SEEP Vol.24 No.3 Fall 2004

volume 24, no.
3
Fall2004
SEEP(ISSN * 1047-0019) is a publication of the Institute for Contemporary
East European Drama and Theatre under the auspices of the Martin E. Segal
Theatre Center. The Institute is at The City University of New York
Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016-4309. All
subscription requests and submissions should be addressed to Slavic and East
European Performance: Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, Theatre Program, The
City University of New York Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue, New York,
NY 10016-4309.
EDITOR
Daniel Gerould
MANAGING EDITOR
Melissa Johnson
EDITORIAL ASSIST ANT
Margaret Araneo
CIRCULATION MANAGER
Elisa Legon
ASSIST ANT CIRCULATION MANAGER
Juan R. Recondo
ADVISORY BOARD
Edwin Wilson, Chair
Marvin Carlson Allen J. Kuharski
Martha W. Coigney Stuart Liebman
Leo Hecht Laurence Senelick
SEEP has a very liberal reprinting policy. Journals and newsletters that desire to
reproduce articles, reviews, and other materials that have appeared in SEEP may do
so, as long as the following provisions are met:
a. Permission to reprint the article must be requested from SEEP in writing before
the fact;
b. Credit to SEEP must be given in the reprint;
Two copies of the publication in which the reprinted material has appeared must be
furnished to the Editors of SEEP immediately upon publication.
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Daniel Gerould
PROGRAM DIRECTOR
Frank Hentschker
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Publications are supported by generous grants from
the Lucille Lortel Chair in Theatre and the Sidney E. Cohn Chair in Theatre of the
Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the City University of New York.
Copyright 2004 Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
2
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 24, No. 3
Editorial Policy
From the Editor
Events
Books Received
ARTICLES
TABLE OF CONTENTS
5
6
7
13
"Provincial Theatre in Modem Russia: The Kaliningrad Region" 14
Jeffrey P. Stephens
"Miro Gavran: The Return of the Playwright to the Stage" 30
Sanja Nikcevic
"The National Theatre Festival of Pees, Hungary, 2004" 40
Eugene Brogyanyi
"The National Theatre Festival of Pees, Hungary, 2004 52
Interview with Pamela Billig by Eleanor Ruth"
"Interview with Grzegorz Bra!, 58
Director of Song of the Goat"
Roger Babb
"Crossing Boundaries: Eastern European 64
Puppet Theatre at the 2004 Unima World Festival"
Jane McMahan
3
REVIEWS
"The journals of Mihail Sebastian by
the Keen Company in New York"
Beate Hein Bennett
"Mayakovsky' s Mystery-Bouffi
at the Berlin Volksbi.ihne"
Marvin Carlson
"What Goes Around Comes Around:
Ostrovsky's Last Sacrifice at the Moscow Art Theatre"
Kurt Taroff
74
80
84
"Gombrowicz Transformed: Hell Meets Henry Halfway 92
by Pig Iron Theatre Company of Philadelphia"
Gerald W eales
"Rezo Gabriadze's Forbidden Christmas, or 98
The Doctor and the Patient at the
Lincoln Center Festival, 2004"
Lars Parker-Myers
Contributors 102
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Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 24, No.3
EDITORIAL POLICY
Manuscripts in the following categories are solicited: articles of no
more than 2,500 words, performance and film reviews, and bibliographies.
Please bear in mind that all submissions must concern themselves either
with contemporary materials on Slavic and East European theatre, drama
and film, or with new approaches to older materials in recently published
works, or new performances of older plays. In other words, we welcome
submissions reviewing innovative performances of Gogo! but we cannot use
original articles discussing Gogo! as a playwright.
Although we welcome translations of articles and reviews from
foreign publications, we do require copyright release statements. We will
also gladly publish announcements of special events and anything else
which may be of interest to our discipline. All submissions are refereed.
All submissions must be typed double-spaced and carefully
proofread. The Chicago Manual if Style should be followed. Trans-literations
should follow the Library of Congress system. Articles should be submitted
on computer disk, as Word 97 Documents for Windows and a hard copy of
the article should be included. Photographs are recommended for all
reviews. All articles should be sent to the attention of Slavic and East
European Peiformance, cl o Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, The City
University of New York Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue, New York, NY
10016-4309. Submissions will be evaluated, and authors will be notified after
approximately four weeks.
You may obtain more information about Slavic and East European
Performance by visiting out website at http//web.gc.cuny.edu/ mestc. Email
inquiries may be addressed to SEEP@gc.cuny.edu
All Journals are available from Pro Ouest Information and Learning as
abstracts online via ProQ!test information service and the
International Index to the Performing Arts.
All Journals are indexed in the MLA International Bibliography and are
members of the Council of Editors of Learned J oumals.
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FROM THE EDITOR
Volume 24, No. 3 of SEEP has a wide scope featuring Rumanian,
Hungarian, Georgian, Croatian, Polish, and Russian theatre, theatre artists,
and playwrights. Jeffrey Stephens paints an evocative picture of Russian
theatre and dramatists in the Kaliningrad region. Sanja Nikcevic offers a
portrait of the Croatian playwright Miro Gavran who has brought the
playwright back to the center of the theatrical event. Eugene Brogyanyi and
Pamela Billig provide an overview and an interview devoted to the
Hungarian Theatre Festival in Pees, 2004. Roger Babb interviews Grzegorz
Bra!, director of the Polish company, Song of the Goat, continuing our
coverage of this innovative Polish company. Jane McMahan surveys the
world of puppet performances at the 2004 Unima World Festival in Rijeka
and Opatija, Croatia. Five reviews complete the issue. Beate Hein Bennett
discusses a New York production of a play about a Rumanian intellectual.
Marvin Carlson looks at a Berlin staging of a play by Mayakovsky rarely
performed in recent times. Kurt T aroff examines a staging of an Ostrovsky
play at the Moscow Art Theatre. Gerald Weales looks at a stage adaptation
of a Gombrowicz story. Lars Parker-Myers watches a Georgian puppet
master at work at the Lincoln Center Festival.
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STAGE PRODUCTIONS
New York City
EVENTS
The Wooster Group presented Poor Theater, directed by Elizabeth
LeCompte, a production that draws from source material gathered from
Grotowski's Polish Laboratory Theatre, November 10 to December 19.
The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center and Theatre of a Two-Headed
Calf presented a staged scene from Stanislaw lgnacy Witkiewicz's Tumor
Brainiowicz, November 15.
The LITE Company presented the fifth annual ChekhovNOW
Festival at the Connelly Theater, October 27 to November 21. The
following productions were included:
3 Sisters Redux, adapted and directed by Brian Rogers, October 29
to 31 and November 1 and 8.
A Teacup Full if Vodka, an adaptation of several of Chekhov's short
stories, by Tinderbox Theatre's Cynthia Croot, November 13, 16,
19, 20, and 21.
Cherry Orchard: Firs's Dream, an adaptation directed by Sonoko
Kawahara and presented in accordance with Crossing Jamaica
Avenue, October 27and November 2, 5, 6, 7, and 9.
Chekhov in Paris, an evening of two one-acts (David and Bathsheba,
directed by Carl Forsman, and Anya in Paris, directed by Christian
Parker), November 10, 11, 14, 15, 19, 20, and 21.
In This the End if Sleeping, adapted and directed by Jay Scheib, based
on Chekhov's fragment Fatherlessness, November 12, 13, 14, 17, 18,
and 20.
7
The Bet, an adaptation by Judythe Cohen directed by Adam
Melnick, October 27and November 2, 5, 6, 7, and 9.
The Proposal, presented by Teatar Dzinot of Macedonia m
Macedonian, November 18 and 20.
Three Sisters: Lost in Time, a Korean language adaptation presented
by the Seoul Factory of Performing Arts, November 11 to 14.
Uncle Victor, a staged reading of Rosary O'Neill's adaptation,
directed by Tom Thornton, November 6.
Arts at St. Ann's and the Polish Cultural Institute presented the TR
Warszawa production of George F. Walker's Risk Everything, directed by
Grzegorz Jarzyna, in Polish with English supertitles, November 10 to 21.
The Polish Cultural Institute and SoHo Think Tank presented Pig
Iron Theatre's Hell Meets Henry Half Way, an adaptation of The Possessed by
Witold Grombowicz, at the Ohio Theatre, November 3 to 21.
Slawomir Mrozek's The Emigrants, directed by Alba Oms, played at
the Tenement Theatre, October 21 to November 14.
The Russian Nights Festival of Art and Culture was presented for
the first time in New York, October 26 to 31, and included the following
theatrical productions:
8
Slava Polunin's Snowshow at the Union Square Theatre, October
27 to 31.
Alla Demidova's From Pushkin to Brodsky at the Theatre Row
Studio, October 28 and 31.
Alexander Filippenko's Five Stories from Zoshchenko to Akunin at the
Theatre Row Studio, October 29 and 30.
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 24, No.3
The Russian American Cultural Center presented Russian/
Canadian director Alexandre Marine's production of Macbeth.com, an
adaptation of Shakespeare's text, at the Sargent Theatre, October 17.
The Lark Play Development Center presented a public reading of
Leaving Eden, A Tragi-Comedy Inspired by Chekhov's Life and Stories, by Chiori
Miyagawa, directed by Greg Learning, October 16.
The Brooklyn Academy of Music presented The Dybbuk, directed
by KrzysztofWarlikowski, October 1 to 16, at the BAM Harvey Theater.
Canary Soup by Milos Rodovic played at the Kraine Theatre, New
York City, November 15 to 17.
The World May be Ending ... But at Least the Sex is Good by Jasmina
Sinanovic played at WOW Cafe Theatre, New York City, November 4 to
13. The play is a reflection on the Bosnian War and current U.S. politics.
La Mama, as part of the La Mama Puppet Series Festival, presented
the following productions:
The Last Escape, a work by the Wrodaw Puppet Theatre, based on
the novels of Bruno Schulz, directed by Aleksander Maksymiak,
September 30 to October 3
The Opole Puppet Theatre of Poland's And I Have Uncurtained the
Night, directed by Krystian Kobylka, September 16 to 19.
East River Commedia, directed by Paul Bargetto, presented
Slawomir Mrozek's Philosopher Fox, August 20, 21, 27, and 28 at the
Delacourt Theater in Central Park.
A dramatic reading of Witold Gombrowicz's Ivona, Princess of
Burgundia was presented at Fordham University in cooperation with the
Polish Cultural Institute on September 30.
9
The musical Chekhov on the Wing, written by Dayle Vander Sande
and Vicki Hirsch, appeared as part of the New York International Fringe
Festival in August 2004.
Lublin Dance Theatre presented Acrobats, Flowers, and the Moon and
Optical Tract at the Merce Cunningham Dance Space, June 11, as part of the
three-day international festival, Global Dance Today.
STAGE PRODUCTIONS
Regional U.S.
The Stanislavsky Opera Company (SOC) debuted at the State
Theatre of New Jersey on November 5, presenting selections from the
operatic canon.
Teatr Provisorium and Kompania Teatr presented Ferdydurke by
Witold Gombrowicz at the Yale University Theatre, CT, October 28.
The Everyman Theatre in Baltimore, MD, presented Brian Friel's
version of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, directed by Vincent M. Lancisi,
September 10 to October 17.
The Studio Theatre, Washington, D.C., opens its 2004-2005 season
with David Hare's adaptation of Chekhov's Ivanov, November 3 to
December 12.
Black Milk, by Vassily Sigarev, translated by Sasha Dugdale, and
directed by Serge Seiden, will play at the Studio Theatre, Washington, D.C.,
January 5 to February 13.
STAGE PRODUCTIONS
International
The Bosnian National Opera premiered Srebrenicanke (Srebrenica
women), dedicated to the victims of terrorism throughout the world,
composed by Ivan Cavlovic and directed by Gojko Bjelac, on October 22.
10
FILM
New York City
The Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Czech Center New York
presented the fifth annual series of New Czech Films, curated by Irena
Kovar1ova, featuring the following films:
Brats (Smradi), directed by Zdenek Tyc, November 4.
elary, directed by Ondrej Trojan, November 5.
Bored in Bmo (Nuda v Bme}, directed by Vladimir Moravek,
November 6.
Faithless Games (Nevlrni hry), directed by Michaela Pavlatova,
November 6.
Sentiment, directed by Tomas Hejtminek, November 7.
Markita Lazarovd, directed by Frantisek VlaeCil, November 7.
The following film and animation programs were presented as part
of the Russian Festival of Art and Culture:
The Young Lady and the Hooligan, directed by Evgeny Slavinsky and
starring Vladimir Mayakovsky, at the Museum of the City of New
York, October 26.
An evening of Russian Classical Animation at the Anthology Film
Archive, including The Cameraman's Revenge, by Vladislav Starevich;
The Dragon Fly & the Ant by Vladislav Starevich; Interplanetary
Revolution, by Zenon Kommissarenko, Yury Merkulov, and
Mikhail Khodataev; One Among Many, by Nikolai Khodataev; and
Mail, by Mikhail Tsekhanovsky, October 27.
jewish Luck, directed by Alexei Granovsky, at the Anthology Film
Archive, October 27.
11
Bed and Sofa, directed by Abram Room, at the Anthology Film
Son of Mongolia, directed by Ilya Trauberg, at the Anthology Film
The Polish Cultural Institute and the Anthology Film Archives
presented the following films:
FILM
Ferdydurke, directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, October 28 to 31.
Pornography (Pornografia), directed by Jan Jakub Kolski, October 28
to 31.
United States
The sixteenth annual Polish Film Festival in America was held in
Chicago, November 6 to 21, in which over forty Polish films were screened.
The Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, SUNY Buffalo, presented
Attention! Light! Short Works by Paul Sharits and J6zef Robakowski,
November 4.
OTHER
From June 26 to July 4, 2004, Makor, a cultural venue in NYC,
hosted a four-day multimedia tribute to the fourteenth annual Jewish
Culture Festival in Cracow, Poland. The event hosted the premiere of the
documentary, Klezmer Musicians Travel "Home" to Cracow, narrated by
Theodore Bike!. It also screened Austeria by Jerzy Kawalerowicz.
Compiled by Margaret Araneo
12
BOOKS RECEIVED
Blonski, Jan and Slawomir Mrozek. Listy 1963-1996. Introduction by
Tadeusz Nyczek. Cracow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2004. Includes 20
photographs and an index of names.
Geizer, Matvei. Mikhoels. Moscow: Molodaya Gvardiya, 2004. 324 pages.
Includes a bibliography, chronology of Mikhoels's life, biographical list of
names, glossary, and 32 pages of photographs.
Gudkova, Violetta. Yuri Olesha i Vsevolod Meierkhofd v rabote nad spektaklem
"Spisak blagodeyanii": opyt teatrafnoi arkheologii. Moscow: Novoe
literaturnoe obozrenie, 2002. 604 pages. A study of Meyerhold's 1929
production of Olesha's play, List of Assets. Includes many documents,
photographs, drawings, diagrams, extensive notes, and an index.
Miro Gavran. Dugi dol 58c, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia. 2004. 20 pages.
Includes biographical sketch, two photographs, list of selected novels,
selected plays (with summary and basic information about themes,
characters, settings, and times, books for teenagers, and children's books.
Nusic, Branislav. The Deceased, A Comedy with a Prelude and Three Acts.
Edited and translated from the Serbian by Milo Y elesiyevich. N.Y.: The
Serbian Classics Press, 2004. 157 pages. Includes a note about the author,
an afterward ("The Harlequin's Bitter Scowl"), and principal works.
13
PROVINCIAL THEATRE IN MODERN RUSSIA:
THE KALININGRAD REGION
Jeffrey P. Stephens
John Freedman, preeminent American commentator on the
contemporary Russian theatre, recently made an exciting pronouncement:
"New plays are the new status symbol in Russian theatre."! For a solid
decade-the 1990s- very few "important" new Russian dramas made the
circuitous path from concept to production whether in Russia's state-
supported or studio theatres. The reasons for such a paucity of new
dramatic literature at a time when Russian society was transforming in front
of artists' eyes have as much to do with economics as with the theatrical
hierarchy, the director having held the top spot throughout the twentieth
century. From Stanislavsky and Meyerhold through Anatoly Vasilyev, Yury
Lyubimov, and Galina Volchek, nowhere has the still subversive concept (in
the United States at any rate) of directorial vision so successfully and
powerfully superseded the idea of text as matrix for the revelation of the
"world of the play" as it has in Russia. (For every JoAnne Akalaitis in the
Anglo-American theatre, there are ten Russians eager to use text as fodder for
the exploration of a personal vision that, when fully tapped, speaks to
many.) From these visionaries and their dutiful progeny, deconstructions of
the classics, in themselves "new" since they so radically departed from the
original text, dominated, at least in Moscow and Petersburg.
For a long time now, many in the West have wondered why, with
all that is going on politically and socially in the former USSR, there is no
substantial canon of dramatic texts demonstrative of the turbulent decade of
Yeltsin. The 1990s were a time for Russian theatre people to continue to
explore the nether regions of once-banned or suspect drama, a process that
had begun in earnest as early as 1985 with the Taganka Theatre's production
ofViktor Slavkin's Cerceau, only three months after Gorbachev's ascendancy
to the politically stratospheric position of General Secretary of the CPSU.
At a Soviet theatre conference at the University of South Carolina in
December 1989, I remember Alma Law prefacing her public presentation
with the bold pronouncement: "There is no censorship in the Soviet
theatre."2 At the time I thought that 1990, less than a month away, would
reveal a new era of great Soviet plays in the manner of Erdman and
14
Fourteenth-century cathedral and site of
Immanuel Kant's grave, Kaliningrad
15
Bulgakov. It was soon clear that although "no censorship" was a great thing,
the dramas that grew from the new reality of "new thinking" were not to be
indicative of a grand "golden age" of original drama that the 1920s had seen.
Many new plays were naturally written during the period of high glasnost
(1985- 1988), but such exciting activity would not characterize the Yeltsin
era. And even the successful plays of the Gorbachev era would naturally lose
their urgency, so rooted are they to time and place. The historical
importance of such glasnost-era plays of the mid to late 1980s as Vladimir
Gubarev's Sarcophagus, Mikhail Shatrov's Dictatorship of the Conscience, and
Alexander Galin's Stars in the Morning Sky cannot be argued, but, like most
of the satirical NEP-era dramas, they are destined for study, not the
repertory, except perhaps in staged reconfigurations via Russia's legacy of
innovative directors.
Many of the new class of Russian playwrights like Vasily Sigarev
come from the provinces.J According to Luda Lopatina, the director of the
American premiere of Sigarev's Black Milk at the European Repertory
Company in Chicago in 2003, there is a plethora of talent in the provincial
cities where the stress and fury concomitant with fully commercial theatrical
production has not made the same deep inroads it has in Moscow and St.
Petersburg.4 Observations like these led me to Kaliningrad, Russia, to
witness some provincial trends myself
While Kaliningrad is a microcosm of the new Russia, the city holds
colossal appeal to the tourist and the student of Soviet history. With its
capacious Baltic coastline and attendant Curonian Spit (Kurshkaya Kosa), a
UNESCO world heritage site, it is indisputably the best kept secret in
Europe. Remnants of nineteenth-century German fortresses seem to hem
the city in, but the expansive port provides miraculous vistas of
indescribable beauty. Blocks of exceedingly unattractive flats exude an
enormous romantic charm, particularly since one sees at many corners the
heartbreaking contrast between what was and what is. But the energy of the
city suggests anything but despondency. Kaliningrad is in a classic state of
historical transition. As close as a Russian can get to Europe without leaving
Russia, and yet wedged between the NATO-member countries Poland and
Lithuania, the city has been part of the Russian empire since 1945 when the
elegant Prussian capital of Koenigsberg, the site of one of the fiercest British
RAF bombing raids during World War II, ceased to exist. Thousands of
Russian soldiers and German civilians died as the Russians successfully
seized the city and the Germans attempted to flee. A heavy naval presence
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and the availability of Russia's only ice-free port made Kaliningrad closed to
W estemers until 1991.
The first substantial forays into the region by Westerners after the
opening of the city were initiated by busloads (still rumbling through the
streets today) of German tourists out to witness for themselves what had
become of their homeland. Today, savvy Kaliningraders sell their fine
amber to these temporary ex-pats. Near the major monuments, you can see
them, sometimes standing numbly near the site of a former home. The
dynamic of this city is affected by it- only adding to its mystique.
This small oblast of about one million is uniquely situated
hundreds of miles from Russia proper, but is fiercely pro-Russian. Despite
its German and Prussian heritage, Kaliningraders consider themselves
Russian to the core. Many are second and third generation inhabitants
whose parents, at the encouragement of the Soviet government, pulled up
stakes in places like Pskov and Tula and immigrated to the newly
incorporated region after 1945.
The city retains a distinctive German ambience on lovely tree-lined
avenues such as Kutuzova and a fascinating, if often grimly monotonous,
Soviet flavor in the city center where most of the British bombs fell. Even
in these areas, though, an almost all-encompassing verdant greenery blunts
the dull and sodden shapes of the Soviet-era shops built strictly for
The Curonian Spit (Kurshkaya Kosa) in Kaliningrad
17
functionality; while further a field major reconstruction projects continue
on the fourteenth-century cathedral (site ofimmanuel Kant's grave) and the
Church of Christ the Saviour, still incomplete. In front of the new church
is a Soviet-era monument to Lenin. One can only hope that when the
church is completed, city leaders will keep Lenin where he is, with arm
outstretched and looking devilishly handsome, to provide future generations
with a fantastically ironic history lesson.
One of the most elegant civic structures is the Kaliningrad Drama
Theatre built in 1927 and located on Theatre Street near Kalinin Park (after
Mikhail Kalinin, for whom both the park and city are named) and the
popular city zoo. A monument to Schiller (one of the only German-era
monuments left in the city) gazes from a park across from the main steps to
the salmon-colored theatre with its imposing neoclassical columns added by
the Soviets in the 1950s when the theatre was completely reconstructed.
The main hall is undergoing extensive renovation, the outside having been
refurbished in 1980, so the studio space on the theatre's third floor serves as
the main theatrical venue in the city until the massive project is complete.
The reputation of the Kaliningrad Drama Theatre is solid; the theatre's
repertory has been traditionally geared toward a general Russian, and
Kaliningrad Drama Theatre built in 1927, Kaliningrad
18
Outside Immanuel Kant's Grave, Kaliningrad
"The House of the Soviets" in Kaliningrad was a major architectural
achievement for the Soviets. It has never been used
and stands empty even today.
19
therefore still discerning, audience. The two productions in repertory from
May through July during the summer of 2004 are fine examples of the
theatre's standard fare: Lyudmila Razumovskaya's A Portionless Man
(Bezpridannik) and Odd Fellows! (Chudaki) adapted from After the Army
(Posle armii), a comedy-drama by the young Rodion Beletsky.
Playwright Lyudmila Razumovskaya is known in the West for Dear
Elena Sergeyevna, a scathing, pre-glasnost indictment of Brezhnevian youth
and Soviet society banned during its Russian-language premiere in
Leningrad in 1982.5 Kaliningraders have seen several of her varied works in
the past decade including her adaptation of Medea; French Passions at a
Russian Dacha, a satire about how imitating Europe leads to conflict with
traditional Russian customs; and My Sister, the Mermaid, an adaptation from
Hans Christian Andersen. A Portionless Man has been in the repertory of the
Kaliningrad Drama Theater since December 2003. By Russian standards,
she is considered a prolific modem playwright.
The premise of the play, directed by V. Gryzetz, is that the male
population in Russia has declined so severely that women must pay a
substantial fee to "marriage bureaus" to secure a husband. So rare are good
men in this society that even a "portionless" one like Ivan Kuzmich, the
anti-hero of the drama, receives offers from reputable women who declare
their devotion. A melodramatic author, a teacher who clasps The Complete
Works of Shakespeare to her breast, a wealthy businesswoman who sells
homebrew, and a stout babushka whose husband drank himself to death
have all been set up with twice-divorced Ivan Kuzmich, a flat broke, likable
nobody. The women attempt to bribe Ivan with money and each explains
why he should choose her. Vika, the marriage bureau's gorgeous secretary,
serves to mollify the distraught women when necessary and to act as
mediator among them.
When, however, a fortuitous letter arrives from America
announcing that Raisa, Ivan's second wife, has left him two million dollars,
Vika immediately jumps into the pool of applicants, and Ivan is unable to
believe how the prospect of money has completely changed him. The play
shifts from satire to farce when yet another letter arrives announcing that
Ivan's first wife is suing him for two million dollars and that Vika, with
whom Ivan has spent several passionate hours, is his own daughter. A gun
is drawn, a bomb explodes, and the shunned applicants show their solidarity
by rejecting Ivan.
Even though Razumovskaya's play is concerned with women's
20
Odd Fellows!, directed by Boris Beinenson, at the Kaliningrad Drama Theatre, Kaliningrad
N
-
survival in a post-Soviet society, it would be a stretch to label A Portionless
Man a feminist play or even a play with a feminist perspective. Ivan is the
most obviously likable character in the play. He is the little man, the
Chaplinesque rogue, the character with whom the audience automatically
identifies. Engaging, ragtag, and wide-eyed, Ivan is without scruples when
faced with a choice between respectability and fulfilled passion. He opts for
passion and life in what the playwright calls "Bandit Petersburg."
Razumovskaya's women are victims of circumstance whose actions are
bound to their desire for companionship and sexual satisfaction.
In many ways this is an emblematic contemporary Russian play.
Program notes rather blithely equate Razumovskaya's comedic gifts with
Saltykov-Shchedrin and Gogo! (and to the extent that the play's dialogue is
so colloquially based that its story is impossible to grasp without an
intelligent native speaker by one's side, I see the resemblance).6 A Portionless
Man, like many other post-glasnost Russian dramas, uses the sudden
proliferation of money among certain citizens as a catalyst for revelation,
resentment, and confusion. Generally well acted and designed, A Portionless
Man briefly touches on the serious, if romantically tinged, issue of the
impending disintegration of a uniquely Russian perspective on the world as
western capitalism chokes out that famous Russian soul, but it finally comes
round to the side of farcical humor, aptly ignoring resolution in favor of a
simple image of human solidarity in the face of a society that even after
more than a decade is still on the verge. Individual members of the cast had
many fans in the theatre who laughed gleefully each time a favorite actor
spoke a humorous line. (The Kaliningrad Drama Theatre remains a state-
supported theatre, and many members of its ensemble have been with the
company since long before the breakup of the Soviet Union). The
production of Razumovskaya's satire demonstrates well the way in which a
serviceable play produced for no purpose other than to bring a little
diversionary happiness to the people is a vital and major component of life
here.
Odd Fellows!, by Rodion Beletsky, directed by Boris Beinenson, is
probably the best translation for the Russian title of the play, Chudaki, but
it is not definitive. Also produced by the Kaliningrad Drama Theatre, the
play's title may translate as "many fantasies." The word "chuda" evokes
mystery and can mean "strange man" (without any negative connotations),
or perhaps one who is capable of finding something interesting in normal
things. Program notes claim that this modem play has an "ironic and
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Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 24, No. 3
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Odd Fellows!, directed by Boris Beinenson, at the Kaliningrad Drama Theatre, Kaliningrad
24
Odd Fellows!, directed by Boris Beinenson, at the
Kaliningrad Drama Theatre, Kaliningrad
serious relation to one's self and life."
Having just finished his mandatory military service, Ilya thinks he
wants to be an actor, but his mother is adamantly opposed because she was
abandoned by an actor as a young woman. Ilya's father supports him,
partially out of guilt, it seems, since he is cheating on his son's mother.
Oppressed by a melancholy worthy of Hamlet but always attuned to the
mysterious side of daily living, Ilya attempts to negotiate life's promise and
duty without destroying the needs of his soul. In this sense, the play wears
its gigantic Russian heart on its sleeve. Scenery by Irina Meder and costumes
by Olesya Konovalova provide a whimsical and lilting environment as the
comedy moves into the realm of a wistful seriousness until finally settling on
a moving sense of the tragicomic tone of everyday life-of which only the
Russians seem to retain a truly deep understanding.
Upstage throughout is a colorful carnivalesque platform above
which a bare light can be turned on and off by the actor who is placed there.
In the spirit of Blok' s Fairground Booth or Andreyev's He Who Gets Slapped,
the design, whether enveloping the downstage realistic scenes in Ilya's room
or the upstage sphere of the obviously non-representational scenes, is both
fanciful and solidly grounded. Often, Ilya's family and friends are seen in
the form of a theatrical chorus with masks, red noses, hats, and colorful
clothing. All characters in the play act as both commentators on the action
and instigators of it.
Ably directed with a very tender hand by Pavel Pribytok, Odd
Fellows! is interspersed with songs and monologues in a Brechtian manner,
but poses no major political questions, only philosophical ones. Although
Ilya wears military fatigues throughout Act I, reminding us that it is the army
that has attempted to crush his idealism, his quest to find something or
someone nourishing enough to fill his sense of emptiness after the drudgery
of military service is met by incomprehension, pity, and wonder by the
people he encounters. It is as if he needs the theatre to remind him who he
is, and yet he quite intentionally sabotages his first audition for a prominent
theatre school by refusing to perform a monologue by the great satirist,
Mikhail Zoshchenko. One adjudicator tells him that if he memorizes and
interprets a Zoshchenko short story, he can return and audition again. At
the beginning of Act II, Ilya performs Zoshchenko's The Lady Aristocrat with
verve and wit and absolute clarity. Alone on stage for almost fifteen
minutes, Maxim Maxinov is sensational as Ilya, capable of navigating the
varying moods and form of Odd Fellows! with profound sympathy for the
25
plight of all who need a metaphysical dimension in an otherwise
monotonous life of empirical truth.
Ilya's best friend, Vovka (powerfully acted by Rostislav
Semenikhin), is a frenetic playboy whose partner, the actress Alyona
(interpreted with dignity and remorse by the superb Tatyana Zolotkova), is
introduced to Ilya, who eventually sees in her some sort of feminine ideal
and equates her with an inexpressible redemptive power even though she
reveals that she hates her job as an actress. The Harlequin-Columbine-
Pierrot triangle is clarified just before the conclusion of Act I when Ilya,
rejected by Alyona, attempts to kill himself. He announces his plan while
in the upstage circus tent with the bare white lightbulb slowly clicking on
and off as mother and father, far downstage and fixated full front, beg him
to live. He decides against suicide and focuses his attentions on
Zoshchenko. Tension among the inhabitants of the love triangle is
exacerbated in Act II when Ilya, dressed in full commedia regalia, attempts
to win Alyona from V ovka, his main obstacle, he believes, to personal
happiness. The romantic contest turns violent as Vovka loses his confidence
and demands that Alyona choose him. As in Razumovskaya's A Portionless
Man, Odd Fellows! has no fulfilling sense of resolution. Vovka is left alone
and offers his theatrical mask to the audience. The tone is reflective and
sobering, gently indicating that one must simply find one's own road in life.
Today, the transference of theatrical and dramatic theme from
culture to culture without what Patrice Pavis calls the "flattening out" of one
culture for the sake of the dominant or host culture is one of the ways in
which serious and legitimate theatre is judged.7 But in Kaliningrad, Russian
culture and concerns are valorized, out of necessity or not, making theatre
in Kaliningrad vigorously linked with the life of its audience. Both A
Portionless Man and Odd FeUows!- only two examples-are uniquely "Russian"
in the sense that the philosophy that emanates from them is non-global in
scope. There has been much recent theorizing about globalization and its
implications for postmodern theatre people, whether as a purely
technological or cultural phenomenon. The two plays addressed above are
by and for Russians-the first satirizing an ongoing social problem and the
second treating in a very Slavic manner the question of the needs of the soul.
These two plays, framed as they are by officialdom in the form of the state-
supported Kaliningrad Drama Theatre, are defiantly "local," even as Western
attitudes turn more and more to a recognition of the importance of a cosmic
or "intercultural" dimension in art somehow deemed necessary rather than
26
inevitable by postmodern ideological stances.s The themes of these plays
are not impenetrable to a non-Russian, but their appeal is clearly demarcated
by Slavophilic perceptions of the world. Some would argue that in this
sense, theatre in the Russian provinces such as Kaliningrad is flagrantly and
defiantly "provincial."
There are, however, additional dramatic groups in the city such as
the upstart "Other" Theatre, a young ensemble with enormous energy and
complete dedication to Alla Tatarikova-Karpenko from Moscow,
whose superior directorial and choreographic gifts tend to supercede the
dramatic texts she chooses to stage. Their production of A Hotel on the
Outskirts (Otel na otshibye), subtitled "a comedic detective play in the style
of a tango," was heavily choreographed to an original musical score, but
ultimately forgettable. The company provided no program, and although I
was told that the play was not an adaptation of Feydeau's Hotel Paradiso or
a reworking of that play, A Hotel on the Outskirts is certainly indebted to his
farcical vision.
There is also the well known but strangely quiet Theatre on
Besseynaya Street (where Moby Dick, or Chasing the White Whale, A Rock
Opera, had premiered in May 2004 and run for only two nights) and large
performance halls in the Soviet style like the House of Arts (Dom Iskusstv)
replete with tons of concrete, drafty foyers, and too little light (although the
theatre spaces themselves are more than adequate, even charming in their
own way).9 Because the Kaliningrad region is so small, a short train or car
ride to view theatrical work in provincial cities such as Sovetsk on the
Lithuanian border is easily arranged. Evgeny Marchelli's stunning
production of Three Sisters remains in the repertory at the famous Til'zit
Theatre there.
In Russia, it is always a treat to witness the "final exams" at public
schools where high school students can complete a two-year "experimental
theatre" course culminating in a final public performance that is eagerly
anticipated. Besides proud parents and friends, these events draw theatre
directors, choreographers, and former graduates of the program who are
working professionally. The director of the theatre program in Kaliningrad
is the marvelous Boris Beinenson who teaches English and serves as director
and inspiration for these aspiring performers. The theatre space in which
this year's event took place was a classic Dom Kulturi (House of Culture), a
Soviet-era cement structure offering classes in art, dance, ceramics, and
theatre-a veritable artists' enclave on the banks of a small lake. The theatre
27
space within the large structure is smallish, sweltering, and devoid of even a
hint of decoration. But none of this matters since Professor Beinenson has
instilled in these students a respect for theatrical art that they will appreciate
long after school is done.
In keeping with tradition, the "final exam" is not a full-length play
but a collection of stories and tales, this time adapted from Chekhov with
identifiable characters serving to link the disparate episodes. Many
interpretations of Chekhov's classic tales are here, most of them linked by
the figure oflvan Dmitrich Chervyakov from "The Death of A Government
Clerk." Rapidly paced, delicately nuanced, and heartbreakingly honest, the
students of Professor Beinenson's course could serve to inspire the most
jaded of theatregoers to a reassessment of what it means to value the role
that theatre can play in the quality of a community's life.
Kaliningrad may be used as an excellent example of the state of
provincial theatre in contemporary Russia because of its history, its
proximity to non-Russian republics, and its varied venues and stages. If it is
only now that Moscow and Petersburg are seeing substantive numbers of
new dramas by new Russian playwrights, I would argue that the Kaliningrad
Drama Theatre's willingness to embrace two relatively fresh voices is
commendable and, indeed, indicative of the city's progressive cultural
attitude. Kaliningrad will never make anyone's list of top ten beautiful
cities, but the generous spirit of its people, borne on those glorious Baltic
breezes, is unrivaled. This spirit will most likely continue to provide the
atmosphere in which its theatre thrives.
NOTES
1 John Freedman, "Young Guns: Playwrights Draw A Bead on the New Russia,"
American Theatre July/ August 2004, 68.
2 Alma Law, "Soviet Theatre on Video." Conference on Theater USSR: Revolution
and Tradition. University of South Carolina, Columbia. December 2, 1989.
3 See my review ofSigarev's Black Milk in SEEP, vol. 24, no. 2, Spring 2004.
4 I conducted a telephone interview with Lopatina on December 30, 2003 after I had
seen the European Repertory Company's production of Black Milk. John Freedman
notes in the same American Theatre above that "(a] host of writers enjoying
international success has emerged from the Ural Mountain city of Yekaterinburg"
(71). Both Lopatina and Sigarev are Yekaterinburgers.
5 See Harold B. Segel, Twentieth-Century Russian Drama: From Gorky to the Present
28
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U, 1979, 1993) 472-8. See also John Freedman
"Lyudmila Razumovskaya: Playwright by Chance," Theatre Three (Final Issue 1992):
195-201.
6 In my case, the native speaker was Elena Ratkevich, a "Main Specialist" within the
municipal government in Kaliningrad to whom I was introduced by Irina and Ilya
Vinokurova of the Privet Language School, an essential resource for anyone traveling
alone in Kaliningrad whose Russian is not fluent enough to grasp rapid-fire dramatic
dialogue, particularly in a text-based play.
7 Patrice Pavis, "Intercultural Performance in Theory and Practice" from his
introduction to The Intercultural Perfonnance Reader (London: Routledge, 1996),
reprinted in The Routledge Reader in Politics and Performance eds. Liz beth Goodman and
Jane de Gay (London: Routledge, 2000), 103.
8 Certainly, Peter Brook's influence is still strong in the West, even decades after he
began his work with the "intercultural" (and multicultural) International Centre of
Theatre Research in 1970.
9 Dom Iskusstv hosted one afternoon performance of "A Gala Concert of Ballet"
featuring significant pieces from the Mariinsky Theatre by notable members of the
dance company for primary and secondary schoolteachers only on May 28, 2003, the
last day of the academic year in the very comfortable large hall that resembled a mini
Palace of Congresses in the Kremlin.
29
MIRO GAVRAN:
THE RETURN OF THE PLAYWRIGHT TO THE STAGE
Sanja Nikcevic
The twentieth century with its modernist understanding of theatre
has often been described as the century of the director-the historical
moment in Western theatrical history where the playwright's authority was
usurped by the all-powerful vision of the director. The director by the mid-
twentieth century became, particularly on European stages, the ultimate
creator of the performance, who employs the playwright's text only as
another element of the theatrical event. The text in the last century became
no more or less important than other production elements, such as lighting
or costumes. Story, in this context, was often reduced to mere fragments,
while the playwright's development of character was distilled into a walking
representation of the director's guiding idea.
With the rise of the director in Europe, we have seen the
subsequent decline of the European playwright. One could argue that
following the Theatre of the Absurd there has been a dearth of important
playwrights who have significantly influenced the European stage. Instead of
investing in new playwrights, theatre directors have routinely chosen
classical texts for their productions since directors can more easily "make"
such texts their own. With the help of dramaturgs, directors are able to piece
together fragments from various classical texts and create "new" theatrical
compositions that can better express the conceptual position of the director.
It is easy to see how a playwright in this situation, particularly a
young playwright who wishes to be produced, may be inclined to write with
the objective of pleasing a potential director, especially since most powerful
positions in the theatre (i.e. theatre managers, advisers to managers, festival
jury members) are often held by those who identify themselves as directors.
New playwrights throughout the second half of the twentieth century have
regularly been brought onto projects more as dramaturgs than playwrights,
producing what could be called "pre-texts" for directors-texts that provide a
foundation for the eventual text that will more accurately manifest a
director's fully developed idea.
The Croatian playwright Miro Gavran, born in 1961 and writing at
the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century, has
30
Slavic and East European Petformance Vol. 24, No.3
Playwright Miro Gavran
31
refused to comply with the dominant director-centered theatre in Europe.
Gavran has always chosen to go his own way regardless of the consequences.
From the beginning, he has acted in an unusual manner within the context
of the European theatre scene.
In 1983, when he was just twenty-two, his first drama Creon's
Antigone was successfully presented at Zagreb's prestigious Gavrella Theatre.
Although the play is based on the well-known myth, Gavran's telling
departed markedly from the Sophoclean version. In Gavran's account, the
tyrant Creon, trying to get rid of Oedipus's three children, devises a cunning
plan and writes new roles for all of the major players. Antigone, confined in
a dungeon, reads Creon's play and falls in love with the rebel character of
Antigone that Creon has created. Her admiration for the character of
Antigone leads the princess to refuse to collaborate with the king.
This new story about a cruel tyrant was well received in Zagreb, and
Croatian audiences greeted Miro Gavran as a promising young writer. His
subsequent plays were staged throughout Croatia, but, unfortunately, in a
short period of time, the rising young playwright lost his official support. He
was not proposed for foreign exchanges as an official representative of
Croatia; his work was not performed in the largest theatres. When Gavran
moved to writing comedies, things became even bleaker. Academics looked
down on his work. Despite his waning reputation, Gavran still pursued his
work as a full-time writer, refusing to accept the art of writing as a mere
hobby.
Gavran worked very briefly as a dramaturg at the Theatre lTD in
Zagreb. Eventually, he became the manager of that theatre. He used his free
time to revitalize the playwriting scene for aspiring Croatian writers. He
worked to publish plays of other writers. In 1995, he started his own private
theatre- Theatre Epilog, and in 2002 he founded the Theatre Gavran. The
establishment of these theatres demonstrated that Croatian audiences still
had a strong liking for Gavran's plays.
Outside Croatia his appeal was even greater. Gavran became the
only living Croatian writer to be performed in the United States (Gavran's
Royalties and Rogues was performed at the O'Neill Theatre Center in 1999).
His twenty plays have been translated into almost as many languages,
including Persian and Esperanto, and have been staged throughout Europe.
Gavran has personally attended more than one hundred opening nights in
Europe. In 2003, sixteen European theatres were playing his work. In 2004,
All about Women was staged in Argentina and the Czech Republic; Creon's
32
Miro Gavran's Creon's Antigone, Rotterdam, Netherlands
33
Miro Gavran's Nights of Gods, Trnava, Slovakia
Miro Gavran's All About Women, Trnava, Slovakia
34
Antigone and Chekhov Says Good-bye to Tolstoy were presented in France; My
Wife's Husband was produced in Poland; and Death of an Actor, Forget
Hollywood was performed in Slovakia. Gavran is one of the few living
playwrights to have a festival named for him. In 2003, so many Slovakian
theatres were staging various plays of his simultaneously that a theatre in
Trnava organized a Gavran "fest" and invited all the companies to perform.
In 2004, the festival expanded to include international productions.
Gavran has earned the respect of theatre historians and professors;
Michael Babiak from Slovakia and Gordana Muzaferija from Bosnia-
Herzegovina have written essays on his work. In addition to his plays,
Gavran has written several novels for both adults and young readers,
prompting Hungary to give him the Central European Times International
Literary Award for the Best Central European writer of the year in 1999.
In insisting on the authority of the playwright in the face of rising
directorial power, Gavran bucked contemporary theatrical trends and
established himself as a European phenomenon. His success can be
explained by several characteristics of his work-work that has often been
called "neo-conservative" by some critics. These characteristics are well-
constructed, clearly defined characters; a tight development of plot; a focus
on positive human emotions, such as friendship and love, as the topics of
his plays; and the presentation of general life-affirming themes.
Miro Gavran's characters live powerfully on stage, especially many
of the historical figures that occupy primary positions in much of his work:
Moliere and Louis XIV in Nights of the Gods, two literary masters in Chekhov
Says Good-bye to Tolstoy, an American president in The Loves if George
Washington. Each character carries with him the baggage his name bestows
on him. It is the name that first attracts the audience to the story, but once
hooked, Gavran surprises the viewer by giving unusual personal dimensions
and humanity to what heretofore had been a sometimes two-dimensional
historical character.
In The Loves of George Washington, Gavran refuses to show
Washington fighting for American independence. Instead, the audience
witnesses Washington's wife and mistress after the president's death. Which
one did Washington love? Similarly, in Chekhov Says Good-bye to Tolstoy, the
audience does not see Tolstoy at the height of his creative powers but at the
end of his career embroiled in what can be seen as a trivial intrigue: Tolstoy
and his wife, hosting Anton Chekhov and his wife Olga Knipper Chekhov,
each try to woo the Chekhovs into writing a book about the great Tolstoy.
35
Leo works on Anton while his wife targets Olga. The result is a comic play
about an old couple quarreling and insulting each other as they try to seduce
members of the younger generation.
Gavran successfully creates full-blooded characters not by showing
them engaged in public, professional conflicts but rather struggling with
personal problems of the heart. All of his characters are individuals who are
left alone to cope with their fate and a limited number of options. Their
social standing, no matter how high, offers little help to the characters. The
decisions that the characters have to make, the situations that unfold around
them, are the same decisions and situations facing ordinary people today:
decisions regarding love, friendship, forgiveness, morality. All must suffer
the consequences of their choices. The audience recognizes its own
dilemmas in those of the king, the president, and the great playwright.
Though historical, Miro Gavran's characters prove extremely
contemporary-they are close to the audience and are always very
intelligible.
Each of Gavran's plays tells a clear and interesting story. By
providing more than one reversal, Gavran holds the attention of the
audience. Frequently press reviews refrain from telling the story so as not to
spoil the effect. Gavran in comedies and dramas alike manages to sustain a
level of tension befitting a gripping detective story.
Throughout Gavran's plays, the characters rise and fall as the plot
unfolds; the masks worn by the characters are pulled off; human souls are
eventually revealed; power shifts from one character to another. For
example, in Nights if Gods, Louis XN, Moliere, and the Fool-all three
drinking companions-party together in the cellar at night. One day the king
discovers that Moliere and the Fool have been performing a play that mocks
the king's love for an actress. Louis XN forces the men to perform the piece
for him. Frightened, Moliere and the Fool do as they are told. The king is
then forced to decide on an appropriate punishment. In the end, however,
power proves not to be in the king's hands alone. When Moliere stops
fearing punishment, he regains power over his own life. The king's eventual
pardon reveals the true nature of power.
Of course, strong dramatic writing conists of more than an idea and
reversal-every good joke has as much. For the theatre, a story has to be told
with the help of skillful dialogue, and here Gavran is a master craftsman.
While sometimes on paper his dialogue may look thin or overly simple, his
skill lies in being able to put on the page only the words spoken while the
36
Miro Gavran's The Loves of George Washington,
Celje, Slovenia
37
sub text of the communication is left to the actor. Gavran allows the physical
components of the actor's instrument-face and body-to reveal the energy
emanating from the words. This quality endears Gavran to actors all over the
world.
All of the living characters and interesting stories that Gavran has
created are anchored in strong feelings. Emotion is always present in
Gavran's work. The emotions are powerful- love, friendship, devotion to
work and country- but there are no grand passions. We have left the arena
of tragedy and entered into the everyday world. Instead of large gestures and
turbulent outpourings of uncontrollable feelings, emotions are expressed
quietly and calmly. This does not mean that the emotional journeys that
Gavran's characters embark upon are less important or sincere. The feelings
are suited to the age in which Gavran writes and lives.
From Gavran's first play, the contemporary expression of emotion
was evident, particularly with regards to his female characters. His recent
play, All about Women, deals primarily with the emotional life of women.
The play has an unusual structure in which the life stories of five women
alternate and interweave. Three actresses are asked to play fifteen different
characters. The situations are very diverse: one story concerns two sisters
struggling for the love of one man; another confronts a special friendship
threatened by the arrival of a third person. The audience witnesses the
emotional highs and lows of secretaries in a competitive firm vying for the
same position. Young girls and older women are all represented,
demonstrating the complexity of Gavran's insight into the ever-changing
emotional life of human beings.
Gavran's work contains, of course, more than studies of the emotional
lives of characters. Broader themes such as the abuse of power and authority
or manipulation of the individual are also addressed. We have seen power
and manipulation at play in Creon's Antigone and in Night of the Gods, but it
is also central to How to Kill the President-Gavran's play about the conflict
between two brothers. The older brother, Robert, is an established professor
with a wife who serves as a director of an asylum. The younger brother, Igor,
is a returned dissident who had escaped from his country and lived abroad.
Both brothers did not approve of the country's former regime, but after
independence had been gained and the regime overthrown, Robert settled
comfortably into the new order while Igor was determined to continue
fighting, identifYing new enemies to combat. Where once he fought an
enemy known as communism, today he attempts to bring down a new foe-
38
globalization. Igor returns to Croatia to kill what he deems the symbol of
globalization-the President of the United States. Igor's brother cannot
support this. The conflict between brothers reveals the struggles of "a
transitional European country at the beginning of the twenty-first century."
Personal struggles-emotional and political-of individual characters express
a larger struggle throughout Europe. This is not simply a Croatian play. The
work was, in fact, translated into Slovak even before an official Croatian
opening was set.
Society for Gavran is comprised of powerfully individualistic people
who are routinely confronted with choices. From characters in high to low
social positions-from Louis XIV and Moliere to the Fool in Night of the
Gods-choices are inevitable. Louis becomes a tyrant who chooses to
subordinate everything to himself, while Moliere makes a choice to risk his
life mocking the king. Choices regarding the direction in which the "new"
society should move are raised throughout How to Kill the President. Similarly,
the literary giants of Chekhov Says Good-bye to Tolstoy are confronted with
choices pertaining to the characters' success. It is Gavran's focus on the
possibility of human choice that serves to reveal the playwright's
fundamental positive thinking and his life-affirming perspective.
A recurring theme in Gavran's work is the quest for life's meaning. The
choices we make affect the society in which we live. The theatre for Gavran
is less about an analysis of the destructive forces in society and more than a
celebration of the potential for growth and change. When Gavran portrays
unhappiness on the stage, he is actually emphasizing the fact that the
opposite condition, happiness, is always a possible alternative. The potential
of the positive alternative rests in the individual's ability to choose
otherwise. While revealing a character's bad choices, Gavran demonstrates
that the alternative route could always have been taken. Positive, life-
affirming choices, for Gavran, should always be believed in and should be
patiently sought out by all members of society. Such anoptimistic outlook
has made Gavran an appealing playwright for many theatres and many
theatregoers.
39
THE NATIONAL THEATRE FESTIVAL
OF PECS, HUNGARY, 2004
Eugene Brogyanyi
Even after fifteen years, the countries of the former Eastern Bloc
continue struggling with the legacy of their subjugation, each in its own way,
economically, socially, politically, and culturally. The post-1989 era is still
emerging, as is demonstrated by the Hungarian theare at this time. While
State subsidies in Hungary remain an important component in maintaining
much of the country's theare, there are now other possibilities: differently
structured theares, non-subsidized companies, free-lance actors and directors
not attached to a given company, and the State no longer has a say in what
may be performed, or how. Consequently, theatrical language is undergoing
reappraisal. Typical of the era preceding the change of regime, theatrical
expression was routinely born of the constraint to speak indirectly, through
coded messages from which audiences drew reassurance. This has now given
way to the possibilities of direct communication of any kind. There is a
sense of ferment, which I experienced at the annual conference of theare
professionals this summer in Hungary.
Each June, the Hungarian theatrical profession assembles for about
ten days to compete, celebrate, and take stock of itself Until2000, this event
was held in a different city each year. Since then, it was decided for practical
reasons that the beautiful, historic town of Pees in southwestern Hungary
would permanently play host to the gathering. The National Theater Festival
of Fees invites the fifteen best productions from theares throughout the
country as well as from Hungarian-language theares in areas that, due to
border changes following World War I, lie outside present-day Hungary.
The task of selecting these productions falls to a different individual each
year, someone connected to the performing arts, either as a critic, an
academic, a performer, a writer, or in some other professional capacity. This
time, an opera singer, Adrienne Csengery, made the fifteen selections,
having spent the 2003-4 theare season attending 130 new productions, each
nominated by the producing theare itself, out of about four hundred
premiers countrywide. In Pees then, a jury, which changes each year, decides
on a number of prizes awarded at the end of the festival, for direction,
design, various acting categories, and best production overall. Consequently,
40
Sandor Weores's Tbeomachia, directed by Zoltan Balazs, at the
Barka Theatre of Budapest
41
these fifteen productions are known as the "Competition Program." They
take place in three venues (except for one of this year's productions, which
required a special site- more on that below): the main stage of the
nineteenth-century, neo-baroque theare building, and two flexible studio
spaces.
In addition, Pees during this time becomes the site of a lively "OFF
Program" consisting of readings of new plays, student productions, puppet
shows, children's theare, dance programs, street theatre and concerts.
Altogether an estimated seven hundred artists perform in thirty-two venues.
All over town, one can find art exhibits in galleries, cafes, corridors,
courtyards, clubs. The main square is surrounded by tents where publishers
offer their latest editions and present discussions and book signings with
their authors.
Each morning, following the second performance of an official
competition entry, a room full of conference participants gather for a
"Professional Discussion" of the production in question. Two invited
discussants, different at each session, give their remarks; then everyone has
an opportunity to participate. This year, these hour-long sessions often
turned into lively debates that placed the given production into the wider
context of Hungarian theare at present. It was clear that the theare remains
a passionate national cause among Hungarians.
Csengery's overriding criterion for the Competition Program
entries was that they should reflect innovative work which offers alternatives
to the ingrained traditions of Hungarian theare. With a few exceptions (a
political cabaret, for example, or a straightforwardly staged Hungarian
nineteenth-century social comedy), she by and large fulfilled her purpose.
Whether the innovation she found was in the direction, the writing, the
acting, or even the dramaturgy, it was almost always striking enough to
generate great interest at these Professional Discussions, where impatience
with the Hungarian traditions of psychological realism and narrative
continuity was often voiced.
Of the fifteen offerings, seven were original Hungarian plays, the
other eight were translations. Two of the latter plays were by Chekhov, The
Seagull and Ivanov; one was the contemporary Russian play Black Milk by
Vassily Sigarev; two were contemporary British adaptations of classics,
Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov by Richard Crane, for four actors, and
Joanna Laurens's Three Birds, based on the fragmentary Tereus by Sophocles;
Roberto Zucco by the modem French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltes was
42
Natella, Azdak, and Grusha in Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle, directed
by Sandor Zs6ter, at the Vfgszfnhaz (Comedy Theatre) of Budapest
Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle, directed by Sandor Zs6ter, at the
Vfgszfnhaz (Comedy Theatre) of Budapest
43
44
Dostoyevsky's Brother's Karamazov, adapted by Richard
Crane, directed by Peter T eli hay, at the Szigligeti Theatre of
Szolnok
Gaea, earth goddess, in Sandor Wei:ires's Theomachia,
directed by Zoltan Balazs, at the Barka Theatre of
Budapest
45
46
Sandor Weores's Theomachia, directed by Zoltan Balazs, at the
Barka Theatre of Budapest
presented; as were two mid-twentieth-century classics, Ionesco's jacques, or
the Submission and Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle.
This article will limit itself largely to discussing three of the
Hungarian plays that most clearly illustrate the sense of mission with which
the country's theare is searching for a new theatrical language. I begin by
quoting some remarks by the playwright, Andras Nagy (a discussant on the
Kn!takor Theater's bare-bones production of The Seagull, directed by Arpad
Schilling), since they epitomize the quest of Hungarian theare today: "This
production is important because it has succeeded in breaking through a mass
of conventions we don't even notice since we're so at home in them. We
often assume they're synonymous with the theare, even though they're
nothing but a system of habits we should be vigorously striving to break
away from."
Nagy's implicit call to action is clearly answered by the production
of Theomachia, a verse play by Sandor W eo res, the greatest Hungarian poet
of the latter part of the twentieth century. A youthful work written in 1938
in alexandrines, it is about the struggles of the pre-Olympian gods, resulting
in the rise of Zeus. The main character is Chronos, who deposed his father,
Uranos, and is now trying to thwart fate and hold onto power by devouring
his offspring. This extraordinary production, directed by the twenty-five-
year-old Zoltan Balazs, takes full advantage of the new possibilities presented
by the Barka Theater of Budapest. Barka, a fully subsidized institution, was
recently founded as a community of artists from related fields. Thus the
salaried staff includes not only actors, directors, and dramaturgs, but also
playwrights, composers, choreographers, musicians, visual artists, and so
forth. Balazs's production, to some extent betraying the influence of Robert
Wilson, integrates movement, sound, and allusions to the fine arts into an
absorbing, boundlessly inventive ritual. The director treats the text, already
a sonorous poem, as a source of music-like material, at times draining it of
semantic content and paring it down to its aural rudiments: vowels repeated
on pitch become integrated into chants accompanied by percussion
instruments. In perhaps the boldest stroke, the actors at times speak the text
in reverse. This stratagem, of course, has to do with time, the meaning of the
name of Chronos, who, by deposing his father and being in turn deposed
by his son, represents passage from the archaic to the new. Various
representations of time are an important feature of the production. For
example, at the side of the stage, a figure draped in red with a birdcage on
her head, reminiscent of a Magritte image, slowly and continuously climbs
47
just a Nail by Marton Kovacs, Istvan Mohacsi, and Janos Mohacsi, directed by
Janos Mohacsi, at the Csiky Gergely Theatre of Kaposvar
up and down a spiral staircase, independently of any other stage action, from
the moment the house opens until the last audience member leaves.
Chronos stands statically center stage; behind him, representing his time, is
a huge shallow cylinder resting on a point of its circumference. At a crucial
moment this circle splits vertically and slowly opens, creating a platform on
which the next generation of gods sit triumphantly. Many costumes are
reminiscent of Eastern culture, thus universalizing the Greek myth. W eo res
himself had more than a passing interest in Zen-Buddhist and Taoist modes
of thought and was a dedicated translator ofFar-Eastern poetry. A celebrated
sixty-three-year-old actress, Ilona Beres, plays Chronos with frightening
masculine intensity, until the character's defeat, when he removes a
monstrous wig and costume elements, revealing the frail woman beneath.
Balazs has clearly set himself the task of creating a language based less on
verbal than on meta-communicative indicators, a structure that may be
decoded only upon reflection or upon revisiting the production.
The "system of habits," to use Andras Nagy's above-quoted phrase,
of the Hungarian theare has until recently precluded a certain approach
already practiced in the West-the production of performance texts based on
48
the improvisatory participation of acting ensembles under the guidance and
vision of a director. Two such productions were presented at the festival.
One was from the town of Kaposvar, whose theare has a history of
innovation and excellence. This production, under the direction of Janos
Mohacsi and titled just a Nail, treats the fate of the Gypsies, Hungary's
largest minority. Though that fate is often tragic, the production revels in
playful, folkloric poeticism, and it is non-didactic. Subtitled Prejudice in Two
Noisy Acts, just a Nail transcends the "Gypsy question," although that is
clearly the subject. Filled with music and dance, the thirty-seven actors and
eleven musicians perform four extensive scenes, each of which could stand
on its own as a one-act play, strung together by shorter episodes. The four
scenes involve an eighteenth-century trial for supposed cannibalism; the
Gypsy Holocaust; the Crucifixion, in which, according to legend, Gypsies
were involved: they stole one of the nails meant for Christ- hence the title-
and ended up as the two thieves; and finally a scene in a contemporary
Hungarian village.
The production is an amalgam of surrealism and realism. What
holds the disparate story elements together is the figure of an old Gypsy
Kinga Mezei and Kata Gyarmati's adaptation of Istvan Domonkos's novel,
Via Italia, directed by Kinga Mezei, at the Theatre of Ujvidek
49
man, who, standing outside the historical events, chats with God over
coffee. Auschwitz brings this good-humored klatsch to an end, however
much the Lord may crave more of the black liquid. The Gypsy returns to
God the token of their bond, the nail from the Crucifixion, underscoring
the parting of their ways. Thus the closing scenes are played out in a world
absent of God. The following day's discussion of the production noted that
it is governed not by a traditional dramaturgic structure but by the vigorous
rhythmic string of its narrative episodes, integrated by strongly emotive and
suggestive movement, dance, and music. In other words, an emerging new
theatrical language, for Hungary at least, was recognized and appreciated.
This is not the first time director Mohacsi has worked in this fashion.
Indeed, he is recognized nationally as a successful practitioner of this
approach. And if we judge from the reception of just a Nail, he is likely to
continue in that vein.
The other production, Via Italia, that generated its performance text
through the improvisations of a tightly-knit company of actors under the
guidance of a director, in this case Kinga Mezei along with the dramaturg
Kata Gyarmati, is from the Hungarian Theater of Ujvidek (Novi Sad) in
Serbia. Via ltalia takes its title and inspiration from a novel by a
contemporary Hungarian writer, Istvan Domonkos, from the same region,
the partly Hungarian-inhabited Vajdasag (Voivodina) in northern Serbia.
The novel shows life in a Hungarian village there in the aftermath ofWorld
War II through the eyes of adolescents. As a reflection of the grotesque tone
of the novel, the director has tipped the entire playing area at a steep angle,
giving literal expression to a skewed world and making it impossible for the
actors to move in a naturalistic way. This angled plane is full of trap doors
and protruding volumes, providing plenty of opportunity for exits,
entrances, and for isolating areas suggesting the village, its rooftops, the
church attic, and the cemetery. The action does not take the form of a
unified plot, but is a series of episodes, and as we witness the events in this
fragmented, disharmonious world, we pick up certain recurring threads. A
boy is planning an Italian journey with his grandfather, whence the title,
although the boy does not entirely realize this is an unattainable dream. A
band of boys plan to detonate a bomb they found, left over from the war.
The "bomb expert" is in love with a girl, who in turn is in love with another
boy, and in his over-zealousness to impress her, the expert accidentally
blows her up. Both the adolescents and the old characters are played by
actors in their twenties. The dialogue is spoken in local dialect, and in one
50
scene, the character of a Serb policeman can hardly hold his own in
Hungarian. Much of the next day's discussion of Via ltalia centered on
whether those shards of action come together or not, indeed whether they
even need to or ought to. It was pointed out that Via Italia was a great
success in Ujvidek, which raised the question of whether it was even fair to
bring a production so peculiar to its place of origin to a festival where
viewers are essentially treating it as a strange commodity in a familiar
marketplace. In any case, Ujvidek will have to do without Kinga Mezei for
a while, since next season she will be under contract to work at the above-
discussed Barka Theater in Budapest. The vitality of Via Italia, however,
encouraged me to believe that her theare in Ujvidek will continue to flourish
even during her temporary absence, and her work in the capital will bring
well-deserved attention to her home base.
I found it paradoxical and gratifying, given all this concern for
finding new forms of theatrical expression, that the main prize went not to
an "extravaganza," but to Arpad Schilling's production ofChekhov's Seagull,
which consciously discards all production values: there is no set, no
costumes, no theatrical lighting, in fact the performance does not take place
in a theare at all; it must be performed in a room with ordinary present-day
furnishings and a glass door to the (actual) outside. The entire performance
is reduced to the actors' behavior and speech in a space that happens to
include a small audience. There is no curtain call, no applause; the exiting
audience has to clear a path for itself This too is a discarding of
conventions, a new language of the stage. In the production's changed
ending, Constantine, instead of shooting himself, tramples the symbol of his
artistic spirit, a violin. Aside from the fact that this superb, absorbing
production deserved the prize, I could not help but consider that the
revitalized Hungarian theare profession was recognizing the pitfalls it faces.
The Seagull is, after all, a play about the subversion of the world-redeeming
dreams of youth. From a similar perspective, the ascent of youth as
represented by Zeus's triumph at the end ofWeores's Theomachia introduces
a new era, that of the gods of Olympus, with their human-like traits and
fallibilities. The demise of communism, with its insecure rigidity and
intolerance-the demise of this latest Chronos devouring his children to
maintain his static power-has given rise to a new era of promise amidst our
inevitable foibles, which the Hungarian theare is endeavoring to reflect and
advance.
51
THE NATIONAL THEATRE FESTIVAL
OF PECS, HUNGARY, 2004
Interview with Pamela Billig by Eleanor Ruth in New York
June 26, 2004
Eleanor Ruth: Was it an international festival you attended in Hungary?
Pamela Billig: No, the POSZT (Pecsi Orszagos Szfnhazi Talalkoz6)1 is a
national festival. The productions originated in Hungarian-language theatres
-1 was one of very few people attending who's not a native speaker of
Hungarian.
Ruth: Does this event involve a competition?
Billig: Yes, it does.
Ruth: Is that the Hungarian version of the Tony awards?
Billig: Not exactly- it seems to be on a much higher level. This is not about
entertainment, but artistry. Hungarians are passionate about theatre; they
want intelligent, committed theatre pieces; they want to be challenged; seek
the best writers, directors, dramaturgs. The small number of people who get
admitted to the theatre academy are the creme de la creme- well-trained,
talented, creative. At the festival, they don't just applaud and give out awards
-there is serious analysis and discussion of every production (not only by
theare professionals, but also laymen.) It was interesting for me, as a New
Yorker, to be in a country where theatre matters. And refreshing to see a
country that supports the arts, despite its own financial difficulties after forty
years of communism.
Ruth: What was your initial impression?
Billig: I had expected all the plays to be by Hungarian writers, but only
about half were.
52
Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol. 24, No.3
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Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle, directed by Sandor Zs6ter, at the Vfgszfnhaz
(Comedy Theatre) of Budapest
53
Ruth: How did you choose which productions to attend?
Billig: Perhaps because I am not a native speaker of Hungarian, I was most
drawn to productions of the more internationally known plays. (Makes it
easier to follow the plot.)
Ruth: Could you appreciate the acting since the performances were in a
foreign tongue? Did any production stand out for its acting?
Billig: Yes. An adaptation of Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov, written for
only four actors by contemporary English playwright Richard Crane
(performed of course in Hungarian). I was doubtful, but curious, about such
a vast Russian canvas on such a small easel. The director staged the play in
a tiny playing area, with the actors deliberately intertwining with audience
members (reminiscent of Richard Schechner's Performing Garage)- hence,
from across the room, I saw two or three audience faces between Dmitry and
Ivan when they confronted each other. The set was also intimate, and
enveloped the space with a network of ropes and catwalks (implying railroad
tracks leading off into nowhere) over our heads, in some cases rather close
to our heads. The predominant material was wood, with some burlap and
fur. In this tight, airless, and unfortunately non-air-conditioned space, the
director added many lit candles with open flames. (I couldn't help thinking
that the venue would never come up to code in New York City).
The acting was extremely physical, and frequently involved
climbing, dangling, jumping, falling, and throwing one another violently to
the floor. (Actors' Equity would never have allowed this level of risk to the
actors had the performance taken place in New York City). As luck would
have it, the temperature that evening hovered around 100 degrees, which
made it feel 110 in the theare. This was uncomfortable enough for the
audience, but the cast, in addition to exerting itself strenuously, was
costumed in heavy fur coats, boots, and hats, to withstand the "cold" of
Mother Russia. (I expected one or two people to collapse.)
In this environment, I was thrilled to find that despite the tough
conditions, the audience (including myself) was mesmerized by the intense
acting and the outstanding ensemble work. This production ranks with the
best acting I've ever seen. Crane's version of the novel very wisely avoids any
futile attempt to cram the vast number of characters and complicated story
into the "two hours' traffic of our stage." This Karamazov is a distillation of
54
the novel into its most essential philosophical, psychological, and emotional
aspects, revealing the tortured souls of its characters. Crane's marvelous
theatrical conceit is to have each actor transform into the domineering
father when he dons a certain large fur coat; director Peter Telihay does a
terrific job with the transitions of the brothers into their father. This
production was the closest thing to a "total theare experience" that I've had
since the Schechner days in New York.
When I returned to the United States, I read Crane's excellent script
in the original English- it is lean, unsparing, doesn't waste a word.
Furthermore, it increased my admiration for the director and actors because
I could clearly see how much they had fleshed out the action.
Ruth: Did any production disappoint you?
Billig: The production of Ionesco's jack, or the Submission was off base right
from the first cue. The company was trying to "act" absurd. In the United
States, the best productions of Ionesco's works are those that let the
language and situation bring out the absurdity. The actors essentially "play
it straight," which underscores the absurd humor. In this production, the
Dostoyevsky's Brother's Karamazov, adapted by Richard Crane,
directed by Peter Telihay, at the Szigligeti Theatre of Szolnok
55
forced kookiness took all the wind out of Ionesco's sails. Perhaps the
Hungarian audience felt differently, because the applause seemed endless.
Ruth: What was the best production you saw?
Billig: The final competition entry originated at the Vfgszinhaz (Comedy
Theater) in Budapest-it was Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle, directed by
Hungarian Wunderkind Sandor Zs6ter. Not only did festival participants
attend, but townspeople flocked to the grand auditorium of the National
Theater in Pees to see Brecht's well-known play. From the instant the
traditional red proscenium curtain opened, we were astounded. The
audience took a collective breath. The entire cast was sitting in theare seats,
facing us. Were we the actors?
The rows of seats onstage seemed to be in a movie theare, complete
with a projection booth, lights inset in the ceiling, swinging doors, etc. To
move to another part of the stage, an actor had to walk in a lateral pattern
(or rather sashay, the way one does through a row of seats in a theare). Most
conversations between characters took place in several rows of seats, with the
actors facing forward. Most of the cast wore dark, military suits with hats to
match, evoking the stultifying sameness of uniforms, except for a woman in
a bright yellow gown sitting in the front row. On the extreme left and right
were troops of children, assembled in the theatre seats, and reciting or
singing the Brechtian parable of the chalk circle. The director's and set
designer's concept was merged into one-seamlessly. I spent the entire time
on the edge of my seat; it was the same old Brecht play-yet it seemed to be
a new world. Voila!- Brecht's alienation. Achieved instantly and effortlessly.
After the initial "bang" more interesting staging emerged. Different
sets of lights in the "movie theatre" created moods - house lights, exit lights,
aisle lights; sometimes a scene was played in the projection booth (that's
where dastardly deeds were often committed) while the rest of the stage was
dark. When winter snows covered the village, the theatre seats were covered
with white slip covers which billowed before being tucked in by the army of
uniformed children-cum-ushers. We, the audience, were frequently thrown
off balance. Some characters were played by members of the opposite sex,
cross-dressed. Seemingly out of nowhere, an acrobat would appear in a tight
ray of light performing cartwheels across the apron. At various points,
certain rows of seats were removed, creating new angles for conversation,
and shifting character allegiances through proximity. As the second act
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Slavic and East European PeifOrmance Vol. 24, No.3
curtain rose, most of the chairs were gone, and the Judge, a male character
played by a woman, was addressing the child's mother, played by a man.
With all of these effects, one might have expected the text to get
lost-but, on the contrary, the story was crystal clear. Also, the acting was
terrific, and the staging very clever, often integrating blocking with changes
in the set. The director's fluid interpretation allowed the character of the
child to be variously portrayed by a doll, by one of the uniformed boys, and
even by a dozen children holding hands. In a brilliant stroke of staging, the
entire troop of children became the chalk circle. An astonishing achievement.
Ruth: Any closing thoughts?
Billig: In the United States, most theares spend most of their time, and get
most of their money, nurturing the "next great American playwright" by
developing new scripts. It was refreshing to immerse myself in a culture that
reexamines the classics, plumbs their depths, and finds completely new life
in them. After all, they are "classics" because they're good.
NOTE
1. The festival (POSZT) lasted ten days- beginningJune 3 and ending June 12. Seven
hundred artists participapated in 165 performances. The main event consisted of the
competition program of fifteen invited produtions from around Hungary. Three
juries-professional, audience, actors-judged the competition. Professional jurors
must attend all fifteen competition entries. They are performed in three venues and
are supplemented by official talks, panels, lectures, meet-the-artists events, and
readings. Hundreds of"off-program" events are scheduled aroudn town in thirty-two
venues. Festival organizers are readily accessible and solicit feedback.
57
INTERVIEW WITH GRZEGORZ BRAL,
DIRECTOR OF SONG OF THE GOAT'S
CHRONICLES-A LAMENT AT/ON
Roger Babb
From 1987 to 1992, Grzegorz Bral was a principal actor for
Gardzienice, one of Poland's foremost experimental theatre groups. As a
member of that company he lead training sessions, traveled to major theatre
festivals, and participated in theatre "expeditions" to Italy, Gotland, and
Ukraine. After leaving the company, he supported himself as a leader of
acting workshops in Poland and other European countries. Now Bral, in his
early forties, identifies himself primarily as a teacher who was forced by
necessity "to take things in my own hands in order to make something more
permanent." The result is Pie5n Kozla, one of Poland's most exciting new
companies whose recent production of Chronicles-A Lamentation, based on
the Sumerian epic Gilgamesh, has received critical acclaim in Europe, New
York, and most recently in Edinburgh where they were awarded a Fringe
First at this summer's festival.!
The influence of Gardzienice is clear. Bra) readily honors his artistic
connection to Wlodzimierz Staniewski's company: "Of course, there is a
direct relationship. Working in music, going on expeditions, researching the
ethnic spirituality." But, Pidn Kozla is different from Gardzienice in a
number of ways- most notably in its open acknowledgement of its artistic
predecessors. Staniewski has been somewhat hesitant to link his early work
with Grotowski in the 1970s to his later work with Gardzienice. It is perhaps
presumptive or premature to speak of Pidn Kozla in the same breath as the
Polish Laboratory Theatre or Gardzienice, but there is strong historical and
aesthetic connection. There are major differences between these three
companies, but there is a basic connection that is manifested in a similar
dedication to physical rigor, intense commitment from the actors and the
fostering of communion between spectators and the performers. Zygmunt
Molik, one of Grotowski's principal actors is affiliated with Pie5n Kozla as a
professor in the company's M.A. University Degree Program at their
company home in Wrodaw. Bra), while paying homage to the legacy of
great Polish experimental theatre artists, is anxious to point out Pie5n Kozla's
unique strengths and attributes.
58
Marcin Rudy as Enkidu and Anna Krotoska as the goddess Ishtar in
Song of the Goat's Chronicles- A Lamentation
59
He founded the company in 1997 with Anna Zubrzycka, a fellow
Gardzienice veteran. The company has gone through a number of changes
but is now made up of a group of well-trained and talented young actors
from Poland, Sweden, Britain, and France. The ensemble is tight, athletic,
and musical. They move with strength and grace, and their remarkable
harmonic singing seems to be the engine that drives the productions.
I interviewed Bra! in New York in May, 2004.
Babb: Your piece is about an hour long. It doesn't seem short; in fact, the
event is very full and dense. Is that a deliberate choice?
Bra!: The previous piece was based on The Bacchae by Euripides, which we
called The Song of the Goat. It was forty or forty-five minutes long. We don't
deliberately do short pieces, but there comes a time when you realize you
can't build it any bigger because what you needed to say is done. This piece
was initially an hour long and through performance has become about fifty
minutes.
Babb: How did the company come about?
Bra!: Anna and I left Gardzienice in 1992. From 1992 to 1995 we ran
workshops. The Grotowski Center in Wrodaw asked us to run a workshop
with an informal group. Would it be possible to make a project? We worked
for three months, and some people called it a performance, but I felt it was
more a kind of training on The Bacchae. But, it was successful, and we were
invited to Lublin and Norway and Germany. There were eighteen people
involved, and then we broke apart. The present company, composed mostly
of people I picked out of workshops, has been together for four or five years.
Babb: Is music the foundation for your pieces?
Bral: The basic foundation is work called "coordination." Coordination
means that everything in life, and in the arts as well, is connected. We try to
make a technique of it. Speech is connected to singing, singing to
movement, and movement to rhythm. The assumption is that you can
exchange everything with something else. But the ground of this assumption
is that everything has to be musical in a very broad sense. If you stop singing,
60
the movement will still be like a singing.
Babb: I'm interested in the movement, which is very strong and highly
choreographed. How was it generated?
Bral: When we researched the polyphonic lamentations from the region of
northern Epiros and Albania, they told us of the division of voices that they
have within the music. These voices are called the one who weaves, the one
who cuts, the one who gives and takes, and the one who holds the drone.
We decided to build the physical performance in a similar way. For example,
one actor is really weaving and weaving in a Polish sense that suggests a
slightly snaky movement. Another actor is cutting and so on.
The movement comes from an understanding that, when two
people face each other, in order to read each other they must coordinate.
We have a basic coordination exercise. Two people stand in front of each
other and try to have something happen between them without any
instigation. One is reflecting the other. but it's not like a mirroring but an
attempt to respond to a vibration. Everyone is working and seeing the
moment, and we say, "Tune to the moment." In music, it's easy; you tune
to the notes, but with two or five or seven people, it's important that people
tune to the movement.
Babb: Are you using any specific methodology? Yoga? Tai Chi? Or
Gardzienice's "mutuality" exercises?
Bral: No. We [Bral and Anna Zubrzycka] think we are Buddhists. Not a
belief, just a practice. Meditation is the highest form of coordination. But,
as a company, we don't do any spiritual practice. The work is a practice. We
practice singing and movement and coordination. Finding connections is
the practice. It is the feeling that everything is connected. The voice is
connected with the past, and gesture is connected to your freedom.
Babb: How is the voice connected with the past?
Bral: Voice is friable and delicate. It always expresses the present moment,
but if you listen very carefully, you can hear the past-when you were
brought up, when you were a child. By channeling your voice you can
awaken in the listener different things. It's huge.
61
Babb: How is it possible for the audience to hear this?
Bra!: First of aU, the actor has to tune into the situation of the performance.
When the actor feels in the right relationship with the audience, what is
manifested has to be a true experience in the spectator's eyes. Not necessarily
in the actor's eyes. I'm not that wise, and I'm not sure how it works.
Babb: Why this music?
Bra!: The music I found myself. Greek! Albanian lamentation. A couple of
years ago I became interested in how people cry. I became a voyeur of how
people cry. It's very difficult because it's such a personal thing. I felt that
crying was something very basic to the theatre because crying is an open
heart and an open expression. In Europe and in Poland there is a growing
idea over the last decade that theatre was born out of funeral rituals and
lamentations. The polyphonic lamentations were used as a link between two
worlds. Those who go and those who stay. The lamentations go very deep
into the other world. In ancient Greece they believed the lamentations could
open the gates of Hades. They guided people into other worlds. One of the
interesting ideas is that a strong lament can enable the hero who has passed
away to come back for revenge. I see the theatre as a way into another world.
A world that reminds us of something of our own world.
Babb: The piece has a strong mythic look and feel to it. The setting is clearly
not contemporary. But it is Gilgamesh and it takes place in Iraq. How do
you relate the mythic and the contemporary?
Bra!: It's all contemporary. I am most interested in talking about
contemporary issues. I'm just using different tools. When we chose
Gilgamesh, it's so obviously a contemporary piece, but I don't want to make
it too obvious. I'm very happy that it works on two levels. For some people,
it's very contemporary, and for others, it's a ritual.
Babb: You were an actor. How did you become a director?
Bra!: I never thought of becoming a director until I had to. Now I have no
space for acting. What I like to do is teach, and this is perhaps where I get
62
an opportunity to act because I demonstrate. I'm not a sitting teacher. I
actively participate and I think this helps. I was an actor and I understand
actors better than most directors. Some directors want actors to fujfilj their
ideas and assumptions, but I think the real creator is the actor. I go on the
assumption that in working on an idea with an actor something completely
different is created. For the performance, I cut and arrange into pieces, but
the work has been discovered and devised by the actors. That's why they are
so into it.
NOTE
1. For a review of Chronicles at La Mama, see: Kathleen Cioffi, "Song of the Goat's
Chronicles- A Lamentation," Slavic and East European Performance, Vol. 24, no. 2, Spring
2004.
63
CROSSING BOUNDARIES:
EASTERN EUROPEAN PUPPET THEATRE AT
THE 2004 UNIMA WORLD FESTIVAL,
RIJEKA AND OPATIJA, CROATIA
Jane McMahan
Every four years UNIMA, the International Union ofMarionettists,
holds its world congress and festival in a different country. The June 2004
version, in Rijeka and Opatija, Croatia, offered an opportunity for puppet
companies from around the world to present their latest creations. Given the
location, it is not surprising that Eastern European companies were much in
the forefront.
On opening night, perhaps in part as an acknowledgment of the
host country, the Puppet Theatre Zadar (Croatia) presented Robinson.
Bulgarian director Aleksandar Ivanov uses a cast of eight combined mask,
dance, song, and puppetry techniques to move freely between slapstick
humor and serious monologue. Robinson takes off from the Defoe story,
with a shipwreck and an island and stereotypical native cannibals. Straw
basket forms represent ship and huts, and costumes are of actual or
suggested animal skins. The staging employs careful compositions of
symmetrical cast groupings. A large central wooden cross, signifying a ship's
mast and possibly intended as a unifying religious theme, is incorporated in
the staging, predominant and omnipresent. The performance appears to
present simple storytelling actions, but there are undertones of greater
meaning and overtones of religious metaphor. We can perhaps find illusions
to a lonely Everyman on a perverted planet with Christ as the way to
redemption, or even to a besieged, shipwrecked ex-Yugoslavia with Croatia
as survivor. These hints at multiple levels suggest symbolic values, but the
overall intention is not legible enough for viewers to determine when this
skillful show is slapstick or sermon.
In a different approach to religious material, Iron Rooster Puppet
Theatre (Hungary) presented The Creation of the World in Eight Days. The
seven actors worked with Polish director KrzysztofRau for this performance,
developing a seemingly spontaneous approach built on improvisational free
play. The actors present a homey work-a-day facade, in loose white overalls
and T-shirts, while commedia half-masks planted atop their heads indicate a
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Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 24, No. 3
The Tempest by Naive Theatre of Liberec (Czech Republic), directed by
Michal Docekal, staging by Petr Matasek
65
Creation of the World in Eight Days,
Iron Rooster Puppet Theatre (Hungary), directed Krzysztof Rau
66
Slavic and East European PeifOrmance Vol. 24, No.3
vague actorly stance.
In the hands of the actors, discarded inner tubes of cars,
motorcycles, and bicycles take shape as fish, plants, flowers, a mushroom, an
ark with masts, as well as cats, a shaggy dog, a bird, and a snake, in this
retelling of the creation story. At times this use of simple means and simple
props borders on amateurism but opens up a comfortable world for the
audience, one in which they are quick to identify with the actors and are free
to imagine themselves doing the same sort of inventive puppet games.
The days of creation are ordered by a grumpy, sarcastic, though
humorous God ("I do value a sense of humor"), who gives the troupe
challenging tasks and urges them to think "metaphorically." There is an
effective boat sequence with a rocking mermaid, a predictable fight of an
angry (male) dog versus a teasing (female) cat, and a strong, flashy fight of a
silent chicken and rooster to a Spanish musical backdrop. A coy, rather
awkward love scene follows as Adam and Eve are told to multiply and
instructed from overhead to "look into each other's eyes and the rest will
come ... "
The techniques used in this production are not particularly new or
unusual, but they serve. This accessible object/puppet theatre includes
athletic dance/theatre techniques and integrates a sound/music score of
hissing mouth noises and stamping feet punctuations along with vibes, jews
harp, cymbals, guitar, an old gramophone, flute, grogger, and pizzicato
violin, that was composed by Robert Luczak and effectively performed by
V. Rab. And so, as the English-accented voice of God commands the cast to
do over a loudspeaker from above, they recreate the world out of nothing
really, as true artists are supposed to be able to do.
Encompassing a theme of giant proportions, the National State
Theatre and Ognjivo Puppet Theatre (Russian Federation), in their
performance Tomorrow Begins Yesterday, take on all of the twentieth century
in Russia from an artistic and historical vantage point. Developing visual
images from celebrated and familiar works of twentieth-century Russian art,
they infuse their overview with rich associations from cultural icons in a way
that is striking and affectionate, thereby creating a millennia! construction,
and reduction, of the past century. Angular detailed body and object forms
dance across the screen, manipulated from behind by shadow-tech art and
computer graphics. At the same time a colorful dramatic film of blended
abstract images is continuously projected on a large screen, accompanied by
a stirring musical score. The author and director of Tomorrow Begins Yesterday
67
is Martha Tsifrinovich. Computer animation creator Andrei Topunov
worked closely with artists Olga Sukhov and Vyatcheslav Sukhov. Stanislav
Kreichi created the musical score.
We watch curiously while a gently rounded woman wearing a wide
lace collar faces a decorative samovar and fastidiously sips her tea,
accompanied by her large cat (from the painting Drinking Tea at Mitsubichi
by Boris Kustodiev). Soon a flying Chagall couple is viewed from many
angles, free-floating, sexy, and lyrical, to a background of electronic outer-
space music. Village dancers tum into a swooshing swirling Whirlwind (Filip
Malyavin) that sweeps across the screen in a leitmotif bringing unpredictable
force and change and becomes a metaphor for the twentieth century: for
roaming and daring, for breaking foundations and principles of ideology so
that present, past, and future coalesce. The Black Square by Kazimir
Malevich breaks into many shattered pieces and then becomes The Red
Square and eventually a red banner unfurling from the hands of a hero (The
Merchant Woman, Boris Kustodiev). A fiery red horse (Kuzma Petrov-
Vodkin) charges across a violent landscape of city and country. Sounds of a
lone cello become the musical background to the vision of a fragile Mikhail
Sokolov seated hunched-over in the gulag, painting tiny pictures that are
lifted up by birds and flown away beyond the barbed wire.
The dreariness of totalitarianism is portrayed by Oleg Tselkov's
work motifs and Tatiana Nazarenko's The Pedestrian Subway. Finally, a
feeling of rising hope is engendered in the musical score through lush movie
music, symphonic folk music, and fervent choral music, as the show and the
century come to a close, and also, to a new beginning. The accompanying
visual backdrop is one of faith and redemption, a trinity of three towering
Sunflowers (Zurab Tsereteli). The orchestrated optimism of this musical,
visual, and historical collage seems a forced attempt to make sense of it all,
but that seems far less significant than the expansive power of such an
eclectic, highly-charged performance.
Historically, elaborate transformation scenes were a part of popular
puppet theatre performances, and sure to receive the appropriate "oohs" and
"aahs" from the audience. Tomorrow Begins Yesterday seems like a logical
extension of such a practice. Instead of historical analysis, the audience is
offered a shifting series of artistic icons and left to make their own
interpretations of the interconnections and implications.
On a more personal level, Shadows in the Night by Puppet Theatre of
Nis (Serbia and Montenegro) presents a woman's changing world and
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Puppet from Tomorrow Begins Yesterday, Ognjivo Puppet Theatre (Russian
Federation), directed by Martha Tsifrinovich
69
70
Shadows in the Night, Puppet Theatre ofNis (Serbia and Montenegro),
directed by Biserka Kolevska
Puppet from Tomorrow Begins Yesterday,
Ognjivo Puppet Theatre (Russian Federation),
directed by Martha Tsifrinovich
71
dilemma as seen through a glass ... colorfully. The wordless story, told in
shadow theatre, projections, and movement, is of a modern-day female
Candide and her misadventures searching for a man who is both soulmate
and lover. The story advances to the ticking of a physical and biological
clock with a mounting emotional tide of panic. It takes an expressionist
approach as we look inside her psyche and see exaggerated tormented
sequences of her explorations with wildly varied partners. These are drawn
broadly in line with tongue-in-cheek humor, in stylish modem silhouettes;
the visual aesthetic favors graffiti, comic strip shapes, distortions, and a
predilection for the color red.
The action takes place in solo pantomime in front of a huge screen
and in ensembles behind the screen. The first male encountered from
behind the four large panels is a sinister black dancing figure who swims
away through blue-green streaks of water. The sound of a skipping record is
excruciating. The actress repeatedly scrawls the words "I love you" and also
a heart shape. Ducking behind the screen and holding a candle before her
like Pierrot, she follows another beckoning man. Shapes waver and change
as she in her red dress continues to explore. Hands become claws. When she
kisses a dramatic figure in cape and top hat, it turns into a bat and then a
skeleton. Alas, another cad! She then seduces a sweet gawky, rather
melancholy businessman, who relentlessly clutches his briefcase and talks
into his cell phone all the while. She interacts with a self-absorbed mystic as
well-to no avail. In between sequences and with rising urgency, she rips
away the rolls of paper that make up the background for the projections and
the foreground for the shadow theatre. Her gestures and movements in front
of the screen become wilder and more extreme as the play progresses. Biljana
Vujovic, who plays the central character, builds a wonderful bond with the
audience as she shares her inmost sense of futility in the whole painful,
ridiculous, and unforgiving process that yields so little in the way of rewards.
Her quest is fruitless. She collapses in a heap downstage center in exhausted
despair.
We are saved from over-seriousness by the fast-paced musical score
created by Nikolai Zaharijev. Whether using solo piano, orchestra, or
computer-generated sounds, this eclectic score of jazz, electric folk, Arabic
music, and German techno creates a feeling of energy and humor. Under the
direction of Bulgarian director Biserka Kolevska, the Puppet Theatre of Nis
gives us a vividly drawn contemporary portrayal of a young woman's
expenence.
72
One performance, The Tempest of Naive Theatre of Liberec (Czech
Republic), directed by Michal Docekal, was aimed specifically at an
audience between twelve and eighteen years old. The emphasis on Prospera
as puppetmaster and magician and on the theme of revenge generated a
harsh reality that was amplified by a computer-generated score (V1t Brukner
and Tom as Prochazka), flashing deep-toned disco lighting, and sci-fi
influenced costumes and stage design (Petr Mat:isek). Even so, the puppets
themselves were often quite beautiful. Miranda, for example, carries a
vacant-eyed mask and figure of herself, and a character with the face of
Shakespeare wears a box at his waist that is a miniature proscenium stage on
which puppets echo much of the action. This double effect served to
underline and intensify characterization.
Tup Tup, a gentler offering for ages twelve and up, from Theatre
Nobodies (Bulgaria) was written, visualized, and directed by Magdalena
Miteva. Shifting forms of pink and blue, manipulated bunraku-style under
black light, create cardiac images that grow tentative capillaries toward one
another. (Can you guess which color represents which sex?) They falter but
ultimately intertwine in the uneasy interaction of love.
The diversity of these performances- from Croatia, Hungary,
Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovenia, Bulgaria, and the Czech
Republic-is apparent in both form and content. Movement across national
boundaries is noticeable as well in the involvement of a Polish director with
a Hungarian company and Bulgarian directors in both Serbian and Croatian
companies, and this is no longer an uncommon phenomenon. Neither is
the movement across other boundaries, evident in the current attempt to
fuse sophisticated techniques of media technology into the form, a form
that has often incorporated music, theatre, and the plastic arts within its
irregular borders.
73
THE JOURNALS OF MIHAIL SEBASTIAN BY THE
KEEN COMPANY IN NEW YORK
Beate Hein Bennett
It would seem that the intimacy and single voice of a journal defies
theatricalization, and yet such writing has drawn playwrights, directors, and
actors, as well as audiences. Perhaps it is the immediate intimacy and
concentrated presence of a single voice sharing the acute testimony of events
and emotions that attract. By the same token, it seems that audiences
accustomed to confessional television no longer expect the stage to present
drama only through plot and characters. Confessional style performance art,
such as Spalding Gray's monologues, has become part of the theatre
landscape. While an early example of diary adaptations, The Diary of Anne
Frank, still follows a more conventional dramaturgy of multiple characters
and a plot, Karen Malpede's adaptation of Victor Klemperer's diary,
performed some years back by George Bartenieff at New York's CSC fully
explores the single voice presentation. The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
of the Graduate Center, The City University of New York, presented
Bartenieff in his role as Klemperer in April 2004 and will again on January
13, 2005.
The most recent addition to the genre of journal drama is the Keen
Company production of The journals of Mihail Sebastian, directed by Carl
Forsman. It was presented at the 45th Street Theatre, New York, from March
6 to April4, 2004. Stephen Kunken embodies the voice ofMihail Sebastian,
a young Romanian writer whose journal from 1935- 1944 tracked the gradual
strangling of life under fascism and during World War II in Romania. David
Auburn wrote a fluid and concise stage adaptation based on the English
translation, a book that comprises six hundred plus pages.! He achieves a
dramatic trajectory that traces Sebastian's personal progress. Starting out as
a successful young advocate and dapper man-about-town struggling with
love affairs and theatrical adventures, he feels at the end like the empty shell
of a man, lonely and exhausted after years of personal deprivations and
humiliations. He feels a certain amazement and guilt as a Jew who survived
pogroms and bombardments in Bucharest. While Auburn has left out much
of the daily drudgery and all direct time references in his text, his deft use of
74
Stephen Kunken in The journals qf Mihail Sebastian
75
Sebastian's comments on actual events keeps the audience informed. The
staccato rhythm of blackouts indicating separate journal entries helps to
create a sense of accelerating catastrophe.
Stephen Kunken, in the course of two hours, captures with an
amazing intensity and dan the downward spiral of Mihail Sebastian's
existence and emotional struggles. The actor's expressive control and his
empathetic intelligence in rendering an incredibly difficult text allowed the
audience to follow into this maelstrom. Stephen Kunken first enters, dressed
in an urbane and elegant but slightly impecunious style, indicated by the
unmatched beige pieces of a three-piece suit. Theresa Squire designed the
superbly smart costume. Kunken's gangly charm, his lean face full of
expressive energy, and clipped but pleasant voice, convey the natural
charisma that must have been Sebastian's social ticket. His words flow easily
at first; he is used to being communicative- he tells us about his love affairs
and frustrations, especially with a flighty actress, his ventures, setbacks, and
successes in the theatre world, his friends and social acquaintances among
the intellectual elite of Bucharest in the thirties. Of particular note are his
mentor, the philosophy professor Nae Ionescu and his friend, Mircea Eliade
(later famous as a scholar of comparative religion), both of whom he
admired and loved very much.
Yet as Sebastian struggles to fathom their ever more virulent fascist
convictions and anti-Semitism that insult his very being, Kunken/Sebastian
tries to keep the light in his eyes and the cheer in his voice. He shows
Sebastian's internal struggles against the depressing reality closing in on him:
the implementation of ever harsher political, economic, legal, and social
repressive measures against Jews, the outbreak of war, the terror of pogroms,
and ultimately the bombardment of Bucharest. However, in the midst of all
the physical deprivations and obvious terror, the worst is the cowardly
withdrawal of friends, lovers, associates at work, and the lack of
opportunities to make a living. Kunken shows Sebastian fighting against
demoralization by humor-his sense of ironic timing is superb-but the body
gradually loses the optimistic spring and expansive energy. As his social
world shrinks, the movement in space is reduced; as his psyche is impinged
by the insults of friends and the political oppression, his body slumps and
slows down.
The choice of blackout punctuation, while at times a little tiring to
the eyes, serves well to emphasize the subtle visual changes that signifY the
gradual constriction and isolation of the man's existence. The intimate stage
76
is initially set up as a blend of private space and public cafe. Stage right
establishes Sebastian's private domain with an old dial radio, some books,
and a pair of wooden skis off to the side. This space blends almost
imperceptibly into the cafe, represented by several small round tables each
covered with a white tablecloth and decorated with a finger vase holding one
rose. A textured dark wall with a back-lit opening like a door closes off the
upstage space to the back. In the course of the play, the cafe side, which
signifies Sebastian's social life, is gradually emptied of much of the furniture
and darkened to a cold grey. As the world closes in around Sebastian, the
dark wall ever so slightly tilts forward in an ominous manner until, at the
very end, Kunken stands in the door opening of the now supine wall as
though he is standing at the edge of an open grave. The simple but highly
effective scenery, designed by Nathan Heverin, together with the intricate
lighting gradually changing from warm and bright to splotchy and gloomy,
designed by Josh Bradford supports Kunken's portrayal. In addition, the
sound design by Stefan Jacobs underscores a sense of period and time,
especially through the radio sound effects. Until radios were confiscated
from the Jews (in 1941 ), it played an important part in Sebastian's daily life.
The radio provided the solace of music transmitted from all over Europe as
well as information about the progress of the German and Allied war
campaigns.
The Keen production adds another vignette to the immense
panorama of twentieth-century tragedies of wars, holocaust, pogroms,
displacements, upheavals, and eradication. It is the vignette of one person
who swims in this vast sea of destruction-one human being's testimony of
a struggle representative of the many yet-to-be-told stories. I observed the
same quiet concentration on the part of the audience watching Kunken's
Sebastian as was the case with the audience at CSC watching Bartenieffs
Klemperer. In both cases I felt a reflective reverence for the voices of the
dead-or perhaps a simple gratitude for being allowed into the actual private
space of suffering that enables the capacity for empathy to unfold. On New
Year's Eve 1941, Victor Klemperer writes: "That it was our most dreadful
year, dreadful because of our own real experience, more dreadful because of
the constant state of threat, most dreadful of all because of what we saw
others suffering (deportations, murder) but that at the end it brought
optimism .... My adhortatio was: head held high for the difficult last five
minutes!"Z On that same New Year's Eve 1941, Sebastian comments more
laconically: "The last day of the year. I don't want to or need to look back
77
and take stock. I carry inside myself the 364 terrible days of the dreadful year
we are closing tonight. But we are alive. We can still wait for something.
There is still time; we still have some time left."3 It would be another three
and a half years of suffering and waiting before the nightmare would end
and Sebastian would be given back freedom. He did not enjoy it for long.
On May 29, 1945 Mihail Sebastian was hit and killed by a truck in
downtown Bucharest.
4
An interesting coda about the life of the text: the diary survived in
manuscript form with Sebastian's brother Benu who shipped it secretly out
ofRomania via diplomatic pouch when he emigrated in 1961 from Romania
to Israel. The first publication of the diary in Romanian in 1996 created a
sensation as it provoked finally a discussion about the nature of Romanian
anti-Semitism. In 1998 the French editionS followed and in 2000 the English
translation which caught the interest of David Auburn. In an interview,
Auburn suggests that he was attracted to a certain correspondence between
the questions that Sebastian was dealing with and those in our own time:
"Sebastian had a very strong awareness that he was living at a key moment
of history, and I think we are also living in a moment like that. All of those
emotions that he's dealing with-even down to, 'What does it feel like to live
in a city that's under attack, or in a city that's been blacked out, or to live
not knowing what's going to happen day to day ... ?"'6 Auburn's curiosity
about what might happen with this text in Romania may find an answer
more directly than anticipated.
The Keen Company production was invited this fall by the T eatrul
Evreiesc de Stat (The Jewish State Theatre) in Bucharest to bring its
production of The journals if Mihail Sebastian. This would have been a
historic event because this is the theatre, founded in 1940 after the exclusion
of Jews from Romanian theatres and mentioned by Sebastian under the
name Baraseum. The production was also slated to go to Braila, a port city
on the Danube and Sebastian's birthplace, as well as to Iasi for the Third
International Goldfaden Festival. Unfortunately, due to lack of financing
this tour did not come about as planned. It would certainly have been a
wonderful contribution and homage by an American company.
78
NOTES
1 Mihail Sebastian, journal., 1935- 1944, trans. Patrick Camiller, (Chicago: Ivan R.
Dee, 2000).
2 Victor Klemperer. I Will Bear Witness:. A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941, trans.
by Martin Chalmers (New York: Random House, 1998), 456.
3 Sebastian,}ournal, 458.
4 Sebastian, 628.
5 Radu Ioanid, "Introduction," in}ournal, vii-viii.
6 David Auburn, "Playbill On-Line's Brief Encounter with David Auburn,"
interview with Kenneth Jones, March 5, 2004.
http :I /www.playbill.com/ celebritybuzz/ article/ print/84 790.html>, 3
79
MAYAKOVSKY'S MYSTERY-BOUFFE
AT THE BERLIN VOLKSBUHNE
Marvin Carlson
Mayakovsky's first play after 1917, a celebration of the Russian
Revolution in the peculiar form of a farce mystery play, puzzled its original
audiences and presents such enormous challenges in staging that it is rarely
revived. Perhaps only a theatre like the Volksbuhne, which combines major
technical resources, a willingness to put these at the disposal of demanding
and unconventional directors, and an ongoing commitment, even in this
late-capitalist era, to the ideals of the Russian Revolution, would today
undertake such a revival.
Mayakovsky's sprawling work is fundamentally a retelling of the
story of Noah and of the Last Judgement, full of contemporary and
historical references and meta theatrical jokes. It begins with a flood covering
all of the earth except the North Pole, where an odd assortment of characters
take refuge in a modern ark. Like the Biblical animals they are divided into
the Clean and the Unclean, that is into the Haves and the Have-Nots. On
the Ark they come to blows over how power is to be shared, and the
Unclean triumph over their adversaries. They move on from this victory to
take their message of emancipation first into Hell, then into Heaven, and
finally establish a workers' paradise on a redeemed earth.
Sebastian Hartmann, one of Germany's most ambitious and
imaginative directors, has given this modern mystery play a spectacular
staging, with the powerful aid of designer Susanne Munzer. Their
production begins quietly, with a prologue at the North Pole on the
forestage, against the dark backdrop of what appears to be the theatre's fire
curtain. Two Eskimos (Angalan Baasanjov and Woo-Chung Lee) bang
unproductively on this curtain and then open several circular holes in the
"ice" of the stage floor. From one a hand emerges, but before they can
respond to this, revolver shots ring out in the auditorium (a gesture perhaps
to Mayakovsky's ties to the futurists). They are being fired by the "author"
himself, Vladimir Majakovsky (Hagen Oechel), who does not appear in the
original play, but who pops up regularly in this restaging. In this, as in
many of Hartmann's directorial decisions, one can see a desire to follow
Mayakovsky's own advice in the preface to the second edition of the play:
80
Mayakovsky's Mystery-Bouffi, directed by Sebastian Hartmann at
the Volksbi.ihne, Berlin
81
Mayakovsky's Mystery-Bou.ffe, directed by Sebastian Hartmann at
the Volksbiihne, Berlin
"In the future, all persons performing, presenting, reading, or publishing the
Mysterium Buffo should change the content, making it contemporary,
immediate, up-to-the-minute." After introducing himself to the audience,
Mayakovsky works his way down to the stage, while delivering the prologue
to the play, originally given to one of the Unclean. Onstage, he takes over
the action, pulling the Clean and Unclean actors out of the holes to in turn
introduce themselves and argue about how to react to the impending flood,
which is suggested by panels falling out of the dark iron curtain behind
them, each causing further panic.
Finally the shattered curtain rises upon a stage filled with billowing
smoke, and it clears to reveal the survivors, including Mayakovsky, gathered
in their ark, which in this production is a modern if dirty and much
damaged minibus, all its windows gone, hanging upside down in mid-air
above the stage, a memorable theatrical image. After the ark sinks out of
sight amid the broken wreckage of the stage floor, the stage again fills with
smoke, but this time shot through with red lights. This is the Hell sequence,
but instead of the variety of devils and damned figures with which
Mayakovsky peoples this scene, Hartmann focuses on a single member of
82
the Unclean, a Soviet soldier carrying a red flag who makes his way boldly
through the smoke until he is stopped by two female devils who try to
confuse and impede him. He resists them but is unable to move forward
until others of the Unclean appear, also with red flags, to form a heroic
tableau. Upon this tableau a group of white, obviously fake cut-out clouds
descend, to signal a transition to heaven. Mayakovksy appears in front of a
white cloud to introduce the act, then apparently dies, but his spirit, in the
form of an image projected on the cloud, arises to witness the subsequent
proceedings. The apparently reborn Unclean appear as babies with pacifiers,
but find no more satisfaction in Heaven than elsewhere. They begin to
construct their own reality, in Mayakovsky's "Land of Chaos." Frantic
activity fills the stage, hammering, sawing, painting, the construction of a
huge banner that is spread across the stage, "We will never be overcome."
Mayakovsky is covered with a white sheet, stapled to the stage, and eyes and
mouth painted on it like a cartoon ghost. While all this activity proceeds on
the stage, the audience also is brought into the turmoil. Actors take orders
for coffee from audience members, run out into the lobby and return with
trays of coffee that they distribute in the house, crawling over seats,
occasionally spilling coffee, and apparently ad Jibbing lines to add to the
general confusion ..
At last, however, calm is restored. Mayakovsky frees himself from
his ghostly sheet and moves up the stage to look into the pit from which
arises whispered echoes of all that has past. Descending into the pit, he re-
emerges with a huge red flag and a girl in white, who begins to sing The
lnternationale. Stepping down center, he slowly waves the flag in sweeping
arcs, while on the ramparts behind him, overlooking the pit of history, other
red-flag bearing figures appear, joining in the triumphant tableau. It is an
image which simultaneously evokes the revolutionary kitsch of Soviet poster
art and thrills with its theatrical power. It can hardly be called immediate
and up to the minute in any serious historical sense, as Mayakovsky seems
to have wished, but it nevertheless rather surprisingly gives to a early twenty-
first century audience something of the thrill of revolutionary exultation in
certain Russian circles a century ago. Through emphasizing the kind of
immediacy that is unique to the theatre, with its utilization of the bodies of
the living, it achieves its own surprisingly evocative power.
83
WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND:
OSTROVSKY'S LAST SACRIFICE AT THE MOSCOW ART
THEATRE
Kurt Taroff
On a recent pilgrimage to that Mecca of realism, the Moscow Art
Theatre, I had the privilege of seeing one of Russia's great actors, Oleg
Tabakov, in an Aleksandr Ostrovsky play rarely, if ever, seen here in the
United States, Last Sacrifice (Poslednyaya Zhertva).
After walking through the venerable halls of the Art Theatre and
admiring its "Hall of Fame" room, I found myself expecting the staid, by-
the-book realism of the critics of the theatre through the years as much as
the glorious spectacle of the real that has always been its claim-to-fame. I
was surprised then to find that the production was hardly by the book, and
certainly not staid.
It is worth noting, first of all, the tremendous response that Oleg
Tabakov received when he first came onstage in Scene Two of the play.
Tabakov' s entrance engendered an extended round of applause far beyond
that accorded to the younger actors in the play, a clear tribute to the long
career of a great actor. Playing the significant, but certainly secondary role
ofFlor Fedulych Pribytkov, Tabakov's sonorous voice and sensitive delivery
provided ample proof of the power with which he has held many a stage
throughout his career. The ensemble was, as would be expected, highly
skilled and successful, but Tabakov's presence was unmistakable.
Last Sacrifice, like many of Ostrovsky's plays, deals with the
intrigues of the Moscow merchant class. Julia, an attractive young widow,
has her heart set on Vadim Dulchin, a wastrel and gambler, who has
borrowed large sums of money from her. However, Vadim soon senses the
possibility of an even more lucrative match with Irina, the niece of the old
millionaire, Prybitkov, who, it is rumored (by Glafira Firsovna, the town
busybody), will provide a significant dowry for his niece. Prybitkov also
happened to be a good friend of Julia's deceased husband, and in looking
after Julia at his friend's request, has developed a romantic interest in the
widow. Prybitkov ultimately denies Irina the dowry that he had, in fact,
never promised, and helps Julia to recover her money from the unfaithful
84
Sergei Kolesnikov (Vadim Dulchin) and Daria Yurskaya
(Irina) in the Moscow Art Theatre's production of
Ostrovsky's Last Sacrifice
85
86
Sergei Kolesnikov (Vadim Dulchin) and Daria Yurskaya (Irina) in the
Moscow Art Theatre's production of Ostrovsky's Last Sacrifice
Set detail for the Moscow Art Theatre's production of Ostrovsky's
Last Sacrifice
87
Dulchin. In the play's final scene (in production), Prybitkov and Julia walk
out into the snow (more on the snow later), and towards their life together.
Interestingly, the Art Theatre ending, focusing on Julia and
Prybitkov and their chances for a happy future together, differs from
Ostrovsky's ending which returns us to Dulchin, the rogue hero, who comes
upon Glafira Firsovna, asking her to introduce him to the elderly widow
Pivokurov and her considerable fortune. Although there was some
suggestion in the production that Dulchin would seek his fortune elsewhere
(and Pivokurov had been ogling him at the club garden), the shift in ending
suggests a darker end for Dulchin. Indeed, we are left to wonder how, even
as quickly as Dulchin seems to be able to work his magic, the debt-ridden
rogue will be able to escape debtor's prison. Indeed, another noticeable
deviation from Ostrovsky's script involves a simple but significant use of a
prop. In the play, we see Dulchin, towards the very end, after Julia has
rejected him, but before his decision to pursue Pivokurov, retrieve his gun
from his desk and threaten to kill himself before his friend Dergachev
convinces him not to. In the MK.hAT production, Dulchin has his gun with
him throughout the play and the threatened suicide, though given a comic
element by having Dergachev and Dulchin wrestle madly for the gun, is
repeated three or four times.
Despite the fine work of Tabakov and the ensemble, it might well
be said that the real star of the production was the elaborate (and elaborately
conceptualized) set. The play, as written, has four total settings, two drawing
rooms, an office, and a club, each of which holds the stage for a full act
Oulia's drawing room appears twice, in Act I and Act IV). This would not
seem terribly difficult to reproduce, particularly for a theatre whose
reputation is based on pictorial realism. And yet, rather than attempting to
reproduce Ostrovsky's settings, the designers of the Art Theatre's Last
Sacrifice opted for a setting clearly designed as a commentary on the play's
plot. The results were fascinating. The play opened with a flat representing
Julia's drawing room downstage right. Behind it, and staggered out just
barely one behind another towards stage left, were several other flats of
which just the very edge could be seen. Above the stage approximately five
to ten wheel-like structures sat inexplicably. The scene played out, rather
frustratingly for those like myself sitting, in the upper left balcony, mostly
in the extreme lower right of the stage, making it essentially impossible for
my neighbors and me to see anything (this resulted in some remarkably loud
grumbling and whispering from my section). Indeed, the entire production
88
Oleg Tabakov (Prybitkov) and Marina Zudina Oulia) in The Moscow Art
Theatre's production of Ostrovsky's Last Sacrifice
89
was skewed to stage right, with the upstage-most set piece only reaching to
about center stage. Extremely little action was played in stage left, which was
represented hallways, with a bank of five doors to the wings, each being used
only when the corresponding set piece was in play.
As the first scene came to a close, the flat representing Julia's
drawing room was raised to the flies, and the wheels above the set began to
twirl, their lights (which only illuminated for the scene changes, flickering in
a carnivalesque flourish. Some of these wheels may (or may not) have been
for the pulleys that actually lifted the set pieces, but the vast majority of
them certainly had no significance to the set-change whatsoever. The lifting
of the first set piece revealed a second flat, representing Pribytkov's office.
The furniture from Julia's drawing room- a few simple chairs and a cafe
table- remained in place and was even used as part of the set with new
furniture added as part of the office setting. At the end of this scene, the
wheel-turning and flat-lifting was repeated, again the office furniture
remained in place, and we were once again in Julia's drawing room, but
rather than returning the original flat to the floor, a duplicate setting, with
an identical flat and yet another set of the same furniture appeared deeper
on the stage. This scene was then followed by a duplication of Pribytkov' s
office setting. In Ostrovsky's text, Act One was to take place in Julia' s
drawing room, and Act Two in Prybitkov's office. The scenes were, clearly,
juggled, sometimes in time, sometimes in place, to achieve the alternation
of the set. Finally, completing the first act of the Art Theatre production,
Prybitkov's office flat was pulled up to the flies and the entire upstage area
was revealed as the club where Dulchin's relationship with Irina takes place.
This scene represented the entirety of Act III of the text, and the production
actually cut the act in two, using it as the end of the first act and the
beginning of the second.
Act Two of the production was a mirror image of the first.
Although when the audience returned after intermission the set appeared
exactly as it did at the beginning of the play, with Julia's drawing room
downstage right, as soon as the lights were dimmed in the house all of the
flats were raised to the flies, returning us to the club scene. Following this
scene, the wheels were once again set in motion, and the flat furthest
upstage, representing now Dulchin's drawing room, was lowered into place.
All the furniture for the set (and indeed, for all of the scenes) was already in
place as the set pieces were lowered with the same flourish with which they
had been raised in the first act. And again, in the text, Julia's drawing room
90
was the setting for Act Four, and Dulchin's drawing room the set for Act
Five. Once again, as I intimated earlier, time and place were juggled to fit
the design concept of the production. It would seem that the production's
design was meant to reinforce a central theme of the play-what goes around
comes around. Dulchin, who schemed and connived to get money that he
merely squandered, ends up with nothing. Irina, the silly girl who saw only
money in her generous uncle, is left heartbroken (although she does seem to
recover and forgives Dulchin rather quickly) and with no dowry. Pribytkov
and Julia, the two characters who are generally depicted as having their heart
in the right place, walk off arm in arm, hopeful of a happy future together.
Poetic justice, it seems, is served.
As each scene was lifted or lowered onto the stage, a video screen
upstage left depicted the scene in the world just outside that which was
taking place inside. Remarkably, whatever we saw outside was seen through
the backdrop of a blizzard that lasted the length of the play. I say this is
remarkable since the text is set in August. Indeed, the club scene of Act III
was originally set in a club garden. The transposition of the play to the dead
of winter provided the spectator the opportunity of experiencing the
Moscow Art Theatre's astoundingly realistic snow effect, an experience that
left me considering the idea that when one is running a theatre in Moscow
whose mainstay is realistic productions, a believable snow effect is absolutely
essential. In addition to the visual effect, the blizzard seems to suggest the
turmoil enveloping these characters, as well as intimating that as in the
white-out of a blizzard, it is sometimes difficult to see what is right in front
of you.
Although I was left with several regrets at the end of the
production- wishing that my Russian were better, that I could have seen a
production here in 1905, and that less of the action had been played
downstage right- the opportunity to witness one of Russia's finest actors at
the most famous of its theatres is an experience I'll not soon forget.
91
GOMBROWICZ TRANSFORMED:
HELL MEETS HENRY HALFWAY
BY PIG IRON THEATRE COMPANY
OF PHILADELPHIA
Gerald W eales
As part of the Philadelphia Living Arts-Fringe Festival in September
2004, the Pig Iron Theatre Company presented Hell Meets Henry Halfway,
based on Witold Gombrowicz's novel Possessed. Pig Iron, which calls itself a
"multi-disciplinary ensemble," was founded in 1995 by a group of young
performers, most of whom were former students of the Ecole Jacques Lecoq
in Paris, and has since produced physical shows, clown shows, and heavily
scripted plays. The new work, under the direction of Dan Rothenberg, was
"conceived and created" by the company with a text by Adriano Shaplin, the
resident playwright and co-founder of San Francisco's Riot Group.
Hell, which has dispensed with much of the plot and the thematic
force of Possessed, has borrowed characters from the novel- Henry
Kholavitski, Maya, W alchak, Hincz, the Prince-and used them for its own
dramatic purposes. In a remarkable performance by Emmanuelle Delpech-
Ramey, which recalls the physical theatre of the company's origin, the actor
becomes the Prince by shrinking herself to a small, helpless creature who has
to be led by the hand. The rest of the cast has less flamboyant physical work
to do, although on occasion they have to fold themselves into tiny spaces,
and Dito van Reigersberg, as Kholavitski, has found a rigidity to separate
himself from the other characters until his collapse at the end of the play.
Hincz here is not the celebrated clairvoyant of the novel but a doctor with
a game leg, about which we hear but oddly enough never see, and his
function is that of the art historian in the novel who rescues the Prince from
Kholavitski's power, although the secretary here, more pompous than
dangerous, is not the evil schemer of the novel. The revulsion/ attraction of
Maya and Walchak recalls that of the novel, but here it is manifested in a
direct and obvious sex scene in which passion is inseparable from aggression.
They are less possessed than simply evil here and the similarity between the
two, which Gombrowicz harps on in the novel, is not a factor in the play.
Walchak's killing of the squirrel on Maya's demand is borrowed from the
novel, but here Walchak is not horrified at what he has done which is not
92
Actors Quinn Bauriedel (Walchak) and Sarah Sanford
(Maya) in the Pig Iron Company's production of
Hell Meets Henry Halfway in Philadelphia
93
94
Emmanuelle Delpech-Ramey (Prince) in the Pig Iron
Company's production of Hell Meets Henry Halfway
in Philadelphia
Actors from left, Quin Bauriedel (W alchak), James Sugg (Jon the Ball boy), Geoff
Sobelle (Dr. Petar Hincz), Dito van Reigersberg (Henry), and Sarah Sanford (Maya)
in the Pig Iron Company's production of Hell Meets Henry Halfway in Philadelphia
95
96
Emmanuelle Delpech-Ramey (Prince), Dito van
Reigersberg (Henry), and Geoff So belle (Dr. Petar
Hincz) in the Pig Iron Company's production of
HtU Meets Henry Halfway in Philadelphia
Slavic and East European PeifOrmance Vol. 24, No. 3
surprising given that, in a fit of exasperation, he beats to death with his
tennis racquet the play's one invented character, the relentlessly cheerful Jon
the Ballboy, whose happy chirping annoys him. At the end, the two lovers,
if that is the word, race each other to see who is going to be first through the
gates of Hell.
The mysterious castle of the novel is here merged with Polyka, the
high class boarding house that Maya's mother runs, to make a single setting
for the play, although it is never more than a playing area on stage. There
is open space for the air tennis games that Maya and Walchak play or that
Jon keeps expecting them to play. A desk at stage right is the secretary's
office, and at the center is a large wardrobe which becomes rooms in the
castle in which Maya and W alchak can be seen lying as though stuck in
Pullman berths and in which, the berths gone, they play their stand-up sex
scene. The doors can be opened to provide an entrance from and an exit to
the other parts of the castle, and finally it becomes Hell's mouth. It recalls
the confined playing area so important in the theatre version of
Gombrowicz's Ferdydurke, which had its English-language premiere in
Philadelphia in 2000.
The cry of "Francis" that punctuates the play is never explained, as
it is in the novel, but it becomes clear at the end when Henry picks up the
Prince's cry of"Francis" and turns it into a cry of"Maya," whom he has lost
to Walchak, that it is a cry ofloss. Henry, recognizing that he is a loser, does
not become the mad would-be murderer of the novel but a suicide, one who
cannot even get into Hell because they don't take suicides there. Unlike the
novel which seems to unravel as it goes along, perhaps because it was first
published as a serial, Hell Meets Henry HalfWay is a tightly designed work that
is a highly effective theatre piece and, for all its differences from its source,
a credit to Gombrowicz.
97
REZO GABRIADZE'S FORBIDDEN CHRISTMAS,
OR THE DOCTOR AND THE PATIENT AT
THE LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL, 2004
Lars Parker-Myers
High tension power line towers are a recurrent image in Rezo
Gabriadze's plays. For Gabriadze they are a symbol of Joseph Stalin's
systematic transformation of Georgia from an agrarian society of old stories,
mythology, and religion into a productive and atheistic technological state.
They are a reminder of technology's grip upon the countryside, but there is
also something mythic about them. They are sentinels of electromagnetic
force, totemic symbols of a modem religion-science. As in his past
productions, symbols of technology are omnipresent but not altogether
repressive, and in Forbidden Christmas, or The Doctor and The Patient, which
made its New York premiere at the John Jay Theater as part of the Lincoln
Center Festival this July after its initial premiere at the Guthrie Theater Lab
in Minneapolis this May, Gabriadze offers a strange synthesis between
imagination and industry.
Stylistically, the production is a mixture of mime, dance theatre,
and magical realism, interspersed with a modicum of puppetry and
performing object techniques. Thematically, Gabriadze explores creativity,
imagination, love, loss, delusion, and madness- all within an oppressive
technocracy in which religion and spirituality are against the law. Most of
all the play is a vehicle (pun intended) for Mikhail Baryshnikov. In the role
of Chi to, a man who believes that he is a car, Baryshnikov rattles, chums,
sputters, and careens his way through the production, all the while
maintaining the demeanor of a tragicomic clown.
Set in Soviet Georgia in the 1950s, the play is based on three
childhood memories of Gabriadze's. The first memory is of a man in his
hometown of Kutaisi who believed he was an automobile, the second is of
two doctors (also from Kutaisi), and the third is of having to celebrate
Christmas surreptitiously because the open celebration of a religious holiday
was forbidden. The story of the play is that Chito, after returning home
from a tour of duty in the navy, finds that his beloved Tsisana, played by
Pilar Witherspoon, has married his best friend. They drive by as newlyweds,
and he chases their car for miles, which leaves a lasting impression on his
98
psyche. Overcome with grief, he tries to drown himself only to be saved by
an angel named Ermonia, played Luis Perez. After many days and nights of
complete silence and motionlessness, he vents his frustration on the front
end of a vehicle, whereupon his delusion of being a car sets in. After a lapse
of seven years we find Chito still driving around town; he has become a
fixture in the small Georgian town. On a snowy Christmas eve he tries to
enlist the help of the local doctor, played by Jon DeVries, in order to pay a
house call to a sick child. The beleaguered doctor agrees, and we follow
them through a surreal whirl of encounters until they reach the child, who
turns out to be Chito's daughter. In a bizarre twist, we discover that Tsisana
and Chito have been married for years.
Chito's is not "cured" of his delusion by his reunion with Tsisana,
which occurred almost immediately after her marriage to his friend, nor is
he restored to sanity at the end of the play. Only once, during the course
of Chito's and the Doctor's peregrinations does the Doctor insist that Chito
give up his delusion and face reality. Chito relents and becomes "normal"
but very unhappy. The Doctor relents and Chito happily becomes a car
once agam.
What exactly is Gabriadze trying to say? Is delusion and madness,
as long as it's joyful, preferable to reality? Considering that the play is set in
Stalinist Georgia, a period of calculated and immensely cruel madness, this
would indeed seem to be the case. Is Chito's choice to remain a car, and
Tsisana's acceptance of his delusion, a way of appropriating the technology
that was designed to replace religion? Gabriadze is not clear on the matter,
but this seems to be a likely possibility.
In this production Gabriadze has all but abandoned the puppets
that populated his last two shows, The Battle ofStalingrad and The Autumn of
My Springtime, in favor of human performers. Their absence is palpable, at
least to those who saw those productions and marveled at the simple beauty
and power of the Ant in the former and Boris in the latter. Baryshnikov tries
to make up for their absence by performing like a large marionette without
strings, as if in an attempt to become one of the puppets that inspired his
collaboration with Gabriadze. (Baryshnikov met Gabriadze after seeing The
Battle of Stalingrad and The Autumn of My Springtime at the Lincoln Center
Festival two years ago.) Jon DeVries makes exaggerated and floppy
movements, and his large stature compliments Baryshnikov's small frame
nicely. The other performers, Luis Perez, Pilar Witherspoon, and Yvonne
Woods, lack the grace of Baryshnikov and the quirkiness of DeVries. They
99
are by no means bad performers, but they are easily overshadowed by their
more charismatic cast members.
There is no dialogue in the first third of the play. Baryshnikov,
Perez, Witherspoon and Woods use mime-like movement to portray the
events that led to the transformation of Chito from a "normal" man into a
man who believes he is a car. There are occasional sound effects and
Georgian folk music, and projected words on a sheet suspended on a wire at
the front of the stage provide a basic introduction before being pulled off
stage.
Gabriadze employs many of the same staging techniques that he
used in his smaller scale puppet plays. We see Chito's ship returning home
from the war, portrayed by a large toy ship elevated by wire rods on rollers
and pulled across the stage by a string. The water is portrayed by three
rotating branches arranged in descending levels from upstage to downstage.
To portray the passage of time in one scene Luis Perez picks up a rod with
a sun cut-out attached to the end and has it arc over Chito's head, repeating
the same motion with a moon cut-out at the end of a rod, and two more
times with the sun and moon.
Baryshnikov's portrayal of Chito as a car is highly amusing and
repeated many times throughout the course of the production. Chi to has
attached a window handle to his shirt pocket, which he cranks vigorously to
engage his engine. Baryshnikov's entire body quakes after some initial failed
attempts to turn his engine over, and once he has warmed up he bobs up
and down in a steady rhythm before shifting gears and heading off in the
desired direction. Despite being an automobile for several years, Chito has
not fully mastered the art of braking, and although he does not crash into
anything, his stops are quite jerky.
The latter half of the production follows the journey of the Doctor
and Chito on a cold and snowy Christmas Eve to find and cure a sick girl
(Chito's daughter). At times it is difficult to follow exactly what is
happening on their late night peregrinations. They lose one another often,
encounter other people and things, and there are many moments when
Baryshnikov and DeVries are running around on the stage calling for one
another. At one point Chito dances with high tension power lines
descending from a large tower, and at another time he encounters a large
train heading straight downstage. There are many interesting moments, but
the overall structure of the journey is confusing and tiresome rather than
being engaging.
100
It is apparent that this is a production still in development,
although it continues to tour nationally. There are many compelling
images, but there are many moments that lag, and the cohesion of the
production has yet to be fully attained. Moreover, I can't help but think
that this was a play originally designed for puppets but refitted for humans.
Puppets have the ability to make credible simple actions and lines of dialog
that may ring false when performed by a human. Gabriadze has more work
to transform Forbidden Christmas into a play for actors, or else he needs to
work with his actors to make them more like puppets.
101
CONTRIBUTORS
ROGER BABB is Professor of Theatre at Mount Holyoke College in
Massachusetts and artistic director of the Otrabanda Company. He
frequently writes for SEEP.
BEATE HEIN BENNETT received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature
from the University of South Carolina. She lives in New York City and
teaches at the High School for Health Professions and Human Services. As
a translator and dramaturg, she has worked in New York with The Living
Theatre, the Open Space Theatre, and Third Step Theatre Company, in
Virginia with Theatre VCU, the Virginia Museum Theatre, and in Germany
with the Theater W erkhaus Moosach.
PAMELA BILLIG is former director of the Brooklyn Arts Council and is
currently artistic co-director of the Threshold Theater Company, which is
dedicated to presenting international drama in translation. Threshold has
commissioned the translation of over thirty plays, has toured in Europe, and
for four years produced the OBIE-winning Caught in the Act festival of
modern international one-act plays at the HERE theare in NYC.
EUGENE BROGYANYI is a translator, dramaturg, and co-founder of the
Threshold Theater Company in New York City. Among his published work
is the play anthology DramaContemporary: Hungary, published by PAJ
Publications.
MARVIN CARLSON is the Sydney C. Cohn Distinguished Professor of
Theatre at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He is the
author of many articles on theatrical theory and European theatre history
and dramatic literature. He is the 1994 recipient of the George Jean Nathan
Award for dramatic criticism and the 1999 recipient of the American Society
for Theatre Research Distinguished Scholar Award. His book, The Haunted
Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine, received the Calloway Prize.
JANE McMAHAN teaches voice and vocal repertory at Barnard College
and writes on street theatre and puppet theatre. She will be teaching a
vocal workshop this coming June in Groznjan, Croatia.
102
LARS PARKER-MYERS is a doctoral student in the Ph.D. Program in
Theatre at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and
teaches theatre at Baruch College.
SAN] A NIKCEVIC is senior consultant for theatre in the Croatian Ministry
of Culture. Since 1984 she has published numerous articles on Croatian and
American drama. She edited Anthology of American Plays, 1993, and
published The Subversiveness of Amencan Drama, or Sympathy for Losers in
1994. She has been a Fulbright Scholar at New York University and at the
Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the author of
the Mansions Series, published by the Croatian Center of ITI. She also writes
comedies and children's plays which have been performed on the radio and
staged in Croatia and Slovenia.
JEFFREY P. STEPHENS is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Oklahoma
State University, having recently returned from Chicago where he worked in
corporate and foundation development at Lyric Opera. His reviews have
appeared in SEEP and Theatre journal.
KURT T AROFF teaches theatre at Baruch College, Hunter College, and
Marymount Manhattan College. He is a doctoral student in the Ph.D.
Program in Theatre at the Graduate Center of the City University of New
York where he is writing his dissertation on monodrama as an intellectual
and theatrical trend.
GERALD WEALES is emeritus Professor of English at the University of
Pennsylvania. He was a regular theatre reviewer for The Reporter (1964-1968)
and Commonweal (1968-1993) and has just published the twenty-seventh of
his annual "American Theater Watch" in The Georgia Review. He won the
George Jean Nathan Award for Drama Criticism, 1964-1965. He has written
or edited roughly fifteen books, most of them on drama, including his Text
and Criticism editions of Death of a Salesman and The Crucible.
103
Photo Credits
Kalin grad
Ilya Vinkurova
Kalingrad Drama Theatre
Jeffrey P. Stephens
Miro Gavran
Courtesy of Mira Gavran
Pees Theatre Festival
Zsuzsa Koncz
Tivadar Domaniczky
Agi Mahr
Simarafoto
Gavrilo Grujity
Billig Interview
Tivadar Domaniczky
Agi Mahr
Bral
Arek Chrusciel
Unima World Festival
Jane McMahan
Ostrovsky's Last Sacrifice
Moscow Art Theatre
The journals of Mihail Sebastian
Josh Bradford
Mystery-Bou.ffe
The Berlin Volkshiihne
Gombrowicz
].]. Tiziou
104
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
THE HEIRS OF
MOLIERE
FOUR FRENCH COMEDIES OF THE
17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES
@ Reg..anl: TJ.e Aboe..t-MIDcl.ecl Lo..r
@
@ La a....-..
@ La'I"'Thefrieacloltl.eLa-
TRANSLATBD AND EDITED BY
MARVIN CARLSON
The Heirs of
Moliere
Translated and Edited by:
Marvin Carlson
This volume contains four
representative French comedies of
the period from the death of Moliere
to the French Revolution: Regnard's
The Absent-Minded Lover,
Destouches's The Conceited Count,
La Chaussee's The Fashionable
Prejudice, and Laya's The Friend of
the Laws.
Translated in a poetic form that
seeks to capture the wit and spirit of
the originals, these four plays
suggest something of the range of
the Moliere inheritance, from
comedy of character through the
highly popular sentimental comedy
of the mid eighteenth century, to
comedy that employs the Moliere
tradition for more contemporary
political ends.
In addition to their humor, these comedies provide fascinating social documents that
show changing ideas about such perennial social concerns as class, gender, and
politics through the turbulent century that ended in the revolutions that gave birth to
the modem era.
USA $20.00 plus shipping $3.00 USA, $6.00 International
Please make payments in U.S. Dollars payable to:
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
Mail checks or money orders to:
Circulation Manager
The CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10016-4309
Visit our web-site at: web.gc.cuny.edu/mestc/
Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 212-817-1868
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
Pixerecourt:
Four Melodramas
Translated and Edited by:
Daniel Gerould
&
Marvin Carlson
This volume conuilns four of
Pixerecourt's most important
melodramas: The Ruins of Babylon,
or Jafar and Zaida, The Dog of
Montatgis, or The Forest of Bondy,
Christopher Columbus, or The
Discovery of the New World, and
Alice, or The Scottish Gravediggers,
as well as Charles Nodier's
"Introduction" to the 1843 Collected
Edition of Pixerecourt's plays and
the two theoretical essays by the
playwright, "Melodrama," and
"Final Reflections on Melodrama."
"Pixerecourt furnished the Theatre of Marvels with its most stunning effects, and
brought the classic situations of fairground comedy up-to-date. He determined the
structure of a popular theatre which was to last through the 19th century ...
Pixerecourt determined that scenery, music, dance, lighting and the very movements
of his actors should no longer be left to chance but made integral parts of his play."
Hannah Winter, The Theatre of Marvels
USA $20.00 plus shipping $3.00 USA, $6.00 International
Please make payments in U.S. Dollars payable to:
Mail checks or money orders to:
Circulation Manager
The CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10016-4309
Visit our web-site at: web.gc.cuny.edu/mestc/
Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 212-817-1868

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