volume 21, no.

1
Winter 2001
SEEP (ISSN # 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 Peiformant-e:
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
Sharon Aronson-Lehavi
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
KurtTaroff
CIRCULATION MANAGERS
Susan Tenneriello
Lara Shalson
ASSISTANT CIRCULATION MANAGERS
Hillary Arlen Celia Braxton
ADVISORY BOARD
Edwin Wilson, Chair
Marvin Carlson Alma Law
Martha W. Coigney
Leo Hecht
Allen]. Kuharski
Stuart Liebman
Laurence Senelick
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 in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the City University of New York.
Copyright 2001 Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
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;
c. Two copies of the publication in which the reprinted material has
appeared must be furnished to the Editors of SEEP immediately upon
publication.
2
Slavic and East European Peiformano-e Vol. 21, No. 1
Editorial Policy
From the Editor
Events
Books Received
IN MEMORIAM
TABLE OF CONTENTS
''WojciechJerzy Has: 1921-2000"
ARTICLES
"Thoughts of a Director: The Winter's Tale"
Slobodan Unkovski
"To Be What You Are: Staging Contemporary
East-European Drama in Canada"
Yana Meerzon
"A Bridge to Nowhere: Gesher-A Russian Theatre in Israel"
Bilha Blum
"Stanislavsky Enters the Twenty First Century"
Sharon Marie Carnicke
PAGES FROM THE PAST
"The Master and the DeviL- Mikhail Bulgakotl'
by Andrzej Drawicz
Kevin Windle
REVIEWS
"The Memorandum at Juilliard:
Giving New Meaning to the Term "Office Politics""
KurtTaroff
"A Dramaturg's Notebook:
The Master and Mm;garitd'
Ilana M. Brownstein
5
6
7
13
14
20
29
38
49
57
64
70
3
"The Bocfy of the Line: Eisenstein's Drawings
The Drawing Center
Daniel Gerould
Contributors
Publications
76
83
85
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Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 21, No. 1
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 S(Yie should be followed. Trans-literations
should follow the Library of Congress system. Articles should be submitted
on computer disk as Word 97 Documents for Windows and a hard copy of the
article should be included. Photographs are recommended for all reviews. All
articles should be sent to the attention of Slavic and East European Peiformance,
c/ o Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, The City University of New York
Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016-4309. Submissions
will be evaluated, and authors will be notified after approximately four weeks.
You may obtain more information about Slavic and East European
Performance by visiting out website at http//www.gc.cuny.edu/ mestc. Email
inquiries may be addressed to SEEP@gc.cuny.edu.
5
FROM THE EDITOR
Vol. 21, No. 1 of SEEP opens with a tribute to film maker Wojciech
Has, whose Saragossa Manuscript is one of the classics of Polish Cinema. Has died
in L6di on October 3, 2000 at the age of seventy five. The four feature articles
reflect the mobility of Eastern European performance in the twenty-first century
and raise a variety of questions about cultural transference. The Macedonian
director, Slobodan Unkovski, analyzes his production of The Winter's Tale at ART
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but cautions against any Balkanizing interpretations.
Yana Meerzon, a critic and dramaturg trained in Russia, discusses her work on the
staging for Canadian audiences of Princess T. by Czech playwright Daniela
Ficherova and Happiness Channel by Serbian playwright Silvija Jestrovic (writing in
English). Bilha Blum examines what happens when a Russian theatre, Gesher,
moves to Israel and seeks to retain its national identity while at the same time
becoming Israeli. Sharon Camicke reflects upon her experiences of transmitting
Stanislavsky's legacy for the Anglo-American theatre.
PAGES FROM THE PAST presents an excerpt from Kevin Windle's
new translation of Andrzej Drawicz's study of Mikhail Bulgakov-an Australian
translation of a Polish book about the Russian playwright. The current number
concludes with Kurt Taroffs review of Havel's Memorandum at Julliard, Ilana
Brownstein's discussion of Lyubimov's adaptation of Bulgakov's Master and
Margarita at the Yale School of Drama, and my report on the Sergei Eisenstein
Exhibit at the Drawing Center in New York.
East European performance has lost its fixed identity and settled
location. It was only during the height of the cold war that the theatres of Eastern
Europe were hermetically sealed off from the West so that to see a production
one had to travel to Moscow, Prague, Budapest, or Warsaw, or be lucky enough
to catch a glimpse of a fortunate company allowed to travel to an international
festival. Long before the collapse of communism, Eastern European performance
began to relocate across the globe. Many major Romanian directors, Serban,
Ciulei, Pintilie, and Purdirete, left for the West in the 1960s and 70s. Czech
playwrights and filmmakers fled their homeland after the 1968 Soviet invasion.
Slawomir Mrozek left Poland in 1963 for Italy, France, Germany, and Mexico,
returning to Cracow only in the mid-90s. Even Tadeusz Kantor, who never "left"
Poland, was more often to be seen at La Mama or the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
than in Cracow; and his later productions were financed and premiered in
Germany and Italy. Eastern European Performance can no longer be defined by
borders or even language. Perhaps its identity comes from its point of origin
rather than its ports of call or final destination. The current issue of SEEP
exemplifies the diffusion of East European performance.
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Slavic and East E11ropea11 Performance Vol. 21, No.1
STAGE PRODUCTIONS
New York City
EVENTS
Song Tree, an original world music theatre piece, with music by
Maryana Sadovska, Yaryana Turianska, and Eugene Hutz, was presented by
the Yara Arts Group. The program featured traditional polyphonic singing by
artists from Ukraine and Yara actors, as well as video by Andrea Odezynska
and the music of Gogo! Bordello, a Ukrainian band. The production was
presented at La Mama Experimental Theatre from December 21 to 23, 2000.
The Mother by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, directed by Hyunjung
Lee, was presented at the Horace Mann Thatre of Columbia University from
March 7 to 10, 2001.
Metamorphosis; or The Golden Ass According to Apuleius was performed by
the Polish Gardzienice Theatre at La Mama Experimental Theatre from
January 24 to 28, 2001.
Boris by the Sea by Matvei Yankelevich, directed by Daniel Kleinfeld,
was shown at the HERE Arts Center from September 28 to October 22, 2000.
Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Onhard, directed by Joseph Hardy, was
performed by The Pearl Theatre from January 11 to February 25, 2001.
The Second Annual Chekhov NOW Festival was presented by LITE
(Laboratory for International Theatre Exchange) Company from November 1
to 19, 2000 at the Connelly Theatre. Performances included:
Gull, an adaptation of The Seagull directed by Ellen Beckerman and
produced by Ellen Beckerman & Co.: November 1 to 16.
In The Widows' Garden by Courtney Baron, adapted from The Student
and directed by Carl Forsman: November 1 to 10.
The Beginning of No by Cusi Cram, adapted from Anna on the Neck and
directed by Shirlana Stokes: November 1 to 10.
The Madman by Ron Fitzgerald, adapted from The Diary of a Violent
Madman and directed by Peter Campbell: November 1 to 10.
The Enemies adapted and directed by Alla Kigel: November 4 to 19.
7
FILM
Iof!Yth adapted and directed by Lise Liepmann: November 4 to 18.
Three Sisters directed by Steven McElroy, presented by the New
Ensemble Theatre Company: November 4 to 19.
Hello, Meatman adapted by Leah Ryan from Murder and directed by
Tim Moore: November 4 to 18.
The Foulest of Creatures adapted and directed by David Gochfeld:
November 10 to 19.
To Kill Charlotte adapted and directed by Slava Stepnova from Ivanov
and presented by the Steps Theatre: November 14 to 18.
How To Insult Your True Love, an operatic adaptation of The Marriage
Proposal with music and lyrics by Burton Sternthal and book by Susan
Saltiel and Burton Stemthal, directed by Howard Berkowitz:
November 10 to 19.
Time Stands Still by Peter Gothar was shown at The Museum of
Modern Art on October 22 and 27, 2000.
Two Men and a Wardrobe by Roman Polanski was screened at The
Museum of Modem Art on October 24, 2000.
Close(y Watt-hed Trains by Jili Menzel was presented at The Museum of
Modem Art on October 27, 2000.
P.rythedelit Invasion of the Battleship Potemkin into Sergei Eisenstein's
Tautological Halludnations by Alexander Roytburd was shown at the Museum of
Modern Art on November 13 and 14,2000.
The DetYJiogue by Krzysztof Kieslowski was screened at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music's Rose Cinemas from January 19 to February 22,2001.
Knife in the Water by Roman Polanski was presented at Anthology
Film Archives on January 3.
Chapaev by Sergei and Georgi Yassiliev was screened at Anthology
Film Archives on January 6.
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Slavit and East European Performan.-e Vol. 21, No. 1
Andrei Roublev by Andrei Tarkovsky was shown at Anthology Film
Archives on January 6 and 20.
Battleship Potemkin and Alexander Nevsky by Sergei Eisenstein were
presented at Anthology Film Archives on January 15.
S haduws of Our Forgotten Ancestors by Sergei Paradjanov was shown at
Anthology Film Archives on January 27.
Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky was presented at Anthology Film
Archives on January 28.
My Name is Ivan/ Ivan's Childhood by Andrei Tarkovsky was screened at
Anthology Film Archives on January 30.
"Revolution in the Revolution: Soviet Cinema of the 60s," a f.tl.m
festival highlighting a creative period in Soviet film, was presented at the
Walter Reade Theatre of the Film Society of Lincoln Center from November
10 to 30, 2000. The following films were presented:
Monologue by Ilya Averbakh: November 10 and 12.
Brief Encounters by Kira Muratova: November 10 and 11.
When Leaves Fall by Otar Iosseliani: November 10 and 11.
Heat by Larisa Shepitko: November 10 and 14.
Beginning of an Unknown Era by Andrei Smimov and Larisa
Shepitko: November 11 and 12.
I Am Twen(Y by Marlen Khutsiev: November 12 and 14.
The Letter Never Sent by Niikhail Kalatozov: November 15.
The Cranes Are F!Jing by Mikhail Kalatozov: November 15.
Nine Dqys of One Year by Mikhail Romm: November 16 and
18.
S haduws of Forgotten Amutors by Sergei Paradjanov:
November 16 and 18.
9
There Wa.r a Lad by Vasily Shukshin: November 17.
Ivan'.r Childhood (previously released as My Name i.r Ivan) by
Andrei Tarkovsky: November 17 and 18.
A Long and Happy Life by Gennady Shpalikov: November 19
and 20.
Nobocfy Wanted to Die by Vitautas Zalakiavicius: November
19 and 20.
Hamlet by Grigory Kozintsev: November 19 and 23.
The Fir.rt Teacher by Andrei Konchalovsky: November 21 and
23.
Ju!J Rain by Marlen Khutsiev: November 21 and 22.
Piro.rmani by Georgy Shagelaya: November 22.
Sayat Nova by Sergei Paradjanov and We by Artavazd
Peleshyan were presented together on November 23 and 30.
Goodbye Boy.r by Mikhail Kalik: November 23 to 28.
Debut by Gleb Panfilov: November 26 to 29.
No Ford in the Fire by Gleb Panftlov: November 26 and 30.
Trial on the Road by Alexei German: November 29 and 30.
Two conferences were held as part of the festival. "Origins and
Impact of 60s Soviet Cinema," November 11. "The Legacy of the Soviet 60s
for Filmmakers Today" featuring filmmakers Andrei Smimov, Otar Iosselliani,
Marlen Khutsiev, and Kira Muratova, November 12.
The Walter Reade Theatre at Lincoln Center presented "Six Days of
Slovak Cinema," from February 16 to 22. Films shown as part of the festival
included:
Picture.r of the Old World by Dusan Hanak: February 16.
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Slavi, and East European Peiformance Vol. 21, No. 1
Paper Heads by Dusan Hanak: February 16.
The Thousand Year Old Bee by Juraj Jakubisko: February 16 and 18.
The Shop on Main Street by Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos:
February 17 and 22.
The Crucial Years aka The Years of Christ by Juraj Jakubisko:
February 17.
The Birds, Orphans and Madmen by Juraj Jakubisko: February
17 and 18.
Sun in the Net by Stefan Uher: February 18 and 22.
The Assistant by Zoro Zahon: February 19.
Signum Laudis by Martin Holly: February 19.
Wild Lillies aka Lillies of the Field by Elo Havetta: February
21.
Story of Seven Hanging Men by Martin Holly, preceded by
Cameval and Sham an by Ondrey Rudavsky: February 21.
The Museum of Modern Art presented "Slovakia Times Two," The Earth Sings
by Karol Plicka and Landscape by Martin Salik, as part of "Art from the Heart,"
a citywide celebration of Slovak culture, on February 26 and 27.
ARTS, EVENTS, NEWS
New York
The Czech Center New York presented a lecture and audiovisual
presentation by Jarka M. Burian, introducing his new book Modern Czech
Theatre: Rejlet"tor and Conscience of a Nation on February 14.
"Revolution to Disillusionment: Russian Music After Chekhov," a
program featuring work by Tchaikovsky, Scriabin, Gubaidulina, Part, and
Prokofiev, was performed by Alan Moverman and Friends as part of the
Chekhov NOW Festival at the Connelly Theatre on November 12.
The Czech Center New York presented a series of events celebrating
composer Bohuslav Martinu. Included were the following:
11
Bohuslav Martinu and America, a new documentary about
Martinu and the twelve years he spent in the United States,
written by ]iii Nekvasil and Ales Brezina and directed by ]iii
Nekvasil was shown on December 5, 2000.
"The Life and Work of Bohuslav Martinu," a collection of
reproductions of photographs and facsimiles of letters,
drawings, and original scores from the holdings of the
Bohuslav Martinu Institute in Prague, was on view from
December 6, 2001 to January 29, 2001.
Return From Exile, a 1998 documentary on Martinu's life in
Europe, written by Ales Brezina and Jili Nekvasil and
directed Jill Nekvasil was presented on January 9, 2001.
ARTS, EVENTS, NEWS
Regional
V aclav Havel was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws by
the University of :Michigan in a ceremony at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor,
Michigan, on September 11. Havel was present at the ceremony, which was
highlighted by a reading of Havel's letters to his wife during his imprisonment
in the 1980s. The University also established the Vaclav Havel Fellows
Program, which will provide assistance to students in three categories: graduate
or dissertation research in the Czech Republic; graduate students who are
citizens of the Czech Republic, and for dissertation research on topics deemed
to "reflect the life, work, intellectual contributions and spirit of V aclav Havel."
(Michigan Today, Fall2000)
ARTS, EVENTS, NEWS
Europe
"Cinema and Theatre of Andrzej Wajda," an international conference
on the work on Andrzej Wajda in both political and cultural contexts, will be
held at the University of L6dz, Poland from October 25 to 28, 2001.
-Compiled by Kurt Taroff
12
Slavi, and East European Vol. 21, No. 1
BOOKS RECEIVED
Contemporary Slovak Drama 2, eclited and with an introduction by Juraj Sebesta.
Bratislava: Divadelny Ustav (The Theatre Institute), 2000. 149 pages. Contains
English translations of four plays: Tomas Horvath, The Chair, Laco Kerata, On the
Surface; Silvester Lavrik, Katarina; and Jozef Gombar, Hugo Carp, plus a selected
bibliography.
The Emer;genry Gazette. Special Double Issue devoted to Daniil Kharms, ed. by
Matvei Yankelevich. No. 27-28, December 29, 2000. 4 pages. Translations of
works by Kharms and articles about his theatre. The Emergenry Gazette can be
accessed at www.emergencygazette.com
Kolankiewicz, Leszek. Ds;jac!J': Teatr f w i ~ t i!"arlych (Forefathers's Eve: The
Theatre of the Day of the Dead). Gdansk: Slowo/Obraz terytoria), 1999. 585
pages. Includes hundreds of illustrations and photographs, notes, bibliography,
and an index of names.
Kowalewicz, Kazimierz, ed. Meetings with the Odi11 Tea/ret. Anthropology/
Sociology/Theatre Series. L6dz: University of L6dz, Chair of Sociology, 2000.
The International School of Theatre Anthropology (ISTA), May 1998. 132 pages.
Contains eighteen articles, all in English, plus a frontpiece of Eugenio Barba,
nineteen plates, notes on contributors, and an index of names.
Krizhanskaya, Daria, ed. Tealr': Rmsia11 Theatre, Past and Present. Vol. 1. Contains
seven articles in Russian, five in English, and a play by Andrei Amal'rik in
Russian, plus book reviews in Russian and in English, a bibliography in Russian,
notes on contributors, and thirteen detachable photographs. Available from
Charles Schlacks,Jr., Publisher, P.O. Box 1256, Idyllwild, CA 92549-1256.
13
WOJCIECH JERZY HAS
1921-2000
Wojciech Has, one of Poland's most original filmmakers, died on
October 3, 2000 in Lodz at the age of 75 from complications of diabetes.
Throughout a long career lasting more than half a century, he made more than
a dozen feature fllms.
Born in Cracow on April 1, 1925, Has studied painting at the Cracow
Academy of Fine Arts before attending the Cracow Film Institute. After
graduation from the Film Institute in 1946, he worked in Lodz, initially at the
Feature Film Studio (Wytwornia Filmow Fabularnych), where in 1948 he
completed his fust film, Harmo'!Y (Harmonia), writing his own scenario, and
then from 1951 to 1956 at the Educational Film Studio (Wytwornia Filmow
Oswiatowych), making a number of educational ftlms and documentaries,
mainly on industrial and agricultural subjects.
In 1955 Has became a member of the Filmmakers Studio Syrena
(Zespol Autorow Filmowych Syrena) in Warsaw, later joining Iluzjon (Illusion)
where he made his first full-length film, The Noose P ~ t l a ) in 1957. In 1958 Has
became associated with the Camera Studio (Kamera) in Wrodaw. From 1980
to 1988 he was the artistic director for the studio Rondo in Warsaw, and from
1990 to 1996 he was the director of the Lodz Film School, where he had taught
in the department of directing since 1974.
In its externals, Has's career was fairly typical of the postwar
generation of Polish filmmakers. It started with a long apprenticeship (1946-
57) at the state-subsidized and controlled studios of Film Polski (Warsaw,
Wrodaw, and Lodz), making documentaries and shorts according to the
precepts of Stalinist propaganda-and also writing scripts which had to be
officially approved. Into these dreary and schematic exercises it was often
possible to insert some rather tame political and social criticism, especially after
Stalin's death in 1953.
Has's association with the Educational Film Studio in Lodz ended
with the Thaw in 1956. His real debut in full -length feature filmmaking came
in 1958 with The Noose, based on the novel, The First Step in the Clouds, by Marek
Hlasko, a truculent non-conformist writer who would soon emigrate. Unlike
the enthusiastically received early films of Andrzej Wajda, Andrzej Munk, and
Jerzy Kawalerowicz (who had studied with Has at the Cracow Film Institute),
The Noose had a lukewarm reception among critics and fllmgoers. The film
made use of stylized expressionist and surrealist formulas (such as empty one-
way streets) to focus on the protagonist's state of mind leading up to his
suicide.
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Slavic and East Europea11 Petformance Vol. 21, No.1
15
16
S/avit a11d East European Peiformatlt'e VoL 21, No.1
Also in 1958 Has completed his second feature, Farewells
(Pozegnania), a more conventional story that started in the prewar period and
followed a pair of lovers through the turmoil of the postwar years, which was
better received. But Has's next three films proved disappointments. The
Shared Room (Wsp6lny pok6j) (1959) was a study of the ennui of Bohemian life
in prewar Warsaw, based on Zbigniew Unilowski's 1932 novel (which Tadeusz
Kantor would use as a major source for Let the Artists Die in 1980). Separation
(Rozstanie) and Gold (Zloto) dealt with contemporary reality.
How to be Loved 0 ak bye kochan:t, 1963) finally brought Has
recognition both at home and abroad, winning a prize at the San Francisco
Film Festival. But it was his next feature, The Saragossa Manuscript (1964), that
became something of a cult film and made Has's reputation as a major director
with a fantastic baroque imagination and a dazzling cinematographic palette.
Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead paid to have the English language version of
The Saragossa Manuscript restored to its original three-hour length, and Luis
Buiiuel apparently found the film's ambivalent mixture of illusion and reality
an inspiration for his own Belle de Jour (1966). Has based his film on a
masterpiece of early nineteenth-century gothic fiction, The Manuscript Found in
Saragossa, written in French by the Polish traveler and ethnographer Count Jan
Potocki.
His next two ftlms-Codes (Szyfry, 1966) and The Doll (Lalka, 1968)-
were not on the same level of mythopoetic creativity, although the latter was a
very stylish adaptation of Boleslaw Pros's panoramic novel about life and love
in nineteenth-century Warsaw. It was not almost until ten years after The
Saragossa Manumipt that Has found another source sufficiently bizarre to stir
his cinematographic imagination. This was The Sanatorium Under the Sign of the
Hourglass (Sanatorium pod klepsydr:t, 1973), based on the stories of Bruno
Schulz about the demiurgical father and his fantastic tailor shop in Drohobycz.
The film won a prize at Cannes, but it was followed by a ten-year hiatus. Has
produced nothing new until 1983, and the fJ..!ms from the last decade of his
creative life added little to the reputation that he had already earned.
Has was a highly idiosyncratic filmmaker and also a very literary one.
He relied heavily on literature. Thirteen of his fourteen feature films are
adaptations of literary texts. "In transferring a literary work to the screen we
make some changes without touching the work itself. It is not destroyed. The
literary work endures in unchanged form," Has declared. "In my opinion fJ..!m
grows out of literature and music. Certainly my cinema does." Leading Polish
composers, such as Tadeusz Baird, Lucjan Kaszycki, and Krzysztof
Penderecki, have written music for his films. Moreover, Has has a painterly
imagination and his films are intensely visual.
Has is unlike most of his peers in that he has never tackled the prime
subject of Polish cinema: national history. His fllms deal rather with existential
17
THOUGHTS OF A DIRECTOR:
THE WINTER'S TALE
Slobodan Unkovski
For almost thirty years now I have been working in the theatre, and I
keep asking myself a simple question: Where do my performances begin?
Numerous times I've had a stomachache as I went to the first rehearsal and
tried to seduce the actors, technicians, and other staff members to want to do
what I wanted. For thirty years I've been asking myself whether I should
continue to practice my primary profession as theatre director. And for thirty
years, after each premiere, as I leave the theatre, I leave a part of myself behind
in what I've put on stage. It may sound pathetic and even old-fashioned, but
unfortunately, or perhaps happily, that's the way it is.
I've always thought that other directors in different places find it
easier and simpler. It must be so. I once attended one of Ingmar Bergman's
rehearsals at the Royal Dramatten Theatre in Stockholm. In the half-empty
hall, he was sitting at an improvised desk at the rear, in his well-known
windbreaker jacket with a familiar expression on his face.
I've worked on productions in the Macedonian language, which is my
mother tongue; in Serbian, which I speak fluendy; in Slovenian, which I
understand most of the time, but don't speak; in Russian, which I understand a
litde, but don' t speak; and in Flemish, of which I don' t understand a single
word, let alone speak! I've worked with actors whose native languages were
Swedish, Italian, Spanish, and English. When I was working on Peer Gynt at the
Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, I underlined all the words that were unknown to me in the
English translation, and there were more than two thousand.
How is it then possible for someone who knows my way of thinking
and my approach to immediately recognize my productions? Where do these
productions have their origin?
Was the beginning located in my first thought when Bob Brustein at
A.R.T. asked me to direct The Winter's Tale? "That's boring," I thought,
because I had proposed a production based on Alan Lightman's novel,
Einstein's Dreams. Or was the beginning when I had the idea that I'd like to
create a trilogy based on Moliere's plays, starting with The Misanthrope, where
Celimene's feminine principle could be my optics for this text?
At the end of the 1980s, I had an interview with Richard Riddell,
head of the School. He asked me what method I used in my work in the
theatre. I didn't get the question. He suggested several options: Grotowski,
Stanislawsky, etc.; "Unkovski," I added. He looked at my visiting card to see
whether it was me. "My very own method," I explained.
20
Slavic and East E11ropean Peiformance Vol. 21, No.1
During the last theatre season, from September 1999 until May 2000,
I staged three plays at A.R.T. in Cambridge: Patrick Marber's Closer, Moliere's
Misanthrope, and Shakespeare's Winter's Tale. All of them focus on different
aspects of the relations between the sexes, the meaning of these relationships,
and the meaning of life itself. In Closer I discovered the dynamics of extremes
and the revelation of London's nakedness in the late 1990s, in The Misanthrope I
found a completely fake world with a strict code of conduct, which perfectly
suited the French audience at the time of its composition. As for The Winter's
Tale, when I first explained what was about to happen in my production, I only
knew that on one hand we would have the cold, severe, black-and-white world
of Sicily, and on the other, there would be the colors, warmth, plentiful time,
passion, happiness, and music in Bohemia. Of course, the images of Bohemia
only came after I had decided that I actually did not want to have Bohemia in
my production at all. Not only because of Shakespeare's famous error in giving
Bohemia a seacoast, but also because Bohemia really doesn't have any meaning
as a location. It doesn't work for the playwright or for me.
Eventually, the play began in black-and-white Sicily, with black
costumes and sharp shadows, pale faces and a very long scene, which lasted
about an hour and twenty minutes. After that, Time lifted the shiny black
castle of King Leontes, and Bohemia appears, voraciously covering the black
with a huge patchwork, made of many pieces of vivid red, with many cushions
and openings, so that the characters could dance under the patchwork. In the
fifth act, the two colors, the two realities were joined. Perdita and Florizal
brought the colors of Bohemia into the cold and solitude of Sicily, and the two
worlds were naturally united.
Sicily wasn't a problem, although I did not conceive it as the Sicily we
know from tourist guides or colored post-cards. It's rather the Sicily of King
Leontes, and similar to him in many ways: convulsed, suspicious, cold and
abrupt. Dangerous, I would say, a country in the grips of a dictatorship.
Bohemia had to be a contrast to Sicily. What is Bohemia? I looked at the
Mediterranean map, and asked myself: What country could be my Bohemia, if
Bohemia was to be what I imagined?
I kept asking myself: On which coast does Antigonus leave the basket
with the baby, thereby giving the child its name, Perdita? I decided that
Tunisia, Morocco, and North Africa would be my Bohemia. After this choice
was made, everything became easy: the colors, the music, and the costumes
must all be very different from my black-and-white Sicily. Excellent, Bohemia
had been solved. There was only one more problem with Bohemia.
Shakespeare's famous stage direction reads: "Exit pursued by a bear." (III. iii) I
21
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Sicily: The Winter's Tale directed by Slobodan Unkovski
at the American Repertory Theatre
didn't check and see whether there were any bears in North Africa; I already
knew the answer.
The rehearsals were planned to begin in April 2000. In January I
came with my scenographer, Meta Hocevar and spent two weeks in Cambridge
preparing for the project. On my way to meet with the Artistic Director I got
ready for all the questions I imagined that he would ask me: What would I do
with the festival? And what about that bear? How was I going
to escape from the legendary trap posed by Act IV (set in Bohemia)? And
perhaps the hardest question of all to answer: How would I stage the
allegorical figure of Time?
Yes, in addition to Bohemia, the festival, and the bear,
I was faced with the problem of Time, who as a chorus, makes only one
appearance in order to bridge over a hiatus of sixteen years. In my country,
Macedonia, there are lots of sheep, but in Cambridge, I don't remember ever
seeing one. Where does this interest in sheep in the vicinity of Harvard, MIT,
and dozens of other universities in the area come from?
Everything else looked very easy. The contrast between Bohemia
(North Africa) and Sicily was clear: In Bohemia there would be two ridiculous
shepherds, a beautiful lost princess, a prince in love, a threatening father
(Polixenes), and a rogue, (Autolycus). That meant that in Bohemia almost
everything was settled. Sicily was much more difficult. At least that's what I
thought then.
A superb young man from England, Gideon Lester, was my
dramaturg for The Winter's Tale. He was much more than a dramaturg. Without
him the production would have been something completely different. We
agreed that we had to make the first three acts in Sicily follow an almost
Aristotelian logic, seeming to be one day long, without any or
interruptions. I told him that this first part of the production should be a
family drama with mounting tragic intensity, as if we were playing Strindberg.
He made the necessary cuts and sent them to me by
I told him that Bohemia was easy for me, but that I didn't know
what to do with Sicily. Gideon, on the contrary, said that Bohemia was really
the problem. He was right.
Whenever I get a new text or scenario I have to work on, I always
want to have a personal timing of the reading. My first contact with the text is
very important; I sometimes read it the same day, sometimes a few days later,
depending on how prepared I am. I usually play with different statistics,
similarly to what my Cathy Zuber, does with her assistants.
I open my workbook and write down where each character appears, whether
he or she speaks, and when the characters are present even if they do not
speak.
23
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Bohemia: The Winter's Tale directed by Slobodan Unkovski
at the .\merican Repertory Theatre
Once again I returned to Bohemia and looked at the statistics. There
were twenty-seven short scenes, all in act IV. This meant that following the
single, unified, emotionally charged, and predominantly tragic story line that
took place in Sicily, we now have to move into Bohemia with completely new
characters, an entirely different tone suited to a pastoral or comedy, emphasize
love instead of hatred, and have colors replace a black-and-white world. And
yet, the first scene in that beautiful place opens with a bear tearing apart poor
Antigonus in front of two cheerful shepherds. I found myself, alongside the
skeletons of many other directors, at the bottom of the well-known trap called
The Winter's Tale, looking up toward the opening where the bear, the sheep,
and the cheerful shepherds were laughing happily.
I even began to dream about that stupid, disgusting bear. I
envisioned one of the unlucky students at the Institute struggling with a huge,
loose-fitting costume made of fake brown fur, stumbling on the stage in front
of the whole audience, his costume tearing apart and his naked body popping
out. This image kept getting mixed up with my first memories of role-playing
and pretending at a carnival, when I was seven or eight: I wore a one-piece cat
costume, with false mustaches and a mask covering my eyes. I remember this
as one of my first moments of total freedom.
Robert Brustein, the Artistic Director of A.R.T., wrote in the
program for the production: "The Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's
strangest and most intriguing plays." I would add: a play with a strange split
that contradicts the need of a production to have cohesion. Everything seemed
so familiar in this text, as if scenes from Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night 's
Dream, Othello were repeating, as if Shakespeare felt the need to write some of
his plays again at a mature age. Yet, in a way, it seemed that each part works
against the others. Strange.
Next I had to figure out the problem of Time. What were we going
to do about Time? Between the third and the fourth acts Time announces that
at least sixteen years have passed.
I asked my friend Brian Schwartz, a professor of physics at the
CUNY Graduate Center, about how to represent Time. He told me about a
project at MIT where a group of professors set out to construct a clock. It had
the shape of a long glass tube containing different kinds of liquids with
different permeability and specific weight. Metal balls cruised through the tube,
indicating the time. I liked that image very much.
Then I talked about my concept of A Winter's Tale and all my
dilemmas with my present and former students at the Faculty for Dramatic
Arts, Skopje University, in Macedonia. They comforted me. "You'll surely
think of something," they said. 'You still have time." Gideon and I agreed that
25
the intermission would not come at the end of the act, but when Antigonus
first sees the ferocious bear. Tills decision was the beginning of the end of the
nightmare. The pieces slowly began to fall into place: we realized that the bear
must serve as a transition between the tragedy and the pastoral, that is, the
comedy in Bohernia. That meant that in the beginning, the bear should seem
dangerous but then become funny.
However, if there are no more bears in North Africa, the question
now was: What should our frightening and at the same time comic bear look
like? A Polar Bear? Yes, we decided on a white Polar Bear. And then I
thought: What if we add more bears to emphasize that this is where the
intermission comes? Brustein grew desperate; but he still agreed we could add
the extra bears.
Finally, this is how the bear scene appeared at the premiere. After his
gentle sohloquy with the baby, Antigonus hears the horrifying roar of a bear.
He is terrified and looks all around. A funny lirtle bear, a very sweet lirtle
white bear, appears and wants to be cuddled. After a moment's hesitation,
Antigonus goes over to the little bear and pets it. Then, a horrible roar is
heard again, and an enormous bear, about seven feet tall, enters and begins to
charge at Antigonus, who tries to run away. Here the audience was laughing,
but at the same time, every one was afraid for Antigonus's life. Time, who
dictated the timing of the play, said "Stop," and, in fact everything stops. That
created a freeze frame.
Intermission.
In the second half of the performance, we began again with the
appearance of the small bear, and we played the scene once again until the
Time said "Stop." This time, Antigonus successfully ran away from the big
second bear and reached the other side of the stage. He stood still, frightened,
and then the bear chasing him also stopped running and they both looked at
each other with a puzzled expression. Then, another bear appeared, a third
huge one, and started to chase everyone offstage. The audience was laughing
and completely relaxed; the scene was comic and not frightening because it
was clear that such a big bear does not actually exist. Then the bear was left
alone on stage, some sort of Arabian music is heard, and the bear started to
dance, shifting from one leg to the other. Finally the bear fell on its stomach,
and broke in two like a Russian babushka. From the lower half, the audience
could now see the head and bare shoulders of one actor, who was trying to
find the quickest way to get off stage. The head of the bear, attached to its
shoulders and arms, looked like an enormous dress, under which the other
actor's two legs, exposed up to the knees, were running from the stage. The
comedy/ pastoral could begin.
In the summer of 1999, when I already had the information about all
three productions, the rehearsal schedules and dates of the premieres, I set up
26 Slavic and East European Peiformante Vol. 21, No.1
three large notebooks, one for each play, so that I could write down my ideas.
Even though I use a computer for everything else I do, I love to write down
by hand the stages of the development of the performance text (except for the
above-mentioned statistics), so that I can always, without too much thought,
draw something, write in different colors, etc. Tbis way I make my creative
work completely different from all my other duties.
From A.R.T., Gideon sent several essays that were extremely useful
to me in understanding previous interpretations of The Winters Tale, but
gradually all of my thoughts, instincts, and energy became directed towards the
tragic position of Hermione. One of the most important questions was the
reconciliation at the end of the play. How can there be forgiveness,
reconciliation, and reunion after so many innocent victims, destroyed lives, and
lost time? This viewpoint became the most controversial one in the final
version of the production, and provoked strong reactions from the critics and
members of the audience.
Benjamin Evett played Time. He participated week after week in
many rehearsals, once we even shortened the version of his speech, but we
couldn't solve the problem of how to portray Time. Just when we were both
starting to get really worried whether we were going to succeed in situating
Time in our production, I heard about the clock that had been created at MIT.
We came up with the idea that our personification of Time should hold
something similar to this clock: from the property shop we ordered a thin
plastic bat with a light inside and with sand that could flow, as in an hourglass.
We wanted it to have laser lights at both ends, which could discharge glowing
sparks, as Time directed the proceedings. But since laser lights proved to be
too complicated and even dangerous, we decided instead to use police
flashlights, which served the purpose equally well. Ben kept coming to the
rehearsals, entering into the action at different points, according to my
instructions, but also following his own feelings. He dictated the rhythm of the
performance and conducted the action, becoming, as it were, the spirit of
Shakespeare himself.
Toward the end of Act Five, Pauline pushed in Hermione's statue in
front of the bewildered Leontes, his newly found daughter Perdita, Polixenes,
Florizal, and the others. Then, Time waved his magic wand over the statue,
and the queen started to wake up. When I staged this scene and when we
played it for the first time, everyone in the rehearsal room cried. Exactly as
Gideon promised: "even in the worst production of The Winters Tale, the
audience always cries in this scene." Afterwards, Hermione looked around, not
recognizing anyone she knew si..xteen years ago, but somehow, recognizing her
lost daughter, whom she had never seen before. She went over to her and
touched her. Everyone grew very excited. Following Shakespeare's text, at this
27
point Leontes led Hermione off stage, because "they have a lot to talk about."
It was as if nothing had happened, as if their little son had not died because of
Leontes's refusal to fulfill Apollo's wish, as if his daughter had not been
sentenced to death by him and left as a baby on an unknown shore, as if
Hermione had not spent sixteen years as a statue--either dead, or catatonic-
and finally, as if all of Sicily had not been plunged into total chaos and
experienced tragic emotions throughout this period.
As Leontes led Hermione out, Perdita was left overwhelmed with
emotions after seeing her mother for the first time. Hermione slowly slipped
out of Leontes's hands, while he tightly gripped her long glove and kept on
walking, leaving without noticing that Hermione has remained on stage. Then
a sound of singing was heard onstage. But Hermione is the only one who
heard it, trying in vain to discover its source. Slowly, the shadow of a child
appeared upstage; probably the late young prince Mamillius, singing the song
he sang at the beginning of the play. Hermione follows him and tries to reach
him.
Black-out.
I think it was the critic for the Boston Globe who wrote that there is no
reconciliation in my play, because I come from the Balkans, and I am
burdened by local wars, tribal hatred and other Balkan specialties. Does this
mean that because I come from Macedonia, or what has been called for the
past few centuries, the powder keg of the Balkans, I cannot have a personal
attitude towards what Shakespeare offers at the end of The Winter's Tale? An
attitude that is not based on religious, political or family views, but on a clear
analysis of what has happened. Do I necessarily employ a feminist attitude if I
support Hermione- when I also show the same support for all the other
characters in the play? Why does one always have to learn something from a
tragedy? Why can't we stage a comedy that does not have a happy ending?
Must everything be transformed at the last minute into something positive?
Leontes is a tragic character, similar to Oedipus. Why shouldn' t we leave some
space for Leontes to go to his "Colonus," bearing his pain across the
mountains? How has he repented his mistake? With repentance itself? I am not
sure if this is enough today. Indulgences are not sold any more on the steps of
churches, and our lives are only here and only now.
The people at A.R.T. recognized after the first few run-throughs that
they had an out-of-the-ordinary performance on their stage, and I got
maJc.imum support from all the actors, technical staff, and from the spectators
who filled A.R.T.'s auditorium to the last seat.
28
(Edited version of a talk given at the Ph.D. Program in Theatre, Graduate
School, City University of New York on December 15, 2000)
Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 21, No.1
TO BE WHAT YOU ARE: STAGING CONTEMPORARY
EAST-EUROPEAN DRAMA IN CANADA
Yana Meerzon
I feel we have to believe in something,
or we have to try to believe, or our life
is empty ... empty ... To live and not
know why the cranes are flying, why
children are born, why there are stars
in the sky; I either know who I am and
what I'm living for, or it's all just a
meaningless flim-flam.
Anton Chekhov. The Three Sisters
1
Masha's words, cited in the epigraph, are the opening words in
Silvija JestroviC's play, Happiness Channel (1999). Sonya, a former famous
Serbian actress, auditions with this monologue for a production of the Three
Sisters that is being staged in Toronto. These words can serve as a motto for
anyone from Eastern Europe struggling to adapt to life in Canada.
Around this theme, I offer an analysis of two recent Canadian
productions of two contemporary East European plays written by women
playwrights. Silvija JestroviC's Happiness Channel (1999), written in English
and developed at the Tarragon Theatre's playwriting workshop, where it
was also first publicly read, was the highlight of Toronto's 2000 Fringe
Festival.
2
Daniela Fischerova's Princess T. (1987), originally written in Czech,
was produced for the first time in English at the University of Toronto in
1999.3
I worked with the director Dragana Varagic as the dramaturg for
both productions in which we made use of dramatic genre, stage space and
rhythm to adapt these politically engaged texts for the Canadian stage.
Daniela Fischerova's Primus T., (1987), an adaptation of Carlo
Gozzi's fairy-tale Princess Turandot, was originally written for Czech audiences
to comment on the Communist regime. In her adaptation, Fischerova
employs the general structure and elements of a fairy tale, creating a
narrative "about the fortunes and misfortunes of a hero or heroine, who,
having experienced various adventures of a more or less supernatural kind,
lives happily ever In Fischerova's Princess T., as in Gozzi's Princess
Turnadot, we find a cruel princess, her father-the Old Emperor- and her
suitor, the Kalif, who must undergo several tests in order to win the
29
Princess. However, in contrast to Gozzi's fable or the traditional fairy tale,
Fischerova's Kalif is not a romantic character willing to risk his life for love.
Rather, he plays the game only for political purposes. As a foreigner residing
abroad, he has a clear plan to become the emperor. He agrees to marry the
Old Emperor's not so young or attractive daughter in order to get the
throne. Even though the Kalif also has a noble goal of avenging his own
father's death and freeing his nation, which the Old Emperor had
conquered many years ago, his primary aim is to seize the imperial crown
and to establish his new regime. Thus, Fischerova's text stresses the
persistence of power. In this case, the victory of a younger force over an
older means the vicious circle of totalitarianism remains closed, a timely
theme for Czechoslovakia in the 1980s. This made the play highly political
and impossible to stage in Prague in 1987.
The other important structural element of the fairy tale is wish
fulfillment. At the end of the play, each character seemingly gets what he
or she wants--either the image or the reality of power. The Old Emperor
marries off his daughter to the Kalif to legalize imperial rule; the Kalif
obtains the Princess and a guarantee of the throne; and Princess T. is going
to become Queen. However, the true outcome is different from the
apparent one: the Old Emperor in fact loses his power, Kalif "wins" a
dangerous rival-his new wife, and Princess T., against all odds, falls in love
with her fiance much more than with the option of ruling. In other words,
the characters' wishes are truly granted only to those who undergo a major
transformation. The only character in the play who acquires something
completely different from what she was seeking is Princess T., as she is the
only character who goes through a major transformation. She falls in love
and opens up as a woman. In this context the dramatic emphasis falls upon
the individualistic aspirations of the characters instead of on their political
goals.
Consequently, as producers of Princess T., we chose to emphasize
not the political aspects of the play, but its genre and private conflict. The
stage version focused on the heroine and on her search for self-identity.
This choice reflected similar patterns in contemporary Canadian theatre,
which tends to emphasize the private side of political or social issues.
The same approach guided us in our work on Silvija JestroviC's
Happiness ChanneL Here we also started with the play's genre. Even though
stylistically this drama is not a fairy tale, the text plays with the idea of wish
fulfillment. By the end of the play, as in a Christmas story, all six characters
gain something, even though it is not what they were initially dreaming of, a
"prize" for being brave and surviving.
30
S Ia vi, and East European Performana Vol. 21, No. 1
King ;\ltoum announcing the arrival
of a new suitor for Princess Turandot
Primus T. directed by Dragana Varagic
.......
(<)
Sonya, a former famous Serbian actress, struggles in Canada to find a job in
the theatre. Nena, a gifted photographer from Belgrade, is a waitress in one
of Toronto's bars. She meets a Canadian homosexual, David, whom she
pays to marry her in order to be eligible for Canadian citizenship. Lela, an
ambassador's daughter, earns money by performing in a peep show. The
three immigrant women, like Chekhov's "three sisters," seek for self-
identity, love and happiness in the New World. Unlike the three sisters in
Chekhov's play, however, JestroviC's characters have already reached their
"Moscow." The only acting job that Sonya gets in eight years in Canada is
as an alien princess in a commercial. She comments on her job: "I acquire a
new language, I'm adapting, I'm changing, I fall in love. I become
somebody new, somebody different."
The final outcome for all the characters is unexpected. Instead of
getting the part of Masha in Chekhov's Three Sisters, for which Sonya has
been constantly and unsuccessfully auditioning, she gets pregnant. Nena,
who was looking for an ideal husband, gets big contracts as a photographer
from all over North America. Lela, the pragmatic striptease star, falls in
love with a person who calls himself "a junky, a loser, and a con artist."
Again, as with Princess T , our production of Happiness Channel
attempted to look at the conflict less from the public angle than a private
one, viewing the problem of immigration as a matter of simple survival
from moment to moment.
A fairy tale can have both tragic and comic dimensions. In our
production, we emphasized the tragic resonance of Fischerov:i's Princess T.
The stage-space and the characters' rhythmical patterns were designed to
convey an atmosphere of mistrust and fear.
One of the major characteristics of the play is its employment of
an imaginary dramatic locale, the rigidly hierarchical world of the imperial
palace that instills fear in its dwellers. The play is full of sounds and
movements that create suspense, and the stage directions suggest that the
set design should incorporate the motion of rustling curtains.
Unfortunately, due to financial and technical problems we could not follow
the playwright' s suggestion. Instead, the set designer Anjelija Djuric opted
for a white wooden box, with transparent sides that opened. In this way,
the uncertainty of the characters' relations to each other was represented by
unexpected use of the different stage-spaces. For instance, when one side
of the box was open, the space represented the Kalifs cell, and in the
following scene, the same space became the Old Emperor's spot for
eavesdropping. By the end of the performance, all the stage spaces were
intermingled, thus destroying the hierarchy of the characters, and of the
palace, hence, of the theatrical space itself. During the performance, the
box remained either fully or half-open, changing its focus and dramatic
32
Slavic and East E11ropea11 Peiformance Vol. 21, No. 1
locations, but at the end, as with a fair-booth of the medieval puppet-
shows, it took in all the characters-good and evil-and closed up.
This intentional confusion of theatrical space also expressed the
intertextual relationship between Fischerova's play based on Gozzi's fable,
which in turn is itself derived from several tales in A Thousand and One
Nights about a cruel princess and her suitor. In addition, in Fischerova's
play, as in Gozzi's, the fairy tale unfolds with the help of Clowns or Zanni,
who control and lead the development of the story. The clowns' role and
their Commedia dell'Arte costumes were significant in the production.
Accordingly, the image of the opening and closing box also represented a
directorial concept that captured the disturbing mixture of danger and
playfulness, which are idiosyncrasies not only of totalitarian cultures, but
also of democratic ones.
The same directorial device-the confusion of theatrical space-
was used in the staging of Silvija J estroviC's Happiness ChanneL Again, due to
financial and technical problems, we were not able to follow the author's
stage directions and build a multi-level stage-construction, which could
have represented public and private spaces-the apartments of three girls in
Toronto, the room of their old friend Sasha in New York, the peep-show
booth, and the airport. Instead, Anjelija Djuric, who designed both
productions, created a highly formalistic set consisting primarily of
theatrical components-a cloth-rack, an old trunk, and chairs. Moving
those elements from place to place signified the change of dramatic locale.
The formalistic set-design necessitated utilization of ''Brechtian devices"
both in the directing and in the acting. For example, all transitions, changes
of costumes, and re-arrangement of furniture were performed in front of
the eyes of spectators, in full lights, with music in the background, and
ending in freeze moments which created the image of snapshots.
The ideas of the priority of private interests over public ones, and
the flow of life that overcomes singular events-even major ones such as
immigration-were conveyed through these stylistic solutions. For
example, the play's epilogue depicts an actual historical event-the
bombing of Belgrade in the spring of 1999. However, we don't see this
event on stage, but rather we witness Sonya, Nena, Lela, and David in front
of the huge television screen watching the news. We then see them sitting
on chairs looking through the empty cloth-rack directly at the audience,
which is informed about the fate of the characters bit by bit from short
monologues that each of them deliver in the form ofletters.
In the text of JestroviC's Happiness Channel, Sasha's sarcastic letter
ends by saying "liars and manipulators are everywhere." In relation to the
event of bombing Belgrade, the obvious directorial solution for this text
would seem to be to emphasize its political implications. However, in our
33
staging of the final scene, Sonya turns off the television after she recognizes
her "Jupiter Chocolate Bars" commercial following the news from
Belgrade. She then crosses the "border-line" of the doth-rack-turned-
television, as if inviting the rest of the characters and audience to meet and
think together. The play ends with Sonya's absurd line, "Besides, I do not
eat fish," giving the performance an open-ended conclusion.
The theatrical use of rhythm is the other directorial device we
employed in both our productions to enhance the individualistic nature of
plays. In Fischerova's Princess T the change of rhythmical attributes of the
characters and the change of rhythmical sequences between the scenes
created an atmosphere of fear. For example, the entire rhythmical structure
of the performance was designed to create the image of a broken record-
music starts at a normal pace, then it skips and becomes faster, then skips
again and runs until the tape breaks off together with the story. Moreover,
an individual rhythmical scheme was developed for each character-the
more dangerous the situation became, the more disharmonic, tense, and
rough the intonations and tempo of the actors' speeches, movements and
gestures grew.
In Happiness Channel, the rhythmical structure was dictated, as in
Chekhov's dramas, by the text itself, by the configuration of the words on
the page. All the dramatic elements-the general flow of time, the
individual qualifications of each character, and the comic slant of the
events-were conveyed not only through the unique rhythmical patterns
designed for each particular moment, but also through the rhythmical
design of the entire action.
For example, the use of accent was one of the most serious
problems encountered during the rehearsals of the play, when we were
looking for the rhythmical patterns for each character. The playwright's
remark that the "girls talk with a strong Slavic accent" put the majority of
our Canadian cast in a state of confusion. The actors felt they were forced
to use artificial accents, which blocked their ability to listen to the text and
its intonations, and to follow its musical score. Intentional focus on Slavic
accents could narrow the focus of the play to the problems of immigration.
Therefore the director, Dragana Varagic , asked the actors not to use Slavic
accents. In Happiness Channel our search for the true rhythmical
representation of the characters was very closely linked to our effort to
keep from politicizing the play, in order to stress its broader human appeal.
The dialogue and the dramatic dynamics were constructed on the interplay
of inner rhythms and not on different accents.
34
Slavic and East European Peiformaltt"e Vol. 21, No. 1
35
Ultimately, it was almost impossible to distinguish between what was East-
European and what was Canadian in these two productions-so completely
had. we integrated the alien and the native elements. Who in fact were those
productions intended for? In our audiences, there are new immigrants as
well as immigrants who carne to Canada many years ago, and also people
who were bom in this country. Our productions are addressed to those
who struggle in order to achieve their individualistic ideals and live their
private lives. The two performances addressed in an artistically unusual way
simple yet fundamental questions of identity-hope, trust, and love.
Although both Happiness Channel and Pn'mus T deal with political
and national problems such as totalitarianism and immigration, within the
Canadian context our productions revealed a core of meaning that was
intimate, private, and individual: the possibility of accepting oneself as one
is at the present moment.
NOTES
I Anton Chekhov, The Three Sisters, trans. Lanford Wilson, (New York: SK Lyme,
1994), 35.
2 Happimss Channel, by Silvija J estrovic was presented by April Productions in
conjunction with The Toronto Fringe Festival, July 6-15,2000. The stage version was
written by Yana Meerzon and Dragana Varagic; directed by Dragana Vagaric; set and
costume design by Anjelija Djuric; lighting design by Terri Carrier-Park; original music
and sound design by Dragoslav Tanaskovic.
Silvija Jestrovic is a playwright and dramaturg from Belgrade. Her recent
works Happimss Channel and Noah's Ark 74 7 have been performed at various festivals in
Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. Her plays staged in Yugoslavia include Cabot# New
Europe (BITEF Theatre), This Dance is For the Ladies (SKC Theatre), as well as several
radio plays produced by Radio Belgrade Drama Program. Her TV specials and
documentaries on theatre appeared on The Independent Art Channel (Belgrade) and on
the Third Channel of Television Serbia. Her articles on theatre have been published in
the Canadian Thea/" Rel!iew; Bot!J, Space, Technology-Thea/" Journal, and LUDUS
(Belgrade). Silvija now lives in Toronto.
3 Princess T. by Daniela Fischerova was first published in Czech in 1987. It was
translated into English by Ivana Jilovcova-Fieldova in 1989 and published by the
DILIA Theatre Agency. Tn 1999 a second English adaptation was made by Veronica
Ambros and Lisa Fitzpatrick. This version was presented by the Graduate Center for
Study of Drama and Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of
Toronto, Canada, November 10-14, 1999. It was directed by Dragana Varagic; with set
and costume design by Anjelija Djuric; lighting design by Danielle Couture; sound
design by Sasa Stoikovic; movement by Jennifer Johnson.
36
S lavit' and East European Performance Vol. 21, No. 1
Daniela Fischerova is a Czech playwright. Her first play Hodina me:{j psem a
vlkem (fhc hour between dog and wolf) was produced in 1979 at the Realisticke
Divadlo in Prague. For political reasons her other plays were not produced in Prague
until 2000. In 2000 the National Theatre in Prague produced her last play Firebird. She
is also famou$ for her radio plays and children's literature. Her book Fingers Pointing
Somewhere EIJe was recently translated into English by Neil Bermel. Fischerova currently
l i v ~ in Prague.
~ J .A Cud don, The Penguin Dictionary of uterary Terms and Literary Theory (Penguin Books:
London, 1998), 302.
37
A BRIDGE TO NOWHERE
GESHER-A RUSSIAN THEATRE IN ISRAEL
Bilha Blum
The Russian theatre Gesher (bridge in Hebrew) came to Israel in
October, 1990, but it was not until the summer of 1991 that it achieved a
break-through in its search for both a professional and national identity. By
then, the group had already appeared on several occasions in different
locations throughout the country before packed houses. The audience
consisted almost exclusively of Russian-speaking spectators for whom they
presented collages of various Russian plays and songs. Despite its initial
success, almost a year passed before the group managed to make its grand
entrance into Israeli cultural circles.
That summer, Gesher had staged Stoppard's Rozencrantz and
Guildenstern are Dead and appeared in Tel Aviv under the auspices of the
Habima National Theatre (which itself had Russian origins), which had also
lent them one of its halls-a small circular amphitheatre-mainly used for
experimental performances. The reason it became such a memorable occasion
was that for the first time Hebrew-speaking spectators (including theatre
reviewers) were officially invited to attend the performances along with the
regular Russian audience, mostly new immigrants in Israel, who were already
familiar with the group's work and loved it. The play was performed in
Russian and simultaneously translated into Hebrew.
Despite the language barrier, the reaction of the Israeli spectators was
one of sheer admiration. Almost overnight, the Gesher theatre group was
perceived as one of the leading theatres in Israel. The superlatives used to
describe its work were strong and clear. The shared opinion of most reviewers
was that the performance was "brilliant," "professional," and "original."
1
One
of them went as far as saying that the performance "deeply touched me,
leaving me in a kind of shock."
2
Beside the creative stage design, basically a
"cantilevered catwalk carpeted in green," and the impressive acting, what really
struck most reviewers was the high spirits and pronounced artistic enthusiasm
shared by the whole cast and automatically transmitted to the audience.
Apparently, it constituted a big change compared to the somewhat commercial
professionalism of the Israeli public theatre. The success was so overwhelming
that the theatre decided to produce the play again, this time in Hebrew, and in
1993 it appeared on the stage once again. The performance took place in a
warehouse in old J affa, which served as the group's auditorium from 1993
until it was granted a regular theatre by the Tel Aviv municipality in 1998.
38
Slavic a11d East Europea11 Petjorma11ce Vol. 21, No. 1
Rozmcrantz and Guildemtem are Dead
ctirected by Y evgeny Arye at the Gesher 1beatre, 1991
39
After the summer of 1991, Gesher, albeit still a Russian theatre, was
considered a full and privileged member of the Israeli theatre community,
often regarded as one of the best. As a result of its newly acquired status, two
very important changes took place that affected the theatre's activities, one
internal, one external. First, it was decided that almost all of the theatre's
future productions would be performed in Hebrew, making the average
Hebrew speaking I sraeli citizen its target spectator, and, second, the
government agreed to contribute to its budget on a regular basis. That is,
Gesher was officially nominated as an Israeli public theatre, joining the other
six Israeli theatres, which benefit from partial governmental funding and
compete in trying to attract the Israeli public. Eventually though, both changes
would prove to be insufficient to turn Gesher into a genuinely Israeli theatre,
partly because a third decision, implicit in its artistic work, had already been
taken: the theatre wished to avoid assimilation.3
The founders' original aim was to establish a Russian theatre in Israel.
The idea was both conceived and carried out almost single-handedly by
Yevgeny Arye, the sole stage director the group has worked with since its
Arye, who was born in Russia in 1947, claims to have dreamed
of becoming a theatre director since the age of fourteen. Before moving to
Israel, he had already staged numerous plays in various important theatres in
Russia, such as the Maly Drama Theatre, the Bolshoi in St. Petersburg, and the
Ermolova Theatre in Moscow. Some of his main productions there were
Aleksandr Gelman's The Bench, Ronald Harwood's The Dresser, and also
Rozemrantz and Gui/denstem ore Dead. On the basis of his charismatic personality
and reputation as an outstanding artist, fifteen actors, actresses, and designers
agreed to come with him.
As Arye has often stated in various interviews, his reasons for
leaving Russia were mainly artistic. The hardship caused by the unstable social
and political situation in Russia in the late 1980s had a negative impact on his
creative abilities, and he felt that the theatre in Russia had lost its former
significance and been relegated to a secondary place. He hoped that in Israel
the general atmosphere would be more conducive to his artistic goals.s
Beyond the question of national identity, launching a RuJsian theatre
in Israel in 1990 was not an unreasonable idea. Following Gorbachev's policy
of "glasnost," about half a million Russian-speaking immigrants had arrived in
Israel by then, and a similar number was still expected to come. Naturally, at
the very beginning, these Russian newcomers automatically became Gesher's
main source of potential spectators. As most of them did not speak Hebrew,
they felt culturally alienated and were eager to take artistic nourishment
wherever they could find it. Under the circumstances, they gratefully received
whatever Gesher had to offer. Moreover, because of the reputation of Arye
and his theatre, with which the Russian immigrants were certainly acquainted,
40
S/avi, and East European Performance Vol. 21, No. 1
Rlizmcrantz and Guildmstem are Dead
directed by Yevgeny Arye at the Gesher Theatre, 1991
39
After the summer of 1991, Gesher, albeit still a Russian theatre, was
considered a full and privileged member of the Israeli theatre community,
often regarded as one of the best. As a result of its newly acquired status, two
very important changes took place that affected the theatre's activities, one
internal, one external. First, it was decided that almost all of the theatre's
future productions would be performed in Hebrew, making the average
Hebrew speaking Israeli citizen its target spectator, and, second, the
government agreed to contribute to its budget on a regular basis. That is,
Gesher was officially nominated as an Israeli public theatre, joining the other
six Israeli theatres, which benefit from partial governmental funding and
compete in trying to attract the Israeli public. Eventually though, both changes
would prove to be insufficient to turn Gesher into a genuinely Israeli theatre,
partly because a third decision, implicit in its artistic work, had already been
taken: the theatre wished to avoid assirn.ilation.3
The founders' original aim was to establish a Russian theatre in Israel.
The idea was both conceived and carried out almost single-handedly by
Yevgeny Arye, the sole stage director the group has worked with since its
Arye, who was born in Russia in 1947, claims to have dreamed
of becoming a theatre director since the age of fourteen. Before moving to
Israel, he had already staged numerous plays in various important theatres in
Russia, such as the Maly Drama Theatre, the Bolshoi in St. Petersburg, and the
Ermolova Theatre in Moscow. Some of his main productions there were
Aleksandr Gelman's The Bench, Ronald Harwood's The Dresser, and also
Rozem-rantz and Guildenslem are Dead. On the basis of his charismatic personality
and reputation as an outstanding artist, fifteen actors, actresses, and designers
agreed to come with him.
As Arye has often stated in various interviews, his reasons for
leaving Russia were mainly artistic. The hardship caused by the unstable social
and political situation in Russia in the late 1980s had a negative impact on his
creative abilities, and he felt that the theatre in Russia had lost its former
significance and been relegated to a secondary place. He hoped that in Israel
the general atmosphere would be more conducive to his artistic goals.
5
Beyond the question of national identity, launching a RuJsian theatre
in Israel in 1990 was not an unreasonable idea. Following Gorbachev's policy
of "glasnost," about half a million Russian-speaking immigrants had arrived in
Israel by then, and a similar number was still expected to come. Naturally, at
the very beginning, these Russian newcomers automatically became Gesher's
main source of potential spectators. As most of them did not speak Hebrew,
they felt culturally alienated and were eager to take artistic nourishment
wherever they could find it. Under the circumstances, they gratefully received
whatever Gesher had to offer. Moreover, because of the reputation of Arye
and his theatre, with which the Russian immigrants were certainly acquainted,
40
Slavic and East E11ropea11 Peiformalla Vol. 21 , No. 1
Gesher's success with the immigrant audience was immideate. It was only
because of the enthusiastic reaction of the Israeli public to the theatre's work
that Gesher was under pressure to depart from its previous program and
address itself to the general Hebrew-speaking public. Apparently, the Israeli
audience appreciated the fact that it was getting good professional theatre and
was ready to disregard its not being politically engaged.
The situation thus created was rather paradoxical While on the one
hand, having made a dramatic shift from Russian to Hebrew and winning both
official acceptance and an Israeli audience, the theatre showed all the signs of
becoming Israeli; on the other hand, no real effort was actually made by its
director and staff to nationalize it. Rehearsals, to mention but one obvious
example, were still being held in Russian. Only a few days before the premiere
was the language changed. As nationalism as well as a strictly political agenda
in the theatre is habitually of great importance in the eyes of the Israeli
audience, its acceptance of Gesher appears rather awkward.
Interesting theoretical questions arise concerning Gesher's artistic
and social raison d'etre as a theatre functioning in a foreign milieu. Can a theatre
that calls itself Russian really become a part of the Israeli society? Can a theatre
consisting of a Russian director, Russian performers, designers, musicians, and
even an entirely Russian administrative staff, as is the case with Gesher, be
considered an authentic local institution, one which is capable of creating and
transmitting locally significant messages?
Moreover, from the point of view of Gesher's creative goals, the fact
that it now became aimed at a culturally alien spectator raised the question as
to whether Gesher would be able to stick to its purely Russian self-definition.
Does cultural transference inevitably lead to assimilation, or can the
theatre retain its original identity even though it changes audiences? When two
or more cultures meet in the framework of a work of art, a dialogue between
them is established; the result is to a large degree influenced by the ability of
the potential addressees to comprehend. Being de facto a Russian artistic
institution functioning in a foreign country, the gap separating Gesher's target
addressee and its source culture appeared both wide and deep. The theatre' s
repertory, its artistic methods and its administrative structure along with its
unusual history, must be placed vis-a-vis the potential spectator it wishes to
reach, if we are to understand the special issues of cultural transference posed
by the Gesher case.
To begin with, the theatre's name deliberately chosen by its founders
(Gesher, i.e. bridge), is deeply ambiguous; On the one hand, it signals the
theatre's goal of connecting the two cultures in question and, ultimately, of
41
42 Slavir and East Ettropean Peiformal!ce Vol. 21 , No. 1
Village (Kfar) directed by Yevgeny "\rye
at the Gesher Theatre 1996

producing an artistic product influenced by both. On the other, it also suggests
Gesher's desire to keep its original national identity: a bridge is not intended to
make any real changes in either of the two different locations it ties together;
its task is merely to provide an easy way to come and go between them.
Indeed, being a great believer in "art for art's sake," Arye, upon his
arrival in Israel, was determined to devote himself to developing his artistic
skills as well as those of the other members of the group, and produce classic
plays while remaining socially and politically uninvolved. Apparently, what
.Arye was looking for in Israel was not a source of inspiration, but rather an
appropriate setting in which to place his creative endeavors. The performances
would be of high artistic quality and at the same time detached from their
immediate surrounding. The local expectation for some kind of relevance,
frequently voiced by both theatre viewers and journalists, was forcefully
denounced by Arye as a "primitive demand."
6
The list of plays produced by Gesher since it was founded
corresponds to its director's search for universality, as shown by a strong
tendency toward classic plays (Stoppard, Moliere, Schiller), and especially
Russian ones (Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Bulgakov).7 At the same time, the list
also reveals that Israeli plays were not totally rejected. The theatre did produce
three plays written by contemporary Israeli playwrights, but in none of them,
despite their clearly Jewish orientation, is the present state of affairs in the
country really discussed. The first Israeli play to be produced by Gesher, Adam
Resurrected, the adaptation of a novel by the Israeli writer Yoram Kaniuk, takes
place in the 1950s and deals with the devastating effects of the Holocaust on
its survivors. Village, by Yehoshua Sobol, written especially for Gesher, is the
story of a typical small Jewish village during the British occupation of Palestine
told in a nostalgic tone. In both cases, as in all of Gesher's other productions,
the director's interpretation did not encourage the spectators to speculate
about the current political or social situation of the country. On the contrary,
these two productions, like many others directed by Arye, were impressive
because of their heightened spectacle; theatricality became the message. Adam
Resurrected, for example, was not performed in a regular theatre. Instead, it took
place in a huge tent designed as an exact replica of a circus tent where the
spectators joined in the action and were assumed to be watching a circus in
which the actors performed real acrobatic feats.
Tartuffe offers a different example of the theatrical distance from local
and contemporary issues maintained by Arye's productions. Because of the
play's emphasis on religious hypocrisy, Gesher's production of Moliere's
Tart11fle is probably the best example of detachment to be found in its entire
repertory. Israel is a country in which politics and religion are frequently
intermingled, and any play dealing with religion and corruption has a great
potentiality for topical relevance. Tartufle has been produced three times in the
last decade, and each time the story of the malicious impostor was used by its
44
Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 21, No. 1
directors to protest against the imposition of religion on the secular
majority's way of life. Gesher's production was the one exception to the rule.
Faithful to his general approach, Arye staged an extremely theatrical version of
the Moliere comedy, utilizing a highly stylized stage design, grotesque
costumes and wigs, loud music, and incessant movement. Even the words of
the text were, for the most part, delivered in a hyper-theatrical fashion: they
were either sung, declaimed in unintelligible French or simply drowned out by
rap music, while the actors kept running up and down the stage and along the
auditorium. The stage design was not less grand and extravagant than the
deliverance of the text or the costumes. It displayed five monumental closed
double doors, rococo style, completely detached from any other object and
changing positions from scene to scene. Once again, in this performance, as
well as in many others, Arye concentrated on extreme theatricality, emphasized
stylization, and a general aesthetic approach to the playtext, leaving out any
sort of social or political connotations that might have been included. Theatre,
he seemed to imply, is essentially an art; the audience is therefore invited to
enjoy it and evaluate it as such.
As a Jew, Arye might be thought to have chosen Israel as his home
and as the milieu for his theatre because of his national consciousness and
need to belong. Actually, that was not the case. His refusal to "become Israeli"
and assume an active role in the local discourse, reflected in each and every
one of his productions, was met by collective perplexity and confusion . ..Arye's
persistent attitude, as well as the extrovert artistic methods he employed, so
different from the British minimalism inherited by the Israeli stage, separated
him from the entire theatrical community. Nevertheless, only rarely was the
group criticized for its lack of involvement.
8
In most cases, Gesher, and
particularly Arye, were warmly received and enthusiastically applauded despite
their relative aloofness.
It thus appears that when applied to Gesher as a Russian theatre
operating in Israel, the processes of cultural transference were actually
reversed. Instead of having been influenced by its cultural environment,
Gesher seems to be the one to have had strong influence on the surrounding
world. Frequent favorable reports and steady full houses can serve as evidence
of its overall reception. Yet, it is possible that certain changes taking place in
the theatre's inner structure at present may develop in the future into a major
transformation. I refer to the fact that lately several Israeli actors and actresses
have been employed, and also that the Russian General Manager was replaced
by an Israeli one. Recently, even an Israeli director was engaged to stage
Strindberg's Miss Julie. Since Israel's previous experience with a Russian theatre
was with the Habima, which eventually became the country's National Theatre
and the ultimate expression of its artistic temperament, we may ask if
something comparable might not also happen with Gesher.
9
45
46
Slavic a11d East Europeall Peiformance Vol. 21, No.1
Tartujje directed by Y evgeny Arye
at the Gesher Theatre, 1995
47
NOTES
t Shosh Avigal, Hadashot,]une 12, 1991; Boaz Evron, Yedioth Ahronoth, 1 May, 1991.
2 Rina Litvin, Ma'ariv, September 27, 1991.
3 Naomi Doudai, The Jemsalem Post, May 3, 1991.
~ Arye staged all Gesher productions except Schiller's Love and Intrigue, mounted by
Leander a u s ~ a n from Germany.
5 Rina Litvin, Maariv, September 27, 1991.
6 Michael Ohad: Davar, August 30, 1991.
7 Gesher's repertory:
1991: Rozencrantz and Guildmslem are Dead: Stop pard
1992:
1993:
1994:
1995:
1996:
1997:
1998:
1999:
2000:
Drryjus File:J.C. Grumberg
Moliere: Bulgakov
The Idiot Dostoevsky
Adam Resurrected Y oram Kaniuk, adaptation by Alexander Chervinsky
The Lower Depths: Gorky
Tartu.ffe: Moliere
The Village: Yehoshua Sobol
The Cit:y: adaptation of Isaac Babel's Odessa Stories
Three Sisterr. Chekhov
Don Juan: Moliere
Eating: Y aacov Shabtai
Love mrd Intrigue: Schiller
The River: Ostrovsky (The Girl without a DOJvry)
Mister Brin: Paul Osborn
Sat an in Mosco IV. adaptation of Bulgakov's Master and Margan/a
8 Yossef Mundi, for example, denounced Gesher as an old-fashioned, unattached
theatre, originating in a foreign culture. He maintained that the reason the Israeli public
was so enthusiastic about it lies in the admiration one generally feels towards whatever
is foreign. Davar, 4 August, 1991.
9 The Habima Theatre was established in Moscow in 1918 as a Hebrew-speaking
theatre and eventually became Israel's National Theatre. Its first and most famous
production was S. Anski's The Dybbuk, directed by Vakhtangov.
48
Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 21, No.1
STANISLAVSKY ENTERS THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Sharon Marie Carnicke
Theatre practice drew me into the serious study of Stan.islavsky. In
1978 my acting teacher asked me to look up a few terms in the Russian editions
of Stanislavsky. Because of my teacher's questions, I encountered the wide
differences between the English and Russian books. Moreover, his attitudes put
me in touch with the issues surrounding debates about the System in the theatre
community. While my teacher considered himself "anti-Stanislavsky," he taught
major elements from the famous System as I had found them in the books.
Hence, I discovered he was actually "anti-Strasberg." Later that year, Sam
Veniaminovich Tsikhotsky arrived in New York from the Moscow Art Theatre
to observe Strasberg's sessions at the Actors Studio and to direct a production of
The S eagu/1. Sam had assisted 1-!ikhail Kedrov in the 1940s, much as Kedrov had
assisted Stanislavsky in the 1930s. I, in my turn, interpreted for and assisted Sam
in his work with Strasberg's students, making debates about Russian and
American versions of the System absolutely concrete for me.
Today, theatre practitioners engage in similar debates. Whenever I
check my email (a twenty-first century technology that would be as unknown to
Stanislavsky if he were alive today, as are the nineteenth century carcellamps of
his childhood to me), I find myself reading two listserves with entirely different
attitudes toward him. One about Russian theatre is scholarly and informative. It
invokes his name whenever new publications about him appear, or whenever
notable events, such as the one hundredth anniversary of his theatre, take place.
Here Stanislavsky has taken his rightful place in history. The other, formed by
working actors, directors, and acting teachers in the United States, fumishes a
virtual chat room, in which members exchange information and opinions about
their profession. The style is chatty, anecdotal, and always passionate. Here
Stanislavsky's name arises on a daily basis. His ideas and those of his American
proponents, who transformed his System into the Method, are as frequently and
as hotly debated as in 1934 when Stella Adler criticized Lee Strasberg's
interpretation of emotional memory, as in 1957 when Robert Lewis tried to sort
out the confusion in a series of sold-out lectures entitled "Method or Madness,"
as in 1978 when I became involved.
David Krasner, head of the undergraduate acting program at Yale
University, draws attention to the C.'<tent of influence that Stanislavsky continues
to exert on the theatrical community when he writes that, "a glance at acting
schools in New York and in urban centers suggests that Method acting refuses
to go away," that "it flourishes among real-world performers."' In so far as
Stanislavsky's ideas formed the springboard for the Method, he too "refuses to
49
go away." Indeed, nearly every chapter of Krasner's fine new anthology on
Method Acting cites, re-examines, and re-evaluates not only the work of the
Americans, but also that of Stanislavsky. In short, he remains alive in the U.S.
theatrical profession, even if, as Russian scholar Tatiana Butova points out,
Stanislavsky is "he and not he. He resembles himself and does not resemble
himself at the same time."2
To explain the fascinating longevity of Stanislavsky's ideas in a
profession that adjusts itself continuously to changing popular tastes, one might
very well trace the Americanization of his ideas (as I do in my own book) or
assess the applicability of his techniques (as does Jean Benedetti in his work).3
These tasks, however, go beyond the bounds of this small article. I will reflect,
instead, on how debates regarding Stanislavsky among theatre professionals have
played a part in his institutionalization by the academy.
Riding waves of enthusiasm that followed the Moscow Art Theatre
tours to the U.S. in 1923 and 1924, Russian emigres (Richard Boleslavsky
primary among them) set up schools. In the 1930s Americans (Harold Clurman,
Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, Robert Lewis and Sanford Meisner in the lead) took
hold of and adapted what they learned from the Russians. Many of them
eventually founded their own schools along with their own schools of thought
about Stanislavsky. In the 1950s, members of the Actors Studio in New York,
who had learned what was now called the Method, infiltrated all avenues of
theatre and film. Even as the communist scare blacklisted many of those who
most vocally championed Stanislavsky's techniques, American films featuring
stars of the Method (like Marlon Brando and James Dean), "globalized" what
had previously been a "local" phenomena. Stanislavsky, or at least what had
become of him, was now the mainstream.
Notably all this activity occurred outside the academy, within
professional theatre. Take Lee Strasberg as an example. While he passionately
collected theatre books and avidly read them, he was largely self-taught and
remained mistrustful of scholars, who did not share with actors the experience of
performing. Yet, at the Actors Studio, Strasberg functioned as an informal
professor of theatre history, the Studio becoming his university. He did not
confine himself to Stanislavsky and the Russians whom he so admired, but
lectured about great actors from the past, among them Eleonora Duse, David
Garrick, and Edmund Kean. He told of Sarah Siddons frightening herself in the
attic while studying the role of Lady Macbeth, and thus finding her way into the
mad scene. He described Duse's famous blush on stage. When he felt the need
to research Stanislavsky, he went to the German translations, which he accurately
understood to be more complete than the available English editions.5 His
students were primarily working actors who had focused on their careers, rather
than on formal education. Actress Rita Gam reflects the experience of many at
50
Slavic and East E11ropea11 Petjormance Vol. 21, No. 1
USSR THEATRE UNION
STANISLAVSIIY CENTRE
Poster for the Intematlonal Symposmm on
"Stanislavsky in a Changing World," Moscow, 1989
51
52
Poster for the International Symposium on
"Stanislavsky in a Changing World," Moscow, 1989
Slavic a11d East Europea11 Peiforma/lce Vol. 21, No.1
the Actors Studio: "I was naive, frightened, and very impressed by Lee
Strasberg's scholarly articulation."
6
Universities began to play their part in the institutionalization of
Stanislavsky relatively late in the game. When Robert Brustein took over the
Yale School of Drama in 1967, he felt it "essential to create a professional
model." Hence he founded Yale Repertory Theatre, a professional regional
company, with the "hope [ ... ] to involve everybody at the School with the
Theatre, and everybody at the Theatre with the School."
7
Moreover, when he
hired Stella Adler and Robert Lewis to teach acting, he literally linked Yale's
curriculum to the earliest professional adoption of Stanislavsky in the United
States. As Brustein acknowledges, Yale's program "accepted _ the preeminence,
as a training method, of the Stanislavsky technique."8
By forging the professional link, Brustein simultaneously called into
question a number of university assumptions. He accepted the tide of dean with
great reluctance, because it "smacked of academic robes and punitive behavior."
Despite his requests, Yale would not allow him to refuse it. In contrast, he
successfully negotiated with the University "to abolish future tenure
appointments" in order to insure that theatrical practitioners serve on the faculty,
and that the school and company be positioned to adjust to changing audience
tastes.9 Yale also grants a Doctor of Fine Arts (DFA), as distinguished from the
Ph.D., on the model of its professional i\fFA.
Today, the most extensive curriculum in Stanislavsky based training is
perhaps the one located at Harvard University. After leaving Yale, Brustein
again connected the profession and the academy, this time at Harvard with the
help of the American Repertory Theatre. In 1997, he founded the American
Repertory Theatre's Institute for .Advanced Theatre Training in collaboration
with the Moscow Art Theatre School. The Institute provides a two-year
program that culminates in a Certificate of Achievement from .-\.R.T., and an
MFA from the Moscow Art Theatre School. IO The 2000-2001 catalogue states
that, "Individually, both A.R.T. and MKMT represent the best in theatre
production and training in their respective countries. Together, they have
established a historic program with unmatched opportunities for student training
and growth."
11
While located at Harvard, training occurs primarily through the two
professional venues. Students spend three months of the first year in Moscow,
where they "start out by studying the elements of the Stanislavsky system as the
primary foundation for their acting training." Russian faculty include "the
second and third generation of teachers at the 1\fKhAT school,"
1
2 thus
promising a living link in the tradition that extends back to Stanislavsky himself.
A.R.T.'s collaboration with the Moscow Art Theatre serves to remind
us that theatre practitioners have often looked to native Russians to fuel
53
American fascination with Stanislavsky. In this regard, Russian &nign!s have
played a vital, if ironic, role. Recall that Boleslavsky forged an influential career
in the U.S. by literally establishing himself as Stanislavsky's first English language
spokesperson. On January 18, 1923, eight days after the Moscow .Art Theatre
opened in New York, Boleslavsky delivered the first of ten lectures from the
stage of the Princess Theatre, where he enunciated principles of acting worked
out at the First Studio. He spoke with Stanislavsky's approval. In April 1923,
while the Russian company still performed on U.S. soil, he published the first
English language article on the System in Theatre Arts a g a ~ n e On June 29,
1923, he founded the American Laboratory Theatre, the first systematic attempt
in the United States to teach actors and produce plays using methods of the
Moscow Art Theatre. Here, he and his compatriot Maria Ouspenskaya taught
Stanislavsky's ideals to the generation of actors and directors who would
significantly shape the future of U.S. theatre. No wonder that Strasberg always
stressed Boleslavsky's central role in the transmission of the System! Yet,
Boleslavsky's reliance on his former work with the Moscow Art Theatre
disturbed Stanislavsky. During the tours, he wrote to Nemirovich-Danchenko
that Boleslavsky's continuing connection with the Moscow Art Theatre proved
how difficult it was for actors to establish themselves in emigration without the
MK.hAT brand name. He saw Boleslavsky's career in the West as a cautionary
tale for young artists who might consider emigrating.13
During Tatiana Butova's visit to Yale University in the 1970s to study
American experimental theatre, she found Russian emigre teachers making their
livings, much as Boleslavsky had done before them, by linking their names to
Stanislavsky. Ironically having honed their art in a nation that had "canonized
and mummified" him, that had placed him behind "plexiglass," their "reaction to
him could only be one of rejection." Yet, these Russians, who had committed
themselves to the avant-garde, who had dedicated themselves to traditions that
radically modified or broke from Stanislavsky, who had emigrated in order "to
seek refuge and escape from the ghost of Stanislavsky" found only the "grimaces
of fate" in the American context. Caught up in the American obsession, they
found that "they could only feed themselves by teaching here . . . the
Stanislavsky system."t4
At Yale, Brustein played with the reality of this irony. \"Vhen he hired
Andrei Serban, whose directorial work "confirmed his hatred of Stanislavsky and
his suspicion of those with Stanislavsky training," Serban complained that he
could not work with the Yale Repertory Theatre's actors. To resolve the
complaint, Brustein encouraged him to recast his play from the younger actors at
the School, slyly admitting that, "I didn't bother to tell him that all of these
actors had been grounded in Stanislavsky."
1
5 Today, the dynamics remain much
the same. Many former Russian actors, whatever their background, find
employment in the U.S. by teaching Stanislavsky.
54
Slavit" and East EuropeaN Peiformam"l! Vol. 21, No. 1
Like the emigres described by Butova, I had set my scholarly sights on
the Russian theatrical avant-garde, but, once exposed to the fascinating debates
among theatre professionals, I found myself researching the arguments. In 1978
I began to search for clues to explain why the English editions of Stanislavsky's
books differ so much from those in his native language. While I had expected to
encounter Soviet censors, I also met American editors, who had reshaped the
texts with commercial ends in mind. Theatre Art Books had demanded that
Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood (translator and holder of the Stanislavsky rights)
abridge the texts and remove Russian references to accommodate the presumed
readership. My research appeared in print in 1984. By 1993, I headed an
international team, poised to publish a new uncensored and unabridged version
of Stanislavsly's works in English, under the imprint of Rourledge, which had
acquired Theatre Arts Books. Yet after securing the rights from the Hapgood
estate and despite high hopes, Roudedge changed ownership and the expensive
project was put on indefinite hold. Like Hapgood, the whole team and I faced
the commercial realities involved in publishing Stanislavsky.
I therefore turned to explicating the texts of Stanislavsky and to
examining the transformations of his System within the theatre profession. The
continuing involvement of the professional arena with Stanislavsky makes
scholarship about him especially exciting. After publishing my first journal
article on the translation of Stanislavsky into English,
16
my mail astonished me.
How interesting to have written an article that inspired letters damning me for
taking on the "bible" of the profession or praising me, asking for more. After
Stanislavsf<:y in Focus, I ftnd myself engaged again in similar correspondence. But
this time, I can also observe my words discussed on the theatre listserve. The
lively and on-going professional debate regarding Stanislavsky has not abated;
Stanislavsky, who "refuses to go away" has merely moved to hyperspace.
N01ES
I David Krasner, ed. Metbod Acli11g Reco11sidered (New York: St. Martin' s Press, 2000), 8.
2
T. V. Butova, Anurika11skii Tealr. Proshlae I Nastoiashchee (Moskva: Gosudarstvennii
Insitut isskusstvovaniia, 1997), 4. Translations from the source are mine.
3 See Sharon Marie Carnicke, StatJislavslg i11 Fot11s (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic
Publisher$, Gordon and Breach International, 1998).
Butova, 21.
s Carnicke, 64.
55
6 Rita Gam, Actress to A ctress (New York: Nick Lyon Books, 1986), 7.
7
Robert Brustein, Making Scmes: A Personal History of the Turbulent Years at Yak, 1966-
1979 (New York: Limelight Editions, 1984), 12.
B Brustein, 230.
9 Rrustein, 11; 260.
10 New York Times, November 11, 1997, E3.
11
Harvard University, Institute for Advanced Theatre Training: 2000-2001 Catalogue,
on-line at http:/ / www.fas. harvard.edu, 1.
12
1bid., 3.
n Carnicke, 36-38.
~ Butova, 6-7.
15 Brustein, 258-259.
1r. Sharon Marie Carnicke,
Comparison of the English
(December 1984), 481-494.
56
"An Actor Prepares/Rabota Aktera Nad Soboi: A
with the Russian Stanislavsky," Theatre ]o11mal, 36:4
S lavit and East E11ropea11 PeiformaJite Vol. 21 , No. 1
THE MASTER AND THE DEVIL:
A STUDY OF MIKHAIL BULGAKOV
BY ANDRZEJ DRAWICZ
1
Translated from the Polish by Kevin Windle
From Chapter 6: Flight
Bulgakov's three "theatrical years," 1926 to 1928, were a period of
spectacular discharge of accumulated dramaturgical energy. This energy was
converted into a wide variety of new forms. But it is clear that Zoika'.r
Apartment and The Crimson Island are by-products, substantial by-products
perhaps, but peripheral to what would come as a sequel to The Days of the
Turbins. In this direction lay the opportunity to pass through the wall and
speak of the things that mattered most.
The design of a new play was conceived at an early date, as the author
dated his work on it "1926-1928."
2
It arose from close contact with the
Moscow Art Theatre. This was the honeymoon of the union between the
playwright and the theatre. For Bulgakov the triumph of Days was probably
compensation for his heartache at having to modify it, while the almost
boundless gratitude of the young troupe for the chance to make a splendid
start no doubt made up for the unpleasant aftertaste of recent conflicts.
As he wrote, the playwright had certain performers in mind and, as
Markov recalls, "considers their character traits and personalities, as well as the
range of their abilities, while not for a moment assuming that they will follow
the beaten track."
3
New variations in acting technique were to emerge from
the new characters, their newly-configured lives, a new over-arching idea and a
new style. The emerging play took shape as a chronological sequel to Days,
though a sequel in no other sense, for everything else about it is different. The
essential point is that the central characters have had the one constant element
in their lives, their anchor point, their House, knocked out from under them;
their belief in the permanence of life, their belief that "a solution will be
found," has nothing to hold on to. From the start all this is doomed to defeat.
This is a completely new concept. We may state at the outset that the writer
makes a significant concession to class criteria and the spirit of historical
determinism. To a great extent he steps down from his spiritual independence.
It is true, however, that he is saved by the self-liberating gesture of the
character most affected by the weight of this determinism, but only up to a
point.
Without jumping to conclusions, we may note that homelessness has
curious artistic consequences. This applies above all to the first two scenes or
57
"dreams" into which the play is divided. Its title is Flight (Russian "Beg"), and
its epigraph a verse by Vasilii Zhukovsky:
Bessmertie-tix:ij, svetlyj breg
Nash put'-k nemu stremlenie.
Pokojsa, kto svoj konchil beg!. .
4
Both the quotation and the nature of the play indicate that it would be wrong
to interpret this title as "running away"; what is intended has more to do with
the sense of "run" or "course," meaning the course and consequences of
events, the course of life and human destiny. The situation of "running" as a
state which is by nature fluent and changeable takes us back in the first act to
the scenic structure of The White Guard, with its fluid and friable downhill
movement. Caught off balance, the characters blunder from one episode to
another within changing configurations of fate, as shown earlier from the
inside, from a different viewpoint, in Notes on Shirt-Cuffi. In the first dream
their fragile anchorage is a monastery, where they are surprised by an advance
unit of Red cavalry and whence they immediately flee. The second dream
shows the fall of the next point, the headquarters of General Khludov, the
commander of the White front, already breached by the Reds; everything now
continues its crumbling downward movement, towards the sea and the ships.
The first two dreams may well be among the best material Bulgakov
ever wrote for the stage. Here he is in his element- ambiguity, the Gogolian
variability of form, and the natural phantasmagoria of life. Everything looms
out of darkness and is exposed in an uncertain creeping light against the
background of the singing of the monks, rising from the cellars of the
monastery, from the mysterious substrata of existence, amidst refugees and
some scrimshankers feigning injury, pretending to be someone else and indeed
no longer themselves. Everything is seen amidst changing destinies, when the
Reds drive out the Whites only to cede the field to them at once, while the
Whites also prepare to withdraw. (Here Bulgakov gives something like a
menacingly dramatic reinterpretation of an old comic device). The second
dream is even better: the very moment of destruction itself is made palpable,
with its atmosphere of extreme exhaustion tinged with restrained hysteria, with
the mechanical motions of sleepwalkers, with senseless acts of despair,
brutality and sheer will-power. The characters in this episode speak less to one
another than past one another; their utterances only occasionally connect; we
observe a collapse of logic, a separation of cause and effect, a grotesque
confusion of kinds of order collapsing into chaos. Almost everyone is like the
stationmaster of whom Bulgakov says, "he moves and speaks, but he's been
dead for twenty-four hours,"
5
while the entrances of actual living characters
from a different dimension only underscore the nightmarish quality of the
vts1on. In this dream we see a distillation of the very essence of defeat and
58
Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 21, No. 1
failure, the end of the world in its purest form-shown as few others have
ever managed to show it in literature.
Up to this point the play is first-rate. And therefore the
disintegration which sets in immediately after this is all the more apparent. Act
Two is set in Sebastopol just before the evacuation and is made up of ordinary
scenes which together form something like a sensational melodrama, with
interrogations, intrigues and people being imprisoned and set free. It all
assumes an orderly form and becomes normal, with a strain of fairly
conventional satire-and is consequently banal. Acts Three and Four, on
foreign soil, are even more conventional. Here we are offered genre scenes of
the emigre's hard lot, a dog-eat-dog life in which the exile can only prostitute
himself and lose whatever dignity he still has--or go home. The real tragedy is
what they left behind in their homeland; what reaches Constantinople and
Paris is part melodrama, part comic farce. The basis for the use of the term
"dreams" now becomes purely a matter of convention; the contours of the
scenes are clearly delineated and the situations are static and unambiguous.
While Act One shows a clear stylistic link with the poetics of The White Guard,
with its nervous orchestration of sound and alternating light and shade, while
we can also sense in it the presence of the half-real packaging of the later Dqyi
of the Turbin!, derived from the fust adaptation, in which Nikolka emerges out
of the darkness whistling a jaunty air, the subsequent acts, especially Acts
Three and Four, are professionally-fashioned, realistic set-pieces.
A number of factors possibly converge here. Bulgakov is simplifying
the emigre experience, perhaps in doing so finding support for the decision
which fate somehow took without consulting him, ordering him to stay in
Russia; perhaps this is a form of subjective auto-persuasion, a voice debating
with him and trying to convince him that he has done the right thing. Perhaps
too, in basing the foreign scenes on the recollections of Liubov' Belozerskaia,
whose account he used and to whom he dedicated the play, he also absorbed
the emotional climate of those recollections, which must have been quite
unambiguous. "He wrote only about what was close and understandable to
him, what he had experienced to the full," wrote Popov later.
6
But this time he
had to rely on second-hand material, without that feeling of closeness, and this
must have cramped his pen, inevitably making his scenes look merely
illustrative. (This would happen again later).
Lastly, it is likely that his internal censor played its part. Even the
most upright of authors engaged it automatically. The author of Dqyi knew by
now the limits of the permissible. On the politically treacherous ground he
had ventured onto he realized they were even tighter. He therefore accepted
significant compromises in advance. He agreed to a paradigm which placed
the blame squarely on one side (Voloshin and Veresaev, for example, managed
59
to be considerably more objective in a similar situation). He denied emigres
the chance of a normal life, a chance he had previously granted to people from
the Turbins's House. He bade the exiles demonstrate with their own broken
lives that life outside Russia was not possible and not worth living; near the
end of the play two of the young characters express their spasmodic urge to
return to their lost homes. " I want to go to Karavannaia Street again. I want
to see the snow! I want to forget all this, as if it had never been!" cries
Serafima, the "young Petersburg lady,"
7
and in her cry we hear the ironic-
melancholy ambivalence of Chekhov's heroines, who are determined to
"work" and "go to Moscow"-but not too determined. Bulgakov suppressed
the ambivalence. Within the play the only way they can regain their lost
equilibrium and fmd a constant in life is to go to Canossa, prostrating
themselves before the victor. Here Bulgakov is playing on powerful emotional
registers; on the passionate Russian bond with the homeland and the cruel pull
of homesickness in the emigre heart.
Thus Flight is a play of conscious half-truths, half-correct and half-
tragic, and the artistic consequences of its half-measures are dire indeed: the
play divides into two parts.
It is saved from complete collapse and artistic failure by the figure of
General Khludov and his cause, which goes some way to restoring its shaky
balance.
Khludov, as we know, was modelled on General Iakov Slashchev, a
commander as outstanding as he was pitiless, who performed sterling service
in the defence of the Crimea following the defeat of Denikin at the end of
1919. By the time of the action ofF light, however, he had been relieved of his
command. In this situation we can see Bulgakov's typical attitude to his
models; the facts are transposed, the externals of a situation altered, but the
psychology of that situation is supremely true to life. That this is so is
demonstrated by the tone of Slashchev's two books, brimful of bitterness,
venom, ambition to command, and a wounded sense of his own dignity, with
perhaps also an element of persecution mania.
8
Bulgakov reconstructs this
state of mind, while exercising his creative right to give it a slighdy different
setting. In the second dream, which occurs in Khludov's headquarters,
Khludov is assailed by the same sense of the imminent end of the world to
which the characters of The White Guard fall prey; by defending an idea, he has
become a criminal, so the collapse of that idea causes him to feel a terrible
weight of responsibility. The disintegration he is witnessing is so suggestive
for the added reason that it is inwardly colored by the general's advancing
illness, so it seems the more acute in his fixed gaze, with eyes aching from lack
of sleep. The last execution carried out on his orders, of an honest orderly,
tips the scales and brings down the whole burden upon Khludov. This is the
point where one of Bulgakov's most important motifs is engaged and begins to
operate. It is familiar from "The Red Crown," where a younger brother is
60
S lavit' and East European PeifonllOIIfe Vol. 21, No. 1
sacrificed to an idea in whose name people have been hanged and where
visions of the dead cause the narrator to go mad. We remember the question:
"For all I know that man swinging from the lamp-post in Berdiansk, the one
with the soot on his cheek, might come calling on you." And the statement
"if he does, it's right that we should suffer."
9
Khludov takes his justified suffering away with him across the sea,
almost exacdy as in Aleksei Tolstoi's Ibikus; and that description may have
exerted some influence on Bulgakov: "Just this morning the man was a
dictator. As a warning to others he ordered the hanging from the arch of a
railway bridge of a stationmaster, his assistant and a third suspicious individual
with tattoos on his arms-and that evening the same man is huddled with his
bundle beside the smokestack of a steamer, glad that it's taking him away- no
matter where."IO
The unidimensional quality of Tolstoi's pamphlet, towards which
some scenes from the second part of Flight tend to gravitate, is partially
avoided by the tragic nature of Khludov's life, by his unremitting tribulations
and his endless trial by conscience, which will come to be so important in The
Master and Margarita. Around the general a field of real tension is created; there
is a concentration of motifs which are very important to Bulgakov, such as
"dusk," "a terrible and crucial time of day," when the dominant brilliance of
the Constantinople sun, shining on a semblance of life, fades and a vision-like
reality--one that exposes the essence of things-finds expression. It is
Khludov who takes on the anguish of the narrator of "The Red Crown." In
the deepest sense, it is he who takes responsibility for the murders which
somewhere, at some time, certainly filled the author with horror. And it is he
who repeats the gesture of Malyshev and Aleksei Turbin- though under
greater pressure than these two-and abandons his flight to nowhere, takes
control of his fate and recovers his dignity. Slashchev himself had done the
same: he returned to Russia. His decision met with approval; the general was
pardoned and he went on to lecture at higher military academies until January
1929, when he was killed by a bullet fired by the brother of one of his victims,
in a strange kind of distant echo of "The Red Crown."
In regaining his own dignity, Khludov at the same time restores the
dignity of Flight, in so far as this is possible. Everything that had previously-
alas - been lowered to the trivial level of the uncomfortable yet comic plight
of the vanquished, who had lost their identity outside their homeland-
repeatedly compared in an elaborate analogy to cockroaches drowning in a
bucket- takes on a truly tragic dimension, and therefore a human one. This
dimension is close to that of Dostoevsky' s characters, but Khludov is no
Raskol'nikov; the situation has been inverted. The general can kill without
placing himself beyond good and evil, but in the name of an idea, and it is the
ultimate disintegration of the idea that deprives the killing of all justification.
Perhaps Bulgakov consciously selected this particular area of the literary
61
tradition with the intention of treating it critically; in The White Guard and Dqys
Dostoevsky had already been mentioned ironically;
11
this time the patent
impotence of a religious stance, the negation of the traditional role of the
monastery and the "wise monk" are characteristic. These elements turn upside
down the motifs of the "shepherd" (when Patriarch Afrikan runs away and
abandons his flock) and the "deluge," and develop an elaborate system of
counterpoint with regard to the biblical motifs. If this intention is present, it is
not elaborated owing to the unidimensional nature of the play, which does not
reach above the level of petty mockery and spite. Not until The Master and
Margarita would the required dimension be achieved. For the moment there is
no attempt-and there could be none in the prevailing climate of half-truths-
to take up the central intellectual strands of the great Russian literary tradition.
They are barely touched on-and found to be fragile and insubstantial. This is
hardly a fruitful way to proceed. This time the pupil of Gogol and apt reader
of Pushkin does them little credit.
But the creation of Khludov must tell in his favour.
NOTES
1 Andrzej Drawicz (1932-1997) was a leading Polish specialist in modem Russian affairs
and Russian literature, the author of many books and articles on Russian writers of the
twentieth century and translator of Bulgakov, Platonov, Vladimov, Akhmatova, and
others. In post-communist Poland he briefly held a government post, before becoming
an advisor to the government on Russian affairs.
Drawicz's The Master and the Devil- A Stutfy of Mikhail Bulgakov, translated from the Polish
by Kevin Windle, is to be published in 2001 by the Edwin Mellen Press.
2. M. Chudakova, "Arkhiv M. A. Bulgakova. Materialy dlia tvorcheskoi biografli
pisatelia," in Zapiski Otrkla futkopisei Gos. BibL SSSR im. Lenina (1\.foscow, 1976), 60.
3. P. Markov, "Istoriia moego teatral'nogo sovremennika," Teatr, No. 5, 1971, 82-83.
Here the casting is foreshadowed: Khludov- Khmelev, Golubkov-lanshin,
Serafima-Sokolova, Charnota-Kachalov, Korzukhin- Ershov (other options are
also considered).
4. ['Immortality-'<! quiet, bright shore/ Our route-'<! striving towards it./ Rest, who his
race has run! . . .'J. Note Chudakova's percipient remark that ' this motto . . is a
programme for the forthcoming plot of The Master and Margan/d. M. Chudakova,
"Arkhiv M.A. Bulgakova," 62.
s. M. Bulgakov, P'e.ry, Moscow, 1962, p. 142. Also in M.A. Bulgakov, Sobranie sochinmii v
piati tomakh, Moscow, 1990, Vol. 3, 228.
62
Slavi, a11d East European Peiformance Vol. 21, No. 1
6. Zametki avtobiograficheskogo kharaktera , Manuscript Department of the Lenin Library,
Fond 218.
7. P'ev, 1962,213. Also in Sobranie sochinenii, 1990, Vol. 3, 276.
8. Ia. Slashchev-Krymskii, Trebuiu suda obshchutva i glasnosti, Constantinople, 1921; Krym v
1920 godu, Moscow, 1924. The first book naturally gives a much more direct record of
the author's emotional state.
9. M.A. Bulgakov, Povesti. Rosskazy. Fel'etOIIJ, Moscow, 1988, 188.
tO-A. Tolstoi, Izbram!Jt sochinmiia, Moscow, 1951, Vol. II, 415.
tt. Notably in the scene in Act One in which a frozen Myshlaevsky appears. For
reasons unknown the text of this scene differs substantially in the editions of 1962
(P'tfY, Moscow) and 1965 (Drai1!J i komedit). Viz.: 'Vot eti samye bogonostsy okaiannye
sochineniia gospodina Dostoevskogo' (P'ev, 26), and : 'Vot eti samye milye muzhichki
sochineniia grafa L'va Tolstogo' (Dranry i komedii, 26). My attention was drawn to this
curious change, introduced without comment, by Militsa Colan. (Editions which follow
the 1940 manuscript, such as Sobranie sochinenii v piati tomakh, Moscow, 1990, Vol. 3, 11,
have: Vot eti samye milye muzhichki iz sochineni.i L'va Tolstogo. Trans.]
63
THE MEMORANDUM AT JUILLIARD:
GIVING NEW MEANING TO THE TERM "OFFICE POLITICS"
Kurt Taroff
Since the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia, the nation's best-
known playwright, Vaclav Havel, has achieved even greater eminence as a
statesman. But as the struggle against communism, a crusade intimately
associated with Havel and his work, recedes into the pages of history, we may
wonder what relevance Havel's work has for us today. Will Pomerantz, in his
direction of the recent production of The Memorandum at the Juilliard School,
suggests ways in which Havel's work does indeed continue to speak to us.
1
Perhaps the best evidence of the continued relevance of Havel's work
comes not from this production, or from any of his plays, but rather from
recent news out of the Czech Republic, where Havel remains President. The
recent protests by the entire staff of Czech National Television station against
the appointment of a new chief for political reasons cannot help but summon
echoes of the communist era. The fact that all this intrigue is occurring within
the workplace, where The Memorandum is set, only reinforces the idea that
Havel's play maintains its relevance with or without communism. It should be
no surprise that Havel ultimately spoke out on behalf of the striking television
workers.
In realizing The Memorandum more than thirty years after its
performance in 1965 and more ten years after the demise of communism,
Pomerantz was faced with presenting Havel's play without the urgency of an
immediate social cause. As such, his task would seem to have been to retain
the surface entertainment value as well as the metaphysical ponderings of
Havel's absurdist framework, while at the same time providing a pointed
reminder of the dangers of autocratic rule.
A particularly striking element of Pomerantz's production is the set,
designed by Troy Hourie. The 1960s office setting with its transparent walls
provides a startling image to the spectator entering the theatre. Pomerantz's
use of the set, however, quickly shows that the scenery is more than just eye
candy. Occasionally observing the ostensible reality of the setting by utilizing
the "doors" that are suggested by the layout of the set, and at other times
completely ignoring such reality by walking through the transparent "walls,"
the characters establish the vague unreality that The Memorandum so carefully
maintains. Furthermore, by undermining any idea of privacy that the
characters of the play might feel within their "private" office spaces,
Pomerantz reinforces a central theme of the play. Just as the Watcher,
George, observes five offices through chinks in the wall, so Mr. Ballas can
continually manage to take Josef Gross by surprise by entering his office
64
Slavit and East European Peiforrna/Jce Vol. 21, No. 1
through the wall. In the exchanges that these unannounced entries occasion,
some of Havel's deeper meaning can be gleaned:
(GROSS rifJes not notice that meanwhile BALLAS and PILLAR
have entered quiet!J try the side door. BALLAS coughs discreet!J.)
GROSS: Are you here?
BALLAS: Yes, we are.
GROSS: I didn't hear you come.
BALLAS: We entered quietly.
GROSS: Have you been here long?
BALLAS: Not long.2
This exchange, quoted from the opening scene of the play, is repeated several
times, with only minor alterations, throughout the play. The scene works
especially well at the opening, establishing the absurdist tone of Havel's play,
while setting an ominous undertone with the suspicious "we," with which
Ballas constantly refers to himself and his henchman. As the play goes on,
Ballas is seen as the force of institutional bureaucracy, and thus his occasional
entry through the wall serves to emphasize, like something out of Orwell, his
connection to the nefarious powers that be, or to elucidate Havel's metaphor,
to communism. Indeed, in discussion with Pomerantz, the director noted that
Ptydepe, the artificial language championed by Ballas, may be seen within the
play as a direct metaphor for communism, making Ballas the revolutionary
leader of the play.
3
Such identification is reinforced by Ballas's continual
appeals to the supposed will of the people:
BALLAS: We cannot ignore the stand of the masses. The
whole organization is seething and waiting for your word.
GROSS: I won't be dictated to by a mob.
BALLAS: You call it a mob, we call it the masses.
4
While there is certainly great significance in an identification of Ballas with
communism, his at times cryptic pronouncements, tinged by the absurdism of
the play, ultimately provide an additional level that may easily be read outside
of any immediate political concerns, and as more of a metaphysical
commentary, applicable well beyond communism and its legacy.
Just as Ballas attempts to enshrine himself as a leader of the masses,
so Gross counters this by asserting himself as a "humanist," concerned with
the individuality and humanity of all under his charge. But in one of the most
effective aspects of Pomerantz's production Gross's claim to humanism is
undercut by a world in which humanism is seemingly impossible. The "60s
kitsch" feel of the production, enhanced by Mattie Ullrich's costume designs,
as well as Hourie's set, reflect a world entrenched in conformity, where
65
66
Slavi, and East European Peiformam-e Vol. 21, No. 1
differentiations between characters based on any sort of personality trait are
exceedingly difficult to make. Pomerantz confirmed in conversation that the
choice of 60s kitsch was both an aesthetic choice (it was indeed a visually
impressive performance) as well as a paean to the play's origin in the 60s. But
by this choice, Pomerantz was additionally able to emphasize a sense of
distance, an alienation that left every character of the play seeming like
caricatures, very much in keeping with Havel's written text. In doing so,
Pomerantz managed to communicate to the audience the sterility and futility
of the world in which these characters exist.
It is in the communication of this message that we find what is
perhaps the only weakness of Havel's play. By the time we approach Gross's
great tirade near the end of the last act, in which he decries that, "Like
Sisyphus, we roll the boulder of our life up the hill of its illusory meaning, only
to have it roll back down again into the valley of its own absurdity," and that
he can do nothing because he is "totally alienated from myself,"
5
not only have
we already reached these conclusions, but we have marveled at Havel's ability
to bring us to them so artfully. In spelling out his message so completely,
Havel may actually undercut the deeper meaning of his play.
Pomerantz's success in this production was aided in large measure by
the work of the student-actors at Juilliard. In addition to fine work by Michael
Moreland Milligan Oosef Gross) and Steven Boyer Oan Ballas), the quality of
the acting was particularly evident in the actors who were forced to speak
Havel's invented language of Ptydepe. Charles Smith (Otto Stroll) and
Christopher Rivera (Alex Savant), playing the translators, and Lee Pace, playing
Mark Lear, the Ptydepe teacher, were faced with the extremely difficult task of
bringing this nonexistent language to life. They were quite successful in doing
so, making this "scientific" and quite difficult language sound perfectly natural.
Ultimately, in searching for a contemporary relevance for The
Memorandum, Pomerantz suggests that the arrogance of Ballas in asserting that
the scientific basis of Ptydepe will ensure a brighter tomorrow may be seen
today in our unflagging faith in technology. As we increasingly depend upon
the conveniences with which technology affords us, we lose sight of the very
humanity that Gross claims to be guarding. And while Pomerantz ends his
60s-set production with a lunchtime chorus line of seemingly brainwashed
workers carrying a knife in one hand, a fork in the other, doing a humorous,
but somehow eerie dance, it is not difficult to imagine the play being set in the
present, with the knife and fork replaced by a Palm Pilot and a cell phone.
67
68
Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 21, No. 1
N01ES
1
The Memorandum, performed at Juilliard School of the Arts, September 27 to
October 1, 2000, directed by Will Pomerantz; set design by Troy Hourie;
costume design by Mattie Ullrich.
2 Vaclav Havel, The Memorafldum, Vera Blackwell, trans., in The Garden Parry afld
Other Plqys, New York: Grove Press, 1993, p. 55.
3 Telephone conversation with Will Pomerantz, December 18, 2000.
4
Havel, 63.
s Havel, 129.
69
A DRAMATURG'S NOTEBOOK
THE MASTER AND MARGARITA
Ilana M. Brownstein
The devil-in this tale, Woland--comes to Moscow on Easter
weekend to host his annual Full Moon Ball. He soon discovers that under
Stalin's rule, belief in him has all but vanished, and the havoc immediately
ensues. After all, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the
world he doesn't exist. So begins Mikhail Bulgakov's novel, written between
1928 and 1940, and the Yale School of Drama's (YSD) recent production of
The Master and Margarita, adapted by Yuri Lyubimov and translated by Michael
Henry Heim. The director, Will Frears, and I worked over a period of seven
months to collect relevant historical research and to select an adaptation-one
which would tell the most interesting story and yield the production we
wanted. The fundamental question was: what kind of adaptation would be
most successful ? And how should the production deal with the story's vast
scope?
While searching for a suitable adaptation, we found that most existing
versions slavishly follow the novel's every narrative twist, or dismiss integral
plot points. Qean Claude van Itallie's adaptation spans only sixty-four pages,
while others fill nearly one hundred-and-fifty). We wanted a middle ground-
a work that combined and simplified Bulgakov's web for the sake of theatrical
clarity without obscuring the story's magic and grandeur. Frears was curious
about Yuri Lyubimov's Russian adaptation, which has been a repertory staple
at his Taganka Theatre since the early 1970s. However, Lyubimov's Master and
Margarita was published in Russian only. With a little serendipity we tracked
down what we believe to be the only English version of Lyubimov's play: in
1987, the American Repertory Theatre (A.R. T.) at Harvard commissioned the
translation from Michael Henry Heim. After reading the type-written, hand-
notated copy sent to us by A.R.T., we knew this was the adaptation/ translation
we wanted to produce. Lyubimov captured the complexity of the story and its
epic scope; Heim made the oblique references accessible and retained the
unique flavor of the Russian language. A.R.T. never produced Heim's
translation, and as far as we know, the YSD production was its American
prerruere.
We worked under the assumption that this translation had never been through
a rehearsal process, which meant we were going to be practicing new play
dramaturgy without the playwright present. The artistic staff was excited by the
challenge, but the situation forced us to tackle some prickly questions. How far
could we go in changing lines for sense and comprehension? What were our
70
Slavic a11d East Europeal/ Peiformaf/ce Vol. 21, No. 1
moral, artistic, and legal obligations to Heim and Lyubimov? The producing
arm of the Drama School wanted cuts from the three-plus-hour play.
If we cut out one scene, could we reincorporate an important
sentence or idea into a subsequent scene to maintain continuity? Frears and I
haggled over this and that cut, one word choice over another, bartering with
each other to find the perfect solution--Qne that would remain true to
Lyubimov and Heim, and ultimately to our own vision. When at an impasse,
we found ourselves turning to Bulgakov's novel for guidance. What were his
phrases, how did he construct a specific thought or particular sequence of
events? Our battered copies of the novel were a constant presence in script
meetings and the rehearsal room.
As we hammered out the details, Frears discovered that what
interested him most was the story's relationship with censorship. Bulgakov
himself was the recipient of constant and vicious attacks by party-line censors.
As political satire, the novel adroitly dissects the problems of life under Stalin.
Bulgakov attacked the writer's unions of the 1930s through the fictional
MASSOLIT (the writer's association of Moscow). These literary thugs are
portrayed as sycophants in a system that rewards them with dachas for their
unquestioning faith in Stalin. Bulgakov hirnself couldn't publish without being
a member of a writer's union, and he couldn't be a member without
propagating the party line. Bulgakov wrote anyway, ferreting away or burning
his most dangerous works. The manuscript of The Master and Margarita
remained hidden by his widow, Y elena Seregeyevna, until 1966, when the
journal Moskva published a censored version in two volumes. Lyubimov also
faced artistic censorship-the authorities viewed his productions at the
Taganka Theatre as politically dissident. In the 1980s he was stripped of his
Russian citizenship and exiled. We were interested in using Bulgakov's and
Lyubimov's battles with censorship as a lens to focus the play's continuing
pertinence, and this emerged as the story Frears wanted to tell.
After narrowing our focus, our next hurdle was to tame the play's
enormous scale. It is a sprawling, politicomic farce mixed with equal parts
metaphysics and mysticism. Though the length posed problems, the play's
classic three-act structure was deeply satisfying. Each intermission was
bracketed by grand spectacles: a crucifixion and a black magic show, a starry
witch's flight and the devil's midnight ball, and finally the granting of eternal
peace for the Master and Margarita. The narrative's monumental scope was
reflected in our production's cast size: eighteen actors playing forty-five roles.
The play as written calls both for more actors and more roles, but our
resources were limited-again, we found ourselves cutting, blending and
restructuring to make up for lost characters.
Lyubimov's adaptation, unlike others we considered, kept the novel's
omniscient, authorial presence that Bulgakov created with a narrator. We were
71
attracted to the narrative voice-an element that allowed us to preserve the
tone of our source material but that is also extraordinarily dramatic. We
searched continuously for the kernel of theatricality in each scene, seeking the
particular moment to send the story careening in unexpected directions. To
emphasize this, and to consolidate the number of actors needed, we reassigned
The Author's lines among the other roles. Each character had the opportunity
to become an "author," commenting to the audience on the action of the play.
For example, Pontius Pilate engages High Priest Caiaphas on the topic of
whether to release the criminal Barabbas or Jeshua Ha-Notzri. Caiaphas
insists on Barabbas's freedom, driving deep unease into Pilate's soul. At that
moment, the actor playing Pilate (Remy Auberjonois) addressed the audience
as an author of his role: '"Immortality had come,' thought the Procurator,
'immortality.' Whose immortality had come? That the Procurator did not
understand, but the thought of it sent a chill through him in the burning heat."
In moments such as these, the actors did not deliver dispassionate narratives,
but rather provided windows to the characters' inner lives. These instances
were embodiments of Bulgakov's voice, preserving the spirit of the novel
while letting the play embrace its own theatricality.
The design elements also helped to emphasize the play's scope. The
original score by sound designer Vincent Olivieri wove its way through the
entire production, using leitmotifs to distinguish among the varying locales.
Olivieri was inspired by such widely divergent music as tango, Henry Mancini,
Yiddish folk songs, and post-modern Cageian silence. He composed in the
rehearsal hall-the sound design, dramaturgy and directorial interpretation
evolved as one entity while Frears staged the play. The resulting score is not a
piece that stands alone, glued onto the action of the play, but rather a vital
element of the total production. F. Thomas Kinney's set design proved integral
to the deft handling of the production's scale. The two twenty-six-foot white
walls designed in the style of Russian Constructivism, incorporated cogs and
sharp angles, subtly invoking the societal machine's disregard for individual
humanity. The main drop and stage floor were inspired by a 1930s Russian
theatre poster-garish yellows, reds and blues. A towering, solid presence, the
walls were easily manipulated by light and staging to fit scenes of both gritty
urban Moscow, and the blinding yellow of Jerusalem's scorching sun. A scrim
dotted with fiber optic stars added magic and mystery to Margarita's witch-like
flight on a pendulum moon. In one of the production's most visually stunning
scenes, the massive walls parted for the first time to reveal Dismas, Hestas and
Jeshua crucified, hanging far above the stage in silhouette against a white
cyclorama. The tableau was unexpected and arresting, conveying the scale of
the story in a tangible way.
Our final hurdle of the process was determining how to help the
actors work within the play's scope, and to use the story's complexity to reach
72
S !avic and East E11ropeau Peiformal/ce Vol. 21 , No.1
audiences. We found that our cast was unfamiliar with general Russian
history, particularly Russian communism. We decided to begin with the source
text-Bulgakov's novel as translated by Mary Burgin and Katherine Tieman
O'Connor. Each actor was required to read the book prior to our first
rehearsal. Because the story itself is complex, as is the historical context
against which the plot is set, we knew there would be many questions.
Accordingly, we dedicated two weeks exclusively to tablework to create a
forum for discussion and debate. I gave workshop lectures on Tsarist Russia,
the October Revolution, Lenin and Stalin, communism, propaganda art, and
early Christianity. To assist actors who wanted to pursue the topics on their
own, I assembled a small library in the rehearsal hall which included books on
history and art, as well as various bibles. To inspire actors and artistic staff
alike, Frears and I worked with the designers to compile an image book-a
collection evoking the atmosphere of the production and, once finished,
containing everything from DeMuth to Dada.
Ultimately, our efforts to produce the best possible Master and
Maf!,arila were, for the most part, successful. It is both a blessing and a curse
to stage a play in a conservatory setting. Financial success is not required, but
academic schedules and regulations can put unusual strains on a production.
For Frears and myself the process spanned nearly a year, but the rehearsal
period amounted to a mere four-and-a-half unconsecutive weeks. Our cast
members had to juggle the demands of other simultaneous productions, as
well as coursework. But in the end, despite these hurdles, our production
surpassed all expected ticket sales and reached audiences from across the
region. We found that a large number of native Russian-speakers attended, as
did self-described Bulgakov groupies. I was pleased with the production, flaws
and aU-it reached not only those who love Bulgakov's novel, but also patrons
who had heard neither of the novel nor Lyubimov. In defiance of the
censorship Bulgakov experienced both during his lifetime and posthumously,
we succeeded in bringing a great master's work to life.
73
The Master a11d Ma'l,arita
at the Yale School of Drama, 2001
74
Slavic a11d East E11ropea11 Peiformam-e Vol. 21, No.1
75
THE BODY OF THE LINE: EISENSTEIN'S DRAWINGS
THE DRAWING CENTER, NEW YORK,
JANUARY 22-MARCH 18, 2000
Daniel Gerould
Occasioned by the recent centennial of the filmmaker's birth, the
exhibition of Sergei Eisenstein's drawings at the Drawing Center includes over
100 works on paper dating from 1914 to 1948 and ranging from the artist's
student sketch books through his travel albums from his trip to Mexico to his
last jottings in the year of his death. Billed as the first U.S. Museum exhibition
of Eisenstein as a graphic artist, the works shown at the Drawing Center focus
on Eisenstein's depiction of the body and are drawn from among the 5,000
items in the permanent collection of the Russian State Archives of Literature
and Art. Also on display were a number of costume and stage design sketches
from a private Moscow collection assembled by Lydia Naumova (a member of
the production crew for Ivan the TemMe). The exhibition was produced by the
Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology in Montreal and
curated by its Director of Programs, Jean Gagnon.
The aim of the exhibit was to reveal an unknown side of the
filmmaker's genius. This it does well. Even for those already acquainted with
Eisenstein's drawings, the experience of seeing so many originals, almost all of
them unfamiliar, will come as a surprise and a revelation. What is most striking
about the drawings is their mischievous, spontaneous, and self-revelatory
nature that at first sight seems so unlike the monumentality of the films.
What we know about Eisenstein as a graphic artist helps to explain
this apparent split in the filmmaker's psyche. Although he never took drawing
lessons or studied painting, he always had a pencil in his hand and drew very
quickly on whatever was nearby-scraps of paper, manuscript margins, theatre
programs, and newspaper clippings.
From childhood Sergei expressed himself most naturally with his
pencil and set down his impressions of the world almost automatically through
his drawings. They are the immediate and uninhibited expression of his
sensibility, subject to neither state nor self-censorship. Drawing for himself
(and sometimes for his friends) in a great variety of styles and on a great
variety of subjects, he put down on paper whatever came into his mind or into
his line of vision. Like Victor Hugo's artwork, Eisenstein's drawings reveal a
private self at odds with the official public artist and his grandiose and
monumental art works.
At the age of ten young Sergei came under the spell of Honore
Daumier. In the comic and burlesque aspects of Eisenstein's caricatures, it is
easy to detect afftnities with the French satirist. Next he discovered Jacques
76
S Ia vic a11d East European Perjorma11ce Vol. 21, No. 1
Callot, French master of the fantastic and grotesque whose fascination with
fairs, carruval disguises, and commedia dell'arte costumes Eisenstein shared.
He was also influenced by the Soviet graphic and poster artist Moor (See
SEEP, Vol. 17, No. 1), whose woodcuts were inspired by Russian folk art and
lubok prints.
Among Eisenstein's sketches are portraits of friends, people he
encountered, artists from the past he admired, and illustrations for books by
these artists. He made sketches of the opera, theatre, music hall, and circus
performances he had seen, and he also captured the essence of the different
genres of tragedy, melodrama, dance, and circus.
Eisenstein's drawings offer the most diverse impressions, responses
to all kinds of stimuli, occasions, associations and memories, including erotic
dreams and fantasies. The stage designs and costumes come from 1921-1924,
which he referred to as a happy period. From this time come the sketches for
The Mexican, an adaptation of a Jack London story, and Shaw's Heartbreak
House, a production by Meyerhold that went into rehearsals but never reached
the public. For Eisenstein, rruse-en-scene was a form of line drawing
indicating the actor's movements onstage.
Then in 1924 Eisenstein began his career in cinema and stopped
drawing for almost eight years, returrung to it only in 1931 at the time of his
trip to Mexico. In Mexico he did hundreds of sketches, some of which are lost
and others destroyed. Eisenstein returned to drawing after his work in cinema
in the 1920s with a new style. Previously drawing helped him with cinema;
now cinema helped him with drawing. Film montage sharpened his sense of
contrasts, and his drawings now had a cinematic dynarrilsm.
Eisenstein thought in graphic terms and translated his ideas
immediately into his drawings, which he called "visual stenographic reports."
The exhibition at the Drawing Center and the symposia and resulting
publications provide conclusive evidence that Eisenstein was a graphic artist of
extraordinary imaginative power and inventiveness.
77
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80
Sergei Eisenstein, Diplomary Lesson
June 8, 1942
Slavic a11d East European Performame Vol. 21, No. 1
l
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Serget Eisenstein, After hit Book
January 23, 1948
81
The exhibition was accompanied by the following public programs and
resulted in two publications listed below.
A Symposium on the subject of Eisenstein's drawing was held on January 27,
2000 with the following participants: Oksana Bulgakova, Jean Gagnon, Mikhail
Iampolski, and Annette Michelson.
Film Screenings and discussions presented in collaboration with the Wooster
Group took place at the Performing Garage:
Bezhin Meadow (1935-37) was presented on January 31, 200, hosted by Naum
Kleiman and Annette Michelson.
On February 7, 2001 the screening of Strike (1923) was hosted by Naum
Kleiman and Martin Scorsese.
The Bot!J of the Line: Eisenstein's Drawings, The Drawing Center's Papers 4.
Catherine de Zegher, "Eisenstein's Contour Lines as Marks of Quotation."
Sergei Michailovich Eisenstein, "How I Learned to Draw (A Chapter about My
Dancing Lessons)," translated by William Powell.
A Symposium: Eisenstein's Motion Pictures, The Drawing Center Attachment 4
Essays from the Symposium held on January 27, 2000.
Annette Michelson, 'The World Embodied in the Dancing Line."
Mikhaillampolski, "Drawing as Will and Representation."
Oksana Bulgakova, "Spiral, Sphere, Circle: Forms and Meanings."
Ian Christie, "Eisenstein's Third Text: The Drawings and Their Ancestors."
Jean Gagnon, "Body of the Line: Impulses of Caricature in Eisenstein's
Drawings."
Additional sources consulted for the review:
Aizenshtat, Olga. "Rezhisser-Grafik," in S. Eisenstein. Risunki. Moscow:
Iskusstvo, 1961, 31-52.
Albera, Frans:ois. "Eisenstein: The Graphic Question," in Eisenstein at Nine(y,
ed. Ian Christie and David Elliott. Oxford: Museum of Modern Art Oxford,
1988,119-29.
Goodwin, James. "Eisenstein, Ecstasy, Joyce, and Hebraism." Critical Inquiry,
Vol. 26, no. 3 (Spring 2000), 529-57.
Karetmikova, Inga. "Vstupitel'naya stat'ya," Mele.rikanskfye Risunki Eisensteina.
Moscow: Sovetskii Khudozhnik, 1969, pages unnumbered.
Roshal', Grigory. "Risunki S.M. Eisensteina," Iz Istorii Kino: Materialy i
Dokumenty. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1974, 39-48.
82
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 21, No.
CONTRIBUTORS
BILHA BLUM holds a doctorate degree in theatre from Tel Aviv University.
She has published many articles in the fields of Israeli performance, poetic
drama and the drama of Lorca. Her main field of research is the staging of
canonical plays on the Israeli public stage, concentrating particularly on the
various aspects of cultural transference. She lectures in the Department of
Theatre Studies, Tel Aviv University on performance and play analysis,
modern theatre, poetic drama, the theatre and poetry of Lorca, and realism in
drama.
!LANA M. BROWNSTEIN is a second-year Dramaturgy & Dramatic
Criticism MFA student at the Yale School of Drama. Her most recent
productions were Hamlet and The Master and Margarita, both directed by Will
Frears. She has worked as a literary assistant at The Ensemble Studio Theatre,
and in the literary department at Actors Theatre of Louisville as a production
dramaturg. She has also worked extensively in children's theatre and serves as
a mentor in Yale's theatre outreach program, The Dwight/Edgewood Project.
SHARON MARIE CARNICKE, Professor of Theatre and Slavic Languages and
Literatures at the University of Southern California, is also Associate Dean of the
USC School of Theatre. Author of Stanislav!fl:y in Focu.r, she has published and
spoken nationally and internationally about the System. Her first book, The
Theatrical Imtinct, however, examines the theories of one of Stanislavsky's arch
opponents, Nikolai Evreinov. She combines scholarship with the practice of
theatre, having directed plays in New York, Los Angeles and Moscow, and having
translated plays for production throughout the United States.
YANA MEERZON received an MA degree from the Russian Academy of
Theatre Arts, Moscow in 1996. She now works in Toronto as a dramaturg and
as a teacher of theatre history. She is also a member of the Canadian Theatre
Critics Association and a Ph.D. candidate at the Graduate Center for Study of
Drama, University of Toronto and has published many articles as a theatre
critic.
KURT TAROFF teaches theatre and literature at York College and
Marymount Manhattan College. He is a student in the Ph.D. program at the
City University of New York Graduate Center where he is writing his
dissertation on applications of Nikolai Evreinov's theory of monodrama.
SLOBODAN UNKOVSKI is a director from Skopje, Macedonia, where he
teaches acting and directing in the Faculty for Dramatic Arts at the University.
His award-winning productions have been seen at international festivals in
83
Bonn, Nancy, and Belgrade. In 1993 Sarqjevo, an international co-production,
was shown for the opening of the Antwerp, Cultural Capital of Europe
Festival, and given a second premiere at the London International Theatre
Festival. From 1996 to 1998 he was .Minister for Culture of the Republic of
Macedonia, and he has been Artist-in-Residence at the American Repertory
Theatre in Cambridge, Visiting Professor at the Institute for Advanced
Theatre Training at Harvard, and Visiting Fulbright Scholar at Brooklyn
College of the City University of New York. He is currently preparing a stage
version of Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dnams.
KEVIN WINDLE is a reader in the School of Language Studies at the
Australian National University in Canberra. He has published numerous
articles on Russian and Polish literature, translations from Slavonic languages
and French, and The Routledge Macedonian-English Dictionary. His translation of
Petr Kral's essay, "Tarkovsky, or The Burning House," appeared in three parts
in SEEP, Volume 15, No. 3, Volume 16, Nos. 2 and 3. His translations of the
radio plays of Ireneusz Iredynski will soon be published by Harwood.
Photo Credits
The Saragossa Manuscript
Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Winter's Tale
Richard Feldman
Happiness Channel and Princess T.
Ivana Otovic
Gesher Theatre performances
Gil Hadani
Stanislavsky Posters
Howard Schmitt
The Memorandum
Jessica Katz
The Master and Margarita
T. Charles Erickson
Eisenstein's Drawings
The Drawing Center, New York
84
S/avi<" and East European Performant'e Vol. 21, No. 1
PUBLICATIONS
The following is a list of publications available through the Martin E. Segal
Theatre Center:
Soviet ~ s in Translation. An annotated bibliography. Compiled and
edited by Alma H. Law and C. Peter Goslett. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign).
Polish l ~ s in Translation. An annotated bibliography. Compiled and
edited by Daniel C. Gerould, Boleslaw Taborski, Ivlichal 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).
Polish and Soviet Theatre Posters Volume Two. Introduction and Catalog
by Daniel C. Gerould and Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign).
Eastern European Drama and The American Stage. A symposium with
Janusz Glowacki, Vasily Aksyonov, and moderated by Daniel C. Gerould
(April 30, 1984). $3.00 ($4.00 foreign).
These publications can be ordered by sending a U.S. dollar check or money
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85
SLAVIC AND EAST EUROPEAN PERFORMANCE
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This journal brings readers lively, authoritative accounts
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Europe, and articles on important new plays, innovati ve
productions, significant revivals, emerging artists, and the
latest in film. Outstanding interviews ond overviews.
Published three times per year.
$10 per ann11m domestic/$15 U.S. foreign
SEEP@gc.cuny.edu
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The widely acclaimed journal devoted solely to drama and
theatre in the USA-past and present. Provocative,
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provide invaluable insight and information on the heritage
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Publi shed three times per year.
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An indispensable resource in keeping abreast of the latest
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contai ns a wealth of information about recent European
festi vals and productions, including reviews. interviews,
and reports. Winter issues focus on the theatre in
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Publi shed three times per year.
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To order any of these publ ications, please send your request to Ollr Circulation Manager at:
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