volume 13. no. 3

fall 1993

SEEP (ISSN II 1047-0018) Is a publication of the Institute for Con­temporary Eastern European Drama and Theatre under the auspices of the Center for Advanced Study In Theatre Arts (CASTA), Graduate Center, City University of New York. The Institute Office Is Room 1206A, City University Graduate Center, 33 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 1 0036. All subscription requests and submissions should be addressed to the Editors of SEEP: Daniel Gerould and Alma law, CASTA, Theatre Program, City University Graduate Center, 33 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.

EDITORS Daniel Gerould Alma Law

ASSOCIATE EDITORS Patrick Hennedy Lisbeth Herer Jay Plum

ADVISORY BOARD Edwin Wilson, Chair Marvin Carlson Leo Hecht Martha W. Coigney

CAST A Publications are supported by generous grants from the Lucille Lortel Chair in Theatre and the Sidney E. Cohn Chair in Theatre Studies in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the City University of New York.

Copyright 1993 CASTA

SEEP has a very liberal reprinting policy. Jownals and newsletters which desire to reproduce articles, reviews, and other materials which have appeared in SEEP may do so, as long as the following provisions are met:

a. Permission to reprint must be requested from SEEP in writing before the fact.

b. Credit to SEEP must be given in the reprint.

c. Two copies of the publication in which the reprinted material has appeared must be furnished to the Editor of SEEP immediately upon publication.

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Editorial Policy From the Editors Events Books Received

TABLE OF CONTENTS

"The Year of the Actor in Moscow" John Freedman

"Grossman, Macharek, Schorm: The Loss of Three Major Czech Directors of the Late Twentieth Century'' J. M. Burian

"Jerzy Grzegorzewski: The Power of Images" Elwira M. Grossman

"The Wheel of Misfortune: Intrigue and Love at the Bolshoi Dramatic Theatre," St. Petersburg Maria Ignatieva and Joseph Brandesky

"Creating the Dramatic Space: Blind Sight by the Yara Arts Group," New York Irina Miller

"Ivanov and Others," Moscow Elizabeth Swain

REVIEWS

"The Bedbug," Lehman College, New York Dana Sutton

"Pinokio Theatre Drak (Czechoslovakia) at the Joseph Papp Public Theatre," New York Shari Troy

"Chekhov at the Festival des Ameriques, Montreal May/June 1993" Jane House

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Contributors Playscripts in Translation Series Subscription Policy

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EDITORIAL POLICY

Manuscripts in the following categories are solicited: articles of no more than 2,500 words, performance and film reviews, and bibliographies. Please bear in mind that all submissions must concern themselves either with contemporary materials on Slavic and East European theatre, drama and film, or with new approaches to older materials in recently published works, or new performances of older plays. In other words, we welcome submissions reviewing innovative performances of Gogol but we cannot use original articles discussing Gogol as a playwright.

Although we welcome translations of articles and reviews from foreign publications, we do require copyright release statements.

We will also gladly publish announcements of special events and anything else which may be of interest to our discipline. All submissions are refereed.

All submissions must be typed double-spaced and carefully proofread. The Chicago Manual of Style should be followed. Transliterations should follow the Library of Congress system. Submissions will be evaluated, and authors will be notified after approximately four weeks.

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FROM THE EDITORS

Moscovites called the uprising on October 3 and 4, "the event," a curiously innocuous word for the bloodiest confrontation to occur in Moscow since the Revolution. Even as it was taking place, people treated the storming of the White House more as a live television show or the shooting of a movie, ignoring the fact that those were real tanks and real bullets, and, incidentally, real blood.

Meanwhile, nearby on the old Arhat, as snipers shot into crowds from the roofs in the vicinity, the Vakhtangov Theatre presented its regular Sunday evening performance, that night, a comedy. Even after President Y eltsin declared a ten-day curfew, Moscow theatres continued to adhere to their regular performance schedules, substituting where necessary shorter productions so that their audiences could get home before the 11:00 curfew.

Thus not only in Moscow this fall, but elsewhere in the former Soviet republics as well as in the East European countries, the show goes on. Perhaps this is because there's a greater need today than ever for theatre, not to provide veiled commentary on life outside the auditorium, but as an escape, if only for a couple of hours, from the depressingly grim reality of the world around it.

On a personal note (Alma Law speaking), I might add that it's one thing to watch live coverage of the Moscow uprising on CNN from a safe vantage point in the U.S., and quite another to see those same pictures while sitting in a Moscow apartment only a few miles from where it was all happening. Looking back it makes a great story to tell of stepping off the plane at 6:30 on Sunday evening, October 3, and being greeted by the words, "Welcome to the Revolution." And to tell of hearing the rumble of tanks on a nearby highway through that first night. But only in retrospect .. .

In this issue we welcome many regulars as well as newcomers to our pages. We encourage readers of SEEP to submit articles and welcome contnbutions by new authors who have not yet appeared in our pages.

The feature Publications which we announced in Vol. 13, no. 1 appears in the current issue with a listing of a number of recent books. We are pleased to provide this information about newly published works dealing with twentieth-century Slavic and East European performance. We ask contributors to include the publisher, price, and a two or three sentence summary of the contents.

- Alma Law and Daniel Gerould

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EVENTS

STAGE PRODUCfiONS

From January to May 1993, the Appalachian State University and the National Honorary Dramatic Society played host to visiting artists from Poland including director J6zef Czemecki and sceoographer Anna Franta. Two plays were produced in a two-part series. The first part took place in January and featured SJawomir Mroi.ek's Out At Sea, a play about three shipwrecked men who must decide who will become dinner for the others. The second part occurred in May and featured Tadeusz R6i.ewicz's The Hunger Artist Departs, a play based on Kafka's story about a man who makes an art of fasting and must resist numerous temptations to abandon his art. lhe first performance was dedicated to President Bill Clinton, and the second to Julian Beck and Judith Malina.

From July 28 to August 8, The Inner-Space Theatre in New York produced two plays from Caroline Thomas's Total Theatre Lab: Going To Poland and Goddess Of Art. These plays, written by Thomas, tackled currently relevant issues such as the prevailing attitude of Americans toward the Bosnia crisis, the historically changing roles of women, and the experience of East Europeans in the United States.

The Phoenix Ensemble, in association with the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts (GITIS), premiered The Bathtub, a new American adaptation of Vladimir Mayakovsky's The Bathhouse. The play ran from September 22 until October 17 at New York's Theatre for the New City. The play was adapted by Paul Schmidt, who has worked on translations for The Wooster Group and Robert Wilson.

Through October 1, The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis staged Aleksandr Ostrovsky's Too Clever By Half, directed by Garland Wright.

Brooklyn College opened its mainstage season with Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters, October 14-24. David Garfield directed the production.

From October 14-30, the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland presented Gerald Freedman's production of The Cherry Orchard by Chekhov.

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From October 19 through November 13, the Indiana Repertory Theatre in Indianapolis also staged The Cherry Orchard. Libby Appel directed the production.

From November 4-14, New York's La MaMa E.T.C. featured Voldya/Russian Hero, a new play about the words and music of Vladimir Vyssotsky, the famous Russian bard and actor, known affectionately as "Voldya." This play was co-written by Walter Jones and Sue Harris. The production was directed by Walter Jones and choreographed by Rod Rodgers.

The University of Rochester's Theatre Program performed the American premiere of a new adaptation of Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov at La MaMa Theatre Annex, November 4-14. It was written by Irish actor/playwright Gerard McLarnon. Directed by Mervyn Willis, the adaptation came to La MaMa after performances by Rochester students on their Russian tour to Moscow, St. Petersburg, Ufa, Novosibirsk, and Kemerovo.

New York's Players Forum produced staged readings of Maciej Wojtyszko's The Revival (October 25) and Samuil Alyoshin's Theme and Variations (November 15) at the Players Club. Gregory Abels directed.

November 21-27 was American Drama Week at the Zagrebian Theatre for Youth in Zagreb, Croatia. The week was organized to promote the publication of Sanja NikCevic's Anthology of American Drama. This is the first American Drama anthology published in Croatia and will include playwrights such as O'Neill, Miller, Inge, Albee, and Fornes. There will be performances (including Fefu and Her Friends), lectures, exhibitions, and videos throughout the week.

The Yara Arts Group workshoped Yara 's Forest Song at La MaMa First Street Workshop Space in New York, December 3-5. The piece combined Virlana Tkacz's and Wanda Phipps's translation of Lesia Ukrania's Forest Song with fragments of contemporary American poetry, pagan myths and songs, and an original musical score by Genji Ito.

From January 8-29, 1994, the Ariwna Theatre Company in Tuscon will produce The Seagull, by Anton Chekhov, translated by Tori Raring­Smith, and directed by Olympia Dukakis.

From January 12 through March 6, the American Conservatory

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Theatre in San Francisco will present Chekhov's Uncle Vanyo. The production will be directed by Artistic Director Carey Perloff.

CONFERENCES

The University of East Anglia (Norwich, England) conducted a Polish Drama Conference, October 8-9. On Friday evening, the featured topics were "Staging the Polish Imagination,'' "Romantic Drama,'' and "Wyspianski, Edward Gordon Craig, and Symbolist Theatre." On Saturday, the presentations included Daniel Gerould's "Witkiewicz,'' Zbigniew Osinski's "Grotowsk.i," and Halina Filipowica's "R6i.ewicz as Dramatist.''

This conference coincided with The Norwich Arts Festival which took place October 12-17. On October 12, the Rough as Guts Company offered Tadeusz R6i.ewicz's The Card Index on a double bill with the Krakow Zenkasi Theatre's presentation of Madmn Eva, Ave Madmn. The Zenkasi is a Polish theatre of the disabled that believes that ''no other actor is able to express human existence better than a person in a wheelchair." On October 13, Ralph Yarrow directed R6i.ewicz' s The Trap at the Sewell Barn Theatre.

On October 23-24, Miami University's Department of Theatre hosted the Miami University International Theatre Festival in Oxford, Ohio. The focus of this conference was Eastern Europe. The conference sessions featured: Helena Albertova, President of the Czechoslovak National Centre of the International Theatre Institute; Nikolina Gueorguieva and Verguinia Pavlova, Directors of the National Academy Puppet Company, a student performance group; Ladislav Lajcha, theatre historian and author of The Development of Slovak National Theatre, 1920-1938 and Slovak Contemporary Scenography; Mikhail Mokeev, director, teacher at the School-Studio at the Moscow Art Theatre, and chair of the theatre lab at the All-Russian Creative Workshops; Hristo Roukov, Rector of the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts, Sofia, Bulgaria; Peter Scherhaufer, Artistic Director of Theatre on a String, Brno, the Czech Republic; Eva Sormova of the Czech International Theatre Institute; and Jan Zavarsky, scenographer, Bratislava, Slovakia.

The topics of the conference sessions were ' 'The Artist as Mirror to Society;" "Current Western Influences on the Arts of Eastern Europe;" and "Eastern Europe's Emerging Identity: Future Collaborations."

Several East European companies were showcased as part of the conference as well. The Bulgarian National Academy Puppet Company

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perfromed Light and SluuUJw, September 30 to October 2. From October 7-10, Howard Blanning's interpretation of MroZek's Tango was produced. A Russian Cabaret, created by and featuring Svetlana Eframova, was staged October 12-13. The Theatre on a String from Bmo, Czech Republic, staged Exercises in Style and Justine, October 21-24. Helena Albertova's The Parlor Room was presented October 28-31 , and Bedrich Smetana's The Bartered Bride was performed November 11-14 ..

From May 18 through November 7, an exhibition in the Miami University Art Museum featured "European Perspectives." From September 14 through November 12, programs that examined East European theatre artists were presented as well.

From October 1-3, MIDFEST International (in collaboration with Miami University Theatre Department and the Cincinnati-Kharkv Sister City Project) held a community celebration of arts and culture of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Ukraine.

FILM

Eighth Day Theatre was presented as part ofMTV's Human Rights Film Watch in New York, May 7-20. Distributed by the Swedish Film Institute, this film documented the Eighth Day Theatre company's journey out of Communist Poland. In 1986 this theatre group was forbidden to pursue its profession in Poland and thus chose to leave Poland and perform in Western Europe. It would take years for the entire group to be reunited, and it is this time period, during and after their exodus, that filmmakers Joanna Helander and Bo Persson recorded. It was described as "a remarkable depiction of theatre as life and life as theatre." Judith Malina of the Living Theatre said, "It is particularly meaningful to a theatre company like the Living Theatre to see the scope and courage of the work of a group that insists on speaking truth through beauty under the most forbidding of circumstances. "

Films of Slavic origin or about Slavic themes were among the numerous films screened during the festival: A Day in the Death of Sarajevo, by Thierry Ravalet, Alain Ferrari, and Bernard-Henri Levy; Dismissed From Life, by Waldemar Krzstek; Hear My Cry, by Maciej Janusz Drygas; The Katyn Forest, by Marcel Lozinski and Andrzej Wajda; Kiev Blue, by Heather MacDonald; Liberators Take Liberties: War, Rape, and Children, by Helke Sander; Serbian Epics, by Pawel Pawilkowski; Videogram of the Revolution, by Harun Farocki and Andrei Vjica; and A View of Bosnia, by Arthur Kent.

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During the month of October, the Film Society of Lincoln Center presented a series of films based on the works of Fedor Dostoevsky, including: Crime and Punishment, directed by Lev Kulidzhanov, Russia (October 17-30); Dostoyevsk:y's The Idiot, directed by Ak.ira Kurosawa, Japan (October 19-27); Raskolnilwv, directed by Robert Wiene, Germany (October 23); Crime and P~mishment, directed by Ak.i Kaurismaki, Finland (October 24); The Idiot, directed by Georges Lampin, France (October 24-27); and Crime and P~mishment, directed by Piere Chenal, France (October 25-27); The Brothers Karamazov, directed by Richard Brooks, US (October 26-27); Crime and Punishment directed by Josef von Sternberg, US (October 28-30); and The Brothers Karamazov, directed by Ivan Pyriev, Russia (October 29-30).

- prepared by Lisbeth Herer

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BOOKS RECEIVED

Gans, Sharon and Jordan Charney. A Chekhov Concert. New York: Samuel French, 1993. pp. 62. $5.00 (Acting Edition). This dramatization combines characters and scenes from Chekhov's The Seagull, Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, and The Cherry Orchard.

Jackson, Robert Louis, ed. Reading Chekhov's Text. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1993. pp. 258. $49.95 (Cloth). Although primarily concerned with Chekhov as a prose writer, this anthology of nineteen essays includes two on Chekhov as a playwright. Laurence Senelick's "Offenbach and Chekhov; or La Belle Elena" examines the influence of Offenbach on Chekhov's dramaturgy, concluding with a comparative reading of Offenbach's La belle Helene and Chekhov's The Wood Demon and Uncle Vanya. Uncle Vanya is central to Gary Saul Morson's essay, "Uncle Vanya and Prosaic Metadrama," as well. Morson explores the influence of Tolstoy's prosaic aesthetic (i.e., the notion that "it is not the dramatic events of life that matter, either for individuals or for societies, but the countless small, prosaic events of daily life") on Chekhov's work.

Kantor, Tadeusz. A Journey Through Other Spaces: Essays and Manifestoes, 1944-1990. Edited and translated by Michal Kobialka. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. pp. 430. $50.00 (Cloth) and $20.00 (Paper). The anthology contains Kantor's major manifestoes in English translation as well as a comprehensive analysis of Kantor's theatre by Kobialka.

The Mayakovsky Centennial: 1893-1993. Edited by Anne D. Perryman and Patricia J. Thompson. New York: Lehman College, 1993. As part of its celebration of the one-hundredth anniversary of Vladimir Mayakovsky's birth, Lehman College hosted an academic symposium organized around four sessions:

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"Mayakovsky the Man: Biographical Perspectives;" "Mayakovsky: World Literature Perspectives;" "Mayakovsky and His Contemporaries;" and "Re-examining Mayakovsky's Poetry and Theatre." Of particular interest to theatre scholars are Jonathan Kalb's reading of The Bathhouse, "Mayakovsky's Tragic

Slavic and East European Performance Vol.13, No. 3

Comedy," and Katherine Lahti's discussion of the influence of Greek dithyrambs on Mayakovsky's dramaturgy, "Vladimir Mayakovsky: A Dithyramb."

Segel, Harold B. Twentieth-Century Russian Drama: From Gorky to the Present. Rev. ed. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1993. pp. 51:7. $65.00 (Cloth) and $19.95 (Paper). The updated version features a new chapter and bibliography on Russian drama from 1979 to 1989. Segel focuses on the "leading and/or more interesting dramatists of the period."

Svoboda, Josef. The Secret of Theatrical Space: The Memoirs of Josef Svoboda. Edited and translated by J. M. Burian. New York: Applause Books, 1993. pp. 143. $49.95 (Cloth). Burian suggests that Svoboda's memoirs are like the man himself: scientific and poetic, descriptive and analytical, reminiscent and visionary. More than 150 photographs are featured in this oversize book, as is a complete listing of Svoboda's productions.

Witkiewicz, Stanislaw. The Witkiewicz Reader. Edited and translated by Daniel C. Gerould. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1993. pp. 400. $59.95 (Cloth) and $22 . .50 (Paper). This anthology gathers excerpts from Witkacy's novels, plays, letters, essays, and manifestoes. A chronology, biographical notes, biographical notes, and numerous illustrations are also included.

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THE YEAR OF THE ACI'OR IN MOSCOW

John Freedman

The commercially-oriented 1992-1993 season in Moscow showed several clear tendencies: melodramas (as in the copies of the Latin­American soap operas flooding Russian television) were in; pseudo­American musicals were in; Ostrovsky (nearly twenty new productions) and Chekhov (five new productions of Uncle Vanya alone) were in; and the absurdists and other authors perceived as "experimental" were out. Naturally, in a city with an estimated four hundred theatres, studios, and theatrical groups, no single trend could possibly define the overall state of affairs. Still, one development carrying over from the previous season began to look like a possible sign of the future. After a century of almost total contro~ Russian directors are clearly ceding primacy to actors. This phenomenon unquestionably remains more quantitative than qualitative, but it is no coincidence that two of the year's best productions, The Possible Meeting. or the Four Hand Dinner at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre and the Bogis Agency's production of Nizhinsky, were very much actor-centric. Nizhinsky was essentially staged without a director at all.

The reappearance in recent years of independent production companies has sharply altered the face of theatre in Moscow. Various organizations, such as David Smelyansky's Russian Theatre Agency, the Bogis Agency, the Whole World International Theatre Center, the Anton Chekhov Theatre, the Roman Viktyuk Theatre, and the OK Theatre began mounting productions outside the confines of the repertory theatre. Several actors, dissatisfied with the state of repertory theatres, formed their own companies. Sergei Yursky founded ACTors ARTel, Oleg Borisov founded the Oleg Borisov Enterprise, and Aleksandr Kalyagin's EtCetera Theatre debuted in February 1993 (the latter two have yet to prove they are capable of creating quality productions). With the sole exception of the Viktyuk Theatre, the major attraction in all cases was the presence of big-name actors who, for the first time since the Revolution, were signed to contracts for specific productions. In order to compete with the independents, traditional repertory theatres also began luring spectators with stars.1 The Possible Meeting is a perfect case in point. Nizhinsky, on the other hand, is an independent production mounted by the new Bogis Agency ("Bogis" is an acronym for the agency's founders, Galina Bogolyubova and Larisa Isaeva).

The Possible Meeting, by the German playwright Paul Barz, brings together composers George Frederic Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach, who never met in real life. Fittingly, the production reunited two of

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Russia's most brilliant actors who seldom perform together anymore: Oleg Yefremov and Innokenty Smoktunovsky.

The year is 1747 and the occasion is Bach's entrance into the German Society of Musical Sciences. Hande~ the society's only other honorary member, bursts into a luxurious room just off the auditorium where Bach can be heard performing for an appreciative crowd. Drunk and irritable, Handel locks horns with his secretary, Johann Schmidt (performed with fastidious dry humor by Stanislav Lyubshin). "Listen to that music," coos Schmidt: "It's genius!" The grousing Handel corrects him darkly: "It's talent."

From his first moments on stage, Y efremov creates a Handel who is driven from within by his powerful personality, his prodigious talent and his ambiguous attitude towards his legendary fame. (Yefremov's own reputation rests, in part, on his having been the moving force at the Sovremennik Theatre in its heyday and on his position as the Moscow Art Theatre's officially-lauded artistic director, whose attempts to reform that moribund venue have met with little success.) Rough as sandpaper, Yefremov's Handel is consumed with a brash self-confidence that hints at an underlying sense of doubt. He denigrates Bach to the dismay of his secretary, grumbling that he should never have agreed to this pointless meeting. But, as Bach makes a painfully timid entrance, Handel instantly dons a saccharine smile, throws his arms open wide and exclaims just a bit too jubilantly: "My dear man!"

Innokenty Smoktunovsky is an actor of sublime grace who, at his best, commands a breathtaking range of subtle shadings. His intellectual approach, his understated voice, his softly nervous gestures, his penetrating eyes and his disarming, almost otherworldly smile have made him the most celebrated Russian actor of the second half of the twentieth century. His performance of Bach gently shifts all of that into an unusual key. This Bach is shy, amusingly awkward, and certain of only one thing: his own genius.

The "meeting" takes forever getting underway as the two composers, like schoolboys playing games in the same sand box, stubbornly refuse to engage one another. Bach wants to play the clavichord; Handel wants to down a bottle of wine. Handel reminisces about his father's doubts that anything would ever come of him, as the poverty-stricken Bach, who has never seen such delicacies as are served up by Schmidt, becomes preoccupied with eating artichokes. The play is an entertaining examination of the vastly different personalities which can be inhabited by genius. The performance is a celebration of the play's theme by two actors who need have no illusions about their own prowess and know it.

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The Possible Meeting, or the Four Hand Dinner Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre

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The teasing interplay between theatre and life in this performance is undeniable. Like the characters they ·play, two great actors are locked in a sparring match. It is a battle from which everyone emerges a winner, and the young director Vyacheslav Dolgachyov was wise to stand back and let two masters go about their business.2

Slowly, as fat chunks of wax begin dropping from the candles on the chandelier above them, the barriers separating the two giants begin to fall. Handel's jealousy of his guest gives way to grudging respect, while Bach, uncharacteristically seduced by worldly desires, admits he is "burning with envy" at Handel's fame, quickly adding, however, that he is "the greater genius of the two." Handel is overjoyed. "That's the best compliment of my life," he exclaims. For a while, the tipsy, newfound friends even start making grandiose plans for collaborations.

Margarita Demyanova created an elegant old-world set, with a strange, absent back wall consisting of a curtain of light which frequently changes in density and color. In effect, it positions the characters with one foot in this world and one foot on the road to eternity. As the performance ends, the "wall" opens up and the two rivals disappear beyond it together. U eternity makes "enemies" of these very different artists, as Handel observes with no little delight, it is also the common ground on which they meet.

Nizhinsky, too, is an exploration of the nature of genius, although its focus is substantially different from The Possible Meeting. First-time author Aleksei Burykin based his play on the diaries of Vaclav Nizhinsky, the great Polish-Russian dancer whose career was cut short at the age of thirty by schizophrenia. The result is a view of genius from the inside, wherein it slowly becomes clear that true genius is a gift from God, existing independently of the person whom it visits. It can be understood or misunderstood. It can be revealed or it can become veiled over, as it is in this case by madness. Burykin distilled Nizhinsky's divine and mortal elements into two theatrical characters who are as inextricable as they are at constant odds.

Oleg Menshikov gained international fame in 1992 by playing Sergei Yesenin opposite Vanessa Redgrave's Isadora Duncan in the award-winning London production of When She Danced. He brings the same poetic grace to his performance of Nizhinsky's intuitive half. Charming, boyish and coy, he isn't at all interested in remembering his glorious days as the star of Sergei Diaghilev's Russian Seasons.

Aleksandr Feklistov built his considerable reputation performing in several acclaimed production at the "Chelovek" Theatre·Studio before moving on to the short-lived Moscow Art Theatre Fifth Studio. As Nizhinsky's cerebral half, he comes across early as a rational psychologist

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Ni1ftinsky, a production of the Boris Agency

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whose task is to draw the impetuous Menshikov out of his sublime estrangement from reality. But, as Menshikov deftly spins away from each ·attempt to make him defme himself, Feklistov loses his confident facade. And, involuntarily, we realize that we are witnessing the mystery of an internal process.

Befitting a performance devoted to a great dancer, the actors's movements, interaction and even inner thoughts are choreographed with taut precision. The action progresses in ebbs and flows as control of the situation passes back and forth between the characters. Concrete images from the past occasionally materialize in the silent form of a young boy and girl who are dressed in costumes from Nizhinsky's most famous roles. Their appearance seems to awaken something in Menshikov's character: he can't help but recognize what they mean, but he either cannot or does not want to acknowledge that. In rare revelatory moments, his memory of the past merges with his awareness of the present and he unexpectedly becomes the dancer once again, executing graceful, balletic leaps and gestures. But such moments are fleeting. Usually he is possessed of a pristine, child-like detachment. The tone of the performance moves lightly from the eerie (as when an effigy of Menshikov's character suddenly comes to life), to mock tragedy, to lyrical comedy (as in a marvelous two-man Chaplin imitation).

Feklistov's rather plodding, troubled persona repeatedly returns to one of the questions which interests him most: "Pronounce your name," he demands of his alter-ego. It is to no avail. Menshikov lists everything he represents-a man, a god, a red-skinned Indian, a black­skinned African, an Egyptian, a foreigner, a stranger, and a Chinaman- but he refuses to say who he is. Eventually Feklistov is forced to abandon his efforts: "I know who I am," he says, "but I'm not saying." His almost unnoticeable descent into the sometimes disturbing, but, more often, liberating world of the irrational is a stunning achievement.

Although three different directors took part in the early stages of rehearsals, none of them met the approval of the actors or the designer, Pavel Kaplevich. The trio completed the production on their own. The performances take place in the small, ornate hall of a children's music school, a location that evokes beautifully the spirit of the Nizhinsky age. Kaplevich added a series of inflatable pseudo-marble columns which increase the stateliness of the environs, while giving it the fragility of sanity: all that is needed for the columns to collapse in a heap are a few swipes of the hand.

Illuminated with a wide-eyed sense of wonder and humor, Nizhinsky is proof that theatre, too, can soar in a state of perpetual

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suspension-as legend has it Nizhinsky himself did in Le Spectre de Ia Rose. Imitating the finale of that famous ballet, Nizhinsky ends as Menshikov takes a flying leap out a window in the stage-left wall.

If the triumph of The Possible Meeting had the feel of an "old­fashioned" actors's showcase, Nu:hinsky created the distinct sensation of innovation. Two of the best young actors in Moscow (together with one of the most respected young designers) molded a powerful performance around their own needs and capabilities, rather than merely executing the demands of a director.3

Meanwhile, the vast majority of last season's productions eschewed unconventional approaches and merely sought to enact play texts. Some did so with talent. A stand-out in this regard was Mark Rozovsky's production of Uncle Vanya at the Nikita Gates Theatre-Studio. Rozovsky repeatedly stated that his primary purpose was to return to the basics of classical drama, and indeed Vanya contained few of the showy tricks this director is apt to employ. Instead he gave a crystal-clear reading of Chekhov's text- bringing out its tragedy and humor in equal doses- while leaving his actors ample room to provide their own interpretations. Especially effective were Mikhail Dolinsky, who fashioned a unusually comical, sympathetic Professor Serebryakov, and Viktoriya Zaslavskaya, who, at moments, gave Sonya's failed stab at love the chilling aura of a confrontation with the devil. The result was a deeply moving performance whose sense of freshness was couched in a deceptively traditional veneer.

Most productions showing a strong director's hand were disappointing. Velemir Khlebnikov's Zangezi (directed by Aleksandr Ponamaryov for the Chyot-Nechet Theatre), Pirandello'sAs You Desire Me (directed by Vladimir Sedov for the Novy Drama Theatre), and Ostrovsky's The Abyss (collated with Victor Ducange's Thirty Year.r of a Gamester's Life by director Sergei Zhenovach at the Malaya Bronnaya Theatre) all bogged down in pretentiousness, obscurity, or both. Yuri Lyubimov's production of Sophocles's Electra at the Taganka seemed rather trifling, if somewhat hysterical, while his "musical parable" based on Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago was so busy it seldom had the time to achieve coherence. Roman Viktyuk dashed off two painfully empty productions: Sergei Kokovkin's A Mystery Play About an Unborn Child, an Unrealized Mother and the Almighty Father at the Mossoviet Theatre, and Edward Albee's dramatization of Nabokov's Lolita, a production of the Viktyuk Theatre. At the Hermitage Theatre, Mikhail Levitin staged a clever Don Juan, based on plays by Moliere and Tirso de Molina, but his real secret to success was Viktor Gvozditsky's performance of one of the production's two Don Juans. Several prominent directors, Kama Ginkas

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among them, produced nothing at all. A telling moment was the Mayakovsky Theatre's revival of Ferdinand Bruckner's Napoleon I, originally staged by the late Anatoly Efros a decade ago. Director Tatyana Kazakova did an admirable job of resurrection, but the performance clearly owed its success to Mikhail Filippov and Olga Yakovleva in the roles of Napoleon and Josephine.

Three productions provided the kind of provocative vision one expects from an auteur director. Yuri Pogrebnichko's adaptation of Gogol's The Maniage at the Krasnaya Presnya Theatre, retitled When I Wrote I Saw Before Me Only Pushkin, was a quirky, mystical meditation on Russian claustrophobia. At the Malaya Bronnaya Theatre, Sergei Zhenovach rebounded from the disastrous Abyss with a rousing, folkloristic production of Aleksandr Ablesimov's eighteenth-century comic opera, The Miller W7w Was Wuard, Cheal, and MaJchmaker. And, finally, Pyotr Fomenko produced a spectacular, intimate version of Ostrovsky's Guilty Without Guilt at the V akhtangov Theatre. The first act was performed by a group of young actors as a prologue in a tiny room overlooking the theatre's elegant foyer. The remaining three acts were performed in the adjacent third-floor buffet by established members of the V akhtangov troupe. In keeping with the spirit of the season as a whole, Fomenko couched the meticulously-constructed performance in a loose, improvisational atmosphere that facilitated maximum contact between the audience and a uniformly strong cast of actors.

Clearly, it would be an overstatement to start talking about the death of the director; the tradition spawned by Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, and Tairov has been too strong and too productive simply to fade away. Nonetheless, it would seem that we are on the threshold of some realignments in the priorities of the Russian theatrical process. At any rate, the lion's share of last year's triumphs in Moscow belonged to actors.

1In the 1991-1992 season, The Bald Brunette featured a popular rock star, The Gamblers-21st Century featured an all-star cast, and What Aro You Doing in a Tux? featured two of Anatoly Vasilyev's former actors and a popular singer. For details about these productions, see "Some Moscow Premieres: The 1991-1992 Season" Slavic and East European Perfonnance 12 {1992): 10-19. Another example was Aleksandr Galin's Sorry, directed by the renowned filmmaker Gleb Panfilov for the Russian Theatre Agency and starring Inna Churikova and Nikolai Karachentsov. After two previews in June 1992, it entered the repertory at the Lenkom Theatre in the 1992-1993 season. I found this performance, which received mixed reviews, to be an excellent treatment of the problems

25

separating and unifying emigr~ and indigenous Russian culture. Whatever the case, critics and packed houses were unanimous in their praise of the actors's work.

2A comparison of two other productions involving Dolgachyov and Yefremov emphasizes the new dependence of directors on actors. Using a cast of inexperienced actors, many still students, Dolgachyov staged a drearily busy, eminently forgettable version of Carlo Gozzi's One of the Last Nights of the Carnival at the Pushkin Theatre. At the Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre, Yefremov the director tried turning Woe From Wit into something of a love story but succeeded only in overwhelming Griboedov's sparkling wit with banality.

3Even the origins of the project were unorthodox as Nizhinsky was written at the request of Menshikov, who was unhappy with the roles being offered him.

26 Slavic and East European Pcrfonnancc Vol. 13, No. 3

GROSSMAN, MACHACEK, SCHORM: THE WSS OF THREE MAJOR CZECH DIR.ECI'ORS OF THE LATE 1WENTIETH CEN11JRY

J. M. Burian

The death in February 1993 of director Jan Grossman, Vaclav Havel's chief collaborator in the 1960s at the Theatre on the Balustrades (Divadlo na zabradlQ, was but the latest severe loss to Czech theatre in the present era of reorganization and reorientation following the Velvet Revolution. It came two years after the death of Miroslav Macharek, a major actor and director at the National Theatre since the 1950s, and only a little more than four years after the death of Ewald Schorm, freelancer and youngest of this triad of significant theatre directors. Although they never quite achieved the world-class reputation of their countrymen Alfred Radok and Otomar Krejbt, these three directors nevertheless helped to create and keep alive the high standards of Czech theatre before and after the Prague Spring of 1968. A brief survey of their careers is a reminder of the range and quality of Czech theatre in the second half of the twentieth century, when the arts were heavily subsidized, but ideologically and bureaucratically restricted by the Communist regime.

Originally an important literary critic, theorist, and editor, Grossman (b. 1925) entered the world of theatre shortly after World War ll as a reader at the National Theatre in Prague. Later, after working a few years as a dramaturg at the State Theatre in Brno, Grossman returned to Prague in the early 1950s as a dramaturg and occasional director for the celebrated prewar theatre artist E. F. Burian in the latter's revived D34 theatre. But Grossman's most significant theatrical activity occurred first as dramaturg and then as director and head of drama at the Theatre on the Balustrades in Prague from 1962-1968, years when the nation moved from the restrictions of a rigid Communist system to the enlightened Prague Spring of 1968 and its motif of socialism with a human face.

Grossman brought a sense of literary and theatrical discipline and structure to the theatre, formulating an artistic policy that gave the theatre a special identity. In this he had the good fortune of working with Vaclav Have~ who was resident playwright and later dramaturg under Grossman. Grossman's program at the Theatre on the Balustrades created a theatre of conscious "appeal" to its spectators. The productions were carefully conceptualized and theatrically inventive models of soci~ political, and psychological behavior that confronted the audiences with implicit questions regarding the society in which they lived. The plays, which tended toward absurdist satires, were mostly original works

27

(Havel's first three full-length plays: The GQI'den Party; The Memorandum, directed by Grossman; and The Increasing Difficulty of Concentration); or Grossman's provocative adaptation and direction of works like Jarry's Ubu cycle and Kafka's The Trial. All these productions brought the theatre sustained success at home, international attention, and tours abroad.

Both Grossman and Havel resigned from the Balustrades theatre for nonpolitical reasons even before the Soviet-led invasion and occupation of August 1968. Nevertheless, for the next twenty-one years, because of his implicitly critical, liberal artistic profile, Grossman was restricted to directing abroad or in peripheral but progressive Czech theatres to which he brought his distinctive style. A patient, gentlemanly intellectual, but painstakingly persistent in his staging demands, his work was marked by a thorough, philosophically slanted analysis of the text, a selection of telling stage images, and a precisely defined mise-en-scene that sought to reveal the socially relevant motifs of the play rather than Grossman's subjective "take" on it.

In the spring of 1989 he was allowed to return to the Balustrades theatre as a guest director of Moliere's Don Juan, which proved to be the outstanding production of the season. Fact became more dramatic than fiction when, after the Velvet Revolution swept the previously jailed Vaclav Havel to the presidency of Czechoslovakia at the end of 1989, Grossman staged Havel's previously banned Largo Desolalo at the Balustrades in April 1990, even persuading President Havel to provide a recorded voice-over narration of the stage directions as part of the performance. Later that same year, Grossman became head of drama at the theatre, and in the summer of 1991 he was named its artistic director, although not before an internal power struggle with the actors, who wanted the theatre to adopt a more commercial orientation in the post­Communist era. Before his death he directed three more plays at the Balustrades: Karel Steigerwald's Alas, Alas, Fear, the Noose, and the Pit, a new play by the theatre's resident playwright (1990); Havel's Temptation (1991); and Alan Bennett's Kafka's Dick (1993), his last work.

Like Jan Grossman, Miroslav Macha~ek and Ewald Schorm endured various forms of restriction if not oppression during the Communist years, primarily in being prevented from working steadily at their art and craft because they would not adapt to various pressures and demands from the authorities. Macharek (1922-1991), a major actor as well as a director, was banished from work in Prague during the 1950s and then prevented from directing during most of the 1980s. Schorm (1931-1988) was restricted to itinerant and intermittent work in the theatre after his successful career as a film director (e.g., Enough Courtlge

28 Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vo1.13, No.3

for Every Day (1964]) in the Czech New Wave era was terminated as part of the purging of liberal forces following the crushing of the Prague Spring. Despite these forced gaps in their creative efforts, each made his mark on Czech theatre.

MachArek worked in several provincial theatres as well as in Prague's Municipal theatres before joining the National Theatre in 1959 as both actor and director. His most notable productions for the National Theatre included Oedipus Rex (1963), l:apeks's Insect Comedy (1965), Henry V (1971), The School for Scandal (19'n), the Czech classic, Our Hotheads (Naif Furimati (1979]), and Hamlet (1982), a straightforward but powerfully affecting production that remained in the repertoire for six years. MacMrek also acted in some of these productions (including the Tramp in Insect Comedy and the First Player in Hamlet). Luka in Lower Depths, Shakespeare's Henry IV, Macbeth, and Tybalt were some of his other major roles. A choleric, intense, often sarcastic and goading personality, MacMrek was above all an actors's director who sought out the passionate core of a drama's conflicts. Not inclined toward avant­garde experimentation in staging, he nevertheless worked fruitfully with Josef Svoboda, infusing the latter's often abstract, metaphoric sets with a richly textured humanity in the give and take of the actors' performances.

MacMrek's uncompromising, fierce commitment to the spirit of independence led logically to his becoming the chief spokesman for the Prague actors and ensembles who played a central role during the turbulent demonstrations, strikes, and debates of the Velvet Revolution. His last work in the theatre was as Serebriakov in the National Theatre's production of Uncle Vanya in 1990.

Ewald Schorm's personality and directing style were the opposite of MachArek's. A handsome, tall man, quiet, reticent, and gentle, he worked best by indirection. Rather than exhort his actors like MachArek, or provide subtle analyses like Grossman, he would seemingly throw up his hands and declare he didn't know what a given moment meant or how to handle a difficult sequence, thus appealing to the actors for a special, intimate artistic collaboration, to which most responded enthusiastically. Again unlike Macharek, most of whose work was for a single company (the large institutional National Theatre), Schorm worked primarily with a number of relatively small studio theatres, such as the Drama Club (tinohernf Klub), the Balustrades Theatre, Ypsilon Theatre, Theatre on a String (Divaldo na ProvUku) of Brno, and the theatre in Ustf on the Elbe. All these ensembles and other even smaller groups keenly anticipated his stints as guest director, for he seemed to bring a breath of simplicity and purity with him, a disarming modesty that hid the intense, perceptive study be devoted to each project. Among his outstanding

29

productions for studio theatres were his own adaptations of novels such as Crime and Punishment, his frrst stage work, for the Cinohernf Klub, (1966), The Brothers Karamazov (1979), and Macbeth (1981), each of which revealed a taste for stylized experimentation, such as the Kabuki elements in the costuming and acting of Othello.

Schorm's work was not restricted entirely to small-scale studio work, however. His most lasting affiliation was with the Laterna Magika theatre ensemble headed by Josef Svoboda, who saw in Schorm's film expertise as scenarist and director an ideal contribution to the complex mixed media form of Latema Magika. The most successful of Schorm's six productions at Laterna Magika were The Magic Cirrus (1977), Ni17U Rehearsal (1981), a probing critique of eroding ethical values in Czechoslovakia during that era, and the lavish spectacle of Odysseus (1987). He also directed a number of opera productions, including some with Svoboda, chiefly abroad. Nevertheless, it is as a director of more intimate, psychologically-centered works drawing on the actors's personalities that Schorm will probably be longest remembered.

As the Czech theatre reformats and reorients itself in the 1990s, these three artists, among the few remaining survivors of the high-water mark of the Czech theatre of the 1960s, will surely be missed.

30 Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol.13, No.3

JERZY GRZEGORZEWSKI: THE POWER OF IMAGES

Elwira M. Grossman

During my one-month stay in Poland, I managed to see three performances staged by Jerzy Grzegorzewski: Uncle Vanya; The Death of Ivan Ilych; and Caught (Zlowiony). Grzegorzewski's stage versions of three different literary genres (a play, a short story, and two poems with corresponding themes), reveal his interest in aeating images that can convey the meaning of any literary text he selects. Grzegorzewski neither ignores given textual directions nor treats them with blind obedience. Instead, he reads them anew and concentrates on elements either ignored or consciously rejected by other readers or performers. Grzegorzewski is as much a playwright and designer as he is a director. Yet he always remains faithful to the spirit of a literary source. His final products appear quite stimulating. Often desaibed by critics as eccentric and controversial, as well as interesting and challenging for both actors and audiences; his direction results in thought-provoking and moving performances.

In his staging of Uncle Vanya, Grzegorzewski concentrates on the elements of Chekhov's technique that prove to be the very origin of the Theatre of the Absurd. His directing focuses on the rejection of traditional concepts of plot and character with a lack of logical motivation for characters's behavior, devaluation of dialogue and language itself, and use of "indirect dialogue," just to name the most important dramatic devices revealed in this production.

At the beginning of Act I, when the daily tea time starts, Marina (Wieslawa Niemyska) and Astrov (Wojciech Malajkat) move the samovar in very slow motion from one edge of a big table to another. They both take turns lifting the opposite sides of the table while remaining silent or uttering single sentences with long pauses as if they were waiting for something to happen or for someone to interrupt them. The slow pace of the action and their movements stirs the viewers's curiosity. At the same time it prepares them for the upcoming uneventful plot with its moments of psychological tension and anxiety, but without climaxes. This introductory scene puzzles the audience and makes them suspicious about the objective nature of the reality presented. The spectator asks "what is happening?" instead of ''what is going to happen?"

The organization of the stage space, which appears wide open and unusually deep, also assures the viewer that what one sees is not the illusion of nineteenth-century Russia but an exclusively subjective reality of the characters' minds and psychic projections. There is a stage door

31

to the right and to the left. The forestage is broadened by removing a few front rows of seats. There are a few chairs, a bench, a piano, and a tree-lined walk in the back indicating an autumn landscape. Grzegorzewski's design for the setting fits Serebriekov's space description very well: "I detest this house, it's a perfect labyrinth . . . twenty-six enormous rooms, everybody scattered where you can't find them." When Ivan Voynitsky-Vanya (Zbigniew Zamachowski) paces nervously as if he could not break the vicious circle of everyday routine and predictable events, his presence acquires a symbolic dimension. For him the reality behind all doors always seems the same. Trapped in a world that offers no solutions for a monotonous and painful existence, Vanya devotes his time to monologues and philosophical discussions. If his behavior puzzles the spectator at the beginning, it appears quite convincing at the end. Zamachowski creates a profound character whose interior world becomes a part of the fragmented setting: visibly present but difficult to grasp and arrange in a logical way.

As the performance progresses the staging slowly unfolds its psychological and existential dimensions; it deepens the loneliness of the characters and makes their emotional distance more visible. Grzegorzewski's theatrical language appeals to the spectator's imagination partly by visualizing psychological aspects of Chekhov's dramatic world. What can potentially be sensed in dialogue through an attentive reading becomes accessible to the viewer much faster through the theatrical signs that Grzegorzewski carefully chooses.

Two scenes are particularly striking: the conversation between Sonya (Aleksandra Justa) and Yelena (Joanna Trzepieciflska) in Act III and, resulting from it, the mutual exchange of views between Astrov (Wojciech Malajkat) and Yelena. Although the conversation between Sonya and her stepmother begins quite innocently, its importance becomes clear after Sonya confesses her deep love for Astrov. Unaware of her stepmother Yelena's own affection for him, Sonya asks her to speak to Astrov in order to learn his true feelings. In her innocence and naivete, Sonya does not realize that Yelena's concern is politely conventional and obviously false. The idea of having two women speaking to each other through a glass top of a table (with Sonya sitting on the floor and Yelena looking at her from above it) creates an appropriate set­up for this scene and comments on the women's relationship in a truly revealing fashion.

Apropos the "glass table" scene, the undertones and sexual innuendos present throughout Yelena's and Astrov's chat are masterfully indicated through a "picture-taking" episode. This scene involves a lot of body posing, different facial expressions, and provocative gestures in both characters' behavior. There is also a lengthy moment when the characters

32 Slavic and East European Performance Vo1.13, No. 3

gaze into each others eyes, having as an obstacle an imaginary camera lens. As a result the scene creates a fascinating psychological game of manipulation, uncertainty, and secret passion.

In addition to these effective scenes, there is a memorable moment when Serebriakov (Wlodzimierz Press) announces his decision to sell the house. At this time all of the characters are sitting in a line of chairs facing each other's back. Intentionally or not, they create a human train of different generations, temperaments, and philosophical views. They are a family that lives together but is really apart, a family that looks in the same direction but knows no destination. While they all want to believe that they move straight ahead, their train seems to be going in a circle because they always arrive at similar observations and the same philosophical conclusion: "life is dreary, dull, and . . . suffocating." As Vanya's fmal lines confirm, nothing can destroy their numbing daily routine: "You'll get the same amount as before-sent regularly. Everything shall be as it was." It does not come as a surprise that the point of arrival in the action of the play is only slightly different from its point of departure-another essential feature of an absurdist play's structure that inspired this very appealing and stirring interpretation of Uncle Vanya.

The music composed by Stanislaw Radwan also becomes an important foreshadowing element. A consistently repeated motif helps to create the quiescent and somberly lyrical atmosphere of this performance. The music also corresponds to the obsessive themes of Astrov's and Vanya's monologues concerning the senselessness of human existence, the humdrumness of life, and time and its impact.

Grzegorzewski's attempt to stage Chekhov as "our contemporary'' by focusing on the recognizable devices of the Theatre of the Absurd creates a highly successful production. The director owes part of this success to .the group of actors from the Studio Theatre who commendably render his vision.

The Death of Ivan I/ych has become an important theatrical event for theatregoers in Poland. Since its premiere in 1991, it has acquired a few detractors and many admirers which proves Grzegorzewski's effort worthwhile and Polish theatre still alive. Because the narration and long inner monologues constitute the major part of Tolstoy's text, and its dramatic texture is reduced to the minimum, the idea of staging The Death of Ivan Ilych itself appears quite a challenge. In order to meet this challenge, Grzegorzewski incorporates poetic pieces by Tadeusz R6:lewicz, jeopardizes certain parts of the story, totally sacrifices some others, and manages to translate a few astonishingly well. The performance does not satisfactorily explain the criteria for his choices. To this, however,

33

Grzegorzewski himself responded during the meeting of the International Theatre Festival "Kontakt '93" in Torun: "If I understand everything from my own performance, it means that something is wrong."2

The setting for the scene of Ivan's wake makes the spectators participate in the imaginary ceremony as passive onlookers. Ivan's friends (Stanislaw Brudny, Andrzej Butruk, Jacek Jarosz, Tomasz Taraszkiewic:z, and J6zef Wieczorek) deliver speeches from a kind of carriage moved in between the rows of seats. At the same time Praslmvya Fedorovna (Wieslawa Niemyska) sobs on the stage in an exaggerated manner that makes her feigned sorrow more visible to the audience. When the guests at the wake exit, Ivan (Jan Peszek) remains on the stage alone and his admirable acting keeps the audience's attention for the rest of the play.

Peszek communicates the protagonist's thoughts, pain, fear, anxiety, and total loneliness in an unforgettable way. Concentrating on Ivan's inner life, Peszek adopts different and often symbolic solutions: he stands on his head, waves his arms and legs, jumps up and down in a frantic way. He conveys the message of Ivan's desperate will to live. Peszek's acting also convincingly illustrates Ivan's inability to communicate his pain and his strong desire to be treated by his family sincerely and naturally.

One of the most surprising and original ideas of this performance is the introduction of a scene with dancing girls which recalls the many balls and parties that Ivan attended before his illness. When the group of dancers enters the stage, the contrast between their young healthy bodies and Ivan's evident weakness astonishes the audience and forces it to reflect. This marks one of the most poignant moments that makes Ivan's suffering undeniable and convincing.

Ivan's recognition of the real nature of his success and his previously "healthy'' life is reached when he becomes aware that the real direction of his existence leads him down, not up; although the movement is fast, it is no longer forward but backward. Ironically, Ivan's illness begins at the peak of his career. He then falls while trying to hang a curtain in his luxurious house. This meaningful moment in the story is symbolized on the stage by the setting. In the background there is a vertical platform in the shape of a trapeze onto which Ivan frequently climbs during the performance. In the last scene the same platform moves apart, and Ivan's dead body appears in a bright stream of gray light, creating a stirringly beautiful and powerful image.

With R62:ewicz's poem "I dreamed of Leo Tolstoy,'' recited by Peszek as part of his role, the performance acquires a different dimension. The death concerns not only a literary character but becomes verifiable by the biography of the writer himself. In terms of literary style, R62:ewicz's language adds a poetic touch to Tolstoy's dry and

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deceptively simple narrative. It changes the story from a chronicle of events to a more private and personal confession.

Although full of beautiful and moving images, the spectacle left me with one major question: if one had not read the story before, would one have known much about Ivan besides his illness and death? What kind of important "discoveries" does this sickness bring to his life? There are a number of possible answers to these questions in Tolstoy's text, but none of them seem to be suggested in Grzegorzewski's stage version. Ivan's philosophical divagations on the falsity of human behavior, especially his family's, are excluded from the acting and Peszek's monologues. There is no motivation for Ivan's close understanding with the peasant Gerasim who, representing Nature, can view Ivan's condition exactly as be wants: with full acceptance and natural sincerity.

According to Tolstoy's version, only a deadly illness can wake Ivan from his artificial, shallow, and success-oriented existence to a life rich in spiritual values and philosophical reflection, a life that ends with a full acceptance of death as its natural component. This important turn in Ivan's consciousness is never communicated onstage, neither is his hatred for family members because of their false behavior towards him. Why Grzegorzewski decides to omit such evidently theatrical aspects of the story is unclear.

Caught (Ziowiony) is a loosely connected chain of poetic images. This time Grzegorzewski creates a performance inspired by the poems "Et in Arcadia Ego" and "Caught" ("Zlowiony'') by Tadeusz R6iewicz. Grzegorzewski's theatrical version of poetry that seeks the meaning, place, and role of Roman and Greek cultures in contemporary life appeals more to the audience's imagination and fantasy than to their emotions or inteUectual reflection. Some of the rich poetic images actualized through the stage language seem to lose their appealing power because of the fact that what is subtly suggested through poetic verses becomes too explicit and one-dimensional on stage. In other cases, the images performed often evoke a completely different feeling from the one in the original text and leave the spectator confused with no sense of direction for possible interpretation. For example, reflective scenes and flashbacks from a visit to Italy do not seem to be connected with scenes that foUow soon after and are performed backstage and on the ftrst balcony simultaneously. Among these intricate images, only single moments such as the monologue to a dead mother have a profound effect on the audience. An old woman, dressed in a shroud, appears between the rows of seats carried on someone's back. Her return to the life, imagination, and memory of the narrator (Olgierd Lukaszewicz) seems very natural, and a deeply reflective mood settles on the viewers. However, the mood shifts

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very quickly and other forms different in their visible action, symbolic meaning, and poetic climate ensue.

The performance Caught serves as convincing proof of the assertion that Grzegorzewski belongs to the Dionysian type of theatre artists who rely on artistic intuition and irrational impulses first and foremost. This and other presentations establish him as a theatre maker who rejects outside stimuli of a political or social nature and who penetrates his imagination as well as different literary works that affect it.

1 A concise and insightful description of Grzegorzewski's directing style can be found in Malgorzata Sugiera, "Poetyka Grzegorzewskiego," Dialog 2 (1990}: 144-154 and Dialog 3 (1990): 108-119; also see ElZbieta Morawiec, Powidoki TeatiU (Krak6w: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1991), especially pp. 283-295.

~he meeting with Jerzy Grzegorzewski and Jan Peszek took place on May 28, 1993 in the Wilam Horzyca Theatre in ToruD, Poland.

36 Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol.l3, No.3

THE WHEEL OF MISFOR1UNE: INTRIGUE .AND LOVE AT THE BOLSHOI DRAMATIC THEATRE

Maria lgoatieva Joseph BnmdeskJ

St. Petersburg audiences have a long standing affinity for Georgian directors. Georgy Tovstonogov, the late artistic patriarch at the Bolshoi Dramatic Theatre (BOT), introduced spectators to his particular view of the classics for nearly forty years. Recently a number of other Georgian directors and theatre artists have distinguished themselves. Chief among this group is Robert Sturua, whose productions of Richard III and The CallCasian Chalk Circle have attracted international acclaim. After Tovstonogov's death in 1989, the search for a new artistic leader at BOT led to another Georgian director: Temur Chkheidze. The latter's production of Obryv (Precipice) had been performed in Tbilisi and was subsequently staged at the Moscow Art Theatre at the invitation of Oleg Efremov. Chkheidze's cruel masterpiece portrayed the systematic degradation of a peasant and his wife by a rich neighbor. In a series of coldly realistic scenes, the peasant, a dreamer I philosopher, is transformed into a nonentity. Like Mother Courage, neither the peasant nor his wife is capable of understanding what is happening to them, thus they are steamrollered by societal forces that seem to view them as little more than expendable pawns. The performance aesthetic used by Chkheidze exists on a highly esoteric plane; in Obryv there is no limit to the humiliations coldly and methodically forced by one human onto another. The victimization and its results are portrayed in clear, precise terms.

Chkheidze uses a similar aesthetic in his production of Friedrich von Schiller's Intrigue and Love at BOT in April1993 (SEEP vol. 13, no. 1, Spring 1993). As we enter the auditorium, a spinning wheel is slowly turned in the midst of a small middle-class dwelling of the early nineteenth century. It looks like a museum exhibit, complete with two figures facing each other while seated on opposite sides of the room. Before the performance begins, we are drawn into an atmosphere which has all the animation of an archive. We learn that the two seated flgures are the lovers, Luisa (Elena Popova) and Ferdinand (Mikhail Morozov). Their movements are slow, deliberate, and precise; their costumes are light-colored, their makeup decidedly pale. These two look like escapees from Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, and as such they are portrayed with a single passion. At ftrst their deliberately static blocking gives the impression of a chess match. Ferdinand, an aristocrat, moves like a black

37

knight while he struggles to attain the white pawn, Luisa, a commoner. But as opposing pieces, their happiness is impossible from the start. Knights move only in L-shaped directions while pawns move one square at a time. Consequently, the lovers in this production almost never come into close proximity with one another; they always appear to be separated by two or three squares. Obstacles like the table in Luisa's home help maintain the distance. The rules of chess also allow a pawn to become a queen under certain circumstances. Luisa is given the opportunity to marry Worm, the President's secretary (Andrei Tolubeev), and rise to the court just as Ferdinand can marry Lady Milford and rise as well. But the lovers refuse to play the game by the rules-those dictated by life and fate-and thus they fall.

Paradoxically, this production is not about love but rather about intrigue and those who represent it. A key to Chkheidze's conception of the play is contained in the title. Schiller's Kilbale und Liebe is consistently translated as Kovarstvo i liubov' in Russian; but English versions vary, and sometimes, as in the case of Coleridge, the title is translated as Love and Intrigue. While an emphasis on true, idealistic "love" may seem consistent with the historical notion of Sturm und Drang romanticism, it runs contrary to Chkheidze's approach to the play. In this production "intrigue" is an indomitable force that corrupts and ultimately crushes all idealism. Chkheidze invites his audiences to watch the characters play symbolic chess with one another as they try to anticipate and outguess their opponents.

Unlike the lovers, the intriguers are portrayed with life, wit, and ingenuity; everything they do is permeated with the irresistible scent of intrigue. At times Chkheidze allows several of the intriguers the opportunity to reveal a sense of their lost ideals. Lady Milford (Alisa Freindlikh) has such a moment in the second act; after she tries to bribe Luisa, Milford agonizingly begs for forgiveness. But, for most, the thrill of intrigue dominates every action. True gamesmanship is enthusiastically pursued by President von Walter (Kirill Lavrov) and Worm (a "telling name" in the truest sense), dual masters of intrigue. In their last scene together, where the final tragic snare is set for Ferdinand, von Walter removes his wig in tired frustration; Worm then removes his wig and warns von Walter that he could blackmail the President. Von Walter reasserts his power over Worm by taking the latter's wig as he forces him into the intrigue and reinforces the image of his power by thro:wing the wig back to Worm at the end of the scene.

Throughout the course of the performance, the characters project a sense of inner intensity without resorting to bombast and false "tom curtain" passion. The variance between the emotions being discussed and

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the stoic reserve of the performance creates a fascinating, cool tension. The audience vicariously plays along with the chess masters and experiences the drama and passion from an engagingly intellectual perspective.

Luisa's father, Miller, is portrayed by one of Russia's best lyrical actors, Valery lvchenko. Miller is neither an idealist nor intriguer; he is a very reasonable middle-class musician who knows the rules but does not exploit them. He is passionately opposed to Luisa's tryst with Ferdinand and does everything he can to convince, cajole, or otherwise force his daughter to abide by his decisions in the matter. Ivchenko's impressive portrayal of Miller through expansive and fluid vocal and physical work brightens and balances the quietly intense mannerisms of his counterparts. Most importantly, through lvchenko we see Miller's heartbreak.

Visual and musical counterpoint enlivens the numerous scene changes and catapults pent-up tensions from one scene into the next. Artist Georgy Aleksi-Meskhishvili uses a series of white, diaphanous curtains; one set moving horizontally, the other verticaUy. The vertical curtains are weighted and when lowered, float like a fme veil of snow. The freefaU illusion is used effectively, always in concert with a very loud, synthesized score composed by David Turiashvili. It is clear that the deliberate juxtaposition of rather static scenes with extremely dynamic transitions is meant to stimulate a tempo-rhythm that, though unexpected, supports the overaU production concept. But the scenic metaphor that best expresses Cbkheidze's philosophy is the spinning wheel used during key moments of the performance. The wheel is lit by a mysterious blue­gray light and turns slowly to the accompaniment of a quaint melody.

Cbkheidze challenges audiences to discover the rules of play for each of his productions. Intrigue and Love is a stimulating mixture of black and white, manipulation and idealism, passion and stoicism. There is no lofty, romantic beauty in the deaths of Ferdinand and Luisa. Chkheidze seems to be saying that the history of humankind mitigates against SchiUer's lovers, but we still need to experience their (and our) idealism in the face of immortal intrigue.

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CREATING THE DRAMATIC SPACE: BLIND SIGJn' BY THE YARA ARTS GROUP

Irina MiUer

Blind Sight, a new artistic experiment by the Yara Arts Group, a resident company at La Mama E.T.C. in New York, explores the dimensions of intercultural contact in a theatrical form. The production's creators, Virlana Tkacz (director), Wanda Phipps (dramaturg), and Watoku Ueno (set and lighting designer), were inspired to take up the extraordinary life of V asyl Y eroshenko. A native Ukrainian, Y eroshenko (b. 1890), who had lost his sight at the age of four, left his village to study in Moscow and London and then traveled to Japan where he eventually wrote and published stories in Japanese. Returning to Moscow in 1924, he was later arrested in the Great Purges, only to emerge from the camps in 1952 and die shortly thereafter.

The literary "body" of the performance is drawn from fragments of Yeroshenko's prose and his diary as well as from pieces of various Ukrainian, Japanese, and American poems. But the poetic and documentary texts are just two of the artistic elements in the production; together with lights, music, song, sounds, movements, and gestures, they elaborate the production space. As a result of the collaboration of these elements, the stage becomes the poetic space of Y eroshenko' s life and his search for light lost to blindness, but found in his spiritual vision.

The space of the performance is constantly changing, assuming different meanings and images. But the principal movement is from the small, tight "box" of Vasyl's fear of darkness in which his consciousness has been caught since childhood toward the broader expanse in which be attains liberation. The hero's fear finds its scenic representation in the niche of the downstage wall where the young Y eroshenko hides from the unknown and dangerous external world full of hostile sounds. This small place had been measured by Vasyl (Andrew Colteaux) in precise numbers of steps and is entirely familiar. It takes times before he can find the courage to leave it.

It is the blind bandura player (Mykola Shkaraban) who first cajoles Vasyl into broadening his horizons. The image of the blind Ukrainian bandurists, who wandered the world describing it in their songs, portends V asyl' s own journey. With the musical sound of the ancient instrument, the darkness on the stage gives way to blue light, symbolizing the birth of Vasyl's inner vision. Yeroshenko's acquaintance with Anna (Richarda Abrams), an extravagant Russian woman who became an enthusiast of Esperanto, gives further direction to his quest. It is she who succeeds in

40 Slavic and Eallt European Performance Vol.l3, No. 3

Blind Sight, Yara Arts Group, New York

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convincing Vasyl to enter the Royal Musical Institute for the Blind in London. With her enchanting words in this new international language delivered while turning vigorously about the stage in her wheelchair, the space of the performance gains wider scope and a faster dynamic in its development. Inspired by the idea of a language that can unite people of different races and nationalities, Y eroshenko decides to set out on his odyssey through the world. The niche in the downstage wall is transformed into the railway car that speeds the hero on his journey through Europe to London. On a dimly lit stage that suggests the atmosphere of London's notorious fog, the director and the actors create the image of the helpless blind man lost in a big city. Against a cascade of simultaneously uttered words in English and Ukrainian, as if hammering in the hero's head, Y eroshenko struggles to escape from an imaginary horse, which almost throws him, but his disorientation in the unknown space is such that he is unable to avoid the accident.

A Japanese melody sung in the closing moments of the London scene moves the action to Tokyo. Forced to leave the Institute, Yeroshenko decides to go to Japan, a place the hero believes to be full of sun and beautiful colors. And indeed, if the darkness and harshness of the outside world surrounded the hero in the previous scenes, the stage for the Tokyo scenes is brightly lit and the actors's costumes burst with color; Yeroshenko finds himself in a warm and friendly atmosphere. Guided by a voluble Japanese girl, Toshiko (Shigeko), Vasyl takes his first steps in his acquaintance with the new culture, repeating after Toshiko unfamiliar Japanese words, learning how to use chopsticks and to sit on the floor, legs crossed, in Japanese style. Virlana Tkacz creates the space of the Japanese scenes in two ways. The documentary, almost naturalistic, scenes build on fragments from Yeroshenko's diary and facts from his biography; the poetic scenes describe or symbolize his inner life, his emotions and feelings, and are created from Yeroshenko's prose and various poems. The biographical scenes are filled with intellectual discourse between Y eroshenko and his new friends on different subjects: race, culture, religion, art, and women's emancipation. We hear the Bahai religion's view of racial equality that "there is no race in the heart," a belief that Vasyl shares along with other liberal social and political ideas current in the first two decades of the twentieth century.

The entire stage becomes too small to embrace Yeroshenko's experience in his new country. As a result of this, the space continues to expand. The part of the downstage wall above the bench in the niche moves apart and opens as a window, opening up additional space. Here Virlana Tkacz creates a theatre within the theatre, staging a scene from Fedor Sologub's The Triumph of Death (which played in Japanese theatres

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at the time). This play within the play presents a Japanese view of Sologub's text, yet another theatrical reference to the theme of intercultural contact developed in Blind Sight. Whereas Yasyl "sees" the Japanese spirit in the production of the Symbolist play, the Japanese playwright Ujaku (Ian Wen) insists that the production conveys the play's Russian essence as well.

Yeroshenko's search for light in the outside world finds its culmination in his love for Ichiko (Jennifer Kato), a Japanese journalist. The theme of love is expressed both in realistic dialogues between the hero and Ichiko, emphasizing their mutual interest in eACh other, and in Yasyl's "Tale of a Paper Lantern," theatricalized on the stage in the process of his telling the story. The latter scene takes place in the "space" of the hero's creative imagination where Ichiko assumes the role of the tale's heroine, Geisha, who is in love with the blind foreigner. As in the fiction, in which the heroine cannot "see" that the man loves her, so in reality Ichiko is blinded by her fear, doubts, and prejudices.

The dramatic love experience turns Yeroshenko's search for light in the outside world into a search within himself, where he finds his complete liberation in creative work. The stage's boundaries are once again expanded in order to reflect the scope of the hero's spiritual life. This time the "window" in the downstage wall serves as a "close-up" of Yasyl's inner voices; three actors read Yeroshenko' s prose poem "Land of Dreams," in two languages: Ukrainian and English. This poem speaks in a metaphorical form of an Island of Bliss where the hero "sees" Eternal Love and Friendship, Faith, Trust, and Liberty under the sky with the sun of Truth, the moon of Justice, and the stars of Art.

The final scene represents a park in which the actors physicalize trees swaying in a light breeze. Here Yeroshenko learns from Ujalru that his "Tale of a Paper Lantern" has been published in a Japanese journal; yet Y eroshenko is already indifferent to the public success he has absorbed in his inner life. As the hero walks toward the audience with his hand stretched to the sky, semi-darkness engulfs the stage. The boundaries of the stage space seem to disappear, expressing the immense night in which the hero has not only made peace with darkness but also found his eternal light.

Blind Sight is a wonderfully creative work by a company that occupies a unique place in contemporary theatre practice. Blind Sight works to find a dramatic means to establish dialogues between the past and the present and between different cultures. In the end, it emphasizes that mutual understanding is what unites people. Like Yasyl Yerosbenko, the Y ara Arts Group is seeking light in life and art with the aim of overcoming our human "darkness": racial, cultural, and social prejudices.

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WANOY AND OTHERS

Elizabeth Swaia

The most exciting new production I saw on a recent visit to Russia was of Chekhov's Ivanov at the Moscow Youth Theatre, directed by Henrietta Y anovskaya. The production opened on September 10, 1993, but I was able to see a special dress rehearsal in June before the company's summer hiatus. I was in Russia with a group of theatre professionals and teachers, under the auspices of the National Theatre Institute. We visited theatre training schools, met with teachers, designers, directors, and other professionals, and attended the theatre.

We met Yanovskaya the day after seeing the performance and learned that she will entitle the production Ivanov and Othus. She saw in the original, somewhat melodramatic play, the seeds of Chekhov's four major plays and added fragments from them to fill out her production. Her stated aim was, "to create the feeling that Ivanov was written by the Chekhov we know." In the sense that the production ranked with the most exciting Chekhov I have seen, she succeeded. But her production was so strikingly original that I was reminded of my reactions on seeing Andrei ~erban's The Cherry Orchard. It too had an emotional and visual vibrancy, a humor, and a startingly unexpected setting.

The designer, Sergei Barkhin, established a world at odds with Chekhov's suggested two drawing rooms, a study, and a garden. Barkhin gives us a series of rusty metal poles of varying circumferences that run from the leaf-strewn floor to a rusty filigreed metal roof. The three sides of the stage, each with three entrances cut in, are made of the same filigreed rusty metal. Two huge, thick poles are laid horizontally at angles across the stage, like fallen tree trunks. The downstage pole later serves as a food-strewn table. The effect is of a dry, barren, burnt-out pine forest, yet at the same time, the metal suggests rotting armaments or a junk yard. In a discussion the day after the rehearsal, Barkhin said he wanted "an image of stinlc.ing gas tanks that the people still pretend is paradise." The setting is completed by three oversized rockers and a samovar. The set seems to have a life of its own at times: the metal pipes make noises when "sounded"; they bend and shake and move when leaned on or swung around. At one point a chair rocked, seemingly of its own volition. At times the world seemed threatening and hostile, at other times quite silly.

Into this "forest" wanders a man merrily making bird calls. Then a second man despondently skirts the periphery trying to fmd a quiet place to read. As he settles into a chair, a servant brings a bowl of water

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Ivanov and Others, Moscow Youth Theatre

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for him to cool his feet in. We feel he has been trudging around forever, trying to find peace and quiet. Soon the stage comes alive with people darting in and out from all directions, weaving around the "trees" and moving in a strange mechanical way, rather like wind-up dolls. We see it through the eyes of Ivanov as he tries to find some refuge in what seems to be a cacophony of meaningless movement, humans flailing around, a world that can't keep still, but is going nowhere.

Henrietta Y anovskaya, the artistic director of the Moscow Youth Theatre, has directed her actors at this intense pace for most of the evening's three and a half hours. It is often said that Chekhov's characters are tired of life. In this production they 611 every moment with manic activity. Ivanov's tubercular wife, Anna, is forcefully played by Victoria Verberg. Her performance is in complete contrast to that of the late Vivien Leigh whose soft vulnerability and weakening physical condition, as I remember, brought great pathos. This Anna will not let go of life. She has a raw energy and passion driving her. She is wired, taut, in danger of snapping, but she fights to the end. In Act m, when she confronts Ivanov with his betrayal of her, her rage is terrifying. She then runs to him and gently puts her arms around him. He seems not to resist and she brings her legs around to straddle him as she is aroused to the sexual passion he has long denied her. She embraces him and tries to kiss him but he hurls her to the ground in an act of terrifying brutality. Moments later he tells her she is dying-a moment that transcends even the previous one in the sheer horror it evokes as she silently absorbs the news which then engulfs her whole being in paroxysms of pain.

It is in the many such extended beats of wordless action that the brilliance of Yanovskaya's production lies. The immensely detailed moments, the seemingly effortless spontaneity, the imaginative risks of the whole production, exemplify the artistic possibilities of long rehearsal periods and a company that knows and trusts each other. The first time we seen Ivanov and Anna together, she takes his hands and holds them forcefully against her cheeks as though trying to recreate the times before he tired of her. No words could have the same impact. There is a hilarious drinking scene at the top of Act m between Shabyelsky, Borkin, and Lebedev, which culminates in the three of them making yet another toast. As they knock back their vodka their three rocking chairs tip back, leaving the trio with their feet stuck in the air. They are rescued by the trusty servant who follows Lebedev throughout the play with a giant bottle of vodka always at the ready. The betrothal scene of Shabyelsky and Babakina is turned into a commedia lazzi between them and the matchmaker, Borkin. In Act IV, as Sasha prepares to marry the widowed Ivanov, her worried father tries to discourage her. He looks at her, picks

46 Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol.13, No. 3

her up as though she were still a child, sets her on a high perch, lifts her down, still unable to speak. Then she runs off to return clutching a box of her childhood toys, puppets,and dolls. As Sasha takes them out she silently weeps, a child again. Now he can ask her not to marry Ivanov.

The toy motif recurs throughout the play: a colorful ball bounces onto the stage, interrupting a serious scene; the rocking chairs are nursery furniture; in the party during Act II the guests run around with lit sparklers; a catherine wheel is lit and whirls uncontrollably just before Sasha's declaration of love to Ivanov and Anna's discovery of them; a servant dons roller skates as the pace builds in Act ill and Ivanov does the same as he gets ready for his wedding. Wearing only one skate, he limps and slides around the stage while arguing with Sasha about their future. The effect is to underscore the triviality of the characters's lives. Even Ivanov's suicide at the end takes on little significance. In fact, the two deaths in the play are each followed by someone running around the outside of the stage holding a flaming firework which splashes red light and bizarre shadows through the filigree walls- perhaps in perverse celebration that something has happened.

The lighting was designed by Kama Ginkas, and it too was rarely still, casting shadows, creating eerie half-light, and fleeting bursts of clarity. In Act II, lightning bugs flashed all over the stage heightening the party's festivities. Barhkin's costumes added to the surprise of the evening. There were no attempts at period accuracy. Ivanov's white suit was distinctly modem. Anna's pale and flowing dresses allowed her a free sensuality coupled with her wound-up energy. The colors were dominantly earth-tone, in harmony with the rust of the set, but three servants or guests appear in odd deep green outfits looking rather like dolls in strange national costume. We see a world unable to defme itself, even it its dress.

The world that Y anovskaya creates suggests the undercurrents of the more familiar Chekhovian melancholy. Her vital physicalization of the play makes the impossibility of real human communication all the more poignant. The constant, frenetic activity underscores the unanswered Chekhovian question, "What can I do?" As Ivanov, played to perfection by guest artist Sergei Shakurov, argues with Anna's doctor, Lvov, about his cruelty to her, he is on his way to empty a bucket of water. He makes false exit after false exit, bucket in hand, as his irritation with Lvov keeps pulling him back. Every intense dramatic moment is undercut in similar ways. Other examples are the ball bouncing in on the Ivanov-Sasha scene and the repeated interruptions of people stomping through in the Ivanov-Anna scene in Act III. In no way can these people control their lives, but we see them unwilling to give up,

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reaching out in their estrangement with a stubborn, surreal vitality, never with the naturalistic ennui so many productions have given us. The essence of Y anovskaya's work is its marriage of organic reality with a blazing theatricality. It is pure poetry of the theatre.

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THE BEDBUG, LEHMAN COLLEGE, NEW YORK

Dana Sutton

Lehman College-CUNY commemorated the one-hundredth anniversary of Vladimir Mayak:ovsky's birthday with a celebration of his life and work, April 30 and May 1, 1993. A variety of activities were scheduled, including film screenings, photograph and book exhibitions, a poetry reading by Yevtushenko, and an academic conference where the keynote address was delivered by Mayak:ovsky's daughter, Patricia J. Thompson.

One of the delights of the Mayakovsky Centennial was the production of The Bedbug. Presented in the college's black-box Studio Theatre by the Department of Speech and Theatre and directed by B. D . Bills in six performances from April 28 through May 2, the vivacious and agile cast

gave a remarkably impassioned performance on Friday evening, April 30, to a capacity crowd of parents, students, and theatre enthusiasts.

The stage was turned into a multi-tiered constructivist set, appropriate for Mayakovsky's play but ironically unlike its first production in the Soviet Union where a more traditional set was used for the first act. The stage itself was flanked by perialaoi (three-sided revolving prisms) which were used not only to frame the nine changes of scene but also to hold placards for explanatory words at appropriate times. The fire scene in the first act as well as the scene with the time machine in the second act made ample use of special effects, including strobe lights. A generous supply of furniture, including a piano, enhanced the visual setting. Scene changes were noted more for the care with which they took place than for their alacrity.

The second act began with a remarkable, slow-motion, robot-like portrayal of the Orator by Duane Ferguson. The slow, mechanical beginning assisted the audience in its comprehension of the fifty-year transition. After the transition, the director continued the play at a faster pace. Among the actors who made the most of this difference was Audrey Moore, who portrayed Zoya and aged fifty years by donning a lab coat and changing her shoes. All the rest of her remarkable aging was done through the demeanor of this talented actress who is in her first year of college. The several ensemble players who played Prisypkin's comrades in the first act became extremely amusing elderly persons in the final scene where they were given a chance to argue about the validity of their distant memories and to observe the bedbug normalis and bourgeoisius vulgaris. Although many of the actors's words were lost in the cavernous space of the theatre, the well-directed acting made the play completely comprehensible. Even

49

though it was written in 1928, the play seemed timely and evoked an appreciative response from the audience.

The production was enhanced by recordings of Dmitri Shostak:ovich's original incidental music to 1M Bedbug, Jau Suites, and selected Russian folk tunes.

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PINOKIO, THEATRE DRAK (CZECHOSLOVAKIA) AT THE JOSEPH PAPP PUBLIC THEATRE, NEW YORK

Shari Troy

Czech puppetry was splendidly represented at the First New York International Festival of Puppet Theatre by Theatre Drak's Pinokio. In its United States premiere, this dark interpretation of the famous story of Geppetto the master craftsman and his wooden puppet astonished adults by its eloquence and children by its ability to surprise. Directed by Josef K.rofta, this version of the Pinocchio story begins with three men pushing an oversized mechanical contraption on stage. This curious invention is nothing we easily recognize. Its two towering wheels might make it a vehicle of sorts, its platform resembles a stage, the handles make us think of a larger-than-life serving cart. Indeed, the adaptable moving construction is all these things and more, as Pinokio unfolds in, on, around, over, and under its appendages.

Pinokio focuses on the developing and deepening relationship between Geppetto, the wood carver, and Pinokio, his creation. In this adaptation for family audiences, Pinokio is the only puppet in a theatre company comprised of humans. Rejecting his role as performer, the rebellious wooden figure bites one of the actors and flees. Geppetto, concerned for the well-being of his creation, follows. Together they undergo a series of adventures which pit them against sea dragons, raging fire, and other dangers. Both puppet and creator risk death in order to save each other, learning finally that the value of life resides in their deep love for one another.

The technical achievement of this production is remarkable. The wooden Pinocchio puppet which stands perhaps five feet tall is a versatile figure that is animated in a variety of ways throughout the production. Looking curiously like a little wooden boy, the puppet is a "live" stick figure, with arms and legs with seemingly rubber joints. The puppet bends and contorts, creating the illusion of gymnastic flexibility. The round little head boasts a large jutting nose, a reminder of this character's original namesake.

Whether manipulated by strings that can or cannot be seen, by an actor's hands or by other devices, the puppet constantly moves in ways we do not expect. At one point the object, arms and legs extended, seems to glide on a tightrope. Later, leaning on a sheet pulled taught all around him, Pinokio is animated by someone behind the fabric. As a result, we see no strings, only the puppet moving effortlessly against the cloth background. Still later, during a scene in which Geppetto maintains constant physical

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contact with Pinolrio, we hardly notice that the live performer is simultaneously interacting with and animating the puppet. This feat depends on a combination of fine technical and acting skills from puppeteer cum actor Vaclav Poul. As a result of the seemingly infinite ways this puppet can move, we begin to half-believe that Pinokio is an autonomous creation, more "boy" than "puppet."

At a panel discussion during the festival, Dr. Krofta, artistic director of the renowned Orale company since 1970, stated that if the puppet and actor are to be on stage simultaneously, there must be some drama between them. In Pinoldo, Krofta creates such an intense relationship between the puppet and other characters that the theatregoer is drawn deeply into the world of the play. Both adults and childral alike believe in the 80ul of the puppet. Indeed, the figure truly becomes animated, almost human in our view. Krofta, who also directs the School for Open Forms and Puppet Theatre in Prague, believes that even a cup on the stage can be more powerful than an actor, provided the actor/manipulator can imbue the object with a sense of life. When Pinokio catches fire during the production, we hold our collective bresth. During the curtain call, Pinokio bends his knee ever so slightly and we marvel at the little boy' s grace and agility. Even months after the show, Krofta's Pinokio remains in our memory as a living entity.

The production credits list an extended family of artists who assisted the director in cresting this innovative, complex, and rich theatre offering. The fine production itself attests to the high standards of artistry and esprit tk corps of the Theatre Dralc company. 1

1 A version of this review was published in the American Alliance for Theatre and Education' s Youth Journal 7 (1993).

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lhree Sisters, Krasnaya Persnaya Theatre, Moscow

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Having said all this in admiration of this splendid young company, which obviously is dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in the theatre, let me also add that Lemieux takes certain liberties with the text by pushing it into farce, particularly in the last act which he sets in a school room replete with an empty closet. And yes, one of Platonov's four amours ends up in the closet and hears what she should not; the gun, which showed up earlier, eventually goes off; and the irrepressible Platonov finally dies. Soon thereafter, in the final tableau, he revives, and in a nice touch, all the actors take their curtain call laughing.

1'1lrr¥ Sislen, Krasnaya Persnaya Theatre of Mosww. This company, headed by Yuri Pogrebnichko, attempted to tum a masterpiece of naturalistic theatre into a surrealist or a cubist work, perhaps following in the footsteps of Robert Wilson's interpretation of Hamletmachine by Heiner Muller. This was a director' s not an actor's showcase. A rope was strung between the set and the audience to remind us that we were viewing a museum piece. We saw a faded drawing room with two pianos at one end and a fireplace at the other. A long table took up the bulk of a very shallow (ten feet deep) stage. Irina used it as a platform for a number of her speeches. Under the table were some plaster heads of famous authors; behind it was suspended a log which served as the dead branch the Baron refers to in Act IV. I could not help thinking of Magritte and Chirico. The set (Yuri Kononenko) and costumes (Nadezhda Bakhvalova), unchanged throughout, seemed frozen in time, adding to the dreamlike effect. There were untraditional interpretations of some roles: Olga, in a shapely black lace dress, smoked cigarettes from a long black cigarette holder and seemed intimate with Kulygin; Anfisa revealed a wooden leg and kept tripping on her exits. An unidentified character (was he supposed to be a museum employee?) kept ducking in and out of the fireplace; in Act IV, he poured sand on Chebutykin's boots several times and waved to the audience. The Russian dialogue was spoken dispassionately; the nature of the production was such that the actors could make no investment in their parts. Despite some clever ideas, the production was too cerebral. It never came near Chekhov's soul.

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CONTRIBUTORS

JOSEPH BRANDESKY is an assistant professor of Theatre at the Ohio State University's Lima Campus. He is currently coordinating an international exchange of theatre designs by Boris Anisfeld for exhibits in St. Petersburg and Columbus, Ohio.

J . M. BURIAN is professor emeritus in the Department of Theatre at the State University of New Yorlc at Albany. He has authored many studies of modem theatre, including The Scenography of Joseph Svoboda and Svoboda: Wagner. Professor Burian is currently visiting the Cm;h Republic on an IREX Grant, completing research on a study of Cm;h theatre from 1945 to 1960.

JOHN FREEDMAN is the author of Silence's Roar: The Life and Dramt~ of Nikolai Erdman (Mosaic Press) and the editor/translator of The Major Plays of Nikolai Erdman (forthcoming from Gordon and Breach Science Publishers). He lives in Moscow where he is the theatre critic for the Moscow 1imes.

ELWIRA M . GROSSMAN is a doctoral candidate in the Ph.D. Program in Comparative Literature at the Pennsylvania State University. She also teaches courses in Polish, Russian, Contemporary Slavic Drama, and Polish Culture and Civilization in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages at Penn State.

JANE HOUSE is preparing an anthology of Italian drama for Columbia University Press. She edited Political Theatre Today and Sacred Theatre. She is a professional actress and teaches theatre courses at New Yorlc University and Lehman College.

MARIA IGNATIEV A is a former assistant professor at the Moscow Art Theatre School-Studio, now teaching and directing at the Ohio State University's Lima Campus. She has lectured on Russian and Soviet theatre at Harvard, Ohio State, and the University of Texas and currently writes essays for American and RUssian periodicals.

IRINA MILLER, a native Russian, is a doctoral student in the theatre at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York.

58 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No. 3

DANA SUlTON is a doctoral student in theatre at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New Yolk.

ELIZABETH SWAIN is chair of Barnard College's Theatre Department. Her visit to Russia was made possible by a Barnard College Faculty Research Grant.

SHARI TROY is a doctoral student in theatre at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York. Her reviews have appeared in Theatre Journal, Theatre Week, and Youth Theatre Journal, among other publications.

Photo Credits The Possible Meeting, Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre Mikhail Guterman

Niz}linsky, A Production of the Boris Agency Mikhial Guterman

Blind Sight, Yara Arts Group Watoku Ueno

Ivanov and Others, Moscow Youth Theatre Victor Bazhenov

Pinoldo, Theatre Orale Josef Ptacek

Three Sisters, K.rasnaya Persnaya Theatre Preobrazenslci

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PLAYSCRIPTS IN TRANSLATION SERIES

The following is a list of publications available through the Center for Advanced Study in Theatre Arts (CASTA):

No. 1 Never Part From Your Loved Ones, by Alexander Volodin. Translated by Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)

No. 2 I, Mikhail Sergeevich Lunin, by Edvard Radzinsky. Translated by Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)

No. 3 An Altar to Himself, by Ireneusz Iredy6ski. Translated by Michal Kobialka. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)

No. 4 Conversation with the Executioner, by Kazimierz Moczarski. Stage adaptation by Zygmunt Hubner; English version by Earl Ostroff and Daniel C. Gerould. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)

No. 5 The Outsider, by lgnatii Dvoretsky. Translated by C. Peter Goslett. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)

No. 6 The Ambassador, by Slawomir MroZek. Translated by Slawomir MroZek and Ralph Mannheim. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)

No. 7 Four by Liudmila Petrushevskaya (Love, Come into the /(jtchen, Nets and Traps, and The Violin). Translated by Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)

No. 8 The Trap, by Tadeusz R6rewicz. Translated by Adam Czerniawski. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)

Soviet Plays in Translation. An Annotated Bibliography. Compiled and edited by Alma H. Law and C. Peter Goslett. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)

Polish Plays in Translation. An Annotated Bibliography. Compiled and edited by Daniel C. Gerould, Boleslaw Taborski, Michal Kobialka, and Steven Hart. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)

Polish and Soviet Theatre Posters. Introduction and Catalog by Daniel C. Gerould and Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)

60 Slavic and East European Performance, Vol. 13, No. 3

Polish and Soviet Theatre Posters Volume Two. Introduction and Catalog by Daniel C. Gerould and Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)

Eastern European Drwna and The American Stage. A Symposium with Janusz Glowacki, Vasily Aksyonov, and moderated by Daniel C. Gerould (April 30, 1984). $3.00 ($4.00 foreign)

These publications can be ordered by sending a U.S. dollar check or money order payable to:

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33 WEST 42nd STREET NEW YORK, NY 10036

61

SUBSCRIPI'ION POLICY

SEEP is partially supported by CASTA and The Institute for Contemporary Eastern European Drama and Theatre at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The annual subscription rate is $10.00 ($15.00 foreign). Individual issues may be purchased for $4.00.

The subscription year is the calendar year and thus a $10.00 fee is now due for 1994. We hope that departments of theatre and film and departments of Slavic languages and literatures will subscribe as weU as individual professors and scholars. Subscriptions can be ordered by sending a U.S. doUar check or money order made payable to "CASTA, CUNY Graduate Center" to:

CASTA Ph.D . Program in Theatre CUNY Graduate Center

33 West 42nd Street New York, NY 10036

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Subscription to SEEP, 1994.

NAME:

ADDRESS:

AFFILIATION:

(if not included in address above)

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