volume 13, no.

2
summer 1993
SEEP (ISSN II 1047-0018) Is a publication of the Institute for Con-
temporary Eastern European Drama and Theatre under the auspices
of the Center for Advanced Study In Theatre Arts (CASTA), Graduate
Center, City University of New York. The Institute Office Is Room
1206A, City University Graduate Center, 33 West 42nd Street, New
York, NY 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
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
Patrick Hennedy
Jay Plum
ADVISORY BOARD
Edwin Wilson, Chair
Marvin Carlson
Leo Hecht
Martha W. Coigney
CAST A Publications are supported by generous grants from the Lucille
Lortel Chair in Theatre and the Sidney E. Cohn Chair in Theatre Studies
in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the City University of New York.
Copyright 1993 CAST A
SEEP bas 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
Slavic and East European Performance, Vol. 13, No. 2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Editorial Policy 4
From the Editors 5
~ 6
"Kiev Season: Autumn 1991"
Vreneli Farber 10
"A Glimpse into Anatoly Vasilyev's School of Dramatic Art"
John Freedman 19
"Grotowski at Fifty-Nine:
The Ten-Day Conference at Irvine (August 1992)
and the Six-Day Mini-Course at NYU (February 1993)"
Robert Findlay 23
"An Overview of the Romanian Theatre"
Tudor Petrut 31
PAGES FROM THE PAST
"Grotowski Visits Moscow''
"Mikhail Chekhov's The Castle Awakens"
Mel Gordon
REVIEWS
"MroZek's Tango by the Independent Theatre Co."
35
45
Joel Bassin 48
"Cinema in Transition: Recent Films from
East and Central Europe- Symposium"
David A. Goldfarb 51
Contributors 55
Playscripts in Translation Series 57
Subscription Policy 59
3
EDITORIAL POLICY
Manuscripts in the following categories are solicited: articles of
no more than 2,500 words, performance and ftlm reviews, and
bibliographies. Please bear in mind that aU submissions must concern
themselves either with contemporary materials on Soviet and East
European theatre, drama and ftlm, or with new approaches to older
materials in recently published works, or new performances of older plays.
In other words, we welcome submissions reviewing innovative
performances of Gogol but we cannot use original articles discussing
Gogol as a playwright.
Although we welcome translations of articles and reviews from
foreign publications, we do require copyright release statements.
We will also gladly publish announcements of special events and
anything else which may be of interest to our discipline. AU submissions
are refereed.
All submissions must be typed double-spaced and carefully
proofread. The Chicago Manual of Style should be followed.
Transliterations should follow the Library of Congress system.
Submissions will be evaluated, and authors will be notified after
approximately four weeks.
4
Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol. 13, No. 2
FROM THE EDITORS
In addition to reports on the 1991 season in Kiev by Vreneli
Farber, Anatoly Vasilyev's latest Moscow production as witnessed by John
Freedman, and an overview of Romanian theatre by Tudor Petrut, the
current issue has several special features that focus on two of the
twentieth century's most innovative theatre theoreticians: Mikhail Cbek-
hov and Jerzy Grotowski. Mel Gordon reconstructs a 1931 "mystical
pantomime" production that sheds light on Mikhail Chekhov's work in
France. Robert Findlay's article tells us of Grotowski's most recent ap-
pearance in New York as part of a six-day mini-course at New York
University, and the album of pictures of Grotowski's 1976 visit to Moscow
(from the Alma Law Archives) gives a striking portrait of one of the
greatest modern teachers of theatre.
- Alma Law and Daniel Gerould
5
EVENTS
STAGE PRODUCfiONS
La Mama E.T.C. presented the American premiere of the Yara
Arts Group's Blind Sight, April15 through May 2. The production was
directed by Virlana Tkacz and written by Tkacz, Wanda Phipps, and
Watoku Ueno.
Pittsburgh's City Theatre produced Marie Wino's translation of
Vaclav Havel's Temptation, April16 through May 16.
On April 18 and May 16, storyteller /puppeteer Vit o f e j ~
performed the traditional Czech folktales, Salt or Gold and Kocha and the
Devil, as well as stories by Josef Capek at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in
New York.
The Miranda Theatre Company in New York produced Valentina
Fratti's production of Prostitutki, Francesca Bartellini's adaptation of
Vladimir Kunin's lntergirl, May 5-16.
Ludmila Petrushevskaya's Love made its New York premiere as
part of an evening of one-acts staged by Hopscotch Theatre Productions
and Tribeca Lab, May 20-21. The production was directed by Mandy
Mishell.
Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margarita, interpreted for the
theatre by Jean-Claude van Itallie, ran from June 3 to 13 at New York's
Theatre for the New City, Joyce and Seward Johnson Theatre. David
Willinger directed.
David Fishelson has adapted and directed Fyodor Dostoyevsky's
The Idiot for the Jean Cocteau Repertory Company at the Bowery Lane
Theatre, New York. The show, which was revived after the Cocteau's
regular season due to audience interest, closed on June 6.
GOH Productions presented The Seagull by Anton Chekhov,
constructed and performed by Hanne Tierney "(with lights, strings, satin,
lace, and music)." The production took place at the Flynn Gallery in
New York City from June 4 to 13.
6
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No.2
Another production of Chekhov's The Seagull ran at Theatre-
Studio in New York City through June 20, directed by A. M. Raychel.
Six Apparitions of Lenin Appear on the Pi011o; Vladimir
Mayakovsky, a Futurist Ballad Opera, by Kenneth Berkowitz, runs from
June 3 to July 3 at the Tribeca Lab in New York City. Reservation for
the Thursday through Saturday performances can be ordered by calling
(212) 966-9371.
As part of its upcoming season, the Guthrie Theater in
Minneapolis will produce Too Clever by Half, by Aleksandr Ostrovsky.
The production opens July 14 and runs in repertory through the summer.
FILM
New York's Film Forum presented the American premiere of
Oleg Kovalov's Garden of Scorpions, March 17-30. The filin critically
examines the former Soviet system through a juxtaposition of sequences
from Rasumny's Corporal Kotschetkov's Case--a Soviet ftlm from the
1950s about a young soldier in love who discovers capitalist spies hiding
under beds and in the samovar--with scenes from Potemkin, Storm Over
Asia, The Man with the Movie Camera, The End of St. Petersburg, and
thirty other Soviet films virtually unknown in the West.
"Cinema in Transition: A Festival of Recent Films from East
and Central Europe" held at the New School, April17-29, was the frrst
major festival of East and Central European filins in the United States
since the collapse of the Iron Curtain. Feature ft.lms presented as part of
the festival included: Docho Bodjakov's The Well (Bulgaria, 1990); loan
Carmazan's The Woodcutters and The House from the Dream (Romania,
1984 and 1992); Kujtim Cashku's The Ballad of Kurbin (Albania, 1989);
Mircea Daneliuc's The Conjugal Bed (Romania, 1993); Pawel Dejczer's
300 Miles to Heaven (Poland, 1989); Bogdan Dumitrescu's Outback
(Romania, 1991); Robert Glinski's All That Really Matters (Poland, 1992);
Rajko Grlic's Charnga (Croatia, 1991); Ferenc Grunwalsky's A Full Day
(Hungary, 1988); Juraj Jakubisco's It's Better to be Rich 011d Healthy th011
Poor and Ill (Slovakia, 1991); Attila Janisch's Shadow on the Snow
(Hungary, 1991); Srdjan Karanovic's Virgina (Serbia, 1991); Wojciech
Marczewski's Escape from Cinema Liberty (Poland, 1990); Andras Mesz's
Meteo (Hungary, 1990); Radu Nicoara's The South Pole (Romania, 1992);
Wladislaw Pasikowski's Pigs (Poland, 1992); Ivan Rossenov's Stop for
7
Strangers (Bulgaria, 1990); Arpad Sopsits's Video Blues (Hungary, 1992);
Jan Sverak's Elementary School (Czech Republic, 1991), and Istvan
Szabo's Sweet Emma, Dear Bobe (Hungary, 1992).
Four documentaries were also screened, including: Maciej J.
Drygas's Hear My Cry (Poland, 1991); Stere Gulea's University S([l!are
(Romania, 1992); Jana Sevcikova's Piemule (Czech Republic, 1989); and
Pavel Stingl's Albania (Czech Republic, 1992). Student ftlms from
Croatia, Czech Republic, and Hungary were presented as well.
On April 24, a symposium of directors, scholars and critics
discussed the future of East and Central European cinema. Yvette Biro,
Jujtim Cashku, Mircea Daneliuc, Feliks Falk, Robert Glinski, Daniel
Goulding, Rajko Grlic, Andrew Horton, Vojtech Jasny, Srdjan Karanovic,
Antonin J. Liehm, Radu Nicoara, Katherine Portuguese, Jan Sverak, and
Frank Turaj were among the participants. See the review in this issue for
more on the symposium.
The Human Rights Watch Film Festival, held in May at the
Loews Village VII in New York, featured two documentaries from
Eastern Europe: Serbian Epics and A Day in the Death of Sarajevo.
VIDEO
Several East European fLlms have recently become available on
videotape. Kino, who has acquired rights from the International Film
Exchange for various Russian ftlms, has released Sergei Eisenstein's Que
Viva Mexico, Nikita Mikhalkov's Oblomov, Sergei Paradzhanov's Red
Pomegranate and The Legend of Suram Fortress, and Andrei Tarkovsky's
Mirror.
Milestone has also produced a ten-cassette series of Russian
silent fLlms. The fLlms include documentaries, folktales and legends,
Wladislaw Starewicz's puppet animations, and Pyotr Cbardynin's
adaptations of Pushkin. For information, call (212) 865-7449.
OPERA
Insect Comedy: The World We Live In, Martin Kalmanoffs and
Lewis Allan:s new opera based on a play by Karel and Josef Capek,
received its world premiere with the Center for Contemporary Opera's
production in New York, May 20-23. Richard Marshall directed. Special
8
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No.2
guests at the opening night included Czech Ambassador Zantovsky and
ftlm producer Milos Forman.
REPORT
Valentin Kuzmenko-Delinde, whose productions include Kuprin's
The Pit at the Moscow Art Theatre, visited the Department of Theatre at
SUNY Stony Brook for six weeks. During March and April, he gave talks
and workshops focusing on current interpretations and performance
usages of Stanislavsky. Farley Richmond, chair of the theatre department,
hopes to invite Kuzmenko-Delinde for a return visit in 1994. Principal
plans involve staging a vaudeville adaptation of Chekhov's short stories
prepared by Nicholas Rzhevsky.
-compiled by Jay Plum and Patrick Hennedy
9
KIEV SEASON: AUTUMN 1991
Vreoeli Farber
Locals say that many fewer people are going to the theatre these
days than ten years ago. The drama of daily life and foreign ftlms viewed
on VCRs are cited as two reasons for this phenomenon. Be that as it
may, I found the theatrical offerings in Kiev in the fall of 1991 to be
varied and engaging. I will comment on the season as a whole but focus
my attention on those productions I saw, which include some of the most
interesting ones.
The productions fell into four categories: Ukrainian plays,
Russian plays, East European plays, and Western plays. If one does not
count productions by studio and "fringe" theatre, there were as many
Ukrainian works staged as in the other three categories combined.
Kievans were clearly expanding the attention given to Ukrainian culture
and to the Ukrainian language! I did not manage to see any ofthe
Ukrainian dramas, but I did see two Ukrainian operas, The Zaporozh
Cossack Beyond the Danube (Zaporozhets za Dunaem) by Semen Gulak-
Artemovskii and Taras Bulba by Nikolai Lysenko (based on Nikolai
Gogol's work of the same title). Both contain the themes of Ukrainian
nationalism and independence and apparently the topical nature of these
themes explains the popularity of the productions.
If Ukrainian nationalism constituted the appeal of the Ukrainian
works performed in Kiev, then striking staging, social satire, and topical
political allusions were what drew audiences to the Russian, East
European, and Western plays.
With the exception of Alexei Pisemsky's The Predators
(Khishchniki) and The Murderer (Ubijtsa) based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's
Crime and Punishment/ all the Russian plays staged were from the Soviet
period, most of them dating from the seventies and eighties. Of the three
pre-1970 works, Nikolai Erdman's The Suicide (Samoubijtsa, 1928),
Vladimir Nabokov's The Event (Sobytie, 1938), and Andrei Amalrik's
East-West: A Dialogue in Suzda/ (Vostok-Zapad: dialog vedushchijsia v
Suzda/i, 1963), produced in Kiev under the title Captivated by You
(Plennenyi toboiu ), I saw only the first.
The production of The Suicide at the Lesia Ukrainka Russian
Dramatic Theatre directed by G. V. Tsarev brought out the farcical
humor and the absurdist atmosphere of the play without losing ' the
undertone of despair. But the despair was conveyed with poignancy
rather than bitterness. A particularly effective moment in the production
was the scene in which Podsekalnikov, having signed for the delivery of
10
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No.2
his own funeral wreaths and cofftn, sets about trying to commit suicide.
The broad humor of his efforts shift to pathos when, shortly afterwards,
he wonders aloud what is life and what is man, only to discover that his
listener is a deaf-mute. The deaf-mute, a minor character adding a
comical note to the original play, performed a more serious and symbolic
function in this staging. No one really hears Podsekalnikov's plea and
dearly nobody has a solution to offer him.
Podsekalnikov's situation and the theme of dealing with hard
times, together with the issue of no clear solutions, had much
contemporary relevance. In fact, the topicality of the play, with allusions
referring simultaneously to the NEP period and to the present, and with
lines about the Revolution that had a double meaning in light of current
events, contributed significantly to the forcefulness of the production.
Similarly, the interesting staging contributed to the success of the show.
Along the backstage wall were cupboards, shelves, and two doors. On a
slightly raised platform occupying the entire center stage was a large
rectangular box, open on both the backstage and downstage sides. The
floor of the box was set with the furniture of the Podsekalnikovs's
bedroom (downstage represented the living room), and from the ceiling
bung the table and chairs used in the banquet scene in Act II. When the
time came to change scenes, the whole box revolved 180 degrees on a
horizontal axis, resulting in the chairs and table standing upright and the
bed, vanity table, mirror, and rubber plant hanging from the ceiling. This
staging made for an effective fmale: the crowd that bad assembled for
Podsekalnikov's funeral rushed offstage at the news of an actual suicide
and Podsekalnikov was left alone downstage in a spotlight, while his life
(the bedroom) and "death" (the banquet) revolved several times before
his stunned gaze.
The post-1970 Russian plays produced in Kiev included Ludmila
Petrushevskaya's Cinzano and Smimova's Birthday (Den' rozhdeniia
Smimovoi, 1978), Edvard Radzinsky's Let's Kill the Man (Ub'em
muzhchinu, 1986), Aleksandr Galin's Stars in the Morning Sky (Zvezdy na
utrennem nebe, 1987), Venedikt Erofeev's Moscow-Petushki (Moskva-
Petushki, 1989), and Arkadii and Boris Strugatsky's "Jews of the City of
Peter . .. "or Sad Conversations by Candlelight ("Zhidi goroda Pitera ... "
iii neveselye besedy pri svechakh, 1991),
3
three of which I saw.
Petrushevskaya's plays were staged in a small cafe on Andrew's
Descent (Andreevsky spusk), the picturesque street leading from St.
Andrew's Church down to the Podol section of Kiev. Dotted with a
number of small theatres, this street appears to be the center of Kiev's
"fringe" theatre! Cinzano, which offers a glimpse of the personal lives
of a group of men at a drinking party, was performed in a semi-circular
11
area of the cafe where chairs and tables had been moved away from the
wall. During intermission the audience walked up a narrow staircase to
the second floor where a small room accommodating about ftfty people
and a tiny, slightly raised stage was situated. This is where Smimova's
Birthday, the companion to Cinzano, was played. The intimacy of the
staging suited the subject matter of the play, which concerns the personal
lives of three women. Although the acting was sometimes forced and
amateurish, the production nevertheless was moving. The two Russian
women with me felt that it spoke to the reality of their lives, and one of
them said she found it bard to imagine families that were unlike those
portrayed in the play where the men don't drink and members respect
one another.
Erofeev's Moscow-Petushki, like Petrushevskaia's plays, was put
on in a small theatre with an unusual ambiance. The "Constellation"
(Suzir'ia) is housed in a building constructed during the first decade of
this century by Mikhail Rodzianko, president of the Duma. Before the
play began, a guide assembled the audience in one of the two second-
floor rooms that served as a lobby and recounted the history of the
building. She led the way into the second room and asked us to imagine
ourselves in the Kursk train station in Moscow. Her narrations gradually
gave way to a conversation among the actors who had appeared unnoticed
in our midst. After this prologue, the doors to the theatre, really just a
third large room with a miniature stage at one end, opened and we took
our unassigned seats.
The play involves a number of themes successfully woven
together into an interesting drama. The dominant theme is alcoholism.
5
Everyone in the play drinks: the hero, the men who gratuitously stab him
to death in the train station, the angels who greet him in the afterlife,
even a young boy who recites Blok but drinks because his grandfather
does (and one wonders therefore what good Blok is to him). The play
makes clear that the drinking stems from work and lives that are not
satisfying, the ultimate cause of which is the Soviet regime. The waste
that results from alcoholism is represented by the hero's failing to attain
any of his goals, not least of which is meeting the woman he loves, a
prostitute waiting for him at Petushki. In the end, she spurns him
because be is an alcoholic. Parallel to the theme of alcoholism is that of
the hero's search for himself, a search that ends in failure.
A third theme is nineteenth-century Russian literature and music.
A distorted picture of this culture emerges from the mouths of the
drunks, not only because of their intoxication, but also because of the way
it has traditionally been taught in the schools under Communism: some
areas revealed, others withheld. In one quite humorous scene the drunlcs
12
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No.2
give an account of how all the great writers of the nineteenth century
drank. For example, they claim that before his death, Chekhov said, "Ich
sterbe," and then asked for champagne.
The play contains a satire of Soviet history from Lenin's "April
Theses" to the coup of 1991 and the cant that has accompanied that
history. It contains many allusions to everyday reality, such as "cocktails"
made from eau de toilette, shampoo, and other products containing
alcohol, and a number of absurdist sequences. All in all, Moscow-
Petushki presents a grim picture of contemporary society in Russia.
The four man, one woman cast performed with minimal props,
costumes, and furniture (including a painter's ladder), using both the
miniature stage that had a painted backdrop and the floor area in front
of it. The lighting was simple and there was no music. Nevertheless the
intimate setting and the intensity of the acting made for a successful
performance.
Equally successful, but produced with all the trappings of
conventional theatre (a proscenium stage, music and sound effects,
complex lighting, realistic sets, props, and costumes) was the Strugatskys'
"Jews of the City of Peter . . . ", which Kievans described as having
"predicted" the August coup.
The cast of characters consists of a well-off professional, his wife,
their two sons, the younger son's co-worker, two old family friends (a
KGB informer and a Jew), a janitor, and a mystery man. The play
revolves around the characters' receiving orders to gather at specific
places in St. Petersburg at specific times on January 12. The orders vary
according to the characters who receive them. The first one, delivered by
the mystery man during a temporary electrical blackout, is addressed to
"All rich men of the city of Peter" and instructs the recipient to bring all
his documents to the meeting place and to leave his valuables and foreign
currency at home. The Jew's order reads "Yids of the city of Peter."
The older son, who has been married and divorced several times, receives
an order addressed to "Profligates of the city of Peter." When the father
calls a friend on the Central Committee for clarification and help in
dealing with this bizarre incident, he learns that his friend has also
received an order. Even the KGB informer is not immune. His order is
directed to "Informers of the city of Peter," and his boss's remark not to
worry because everything is under control does not reassure him. The
janitor's order reads "All bribe-takers of the city of Peter." In other
words, all layers of society are affected by this event, which in its
ominousness and lack of information recalled for audiences of late 1991
the August putsch. But these are associations that the play evokes in
spite of itself. Associations that are deliberate are those that occur
13
between the present and WWII. The Jew recalls what happened in Kiev
during the war: orders issued for certain persons to convene at specified
places at designated times, and then Babi Yar. When the father turns on
the radio and hears only the sound of a metronome, he is reminded of
the news blackout during the blockade of Leningrad.
The play presents the conflict of generations in an interesting
fashion. Initially the younger son and his friend fit the stereotypical
image of the younger generation- fondness for rock music and carefree
behavior beyond the comprehension of adults-but the conflict takes on
a more serious character when they condemn the older generation for its
compliance with the strange orders. Such obedience is explained as the
result of the adults having lived through the Stalin era. But the fmal
verdict on the older generation is that they all made their choices, namely
compromises with the system,
6
long before these mysterious orders
appeared. The father responds that the orders are not really a call-up to
his generation, which is already shaped by the past, but rather to the
younger generation. How will they respond to this crisis? They have
been shown to be gratuitously harsh and violent, schooling themselves to
eschew pity. The play ends with the KGB informer brandishing slips
canceling the orders and rejoicing, "I knew this couldn't happen!" But
questions remain hanging in the air: "Can we be sure?" and "What are
we to expect from the younger generation, given the way they are?"
These Russian plays aimed at provoking thought and engaged in
social criticism. Audiences were drawn to them for these reasons. Their
staging was creative and made for interesting theatre.
The strongest aspect of the East European and Western plays
was their staging and the performances by some of the actors. I am
generalizing on the basis of three productions: Branislav D. m i ~ s UJEt
(an acronym for Association of Yugoslav Emancipated Women, in
Russian, OBEZH, 1935); Jean Cocteau's The Holy Tenvrs (Les Monstres
sacrees, 1940); and Leonard Bernstein's Candide (1974V
N u ~ i ~ s comedy is a spoof on women's organizations that
supposedly engage in welfare activities yet accomplish nothing. The
members are really more interested in one another's private lives. Their
involvement in the organization causes them to neglect their families.
Although this neglect is presented humorously, and husbands too are
satirized, there is nevertheless a dark note in the play. Parents' lack of
involvement in the lives of their children has serious consequences: out -of-
wedlock pregnancy and criminal activity. This is what happens to.the
children of the OBEZH president. However, even when she realizes the
damage her neglect has caused, she refuses to abandon OBEZH. One
sympathizes with her desire to be liberated from the demands of the
14
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No.2
home, but not with her pointless activities and the effect they have on her
family. The production itself was full of energy and made use of comic
exaggeration both in acting and costuming, as well as including some
cabaret devices.
The same elements of energy and exaggeration were to be found
in the staging of Bernstein's Candide, directed by V. Petrov. Theatrically,
there was much to recommend the production. For example, Nikolai
Epov designed a single set, Voltaire's study, that was used very effectively
to create numerous settings. Bookcases opening to permit actors to enter
and exit, a twelve foot high balcony running the length of the bookshelves
and reached by a wide staircase, an interesting lighting plan involving the
use of spotlights, colored lights, and other effects (sound, dry ice, etc.)
combined to make this variety possible. Similarly, the exaggerated
eighteenth-century costumes were generally successful, as were several
carefully choreographed sequences. But the show had no depth. The
entire emphasis was on comic effect; sometimes it was successful,
sometimes it was simply slapstick sexual humor that was not genuinely
funny. Perhaps the remark of one theatre specialist best sums up the
appeal of the production: "Of course for you (Americans] this kind of
show is nothing new, but for us it's still a novelty."
By far the most theatrically interesting production I saw was
Cocteau's Les Monstres sacrees which reproduced Moscow director
Roman Viktuik's staging of the work. The story line concerns the love
relationship between a middle-aged actor and actress, but the overall
theme is the nature of the theatrical experience. The staging suited this
theme beautifully. The stage remained dark except for shifting pools of
bright light where action took place and for the subdued illumination of
a large Art Nouveau panel, slightly left of center stage. Part of the panel
was transparent so that shadows were visible behind it. In the middle was
a tall, revolving door designed in the Art Nouveau style. The characters
made entries through the door as well as from the darkness on both sides
of the panel. The action shifted sharply and so too did the pools of light.
The only pieces of furniture were a metal bent-wood style rocker and two
rectangular benches. The black and white costumes against the
background of the silver furniture and the panel created a Beardsley look
that was very striking. The music combined Russian romances and
selections from the soundtrack of the fllm, A Man and a Woman.
The stylized acting of the opening scenes was static, but perhaps
this was deliberate in order to provide a contrast with the mime added to
the play by Viktiuk. The mime frequently flitted from one part of the
stage to another and occasionally stood behind actors to "frame" them
with his sleeves that swept the floor. The sleeves formed part of a
15
garment that covered his shoulders but revealed his torso. He wore black
tights and a black Pierrot -style head covering and was barefoot. In
Cocteau's text there is no "angel Ertebiz," who appears to be an
embodiment of the spirit of theatre, but he was a theatrically effective
addition to the cast.
The o o ~ distancing effect of Viktiuk's staging formed a
successful counterpoint to the human warmth between the couple and the
emotional gamut they travel in the course of the play.
To recapitulate: in the fall of 1991, Ukrainian works received
much attention and their appeal was grounded in nationalism. Striking
staging, social satire, and topical political allusions constituted the
attraction of the Russian, East European and Western plays produced.
The Russian dramas, most dating from the past two decades, allowed for
comment on social problems such as alcoholism, broken families, and
moral issues such as compromise and spiritual bankruptcy. The East
European and Western plays dealt also with social questions, but what
was most successful in these shows was their staging.
16
Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol. 13, No. 2
NOTES
1
Ukrainian authors represented at the Franko Ukrainian
Dramatic Theatre were Iurii Ribchinskii and Georgii Tatarchenko, OJga
Kobilianska, Vasilii Simonenko, Ivan Franko, Iurii Mikhajlik, and Ivan
Kotliarevskii. Foreigners translated into Ukrainian were Claude Magnier,
Tirso de Molina, Friedrich Diirrenmatt, Giulio Scarnicci, and Renzo
Tarabusi. Likewise, Grigorii Gorin's Tevye-Tevel (based on stories by
Sholom Aleichem) and Mikhail Roshchin's Master and Margarita (based
on Mikhail Bulgakov's novel of the same title) were produced in
Ukrainian.
2
Using the staging of Moscow director Mark Rozovsky, Valerij
Patsunov, the director-producer at the "Golden Gates" Theatre (Teatr
"Zolotye created his own interpretation of the dramatization.
1'his play was published in Zavtra (Tomorrow), No. 2 (1991),
226-240.
4
It was also on Andreevsky spusk that I watched a rehearsal of
Alexander Pushkin's MoUllt and Salieri by the Kiev Theatre on Podol
(Kievskii teatr na Podole) . Mozart wore plaid bermuda shorts and a
Hawaiian shirt; Salieri was dressed in a black trenchcoat. My reaction
was that this production might work if given many more hours of
rehearsal. Yet the troupe was on its way to London within two days in
order to perform the play!
5
1t is interesting to note that Moscow-Petushki was first published
in the journal Sobriety and Culture (Trezvost' i kul'tura), No. 12 (1988),
Nos. 1-3 (1989).
mother did not receive an order because she consistently
refused to compromise herself by cooperating with the KGB.
7
Bernstein's original Candide, produced in 1965 with the book by
Lillian Hellman, did not receive acclaim, but the revised version in 1974,
with the book by Hugh Callingham Wheeler, enjoyed success. It is this
latter version that was used in Kiev.
Other foreign works performed in Kiev in the fall of 1991 were
The Insect Play (Ze fivota hmyzll, 1921) by Karel Capek; Hot and Cold or
the Idea of Mister Dom (Chaud et froid ou L'idee de Monsieur Dom, 1934)
by Fernand Crommelynck; The Tale About the Soldier and the Snake
(Skazka pro so/data i zmeiu, 1958) by Tamara Grigorevna Gabbe; Memoir
17
(Smekh langusty in Kiev) (1978) by Canadian John Murrell; Variation on
a Theme (Dama bez kamelii in Kiev) (1958) by Terence Rattigan; and
Desire Under the Elms (1924) by Eugene O'Neill. Although I did not see
tapek's play, I cannot help think that as with the Strugatskys' play, the
audience, with the August coup fresh in their minds, found contemporary
relevance in tapek's warning that a terrible end awaits a populace that
fails to rise against its oppressors.
18
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No.2
A GLIMPSE INTO ANATOLY VASILYEV'S
SCHOOL OF DRAMATIC ART
John Freedman
After getting mixed reviews for his production of Mikhail
Lermontov's The Masquerade at the in June 1992,
Anatoly Vasilyev moved back to his School of Dramatic Art in Moscow
to continue work on a long-term project: his adaptation of Thomas
Mann's Joseph and His Brothers. In December, Vasilyev gave five semi-
public showings, gaining admission to which proved as dramatic as the
performances themselves. For days in advance, administrators at the
School either denied knowledge of the upcoming showings, claimed the
caller bad reached a wrong number, or merely bung up the phone. At
the door, attempts were made to weed out journalists and critics. Those
who belonged to Vasilyev's inner circle, or who were especially stubborn,
had the opportunity to see six random scenes from Joseph as well as the
new theatre Vasilyev is constructing in the old Uranus movie house on
Sretenka Street. Except for a penciled announcement on the exterior
that a theatre-studio was looking for a doorman, nothing gave any
indication that this location was anything but another of Moscow's
countless abandoned buildings.
After passing through the future theatre's run-down entryway and
foyers, spectators enter what begs to be called a clean, well-lighted place.
The floor consists of well-lacquered white pine planks, and the walls are
covered in canvas painted off-white. A narrow three-story, U-shaped
structure forms the "auditorium" and appears to be something of a light-
hearted parody of traditional large theatres. It is essentially a
construction of scaffolding consisting of bright red pipes with facings
covered in the same off-white canvas that adorns the walls. The top level
is reserved for technicians, while the slightly-elevated floor and seepnd
levels each have room only for one row of seats. It appears that
maximum seating is about sixty. Spectators on the floor level are
separated from the acting space by a low, stately, white-columned fence.
The second level hangs over the first and there is a narrow slit in the
floor that allows spectators to peer straight down to glimpse what is going
on below. The acting space, at least for Joseph, was the floor area
encompassed by the scaffolding. A medium-sized, elevated stage extends
from the open end of the scaffolding to the back wall. Financing for the
theatre comes exclusively from money Vasilyev has earned while working
in the West.
19
The showing began with an extended prelude. Eleven men and
twelve women walked out and formed a circle. They beautifully sang six
hymns, after each of which they made the sign of the cross and bowed.
V asilyev himself stood in an aperture in the center of the floor level
where he too crossed himself repeatedly and occasionally wept. Carefully,
even demonstratively, he removed a handkerchief from his pocket,
unfolded it, and dried his eyes. Following the singing of the final hymn,
the actors took seats positioned in single ftle in front of the audience.
V asilyev also seated himself in the aperture before a small table on which
the only object was a Bible. A spotlight positioned behind him cast his
long shadow across the acting space. (It was turned off only after the
intermission.) An actress then stepped up to one of the three podiums
and began reading from Genesis in a chanting voice, the other actors
following the text in their own copies of the Bible. As the "cantor"
intoned the lines, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image,' " the
actors began singing another hymn. Upon the completion of the reading,
all made the sign of the cross and the actress took her seat. A second
actress stepped up to another podium and began reading further. Only
then did the two actors portraying Joseph and Jacob fmally take positions
in front of the stage and begin performing the first scene, "By the Well."
The readings from Genesis continued uninterrupted throughout
all six scenes and frequently a third layer of voices was added as hymns
were sung. As each actor fmished his or her reading, or as the singing
came to an end, all but those performing crossed themselves and bowed.
Besides "By the Well," the other segments performed were "The
Unclean Beast," "The Pursuit," "To the Master," "Husband and Wife,''
and "Potiphar." All involved two characters except "The Pursuit,'' which
involved three. The actors did little more than assume positions in front
of the stage and deliver their lines. From time to time they sat on one of
two chairs, but more often they stood motionlessly or walked around
slowly. Their "gestures" were limited to facial expressions, emotional
speech, and a few repetitive, stylized motions of the fingers, hands, and
arms. The text was merely delivered in the form of engaged Socratic
dialogues. Some of the actors seemed nervous or unsure of themselves;
their hands occasionally trembled and they frequently stumbled over the
text. There was no action or interaction to speak of. Only once during
the scene "Husband and Wife" did the actor and actress embrace. There
were no props aside from the two chairs and some lights depicting stars
that hung in a net beneath the ceiling during the performance of "By the
Well."
Upon the conclusion of the sixth scene, an actor stepped up to
the one podium that was located on the elevated stage. There, as the
20
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No. 2
seated actors sang a hymn, he continued the Bible reading. After he
fmished, all made the sign of the cross, stood, and left silently.
While it would be improper to draw any broad conclusions based
on these exercises that were clearly intended for a select audience, it is
possible to make a few general observations. The most obvious is that
V asilyev continues to grow increasingly uncomfortable with the notion of
"traditional theatre." By having his actors perform exclusively on a space
in front of an empty stage-reserving that stage only for the reading of
the Bible- he seems to have signaled either that they have already
abandoned the traditional stage or, on the contrary, that they are not yet
ready to mount it. Moreover, the meticulous conducting of what amounts
to a staged religious service throughout the performance implies the
director's doubt that theatrical devices alone are capable of expressing
satisfactorily what he wishes to say. On the other hand, Vasilyev himself
has not yet rejected theatre altogether. The careful positioning of a
spotlight that casts his shadow over his actors and the methodical
handling of the handkerchief as be dries his teary eyes while standing at
the rim of the acting space are clear signs of that. The clever
configuration of his new performing space also implies a healthy dose of
"playing at theatre."
Perhaps V asilyev's rancorous break with the masterful actors who
helped make his reputation left him more alone than be knows. The new
students he is trying to form outside the traditional educational theatre
system are better at imitating their teacher's "terrible, swift" aura than
creating convincing performances. Most of the men sport the same long,
black hair, the same flowing beards, and the same scowling looks that
have made Vasilyev's image famous. Even the women seem to have
adopted the "Vasilyev look." What appears to be lacking are strong
creative personalities who might enter into a fruitful dialogue with a man
of vision and talent. At any rate, Vasilyev's "school" presently resembles
a hermetic spiritual sect as much as an environment for developing the
dramatic art.
Vasilyev has long been at least one step ahead of his contempo-
raries. Perhaps he is still out in the lead. Whether that is true or not
may become more evident when Joseph and His Brothers is completed?
21
NOTES
1
I attended the first showing on December 24, 1992. The final
two were held at the old location on Vorovsky Street.
2
For more information about Vasilyev, see Lurana Donnels
O'Malley, "Anatoly Vasilyev and PirandeUo's Six Characters: Mixing It
Up," SEEP 9 (Fall 1989): 67-69.
22
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No. 2
GROTOWSKI AT FIFIY-NINE:
THE TEN-DAY CONFERENCE AT IRVINE (AUGUST 1992)
AND THE SIX-DAY MINI-COURSE AT NYU (FEBRUARY 1993)
Robert Findlay
The mlDl-course entitled "Jerzy Grotowski: The Theatrical
Period," which I arranged with the help of many others at New York
University, '12-27 February 1993, first began to take form last summer in
Irvine, California. I had been invited by Grotowski through Stephen
Barker, chair of the theatre program at the University of California,
Irvine, to attend a very small ten-day conference, 10-19 August. There
were demonstrations and discussions of student work, long evening
sessions of videotapes of Grotowski's work, and discussions with him in
a guest room at the Raddison Hotel near the Orange County (John
Wayne) Airport.
I say "a very small . .. conference" because there were only a
few of us: Jerzy Grotowski, James Slowiak (University of Akron, who had
worked extensively with Grotowski as a student at Irvine in the mid-1980s
and later with him at the Centro di Lavoro di Jerzy Grotowski in
Pontedera, Italy), Lisa Wolford (doctoral student in performance studies
at Northwestern University, who had worked with Slowiak at both Irvine
and Akron- and also with Grotowski at Irvine-and had written about
it
1
), Masoud Saidpour (graduate student at both Irvine and Akron from
Iran who had worked with Grotowski, Slowiak, and Wolford over a
number of years), Yi-song Fan (specialist and performer in Beijing Opera,
who had never met Grotowski but who had translated into Chinese parts
of an article by Halina Filipowicz and me on the closing of the Teatr
Laboratorium
2
), occasional visitor Stephen Barker (who had procured the
necessary funds from UC-Irvine to bring about this whole conference),
and myself.
What follows here is a personal account, open to correction and
perhaps even to a multiplicity of interpretations. Grotowski's and my
conversations over many dinners, walking in the streets of New York,
Irvine, and Long Beach, or talking in Andre and Chiquita Gregory>s
apartment in New York (when they weren't there) have always been
direct and face-to-face. I've never taken notes in his presence or used a
recording device, since it would break the spell of conversation if I
seemed to be "interviewing'' him. But always, in every encounter either
with him or members of the Teatr Laboratorium, I've gone swiftly hQme
to wherever I was staying (in Wroclaw, Poland; Milan, Italy; New York;
Irvine; and even my own home in Lawrence, Kansas) and taken many
23
notes. Grotowski has always believed that if one takes notes at the
moment, one is not really listening or participating.
In all our "meetings" over the years, I've always observed how
supremely quick and agile his mind is. Despite his recent illness,
Grotowski continues to be very charismatic, energetic, and animated in his
conversation. He is always precisely clear, though he frequently speaks
in metaphors and symbols, and he is always ironic: "Bob, you must
understand that everything I say is ironic," he said to me in a restaurant
last summer. At the time he was questioning me about what I had
written about him in 1986--reporting what he had said to me in New
York on the day that the Teatr Laboratorium officially d.isbanded -(31
August 1984). "'The example of Christ, as a living human being only, is
very important to me.' And then, jokingly, not wistful or self-indulgent,
but ironic, smiling, laughing almost, self-deprecatory, telling a funny story:
'Jesus Christ had only three years; I had twenty-three with the
Laboratorium.' "
3
Eight years ago in Long Beach at an all-night restaurant, where
he and I drank diet Cokes until 4:00 a.m. and talked about, among many
other things, visionary experiences and my brother Bill's "calling" to
become a Presbyterian minister, Grotowski made a distinction between
"the priests" (the followers) and "the visionaries" (those who really make
a difference). That night he had alluded many times to St. John of the
Cross, the Spanish sixteenth-century mystic poet usually associated with
St. Teresa and the reform of the Carmelite order. In paintings, John is
usually pictured surrounded by the books be has written. Thus, just as
Grotowski's theatrical work metaphorically and often blasphemously
borrowed from Christian imagery (in Faustus, The Constant Prince, and
Apocalypsis cum figuris), so too does his conversation constantly allude to
such images. Interestingly, Grotowski said last summer that his mother
(Emilia Grotowska, 1897-1978) had been a Muslim.
Although Grotowski sometimes has requested to see articles that
are written about him before they are published in order to check the
facts, he has never asked to see beforehand what I've written about !Pm.
I am constantly reminded of the request he once made to Polish critic
J6zef Kelera to never quote him, but only to speak about his (Kelera's)
perception of what he (Grotowski) had said. In a sense, that's what I've
always tried to do.
At our last supper together (18 August 1992; the anniversary of
Zbigniew Cynkutis's [1938-87] birthday, which we both acknowledged), I
gave him a copy of the memorial article on Cynkutis I'd written for the
Spring 1987 issue of the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism.$ We
then walked through the woods from the restaurant to the o t e ~ and he
24
Slavic and Ealt European Performance Vol. 13, No.2
25
called out to me, "Bob, you must understand that I am much older than
you, because I am very ill." (Last summer, Grotowski and I celebrated
his fifty-ninth and my sixtieth birthdays together in Irvine; his on 11
August 1933 and mine on 16 August 1932, making me exactly 360 days
older than he.) Though persistently aware of his own mortality, he does
not seem particularly morose. Nonetheless he mourns the loss of so
many of his former colleagues so early in their lives: Antoni Jaholkowski
in 1981, Jacek Zmyslowski in 1982, Stanislaw Scierski in 1983, Zhigniew
Cynkutis in 1987, and Ryszard in 1990-but also his long-time
friend Chiquita Gregory in 1991. When I told him that statistically the
deaths of so many relatively young people seemed improbable, he spoke
ironically of the "myth" among some Poles that the members of the
Laboratorium were "cursed" for their blasphemy.
In the lobby of the Raddison Hotel in Irvine, Grotowski and I
stood looking at a map of the United States. The chair of my department
at Kansas, John Gronbeck-Tedesco, had asked if I could get Grotowski
to come for a time from Italy to Kansas, maybe for a week. Grotowski
liked the idea. He asked, "Where is Kansas?" I showed him Kansas City
on the map, then Lawrence, which is right in the center of the country.
I said, "Some people ask me why I stay at Kansas." But then I said,
pointing to the map, "Look, I can get to New York faster than people in
lA can get to New York; and I can also get to lA faster than anyone in
New York can." Grotowski wanted to come to Kansas in February 1993
partly because years before in spring 1982, I'd brought Cynkutis to Kansas
for a semester, and he'd been a great success with students and faculty in
two acting and directing courses.
Although Grotowski had requested only enough funds to cover
his business-class airfare from Italy and housing expenses (he asked for
no honorarium), it turned out that we at Kansas were unable to raise
sufficient money. The Foundation in New York seemed
willing to help fmance the trip if Grotowski would make an appearance
there, but he said no, that it would be too much. But then another plan
began to evolve among a number of people. Two of my former doctoral
students at Kansas, James Larson and Rob Taylor, now co-directors of
the Educational Theatre Program at NYU, set about to get funds for me
to coordinate and teach a mini-course for six days (thirty hours) for
approximately thirty graduate students from the NYU Educational
Theatre Program, NYU Performance Studies, and three of my own
graduate students from Kansas. Grotowski agreed to come to New York
in late February.
Originally I'd planned to model the mini-course after my Seminar
on Grotowski which I teach every other spring at Kansas. On Tuesday
26
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No.2
afternoons, we discuss the various phases of Grotowski's career: the
period of the political activist, the theatrical period, the forays into
paratheatrical work and "active culture," and eventually the work in
Theatre of Sources, Objective Drama, and, more recently in Pontedera,
Italy, Art as Vehicle or Ritual Arts.
6
On Thursday afternoons we do
paratheatrical work. I bring my clarinet and improvise rhythms and
melodies (sometimes jazz riffs, sometimes folk melodies), and the
students dress comfortably and move and vocalize nonverbally in the
space. We seek to fmd form in much the same way Grotowski once
precisely described this process in 1981 at a benefit at Hunter College to
pay the enormous hospital expenses for Jacek Zmyslowski at Sloan-
Kettering.7
Although Grotowski has long since moved far beyond para-
theatrical work- which he now considers his "amateur period"-1
nonetheless still find value in this kind of work particularly to give a
company of actors in rehearsals a sense of ensemble and individual
creativity. Grotowski's more recent work since Theatre of Sources has
progressed toward greater discipline and more precision. (A videotape
I saw at Irvine last summer of the work of Thomas Richards and the so-
called "downstairs group" in Pontedera, shot by Chiquita Gregory shortly
before her death in 1991, reveals the work now taking place as perhaps
even more precise and disciplined than that of the Teatr Laboratorium
during the 1960s, when the group became internationally famous.)
Ultimately, through Carla Pollastrelli, Grotowski's chief
administrator in Pontedera, and Lisa Wolford, who went to Pontedera in
the interim between Irvine and New York, I was told that Grotowski
wanted no paratheatrical work done in New York. He wanted me to
organize the mini-course around only the theatrical work of the 1960s.
I was stunned. I felt hobbled. I argued with Carla over the phone and
by fax several times, asking, "How is it possible to talk only about
Grotowski's theatrical work without somehow recognizing what has come
after?"
However, after much reflection in trying to work out the details
of the mini-course, I came to see the wisdom of Grotowski's choice.
Unlike most of the younger people now most closely associated with
Grotowski, I had personally known all the members of the theatrical
company- Mirecka, Cieslak, Scierski, Jaholkowski, Molik, Albahaca, and
particularly Cynkutis- and had seen at least some of the theatrical work,
particularly Apocalypsis cum figuris (six times in Milan and Wroclaw). I
gradually came to see that Grotowski had chosen the best focus for me.
Carla told me that J erzy wanted both Andre Gregory and
Margaret Croyden to participate in the mini-course. I thought this was
27
a very good idea and set about with Lisa Wolford arranging their
appearances. For years Andre has been very close to Jerzy (witness the
ftlrn, My Dinner with Andre). Margaret was the frrst one to place
Grotowski in the context of his times in her book, Lunatics, Lovers, and
Poets: The Contemporary Experimental Theatre (1974).
I told Carla by phone of some of the other people I wanted to
bring for appearances at the mini-course. Critic Gerald Rabkin (formerly
of the University of Kansas, since 1970 at Rutgers University) had gone
from Kansas to see Akropolis and The Constant Prince in New York in
1969 and eventually had seen Apoca/ypsis in 1973 in Philadelphia. Stacey
MacFarlane (presently a graduate student at Kansas) had worked with
Cynkutis in Kansas in 1982 and in Wrodaw in 1986 before his death.
There were also two other graduate students from Kansas, Steve
Grossman and Kung-yu Chin. Kevin Kuhlke (NYU Experimental Theatre
Wing) grew up in Lawrence, Kansas and had worked in Poland with
Grotowski in 1980 on Theatre of Sources. Richard Schechner
(Distinguished Professor at NYU Performance Studies) is the editor of
TDR, the journal which since 1965 has devoted more pages to Grotowski
than any other journal. Carla approved most of my choices.
Grotowski had said from the beginning that the group must be
very small. Ultimately, there were approximately sixty people when
Grotowski himself appeared at the Black Box performance space at 32
Washington Place to show and discuss the videotape of The Constant
Prince. The invited guest list of outside scholars and friends of
Grotowski was quite short. Students in the mini-course had been told
they could not bring friends. Grotowski, as usual, was charismatic,
articulate, and precise, but also metaphoric. He talked about his
theatrical work as seeking to extend from where Stanislavsky had left off,
i.e. with the method of physical actions. This was a topic he had
discussed extensively with student actors in Irvine the previous summer.
If the actor has to play boredom, as in Chekhov's The Seagull, Grotowski
said, the actor cannot simply "play'' boredom; the actor must show
boredom. "The actor perhaps paces back and forth, looks out the
window, seeking to fmd something interesting." This distinguishes
physical actions from simply physical activity; in other words, the actor
finds objectives.
The day after Grotowski appeared, James Slowiak flew in from
Akron to show and discuss the videotapes of R yszard Cieslak and Rena
Mirecka separately demonstrating Grotowskian plastiques and other
exercises. Many in the group of graduate students and professors were
particularly stunned by this work, especially that of Mirecka. Gerald
Rabkin commented about the androgyny of Grotowskian techniques. He
28
Slavic and East European Perfonnancc Vol. 13, No.2
talked about the distinctly "masculine" work of i e ~ a k but also about the
distinctly "feminine" work of Mirecka.
After the course closed at 6:00 p.m. Saturday, 27. February,
Grotowski asked me to come to where he'd secretly been staying all week
under the care of Lisa Wolford. He'd already summoned Kansas
graduate student Stacey MacFarlane to discuss her work with Cynkutis in
the year before his death. When I came into the room, Jerzy and Stacey
were talking intently. I sat down quietly and listened. Then, after a few
minutes, I said, "I believe we are talking about our old friend Zbyszek
Cynkutis." Then they both noticed me, and we all talked together. After
a short time Grotowski asked Stacey to leave, and he and I talked for
about forty minutes concerning the mini-course. We were both exhausted
but pleased at what had occurred. When we finished, Grotowski
summoned Lisa and asked her to pour a glass of cognac both for herself
and for me. Then he smiled almost like a sly child and looked at Lisa
and me saying, "Now you're both ftred!" We all laughed.
When I left shortly after, he and I embraced. Despite his
fragility, he held me very tight, almost making me fall off balance. He
kissed me on the right cheek, European style, and I kissed him back. He
smiled. I said, "Take care of yourself." That was it. Then I got Stacey
from Lisa's room, where she, Lisa, and Jim Slowiak had been talking
while I had been conversing with Jerzy, and we took a taxi to our hotel.
There we met our other Kansas colleagues, Steve Grossman and Kung-yu
Chin, and went out for dinner. The Kansas group left for home the next
day. Grotowski stayed in New York for a few more days, then flew to
Paris where he saw a doctor, then on to Pisa, and from there home by car
to Pontedera and the Centro di Lavoro di Jerzy Grotowski, where his
work "beyond theatre" continues.
29
NOTES
1
See Lisa Wolford, "Subjective Reflections on Objective Work:
Grotowski in Irvine," 1M Drama Review T129 (1991): 165-180.
lRobert Findlay and Halina Filipowicz, "Grotowski's Laboratory
Theatre: Dissolution and Diaspora," 1M Drama Review Tl11 ( 1986):
225. (Yi-song Fan's Chinese translation is in IMatre Arts, Shanghai
Drama Institute, no. 2, 1988.)
4
J6zef Kelera, "Grotowski w mowie pozornie zale:inej," Odra 14
(1974): 35-44.
5
Robert Findlay, "Practicerrheory /Practiceffheory: Excerpts from
an Extended Interview/Dialogue with Zbigniew Cynkutis (1938-1987); 26
May 1982, Lawrence, Kansas,'' Journal of Dramatic IMory and Criticism
1 (1987): 145-150.
6
For a clarification of the latest work, see Peter Brook,
"Grotowski, Art as a Vehicle," 1M Drama Review Tl29 (1991): 92-94;
and Zbigniew Osi6ski, "Grotowski Blazes the Trails: From Objective
Drama to Ritual Arts," Trans. Ann Herron and Halina Filipowicz, Ed.
Halina Filipowicz, The Drama Review Tl29 (1991): 95-112.
7
See Robert Findlay, "Grotowski's l'homme pur: Towards
Demystification," Contemporary Russian and Polish Theatre and Drama
(Theatre Perspectives No. 2, 1982): 47-53.
8
See Ferdinando Taviani, "In Memory of Ryszard Cielak," NTQ
8, no. 31 (1992): 249-261 for details about this videotape.
30
Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol. 13, No.2
AN OVERVIEW OF THE ROMANIAN THEATRE
Tudor Petrut
One might ask how and why Romanian theatre was one of the
few means of subterranean anti-communism in a country with harsh
censorship and dictatorial pressure on mass media and the arts. Some
might consider that theatre, with its established reach of intellectuals, an
elite of theatregoers, hadn't the strong popular audience, even in a
country where stage performances were the only alternative to the kind
of entertainment banned from the movie theatres and television. But
Romanian theatre in the capital city of Bucharest and in its regional
companies did attract almost all sold out performances. Others can argue
that stage artists, including actors, directors, and crews, were just a
minority, sometimes regarded with suspicion even by the ordinary peeple
who were fed by rumors from the ideologists that wanted to hurt the
theatrical movement. Some 1000 actors and less than 100 directors were
working in the 45 theatres across Romania. Most of the actors were
involved in film projects, and all the stars of the Romanian movie screen
were established stage actors. Even with the strong censorship imposed
on plays and theatrical concepts, theatre was not on the main agenda of
the Communist Party ideologists and not even often criticized by the late
President Ceallijescu, who had a lot to say about Romanian filin, maybe
because of its larger mass exposure.
Theatre, very traditional and respected, has a long history for the
Romanians. During some of the most important social and political
movements of the 19th century, theatre was a rhetorical tool for the
exposure of progressive ideas that benefited society. And nothing
captured the spirit of the Romanian nation, its moral ups and downs on
the verge of the changing centuries, like the works of the most important
Romanian playwright, Ion Luca Caragiale.
Few remember that in 19U, when cinema was still struggling for
recognition as the seventh art, a group of Romanian stage stars, using
their connections for fmancing it and talent for completing it, filmed a
feature silent ftlm about one of the most important events in the country's
history, the war for independence from the Turks.
Theatre artists were part of the elite of Romanian s<>Qety
between the two World Wars, and theatre itself was well regarded by the
people. An evening at the theatre was a family event, and the opening
nights were an extravaganza of social exposure in Bucharest, a city then
named "the little Paris." Great stage masters were seen in memorable
performances, and Shakespeare, a favorite, was constantly staged.
31
Some Romanian dramatists established themselves as strong
literary voices. Their art gained a new dimension, a deeper, philosophical
meaning with the works of later internationally renowned Lucian Blaga
and Victor Eftimiu, long time artistic director of the National Theatre.
Directing was beginning to be considered a separate but inseparable craft
from stage performance. With the theoretical works of director,
dramatist, and novelist Camil Petrescu, directing became a new creative
dimension in theatre, and directors generated many interesting theatrical
visions that were fulfilled by the craft of great actors. The director in
theatre became important and sought after.
After World War n and the rise of communist propaganda,
theatre had to resp<?nd for almost a decade, sometimes violently
pressured, to the commandments of the new ideology. A new generation
of actors and directors tried to oppose this censorship. It was the courage
of directors like Horea Popescu, followed by a group of young actors
from the National Theatre in Bucharest, that helped break the ideological
chains and remake theatre as an intellectual institution of cultural
prestige.
Having escaped here and there from the vigilant eye of
censorship for reasons historians will surely disclose, theatre boomed in
the seventies, backed by a breeze of liberalism in the Communist Party
and maintained by a deeper break from the Soviets and an apparent turn
to the West by leader Nicolae Theatre makers didn't waste
their time in creating some critically acclaimed performances with very
liberal, anti-communist and anti-dictatorial overtones. But the popular
appeal and the tone of certain performances and plays was not disre-
garded by the hardliners of the regime. Because of the social impact of
theatre and because Romania was strongly encouraged by the Western
democracies, the leaders in Bucharest couldn't respond in the ways of the
Bolshevik ftfties when the undesirables were thrown into hard labor
camps. Instead, they issued passports and visas, a luxury for ordinary
Romanians, and many, especially the directors, were flown out of the
country.
Liviu who once teamed with Edward Albee and Woody
Allen at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, became famous in the
United States as a master director and set designer with intelligent
creativeness. Lucian Pintilie stormed Paris with his powerful imagination,
directing opera and theatre and later winning international acclaim with
two Romanian films that were praised at the Cannes Film Festival, 'Why
Do the Bells Mitica and The Balance. Both directors Lucian
Giurchescu and Radu Penciulescu made the news in Northern Europe
while also pursuing academic careers. Two younger directors with some
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Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No.2
great Romanian performances on their resumes, Adrian Tocilescu in
Germany and Florin Fatulescu in Los Angeles, are now scoring success
after success. After working with Peter Brook and enjoying a brilliant
career on the East Coast, director Andrei Serban went back to Bucharest
as artistic director of the National Theatre following the 1989 revolution,
and the results of his efforts have been weD received at prestigious
European drama festivals.
But Serban was not the only director to return home after the
overthrow of Ceauescu and his communist regime. Liviu Ciulei and
Lucian Pintilie were, and are, working in Romanian theatres in friendly
competition with some of the great directors of the Romanian stage.
Also of note are the excellent adaptations of literary works and
interpretations of PirandeUo by Catalina Buzoianu; the display of
creativeness and imagination of Silviu Purcarete; the visual madness of
Aureliu Manea and Mihai Manutiu; the soft, exact mises-en-scene of
Tudor Marascu and Alexa Visarion; the explosion of fantasy in the work
of young directors like Alexandru Darie, Dominic Dembinski, Stefan
Iordanescu, and Andrei Mihalache; and the enthusiasm of newcomers Ion
Manzatu, Cornel Mihalache, Felix Alexa, and Laur Oniga.
Romanian playwrights have usually been published through the
editorial efforts of a few theatre-loving publishers. Distributed in smaU
numbers, the plays reach only a few connoisseurs, while the drama
studied in school covers only the classic period. Some dramatists,
convinced one way or another of the values of communism or forced by
the cultural leaders, have written the plays that are better forgotten today.
And actors and directors (most of them unwillingly) had to produce and
perform them on stage. But many of the endeavors of Romanian
dramatists are strong literary statements, with ascertainable anti-
communist overtones or poetic and philosophical values about man and
mankind. The works of Dumitru Solomon, Romulus Guga, Adrian
Dohotaru, AI. Mirodan, the unpublished Matei Visniec, and even some
of the plays by the politicaUy controversial Dumitru Popescu and Paul
Everac, the chairman of Romanian television, can now be meaningfuUy
produced in the new political and social setting opened up by the 1989
Romanian revolution.
Even with the normal fmancial problems of culture in a transi-
tional society, Romanian theatre still finds support from the state budget.
Some groups have become independent and have recently been able to
stage a number of successful productions. But the mainstream of
Romanian theatre remains in the established Bulandra, Nattara, and
National Theatres of Bucharest and the Arad, Piatra Neamt, and Craiova
regional theatres. The efforts of Romanian theatre practitioners now
seem to incorporate a new consideration: international exposure. Even
33
with the well-established reputations of excellent directors, Romanian
theatre still lacks a package of translations in foreign languages that
would create interest not only in a traditional theatre movement, but in
a country with centuries of history and valuable cultural, folkloric, and
national experiences. The newly formed Theatre Union of Romania
(UNITER) is trying to increase the representation of Romanian theatre
abroad, and with the support of the Los Angeles based Society of
Romanian-Americans (SORA), hopes for a larger exposure to American
specialists and audiences. It will take time, but since Romanian theatre
has succeeded in surviving history and a communist regime, it will surely
take the challenge.
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Slavic and East European Perfonnancc Vol. 13, No. 2
PAGES FROM THE PAST
GROTOWSKI VISITS MOSCOW
In May 1976, J erzy Grotowski visited Moscow where he lectured
at the All-Russian Theatre Society (VfO) and met with Oleg Yefremov
and the actors at the Moscow Art Theatre. It was his first visit to the
Soviet capital since his year there in 1955-56 studying directing under Yuri
Zavadsky at the State Theatre Institute (GffiS).
The photographs that follow were taken during his lecture at
VfO and in Stanislavsky's dressing room at the Moscow Art Theatre.
A. L.
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Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No. 2
PAGES FROM THE PAST
MIKHAIL CHEKHOV'S THE CAS1LE AWAKENS
Mel Gordon
Today in theatrical circles in Moscow, no historical figure from
Russia's past is more in vogue than Mikhail Chekhov, the nephew of
Anton Chekhov and celebrated innovator-rebel from Stanislavsky's
Moscow Art Theatre. After leaving the Soviet Union in 1928, Chekhov's
acting and directing career spanned six European capitals and New York
before settling in Hollywood in 1943. During his difficult life outside
Russia, Chekhov pursued a quixotic journey to form his own international
troupe and specialized school of actor training. But in every adopted
country where his stage and ftlm acting was highly praised, Chekhov's
grandiose plans for a theatre studio stalled, backfired, or disintegrated.
The traditional curse that plagued other Russian artists-in-exile- that no
nation outside of Mother Russia would fully embrace and understand
them- doggedly pursued Chekhov wherever he went.
In October 1930, following a ten-month period of fmancial
intrigue and failed promises in Berlin and Prague, Chekhov and his
Russian troupe (which now included Stanislavsky's son, Igor K. Alekseev)
came to Paris, the home of the largest Russian-speaking community
outside the Soviet Union. There, both pro- and anti-Bolshevik factions
of the Russian emigre world joined forces to thwart Chekhov's theatre
plans. Russian and French supporters of the Soviet Union viewed
Chekhov as one more renegade bourgeois actor, seeking material riches
in the West. In addition, indignant that Chekhov refused to speak .out
against Communism or sign their petitions, the powerful Russian anti-
Bolshevik factions accused the apolitical actor of being an agent of GPU
(State Political Administration).
The old repertoire from Chekhov's First Studio and Moscow Art
Theatre days-Strindberg's Eric W, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Henning
Berger's The Deluge, and Anton Chekltov Sketches- reappeared at the
Theatre Montmartre I' Atelier. The Theatre Tschekhov productions found
support in the politically moderate French press. But few French
spectators weathered the linguistic challenge of these Russian-language
performances. And once again, technical imbroglios and budgetary
mismanagement complicated each premiere.
In May 1931, Georgette Boner, a young Swiss pupil of Max
Reinhardt and director of the Deutschen Biihne Paris, met Chekhov at
the home of the Vysotskys, a wealthy emigre family. Immediately, the
45
Chekhov-Boner Company, an amalgamation of their two troupes, was
established. Although Chekhov wanted to stage an elaborate dramatiza-
tion of Don Quixote, a simpler repertoire was fmally agreed upon.
Throughout the summer and autumn months of 1931, the Chekhov and
Boner performers underwent a disciplined regimen of Mikhail Chekhov
Technique.
On November 9, 1931 at the Theatre de !'Avenue, the Chekhov-
Boner Company opened with a mystical pantomime, The Castle Awakens,
created by the starring Chekhov. Concentrating on Symbolist-like decor
and musical effects (by Vladimir Butzov) as well as Eurhythmic
movement, Chekhov hoped the production would attract a large
international audience, Dozens of special exercises and etudes were
created to train his young actors. Not wishing to perform solely before
the Russian emigre community or play in badly accented French, Chekhov
invented a "universal language" for The Castle Awakens, using the occult
ideas of Rudolf Steiner, the German founder of Anthroposophy, a
"scientific religion." In fact, the sparse text based on traditional Russian
folk tales consisted of only fifty lines of fragmented dialogue (conceived
in German but performed in French).
Promoted as a mystery parable of modern life, The Castle
Awakens, if anything, revealed Chekhov's hidden fantasies in 1931 and
their symbolic transformation. Although Boner later analyzed Castle's
characters and themes in a purely universal and Jungian context in her
book on Chekhov's acting techniques, Werkgeheimnisse der Schauspiel-
kunst (Zurich: Werner Klassen Verlang, 1979), another interpretation
points to the play's parallels with Chekhov's personal life:
In the ancient Castle (Russia), a faithless Servant (Bolshevism/
materialism) lulls both the King and his Courtiers (the Russian people)
asleep with his song. Outside the Castle, Prince Ivan (Chekhov) discovers
Beauty (Anthroposophy/Second MAT), which he delivers to his father,
the King. Immediately, the evil Bone Spirit and his Daughter (Soviet
government/cultural commissars) come to steal Beauty away. The
frightened King wants to give up Beauty but Ivan hides her. The puny
Ivan is then defeated in a lopsided battle with the Bone Spirit and his
Daughter, and the Servant leads the evil forces to Beauty who kidnap her.
Prince Ivan decides to leave the safety of the Castle in order to rescue
her.
In the forest of Poets (Europe), Ivan fights with the Forest Spirit
(Max Reinhardt/Boner) but then saves his life when the Forest Spirit
becomes entangled in a Witches' web (European commercialism). Later
the Witches deprive Ivan of his powers to hear, see, and speak, but the
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Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No. 2
Forest Spirit returns to rescue his senseless friend. Using his special
contracts with the elements, the Forest Spirit revives all of Ivan's faculties,
especially his power of speech, which now has a greater force (a universal,
Anthroposophicallanguage). Together, the Forest Spirit and Ivan seek
out the captured Beauty, who is weighted down with stones in the Bone
Spirit's fortress. The two heroes defeat the Bone Spirit and his singing
Daughter and go back to the Castle. Once again the Servant steals
Beauty away but, through trickery, Ivan kills the Servant. The Castle
awakens to the wedding of Ivan and Beauty.
Although acclaimed by much of the international press, opening
night difficulties with the six disgruntled musicians and the play's occult
theme damaged the reception of The Castle Awakens with the theatre-
going public. Parisian critics were mainly condescending, praising the
"Slavic" setting and the simple, primitive charm of the piece. The
Russian-language newspapers characteristically berated Chekhov's
Anthroposophical interpretation of Russian fairytales as "nightmarish"
and "gloomy." Attendance fell markedly and The Castle Awakens closed
after one week. Once more, Chekhov's dream was failing.
Highly sensitive to criticism, Mikhail Chekhov never again
experimented with the creation of texts for his "future theatre." And
after this experience, Anthroposophy became a largely private concern in
his life and work. Viktor Gromov and Boner, his co-creators in this
project, made plans for still another Chekhov studio in independent Latvia
and Lithuania while the Chekhov-Boner Company successfully completed
their 1931-1932 season with their old productions of Berger, Strindberg,
Shakespeare, and Anton Chekhov.
47
MROZEK'S TANGO BY THE INDEPENDENT THEATRE CO.
Joel Bassin
The Polish playwright Slawomir Mrorek's Tango, originally
produced in Belgrade in 1965, was given a New York production during
February and March of 1993 by the non-equity Independent Theatre
Company. According to their program, the I.T.C. is "dedicated to
producing outstanding theatre of a difficult, abstract, and presentational
nature" by "pushing beyond conventional theatrical representation."
I.T.C.'s stated mission and approach were minimally realized in this
production of Tango, p ~ r h p s because of the unique qualities of MroZek's
dramatic text.
Tango is "difficult" to the extent that the paradoxical ideas
demand the audience's active intellectual involvement, but there is nothing
"presentational" or "abstract" about it. In fact, Mrorek utilizes
"conventional theatrical representation" to illustrate the revolutionary
dynamic. His characters represent opposing philosophical points of view,
and this conflict of applied logic becomes the basis of the dramatic
conflict.
Arthur, a too-earnest medical student, tries to impose order on
his eccentric avant-garde artist family. Arthur is full of the revolutionary
zeal of the young. He resents the older generation for successtully
abolishing order and tradition. In this void, where his father, Stomil, must
accept his wife's infidelity because a world of freedom must logically
include sexual freedom, Arthur can only direct his energies to restoring
the conventions of the past. In a moment of inspiration Arthur proposes
marriage to his cousin, Ala, convinced that a wedding will catch his family
off guard. By turning them into a bridal procession Arthur reasons that
they will be engaged by the wedding ritual and he will finally impose
order on the chaos.
The fanal act opens with the expectant and uncomfortable family,
all dressed up, sitting in ordered rows of chairs and posing for
photographs as they wait for the groom. The tradition of taking
photographs is more important than Uncle Eugene's admission that the
ancient camera has not worked for years. When Arthur arrives, late and
drunk, he announces that the old ideas have no relevance. Grandmother
Eugenia dies while the others debate the meaning of existence. Arthur
realizes in Eugenia's death an instinctual and unifying fear of death that
gives meaning to life. He enlists the aid of the primitive Eddie to act as
strongman for his new regime of order through terror and physical power.
It is at this moment that Ala confesses she slept with Eddie. Arthur
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Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No. 2
attacks Eddie in a conventional jealous rage, but is killed by his physically
superior rival. The play ends as Eddie and Uncle Eugene dance the
tango.
For its production of Tango, the I.T.C.'s home, House of Candles
Theatre, was configured with seating platforms about six feet high on
opposite ends of a small room that left a meager playing space on the
floor. The scenic design was low-budget to the point of being almost
non-existent. There is no designer credited in the program. Mroiek's
text requires a room that can accommodate a card table surrounded by
chaotic household rubble illustrative of the family's lack of concern for
order. The setting should convey the paradox of revolution by
representing a solid, traditional, old-fashioned bourgeois shell which has
become a kind of squatter's storage space for all the useless antique
trappings of a family who, since the revolution, is only interested in
immediate needs. While I.T.C. was able to create a sense of chaos by
stacking about twenty chairs on top of each other in groupings around the
space, they were not able to establish the historical layers of continuous
revolutionary cycles that a detailed box set would have expressed.
Instead, director Rasa Allan Kazlas chose to emphasize the temporary
and absurd nature of existence with a large cardboard box representing
a catafalque, a smaller box serving as the card table, and crookedly nailed
curtains and window frames on the walls.
A slow-motion, presentational style was imposed on two moments
in Tango. At the beginning of the production Uncle Eugene, Eddie,
Grandmother Eugenia, and Arthur's mother, Eleanor, play cards. The
lights dim, jungle drumming is heard on the theatre's speakers, and the
card players cheat in slow-motion by looking at discards, taking cards, and
stealing chips from others. Later, when Arthur is fmally able to goad his
father into catching Eleanor in the act of infidelity with Eddie, Stomil
exits offstage with a revolver. The lights dim, jungle music plays, and
Stomil, Eleanor, Eddie, and Grandmother Eugenia enter in slow motion,
take up places at the card table/box, and begin playing cards.
The second use of this slow-motion style was probably Kazlas's
attempt to solve Mroiek's requirement that Arthur, after impatiently
waiting for the anticipated gunshot from Stomil's revolver, enters the
bedroom and fmds his father playing cards with the others. Since there
are no doors for Arthur to open in this production, and no other room
where this discovery scene can be played, the director needed a transition
to bring the action back into the playing space after Stomil exits. Kazlas's
choice weakens the theatrical value and humor of the discovery.
If the fust moment of the slow-motion style is meant to signify
primitive impulses toward violence and social anarchy resulting from
49
individual desire, then the second is inconsistent. It occurs when violence
and anarchy are diffused, and Stomil's individual project is replaced by a
collective game of bridge. And, if the first slow-motion moment is there
only to establish the later utilitarian use, a less ethically loaded mime
should have been found. Finally, these two moments seem out of place
and opposed to Mroi:ek's firmly constructed "reality."
The I.T.C. production is more successful in realizing the central
conflict and its resultant humor between Arthur's rebellious passion and
the aU-embracing logic of acceptance by which it is met. This is achieved
through broad strokes of performance. Arthur's frustration is emphasized
over intellectual precision and detail in the progress of the dialectic that
is at the heart of Mroi:ek's text. The production's focus on the broader
implications of chaos replaced by order was supported by the change in
costume, setting, and music as the family waits for the wedding. The piles
of chairs are arranged in neat, symmetrical rows; the miscellany of useless
objects are cleared out; the family changes from their pajamas, shorts,
and colorfully eccentric outfits to traditional formal dress; and the big
band swing music that opens the production is replaced by eerily upbeat
polka tunes. The formerly-free spirits of the performers chafe
uncomfortably as a result of these physical changes.
Despite the unevenness and lack of detail in performance and
direction in I.T.C.'s Tango, the final dance between Eddie and Uncle
Eugene is a compelling and frightening image that testifies to the power
of Mroi:ek's text. The physical movement is simultaneously a wrestling
match and a dance. Eugene, who represents the old aristocracy and has
voluntarily joined Arthur's crusade, wears a long coat with bright gold
buttons, suggesting a military uniform in disrepair. Eddie, in his
sleeveless tee shirt and spiked black leather gloves, is the picture of a
violent street hood. Earlier, Eddie had struck Hitler and Mussolini poses.
As Eddie gains control of the dance, Mroi:ek's historical context of
revolutionary cycles becomes apparent. Instead of bringing the play to a
resolution, the image lingers and implies the revolution that will inevitably
be waged against the tyrannical monster who has killed his maker.
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Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol. 13, No. 2
CINEMA IN TRANSITION: RECENT FILMS
FROM EAST AND CENTRAL EUROPE--sYMPOSIUM
David A. Goldfarb
Pencil and paper are all a poet needs to transform an artistic
vision into its practically finished form. Publication can be someone else's
job. Almost by definition we presume that the lyric verse is the product
of one voice acting alone.
Filmmaking is industry. Wheels turn, lights burn, knives cut and
hundreds of hands contribute their labor with generally little knowledge
of the eventual shape of the fmal project. Filmmakers like all industrialists
in the former Communist world are experiencing a fundamental change
in the way they do business. The interdependence between business and
the creative process was the most salient topic of a recent symposium at
the New School for Social Research in New York, as part of "Cinema in
Transition: Recent Films from East and Central Europe."
The festival, organized by Katherine Cornell and Elzbieta
Matynia, ran from April17 to April 28, screening over thirty feature films,
documentaries, shorts and student productions, and producing an East
European supplement to v. XIX, no. 4 of Cineaste. Most interesting was
the opportunity for the directors of most of the films shown to answer
questions after the screenings and to meet for an aU-day Symposium with
critics, actors and writers on Saturday, April 28. In spite of a desire to
bracket the "economic" questions to the earliest panel and move on to
"artistic" concerns, the conference revealed that the two cannot be
separated. The three panels were entitled "From Subsidy and Censorship
to Free Speech and the Box Office," "The New Cinema: Themes,
Heroes, Climate," and "The New Cinema and the Politics of Identity;"
but attempts to contain topics were happily unsuccessful, with all speakers
overlapping and joining in on other panels.
Polish director Feliks Falk (Top Dog) set the tone when he
observed that complaining is the current fashion among East European
directors. While all sixteen of the directors who spoke said "yes, but not
me," it was apparent that the nature of filmmaking in all its
details- technique, themes, audience, and even the idea of a "national
cinema"- was changing rapidly after a long period of relative stability,
which was the positive effect of heavy state regulation and subsidy. Not
only were these filmmakers transforming their industry to become "more
like it is in Western Europe," but in the process were realizing that they
were stepping into a moving river which was never before like it is
51
now--even for Westerners. Indeed, what artistic ftl.mmaker in the world
does not have something to complain about?
Antonin Liehm (The Most Important Art: East European Film
after 1945, with Mira Liehm), Czech critic, compared the current situation
to Germany in the 1920's. As former East Bloc currencies, wages,
products, etc. have not caught up to the world market, it is possible to
make large feature ftlms for relatively little money and still a substantial
government subsidy. This situation invites speculation. A wildly
successful film may cover only half its production costs, Liehm claimed,
because East European markets are simply too small. Romanian Mircea
Danieluc, for instance, claimed that he made The Conjugal Bed for about
$60,000, and that in his country the price of a ticket is about half the price
of a beer. Everyone knows, however, that a massive adjustment in the
economy must come over the next five years, and that 1993 ftlm budgets
will seem like peanuts in 1998. It is likely, therefore, that a ftlm produced
now can be rereleased or exported later and return many times its
investment, even if it is not particularly successful.
It has long been the case that many more American than
European films are screened in East European cinemas, as in all
European cinemas, but several directors noted that box office sales for
American ftlms have declined as videocassette recorders and (frequently
bootlegged) tapes have become more widely available. Hungarian
director, and now director of the Hungarian Film school, Gyula Gazdag
(Hungarian Fairy Tale) noted that while the increased use of VCRs was
cutting into the box office on all sides, they were necessary for the
elimination of censorship. Theaters are large and easy to close down.
VCRs and the distribution of tapes are impossible to regulate, as is well
known in the U.S.
Rather than fighting the trend, ftlmmakers are considering ways
of utilizing "competing" media for their own ends. Montenegran director
Dusan Makavejev (WR: Mysteries of the Organism) commented that many
directors are paying for their projects by producing films in 35mm for
television in a four-times-fifty minute miniseries format then recutting for
the theater. This "compromise" with television, Makavejev astutely
observed, is not a particularly East European phenomenon but the effect
of new ways of seeing film throughout the world. Everywhere, the single
screen theater is being replaced by the multiplex, video, laser disc, cable
television, pay-per-view, and in short order, the possibility of downloading
all media products from computer networks. Even in Hollywood--es-
pecially in Hollywood- films are not produced without a thorough
consideration of all marketing possibilities.
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Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No.2
Falk stated that his goals would not really change with the
political changes in Poland, but that he ~ t l l felt the need to document
social life and to produce politically engaged filins. Filmmakers are not
only now feeling the effects of market pressure on their creative
endeavors, but in Poland, recent "Preservation of Christian Values"
legislation is replacing older forms of censorship. Falk, Robert Gli.Dski
(All That Really Matters) who faxed his comments to the symposium, and
Polish actor Daniel Olbrychski (Wajda, The Promised Land) all concurred
that this new law and the growth of right -wing nationalism were the
greatest political dangers to culture in the new republics.
The prolific young Polish ftlmmaker Magdalena Lazarkiewicz
(The Last Bell) expressed a desire for a new realism in East European
film. She noted that upon arrival to New York, the airport, the subway,
and the city all seemed somehow familiar, and that she seemed to have
met these forms of everyday life already in American filin. American
cinema "is everywhere," she said, but "our cinema is in the head."
Lazarkiewicz felt that East Europeans need to work at "translating
reality" for others, as Americans have done, and pointed to a Steven
Spielberg production employing a half Polish cast as one effort toward
that goal.
Rumanian director Radu Nicoara (The South Pole) and the
young Hungarian, Arpad Sopsits (Video Blues), on the other hand,
envisioned a new moral indeterminacy in filmmaking. Nicoara, perhaps
reacting to the requirement of the positive hero under Socialist Realism
and the personality cult of Ceauescu, wants to make films without clear
heroes or enemies, depicting the "absence of personality." His current
project, he told the audience, is a filin about the last Volkswagen, in
which his hero will be Europe. Sopsits saw much opportunity, with the
opening of Soviet and East European archives, for the exploration of the
tragic hero but imagined the possibility of "unfmished" tragedies, leaving
the freedom of the conclusion to the minds of the audience.
In former Yugoslavia everything is much more indeterminate.
Propaganda fUms, apparently, are being made, but Rajko Grlic (ChQIUga)
and American scholar Daniel Goulding (Post New Wave Cinema in the
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe) imagined that the infrastructure of the
country and the physical means of producing films would be so severely
damaged by the war that film could have little impact on cultural life in
the region. Makavejev, however, noted that American filin had already
played a role in forming the self-conception of the combatants in the war.
One need only look at CNN, Makavejev claimed, to see that the street
fighters were not dressing like the familiar chetniks but like Rambo,
karate fighters and Vietnam-era soldiers. Grlic divided his life into his
53
day job and his night job. By day he teaches at New York U Diversity and
is working on a big-budget production for the BBC about the ftrst giraffe
in Europe. By night he is on the phone to friends and family at home,
and is working on an underground film in 8mm video about a Croatian
child from a Serbian village and a Serbian child from a Croatian village
who are caught in the war.
Grlic's comments and an encouraging note from screenwriter and
scholar Andrew Horton of Loyola University, suggested that in spite of
the difficulties of developing a new industry, if not because of those
difficulties, important ftlms must be made. Horton idealistically pointed
to the example of his own struggling student filmmakers who wiD get their
works on screen and into the festivals even if they can only muster the
resources for an 8mm video camera and the benevolence of a few close
associates. Ultimately, no economic system supports artistic ftlm because
such films chaUenge prevailing systems. Dusan Makavejev, producer of
the most outrageous ftlms, maintained, however, that the whole
filinmaking process entails the exercise of constraints on artistic
judgement, stating, "we do nothing but censorship from the frrst cut to
the end. Every cut is a choice."
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Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol. 13, No. 2
CONTRIBUTORS
JOEL BASSIN is General Manager of the Triplex Performing Arts
Center at the Borough of Manhattan Community College in New York
City. He is also a consultant with the New York State Council on the
Arts Theatre Program and a second year student in the Ph.D. theatre
program at the CUNY Graduate Center.
VRENELI FARBER is an Assistant Professor of Russian in the
Department of Foreign Languages at Oregon State University. She is
currently engaged in a long-range research project on the life and works
of Aleksandr V ampilov. She is also an actress.
ROBERT FINDLAY is Professor of Theatre and Film at the University
of Kansas. His numerous articles on Grotowski's work have appeared in
journals such as TDR, Modem Drama, and Theatre Journal. He is co-
author with Oscar Brockett of Century of Innovation: A History of
European and American Theatre and Drama Since the Late 19th Century
(2nd ed., 1991).
JOHN FREEDMAN is the author of Silence's Roar: The Life and Drama
of Nikolai Erdman (Mosaic Press) and the editor/translator of The Major
Plays of Nikolai Erdman (forthcoming from Gordon and Breach Science
Publishers). He lives in Moscow where he is the theatre critic for the
Moscow Times.
DAVID A. GOLDFARB is a Ph.D. candidate in comparative literature at
the City University of New York. He will chair a panel on Ceqtral
European cinema at he 1993 AATSEEL conference in Toronto.
MEL GORDON is Professor of Dramatic Art at the University of
California, Berkeley. With Alma Law he is co-author of the forthcoming
Mayerhold, Eisenstein, and Biomechanics: Actor Training and Revolu-
tionary Russia.
TUDOR PETRUT is the American representative of the Theatre Union
of Romania (UNITER). A graduate of the Theatre and Film Academy
in Bucharest, he has written, directed, and acted for theatre and ftlm in
both America and Romania. He also writes articles and critiques for
Romanian cultural magazines and newspapers.
55
Photo Credits
"Jerzy Grotowski, 1993"
Tony D'Urso
"Grotowski Visits Moscow''
Alma Law Archives
56
Slavic jllld East European Performance Vol. 13, No.1
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 Ireneusz Iredy6ski. Translated by Michal
Kobialka. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No. 4 Conversation with the Executioner, by Kazimierz Moczarski. Stage
adaptation by Zygmunt Hubner; English version by Earl Ostroff
and Daniel C. Gerould. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No. 5 The Outsider, by Ignatii Dvoretsky. Translated by C. Peter
Goslett. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No. 6 The Ambassador, by Slawomir Mroiek. Translated by Slawomir
Mroiek and Ralph Mannheim. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No. 7 Four by Liudmila Pet1Ushevskaya (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, Boleslaw Taborski, Michal
Kobialka, and Steven Hart. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
Polish and Soviet Theatre Posters. Introduction and Catalog by Daniel C.
Gerould and Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
57
Polish and Soviet Theatre Posters Volume Two. Introduction and Catalog
by Daniel C. Gerould and Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
Eastern European Drama and The American Stage. A Symposium with
Janusz Glowacki, Vasily Aksyonov, and moderated by Daniel C.
Gerould (April 30, 1984). $3.00 ($4.00 foreign)
These publications can be ordered by sending a U.S. doUar check or
money order payable to:
58
CASTA--THEATRE PROGRAM
CUNY GRADUATE CENTER
33 WEST 42nd STREET
NEW YORK, NY 10036
SUBSCRIYfiON POLICY
SEEP is partially supported by CASTA and The Institute for
Contemporary Eastern European Drama and Theatre at The Graduate
Center of the City University of New York. The annual subscription rate
is $10.00 ($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 1993. We hope that departments of theatre and film and
departments of Slavic languages and literatures will subscribe as well as
individual professors and scholars. Subscriptions can be ordered by
sending a U.S. dollar check or money order made payable to "CAST A,
CUNY Graduate Center" to:
CASTA- Theatre Program
CUNY Graduate Center
33 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036

Subscription to SEEP, 1993.
NAME:
ADDRESS:
AFFILIATION:
(if not included in address above)
59