SEEP Vol.11. No.3 Winter 1991

Volume eleven, no 3
winter 1991
soviet
and
east european
performance
drama
theatre
film
7
SEEP QSSN # 1047-0018) Is a publication of the Institute for Con-
temporary Eastern European Drama and Theatre under the auspices
of the Center for Advanced Study in Theatre Arts (CASTA), Graduate
Center, City University of New York. The Institute Office Is Room
1206A, City University Graduate Center, 33 West 42nd Street, New
York, NY 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 10036.
EDITORS
Daniel Gerould
Alma law
ASSITANT EDITOR
Edward Dee
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Patrick Hennedy
ADVISORY BOARD
Edwin WHson, Chairman
Marvin Carlson
Leo Hecht
Martha W. Colgney
CASTA Publications are supported by generous grants from the
Lucille Lortel Chair in Theatre and the Sidney E. Cohn Chair In
Theatre Studies In the Ph.D. Program In Theatre at the City University
of New York.
Copyright 1991 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
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Editorial Polley ....................................................................................... 4
From the Editors .................................................................................... 5
Events .................................................................................................... 7
"Forgive Us Anton Pavlovich" ............................................................. 10
"Theatre In Prague:
and the Seventh Prague Quadrennial"
Arnold Aronson ................................ .................................................... 11
"Interview with Istvan Eorsi"
lmre Goldstein ..................................................................................... 21
"Istvan Eorsi" ........................................................................................ 26
"Polish Theatre's Incomplete Transition:
The Rape of Europe"
Kathleen Cioffi.. .................................................................................... 27
"Broadway in the Barren land?"
Greg Gransden .................................................................................... 32
PAGES FROM THE PAST
"Meyerhold's Grave" .............................................................. 35
REVIEWS
"Caught Between Two Wor1ds:
A Review of The Emigrants by Slawomir Mroiek
at the Jean Cocteau Repertory
New York"
Scott E. Walters ..................................................................... 40
"Seagull at the Arena Stage"
Marina J. B. Peter .................................................................. 43
3
"'Funny and Sad Stories'
GITIS of Moscow
Hunter College, New York"
J. K. Curry .............................................................................. 47
REVIEWS FROM
THE SECOND NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF THE
ARTS
"Tattoo Theatre by Yugoslavia's Open StagejObala"
Christine A. Pinkowlcz ......................................................................... 48
"The State Theatre of Lithuania's
Uncle Vanya
Joel Berkowitz ..................................................................................... 54
"Tadeusz Kantor's Today is My Birthday
by Cricot 2 at La Mama E.T.C."
Edward Dee ......................................................................................... 58
Contributors .... .. ................................................................................... 63
Playscripts in Translation Series ......................................................... 65
Subscription Policy ............................................................................. 67
EDITORIAL POLICY
Manuscripts In the following categories are solicited: articles of no more
than 2,500 words, performance and film reviews, and bibliographies. Please bear In
mind that all of 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 welcome submissions reviewing innovative perform-
ances of Gogol but we cannot use original articles discussing Gogol as a playwright.
Although we welcome translations of articles and reviews from foreign
publications, we do require copyright release statements.
We will also gladly publish announcements of special events and anything
else which may be of Interest to our discipline. All submissions are refereed.
All submissions must be typed double-spaced and carefully proofread.
The Chicago Manual of Style should be followed. Transliterations should follow the
Ubrary of Congress system. Submissions will be evaluated, and authors will be
notified after approximately four weeks.
4
FROM THE EDITOR
Is It really less than two years since the Berlin Wall came
down and Communist control over Eastern Europe began unravel-
Ing? And now the August coup, a three-day tragifarce that brought a
sudden end to Communist rule In the Soviet Union. History seems to
be on fast forward these days and who will ever forget being able to
watch it all happen on TV? I'm sure I was only one of many who was
cheering as the statue of "Iron Felix," the hated symbol of Communist
repression, came down from the square In front of K.G.B. head-
quarters. But perhaps my favorite, and so typically Russian scene, Is
that of hundreds of women descending on the Moscow White House
on Tuesday evening all armed with shopping bags stuffed with food
to feed everyone on both sides of the barricades. Never mind that
there was a bltterty cold rain falling, and that an assault on the White
House was Imminent. These people had to be fed.
This summer I spent-a month In Moscow, returning home
just four weeks before the coup began. At that time, I heard not a
word about coups, or did anyone ask as they had a year ago, "Do
you think there'll be a civil war?" People seemed to be In a state of
limbo, little Interested in what was going on, waiting for something to
happen, but not one seemed certain just what. 'We don't know, you
tell us," was the answer when I would ask, 'What's ahead?" Aside
from the perennial topic of food shortages (cheese was the principal
one In June), the main concern on everyone's mind seemed to be:
how to wrangle a trip abroad and how to earn some extra money,
preferably hard currency.
But that things had changed since my last trip a year ago
was clear the minute I stepped out on the street and saw all the
bookstalls arrayed on every corner and jammed together In every
metro station. All I could think as I saw the vast selection of books
and pamphlets available was that whatever the economic gurus were
saying, at the street level the free market system is already in opera-
tion. The choice was endless, everything from Lee lacocca to Dr.
Spock; the Bible to a vast array of sex manuals; even a pamphlet on
"Lenin's Jewish Ancestors." No matter that there is a shortage of
paper, these Independent publishers all seem to have found a way
around it. Most of the sellers were students hired by some distrib-
utor, and already there were the beginnings of competition with
prices being cut to meet a neighboring stall's markdown.
And with all the changes sweeping through Eastern Europe
and the remnants of the Soviet empire, what an encouraging sign it is
t hat theatre, like the Duracell Rabbit keeps on going, and going, and
going. Even as I write these comments, the twenty-fifth BITEF Festi-
val is opening In Belgrade, Yugoslavia. With civil war now tearing
5
that country apart, It won't be the gala celebration that was originally
planned. but stNI there was never any question of canceling it.
Several of the articles In this Issue also reflect this determina-
tion that, "the show must go on, and that, In fact, It Is doing just that.
It can only hearten all of us to see the continuing vlabUity of theatre In
the countries of Eastern Europe, In the newly-independent Baltic
States and what stUI remains of the Soviet Union. As the 1991-1992
theatre season unfolds we look forward to bringing to our readers a
rich abundance of fresh reports testifying to that vitality.
6
Alma H. Law, Co-Editor
September 19, 1991
Soviet and East European Performance Vol . 11, No. 3
EVENTS
FESTIVALS
This fall BITEF (the Belgrade International Theatre Festival)
celebrated Its 25th anniversary. The program, entitled "Theatre Sum-
mit 91," ran from September 19 to 30. Due to the rapk:Jiy expanding
conflict between Serbia and Croatia, the number of forlegn com-
panies participating was down sharply. There were no American
theatre groups attending.
This year's festival opened with Moscow director Roman Vik-
tiuk's highly theatricalized interpretation of David Hwang's M. But-
terfly. Other productions Included the Taganka Theatre production
of Boris Godunov directed by Yuri Lyubimov, Wlm Vandekeybus's
Always the Same Lies by the Ultima Vez company from Belgium, and
from Lyon, France, La Cite Cornu, which was written and directed by
Wladlslaw Znorko and presented by the Cosmos KolejjTheatre de
Curioslte. The festival closed with a showing of the German film, The
Empress' Lament, directed by Pina Baush.
The YU Theatre Marathon, a two day presentation of sig-
nificant Yugoslav theatre productions from the past season, also ran
at BITEF that weekend.
NOTES OF PAST PRODUCTIONS
In July, the Royal Court Theatre In London presented the
Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg production of Brothers and
Sisters, the six-hour epic adapted by director Lev Dodin from a tril-
ogy of novels by Fyodor Abramov. (See review SEEP, Vol. 9, Nos. 2
and 3, Fall1989, pp 55-57.)
FILM
There were depressingly few Soviet and East European films
at this year's New York Film Festival. The lone Soviet film was direc-
tor Viatcheslav Krichtofovitch's 1990 chamber piece about three gen-
erations of women sharing a tiny apartment. Entitled Adam's Rib, It
stars lnna Tchourikova. The only other East European films were
from Poland, and both were made in collaboration with a western
country. The opening night of the Festival was a presentation of The
Double Life of Veronique, a Polish-French co-production directed by
Krzysztof KleSlowski and starring Irene Jacobs, winner of the 1991
Best Actress Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. The Double Life of
Veronique has also had a successful commercial run in New York.
7
The other collaboration, between Germany and Poland, was
Inventory, about the battle between a mother and the "older woman"
her son brings home. The 1989 film stars Krystyna Janda and Maja
Komorowska and was directed by Krzysztof Zanussi.
Besides The Double Life of Veronique, two other East Euro-
pean films have had limited commercial runs in New York recently:
Where, by the Hungarian director Gabor Szabo; and the elliptical
Swan Lake: The Zone, a Ukrainian-Canadian-Swedish fUm about a
prisoner In a labor camp who escapes three days before his
scheduled release and lives in a large hammer and sickle. It stars
Vlktor Solovyov and Lyudmila Yeflmenko, and was directed by Yurl
lllyenko. The film was written by Mr. lllyenko and Sergei
Paradzhanov, based on Mr. Paradzhanov's stories.
CONFERENCES, LECTURES AND EXHIBITIONS
The New York International Festival of the Arts and the Ph. D.
Program in Theatre at the Graduate Center of the City University of
New York presented a symposium in June entitled, "An International
Theatre Symposium: Creative Directors of the Classics." Among the
participants were JoAnne Akalaitis, Adrian Hall, Mark Lamos, and
Eimuntas Nekrosius of the State Theatre of Lithuania.
Amsterdam Summer University offered classes this summer
in "Jest as a Way of Thinking," by Czechoslovak actor-director-
playwright Bolek Polivka; and Gennady Bogdanov of GITIS in Mos-
cow taught a "Workshop on Biomechanics, a Movement Meth-
odology by V. E. Meyerhold.
The 16th Congress of t he Union lnternatlonale de Ia
Marionette is currently scheduled to be held in Cankarjev Dom,
Ljublijana, Yugoslavia, from June 14 to 19, 1992. The sessions will
be combined with a festival of productions from around the world.
For more information contact Edi Majaron, General Secretary,
Cankarjev Dom, Cultural and Congress Center, 6100 LJubljaja,
Kidricev Park 1, Yugoslavia. Tel: 061 210 956. Fax: 061 217 431 .
Moscow's Association of Stage Directors, organized under
the auspices of the U.S.S.R. Theatre Workers' Union, Is planning a
series of events devoted to Issues involved In mastering the creative
techniques of Meyerhold and his contemporaries. For more Informa-
tion contact Marina Druzhlnina, Executive Secretary, Association of
Stage Directors, 12 Tverskaya Street, Building 7, Apt.217, Moscow
103009, USSR. Tel: 209-5406.
8
NEWS
The New York Times reported in an article on video piracy in
the Third Wor1d (August 18, 1991, A1) that because the unauthorized
copying of fWms onto videocassettes has become so widespread in
the Soviet Union, the major American film studios agreed to suspend
licensing of all fUms there. The problem applies not only to fYms, but
also to computer software and is causing major strains in the eco-
nomic relations between First and Third Wor1d countries. The United
States is pressing for extension of the General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade (GATI), which at present has no rules forbidding the
piracy of intellectual property.
Herbert P. J. Marshall, filmmaker, theatrical director,
educator, and expert on Soviet arts and letters died over the summer
at Cowfold, West Sussex, England at the age of 85. Mr. Marshall,
who directed such films as Thunder Rock (1942) starring Michael
Redgrave, studied film making in Moscow in the 1930s with Sergei
Eisenstein. He spent the last twenty years as director of the Center
for Soviet and East European Studies in the Performing Arts at the
University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale, where he had retired as
distinguished professor of Soviet Literature and Theatre Arts in 1979.
Professor Marshall translated scores of Russian poems,
plays, and short stories, and wrote more than a dozen books and
screenplays. His books on Russian topics include: Pictorial History
of the Russian Theatre, Battleship Potemkin, Mayakovsky, Yev-
tushenko Poems, and Crippled Autobiographies. Professor Marshall
was also the translator of Sergei Eisenstein's autobiography, Immoral
Memories.
He is survived by his wife, Polish-born actress and sculptor
Fredda Brilliant.
prepared by Edward Dee
9
FORGIVE US ANTON PAVLOVICH
Apparently in order to drum up more business for the Mos-
cow Art Theater (Chekhov Branch) on Art Theatre Passage just off
Gorky Street, a huge portrait of Chekhov along with a listing of
MXAT's productions of Chekhov plays was mounted on the wall
across the street from the theatre. A. Danilkin, In an item in Evening
Moscow (Vechernala Moskva) on June 3, 1991, writes:
"The founding fathers (i.e. Nemlrovlch Danchenko and
Konstantin Stanlslavsky) boldly maintained that the theatre begins
with the coat-check room. We've gone even further. Judging by the
energetic Ideas of the creators of that advertisement, In our day the
theatre begins with ... the cooperative toilet.
The author goes on to explain that the left entrance under
the sign leads to the men's toilet and the right entrance to the
women's. Judging by its popularity, this 'literary-dramatic' toilet suc-
cessfully competes with its famous neighbor across the way: In con-
trast to MXAT, it is accessible from morning on." The author then
turns loose his Imagination, proposing everything from selling
programs In the toilets to performing excerpts from performances
down there. And why not hang appropriate literary portraits above
all the public toilets? Then people could say, for example, "Let's go
see Pushkin, or let's visit Gogol." "And why not print verses by young
poets on the toilet paper?"
10 Soviet and East European Performance Vol. 11, No. 3
THEATRE IN PRAGUE
AND THE SEVENTH PRAGUE QUADRENNIAL
Arnold Aronson
The seventh Prague Quadrennial of Stage Design was held
this year at Prague's Palace of Culture from June 10-30. This event,
first held in 1967, is the most extensive and prestigious exhibition and
competition of theatrical design and architecture in the world, as well
as a unique international gathering of designers. This year thirty-six
nations entered exhibits in at least one of the four categories. I was
privileged to participate as President of the International Jury which
awards the Golden Triga to the best national exhibit, and gold and
silver medals and honorary diplomas to individuals and exhibits In set
design, costume design, theatre architecture, and In the thematic
section which this year was, Inevitably, "Design for Mozart. There is
also a non-competitive display of student work (though had It been in
the competition, there Is little doubt that several student designs
would have done better than many of the less-than-inspiring "profes-
sional" works).
I was last In Prague for the 1987 Quadrennial and the out-
ward change Is stunning. Though the airport still seems like It would
be more appropriate In a small-town (and the machine-gun-toting
guards still patrol) one breezes through passport control and
customs as if they did not exist. Arriving In the city Itself, the trans-
formation is remarkable. What was once a palpably oppressed city
Is now filled with energy. There are people on the streets--many of
them tourists--there is far more color visible In shop windows, on
billboards, and on people themselves. The first fruits of "freedom
are evident: pornography can be purchased on the street and at
metro stations; cab drivers who once offered to change money at
three to four times the official rate now simply overcharge. But most
importantly, everyone we met talked about the change and the hope
for the future.
The PQ Is an official event of OISTAT, the International
Organization of Scenographers, Theatre Architects, and Technicians
(whose American center is the United States Institute for Theatre
Technology), but It Is presented by the Theatre Institute In Prague
(Divadlenr ustav Praha) under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture
of Czechoslovakia. This has had a range of political implications In
the past and some interesting repercussions in the aftermath of the
Velvet Revolution. Since Its Inception the PQ was run by Dr. Eva
Soukopova of the Theatre Institute who deftly played official politics
over the years in order to sustain official support for the event. Pub-
lic and published statements by her praised the government and vari-
ous socialist policies; the Soviet Union was proclaimed a model of
11
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Entrance to the Czechoslovak exhibit.
The years between the beginning and end of Soviet occupation are ticked off on the wall , through the entrance, bright
light from the outside pours ln.
artistic accomplishment to be emulated. Czech and Slovak theatre
artists understood the necessity of this game and no one protested.
After all, for much of the past twenty-frve years the Quadrennial was
the only International event In Prague and it provided a much-needed
link to the outside wor1d not only for artists, but for the general public
who flocked to see the exhibition. The down side of this political
game was the necessity to follow government policies and proce-
dures. On a purely bureaucratic level this meant that official Invita-
tions to the PO could only go from the Ministry of Culture to its Inter-
national counterparts which In the United States meant the State
Department which was little concerned with such matters. More sig-
nificant though was t he official exclusion of such countries as Israel
and South Korea whose governments were not recognized. This
year. both of those countries were present for the first time (with
high-quality exhibits) and the Quadrennial organizers proudly
proclaimed this fact. The Commissioner General of the PO this time,
however, was not Dr. Soukopova but Jaroslav Malina, one of the
leading Czech designers. Soukopova was too closely associated
with the Communist regime and became a victim of revolutionary
politics; she was excluded from the official ceremonies and visited
the PO one afternoon as a virtual non-person. The OIST AT Executive
Committee, however, officially acknowledged her contributions, as
did the statement accompanying the American entry. "Mozart in
America. Under Malina and Helena Albertova of the Theatre
Institute, this PQ seemed more relaxed, almost casual, yet the sense
of change, and the pride and wonder at this change, generated an
electric current beneath the surface.
Economics. too, played a part in this Quadrennial. Most of
the past exhibitions were held In the beautiful, though somewhat
shabby, Art Nouveau exposition hall in Julius Futlk Park built for an
international exposition around the turn of the century, while official
guests had always been housed in a modern hotel near the park.
Since the Revolution a market economy has begun to emerge. u ~ l k
Park has been turned into a pleasure garden complete with "dancing
waters" and the exposition hall has been spruced up and now rents
out to various commercial exhibits at an astounding $600 a square
foot, far more than the PO organizers could afford. The Irony, as
everyone noticed, was that with a playwright as head of the
government, support for the arts was disappearing. As a result, the
PO was moved to the modern Palace of Culture on the other side of
t he city. Meanwhile, with luxury hotels running over $200 a day the
organizers were forced to house the official guests in what had once
been a dormitory, some distance from the exhibit. The Palace of Cul-
ture is a 1960s-style monstrosity, part congress hall, part exhibition
center, though admittedly, the glass wall on the north side provides a
breathtaking panorama of one of the world's most beautiful cities.
13
14
Soviet and East European Performance Vol. 11, No. 3
The building now houses commercial showrooms for International
corporations and contains two video arcade galleries. The PO exhib-
Its were forced to spread out over three floors and the student dis-
plays were housed In the underground parking garage (Jaroslav
Malina's students at OAMU, the Theatre Academy, offered an Ironic
exhibit by creating a sculpture of sorts out of the body of an old car).
The amount of space allotted to each country was slightly less than
in previous years as well. On the other hand, most countries had to
scale back their exhibits anyway for their own economic reasons;
only Japan seemed to have an ostensibly lavish exhibit. Most others
took money-saving measures--notably, there were more
photographs and fewer "real" objects than ever before.
The exhibition brought forward no startling Individual works,
nor were any overall trends particularly evident. Mlrjam Grote-
Gansey of the Nether1ands won the gold medal for set design for a
series of arresting and Imaginative set models, though no one work
of hers, taken on Its own merits, was particularly outstanding,
certainly nothing new. There was no gold medal awarded In costume
design and the silver medalist, Vera Marzot of Italy, was represented
simply by renderings. The British exhibit presented one or two works
each from seven designers including such veterans as Ralph Koltai,
Timothy O' Brien, Pamela Howard, and Richard Hudson. Joe Vanek's
set for the Broadway-bound Dancing at Lughnasa was also on dis-
play. Individually, these were the most striking set models of the PO,
and they were starkly, though stunningly, presented In the context of
"trash." Commenting on the fact that the artifacts of the designer's
process are ultimately discarded, these models were displayed atop
old tires and trash cans or draped with heavy plastic tarps. The
exhibit won the Triga, Britain's second.
A pervading theme of sorts did emerge In the exhibits
themselves--a surprising sense of Isolation, darkness, and enclosure.
Perhaps as many as a third of the national or thematic exhibits con-
sisted of enclosed environments--low-ceilinged rooms, mazes. or
1950s-like art Installations. There seemed to be two ostensible
impulses for this trend: a desire to create a more immediate and
frankly theatrical experience for the spectator-to recreate the sense
of theatre In the context of an otherwise lifeless display of artifacts;
and undoubtedly some desire to imitate the award-winning American
exhibit of PO 87 that consisted of a four-room pastiche of designers'
studios. But, by Intention or accident, this year's environments, with
a few notable exceptions, tended to create a sense of oppression,
isolation, and overriding pessimism. This was most notable, perhaps
not surprisingly, In the Polish exhibit which was somewhat like a dark
cave. As you walked up a wooden ramp you passed set models on
one side placed In "grottoes that lighted up a portion at a time and
then receded Into darkness so that you could never grasp the full
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16 Soviet and East European Performance Vol . 11, No. 3
extent of the design at a single glance. Costumed mannequins and
props were arranged in a kind of fragmentary scene along the other
side of the ramp. To exit the space one had to cross a plexlglass-
coverecl "grave in which were Kantor -like emballages. Poland has a
history of dark, death-fixated environments at these exhibitions and
they clearly reflect certain social, cultural, and political preoccupa-
tions. But how does one explain the similarly dark maze of Finland,
or the stiflingly hot, black void of the British exhibit?
The German exhibit may have been the cleverest blending of
art and politics. Until this year, of course, East and West Germany
exhibited separately. WhUe there were always some stylistic and
content similarities, West Germany tended to be more conceptual
and more Iconoclastic, and It has won more awards over the years.
This, the first unified exhibit, consisted of four rooms connected
where the four corners met by a revolving door with the glass miss-
Ing. One could treat the door as a real door, or one could simply
Ignore It and step through the frame from one room to another.
Each room contained at least two conceptions for a single play-one
from an East German and one from a West German production. One
room, for instance, contained designs for two 1990 productions In
Berlin of Schiller's The Robbers: one by Bert Neumann at the
Volksbuhne and another by Caroline Neven du Mont at the
Deutsches Theater. Another room contained a conceptual wall of
barbed wire and shattered glass by [East] German designer Jochen
Finke for Kleist's Penthise/ea. Diagonally opposite this was a room
with two versions of Germania--Death in Berlin by Heiner Muller
whom the lavish German catalogue describes as Brecht's "succes-
sor. One model was for a 1988 production at the Nationaltheater in
Mannheim by Hans-Joachim Schlieker, a designer from the
Volksbuhne who moved to the West in 1984; the other was by Kar1
Kneidl, a West German designer who created this production at the
Ber1iner ensemble in 1989. As the catalogue explained, the new unity
created some new barriers "which are not of a solid nature any more,
but of a more 'liquid' --or, one could also say--liquidating nature.
Here in Prague ... those new barriers are not perceptible. Here, in
the exhibition rooms of the first unified German Quadrennial con-
tribution, German unity really takes place . . .. There is equality:
German unity as one flat [apartment] whose Inhabitants have to
share rooms in a tense-friendly coexistence." The essay goes on to
explain that German classical drama and the Ideas and practices of
Brecht held the theatre of both countries together even when political
barriers intervened.
The opening week of the Quadrennial also provided an
opportunity to sample the Prague theatre scene. Perhaps the most
talked about event In Prague was the return last year of Otomar
Krej& after an absence of some fifteen years. The return began with
17
a territorial battle with his former artistic collaborator, Josef Svoboda,
over the rights t o the fair1y intimate Za Branou II Theatre which had
been the home of Latema Magika for years. Krej& Insisted upon the
return of his old theatre. He prevailed and Laterna Maglka was
relegated to the cavernous congress hall of the Palace of Culture.
reopened his theatre with a production of The Cherry
Orchard. While audiences Initially flocked to see the return of this
great director, Interest quickly flagged. The production, though cap-
tivating and moving, was Ineluctably rooted In a pre-revolutionary
Czechoslovakia. It was a very respectable modem production: the
setting was a form of abstract realism and the transformations from
Interior to exterior were fluid and clever. The costumes were more
German than Russian, and of a slightly later period. The character-
Izations were based on psychological realism; Marie Tornasova's
Ranevskaya was strong, yet not memorable. Interestingly, the most
famous sound effect In Chekhov, the "dying harpstring, was missing
from this version. All in all, It was a very solid production that almost
everyone in the theatre wor1d described as boring. Za Branou, for
which tickets were once scarce, was running at about 60% capacity.
It was clear that in this post-revolutionary wor1d, the theatre had to
make a special connection to Its audience In order to sell and
Cherry Orchard simply did not speak to the children of the
Velvet Revolution. The National Opera, once a scalper's dream, now
was half-empty on a Friday night for a deadly, old-fashioned produc-
tion of Smetana's Tajemstvf. Bus loads of tourists allowed Laterna
Magika to make a respectable showing in the several-thousand seat
congress hall, but their new production, Odysseus, was embarrass-
ingly silly, no longer the technical and artistically Innovative force It
once might have been. Another Laterna Magika piece played in a
new spiral theatre at Park. The audience sat along spiral
ramps around the interior of a cylindrical theatre about four storys
high. A film was projected on the circular floor and a performer Inter-
acted with it--sort of. The ten-minute show was repeated every half-
hour throughout the day. Not only was the concept uninteresting,
but the film quality was poor.
One of the continuing successes of the Prague theatre
scene, a Sean O'Casey piece at the Cinoherni klub starring filmmaker
Jirf Menzl, closed without warning due to internal disputes. Menzl
has been commuting to Prague from his home In Canada to perform
in this production which runs in repertory with about a dozen other
shows. The production Is some twenty years old but still enormously
popular due In large part to Manzi ' s presence. The dispute
apparently arose In response to the new producer's decision to
remove the director's daughter from the cast. Menzl showed up for
his performance the week we were there without having been told
that the show was canceled.
-...,.
Conceptual installation at the German PO exhibit for Penthesilea
designed by Jochen Finke for the Staatsschauapiel Dresden.
0)
Opera Furore has been presenting an "opera" entitled Andy
Warhol in a cafe theatre above Malostranska Square for over a year.
The piece, an Ironic and strangely dispassionate (I.e., Warhol-llke)
look at Western consumerism, decadence, and mythology, sets War-
hol quotes to a recitative presentation with a jazz saxophone
accompaniment. An appropriately tacky kitchen set--all red plastic-
provides the environment for act one In which Warhol sits In a swing
above a man and a woman who watch television and use and dis-
card banal household objects. In act two, Mickey (Minnie?) Mouse
attempts to seduce the saxophone player as Warhol sings at the side
of the stage. The piece Is funny and ultimately quite poignant.
Probably the most successful company In Prague Is the
twenty-five year old Studio Ypsilon headed by Jan Schmid whose
new production, Mozart In Prague, Is the hottest ticket In town. This
company operates In a flexible 200-seat basement theatre and is
constantly sold out. The loyal audience consists primarily of students
and people in their twenties, and the group purposely keeps the tick-
ets at a mere ten crowns (about 30) for this audience. Mozart In
Prague is a fantasy /nightmare of the last year of Mozart's life leading
up to the premiere of Don Giovanni. The a.ctors each play several
instruments and sing as the play glides In and out of historically-
based scenes from Prague society and scenes from the operas.
Fragments of The Magic Flute and Don Giovanni float through the
production, occasionally transforming into bits of pop and folk
music. The performance ends with a fifteen-minute parody of Don
Giovanni which is hilariously funny while being a wonderfully loving
tribute to Mozart. Without a knowledge of the language, much of the
prodigious verbal humor, of course, Is lost. But the musical humor
predominates, and the acting manages to transcend language bar-
riers.
As a demonstration of the effects of change, perhaps
nothing is more illustrative than the fact that Studio Ypsilon canceled
its performance on June 25. Why? There was a Paul Simon concert
in Prague!
The problem facing almost all the theatres is the changeover
to a market economy in the next year. With the exception of the
National Theatre, virtually all the theatres will lose their subsidies. A
ten-crown ticket will be a thing of the past which, of course, may
have a profound effect on the makeup of the audience. And produc-
tions will no longer be able to survive with half-full houses. Right now
Prague, in its theatres, discos, streetlife, and even the souvenir haw-
kers and bad artists on the Charles Bridge, resembles Greenwich VU-
Iage of the late sixties and early seventies. Very soon, in its cultural
life at least, it may resemble New York of the nineties.
INTERVIEW WITH ISTVAN E0RSI
lmre Goldstein
In January 1990 at the Invitation of the Washington-based Freedom
House, the Hungarian writer s t v ~ n Eorsl spent three days In
Nicaragua as one of the two Hungarian observers of Nicaragua's
preparations tor free elections. On his way back to Hungary, Eorsl
stayed for three days with Allen Ginsberg in New York. Following are
excerpts from an Interview conducted In Ginsberg's apartment on
January29.
IG: How would you describe the current cultural situation In
Hungary in the light of recent political developments?
IE: The latest novelty Is the decentralization of cultural acti-
vities. The State, and the well-defined groups directly under Its
influence, no longer monopolize the country's cultural life. This Is
enormously significant. For one thing, censorship has been
abolished. Hungary has never enjoyed, certainly not in this century,
such freedom of artistic expression. New people, new voices, new
ideologies, and some old ones, are being heard. This is also a period
of transition for those of us coming from the underground. samizdat
movement. Moral rectitude no longer suffices; while we were read by
an ever Increasing audience because we dared to speak up during
difficult times, today, when anyone may write about anything,
aesthetics and professional ability must prevail: books, plays, arti-
cles, etc., must stand on their own feet. It's not enough for their
authors to be brave.
Such great and sudden freedom has its dark side, too. Not
unlike extreme right-wing bands in the Soviet Union that lay low
under Stalin and then surfaced with a bang during the "thaw,
extremist groups are also making themselves heard in Hungary.
Resenting what they call their forty years of non-recognition and
forced silence, they are all the more vocal today. Add to this their
uneasiness about having had their tails between their legs, and
having had to toe the line of compromise, called the "consensus,
during the Kadar years, and you can see why they are now so eager
to prove how pure and truly Hungarian they are, and how they had
always been in the opposition. Although, In my view, these extreme
right-wing and nationalist bands form a malignant growth on the new
cultural body, I am not advocating their removal or banishment. But I
do regret the way they are trying to influence the population. Just a
word to clarify the "consensus I've mentioned. During the Kadar era
the large majority of the population (I'm deliberately avoiding the
much-abused appellation, "the people"), opted for self-preservation
through "personal improvement, such as saving for a small car or a
21
house--often taking twenty years to do it. It was their way of coping
with prevailing politics in which they had no say. The essence of the
"consensus" was this: In the mid-sixties Kadar said in effect: "You'll
get more to eat, and more freedom If you accept my rule." And the
population acquiesced because It had already been browbeaten and
humHiated; hundreds of thousands had escaped, tens of thousands
were jaUed, and at least a thousand were executed. With no promis-
ing future or opportunities on the horizon, Kadar's offer was the only
possibility. As time went on, this "consensus" was perceived as a les-
ser evil. More and more frequently one heard It referred to as "not so
bad," or "not bad at all." In another context the writer Istvan Vas
labelled It "relatively wonderful." The situation thus reached was
admittedly the collective shame of the Hungarian Intelligentsia. Very
few dared to reject the "consensus." I was "lucky," I was In jail for a
few years (some of my friends were executed), away from the emo-
tional and psychological climate created by the "consensus. Now
that freedom Is here, some Intellectuals are not only parading their
liberal ideas, kept secret under Kadar, but, via a self-administered
cure of compensation and rehabilitation, they are trying to reshape
their own pasts.
On the positive side, I must repeat my delight at the
appearance of wonderful youngsters on the scene, and of some
older ones who simply kept quiet for years. Suddenly we see what a
wealth of talent there is in Hungary.
IG: Keeping the writer In focus, what about the state of litera-
ture, drama, and the theatre?
IE: As long as It was possible, before the inevitable collapse
of the poorly-managed economy, Kadar kept his promise of more
freedom and more meat. For the writer, this freedom meant a simple
formula. You may write as you wish, only beware of certain taboos.
Those writers who temperamentally, emotionally, and artistically
were not drawn to topics covered by these taboos could, and In fact
did produce significant bodies of work. I am thinking of such writers
as Meszoly or Mandy. Some, like Konrad, or the poet Petri and
others. myself included, whose literary Interests constantly "bumped
Into these taboos, such as the events of 1956, the presence of
Soviet troops In Hungary, sociological analysis of socialist society,
etc., had to go underground.
Drama suffered the most from a censorship that was most
vigilant in the theatre. This was doubly bad because Hungary tradi-
tionally has had enormous problems developing its drama. His-
torically we started about two hundred years behind the rest of
Europe, and we never had a Shakespeare or a Moliere, no Ibsen or
Chekhov, not even a Nestroy. Whenever there seemed to be a flicker
of a chance of developing a unique Hungarian drama, some new
repressive regime nipped it. Our last major chance, before the cur-
22
rent one, occurred right after Wor1d War II, but the rise of the Com-
munist party brought along Socialist Realism. Few authors tried to
break out of the strait-jacket; the number of successes was very
small. Perhaps Orkeny, who In his Ironic absurdllke style managed to
outwit his censors. To some extent this was true of the first plays of
Istvan Csuri<a. But on the whole we were seeing Molrl8r-type dramas
In socialist settings, a mixture most unpalatable. It Is no secret why
totalitarian regimes fear most, and therefore suppress most, drama
and theatre. It Is In the theatre that human conflicts are most sharply
drawn, and human conflicts always have deep roots In social situa-
tions even when those situations are not In the Immediately visible
foreground. On a personal note I'd like to mention, because It is so
characteristic of the past regime's methods, that after several
rejections of some of my plays I was told by Istvan Bart, head of the
Hungarian PEN Club, that the reason I was not being produced was
my lack of talent; my ostracism had nothing to do with my political
views.
At this moment four of my plays are running simultaneously,
something quite unprecedented. One, The Interrogation, was written
In 1965, first produced In West Berlin In 1984, premiered In Hungary
In 1988, and In 1989 won the best play and best production awards.
Another, the play closest to my heart, The Interview: His Master's
Voice, a play about Lukacs, has Hungary's foremost actors In the
cast, and was directed by the same Laszl6 Babarczy who first
directed The Interrogation In Hungary.
Let me mention here the wonderful efforts of two theatres,
the Gergely Csiky Theatre at Kaposvar and the J6zsef Katona
Theatre In Budapest. In the last few years they have developed a dis-
tinct style of their own, with a very modem approach to acting which
some call super-realism. In their presentation, Weiss's MaratjSade
was all about Hungary in 1956, depicting the decaying situation after
the revolution, and full of nostalgia about the heroic days. At the time,
the production of a play about '56 by a Hungarian author would have
been unthinkable. I'd say that these two ensembles have created a
modern Hungarian theatre that Is now eagerly awaiting the true
development of modern Hungarian drama. There Is also a group of
enormously talented directors who, If they had worked In the West,
would be at the very top of the International theatrical scene. With
one of them, Tamas Asher, I am now working on a new version of
Animal Farm.
IG: Are these directors running Hungary's theatres?
IE: Some are in leading positions, but indeed they should be
running the theatres. At the moment the theatres are In financial
danger. The Finance Minister has announced major reductions In
subsidies, making the size of the subsidy commensurate with
audience development: the more tickets you sell, the more money
23
you get. With such a policy It Is clear that the Operetta Theatre would
receive a huge subsidy while other legitimate theatres, not to men-
tion experimental ones, would fold. The new subsidy policy has
been postponed for now, because of the concerted opposition of
theatre managers, untU something more suitable can be worked out.
Here, the new spirit of the market economy could present a danger.
Some Western European countries like West Germany have found
ways not to let the market economy ruin the arts. It Is obvious that
when the whole country Is to go over to a market economy we can-
not expect cultural activities to be sponsored by the State, or worse,
by the Party, any party. It is also difficult to find neutral, Impartial
sponsors. I am not for the old system. What I'd like to see Is a
government allocating the funds which then would be managed by
the professionals In the theatre. This may sound utopian, but It Isn't,
especially since there is a true consensus about who the best direc-
tors in the country are; and they could do the job.
IG: Just as long-suppressed books are now being published,
are there any plays coming out of drawers and reaching the stage?
IE: Not really. In this respect I am just about alone. While
novels and poems can wait in drawers, plays cannot. But lots of
plays are being written; political satire of course Is flourishing. Some
of the younger authors, like Splr6, Kornlss, and Nadas who during
the last few years have come out with plays of serious political con-
tent will continue to write.
IG: Have censorship and jail prepared you for this new free-
dom?
IE: I'm glad to have both behind me. I must admit that
censorship made me a better craftsman; jail Is where I really became
a writer. Until then I was only an intellectual. I call a man fortunate not
because he's had no unfortunate experiences, but because he can
make good use of those experiences. I think I have developed a
guerrilla style that may be best described as a combination of Don
Quixote and Schweik, and this style, even after the abolition of
censorship, Is still very timely. To be a Don Quixote In Hungary
today means to be a leftist, just as a little while ago It meant to be
against the Party. One also needs a touch of Schweik to sell one's
goods: to be entertaining, humorous. somewhat crafty and cunning.
IG: Do you consider yourself first a poet and playwright, and
then a publicist and essayist?
IE: I consider my best poems to be the best things I've
created, possibly for the same reason a mother may love best her
ugliest child. Ironically, I am appreciated least as a poet and most as
a publicist. But that doesn't matter. What does matter very much Is
that when your best works In all genres are placed side by side, It Is
still the same face that looks back at the reader. As to critics and
criticism I keep Lukacs's words in mind: no work has become better
because it's been praised, or worse because it's been denigrated.
IG: Since the better part of your three days In New York Is
spent with Allen Ginsberg, clarifying fine points for your new transla-
tion of HOWL, perhaps a word about translation would be In order.
IE: Blowing my hom a bit, I believe that my work as a trans-
lator has been vital. Since Hungarian literature has always been Iso-
lated, most of its best cultivators In every age have considered trans-
lation to be an Important part of their lives' work. It has been my
good fortune that even in the worst of times, including my years in
jail, I could get jobs translating, even making a living at lt. Thus far I
have translated five of Shakespeare's plays, the important later works
of Lukacs, also Ginsberg, Corso, Fertinghetti, hundreds of poems by
Heine and Brecht; Pushkln, Mayakovsky, and other Russians. Of the
two basic types of translators--one who translates only works close
to him artistically and temperamentally, the other, the omnivorous
klnd--1 belong to the latter. The title of my volume of translations Is
Trying on Clothes:
Uke a buyer on credit,
I'm trying on everything.
This one's too big, that one's too small;
What's to be done?
Well, I'll put on,
Or lose some weight; please pack them all.
IG: Is there anything you wish for in the months and years
ahead?
IE: Lots. But let me focus briefly on Europe. I feel that the
West needs to understand us at least as much as we need to
understand, or I should say continue to understand the West. We do
have a great deal to offer, and not everything that has been going on
until now has been negative. Consider, for example, how our litera-
ture has preserved the sense that there is a deep tie, a dialectical tie
if you will, between the fate of the Individual and that of society as a
whole. In the right kind of osmosis between Eastern and Western
Europe, both have a lot to gain. The new Europe, as I see it, or wish
to see it, will not be created by Eastern Europe joining or rejoining
the West, but by a merger. Put another way: Western Europe needs
to join us no less than we need to join it.
25
"
ISTVAN E0RSI
I was born in 1931 In Budapest and began my studies at the
Hungarian-English Faculty of the Lorand Eotvos University In 1949
where I earned my teacher's diploma In Hungarian Language and
Uterature In 1953. During my university studies I took part In Georg
Lukacs' seminars In esthetics. The teacher-student relationship
originating In these seminars grew Increasingly more Intense and
lasted until Lukacs' death In 1971.
My first poems, showing the neophyte's enthusiasm for the
Stalinist era, were published In 1951. For these I was awarded the
Attila J6zsef Prize In 1952. In 1953 my tone became more critical.
For my participation In the 1956 Revolution I was sentenced (In 1957)
to eight years Imprisonment. In August 1960 I was released from jail
due to a special clemency.
Until 1977 I worked as a free-lance writer, living mostly from
translations. My books--poems, essays, political pieces, short
stories, and plays--began appearing again In 1968. (Until the end of
1956 two volumes of my poetry had been published.) Some of my
plays were produced. During these years there were periods in
which access to publication was partially or completely denied me.
Between 1977 and 1982 I served as dramaturg of the
Gergely Csiky Theatre at Kaposvar, a post which I had to leave for
political reasons because my activities in the opposition were taking
on a more organized form. I participated in the very first protest
movements (in 1977, I was among the 32 Hungarian signatories of
Charter 77), and I became more and more involved In the Hungarian
samizdat which, between 1982 and 1987, was the main forum of pub-
lishing possibilities for me.
From 1983 to 198611ived in West Berlin. The first year I was
on a DAAD scholarship. Then after the SchaubOhne Theater pro-
duced my play The Interrogation, (written in 1965), followed by addi-
tional production of this play as well as some of my other plays (I
myself also directed The Interrogation and The Compromise), I was
given the opportunity to remain abroad.
In 1986 I returned to Hungary where, in 1988, my volume of
Nine Plays appeared Qegally), and my memoir, dealing with my years
in jail, was published (illegally). In the same year, The Interrogation
was produced at Kaposvar.
With Erzsebet Vezer, a literary critic and historian, I con-
ducted a series of taped interviews with Georg Lukacs during the last
year of his life. In 1976, I edited the material into a book which first
appeared in German in 1981, followed by publications in Italian,
Serbo-Croatian, English, French, and Japanese. The Hungarian edi-
tion was published in 1989.
POUSH THEATRE'S INCOMPLETE TRANSITION:
THE RAPE OF EUROPE
Kathleen Cioffi
During February and March 1991, I participated In an
extraordinary theatrical event which took place In the student club,
Zak, In Gdallsk, Poland. This event was the result of a collaboration
between Theatre Workshop, a professional theatre company from
Edinburgh. Scotland, and a group of approximately 140 residents of
the Gdansk area, most of whom were university and high school stu-
dents without any previous theatrical experience. During the course
of five weeks of workshops, Improvisations, and discussions, this
group of young people (plus a few older ones such as myself), work-
Ing with directors Peter Clerke and Andl Ross from Theatre Work-
shop, managed to put together a show which reflected to an
extraordinary degree their own concerns as members of Polish
society. The production which emerged from this process was
called The Rape of Europe (Porwanie Europy), and was based on the
Greek myth of Zeus abducting Europe. Not only the final product,
but the very process itself, was what was most revealing of how atti-
tudes in Poland are in a period of transition from the sureness which
characterized Communism to the uncertainties of capitalism.
During an Initial week-long series of meetings in the fall of
1990 between Theatre Workshop members and a group of peo.Pie
who had responded to leaflets distributed at the University of Gdansk
and elsewhere, It quickly became apparent that certain ideas which
were proposed for the storyline met with violent rejection by the
young people. The idea proposed by Bogusr.tw Posmyk, co-director
of the project, which sounded quite Interesting to me, was that the
play would be based on the history of the Zak building Itself (the old
League of Nations building) and the various turbulent periods in the
history of Gdar'isk-Danzig to which it had born silent witness. The
young participants deeply disliked this proposal; they contended that
Poland had had enough political theatre and theatre based on Polish
history. They proposed instead that we work on something "more
universal, though at the time they seemed to have only vague
notions of what that should be. In the end, the scenario which
emerged during the final Intensive period of workshops in February
and March was Indeed "more universal, though It certainly had its
analogues In Polish history.
The play created In these workshops was set In a mytholo-
gical country which, however, bore a distinct resemblance to Poland.
Before the play starts, as the audience waits to enter the hall,
Sisyphus tries to set up a table, chair, briefcase, and candle on the
stairs, but of course he can't because the staircase Is uneven, so he
27
must keep trying over and over again. In the opening scene, a
Queen (Poland) sits sleeping on an enormous throne. She is
awakened by the entrance of three groups of people (Austria,
Germany, and Russia), each of which has a distinctive way of walk-
ing and of dressing, its own anthem, and its own banner. The
guests/members of the three groups waltz together as if attending a
ball, but periodically stop to argue about the shape of the throne. A
fight ensues, first between the leaders of the groups, then between
individual members. Finally, everyone rushes to the throne and tries
to jump on it. Meanwhile, the Bull enters and leads the Queen down
from her perch at the top and out the door. The crowd then tears
open the throne, symbolically tearing apart Poland as it was tom
apart during the partitions at the end of the eighteenth century.
When it is opened, however, a Family (the Polish people) is discov-
ered contentedly living inside it.
The allegory is carried further in the subsequent scenes
where the Family is led on a long journey from the wreck of their
home (country) and back to it, in a kind of illustration of the currently
popular joke: "What is socialism? The longest road from capitalism
to capitalism." Diogenes, who had served as the Queen's translator
in the earlier scene, pops out of the throne again, and offers to help
the Family. At first they don't trust him, but then they agree to let him
lead them. They all leave together, following the trail of the Bull and
the Queen. Diogenes leads the Family (and the audience) on a jour-
ney through the building which represents a journey through some
strange other countries. First they go the the basement where they
are bullied by some very aggressive waiters and waitresses and they
listen to a manic priest declare, "What's good for the church is good
for the country.
In the next scene, in the attic, an analogy is made between
the Communist years in Poland and the oppression of primitive
people by an elite cult of priests. When the Family goes to the attic,
they see people in small groups who have made their homes in little
corners, like street people. These people are dominated by a group
of Stargazers who perform a ritual in which a high priest looks
though a telescope. He recounts the dreams he sees there, and
calls upon the people's dreams (performed by actors wearing black
clothes and white masks) to jump on their backs. This pointless
ritual is reminiscent of the way the Communist Party was constantly
promising a better future and oppressing people in the name of a
higher ideology. Here, in a symbolic re-enactment of the Solidarity
strikes of 1980, one of the lesser priestesses accidentally discovers
that the telescope has no lens in it, and that the whole ritual has been
built on lies. She calls upon the people to revolt, and they do, throw-
ing off their dreams, and setting fire to the Stargazers's altar. The
28
Family, Dlogenes, and the audience flee before they are consumed
by flames.
When the FamUy returns to the main hall, they confront the
current preoccupations of the Polish nation. There they recognize
their old home/country (the throne), even though It has been looted,
vandalized, and wrecked almost beyond recognition. Near the
throne are some people In colorfU dothes who are standing motion-
less on platfonns and stools In a large circle. They are the Sellers
and they try to sell the contents of their boxes to the FamUy, describ-
Ing these contents In glowing tenns. They represent the kind of "Wild
West" survival-of-the-fittest capitalism that Poland is experiencing
now. The Sellers play a sort of game with the Family, alternately
taunting and tempting them with their goods, finally jumping down off
their perches, chasing the FamUy, and surrounding them. Diogenes
sees that the Sellers have only contempt for the Family, but the Fam-
ily Is tempted by the goods that the Sellers offer. Finally, the Sellers
take the goods out of their boxes, leave them in front of the FamUy,
and retreat, laughing uproariously at the Family.
Various solutions to the problems posed by capitalism are
offered. First, the Queen appears on a balcony above the Family and
sings a song. The Family tries to dimb up to her, to return to their
old life, but they keep falling down. That life is gone, that country
destroyed. Other groups of people form and play out pantomime
rituals of frustration or destruction. These rituals get faster and faster
until, finally, everyone collapses in exhaustion. People are frantically
trying to rebuild the economy in today's Poland, but things seem to
be collapsing before their eyes. Then, while everyone Is lying on the
floor, one young person gets up, goes to the wrecked throne, calls to
her friends to come play, and they start to build something out of the
wreckage In a very childish way. Perhaps the young generation will
be able to create something out of the mess of forty years of Com-
munism.
In the end, optimism overcomes defeat. Everyone gets up
from the floor, and dances a joyful samba. After the samba finishes,
there is a loud knocking at the door. Someone opens It, and the fig-
ure of Sisyphus comes In, dragging his table, chair, briefcase, and
candle. He arranges these things, sits down, and the crowd of
actors exits toward the light which streams In through the door
behind Sisyphus. Perhaps Poland will have to be rebuilt over and
over, like Sisyphus' Impossible task, but the young people will con-
tinue to carry on.
The naive fairy tale became compelling in performance
largely due to the skill of the Scottish directors In thinking of
improvisations and exercises to elicit the creativity of the young
people and then in culling the best from those improvisations. An
atmosphere of excitement was created by the energy and
29
enthusiasm of the young performers. This atmosphere was
enhanced by the music provided by Peter Livingstone of Theatre
Workshop, working with a group of young people; their music greatly
added to the various moods In each scene. In addition, the scenery
designed by Victor Syperek, particularly the throne In the opening
scene, made a commanding visual impression. The audience was at
every point encouraged to get Involved in the show: they were
Invited to dance during the waltz at the beginning and the samba at
the end; they had to move from one part of the building to another;
they were bullied by the waiters In the basement and begged from by
the beggars In the attic.
The show Itself and the process of creating It showed how
much the theatrical mind-set of the younger generation of Poles has
already changed since the overthrow of Communism only two years
ago. For example, the scene of the Sellers tempting the Family with
their shoddy goods, with Its Implicit critique of capitalism, would
never have been part of any pre-1989 performance. If It had been,
the performers would have been branded as toadies to the regime.
When the Scottish directors originally discussed the scene with us,
they proposed portraying something like a supermarket Instead of
Individuals hawking wares. The young people rejected this idea, but
the final version, which was quite similar to the original Idea, was
accepted by them. Perhaps the youngsters are already perceiving
that capitalism is not the cure-all that everyone for so long assumed
It would be.
The rejection of any overt political or even historical theme
is another difference in Polish theatrical preoccupations. On my
previous visit to Poland, before the overthrow, I had the opportunity
to see many performances of student groups. These performances
had been , for the most part, political. They varied greatly In quality,
but nearly all revealed a remarkable unity of thinking among Polish
people, especially among what may be termed the "young
intelligentsia. When a colleague and I interviewed the director of the
Theatre of the Eighth Day, a group which started as a student theatre
and in the late seventies and eighties became the most imitated
theatre group In the student theatre movement, he said, "In Poland
we are in an enviable position. In our oppressive political situation
we do not have any trouble choosing our values." Fortunately for
the Polish people, the political situation In Poland is no longer
oppressive, but unfortunately for the state of Polish art, there is much
more trouble in "choosing values." Polish society, which in the 1980s
had seen itself as "us against the p o w ~ l Communist "them, since
the crumbling of the Communist enemy a(ld the factlonallzatlon of
Solidarity no longer has any powerful force uniting it.
This loss of unifying force Is reflected In a loss of subject
matter for Polish theatre. This can be seen In the professional theatre
as well as in alternative productions such as The Rape of Europe. In
a sense, before the overthrow of Communism, there was only one
"proper" subject for theatre. Initially, the young people In my group
revolted against this subject, but in the end, they were unable to think
of any other. By revolting against politics and trying to create some-
thing "more universal, they ended up retreating to precisely the type
of play which they claimed to be most tired of, a kind of play typical
of Polish theatre In the 1960s, but quite common later as well. Cued
to censorship, Polish playwrights such as w o m r Mrozek tended
to write works that were, like The Rape of Europe, disguised
allegories. Unlike The Rape of Europe, these works had to be
allegories In order to carry out their real purpose, criticizing the
powers-that-be In a way that would get them past the censor. Now
that there Is no censor, however, it is Ironic that the young people stUI
seem reluctant to speak directly In the theatre. Perhaps because
there Is no longer any agreement about who to criticize, they tend to
think that their own history is boring and provincial.
Polish theatre, like Polish society, Is currently In the midst of
searching for itself. The old ways of doing things wUI no longer suf-
fice, yet it is hard to learn new ways, hard even to imagine them. The
old subject for theatre, which was for so long the Inspiration for many
really powerful dramatic works, has, almost overnight, lost its power.
Since the demise of Communism in 1989 there are many "proper
subjects" for theatre to take up. Yet it is difficult, even for a group as
young as the creators of The Rape of Europe, to abandon the old
subjects although they feel the impulse to do so. It seemed to me,
while working on The Rape of Europe, that I was witnessing the
Polish mentality in the very process of change: these young people
were already thinking in ways quite different from those young
people only a few years ago. But the transition is still incomplete. It
remains to be seen just exactly how Polish theatre and Polish society
will change in the coming years.
NOTE
1Lech Raczak, "An Interview with Director Lech Raczak," with
Kathleen Cioffi and Andrzej Ceynowa, The Drama Review Vol. 30,
No. 3 {1986), p 90.
31
BROADWAY IN THE BARREN LAND?
Greg Granlden
Omsk -- the name does not spring lightly to the lips of Soviet
literati. And, at first sight this drab Siberian Industrial center seems
an unlikely place to stage a minor renaissance in Russian theatre.
This city of 1.3 mHIIon lies 2,250 kUometers east of Moscow,
far outside the Moscow-St. Petersburg axis where much of Russia's
cultural Industry Is heavily concentrated. Until now, Omsk's main
claim to fame as a cultural landmark was that the young Fyodor
Dostoevsky, the great nineteenth century Russian writer, suffered
four brutal years of Imprisonment there for political crimes.
Now Omsk is emerging as an important center for Russian
theatre. Every year since 1984, the Omsk Academic Drama Theatre
has been host to a gathering of theatre directors, critics, and
playwrights from all over Siberia, including some from European Rus-
sia. They watch plays, hold often heated discussions, and, Inspired
by a similar workshop at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center In Con-
necticut, they mount semi-finished productions of new works or
works-In-progress.
The week-long event, which is organized independently, is
unique In the Soviet Union. It has even begun to attract foreign inter-
est: this year the workshop attracted directors and dramaturges
from Norway, Sweden, Belgium, France, Italy, and Germany.
Some of them left Omsk with commitments for future work
with Siberian theatre: Christophe Feutrler, a Salnt-Etlenne, France-
based director and playwright, has an Invitation to direct a play later
this year in Chelyabinsk; Paolo Landi of Rome's Teatro Flaiano will
return at the end of April to direct Eugene lonesco's The Bald
Soprano at the Omsk Theatre; and Frie Leysen, the artistic director of
the Antwerp Arts Center deSingel, Is hoping to bring the Omsk
Theatre's production of Dostoevsky's The Insulted and the Injured to
Belgium.
"Siberia could potentially produce some of the most Interest-
Ing theatre," said Rimrna Krechetova, a Moscow theatre critic attend-
ing the workshop. She cited a strong tradition of sponsorship for
theatre in Siberia. Indeed, the program lists the Siberian Automobile-
Road Institute, a petrochemical complex and several local factories
as sponsors of the Omsk productions.
Krechetova said there was also a growing tendency among
theatre school graduates from Moscow and St. Petersburg, faced
with unemployment at home, to seek work east of the Urals, bringing
fresh skills and, more importantly, the latest ideas to provincial Rus-
sia.
32
"Previously, Siberia would only get touring productions from
the center, she said. "Now, there are a lot of young Siberian writers,
and they're very independent-minded. Their only common theme is
that they write about the Siberian life around them.
One of the unofficial stars of this year's workshop is Yuri
Knyazev, a young, self-taught playwright from near Irkutsk, on Lake
Baikal. The workshop featured two of his plays: The Influx (Naplyv),
about an alcoholic factory worker's estrangement from his wife; and
Deenamo, which looks at the tumultuous personal life of a strong-
willed actress.
Knyazev's works offer an insight into Soviet life at its grittiest.
In The Influx, for example, three famUies live together In a fUthy com-
munal apartment: an alcoholic worker, whose wife is raped by a
policeman and then becomes sterile after the fetus miscarries; an
engineer who abuses his wife; a bitter, lonely old man writing his
memoirs and his orphaned, drug-addicted niece. His plays are full of
raw language and raw nerves, his characters' composure eroded
daily by poverty, alcohol, and violence. Inevitably, though, a certain
dignity emerges in their lives; Knyazev's most unlikely heroes inspire
respect as well as sympathy.
Notably, Knyazev's plays are non-political. In a country with
a strong tradition of politicized art and literature, this makes writing
like Knyazev's if not quite controversial, then hopelessly irrelevant in
the eyes of some.
"This Is what I thought as I watched It: when did the action
take place?" said one Moscow critic of The Influx. Was It before the
50s? Was It after Stalin?"
"These are the concerns of modern man: what's going to
happen tomorrow in Pushkin Square, the critic said, referring to
Moscow's equivalent of the Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park. "What's
going to happen with the economy, or in the Persian Gulf? ... You
can't take a person out of that context. It's artificial."
Another critic strongly objected to this view. "When we see a
political play, we often say: why can't we have something without
politics?" she said. "Then, when we get a non-political play, we say:
what about the politics?"
"I don't care about what happens in contemporary life,
added a young director. "Firstly, it's boring; and secondly, I don't
understand it."
The previous day, another work--Family Portrait with
Stranger, by Stepan Lobozerov from Perm--had come under even
heavier criticism from workshop participants. A situation comedy set
in a small Siberian village, it touched a raw nerve when one of the
main characters, a non-Russian liberal with a heavy Baltic accent,
argued politics with a conservative local Communist Party official.
33
"It was an Estonian accent, Insisted one critic. "And when
you hear this Estonian accent, you realize that his rantlngs about
democracy are not about democracy at all, they're about nation-
alism.
Though the political divisions ran deep among participants,
there was a consensus that Russian theatre needs something to re-
animate It, and restore the kind of wor1d stature It enjoyed In the era
of Chekhov and Stanlslavsky. The Omsk workshop Is a step In that
direction, and so far It has borne some fruit In winning outside recog-
nition for Its participants.
For Instance, one of Knyazev's plays, The Cottage
(Kottedzh), was staged at the Eugene O'Neill Center's Playwright's
Conference two years ago. And Moscow-based writer Vladimir
Gurkin's play Love and Pigeons (Liubov' i go/ubi) went from a read-
Ing at the workshop six years ago to the Managa Comedy Film Festi-
val in Spain last December.
But despite these modest successes, all Is not well with the
organizers of the event. Tensions within the Omsk Dramatic Theatre
Itself, plus the resignation of one of the workshop' s principal
organizers, artistic direct or Slava Kokorln, may jeopardize future
workshops.
34
PAGES FROM THE PAST
MEYERHOLD'S GRAVE IS LOCATED
Last November 27 the newspaper, Evening Moscow
(Vechernala Moskva) , announced the discovery of the first list of
those executed and secretly buried In mass graves In Moscow during
the 1930s. A week later, on December 6, the newspaper began pub-
lishing these documents. Since then Evening Moscow has published
the names of more than 550 secretly buried victims, each publication
evoking a flood of responses from people grateful to learn the fate of
relatives and friends, and from others requesting help In locating a
loved one.
May 17, 1991 In an Interview with Milchakov (since the end of
last year Chairman of the Search Committee to find the secret loca-
tions of mass graves), he reported on new recently-discovered docu-
ments. And once more Milchakov received a flood of telephone calls
and letters, among them a call to Evening Moscow's editorial offices
from Vsevolod Meyerhold's granddaughter, Maria Alekseevna
Valente!. Soon after she met with Milchakov, providing him with the
clue that enabled him to establish where Meyerhold was burled.
Marla Alekseevna had already been able to document that
Meyerhold was tried on February 1, 1940, and that he was executed
by firing squad the following day. She had also uncovered the fact
that Mikhail Koltsov, the famous Soviet journalist and one of the
founders of Evening Moscow, had been executed the same day.
Armed with this new piece of information, Milchakov Immediately
contacted the personnel at the U.S.S.R. K.G.B. archives where a
young jurist, Oleg Mozokhln, was able to put together these two
executions and launch a search. He found the necessary documents
so that now It can be said with certainty that Meyerhold and Koltsov
were both sentenced on February 1, 1940, and executed on Febru-
ary 2. Their bodies were cremated at the crematorium (now called
"the old crematorium") located on the grounds of Donskol
Monastery. Their ashes, along with the ashes of thousands of other
victims, were dumped In a pit five meters deep behind the
crematorium.
In MUchakov's full-page article in the the June 14, 1991 Issue
of Evening Moscow reporting on the location of the mass grave
other details emerged, Including a letter Meyerhold wrote on Novem-
ber 16-17, 1939 in which he stated that he had slandered the names
of the people he had Implicated under torture In an earlier statement,
35
36
OBlllAII MorHJIA N 1
3AlOPOHEHME HfBOCTP608AiflfbiX
nPAX08
; 1930 r. - 1942 r. IIUIIO'I.
Common Grave No. 1, Donskoi Monastery
among them Ehrenburg, Pasternak, Shostakovlch, and Eisenstein.
Also uncovered was Meyerhold's final statement addressed to the
Chairman of the Military Court, Vasilii Ulrikh, in which he said, "It Is
strange that a 66-year-old man did not say what he should have, but
what t he Investigator needed to hear, and t hat he lied only because
he was beaten with a rubber rod. He decided then to lie and to go
Into the fire. He Is not guilty of anything. He has never betrayed his
country; his daughter [Tanya] Is a Communist whom he himself
brought up. He thinks that the judge will understand him and sense
that he Is not guilty.
Judging from other Information In this document Molsenko
unearthed, Meyerhold was In the hospital before he was tried, proba-
bly as a result of the beatings. He also established that, as was the
pract ice, all those sentenced on February 1, Including Meyerhold and
Koltsov, were placed In a single cell and spent t heir last night
together. What a picture that evokes of these victims, physically
broken and mentally demoralized, sharing their final hours. Many of
them, like Meyerhold and Koltsov, knew each other. What words
passed between them? And the following day when they were
removed one by one, could those remaining hear the gunshots?
Who would be next? Did some break down when their turn came?
How many among them went to their death convinced that their
arrest and execution was all a horrible mistake?
There's another Interesting highlight In the June 14 article In
Evening Moscow which sheds some light on Stalin's character. As
Milchakov writes, "When you see how [Mikhail Koltsov) spent the
final days before his arrest you keenly feel the state of alarm and
apprehension In which Muscovites lived during those terrible years.
It's well-known how much Stalin valued Mikhail Koltsov, a journalist
who had spent several years In Spain during the [Spanish Civil] War.
After he returned to Moscow, Stalin received him and listened atten-
tively to his conclusions and assessments about the war. Several
days before his arrest he was elected a corresponding member of
the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences and the entire country was read-
Ing his latest book, Spanish Diary.
"Two weeks before his arrest, when Stalin was attending the
Bolshoi Theatre, he Invited Koltsov to his loge; he praised him for his
Spanish Diary, and again joked that it was more widely read than the
Short Course of the History of the Communist Party. Stalin proposed
that he give a report at the Party conference of writers about the sig-
nificance of the Short Course. Koltsov fulfilled Stalin's request. Late
evening he returned from the House of Writers to the editorial offices
of Evening Moscow, and there he was arrested.
Milchakov concludes, "What other proof Is needed of Stalin's
attitude toward people. He alone could praise a person, draw him
37
close, even award him with a medal, and then several days later
Issue the order for his arrest."
All this suggests that Pasternak, after all, was right In advis-
Ing Meyerhold not to try to meet and talk to Stalin. It clear1y would
have done no good.
A.L
I am Indebted to Marla Valente! and John Freedman for their
help In preparing this account.
39
CAUGHT BETWEEN TWO WORLDS: ,
A REVIEW OF THE EMIGRANTS BY St.AWOMIR MROZEK
AT THE JEAN COCTEAU REPERTORY
NEW YORK
Scott E. WaHers
While walking down Bowery Street on my way to the subway
following a performance of Slawomir Mrozek's play The Emigrants at
the Jean Cocteau Repertory, I passed a rundown building whose
large, dirty windows opened onto the street. I glanced In as I
passed. Several high-watt bulbs flooded a large room with shadow-
less light. The furnishings were sparse: stained white walls and a
worn-out linoleum floor, long folding tables pushed together to form
rows, metal chairs scattered around the tables. And here and there a
disheveled man sat head In hands, staring. At the center of the back
wall was an old-fashioned hotel clerk's cage, and above the cage, a
crudely-lettered cardboard sign slanted downwards. The sign read,
"Transient Lodging."
The sight was unexpected. One moment I was walking
along mulling over Mrozek's play, the next I was peering through a
window at an American version of the lower depths. And as some-
times happens when one is surprised In mid-thought, the two Images
merged in my mind and I suddenly saw Mrozek's two characters
seated at one of the dirty tables of the flophouse, head in hands, star-
ing into the painful brightness. They seemed at home there. No, not
at home. Rather, the room seemed to reflect their own isolation and
emptiness. They were alone, Isolated. They were emigrants.
Mrozek's characters--nameless, identified only as a worker
(Grant Neale) and an intellectual (Joseph Menino)--live not in a
transient hotel, but in a windowless basement apartment. But the
atmosphere is the same. The set, as designed by the play's director,
Jonathan Bank, is spare. A bare bulb hangs from overhead illumi-
nating two steel beds and a chrome-legged kitchen table, the latter
flanked by two red vinyl -backed chairs. A coat stand wobbles in the
background. The set is surrounded by darkness as if to further
emphasize the isolation of the characters. But while the scenery
reflects the edge of the abyss, the production itself lacks a sense of
empty desperation, of longing, of edginess which I had glimpsed In
the flophouse lobby, and which also comes packed in the luggage of
the emigrant.
Written by Mroiek In 1974, six years after being stripped of
his Polish citizenship, The Emigrants has the ring of lived truth. It
would be easy to Imagine Mrozek himself as the model for the
intellectual. Yet, strangely, there is also something very literary about
the play. One is reminded of other dramas about alienated duos
40
trapped In Isolated rooms or landscapes: Beckett's Endgame and
Waiting For Godot; Pinter's The Dumbwaiter and The Caretaker.
Like those plays, Mrozek's Is the story of the dispossessed.
But in this case, the characters have been dispossessed by a political
state, not by the state of the universe. The characters are isolated
because they have abandoned their homeland, but each for different
reasons: the Worker, In order to make money to take back to his
Impoverished family; the Intellectual, in order to escape a place
where he could not express himself freely.
And therein lies the conflict of the play. For the Worker. this
new country represents an opportunity to get ahead; he has nothing
against his homeland, has left it only to pursue his fortune and
intends to return to his wife and children there. His dreams are of
houses and riches. The Intellectual, on the other hand, is a political
exile who has left to avoid persecution and oppression. Yet in one of
the most poignant moments of the play, he explains that, while he
could no longer live In a place where he could not express himself,
once freed from it he has found that he no longer has anything to
express. He has lost his subject, and with it his reason for living.
And so he clings to the Worker, who provides the Intellectual
with a reminder of what it was he left behind, and for whom he's fight-
Ing. In this, Mrozek's play is as much about the political relationship
between the Intelligentsia and the worker as it is about the experi-
ence of exile. "What are you doing here with me?" the Worker
demands of the Intellectual at one point. And the intellectual
responds that he is atoning for the sins of his father, for ali wealthy
aristocrats. But the Worker's question leaves others unspoken. Is
the Intellectual irrelevant? Can he really speak for the Worker? Does
he really want the Worker to be free? Or is he simply using the
Worker for himself? This last question is dramatized when the
Intellectual discovers that the Worker is planning to return to his
homeland, the Intellectual threatens to denounce him as a traitor to
the authorities and thus prevent his return forever. The Worker must
stay with him, he desperately explains, so that he can use him as a
model for his new masterpiece, which he has not even begun. The
Worker is still not to be free.
All of this takes place on New Year's Eve, as If to emphasize
the liminal nature of the characters' lives: between two years,
between two social classes, between two philosophies, between two
countries. As the evening wears on, and more celebratory alcohol is
consumed, layers of truths are stripped away until the characters
stand naked before each other in ail their lies and hopelessness.
The final image is haunting. After emotionally flaying each
other until midnight arrives, the Worker finally decides that it would
be best If he moved to another apartment. The Intellectual agrees,
but requests a memento: the stuffed animal that the Worker has kept
41
on his bed. He snatches the toy, and despite the Worker's pleadings
and threats, rips open the toy's stomach. Money pours out. Then
the Intellectual reveals the final lie: not that the Worker has been
hoarding money, but that the Worker's pathological miser1iness is his
only reason for being. "You have the soul of a slave," the Intellectual
shouts. A slave to his riches, a slave to his parsimoniousness, a
slave to his greed. Without this pursuit of money, he would have no
identity, no reason to live. He will always be an emigrant; he wUI
never return home.
Shattered by the truth of the Intellectual's words, the Worker,
in a final desperate bid for freedom, tears up his savings into little
crumpled pieces and collapses sobbing onto the floor. For a
moment he is free, but only for a moment. "Do you think we can tape
it back together?" the Worker asks for1ornly. But they both know it
can't be, and the lights go down on the two characters sitting amidst
the rubble of their dreams.
Mrozek's play is a dense one, operating on many levels:
intellectual, emotional, and political. Unfortunately, the Jean Cocteau
Repertory's production only scratches the surface. Director
Jonathan Bank stresses the personal aspects of the play so strongly
that the other elements are for the most part lost. The result turns the
play into an off-beat domestic comedy, with little political bite--The
Odd Couple played by emigres--and certainly not the cutting satire
Mrozek clear1y Intends.
This is only exacerbated by the performances. Joseph
Menino plays the Intellectual like a garrulous windbag, all hot air and
empty rhetoric. His speeches, delivered in the tones of an AM disc
jockey, lead one to wonder whether he is a political exile from a
country where glibness is considered an anti-government act. Grant
Neale's Worker is more interesting, but his twitchy nervousness and
seeming lack of intelligence turns the Worker into a Stan Laurel fig-
ure, and thus limits his emotional range at the end of the play.
Ultimately, the problem may be cultural. American theatre
practitioners often seem unable to relate to a political argument, par-
ticuiar1y one based on the conflicts of another system. Instead, they
insist on seeing all conflict as psychological, and end up playing
Mrozek's trenchant satire as if it were an episode of Perfect
Strangers. The result, while good-natured and energetic, makes
hash out of Mrozek's social commentary and ultimately fails to serve
the play. Like the characters it portrays, this production falls
between two worlds, caught in a limbo from which it cannot, or will
not, escape.
SEAGULL AT THE ARENA STAGE
Marina J. B. Peter
This past summer (May 17-June 23, 1991) the Arena Stage
of Washington D.C. under the direction of Douglas C. Wager pre-
sented an Innovative approach to Chekhov's Seagull. Special sound
effects (by Susan R. White) and lighting (by Arden Fingerhut) set off
the monologs of Dorn, Trigorin, Treplev, and Nina, heightening
awareness of these moments, and creating a resonance between
them. This shifted the perspective on everything else, subtly chang-
ing the focus and underscoring the themes of the play. The
audience was thereby Invited to observe the events unfolding
onstage dispassionately, yet with irony. The personal stories of the
individuals on Sarin's estate, their affairs, ambitions, and interactions,
while dramatic and Interesting, were no longer the main focus,
although they comprise the body of the play. The lofty Ideals and
aspirations of those who care about true art (Treplev, Nina) were jux-
taposed to those who opt for ego gratification and success by bec-
oming popular artists and writers (Arkadina, Trigorin). The few fleet-
Ing moments of artistic, spiritual, and poetic insight were set in relief
against the mundane world of banal, materialistic, self-serving,
spiritually empty concerns, what the Russians call poshlost'. This is
the first Seagull this reviewer has seen that so strongly brings out the
author's point of view.
The overwhelming, yet subtle impact of the play was thus not
caused by spectacular stage effects, or striking set designs (which
were consciously avoided) , or the style of the presentation, or even
by the actors' depiction of Chekhov's fascinatingly complex charac-
ters, but by the atypical use of standard stage devices: not new
forms, but old forms used in new ways. The play's not the thing, but
the meta-play, as the opposition and interaction of ideas and world-
views limned on stage and generated within the minds of the recep-
tive audience.
The evening began with three ritualistic knocks of a wooden
clapper, the same sound that was used to introduce the "play-within-
a-play" in Act 1.
1
Electronically generated sounds were used as a
sonic curtain (between acts and at the beginning and end of the
play) as well as In muted, almost subliminal tones introducing the
highlighted monologues. These sounds resembled a cross between
surrealistic music (as might be conceived by David Bowie) and the
chanting of Tibetan monks; one heard percussive sounds (wooden
clapper, cymbals, bells) combined with mantra-like chants of deep
male volces.2 Strange, prominent, totally unexpected, these sounds
certainly heightened attention, If not, Initially, understanding.
43
44
Soliloquies were slightly amplified by voice mike, giving a
subtle auditory underscoring to these moments. At the same time,
the actor was bathed in a spotlight, while the rest of the stage was In
shadow. These two devices served to effectively focus audience
attention and Intensify the monologs.
These surrealistic and abstract sounds and the changed
lighting were Intentionally In jarring contrast with the style of the rest
of the production. Realistic effects were used In the main body of the
play. There were the traditional sounds we have come to expect In
Chekhov: the Imitations of bird calls made by Masha and Med-
vedenko, the animal sounds (of crickets and cries of seagulls and a
dog barking), the music (singing wafting across the lake, plano
music), and the sound of a gun.
3
Visually, there were many realistic
details, especially In the first and fourth acts. In the scene where
Nina declaimed Treplev's play, real candles were placed on the small
stage. The entire "audience, as well as the actress, swatted at
Imaginary mosquitoes. As Treplev appeared, walking on box-like
blocks strapped to his feet and carrying two tall poles with red
lanterns swinging from the top, the smell of sulphur pervaded the
theatre. All this was effective and amusing. Real food was used In
Act Ill. At one point, Sorin hunched over an actual steaming tea
kettle, covering his head with a large towel, to create an old-
fashioned steam vaporizer.4 His post-stroke symptoms in the final
act were very specific and realistic.
There were some puzzling minor inconsistencies in the use
of the spare set pieces designed by Ming Cho Lee. Why was a
gigantic bare branch suspended over the dining room In Act Ill, when
it would have been more logical in the first two acts, which do take
place outdoors? Exits and entrances through imaginary gates or
doors were Inconsistently used; this was especially egregious when
the platform stage was raked at an angle between Acts Ill and IV, and
actors appeared to clamber back onto the platform at seemingly
arbitrary locations.
In sum, the Arena Theatre production of Chekhov's Seagull
was provocative and driven by a novel concept. While there is some
question of whether the intended ideas were effectively transmitted to
the audience,5 this was indeed a significant production.
NOTES
1
The same three strokes of a wooden clapper used In a ritual
way to designate the beginning of a spectacle is a common practice
In Southeast Asia where performances are similarly given on a raised
45
wooden platform with no curtains, and with the audience seated on
ali four sides. Interestingly enough, the sound engineer was not
aware of this usage, although the electronic sound used in other
moments of the play was indeed based on Asian monks' chants.
2Susan White said that the idea of using a "central Asian
primitive sound" was first suggested by Zelda Fichandler, who was
originally scheduled to stage the production.
3While a real shotgun was used for the shooting of the
seagull, creating a loud blast, what sounded like someone hitting a
packing crate accompanied Treplev's suicide, the effect of which
"misfired. It would have been more effective to be consistent and
use a muffled real shot.
4Well-motivated, since the doctor states that he suffers not
only from a bad heart, but also from asthma.
5Eavesdropping in the lobby at intermission, I noticed that
people were discussing everything else .QYJ the central concept of
the production. If they commented at ali on the sounds used, it was
with puzzlement. Only one of the press reviews (Bob Mandella, City
Paper) even mentioned the unusual use of light and sound, but it did
not explain its function within the production.
46
"FUNNY AND SAD STORIES", GITIS OF MOSCOW
HUNTER COLLEGE, NEW YORK. SEPTEMBER 11-15, 1991
J.K.Curry
Under the title "Funny and Sad Stories" the Phoenix Ensem-
ble and GITIS (the State Institute of Theatre Arts) of Moscow pre-
sented three short one-act plays at the Little Theatre of New York
City's Hunter College from September 11-15, 1991. The lively pro-
duction featured the work of actors Victor Pavlutchenkov, Ivan
Pilipenko, Vladislav Sich, and Yuri Tcherkasov, all recent graduates
of the four-year dramatic actor training program of GITIS.
Performed without intermission, the three plays were
adapted from works of Russian literature. The first, based on Chek-
hov's "The Barber," follows the moods of the young barber, first
eagerly attempting to please his future father-In-law, then descending
Into melancholy despair when he realizes that his Intended bride
plans to marry someone else. "Twelve Chairs" was adapted from a
1920s novel by llf and Petrov. It features a down-and-out former
nobleman hoping to recover his mother's lost gems and a scheming,
cheating adventurer willing to assist In regaining the loot. This play
had the look of a vaudeville sketch, with the two exchanging blows
and dancing to the accompaniment of an accordion as they
negotiate a partnership. The final and most elaborately developed
piece was "The Dragon" from a story by Vasilii Shukshin. Peasants
gather for an evening of singing, dancing, and trading stories, Includ-
Ing, of course, a tale about a dragon.
The company performed in Russian on a bare stage with
only simple props (table, chairs) . Yet because of the high degree of
physicality involved in the performances, they were able to communi-
cate quite well with an English-speaking audience. A preview
audience of Hunter College theatre students was greatly amused by
the broad physical humor. The production also demonstrated the
value of training actors to sing, dance, and play musical instruments.
In addition to giving performances, members of the company visited
theatre classes at Hunter and talked to students about their training
In Moscow.
47
48
Tatoo Theatre, Open Stagej Obala, Yugoslavia
directed by Mladen Materic
The Kitchen, New York
TATTOO THEATRE BY YUGOSLAVIA'S OPEN STAGE/OBALA
Christine A. Pinkowicz
The evening began with a tattoo, really a handstamp, but a
particular one for each individual. In the days to come, as the little
Ink flower on my wrist gradually faded, this seemlngly-hokey pre-
theatre touch came to crystallize not only one of Tattoo Theatre' s
central themes, but Its lasting dramatic Impact on the viewer. Tattoo
Theatre, presented at The Kitchen in June as part of the second New
York International Festival of the Arts, is a remarkable wordless pro-
duction that seamlessly and amazingly combines kitchen-sink
realism with a delightful imaginative surrealism. Fresh from triumphs
at London's Almeida Theatre, Scotland's Edinburgh Festival, and
Quebec's Qulnzalne International Theatre Festival, t he Open
Stage/Obala's play by director Mladen Materic manages to show the
beauty of human relations that prevaHs despite problems of violence,
money, and Infidelity.
Materic segues the audience into her world fluidly: about 80
"tattooed" spectators, drinking amiably in the small theatre lobby are
unobtrusively joined by six actors who sidle up to the bar. Quietly,
and in our midst, the performers slowly build to an altercation
between a James Dean clone and a Hawailan-shlrted tourist type
trying to force himself on the only female. The Dean character--who
becomes the protagonist identified as "He" --jumps to her defense by
flattening the tourist, grabbing her hand, and running out with her
through the doors to the auditorium. The other performers slink out
into the street as we, the audience, trail into the theatre, literally fol-
lowing the couple into the action.
With just enough time to be seated, we witness the bare inte-
rior of a deserted place surrounded by an exterior deep blue sky with
twinkling stars and an almost-smil ing crescent moon. The sounds of
raucous barroom music from the Prologue continue now into a con-
stant evocative "soundtrack, counterpoint to the complete lack of
dialogue. Folkloric Balkan music abounds as the lights shift
lmperceptively from audience to stage, and He and She furtively
enter the abandoned dwelling. It is their first night together and filled
with young love, passion, and tenderness. He gives her a tattoo to
match his and a little stuffed rabbit wearing a purple tuxedo. With
these two tokens of their feelings--one Indelibly carved into real flesh
and the other evoking a child-like world of play--She now carries with
her the stepping stones for the production's approach. Materic pro-
ceeds to show us their history using the usually contradictory styles
of realism and surrealism to capture, respectively, the intellectual and
emotional reactions of her audience.
49
In the following scenes, He and She start to live their life
together before our eyes. They move into a tiny, bare apartment,
bringing their few possessions with them. Silently, they set up
housekeeping-hanging curtains, arranging their meager lot, unpack-
Ing clothes--and begin to live. One of their prized possessions, a
radio, is Immediately given a prominent place, and music now
emanates from bOth audience and performance areas. He and She
work, conceive a child, do laundry, change clothes, make meals,
hide money In a sock in the cupboard, all In the manner of kitchen-
sink realism--only the poverty of this couple is such that they wash
and do their dishes in a pail of water, lacking the proverbial plumlr
ing. As new possessions are acquired, they are arranged; as the
child grows, the Indoor washline Is used both to dry clothes and to
separate the room Into two sleeping areas; when onions are
chopped and when a luxurious pineapple is passionately devoured,
we smell their life. The fluid indications of ~ m passing made by the
excellent actors, Haris Burina and Jelena CoviC, are Impressive, the
kind usually considered possible only in film. But the fact that the
characters make these changes themselves not only shows them
actually "living, but makes the passage of time and its changes all
the more believable. As a result, when the relationship begins to deal
with the destructive elements of He's drinking and violence toward
his wife, her dlspalr, their economic troubles, and the child's loneli-
ness, it all achieves an alarming hyper-reality. This is the grit of life
we're all too familiar with.
Juxtaposed with this grounded and effective realism,
however, is an overlayer of the surreal. The tiny stuffed rabbit sym-
bolizing their love and devotion literally becomes larger than life, a
full-fledged character in this wordless drama. Even before the couple
moves into their first home, the Rabbit appears, tender1y preparing
the place for their arrival. Symbolizing and constantly evoking the
magic and childlike joy of their young love, the Rabbit appears first in
separate scenes almost as an identity unknown to them. As the
"real" life onstage becomes more difficult, the Rabbit sneaks Into the
family action, making its presence felt; when He can't keep a job and
is arrested for buying stolen goods, and She resorts to prostitution to
survive--the Rabbit joins She onstage as a constant companion.
Even after He returns, the Rabbit has become a third character who
silently reminds the couple of their love and of the magical connec-
tion between them. It is this surreal element that makes their grim
reality seem beautiful and tender. Henri Breton once said that "the
mind that plunges into Surrealism relives the best part of its child-
hood." Indeed, the surreal here is a constant reminder of what is
good and worthwhile in human relations, even in the midst of difficul-
ties.
While this positive reminder of life's beauty is remarkable in
50
Itself, the success of this juxtaposition is stylistically the most
Impressive thing about Tattoo Theatre. Materlc not only presents
both the real and the surreal but flirts with danger by highlighting the
boundaries where they meet. In one striking example the Rabbit
befriends the lonely child and gives him a real , live rabbit for com-
panionship, thus placing the real and surreal side by side at a single
point of intersection. The music also crosses this boundary freely by
alternating the source of the constant pop soundtrack between the
auditorium sound system and t he onstage radio. (A Yugoslav
woman I spoke with after the performance emphasized that
American music typically predominates in her homeland much as It
does in this production.) In another instance, He merges the two
styles humorously during one round of the evolving "home Improve-
ment." Clearly dissat isfied with the lack of sunl ight in the room, He
sulks around, then suddenly punches a large hole in the wail. The
"wall" peels away, and He reaches outside to pull in a complete
window unit that magically fits the space he has opened up.
The overall result Is quite striking: Tattoo Theatre succeeds
In dealing unashamedly with love, tell ing a boy-meets-girl story of
two people who are "marked" for l ife by their love. It succeeds in
showing the Irony of violence becoming the sole means of com-
munication for people who, in fact, crave tenderness and love. No
less significantly, Tattoo Theatre also makes a strong statement
tojfor its homeland of Yugoslavia, finding a persuasive means of
communication that transcends language barriers. On June 25, as
the Open Stage/Obala was concluding its New York engagement,
the republics of Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence
from the central government; and now as newspaper headlines
proclaim that ethnic unrest will likely lead to civil war, it is significant
that Tattoo Theatre can speak so strongly to all Yugoslavs. Despite
the oppression by t he national government acknowledged by the
play, the ending with He and She reconciling and symbolically
sprinkling each other with baby powder to simulate advancing mid-
dle age is optomistic, one which suggests the possibility of long-lived
happiness and peace.
So seamless is this production that its one weak scene
stands out noticeably: about midway through the evening, the
audience is instructed to leave the auditorium to view scenes in two
locations--the women upstairs and the men across the street. The
female spectators witness He cheating on his wife for the first time;
the men (so I was told) see She doing the same. While this is proba-
bly intended as a way of further blurring the audience factor and thus
the real/surreal relationship, it is merely disruptive. This tactic is
clearly aimed also at specific gender interpretation. But since both
sexes witness the same scenario, it has little Impact and seemingly
little purpose.
51
52
Tatoo Theatre, Open Stage/Obala, Yugoslavia
directed by Mladen Materic
The Kitchen, New York
My main concern, however, lies with the title, Tattoo Theatre.
In the scant press I saw about this production, It was difficult to
determine which was the name of the theatre company and which
the name of the presentation; even more importantly, having seen
the production, I find the name Tattoo Theatre much less appropriate
than the title Tattoo, which was used in several of its last venues. The
former actually misrepresents the play, suggesting ~ of theatri-
cal activity somehow dealing with body painting. In fact, this produc-
tion goes far beyond that, for the tattoo comes to represent both the
bond joining He and She and the lasting impact of this production on
its audience. Overall, the Open StagejObala was for me the
undiscovered jewel of the second New York International Festival.
Although the cheapest (at $12), and least advertised (I saw not one
review In New York papers) of the NYIFA theatre offerings, Tattoo
Theatre is a beautHul, evocative production, one that will go far In dis-
proving the everlasting assumption that theatre needs elaborate set-
tings and elaborate words to communicate effectively with human
beings on their most basic intellectual and emotional levels.
53
THE STATE THEATRE OF UTHUANIA'S
UNCLEVANYA
Joel Berkowitz
Eimuntas and his troupe from the State Theatre of
Lithuania have found a way to make lethargy, inactivity, and
boredom theatrically compelling. Rather than suppressing the Inertia
that pervades Uncle Vanya, they emphasize it, thereby out-
Chekhoving Chekhov. Once on stage, the actors don't just discuss
their inactivity; paradoxically, they act it out as well. For Instance,
Waffles (Juozas Pocius), perhaps the most lethargic wastrel on the
estate, spends an enormous amount of time on stage In this produc-
tion, and serves as an almost omnipresent witness to Vanya's embar-
rassments. While Yelena (Dalia Storyk) sighs, "There's so much
boredom in this house, Vanya (Vidas Petkevicius) lies ike on
the floor downstage center holding a golden-brown bouquet to his
chest. Perhaps the most remarkable example of staging
of inaction occurs in the final moments of this monumental. nearly
four-hour production. Astrov's (Kostas Smoriginas) final exit is
delayed, and he rests under a bearskin during most of Sonya's (Dalia
Overaite) final speech; all his talk about rushing to leave, like his
previous resolution to stop drinking, is nothing but talk.
Nekroius uses pantomime effectively throughout the pro-
duction. In fact, the play opens with an extended pantomime of
Astrov treating Waffles with a series of folk remedies, and he later
subjects Vanya to the process of "cupping". Astrov's status as a man
of science is further undercut in his speeches about the erosion of
the forests. For as authoritative as his description of the area may
sound, the maps he uses to illustrate his discussion are the size of
postage stamps, and he holds them up with a pair of tweezers. The
anti-climax of the second act, when Sonya returns with the dis-
appointing news that she and Yelena are not allowed to play the
piano, is here elaborated upon by the two women performing an
elegant, lugubrious pas de deux.
The company endows the production with a physicality that
often veers toward farce. To Chekhov's cast-list Nekroius has
added three comic servants, who glide onstage in their felt slippers
and perform knockabout interludes accompanied by a sprightly leit-
motif as they carry out scene changes. It is as if the Marx Brothers,
having spent a night In the Ukraine, are doomed to sojourn there
indefinitely. Serebryakov's (VIadas Bogdanas) distinguishing physi-
cal trait is his bizarre walk; he leans on his cane at a forty-five degree
angle, so that he looks as if he is perpetually walking along the side
of a steep hill. Other characters play off this quirk. For example,
when the professor Ignores Vanya's challenge to a duel, the latter
55
thrusts a dueling pistol in the professor's armpit, thus disturbing his
already precarious balance.
Yet with all of this gesture and pantomime to guide the
audience, some of the most striking scenes in this production-which
most of the audience followed with the aid of simultaneous
translation--were subdued and controlled, distinguished by tight
ensemble acting and the hand of a director whose staging requires
no translation. Perhaps the most breathtaking example is the Act II
exchange between Astrov and Sonya in which she tries to get him to
stop drinking and realizes that he hardly notices her. The actors play
the entire scene on either side of a wicker stand in a downstage
corner, isolated by a square of white light. At various points in the
scene they speak through the bars of the stand, further emphasizing
their spiritual imprisonment. The theme of confinement is echoed
near the end of the play when Astrov and Waffles search Vanya for
the morphine he has stolen, then grab him and trap him under the
chair, upon which Astrov proceeds to sit.
The play ends, as it opened, in silence. When Astrov finally
makes his exit, he goes out on all fours, stili cloaked in his bearskin.
In this bestial form he approaches a large wooded landscape paint-
ing that the servants have brought forward from the upstage center
wall. Astrov crawls to the painting, brushes against it like a dog rub-
bing against his master's leg, and departs. This final image fittingly
sums up all that has come before. The painting--man's imitation of
nature--may be as close as these characters come to appreciating
the natural world; and the bearskin is merely the outer trapping of
beings free from the spiritual confinement of a dying society.
57
I I /
'-! I Ill
58
Tadeusz Kantor's Today Is My Birthday, Cricot 2 Theatre
La MaMa E.T.C., New York
TADEUSZ KANTOR'S TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY
BY CRICOT 2 AT LA MAMA E.T.C.
Edward Dee
On a steamy night in June, Tadeusz Kantor came to New
York City. More specifically, the Cricot 2 Theatre presented Kantor's
last piece, Today Is My Birthday, at the La MaMa E.T.C. as part of the
New York International Festival of the Arts. And even though Kantor
had died six months earlier, his presence was as palpable as H he
had been there. Today Is My Birthday Is a fitting valedictory for
Kantor, a recapitulation of the blending of his art and his life.
The performance has many shifting levels of reality. First
and most Important is the theatre. Today Is My Birthday never lets
the audience forget that they are experiencing a theatrical event.
Second is the setting, what Kantor called my poor room of Imagina-
tion. The room becomes the world where the Proprietor can be an
Individual and not a member of a collective society. His Imagination
is, in Kantor's words, "the only place in this wortd, the wortd ruled by
the ruthless laws of collectivism. banality and society; the only place
in this wortd, where the individual, policed by society, can hide, be a
master of his fate and destiny. "
1
The Proprietor was the role that
Kantor would have played, but now his presence is simply but
powerfully evoked by an empty chair. This room is completely non-
descript, furnished with only a bed, a table, a chair, a door, and a
cast-iron stove with its pipe. The room becomes, however, a very
personal statement because Kantor the artist has filled this decrepit
little room with huge "canvasses on easels. Each of these can-
vasses recreates a painting by placing an actor in it. In the frame
stage left is the Infanta from Velasquez's painting, played by Teresa
Welminska, while on stage right Is the self-portrait of the Proprietor,
played by Andrzej Welmifiski. Upstage center, directly in front of the
door is an empty frame. Scattered around the floor are motionless
people (Kantor's emballages) covered with blankets. And sleeping
in the bed is the actor's shadow, played by Loriano della Rocca.
In Kantor's staging, the Proprietor begins by telling a story,
with the self-portrait aping each gesture until it becomes so agitated
that it falls out of the frame, thus moving one level closer to reality. In
the production at La MaMa, Kantor was replaced by a tape of his
voice made during rehearsal. Without the program notes, it would
have been impossible to understand the reason for the Self-Portrait's
actions.
The Poor Girl Who Is Not There (Marie enters
from upstage. She seems to function as a chorus, commenting but
never acting or being acted upon. Accompanying her, but never
59
leaving the area bounded by the frame, are the Dear Absent Ones:
the Father, the Mother, the Uncle-Musician, and the Priest Smietana
from Wlelopole. As they pose behind the frame, the Cleaning
Woman-Critic, played affectingly by Ludmila Ryba, places a table in
front of the Dear Departed Ones. The painting resolves itself into a
copy of the photograph on the table next to Kantor's chair, where
Kantor's family is celebrating his birthday.
But it Is Impossible for Kantor to keep the ugliness of the
"real" world out of his poor room, and for the rest of the play, the ugli-
ness outside keeps threatening to overwhelm him. As the horrors of
World War I intrude, his emballages become the dead,
unceremoniously dumped Into the center picture frame by the aean-
lng Woman and the Shadow.
Other memories crowd in, people who are Important to him
Including Maria Jarema, the sculptor and painter. He was a member
of the original Cricot before World War II and, with Kantor, founded
Cricot 2. Also living in Kantor's memories is Jonasz Stern, who tells
the story of how he escaped the mass extermination of Jews In Lvov
by failing as the Nazis fired and hiding among the bodies until night.
Kantor evokes places, such as a hospital where the emballages are
brought back to life, and historical events such as the arrest and tor-
ture of Meyerhold (who is played by the Self-Portrait), thus streng-
thening the connection Kantor sees between himself and the Russian
master.
The play ends with the Shadow and the Cleaning Woman
futilely trying to clean the room as the Gravediggers enter and turn
the Poor Room Into a graveyard. Others bring in circus cages con-
taining the people who made Kantor's escape into imagination
necessary: police, generals, bureaucrats, and monarchs.
Individual performances, especially Ludmila Ryba as the
cleaning woman and Zbigniew Bednarczyk as Jonasz Stern, were
handled with extreme skill. There was a theatricality to the produc-
tion, part of Kantor's levels of reality, that always reminded the
audience where they were. The most amazing example was Kantor's
use of identical twins, Waclaw and Leslaw Janicki to portray The
Father and The Individual Who Has Appropriated Father's Face. The
sight of these two tussling inside the picture frame as the Father goes
through a major identity crisis was particularly successful.
The real joy of the production was, however, the amazing
ensemble effect Kantor achieved. The staging of World War I and the
mob scene in Act IV were only precursors to the tremendous explo-
sion of action at the end of the play. The scene was cacophony and
recapitulation, as elements from earlier in the play reappeared, swirl-
Ing louder and faster until the Self-Portrait's words were lost In the
maelstrom. But as chaotic as It seemed, looking closer it was pos-
sible to see that every second had been planned, every moment was
61
under control. When everything came to an abrupt stop, the
audience at La MaMa sat stunned before engulfing the actors in
waves of applause.
There was a sense of sadness about the performance at La
MaMa, much like the wistfulness felt at the changing of the seasons.
In some ways it was like attending a wake where no one can accept
t he finality of death. Everyone was waiting for Kantor to stride into
the room, sit in his chair, and take over. It was also the end of an era
for his actors. Kantor's work was intensely personal. It was created
as an individual statement and refined in rehearsal with the dedicated
performers of Cricot 2. While the company is technically adept
enough to go on functioning, it will be very difficult to replace the
vision. Kantor was the soul of the Cricot 2 Theatre, and it is hard to
imagine the group surviving without him.
NOTE
1
Kantor, Tadeusz, quoted in the program for Aujourd'hui
c'est mon anniversaire, translated by Ludmila Ryba and MichatKol-
blatka. La MaMa E.T.C., 1991. p 6.
CONTRIBUTORS
ARNOLD ARONSON, author of American Set Design, Is chair of the
Division of Theatre at Columbia University.
JOEL BERKOWITZ is associate editor of The Journal of American
Drama and Theatre and is a doctoral candidate at the Gradu-
ate School of the City University of New York.
KATHLEEN CIOFFI Is a doctoral candidate in the Educational
Theatre Program at New York University. She directed the
English Language Theatre Group at Gdansk University in
Gdansk, Poland from 1984 to 1987 and in 1990-91. She has
contributed to The Drama Review and several anthologies.
J. K. CURRY Is an associate professor of theatre at Hunter College.
EDWARD DEE is assistant editor of SEEP and a doctoral candidate
at the Graduate School of the City University of New York.
IMRE GOLDSTEIN is a native of Hungary. He is a director,
playwright and translator. His latest professional work is a
new translation and adaptation of The Dybbuk, which he has
directed for the current season of the North Carolina
Shakespeare Festival.
GREG GRANSDEN Is a Canadian freelance writer based in Moscow.
He regularly contributes articles on culture, politics, and
business to the Los Angeles Times and the Toronto Globe
and Mail.
MARINA J. B. PETER is a doctoral candidate at the University of
Michigan Slavic Department. With a concentration in Soviet
theatre, she Is presently writing a dissertation entitled "In the
Dragon's Shadow: Aesopean Language and Censorship in
the Major Plays of Evgenii Shvarts.
CHRISTINE A. PINKOWICZ is an adjunct in the Hunter College
Theatre Department and the Brooklyn College Continuing
Education Program. She is a doctoral candidate in the
Theatre Program at the Graduate School of the City
University of New York. She is author of Real Estate Crisis in
the New York City Not-For-Profit Theatre.
SCOTT WALTERS is a doctoral candidate at the Graduate School of
the City University of New York.
63
Photo Credits:
"Seagull at the Arena"
Arena Stage
Joan Marcus
"Open StagejObala"
"Uncle Vanya
Alma Law Archives
The Kitchen, New York City
"Today Is My Birthday"
New York International
Festival of the Arts
"Prague Quadrennial"
Arnold Aronson
64
PLAYSCRIPTS IN TRANSLATION SERIES
The following Is a list of publications available through the Center for
Advanced Study In Theatre Arts (CASTA) :
No. 1 Never Part From Your Loved Ones, by Alexander Volodin.
Translated by Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No. 2 I, Mikhail Sergeevich Lunin, by Edvard Radzinsky. Translated
by Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No. 3 An Altar to Himself, by lreneusz lredynski. Translated by
Mlchat'KoblaH<a. $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 lgnatil Dvoretsky. Translated by C. Peter
Goslett. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No. 6 The Ambassador, by Slawomir Mrozek. Translated by
SH!womir 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 R6zewicz. 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, ~ s l a w Taborski, Michal'
KobiaH<a, and Steven Hart. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
Polish and Soviet Theatre Posters. Introduction and Catalog by
Daniel C. Gerould and Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
Polish and Soviet Theatre Posters Volume Two. Introduction and
Catalog by Daniel C. Gerould and Alma H. Law. $5.00
65
($6.00 foreign)
Eastern European Drama and The American Stage. A Symposium
with Janusz Gtt>wacki, 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 CAST A to:
66
CASTA-THEATRE PROGRAM
GRADUATE CENTER OF CUNY
33 WEST 42nd STREET
NEW YORK, N.Y.10036
SUBSCRIPTION POUCY
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. Because of Increased
printing and mailing costs, it Is necessary to raise the annual sub-
scription rate to $10.00 a year ($15.00 foreign). Individual Issues may
be purchased for $4.00.
The subscription year is the calendar year and thus a $10.00
fee Is now due for 1992. 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. Subscriptions
can be ordered by sending a U.S. dollar check or money order made
payable to "CASTA, CUNY Graduate Center" to:
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