VOLUME 7, NOS .

2 ' 3
DECEMBER, 1987

and

D :rama T'heatre
.. ' . , I
and
F 'ilm
SEEDTF is a publication of the Institute for Contemporary
Enstern European Drama and Theatre under the nuspices of
the Center for Advanced Study in Theatre Arts (CASTA) ,
Grndunte Center, City University of New York with support
from the National Endowment for the Humanitites. The
Institute Office is Room I 206A, City University Graduate
Center, 33 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036. All sub-
scription requests and submissions should be addressed to the
Editors of SEEDTF: Daniel Gerould and Alma Law, CASTA,
Theatre Program, City University Graduate Center, 33 West
42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.
EDITORS
Daniel Gerould
Alma Law
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Richard Brad Medoff
ADVISORY BOARD
Edwin Wilson, Chairman
Marvin Carlson
Leo Hecht
Copyright 1987 CASTA
SEEDTF has a very liberal reprint ing policy. Journals :-.nd
newsletters which desire to reproduce articles, reviews, :-.nd
other materials which have appeared in SEEDTF m:-.y do so,
as long as the following provisions are met:
a. Permission to reprint must be requested from SEEDTF in
writing before the fact.
b. Credit to SEEDTF must be given in the reprint.
c. Two copies of the publication in which the reprinted
material has appeared must be f urnished to the Editor of
SEEDTF immediately upon publication.
2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Editorial Policy ............... .......................................... S
Subscription Policy .... ....................... ........................ 6
Notes from the Editors ........................................ ..... 7
Announcements ........................................................ 8
"Theatre in Moscow:
The 1986-1987 Season." Alma Law ...................... l5
"Yugoslavia: Even Summer Theatre
Carries on the Business of Politics:
Dragan K lait ........................................................... 20
"Eastern European Films."
Leo Hecht ................................................................. 24
"Andrei Tarkovsky 1832-1986." .............................. 30
"Kierkegaardian Motifs in
Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice"
Peter G. Christensen ..... ...... ..................................... 31
"Alcksandr Sokurov: Ma11's
Lo11el )' Voice . ........................................................ .40
"Zbigniew Cynkutis 1938- 1987."
Marc Robinson ........................................................ .42
"Piwnica Pod Baranami--A Cabaret
from Poland." Teodor Zareba ................................. .44
"Folktheatre in Poland."
Steven Hart ............................. ........................... ...... .46
3
"An Absurdoid Evening in
Binghamton." Eugene Brogyani. .................... .. .. 51
"Polished Polish Performances:
Without Benefit of Translation."
Glenn Loney ........................................................ 54
"On Radzinsky's Joggi11g.
Alma Law ............................................................ 62
"The Poetry of Infidelity."
Lisa Portes ........................................................... 64
Book Reviews ..................................................... 70
Contributors ............................................... : ........ 73
Playscripts in Translation Series ........... ............ 74
4
EDITORIAL POLICY
Manuscripts in the following categories are solicited:
articles of no more than 2.500 words; book reviews; p r ~
formance and film reviews; and bibliographies. It must be
kept in mind that all of the above submissions must concern
themselves either with contemporary materials on Soviet or
East European theatre. drama and film, new approaches to
older materials in recently published works. and new per-
formances of older plays. In other words, we would welcome
submissions reviewing innovative performances of Gogo! or
recently published books on Gogo!, for example, but we could
not use original articles discussing Gogo! as a playwright.
Although we welcome translations of articles and
reviews from foreign publications, we do require copyright
relense statements.
We will also gladly publish announcements of special
events. new book releases, job opportunities and anything else
which may be of interest to our discipl ine. Of course all sub-
missions are evalunted by blind readers on whose findings
acceptance or rejection is based.
All submissions must be typed double-spaced and
carefully proofrend. Submit two copies of each manuscript
and attach a stamped, self addressed envelope. The Chicago
Manual of Style should be followed. Transliterations should
follow the Library of Congress system. Submissions will be
evaluated, and authors will be notified after approximately
four weeks.
All submiss ions, inquires and subscription requests
should be directed to:
Daniel Gerould or Alma Law
CASTA, The.atre Program
Graduate Center of CUNY
33 West 42nd Street
New York. NY 10036
5
SUBSCRIPTION POLICY
SEEDTF is partially supported by CASTA and The
Institute for Contemporary Eastern European Drama and
Theatre at The Graduate Center of the City University of
New York. The $5.00 annual subscription pays for a portion
of handling, mailing and printing costs.
The subscription year is the calendar year and thus a
$5.00 fee is now due for 1988. We hope that departments of
theatre and film and departments of Slavic languages and lit-
eratures will subscribe as well as individual professors and
scholars. The $5.00 check should be made payable to
"CAST A, CUNY Graduate Center" and sent to:
CAST A, Theatre Program
CUNY Graduate Center
33 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036
Subscription to SEEDTF, 1988.
NAME:
ADDRESS:
AFFILIATION;
(if not included in address above)
6
NOTES FROM THE EDITORS
Begi nning with thi s issue, SOVI ET AND EAST-
EUROPEAN DRAMA., THEATRE, AND FILM returns to the
Center f or Advanced Study in Theatre Arts (CAST A) at the
City University Graduate Center where it was originally con-
ceived seven years ago as a project of the NEH Humanities
Institute for Contemporary Eastern European Drama and
Theatre with support from the National Endowment for t he
Humanities.
In assuming responsibility for the continued publica-
tion of SEEDTF, we would like to express our deep gratitude
to its founding editor, Professor Leo Hecht, Chairman, Rus-
sian Studies, George Mason University, who with great energy
and enthusiasm has transformed what was originally a modest
newsletter into a full-fledged periodical, published three times
a year. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank
George Mason University for its continued support in assist-
ing with the printing and mailing costs of the publication.
In spite of a very heavy academic schedule, Leo Hecht
has consistently--and almost single-handedly--brought to
SEEDTF's readership a wealth of information on Soviet and
East European cultural activities. SEEDTF is unique in
making available news on what is happening right now. In
this respect, we share Leo's belief that the publication fills a
void left by the more academic journals in the Slavic and
performing arts fields where the lag time is considerably
greater, and the popular press which must spread its reporting
over a much larger field. Judging from the comments of
SEEDTF's readers, the immediacy of the information is one
of its strongest points and one that we also intend to
emphasize.
In taking over the editorship of SEEDTF, it is perhaps
appropriate to remind our readers that we welcome, indeed,
we need the help of each of you in bringing to our attention
for publication any and all information concerning Soviet and
East-European drama, theatre, and film, including perform-
ances here and abroad, related conferences and exhibitions.
We are especially eager to have write- ups of productions and
films you have seen while traveling or studying in Eastern
Europe or the Soviet Union as this information is simply not
available anywhere else. We also welcome brief reviews of
new books and videotapes related to performance and will
gladly publish announcements of special events, job
opportunities and other news which may be of interest to our
readership.
Daniel Gerould and Alma Law
7
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Recent Events
Hanna Krall's play about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,
To Steal a March on God, was presented as part of The
Spring Play-reading Series of the Theatre Project at The
Third Floor Studio Theatre of R. A.P.P. Arts Center, New
York City, on May 17, 1987. The producing company,
Dramatic Risks, under the direction of Mark Grant Waren
also gave stage readings of Love, Nets and Traps, and Come
into the Kitchen, three one-act plays by Liudmila
Petrushevskaya, and Edvard Radzinsky's Joggi11g on April II,
all in translations by Alma Law. Jogging is scheduled for
full production in January; for more information check the
listing in "Upcoming Events."
The McGolrick Park in Brooklyn was the site for
three outdoor presentations of The Polish Theatre Institute.
Two Polish Augusts, a tribute in prose, poetry and song to the
Polish Home Army of World War II on the 43rd anniversary
of the rising of Warsaw, and Solidarity, dedicated to the
Polish Solidarity movement on the 7th anniversary of its birth
were both performed on August 19, 1987. One week later,
August 26, the third presentation "In Pursuit of Liherty ... "
was performed. This program was a salute to the American
and Polish Constitutions and consisted of music, mostly vocal,
poetry, and prose from the end of the 18th century to the
present day and included a performance by The Polish
American Folk Dance Ensemble. For more information, see
the listing in "Upcoming Events."
The first Soviet play about Chernobyl, Sarcophagus
was written by the science editor of Pravda, Vladimir
Gubaryev. First published in the literary monthly Znamya,
the play has already appeared in ten productions in the Soviet
Union (see Alma Law's article "Theatre in Moscow: the
1986-1987 Season" in this issue of SEEDTF) Foreign stagings
have taken place in Vienna, Stockholm, and in London by
The Royal Shakespeare Company. This past September the
play opened simultaneously in the same translation by Micheal
Glenny at the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Con-
necticut and on the other coast in California at the Los
Angeles Theatre Center.
Kazimierz Braun inaugurated his tenure .as Head of
the Acting Program at the State University of New York at
Buffalo by directing the American premiere of Tadeusz
8
R6zewicz's The Hu11ger Artist Departs in a translation by
Adam Czerniawski. The cast included both professional
actors and students with the role of "The Author" being
played by the Polish playwright, actor, and director Stanislaw
Brejdygant. The play ran from April 23 to May 3, 1987 and
was advertized using a poster designed by Polish Artist
Krystyna Jachniewicz. On April 24, Rozewicz discussed his
work at a lecture on campus. During his visit ot the U.S.
Rozewicz also addressed the Polish Institute of Arts and
Sciences of America, in New York City.
The Manhattan Theatre Club presented Janusz
Gtowack i's Hu11ti11g Cockroaches translated by Jadwiga
Kosicka at the New York City Center during the Spring 1987
season. It was directed by Arthur Penn who also directed this
play at the Ma rk Taper Forum in Cali fornia. At the Mark
Taper Forum it ran from November to Dectember. For those
who missed these productions, there are several productions
planned around the country listed in the "Upcoming Events."
Opening in March and running through May, 1987;
Witkiewicz's The Shoemakers joined the repertory at the Jean
Cocteau Theatre in New York; it was directed by Wlodzimierz
Herman (from Denmark) who had directed the famous Pol ish
production in 1965 at the WrocP.lw student theatre Kalambur.
The stage design was by the well-known Polish artist Jan
Sawka (now in the U.S.)
On October 9, the Graduate Center of the City Univ-
ersity of New York was the scene of a performance by
MASTFOR II, a group started by Mel Gordon and Alama
Law dedicated to the preservation of the early Soviet avant-
garde. They presented a reconstruction of the third-act
cabaret from Good Treatme11t For Horses. Originally per-
formed in 1922, Nikolai Foregger's celebrated Russian Con-
structivist production combined the eccentric and risque
costume-design talents of Sergei Eisenstein and Sergei Yut-
kevich with the satiric writing of Vladimir Mass. This scene
included a demonstraion of Foregger's grid of 100 mechanical
acting movements called It was performed in
conjunction with an exhibit of costumes and set designs called
Moscow /922: Avame-Garde Per/orma11ce. Designed and
executed by Piotr Zaleski, the exhibit could be seen in the
Graduate Center Mall from October 6 to December 4, 1987.
From November 10-17, 1987, The Museum of Modern
Art in New York presented a film series, "New Voices from
the Soviet Cinema." The seven features and three short sub-
9
jects fell into two categories: films banned and shelved for as
long as twenty years and recent works that indicate new art-
istic d irections. Included in this series were: A. Sokurov's
Man's Lonely Voice (1978, reviewed i n this issue); N.
Djordjadze's Robinsonada; or My English Gra11d/ather
(I Qft6), about a Briton building a telegraph line in Georgia
during the turbulent twenties, and his thesis film Joume.v to
Sopot; S. Ovtscharov's Belie'ie II or Not (1983), a fairy-tale
comedy based on traditional motifs of Russian fol klore; Cen-
tral Asian filmmaker B. Sadikov's pol itical allegory Adonis
XIV (1977); V. Tumaev's A Visit 10 a Son (1986); newcomer
Y. Mamin's short feat ure Neptu11e's Holiday (1986); Y. Pod-
niek's outspoken documentary Is It Easy To Be roung?
( 1986); and Viktor Ogorodnikov's look at the contemporary
punk music scene of Leningrad's teenage subculture in The
Burglar (1987). The series was organized by Jytte Jensen.
In Brief:
Running from August through October, The CAST
Theatre in Hollywood presented Joumey ittto the Whirlwind,
based on Yevgenia Ginsburg's memoirs, adapted and per-
formed by Rebecca Schull.
Livieu Ciulei directed Shakespeare's Coriolanus at the
McCarter Theatre in Princeton from November 4 to 22.
Blanka Ziska produced and directed Charles
Marowicz's t ranslation of lonesco's Macbet t at the Wilma
Theatre, Philadelphia. It opened for a limited run on Novem-
ber 15.
The Department of Theatre Arts at Bethel College in
St. Paul, Minnesota presented the American premiere of
Kazimierz Braun's The Plague. It was directed by Jeffrey
Miller and ran from October 14-24.
As part of the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music, Peter Sellars directed za,gezi: Super-
saga in 20 Planes by Russian Futurist poet Velimir K hleb-
nikov. It was originall y produced in May 1923 at the
Museum of Artistic Culture in Leningrad, with stage design
by t he Constructivist sculptor, Vladimir Tatlin. Sellars's
production, which began a limited run on November 24,
1987, was first staged in December, 1986 for the opening of
the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
Upcoming Events
Janusz Glbwacki's Hunting Cockroaches, directed by
Doug Finlayson, will be performed from February 17 to April
10 at Wisdom Bridge Theatre, Chicago. The play will find
10
another home at The Alley Theatre, Houston, from March 26
to May 8. A third production of the play is in the process of
being scheduled by the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, Los
Angeles.
The Odyssey will also produce Witkiewicz's The
Shoemakers directed by Kazimierz Braun. It is scheduled for
their December-February slot, with the official opening on
January 16, 1988.
The Puppet Master ofl:.od1, written by Gitter Sigal
and translated by Sara O'Connor, will be produced by the
Milwaukee Repertory Theatre April 29 to May 15.
The Dallas Theatre Center wilt produce Fred Cur-
chuck's production of Uucle Vau.va from February II to
March 6. Lucian Pintele will direct The Cherrv Orchard for
the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C .. This production is due
to run from April 29 to June 5. Laurence Senelick's new
translation of The Cherry Orchard opens at the Ensemble
Repertory Theatre of Los Angeles on April 15, staged by the
company's new artistic director David Kaplan. Beginning
Jnnuary 18, The Cherry Orchard directed by Peter Brook will
be performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music for a 12-
week run. This production was originally created in Paris.
The American cast includes Brian Dennehy, Linda Hunt,
Erland Josephson and Natasha Perry
Maria Irene Fornes will direct Uucle Vauya for the
CSC Repertory, New York. It will run from December 6 to
Jnnuary 2. From February 7 to March 5, the CSC will house
Diderot's Rameau's Nephew directed by Andrei Delgrader.
Karel The White Plague, translated by Michael
Heim, will be presented at the North Light Theatre,
Evanston, Illinois, from February 10 to March 13.
J.R. Sullivan's production of Strider will be performed
at the Illinois Theatre Center in Park Forest from Mnrch I to
April 3.
Witkiewicz's Couutry House, translated by Daniel
Gerould and directed by Paul Berman, will be given at
Barnard College in March, 1988.
Director Tengis Abuladze's 1984 film about Stalinist
dictatorship, Repenta11ce, is due to open in New York in
December. It is under consideration for the Academy
A ward's Best Foreign Film A ward.
The films of Zanussi will be shown at the Museum of
Modern Art from December 18 to January 31.
The Polish Theatre Institute is now accepting bookings
for their current and upcoming concert/readings and
productions. These include: "/11 Pursuit of Liberty ... ";
Three Polish Emigratio11s, narrative, poetry, and song in
11
English and Polish from the Great Emigration of the 19th
Century, post World War II, and the Present; The Eleven
Days ;, October, this program presents reports, poetry, and
songs during the time that the Polish people waited for news
about f:ather Jerzy Popieluszko, with excerpts from the
Priest's homilies; and two programs by Leon Schiller, using
the Polish actor Kazimierz Kaczor and Polish singers Jolanta
Rajewska and Krzysztof Milczarek, Pastora/ka (a shepherds'
Nativity with music) and Shop of Songs (a story of Polish
song from 16th Century to the Present). For further informa-
tion contact Nina Polan, The Polish Theatre Institute, 16 West
64th Street #58, New York, NY 10023, (212) 724-9323.
Alma Law's translation of Radzinsky's Joggi11g is to
be produced by Mark Grant Waren's Dramatic Risks . At
press time the production is scheduled for opening on January
27, 1988 to be directed by Virlana Tkacz at the R.A.P.P. Arts
Center Main Stage Theatre. 220 East 4th Street, New York.
Because of changes in the group's affiliation, it would be best
to contact Dramatic Risks directly at 60 East 4th Street # 19,
New York, NY 10003 (212) 353-1965 for the latest update.
Michael Andrew Miner, Artistic Director of Actors
Theatre of St. Paul, has announced the establishment of a
sister theatre relationship with Moscow's Ermolova Theatre.
The artistic exchange will begin during the 1988-89 theatre
season, when Miner will direct in Moscow and Yermolova's
Artistic Director, Valerie Fokin, will direct at Actors Theatre.
The following season, 1989-90, an exchange between the two
acting companies is planned. Actors Theatre recently pro-
duced the first World Premiere of a contemporary Soviet work
outside of the Soviet Union with their production of Break-
fast With Strangers in September and October. Playwright
Yladlen Dozortsev travelled from the Soviet Union to see the
production.
Another Minnesota company, the Children's Theatre
Co. of Minneapolis, will be exchanging productions and art-
istic staffs with Moscow's Central Children's Theatre next
fall. Central Theatre artistic director A. Borodin and manag-
ing director Sergey Remizov will visit Minneapolis in March
and ship one of their productions to CTC in September 1989
to open CTC's 25th season. Borodin will return in March
1990 to direct a play in rnglish with the CTC cast, while
later that year CTC is exp."ted to send one of its own prod-
uctions to the Soviet Union for performances in Moscow and
Leningrad.
12
Professor Laurence Senel ick of Tufts University has
notified us that The American Council of Learned Societies-
Soviet Ministry of Culture Commission on Arts and Arts
Research has recently been expanded, in cooperation with
IR EX. The expansion includes a new Sub-Committee on
Theatre and Dance, whose mandate is to promote culural
exchanges in those fields. This does not include ordinary
scholarly research or the kind of large-scale exchange of per-
formers traditionally carried out by impTesarios. Rather,
those projects are solicited which involve the interpenetration
of research into arts creation, performance, presentation.
Among the types of projects suggested are symposium series,
exchange of materials, joint publications or preparation of
exhibits, and the mutual interchange of choreographers,
dramatists and critics. The American members of the sub-
committee are Kalman Burnim (Chairman), President of the
American Society for Theatre Research; Marvin Carlson,
Executive Officer of the Ph.D. in Theatre at the Graduate
Center of CUNY; Laurence Senelick of Tufts University;
Selma-Jeanne Cohen, Editor of The International
Enc_l'clopedia of Dance; Martha W. Coigney, Director of Inter-
national Theatre Institute of the United States; Adrian Hall,
Artistic Director of the Dallas Theatre Center and Trinity
Repertory Company; and Bruce Marks, Artistic Director of
the Boston Ballet. Projects should be keyed to specific
sponsoring groups or institutions, and any suggestions
addressed to Professor Kalman A. Burnim, Department of
Drama and Dance, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155.
Grad Teatar/ Theatre City Budva is a foundation,
established by the National Theatre Subotica and Municipality
of Budva, a town in the south of the Yugoslav Adriatic coast,
with two main fields of activity: Theatre City Budva/ Festi-
val takes place in July and August in various venues of the
old core of Budva and its environs, while Theatre City
Budva / School operates from September to June --as a
research and educational facility that offers various programs
and projects. The Skola is international in the composition of
its participants and staff and interdisciplinary in its approach
to theatre, with four main lines of activity: education of
theatre professionals and of other specialists- -seminars,
labs; research projects, undertaken with interdis-
ciplinary Yugoslav or international teams; collection, process -
ing and disseminaton of data on theatre life; and publishing
of a newsletter in English about ongoing and future programs
of the Foundation.
With its various programs, the School connects Yugos-
lav and foreign theatre professionals and specialists of related
13
disciplines (sociologists, psychologists, architects, urban plan-
ners, economists, etc. ); stimulates research in theatre praxis
and theoretical work on t heatre; promotes Yugoslav theatre
abroad; and serves as a place of continuous and alternative
theatre education, for theatre collectives and individual artists.
The School is headed by Dr. Dragan K laic, Associate
Professor, University of Arts Belgrade (Ho Si Mina 20, 11070
Belgrad, tel. 0 II 135 684, ext. 89).
For more information, National Theatre Subotica, lve
Vojnovica 2, 24000 Subotica, Yugoslavia, tel. 3824/ 23 431,
telex YUFESTYU 15053.
Grad theatre/ theatre City Budva, Skupstina opstine
Budva, 86000 Budva, Yugoslavia, tel. 3886/ 44 070 I 44 062,
telex YUOIUBD 61194.
14
TIIF.ATRE IN MOSCOW: THE 1986-1987 SEASON
by Alma Law
After the sensation of the 1985-1986 season, Moscow
auditnces found Lis past season somewhat tame. If they
were hoping for even greater "openness" in the airing of long-
forbidden topics than they had relished in such productions as
Aleksandr Misharin's expose of provincial corruption in Silver
AnnivNsnry at MXAT, Mikhail Shatrov's political debate of
Leninist ideas, Dictatorship of Conscience, at the Moscow
Lenin Komsomol Theatre or Speak at the Ermolova Theatre
based on Valentin Ovechkin's sketches of rural life just
before and after Stalin's death, they were bound to be disap-
pointed. As the editor-in-chief of Dru;hhn narodOI' com-
mented not too long ago, "You can't surprise anyone today
with (productions like this]. because the newspapers are
reporting more contrO\'ersial matters than are covered in the
plays being staged." In fact, the main topic of conversation
among theatregoers this past season seemed to be, not what
was on stage, but the rise in ticket prices introduced by many
theatres as part of a two-year experiment launched January I
to give theatres greater freedom in managing their repertories
and finances.
Several critics have even ventured the opinion that this
has been one of the least interesting seasons in a long, long
time. Dull? Uninteresting? With Beckett's Krapp's Last
Tape at the Mossoviet, Waiting for Godot at the Ermolova and
lonesco's The Chairs at the Stanislavsky Theatre? But , of
course, many of these productions have been around a long
time in studios and rehearsal rooms so that for the dedicated
theatre buff they can hardly be considered new.
Of greater intert>st, are the numerous Polish plays that
have made their appearance including Mrozek's long banned
The EmigrEs at the Theatre-Studio "Chelovek," and Janusz
Krasinski's black comedy, Death in Installments, about two
prisoners, who in order to delay being executed, keep con-
fessing to new crimes, each confession giving them another
lease on life. Arthur Miller is enjoying a revival with prod-
uctions of lncidelll at Vichy and The Crucible already on the
boards and a production of After the Fall scheduled for this
season at the Moscow Gogo! Theatre. House on the Embank-
ment is once again in the repertory of the Taganka Theatre
where the new chief director, Nikolai Gubenko, has promised
to restore all of the theatre's banished productions including
Alive and Boris Godunov. Nikolai Erdman's The Suicide is also
back at the Satire Theatre, this time not in Sergei Mikhalkov's
watered-down adaptation that was shown a half dozen times
15
albeit without some of Erdman's pearls of humor," as one
critic noted.
As for contemporary plays, as in the film industry, by
the end of the season, the shelves had just about been cleared
of productions. Virtually everything that has been banned or
in extended rehearsal over the past five years (and in a few
cases even longer) is now already before the public or in
rehearsal. This includes Viktor Rozov's The Little Boar
[Kabanchik), which had its national premiere at the Russian
Theatre in Riga (under the title By the Sea)and has now also
opened at the Vakhtangov Theatre in Moscow, directed by
Adolph Shapiro from the Riga Theatre of the Young Spec-
tator. After being roundly vilified at a closed session of the
Union of Writers when he first submitted this play in 1982,
Rozov is now being praised for being one of the first to deal
honestly with the moral and social effects of corruption
among top-level officials.
Liudmila Petrushevskaya's plays are at long last
making their way into the professional theatres, as are also
those of other lesser-known talents, including Andrei
K uternitsky, Nina Sadur and Liudmila Razumovskaya.
Although, as is the case with so many newer playwrights,
directors continue to misread their works as deeply realistic.
Aleksandr Galin's very stageable plays are also begin-
ning to show up all over Moscow. His The Toastma.Her at the
Moscow Art Theatre, directed by Kama Ginkas, is set in the
banquet room of a restaurant where a wedding celebration is
taking place. The highlight of the production is the duel of
toasts between a failed actor who has been hired to provide
the toasts, and Revaz, a guest at another wedding party, who
is a born toastmaster. For this funny-sad "group portrait" of
contemporary life, Ginkas has placed the cast of more than
f ifty actors in front of a huge mirror that reflects not only
everything on stage, but the audience as well.
As the season closed, another of Galin' s plays, The
Wall, premiered at the "Sovremennik" Theatre. Roman Yik-
tiuk is responsible for staging this hilarious Pirandellian game
in which the audience watches a group of actors in a provin-
cial theatre rehearsing a play and in the process loses all sense
of what is real and what is part of the production.
Edvard Radzinsky's I'm Standi11g b.v a Restaura11t (also
known as To Kill a Man) at the Mayakovsky Theatre is
another exercise in theatre within theatre. This time it's a
duel in a loft apartment between a lonely actress and her
hner, a director, in which to the very end the audience can't
be quite sure whether she is trying to kill him with her
poisoned mushrooms or simply playing a clever game of
psychological revenge. (See my commentary to Lisa Portes
16
article in this issue for a review of Radzinsky's other
premiere this season, Jogging.)
Several of Mikhail Roshchin's more satirical plays
have been brought out of limbo, including his "Aristophanes.H
or the Production of the Comedy. "Lysistrata" ill 4/1 B.C. in
Athens which was banned in 1983 for being too pacifist, and
his comedy The Seventh Labor of Hercules, about how Her-
cules succeeded in clean ing out the Auge_an stables. Written
in 1963, it was staged for the first time this season by the
new "Sovremennik-11" headed by Oleg Efremov's son Mikhail.
The production of Roshchin's sat iri cal Mother of Pearl
Zinaida, after six years of on again-off again rehearsals at
the Moscow Art Theatre, is also due to open during the com-
ing season.
Perhaps the season's most noteworthy production is
Getta Yanovskaya's staging for the first time of Bulgakov's
Heart of a Dog at the Moscow Theatre of the Young Spec-
tator (TIUZ). Yanovskaya immediately found herself in the
middle of a heated controversy over whether this was suitable
fare for teenagers, a charge she summarily rejects by arguing
that it's high time young people were offered something other
than simple-minded contemporary plays and watered-down
versions of the classics. But everyone seems to agree that this
vastly underrated director, in recreating the atmosphere and
bite of Bulgakov's 1925 parable of the Russian Revolution,
has produced one of the artistic sensations of the season.
Without fanfare, Aleksei Kazantsev has taken actors
from various theatres to stage a production of his play, Great
Buddha. Help Them! The playwright, himself, characterizes
the work as, "a political parable about how contemporary Fas-
cists hiding under leftist slogans deceive people and attempt
to turn them into the blind instruments of their [the Fascists')
power." Those who saw one of the several performances for
select audiences were quick to praise it. One observer called
it, "a cross between Orwell's 1984 and Evgenii Zamiatin's We,
and while the play is ostensibly set in Kampuchea [Cambodia)
everyone reads it as about totalitarianism in the Soviet
Union."
One of the paradoxes of the season is the absence in
Moscow, or for that matter in any major Soviet city, of a
production of The Sarcophagus by Pravda science editor
Vladimir Gubarev about the nuclear accident at Chernobyl.
Gubarev has denied that the play was sent to the West as a
Soviet propaganda maneuver, and asserts that productions are
being planned for both Moscow and Leningrad. But thus far,
after opening in Tambov, it has only appeared in a number of
other provincial cities such as Krasnoyarsk and Tiraspol near
the Black Sea. Meanwhile, Sarcophagus has already been
17
staged in Vienna at the Volkstheatre where it was highly
praised in the press for its frank criticism of the Soviet
bureaucracy, and in London at the Royal Shakespeare. The
play, which could more accurately be characterized as a piece
of "didactic theatrical reportage," has also been included in
this season's production schedule at both the Mark Taper in
Los Angeles and the Yale Repertory Theatre.
As the new season unfolds everyone is eagerly await-
ing the production now in preparation at the Vakhtangov
Theatre of Shatrov's The Peace Treaty of Brest-Litovsk:
Written twenty-five years ago as a film scenario, it was
originally to have made its stage debut at the Moscow Art
Theatre in the late 60s. But the times weren't ripe then for
portraying Nikolai Bukharin and Leon Trotsky as Lenin's
faithful disciples and Efremov was forbidden even to rehearse
the play. In its current version The Peace Treaty is clearly
intended to reflect Lenin's support for Gorbachev's peace
plan (Lenin to Trotsky: " ... what do we need today--war
or peace? Always---peace ... "). It is being directed by
Robert Sturua, chief director of the Rustaveli Theatre, in
celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Revolution. That
Sturua was chosen for the production has ironic connotations
for it was Sturua's production of another Shatrov play about
Lenin, Blue Horses 011 Red Grass, that was summarily banned
from further performances in Moscow following the showing
of it at the Maly Theatre on the opening night of the
Rustaveli's tour in September 1980. Not surprisingly, the
bureaucratic watchdogs were not all pleased to find three
Lenins on the stage, including one who dances to a Viennese
waltz. Not only that, but it was Shatrov who, after praising
the production when he saw it in Tbilisi, was forced to play
the heavy and demand that the theatre withdraw it. As
Sturua wryly commented in recalling the incident, "We
Georgians have a somewhat different way of viewing Lenin."
Also in the works are productions of Chingiz Ait-
matov's controversial novella The Executioner's Block and
Anatoly Rybakov's autobiographical novel set in the 1930's,
Children of the Arbat. Undoubtedly, other productions will
also appear to challenge the limits of Hg/asnvstH or openness.
Much of what has been staged thus far has been a matter of
putting before the public what everyone already knew but
couldn't say outloud. The real test will come when
playwrights and theatres move into new territory. There are
already signs that the limits are being set. Gorbachev him-
s.-lf, in a meeting with prominent members of the press in
July warned that "openness and democracy ... do not mean
that everything is permitted .... Openness is called upon to
strengthen socialism, the spirit of the people, to strengthen
18
the moral atmosphere in our society. Openness also means
criticism of shortcomings. But it does not mean the
undermining of socialism and of our socialist values."
Some critics have also joined in to suggest that
"enough is enough," and are calling for more genuinely
theatrical works. There are already the fi rst signs in Moscow
that interest in going to the theatre is dropping and th:lt
theat r es may soon be facing the same problem of empty
auditor iums that have already plagued provincial cit ies for a
number of years. At the moment, it is not clear to anyone
just what audiences want these days in the face of what
television, the newspapers and magazines such as Ogonek have
to offer. Perhaps the current season will provide some ans-
wers.
(Alma Law completed this article in September, just
before she left for a four-month research trip to the Soviet
Union.]
19
YUGOSLAVIA: EVEN SUMMER THEATRE CAR-
RIES ON THE BUSINESS OF POLITICS
by Dragan Klaic
Despite the worsening economic situation and inner
political conflicts that strain Yugoslavia and its many nation-
alities, theatre remains a vital realm of public life in the
country. Inflation may reach over 100 percent, troubles with
the Albanian minority in Kosovo province may stir up pas-
sions, disputes about the new constitution heat up, and new
scandals involving corruption and abuse of public investment
funds break out daily, and yet major theatre productions con-
tinue to attract audiences and offer the stage as a forum for
important public debate and as a place of collective soul
searching in these trying times. Even in the summer months
this is not a theatre of light entertainment, but of intellectual
vigor and polemic energy.
At the beginning of the summer, most repertory
theatre companies usually close their doors, but independent
theatre groups and many festival ensembles start their busy
season. From Ljublijana, in the northwest, where drama,
ballet, and opera are offered in a former Cloister near a
monument to the unknown soldier of the Napoleonic army, to
Ohrid in the south of Macedonia, where programs are given
in a former medieval church at this lake resort, festivals old
and new cater to tourists and to local theatregoers and even to
some foreigners on vacation. Various open air venues, city
SQll ares, fortresses, courtyards and even some more
unorthodox sites are turned into stages and every summer a
director comes up with a newly discovered environment to
serve his production concept.
This past summer, Split festival had major troubles in
securing some of these sites and had to cancel a scheduled
production of Oedipus Rex in a bitter conflict with the
Catholic church authorities and heirs of Ivan Mestrovic over
the use of a chapel decorated by this sculptor. For a prod-
uction of Shakespeare' s Tempest t he Dubrovnik summmer fes-
tival brought the aud iences by small boats to the nearby
island of Lokrum, a public beach during t he day. This co-
production with the Yugoslav Drama T heatre of Belgrade
certainly had a superb ready-made set for Prospero's tropical
island, but apparently the production had trouble muscling
enough acting strength to match it. In Dubrovnik's Old City,
Calder6n's Life Is A Dream was directed by Duran Jovanovic
as a gesture in praise of personal freedom against the threats
of an on111ipottnt state and arbitrary political might. And the
International University Sport Games, held in Zagreb in J ul y,
provided an excuse (and public funds) for an international
20
series of avant-garde t heatre product ions f rom abroad.
In the north of the country, i n Subotica, which
became a major theatre center two years ago when the direc-
tor LjubiYa Ristic took over the flagging local rep company, a
festival took place. Ristic and his choreographer
Nada Kokotovic offered a Do11 Jua11 , entirel y set on a real
lake shore, whe re the Spanish gala11 and h is serva nt met'l all
their opponents amidst a crowd of rust ic natives who worship
an enormous monument to the slain Come,idador- - a kind of
exotic totem pole, a reminder of past authority now gone and
rejected. A melancholic Tartuffe was set in a real amusement
park, with Orgon updated and downgraded to its tired owner
and Tartuffe made a marginal , charming, irresistible tramp
with a few magic tricks of his own. Both productions end in
speedy departures and ambiguous victories: Don Juan rows in
a small boat to Hades or to new adventures, after the monu-
ment burns down, while Tartuffe makes a hasty escape in a
pick-up truck with Orgon' s wife. While these two prod-
uctions could be seen as celebrations of personal sense of
freedom in a society that increasingly praises self reliance as a
cure for its many current troubles, a Misanthrope directed by
set on a tennis court, turned the self-righteous
rhetoric of the play's characters into a series of smooth, slow-
motion tennis movements. The tennis etiquette became a
form of social mimicry, a choreographed display of non-
chalance, an ultimate form of pervasive social insincerity. A
School for Wives with strong satiric tones completed this
series of Moliere productions, that is, in fact, a second phase
o f a Subotica endeavor star ted in the summer of 1986 with
seven Shakespeare productions--all staged in the open, in the
parks and terraces of a tur n-of -the-century resort at nearby
Palic lake.
This summe r, however , has greatly expanded
h is o peration by open ing an additional p roduct ion c ente r ,
Kotorart , in Kotor, a town on the Montenegr ia n Ri viera,
known as the si t e o f the 19 17 Austrian sai lors' rebellion
(memorial ized in Fredrich Wolf's pacifist play, The Sailors of
Callaro). In Kotor, a dozen productions by young di rectors,
some with international casts, opened in brisk sequence in
early July. The Kotor and Moliere series, together wi th last -
year's Shakespeare productions, were the core of a festiva l
t h at Subot ica th e atre organized in Bu dva, ano t her
Montenegrian resort. Both Kot or a nd Budva have rece nt ly
re novated t heir old q uarters heavily damaged in the 1979
earthquake. Ambit ious local governments, eager to upgrade
t he ir tour ist offerings with some unique cultural events, f ound
a willing pa rtner in Rist ic and his t heatre. Subot ica theatre
and the municipality of Budva set up a foundation- - Theatre
21
City Budva--that will be financed by a special tax, assessed
on a daily basis, on all tourists in the area and thus have
funds to offer the festival in the summer months and run a
theatre education and research center throughout the year.
With the local governments of Subotica, Budva, and
K otor solidly behind him, Ristic could sign up more cities in
a growing network that have bought packages of his prod-
uctions. They knew that Ristic could assemble the best talent
for productions that would attract much attention, bring
audiences, and publicity. All together some two dozen prod-
uctions had over 200 environmental performances in 60 days.
YU Fest, as the whole network was named, is not only an
entrepreneurial coup and an operation of mind-boggling
logistics; but, it is also an undertaking of clear political
importance that in many regards surpasses the artistic merits
of any particular production. In a federal state where six
republics and two autonomous provinces tend to look after
their own turf, pursue their own political priorities, and
where competing and often irreconcilable economic interests
turn into political conflicts and potentially dangerous ethnic
strife, YU Fest brought artists from all parts of the country
together, despite the reigning cultural parochialism, and
turned this festival into a symbol of Yugoslav cultural and,
indeed, theatrical unity. This movement of theatre profes-
sionals, who joined forces in a virtual grass-roots manner, is a
rebuke to the impotence and self -centeredness of the cultural
bureaucracies of the federal units which otherwise hold the
purse strings for culture-- Yugoslavia has no federal ministry
of culture, and no money for arts from the federal budget.
The novelty is that the municipalities dared to avoid their
respective superiors on the state level and joined forces
directly with each other and with teams of theatre artists,
breaking local monopolies and discarding the usual patronage
of the local talent.
YU Fest enjoyed broad media coverage and for the
most part a supportive press, eager to demonstrate to their
readers that, in a country where seemingly nothing works
properly anymore and all Yugoslav initiatives seem doomed
from the beginning, some major effort, uniting the talent of
different cultures, languages, and nations, still can be success-
ful. There were opposing voices too. Belgrade's daily Borba
greeted the August run of YU Fest productions in the capital
with two sarcastic articles that attacked Ristic and his shows
as fluff and as an expensive extravaganza for the gullible.
Y.-t, Politika, Belgrade's foremost daily, praised the undertak-
ing, in a lead article in its culture and arts supplement only a
few days later, as an encouraging example amidst an outpour-
ing of bad political and economic news that tends to make
22
most artists and intellectuals passive and resigned. The news
magazines and TV stations in Zagreb, Belgrade, and elsewhere
were equally supportive.
Some time will be necessary to j udge t he full impact
of the YU Fest--political, artistic, and financial, but Ristic is
alreadv announcing a series of new Yugoslav plays for next
summer and more municipal i t i es a re eager to join the
network. The Subotica theatre, which made a successful tour
in May to West Germany and West Berlin, has an invitation
for the Cervantino f esti val in Mexico, and contemplates a
U.S. appearance. Meanwhile, negot iations are underway to
revive in West Berlin Ristic's mega-production of Madach.
Commentaries, done originally in several urban venues at the
start of his Subotica tenure.
While this is being written, in early September, Bel-
grade is getting ready for the 21st BITEF festi val, the annual
parade of the international avant-garde. This year the impor-
tance of theatre in Yugoslav politics is being confirmed in a
curious way: the appearance of the Israeli Habima Theatre at
BITEF is perceived by many as an equivalent of the famous
U.S./China ping-pong diplomacy, a prelude for there-
establ ishment of Yugoslav-Israeli relations which had broken
off 20 years ago. The Israelis are bringing Kafka's Trial
directed by the British Steven Berkoff, and Babel's Sunset
directed by the Russian Yuri Lyubimov. The exiled director
is not expected to attend. Pity, as he could meet, in the cozy
atmosphere of Belgrade, some of his former Moscow col-
leagues who will appear at the Bitef festival in the Taganka
Studio production of Slavkin's Cercau directed by Vasilyev.
Dragan Klaic, a long-time collaborator of Ljubila
Ristic, avoided most of the YU Fest hassle by hiding out t his
past summer in the Van Pelt Library of the University of
Pennsylvania
23
EASTERN EUROPEAN FILMS
by Leo Hecht
On previous occasions a number of articles and
reviews discussing recent Soviet films have appeared in
SEEDTF. but only on rare occasions has contemporary East-
ern European cinema received the same attention.
Unfortunately. this is due to the fact that Soviet f ilms appear
to be much more in demand by American audiences. with the
rare exceptions of political films such as Wajdas Mall of /roll.
There are frequent "Soviet Film Festivals" and special show-
ings of Soviet film series. but very few similar occasions for
films from Eastern Europe--if one does not count special
programs at the Smithsonian Institution. the American Film
Institute, and various institutions of higher learning. This
article is intended, to some small degree. to rectify the over-
sight. at the request of many readers of SEEDTF, and to
present a number of important films released during the past
two decades. most of which are available for rental. All are
in their original language, i.e., Polish. Hungarian, and Serbo-
Croatian, respectively, and have English subtitles;
Polish Films
Identification Marks: Nolle, 1964, directed by Jerzy
Skolimowski. The director. himself, stars as a loafer with
poetic pretensions who lives off of his wife's earnings, unsuc-
cessfully attempts to evade being inducted into the army, and
in general avoids any social interaction within the Pol ish
system. Skolimowski made this film as a student in the .t.6di.
Film Institute. His style has been characterized as a mixture
of Orson Welles and cinema-verite.
Walkover. 1965. also directed by Jerzy Skolimowski.
This film continues the development of the hero of his
previous film, who. after his military service, works as a
hustler at amateur boxing contests and travels throughout the
country. Technically more polished than its predecessor, this
film is a bit more incisive and ironic. Its basic theme remains
one of alienation. Skolimowski's later films include Deep Elld
and The Shout.
Everything for Sale, 1968, directed by Andrzej Wajda,
is a highly personal film concerned with Zbigniew Cybulski, a
superb actor and star of Wajda's film Ashes and Diamonds,
who had died in an accident several months previously. The
entire ! ilm is dominated by the off -stage presence of the star.
It is a film about making a film whose star is killed halfway
through its completion to the great despair of the director.
Landscape After Battle, 1970, was also directed by
24
Andrzej Wajda. It tells a love story set against a background
of post-World War II chaos. Liberated Polish concentration
camp inmates find themselves stranded in a Displaced Persons
Camp where psychologically they feel neither free nor
imprisoned. The main protagonist, an intellectual with
memories of horror, hides behind his books until he is forced
back into reality by a Jewish refugee girl.
Matr of Marh/e, 1977, directed by Andrzej Wajda, is
the investigation into a man's life undertaken by a woman fit-
maker. The man was Mateusz Birkut, a now forgotten figure
of the 1950s who had been made a celebrity as part of the
government's effort to create "heroes of labor" as an example
for other workers. This epic film (nearly three hours long),
concerns itself with the relationship between political
propaganda and art and between the intelligentsia and the
working class.
Without Anesthesia, 1978, was directed by Andrzej
Wajda. This intimate, poignant film is about a foreign cor-
respondent who returns home from abroad and finds that his
wife has left him for a young writer. Against everyone's
advice, the correspondent fights the divorce action and sear-
ches unsuccessfully for the reasons of his wife's infidelity.
Provincial Actors, 1979, is an early work by a young
woman director, Agnieszka Holland. It tells the story of a
second-rate theatre troupe, its difficulties in the staging of a
classical play with a young, overzealous director from War-
saw, and the disintegrating relationship between its leading
actor and his wife, an unsuccessful actress who works in a
puppet theatre. All this is related in an agreeably open-ended
behavioral, semi-vrite style which is geared toward flow
rather than structure, and is ideally suited to describe the
bustling matrix of backstage life: gossip, backbiting, horse-
play, grumbling, quar.rels, exhibitonism, excitement, and
frayed nerves. Director Holland deftly captures the hap-
hazard and precarious lives of artists suspended in a volatile
zone between greatness and mediocrity.
Contract , 1980, directed by Krzysztof Zanussi, is an
ambitious, polyphonic comedy centering on a two-day wed-
ding reception among haute bourgeoisie. The plotline details
a steady stream of insults, embarrassments, and bruised feel-
ings which finally escalate into a series of scandals and
debacles--the bride runs off, the groom goes berserk, the
house catches on fire. All of this is rendered with the driest
of wit, an elegant and precise style and an excellent acting
ensemble including Leslie Caron as a grande dame."
Zanussi' s most remarkable achievement, however, is his
ability to balance farce with scathing social commentary.
Beneath the sparkling satire the film contains an eerily
25
prophetic vision of a deteriorating society.
The Constant Factor, 1980, also directed by Zanussi,
concerns itself with a young, excessively idealistic electrician
who yearns for the purity of mathematics and the Himalayan
peaks, where his father, a mountain climber, had mysteriously
lost his life. Instead, he finds himself severely shaken in a
world filled with petty corruption, confusion, disease and
unfairness. He is a believable and original character who is
exasperating yet oddly noble in his obstinate refusal to con-
form.
The Orchestra Conductor, 1980, directed by Wajda,
stars John Gielgud as a famous conductor, who, after 50 years
abroad, returns to his native Poland to guest conduct. The
story of his partly triumphant, partly embarrass ing return,
including his attempts to escape mounting political pressures,
is the director's eloquent statement on the artist's commitment
to his art and the individual's personal need for integrity,
even when faced with the reality of exile.
Aria for an Athlete, 1980, directed by Filip Bajon, is a
picaresque tale of a 19th century village boy with a strong
body and little intelligence, who wants to make a name for
himself in the world. The story is told in a flamboyant
rococo style full of extravagances.
Camera Buff, 1980, directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski,
is a film about an obsession with film. It starts innocent ly
with a father buying a movie camera so that he can film his
baby daughter. Next, he is asked to use his camera to docu-
ment propaganda events at his plant. He then becomes
obsessed with the realization that the camera lens sees and
records the truth. He commences to photograph things that
are upsetting to the authorities and suffers for it. This film
contains elements of slapstick mixed with sati re and political
nonconformity.
Shivers, 1981, directed by Wojciech Marczewski, was
made during the "Solidarity " period and supressed during the
subsequent crackdown. It is set in the early 1950's and con-
cerns itself with the experiences of a teen-age boy who is
sent to an elite indoctrination center for future Party
memebers. It portrays vivid imagery of an off -balance world
filled with transitions, cynicism, adolescent yearnings, reli-
gious mysticism and political zealotry.
Hungarian Films:
ll'he11 Joseph Returns, 1976, was directed by Zsolt
who made this film with a quietly feminist
understanding of human relationships. reveals
characters caught in a flux of feelings, events, and situat ions
26
which are strikingly modern and socially complex. The fil m
follows the uneasy progress of two women who are
awkwardly thrown together when the newlywed wife of a
young merchant marine comes to live with his mother after
he is sent out to sea.
Nine Months, 1977, was directed by Marta Meszaros
who is strongly identified as a femi nist fil maker. The f il m
describes the love affair between a strong-willed woman and
an impulsive, arbitrary fellow worker in an industrial ci ty.
The director's feeling for environment --stunning factory-
scapes of snow and smoke--is matched by her sensit ivity to
the sensual chemistry and emotional fluctuations of the cen-
tral relationship. Her style leans heavily towards closeups and
hands and faces are used with expressiveness and intensity.
Women, 1971, is the best known film of director Marta
Meszaros. It is the story of a friendship between a passionate
young rebel and an older woman who is disillusioned with her
well-ordered married life. It stars Marina Vlady in one of
her most important roles.
Rain or Shine, 1977, is a comedy directed by Ferenc
Andr5s . It is the story of a country family's efforts to
entertain visitors from the city on the day of a great celebra-
tion. One witnesses a steady procession of small mortifica-
tions and missed connections until a general air of acute
embarrassment settles over the entire affair.
The Stud Farm, 1978, was directed by Andras Kov5cs.
It takes place in the early 1950s and is a penetrating study of
the Stalin era as seen on a personal, savage level. The setting
is a horse-breeding farm and focuses on the tensions between
the new manager, an inexperienced young villager, and the
entrenched, hostile ex-officers of the previous generation.
The image created by depicting horses rushing at each other,
biting, and kicking, suggests that this human struggle, also, is
a matter of life and death.
Angi Vera, 1979, was directed by Pal Gllbor. It takes
place in 1948 during the period of confusion and political
reorganization. The title heroine, a naive but earnest woman,
is enrolled in a Party school. She becomes infatuated with the
group leader and is seduced by him. This is a delicate,
embivalent work which expresses the confusion, both political
and emotional, of the period it depicts.
Confidence, 1979, directed by Istvlln Szab6, is a love
story mixed with suspense. In Nazi-occupied Budapest a
woman learns that her husband is being hunted by the
Germans. To prevent her from falling into the hands of the
Nazis, the resistance gives her a new identity as the wife of
another fugitive. Posing as husband and wife the couple lives
in constant fear of discovery. In this paranoid environment
27
they fall in love and experience the heights of passion because
of their conviction that every sexual encounter could be their
last.
Diary for my Childrerr, 1984, was directed by Marta
MEszaros and is, to a significant extent, autobiographical. It
combines adolescent reminiscences with historical breadth as
seen through the eyes of an orphaned teen-age girl who
comes to Budapest, in the era of post-war repression, to live
with her aunt, a dedicated Party functionary. The film is
considered to be the hardest hitting depiction of Stalinist ter-
ror to come out of Hungary.
Yugoslav Films:
Three, 1966, was directed by Aleksandar Petrovii:,
considered to be the founder of modern Yugoslav cinema,
who broke the restraints of Realism" and adopted a
modernist style comparable to his contemporary French and
Italian filmmakers. The film was nominated for an Academy
Award. It combines three distinct, but yet related, episodes
in the period of German occupation.
lmwunce Unprotected, 1968, was directed oy Du'!an
Makavejev. It is a semi- documentary which is highly innova-
tive in style and composition. It mixes footage from an
original film with the same title, which was secretly made
during the German occupation, with new materials including
interviews with surviving participants.
The Fragrance of Wild Flowers, 1978, directed by
Srdjan won the International Critics Award at the
Cannes Film Festival. It is a mixture of lyricism and slapstick
comedy, murder mystery, Fellini - tike sideshows, and scathing
social satire. The story concerns a well - known actor who
storms out of a dress rehearsal and goes off to seek a simpler
life in a fishing village on the banks of the Danube. His
peace is disturbed when the media invade his sanctuary,
creating a circus- like atmosphere and attracting thousands of
eccentric converts to the life."
Petria's Wreath, 1980, was also directed by Karanovic.
It is the chronicle of a woman's life across three decades of
mid-century history and is depicted with the artful and
haunting simplicity of the hand-tinted family photographs
which constitute the leitmotif of the film. Petria' s life
encompasses romance, brutality, pettiness, and superstition,
with history always unfolding in the background.
Special Treatme11t, 1980, is an outrageous comedy with
subtle allegory, directed by Goran Paskaljevic. The plot cen-
ters around the head of an alcohol abuse clinic who attempts
to cure his patients with a regimen of apples, Wagner, exer-
28
cise, and psychodrama. Selecting a inotley crew from his
prize pupils, he sets off on a theatrical tour to teach the evils
of drink to the contentedly alcohol-drenched citizenry.
All of the films are in color with t he exception of
ldenli/icalion Marks: None, Walkover, Diary for My Children,
and Three, which are in black and white.
Most of these films are available for rental from New
Yorker Films, 16 West 61st Street, New York, N.Y. 10023,
who will send a catalog upon request. Much of this article is
based on printed materials furnished by them.
29
ANDREI TARKOVSKY 1932-1986
Son of the Russian poet Arseni Tarkovsky, Andrei
Tarkovsky grew up in the artistic milieu of the Soviet writers
colony at Peredelkino. He attended music school and studied
painting before entering the State Institute for Cinema in 1956,
from which he graduated in 1960. Before his death on December
26, 1986, Tarkovsky completed eight films:
The Steamroller and the Violin, 1960. Made a5
graduation requirement for the State lnstitutJ
for Cinema. In Russian.
My Name is Ivan, 1962. In Russian.
Solaris, 1972. Based on Stanislaw Lem's scienc(
fiction novel. In Russian.
Andrei Rublev, 1965. Based on the life of the Rus
sian icon painter. In Russian.
The Mirror, 1975. Based on the filmmaker's ow
life. In Russian.
Stalker, 1979. In Russian
Nostalghia, 1983. Filmed in and around the V ig
noni baths in a fourteenth-century Tuscrq
village. Reviewed by Leo Hecht in SEEDTI
6 #3 (December 1986): 32-36. In Russian an1
Italian.
The Sacrifice, 1986. Filmed in Sweden anc
photographed by Sven Nykvist, lngmar Berg
man's cinematographer. In Swedish.
Tarkovsky's films are poetic and painterly, frequent)
citing and alluding to works by the old masters. Of Tarkovsky
Bergman has said, "He is for me the greatest, the one wh
invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it capture
life as a reflection, life as a dream. " A retrospective o
Tarkovsky's eight films, organized by Anna Lawton, professor o
Russian liter::ture and film at Purdue University, was presented 3
the National Gallery of Art in Washington between November I
and December 27. This obituary is adapted frorn the Filr
Calendar of the National Gallery, Autumn, 1987.
30
KIERKEGAARDIAN MOTIFS IN TARKOVSKY'S
THE SACRIFICE
by Peter G. Christensen
Various artistic contexts have been considered for
Andrei Tarkovsky's seventh and final feature film, The
Sacrifice (1986). Some of these are obvious ones, as they :tre
invoked by the film itself: Leonardo, Bach, Nietzsche,
Shakespeare, and Dostoevsky. Critics have suggested others,
such as Bergman (Shame), Bunuel (The Exterminating Angel),
and Chekhov (Uncle Vanya). However, possibly the most
relevant reference, Kierkegaard's essay Fear and Trembling
( 1843 ), has been overlooked. Not only does it provide a con-
text in which Alexander's strange "sacrifice" can be under-
stood, but it helps mediate between interpretations of the film
which ~ i w Alexander's actions either exclusively as holy or
pathological. It is not my contention that Tarkovsky has
Alexander serve as an unequivocal illustration of the "knight
of faith," but rather that a dramatic situation is created which
is illuminated by Kierkegaard's famous spiritual meditation.
Tarkovsky forces the leap of faith, a form of intense religious
individualism, into a world marked by both the possibility of
repeated but generally undiscovered supernatural events (the
subjects of Otto the postman's investigations) and the per-
formance of religious ritual (as represented by the watering of
the leafless tree).
The most interesting comments on The Sacrifice have
been offered by Pascal Bonitzer in "L'Idee principale"
1
in
Cahiers du Ciilema and Peter Green in "Apocalypse and
Sacrifice"
2
in Sight and Sound. A short, but interesting inter-
view with Tarkovsky3 about the film can be found in Positif,
and some material in his booklength essay Sculpting in Time
4
is also relevant.
Bonitzer argues that The Sacrifice is a metaphysical
and religious apology. The supernatural can only spring
"from the prism of a decomposing reality, through a sick
spirit for example [translation mine];" it is "by necessity secret
and uncertain" here (I 3). Bonitzer points out that if
Tarkovsky had i ndicated without ambiguity that a nuclear
holocaust had been avoided through Alexander's prayer and in
the manner suggested by Otto (the encounter with Maria, the
"witch"), the film's message would risk falling into the
ridiculous.
Further, Alexander's actions would lose all tragic
resonance. For if such deeds were required to save the world
from total devastation who would act otherwise? What real
choice would there be? On the other hand, if everything (the
nuclear attack, the night spent with Maria) turns out to be a
31
dream, then Alexander's burning of the house, his retreat into
silence, and his loss of his family would become the actions
of a mad academic whose incarceration would come as no
surprise. In the second, pathological gesture, there is no
sacrifce either. Sacrifice can only emerge between these two
poles.
Bonitzer's position is very well taken. However, it is
implic i tly challenged by Peter Green, who asks how
Alexander's faith can be evidenced in a world obeying the
natural laws of, everyday life. He writes that the "inevitable
holocaust is averted by the seemingly simple device of turning
the catastrophe into a dream, from which Alexander now
awakes" (118).
Green, unlike Bonitzer, chooses an explanation with
recourse to dream partially because "direct intervention by
God would invalidate the very rule [of explicable events) the
film has established" ( 118). For him, God does not step in as
He did when he stopped Abraham from taking the life of his
son Isaac. Green does not ask if Otto's investigations prepare
us to accept a world of the supernatural. The postman has
already mentioned the woman whose son, a soldier, appeared
to her in a photograph over twenty years after he was killed.
Perhaps Otto's name should remind us of Rudolf Otto's
famous book on religious experience, The Holy ( 1917), which
examines the feeling of terror before the sacred. In Green's
schema for Alexander not to act on his decision to lose his
family would be to "return to the prevarication he abhors"
( 118).
Bonitzer feels that The Sacrifice works because it in
effect inscribes itself in the world of the fantastic (as
described by Todorov), where the bizarre events can be
explained either by dream or by divine intervention. The
film's extraordinary use of color, sepia, and black and white,
along with the unusual editing patterns, helps to maintain the
action in an ambiguous sphere. If the situation is ambiguous,
Tarkovsky avoids giving tragic connotations to Alexander's
actions. Green, however, opts for the dream, and in so
doing, hopes to find in Alexander's choice a tragic dimension,
which Bonitzer can only read as madness.
Had Green turned his mention of Abraham and Isaac
to Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, he would have found
several ideas to help us in our analysis of the film: I) the
knight of faith, who can never be a tragic hero; 2) the silence
surrounding the knight of faith; and 3) the inability of the
out!'ide observer to distinguish among another person's acts
which may represent faith, wrongdoing, or madness.
Although there is no direct reference to Kierkegaard
anywhere in the film, we should note that Shakespeare's
32
Richard Ill is mentioned in both contexts. In the film's first
post-credit scene, Alexander receives a birthday greeting from
a friend who once acted on stage with him, "Mighty King
Richard greets good Prince Myshkin." Alexander later
explains to his family that he gave up acting because he could
no longer cope with assuming a false identity, even if his
profession made it an absolute necessity. Whereas the
reference to The Idiot is further developed when the family
remembers a scene in the novel involving the breaking of a
pitcher, the allusion to Richard Ill is more puzzling. Here
K ierkegaard's characterization of the hunchbacked king as
tragic hero is illuminating:
That horrible demon, the most demoniacal figure
Shakespeare has depicted and depicted incomparably,
the Duke of Gloucester (afterwards to become Richard
111)--what made him a demon? Evidently the fact
that he could not bear the pity he had been subjected
to since childhood. His monologue in the first act of
Richard Ill is worth more than all the moral systems
~ h i h have no inkling of the terrors of existence or of
the explanation .of them.5
For K ierkegaard, Shakespeare's play invokes an existential
terror that we commonly associate with Dostoevsky. Initially,
Alexander seems more like the ineffectual, gentle Myshkin,
but as his later destruction of the house
shows, he is capable of going through with violent actions.
In another reference, K ierkegaard presents Richard as
a t ragic hero in conflict with a world which has presented all
its ethical arguments against his acts.
[The tragic hero] can be sure that everything that can
be said against him has been said, unsparingly,
mercilessly--and to strive against the whole world is a
comfort, to strive with oneself is dreadful . . .. The
tragic hero does not know the terrible responsibility of
solitude. (123)
Even if Tarkovsky does not come to Richard Ill
through Kierkegaard, it does not make a comparison unfruit-
ful. The Kierkegaardian categories can still be used to make
sense of the film. First, we should note that the tragic hero is
the p<'rson in distress who weighs society's values of good and
evil against each other. He moves in a world of ethics which
is completely foreign to the knight of faith. Ethics represents
an agreed-upon intermediary world of principles of behavior,
no matter how abstract, and acting on ethical principles is
33
very different from making the leap of faith by which a per-
son lives in direct relationship with God. According to
K ierkegaard:
The genuine tragic hero sacrifices himself and all
that is his for the universal, his deed and every emo-
tion with him belong to the universal , he is revealed,
and in this self -revelation he is the beloved son of
ethics. This does not fit the case of Abraham: he
does nothing for the universal, and he is concealed.
Now we reach the paradox. Either the individual
as the individual is able to stand in an ahsolute rela-
tion to the absolute (and then the ethical is not the
highest)/or Abraham is lost--he is neither a tragic
hero, nor an aesthetic hero. (I 22)
When K ierkegaard asks whether there is a teleological suspen-
sion of the ethical, he answers yes. For him, "faith is this
paradox, that the particular is higher than the universal"(65).
For if the ethical is the highest good, then Abraham's resolu-
tion to heed God and slay Isaac can only be murder.
In The Sacrifice, Alexander commits two actions
which cannot be easily regarded as ethical. He sleeps with
Maria, the Icelandic servant, although he is married to
Adelaide; and he destroys the family home. It is not the
realm of the ethical to sleep with Maria to save the world.
This deed can only be understood as a summons by God.
Otto tells him to do this, and thus, unlike in the example of
A braham, there is a second person involved who has also left
the ethical. If the filmed events are "real," t hen the encounter
with Maria saves the world, and the burning of the home
saves Alexander' s soul. Both event's appear absurd, a notion
which Kierkegaard links with individual faith:
(A braham) acts by virtue of the absurd, for it is
precisely absurd that he as the particular is higher
than the universal. This paradox cannot be mediated;
for as soon as he begins to do this he has to admit that
he was in temptation (Anfechtung), and if such were
the case, he never gets to the point of sacrificing
Isaac, or, if he has sacrificed Isaac, he must turn back
repentantly to the universal. By virtue of the absurd,
he gets Isaac again. Abraham is, therefore, at no
instant a tragic hero but something quite different,
either a murderer or a believer. (67)
Tarkovsky minimizes the elements of this form of
temptation in the treatment of Alexander. After Otto tells
34
him that he must go to Maria, he is not presented openly
debating with himself, nor does he have any interactions with
other characters. In Maria's living room, he plays an organ
prelude and recounts the long story about how he had
unintentionally destroyed his mother's garden by trying to
change its natural state into an ordered one. When he puts
Yiktor's gun to his head, while Maria is standing at the table,
this may look like temptation to avoid the unethical deed, but
it is more likely a gesture of despair, a belief that the mission
can only be in vain. At this point Maria comes to him, and
soon after we see them lying in bed, limbs entwined, their
.,odies several inches off the ground. The next day when
Alexander surprisingly wakes up in his own bedroom, we do
not suspect that he is going to burn down the house until he
sets the chairs on the porch table and looks for the matches.
No elements of this type of temptation (no irresolution,
weighing of the pros and cons, or more prayers) are part of
the action.
K ierkegaard juxtaposes the first definition of tempta-
tion (Anfechtung) with a different type (Fristelse) to explain
the difference between the knight of faith and the tragic
hero:
Why then did Abraham do it? For God's sake, and (in
complete identity with this) for his own sake. He did
it for God's sake because God required this proof of
his faith; for his sake he did it in order that he might
furnish the proof. The unity of these two points of
view is perfectly expressed by the word which has
always been used to characterize this situation: it is a
trial, a temptation (Fri:.telsc). A temptation--but what
does that mean? What ordinarily tempts a man is that
which would keep him from doing his duty, but in
this case the temptation is itself the ethical ... which
would keep him from doing God's will. But what
then is duty? Duty is precisely the expression of
God's will. (70)
Alexander's willful ending of his home life, a fulfill-
ment of his despairing prayer to God in the dark room before
Otto comes with his message, serves as the proof of his
faith--something which is done for its own sake. If duty
really is the expression of God's will, then the world of
everyday ethics can offer no signposts along the way. For
K ierkegaard, a second major point is that the direct relation-
ship of the human to the divine is marked by silence toward
the world. Whereas the tragic hero is in dialogue with the
everyday world (as the second reference to Richard Ill)
35
shows, the knight is not.
Abraham keeps silent--but he cannot speak. Therein
lies the distress and anguish. For if I when I speak
am unable to make myself intelligible, then I am not
speaking--even though I were to talk uninterruptedly
day and night. Such is the case with Abraham. He is
able to utter everything, but one thing he cannot say,
i.e., say it in such a way that another understands it,
and so he is not speaking. The relief of speech is that
it translates me into the universal.( 122-23)
When Alexander is running frantically in front of the
burning house, he begins to speak and then reminds himself
that he must be silent. This refusal to make himself intel-
ligible to his family and friends is contrasted with his silent
bending down before Maria, who suddenly arrives on the left
of the frame. Is she able to understand what he has done?
We really cannot say. She may only have compassion, not
understanding. There is no human language for Alexander
which will not bring him back into the ethical framework
where he would join the ranks of K ierkegaard's tragic heroes
such as Agamemnon.
In the final scene, Alexander is gone. His son, Little
Man, waters the "Japanese" tree, lies beneath it, and says. "In
the beginning was the Word. Why is that, Papa?" This
quotation from St. John is one of the few direct allusions to
Christianity in the film. The comment is ironic, since
Alexander's incommunicable action takes place in a world
where God is understood as Word.
Because of the importance of si lence, K ierkegartrd
maintains a third point--only the knight can know if he is the
knight of faith or not.
Whether the individual is in temptation
(Anfechtung) or is a knight of faith only the individual
can decide. Nevertheless it is possible to construct
from the paradox several criteria which he too can
understand who is not within the paradox. The true
knight of faith is always absolute isolation, the false
knight is sectarian. (89)
Not surpri singly, acting on the basis of faith may
appear to be ~ i t h r sin or madness. An outside observer can
never know definitely. For K ierkegaard, the acts of the
knight of faith do not overlap with evil or pathological
behavior. Within this system, we as viewers cannot defini-
tively say whether Alexander's actions are based on faith.
36
However, if we decide without question that he is morally or
emotionally demented, we are taking up the ethical viewpoint
which Kierkegaard has called us to reinterpret. In the long
shot of several minutes duration presenting Alexander's zigzag
m<wements in front of the flames, we are given no close-ups
to read his suffering, for what would be there for us to read?
Hr appears as a figure in a landscape, and his interiority is no
more accessible to us than that of the other characters in the
frame.
As critics have noted, the dream/reality question and
the evil/good/ mad question are closely linked. From the
K icrkegaardian standpoint, the film may be about a miracle.
Should Alexander really be the knight of faith, then the laws
of time have been suspended. The film then serves as a
parable on the idea that faith can move mountains. (If
Alexander dreamed the war, his prayer, and the encounter
with Maria, then it makes little sense that he should fulfill a
vow he made while he was in what he must come to realize
was a dream.) The day, June 12, 1985, is begun again. This
situation contrasts with Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrance,
discussed by Otto and Alexander at the beginning of the film.
Because of the use of miracle to save the protagonist's
son, a comparison with K ierkegaard's story of Abraham is
instructive. When the ram replaces Isaac on the altar, the
Jaws of nature are not suspended. In contrast, Alexander
loses his son, and the events of the day which we just saw did
not take place, a situation as paradoxical in screen time as in
everyday time.
In speaking of the film in his interview with Positif,
Tarkovsky does not mention Kierkegaard, but his conversa-
tion is certainly cast in terms of post-Kierkegaardian religious
existential thought:
When you're hungry, you go to the store and buy
something to eat, but when you really feel bad and are
in the midst of a spiritual crisis, there is nowhere to
go, except to sexologists and psychiatrists who don't
know anything about what's going on. They are
talkative voyeurs, who console you and calm you, but
who cost you dearly. (4)
Although Tarkovsky says that his film has several
levels of meaning, he is openly offering guidelines for an
authorized interpretation. Alexander's action is desperate but
good and beneficial. Tarkovsky states that we must be con-
scious of being dependent on God before claiming to ..:on-
tribute to the development of humanity. We, as viewers, must
gain our bearings from the director's comments, but not col-
37
lapse authorial intentionality onto the film. The element of
interiority in Kierkegaard's vision can not completely mesh
with Tarkovsky's, as the director in his spoken intentions and
in the final scene of the film indicates the communicable
regeneration which comes from the apparently absurd act.
Tarkovsky makes the claim that h ~ Sacrifice differs
from all his previous films in the sense that he reveals the
events in a "dramatic manner" (4) that corresponds to the way
we see things in everyday life. The film events are part of a
parable, but they are shot as if they were natural. This
external style of presentation is appropriate for looking at
characters whose spiritual lives are ultimately inacessible to
ourselves. Our understanding of Alexander's act is not only
filtered through a dramatic presentation. In addition, the
realm of the sacred is not limited to the possible miraculous
occurrence, which would probably be catalogued by Otto as
the 285th supernatural phenomenon he knows. In the closing
scene of the film a type of ritual is being enacted as Little
Man waters the leafless tree. In the first post-credit scene,
Alexander had suggested that doin"g the same action at the
same time every day was a way of getting in touch with the
divine, and he cited as an example the story of the Orthodox
monk Pamve, who had planted a dead tree on a mountain.
He told one of his juniors to water it every day until it
wakened to life. After three years, the monks, one day,
found the tree covered with blossoms.
In part, the tale of the monk Pamve is another miracle
story which sets the tone for the rest of the film. However,
it also suggests a frame of reference quite outside of
K ierkegaard's. Ritual is not an interiorized action. It is part
of the activity of the community of believers, whose spiritual
lives are not totally private. In addition, the tree which
serves as a bond between father and son, in the film, symbol-
izes life, and so can be related to the tree of life in world
mythology and Christian iconography. The generically
ambiguous tree in Leonardo's unfinished The Adoration of the
Magi reminds us of this fact. The camera pans up the tree in
the film's credit sequence, and in the final shot, the camera
repeats a similar pan up the "Japanese" tree.
The incorporation into the film of the pan- religious
hierophanic tree and of the Icelandic witch with the Christian
name Maria reminds us that Tarkovsky is not searching for a
dogmatically Christian view of t'he sacred. The two major
references to Christianity come through juxtaposed artworks,
Leonardo's painting and the alto solo "Erbarme dich, Mein
Gott," Section 47 of Bach's Saim Matthew Passion. The death
and birth of Christ are presented simultaneously, and we are
reminded of the Magi in T.S. Eliot's poem who discover
38
unexpectedly the future Passion in the Nativity scene. In the
film Christ's sacrifice becomes a model, rather than the center
of a cult. Alexander's self -sacrifice and imposed silence are
symbolically juxtaposed to his son's recovery from a throat
operation and ability to speak once again. There is a bridge
between the leap of faith and the possibility of religious
awareness, sharing, and continuity through ritual. God is
reached both through intense interiority and community
activity.
We should not let understanding of The Sacrifice be
thwarted by an overemphasis on whether the strange events
are real or not. Instead, we can use the ambiguity mentioned
by Bonitzer as a starting point from which we can begin to
expl ore more deeply the spiritual values important to
Tarkovsky in a work which is to some extent a final testa-
ment made in the face of oncoming death.
I would like to thank Elizabeth Ryan for her discus-
sions of the film.
I. Pascal Bonitzer, "L ' Idee principale," Cahiers du
Cinema 386 (July-August 1986): 12-13.
2. Peter Green, "Apocalypse and Sacrifice," Sight
and Sound 56.2 (Spring 1987): 111-18.
3. Andrei Tarkovsky. "A props du Sacrifice," Posit if
303 (May 1986): 3-5.
4. Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time: Reflections
011 the Ci11ema (London: The Bodley Head, 1986).
5. Sil'ren Kierkegard, "Fear and Trembling" and The
Sickness unto Death." trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Prin-
ceton UP, 1954): 114-15.
39
ALEKSANDR SOKUROV: MAN'S LONELY VOICE
Shown as part of the Museum of Modern Art's recent
series, "New Voices from the Russian Cinema," Man'J Lonely
Voice is the work of Aleksandr Sokurov, a director who has
often worked in the field of the documentary. Born in 1951,
Sok urov graduated from the Gorky Un iversity History
Department in 1974 and from the All-Union Institute of
Cinematography as a documentry director in 1979. Made in
1978 for the Lenfilm Studios, Man 's Loll' /.1' Voice--based
loosely upon two stories by Andrei Platonov, "The Potudan
River" and "The Origin of a Master"--is a poetic evocation of
loneliness, desolation, and disorientation in the period follow-
ing the civil war. Dedicated by the filmmaker in 1987 to the
memory of Andrei Tarkovsky, Man's Loncl.v l' oice shares
with Tarkovsky's work a brooding concentration on jux-
taposed images of lyrical beauty and poignancy. at the
expense of narrative and easy intelligibility, as well as a
mixing of black and white with color, and a contrastive use
of music and sound as expressive elements. But, whereas
Tarkovsky incorporates paintings by the old masters and their
iconography into his films, Sokurov, drawing upon his train-
ing both in history and in the documentary, includes in Man's
Lone/.) Voice old photographs and documentary film shots
(that often start as stills and then slowly begin to move) in
order to stir memories and invoke both the more distant pre-
revolutionary past and also the early Soviet 1920s in which
the scenario unfolds.
Sokurov's cinematographic rendit ion of Platonov (with
consultation by Maria Platonova) is a powerful example of the
poetry of solitude and silence. The film opens with the hero
Nikita seen against a huge natural background--in intense
green--a tiny human figure in the lower right hand corner of
the screen. Then a black and whi te still shot shows peasants
grappling a huge wooden wheel, like animals in a treadmill,
which they begin to turn--a recurring image of endless labor,
a vicious circle, taken up again in silent footage of workmen
operating machinery in a primitive factory, of pulling up and
pushing over a heavy tree stump, of a crowded trolly car, and
of a small ship in a darkened harbor. The camera focuses on
the grainy, rough textures of baked soil , old wooden houses,
crumbling walls, and weathered stone. The basic realities of
earth, sky, fire, and water are constantly present , as is man's
hunger in the face of the pervasive spiritual bleakness and
emptiness , that is worse than the actual starvation and disease.
Nikita almost dies of fever, runs away from Lyuba--
his bride from whom he feels alienated--and works in the
town sweeping up in a slaughterhouse, then returns to his
40
wife, who has attempted to drown herself. Sokurov makes
use of many sudden changes in intensity of light and sound.
His spectrum ranges from total black to blazing whiteness;
the lush colors of the natural setting sometimes stand in oppo-
sition to the psychic states of inner dislocation, or the winter
grays of snow-covered landscapes (perceived from shifting
perspectives of distance) reflect the hopeless chill of despera-
tion. Harsh, discordant music contrasts with expansive
romantic themes (Penderecki is among the composers fea-
tured). Time and place are as unstable as memory; while
Lyuba studies a family album, we are shown, in a series of
close-ups, relics of a lost world, just as the film itself is a
fossil of the past. In a strange t ragi-comi c scene that takes
place at night on the water in almost impenetrable darkness,
the displaced, obsolete priest and the clerk from the new
Soviet registry of births, marriages, and deaths (where Nikita
and Lyuba are married) go for a row. during which the for-
mer man of God, consumed with curiosity to know whether
existence "over there" is the same as life here, has his friend
tie his legs together before slipping quietly overboard. Much
in the same way as Lyuba is saved from drowning and
reunited with Nikita, the ex-priest pops back up, but without
a word as to what he has seen on the other side.
Mans Lmrel.v V01ce captures a particular historical
moment of uprootedness and dislocation in the USSR, but
more than that it is a haunting composition full of images of
raging fever, wind, and silence, pictures of nature and human
squalor, and, most of att, faces reflecting disconnection,
yearning, and isolation. Of the work Sokurov said, "Based on
Andrei Plantov's stories, the film concentrates more on the
traditional Russian theme of inner anguish than on outward
action. I wanted the man to observe his subtle feelings. In
the context of the young man's lofty spiritual claims, the
erotic motivation reveals how the lonely voice of the spirit
dies in the face of matter."
D.C.G.
41
ZBIGNIEW CYNKUTIS: 1938--1987
by Marc Robinson
"I had the chance to participate in an incredible
adventure," Zbigniew Cynkutis said to me of his 23 years in
the Polish Lab, "and it is simply my responsibility not to take
what I learned with me to my grave: I must share it with
others." We were speaking in December 1985. A year later,
on January 9, 1987, Cynkutis was killed in an automobile
accident on an icy Polish highway. He was 48.
Cynkutis succeeded in fulfilling that responsibility
before he died: he generously shared what he knew at
workshops around Europe, colleges and universities in the
United States, acting schools in Poland, and most recently at
the Second Studio of Wrocbw, the theater he founded two
years ago. He also had participated in numerous conferences,
lectured widely, and written about acting for several theatre
journals. Cynkutis's teaching career, which began in 1972,
was certainly as distinguished and revolutionary as his acting.
And it may have reached farther.
I met Zbyszek in an acting class at Hnmilton College.
In the last five years Zbyszek touched mostly young people--
students in their late teens and early twenties who had never
heard of the Polish Lab or seen one of its productions. In our
class we had no idea that our teacher had achieved interna-
tional fame as Dr. Faustus, or that he had played Myshkin in
The Idiot, Kordian in Kordiall, Paris in Akropolis, and Muley
in The Collstallt Prillce. Only the most informed of Zbyszek's
Polish students could have caught his Lazarus in Apocal.rpsis
Cum Figuris. He played the role for 12 years, until 1980. We
hadn't read Towards a Poor Theatre; when we did, it was
only to know more about what we had just discovered first-
hand. And nobody had a clue as to what "paratheatrical"
meant.
Most of us, in fact, knew very little about any kind of
theatre when we met Zbyszek. Perhaps that's why he
affected us so profoundly. Before we could be locked into
conservative ideas of performance or paralyzed by the field's
financial pressures, Zbyszek enabled us to experiment, dare,
maybe f ail ... and play. The theatre he let us dream about
may be a seductive fantasy, but I'm sure that his idealism will
help us weather many future disappointments. When we
argued with Zbyszek--as most of us did--it was often
because we resented being stirred so deeply. To our surprise,
we found ourselves caring passionately about something that
until then had been a mere diversion.
He told us that "tolerance, flexibility, and respect"
made up theatre, and in his classes we searched for a per-
42
forming style that reflected those qualities. I don't think it
was just Zbyszek's idiosyncratic English that had him calling
a workshop a "cooperation." While he taught us new ways to
release our voices, carry our bodies, and interact with others,
he also made sure, as he wrote in an open letter on theatre
that we developed "fundamental social, cultural,
a nd moral values of the world at large." No wonder, then,
that the sessions I remember most are the ones in which
Zbyszek held forth for an hour on philosophy, politics, or
artistic responsibility. Acting class was no longer just about
acting. Anyone who worked with Zbyszek will remember his
favorite phrase, "We must go beyond certain limits!"
Zbyszek's commitment to education finally led him to
create his last and most ambitious project: the Second Studio
of Wroclaw. After three years of teaching in the United
States, he returned to Poland in 1984; by September 1985 he
had gathered a company of actors from around the globe. I
don't know of any other place in the world where, regardless
of your level of proficiency, you could work closely and in
relative security with artists of such high caliber. You didn't
even need to be an actor: all Zbyszek required was energy
and dedication.
Zbyszek directed and taught at the Studio (we per-
formed his Phaedra, and at the time of his death he was
preparing Oedipus) a nd he also brought in novice directors
and allowed some in the company to lead training. "Here,"
Zbyszek said, "you can risk and not feel responsible. It is a
place that extends your childhood--which is so important in
art."
When I spoke with the actors left in Poland, they told
me that they are trying to save the Studio from closing and
hope to continue the work Zbyszek started. Of course, he
would want it so. "In our role as educators," Zbyszek wrote
in 1984, "we may transmit a legacy of hope for the future.
We can make an important contribution to the betterment of
our profession , to ourselves as human beings, and to our
society through our students. We have to care about this con-
tinuity and protect it from extinction."
43
PIWNICA POD BARANAMI--A CABARET FROM
POLAND
by Teodor Zareba
The Polish Cabaret "Piwnica pod Baranami" (The Cel-
lar Under the Rams) recently appeared at Alice Tully Hall on
August 29, and in the Auditorium of the Graduate School of
the City University of New York on September 4, 1987.
The Cabaret was formed in 1956 in Cracow by a
group of young artists--for the most part students from the
Academy of Fine Arts--and soon became a phenomenon in
Polish cultural life. Last year the company celebrated its 30th
anniversary with the opening of a very unusual exhibition
entitled, "Remaining Evidences," in Cracow's Palace of Art,
consisting of scenery, costumes, programs, photographs,
reviews from the press and periodicals, as well as art works
created by members of the group.
As a cabaret, Piwnica has an approach quite different
from what we expect in this genre. It is neither satirical nor
strictly political, but rather seeks to stress the absurdity of
existence by combining features of cabaret, boulevard theatre,
operetta, and small theatrical forms. In the prcductions
mockery serves as the spr i ngboard for deriding widely
accepted conventions, and having a good time seems to fulfill
Piwnica's basic credos; "Let's make Cracow the merriest town
in the world" and "Death will come and change everything."
In all its programs Piwnica uses a juxtaposition of poetic
songs, excerpts of memoirs, old letters, official notices, legal
documents, and ludicrous stories. This mixture of lyricism
and burlesque, pathos and ridicule, pastiche, and musical and
spoken texts makes the entertainment both comic and moving
through a heady concoction of styles.
The program presented in New York was no excep-
tion . However, on this occasion songs and pantomime
predominated . Poetic songs composed by members of the
cabaret have been Piwnica's trademar k since the early
seventies when the composer Zygmunt Konieczny and the
singer Ewa Demarczyk began their collaboration. As a result,
the program included some very impressive settings of various
literary works, including authors as diverse as Shakespeare,
Tuwim, Lesmian, and Witkiewicz as well as Marek Grechuta
and other members of the company. The program started
with "Spanioletta," a Dada-like group song which introduced
the atmosphere of circus and play with it's ping-pong game,
and ended with "Desiderata," a collection of rules and advice
on how to live the beautiful life . Piotr Skrzynecki, the
founder of Piwnica and its eternal host, was paradoxically
able to link the diverse pieces and, at the same time, to create
44
an atmosphere of chaos, which is precisely the style of this
cabaret. It was quite extraordinary to see this group of 25
artists from Cracow translating their normally intimate artistic
environment of a gothic Cracovian cellar into a larger, colder
concert hall or university auditorium. The fact that the eve-
ning held such great appeal for a very mixed audience was
proof o Piwnica's skills and originality.
45
FOLKTHEATRE IN POLAND
by Steven Hart
I have recently returned from Poland where I attended
a "Popular Folkloric Theatre Festival" as the guest of the
Theatre Culture Society. The festival included two types of
theatre: amateur productions of conventional drama and the
performance of regional fol k customs relating to var ious
aspects of daily life in Polish count ry villages where small
farming has always been the principal occupation. By far, the
most interesting part of the festival were thest- folk ritual
performances which radiated a cheerful, earthy vitality which
I will try to describe.
Understanding the special vitality of these folk per-
formances requires some sense of Polish country life which is
perhaps most simply illustrated by drawing a brief picture of
Tarnogrod where the three-day festival has been held each
autumn for the past four years.
Tarnogrod is a village in what is now eastern Poland
in a region that was central Poland before the redistribution
of borders in the late 1940s. The mists roll and catch in the
orchards and willow trees here as they do in the p:.intings of
Wyspianski . Tarnogrod is a fairly large village dominated by
one long street that boasts a handsome Catholic church from
t he Polish Renaissance in which hangs a genuine Tintoretto.
There is also an Orthodox church, a town square with a small
park and one very bad restaurant. The land is flat but not as
flat as the Warsaw region, and the soil is rich clay which is
extremely good for growing sugarbeets, the principal
sweetener for the prodigious quantities of tea that Poles con-
sume. In the autumn, the farmers carry bulging carloads of
the harvested beets in horsedrawn carts to the refinery; trac-
tors continue to be astronomically .expensive, difficult at best
to repair, and there is a ten-year waiting list for those with
the money to buy one.
The horses are round and self -sat isfied as is most
Polish livestock, and they appear to be the object of serious
care and attention. The horse is in any case probably more
practical for Polish farmers whose holdings are generally
composed of several small plots distributed within the vicinity
of their town or village. A combination of factors that effect
Polish farming may contribute to the special nature of the
Folk theatre in Poland. For the first time in its prosperous
agricultural history, Poland finds itself in the position of
having to import food. The impractical distribution of the
land, coupled with other economic factors, may make folk
culture impossible to maintain. For that reason, there is a
special urgency to keeping alive the collective memory of
46
these traditions because they represent an organic past that
has survived wars, governments and economic factors.
Many of the participants in the festival no longer
work the land exclusively because they cannot afford to do so
without supplementing their income with factory jobs or
other employment. The declining value of the ~ t y makes
trade, even with the other Warsaw Pact nations, increasingly
difficult. Even as the dollar has skidded downward in the
West , the ztoty has declined against the dollar 25% since 1985.
Young people move away from the farm into the cities and
already there are plans for the redistribution of land so that
larger, more efficient farms .can be made profitable. These
conditions reflect the larger picture of the Polish economy
which has noticeably suffered since my last visit in 1985.
The government has proposed a "Reform" to integrate the
Polish economy more realistically with the world economy at
the suggestion of the World Monetary Fund. This is to be
initiated in the next few months through a 100% price rise in
certain staples such as bread and flour with no rise in wages.
There are currently shortages of these commodities in Poland.
I apologize, to a very small degree, for this dour dis-
cussion of economics, but without it it would be easy to get
the wrong impression about what happens at Tarnogr6d.
Unlike this festival, there is a sort of official folk-culture
done by professional performers which is fostered, largely for
export, by the government. J saw a sample of this done in
the large plaza in front of the architecturally notorious Palace
of Culture in Warsaw in 1985. It was embued with the sort
of glazed, unnatural qual ity that reminds one of Walt Disney's
television treatment of Davy Crockett.
In contrast, the work that is done at Tarnogr6d is
created, frankly, out of love, and it is gifted with a very
lively, unusual sort of fun. The performances generally
represent two or three years research and rehearsal to ensure
authenticity. Special objects and clothing--these are not
theatrical props and costumes--are provided at the expense of
the performers because the groups get little or no government
support.
A group of Silesian highlanders , for example, per-
formed the complete ceremony of courtship including the
groom's arrival with his representative and the dowry negotia-
tions propitiated by vodka supplied by the groom. The glass
from which it is drunk is decorously passed, after refilling, to
each person at the table. Later, we see the wedding invitation
which is done in traditinal verse for each of the chosen
guests. Then, there is the wedding ceremony at home which
precedes the church service in which the bride and groom
kneel together on a white cloth while they receive the bless-
47
ings of their families in song. At the "reception" which fol-
lows the church service, there are various "games." In one, for
i ns ta nce, the bride prete nds to have disappeared and the
groom js obliged to interview an assortme nt of ot her ladies,
i ncl udi ng an elderly comic crone, in order to find hi s new
wi fe. Finally, the women join in a bi ttersweet song as the y
remove the bri de' s veil and replace it with a scar f whi ch
covers her hair, showing that she is now a married woman.
Special songs and vigorous, exhausting dancing con-
ti nued throughout this performance whi c h took over two
hours. At the discussion, later that evening, a member of the
artistic commission voiced the opinion that the performance
was rather too long and that some segments, like the rec ita-
tion of the invitational verse, could have been omitted. The
director of the group disagreed, pointing out that they wanted
to show the whole process of courtship and marriage and that
without any of these elements the work would be incomplete.
To my mind, she was right. These folk theatre performances
are not theatrical imitations of action. They are reenactments
and that is partly the source of their fascination.
The performers' clothing were hand-made, carefully
recreated renditions of the particular village traditional color
pattern and tailoring. Each article may involve highly com-
plex patterns of embroidery that is dist inctive to that village.
Some items were actually heirlooms that have been preserved
by earlier generations. Around the stage were artifacts, such
as tools, cooking utensils, toys and even works of art that
have been painstakingly gathered. The Silesian Highlanders
had several paintings on glass, a medium distinctive to Polish
f olk art form found in their region and in the Tatra
Mountains. A group from Zamosc, a town near Tarnogr6d,
demonstrated how one makes special wands and wreaths as
part of that region's wedding customs.
It is important to understand the spirit of these per-
formances. The participants are not acting in the usual sense;
indeed when bridging segments of manufactured "drama" are
needed to get from segment to segment, the "acting" is pretty
bad. Their joy in performing comes in part from the under-
standing that while their traditions may be fragile, they are
kept alive by performing them fo r others. An excellent
example is a group from eastern Poland who showed us the
preparation, spinning, and weaving of linen. It was explained
to me t hat various spinni ng wheels and looms had not been
recreated but had been found in the village homes. I know
.for a fact that such tools are still used in Poland as I met a
woman in Warsaw who supplements her income by spinning
wool, carded from old garments, into yarn for new ones.
One performance, given by a group of Kashubians,
48
included the use of a most extraordinary musical instrument.
It was shaped rather like a viola that had been stretched on a
rack so that its neck was elongated to about three feet . At
the top of this neck is a head carved in wood with a long,
serio-comic face. On top of the head is a tin hat of vaguely
Spanish design which is betasseled with bells. This instrument
is neither plucked nor bowed, but rather bounced assiduously
up and down on the floor while the player strikes the tin rim
of the hat rather like a cymbal. Despite a really marvelous
leaping dance performed by the men in this group, it was
hard to take one's eyes off this instrument when it was in
operation.
The festival is held in the Tarnogrod House of Cul-
ture, which is perhaps disproportionately large for the size of
the village. It boasts a traditional, baroque theatre with com-
fortable plush seats arrayed in rows before a raised stage. It
seemed to me that I had never seen performances that
yearned more to be done outdoors in the fields or in the
traditional log houses that are in the village streets. I under-
stand that the fractious Polish weather might have made this
difficult if not impossible, but the audience seemed to share
my feeling and made .enthusiastic efforts to overcome the
emotional confines of the space.
The house was always filled to capacity with spec-
tators who energetically cheered on the performers, joined
them in song, talked among themselves and generally had a
good time. Hordes of good-natured children worked their
way up the steps at the base of the stage and ensconced
themselves as close as possible to the swirl of color and sound.
Some even managed to sneak into the wings to be still closer
to the action. Even the members of the artistic commission
who were ceremoniously seated in the first row, talked,
laughed, and sometimes joined in with the songs. The "prob-
lem" in this sort of theatre is suppressing the audience's
enthusiasm, as opposed to the solemnities of the conventional
theatre where one struggles to keep the spectators awake.
The depth of feeling created by these performances is
enhanced by their relationship with the process of life and
death in the continuation of the year cycle. One group per-
formed a christening ritual, while another did the harvesting
of the wheat. A Christmas play about King Herod, performed
by one group, provided a rather weird blend of Witkacian
lunacy and The Play of St. George. Herod appeared with his
court in modern military garb, enhanced by numerous shiny
glass baubles and bizarrely draped ribbons, in order to do
battle with various Turks.
Another group from southeastern Poland gave a per-
formance called "Drepci11y" or "Stomping," an archaic term
49
that seemed to mean very little to many in the audience
before the work was performed. It is a ceremony similar to
an American barnraising. Friends and neighbors are invited
to a party at the site where a new house is to be built. Using
tampers and their bare feet, they rythmically "stamp" down
the clay surface of the earth to form the floor of the new
house, while they sing and periodically halt for food, beer, or
a chat.
In many of the performances, special breads and cakes
had been prepared which would be served traditionally with
the given occasion. Samples of these tasty items were made
available to the audience by members of the casts, who came
down into the house to share them with us. One had a sense
that the struggle for communion for which Grotowski and
others had labored so mightily in the 60s and the 70s had
been achieved through the directness and truth of this folk
theatre. That is not to say that the participants are given to
the pretentions of many people in the arts. When a critic on
the commission pointed out that the dramatized links between
segments of ritual were neither good nor necessary, the direc-
tor rejoined. She explained that they had not had these bits
in the original performances in their village, but had put
them in so that the intellectuals on the commission would
have "something to criticize." She brought down the house
including every member of the commisssion.
50
AN ABSURDOID EVENING IN BINGHAMTON
by Eugene Brogyanyi
On November 7, the Threshold Theatre Company pre-
sented an evening of five short plays by the Hungarian writer
Glza Paskandi, as part of the 20th anniversary celebration of
Modern International Drama, a magazine of contemporary
d r ~ m a in translation, at S.U.N.Y. Binghamton. The Company
was invited by Professor George E. Wellworth, co-editor of
M.l.D., a publication of the Max Reinhardt Archive.
The five plays , presented under the title Outside
Noises, require a total of 17 characters, all of which were
played by four actors, Gabriel Barre, Warren Kelley, David
Sterry, and Owen Thompson. The widely varied characteriza-
tions required of each actor enhanced the ensemble aspects of
the comic production, which was enthusiastically received by
the audience of theatre students and faculty at the University
as well as the theatre scholars who pa rticipJted in panels at
the M.l.D. celebration. In addi tion to Outside Noises or:
Dv11't Be Afraid of Mr. Kopa, the evening consisted of The
Dr.1 Cleaner's l11tegrit y, The World of Statistics or: IVe Know
Why, Volunteer Firemen, and A Moment of Sincerity. The
plays ranged in running time from 8 to 15 minutes each. The
first and last of the above were published in the Spring 1984
edition of M.l.D. (vol. 17, no.2), along with other, longer
plays by the author, who lives in Budapest. The event proved
to be a "homecoming" of sorts for Pamela Caren Billig, direc-
tor of the production, since she had completed her
undergraduate work in Theatre Arts at S.U.N.Y. Binghamton.
The plays were translated by the present writer, a founder
with Ms Billig of the Threshold Theatre Company.
Geza P5skandi is best known i n Hungary for his
large-scale historical dramas, many of which combine
psychological realism with the absurdity elicited by internal
and external constraints. The plays in the Binghamton
program display in much purer form what the author terms
his "absurdoid" bent. These plays may be seen as grotesque
reflections on intrusions by the organs of modern mass society
into the daily lives of individuals. On a deeper level they
express the angst of modern man, faced as he inevitably is
with his own contingency.
Paskandi distinguishes between western Theatre of the
Absurd (as represented by Beckett, et at.) and his own absur-
doid writing. The difference lies in the fact that Theatre of
the Absurd typically posits a universe that is absurd per se.
In such a universe, characters are from the outset helpless
victims. In Paskbdi's universe, absurdity either visits itself
upon characters or is generated by them, and power. is often
51
the agent of the absurd. The behavior of the individual and
his relations to his fellow man are determined by where he
stands--or where he imagines he stands--in the spectrum or
graces o.f authority. Furthermore, it may not even be certain
whether that authority poses a real threat, holds out a real
promise, or even exists.
Thus every move on the part of the three clerks in the
title piece, Outside Noises or: Don't Be A/raid of Mr. Kopa,
is determined by the inscr utable presence of Mr. Kopa, who
does not say a word and does not make a move; who stands
in one place, expressionless; and for whom, as the character
Someone is continually remind i ng them, the clerks have
nothing to fear. Someone, Mr. K opa, and the "outside
noises," then, represent, to the clerks, increasingly unknow-
able sources of possible threat. The same type of behavior,
born of uncertainty, is displayed in The Dr .1 Cleaner's
Integrity by the title character, whose half of a telephone
conversation we hear. In it, he vacillates on the question
whether a particular stain will come out. The truth hinges
not on the nature of the stain, but on the effect that a
vaguely threatening scenario--part of which seems to be
taking place in his shop--has on the dry cleaner. The truth
gets similar treatment in A Moment of Sincerity. Here, two
officials believe they have discovered the poetic voice of a
silenced young generation, in the form of graffiti on a
washroom wall. The poetry is brilliant. The problem is that
the youth, whose sincere expression t he poetry represents to
the authorit ies, have been regimented: The young people are
on the front or in correctional institutions. Unbeknownst to
the officials, the graffiti are the work of the bored, old
woman who is the washroom attendant. The t heme of "truth"
as defined by authority finds expression also in The World of
Statistics, in which two one-legged men cannot get a permit
to open a newsstand because, according to the General
Statistical Depository, they are not lame. Their ratio of head-
to-foot is one-to-one, and since the head is the more valuable
of the two body parts, this ratio is more favorable than the
usual one-to-two head-to-foot. Thus the men are not,
statistically speaking, disabled. In this way, Protagoras' adage
that "man is the measure of all things" becomes tranformed
into "statistics are the measure of all men."
Among these five plays, the most all-embracing
expression of P:lskandi's absurdoid world-outlook is Volunteer
Firemen. It is an eloquent, ingenious metaphor of the
t'mergt-nce of modern man. Humanity is here represented by
three volunteer firemen, whose paralyzed wills cannot bring
them to stop fishing long enough to put out the fires that
threaten civilization and the past, here represented by Mr.
52
Nero's barn and Miss Cleopatra's house. As these structures
burn, the moral basis of the fireman's will to take action goes
up in smoke. Their new-found "freedom," however, has sur-
prising consequences.
The Threshold Theatre Company will be presenting
Outside Noises in New York City in the coming months. For
information, call (212) 724-9129, or write to the Administra-
tive Office of the company at 25 I West 87th St., Suite 26,
NYC 10024. .
53
POLISHED POLISH PERFORMANCES: Without
Benefit or Translation
by Glenn Loney
It may seem odd, for one who has often savored prod-
uctions of classics of the drama and modern works in Western
Europe, to wait until his 58th year to experience theatre life
in Poland. Not knowing a single word of Polish was certainly
a deterrent, as was the political unrest of recent years. Now,
however, after only two weeks of performances in Warsaw
and Cracow, even without translations or subtitles, I must
admit that it was my loss to have waited so long. Of course
fac i lity in Polish is essent ial to the comprehension of new
plays, especially those dealing with complex ideas.
Nonetheless, it is possible to appreciate productions
and performances on other levels, or in other aspects. That's
not to suggest that all tourists from t he West are going to be
riveted to their seats by a production of Witkacy' s The Water
Hen, no matter how visually virtuosic. With the classics, it
does help to be a drama professor and critic who knows and
has taught the texts in English. Similarly, with well-known
modern plays from the West, the experi e nce of having read
and seen them in varied productions can help one to follow
the Polish versions. When English synopses are provided with
the programs, as is the case with opera at Warsaw's Teatr
Wielki, one has virtually the same advantage as Lincoln Cen-
ter operagoers, gi rdi ng themselves for an eveni ng of Boris
Godwwv.
A useful prelude to a fortnight of Polish performances
was a thorough introduction to Polish Theatre by Konstanty
Puzyna, editor of Dialog, Poland's premiere theatre journal,
while he was in New York. Coupled with inventive Manhat-
tan productions of Stanis.f'aw lgnacy Witkiewicz's The
Shoemakers and Janusz Growacki's Huming Cockroaches, an
appetite for the Polish experience was rapidly whetted.
Actually, I had been invited to Poland to see current prod-
uctions of musical theatre, especially American musicals,
rather than difficult new plays or revered Polish ~ l a s s i e s
Having already enjoyed Fiddler on the Roof in Swedish--as
well as Laszlo Vamos' powerful Budapest production and
Walter Felsenstein's memorabie Komische Oper staging in East
Berlin--! looked forward to it and a visit to Gdynia's Music
Theatre, under the direction of Jerzy Gruza.
Unfortunately, spring recess was the only time I could
go, and that coincided with Easter Week. There simply was
not time to do what had been projected, notably because most
theatres, unlike those of the west, close for the religious
holidays. Fortunately, Gruza was determined that I see at
54
least two of Gdynia's most popular musicals, Fiddler and M.v
Fair Lady. Since there wasn't time for the journey to Gruza's
theatre, he came to Warsaw with color videotapes of the two
shows. It was impressive--amazing, even--to see this Polish
Fiddler performed with all the brassy vitali ty and profes-
sionalism of the Broadway original. True, it wasn't as crisp
as a cast working directly under Jerome Robbins might have
been. but it was--and is, as it's a repertory favorite--quite an
achievement so many miles from Broadway. J ust as in the
Berlin and Budapest product ions, Gruza has emphasized the
more serious aspects of life in the shtetl, always lived in the
shadow of Russian authority. This often unseen but nonethe-
less menacing presence is something the Poles understand very
well.
In New York, if not elsewhere in the United States,
there seems to be a perception that the Poles, even today, are
anti-Semitic. Surprised to hear of the popularity of Fiddler
011 the Roof in Poland, some New Yorkers respond: "They
must be feeling guilty!" The same has been said of East Ber-
liners and Budapest theatre audiences, but not by people who
have experienced the shows among such spectators. Even
when seeing the Gdynia production only on videotape, there
is, in fact, a very strong sense of identification with the vic-
tims of oppression, a direct , spontaneous response of
sympathy and sorrow.
My Fair Lady, which was also playing in Cracow in a
different staging, was a slick mounting of this quintessential
latter-day operetta, using that standard piece of European
stage-machinery, the turntable. Instead of the detailed period
settings of the Broadway production, Gruza had opted for
suggestive scenic elements, designed by Marek Lewandowski.
This was serviceable on the revolve, but it looked rather too
frugal. It is not necessary to be a Slav or a linguist. however,
to appreciate the Lerner and Loewe songs in a light-hearted,
stylish production, with an attractive cast. Understandably,
Polish speech improvement exercises cannot be direct transla-
tions of the British originals. Translator Antoni Marianowicz
had to rise to the Shavian challenge.
Marianowicz, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, is the
author of books for Polish musicals. Machiavelli's libretto,
for instance, is his collaboration with R.M. Gronski, and has a
score by Jerzy Wasowski. This tuneful fantasy makes
Machiavelli the master intriguer in his own comedy,
Mandragola. Marianowicz admits that he and his creative
team would be very pleased to see such a Polish product take
a bow on an American stage: a kind of Balance of Musicals,
if not of payments. While Polish theatre professionals and
audiences alike know and love some major American musi-
55
cals, very few Americans--even professional theatre people--
are aware that there is such a thing as a modern Polish musi-
cal.
.Whatever the White House's forebodings may be about
the aims, attitudes, and enthusiasms of the peoples of Eastern
Europe, it is easy t o see--not only in Poland, but also in
Hungary and East Germany--that audiences are fascinated
with America and Americans. After waves of immigration to
America, there are few families without some ties to America.
(One evening away from the theatre was spent in front of a
Polish TV set watching Edith Piaf conquer New York with
song.) The point is that productions of modern American
musicals and plays in Poland, even with the exaggerations and
theatrical license to which such works are prone, give a more
vivid and honest picture of the reality than any earnest USIA
publication or touring photo-show. These shows are certainly
closer to the American essences and facts than some of the
news and documentaries prepared by Polish and Russian
experts.
There are, says Marianowicz, some ten Polish theatres
in major cities which specialize in musical theatre. Some
favor opera and operetta; others prefer the American models,
but, at present, it is simply not possible for these theatres to
produce as many American works as they would like. Hard
currency is one stumbl ing block. Dollars are in very short
supply; they are needed for essential purchases and debt-
payments. That means that American composers, lyricists,
and librettists must customarily by paid in zlotys. These can-
not be converted or exported, so, unless Joseph Stein and
Jerry Bock want to buy Polish pianos or spend three weeks in
Wroclaw, the money piles up in a Polish account. Stein has
permitted his royalties to be used in restor ing damaged Jewish
cemeteries, for instance. It has also been suggested that such
blocked f unds might well be used to pay for workshops by
leading American directors, choreographers, performers, and
designers, to show Polish ensembles how thi ngs are done on
Broadway and beyond. Some American composers are reluc-
ta nt, even now, to permit their works to be performed on
Polish stages, perhaps as a residue of old animosities.
Young Polish audiences and performers know nothing
of this, nor should t hey be made to pay a penalty for the
bigotry of the past. Not only do American plays and musicals
prov ide a mos: interesting view--often critical or satirical,
which reinforces the fact of their freedom from censorsh ip--
of our life for Poles who are not able to visit the United
States, but they also offer at least a momentary respite from
economic and political problems. So, it' s to be hoped t hat
more American works will be released, and that the resulting
56
z.toty royalties can be more c ons truc tively used t o build
br idges of culture and friendship through t heatre. Inter-
estingly, Marlboro cigarettes are now available in Poland, with
advertising in theatre programs. Marlboro pays for this by
hel ping out with those royalties and fees which must be paid
in dolla rs.
Long before Tadeusz Kantor's The Dead Class
s hown i n New York at La Ma ma E. T. C ., Ka ntor and his
ensemble of artist-actors--some of them unforgettable t ypes--
appeared at the Edinburgh Festi val. The product ion--as with
the subsequent works, Wie/opole. Wielopole and Let the Artist
Die--was visually so vi vid, evocative, and obsessive, that the
loss of a few Polish phrases was not important to its shatter-
ing effect. Much later, both in Edinburgh and in Danish
Aarhus, Janusz Wi!niewski had a simil:u success with The End
of Europe, cloned from Kantor's work but still visually arrest-
ing. When Kantor and company are not resident in Cracow,
theatre pilgrims can still visit the ancient palace which houses
his Cricot 2 production center and archive. Production
videotapes, production records, Kantor's set and costume
designs and other artworks, even actual props and costumes,
are on display.
Cracow is itself rather like a Great World Theatre, for
it seems to have weathered centuries without much change. It
is certainly an open-air museum of architectural periods.
Among the theatre landmarks are, of course, the Stary
Theatre, once the stage of Helena Modjeska, and the imposing
Jul iusz Stowacki Theatre. Owing to Easter holidays, the Stary
was dark, but a rehearsal of an unnamed new play was going
forward at the stowacki. The director eJtplained that some of
the angry scenes I'd watched concerned preparations for the
Polish rebell ion against the Russian overlords in 1863. Con-
sider ing currently strained relations, the decision to produce
such a play seemed either courageous--or dangerous.
After the modest New York production of Wit-
kiewicz's The Shoemakers , it was somet h i ng of a shock- -
a lt hough a most eJtciting one--to see the playwright's The
Madman and the Nun forcefully staged i n Cracow at Teatr
Stu, by its director, K rzysztof Jasinsk i. Now 20 years old ,
the Stu T heatre is often seen at major international festivals.
Still, it' s much more interesting to see it in its own home, an
i nt i mate studio space. For Madman, the audience crowded
tiered seating to look through three sides of imaginary walls
at a very real padded cell. Both the action and the humor of
t his production were violent even before the seeming maniac
and the novice-nun departed the cell dressed to kill. It
was wil d, clever, and farcical. As is so often the case in
modern Polish plays, the surfaces suggested layers of meta-
57
phoric meanings.
There was another form of theatre--or tableaux--at
Easter-time which reinforced the impression that repressed
passions are finding voice and release in varied arts expres-
sions. In the nominally Christ ian West, Christmas creches--
nativity scenes - -are a common f orm of religious toy-theatre.
In Poland, Easter is also a time for appropriate displays. It is
the custom in major churches to invite outstanding artists--
painters, sculptors, designers, and craftsmen to create highly
original sepulchres symbolizing Jesus's entombment and later
Easter Resurrection. Most of these in 1987 were virtually
mini-stage settings, their drama implicit. Roughly half of
them embodied the colors, symbols, mottos, or name of
Solidarity.
Despite general theatre closures, Warsaw's Teatr Nowy
provided a holiday special, Scenes of Passion, which ought to
tour abroad, especially in America's religious heartland. No
word of Polish--or even Latin--is spoken. To the
accompaniment of J.S. Bach's St. Mauhew Pa.nion, the life of
Christ is shown in startling images, without any kind of ver-
bal commentary by its animator, actor Marcin
Jarmuszkiewicz. Presented in an almost claustrophobic black-
box studio-theatre, the Scenes unfold as the black clad per-
former, rather like a silent priest or celebrant, rotates a pulpit
to reveal it as an illuminated box in which the nativity is
evoked, followed by other boxes with such scenes as the
Flight into Egypt, each of them made to move with unseen
rods and strings. A life-sized image of Jesus riding the Palm
Sunday donkey into Jerusalem floats from the performance
area through the audience on an overhead track. Later, soft-
sculpture banners similarl-y advance, featuring Veronica's
Handkerchief, a Menorah, and the Wound and the Blood. A
dove swoops down from heaven, manipulated invisibly by the
actor, who looks ineffably sad. A tiny church with a real
bell--also tiny--opens to reveal life-sized heads of Christ and
the Disciples. His breast opens to disclose a glowing heart. A
black cabinet reveals a huge, grotesque head of Pilate, sur-
rounded by glaring light- bulbs. A large puppet Christ is
animated by strings. Finally, the sorrowful actor takes a big,
articulated black image of Christ and nails it to a crossbar,
mounting it on a post to complete the ritual Crucifixion.
Devised by Jarmuszkiewicz and the designer, Roman Wo'i.-
niak, this is a riveting piece of performance art. Religious
belief is hardly necessary to appreciate its stark, unusual
design and it's dignified, haunting, mute presentation. It's
not for the pious alone, nor need it be shown solely at Easter.
It belongs at BAM in the Next Wave programs.
More mysterious metaphors were being explored at
58
Maciej Englert's Contemporary Theatre in Warsaw, in an eco-
nomical but nonetheless remarkable staging of Bulgakov's The
Master and Margarita. "The Devil finds work for idle hands"
was never more true, especially when the hands are itchy and
corrupt, and the Master is so subtle in his temptati ons, so
inexorable in his demands. Even with a complex text--not
much illuminated by my having seen the Public Theatre's
production some seasons ago--the visual elements were so
powerful, so arresting, that non-Pol ish theatre buffs could
still find much to savor in this production. Curiously, the
setting was virtually vestigial--sparsely suggested areas at
either side of the central performance-box, with neutral, even
translucent curtains on bars which swung inward from the
proscenium to indicate changes of locale in bare space. The
dynamism and detail of the acting, however, created this
cosmos completely.
At the Warsaw Literary Club, The Antechamber, a
metaphoric 1964 work was given a private, uncensored, con-
cert performance. Using the device of Lifeboat, Stagecoach,
and similar dramatic constructs, in which diverse character
types are thrust together in a situation of great stress and
danger, The Antechamber was set just outside a gas-chamber.
Semites and anti-Semites, patriots, collaborators, cowards, the
innocent and the guilty: all were given their arias and duets,
with predictable results- - but also with historical and meta-
phorical overtones far more accessible to Poles than to a
western visitor.
Andrzej Secretary of Poland's Center of the
ITI--or International Theatre Institute--is also the director of
Warsaw's Popular Theatre. In its repertory are such prod-
uctions as Sophocles' Antigone, Isaac Bashevis Singer's The
Magician of Lublin, another Witkiewicz fantasy, and--of all
things--Lucy Maude Montgomery's Anne of Green Gah/es.
This Canadian tale of an orphan girl who changes the lives of
those who care for her belongs to that popular turn-of -the-
century genre of orphan novels, such as Pollyamma, Daddy
Long/egs, and Rebecca of Sumrybrook Farm, none of which
owes anything to the cynicism of Mark Twain and his earlier
orphans, Tom and Huck. This show is endlessly repeated for
schoolchildren because the novel is required reading in Polish
grammar schools. One can only hope that can get
the rights to the musical version of Anne of Green Gah/es,
which makes the plot a bit more palatable. It has been shown
on Broadway and is a summer festival favorite on Prince
Edward Island, where Montgomery set her story. is
not only proud of his theatre's productions but also of The
Theatre in Poland, the ITI French-English monthly, lit?erally
illustrated with photos of new works and classic revivals,
59
complementing detailed reports of productions and theatre
news.
Conversion in Jaffa, by Marek Hr.lsko (1931-69) is the
dramatization of a book by a totally disillusioned emigre poet
i :! Israel. Performed at the Powszechny Theatre, its choppy
scenes--rather like quick cuts in a film--nonetheless con-
veyed human cupidity and cruelty effectively, even without
any subtitles. Quite a change of pace was The Terrible
Drago11 at Teatre Lalka, a children's theatre in one of the
four sumptuous theatre-museum complexes which abut the
skyscraper Palace of Culture, a 1955 Soviet gift to Poland.
A darn K itian, the noted Polish designer, devised marvelous
character head-masks for live actors to animate: no rods or
strings here, even though the figures were puppet-like in
movement and emotions. Anyone familiar with the legend of
St George and the Dragon could immediately grasp the essen-
tials of Maria Kownacka's fable. With a doting old king and
a flighty young princess, Kilian's wickerwork dragon--
animated by several dancing performers--became an amusing
serpent in their ..R'oyal Eden. But these weren't just talking
heads; the young performers were also adept in singing and
dancing. In the handsome Art Deco puppet-theatre--La/ka
means puppet--parents seemed to have just as much fun as
their children. The score to the jolly romp is by Bogumil
Pasternak, with staging by Edward Dobraczynski.
It is a sad footnote that just this September most of
Bit Baird's beloved marionettes were auctioned in New York,
while his intimate Greenwich Village puppet-theatre had been
closed for some time. Without subsidies and other encourage-
ment, his heirs could not carry on. In Warsaw, there are four
subsidized theatres for children, and their respective rosters of
performers, technicians, and administrators are embarrassingly
larger than those of many American regional theatres dedi-
cated to adult audiences. Funding is not niggardly; puppetry
is popular . Major cities all have puppet-theatres, some of
which tour to smaller communities and schools.
While Lalka is centrally located in the Palace of Cul-
ture, an oriental wedding-cake, Teatr Baj--for "story-teller"--
is housed in a shabby Deco building in a modest residential
quarter, across the Vistula from Warsaw's Old Town. Inside,
however, all is light and liveliness, with another Art Deco
stage and auditorium. Before The Blue Dog began, the young
audience was buzzing with excitement--an Easter treat, with
mother and father along. Rapt silence descended the minute
the tiny blue dog appeared. Gyula Urban's script--with
lyrics by Joanna Kulmowa and music by Jerzy Derfel--
dramatizes the saga of an unfortunate indigo puppy, who is
shunned alike by dogs of the proper colors and by censorious
60
humans. Joining forces with a treacherous cat, who exploits
and abandons the canine anti-hero, the forlorn mutt decided
to leave his Polish homeland for New York. This may seem
an odd destination, given a young Warsaw audience, but it
seems that Polish children are as fascinated by things
A me ican as their elders. In fact, the ida of New York has a
rather different formulation in Warsaw than it does on the
actual site. The blue dog actually dares . to sleep in Central
Park at night! Teatr Baj's repertory also includes The Wizard
of Oz, Drago11's Lege11d, The Voice Wafting Over the Dew
and an Eskimo drama, /nook and the Sun, evoking legends,
customs, and crafts of North America' s Northwest Coast.
Appropriately enough, the last Warsaw performance I
saw was a distinctively American comedy, Woody Allen's Play
it Again.Sam, presented in the Studio, another of the theatres
in the Palace of Culture. Scores of young people waited in
line from early morning for the few seats remaining in the
intimate and informal studio-space. So that Allen's comedic
references to Humphrey Bogart would be understood, the
theatre arranged to have Casah/anca--previously unknown to
most Poles--shown on Warsaw TV. Instead of the shabby
Manhattan apartment shown in the original Broadway prod-
uction , Warsaw's Woody (Wojciech Malajkat) had the good
fortune to inhabit a penthouse suite, draped in black velvet
with chrome Art Deco furniture and a spectacular downtown
vi ew. Quite charming, he wasn' t exactly the nebbish of
Allen's autobiographical fantasy, but he held his doting
audience fast. Some scantily clad female figments of his
imagination sauntered on and off singing "Summertime,"
"Wonderful Town," and "New York, New York," which, with
a combo at the side of the stage, effectually made this into a
mini -musical.
It is time for American theat re professionals to share
their native experience and expertise with these talented,
dedicated Polish colleagues. Since Polis h directors and
playwrights come gladly to American theatres, we should
return the favor.
61
ON RADZINSKY'S JOGGING
by Alma H. Law
When cr1t1c Konstantin Shcherbakov was asked to
write areview this spring of the 1986-1987 season for the
Soviet periodical Theatrical life (Teatral'naia zhizn'), the
editors requested, Jf you don't mind, no more about Rad-
zinsky, find some other productions and themes .. .. " After
being officially ignored in the press for a number of years,
even when he had as many as seven plays running in Moscow
at the same time, Edvard Radzinsky is once again the center
of critical attention. A major reason for this renewed interest
is the production this season at the Ermolova Theatre in Mos-
cow of his play, Jogging. Directed by Valerii Fokin, and
starring Tatiana Doronina, one of Moscow's leading actresses,
it has been wildly successful with audiences ever since it
opened last fall .
Radzinsky's four-character play presents a fascinating
and vicious battle of the sexes that evokes intriguing parallels
with Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, as Lisa
Portes points out in her essay comparing the two plays. But
as she also rightly notes, "Jogging only appears to he a
simplified version of an American classic, it is in reality ...
a very complex social commentary on Soviet life under cover
of an American classic.
Several years ago Victor Rozov came under harsh
official criticism for daring to depict the domestic tribulations
of a top-level Soviet bureaucrat in his The Nest of the
IVoodgrouse (seen in New York at the Public Theatre). But
Radzinsky goes considerably further. For the first time, in
Jogging, audiences are seeing on the stage of the Ermolova
Theatre the privileged world of the children and grand-
children of the Kremlin elite. Galina Brezhnev, for example,
could easily have served as a model for lnga, and her hus-
band, Yuri Churbanov, arrested just this spring for corruption
and bribe-taking, as a prototype for Inga's husband, Misha,
whom one Soviet critic termed a "socialist prostitute." And
certainly the story of Serezha's grandfather who allowed his
wife to be arrested and exiled also has its parallels among the
Kremlin elite in the Stalinist period. Perhaps most frighten-
ing of all are the two younger people: the spoiled Serezha, "a
parasite as he characterizes himself, who prefers to spend his
time lying on the sofa listening to his collection of jazz
records, and his wife, Katya, who with characteristic honesty
remi nds everyone that she is "trash." In a society where there
are no gossip columns, no People magazines, or Barbara
Walters-type interviews detailing the goings on of the elite,
it's little wonder that audiences are shocked and titillated by
62
the blatant cynicism and greed that Radzinsky throws at them
in these Sporting Scenes 198 I, as the play is known in Mos-
cow in order to distance it from the present Kremlin
leadership.
By comparison with Radzinsky's play, Albee's Who's
Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which for many years was con-
sidered too emotionally volatile and corrupt for Soviet
audiences, now seems pretty tame. Although there were a
sprinkling of productions of it in Riga and in provincial Rus-
sian cities beginning in the mid-1970s, it was only in 1985
that Virginia Woolf was finally staged in Moscow at the "Sov-
remennik" Theatre, also directed by Valerii Fokin. But, of
course, as Ms Portes assumes, members of the Russian intel-
ligensia, hardly needed to wait for a Moscow stage production
to become acquainted with Albee's play. The play has circu-
lated for years in translation. As for Radzinsky himself, he
recalls first seeing Virginia Woolf a number of years ago on a
trip to Rumania. In a 1980 interview with this writer, he
noted, "The production was in Rumanian, a language I didn't
know. Nevertheless, I understood everything, every word.
The play seemed very close to me and it threw me into
despair, because I hadf(t written it."
New York audiences will have an opportunity this
season to judge Radzinsky's Jogging for themselves, when the
R. A.P. P. Arts Center's Main Stage Theatre presents the
English language premiere on January 27, 1988 directed by
Virlanan Tkacz. Additional information on the production
may be obtained by writing or calling the R.A.P.P. Arts Cen-
ter, 220 East 4th Street, New York 10009, tel. (212) 529-5921.
63
THE POETRY OF INFIDELITY
An interpretive Comparison of Ed vard Radzinsky's
Jogging to Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
by lisa Portes
- .. . or they squash your rib cage as i f t hty were
trying to tum you into a forfeit in a game. ft l
Jogging
In reading Edvard Radzinsky' s Jogging for t he first
time, I assumed it was simply a Soviet take-off on Edward
Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf . The structural paral-
lels were obvious enough; Joggi11g appeared to be but a
simplified version of Virginia Woolf. However, after re-
reading both plays, noting not only the more obvious structual
parallels, but the more subtle, off -hand allusions in
to Virgi11ia Woolf, I began to wonder why, exactly, Radzinsky
had chosen to write as he did . In so doing, I began to
unravel what I believe might be a very subtle, multi-
dimensional, almost encoded commentary on Soviet society.
The following essay will first discuss how exactly Jog::ing
parallels Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, examining the
similarities and differences in plot, structure, and dialogue, as
well as the more subtle references made throughout
to Virginia Woolf. The second portion will focus on a discus-
sion of why, perhaps, Radzinsky chose to parallel so strongly
Albee's American classic, and why he diJ so in such an
unusual manner.
Initially, Joggi11g appears to be a more naturalistic
version of Who's Afraid of Virginia ll'oolf, the primary dif-
ference being the reversal of the sexes within the basic
character structure. The basic plot of both plays is the same:
An older couple invites a younger couple to spend some time
with them. The older couple is for the most part in control
of the situation, using the younger couple as pawns in the
various games they play. More specifically, both plays des-
cribe both couples as childless, yet references are made by the
older couple of an unborn son. Both plays i nvolve a sugges-
tion of infidelity between a member of the older couple and a
membe r of the younger couple. This infidelity, in turn, t rig-
gers the e nactment of the final "game" wh ich ul ti mately
returns the individuals to their original mates and the si tua-
tion to its "or iginal" state. Thus, the most basic plot synopsis
of the tWt) plays is virtually identical. The differences arise
from what appears to a very obvious attempt on Rad-
zinsky's part to camouflage Albee.
Joggi11g may, perhaps, be described as a more
64
"naturalistic" version of Who's A/raid of Virginia Woolf, not
so much because one is more true to life than the other, but
because the given circumstances in Jogging are much more .
concrete than those in Virginia Woolf. Anything that Albee
has left nebulous and in question Radzinsky makes specific.
For example, Albee's opening scenario is a bit suspicious in
that it seems quite unusual for Martha, so late in the evening,
to have invited a couple, that she and George have just met,
over to their house for drinks. Radzinsky, on the other hand,
opens his play with a more plausible scenario: Misha and
lnga have invited the son of friends of the family and his
mate out for a jog in the midCIIe of the afternoon. Both plays
use the convention of monologues describing various secrets
of the past as a method of delineating the characters and of
providing ammunition for the other characters; yet, Albee
leaves these monologues in the air--neither the reader nor the
characters themselves know whether these stories are true or
false, and thus, both the characters and the validity of the
ammunition are left in question. Radzinsky, on the other
hand, never questions the veracity of the stories. They are
written and spoken as basic, simple truths, and, for the sake
of veracity, none of th'e secrets is too outrageous or
dangerous. The young man, Serezha's bedwetting is not
threatening to the basic progress of reality, as is Honey's
hysterical pregnancy; the bedwetting is simply humiliating.
Misha's reputation as a "U.L.O." (Unidentified Limping
Object) is not nearly so disturbing as George's possible past as
a murderer; again, it is simply humiliating. Furthermore,
the unborn son in A I bee's play is revealed as entirely
imaginary--Martha and George made him up in a sick
attempt at connection. Radzinsky's use of an unborn son is
not nearly as disquieting, having at least been at one time a
fetus which was appar.ently aborted. Radzinsky has, then,
specified Albee. He has taken Who's Afraid of Virginia
Woolf and removed the ambiguities, defining the characters
and their pasts, and leaving the reader/audience safe from
and unthreatened by the possibilities of the unknown. Before
discussing why Radzinsky has chosen to do so, let us quickly
examine the second basic difference between the two plays.
In order perhaps to further disguise Jogging, Rad-
zinsky has switched the roles of the husbands and wives as
originally defined by Albee. Whereas Virgi11ia Woo/Fs Martha
is the "game" enthusiast--the one who consistently pushes her
spouse, George, into the "game"--it is Radzinsky's Misha, the
husband, who is the sports enthusiast, the jogger, and it is he
who pushes his wife, lnga, to play along. It may perhaps be
best to note here that "jogging" might be seen as a more con-
crete metaphor for the "gaming which occurs in Albee's Vir-
6S
ginia Jlloulf. Whereas, Honey, the younger wife in Albee's
play, is the weakest of the four characters, and is also the one
of the two younger characters to have come f rom a wealthy
home, it is Serezha, the young husband, who holds these
c haracteristics in Radzinsky's version. Nick, the young,
arrogant, and ambitious husband in Jlirgi11ia ll'nolf, is rein-
carnated as Katya, the young, arrogant, and ambitious wife in
Juggi11g. George, t he older and originally somewhat weaker
seeming husband in the American classic gets the last word
while lnga, the comparable Soviet character, does in Jugging.
Therefore, Radzinsky's Juggi11g has the same basic
plot as Who's Afraid of Virginia IVuolf and the same basic
characters, both altered, ot course, but why? Why has Rad-
zinsky chosen to write what appears to he a simpli f ifed ver-
sion of Edward Albee's classic American play? The answer
lies in the fact that Joggi11g only appears to be a simplified
version of an American classic; it is in reality what I believe
to be a very complex social commentary on Soviet life under
cover of an American classic.
If one interprets Virginia Woolf as a commentary on
the decadence of modern American society, one can deduce
the reasons why a Soviet version of the play would never pass
the Soviet censors. The most worrisome aspect of Albee's
play is precisely its ambiguity, for without a concrete, indis-
putable scapegoat the blame for the play's sicknesses may lie
anywhere. In addition to taming the general circumstances of
his play, Radzinsky also solidifies them. Each character's
motivation can be clearly traced to a specific, tangible root, in
most cases, that being class. Serezha is weak and insecure
because his wealthy, spendthrift (capitalistic) parents left him
when he was young to go overseas. He is the victim of too
much money--a viable political statement in the eyes of the
censors I am sure. Katya is stronger because she came from a
working class family. Her tragic flaw, however, may be her
desire for upward mobility--she apparently stays with Serezha
because she has nowhere else to go and it is comfortable.
When she finally might have a way out with Misha, it is
undermined by the suspicious nature of his social postion.
Misha, too, is strong, again a tribute to his upbringing, but,
because of his connections with the black market, reflecting
his desire for material comfort, he is held in check by his
wife, lnga. lnga, then, emerges as the victor . Her back-
ground, it seems, is that of the accepted Soviet elite. Though
it is never mentioned specifically, the references made to her
city upbringing and her circle of friends, as well as her access
to such things as a Mercedes, imply that her father , if not a
party member, was at least a member of the upper echelons
of Soviet society. She resides fairly comfortably in her
66
acce pted social stat us, and only uses it as a weapon when
necessary, to combat a black mar keteering husband or an
ambitious young woman. She, t hen, appears as the proper
Soviet heroi ne; the three remaining c haracters, d ue to some
fl uke in their class status, stand defeated.
In this way, then, Edward Albee's plot is transl atert
into Soviet real ity without provoking the censors--every fault
conveniently attributed to some concrete cause, most often an
indi vidual o r class flaw; anything t hat mi ght dist urb the
normal flow of reality is, as discussed in the first portion of
this paper, comfort ingly simplified. There is nothing in the
outer str ucture of Radzinsky's play which can point back to a
flaw in Soviet society as a whole. Yet, if one examines Jog-
ging more closely, one may find various clues, "semaphors"
shall we say, which allude quite strongly to a parallel drawn
between the American and Soviet societies.
The first clues to this parallel are the very subtle,
almost off - hand allusions to parts of Virgillia Woolf which are
not explicitly rewritten in Joggillg. For example, Albee
refers to a mouse at various times throughout his play: Honey
is nicknamed "Mousie;" Martha refers to her father as "Daddy
White Mouse;" and Nick calls Honey' s father a "church
mouse." These three "mouse characters are people somehow
connected with money. Their "mousiness" implies that they
are rodents carrying mone y, thus. invoking money as a dis-
ease. Again, if one looks at Albee's play as a commentary on
the decadence of American society, one might then conclude
that money is a major contribution to the disintegration of
social values.
Though Radzinsky does not directly draw a parallel to
this idea in his play, for reasons which might be obvious, he
does make two direct allusions to mice. The first comes in a
conversation between Katya and Misha wherein Katya, to
prove her heartlessness, brags that she "squashed a mouse in
her boot." The second occurs in a conversation between
Serezha and lnga during which Serezha confesses to having
seen another girl i n high school in order to spi te Kat ya:
"Everyone called her 'Mousie' because she was so homely .. .
she reall y was a ... mouse!" Though neither instance con-
nects these characters directly to money, the allusion connects
them to Albee's play, i nvoki ng the spirit of Virgini a Woolf
without the substance with which to censor it.
Further examples of the same subtlety occur with the
issue of procreation. Albee's play implies a certain sickness
connected with giving birth. Martha and George cannot give
birth, so they create an imaginary child whom George "mur-
ders" in the final scene. Honey and Nick are childless as well ,
Honey being afraid of having children and having had some
67
sort of "problem" with an "hysterical pregnancy. Though I
am uncertain as to Albee's intention concerning these unborn
children, I feel it is safe to assume that he may have been
making a statement on the sickness of bringing children into
modern society. Radzinsky combines Albee's two unborn
children into one and gives it to lnga. lnga, too, was preg-
nant when she married (like Honey), but her husband forced
her to have an abortion. This abortion, because it was
demanded by her husband, connects her i n one way to
Martha: both women were forced to give up their children
by their husbands. Indeed, a startling allusion is made to
Virginia WooiFs final scene in a conversation betweeen Jnga
and Misha wherein Jnga refers back to the time of her abor-
tion as the time "when [Misha] forced me .. . to murder our
child." lnga is also connected to Honey in that she too went
up (in her pregnancy) and then went down (after her abor-
tion). Furthermore, a specific allusion is made to this
mysterious puffing up in the same conversation betwt>en
Serezha and Jnga about "Mousie." Jnga talks about the South
and mentions that "down there you have to eat fruit all the
time. And your stomach swells so that any moment you feel
you might float up to the ceiling . .. . " Though the allusion
is not obvious, it is enough to trigger a recognition in the
reader or spectator who has read or seen Virginia IV oolf. I
am unsure as to whether or not Who's Afraid Of Virginia
Woolf is available in the Soviet Union, but I would assume
that available or not various members of the intellectual cir-
cles have had access to it at some point or another. Once
again a parallel is drawn between Jogging and Virgi11ia Woolf.
This parallel about childbearing in J110dern society, however,
like that of the mouse, is drawn somewhat clandestinely.
Thus, Jogging, appears to be a play of dual dimen-
sion. On the surface Radzinsky appears to have written a
very simplified version of Albee's American classic; a version
which on the outside is quite harmless to and, indeed, in
keeping with the accepted mores of Soviet society; a version
which stands a chance of passing the censors. However,
underneath this fairly harmless superstructure Radzinsky has
inferred the sicknesses and decadence of Virgi11ia Woolf
through allusion. While appearing to parallel Albee's play
only in structure, Radzinsky has drawn the parallel in theme
as well, implying perhaps a parallel decadence in Soviet
society. Jogging appears tame on the surface, but underneath
it t>vol.es the same ocean of ambiguity and nausea through
continuous and consistent allusion to the diseases of American
society.
These allusions, then, may perhaps be Radzinsky's
"semaphors," his "banners" of infidelity to the Soviet govern-
68
ment. If the above hypotheses are true, Radzinsky is, in
effect, betraying the appearance of order and perfection put
forth by the Soviet government. He is, in essence, warning
his readers or viewers against playing the part of Candide,
like Serezha, and buying into the lie of "the best of all pos-
sible worlds. This warning may be further detected in the
consistent use of jokes in which t he basic theme is that of
things not being as they appear: a man who buys an owl
thinking its a a parrot; and a man assuming a certain picture
would be that of a woman when it was in reality a picture of
Darwin. Radzinsky is saying, in the words of lnga, that
though you may "squash your rib cage" in order to appear like
a "forfeit in a game," though one may appear to be one thing
in order to please certain people, one must look below the
appearance for the signs of infidelity--the infidelity of a
playwright to his state, of a state to its people, of a husband
to a wife, to any number of possible Serezhas who continue
blindly in the pitiful hope that what their unfaithful spouses
say is true.
I. All quotations from Jogging, including the title of
this essay, come from Alma Law's unpublished translation of
Edvard Radzinsky's play. Citations from Albee are taken
from IV/ro's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (New York: Signet,
1983).
69
BOOK REVIEWS

Munich. Vienna. Cracow. Moscow. Sl. Prlrrsburg. Zurich.
Harold B. Segel.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1987. Pp 418
At the fin-de-siecle, cabaret enjoyed a remarkable
vogue in a number of the cultural centers of Europe among
the artistic and intellectual elite. Rather than being a minor
or marginal form--as it must have seemed at the time--
cabaret has proved to be a spearhead of a major revolution in
sensibility and the harbinger of the irreverent avant-gardes
that assaulted stodgy nineteenth-century official culture.
Such is the intriguing thesis of Harold Segel's Turn-of-the-
Centur.l Cabaret, which traces the origins and development of
the genre, from its creation at the Chat Noir in Paris in 1881
to its iconoclastic apogee at the cosmopolitan Cafe Voltaire in
Zurich where Dada was born during the carnage of World
War I.
Segel argues persuasively that the phenomenon of
cabaret was an attack on authority and philistinism and the
proving ground for experimentation and innovation in the
arts. Its small forms of chansons, puppet and marionette
shows, shadow plays, sketches, parodies, and monologues
flouted tradition and convention. Their brevity, playfulness,
and cult of ephemerality and expendability were symptomatic
of a crumbling civilization. The /in-de-siecle cabaret artists
broke down distinctions between high and low art, and joy-
fully fragmented and dismantled pompous nineteenth-century
art and the social order that produced it. Cabaret has a close
but ambivalent relation to modernism, in some cases embrac-
ing and supporting it, in others, mocking it affectionately or
mordantly.
With dazzling erudition and command of five lan-
guages, Segel takes the reader on a fascinating tour of the
principal cabarets at the (what marvelously
expressive names they had!); the Berlin Uberbrettl, the
Munich Eleven Executioners, the Barcelona Four Cats, The
Vienna Bat, the Cracow Green Balloon, the Moscow Bat and
Crooked Mirror. and the St. Petersburg Stray Dog. Segel
points out that the Green Balloon made a significant con-
tribution to Polish modernism, whereas, the Russian pre-
revolutionary cabaret, largely parodic in nature, was in the
forefront of the movement to re-theatricalize the theatre.
Furnished with many pictures and photographs, detailed
notes, and an extensive bibliography, Tunr-of-the-Century
70
Caharet is an important and delightful critical history of a
"small form" that had a great effect on the evolution of
modern culture.
The Collected Plan and Writings on Theatre.
Karol Wojtyla.
Translated with introductions by Boleslaw Taborski.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. Pp.395.
DCG
This volume presents the six plays written by John
Paul II in the period of his theatrical activity from 1939 to
1964, as well as all his writings on the theatre. In a general
introduction, Taborski discusses the manifold participation of
the future pope as dramatist, theoretician, and "nonacting"
performer and argues convincingly that Karol Wojtyta's invol-
vement with theatre over a quarter of a century has not only
been an integral part of his formation, but also that it con-
stitutes a significant contribution to the theory and practice of
the modern stage. Each of the six plays--Job ( 1940),
Jeremiah ( 1940), Our God's Brother ( 1949), The Jeweler's Shop
( 1960), Radiation of Fatherhood ( 1964), and Reflections on
Fatherhood (1964)--is provided with a detailed introduction
that sets out the circumstances of its compostition, describes
the historical, social and cultural context, and offers a com-
mentary on its form and substance.
Taborski paints a vivid picture of the early career of
Pope John Paul II as a man of the theatre, focusing on his
long association with an innovative poetic theatre, the Rhap-
sodic, devoted to the spoken word, which he helped to estab-
lish in the medieval city of Cracow during the Nazi occupa-
tion, when clandestine performances had to be given in pri-
vate apartments. In its spiritual dimensions, Wojty-ta's "theatre
of the inner self" recalls the mysteries of the middle ages,
while at the same time functioning as an assertion of national
consciousness against all efforts at political censorship and
suppression of native Polish culture.
The plays themselves--which have been performed for
the first time in Poland in the 1980s--range widely in style
and content, some dealing with Biblical themes, others with
historical and national subjects, still others in the form of
Mysteries, with eternal spiritual issues, but they all belong to
the Polish tradition of visionary, poetic, and metaphoric
drama that started with the great Romantic writers of the
nineteenth-century and was continued by Wyspianski. Woj-
tyfa's plays, which are written in both prose and verse, some-
71
times in combination. have been masterfully rendered into
English by Taborski, who has made a major contribution to
theatre studies in translating and introducing so effectively
the work of this remarkable creative personality.
DCG
72
CONTRIBUTORS
EUGENE BROGYANYI is the co-founder of The Threshold
Theatre Company. He is a translator and editor of
DramaContemporary: Hungary a Performing Arts Journal
Public:ttion due for release in 1987. and is in the process of
editing Hungarian Plays in Translation: An Annotated Biblio-
graphy for CAST A Publications.
PETER G. CHRISTENSEN is an adjunct Lecturer in the
Departments of English Cinema. and Comparative Literature
at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He is
the author of numerous essays published in both books such
as Holding the Visimr: Essays on Film and periodicals such as
Forum for Modern Language Studies. Powys Review.
Dada/ Surrealism. and Soviet and East European Drama.
Theatre. and Film.
STEVEN HART is a Professor teaching in NYus Program in
Educational Theatre. He directed Witkiewiczs The New
Deliverance in 1986.
LEO HECHT is on the Advisory Board of SEEDTF and is a
Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages & Litera-
tures at George Mason University.

DRAGAN KLAIC is an Associate Professor of Drama at the
University of Arts. Belgrade.
GLENN LONEY teaches in the Theatre Department at
Brooklyn College and in the Ph.D. Program of the Graduate
Center of CUNY.
LISA PORTES is a graduate student at Oberlin University.
MARC ROBINSON is a graduate student in Dramaturgy at
Yale University and has had articles published in PAJ.
Theatre 111. and TDR.
TE;ODOR ZAREBA is a graduate student in the Ph. D.
Theatre Program at the Graduate Center of CUNY and is
working on his dissertation. the topic of which is the cabaret
"Piwnica Pod Baranami."
73
PLAYSCRIPTS IN TRANSLATION SERIES
The f ollowing is a list of publications available through the
Center for Advanced Study in Theatre Arts (CASTA):
No.I Never Part From Your Loved 011es, by Alexander
Volodin.
Translated by Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No.2 /, Mikhail Sergeevich Lu11i11, by Edvard Radzinsky.
Translated by Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No.3 All Altar to Himself, by lreneusz Jredynski.
Translated by Michar Kobiatka. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No.4 Conversation with the ExecutionC'r, by Kazimierz
Moczarski.
Stage adaptation by Zygmunt Hubner; English version
by Earl Ostroff and Daniel Gerould. $5.00
($6.00 foreign)
No.5 The Outsider, by lgnatii Dvoretsky.
Translated by C. Peter Goslett. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No.6 The Ambassador, by Srawomir Mroiek.
Translated by Slawomir Mrozek and Ralph Manheim.
$5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No.7 Four hy Liudmi/a Petrushevskaya (Love, Come' into th<'
Kitchen, Neu and Traps, and The Violin).
Translated by Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No.8 The Trap, by Tadeusz Roiewicz.
Translated by Adam Czerniawski. $5.00
($6.00 foreign)
Soviet P/a.v.f in Translatiu11 . An Annotated Bibliography.
Compiled and Edited by Alma H. Law and C. Peter Goslell.
$5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
Polish Plays in Tra11slation. An annotated Bibliography.
Compiled and Edited by Daniel C. Gerould, Boleslaw
Tab.)rsl..i, Michal Kobialka, and Steven Hart. $5.00 ($6.00
forcaKn)
Poli.fh and Soviet Theatre Posters. Introduction and Catalog
by Daniel C. Gerould and Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
74
Polish and Soviet Theatre Posters Volume Two. Introduction
and Catalog by Daniel C. Gerould and Alma H. Law. $5.00
($6.00 foreign)
Easttrn European Drama and The American Stage . A
with Janusz Glowacki, Vasi ly Aksyonov, and
moderated by Daniel C. Gerould (April 30, 1984). $3.00
($4.00 foreign)
These publications can be ordered by sending a U.S. dollar
check or money order payable to CASTA to:
CASTA--THEATRE PROGRAM
GRADUATE CENTER OF CUNY
33 WEST 42nd STREET
NEW YORK, N.Y. 10036
75