SEEP Vol.24 No2 Spring 2004

volume 24, no. 2

Spring 2004

SEEP(ISSN 4F 1047-0019) is a publication of the Institute for Contemporary East European Drama and Theatre under the auspices of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. The Institute is at The City University of New York Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016-4309. All subscription requests and submissions should be addressed to Slavic and East European Performance: Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, Theatre Program, The City University of New York Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016-4309.

EDITOR Daniel Gerould

MANAGING EDITOR Melissa Johnson

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Margaret Araneo

CIRCULATION MANAGER Jill Stevenson

ASSISTANT CIRCULATION MANAGER Serap Erincin

ADVISORY BOARD Edwin Wilson, Chair

Marvin Carlson Allen]. Kuharski Martha W. Coigney Stuart Liebman Leo Hecht Laurence Senelick

SEEP has a very liberal reprinting policy. Journals and newsletters that desire to reproduce articles, reviews, and other materials that have appeared in SEEP may do so, as long as the following provisions are met: a. Permission to reprint the article must be requested from SEEP in writing before

the fact; b. Credit to SEEP must be given in the reprint; Two copies of the publication in which the reprinted material has appeared must be furnished to the Editors of SEEP immediately upon publication.

MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER EXECUTNE DIRECTOR

Daniel Gerould

PROGRAM DIRECTOR Frank Hentschker

Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Publications are supported by generous grants from the Lucille Lortel Chair in Theatre and the Sidney E. Cohn Chair in Theatre of the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the City University of New York. Copyright 2004 Martin E. Segal Theatre Center

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Editorial Policy From the Editor Events Books Received

ARTICLES

TABLE OF CONTENTS

"Kama Ginkas Rehearses Rothschild's Fiddle: An Annotated Diary'' John Freedman

"A Spanish Yvonne Princesa de Burgundid' Elizabeth Wittlin Lipton

REVIEWS

"Song of the Goat's Chronicles-A Lamentation" Kathleen Cioffi

"Witkiewicz's The Mother by the Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf at La MaMa" Kimon Keramidas

"Vassily Sigarev's Black Milk at Chicago's European Repertory Company" Jeffrey Stephens

"Chekhov's Platonov on the Stage of the Comedie-Fran

"Alexander Nwsky Revisited in 2003" Saera Yoon

"Prokofiev and his Contemporaries: The Impact of Soviet Culture" Daniel Gerould

Contributors

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72

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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. Trans-literations should follow the Library of Congress system. Articles should be submitted on computer disk, as Word 97 Documents for Windows and a hard copy of the article should be included. Photographs are recommended for all reviews. All articles should be sent to the attention of Slavic and East European Performance, c/o Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, The City University of New York Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016-4309. Submissions will be evaluated, and authors will be notified after approximately four weeks.

You may obtain more information about Slavic and East European Performance by visiting out website at http//web.gc.cuny.edu/ mestc. Email inquiries may be addressed to [email protected].

All Journals are available from ProOuest Information and Learning as abstracts online via ProO!Iest information service and the

International Index to the Performing Arts. All Journals are indexed in the MLA International Bibliography and are

members of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals.

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FROM THE EDITOR

Volume 24, No. 2 of SEEP has a special focus: current Russian and Polish productions and events in an international context. The issue opens with two accounts of the creative process by participants involved in the performances. John Freedman gives his day-by-day report on the rehearsals of Kama Glinkas's Rothschild's Fiddle at Yale. Next Elizabeth Wittlin Lipton describes her work as stage and costume designer on a new Spanish production of Gombrowicz's Ivana directed by Zywila Pietrzak. The rest of the issue is devoted to six reviews.

The first two productions reviewed took place in New York at La MaMa, which has been the home of so much significant Polish and Eastern European theatre over many decades. Kathleen Cioffi analyzes Chronicles-A Lamentation by Teatr Pidn Kozla (Song of the Goat Theatre), and Kimon Keramidas describes Witkiewicz's The Mother directed by Brooke O'Hara with music by Brendan Connolly. Jeffrey Stephens reports on the production of Vassily Sigarev's Black Milk in Chicago, and Ekaterina Sukhanova provides an account of the premiere of Chekhov's Platonov at the Comedie Fran~aise. The issue concludes with two celebrations of Prokofiev on the fiftieth anniversary of his death. Saera Yoon documents the live performance of his music for Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, accompanying a screening of the film at Indiana University, and I review the exhibition, Prokofiev and His Contemporaries, at the New York Library for the Performing Arts.


STAGE PRODUCTIONS New York

EVENTS

David Auburn's new play, The journals of Mihail Sebastian, had a limited run off-Broadway at the 45th Street Theatre, March 6 to April 4.

Helena- The Emigrant .Q]teen, a one-woman play by Kazimierz Braun, was presented at the Kosciuszko Foundation Gallery on March 20.

La MaMa, in association with the Polish Cultural Center, presented Chronicles-A Lamentation, a new work by Teatr Pie5n Kozla (Song of the Goat Theatre), April 15 to May 2.

A staged reading of Saviana Stiinescu's play Lenin 's Shoes was presented at the Goldberg Theatre of New York University on April 23.

A production of The Pragmatists by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, translated by Daniel Gerould and directed by Jeffrey A. Lewonczyk, was presented at the Brick, May 13-June 5.

The Jumble Shop Theater performed Recitalfor Brancusi, 1955, a theatrical performance based on an encounter between Eugene Ionesco and Constantin Brancusi, at the Donnell Library, May 15 and 23.

The Czech Center of New York in coordination with the Immigrants' Theater Project and the Theater Institute in Prague presented a third season of New Czech Plays in Translation at the Public Theatre. The following pieces were performed:

22 Anxiety Street (Stisnend 22) by Iva Volankova, translated by David Nykl, May 3.

I'm Still Living with a Coat Rack, a Cap, and a Signal Disc (!efte iju s vlfdkem cepici a pldcackou) by Samuel Koeniggratz (nee Rene LevinskY), translated by Alex Zucker, May 24.

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The Moment before I Opened the Drawer and Pulled Out the Knife ( Chvfli pfedfm, ne jsem otevfela zdsuvku a vyndala nuz") written and translated by Ivana Ruzickova,June 7.

Dad Scores (Tat'ka stfz1 g6!Y) by Jiri Pokorny, translated by David Short, June 21.

Lincoln Center will present the following productions as part of its 2004 summer festival:

Shosha and The Slave, directed by Yebgeny Arye,July 21-25.

Egyptian Nights and War and Peace, both directed by Piotr Fomenko, July 6-10.

Forbidden Christmas or The Doctor and the Patient, directed by Rezo Gabriadze,July 9-11 and 14-17

STAGE PRODUCTIONS United States

Bard Summerscape, Shostakovich and His World-a four-week performing arts festival at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York- will present the following theatrical and operatic productions:

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The Alexandrinsky's Theatre's production of Gogel's The Inspector General, directed by Valery Fokin, with an original score by Leonid Desyatnikov, July 8-11.

Nine Circles Chamber Theater's production of Guest from the Future, with music by Mel Marvin, libretto by Jonathan Levi, directed by David Chambers, July 22- 25, 29, 31, and August 1.

The East Coast professional premiere of Dimitri Shostakovich's opera The Nose, based on the story by Nikolai Gogol, with Leon Botstein conducting the American Symphony Orchestra, directed by Francesca Zambello, July 28, 30, August 1, 6, and 7.

Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 24, No.2

Dimitri Shostakovich's Moscow: Cherry Tree Towers, adapted by Sergei Dreznin, directed by Francesca Zambello, August 12-15.

STAGE PRODUCTIONS International

Le Dibbouk, adapted by Hanna Krall, directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski, ran at the Theatre de Bouffes du Nord in Paris, March 6 to April30.

FILM New York

In March 2004, the Film Society of Lincoln Center presented Bdnk Bdn, directed by Csaba Kael, March 11.

CUNY-TV, Cable Channel 75 City Cinematheque, in cooperation with the Donnell Library Center, presented a five-week series on the films of Romania. Films screened included: Forest of the Hanged, directed by Liviu Ciulei; Stone Wedding, directed by Mircea Veroiu and Dan Pita; The Cruise, directed by Mircea Daneliuc; The Oak, directed by Lucian Pintilie; and West, directed by Cristian Mungiu.

OTHER EVENTS New York

Makor at the 92nd Street Y presents a four-day tribute to the Fourteenth Annual Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, Poland, featuring films, music, and panel discussions, June 26 to July 4.

Compiled by Margaret Araneo

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BOOKS RECEIVED

Gavran, Mira. Dangerous Plays: How To Kill The President, Doctor Freud's Patient, Night of the Gods. Tr. from the Croatian by Laura Gudim. Zagreb: Teatar Gavran, ITG, 2004. 134 pages. Includes biographical sketch of the playwright.

The Mrozek Reader. Ed. Daniel Gerould. New Y ark: Grove Press, 2004. 680 pages. Includes fourteen plays and ten stories from The Elephant, and a chronology, introduction, and bibliography.

Notatnik Teatralny, 30-31, 2003/2004. 215 pages. Special issue devoted to Henryk Tomaszewski and the Wrodaw Pantomime Theatre. Includes twenty articles, among them reminiscences, writings by Tomaszewski and conversations with him, and a letter from Marcel Marceau. A second special feature of seven articles is devoted to Jan Kott. Other articles cover theatre in Wroclaw, books, and photography. The issue contains dozens of illustrations and photographs, many of them rare.

The Theatre in Poland, vol. 1-2, 2003. 68 pages. Includes Wojciech Majcherek, "A Report on the Current State of the Polish Theatre" and Piotr Gruszczyriski, "The Second Wave in the Theatre," as well as a tribute to Kazimierz Dejmek, articles on new productions, new Polish plays, and books on the theatre. Contains many photographs, some in color.

The Theatre in Poland, vol. 3-4, 2003. 70 pages. Includes Jacek Sieradzki, "Szczecin: Anna Augustynowicz and Her Theatre" and Maryla Zieliri.ska, "TV Theatre: An Interview with Jacek Weksler" as well as articles on new productions, new Polish plays, and books on the theatre. Contains many photographs, some in color.

Witkiewicz, Stanislaw Ignacy. Marginalia filozoficzne. Warsaw: Centrum Sztuki Wsp6lczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, 2004. 140 pages. Book serving as the catalogue for the exhibition held from January 19 to February 22, 2004, at the Centrum Sztuki Wsp6lczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski. Texts by Bogdan Michalski and Pawel Polit. Contains dozens of reproductions of

10 Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 24, No. 2

philosophical texts annotated by Witkiewicz and drawings, paintings, and photographs by the artist, as well as photographs and drawings of him and his friends and art works by contemporary artists inspired by Witkiewicz. Many of the illustrations are reproduced in color or in monotints. Also included are fragments of music by Witkiewicz and a ten-minute CD by Maciej Grzybowski, PezzoJ(Jit-cazzo, a piano fantasy on the theme of musical sketches by Witkacy. Contains lists of sources for works in the exhibition and a complete list of philosophical works with Witkiewicz's marginalia.

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KAMA GINKAS REHEARSES ROTHSCHILD'S FIDDLE: AN ANNOTATED DIARY

John Freedman

Over the years, Kama Ginkas has been adamant about keeping the world at bay while he works. Rehearsal for him is, to use his phrase, an "intimate" process, one that is nobody's business but that of the few who are crucial to the creation of the show. This famously strict rule, however, may be breaking down some now. I would never suggest that this fiercely uncompromising artist is mellowing at age sixty-two, but one does see in him what appears to be an increased willingness to be observed and examined by outsiders. Although I have been acquainted with Ginkas for over a decade, the last three years of which we collaborated on a book, the first rehearsal of his I ever attended was in Cambridge in August 2003 when he was preparing Lady with a Lapdog at the American Repertory Theatre.

These notes begin on October 31,2003, and this time I am a minor participant in the process. I will create the supertitles for the world premiere of Rothschild's Fiddle, Ginkas's adaptation of the Anton Chekhov story, which will be performed by Russian actors sixteen times at the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven from January 14 to 31,2004, before going on to a repertory run at the Moscow New Generation (Young Spectator) Theatre.

Ginkas adapted Chekhov's story about a coffin maker, who is obsessed with the losses life brings, by subtly distributing the original text among four characters: Yakov/Bronza (Valery Barinov), Rothschild (Igor Yasulovich), Marfa (Arina Nesterova), and the Doctor's Assistant (Alexei Dubrovsky). As is always true in Ginkas's prose dramatizations, the actors speak the third-person, omniscient narrative with few changes besides minor cuts and some added pronouns and interjections. The tale is one of Chekhov's bleakest, and Ginkas frames it in the austere light of his own challenging art. For me, three themes emerge almost immediately and remain valid after the show opens: 1) the calamity of seeking validation in profit; 2) the calamity of prejudice; and 3) the mystery of creativity, of making and doing, regardless of what is being made. Ginkas's prowess at creating an autonomous language out of action, gestures, pauses, mises en scene, and the unorthodox use of props is unsurpassed. Rothschild's Fiddle


Igor Yasulovich (Rothschild) and Valery Barinov (Yakov) in Chekhov's Rothchild's Fiddle directed by Kama Ginkas,

Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven.

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provides further evidence of this skill. Long, wordless scenes are filled with action as Yakov labors at his work table or lies sleepless in bed at night, Rothschild plays a keening saw (in place of a flute and violin), and the Doctor's Assistant fastidiously downs a bottle of vodka while the dying Marfa moans and waits.

I am struck by one thing in particular as I leap onto this theatrical train that is already in full motion. (The company has been working for some time but has only just recently moved onto the stage outfitted with Sergei Barkhin's set of stylized vertical coffins.) Before the rehearsal gets underway, I see a handful of observers in the hall. Over the next two months, others will come and go, contradicting my naive impression that no one ever gets into a Ginkas rehearsal. But Ginkas has requirements about visitors: if he has allowed you to observe, you sit quietly, watch alertly, react candidly and sit to the end, or you don't come at all. One day, a visitor innocently takes a seat a few rows in front of Ginkas's chair located behind a small table in the aisle at the seventh row. Ginkas curtly but politely asks the woman to move behind him.

"That is an old rule of Georgy Tovstonogov's," Ginkas explains to no one in particular. "Nobody comes between the director and his actors."

Later, when the show is coming closer to the semi-public dress rehearsals, he will specifically ask people to take seats in the front rows to give the actors spectators with whom to work. But on October 31, that seems a long way off.

Although there is probably no sin greater at a Ginkas rehearsal than rustling a piece of paper-Ginkas will not abide extraneous noise of any kind, and above all, he loathes the rustle of paper-I doubly risk the wrath of the master. Not only am I bound to work with the pages of the emerging English script balanced gingerly in my lap, but I simultaneously keep a sporadic on-the-spot diary in a spiral notebook. I will become good at turning pages silently, although on occasion my heart will sink as I fumbled a page noisily in the dark. Ginkas never says a word to me, although I will notice his most pointed criticisms are usually made indirectly. One day, while talking with his actors, he launches into an excursus about the evil of petty noises, and I suspect who had prompted this lecture. I redouble my efforts to perfect the delicate art of page-turning in absolute silence.

What follows is a selective and enhanced version of my diary. Although I expanded cursory notes into full sentences and added descriptions, I did not attempt to give the text a polished flow. My purpose


Valery Barinov (Yakov) and Igor Yasulovich (Rothschild) in Chekhov's Rothchild's Fiddle directed by Kama Ginkas,


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was to reveal the extraordinary energy, conviction, humor, and devotion that Ginkas brings to his work, and to provide a glimpse into the atmosphere of that work in process. If such a picture does not arise in these notes, the fault is entirely mine.

October 31, 2003. Barkhin's amazing set of stylized coffins, boats, piles, and buildings stands on stage. Lined in a straight row, like a written text developing from the crude and the ancient at the left to the refined and the modern on the right, they give the sensation of the world reduced from three dimensions to two. The proliferation of so much yellowish, unfinished pine lends tangible warmth to the picture. At first I don't notice an enormous, real tree trunk standing deep upstage in the shadows. Sticking out of the neat line of vertical objects in the direction of the hall is a wonderfully battered workbench.

Ginkas is all over the place-on stage, in the hall, sitting down, jumping up- unleashing bursts of energy in gestures, shouts and exhortations. You can see him physically working to fill the empty hall with creative tension. Shouts of "good!" and "thank you!" boom out constantly, every time anyone does something well, from the actors to the lighting and sound engineers. Then, suddenly, Ginkas is quiet and gentle, working with an actor intimately, in a whisper or an enchanting singsong voice. There is one long moment when he almost sings as he stands in front of the stage and speaks to the cast. He is letting them hear first-hand an example of the rhythm and ambience he might like to see in their performances. "Don't ruin the scene with text," he urges Barinov later.

Ginkas wants the huge tree in back to be hidden from sight by three long planks stood up on end. He asks stage hands to encircle the planks with a rope, so they don't fall on anyone. When they do this, he asks if they can drop the rope lower.

"We can," says the master carpenter, "but we tied them high for safety."

"I know," Ginkas replies. "But I have a disease. I wake up in the middle of the night and move the table lamp because it doesn't fit perfectly with the corner of the table. I need that rope lower." The rope is lowered.

Igor Yasulovich, who will play Rothschild, is out of town. His place is temporarily filled by Robert Olinger, an American student in Ginkas's directing class at the Moscow Art Theatre who also performed as one of the Resort Bathers in Lady with a Lapdog at the American Repertory Theatre. Ginkas stares at Olinger for a moment and quips, "Robert, you look like a


......

'I

Valery Barinov (Yakov) in Chekhov's Rothchild's Fiddle directed by Kama Ginkas, Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven .

Alexei Dubrovsky {The Doctor's Assistant), Valery Barinov (Yakov), Arina Nesterova {Marfa), and Igor Yasulovich (Rothschild) in Chekhov's Rothchild's Fiddle

directed by Kama Ginkas, Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven.

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dog. No, you look like a lady with a dog." Burst of laughter. November 8, 2003. Ginkas begins, as he often does, telling a story

or engaging in seemingly irrelevant talk that imperceptibly segues into rehearsal before anyone notices it. Today he tells about working with the designer David Borovsky in Helsinki in 1990 on Crime and Punishment.

"The whole set was made of doors," Ginkas explains. "I wanted them to be those filthy, banged-up things you used to see fences made of in Leningrad. The Finnish carpenters made a set of modem, beautifully crafted doors. Then, when they painted them, they didn't use brushes that leave behind crude paint strokes and stray hairs; they used paint guns. It was hopelessly sterile, like something out of a hospital. I asked Borovsky if maybe the carpenters could 'ruin' them. He said, 'Kama, you'll never get a Finn to ruin anything!' But, in time, as we worked with the set, I began to realize that the sterility of the set was even better than the mess of junk I had wanted. It gave us something to work against."

Later, as Ginkas steers his actors away from delivering Chekhov's narrative like storytellers, he utters the memorable phrase: "Chekhov will constantly get the upper hand. But we must nevertheless do what we have to do."

November 12, 2003. "We may think some things are micro-events," Ginkas tells his cast as he works meticulously on the nuances of speech and action. "For example, someone rustles a piece of paper barely audibly. Somebody may think this is unimportant, even non-existent. But I will overreact terribly, in a completely inappropriate way. In the thirty years I have been doing this, I have learned that the little things take on enormous significance. There are no micro-events in theatre."

Ginkas is almost coquettish with Barinov today. At one point, when he jumps up on stage to talk to him, he looks like a love-struck young man falling head over heels to please a reticent girl. His laughter is forced, almost fawning. Meanwhile, the message of his words is tough, very critical. Ginkas bobs and weaves around Barinov, not touching him, but almost caressing him as he coos and envelops him in a physical space of comfort and acceptance while whacking him with words about what must be done differently. Suddenly, Ginkas abruptly interrupts himself and heads back to his place in the hall. As he steps off the stage, he flatly tosses off the phrase: "I've just been trying to seduce you."

Ginkas later stops a scene and says to Barinov, "Even when Yakov is talking to a piece of wood, he is talking to ... " and his voice trails off as

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he spreads out his arms and trains a fierce gaze toward the heavens. This captures in a nutshell what Ginkas is up to, no matter what he is doing: conducting a silent, indirect dialogue, or, perhaps, monologue, with God.

November 17, 2003. Ginkas speaks to Barinov before rehearsal begins. (He directs almost all of his comments to Barinov and frequently calls this show with four characters Barinov's "one-man show.") "I am going to repeat myself now," Ginkas says. "But that's all right. Most of what a director does is repeat himself I once read Efros's book and I was amazed. He said, 'Don't fear telling actors the same thing over and over.' I used to suffer because I didn't always have anything new to say to an actor. Now I don't suffer over that anymore."

Rehearsal begins, but Ginkas immediately interrupts it and the following dialogue ensues.

GINKAS: time? BARINOV: GINKAS: BARINOV: GINKAS:

You remember, don't you, that we changed a lot last

We did? In a technical sense. I don't remember. We did. Forget it. You'll remember as we go along.

This is Ginkas throwing his actors off-guard, creating an atmosphere that will foster the birth of the unexpected and the spontaneous. It is also an example of how he establishes a sensation of comfort within a state of free-fall. After pulling the rug out from under Barinov by interrupting him just as he began to work, Ginkas reassures him at the same time. Vintage Ginkas.

November 18, 2003. The mainstage is occupied today, and we are up in the fourth-floor rehearsal room of the New Generation Theatre. After working so long on the stage, the actors struggle in the small space with the mock set. Ginkas, looking to involve the actors, begins a detailed discussion about props. Props are crucial for him- they are the actors' work tools. There has been a problem with one of the coffins, and Ginkas encourages Barinov to suggest how to fix it. At that moment, Yasulovich and Dubrovsky are rehearsing a mugging scene in another corner and Yasulovich accidentally whacks Dubrovsky on the lip. Arina Nesterova runs over from where she has been helping Barinov to find out what happened. Yasulovich opens the window and grabs a handful of wet snow. By now, Barinov is showing the master carpenter what needs to be done with the coffin. Nesterova, who


Valery Barinov Cf akov) and Igor Yasulovich (Rothschild) in Chekhov's Rothchild's Fiddle directed by Kama Ginkas,


21

must slip out of the coffin through a trap door in the back, returns to help them as they bang and hammer. Y asulovich is stuffing snow between Dubrovsky's gums and upper lip, and Ginkas suddenly backs off to watch it all happen. Everyone has completely forgotten about him. He slowly walks over to me, sits down silently, and leans back as a big grin breaks out on his face. "Fun rehearsal today, huh?" he remarks.

This is Ginkas in his element. The actors are completely removed from "make-believe." They are not "rehearsing" but are involved in real tasks that deepen their attachment to each other and the tools with which they work. All Ginkas has to do is sit back and let the process develop on its own.

Later, Ginkas stops Barinov in the middle of a scene. He walks up to him and says very quietly and tenderly, "I like everything you are doing, except one thing .... " Ginkas places his hand on Barinov's shoulder gently, but forcefully, and adds in a whisper, "You have lost the sensation of being empty."

November 21, 2003. Rehearsals of a highly emotional and violent scene: Yakov, aided by the Doctor's Assistant, beats up on Rothschild. As the actors slam each other around the stage, Ginkas careens around the hall. He begins by shaking and shuddering in his seat, but before long, leaps onto his feet and races down to be by the stage where he runs back and forth with the actors, jumping and waving his arms in the air. When the beating has almost, but not quite, ended, Ginkas bounds up onto the stage. As soon as the fight ends, Ginkas begins throwing energetic shadow punches at Yakov, who fends off the director's attack. Everybody bursts into laughter.

This is another quintessential moment: Ginkas taking on everything from the conventions of theatre and Russian culture to himself and Chekhov.

Ginkas to Barinov, later: "Be careful. Anton Pavlovich is winning again. You are slipping back into storytelling."

November 22, 2003. At one point in the show, Barinov must rotate blindly on his heels and sink an axe into a narrow stump of wood standing on end. He is extraordinarily good at it, but today, he misses repeatedly, barely grazing the stump with a tinny, clanging sound rather than sinking the axe meatily and heavily into the wood. Ginkas says, "Valery, don't worry about it. We'll make sure you have a thicker stump to hit." Barinov grumbles, "No. I must be able to split a pencil." Ginkas spins around with sparkling eyes and exclaims, "You hear that?! A Russian actor must be able to split a pencil with an axe!"


Ginkas rehearses one of the show's most remarkable scenes, a passage when Y akov dreams that the dead Marfa has returned to him as a young woman before she suddenly transforms into an old hag again. It is a beautiful and painfully brieflove scene cut off in full bloom by the intrusion of reality. "Americans don't like pauses," Ginkas explains to his actors. "And they'll hate this part, which I really love. Some of the Americans who came to see Lady with a Lapdog watched with interest and said, 'Too long.' Unless there was action and text together, they didn't know how to respond."

November 24, 2003. Today's rehearsal of the scene just before Yakov dies is especially tender and gentle. Ginkas frequently stands right next to Barinov and whispers his directions as he touches him fleetingly and delicately. He gets down on his knees before him, making Barinov look down on him as he speaks. Shortly afterwards, Ginkas comments: "This is a very fragile scene. We must rehearse it rarely and carefully, or we will run it into the ground."

During a notes session, Ginkas talks at length about Fellini for the second day in a row. He tells how he snuck into the Kremlin Palace of Congresses during the Moscow Film Festival to see 8 112 when he was still a student in Tovstonogov's directing course. As he passed through a foyer, he recognized Fellini and Giullietta Masina walking arm in arm. "I was shocked!" Ginkas admits. "I knew her as the simple little girl from La Strada, and here she was all dolled up with a fancy hairdo: the wife of a great director. And then Fellini comes out onstage to introduce his film. He begins wondering aloud if anybody can possibly be interested in what he's done. This great artist, mumbling something like that publicly! He's not even talking to the audience, really, just thinking aloud. And then you know what he does? He bends over and ties his shoelace, right there on stage. These were unthinkable knockouts for me.''

November 25, 2003. They begin attempting the finale for the first time, but it is not working. After interrupting the scene for the third time, Ginkas jumps up and announces that rehearsal is over. "Let's not do this!" he says. "We must come up on it suddenly. It will work. I know that. But it has to happen on its own, without my direction and without your trying."

December 4, 2003. I arrive to discover a new element in the set. Ginkas and Barkhin have added (something they planned to do all along) four planks that stretch across the entire width of the stage opening and hang on booms in a staggered, frame-like line just above the highest point of the rooftops at stage left. The effect is striking. Suddenly, the

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environment is more "constructed," more artificial and more claustrophobic. But the real surprise comes when Yakov, frustrated utterly by his wasted life, goes on a rampage, knocking over half the objects in the set. At this moment, the planks jerk upward and ride out of view. Combined with the gaping hole left by the knocked-over coffins, the thickly tangible sense of expanded space is breathtaking. Ginkas comments:" Amazing, isn't it? A simple theatrical trick: a boom rises. But you do it and you get goose bumps."

Rehearsal began as Ginkas's assistant asked what they would be doing today. "Oh, let's do nothing," Ginkas quipped. "Ken Reynolds [the photographer) is here today. Let's all go drink Scotch." Everybody concurs enthusiastically, although within thirty seconds rehearsal is underway.

December 5, 2003. Ginkas works with Barinov on one of the action-filled "pauses," a scene in which Y akov silently tries to overcome his growing exasperation with the "terrible losses" of his life by stopping and fondling the tools and materials on his workbench. "I want a long chunk here," Ginkas tells his actor, "an inspired, erotic scene of Bronza meeting with his work tools." Ginkas himself picks up a saw, then a hammer, then a plane, then a yardstick, holding and stroking them lovingly. "These are my women," he continues, almost cooing. "My women that give me no peace."

December 9, 2003. Ginkas to his actors before rehearsal: "There is a moment when the time has come to fill the veins of the show with blood,

24

Igor Yasulovich (Rothschild) in Chekhov's Rothchild's Fiddle directed by Kama Ginkas, Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven.


when all the veins are in place, but no blood is in them yet." December 16, 2003. Ginkas and lighting designer Gleb Filshtinsky

are discussing the proper brightness for a scene. Ginkas wants a slightly dimmer quality. He asks Filshtinsky to start with the stage in total darkness and slowly run the light up. When it reaches what he wants, he calls "Stop!" The light is now at twenty-five percent brightness; Filshtinsky had suggested thirty percent. Ginkas asks Filshtinsky to run it up a bit more. A few seconds later, he comments, "There. That's where theatrical lighting appears. The illumination of the set. That is exactly what I don't want." Ginkas decides to compromise. "Let's call it twenty-seven and a half percent," he laughs. After a few seconds of thought, he adds in all seriousness, "No, let's compromise even more. Move it another two percent in my direction."

December 23, 2003. Today is the first of three consecutive days with afternoon and evening run-throughs before a short break and then the trip to New Haven. Ginkas is addressing Yasulovich, although, in his way of saying the most important things indirectly, I sense the comments are primarily intended for Barinov. "Yesterday you began allowing yourself some improvisations," Ginkas tells Yasulovich. "That is correct. Like Alyosha and Arisha, you must toss Valery surprises all the time. His line is much more structured. Your unexpected actions help create a sense of fresh air and freedom for him. You essentially have localized episodes. No matter what you do, the essence of the show will not-cannot-change. So don't fear going out on a limb. Valery's position is much more difficult. He must keep his sense of freedom even though he is bound to execute a whole series of specific tasks."

December 25, 2003. After the first of the final two run-throughs, Ginkas addresses Yasulovich. "Igor Nikolaevich," he says, "when you are up on top of the houses playing on the saw, you are playing atmosphere. I want you to play the saw."

Ginkas then comments on the way Yasulovich has been gaily shouting "I've been looking for you!" in the scene shortly after Yakov has buried his wife. "Igor Nikolaevich," Ginkas begins, "you do something that all actors do and I can't stand that ... " but never finishes the phrase because Yasulovich abruptly drops down on the stage and whacks his head loudly on the boards in mock self-penance. Bursts of laughter.

January 14, 2004. Following a week of technical rehearsals in New Haven and just ninety minutes before the lone preview, Ginkas addresses his cast. ''Who will your audience be tonight?" he asks rhetorically. "Professors.

25

This is a difficult crowd. These people know that Chekhov is tender and gentle. They know there must be a yellow leaf falling, perhaps with a bit of green still in it. They know all of this about Chekhov, although, except for those who teach it, they haven't read 'Rothschild's Fiddle.' It will be very difficult to reach these people. They will come to enhance their intellectual and aesthetic leisure. They don't want to be challenged. They want to have a philosophical experience. I want to attune you to the fact that you will not get the lively reactions the students gave you last night. If you do, it will be a great gift."

The record of the reactions belongs to others. At this point, Ginkas's job and my notes are at an end.!

NOTES

1 Following is a chronological selection of the press: E. Kyle Minor, "From Russia, a Poetic Tale that Isn't Lost in

Translation," NewHavenRegisterOanuary 16, 2004): Weekend, 16-17. Tom Isler, '"Rothschild's Fiddle' Premieres at the Rep," Yale Daily

News, Oanuary 16, 2004): B6. Malcolm Johnson, "The Grim Ordeal of Peasant Life," The Hartford

Courant Oanuary 17, 2004): 01, 04. Joe Meyers, '"Fiddle' Plays for First Time at Yale Rep," Connecticut

Post, Oanuary 18, 2004): F1, F4. Laura Collins-Hughes, 'With Tenderness, a Russian Director

Finally Tells the Story of'Rothschild's Fiddle'," New Haven Register Oanuary 18, 2004): Gl, G2.

Bonnie Goldberg, "A Tale of Old Russia Comes to the Yale Rep," Middletown Press Oanuary 22, 2004).

Christopher Arnott, '"Rothschild's Fiddle,"' New Haven Advocate, Oanuary 22, 2004).

Aleksandr Popov, "Russky medved' so skripkoi," Izvestia Oanuary 22, 2004): 13.

John Freedman, "Laughter and Tears at Ginkas' Yale Premiere," The Moscow Times Oanuary 23, 2004): Metropolis, vi.

Jeffery Kurz, "Little Moments in 'Rothschild's Fiddle' Make it Worthwhile," The Cheshire Post Oanuary 24, 2004): 8.

26 Slavic and East European PeifOrmance Vol. 24, No.2

Alvin Klein, "A Chekhov Story, Distilled to Drama," New York Times, Connecticut Weekly Desk Qanuary 25, 2004).

Chesley Plemmons, "Chekhov in a Truly Russian Key," Danbury News Times Qanuary 25, 2004).

Irene Backalenick, "Inspired Design, Acting in Debut of 'Fiddle' at Yale," Connecticut Post Qanuary 25, 2004).

Frank Rizzo, "Rothschild's Fiddle," Variety Qanuary 25, 2004). Joanne Greco Rochman, "Yale Troupe Hits Chekhov's Notes,"

The Sunday Republican Qanuary 25, 2004): SH. David A. Rosenberg, "New Play at Yale Captures Chekhov's

Worldview," Nowalk Hour Qanuary 25, 2004). Steve Starger, "Yale Offers Rare Opportunity to See Russian

Theatre," journal Inquirer Qanuary 26, 2004). Maria Sedykh, "Lyubov' do groba," Itogi Qanuary 27, 2004): 60-62. Lindy Lee Gold letter to the editor: "Yale Rep in Russian Expands

Horizons," New Haven Register (February 1, 2004). Vladimir Orenov, "Russky desant so 'Skripkoi Rotshil'da',"

Teatral'nye novye izvestia 2 (February 2004): 2. See also, www.scriptum.ru for detailed information about

rehearsals, performances, and the aftermath, and the forthcoming casebook on Rothschild's Fiddle that will consist of articles by Mark Bly and me with a translation of Ginkas's adaptation: TheatreForum 25 (Summer/Fall 2004).

27

A SPANISH YVONNE PRINCESA DE BURGUNDIA

Elizabeth Wittlin Lipton

"Now there are no more heroes, only a chorus." Ortega y Gasset

Early in 2000, I was asked to design the scenery and costumes for a Spanish production of Witold Gombrowicz's Ivana, Princess of Burgundia (1938), It was to be the first major performance of a new theatre group, T eatro C6nkavo, formed by the graduates of the Madrid drama school, Replika, whose artistic director Jaroslaw Bielskil based his methods of teaching and molded the school' s curriculum on Polish models. The co-director, Zywila Pietrzak,2 taught master classes and headed the group that organized the Teatro C6nkavo. Gombrowicz was a gigantic and risky undertaking for a first venture by an untested ensemble. The budget was miniscule.

From my New York drafting board, I tried to imagine how Ivana would sound in Castillian and how my designs would be read by Spanish audiences. I was flattered to be asked to undertake this task, as there are so many excellent Spanish designers. In many e-mails and telephone conversations from Madrid, Zywila Pietrzak discussed with me her ideas about the play, elucidating why and how she wished to stage it. She explained that Ivana attracted her because in a world of cruelty, hypocrisy, cowardice, and fear it is a comedy with a deeper meaning, a subtext with a message. It is both a tragedy and a comedy: a tragedy because it deals with the shame of our times; a comedy because of its form and the ridiculous nature of its characters. The spectator can laugh and cry at the same time.

For Zywila, Ivana is a play full of surprises, brimming with acerbity and anger, but never losing its light touch. For these reasons she felt that Gombrowicz's work calls for a contemporary theatre of rebellion and provocation. Because it is cast in the form of farce (a genre popular at the time the play was written), at first sight, Ivana seems facile, requiring no great intellectual effort on the part of the spectator. This aspect of the piece, however, in the end proves a great strength. Beneath the surface of farce, there lurks a bitter truth. In the words of the author, the central character,


Costume design for character oflvona by Elizabeth Wittlin Lipton for Yvonne Princesa de Burgundia.

29

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-~~ ..

Costume designs by Elizabeth Wittlin Lipton for Yvonne Princesa de Burgundia.

Ivona, "functions as a detonator whose presence endangers an ancient order which is based on hypocrisy, boredom, and a lack of ideals. That is why she must die. A being whose mere presence could endanger the total order surrounding her must be eliminated."

Zywila asked me to design a collapsible segmented scenic space full of concave mirrored panels, which could also reflect a deformed audience. It was to be constructed for a traveling production of Yvonne Princesa de Borgoiia, as the Spanish translation was hitherto called. The two-leveled modular set had to adapt to different theatres with scenic spaces and prosceniae of various shapes and sizes. Although chosen to be a part of the prestigious Madrid Fall Festival, the play would at first be performed only once in each of four different locations before staying in a larger city for a longer run. Often a town hall auditorium with no fly space had to suffice. The crucial platform had to be assembled and reassembled for each of these first one-night stands, and as it was bulky, only a minimum of elements could be used.

Among the other properties, Zywila demanded a clanging iron chain "cage" that could be dropped from the ceiling (for which a fly space


was required), as well as a park bench and a tree. All that had to fit in the small rented truck used for transport. In the smaller pueblos, traffic jams were sometimes caused by a relic of the past, a donkey with a "Sancho" mounted on it who would later form a part of the respetable (the audience).

For me the performance by the spectators was often the best part of the whole experience. In one of the smallest villages the audience participation made it difficult for all of us to keep a straight face. Not only were loudly voiced comments occasioned by the transparent or scanty attire of the actors, but also by the many simulated sex acts performed on the stage. Ivonne's character, however, drew solidarity and sympathy for her plight. This was spontaneously expressed by supporting comments from the audience, such as "Onward Joan of Arc!" Since Gombrowicz's Prince is named Phillip and the present Crown Prince of Asturias is also a Felipe- the latter at the time being almost equally capricious in his choice of a bride (the subsequent announcement of his engagement to the controversial Leticia was still to come)- the public was quick to discern and comment on the similarity.

\ I '

-'I'M !>I..,. ..,.,nc_ tJ!. t1/1/l !.w:/'M t.;,Ptl I f If< C/'1.,_ ~ l'(rf!i'~ 41 I:!PflC:.Jf'ti:-IA .fJ)JCc~ .l.Y~AM ~;uV.. ~ l.)llfl./N ~/Jf"eh 't~;

fl .. ~ s.t Set for Yvonne Princesa de Burgundia.

Designed by Elizabeth Witdin Lipton.

31

For the meticulous and exact execution of the costumes, I thank the talented Ana Bravo. The director Zywila Pietrzak set certain unusual preconditions for the realization of the heroine's character; she wanted Ivona to be normal and beautiful, a victim but in no way an integral part of her own unlucky abjection. This approach was totally new to me as I had always understood the text to demand just the opposite. Sonia de Rojas, the actress playing Ivona, rose to the occasion admirably and was much applauded.

Spain's already not-so-new freedom (growing ever since Franco's death a quarter of a century ago) was to be celebrated by the application of a strong dose of explicit sex . This was a good strategy for enhancing box-office appeal. Many proper mamds and papds were eager to take their offspring to the show, thinking that the title indicated a fairy tale, with the result that at the last moment the warning "Not suitable for minors" had to be pasted on the misleadingly innocent-looking poster designed by Jaime Nieto, who received his training in this art in Poland.

32

Yvonne Princesa de Burgundia produced by Teatro C6nkavo, Madrid.


Yvonne Princesa de Burgundia produced by Teatro C6nkavo, Madrid.

The director seemed pleased with most of my costume renderings, but as the rehearsals progressed, often until5:00 A.M. (not unusual in Spain), the dramatis personae had to be reduced in size. Inocencio had also to carry the role of the Beggar. After seeing and hearing at rehearsals the whining little voice and fragile stature of the actor Raul Chacon being taunted by the Olympian and arrogant Cyrilo (Andres Capano), who in turn egged on the even taller Principe Felipe (Pablo Chiapella), I could only think of the poor and somewhat evil Inocencio as the object of the extreme Fuerza Nueva's wall graffiti: "Mason]udioy Comunista. "Little Raul with his trembling skinny calves, which he somehow managed to force into a bow shape, contrasted

33

34

,

'

Costume designs for King and Qy.een by Elizabeth Wittlin Lipton for Yvonne Princesa de Burgundia.

Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 24, No. 2

Yvonne Princesa de Burgundia produced by T eatro C6nkavo, Madrid.

35

with the long-legged athleticism of the handsome Felipe and Cyrilo, which to him and to us represented the cruel "fun and games" of a "Master Race." Inocencio brought the house down.

To appeal to Spanish audiences, I included a cardinal mounted on a scooter, with a pacifier hanging around his neck, wearing shorts made out of an American flag and playing a flute to alternate with the trumpeter, who was also Valentfn the lackey, alias the cook and sommelier Goaquin Abaci), but the budget prohibited another actor and another costume, and the cardinal never appeared. I made the headgear and many of the props and accessories and painted the set on a fifteen-foot ladder. Toward the end, I stitched and stitched, literally finishing the sewing on a Madrid Plaza bench. This drew an intrigued and admiring crowd, as I waited-threaded needle and thimble in hand-for the SUV of one of the actors to pick me up one hour before curtain time.

Although I imagined the young Gombrowicz (after all, the play had been written in 1936) to be somewhat of a Noel Coward, a decadent dandy, it was not to be the style of the production. This was not at all the director's vision. Instead of Strauss's Tales of the Vienna Woods, I would have preferred to hear Mad Dogs and Englishmen as the introductory music before the curtain went up, but that was neither here nor there. I do feel that any scenic designer of worth is in some way a visual dramaturg, although of necessity compliant to the director's wishes. With the Atlantic Ocean between us, it was not always easy for me to understand Zywila's requirements and fullfil them all, and it was not much easier once I was in Spain. Nevertheless, we reached a compromise by following my suggestion of using the word "Burgundia" contained in the title and visual representations of Gombrowicz's idea of "immaturity" as a sort of clef French and Flemish portraits of Phillippe Le Bon served to illustrate the first concept of stylization, and the paintings of Balthus provided examples of the second. Hard-core porno was an important element for Pietrzak, which I must admit I resisted and even fought against bitterly, since I am a close and indebted friend of Gombrowicz's widow Rita, who was supposed to arrive for the opening. Fortunately (or unfortunately), Mme Gombrowicz was taken ill just in time.

Once in Spain, I had my arm twisted and partially complied by giving in to thong cache-sexe garments for the Principe and his cohort Cyrilo, which resulted in their both exhibiting an admirable pair of buttocks. The rest was not as controversial. I approved the idea of revealing the true caliber


of each character through his or her underwear by means of totally transparent overgarments for all but Ivona and her two Aunts. Those three were prudishly covered up in opaque fabrics.

Besides the shopping for underwear in both the straight and gay hard-core prostitution bamos, my personal X-rated experience consisted of purchasing oversized plastic breasts for the Q!een (Socorro And6n). Unable to procure the right prostheses and refusing to expose the actress to such humiliation (and she herself refused adamantly), I had the problem on my own hands. Camouflaging her natural beauty and gentle character and transforming her into an exaggeratedly demonized murderous Lady Macbeth was quite enough of a task. I found the grotesque characterization legitimate as it could translate into a Valle-Inchinesque esperpento personage-something a Spaniard could traditionally understand; the form has long existed and been taught in the schools since its popularity dates back to the Golden Age of Quevedo and his La vida del Buscon (The life of a Scoundrel).

In desperation, as time was pressing and the couturiere hysterical, I left early one morning for the center of town, the "Puerta del Sol." Right off "Sol," the well-equipped supermercado of the time-honored Spanish institution "El Corte Ingles" was to be found. I needed some heavy groceries, and for that reason I took my shopping cart along. My first stop, however, was not the supermarket, but the porno shop on the adjacent, infamous, vice-ridden Calle Montera. The store had just opened, and now was the only time to shop; soon hordes of of people, some shady, would arrive en mass and pour into the area. Lunch hour was out, since any self-respecting establishment except the Corte Ingles closes for at least four hours. After lunch and siesta, the swelling numbers of customers render the shopping panorama apocalyptic.

Although there were some earlier customers behind the black-curtain side of the store, which presumably functioned as a peep-show area, I was the first "serious shopper" to arrive. I was treated with great respect, and, although the shelves and ceiling were well purveyed and overflowing with all sorts of merchandise, the large-size breasts were out of stock, but "if the Senora would be willing to wait, a clerk would procure them from the nearby warehouse." I really had no choice but to exercise patience. I was offered a comfortable seat, the only one in the store, a place was found for my cart so as not to obstruct traffic to the black-curtain area, which got busier by the minute, and the owner, who stood as I had taken his chair, went out of his way to entertain me. He offered me mineral water and shared

37

I C/V.',yl"''""' ": ~ ,&.CN< lt'.t:" ,1;.";4~:.~ ...... f. ;. -

Costume design for the character oflnocencio II by Elizabeth Wittlin Lipton for Yvonne Princesa de Burgundia


Yvonne Princesa de Burgundia produced by T eatro C6nkavo, Madrid.

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Costume design for the character of Cyril II by Elizabeth Wittlin Lipton for Yvonne Princesa de Burgundia


Yvonne Pn.ncesa de Burgundia produced by T eatro C6nkavo, Madrid.

41

with me the sad fact that business was not good this fall. There we commiserated with each other, sighing all the while. After a while the early clients from behind the curtain began to leave and others entered to take their place. Each, without exception, gave me a quizzical look, some with their mouths gaping open, but the real object of their curiosity was the still empty shopping cart next to me as I sat and waited surrounded by hanging rubber merchandise typical of such establishments. They seemed surprised at my gray hair as well. I answered their buenos dias as one is wont to do in Spain. After enough of such greetings, I began to perspire, although the cool weather had arrived, and I noticed in a mirror that my face had turned an unbecoming crimson. Finally, I was rewarded; the breasts arrived and the size was right. I could not make my getaway until the breasts were proudly modeled by the owner over his sweater and their merits described to justify the elevated price. Once approved and properly repacked and paid for, a tax free receipt was issued. This last consideration is always granted for cultural endeavors in Spain.

The play was first performed within Madrid's Comunidad (Metropolitan Area) in San Martin de Valdeiglesias at the Teatro Municipal on October 19, 2002. Other venues for the play were San Fernando de Henares in the Teatro Auditorio Federico Garda Lorca on November 9; and on December 10, it was shown in Pozuelo de Alarcon in the Patronato Municipal de Cultura. There were more performances within the Comunidad before the production went on to large cities such as Valladolid and Zamora. Both of these took place later in 2003. The critics in the many Valladolid newspapers were unanimous in their praise. King Ignacio, acted by Emilio Gomez as a tyrannical caricature, was compared to Jarry's hero, Ubu. Las Tias (the Aunts) were portrayed by Aurora Rodriguez and Paloma Luaces, who also played the Ladies-in-Waiting. Isabel (Alejandra Caparros) was temptingly feline. The Chambelan (Chema Perez) set the pace as a diabolic master of ceremonies who ran the proceedings using gestures appropriate to the Commedia dell' Arte. Chema, a responsible problem shooter, was also the treasurer, truck driver, carpenter, and invaluable stage-manager. Marta Graiia managed the lighting ably. I received much favorable mention for the set and costumes, but the director Zywila Pietrzak got the highest praise for her dynamic direction as well as for her skillful adaptation of the play. The production is supposed to have a run in the center of Madrid soon and is now scheduled to travel to Poland in the fall.


NOTES

1 Jaroslaw Bielski graduated from the Theatre School in Cracow in 1983 and worked as an actor at the T eatr Wybrzeze in Gdansk and at the T eatr J aracza in L6di. In 1984 he received a grant from the Polish Ministry of Culture and Art to study directing in Spain. After being denied permission to return home by the Polish authorities in 1988, he decided to remain permanently in Spain where he has pursued his career as a director, teacher, and actor in theatre, film, and television,. He has translated, published, and directed many Polish authors, including Witkiewicz, Mrozek, R6zewicz, Schaeffer, and Kajzar. He has also directed Unamuno, Lope de Vega, Beckett, and Lorca. In 1989 he co-founded with Socorro Anadon the Compaii.ia de Teatro Nuevo, which in 1997 became the Academia de Actor. His most recent translation and production was Dale Wasserman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, given its Spanish premiere at his own theatre, Replika, established in Madrid in 2003. He has frequently worked abroad as an actor, director, and teacher, and he has presented many productions at international festivals.

2 Zywila Pietrzak graduated from the Film, Television, and Theatre School in L6di in 1980 and until1989 worked as an actress at the New Theatre in Poznan and at the Teatr Jaracza in L6di, appearing in over thirty productions, including Wisniewski's End of Europe and Panoptikon d Ia Madame Tussaud. She also appeared in many Polish television dramas and films, directed by Wajda, Kie5lowski, Holland, and others. In 1989 at the invitation of Los Goliardos she went to Spain to play the role of Estelle in Sartre's Huis Clos, directed by Angel Facio. Since then she has continued her career in Spain as a director and actress, appearing in many films and television series. Her 1997 production, Frida Khalo, co-directed with Peter Hinton, is still in the repertory. She began teaching in 1991 and joined the Academia de Actor in 1997. In 2002 she founded her own Teatro C6nkavo, where in addition to Gombrowicz she has also presented in 2004 Janusz Glowacki's Antigone in New York.

43

SONG OF THE GOAT'S CHRONICLES-A LAMENT AT/ON

Kathleen Cioffi

After the fall of communism in 1989, Polish alternative theatre should have died. But surprisingly, despite the disappearance of political opposition as its raison d'etre, it experienced a revitalization. As Magdalena Golaczynska declared in these pages, "There are more and more alternative or independent companies created every season, and all of the roughly three hundred companies currently in existence can be considered as working outside the mainstream repertory theatre."' Teatr Pidn Kozla [Song of the Goat Theatre], one of the new alternative theatre companies formed in the 1990s, recently visited New York and performed Kroniki- obyczaj lamentacyjny [Chronicles-A Lamentation].2 The company's intensely theatrical language is derived from Jerzy Grotowski by way of Gardzienice yet also owes something to opera, dance, and storytelling (though it is nothing like any opera, dance performance, or storytellers you've ever seen), as well as something to the company's investigations of folk rituals. Yet, it has produced something more vital and more gripping than any of those separate elements, something unique that, nonetheless, partakes of the work of its theatrical forebears as well as of other performing arts practitioners.

Chronicles is based on the Epic of Gilgamesh, an ancient Sumerian heroic poem that has been called "the first great book of man's heart."3 Gilgamesh predates the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Bible, though it may well have influenced those works. The epic tells the story of Gilgamesh, a half-human, half-divine king who rules over the Babylonian city-state ofUruk, in modern-day Iraq. Gilgamesh and his wild friend Enkidu journey together and share many adventures, but they incur the wrath of the goddess Ish tar, because Gilgamesh refuses to become her lover and Enkidu insults her. Enkidu is condemned to die by the gods, and when he dies, his death forces the inconsolable Gilgamesh to realize that he too must eventually die. He cannot accept this, so he journeys to the Underworld to meet Utnapishti, the Sumerian Noah, who survived the great flood and was given immortality by the gods. The gods refuse to grant Gilgamesh immortality, but Utnapishti gives him an herb that restores youth, which, on Gilgamesh's return to the upper world, is stolen by a serpent. Gilgamesh returns to Uruk and at last


Maria Sendow as Death and Anna Zubrzycka as the Mother of Gilgamesh in Song of the Goat's Chronicles-A Lamentation

45

Marcin Rudy as Enkidu and Anna Krotoska as the goddess Ishtar in Song of the Goat's Chronicles-A Lamentation

accepts his fate. The production is not a straightforward adaptation of mythic

materials, such as Mary Zimmerman's adaptations of Homer's Odyssey or Ovid's Metamorphoses. Instead, Song of the Goat has taken certain themes from the epic and woven them together with songs, chants, and movement. The founders of Song of the Goat, Grzegorz Bra! and Anna Zubrzycka, are former members of the Gardzienice Theatre Association, and they have brought with them that company's interest in the power of the human voice. Wlodzimierz Stan.iewski, the founder and artistic director of Gardzienice, once declared in an interview, ''We start with the question, 'How can we sing it?"'4 And this is obviously the fundamental question for Song of the Goat as well. Chronicles is the culmination of two years of research into a particular European and Asian tradition of song, the tradition of musical lamentation. The company journeyed to northern Epiros (a region straddling Greece and Albania) and found there a rich tradition of polyphonic lamentations. They


built their performance around the lamentations they had found, and thus the production incorporates laments sung in Albanian and in Greek, together with Polish and English chants and dialogue.

The production may also be seen as very much in the tradition of Grotowski's "theatre of sources" phase. The structure of the polyphonic lamentations that the company found in Epiros reminded company members of the structure of Greek tragedy, which they have been interested in exploring since the company's founding in 1997. Indeed its name, "Song of the Goat," was also the title of their first production, and is derived from the ancient Greek for "tragedy," tragon ode [goat song]. In the program notes for Chronicles, they ask:

Is it possible that that a tradition has survived which was itself the inspiration for Greek tragedy? ... Can theatre archaeologists seek their answers even further back in time? Is it possible that an ancient tradition survived, when an ancient theatrical form did not? We know that the origins of some songs and dances date back as far as two or three thousand years. Is it possible that what was once the inspiration for ancient theatre has survived and may also be a theatrical inspiration for us?

Rafa! Habel as Gilgamesh, Marcin Rudy as Enkidu, and Christopher Sivertsen as a Shaman in Song of the Goat's Chronicles-A Lamentation

47

Although it seems as if these questions about tragedy's ongms may be impossible to answer with any certainty, the active way Song of the Goat is pursuing this research-with their voices and bodies- creates a theatrically exciting form, one that incorporates song, dance, rhythm, movement, gesture, and the spoken word.

The choice of the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh seems particularly appropriate for an approach that puts lamentation at its center: when Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh utters what poet Derrek Hines calls "the first great lament for a dead companion in literature."5 We are plunged in the performance into a kind of ceremonial lamentation that also reenacts parts of the Gilgamesh myth. The theatre manages to create a feeling of being part of some kind of performative primitive ritual akin to what I imagine tribal ceremonies to be. The polyphonic laments are sung by the actors in an open-throated, energetic style, in which their voices seem to be coming up not just from their diaphragms but from the soles of their feet. And they not only lament with their voices; they move their bodies in such an athletic way that they at times seem to be dancing, at others performing gymnastics.

Certain moments particularly stand out in memory. The opening of the show, when women with veils over their faces sit in a semi-circle and sing an open-throated lament in Albanian to the drone of a hurdy-gurdy, creates the atmosphere of something sacred happening in the theatre that Grotowski was always aspiring to. Ishtar's creation of the wild man Enkidu and her initiation of him into the mysteries of sex are embodied by a dance that is at once sexy and ritualized. Anna Zubrzycka as Gilgamesh's mother reenacts his birth, all the while lamenting as Death torments her. And when Enkidu dies and is laid to rest on a funeral bier, Gilgamesh and the two other men in the cast leap onto the bier and do cartwheels over the corpse with a lightness that gives the illusion that they're flying; soon Enkidu's soul joins them in their sacred acrobatics.

As I watched Chronicles- A Lamentation, I recalled the words of Richard Demarco, an impresario who has hosted many Polish groups at the Edinburgh Festival, and who in a 1992 interview said, "Polish theatre is a particular voice, different from others that one can hear in Europe .... The only important energy in art is the energy of the spirit. You still have it."6 Song of the Goat seems to embody that spirit energy with a marvelous control over voice and body that feels more akin to what singers and dancers must master than to the kinds of emotion-based training that actors trained in traditional theatre programs undergo. Nevertheless, Manchester


Metropolitan University in England will start to offer a master's course based on the company's technique this fall. It will be fascinating to see whether work produced by students of this program will somehow combine the musicality, physicality, and mystery of the Song of the Goat performance technique with a more Anglo-American theatre convention. Avant-garde Polish theatre, from Mickiewicz to Wyspianski through Grotowski and Gardzienice, has been far more interested than Anglophone theatre in exploring the roots of its own theatricality and establishing a mysterious place apart where magical/sacred things occur. Song of the Goat fits squarely within this tradition: I had the feeling not of watching a play but of stepping back in time and witnessing a group of incredibly skillful shamans as they recreated an ancient ceremony. As the actor/shamans reenacted the ancient story of Gilgamesh, I felt their songs throb through my own body and somehow had the illusion that I myself had participated in the ceremony, and been, at least for a little while, healed.

NOTES

1 Magadalena Golaczynska, "Malta 2002 and Other Alternative Theatre Festivals," Slavic and East European Peiformance 22, no. 3 (Fall2002): 21. 2 Chronicles-A Lamentation was performed at La MaMa, April 15- May 2, 2004. 3 Derrek Hines, Gilgamesh (London: Chatto and Windus, 2002), ix. 4 Wlodzimierz Staniewski, interview with Richard Schechner, The Drama Review 31, no. 2 (1987): 147. 5 Hines, xi. 6 Richard Demarco, "Potrzebuj~ was" [I Need You], interview with Malgorzata Szum, Teatr 47, no. 12 (1992): 12. My translation.

49

WITKIEWICZ'S THE MOTHER BY THE THEATRE OF A TWO-HEADED CALF AT LA MAMA

By Kimon Keramidas

In April of 2003, the Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf presented The Mother at La MaMa in New York City, their second interpretation of a play by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz in a little over a year. Following in the wake of the previous year's frenetically entertaining and successful Tumor Brainowicz, l director Brooke O'Hara and her team of collaborators adapted and developed Witkiewicz's play to suit their unique style. This production was no small achievement as the company tackled the characteristically difficult text, while integrating technical aspects into the work that challenged the rugged simplicity of the small stage and limited resources at La MaMa. Along with the successful integration of different media into the live performance, including live and recorded audio and video, the company expanded the scope of the production to include a pamphlet and website, developing a rough-hewn but high-tech cross-media event that extended the fleeting moment of performance and had the potential of expanding the audience's immersion in the finished product and in the process of creating the work.

As in their work on Tumor Brainowicz, the Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf was able to combine O'Hara's unpredictable and sometimes frenetic directing style with Brendan Connelly's equally eccentric musical score and sound design. As O'Hara and Connelly let the story and environment unfold, they are at once able to grasp and negotiate Witkiewicz's high level of intellectual detail, as well as reveal and portray the grotesque absurdity that is at the root of his characters, plots, and storylines. O'Hara feels that "Witkiewicz's plays are always awful and beautiful at the same time. I hate them and I'm madly attracted to them,"2 and in this piece, she revealed an understanding of this tension in Witkiewicz's highly crafted works.

A satirical commentary on the work of writers such as Ibsen and Strindberg, The Mother reveals Witkiewicz's dislike for the bourgeois drama of his time. O'Hara and Connelly followed the playwright's lead and probed the distorted relationships within the family and the society surrounding it. O'Hara allowed her actors to explore a full range of emotion and means of

50 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 24, No. 2

Suli Holum in Two-Headed Calfs production ofWitkiewicz's The Mother at La MaMa in New York City.

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expression, and they engaged the audience with an energetic and physical acting style that suited the play and the small space at La MaMa. The actors, in particular Tina Shepherd as the sometimes dignified and sometimes delusional mother and Suli Holum as the highly animated and occasionally disturbing object of male desire, were intense during the most unsettling of scenes but were also capable of delivering comedy when necessary.

The physically centered acting style of the performers was complemented by the director's creative use of simultaneous streaming video. The video equipment was strategically placed on the stage. One wireless camera was inserted into the eye of a doll (the doll doubling the role of the son, Leon), another placed on the mother's hat. One wired camera was perched on the top of a table with another positioned in the downstage area to face into the action, simulating the position of the audience. Four computer monitors were also visible on stage- two underneath the table center stage and one on each side of the stage, which were rotated frequently by the actors either to reveal or hide the front of the monitor. A television acted as an object in the world of the play while also displaying stills and video captured from the various cameras embedded in the action.

Initially, the technology was not made apparent to the audience, since much of it was either covered or too small. Monitors were slowly revealed to frame the stage action. The audience would then try to figure out which camera was feeding the monitor. The wireless cameras were especially challenging, since they were small and purposely hidden in the hat of the mother and the eye of the Leon puppet. O'Hara used this puppet to great effect, as she has used puppets in past productions, creating some amazing points of view for the audience to consider simultaneously on the monitors along with what they were seeing on stage. The video from these cameras was sometimes frozen, replayed, slowed down, or blended with prerecorded video, and at times, it was challenging to determine which view was which, and to discover whether or not the video being shown was live from the performance or had been manipulated or previously recorded.

With this array of technology, O'Hara was able to capture more than one view of the action for the audience. Through the orchestration and manipulation of the cameras and displays by video designer Bilal Khan, the video and stills that were captured could then be presented on the monitors and television. These images conflated the typical subjective-objective relationships between the characters on the stage giving the audience more than one dominant viewpoint and often challenging


V1 w

Tina Shepard (the Mother), Jim Fletcher (Leon Eely) and Suli Holum (Sophia) in Witkiewicz's The Mother at La MaMa in New York City.

traditional stage conventions. The end result was that the cameras changed the nature of the scenic structure, augmented the performances of the actors, and complicated the relationships of the characters.

Just as O'Hara embraced rough energy in her directorial style and was not afraid of challenging juxtapositions, the stage was mostly composed of found furniture that created an appropriately aged and battered environment for the family to exist in. The impact of the video was also felt in the design of the piece, both structurally and in the ornamentation of the scenery, as objects were positioned and adapted to accommodate the cameras and monitors. A large wooden table in the center of the stage was flanked on stage right by the mother's chair and on stage left by a pedestal on which the television sat. Behind the table was a wall, part scrim and part solid, adorned with a roughly drawn image of the dead father. The scrim was used with simple effectiveness to reveal or hide the orchestra, depending on the music in the scene, as well as for the appearance of the dead father, Albert. The visual appearance of the monitors and television contributed to this environment of accumulated detritus. Rather than the slickest new technology, coordinated to create a specific visual unity, the screens on stage were of varying type and quality. As a result, the image was fuzzier on some rather than others, though not to the point of distraction, and the plastic casings showed a range of age and use. But this physical reality, even if it was determined by questions of cost, blended into the disrupting juxtapositions of the entire piece and helped to situate the video even more squarely in the world of play.

The performance of Tbe Mother had another life beyond the lived experience at La MaMa. Hoping to enlarge their audience, develop their association with other companies, and explore the impact of different media, Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf published a pamphlet, which they distributed at the performance and have launched a website that displays information about the company and its work. Each of these media has a scope that covers more than just information about Tbe Mother. The pamphlet, entitled Tbe Tbeatre qf a Two-Headed Calfs Narrow Sheet, included information on film, theatre, and music performances at the time of the production, as well as general information on the company. The company's website, http://www. twoheadedcalf.org, includes information on performances, members, press, and the artistic goals.

The pamphlet and website contribute to the experience of the play by providing the insights of the collaborators through images, script drafts,


and production notes. In the pamphlet, the dramaturg Inna Giter interviews Brooke O'Hara about her theatrical experience as well as her attraction to Witkiewicz's work, in particular The Mother. There is also a synopsis of the play and description of how the company worked on the production. The website provides even more information, offering extensive and detailed notes from O'Hara, Connelly, Giter (whose notes include three drafts of the script at different stages), and Khan. Khan's notes are of particular interest because he describes in detail the hardware and software used in the production as well as provides production and video stills used to illustrate the project's different dramatic techniques, such as distortion of past and present, subtext, table play, and two-fisted videos, which were made possible by the implementation of the cameras.

The pamphlet and website provided a useful accompaniment to the production and allowed the interested viewer to investigate more deeply the process and world of the play, offering useful links and hyperlinks to other works and companies directly or indirectly connected to the work of the Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf. The extension of the live performance through these various media reflects the broader aims of the Theatre of a Two-Headed Calfs production of The Mother. O'Hara and her collaborators were able to assemble puzzle pieces pulled from disparate sources, place them side by side, and from seemingly irreconcilable juxtapositions successfully create Witkiewicz's grotesquely absurd and socially challenging worlds.

The Mother by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz. Directed by Brooke O'Hara. Tr. by Daniel Gerould. Starring Tina Shepard, Jim Fletcher, Suli Holum, Nicky Paraiso, Wilson Hall, Zakia Babb & Barb Lanciers. Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf, La MaMa, New York City. March 27- April13, 2003.

NOTES

1 Kimon Keramidas, "Two by Witkiewicz in Manhattan: Tumor Brainiowicz and The Water Hen;' Slavic and Eastern European Performance, 22, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 88-93. 2 Brooke O 'Hara to Inna Giter, "From Thermodynamics to Theatre," The Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf's Narrow Sheet 1 (March 2003):

55

V ASSILY SIGAREV'S BLACK MILK AT CHICAGO'S EUROPEAN REPERTORY COMPANY

Jeffrey Stephens

Lyudmila Razumovskaya's Dear Elena Sergeevna (1987) gave us an almost perfect snapshot ofBrezhnevian youth in the Soviet Union's period of stagnation. Now Vassily Sigarev's Black Milk, which received its American premiere in Chicago last year, says things about the post-Yeltsin generation that no article in the New York Times could capture as effectively for an American audience. I hesitate to call it a major new work, but it is a hugely actable one. Deeply rooted in its milieu and time, Black Milk may not be in quite the same class as the naturalistic masterpieces of Chekhov or Gorky, but it nonetheless demands attention. Today, we read a satirical comedy like Nikolai Erdman's long suppressed Suicide (1928) as a savage portrayal of Soviet life at the end of the NEP era, even though it has not proved able to maintain a place in the current performance canon; such may be the fate of Black Milk. But while its depiction of a Putinesque Russian world may not speak as clearly to future generations as Cherry Orchard or Lower Depths, Sigarev's play tells a compelling and sometimes devastatingly accurate story. In a superb English translation by Sasha Dugdale, Black Milk is consistently surprising, richly nuanced, and grimly realistic.!

The director Luda Lopatina, who, like the playwright Sigarev, was born in Ekaterinburg (Soviet Sverdlovsk), has worked with Chicago's European Repertory Company (ERC) for the past decade, staging Russian standards and Soviet plays, such as Mikhail Bulgakov's Zoya's Apartment (1926) and Galin's Stars in the Morning Sky (1987). Established in 1992, the ERC is Chicago's best small theatre company. The ensemble members have, more or less, remained committed to the company's mission over the years, and co-directors Y asen Peyankov and Dale Goulding have steered the company through many artistically successful seasons. The work of the ERC is consistently solid in ways that few other Chicago companies of the past decade and a half can boast of. Lopatina explains that the ERC seeks out new plays from Eastern Europe and specifically Russia, although many a non-Slavic play has been mounted over the years, including major productions of Agamemnon, The Mayor of Zalamea, and Roberto Zucco


Vassily Sigarev's Black Milk directed by Luda Lopatina at Chicago's European Repertory Company.

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(classical Greek, Golden Age Spanish, and modern French respectively). I have seen several of the company's Russian productions, and it is in this metier that the group seems most at home. The path to their production of Sigarev's play is not really all that circuitous, but, like most stories surrounding how the rights of a modem foreign play are secured, it is worth telling.

While in Moscow after directing a new Russian adaptation of Albee's W'ho's Afraid of Virginia Woo!fl-for which she won a Russian Bravo Award-Lopatina contacted Sigarev. She discovered that in keeping with its long tradition of supporting new work, the Royal Court Theatre in London had staged Sigarev's Plasticine as part of their annual International Playwrights Seasons in 2002. In that same year, Sigarev was named "Most Promising Playwright" by London's Evening Standard. Sigarev explained to Lopatina that, native-born Ekaterinburger or not, she needed to contact the Royal Court (since it handled the rights to his plays) for information about staging the play in the United States. Although Lopatina remains based in Chicago and Sigarev in Moscow and London, the two remain close friends. Lopatina persevered, obtained the rights, and invited Sigarev to Chicago for the American premiere, which he attended in November 2003. His most recent play, Ladybird, was staged at the Royal Court in March 2004 and will most likely be shepherded to the ERC for its American premiere. British critical response to Ladybird has been overwhelmingly positive.

In Black Milk, against the dingy, peeling walls of a decrepit train station somewhere in the "boundless motherland," a narrator accompanies himself on the accordion while commenting on the inanity and contradictory nature of contemporary Russian life. Sasha Dugdale's eminently actable translation brings the dialogue to life in English. The ticket clerk rules the freezing station from the confines of an ancient kiosk in which she passes the time by listening to vapid Europop. Poppet and Lyovchik arrive, cursing loudly and impudently at each other and at those they encounter, only to be informed that the next train out of town won't arrive until morning. Pregnant Poppet, Lyovchik's partner and lover, chain-smokes her way through a vulgar litany of abuse directed at the town. A ragtag group of villagers enters and demands refunds for the defective toasters they have been sold by the pair. Led by Mishka, the group finds strength in their collective will but is eventually crushed by the taunts and humiliating logic behind Lyovchik's reasoning: he and Poppet are merely middlemen, selling goods for the shady "Kanzai" company to the gullible.

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It's not his fault that the town harbors so many suckers. After the group has departed, a drunken man sprawled upstage

awakens and delivers a vodka-sodden ode on the death of the Russian souL Mishka returns with a gun and fires several shots-all blanks-as chaos ensues and the ticket clerk-echoing the plea of Bobchinsky in Gogol's Inspector General, but turning it on its ear-screams, "When you get back to Moscow, tell them how people really live in Russia!" The seemingly impenetrable barrier between Russia's provincial poor and her urban inhabitants remains unbreeched as the city folk are left on stage alone to deal with the terrifying prospect of the birth of their child in what Poppet has many times labeled a

Vassily Sigarev's Black Milk directed by Luda Lopatina at Chicago's European Repertory Company.

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"shithole." Sigarev uses sexy con artists, Lyovchik and Poppet, as

representatives of Russian urban survivors among the wretched poor of the town of Mokhovoye hundreds of miles from Moscow. They have made it through the first post-Soviet decade by selling worthless gadgets to easily duped peasants. They are modern-day Chichikovs who ingratiate themselves with all the provincials they meet and then hoodwink their prey with their oily enthusiasm and eventual quick getaway. Their troika is the train, and it plays a pivotal role in the plot. Poppet and Lyovchik are smarter than Gogol's Khlestakov, less gregarious than Chekhov's Lopakhin, and more destructive to those they encounter than those two upstarts combined. Pregnant and quite literally on the verge of labor throughout Act I, Poppet smokes, sucks on lollipops, and eats nothing that could nourish a baby. Her callous treatment of their customers is made to seem less cruel than it would be in reality, because there is so much talk about how the couple will change once they have their child. Instead, the child's birth eventually forces them into an untenable position that leads to the most compelling conclusion to a new play that I have seen in years.

An eerie sense of impending catastrophe permeates Act II. A perambulator sits immobile upstage, and since Black Snow is a drama characterized by black comedy and an ambiguous tone, one thinks immediately of Edward Bond's unnerving Saved and the fate of that play's helpless infant. It is ten days later; Poppet (now referred to, in the diminutive, as "Shura" by a new character, the doting Auntie Pasha) has given birth and undergone an obvious physical and spiritual transformation. She announces that she is "tired of being a bitch" and "wants to be a real person." Although the baby is healthy, the infant refuses her mother's milk, because it has been made too bitter by an irresponsible diet and, according to Auntie Pasha, too much tobacco in the bloodstream.

To Lyovchik's utter disbelief, Shura wants to settle down in this desolate hinterland. Arguments ensue, trains continue to roar past the station, and Lyovchik gives Shura an ultimatum disguised as a legitimate choice. He will allow her to stay in the town as long as the baby goes back with him to Moscow. With all the ferocity of a crazed animal, Shura-acted with special reserves of grace and skill by Heather Prete-fights for her baby, for Russia, and, it seems, for the dignity of the Mokhovoye villagers whom she once despised. The verbal duel metamorphoses into a physical one. Although Shura is now light years ahead of Lyovchik in a strictly moral


sense (even refusing the proffered cigarettes that were once her lifeblood), Lyovchik is physically powerful and, making him even more dangerous, devoid of scruples. He punches her repeatedly in the womb until she lies howling on the floor. As he bundles the child up and steals out the door, Shura grabs the backpack full of bottled milk left by Auntie Pasha and flings it full force against the upstage wall, while the baby begins screaming and another train roars past.

In a complex scene expertly choreographed by Lopatina, the baby's cries stop, the train's roar slowly fades, and the blindingly white milk from the shattered bottles begins to ooze from the soaking backpack- all underscored by Shura's wailing. When Lyovchik returns, the baby is gone, presumably having been thrown underneath the speeding train. There is nothing left for Shura to do but allow herself to be assisted out the door by her lover, now branded to him for all time by her complicity in the death of their child. The play ends with mournful notes from the accordion as yet another train speeds by.

These last images may read as excessively melodramatic on paper, but in the context of the ERC's production, they constitute theatrical moments so pure and so perfect that they take on the quality of a touchstone for contemporary Russian playwriting, superseding anything written in a book about the period.

Black Milk is an exciting