a Professor in
the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at George
Mason University.
MARJORIE HOOVER is the author of such books as Meyerhold:
The Art of Conscious Theatre and Alexander Ostrovsky.
RICHARD BRAD MEDOFF, assistant editor of SEEP, is an adjunct
lecturer at City College in the Speech Department and is writing his
dissertation on The Dramatization of Paintings.
HALLIE ANNE WHITE is a graduate student In the Department of
Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University.
JEANNIE WOODS having completed her dissertation entitled The
Theatre of Adrian Hall has recently received her Ph.D. in Theatre and
In August, 1989, Dr. Woods will join the faculty of Winthrop College in
Rock Hill , SC, as Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre
and Dance.
54
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 /,Mikhail Sergeevich Lunin, by Edvard Radzinsky. Translated
by Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No.3 An Altar to Himself, by lreneusz lredynski. Translated by
Michat Kobiatka. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No.4 Conversation with the Executioner, by Kazimierz Moczarskl.
Stage adaptation by Zygmunt Hubner; English version by
Ear1 Ostroff and Daniel Gerould. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No.5 The Outsider, by lgnatii Dvoretsky. Translated by C. Peter
Goslett. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No.6 The Ambassador, by Stawomir Mrozek. Translated by
Stawomir Mrozek and Ralph Manheim. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No.7 Four by Liudmila Petrushevskaya (Love, Come into the
Kitchen, Nets and Traps, and The Violin). Translated by Alma
H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No.8 The Trap, by Tadeusz R6iewicz. Translated by Adam
Czerniawski. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
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
Kobiafka, and Steven Hart. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
Polish and Soviet Theatre Posters. Introduction and Catalog by
Daniel C. Gerould and Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
Polish and Soviet Theatr?J Posters Volume Two. Introduction and
Catalog by Daniel C. Gerould and Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00
foreign)
55
Eastern European Drama and The American Stage. A Symposium
with Janusz Gtowacki, Vasily Aksyonov, and moderated by
Daniel C. Gerould (April30, 1984). $3.00 ($4.00 foreign)
These publications can be ordered by sending a U.S. dollar check or
money order payable to CASTA to:
CASTA--THEATRE PROGRAM
GRADUATE CENTER OF CUNY
33 WEST 42nd STREET
NEWYORK, N.Y.10036
56
SUBSCRIPTION POLICY
SEEP is partially supported by CASTA and The Institute for
Contemporary Eastern European Drama and Theatre at The Gradu-
ate Center of the City University of New York. The $5.00 annual sub-
scription pays for a portion of handling, mailing and printing costs.
The subscription year is the calendar year and thus a $5.00
fee is now due for 1989. We hope that departments of theatre and
film and departments of Slavic languages and literatures will sub-
scribe as well as individual professors and scholars. The $5.00
check should be made payable to "CASTA, CUNY Graduate Center"
and sent to:
CASTA, Theatre Program
CUNY Graduate Center
33 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036
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Subscription to SEEP, 1989.
NAME:
ADDRESS:
AFFILIATION;
(if not included in address above)
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