SEEP Vol.23 No.3 Fall 2003

SEEP (ISSN # 104 7-00 19) is a publication of the Institute for Contemporary
East European Drama and Theatre under the auspices of the Martin E. Segal
Theatre Center. The Institute is at The City University of New York
Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016-4309. All
subscription requests and submissions should be addressed to Slavic and East
European Peiformance: Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, Theatre Program, The
City University of New York Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue, New York,
NY 10016-4309.
EDITOR
Daniel Gerould
MANAGING EDITOR
Melissa Johnson
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
Margaret Araneo
CIRCULATION MANAGER
Jill Stevenson
ASSIST ANT CIRCULATION MANAGER
Serap Erincin
ADVISORY BOARD
Edwin Wilson, Chair
Marvin Carlson Allen J. Kuharski
Martha W. Coigney Stuart Liebman
Leo Hecht Laurence Senelick
SEEP has a very liberal reprinting policy. Journals and newsletters that desire to
reproduce articles, reviews, and other materials that have appeared in SEEP may do
so, as long as the following provisions are met:
a. Permission to reprint the article must be requested from SEEP in writing before
the fact;
b. Credit to SEEP must be given in the reprint;
Two copies of the publication in which the reprinted material has appeared must be
furnished to the Editors of SEEP immediately upon publication.
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Daniel Gerould
DIRECTOR
James Patrick
DIRECTOR OF SPECIAL PROJECTS
Frank Hentschker
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Publications are supported by generous grants &om
the Lucille Lortel Chair in Theatre and the Sidney E. Cohn Chair in Theatre in the
Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the City University of New York.
Copyright 2003 Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
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Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 23, No. 3
Editorial Policy
From the Editor
Events
Books Received
IN MEMORIAM
"Alma Law, 1927- 2003"
ARTICLES
"Saviana Stanescu:
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Romanian Poet and Playwright"
Beate Hein Bennett
"Karel Steigerwald, Part I"
Stepan S. Simek
"Interview with Mark Rozovsky"
Maria Ignatieva
"Translating and Directing Mrozek's
The Turkey in London"
Teresa Murjas
PAGES FROM THE PAST
"Stalin and the Moscow Art Theatre"
Marie Christine Autant-Mathieu
"Letter from Stanislavsky to Stalin"
Translated by Sharon Marie Carnicke
5
6
7
14
16
18
28
44
56
70
86
3
REVIEWS
"Marat/Sade by the Triumviratus
Art Group of Bulgaria"
Marvin Carlson
"Ostrovsky's The Forest:
Fomenko Interprets Ostrovsky for Paris"
Sharon Marie Carnicke
Contributors
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92
95
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Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 23, No.3
EDITORIAL POLICY
Manuscripts in the following categories are solicited: articles of no
more than 2,500 words, performance and film reviews, and bibliographies.
Please bear in mind that all submissions must concern themselves either
with contemporary materials on Slavic and East European theatre, drama
and fi lm, or with new approaches to older materials in recently published
works, or new performances of older plays. In other words, we welcome
submissions reviewing innovative performances of Gogol but we cannot use
original articles discussing Gogol as a playwright.
Although we welcome translations of articles and reviews from
foreign publications, we do require copyright release statements. We will
also gladly publish announcements of special events and anything else
which may be of interest to our discipline. All submissions are refereed.
All submissions must be typed double-spaced and carefully
proofread. The Chicago Manual if Style should be followed. Trans-literations
should follow the Library of Congress system. Articles should be submitted
on computer disk, as Word 97 Documents for Windows and a hard copy of
the article should be included. Photographs are recommended for all
reviews. All articles should be sent to the attention of Slavic and East
European Peiformance, c/o Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, The City
University of New York Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue, New York, NY
10016-4309. Submissions will be evaluated, and authors will be notified after
approximately four weeks.
You may obtain more information about Slavic and East European
Peiformance by visiting out website at http//web.gc.cuny.edu/mestc. Email
inquiries may be addressed to SEEP@gc.cuny.edu.
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Journals are available online from
r o ~ e s t Information and Learning as abstracts via the r o ~ e s t
information service and the International Index to the Performing Arts.
www.il. proquest.com
5
FROM THE EDITOR
Volume 23, No. 3 of SEEP opens with a tribute to the noted
scholar of Soviet theatre and translator of Russian drama, Alma Law
(1927-2003), who served as the co-editor of this journal from 1987 (when it
moved from George Mason University to the CUNY Graduate Center) until
1995. A good friend and valued colleague, Alma will be remembered as a
forceful, passionate scholar with vast knowledge of twentieth-century
Russian theatre who shared her many enthusiasms with readers and
theatregoers through her numerous books and articles, translations,
theatrical recreations and museum exhibits.
Articles in the current issue begin with Beate Hein Bennett's
portrait of the Romanian playwright Saviana Stanescu. This is followed by
the first half of a two-part article by Stepan S. Simek on Karel Steigerwald
and contemporary Czech drama. Maria Ignatieva conducts a wide-ranging
interview with Mark Rozovsky, an active force in Russian theatre since the
1960s. Teresa Murjas provides an account of how she translated and staged
Mrozek' s TheTurkey in London. In PAGES FROM THE PAST Marie
Christine Autant-Mathieu explores the relations of the Moscow Art Theatre
and Stalin. The accompanying document is a letter from Stanislavsky to
Stalin, appearing for the first time in an English translation by Sharon
Camicke. The issue is rounded out by reviews of a Bulgarian Marat/Sade by
Marvin Carlson and of a Russian director's Parisian version of Ostrovsky's
The Forest by Sharon Carnicke.
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Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 23, No. 3
STAGE PRODUCTIONS
New York
EVENTS
Piper McKenzie Productions presented a workshop production
of Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz's The Pragmatists, translated by Daniel
Gerould, directed by Jeffrey Alexander Lewonczyk, at Chashama Arts Space,
on November 13 and 14.
The avant-garde Polish troupe Teatr Biuro Podr6zy presented
Carmen Funebre (Funeral Song) in Phoenix, Chicago, and Minneapolis before
concluding its tour in New York. New York performances were held at the
Tobacco Warehouse in DUMBO on September 26, 27, and 28.
La Mama presents the Eleventh Hour Theatre in Part II of
Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov (Part I was presented in February 2003),
adapted and directed by Alexander Harrington, from January 1 to January
18, 2004.
Deftnses in Prague, a new play by Sophia Murashkovsky, will be
presented at La Mama from January 22 to February 8, 2004.
Bard Summerscape-a four-week performing arts festival at Bard
College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York- presented the following
theatrical and operatic productions:
The Moscow New Generation theatre presented Ostrovsky's The
Storm, directed by Henrietta Yanovskaya, and K.I.from "Cn.me," an
adaptation of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, directed by Kama
Ginkas, from August 6 to 10.
The American premiere of Leos Janacek's opera Osud (Fate),
conducted by Leon Botstein, with the American Symphony
Orchestra, and directed by JoAnne Akalaitis, was presented on July
23, 25, 27, August 1, and 2.
Don juan in Prague, an adaptation of the Mozart opera directed by
7
David Chambers, was presented on July 30, 31, August 2, and 3.
The Czech puppet company DRAK presented Janacek's Cunning
Little Vixen from August 13 to 17.
STAGE PRODUCTIONS
United States
Kama Ginka's adaptation of Chekhov's Lady with a Lapdog opened
the American Repertory Theatre's 2003-2004 season, running from
September 13 to October 11.
The following events were presented as part of the U.S. phase of
]uliett 484- a U.S./Polish cultural exchange program sponsored by the
Convergence International Arts Festival (Providence, Rhode Island), Mobius
(Boston), and Castle of the Imagination International Performance Festival
(Gdansk, Poland):
Peiformances, installation, video and other work sited on the submarine,
]uliett 484 was presented at Collier Point Park, Providence, Rhode
Island, on September 20 and 21.
Polish Artists' Talk and Performances was held at the School of the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, on September 24.
Peiformances by the U.S. and Polish Artists presented at Chashama in
New York City on September 24.
FILM
New York
Autumn Spring, written by Jiif Hubac and directed by Vladimir
Michalek, was shown as part of the New Directors/New Films festival in
New York on April3 and 4.
The Cuckoo, directed by Alexander Rogozhkin, opened in New York
onJuly 11.
8
Jan Jakub Kolski's adaptation ofWitold Gombrowicz's Pornography
was presented at Lincoln Center on October 6 and 7 as part of the New York
Film Festival.
Anthology Film Archives presented five films by Kazimierz Kutz
from October 16 to 19:
Silence, (1963) October 16.
TheSaltoftheBlackLand, (1969) October 16 and 19.
The Pearl in a Crown, (1971) with guest appearance by Kazimierz
Kutz, October 17 and 19.
Death as a Slice of Bread, (1994) October 17 and 19.
The Turned Back/aka The Convert, (1994) October 18
Colonel Kwiatkowski, (1995) October 18.
MOMA Film and the Polish Cultural Institute presented two
surveys of Polish cinema: A Short History of Polish Animation and A Short
History of Avant-Garde and Experimental Film. The programs for each survey
were as follows:
A Short History of Polish Animation
Program 1: The Golden Age, introduced by Zbigniew Rybczynski,
October 31.
Program 2: jan Lenica and Walerian Borowczyk, October 24 and 30.
Program 3: Ear{y Stirrings, Witold Giersz, Miroslaw Kfjowicz, October
24 and 31.
Program 4:]erzy Kucia and Piotr Duma/am, October 25 and 30.
9
Program 5: Portraits in Black: Stifan Schabenbeck, Ryszard Czekala, and
Others, October 26 and November 1.
Program 6: Daniel Szczechura, Piotr Kamler, and the New Guard,
October 26 and November 1.
A Short History of Polish Avant-Garde and Experimental Fzlm
Program 1: October 25 and November 2.
Program 2: introduced by Zbigniew Rybczynski, October 25 and
November 2.
Radio Voice of Bosnia and Herzegovina organized the first Bosnian
Film Festival in New York City at the Pioneer Theater, featuring the
following films:
Kuduz by Ademir Kenovic
Sjever je Poludio by Aida Begic
Remake by Dina Mustafic, October 25 and 26
Minuta by Ahmet Imamovic, October 25
Ljeto u Zlatnoj Dolini by Srdjan Vuletic, October 25
Symphony Space presented The Decalogue, ten films thematically
based on each of the Ten Commandments, directed by Krzysztof
Kidlowski, on October 25, 26, November 1, 2, 8, and 9.
The New York Public Library, as part of its exhibition Russia
Engages the World, 1453-1825, presents the film series Russia Engages the
Cinema at the Donnell Library Center. The following films were presented
Wednesdays at 2:30 P.M., Fridays and Saturdays at 1 :00 P.M.:
10
The Eagle (1925), November 5 War and Peace, Part One (1968;
directed by Sergei Bondarchuk), November 7
War and Peace, Part Two (1968; directed by Sergei Bondarchuk),
November 8
The Queen of Spades (1949; starring Edith Evans), November 12
Russian Ark (2002; directed by Aleksandr Sokurov), November 15
Prince Igor (1969; Borodin's opera, performed by the Kirov Opera),
November 19
Alexander Nevsky (1938; directed by Sergei Eisenstein),
November 26
Ivan the Terrible, Part One (1943; directed by Sergei Eisenstein),
December 3
Ivan the Terrible, Part Two (1946; directed by Sergei Eisenstein),
December 10
The Film Society of Lincoln Center and Seagull Films, in
collaboration with Lenfilm Studios and the Russian State Department of
Cinema, presented Another Russia: A Tribute to Len.film Studios, featuring
thirty films, from November 7 to December 4.
BAM and the Czech Center New York co-presented New Czech
Films, a festival highlighting important cinema from the Czech
Republic. The following films were presented:
Forest Walkers (Lesnf chodci) (2003; directed by Ivan Vojnar)
November 6
Pupendo (2003; directed by Jan Hrebejk) November 7
Fimfdrum (2002; directed by Aurel Klimt, Vlasta Posp!Silova) and
Fricasse (2003; directed by Martin Krejci), November 8
One Hand Can't Clap (/edna ruka netleskd) (2003; directed by David
Ondffcek) November 8
Girlie (Dlvcdtko) (2003; directed by Benjamin Tucek) November 9
11
Year of the Devil (Rok d'dbla) (2002; Directed by Petr Zelenka)
November 9
Bard College's 2003 Summerscape, Annandale-on-Hudson, New
York, included a Czech film festival where the following films were
presented:
The joke ( ert), 1968, (directed by JaromilJird) July 24.
The Lion with the White Mane (Lev s bilou hfivou), 1986, (directed by
Jaromil Jird) July 26.
On the Winding Path (Po zarostlim chodnic"ku), 1987, (directed by
Jaromil Jird) July 26.
A Ballad for a Bandit (Balada pro banditu), 1978, (directed by
Vladimir Sis) July 31.
The Diary of One Who Vanished, (Zdpisnik zmizeliho), 1980, (directed
by Jaromil Jird) July 31.
Year of the Devil, (Rok d'dbla), 2002, (directed by Petr Zelenka)
August 3.
OTHER EVENTS
New York
"A Conversation with J6zef Szajna" was held at the Brooklyn
Museum of Art in cooperation with the Polish Cultural Institute on June 8.
Szajna's early work was included in the BMA's exhibition Last Expression: Art
and Auschwitz, which ran through June 15.
The New York City Literary Festival presented a reading of Biljana
SrbljanoviC's Family Stories: Belgrade, translated by Rebecca Rugg, at the
POINT Theater, NY, on October 24.
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts presents
Prokofiev and His Contemporaries: The Impact of Soviet Culture at the Vincent
Astor Gallery-an exhibit of artifacts from the Library for the Performing
12
Arts, the Glinka Archives and State Central Museum of Music, the Bolshoi
Theater Museum, and the K.S. Stanislavsky and VI. I. Nemirovich-
Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theater, demonstrating the impact
Soviet culture of the 1920s and 1940s had on American performing arts. The
exhibitions runs from October 15, 2003 to January 10, 2004.
Larger than Lift, a video by Polish artist Pawel Kruk, was shown at
the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of the museum's exhibit The
American Effect: Global Perspectives on the United States, 1990-2003 frotn July 3
to October 12.
The Art Gallery of The Graduate Center, The City University of
New York, presents Boris Anisftld: Paintings and Stage Designs, 1906-1926
from December 4, 2003 to January 17, 2004.
OTHER EVENTS
International
The second edition of the International Theatre Festival Dialog that
focused on the question "Are we witnessing the birth of new theatre?" was
held in Wrodaw, Poland, from October 6 to 12.
The Fondation Maeght presented Russia and Its Avant-Gardes, an
exhibit surveying the period of Russian modern art from 1908 to 1928, at
St.-Paul-de-Vence, France, through November 5.
CALL FOR PAPERS
The Toronto Slavic Q]tarterly, the internet journal of the Department of Slavic
Languages and Literatures of the University ofT oronto, seeks contributions
in English and all Slavic and East European languages. Contributions may
include, but are not limited to scholarly articles, reviews, interviews, archival
documents, chapters from recent dissertations and forthcoming books, and
new plays and translations. Contributions with an abstract in English should
be sent to catwalkjournal@yahoo.ca by December 1, 2003. Submission
guidelines are at www.utoronto.ca/slavic/tsq/submission.html
Compiled by Margaret Araneo
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BOOKS RECEIVED
Kruszyna, Natalia. Palam chfciq. rysowania ]ej Asymetrii (I'm burning with
desire to draw Her Asymmetry). Katowice: Muzeum Historii Katowic, 2003.
67 pages. The album contains the twenty-six color portraits by Witkacy of
the asymmetrical lady, Eugenia Wyszomirska-Kuinicka, with ten over-
leaves, and a selection of texts from Witkacy's letters to her (1933-8), plays,
and other writings as well as the lady's reminiscences, all chosen by Natalia
Kruszyna, plus ten photographs of Witkacy, the asymmetrical lady, his
circle, and other portraits. A list of sources is included. An accompanying
CD (52: 19) features readings of the texts interpreted by Natalia Kruszyna,
with music composed and played by Bogdan Mizerski. Kruszyna and
Mizerski provide general introductions, with a color photograph of each of
t he artists. The album is available from Muzeum Historii Katowic, 40-025
Katowice, ul. Ks. J. Szafranka 9, Poland.
Steiner, Marta. Geneza teatru w fwietle antropologii kulturowej (The Origin of
the Theatre in the Light of Cultural Anthropology). Wroclaw:
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrodawskiego, 2003. 352 pages. Includes an
extensive bibliography, index, summary in English, twenty-six color plates,
and many diagrams.
TEATP': Russian Theatre Past and Present. vol. 3, 2002. 164 pages. Includes
seven articles on Russian theatre past and present, letters from Yuri Rakitin
to Nikolai Evreinov, books reviews, notes on contributors, and seven
photographs and a portrait. In Russian and English.
The Theatre in Poland, vol. 1- 2, 2002. 67 pages. Contains "Seventy Years of
the Academy of Drama in Warsaw," discusses new Polish plays and books,
and Tadeusz R6zewicz eightieth anniversary. Includes many photographs,
some in color.
The Theatre in Poland, vol. 3- 4, 2002. 76 pages. Contains articles on opera
and dance in Poland, as well as "Jan Kott, in Memoriam." Includes many
color and black-and-white photographs.
Wirth, Andrzej. Teatr jaki m6glby bye (Theatre as It Could Be). Ed. by
Malgorzata Sugiera. Texts translated from German and English by
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Malgorzata Leyko and Janusz Marganski. Introduction by Jan Kott. Cracow:
Akademicka, 2002. 334 pages. Collected theatre essays and
explorations written by Andrzej Wirth in Polish, English, and German over
four decades and covering such topics as Brecht, the Theatre of the Absurd,
and Robert Wilson. Includes an index, source of articles, and fifteen
photographs of the author and theatrical productions and auto-
performances created by the author.
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IN MEMORIAM
ALMA LAW 1927-2003
Alma Law died in her sleep on July 22, 2003 in her home in
Scarsdale, New York. She had suffered a debilitating stroke in 1998. Born on
April 19, 1927, in Racine, Wisconsin, Alma was a leading authority on
Soviet theatre and a translator of Soviet plays by Volodin, Radzinsky,
Pavlova, Petrushevskaya, Roshchin, Vampilov, and Zorin. Her translations
were widely performed throughout the United States. Her numerous
publications covered all aspects of Soviet theatre, with special emphasis on
Meyerhold and Lyubimov. Her books include Aleksandr Vampilov: The
Major Plays (Harwood, 1994), which she edited and translated; Meyerhold,
Eisenstein and Biomechanics: Actor Training in Revolutionary Russia, co-
authored with Mel Gordon (McFarland, 1996); and Gorchakov: Conversations
with Meyerhold (Harwood, 2000), which she edited and translated. She
received her Ph.D. in Russian from Columbia University and served as a
fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. She was a
CASTA fellow at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York
and served as co-editor of Slavic and East European Performance from 1987 to
1995.
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Alma Law
1927- 2003
17
SAVIANA STANESCU:
A ROMANIAN POET AND PLAYWRIGHT
CROSSING BORDERS-NEGOTIATING CULTURES
Beate Hein Bennett
When meeting Saviana for the first time, one is struck by her exotic
strong-featured face beaming a welcoming smile. It is matched by a vigorous
voice that greets the new acquaintance like an old friend. Voila Saviana! The
following article is based on an interview conducted with the playwright in
New York on April11, 2003.
Ms. Stiinescu arrived on the New York theatrical scene after having
left quite a track record in her native Romania for the past ten years as poet,
journalist, critic, and playwright. Having experienced the 1989 revolution as
a senior student, she emerged as one of the cultural movers and shakers of
the period, a period full of hope, controversy, and fervor.
While social, political, and economic changes in Romania have been
understandably slow in implementation after sixty years of fascist and
communist dictatorships, the explosion of pent up artistic energies has
catapulted young voices to the forefront of the cultural scene in theatre,
music, film, and the visual arts. Although the established cultural
institutions still suffer to some degree from structural calcification and
economic constraints, individual artistic voices and a receptive public have
created a space for innovation both in state supported organizations and
emergent private enterprises. Saviana Stiinescu has made her voice heard in
several of these arenas.
The 1989 revolution came at the right moment for Saviana. "After
graduation, I was supposed to be sent to the countryside, to a village
somewhere. Many very educated and cultured people before the 1989
revolution wasted their lives in small towns or villages without hope of
realizing their potential. If one did not have a party connection, one did not
get a position." With the regime toppled and the entire Soviet
bloc coming apart at the seams while the rest of the world was watching,
Romania, like its neighbors, manifested an intense hunger for the expression
and exchange of ideas at home along with a curiosity about anything west
of the fallen Iron Curtain. Diverse newspapers and journals were bursting
onto the scene; cultural exchanges enabled the importation of guest artists
and performances from the long demonized West. Many of the talented
18
Playwright, Saviana Stiinescu
19
Romanian artists who had fled the country for years during
regime and established reputations in the West were able to return. Saviana,
like many intellectuals and artists of her generation and time, became part
of this new euphoria of freedom and cultural openness. She became a
cultural journalist: "I could finally shout out against the old structures-! was
very idealistic and thrilled by the new reality. It was very exciting: the
international cultural exchanges, the imports from abroad, not only the
classics and safe ones which we were able to get before, but innovative
contemporary works. We started to be connected to the cultural world. But
I was also still there in my Romanian reality."
And this Romanian reality was sobering. Mter the euphoria, the
prospect of building a country that had been raped by an oppressive system
to the point of total exhaustion was daunting. How to free it from the toxic
waste of a corrupt ideology that had perverted all values and demoralized
the population for generations into submission and suspicion? Where to
look for models of institutions and structures that could work? What would
be the vision for a new Romania? Saviana now remembers "all that energy
wasted in endless discussions, debates, and arguments about reforming
structures and institutions instead of building new things." She felt that "we
were not- I was not able to write about the reality." Especially drama
presented "a problem because many writers could not respond to the social
changes and explore everyday issues in their work in a genuine way. Before
1989, the concept of 'socialist realism' had meant submitting to the
regime's political propaganda." The audience could or would not
deal with plain reality either; they went to the theatre to escape from reality.
The prevailing style that was dominating mainstream Romanian literature
before 1989 relied on metaphor- in Saviana's words an "Aesopian language
syndrome"-because nothing could be said directly, especially relating to
matters of politics, everyday life, sex, and death. Saviana concedes that her
own writing initially conformed to this highly metaphorical style. However,
even her early poetry had a certain performative quality and was consciously
patterned after the surreal absurdist style of earlier Romanian writers,
particularly Urmuz. After all, she grew up in a house where Urmuz had lived
and perhaps absorbed some of his satirical vision by osmosis.
She also remembers looking to the generation of 1927 for
inspiration, to E.M. Cioran, Mircea Vulcanescu, Mircea Eliade, "but some
of them were also problematic-for example, their anti-semitism. And, of
course, we cannot go back to that time of cultural activity, we have to move
20
on, be synchronic with our own times." Trying to establish a cultural
identity while searching for models that dare to break the mold, looking
backward while groping forward, are characteristics of countries emerging
&om a totalitarian regime. For Romania, this seems to be a problem with a
particular edge because it is a country that has traditionally cultivated an
affinity with the Latin world distinct from the surrounding predominantly
Slavic peoples. It is also a country that has served for thousands of years as
a transit territory for a multitude of tribes and was dominated for centuries
by Turkish rule while maintaining its ties to Orthodox Christianity. It is a
multi-ethnic country with an intensely nationalistic population and a
traditionally westward-looking cosmopolitan intelligentia. In view of the
long and short political history of the country and its social and ethnic
tensions, it was a difficult task "to construct a cultural environment in a
healthy and authentic way," according to Saviana. "There were all these
debates about what is authentic now, for whom, this search for our identity,
without becoming nationalistic, this strange energy in many directions."
As a German born in 1945 and growing up in the post-Nazi period
of the 1950s and early 1960s, I was interested to explore the
intergenerational relationship in Romania &om Saviana's perspective and
experience. Is there a dialogue now after 1989 about "that time" between the
older and the younger generation? Saviana reflected:
My parents, both high school teachers, became even poorer [after
1989]-that generation is a kind of lost generation that lived their
lives through us, by proxy. They invested all their love in family. In
my new plays, I am interested in coming out of the abstract
surrealist world and getting into the psychological reality of their
lives ... I feel responsible for my parents. What does it mean to live
all your life in a small powerless country between two super powers?
My parents and friends are still looking for a daddy, a powerful
daddy, a model from the outside. I wish they could develop their
own value system and value themselves more.
There are two popular Romanian legends. that symbolize a certain national
self-perception. One legend is the Miori{a about a shepherd who is betrayed
and killed by his fellow shepherds. The other is the Master Manole legend
about a master-builder who must sacrifice his most beloved possession to
salvage the church he has built; thus he immures his wife in one wall of the
21
22
Stanescu's Infanta. User's Guide, directed by Radu Afrim,
Underground Theatre, T!rgu M u r e ~ Romania
church, possibly an allusion to sacrificing the life of a people for an ideal.
Both of these legends are still operative in the minds of nationalistic
politicians and their followers. Saviana grew up in the Master Manole town
and thus became keenly aware of the ironic message contained in that
legend, especially poignant for an alert young woman growing up in a male-
dominated world.
This intense debate about a country's cultural, political, and social
direction, while struggling with its economic bankruptcy absorbed much of
the creative energy in general, but Saviana felt that these energy-consuming
issues affected also her personal creative growth.
I didn't have a lot of time to invest in my own writing. It wasn't my
personal struggle but against old institutions and structures. Mter
1989 the pluralism of different opinions was problematic, because
people were still used to dealing with one opinion, one system, the
official one, or if not official, at least one standard of values. It was
difficult to get people to accept, the multiplicity of truths-of artistic
truths, of perspectives-something that was achieved in the West a
long time ago, especially on the aesthetic level. The idea that no
one is more important than others, the postmodem paradigm of
variable values, and the opportunity to speak about these things
openly, was for us very special. We still had this romantic idea that
as artists "we are great." Well, we are not that great. Artists should
not consider themselves that special.
However, Saviana did enjoy the benefits of her special status as an
outspoken journalist and of her growing reputation as a poet. Her first book
of poetry, Sex on Barbed Wire (1994), followed in 1996 by another book of
verse, Advice for Houswives and Muses, established her as one of the "trendy
poets of Bucharest .. . [who] successfully revigorated Futurist and Dadaist
rhetoric in her poems," according to Alina Nelega, a fellow Romanian
playwright.! The performativity of her poetry caught the attention of some
young theatre directors. In 1996 Adrian Lupu, the artistic director ofTeatrul
Dramatic Galati, a city on the Danube was the first to offer his theatre for a
performance of The Outcast (a text to be performed). A wild concoction of
modem sexual politics in Dadaist language and with surreal characters
augmented by puppets of all sorts, the text is held together by a formal
structure of stichomythia alternating with choral passages, reminiscent of
23
ancient Greek drama.2 As theatre critic for Adevdrual Literar Artistic, she
moved in theatrical circles. The establishment, with her husband Alexandru
Condeescu, of the Museum of Romanian Literature, and her hand in
organizing events that mixed exhibitions with performance and music
provided her with the experience of alternative theatre experimentation. In
the mid-nineties site-specific projects were beginning to pop up in all kinds
of places in Bucharest. "My poems were everywhere. Young directors,
emerging theatre people were working together- it was an alive, kind of hip-
hop atmosphere of new things."
In 1998, Saviana went to Bochum, Germany, to attend the Ruhr
International Theatre Academy where her play, Final Countdown (Balkan
Blues), was first conceived. It was later that year selected by Alina Nelega for
Dramafest in where it was further developed. (The Lark
Theatre Company produced the play for the Fringe Festival 2003 in New
York City under Cosmin Chivu's direction with music composed by John
Stone.) That same year, in 1998, her poem/ play, The Outcast, was selected to
represent Romania at the Festival du Monde at the Theatre Gerard Philippe
in Paris. In 1999, The Inflatable Apocalypse: An Aberration in Four Scenes and
Three Episodes was chosen Best Play, a prestigious yearly prize awarded by the
Romanian Theatre Association, UNITER. A writer-in-residence fellowship
brought Saviana to Vienna.
Her journalistic career had been taking off in several media; she
worked for Radio Free Europe and hosted a TV talk show, Polemics. As a
Romanian liaison for the British Council for a few years, she was a member
of several committees organizing literary events. "This access to
contemporary British writing was formative for me." It also opened the
doors to two literary festivals in Great Britain, Bath and Cambridge. She was
invited to read her poetry all over England, both in English and in
Romanian. She found "an international writer identity growing within and
realized that expressing myself in Romanian was not enough. I wanted to be
able to communicate something to the world, especially about Romania,
about my feelings about Romania, my identity as a Romanian. I felt that
even through translation, it is difficult to reach people abroad- the language
barriers, different styles and references-what we consider very beautiful in
Romanian could be considered too muddled. Our metaphors are difficult to
translate and not clear to British or American audiences. I love the
Romanian language-it is a powerful language-but I grew to love writing in
English."
24
Slavic and East European PeifOrmance Vol. 23, No. 3
Stanescu's Body Maps, co-directed with Oana Botez,
New York Fringe Festival, 2002
.25
In 2001, Saviana came to New York City, considered the mecca for
many young Romanians. She was accepted into the Performance Studies
Program at New York University on a Fulbright grant. With Richard
Schechner, she co-authored a new play, Yokastas, produced at La Mama
under Schechner's direction. Another play, Waxing West, was given a reading
in May 2003 and presented in a full production by the Lark Theatre
Company in September 2003. The play combines a view of Romania and
America with some of the absurd theatrical elements of her earlier work, but
she also explores character in a more conventional psychological style.
Nevertheless, her sense of the grotesque is never far-and so we have, as
interludes, cemetery scenes with the e a u ~ e s c u pair as inept vampires. This
play was written in English. "It is interesting that it's easier for me to write
theatre in English, maybe because I studied and read many plays in English.
It is such a rich language; one can be so subtle about any small action.
Strangely, in Romanian, I still cannot be precise enough- we don't even have
the expression 'to make a point.' We make too many points- it is
labyrinthine."
The experience of living abroad- first in Germany; then Vienna,
Paris, and London; and finally New York City-has given her a perspective
toward Romania in the context of a larger world. Curiously, the distance has
allowed her to come to terms with her country. "When I came here, I gained
a better sense of my identity, my reality. I also don't have this idealized view
of the West anymore. Over there, people believe it's an artist's paradise in
New York, but the irony is that many American writers envy the European
system of supporting/subsidizing artists."
Straddling cultures and languages can also be quite disorienting.
Leaving a prominent position and opting for the anonymity of student life
in New York City means reinventing oneself
26
Now that I've been here, I know that life is short, and I am hung
between two cultures. I have to fight with feelings of belonging
nowhere or in between. Starting from scratch and being a student
at my age hasn't been easy, but I feel compelled to go forward.
Friends of my age over there have a nice life, compared to my life
here .... But I have stories to tell. We are constructed by the
stories we are told and the stories we tell. My self-assigned mission
now is to talk about the East-European post-totalitarian reality as an
insider and outsider. In 1989, Caryl Churchill came to Romania for
a two-week workshop with students, and she created this brilliant
outcome, Mad Forest. It's great that this wonderful play exists, and
it has made Western audiences interested in Romania. The lesson
that Churchill unintentionally taught us is that artists should
respond quickly to their own history. We shouldn't wait for an
outsider to write about us. We should get out of this mentality, this
habit, of waiting for history to remember us. I am trying to be an
active witness of our times, to define and redefine myself as a
Romanian writer and as an international writer. I would like not to
be looked at in narrow limitations, not to be tagged. I consider
myself a witness compelled to tell stories.
The stories are harsh-they speak of death and violence-the figures are
grotesque and tragic; the voice is shrill with laughter and fury. It all comes
from a place of long-lived terror. Since coming to New York, Saviana weaves
her stories into the web of unlikely encounters that make up the vibrant
drama of this city, a place where death and life share close quarters.
NOTES
1 Alina Nelega, C.R.A.P. or Concerning a Revival of the Absurd Parodied, in Saviana
Stanescu, Black Milk: Four Plays, English-Romanian, (Bucharest: Editura Muzeul
Literaturii Romane & Norii [USA], 2001}, 5. The title of this anthology is an
hommage to the Romanian-Jewish-German poet Paul Celan whose Holocaust poem
"Fugue of Death" opens with "Black milk of morning we drink it at night. .. "The
bilingual volume contains Infanta-User's Guide, Final Countdown, Death- Step by Step,
The Inflatable Apocalypse.
2 Saviana Stanescu, The Outcast in New Romanian Plays: Dramafist 1998
Romania: The Dramafest Foundation, 1998}. This volume contains four plays, by
young Romanian playwrights, in English translation, selected for Dramafest. Among
them, The Outcast in English was translated and adaptated by Alina Nelega-Cadariu,
and revised by Virgil Stanciu.
27
KAREL STEIGERWALD: "REMARKABLE MORALIST" AND
THEATRE AS A "TEMPLE OF THE MIND"
PART I
Stepan S. Simek
Czech Theatre in the 1990s and Its Relationship to New Works
During an extensive 1998 public debate between the playwright Pavel
Kohout and ]ifina Jiraskova, the artistic director of the Vinohrady Theatre
in Prague, Kohout argued that "Only a contemporary play can raise the bar
of theatre in any country."
1
In an article entitled "The Erratum of
Commonly Held Misconceptions" Petr Pavlovslcy, a Czech theatre scholar
and critic, replies, "No, no, and thousand times no!" He maintains that
Kohout's view is based on a "literary view of the theatre that, ever since
Aristotle, considered the theatre a marginal form of literature." Pavlovslcy
argues, "The bar of the Czech theatre has always been raised by directors
rather than playwrights." He goes on to claim that he knows "of no
theoretical argument that would prove that the potential of artistic success
is higher by producing a contemporary play rather than the canon." 2
What is the role of contemporary Czech playwrights in the context
of Czech theatre after the fall of Communism? The case of Karel
Steigerwald, one of the leading contemporary Czech playwrights, and his
struggle to gain acceptance after 1989, illustrates the difficulties of many
contemporary Czech playwrights who seek a foothold in the post-
Communist theatre of the Czech Republic.
Immediately following the 1989 revolution, the Czech theatres in a
quick succession staged a number of previously forbidden plays by Vaclav
Havel, Pavel Kohout, Josef Topol, and a few other "dissident" playwrights.
This enthusiasm, however, for recent Czech plays quickly waned, and the
theatres soon turned to the classics, foreign imports, and plays that were
considered "safe" from a financial and "audience appreciation" point of
view. In the first five years following the collapse of Communism, theatre
attendance in the Czech Republic fell significantly,3 and theatre
administrators, dramaturgs, and many directors became weary of staging
untested plays of young playwrights.
The unwillingness to produce new work has somewhat abated in
28
Playwright, Karel Steigerwald
29
the last few years, and as I will show, there are now several, mostly
provincial, theatres and some studio theatres in Prague that are willing to
produce new plays. The large state and municipally supported houses,
however, still eye new plays wearily. This trend is especially severe in Prague
where the dramaturgical and financial arguments against new, untested texts
continue, especially in the larger theatres. As late as 2000, the managing
director of the National Theatre in Prague argued that in order to get a
return on the initial capital, a play needed to be in the theatre's repertory for
at least two years, and producing new plays presented too great a financial
risk for the institution.
The sole exceptions to this resistance to produce new plays in
Prague are the small but prestigious Balustrade Theatre and the even smaller
Dejvicke Theatre, both of which staged plays by contemporary playwrights
early on after the fall of Communism. Three-minute Egg or Against the Wind
by Jan Kraus at the Balustrade Theatre has played since 1995 to sold-out
houses, rebutting the financial argument against new plays made by the
larger houses. More recently, the phenomenal2001 Tales of Ordinary Madness
by Petr Zelenka and 2003 Syrup by Miroslav Krobot, both at Dejvicke
Theatre, became two of the most celebrated productions of the new
millennium.
In the decade following the fall of Communism, many
contemporary Czech playwrights of stature stopped writing for the theatre
altogether.4 The new generation of dramatists has been relatively slow in
writing plays that, in one way or another, reflect the new circumstances in
the post-Communist society. Playwrights of the 1990s endured an especially
difficult situation. On one hand, they heard repeated calls in the theatre
community and in the press to discover new talent reflecting the new post-
Communist world on stage; on the other hand, the theatres refused to
produce such plays, and the critics were generally dismissive toward the few
plays that tried to address the new situation.
The litany of regrets about the absence of new Czech plays is long,
and it can be traced throughout the last twelve years across a broad spectrum
of Czech theatre publications, the daily press, intermission talks in the
famous Prague theatre bars, and interviews with a range of dramaturgs in the
Czech theatre. In the years immediately following the revolution, there grew
an expectation that a new Czech play would arise: a play that would sum up
all the fears and hopes of the newly freed country; a play that wrestled with
the past in a way that none had managed to do before; a play that would
30
usher in a new, glorious era of Czech playwriting and would seamlessly
continue the small but distinguished line of such authors as Capek, Havel,
and Topol. As with many other such dreams and desires after the fall of
Communism, these expectations were both understandable and unrealistic.
For example, Vaclav Havel, during an extended discussion about the state of
the Czech theatre in 1994, spoke of the sense of emptiness that plagued all
walks of life in the early nineties. He called for a thorough analysis of this
pervasive emptiness with the hope that such an analysis would become a
"source of catharsis." Havel pointed to Samuel Beckett as the supreme
playwright of emptiness and likened the Czech desire for the new playwright
to a "calling for a new Czech Beckett of the hour."5
Fortunately, the desire for new plays did result in a few concrete
actions, chief among them being the establishment of the so-called Alfred
Radok Foundation, which was named after the great post-war Czech director
and founder of the famed Laterna Magika. The Foundation sponsors a
yearly competition of new Czech and Slovak plays that attracts significant
participation by emerging playwrights. For all its promise, however, the
contest has not fostered the "new Czech play." In fact, five out of twelve
times, a first prize has not even been awarded, and during the first years of
its existence, the top honors went not to Czech but to Slovak plays. The
establishment of such a highly visible and prestigious competition,
combined with the apparent lack of consensus on the merits of the
submitted plays, demonstrates the extremely ambiguous role of new work in
the Czech theatre generally and in the prestigious Prague theatre community
in particular. Thus in the 1990s, the theatre community comprised of
dramaturgs, directors, and critics was calling for new contemporary plays.
The playwrights busily wrote them, offering their work to the theatres,
submitting them to the Alfred Radok competition but found that only
small, mainly regional theatre companies were willing to produce them.
The major reason for such a lack of acceptance rests on an almost
pathological dislike by the leading Czech theatres of plays that are topical,
truly contemporary, political, or otherwise engaged with the present.
Consider the commonly held view that came to light during a 1998 panel
discussion of leading Czech dramaturgs. The theme of the panel was the
lack of reaction by the theatre community to the events of the nineties. One
of the discussants summed up the prevailing attitude about the role of
topical theatre in the following words:
I don't think that we ignore the nineties. It is true that we don't
31
produce plays that directly pertain to the nineties. This is because such
plays either don't exist, or if they do exist, we consider them
unplayable. I also think that a program of a political theatre-a
theatre that reacts to its time is not our aim. Rather, we want to make
theatre about general problems of humanity. And it doesn't matter
whether such problems pertain to the nineties or any other time.6
Thus the contemporary Czech playwrights in the first ten years after the fall
of Communism were caught in a sort of a vicious circle. The theatre
community expected and desired new plays that would illuminate the
present, yet it often considered such plays "unplayable." The situation has
changed in the last few years when a number of Czech theatres-especially
in the provinces-began to embrace new plays that dealt with contemporary
issues in the Czech Republic. For example, in an unprecedented move, the
Drama Studio of Usti nad Labem, a provincial theatre with a long and
distinguished tradition of experimentation, dedicated the entire 1999-2000
season to new Czech plays. Contrary to the fears of the Prague theatre
establishment, the season in Usti nad Labem was a success, and according to
David Czesany, the coartistic director of the theatre, no significant drop in
attendance was recorded during that season.7
The "Czech Season" at the Drama Studio, along with a number of
other provincial theatres and a handful of theatres in Prague that produce
contemporary Czech plays, showed that new plays can be indeed playable
and that adventurous dramaturgy and season planning are possible without
a significant loss in theatre audience. However, with few exceptions-
especially the brutal and biting plays by ]iii Pokorny-the majority of plays
written by young playwrights and produced by the provincial studio theatres
seem almost entirely devoid of ideology, or even sharp social or political
commentary. The plays by authors who took up playwriting after 1989
display either a strong postrnodern absence of ideology or a quasi-realistic
"kitchen sink" theatrical sensibility that deals mostly with personal, intimate,
and relationship themes that seem strangely disconnected from the larger
social and political trends. The Czech Republic in the 1990s remained
difficult to capture on stage.
Theatre as a "Temple of the Mind": A Brief Socio-Historical Analysis
There are several reasons for the absence of strong political and
social themes in the new plays of the Czech Republic. Czechs consider their
32
theatre, in the words of Czech critic Vladimir Hulec, a "Temple of the
Mind"B removed from the everyday realities, yet at the same time, the
theatre is an integral part of spiritual, aesthetic, and cultural life. It is
considered a place where one cultivates one's mind and expands one's
aesthetic and cultural horizons, but it is usually not a place where the
political and social questions of the day are discussed. The leading Czech
director of the 1920s and 1930s, Jindrich Honzl, famously expressed such a
view: "I abhor the idea of some ideological guardians and cowards forcing
the theatre to imitate everyday life!" This of course sounds just like any self-
respecting modernist and anti-naturalist manifesto, but it also points toward
a rejection of anything topical. A strong rejection of the "ideological
guardians" became the artistic credo of the Czech theatre, giving rise to the
role of the creative interpreter: the director, designer, and actor rather than
the writer.
Another reason for the lack of strong political themes in the
nineties is the presence of almost forty years of Socialist Realism. After the
Communist take-over in 1948, the Czech theatre was hit hard by the
Zdhanovian decrees. Here paradoxically began the first instance where the
theatre actually engaged in topical, overtly political, and current themes and
issues. That is, after all, what Socialist Realism is all about! It is exactly this
ideologically imposed topicality that resulted in the subsequent dislike for it
in the theatre, especially after the fall of Communism. Czech theatre artists
and audiences abhor Social Realism, and the relative absence of ideology in
the nineties is the result of such dislike.
Finally, the social and economic policies of V aclav Klaus's center-
right governing party in the first ten years after the fall of Communism
created a decidedly forward-looking atmosphere in the Czech Republic.
Klaus argued forcefully and successfully that the creation of the new political
and economic environment must happen quickly. He deemed questions
about the origin of the new wealth, queries regarding the former Communist
careers of many of the "captains of industry," and a general reckoning with
the past as unnecessary distractions from the creation of the new system.
The past was relegated to the background because only the present and the
future mattered. 9
Asking questions, criticizing the course of the reforms, and delving
into the obvious problems of the "gangster-style capitalism" were seen as
counterproductive at best and as "Communist propaganda" at worst. The
theatre in the nineties mirrored this attitude, and when on a rare occasion
33
34
Sorrow, Sorrow, Fear, the Rope and the Pit, directed by Jan Grossman,
Balustrade Theatre, 1991
an original play with a strong social agenda was staged, it was subjected to
savage criticism. For example, Antonin Masa's play Strange Birds, which took
to task some of the most brutal excesses of the new capitalist attitudes, has
been labeled by one of the most respected Czech critics and theatre scholars,
Zdenek Hoilnek, a "pre-election agitation of the National Theatre aimed
against the current course of our society" to The play was admittedly deeply
flawed dramaturgically, but HoHnek's criticism sounds eerily reminiscent of
past Communist attacks on dissident writers.
The "Middle Generation" and the Myth of Sisyphus
The absence of ideology, the use of postmodern dramaturgy, and
the lack of political themes in the majority of new Czech plays is, however,
not entirely universal. Apart from the young playwrights whose careers are
closely associated with the provincial studio theatres and whose work can
almost exclusively be located in the period after the 1989 overthrow of
Communism, there exists a group of writers who are often classified as the
"Middle Generation." These are authors whose careers as playwrights
emerged in the 1970s. While their older colleagues, such as V aclav Havel,
Pavel Kohout, and Josef Topol, have been associated with the brief period
of artistic freedom and the renaissance of Czech theatre in the 1960s before
their banishment from the stage after the Soviet invasion in 1968, the
playwrights of the Middle Generation tentatively maneuvered around a
number of limitations, interdictions, and numerous fights with censorship
to have their plays produced during the so-called period of normalization
between 1968 and 1989. Some of them did continue to write prolifically
after the fall of Communism. The three most prominent names of this
group are Karel Steigerwald, Daniela Fischerova, and Arnost Goldflam. As a
generation of authors who bravely navigated the treacherous waters of
Communist censorship in the 1970s and 1980s (many of their plays were
banned just after opening; others waited for production for years), who
perfected the fine art of "writing between the lines," and who filled the
theatres with their often historical parables of oppression, they found
themselves in a sort of a vacuum after the fall of Communism. Their fate
closely mirrored the fate of the Czech society as such. V aclav Havel's often
quoted description of the state of the society after the fall of Communism
(made at the opening of the Salzburg Festival in Austria in 1990) captures
the mixed feelings and seeming vacuum in which Czech artists found
themselves when they suddenly regained their freedom.
35
A sensation of the absurd: What Sisyphus might have felt if one
fine day his boulder stopped, rested on the hilltop, and failed to roll
back down. It was a sensation of Sisyphus whose life had lost its old
purpose and hadn't yet developed a new one. 11
Young playwrights whose works are gradually being produced in some
Czech theatres now seem unburdened by such problems. For the most part,
they did not partake in the Sisyphean struggle that essentially defined the
work of their older colleagues, and consequently their starting point as
playwrights, forms a tabula rasa devoid of ideological and historical
consciousness. The writers of the Middle Generation, however, needed to
bridge the past and the present. Their struggle to position their work within
the new society has encountered many obstacles, and while their younger
counterparts have, especially in the last few years, registered some success,
the playwrights of the Middle Generation have either gradually stopped
writing for the theatre altogether or been subjected to relentless criticism and
considered out of touch by both critics and audiences.
Political Theatre: A Czech "Definition"
The critical reaction to the contemporary plays of Karel
Steigerwald, the leading Czech playwright in the 1970s and 1980s, and one
of the most prolific authors of the Middle Generation, serves as a case study
in the problematic relationship between the playwrights of his generation
and the critics and audiences of the post-Communist era in the Czech
theatre. Steigerwald, as opposed to the young generation of playwrights, is a
political playwright who balanced on the brink of illegality during the
Communist regime. This experience compelled him to deal with the past
and its implications for a contemporary, post-Communist society. Indeed,
in his authoritative study of Steigerwald's pre-1989 work, the critic Vladimir
Mikulka calls Steigerwald "the most important author of political theatre
plays in the 1970s and 1980s next to Vadav Havel."12
The Czech understanding of "political theatre," however, is broad.
Jarka Burian subtitles his book on the modern Czech theatre as a "Reflector
and Conscience of a Nation," and Vadav Havel calls for the theatre to "try
to awaken in a man a consciousness of his real problems."l3 Such theatre is
also the theatre of Karel Steigerwald, however, Steigerwald's "reflector"
points out the distortions. His "conscience" is for the most part "bad
conscience," and the solutions to the "real problems," which his characters
36
find, are usually selfish. While Steigerwald's brand of political theatre found
great resonance with audiences in the 1970s and 1980s, his insistence on
coming to grips with the contemporary world of the Czech Republic and
formulating a clear ideological point of view on stage has encountered
mostly negative responses from critics and audiences in the 1990s.
Steigerwald's career as a playwright and publicist, after the fall of
Communism, demonstrates the inherent tension between the cultural
expectations of the theatre as "Temple of the Mind" and his more overtly
"political" plays.
Karel Steigerwald-Plays and Themes Before 1989
Steigerwald was born in 1945, and like many playwrights of his
generation, he graduated from the screenwriting and drama theory
department of the Prague Film School (FAMU), where one of his teachers
was Milan Kundera. After six years as a resident screenwriter of the State
Film Studio Barrandov in the 1970s, Steigerwald began his long and fruitful
association with the provincial Drama Studio Usti nad Labem under the
artistic directorship of Ivan Rajmont. The Drama Studio in the 1970s and
1980s was among the most adventurous of Czech theatres. As opposed to
other small studio theatres that practiced the so-called irregular dramaturgy,
creating original collaborative adaptations of non-dramatic texts, the Drama
Studio produced "regular" plays by Chekhov, Brecht, Shakespeare, etc. The
manner, however, in which those plays were presented was unusual for this
period. The director, Ivan Rajmont, and his company "found a
contemporary language and contemporary gestures. They saw these plays
and characters through the prism of their experience as markedly grotesque
and tragic at the same time."l4
It was for this company that Steigerwald wrote his legendary series
of plays on Czech history-Tartar Feast (1978), Period Dances (1980), Foxtrot
(1982) and Neapolitan Disease (1984). These plays constitute a historical
Czech chronicle from the mid-nineteenth century to an undated future.
Period Dances take place in 1852 shortly after the defeat of the liberal and
nationalist revolution of 1848, Foxtrot is a family saga spanning the period
from the 1918 founding of independent Czechoslovakia to 1945, Tartar
Feast deals with the period between the 1950s and 1960s, and finally,
Neapolitan Disease takes place in a "day after'' post-apocalyptic future. In
each particular play, Steigerwald systematically demolishes one national
myth after another: the myth of the Czech revolutionary patriotism in the
37
nineteeth century, the myth of the democratic society before World War II,
the myth of anti-fascist resistance during the war, the myth of civil
disobedience during the Communist fifties. In Neapolitan Disease, even the
romantic myth of human solidarity and humanism in the face of the
apocalypse is destroyed. Steigerwald, however, labels his pre-1989 quartet of
plays alternately a farce, a burlesque, a comedy, and finally a tragi-farce. He
populates his works with starkly drawn and recurring caricatures of spineless
individuals and naively hopeless idealists; he creates absurd situations
bordering on farce, reminiscent of works by Ionesco, Beckett, or Havel.
Because all his pre-1989 plays are located in an unmistakable Czech
environment and at specific times in history, one could argue that the
combination of the farcical elements and the historical and geographical
spaces creates a unique and unflattering picture of something that could be
called "Czech character." He erects a crooked mirror in which Czech society
can view itself. He does not set out to "reconstruct historical events but to
portray the more ordinary characters and mechanisms, which testify to the
climate of the post-1968 'normalization' in Czechoslovakia."I5
At the very center of Steigerwald's pre-1989 plays, lies the question
of how individuals behave when faced with a total collapse of moral values.
The quartet of historical plays develops basic themes through a recurring
cast of archetypal characters. Self-delusion, opportunism, and spineless
accommodation are contrasted with naive and hopelessly unsuccessful
attempts at morally pure actions.
Steigerwald's pre-1989 work found a willing, attentive and
conspiratorial audience among Czech theatre-goers. When Vladimir
Mikulka calls Steigerwald the "bravest of the tolerated" authors of the 1970s
and 1980s, he echoes Steigerwald's reputation with audiences in the
totalitarian society. In Communist Czechoslovakia, Steigerwald was an
active participant in an interpretive community because his use of historical
simile was clearly understood. In addition to creating a clear analogue to the
climate of the 1970s and 1980s, he also created an unflattering picture of
Czech society and its individual members. He showed the "pragmatic
cynicism of a society and its members who are not interested in the moral,
human, or ethical consequences of their chosen behavior."l6 Steigerwald's
historical simile created a mirror in which Czechs saw themselves and
recognized a "grotesque grimace."l7 However, and this is a crucial point, his
1970s and 1980s audience had a culprit on whom to blame the grimace. It
was clearly understood that the character deformations that Steigerwald so
38
Slavic and East European Performance vol. 23, No.3
savagely portrayed in his plays were the result of the oppressive regime under
which they lived. The audiences understood the plays as "a study of the
behavior of an individual pushed to the wall by the totalitarian system."18
Once this system had been toppled, the chamber of horrors of the "Czech
character" was stripped of the protective wall of totalitarianism. Because of
his unrelenting critique of the Czech individual, Steigerwald's post-1989
work met a largely negative audience and dismissive critical reaction.
Nobel, directed by Ivan Rajmont at the
Theatre of the Estates, 1994
The "Reflective Vacuum" after 1989
In 1989, just shortly before the Velvet Revolution, Steigerwald
became the dramaturg and literary manager of the famous Theatre on the
Balustrade in Prague. It was here in 1991 that Steigerwald's next play, Sorrow,
Sorrow, Fear, the Rope and the Pit was staged by one of the greatest post-war
Czech directors, Jan Grossman, who had just recently returned from internal
exile. The production of Sorrow, Sorrow ... , one of the most anticipated
theatrical events in the early 1990s, encountered decidedly mixed critical
39
reception and almost universal audience dismay. Indeed, the reaction to the
play by critics and audiences alike pointed the way for the reception that
new Czech plays would face after the fall of Communism. Mter Grossman's
death in 1992, Steigerwald left the Balustrade and joined the editorial boards
of the two leading Czech dailies, Lidove Noviny and Mladd Fronta Dnes, and
began to appear as a highly controversial political and social commentator
in the press, radio, and television. Steigerwald, however, did not abandon
writing plays. In 1994, Nobel, one of the few contemporary plays produced
at the National Theatre in Prague, was directed by Ivan Rajmont,
Steigerwald's old collaborator in the 1970s and 1980s.
After Nobel, Steigerwald wrote Neighbors/Fatherland, a play about
the strained relationship between Czechs and Germans after 1989. It is
telling that Neighbors premiered not in the Czech Republic but rather in
German translation at a regional theatre in Germany. The Czech premiere
in a small studio theatre, Rubfn, in Prague in 1999 was more or less ignored
by the critical press, and the few reviews of it were mostly negative.
Steigerwald's last two plays-Martha Peschek at the Pearly Gates (1999),
a starkly critical reckoning with the life and work of Bertolt Brecht based on
Paul Johnson's chapter on Brecht in his The Intellectuals, and Play Comedy: a
Tragedy of Actresses (2001), a savagely grotesque play about manipulation of
history in a world governed by sound bites and media hype- have not had
full-fledged productions as of 2003. They have been published in the
respected theatre journal Svlt a divadlo CW orld and Theatre) and have had a
limited exposure as staged readings. While a highly stylized staged reading
of Play Comedy directed by one of the most respected Czech directors,
Vladimir Moravek, has been widely acclaimed, an eventual production of
the play is uncertain. According to the literary agent for the AuraPont
theatre agency, and one of the authorities on contemporary Czech theatre,
Jitka Sloupova, "People don't want to deal with the past, the directors are
afraid, actresses are cowardly."I9
What is it then that makes Steigerwald's post-1989 plays subject to
negative criticism, audience displeasure, directors' fear, and "actresses'
cowardice"? Surely an author who up until 1989 was considered "the most
significant political writer for the theatre," whose plays used to fill theatres,
and whose "message" was heard by eager audiences could not just become a
"bad" playwright overnight. What is it that makes Steigerwald still the most
analyzed playwright in Czech theatre publications, but the least produced?20
The answer is closely related to Steigerwald's own admission to being
40
something of a "single issue author."
I hope that I have, like any good author, only one single theme.
It sustained me for five plays so far, and I hope it will sustain
me in the future. People call it the "individual and power." But
I would prefer to call it the "individual and illusion." 21
After 1989, Steigerwald continued to write on this theme. During the
Communist regime, the relationship between the individual and power was
of prime importance to audiences in Czechoslovakia. Passive resistance to
power was implicitly enacted by going to see Steigerwald's plays, but the
sudden absence of such "power"-namely the totalitarian system after the
Velvet Revolution-virtually deprived Steigerwald' s plays, in the minds ofhis
audience, of one half of the relationship that defined his pre-1989 work. In
his excellent study of the Czech "authorial theatre," Dennis Beck describes
the effect of the years immediately following the 1989 Velvet Revolution as
"postpartum depression." He sees the theatre "moving away from the center
that had previously been defined in opposition to a single adversary." Beck
writes:
The long familiar other simply stopped existing, and the inverted
reflection of the self that it provided suddenly vanished from the
mirror of cultural and personal definition. In the rush of possible
alternatives to fill up the reflective vacuum, theatre companies and
individuals lost their prior sense of identity and purpose .. .. The
removal of the communist state also removed its polar counterpart:
the parallel polis.22
St eigerwald's post-1989 work, in a sense, steps in to fill the "reflective
vacuum." Rather than defining the "other" as the oppressive regime, he finds
the adversary (or better yet, continues locating it) within each individual
member of the society. The "long familiar other" that previously stood for
the oppressive regime has now clearly become, in Steigerwald's new plays,
the "other" within each individual member of the new, free society. The
adversary is no longer located in the "parallel polis." It now becomes part of
every individual. As the analysis of his post-1989 plays will show, the
protective wall of totalitarianism that, in the popular belief, "made us behave
like that" will be removed, and the audience will be confronted with an
honest reckoning with the past, the individual culpability for the previous
41
regime, and a bitter vision of the present state of the country and its citizens.
The somewhat mistaken but understandable interpretation of Steigerwald's
pre-1989 plays as an examination of the relationship of the individual to
power will be replaced by the unwillingness to confront his plays in terms of
the relationship of the individual to illusion.
(Part II will appear in the next issue.)
NOTES
1 Pavel Kohout, quoted by Petr Pavlovslcy, "The Erratum of Commonly Held
Misconceptions" (Opravnik oblfbenych omylu), Svlt a divadlo 1 (1999), 165.
2 Ibid.,166
3 This trend, however, has been reversed dating from approximately 1996. Theatre
attendance in Prague and the majority of provincial cities is now at the pre-1989
level, partially because the fascination with the liberated mass media has turned into
more of a general disgust with TV and foreign action films, and partly because the
financial situation of the theatres has stabilized with a number of municipal
ordinances dealing with financial support of theatres.
4 Pavel Kohout's only post 1989 play Double 0 (in reference to the common sign
"00" signifying public toilets) has created something of a scandal in 2000 after being
refused by one of Prague's leading large theatres, Vinohrady Theatre, for being
"unplayable." Havel has not written any new plays since 1989 and neither has Josef
Topol- the third member of a successful playwriting trio of the 1960s.
5 Vaclav Havel, in "From Czech Theatre to Islamic Fundamentalism (and Back
Again)" (Od ceskeho divadla k islamskemu fundamentalismu [a zpatky]), Svlt a
divadlo 5 (1994), 37.
6 Marek Pivovar, "From the Provinces" (Z provincie), Svlt a divadlo 6 (1998), 61.
Emphasis added by the author.
7 David Czesany, "Czech Season" (Ceska sez6na), Divade/n{ noviny 9:18 (October
31, 2000), 2.
8 Vladimir Hulec, in a personal interview: January, 1998.
9 Interestingly, as opposed to a number of other formally Communist countries, very
few former Communist officials were ever brought to trial in the Czech Republic.
On the contrary, many former Communist officials, factory bosses, secret service
agents, etc. became the leading entrepreneurs in the nineties. In some instances, the
turnaround took an absurd form. For example, one of the former "Cultural
Secretaries" of the Prague branch of the Communist Party-essentially one of the
chief censors in Prague- became the first director of the Czech edition of Playboy
42
Magazine.
10 Zdenek Hoi'lnek, "A Lukewarm era at the National Theatre" (:Era vlaznosti v
Narodnfm divadle), Svlt a divadlo 5 (1996), 36.
11 V aclav Havel, The Art of the Impossible: Politics as Morality in Practice, Trans. Paul
Wilson and others. (New York: Fromm International, 1998), 49.
12 Vladimir Mikulka, "The Bravest of the Tolerated (Karel Steigerwald's Drama prior
to 1989)" (Nejodvaznejsf z povolenych [Dramaticka tvorba Karla Steigerwalda pred
rokem 1989]), Divadelni revue 2 (April 2000), 11.
13 Vaclav Havel, quoted by Jarka Burian, Modern Czech Theatre: Reflector and
Conscience of a Nation (Iowa City: U. of Iowa Press, 2000), 110. The full quotation
reveals much about Havel's understanding of the theatre in particular and his
humanistic approach to politics in general: "What should theatre do, actually?
According to my opinion it should awaken man in his authenticity; it should help
him to become aware of himself in the full span of his problems, to understand the
situation in which he lives; to provoke him to think about himself. [However] next
to this true authenticity there exists, of course, an authenticity that is actually
obscurity, false, when the theatre doesn't try to awaken in a man a consciousness of
his real problems but on the contrary helps his natural tendency to solve these
problems superficially."
14 Jitka Sloupova, Karel Steigerwald: Bjti satirikem (Karel Steigerwald: Being a Satirist)
(:Prague: Dilia, 1990), 3.
15 Vaclav Koenigsmark, "Wandering and Searching," Theatre Czech and Slovak 3
(1992): 6. This article offers good synopses of Steigerwald's pre-1989 plays.
16 Koenigsmark, Wanden"ng and Searching, 8.
17 Ibid.
18 Milena Vojtikova, "Karel Steigerwald (An Attempt of Analysis of Authorial Style)"
(Karel Steigerwald, [Pokus o analyzu autorskeho stylu]), Divadelni revue 4 Guly 1996),
32.
19 Jitka Sloupova, E-mail Interview. July 2002.
20 Since 1990 Divadelni revue, the most prestigious theatre theory publication in the
Czech Republic published as many as four analyses of Steigerwald's work; the bi-
monthly Svlt a divadlo has published all of Steigerwald's new plays, and the bi-weekly
Divadelni noviny rarely omits to mention Steigerwald one way or another in most of
its issues. No other playwright in the Czech Republic has been so thoroughly
analyzed, and at the same time few other playwrights have been so rarely produced.
21 Karel Steigerwald, quoted by Jitka Sloupova, Karel Steige171Jald, 27.
22 Dennis C. Beck, "Divadlo Husa na Provazku and the 'Absence' of Czech
Community," Theatre]ournal, 48:4 (December 1996), 438-439.
43
INTERVIEW WITH MARK ROZOVSKY:
TWENTY YEARS AT THE THEATRE AT THE NIKITSKY GATES,
FORTY-FIVE YEARS IN THE RUSSIAN THEATRE
Maria Ignatieva
This interview took place in Moscow, At the Nikitsky Gates Theatre, December 30,
2002.
Mark Rozovsky (born in 1937) graduated from Moscow State
University in 1960 and became one of the leaders of the Studio Theatre
movement. He was the artistic director of the Moscow State University
Studio, Our Home, from 1958 to 1969. Between 1970 and 1973, he
established the Theatre at the State Literary Museum. Rozovsky also worked
at the Moscow Theatre for Youth, Bolshoi Dramatic Theatre (Leningrad),
the Moscow Art Theatre, and the Russian Drama Theatre in Riga. In 1975,
he staged the first USSR rock-opera in Moscow, Orpheus and Eurydice (music
by Alexander Zhurbin). In 1983, he founded his own theatre, U Nikitskikh
Vorot (At the Nikitsky Gates). Today, the theatre's repertory includes more
than twenty-five plays. It has toured in Russia, as well as in Sweden,
Denmark, Finland, the United States, Germany, Israel, and France.
Rozovsky has written books about the theatre, such as Director of the
Show, Self-Return, Traniformation, Theatre Out of Nothing, and Reading Uncle
Vanya. Rozovsky is also the author of numerous plays, scenarios, and
adaptations such as The Red Corner, Dressing Room, and Triumphal Square. He
has also composed music for his own plays and musicals. His play, The Story
of a Horse, based on Leo Tolstoi's story Strider, was successfully staged on
Broadway (1979-1980), and later produced by several university theatres in
the United States.
Mark Rozovsky: It seems to me that I have lived two lives. In fact, a lot
of us have: one life and biography during the Soviet days, and the other one
when censorship was abolished and we got freedom. Then I became the
head of the Theatre at the Nikitsky Gates, which will soon celebrate its
twentieth anniversary. Some of my shows lived a long time. Perhaps for
Americans, it would sound weird: the same shows running for fifteen or
twenty years. But both Poor Lisa and The Story of a Horse are still being
44
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Mark Rozovsky
45
performed exactly the way they were staged a long time ago, and they remain
very popular.
Maria Ignatieva: What is the secret of their longevity?
MR: I'm not in the habit of boasting about the secrets of my success.
MI: But surely you have thought about it. Can't you give me a little
hint ?
MR: I can tell you that my shows are alive because the spectators and
I myself treat them as if they were living creatures. The breathing of the show
and the breathing of the audience merge, creating a unique atmosphere. My
long-lived productions (such as The Story of a Horse and Poor Lisa) have
universal themes so that every twist and turn in history simply throws new
light on their timeless messages. I guess these shows were well done too, for
time has not diminished or weakened them .... When new actors replace
the old cast, they always fill the old productions with new inspiration.
MI: Could you say a few words about the shows you directed in other
professional theatres with professional actors?
MR: It's the same story. For example, in 1983, I directed Amadeus. It
is one of my oldest shows running at the Moscow Art Theatre, and it was
just recently revived.
MI: Tell me how you see the role of amateurs in the professional
theatre.
MR: I came from the world of amateurs myself and gradually became
a professional. Believe me, colleagues still remind me of that fact. But, as we
all remember, neither Stanislavsky nor Nemirovich-Danchenko graduated
from the professional t heatre academies or conservatories (laughs), which are
named after them these days. Though I was an amateur, in every single
production of mine, I insisted on an absolutely professional attitude.
Sometimes I see my generation as if we were self-educated cybernetic
machines that learned their profession while they were in the process of
working on the show. I personally was taught a lot that way. I learned while
46
I was working at the amateur theatres and professional theatres (at the
Moscow Art Theatre, at the Bolshoi Dramatic Theatre in Leningrad, and
The Russian Drama Theatre in Riga), and at the Music-halls and Variety
theatres. The Music-halls and Variety Theatres taught me, perhaps, the
greatest lessons. You see, Meyerhold often repeated that the theatre of the
future would make use of the small genres and forms. I started my career at
the University Theatre in 1959. During that wonderful time of the Thaw,
when our society and our minds were liberated and new opportunities came
our way, I experienced new theatrical forms combining drama, dance,
cabaret, and even circus, and I mixed them together in my productions.
MI: When did you start writing your own plays, adaptations, and
scenarios?
MR: Also in the late fifties, when I was just twenty-one. Believe it or
not, my first play was written in the style of theatre of the absurd. Of course,
it was influenced by Ionesco. And at the same time, it was not! Why?
Because I had never seen Ionesco performed on stage then, or even had a
chance to read Ionesco's plays! But I heard about him. I remember I read a
review about one of his plays and was struck by the fact that I had written
something very similar to Ionesco. It was not a question of textual
similarities, but methodology and the structure of the dialogue. Today, in
the twenty-first century, phrases like "the newly discovered" Russian Theatre
of the Absurd make me smile. It was all discovered and tried out in the
sixties. Today, it tastes like gum that was chewed a long time ago and spat
out.
MI: In the sixties, the Thaw generation established their cult of Ernest
Hemingway. The American writer became an idol for the Soviet
intelligentsia. His picture could be found in every apartment; his books
became the bible for many Thaw artists.
MR: This fashion hadn't touched me at all! The whole "set of
images" - when bearded people from the sixties sang songs near a bonfire,
drank themselves to death, and read Hemingway-had become a cliche even
then. At our studio theatre, we mocked such cliches and parodied them. We
chose a very different path-we became the "theatrical sarnizdat" of our time.
We wanted to talk about the "hottest topics" of the time in fluid and
47
entertaining theatrical forms. Believe me, the audience mobbed our studio
every night. Finally, the theatre was banned "for anti-Soviet propaganda,"
and I got labeled a dissident.
MI: Please say a few words about your actors.
MR: Actors of the "small genres" easily adjust to the demands of my
theatre. You see, I have always tried to create a syncretic actor. If dramatic
actors usually fail in musicals, the music hall actors succeed in drama
because they have unhampered muscles, incredible flexibility, and can sing
and project. If they are baptized into the art of psychological drama, they
blossom. I collect my actors; I treasure them and their talents. From my
point of view, they have to be extraordinary people as well as talented actors.
As their artistic director, I need to bring them together, like the pieces of a
puzzle. It cannot be done in one, or two, or even three seasons; it must be
a planned and carefully developed strategy. Such an ensemble cannot be
achieved at an enterprise theatre where the actors are hired for a single
production.
MI: How do you train them?
MR: The same way they have been trained in the past: they grow in
the process of creating new productions. My favorite method is to throw
them into productions as puppies are thrown into a river: they don't have
any choice but to swim. When I work with inexperienced actors, I usually
give them the most difficult theatrical task. I don't ask them to do what they
already know; usually I ask them to do impossible things ... . Having worked
with my actors for years, I am spoiled by their goodness, resulting in
incredible mutual understanding. Usually I say "a" and they add "b, c, and
d." Then I say "e," and they say the rest of letters. This is called complete
mutual understanding, which has been cultivated through the years.
MI: What, from your point of view, is the difference between
Western and Russian actors? In very general terms ...
MR: Hmm ... A Russian actor differs tremendously from his Western
counterpart. First of all, a Russian actor always has doubts about everything
and can't just do what he is told to do. In many cases, he can't execute the
48
The Story of a Horse presented by Cornell's Center for Theatre Arts,
1997
49
simplest directorial task. If the director says to him "louder-softer," or "step
here and tum there," such commands will either depress the Russian actor,
or make him laugh. I exaggerate just a little here. You know, a typical
Russian actor has to go through a very painful series of doubts and
disappointments. Until the Russian actor has beaten his own chest,
metaphorically speaking, until he has told everyone that he was helpless,
until he has cried his eyes out while drinking vodka and has blamed
everything and everyone-that is, until he has tortured himself and his
friends and relatives, he cannot play his role. Then, only after opening night,
when he is praised as a genius, will he smile naively and stop suffering. So
Russian actors weigh every directorial task; they are their own directors.
Sometimes it destroys them; sometimes, as a result, they become very
vulnerable and insecure.
Ml: So, as you said before, you know your troupe, and your troupe is
in touch with you. Does that mean that you have the same way of working
on each new show?
MR: No, of course not! I start every show from scratch, as writers do,
having just a blank sheet of paper in front of them. Every time I start, I am
very nervous and excited. One absolute condition of my work is that I must
not know whats ahead of me. I need to set the fire within my imagination;
my inspiration comes not from knowledge; but from fear that I can't express
what I feel. My intuition starts it all; then I suddenly feel this incredible
energy of penetration into the play's core. It is a breathtaking process of
discovery when one goes through mazes, dead ends, ditches, and jungles. At
the same time, I have always tested my discoveries through my own
pragmatism. "What for and why" are the most essential questions that every
director must be able to answer at any point in his work. The classical
directors taught us exactly that. Directing is a search: first just my personal
search, and then the whole team of actors' search.
MI: Mark, you were among the founders of the Russian national
version of the musical. You started creating musicals in the late fifties and
have continued into the twenty-first century. With the invasion of American
culture into the Russian entertainment market, interest in musicals is at a
high point.
50
Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol. 23, No. 3
MR: When young directors tell me that they have "invented" the
musical or "directed a musical for the first time," I smile. All my life, I have
created musical performances; in the sixties, we were not allowed to call
them "musicals," it sounded too damn American!
MI: Could you say a few words about your American connections?
MR: The Story of a Horse, with my lyrics and my music, was staged on
Broadway during the 1979-1980 season. Since I was not allowed to travel
abroad until after Perestroika, I never saw it. People from the American
Embassy in Moscow secretly slipped me the reviews. For the late seventies,
it was a unique "breakthrough"; I still can't believe that it really happened.
For the first fifty years of my life, I was not allowed to visit capitalist
countries; since 1987, I've been to the States sixteen times. Another play of
mine, Kafka: Father and Son, was twice staged at La Mama (Feb. 1985 and
Jan. 1992). I fell in love with the show itself and was thrilled by the critical
response: the critics understood everything that I wanted to say! It was a true
serendipity; I was amazed how profoundly they saw to the core of the play.
Today, it is fashionable to criticize American theatre. As for me, I like
American theatre: that country demonstrates a great variety of genres and
styles. Unfortunately, both nations' bad luck is that American culture is still
closed to Russian spectators, and vice versa. There is no Iron Curtain
anymore, but real interaction between the two cultures still does not
happen.
MI: Don't you think that these days instead of an Iron Curtain, we
have a Dollar Curtain?
MR: Dollars, distances, visas, economies, etc. Most of the
international theatrical projects, which are sponsored in Russia, are geared to
pure entertainment. I don't reject "entertainment" (how can theatre be
theatre without entertainment?), but the greatest mission of theatre must not
be reduced to entertainment only.
MI: Do you have a favorite person in American theatre?
MR: Of course! Bob Fosse. From my point of view, he made musicals
high art. I directed a play dedicated to him; it is called Cabaret, or Bob Fosse
51
Lives in Moscow. Fosse finds himself in Moscow, directs a musical in my
theatre; my actors in the show transform themselves into American actors
(by the way, they sing with no accent, they were coached by an American
teacher!). Then Fosse dies in Moscow.
MI: You have composed music for your own musicals. Please explain
how you do it without having a formal musical education.
MR: Ha! I don't know how to write the score at all. But I hum my
tunes and my friends, professional composers, then play them for me. After
that I correct the melody, and then they write a score. So I work like Irving
Berlin. The Story of a Horse uses my melodies; I created the musical numbers
for most of my shows.
MI: How would you describe your style? What is your "credo" these
days?
MR: When I directed Romeo and juliet, I tried to move as far away from
the "denim style" as I could. I don't like Shakespeare in contemporary dress
and actors with college manners. When I directed Romeo and juliet, I used the
beautiful translation by Boris Pasternak and music by Peter Iliych
T chaikovsky. Today, I am defending theatre in the grand style. I can still
work in the "denim style"; in fact, I can do it in my sleep. But it is much
more difficult to stage a play as it was written, and to find the essence of the
relationships among the characters. These days, I seek a new theatricality
growing out of the text. It is the most difficult task.
MI: How do you define the "grand style"?
MR: When I say "grand style," I am talking about a theatre of
powerful spirituality, which is embodied in the actors and not in directorial
tricks. Actors are not marionettes; they serve higher spiritual goals and have
to be able to convey these to audiences.
MI: My next question is about the economic status of your theatre.
Your theatre opened in 1983.
MR: In 1986, we were gtven our status as a professional Studio-
52 Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 23, No. 3
Theatre, with permission to have a budget, although we did not receive a
single penny from the government. But we managed. Then Russia had its
crisis in 1991 when prices jumped 3,000 per cent. It was only then that it
became impossible for us to survive financially. Right after the crisis, I was
called to the Moscow Committee of Culture, and our studio became a
Moscow municipal theatre. Now it is one of the eighty-six municipal
theatres in Moscow. We are given a very small subsidy, which is hardly
enough for the actors' salaries; in addition, we have a little money for two
new shows a year. But I usually direct four or five!
MI: So how do you manage? Do you have sponsors like other
theatres these days?
MR: No, we don't! We earn the money ourselves. You see, a normal
person from the West won't be able to understand what's going on in
Russia. Russia has over 700 theatres surviving with the help of subsidies. But
let me tell you what our real problem is: our problem is not that we are not
given enough money from the government, but that the government doesn't
let us earn our money. We pay taxes, but we don't have a law that
encourages rich people to invest money in culture by reducing their income
taxes! So it is not profitable for the rich to sponsor culture. We don't have
any law affecting theatres; we are still operating under the previous system.
The only thing that is different is the absence of censorship,
which is crucially important. But otherwise, financially, the law is the same
as it was fifteen years ago. We are moving very slowly toward a new system
of economic relationships and regulations. In the next ten years, I am sure
there will be reforms, and first of all, they will hit the old established
monsters, known as the repertory theatres. They were called the Imperial
Theatres in the pre-Revolutionary times. They are still supported by the
government, having giant troupes of up to 200 actors, out of which just fifty
actors are involved in the productions while the rest are paid for doing
nothing! Even if their salaries are really low, they are still paid! On the other
hand, let's look at the enterprises (commercial capitalist ventures). There are
thousands of them in Russia, but do they bring real art? Very rarely! I have
not seen a single show in any enterprise that could be called real art. There
are attempts, but they are not convincing. It's a nice source of income for
the underpaid actors of the repertory theatres, of course. But many
spectators already know that in most cases, enterprises don't have any artistic
53
potential.
MI: Please describe how you will celebrate the anniversary of your
theatre.
MR: No anniversaries! No celebrations! It is a working season for us,
just the same as every other season. I am doing Albert Camus's dramatic
adaptation of Dostoevsky's The Possessed, which is about Russian terrorism. I
think it is extremely important to get to the core of terrorism today by
understanding its philosophy and psychology. How can we fight Bin Laden
without understanding the roots of our own Russian terrorism? No, I am not
directing this play because my daughter was among the hostages of Nord-
Ost. I announced my plans to direct Camus before Nord-Ost happened, at
the opening of the new season. In addition, I will direct Lord Byron's
Sardanapalus, and it will be the first staging of the play in Russia. Oh, it will
be a spectacular oriental performance; I invited a designer from the
Turkmen Republic, an incredible stage artist, Berda Gulah Aman Sakhet. No
one knows him in Moscow, but he is well known in Europe. He is a true
expert in ancient civilizations and oriental style.
MI: This past year you went through agony having your daughter
among the hostages.
MR: As long as I live, I will be very thankful to the unknown soldier
who carried my Sasha (she is fourteen) out of the theatre. Along with eight
other children, they were taken to the Children's Hospital, and four of them
went into the Intensive Therapy Unit. What can I say about her condition
these days? No one knows what to expect. It was very strong gas poisoning,
all her organs were damaged. For now, she seems to have recovered. How it
will affect her future, I don't know.
MI: Is she able to talk about it?
MR: Not much. Not only were those three days hard for her, but even
worse was what happened afterward. Two of her best friends died, a boy and
a girl, both her age. I know she was very composed there, at the Ball Bearing
Palace of Culture. She even asked one of the Chechens to allow "her
brother"- who was not really her brother, you understand, just her friend-
54
to move from his seat to sit with her, in the balcony. The Chechen allowed
the boy to move. But later the gas killed him. In December, I invited my
daughter Sasha and her friend to see one of my productions. When she saw
two actors dressed as soldiers and heard the taped sound of gunfire, she
immediately put her head on her knees and covered it with her hands.
MI: I know that people from all over the world were devastated by the
hostage crisis. Though far from Moscow, we all prayed for everyone, and
you and your daughter, too.
MR: I am very thankful to the people who called me and morally
supported me. In January, Sasha and I, along with other children-hostages
and their parents, will fly to Israel. They invited us for relaxation and
treatment for two weeks. It was a gift from the Israeli government.
MI: Good luck to you, and your family in the New Year,
congratulations on the twentieth anniversary of your theatre.
MR: Thank you.
55
TRANSLATING AND DIRECTING MROZEK'S THE TURKEY
IN LONDON
Teresa Murjas
Keeping the Faith, based on the Ph.D. thesis written by a former state-
registered nurse, Michelle Winslow, tells the story of the Polish community
that found itself on British soil after World War 1!.
1
The majority of these
refugees had already arrived by 1949. A Home Office report estimated the
numbers to be some 162,000, of which only two per cent were Jewish. They
made up the largest group of political exiles to settle in Britain since 1918.2
I grew up in such a community. My parents were both deported
from villages near the southeast town of Krasiczyn-my mother's family to
Siberia by the Soviets in the first wave of deportations at the start of the war,
and my father later by the Nazis to a German labor camp. They met in
England after the end of the war, having done a great deal of traveling (and
I use the term ironically). It was a long way to come to start a romance. I
grew up in a thriving and energetic Polish community in Derby, which is in
central England, where theatre and the arts were highly valued. All artistic
activity was fuelled by great zeal. It was inevitably linked to patriotism. It was
always connected to national and cultural festivals. It always took place in
an atmosphere of religious devotion. For this particular community, art itself
was a political act-an affirmation and re-negotiation of Polish identity in a
foreign environment.
Peter Stachura, head of a new research center on Polish history at
the University of Stirling notes that, unlike some ethnic groups, Poles have
kept to themselves and do not have a high public profile.3 While other
ethnic groups in Britain-particularly those connected to England's colonial
past- have entered into a public and artistic negotiation of their new
position, location and cultural contribution, and thus actively forged the
shape of post-colonial culture in Britain, the Polish community, for reasons
both political and historical, has been denied, or has denied itself, such a
prominent voice.
It was precisely this form of negotiation that I wished to engage in
by setting up a theatre company dedicated to the translation and
performance of Polish drama. Our first project was Slawomir Mrozek's Tbe
Turkey (Indyk, 1960).4
56
Tristan Langlois (Poet), left, Andrew Heath (Prince), center, and
Clive Smith (Hermit) in the Flesh and Blood Theatre
Company's production of Mrozek's The Turkry, London.
57
In translation, however, The Turkey immediately posed problems.
Mrozek wrote, at a very specific political and cultural moment, for an
audience who could appreciate the intertextuality of the play, its theatrical
and philosophical context, and thus its potentially subversive political
import. The transplantation of such a text into a culture with none of the
same references was problematic.
I had to assume that a significant proportion of my audience would
not be Polish. Should I retain the cultural specificity of the text and set it in
Poland, giving the peasants in the play, for example, Polish accents? Should
I attempt to find an equivalent British political situation and have, for
example, Irish peasants, thereby bringing a completely different set of
literary and political allusions into play? This issue seemed particularly
important because, in much of his work, Mrozek uses cultural stereotypes as
the initial "molds" for his characters. Working in the tradition of Stanislaw
Wyspianski (whose play The Wedding is one of the starting points for The
Turkey), Mrozek then proceeds to examine their limitations. The cultural
transference of these stereotypes, therefore, has serious implications for a
translator.
It was very important for me to convey as fully as possible the
playwright's intention. But it sometimes seemed as if my own cultural
position and my understanding of Polish history hampered my ability to let
the performance exist in my own present multicultural historical context. An
awareness of the contrasting histories of Poland and England made it very
difficult for me to accept the speaking of the text in English.
The translator and director within me engaged in a battle for
authenticity. How could I best adhere to the playwright's intentions? How
much could be achieved with the text itself and how much was achievable
through a visual concept? Ultimately, was I the right person to perform this
risky transplantation? Was it indeed possible to operate successfully on this
particular text?
Of course, Mrozek's distancing device-setting his action in the
fairy-tale realm of romanticism-provided part of the answer. Allowing the
characters to exist in a self-contained world, relying on the power of theatre,
focusing on the relationships between characters and letting go of my
anxieties about audience response appeared to be the key.
I had to trust the intelligence of my audience. It was up to them to
place Mrozek's clash of contrasting philosophical and moral standpoints in
their own intellectual context. Only then might they ask what prompted a
58
Polish playwright to write this drama. What mattered was the plausibility of
the characters and their relationships. Of course, the play presents a set of
symbols and stereotypes and offers them up for interpretation, but it is not
necessarily helpful for a director to think along these lines during rehearsal.
An audience can only listen and observe. An actor can only play actions. A
director can ... worry.
The Turkey is, on a number of levels, a play about impotence. The
action is set in an inn inhabited by a Poet, a former Army Captain, three
Peasants, and a Sleeping Man, who awakens only toward the end of the play.
Each character is, in his own special way, impotent.
Everyone's upkeep at the inn is, it seems, assured by the powers that
be in the land, whether they do any work or not. For a number of reasons
this has created a feeling of stagnation. The Poet has persuaded himself that
there is nothing to express any more, and no valid form in which to express
it. Even an expression of nothingness would have no impact on the
surroundings or alter the status quo. The Poet assumes a role of resignation
and apathy, a convenient existentialist persona, which he "performs" while
ripping up any book he can lay his hands on. All the Poet's energy goes into
performing this role for his friend the Captain, whom he torments with a
playful viciousness, yet ultimately cannot live without.
The Captain, on the other hand, applies his energy to playing the
violin, which he does abysmally. Since he deserted from the Army, his life
has lost its structure, discipline, and purpose. Yet he thinks he has acquired
artistic sensibility, although he can't express it creatively.
The Peasants with whom the Poet and the Captain co-exist act as a
Chorus of resignation. They spend their time drinking warm beer and
providing a tangential and absurd commentary on the inaction. They can't
be bothered to plough, sow or reap. Their upkeep at the inn is, after all,
guaranteed, whatever they actually do.
These individuals' self-congratulatory apathy is threatened by the
arrival of an eloping couple. Rudolf-an idealistic romantic hero and
virtuoso violinist, ripe for disillusionment and ridicule- has rescued the
flirtatious and bold Laura from a life in a castle like those in lgnacy
Kraszewski's gothic novels. They are pursued by the "camp" Prince and his
side-kick, a skull-wielding, John-the-Baptist-like Hermit, who is supposed to
act as a spin-doctor for the Prince's totalitarian agenda. He fails abysmally.
The introduction of a female into this environment creates conflict.
A duel is almost fought, Laura loses her patience and leaves (possibly with
59
Tristan Langlois (Poet) and Tanya Mundy (Laura) in the Flesh and Blood Theatre Company's production of
Mrozek's The Turkey, London
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the no-longer-sleeping Man) without being noticed, Rudolf loses his
philosophical innocence, the Poet rediscovers his potency, and the Prince is
ultimately unable to restore any form of order by his attempts to marry
Laura off, in an innovative secular ceremony, to anyone at all-including
himself He has made a bid to gain state control over the realm of the
emotions- the final frontier in his plan for "expansion."
The company is finally forced, by the pistol-wielding Poet, to listen
to the Captain's dreadful violin playing and observe the curiously shaped,
potentially fertilized egg which has been laid by a local turkey-hen-a rare
occurrence, since the flock has been suffering from an inability to copulate.
The audience is asked to interpret the ambiguous (and humorous) symbol
of the egg in the context of the clashing ideological positions, which must
boldly define the characters.
What, asks Mrozek, is the solution to impotence, whether
externally imposed or self-inflicted? Is impotence perhaps part of humanity's
natural state? Ought one to engage in a struggle against oneself and one's
environment, and if so, how? Using a pen, poetry, pistols-or perhaps a
violin? Ultimately, how does one render the struggle meaningful?
Mrozek couches the play's philosophical discourse in a colloquial
idiom. The dialogue has, except for notable exceptions such as Rudolfs
sweeping poetic recitation, a relaxed and conversational quality. Seemingly
banal issues-such as the impotent turkey- are discussed with great
intellectual gravity in "everyday" language. As translator, I searched for
equivalent British stereotypes that would not necessarily bring a separate set
of political meanings into play. The drunken Peasants, for example, who
speak in dialect, became rather outlandish West-Country bumpkins with
speech patterns derived from Thomas Hardy. Rudolf's recitation, on the
other hand, was put into blank verse. The Prince complained about the
sexual mores of contemporary society in clipped upper-class tones.
The sense of theatricality and linguistic artificiality created by the
combination of these diverse voices were signs of Mrozek's mastery of
parody. Stereotyping characters to such an extent ultimately helped to
distance the performance from its English social context and to invite
alternative interpretations. I tried to capture Mrozek's small "parallel
universe" with its own set of rules.
Because The Turkey can be interpreted as a political allegory, I
treated the characters not only as stereotypes, but also as archetypes, and
thus felt able to justify my interpretative approach. My visual concept for
61
the production complemented this idea. Costumes suggested a fairy-tale
kingdom, whereas some details of set-including the Russian newspapers
strung up on a clothesline-alluded to aspects of the play's time of origin.
One of the most interesting aspects of my project was the search for
a theatre venue. Initially, I entered my translated text and later my company
of actors in a directors competition at the prestigious London fringe venue,
the Battersea Arts Centre. I called the company Flesh and Blood Theatre, a
name which conveyed both a theatrical style and something about its origins
and evolution. The company was eventually made up of actors from various
backgrounds. I was a runner-up in the competition and was thus enabled to
present a rehearsed "reading" (which was actually off-book and costumed)
through which I could explore the effectiveness of my translation.
Reasonably satisfied, although a little uneasy at that stage about
how exactly to tackle the humor in the play, I decided to take the project
further. I visited a number of theatres, including the Lyric Hammersmith,
whose representative had been to see a performance and expressed an
interest. Finally, the Lyric decided that the play was too experimental, and
our company too much of an unknown quantity to justify the financial risk.
It was suggested that the play belonged on the fringe circuit.
I contacted several fringe theatres and several times was forced to
answer the same question. "You're Polish aren't you? The Polish community
has an excellent theatre building in London. [This theatre is part of the large
Polish community center in Hammersmith. It was set up, and is still run by,
professional emigre theatre practitioners.] Why aren't you staging the play
there?" Each time I gave the same answer. "Because I translated the play so
it could reach an audience that does not speak Polish. The Polish theatre
does not cater to such an audience." "But non-Poles won't really understand
it" was invariably the reply.
I was asked how I planned to make the play accessible. How would
my visual concept show that the action of this play was located in Poland in
the early 1960s? "You ought to think about this very carefully," I was told,
"since British audiences generally don't know anything about Polish
history."
The play's culturally and historically specific visual "syntax" was
considered to be in need of revision. As the director, I was expected to
explain how I would bridge the gap between the play's inner logic and the
British spectator. Since I had not yet started directing the play and was still
thinking as a translator, it seemed as though I had a literary interpretation of
62
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Actor, Clive Smith (Hermit) in the Flesh and Blood Theatre Company's
production of Mrozek's The Turkey, London
the text rather than a "practical stage idiom." Also, as translator, I had to
consider whether I had failed to render the Polish text into effective English.
The London fringe is generally perceived as the champion of
foreign plays, written in minor languages, which are automatically labeled
avant-garde. Whereas the dramas of Chekhov, Ibsen, Brecht, and even
Strindberg, are now deemed worthy of regular mainstream performance, one
could probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of productions
of Polish plays on the established English stage. The situation is actually no
better on the fringe. Mrozek's Tango and Emigres have both managed to
reach mainstream theatres in London: Trevor Nunn directed the former at
the RSC/ Aldwych in 1966, in an adaptation by Tom Stoppard, and Kevin
Billington the latter at the Young Vic/National in 1976, in a translation by
Maciej and Teresa Wrona, assisted by Robert Holman. Has the fringe done
any better by Mrozek?
Is the lack of interest due to the fact that Poland's political status
has changed since 1990, and Mrozek's plays no longer seem topical? In
France, they remain popular, particularly with younger companies.
Inevitably, I also came up against the problem of classification. "Is
The Turkey absurdism?" was a constant question. Clearly, it is, but not in the
way the term is usually interpreted in Britain, using Ionesco and Beckett as
yardsticks. Mrozek more appropriately belongs with Frisch, Adamov and
Arrabal.S These playwrights are perhaps little better known in England now
than Mrozek, although Mrozek carries an extra burden; to understand his
brand of absurdism, it helps to have some knowledge of Polish history,
including Polish theatrical history.
Finally, in a vague state of despair, I decided to telephone the Polish
Theatre in the hope that they might be able to offer a solution. "Sorry," was
the reply, "we only stage performances by visiting companies from Poland,
in Polish. For a Polish audience. Why did you translate the play? Have you
thought about staging it in Polish? We'd be happy to talk to you then."
Perhaps, I thought to myself, I should try staging this play on
another planet. But I settled for Camden People' s Theatre and, very
generously, the Polish Cultural Institute in London offered us luxurious
rehearsal space. I had to finance the project myself, as no other theatre
would take the risk of presenting an unknown play staged by an unknown
company.
Camden People's Theatre was, at that stage, very small, relatively
cheap to hire, and very basic. It is situated in the heart of London on the
64
corner of two very busy streets, and was not yet properly sound-proofed. It
was either very hot or very cold, depending on how the primitive heating
was faring on any particular day. It was a little like the inn in the play, but
it was the only inn prepared to offer us a room.
The performances ran for three weeks. As is typical on the fringe,
the first two brought a slow trickle of stragglers to our doors. In the final
week we saw a surge of interest, with the forty-odd-seat theatre filling up on
most occasions. Perhaps we were not reaching the masses, but this was one
very small step for Polish drama into alien territory.
In retrospect, there are four aspects of the production that I believe
are worthy of note. First, as time went on, I began to realize that 98 per cent
of my audience consisted of members of the Polish community of London
or of tourists from Poland. Although there was absolutely nothing wrong
with this in principle and I was delighted with their attendance, the situation
seemed ironic. On one occasion a large group of these tourists, who sat in
the back row translating the dialogue to one another into whispered Polish,
gave us a heartfelt and rowdy standing ovation involving a lot of much-
appreciated stamping.
Second, the two theatre reviews we received, both from non-Polish-
speaking journalists, one commending us for our energy and missionary
zeal, the other launching a ferocious attack on my directorial style, judged
Tristan Langlois (Poet) and James Bellorini (Rudolf) in the Flesh and Blood
Theatre Company's production of The Turluy, London
65
the play to lack relevance to modem British society, which is, apparently,
devoid of citizens of Polish ancestry. Rather amusingly, a turkey in English
also means, of course, a failure or dud. It was considered apt that Mrozek
had given his play this title.
One of these reviews was made up almost entirely of an
encyclopedia entry about Mrozek I had happened to read the previous
week- the critic did not even think of going to Martin Esslin's Theatre of the
Absurd for guidance. He also described my translation as "sloppily
colloquial," perhaps with some justification, though it is a phrase that has
burned itself into my consciousness and has the habit of smoldering every
so often. The other critic waited to see me after the performance and asked
me to fax him any information I had about Mrozek, since there was
apparently none available anywhere. This material then went on to form his
supposed review. Neither critic made any meaningful attempt to interpret
the play or performance; the action was simply described.
Third, to my surprise, Mrozek's play in performance affected me in
an unexpected way. While my highly skilled actors provided energetic and
committed performances, which in rehearsal had provoked a lot of laughter,
the resultant effect was strongly tinged with tragedy and on several occasions
stopped laughter in mid-flow. The focal relationship between the Captain
and the Poet emerged as particularly affecting. Even the Captain's violin
playing could provoke tears-of an unexpected variety!
Initially, this unpredicted response was one of the reasons why I
thought my mission had failed. I had expected Mrozek's dramatic method
to have a greater distancing effect on the audience. However, these aspects
of the text can only be discovered through practical engagement with it. In
hindsight, given the seriousness and emotive nature of Mrozek's subject
matter, such a response appears entirely appropriate, and it seems almost
foolish now not to have fully appreciated the force of love between these
two characters. It is particularly illuminating to consider the way in which
this relationship re-surfaces in Mrozek's later play Emigres, in the characters
XX and AA.
Fourth, the entire process of staging the play filled me with despair.
In spite of a generally positive audience response- sometimes a positively
ecstatic response (from the Polish tourists in particular), and an absolutely
dedicated and enthusiastic cast-the project disturbed me at a very profound
level and made me feel extremely exposed. This has never happened with
any other play I have directed. Somehow it managed to strike at the heart of
66
a conflict about my own identity and the struggle to fuse, or bridge-I'm not
yet exactly sure what the verb should be- two cultures. My patriotic desire to
do something for the country of my forbears was thwarted by the refusal of
a non-Polish audience to attend. I felt as though I had argued myself into a
state of impotence (the subject of the play), exacerbated by my conflicting
roles of translator and director.
Where, after all, does translation end and interpretation begin? Are
there necessarily instances in which the translator rather than the director
must interpret? This is a moral issue, and I feel it more keenly now than I
did then. As a director, I certainly do not feel that I did the play justice, I
foolishly underestimated its complexity. In spite of this, my attitude towards
my translation is decidedly more generous. The translator's and director's
"gaze" are, I have learnt, very different. The mere fact that one has translated
a play does not necessarily mean that one knows it as fully as one thinks, and
this very strong sense, as a translator, of knowing the text is almost a
psychological block that rieeds to be broken down in order to be able to
look at it afresh as a director. Perhaps my inability to do this, and even a lack
of awareness that I needed to do it, resulted in the fact that I privileged style
over substance in my production. I did not explore the text with my actors
in the way I should have, simply because I thought I already understood it
well enough.
And yet the problem was more complicated than this. As a director,
I could only act as a facilitator and mediator for someone else's text. The
playwright came from a culture which was, in some senses, no longer my
own, even though we shared the same language. I could not, in fact, lay
claim to it in the way I had wanted to. The way in which Polish culture had
developed for me, in my community, was by now very distinct and separate.
I realized, through staging Mrozek's play, that what I actually
wanted to do was express something about my own community, their lives
and their experiences. As a director working on a Polish text I was doubly
gagged. I might as well have staged the play at the Polish theatre with Polish
actors. The same audience would have come to see it, and then we could at
least have had some pierogi in the restaurant upstairs after the show. The
experience would have been just as, if not more, satisfying. Or perhaps I
mean that it would have been safer for me.
What next? I am looking for a playwright, someone to gather
together the experiences described in Winslow's book Keeping the Faith and
to give them dramatic form. Failing that, I will have to try writing a play
67
Michael Good (Captain) and Andrew Heath {Prince) in the Flesh and Blood Theatre Company's
production of Mrozek's The Turkey, London.
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myself, to begin the search for a form for my material. The stories my
parents and grandparents have told me, and the stories of the contributors
to Winslow's book, consistently clamor for attention and expression.
The only way I now believe I can achieve what has subsequently
emerged as my artistic purpose and the sense of peace which I believe might
come with this (though I may of course be wrong) is to gain control of my
own material, both the subject matter itself and the means of expression.
This does not mean I will stop my work with Polish dramatic literature. A
turkey is for life, not just for Christmas.
NOTES
Michelle Winslow (text) and Tim Smith (photographs), Keeping the Faith: The
Polish Community in Britain (Sheffield: University of Sheffield in association with
Bradford Heritage Recording Unit and Migration Ethnicity Centre, 2000).
2 For further information see Chris Arnot, "Facing up to the past," in the
Guardian, February 21, 2001. Society Section, 6-7.
3 Olga Wojtas, "Stepping out of rivals' shadow," in Times Higher Education
Supplement, March 9, 2000, 24-25.
4 Rehearsed reading at Battersea Arts Centre, August 1998. Performances at
Camden People's Theatre, March 1999.
5 Malgorzata Sugiera, Dramaturgia Slawomira Mroika (Cracow: Universitas, 1996),
103. This book has not been translated into English.
69
STALIN AND THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE
Intensive preparations were made for the celebration of the fortieth
anniversary of the Moscow Art Theatre on October 19, 1938. The death two
months earlier of its celebrated co-founder Konstantin Stanislavsky, which
had been widely feared but nevertheless marked a decisive turning-point in
the history of the company, did not detract from the splendor of the
ceremony, which was attended by Stalin in person. Sitting next to Vladimir
Nemirovich-Danchenko in the official photograph of the event, Stalin, by
his presence, somehow made up for the irreparable loss of the spiritual
"father" of the company and might well be said to have taken his place. This
photograph is a pointer to the changes that occurred in the life of the
theatre: from then on, as can be seen from the figures of Voroshilov,
Molotov, and Kaganovich in the front row and of Zhdanov, the young
Khruschchev, and Mikoyan in the second, politicians came to be closely
involved with performing artists. To judge from the decorations resplendent
in the latter's buttonholes, submissiveness also had its price.
How did it come about that forty years after its foundation a private
theatre, run as a share-holding venture!, found itself not only bound hand
and foot by ideological and bureaucratic imperatives as was the fate of all
cultural institutions by the end of the 1920s but also coming directly under
the thumb of the Politburo?
The Art Theatre Becomes "A Giant of Theatre Production"2
As the temple of realism and the stronghold of the intelligentsia
with its deep attachment to humanist values, the Art Theatre had been the
target of violent attacks in the years following the Revolution. The fact was
that it spurned the role of vector of new ideas which the Bolshevik
authorities wanted to foist on it. It stood aloof from agit-prop meetings, was
fiercely opposed to radical staging experiments, with their undue haste to do
away with tradition, and endeavored instead to find a place of its own.
Without throwing in its lot with the Bolsheviks or refusing to co-operate as
the Imperial theatres in Petrograd had done in 1918, it followed what it
regarded as its natural path: It took advantage of the Revolution to attempt
70
Stanislavsky next to his official portrait and sculptor, N. Gavripov. 1935/36
71
to bring art to the widest possible audience. In 1917, Stanislavsky wrote to a
woman friend:
The Revolution is what it is. It is a contagious disease. It cannot
vanish like a dream. Horror and atrocities are inevitable. Our time
has come. We have to educate aesthetic feeling as quickly and as
forcefully as possible.3
Although he was disgusted at the acts of vandalism committed by the Red
Guards at the Maly Theatre, Stanislavsky still preached forgiveness:
If we are to serve the Enlightenment, we have to tread very
carefully, especially at this point in time, when the world around us
is savage and cruel.4
This, then, was the naive and generous frame of mind in which the first
generation of artists at the Art Theatre approached the Revolution.s
Even so, they were spared none of the deprivation or exactions of
the time. More and more people at the Art Theatre were arrested in 1918
and 1919, and Stanislavsky himself was interrogated by the Cheka. As the
wealthy owner of a factory producing gold thread, his property was
expropriated, and he was driven out of his house.6 However, the
nationalization of the Art Theatre in December 1919 was not an altogether
bad thing, since it was instrumental in providing subsidies at a time when
the country's economy was at its lowest ebb. Like the other treasures of the
Russian heritage, such as the Bolshoi, the Maly, and the Imperial theatres,
the MKhAT then came to depend on the Narkompros (the Commissariat
for Education) headed by Anatoly Lunacharsky, a cultivated man of letters
who kept it under his protection and control for ten years.
As the years went by, the supervisory authorities exerted increasing
pressure on it7: the takeover of the second studio theatre in 1924 brought
into the company a number of young Communist actors and directors
whom the authorities counted on to control the Art Theatre from the inside.
The more freedom of movement which Narkompros granted the "old
directors" (who each travelled in turn in Europe and the United States), the
greater the foothold it gained in the company as a whole8 The ideological
demands were stepped up at the Agit-prop Conference held in May 1927; as
in the case of all the other academic theatres,9 an artistic and political
72
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 23, no. 3
Council was set up, which criticized, queried, and even overrode the
decisions taken by the artistic management.JO
On October 27, 1928, the celebration of the Art Theatre's thirtieth
anniversary marked a pause in the move to wrest back control of the theatre.
Large numbers of party members came to applaud the cast. In fact, they had
singled out the theatre as a model of its kind because its artistic approach-
one of psychological realism- was less offensive to the political leaders of the
time, who had been born in the nineteenth century and had received a
conventional education, than the daring and provocative productions of the
avant-garde and left-wing theatres.Jl Stanislavsky, who had returned from
Germany only ten days earlier, feared the worst, since the celebration had
been turned into a surprisingly solemn occasion. The Art Theatre had
changed color. Instead of its discreet gray and olive-green tones, it was now
painted white, red, and gold. An enormous white amphitheatre had been
built to cover the entire stage area. The top of the staircase was closed off by
a red curtain embroidered in gold with the initials MKhAT, surmounted by
an enormous white seagull. This highly elaborate display was meant to
signify that the Art Theatre was still very much alive and that it had acquired
the status of a national company. Stanislavsky felt very uncomfortable with
all this pomp and ceremony and lost the thread of his speech. Above all, he
made a serious political mistake when he called on the all-Communist
audience to rise in tribute to the memory of the wealthy industrialist, Sava
Morozov, who had been the patron of the Art Theatre from its inception.
On the following day, the press launched a violent attack on him, and he
had to take to his bed after suffering a severe heart-attack.
On September 5, 1929, the first Communist director, Mikhail
Geitz, took up his political and administrative duties at the Art Theatre.
Three months later, Lunarcharsky was removed from office. The Soviet
Union was entering a new phase: In the wake of the New Economic Policy
(NEP), the great parting of the ways had been reached. The young directors
Nikolai Gorchakov, Ilya Sudakov, and Mikhail Kedrov stood ready to take
over the reins. Stanislavsky protested not so much at the fact that a
Communist had been appointed director-indeed, it had been his wish-as at
the overly propagandistic and productivity-oriented line he was taking.l2 He
appealed for freedom of choice in respect to the plays to be performed and
their staging, as well as for flexibility in setting deadlines. Two years after he
had been appointed; Geitz was dismissed on Stalin's orders. On December
15, 1931, the MKhAT was attached directly to the TSIK (the Central
73
Executive Committee) so that it came under even closer surveillance.
Bulgakov's Flight and Erdman's Suicide were banned, and a series of close
checks delayed the presentation of Afinogenov's Fear and prevented his Lie
from being performed. The name of Chekhov, the Art Theatre's spiritual
father, was removed from its title and it was renamed the Gorky MKhAT of
the USSR. In the same year, "production conferences" were introduced, with
the aim of running the Art Theatre as if it were a high-productivity factory
plant.
In early 1935, the "speech by Comrade Stalin on professional
cadres" was the occasion for meetings, which degenerated into systematic
attacks against the older generation. Kalinin and some other officials hoped
that they would be able to force Nemirovich-Danchenko and Stanislavsky
to resign. However, the policy of the Committee for Artistic AffairslLwhich
was established in 1936 to orchestrate the campaign against formalism and
muzzle the arts-lay elsewhere. If the model was to be perfect, it had to be
flawless. Once they had made their peace, the two directors would be kept
at their posts, but they would be stripped of }heir functions which, in respect
of political and administrative matters, would go to a new Communist
director Mikhail Arkadiev. The pace of developments was stepped up.
Bulgakov's Moliere was banned in February 1936, since it was sensed that an
allusion to the ruthlessness of Stalin lay behind the relations between
Moliere and Louis XIV. Arkadiev was arrested in June 1937 and was shot, as
a result of a misguided decision he made when organizing the MKhAT's
season to Paris.l4
In Paris in August 1937, before the eyes of the whole world-the visit
coincided with the Universal Exhibition-and at the price of enormous
financial sacrifice,IS the MKhAT unveiled its twofold identity: It was both
the repository of the Russian heritage (it performed Anna Karenina) and the
nursery of the Soviet drama, in that contemporary authors were represented
by Maxim Gorky's Enemies and Konstantin Trenyov's Lyubov' Yarovaya.
The host of awards, titles, gifts, grants of apartments and other
benefits showered on the Theatre's members on its fortieth anniversary was
the ultimate confirmation of its status as the showpiece of theatrical policy.
After the Second World War, the operating methods and aesthetic
approach laid down by the Art Theatre's founders became completely
fossilized; the plays staged were confined to winners of the Stalin Prize, and
a pared-down version of Stanislavsky's system was taken as gospel and
imposed on all the country's schools. Forced "Mkhatovization" stifled the
74
75
Art Theatre from the inside and made it hateful for the general public and
all other Soviet directors. Stalin had said that Mandelstam should be isolated
but that his life should be spared. The fate of the Art Theatre was just as
unbearable. Hoisted by force onto a pedestal and drummed into
submission, it lost its vocation as a community of artists, its creativity, and
its faith in art.
The Letters to Stalin
W auld it be too much to suppose that Bulgakov played a decisive
role in Stalin's privileged relationship with the Art Theatre? Stalin saw The
Days of the Turbins some fifteen times. He intervened personally to obtain
exclusive authorization for the MKhAT to stage the play and to keep it in
the repertory for two seasons, and then for it to be authorized again in 1932.
He received several letters from Bulgakov and went so far as to telephone
him on April 18, 1930 in support of his application for the post of assistant
director at the MKhAT. Bulgakov was literally obsessed by the idea of
meeting the Party Secretary-General, and the fact that such a meeting did
not take place plunged him "into a state of horror and the deathly shadows
of the tomb."16 He went to the extent of visualizing this meeting taking
place through a set of surrogate characters at the end of his play Adam and
Eve; he imagined himself in the guise of Moliere (and, more obliquely, of
Gogo! and Pushkin) in his relationship to the authorities. After the banning
of A Cabal of Hypocrites/Moliere, which broke his spirit and caused him to
leave the Art Theatre, he set about writing Batum on the early years of Soso
Djugashvili. He looked upon Stalin as someone with whom he could
communicate, someone he could trust, a dispenser of justice, his "Number
One reader," a protective figure, a miracle-worker. Stalin fascinated him
because of his all-powerfulness and omniscience, and he treated him like a
charismatic personage out of literature: half man, half devil.
There were many Soviet citizens, especially writers, who
endeavored to engage in dialogue with Stalin in the 1930s and 1940s. A
whole list of them, including Osip Mandelstam, Boris Pasternak, Andrei
Platonov, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Ilya Ehrenburg, and Nikolai Virta, turned to
the "Big Boss" to seek the lifting of a ban on publication or to save a relative
or close friend from extermination. In some cases, the letters were written
not only for a utilitarian or practical purpose but were motivated by
aesthetic feelings and sometimes philosophical considerations. Stalin
appeared to be a kind of superman belonging to a different dimension of
76
Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 23, No.3
things; appealing to this dense mass of cosmic energy transported the
individual far above his earthly cares and gave rise to a sort of
otherworldness. I 7
Stanislavsky also wrote to Stalin, but his letters are not of the same
literary import as those of Bulgakov or Zamyatin. Out of the five letters that
have been traced and have now been published, two of them involve Stalin's
responsibility in the Art Theatre's future.IS In October 1931, Stanislavsky
tried to obtain permission to stage Erdman's Suicide. There was no question
of his being hypnotized or obsessed by Stalin. Stanislavsky was an old hand,
an ancestor figure who had become unassailable, who was writing to the
leader of the country in his capacity as the head of the company, as a skilled
and responsible-minded artist whose task it was to hand down a heritage.I9
On the subject of Erdman's play, he asked Stalin to trust his experience:
In our opinion, Nikolai Erdman has succeeded in laying bare the
different forms and innermost roots of the bourgeois tendencies
which are inhibiting the country's construction. The process by
which the author has shown monstrous real-life petit-bourgeois
figures really represents a novel approach, while still being strictly
in line with Russian realism .20
The letter ofDecember 4, 1935 was of a quite different stamp. It was written
not so much in connection with a specific issue (an attempt to secure the
appointment of Aikadiev, whom he knew, rather than see the imposition of
an outsider who would take advantage of the widespread infighting in the
Ait Theatre) as by way of a last will and testament. In this instance, Stalin
became a judge or arbitrator to whom Stanislavsky proposed to tell "the
whole truth and nothing but the truth." In the diabolical game with the
country's master in which the actors and directors were engaged almost as if
by instinct, the playing field was strewn with pitfalls. Stanislavsky sang the
praises "of the new civilization that is born,"2
1
when he knew perfectly well
what a heavy price it had entailed in human lives. It was on his own initiative
that he asked for the appointment of an ideological overseer, although he
himself had always endeavored to stand aloof from politics or, as Bulgakov
had put it, "above the Reds and Whites."22 Old and sick, living in isolation
(over the period from 1928 to 1938, he had spent three whole years at spas
outside the country, but after 1935, he became too weak to travel and took
refuge in his opera studio), Stanislavsky, like the hero of Erdman's The
77
Warrant, mistakenly thought that a Communist could prove very useful to
the company; he would protect it and his voice would carry weight when
administrative decisions were being taken. For Stanislavsky, saving his
theatre-his life's work-from being destroyed and scattered to the winds was
"a matter of life or death."23 He believed that it was possible to keep the
political and artistic aspects separate. In his view, the separation of powers
would make it possible to save culture and art. "Only a theatre upholding
the highest cultural and artistic standards can ensure its preservation. Such a
theatre has to be the highest peak toward which everything else strives."24
Stanislavsky's hopes were to be raised. Stalin respected his choice
and had Mikhail Arkadiev appointed to the post. His theatre became the
standard to which all the others had to conform. Yet this outcome was a
complete misrepresentation of the old master's ideal. Instead of continuing
to be the trailblazer in ensemble playing and an ethical and aesthetic
community, MKhAT degenerated into becoming an institution that was
managed as if it were a machine for the mass production of plays.
Stanislavsky thought that he could come to an arrangement with Stalin.
Whether out of naivety or under duress, he agreed to the controls and the
re-organization in a bid to preserve his theatre and hand it down to posterity.
Indeed, it was handed down, but it was first emptied of its founding
principles. Stalin cared little about "the drastic decline in quality" reported
to him. Neither the main themes of Stanislavsky's letter as they related to
creativity, creative artists, art, and culture-as opposed to "output"-nor the
appeal for the highest standards was apparently of any interest to Stalin. He
had succeeded in "Sovietizing" the old theatre25 and had put in its place a
new generation of actors and directors conversant with the new rules. It had
to be asked whether there was any place for art in only one creative
approach, that of socialist realism.
Uncle Vanya or Ly ubov Yarovaya?
It was primarily by imposing an updated classical repertory and
above all performing new Soviet plays that the cultural authorities proposed
to set the theatre on the new rails of communism.26 This goal was difficult
to attain, since good new dramatists were few and far between and the
MKhAT was reluctant to put on works that were mere propaganda- "agitki"
as Stanislavsky so scathingly called them. He sought every possible means of
"rejecting the 'tendency' [toward political commitment] and of bringing out
78
79
the essence of things."27 Even so, it only proved really possible to bring back
the old repertory, and Chekhov's plays in particular, from 1926 on, by
which time the Left's attacks on "bourgeois" theatres had subsided and the
actors of the older generation, who had been touring Europe and the United
States for two years, were back in the country.28 To Nemirovich-
Danchenko's surprise, Stalin enjoyed Uncle Vanya (which had first been
performed in 1899).29 He is alleged to have said, "We may be uncouth, but
who wouldn't have cried at the last act?" Bukharin was naturally of the same
opinion.30 Stalin and Molotov also enjoyed Ostrovsky's Too Clever By Half
(first performed in 1910). However, the repeat performances were themselves
censored. Nemirovich protested to Lunacharsky that Glavrepertkom had
made so many cuts and changes in the text of The Bluebird that he preferred
to withdraw Maeterlinck's play (first performed in 1911) rather than present
it in so truncated a form. 31
In 1927, Leonid Leonov's Untilovsk was the first contemporary play
to come under the auspices of the newly established artistic and ideological
council, which demanded a large number of corrections. In point of fact,
there was not a single play that reached the performance stage without being
altered, and contemporary authors built up a whole stock of variant versions,
as in the case of Mikhail Bulgakov with The Days of the Turbins, Aleksandr
Afinogenov with The Lie, and Vsevolod Ivanov with The Armoured Train.
These hair-splitting and ultimately self-defeating checks were inconsistent
with the productivity norms imposed by the administrative management.
For instance, a whole year was spent on rehearsing Trenyov's
Pugachovshchina, the same length of time for Untilovsk, and many fruitless
years for Flight, Suicide and Nikolai Pogodin's Daring. The record was held
by Bulgakov's Moliere (5 years!).
The generational divide between directors was most conspicuous in
the choice of repertory. The older generation preferred the classics, such as
Aleksandr Ostovsky's A Burning Heart, Beaumarchais's The Marriage of
Figaro, Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls, Lev Tolstoy's Resurrection and Anna
Karen ina, and the plays of Chekhov. The younger directors, such as Sudakov
and Gorchakov, produced contemporary plays, since they were no doubt
less appalled than Stanislavsky by "the demands of young writers of the
Averbakh-Kirchonov tendency. "32
Until 1929, Lunacharsky was still in charge, and this made it
possible to choose politically moderate playwrights. The Communists
Nikolai Virta, Aleksandr Komeichuk, and Vladimir Kirshon only entered
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Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 23, No.3
the repertory in the 1930s. This did not prevent Stanislavsky from having to
direct Ivanov's Armoured Train for the tenth anniversary of the October
Revolution in 1927 and to work on Dennery and Corman's The Two
Orphans, a French melodrama which was rewritten by Vladimir Mass as a
drama heralding the French Revolution. 33
From the time the MKhAT came under the TSIK, Stalin intervened
directly in the choice of plays. His positive reaction to the restaging of Uncle
Vmrya and his action in 1927, which brought The Days of the Turbins "to the
brink of censorship3
4
" were a reflection of the tastes and fads of a political
leader who was admittedly powerful but still did not wield absolute power
in the mid-1920s. When Untilovsk was given a public reading in 1926, he was
only in the thirty-ninth position on the list of guests.35 In the 1930s, Stalin
gave the green light to all the first nights of the Gorky MKhAT of the USSR.
It was his duty not only to honor the performances by his presence but also
to verify in person the "correctness" (pravilnost) of the ideological line. He
checked to ensure that the repertory was representative and criticized the
leading Soviet drama theatre with having been dilatory in producing Gorky's
The Enemies and Konstantin Trenyov's Lyubov Yarovaya (which he had seen
twenty-eight times at the Maly Theatre). He personally drew up the program
for the visit to Paris, but it was Arkadiev who selected the cast and
announced it without Stalin's consent and was subsequently to pay with his
life for the liberty he had taken.
It was likewise Stalin who banned Hamlet and Boris Godunov.36
When Stalin, accompanied by the members of the Politburo, saw Dead Souls
in 1932, Yegor Bulychov in 1935 and Anna Karenina37 in 1937, the visits were
not of a private nature but acts of cultural policy. As Stalin himself never
tired of repeating, he attended the performances not in the capacity of a
specialist or professional, but as a spectator representing the people, and his
positive or adverse reaction was the culminating point of all the prior
verifications; it was the key to success or the "thumbs-down" signal, with no
hope of appeal. The fate of every artist, regardless of his or her political
loyalty, depended on Stalin's whim. For example, Afinogenov, "the
proletarian," was congratulated by Stalin for The Eccentric and once again for
Fear, but he then suddenly fell into disgrace with The Lie. Stalin tolerated
"apolitical" figures like Erdman, Yuri Olesha and Bulgakov by condemning
them to silence, but he did not spare the life of Vladimir Kirshon.
81
People's Artists
It was in January 1936, under Platon Kerzhentsev, the new
Chairman of the Committee on Artistic Affairs, that the campaign against
formalism took off. In the Art Theatre, the target was Bulgakov's Moliere,
which was first created in February of that year but was taken off, with
Stalin's approval,38 after only seven performances. However, the Art Theatre
escaped a worse fate: it was not closed down, unlike its former studio theatre,
which had become MKhAT-2, and the Meyerhold Theatre or the
Okhlopkov Realist Theatre. In the competition for the best play on the
October Revolution, which Kerzhentsev had suggested to Stalin, the
MKhAT was still in the running alongside the Maly and Vakhtangov
Theatres. Stalin added the names of Aleksandr Vishnevsky and Konstantin
Trenyov to the shortlist of prospective authors and that of Nemirovich-
Danchenko to the list of members of the adjudicating panel.39 He
scrutinized and guided the choices made, but he was also capable of
appreciating people's efforts. He accepted virtually without discussion the
proposals submitted to him by the Art Theatre's administrative director. On
May 28, 1937, following the success of Lyubov Yarovaya and AnnaKarenina,
the Art Theatre was awarded the Order of Lenin and members of the cast
were given substantial pay increases.40
The fascination that Stalin exercised in the world of the theatre over
performers and public alike can be gauged from the account given by Elena
Sergeyevna, Bulgakov's wife, at the first night of Ivan Susanin at the Bolshoi
Theatre in April 1939, when she witnessed what amounted to a wave of
collective hysteria. Standing on their seats, the audience applauded Stalin
when he appeared in the official box, and an old woman crossed herself and
cried out, "I have seen him at last!"41 Stalin's myth-like presence went
beyond the bounds of normal everyday criteria. His presence became the
Apparition and his word was Gospel, which either destroyed or resurrected.
Whenever friends were dining at his home, Bulgakov liked to imagine that
Stalin had come to his defense and had telephoned the MKhAT and asked
to speak to Stanislavsky, who was so panic-stricken that he fell down dead,
and then the same thing happened to Nemirovich-Danchenko. Finally,
Stalin had done a deal with the administrative director and had thereupon
ensured that the play that had been "in limbo" would be staged and that his
"favorite playwright" would be paid a handsome fee.
However, truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. The myth
82
concerning the superhuman powers of the "Big Boss" also affected the actors
Vassily Kachalov, Alia Tarassova, and Nikolai Khmelov. On February 8,
1940, when Bulgakov was on his deathbed, they addressed a plea to Stalin's
secretariat: if only Stalin could make telephone the dying man, he would
give him so positive an emotional shock that he was bound to recover.42
In 1956, during the "Thaw," three years after Stalin's death, Oleg
Efremov and his colleagues tried to hark back to the roots of the old Art
Theatre by creating the Sovremennik studio theatre. However, the harsh
years of Stalinization had left their scars. With the arrival of perestroika, the
Art Theatre had already become a museum of the official aesthetic line.
Eventually, it was split into two companies, one named after Chekhov and
the other after Gorky.
NOTES
1 The first ever in the world of the theatre, in 1898.
2 "Gigant teatral'nogo proizvodstva." The phrase is that ofMikhail Geitz, quoted by
Ol'ga Radisheva in Stanislavsky, Nemirovich-Danchenko. Istoriya teatral'nykh otnoshenii
1917- 1938, vol. 3 (Moscow: A.R.T., 1999), 277.
3 Letter to Vera Kotlyarevskaya, August 1917, following the first upheavals in
February of that year, in Konstantin Stanislavsky, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 9 (Moscow:
Iskusstvo, 1999), 19.
4 Ibidem, 10 November 1917, p. 10.
5 MKhT (Moscow Art Theatre) until 1919, when it became the "Moscow Academic
Art Theatre" (MKhAT).
6 He was only rehoused in 1920, through the intervention of Lunacharsky.
7 The first signs of the theatre's loss of independence came as early as 1920, when
the authorities refused to let it go on foreign tour (Lunacharsky had to fight for two
years to obtain permission).
8 Even so, the company managed to prevent the appointment of a communist
director in November 1925.
9 Cf. Radisheva, op.cit., 206. It was in charge of the ideological and educational
aspects of the repertoire and was required to vet t he plays beforehand.
Representatives of the Party, the government and the press sat alongside the
members of the Theatre on the Council.
10 Stanislavsky himself was berated by Lunacharsky for having staged Leonid
Leonov's Untilovsk.
11 Stalin chose neither the Meyerhold Theatre, which was too innovative, nor the
Maly, which was too conservative-leaning, but adopted the Art Theatre instead.
Between 1932 and 1935, its privileged status was further enhanced by its being
83
granted the right to set up a subsidiary theatre, an opera studio and a school project.
In January 1933, Ave! Yenukidze, the Secretary of the TSIK (the Central Executive
Committee of the Party), assured Stanislavsky that the Art Theatre was "the basis of
the development of theatrical culture in the USSR." Cf. Radisheva, op.cit., 301.
12 Among other things, Geitz had a banner displayed on the theatre's facade,
reading: "We shall transform the entire Komsomol into shock brigades in order to
fulfil the Five-Year Plan." In 1930, in a letter to Stanislavsky, Nemirovich-Danchenko
complained of the policy adopted by Geitz, who only thought of efficiency and
exhausted the actors because he did not leave them any time to rest between
performances and was calling more and more meetings.
13 It was attached to the Sovnarkom (the Council of People's Commissars of the
USSR).
14 His successor suffered the same fate two years later.
15 The trip was very costly because the government was generous enough to allow
the actors' spouses and some of their children to travel with them. In addition, the
performances recorded a deficit because the trip was in August, when most the
theatre-going audience was away from Paris.
16 Letter to Vikenty Veresayev dated 22 July 1931, Mikhail Bulgakov, Pis'ma,
(Moscow: Sovremennik, 1989), 203
17 Tamara Vahitova, "Pis'ma M. Bulgakova pravitel'stvu kak literaturnyj fakt" in
Tvorchestvo Mikhai/a Bulgakova, vol.J (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1995), 5-24.
18 Two of the letters consist of appeals for clemency (in support of the Bakhrushin
Museum, which was threatened with expropriation, and a request for a grant of
foreign exchange, so that Nemirovich-Danchenko, with debts in Italy, could repay
his creditors and return home). The third letter thanked Stalin for his good wishes
on his seventy-fifth birthday. He did not dare make personal requests of Stalin. He
turned to Y enukidze to seek help in saving his nephew and wife from internment.
19 He was sixteen years older than Stalin.
20 Letter of October 29, 1931, vol. 9, op.cit., 463.
21 Vol. 9, op.cit., Radisheva, 632.
22 Letter to the government dated March 28, 1930, in Pis'ma, op.cit., 176.
23Letter to Leonid Leonidov dated September 15, 1929, in vol. 9, op.cit., 354.
24 Vol. 9, op.cit., 632.
25 The phrase used by the Communist Lezhava after he had seen Valentin Katayev's
The Embezzlers in 1928, vol. 9., op cit., 313.
26 Letter ftom Nemirovich-Danchenko to Stanislavsky in 1930, in vol.9, op.cit., 749.
27 Radisheva, op.cit., 203.
84
Slavic and East European PeifOrmance Vol. 23, No. 3
28 C Les Voyages du theatre, ed. Helene Henry et Marie Christine Autant-Mathieu
(Tours: Presses Universitaires: Serie Cahiers d'histoire culturelle no.lO), 2001.
29 Uncle Vanya was performed again in early 1926 on the experimental stage, for the
benefit of Stanislavsky's Opera Studio. Once it had been approved by the "bosses,"
it was performed on the main stage on May 11, 1926.
30 Letter from Olga Bokshanskaya to Nemirovich-Danchenko dated February 5,
1927, quoted by Radisheva, op.cit., 202.
31 Letter dated October 14, 1924, in Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, lzbrannye
pis'ma, vol. 2 (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1979), 321.
32 Vol. 9, op.cit., 749. Ilya Sudakov ( 1890-1969) produced Bulgakov's The Dtrys of the
Turbins (1926) and Ivanov's Armoured Train (1927) with Stanislavsky. With
Nemirovich-Danchenko, he produced Ivanov's Blockade (1929) and Trenyov's
Lyubov Yarovaya (1936). Working alone, he put on Kirshon's W'heat (1931),
Afinogenov's Fear (1931) and Korneichuk's Platon Krechet. Nikolai Gorchakov (1898-
1958) worked with Nemirovich-Danchenko on Pogodin's Daring (which was
eventually abandoned) and Olesha's Three Fat Men (1930). He produced Bulgakov's
Moliere (1931-1935) and Virta's Earth (1937).
33 It was renamed The Gerard Sisters.
34 Leslie Milne, "Mikhail Bulgakov-dramaturg v sovremennom mire", in "Etot mir
moi ... " (St. Petersburg: Bulgakovskoe obchestvo, 1993), 11.
35 Radisheva, op.cit., 11.
36 Yet these two plays had been rehearsed at length by Nemirovich-Danchenko. It
was rumoured that Stalin had spoken of his misgivings to the actor Boris Livanov,
who was due to play the title role of Hamlet. In another version, he is said to have
vetoed them after an unsatisfactory rehearsal. Cf. Teatr, 1990, no.3, 138.
37 On April21, 1937, Stalin, accompanied by Molotov, Zhdanov, Kaganovich and
Voroshilov, saw Anna Karenina produced by Nemirovich-Danchenko with the
assistance of Vassily Sakhnovsky. On Stalin's orders, Alia Tarassova, Nikolai
Khmelov and Dobronravov were all awarded the title of People's Artist of the USSR.
38 It was first performed on February 16, 1936 and was withdrawn on March 9.
39vzast' i khudozhestvennaya intelligentsia, 1917-1953 (Moscow: Mez. Fond
Demokratiia, 1999), 295.
40 On September 6, 1936, the TSIK established the title of People's Artist of the
USSR and awarded it to Stanislavsky, Nemirovich-Danchenko, Vassily Kachalov and
Ivan Moskvin, making four members of the MKhAT out of a total of 12
prizewinners. Vlast' i khudozhestvenneie intelligentsia, op.cit, 693.
41 Dnevnik Eleny Bulgakovoi (Moscow: Knizhneie palata, 1990), 250.
42 Lidia Janovskaia, Zapiski o Mikhaile Bulgakove (Holon: Moria, 1997), 247.
85
Letter from Konstantin Sergeievich Stanislavsky to
losif Vissarionovich Stalinl
Moscow [Post December 14, 1935]
Dear Esteemed Iosif Vissarionovich,
Comrade Zhivotova (Asst. Manager of MKhAT) conveyed your
greetings to me, and I am deeply touched by your attention and concern.2
I learned from her, that the state of the Art Theatre interests you, and so I
feel obligated to tell you the whole truth about it. I understand I must do so
very briefly, given the fact that you are overburdened with questions of
worldwide import.
The enormous changes, which have taken place in all aspects of our
land-new people and a new way of life, born from a new civilization-
prompts me, as one of the oldest theatre representatives and one sincerely
committed to art, to worry about the future. Our theatre can and must
become the foremost theatre in our country through its ability to theatrically
reflect the full, inner, spiritual life of the worker, now positioned as the
earth's proprietor.
Theatrical work throughout the world is in a state of stagnation.
Age-old traditions are disappearing.
But, happily, the USSR at present is the true successor of the best
traditions, not only from the European theatre, but also from all that is good
in the old traditions ofRussian theatre. We must take time to transmit what
is most precious in them to the young, upcoming generation, not only to
retain the traditions, but also to strengthen them for future development. As
representatives of contemporary theatre, we must above all take care to
preserve these kernels of age-old theatrical achievements and to develop
from them new, beautiful art. We can preserve these only in a theatre of the
highest standards and the highest skills. This theatre must become a tower,
with all other theatres building themselves up to match it.
In its day, the Maly Theatre was such a tower, and then the Art
Theatre. Now, there are no such towers. The Art Theatre carne down from
the heights and became, at best, a decent theatre factory. But the spiritual
needs of the spectator are growing and can outpace it.
I would like to give all my experience, all my knowledge, all my
time and health, all my remaining years to the making of a truly creative
theatre. In search of means to make such a theatre, I turned to young people
and organized the Opera-Dramatic Studio a few months ago. With this goal
86
in mind, I am also working on my second book through which I want to
transmit my experience and all my knowledge. But one of the most
important means is the preservation and development of the creative wealth
that has been amassed at the Art Theatre.
A faction of the troupe-for whom great art is unnecessary and
inconvenient due to the great demands it makes on the human being/artist
- are treating this wealth carelessly.
The battle between lofty aspirations and petty, transient interests is
taking place at this very moment in the Moscow Art Theatre, and is tearing
it to pieces. On one side, the "old men" and some of the young, who are in
training, offer creative experience and aspirations for great art. On the other
side, there is great energy, directed at small, easily accomplished tasks.
The battle is difficult, and taking into account we two elderly
directors, our differences over creative principles, and our tangled relations
for forty years, timely help is necessary to pull the theatre out of its present
state. For creative leadership, the theatre needs an experienced, cultured,
Communist manager who will help V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko and me to
repair our mutual relations. It occurs to me that, as someone with theatrical
experience, tact and great energy, M. P. Arkadiev, head of the Theatrical
Administrative Board of the RSFSR Narkompros, would be the most
appropriate candidate for this complex, difficult position.3
Along with this, a strengthening of the Party's organization within
the theatre through cultured and qualified leadership is necessary.
Thorough and strict review and reappraisal of the theatre's whole
collective is necessary to determine the people, suitable for great creative,
experimental work and capable of creating true theatre.
We must oblige theatre workers to hasten to raise their
qualifications to the level of genuine masters of art, paying bonuses with this
goal in mind.
We in the theatre must bandy about the slogan "Speed up Quality
Actor Training," and then the pace of our theatrical industry will naturally
increase of itself.
Those who cannot enter the collective of qualified masters will
continue to work under their former conditions, filling their ranks with new
actors, as they establish a theatre factory in a building separate from
MKhAT.
MKhAT itself must be transformed into a tower of theatrical art.
Knowing your love of theatre, I hope for your help.
87
NOTES
1 First published inKS. Stanislavsky, Sobranie sochinenii v 9-ti tomakh, Vol. 9
(Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1999), 631- 633.
2Elena Sergeevna Zhivotova was Assistant Manager of the Moscow Art Theatre
from 1935 to 1936.
3Mikhail Pavlovich Arkadiev (1896-1937), head of the Theatrical Section within
the Russian Federation People's Commissariat of Enlightenment, became MKhAT's
Communist Manager in 1936. While much respected .by the company, he was
arrested in connection with the Theatre's 1937 tour to Paris for allegedly spying
and was executed that same year.
Translated by Sharon Marie Carnicke
88
MARATISADE BY THE TRIUMVlRATUS ART GROUP OF
BULGARIA
Marvin Carlson
The T riumviratus Art Group was formed in 1994 by the director
Javor Gardev, then a student at the Bulgarian Theatre Academy, along with
author Georgi Tenev and scenic designer Nicola Toromanov.
Gardev studied with Ivan Dobchev, founder of the much honored Sfumato
company, and traces of the Sfumato approach may be seen in the work of
Triumviratus- the precise use of lighting, dividing up the stage into discrete
areas, the emphasis upon the body, the strong visual accents, the layering of
texts. To this Gardev adds a strong filmic quality emphasized in this
production of Marat/Sade by the continual use of video cameras. It was
premiered in the spring of2003 at the Dramatic Theatre "Stojan Bachvarov"
in Varna, Bulgaria, before touring to Berlin (where I saw it in June) and the
Netherlands.
Although the action in large measure follows Weiss's text, the
departures are major, making this really more of an adaptation than a stage
realization. Coulmier and his family are gone, and so Sade is subjected to no
overall controlling presence and he essentially controls the production. This
is both literally and figuratively true, since the entire production, with the
exception of an opening sequence (to be discussed presently), is seen both
live on stage and above the stage on a large video screen, which shows the
image that is selected for our viewing by Sade, either from a small camera he
wears throughout or from one of two auxiliary cameras held by the two
nurses who operate under his direction.
Weiss's text is seriously cut and rearranged, and significant new
material is added, most notably at the beginning and end. Marat is played
by a woman, Snezhina Petrova, who is nude for almost the entire evening.
The production begins with her naked body isolated by light in center stage,
facing the audience and presenting a lengthy (almost fifteen minutes) speech
on choice, death, and suicide extracted from Albert Camus's L 'homme rivolti.
At the conclusion de Sade (Mihail Mutafov), similarly left alone on stage,
delivers an almost equally extended quotation from Michel Houellebecq's
Die Welt als Supermarkt beginning "The goal of a celebration is to make us
forget we are solitary, miserable, and doomed to death. To put it differently,
89
it is the goal of a celebration to tum us into animals" -surely an apposite
observation on Sade's "celebratory" play.
After Marat's opening speech, an offstage voice summons the
actors onstage, and we see them entering upstage doors and also on a large
video screen hanging above the stage, which shows them as being
simultaneously filmed by a video camera somewhere in the flies. The
offstage voice puts them through a series of physical exercises, after which
we see the image on the screen changing as the camera apparently descends
from the flies by a winding staircase and comes onstage. When it appears,
we find that it is being worn by de Sade on a harness that holds it out about
two feet from his body at the level of his head. It was, of course, his offstage
voice we have been hearing. He wears this apparatus throughout the
production, pointed in almost equal measure at whatever part of the action
he wishes to emphasize or upon close-ups of his own distorted features,
speaking into the camera or simply observing what is happening elsewhere
on stage. The video images on the large screen are continuous, and although
de Sade is presumably in total control of their orientation and focus, not all
are generated from his own apparatus.
The two Charenton nurses who serve as his assistants each carry
a hand-held video of their own, and these allow them not only to provide
onstage perspectives different from those available to de Sade's camera, but,
more importantly, to pursue actors offstage as they wander about the
corridors of the theatre, or even out of doors, while de Sade is supervising
and participating in the onstage activities. Thus we see, for example,
Charlotte Corday (Paraskeva Djukelova) outside near the stage door,
smoking a cigarette and warming up for her encounter with Marat. This use
of moving cameras allows a complex interweaving of the dramatic and real
worlds, as when the chorus rages through the halls and lobbies of the
theatre, followed by the cameras, and then bursts into the auditorium
through the balcony doors (the cameras still recording all this) to lean over
the railing and berate Marat for their continued poverty.
The stage remains basically empty, but from time to time large
mechanized constructivist objects appear. The simplest of these is Marat's
tub, a clear plastic basin like a large fish tank mounted on a wheeled metal
platform. The most complex is the extremely phallic crane mounted by
Duperret, a metal construction rather in the shape of a huge barrier gate
which Duperret climbs at the heavy end and the front end of which is
straddled first by Marat and later (in a sequence when Duperret raises and
90
lowers her with a clearly sexual increasing intensity) by Corday. The third
such unit is clearly constructed in imitation of the base of the Eiffel tower,
and it first appears with Corday riding on top of it, completing the Eiffel
tower silhouette by spreading her legs and holding her hands together above
her head. Later, Jacques Roux (Penko Gospodinov) set up a sleek working
guillotine atop this same structure.
Although several of the songs remain, Weiss's four singers are
only rarely differentiated from the rest of the chorus, and are a far less
significant part of the production than is normally the case. Coulmier and
his family never appear, and the Herald is split into two identically dressed
ladies, Sofie and Marie, who basically serve as further foils for de Sade. All
of this works to bring de Sade at almost every moment to the center of the
production, and even when the action on stage involves others, it is most
often his amused, sardonic observing face hovering over all on the video
screen that dominates the visual impression. Only once, near the end, does
Marat, now wrapped in the red robe of liberty, one breast showing, make
what appears to be an attempt to break out of de Sade's representation.
Appropriating the knife from Corday, Marat comes downstage and slices an
opening in a hitherto unobserved plastic screen that covers the fourth wall,
stepping out and into a more capacious bath sunk into the forestage. As
Marat delivers a plea for freedom, however, the inmates follow, making their
own holes in the screen, chanting the Dies !rae, and frolicking about in the
water in an increasingly orgiastic display. Marat loses concentration and is
seized by a kind of epileptic fit. Finally all leave the bath except de Sade,
who climbs heavily into it without bothering even to remove his boots.
There he delivers the final cynical passage from Houellebecq at the end of
which he switches off the video and turns to look up at the screen above its
head, now blank except for the cold message (in English) "No input is
detected on video."
91
OSTROVSKY'S THE FOREST:
FOMENKO INTERPRETS OSTROVSKY FOR PARISI
Sharon Marie Carnicke
While Russian directors continue to stage plays by Aleksander
Ostrovsky in his native land, his oeuvre remains relatively unknown in the
West. In staging The Forest (Les) with company members from La Comedie
Pyotr Fomenko brings Ostrovsky's riches to Paris. Moreover, he
revisits the playwright through the eyes of Russian dramatists who are better
known beyond their own shores. In Fomenko's French production La Foret
induces laughter, offers insight into human nature, and provokes
acknowledgement of the debts that Ostrovsky's compatriots owe to him.
Through sophisticated, witty, and sometimes ironic, theatrical details,
Fomenko demonstrates the same instinct for staging Ostrovsky, that he had
shown in his masterful 1992 production of Guilty Without Guilt at Moscow's
Vakhtangov Theatre.l At that time, Fomenko had "put his whole
comedian's heart into Ostrovsky's melodrama",3 and he does so now as well.
The greedy landowner Gurmyzhskaya (played by Martine
Chevallier) has been selling her forest bit by bit to the unscrupulous timber
merchant Vosmibratov (Gerard Giroudon) in order to finance her whims,
her latest being the young, but impoverished Bulanov (Mathieu Genet).
While at first she masks her passion by promoting his marriage to her poor,
young relative Aksyusha (Anne Kessler), Gurmyzhskaya succumbs to her
lust, after learning that Aksyusha prefers Vosmibratov's son, Petya (Laurent
Stocker). Into this melodrama, Ostrovsky unexpectedly brings two traveling
players: Gurmyzhskaya's long lost nephew, a tragedian aptly named
Neschatlivtsev (in French Infortunatov, acted by Michel Vuillermoz), and
his theatrical rival, Schastlivtsev (Fortunatov, Denis Podalydes). Joining
forces by taking on the conventional comedic roles of master and servant,
they visit the forest in hopes of a handout. By bringing to life the masks of
tragedy and comedy, Ostrovsky teases realistic illusion and ironically
comments on melodramatic passion.
Fomenko exploits Ostrovsky's deft dramaturgy by turning the
entire play into a theatricalized exploration of human nature. He opens and
closes his production with the players' soulful sighs of "L'humanite!
L'humanite!" Throughout the evening, they continuously remind us that
92
they are actors. They rifle through a theatrical trunk, try on each other's wigs
and costumes, and test out various props like Yorick's skull. Infortunatov
dresses for dinner, not in the usual frock coat, but as a French Pierrot, while
Fortunatov transforms himself into other recognizable clowns, among them
Charlie Chaplin and Harpo Marx.
Fomenko also presents Ostrovsky's melodramatic characters
through this theatricalized lens. Vosmibratov and Petya enter, dressed in
similar great coats, their bodies moving in tandem around the stage, as if
engaged in a perverse waltz. Their dance creates a sardonic image of a
father's oppression. Gurmyzhskaya not only owns the forest; it is part of her.
As she turns her back, we see tree branches woven into her bustle. When
Bulanov's embrace accidentally tears off her wig, we understand that the
players are not the only ones who indulge in disguise. Moreover, like her
decimated forest, she too is bald. Her lover moves oddly, bending his legs in
sharp angles, turning his feet inward, and often standing in one-legged poses
that threaten to teeter out of balance at any moment. Bulanov looks like one
of Goleizovsky's "eccentric" dancers or a cog from a "machine dance" by
Foregger staged during Moscow's 1920s avant-garde. This studied movement
suggests that cunning, not love, drives Bulanov. Aksyusha, in contrast,
waltzes lightly and energetically through the space. At times she hangs from
the ledges of the house, her loose dress and long hair swinging freely as her
romantic love blooms. Yet, she too is not what she seems. Her argument
with Gurmyzhskaya over Bulanov reveals that she shares the older woman's
willfulness. With each volley, Gurmyzhskaya opens the door to the house
and Aksyusha shuts it. At the climax of the play, when Aksyusha appears
with her hair up, her bodice tightly laced, and her words punctuated by the
same verbal tic that had characterized her rival from the first, her stunning
transformation seems right and insightful.
Such details express Fomenko's view of The Forest as a play that
inverts expectations. By the end of the evening, apparently realistic
characters are seen as masks of deceptive role-playing, whereas apparently
empty theatrical masks emerge as generous people of deep emotion. When
Infortunatov gives away his entire fortune to insure Aksyusha's happiness,
Fomenko's view is crystal clear.
Ostrovsky's legacy to Russian drama also resonates through the
production's details. Gurmyzhskaya's passion for a younger man readily
brings to mind Natalia Petrovna's attraction to her son's tutor (A Month in
the Country), Arkadina's jealous lust for Trigorin (The Seagull), and
93
Ranevskaya's suppressed desire for her Parisian lover (The Cherry Orchard).
When Infortunatov quotes Hamlet, we also hear Treplev. When a
photographer's flash documents Gurmyzhskaya's engagement to Bulanov,
we recall the photograph taken in The Three Sisters. Is that old servant Karp
(played by Michel Robin), or is it really Chekhov's Firs in his formal livery?
Finally, Igor Ivanov's fascinating set, which merges trees with house,
provides a tiled carpet for the forest and leafy chandeliers for illumination,
suggesting that Gurmyzhskaya's immense "forest" is little more than
Ranevskaya's "orchard." At the end of the production, an endless parade of
tree stumps scroll past our eyes, making the sound of Lopakhin's ax seem,
in hind sight, somehow less revolutionary. Fomenko has provided more
than an enjoyable evening in the theatre; he reminds us in the West that
there is more to the history ofRussian drama than the plays ofTurgenev and
Chekhov.
NOTES
1 La Foret, directed by Pyotr Fomenko. Translation by Andre Markowicz;
scenography by Igor Ivanov; costumes by Maria Danilov. La Comedie
Paris, April14 to July 13, 2003.
2 See John Freedman, Moscow Performances: The New Russian Theater 1991-1996
(Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997), xv-xvi; 50-52.
3 Anatoly Smeliansky, The Russian Theatre after Stalin (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1999), 111.
94
CONTRIBUTORS
BEATE HEIN BENNETT received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature
from the University of South Carolina. She lives in New York City and
teaches at the High School for Health Professions and Human Services. As
translator and dramaturg, she has worked in New York with The Living
Theatre, the Open Space Theatre, and Third Step Theatre Company; in
Virginia with Theatre VCU, the Virginia Museum Theatre; and in Germany
with the Theater W erkhaus Moosach.
MARVIN CARLSON is the Sidney C. Cohn Distinguished Professor of
Theatre at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He is the
author of many articles on theatrical theory and European theatre history
and dramatic literature. He is the 1994 recipient of the George Jean Nathan
Award for dramatic criticism and the 1999 recipient of the American Society
for Theatre Research Distinguished Scholar Award. His book, The Haunted
Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine, received the Calloway Prize.
SHARON MARIE CARNICKE is Professor of Theatre and Slavic
Languages and Literatures at the University of Southern California in Los
Angeles. She is also Associate Dean of USC School of Theatre. She has
written widely on Russian theatre, her most recent book being Stanislavsky
in Focus.
MARIA IGNATIEV A is a specialist in Russian theatre history and
contemporary Russian theatre. She was Assistant Professor at the
Moscow Art Theatre School-Studio; since 1994, she has worked in the
Department of Theatre, Ohio State-Lima. She has published in Theatre
History Studies, Western European Theatre, The 19th Century Theatre, Guademos
de Filologia (Spain), as well as in the Russian Theatre Press. She is a frequent
contributor to SEEP.
MARIE CHRISTINE AUT ANT-MATHIEU is director of research at the
National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS), and teaches at Paris III-
New Sorbonne. She is a specialist on the history of Russian and Soviet
theatre (directing, acting, playwriting). Her books include Le Theatre
sovietique durant le degel, Ecrire pour le theatre Alexandre Vampilov, Theatre russe
contemporain, Le Theatre de Boulgakov, Les Voyages du theatre.
95
TERESA MURJAS is a Lecturer in Theatre at the University of Reading,
England. She teaches practical drama, and her research interests are Polish
theatre, the plays of August Strindberg in performance, and contemporary
British theatre companies. She is currently involved in directing a
production of Gabriela Zapolska's The Morality of Mrs Dulska, in her own
translation.
STEPAN S. SIMEK is Assistant Professor of Theatre at Lewis and Clark
College in Portland, Oregon. As a teacher and freelance director, he
directed, among others, a number of modern Czech plays in his translation
in Seattle and Portland, and he travels regularly to Prague to research Czech
theatre after the fall of Communism.
Photo Credits
Stanescu
Saviana Stanescu
Steigerwald
Jan Sibik
Josef Ptacek
Helena Smejkalova
Mrozek's The Turkey
Teresa Murjas
Moscow Art Theatre
96
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
FOUR PRI!NCH COMEDIES OP THE
17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES
@
@ Deotoacl.ec ll.eCoaceited Cow.t
@ LaO.....-.ll.eF...I.ioaaYePnrJwllce
@ l.a1)4:1!.e&...doitL.I...n.o
TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY
MARVIN CARLSON
The Heirs of
Moliere
Translated and Edited by:
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This volume contains four
representative French comedies of
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to the French Revolution: Regnard's
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Prejudice, and Laya's The Friend of
the Laws.
Translated in a poetic form that
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the originals, these four plays
suggest something of the range of
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comedy of character through the
highly popular sentimental comedy
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comedy that employs the Moliere
tradition for more contemporary
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In addition to their humor, these comedies provide fascinating social documents that
show changing ideas about such perennial social concerns as class, gender, and
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the modem era.
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