SEEP Vol.29 No.1 Winter 2009

volume 29, no.
1
Winter 2009
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 Fifth 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, The City University of
New York Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016-4309.
EDITOR
Daniel Gerould
MANAGING EDITOR
Margaret Araneo
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Christopher Silsby
ASSISTANT EDITOR
Marina Volok
CIRCULATION MANAGER
Jessica Del Vecchio
ADVISORY BOARD
Edwin Wilson, Chair
Marvin Carlson Allen J. Kuharski Martha W Coigney
Stuart Liebman Leo Hecht Laurence Senelick Dasha Krijanskaia
SEEP has a liberal reprinting policy. Publications that desire to reproduce
materials that have appeared in SEEP may do so with the following
provisions: a.) permission to reprint the article must be requested from
SEEP in writing before the fact; b.) credit to SEEP must be given in the
reprint; c.) rwo copies of the publication in which the reprinted material has
appeared must be furnished to SEEP immediately upon publication.
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Frank Hentschker
DIRECTOR OF ACADEMIC AFFAIRS AND PUBLICATIONS
Daniel Gerould
DIRECTOR OF ADMINISTRATION
Jan Stenzel
Slavic and East European Performance is supported by a generous grant from the
Lucille Lortel Chair in Theatre of the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at The City
University of New York.
Copyright 2009. Martin E. Segal T heatre Center.
2 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 29, No.1
Editorial Policy
From the Editor
Events
Books Received
TABLE OF CONTENTS
"Grotowski, His Laboratory Theatre, and
His Legacy in SEEP: 1981-2009"
ARTICLES
"The Hidden Work of Grotowski's Theatre of Sources"
Kermit Dunkelberg
"In a Different Light: Virlana Tkacz"
Olena Jennings
"The Theatre of Michal Zadara"
Allen ]. Kuharski
PAGES FROM THE PAST"
"The Varpak.hovsky Theatre Dynasty:
From Meyerhold's Troupe Through Stalin's Camp
to Moscow and Montreal"
Mayia Pramatarova
REVIEWS
"Made in Poland at 59E59"
Thomas Starky
5
6
7
17
19
21
32
40
51
57
3
"Chekhovian Tango, Korean-Style:
A Staging of The Seagull in Seoul, Korea"
Olga Muratova
"Wajda's Karyn"
Leonard Quart
Contributors
65
77
83
4 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 29, No. 1
EDITORIAL POLICY
Manuscripts in the following categories are solicited: articles of no
more than 2,500 words, performance and film reviews, and bibliographies.
Please bear in mind that all submissions must concern themselves with
contemporary materials on Slavic and East European theatre, drama, and
film; with new approaches to older materials in recently published works;
or with 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 that
may be of interest to our discipline. All submissions are refereed.
All submissions must be typed double-spaced and carefully
proofread. The Chicago 1Vlanual of Style should be followed. Transliterations
should follow the Library of Congress system. Articles should be
submitted on computer disk, as Word Documents for Windows and a hard
copy of the article should be included. Photographs are recommended for
all reviews. All articles should be sent to the attention of Slavic and East
European Peiformance, c/o Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, The City
University of New York Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue, New York, NY
10016-4309. Submissions will be evaluated, and authors will be notified
after approximately four weeks.
You may obtain more information about Slavic and East European
Peiformance by visiting our website at http/ /web.gc.cuny.edu/metsc. E-mail
inquiries may be addressed to SEEP@gc.cuny.edu.
All Journals are available from ProQuest Information and Learning as
abstracts online via ProQuest information service and the
International Index to the Performing Arts.
All Journals are indexed in the lviLA International Bibliography and are
members of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals.
5
FROM THE EDITOR
The winter issue, SEEP Vol. 29, No.1, has as its focus the creative life
of the theatre artist. UNESCO-The United ations Educational, Scientific,
and Cultural Organization- has designated 2009 as the Year of Grotowski.
Now fifty years after the founding of the Polish Laboratory Theatre in Opole
and ten years after the death of the master, commemorative events are being
held worldwide-in the form of films, panels, workshops, and symposia-
honoring Grotowski as a director, teacher, and spiritual leader and celebrating
his legacy. We are including a bibliography of all the articles on Grotowski
previously published in SEEP, starting with the first year of publication in
1981, and we open the current issue with Kermit Dunkel berg's "The Hidden
Work of Grotowski's Theatre of Sources," the first of two articles dealing
with this least known of the Polish director's major periods.
The next three articles explore the careers of a Ukrainian-American,
a Russian, and a Polish theatre artist. Olena Jennings gives an intimate picture
of Virlana Tkacz's development as an artist and of the formation of the Yara
Arts Group and its many triumphs in New York and abroad. Allen Kuharski
investigates the American and Polish education of the young Polish director
Michal Zadara whose work speaks to new generations of postcommunist
audiences. In PAGES FROM THE PAST, Mayia Pramatarova traces the
vicissitudes of Leonid Varpakhovsky's career that took him from Meyerhold's
company to the gulag and back to Moscow, with an epilogue in Canada.
The issue concludes with three reviews: Thomas Starky discusses an
English-language performance in New York of a contemporary Polish play,
Made in Poland; Olga Muratova describes a Korean interpretation of
Chekhov's Seagull in Seoul; and Leonard Quart analyzes Andrzej Wajda's film
about the Karyn massacre of Polish officers during World War II.
6
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 29, No. 1
STAGE PRODUCTIONS
New York City:
EVENTS
The Royal Court Theatre production of Chekhov's Seagull, directed
by Ian Rickson, was presented on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre from
October 2 to December 21.
Peter Brook's Theatre des Bouffes du Nord (Paris) production of The
Grand Inquisitor, based on Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov and adapted by
Marie-Helene Estienne, was presented by the Theatre for a New Audience and
the New York Theatre Workshop at the latter's theatre space from October 22
to November 30.
Made in Poland: A Festival of New Polish Plays was held at 59E59,
from October 22 to November 30:
Theatre of the Eighth Day, The Fifes, based on Secret Police reports
about the theatre company berween 1975 and 1983, from October 22
to ovember 9.
The Play Company, Made in Poland by Przemyslaw Wojcieszek,
directed by Jackson Gay, from October 29 to November 30.
Immigrants' Theatre Project, rwo one-acts by 11ichal Walczak:
Sandbox, directed by Piotr Kruszczyiiski, and The First Time, directed
by Marcy Arlin, from November 13 to 30.
A city-wide presentation of the artistic and theatrical work of
Tadeusz Kantor included an installation of Dead Class exhibited by the Jewish
Museum from November 9 to February 1, the archival flims of his work at La
MaMa (shown in the original space where they were first produced in New
York) from November 10 to 16, and an international symposium hosted by the
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center and the Polish Cultural Institute at the CUNY
Graduate Center on January 26.
7
Kama Ginkas, director of Moscow's Theatre of a Young Audience,
presented readings of two plays-Rothschild's Fiddle and The Theatre of the
Watchman Nikita, based on Chekhov short stories-and discussed the issues
surrounding the adaptation and staging of literary texts with translator and
critic John Freedman, at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, CUNY Graduate
Center, on November 17.
The Czech National Theatre presented Three Lives by Vlasta
Chramostova, directed by Ivan Rajmont, in Czech at the Bohemian National
Hall, Czech Center of New York, on November 17.
The Czechoslovak-American (M:arionette) Theatre premiered The
Very Sad Story of Ethel & julius, Lovers and Spyes, and about Their Unrymelie End
while Sitting in a Small Room at the Correctional Facility in Ossining, NY, written and
directed by Vit Horejs, at the Theater for the New City from November 28 to
December 14.
Moscow's Nikitsky Gates Theatre (Teatr U Nikitskikh Vorot)
brought their production of Singing Mikhoels, about the Russian Jewish actor
and director Solomon Mikhoels, directed by Mark Rozovsky to the 11illennium
Theatre, Brooklyn, on November 30.
As part of a series titled Prague 1600, the Czech Cultural Center of
New York and Untitled Theater Company #61: A Theater of Ideas presented
readings of two plays by Edward Einhorn on the history of Jews in Prague.
Co/em Stories, directed by the playwright, was read on December 1, and Rudolf
II, directed by Henry Akoma, was read on December 15 at the Bohemian
National Hall.
The Yara Arts Group presented Still the River Fl01vs: Celebrations of
Winter Rituals from the Carpathian Mountains, directed by Virlana Tkacz and
designed by Watoku Ueno, with sections of a nativity puppet performance, at
La MaMa, from December 26 to 30.
8 Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 29, No. 1
The Dialogue Literary Theater presented I Speak 1vith You from
Leningrad . . . , based on collected primary sources and works by Olga
Berggolts, Anna Akhmatova, and Shostakovich, in remembrance of the sixty-
fifth anniversary of the end of the siege of Leningrad, at the Shorefront YM-
Y\X1HA, Brooklyn, on January 25.
STAGE PRODUCTIONS
U.S. Regional:
As a part of her residency with the Iowa International Writing
Program and Far Away Festival, Romanian playwright Alina Nelega read
excerpts of her new play Just Vif!YI. The readings took place on November 10
at Portland Stage Company in Portland, OR, and on November 17 at New
York Theatre Workshop.
Moscow's Mossovet Theatre toured the United States and Canada
'W;th its production of Husband, Wife, and Lover, based on Turgenev and
Dostoevsky, directed by Yury Yeremin, from November 30 to December 9, at
the Wilshire Ebell Theatre (Los Angeles), North Shore Center (Chicago),
Tribeca Performing Arts Center (New York), and the Metro Toronto Center.
The Olympia Family Theater presented Korczak's Children by Jeffrey
Hatcher, based on the life of Janusz Korczak's work in Polish ghettos during
World War II, at the Minnaert Center for the Arts, Olympia, "X'A, from January
16 to February 1.
STAGE PRODUCTIONS
International:
The English-language premiere of Vaclav Havel's Leaving was
presented by the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, England, from
September 19 to December 13. Associated with the production were the
seminar, "Vaclav Havel: Playwright & Politician," a marathon of all of Havel's
plays, a gala performance held for Havel, and a symposium held at the British
Library titled "To the Castle and Back: Vaclav Havel in Conversation with John
Tusa" on September 27.
9
Moscow Drama Theatre of K. S. Stanislavsky premiered fa Prishel (I
Arrived) by Belorussian playwright Nicolai Khalezin, directed by Grigory
Kataev, on November 28 on the main stage.
The Nierealne Company (England and Poland) presented Unreal City,
a "jazzed performance" of T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," using music and text
in both English and Polish, created and performed by Krystyna Krotoska,
Tanya Munday, Rafal Habel, and Jez Harisson on November 14 at Pod Bialym
Bocianem Synagogue in Wrodaw, Poland.
Moscow Dramaturgy Center of Aleksey Kazantsev and Michael
Roschin presented Khlam (Trash), written by Mikhail Durnenkov and directed
by Marat Gatsalov. Khlam premiered on November 14 at the Begovoy Stage
Theatre.
The Polish theatre ensemble Te Art Project (London) presented
Witlciewicz's The Mother, directed by Malwina Sworczuk and Agata Szymanska,
at the Camden People's Theatre from January 13 to 31.
The Eighteenth Baltic House International Theatre Festival (St.
Petersburg, Russia), October 8 to 19, Baltic House Theatre:
10
Teatr Rozmaitosci (Warsaw, Poland) presented Giovanni, an adaptation
of Moliere's Don Juan and Mozart's Don Giovanni, directed by
Grzegorz Jarzyna.
Moscow State Theatre of Nations (Moscow, Russia) presented
Karmen, !skhod (Carmen, Exodus) directed by Andrey Zholdak.
State Youth Theatre of Lithuania (Vilnius, Lithuania) presented The
Patriots by Petras Vaiciunas, directed by Jonas Vaitkus.
New Riga Theatre (Riga, Latvia) presented Sot!Ja by Tatiana Tolstaya,
directed by Alvis Hermanis.
Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 29, No. 1
FILM
Alexandrinsky Theatre (St. Petersburg, Russia) presented two
adaptations of Gogol's plays: The i'vfarriage, directed by Valery Fokin,
and The !vans, directed by Andrey Mogutchy.
Baltic House Theatre (St. Petersburg, Russia) presented Pokhoronite
1'vfenia za Plintusom (Bury Me Behind a Plinth) by Pavel Sanaev, directed
by Igor Koniaev.
Theatre of Satire on Vasilievsky Island (St. Petersburg, Russia)
presented Russkqye Varenie (Russian Preserves) by Ludmila Ulitskaya,
directed by Andrzej Bubien.
New York City:
Brooklyn Public Library hosted a documentary screening of Rossia!
Drama Iskusstva v 12 Epizodakh (Russia! Art Drama in 12 Episodes), directed by
Nina Zaretskaya, 2007. The documentary was based on the exhibition of
Russian Art, which was held at the Guggenheim Museum in 2005.
The Hungarian Film Society presented Delta, a film directed by
Kornel Mundrucz6, 2008. Delta won the International Federation of Film
Critics (FIPRESCI) award at the Sixty-First Cannes Film Festival and was
screened at the Hungarian Cultural Center on November 12.
The Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Polish Cultural Institute of
New York, and the Polish National Film Archive presented a retrospective of
thirty-fiYe films entitled, "Truth or Dare: The Films of Andrzej Wajda," from
October 17 to November 13 at the Walter Reade Theater.
The Hungarian Cultural Center and the Hungarian Film Society
presented Csaba Boll6k's 2007 film Iszka'sjournry (Iszka utazasa), on December
17 at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
11
The Brooklyn Public Library hosted a screening of fifty years of
Soviet propaganda animation f!lms from 1920 to 1970, presented by film critic
Oleg Sulkin at the Dweck Center on Ferbruary 25.
The Romanian Club at Columbia University in collaboration with the
Romanian Cultural Institute in New York presented a special screening of the
documentary The Great Colllmunist Bank Robber)', directed by Alcxandru
Solomon, February 7 at Columbia University's Lerner Hall.
As a part of its Documentary Fortnight 2009, the Museum of
Modern Art presented Neither Memory Nor Magic directed by Hugo Perez,
2007. The film premiered on February 22 at the Roy and Niuta Titus
Theater 1.
FILM
U.S. Regional:
The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Mayor's Office for
Special Events in collaboration with AMC Theatres presented the Forty-
Fourth Chicago International Film Festival from October 16-29. Films
included:
12
Crossing Dates (lntalniri lncrucisate) (Romania, 2008), directed by Anca
Damian.
Four Nights with Anna (C'{!ery noce zAnnq) (Poland, 2008), directed by
Jerzy Skolimowski.
Ka!Jn (Poland, 2007), directed by Andrzej Wajda.
Native Dancer (Baksy) (Kazakhstan, 2008), directed by Gulshat
Omarova.
Of Parents and Children (0 rodifich a dltech) (Czech Republic, 2008),
directed by Vladimir Michalek.
Snow (Snijeg) (Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2008), directed by Aida Begic.
The Mermaid (Rusalka) (Russia, 2007), directed by Anna Melikyan.
The Vanished Empire (lscheznuvshaia lmperiia) (Russia, 2008), directed by
Karen Shakhnazarov.
Tranquility (Nyugalom) (Hungary, 2008), directed by Robert Alfoldi.
Palm Springs International Film Society presented the Twentieth
Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival from January 6-19. Films
included:
Forgotten Transports: To Estonia (Zapomenute transporty: Do Estonska)
(Czech Republic, 2008), directed by Lukas Pribyl.
The Karamazovs (Karamazovt) (Czech Republic, 2008), directed by Petr
Zelenka.
Vtic/av (Czech Republic, 2007), directed by Jiri Vejdelek.
The Gift to Stalin (Podarok Stalinu) (Kazakhstan, 2008), directed by
Rustem Abdrashev.
Tulpan (Kazakhstan, 2007), directed by Sergey Dvortsevoy.
Tengri: Blue Heavens (Tengn) (Kyrgyzstan, 2008), directed by Marie
Jaoul de Poncheville.
Loss (Nereikalingi zmonis) (Lithuania, 2008), directed by Maris
Martinsons.
The Jester (Der Purimspiler') (Poland, 1937), directed by Joseph Green
and Jan Jowina-Przybylski.
Tricks (Sztuczkz) (Poland, 2007), directed by Andrzej Jakimowski.
13
Hooked (Pescuit Sportiv) (Romania, 2008), directed by Adrian Sitaru.
The Rest Is Silence (Restul e tacere) (Romania, 2007), directed by Nae
Caranftl.
uve and Other Crimes (Ljubav i dmgi ifocim) (Serbia, 2007), directed by
Stefan Arsenijevic.
The Tour (Turnqa) (Serbia, 2008), directed by Goran Markovic.
Blind Loves (Slepe (Slovakia, 2008), directed by Juraj Lehotsky.
FILM
International:
CentEast presented the Twelfth International Tallinn Black Nights
Film FestiYal from November 13 to December 7, 2008. Films included:
14
The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner (Svetat e Go!Jam i
Spasenie Dehne Otvryakade) (Bulgaria, 2008), directed by
Stephan Komandarev.
Zift (Bulgaria, 2008), directed by Javor Gardev.
Country Teacher (Venkovskj (Czech Republic, 2008), directed by
Bohdan Slama.
Q;mpl (Czech Republic, 2007), directed by Tomas Vorel.
Afjosha (Estonia, 2008), directed by Meelis Muhu.
I Wczs Here (Mina Olin Siin) (Estonia, 2008), directed by Rene Vilbre.
Life Without Gabriella Ferri (Eiu ilma Gabriella Ferrita) (Estonia, 2008),
directed by Priit Parn, Olga Marchenko.
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 29, No.1
Rambikramp (Estonia, 2008), directed by Elen Lotman, Katrin
Sipelgas.
Taarka (Estonia, 2008), directed by Ain Maeots.
Amateur (Amatieris) (Latvia, 2008), directed by Janis Nords.
The Soviet Story (Latvia, 2008), directed by Edvins Snore.
Three Men and Fish Pond (Par Dzimtenitt) (Latvia, 2008), directed by
Laila Pakalnina.
The Bug Trainer (Vabzdziu Dresuotqjas) (Lithuania, 2008), directed by
Donatas Ulvydas, Linas Augutis, and Marek Skrobecki.
When I Was a Partizan (Kai as Buvau Partizanas) (Lithuania, 2008),
directed by Vytautas V Landsbergis.
Boogie (Romania, 2008), directed by Radu Muntean.
Cinderella 4x4 (Zolushka 4X4) (Russia, 2008), directed by
Aleksandr Barshak and Yury Morozov.
Once Upon a 1ime in the Provinces (Odnazhdi v Provincit) (Russia, 2008),
directed by Katja Shagalova.
Paper Soldier (Bumazrryi Soldaf) (Russia, 2008), directed by
Aleksei German Jr.
Las Meninas (Ukraine, 2008), directed by Ihor Podolchak and
Dean Karr.
15
CONFERENCES, ETC:
The Jewish Center of Jackson Heights, Queens, hosted a seminar and
exhibition "Kiev to Broadway: The Creative Journey of Stage Designer Boris
Aronson," with a lecture by set designer Jim Steere on November 16.
As part of the exhibition "The Art and Theatre of Tadeusz Kantor,"
the Polish Cultural Institute presented ftlms of Kantor's Theatre of Death,
including The Dead Class; Wielopole, Wielopole; Let the Artists Die; I Shall Never
Return; and Todqy Is A[y Birthdqy, at La MaMa from November 10 to 16.
As part of the inauguration of the Year of Grotowski, the Grotowski
Institute hosted an international conference "Grotowski: What Was, What Is.
And What Is To Be Done" at the Assembly Hall of the Ossolinski National
Institute, Wrodaw, Poland, from January 13 to 15.
The University of Kent, Canterbury, hosted a symposium entitled,
"Training for Performance-Tradition and Innovation: Britain/Russia" with
Moscow Art Theatre School instructors Natasha Fedorova, Vladimir Sazhin,
and OlegTopoloyansky, on January 31.
MROZEK IN DAMASCUS
Although Slawomir Mrozek seems a figure from the past to young Polish
audiences, his 1975 play Emigrants has been playing to packed houses in Syria
since its opening in October 2008 in an underground air-raid shelter in
Damascus. Adapted as AI Muhqjiran by Samer Omran, who plays the
intellectual XX to Muhammed al Rashee's proletarian XX, Mrozek's play about
two exiles-one political, the other economic-living in a squalid basement
apartment in an unnamed Western city seems politically topically and
emotionally powerful to Syrian spectators, who experience directly feelings of
alienation and nostalgia in the windowless bunker that serves as the setting of
the production.
16
BOOKS RECEIVED
Brook, Peter. With Grotowski. Theatre Is Just a Form. Ed. Georges Banu and
Grzegorz Ziolkowski with Paul Allain. Wrodaw: The Grotowski Institute,
2009. 118 pages. Includes fourteen short chapters, an Appendix (''A Dialogue
between Peter Brook and Jerzy Grotowski led by Georges Banu"), From the
Editors, Chronology, Editorial Notes, Index of Names, and a photographic
portrait of Brook and Grotowski.
Carnicke, Sharon Marie. Stanislavsk:J in Focus. An Acting Master for the 1/venry-First
Century. Second Edition. London: Routledge, 2009. 252 pages. Consists of an
introduction, three parts - Transmission, Translation, and Transformation-
and an afterword. Includes The System's terminology, Endnotes,
Bibliography, Index, and 20 plates, illustrations, and photographs.
Dacre, Kathy and Paul Fryer, eds. Stanislavski on Stage. Kent: Rose Bruford
College in association with The National Theatre, 2008. 64 pages. In English
and Russian. Russian translation by Anna Shulgat. An exhibition of
photographic material drawn from the archive of The Stanislavski Centre
Rose Bruford College. Contains essays by Paul Fryer, Jean Benedetti, Marie-
Christine Autant-Mathieu, Kathy Dacre, Anatoly Smielansky, Laurence
Senelick, Kathie Mitchell, Richard Hornsby, and Declan Donnellan, and many
production photographs.
Ferguson, Marcia. Blanka and Jiri Zizka at the Wilma Theater, 19 79-2000. From the
Underground to the Avenue. Saarbrucken: VDM Verlag Dr. Muller, 2008. 136
pages. Traces the Zizkas' theatrical career from Czechoslovakia to America.
Includes a bibliography.
Luchuk, Olha, ed. In A Different Light. A Bilingual Anthology of Ukrainian
Literature Translated into English by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps as
Performed by Yara Arts Group. Compiled and edited with Foreword and
Notes by Olha Luchuk. Introduction by Natalia Pylypiuk. Lviv: Sribne Slovo
Press, 2008. 790 pages. Includes Virlana Tkacz's introductory essay, "Poetry as
17
Text for Theatre." Contains a wide spectrum of Ukrainian poetry, songs, and
legends, including the complete text of Forest Song by Lesya Ukrainka, as well
as Events ("The Productions Which Generated the Translations'') and
biographical indices, bibliography, general index, 32 color plates and black-
and-white photographs of authors and artists.
Rzhevsky, Nicholas. The Modern Russian Theater. A Literary and Cultural History.
Armonk, NY; London: M.E. Sharpe, 2009.319 pages. Contains eight chapters,
extensi,e notes, a selected bibliography, an index, and many production
photographs.
Suchan, Jaros!aw, ed. Tadeusz Kantor niemoijiwe impossible. Cracow: Bunkier
Sztuki, 2000. 242 pages. A collection of nine essays, in both Polish and
English, published on the occasion of the exhibition at the Center for
Contemporary Art at the Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, June- July 2000. Includes
36 illustrations.
Toporisic, Tomaz, Barbara Skubic, Tina Malic, and Mateja Dermelj. Has the
Future Alreacfy Arrived? Fifty Years of Slovenska Mladinsko Gledaliffe. Ljubljana:
Slovenska mladinsko gledaliSce, 2007. 346 pages. In English. Contains more
than one hundred short essays and interviews by dozens of writers, as well as
extensive documentary material, including The Mladinsko Register from 1955
to 2006, Performances, Important Tours, Awards, The Mladinsko
Management, Actors, Directors, The Mladinsko at the End of 2006, Index,
and hundreds of pictures, drawings, and photographs, many in color.
2009. The Grotowski Year. Wrodaw: The Grotowski Institute, 2009. 48 pages
(unnumbered). Contains information about the many events to be held
worldwide in celebration of the Grotowski Year. Includes many photographs
and illustrations.
18
GROTOWSKI, HIS LABORATORY THEATRE, AND
HIS LEGACY IN SEEP: 1981 TO 2009
Robert Findlay, "Grotowski in 1981." Vol. 1, no. 3 (Fall 1981 ). 11-2.
Addison Bross, "Grotowski's Akropolis on Film." Vol. 3, no. 2 (Spring 1983).
16-8.
Marc Robinson, "Zbigniew Cynkutis 1938-1987." Vol. 7, nos. 2 and 3 (Fall
1987). 42-3.
Jan Kott, "Grotowski or the Limit." Vol. 9, nos. 2 and 3 (Fall, 1989). 20-4.
Robert Findlay, "Grotowski at Fifty-Nine: The Ten-Day Conference at
Irvine (August 1992) and the Six-Day Mini-Course at YU (February
1993)." Vol. 13, no. 2 (Summer 1993). 23--30.
A.L. (Alma Law], "Grotowski Visits Moscow" (PAGES FROM THE PAST).
Vol. 13, no. 2 (Summer 1993). 35-44.
Allen J. Kuharski, "Jerzy Grotowski's First Lecture at the College de
France." Vol. 17, no. 2 (Summer 1997). 16-20.
[Daniel Gerould], IN MEMORIAMJerzy Grotowski (1933-1999). Vol. 19,
no. 1 (Spring 1999). 7-8.
Grotowski at Irvine-and Beyond (Special Issue) Vol. 20, no. 2 (Summer
2000):
Robert Cohen, "Introduction." 13-6.
Robert Cohen, "Putting a Tree in a Box." 17-25.
Jairo Cuesta, "On His Way." 26-7.
James Slowiak, "Grotowski: The Teacher." 28-30.
19
Holly Holsinger, "Reaching Back." 31-3.
Richard Hornby, "Grotowski's Subjective Drama." 34-42.
Lars Myers, "Postscript in New York: Grotowsk.i after Grotowsk.i."
43- 7.
Janusz Degler, "In Pontedera after Grotowsk.i and About Grotowsk.i." Vol. 22,
no. 1 (Winter 2002). 32-9.
Magdalena Hasiuk, ''Jerzy Grotowsk.i's Bright Alley." Vol. 23, no. 1 (Winter
2003). 24-33.
Janusz Degler, "Jerzy Grotowsk.i on the Books of His Youth." Vol. 23, no. 2
(Spring 2003). 40- 8.
Seth Baumrin, "The Grotowsk.i Centre in Wrodaw: Performances at the
Headquarters of Paratheatre::>" Vol. 27, no. 1 (Winter 2007). 31-40.
Pablo Pakula, "The British Grotowski Project." Vol. 28, no. 1 (Winter 2008).
39-47.
Kathleen Cioffi, "ZAR and Other Microcultures of 'Grotland.'" Vol. 28, no.
2 (Spring 2008). 20- 9.
THE HIDDEN WORK OF GROTOWSKI'S
THEATRE OF SOURCES
Kermit Dun.kelberg
All that sustains belongs to the realm of the hidden.
1
Jerzy Grotowski's Theatre of Sources (1976-1982) was the most
hidden and closely guarded phase of his work. Grotowski's statements about
Theatre of Sources were infrequent and revealed few practical details.
Documentation was scant. Ronald Grimes published an informative account
of the most open phase of Theatre of Sources, but the event he participated
in during the summer of 1980 was only the tip of the iceberg: the public face
of a very private period of work. Only the barest details have been published
regarding another phase of Theatre of Sources: the international
"expeditions."2
But the least-known part of Theatre of Sources was the work carried
out in solitude by a small, dedicated team in the Polish Laboratory's forest base
near the village of Brzezinka. This unseen phase of research was the project's
most vital component, the hidden source of all of the other Theatre of
Sources investigations (and of much of Grotowski's later research).
Public Pronouncements
Grotowski announced his Theatre of Sources project at the
International Theatre Institute's ~ t of the Beginner" Symposium at Lazienki
Park in Warsaw, June 4-5, 1978. This Symposium was part of the much larger
First International Theatre Meeting of ITI, which Grotowski had lobbied hard
to bring to Poland as a forum to announce the new orientation of his research.
The entire conference-underwritten by the Polish Ministry of Art and
Culture and the Polish branch of ITI-was "as though for (Grotowski's)
benefit."3 Representatives from over thirty countries participated, from
Eastern and Western Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, and the United States. In
addition to Grotowski's remarks, Professor Louis P. Mars of Haiti, a
psychiatrist and expert on voudoun, laid out some of the theoretical bases for
Theatre of Sources's investigations.
4
21
Jerzy Grotowski, 1975
Grotowsk.i announced that the three-year Theatre of Sources project
would consist of "three principal stages, each lasting a season." The first
(1977-1978) would include an "international colloquium devoted to the
primordial dramatic phenomenon and to the technique of the sources." This
colloquium consisted of the ITI conference itself, followed by a two-day event
for conference VIPs at the castle of Grzegorzewice.S The second phase would
consist of closed practice with an international team (actually already in
process since 1976), culminating in 1979 with intensive summer work at
Brzezinka in a temporary "transcultural village." Further closed work in 1980
would lead to a second "transcultural village," this time including outsiders
whose participation would "put to the test the particularities of the project
Theatre of Sources."6 The open session of which Grimes would write was the
realization of this second "transcultural village." Theatre of Sources
proceeded as conceptualized in advance: with the important addition of the
international "expeditions," which were made possible due to a Rockefeller
Foundation grant obtained after the announcement of the project in 1978.
James Slowiak and Jairo Cuesta state that with the announcement of
Theatre of Sources, "Grotowsk.i's agenda was no longer hidden,"7 but if this
is true, it is only so in retrospect. Perhaps Grotowsk.i's "agenda" became clear
to some of those working closely with him (such as Cuesta, who was involved
.in Theatre of Sources from its earliest stages). Certainly Grotowsk.i felt that he
had gained new clarity on the nature of his life's work. He noted in 1980 that
Now, given circumstances, it seems a natural time in my life simply to
say publicly, "all right, this is my work." It was around 1977 that the
occasion presented itself ... I said to myself, "that's the moment,"
[sic] and I found the name Theatre of Sourccs.8
Grotowski's public statements about Theatre of Sources deliberately
hide the practical aspects of the work. As Halina Filipowicz has observed,
Grotowsk.i was always "among those artists who use an official language to
conceal rather than reveal their ideas."9 At no time since the mid-1960s (when
the Theatre of Thirteen Rows, then still in Opole, was in danger of closure by
the authorities) was Grotowski's need to conceal his ideas stronger than during
Theatre of Sources. Poland's national life had taken to the streets, in the form
of the Solidarity strikes of 1980-1981 and the Jaruzelski regime's retaliatory
23
imposition of martial law in December 1981. Political pressures, both direct
and indirect, forced Grotowski to move his Theatre of Sources operations to
Italy early in 1982 and led to his eventual decision to emigrate permanently.
During this most public of times in Poland's political life, Grotowski's work
turned increasingly inward.
Grotowski stated that the term "Theatre of Sources" was "simply a
code."
1
0 A code conceals meaning for those outside the circle of intended
recipients, yet reveals its meaning to those for whom it is intended (those
Grotowski once referred to, during Paratheatre, as simply "our kind").11 The
term "theatre" in Theatre of Sources functioned as code. As Ludwik Flaszen
has noted in reference to Para theatre, "Theatre is something that's socially
rooted, something that's legal,"
12
and therefore acceptable to the Polish
authorities (not to mention the Western funding sources, which included
UNESCO, ITI, and the Rockefeller Foundation). But "theatre" was also
simply code for Grotowski's main object of study, which was the "primordial
dramatic phenomenon." Grotowski employed this term, adapted from Mars,
to refer to the process of the doer (the actor or ritual artist) in relation to
others. In Theatre of Sources there were performers (doers), but no audience
or witnesses, in the sense of people from outside of the working group. It was
"a theatre where only action took place, not acting."13
Theatre of Sources constituted a search for the "origin"-but not in
a chronological or anthropological sense-rather in the sense of an organic
impulse born in the body of the doer, here and now (hie et nunc) . Two paths to
discovering the "origin" presented themselves: traditional techniques or
devised techniques. Jairo Cuesta describes these two paths as the "old
traditions" and the traditions nascent:
24
When you put a person who doesn't have a lot of knowledge of
traditions ... into the forest, this person begins to deal with intuitions,
with his urges, with his dreams, with his energies .... And these
energies, these intuitions, these old dreams start to talk to him,
guiding him into something .... I think Grotowski was very interested
to put his eyes on this kind of process. But at the same time, for him,
it was very interesting to put his eyes onto something that was already
happening ... how traditions work. For that reason in the Theatre of
Sources it was important to put old traditions at the side of traditions
nascent: traditions that are being born. I think for him it was important
to see what the connection between the two of them was. And there
are connections. There are very clear connections.14
Individual Source Techniques
The work with "old traditions" involved traditional practitioners,
encountered through the "expeditions," which will be the subject of the
second ar ticle in this two-part series. Prior to the "expeditions," an
intercultural team undertook individually focused work, primarily at the forest
base at Brzezinka, in nature and in solitude. This undocumented phase of
Theatre of Sources-the work on traditions nascent-constitutes the hidden
source of Grotowski's most hidden period of work.
Theatre of Sources's focus on individual process was a change from
the communal emphasis of Paratheatre. Paratheatre had looked backward
toward Grotowski's old theatrical aim of a communal ritual.
1
5 Theatre of
Sources pointed toward his future life's work, the study of "Ritual Arts"
(Zbigniew Osinski's early designation for the work, which became known as
~ r t as Vehicle") .16
In the earliest phase of Theatre of Sources, the task for each member
of the team was to find a precise technique of awareness in relation to the
natural environment. This search for one's own source technique was the
primary concern of Theatre of Sources. It demanded a quiet heroism. At a
conference on Paratheatre and Theatre of Sources held at the former Polish
Laboratory Theatre's r ural workspace in Brzezinka, Poland, in 2002, Theatre
of Sources ream member Marek Musial17 described the solitary process that
led to the development of individual source techniques. Day after day, month
after month, season after season, each team member performed his or her task
in stoic solitude, working through thresholds of discomfort and boredom, to
discover that
What was attractive at the very beginning, what was on the first level,
what drew our attention, ceases to interest us. Something further is
deepened: the leaves were green, they've become yellow. Snow comes
falling, rain, wind, sun. And we keep coming, regardless of the
25
weather. And here begins something that is very difficult to explain.
Certain things start penetrating one another.18
Their task was to find a way to "be in the beginning"- to be fully present and
aware-each through his or her own proposal for an individual source
technique.
1
9
~ l l these [techniques] are quite simple," Grotowski claimed, "and
one of Theatre of Sources's simplest actions is just a certain way of walking
which, through rhythms different from the rhythms of life, breaks the kind of
walk that is directed toward an objective."
2
0 The point of departure was often
"a childlike action:21 The techniques had no special provenance. They were
ordinary, but were refined through endless repetition. Grotowski even claimed
to have seen someone arrive at "something similar" while washing dishes.22
The purpose of these techniques was non-intentional action (i.e., not
walking to get somewhere, but walking to walk). Theatre of Sources was not
about learning traditional techniques, but about unlearning one's own "daily,
habitual techniques of the body ... as analyzed by Marcel Mauss" in order to
arrive at "a de-conditioning of perception."23
The techniques were then submitted to a very specific method of
verification:
Grotowski never assisted these moments of individual experience.
After maybe six months of work, he began to send some witnesses.
You needed to take the witness with you, and you needed to do your
work. ... [H]e only talked with the witnesses. He didn't talk with the
leader of the action. And through the testimonies, he [discovered]
what was working.24
Techniques deemed to be working well might be adapted and worked on by
others, as happened with running (developed by Cuesta and others), slow and
fast walks (developed by Musial, Stefano Vercelli, and others), and The
Motions.
The Motions
One of the most important individual source techniques to emerge
from Theatre of Sources was the complex sequence called The l\forions.
The Motions originated as a personal source technique developed by
Zbigniew "Teo" Spychalski.2s Spychalski states that:
This exercise was a personal invention and it comes from practical
work in nature that I developed . .. . With regard to the inspiration
to create The Motions, it would be difficult to assert that it was
only a combination, collage or melange of Hatha Yoga, especially
the Salute to the Sun. It would be better to speak of a creation
inspired by tai chi, which employs a kind of "imaginary yoga," a
personal yoga, a yoga of the ignorant, so to speak: yoga of
someone who does not really know [yoga]. Thus to evoke yoga or
tai chi is [only) a comparison so that people who question on what
it was based can have a point of reference.26
Cuesta elaborates:
Teo was not a yoga student. He was not a tai chi student .... [An]
action comes from somewhere. . . . It's very clear that this
"somewhere" is your body .. .. When you relate to this physical
body-it is your body, but it is [also] something bigger than your
body ... something different appears in everyone .... (They] work
months and months until something starts to happen. I think for
Teo, it was about observing .. . what's going on in you- and
reacting to that. The quality of his movements started to be a sor t
of tai chi kind of movement, or maybe North American Indian
kind of dance, or some kind of yoga positions. Of course they
were not yoga, they were not Indian dances, and they were not tai
chi. But maybe in the end of the seventies, these kind of
techniques were in the air. We didn't want to go to a technique ... .
For Grotowski, I think it was very interesting to see someone who
was connecting with something very deep in himself .... (Teo's]
27
dance was a dance of integration, like many of the actions of the
people in Theatre of Sources. They were actions that we made,
because we needed to understand ourselves.27
Grimes described what I take to be a version of The Motions
practiced in 1980 as "a series of movements that I would call 'spiritual
exercises."'28 He presciently sensed them to be "like a generative grammar
of the other actions of the Theatre of Sources .. . the kinetic seedbed out
of which other events sprang as offshoots."29
Through a process of transmission which deliberately
incorporated change, The Motions were further refined during Theatre of
Sources:
Grotowski later wanted two versions of this practice to exist,
wanted mine to remain, [as] it had its specific function, and he did
not at all want to destroy it or even influence it too much. [A)
second version was created by another working group during the
Theatre of the Sources in 1980, in which emerged the elements
which relate to ceremonial concepts .. . e.g., four cardinal points,
the zenith, etc. . . . My objectives were different .... [We] kept
differentiations in our approaches during all the program of
Theatre of Sources.30
The Motions passed through continual refining processes of verification
and transmission in Theatre of Sources, and later in Objective Drama and
Art as Vehicle.31
The individual source techniques were further tested and verified
during the expeditions, through encounters with the landscape and
alongside traditional practitioners. To some extent, the opening of the
Theatre of Sources to outsiders also functioned as a verification of the
techniques. But in contrast to Paratheatre, this opening to the public was
neither the fulfillment nor the validation of the techniques developed in
closed work. In Paratheatre, the purpose of the preparations was to make
ready for a meeting: as in theatre, until the spectator/participants arrived,
the event was incomplete. But in Theatre of Sources, the emphasis was on
"what the human being can do with his own solitude."32
Theatre of Sources represents a watershed in Grotowski's research,
perhaps an even greater watershed than his abandonment of Theatre of
Productions for Paratheatre in 1970. The search for the "primordial
dramatic phenomenon" was the beginning of the road to Performer.33
NOTES
1
Martin Buber, land Thou, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith, 2nd ed. (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1958), 24.
2 Robert Findlay, "A Necessary Afterword," in Zbigniew Osinski, CrotoJ1!ski and His
Laboratory, trans. and abr. Lillian Valee and Robert Findlay (New York: PAJ, 1986),
171. See also Robert Rozycki, ed., "\X'yprawy Terenowe Teatru Zr6del," excerpted
and edited from doctoral dissertation, "Poszukiwania etnologiczne wsp6!czesnej
awangardy teatralnej," Leszek Kolankiewicz, Notatnik Teatralfi.J, no. 4 (1992):
142-57; Zbigniew Osinski, Goscinne Teatru Laboratorium 1959-1984.
Kronika Dzialalnosci 1978-1984," Teatrai'!J 49, no. 1-4 (2000): 627-90;
James Slowiak and Jairo Cuesta, Jerzy GrotoJJ;ski, Routledge Performance
Practitioners Series, ed. Franc Chamberlain (London and New York: Routledge,
2007), 42-4.
3 J6zef Kelera, Crot01vski Wielokrotnie (Wroclaw: Osrodek Badan Tw6rczo5ci
Jerzego Grotowskiego i Poszukiwari Teatralno-Kulturowych, 1999), 60.
4
Price Louis Mars, "The Ethnodrama: Dramatic Religion," lntemational Theatre
Institute (1978): 47-9.
5 Kelera, 61-3. See also Leszek Kolankiewicz, Wielki i'vfa(y Woz (Gdansk:
Wydawnictwo slowo/obraz terytoria, 2001), 258- 60.
6 International Theatre Institute, "Theatre of Sources 1977-80: A Jerzy Grotowski
Project," lnternatiot1al Theatre Information (\Vinter 1978): 5.
7 Jairo Cuesta, interview with author, Olsztyn, Poland; Aug. 20-21, 2003.
8 JerZ)' Grotowski, "Theatre of Sources," ed. Lisa Wolford and Richard Schechner,
Tbe Groto111ski Sourcebook (London and New York: Routledge, 1997; 1980-1982), 255;
see also Jennifer Kumiega, The Theatre of Groto111ski (London and New York:
Methuen, 1987), 231.
9 Halina Filipowicz, "\'<'here Is Gurutowski?" TDR 35, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 181- 6,
repr. rev. and ed. author in Wolford and Schechner, 403.
10 Grotowski in Wolford and Schechner, 256.
29
11 Jerzy Grotowski, "Holiday: The Day That Is Holy," trans. Boleslaw Taborski,
TDR 17, no. 2 (Summer 1973) : 129.
12 Ludwik Flaszen, Paratheafre and Theatre of Sources: Reflections (Lecture, Paratheafre
(1969-1978) and Theatre of Sources (1976-1982) International Conference,
Wrodaw/Brzezinka, Poland, Sept. 28, 2002).
13 Slowiak and Cuesta, 40.
14 Cuesta, Aug. 21, 2003.
15 Jerzy Grotowski, "Teatr a Rytual," Dialog, no. 8 (1969): 64--74.
16 Zbigniew Osinski, "Grotowski Blazes the Trails: From ObjectiYe Drama to Ritual
Arts," TDR 35, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 95-112; repr. as "Grotowski Blazes the Trails:
From Objective Drama tO Art as Vehicle," in Wolford and Schechner, 383-401.
17 Musial had been part of the very first Paratheatre group in 1970. He returned to
Paratheatre in the mid-1970s and participated in several Special Projects before
joining Theatre of Sources.
18 Marek Musial, Paratheatre and Theatre of Sources, Testimonies, Part II (Talk, Para theatre
(1969-1978) and Theatre of Sources (19 76-1982) International Confer ence,
Wrodaw/Brzezinka, Poland, Sept. 28, 2002).
19 Jerzy Grotowski, "The Act of the Beginner," !nternational Theatre biformation
(1978): 8.
20 Kumiega, 233.
21 Grotowski in Kumiega, 234.
23 Ibid., 257.
24 Cuesta, Aug. 21, 2003.
25 Wielki Na!J Woz, 264, also in Cuesta, Aug. 21, 2003.
26 Teo (Zbigniew) Spychalski, Personal communication with author (electronic),
Aug. 30, 2004.
27 Cuesta, Aug. 21, 2003.
28 Ronald L Grimes, "The Theatre of Sources," TDR 35, no. 3 (Fall 1981): 67-74;
repr. in Wol ford and Schechner, 271-2.
29 Ibid., 272.
30 Spychalski, Aug. 30, 2004.
31 For a description of The Motions as practiced in Objective Drama, see 1.
Wayan Lendra, " Bali and Grotowski: Some parallels in the training process,"
TDR 35, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 113- 28; repr. in Wolford and Schechner, 310-25.
30
Slavic and East E11ropean Performance Vol. 29, No.1
33 Jerzy Grotowski, "Performer," Centro Di Lavoro Di Jer:o Grotowski/Workcenter of
Jerzy Grotowski, trans. Thomas Richards (Pontedera, Italy: Centro per
Sperimentazione e la Ricerca Teatrale, 1988), 36-41; repr. in Wolford and
Schechner, 374-8.
31
IN A DIFFERENT LIGHT: VIRLANA TKACZ
Olena Jennings
In a Different Light is an anthology of translations of Ukrainian poetry
and drama done by Virlana Tkacz and American poet Wanda Phipps (see
BOOKS RECEIVED, page 17) for performances by the Yara Arts Group,
many of which took place at La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York City.
The arrangement of the translations chronicles Yara's performance history.
The last section of the book tells the story of how the poetry in the anthology
was used in Yara's theatre productions, workshops, and poetry events. Yara
often creates theatre pieces from poems strung together to form a narrati,e,
rather than using traditional scripts.
Translations in the anthology include the works of both classic and
contemporary authors. There is a special focus on women's poetry. Many of the
translations have also been published in literary journals including Agni, Luna,
Leviathan, Quarter!J, Nimrod, and Index on Censorship. Most importantly, the
translations are meant for the stage. They read like poems in English rather than
like translations.
My first experience with Yara was hands-on. When I was a student at
Harvard Ukrainian Summer School in 1998, Virlana Tkacz came with other
Yara artists to put together a theatre piece using a wealth of Ukrainian poetry
and song. The piece grew from theatre exercises and recitation of poems, all
with the theme of "the messenger." Eventually, a show was formed that
featured Julian Kytasty's performance on the Ukrainian bandura, a harp-like
instrument that was haunting as it accentuated the footsteps of the students
dressed in black, acting in some way as messengers. The set was designed by
Watoku Ueno, a founding member of Yara who works with them to this day.
Virlana Tkacz's path leading to the formation of the Yara Arts Group
was eclectic. She began with a love for poetry. Her mother and grandfather both
taught poetry in a Ukrainian language school in Newark, New Jersey, where
Tkacz was born. Then, she herself went to Harvard Ukrainian Summer School
where Professor George Grabowicz inspired her with his love for Ukrainian
avant-garde poet Pavlo Tychyna (1891-1967) and Tychyna's work Instead if
Sonnets and Octaves.
Virlana Tkacz
33
Then Tkacz began to experience the theatre pieces of Polish director
Jerzy Grotowski and Romanian director Andrei Serban. She realized almost
immediately that the unusual and intense quality of Grotowski's pieces was
something that she wanted to recreate.
The first show she saw by Andrei Serban was Trojan WOmen. It was
unique in that it went beyond language. The show was performed at the La
MaMa theatre. Most of the action took place on the balcony that encircles the
theatre. It was a frightening, visceral experience. "It was as if the walls of Troy
were up there," Tkacz says. Actors ran through the audience with torches. In the
intense atmosphere, an old woman grabbed Tkacz's hand. "For the first time I
understood my mother's stories about the war," Tkacz continues. "I understood
how direct theatre could be and that it could have a great impact on one's life and
one's understanding of the world."
Tkacz attended Bennington College where she majored in literature
and theatre. While at Bennington she was able to explore Grotowski's work in
detail. Later, Tkacz did her MFA in theatre at Columbia University where she
wrote her thesis on Ukrainian avant-garde director Les Kurbas (1887-1937),
who had been arrested and then killed by Stalin. Other influences include
George Ferencz with whom she worked on fi fty shows and theatre director,
choreographer, video and installation artist Ping Chong. Her American
influences include playwrights Sam Shepard and Eugene O'Neill.
\X'hen she was writing her thesis for the Columbia MFA program,
Tkacz met the leading Ukrainian actor and director Yosyp Hirniak (1895- 1989),
then living in New York. He told her a lot of stories about Kurbas, with whom
he had worked in the 1920s and 1930s. For Tkacz, he was the window into
Kurbas's world. Tkacz would see him every day as she rushed through St Mark's
Place on her way to La MaMa. One day he passed away. No one told Tkacz
about this, but as she was hurrying to tell him about a workshop at Harvard that
she was conducting, she realized that his space by the window was empty. The
window to Kurbas was closed to her. When La MaMa founder Ellen Stewart
asked Virlana what her show would be called, Tkacz opened her mouth, some
form of destiny intervened, and she said, "A Light from the East."
The idea of creating the Yara Arts Group was born during rehearsals
for A Light From the East, which was staged in November 1990. It drew upon
Kurbas's diaries and the memoirs of actors in his company. Tkacz writes in the
anthology, "The characters in A Light from the East were actors in Kurbas's
troupes in 1919 who toured the countryside till 1921. During this time they
tried staging poetry. I believe this eventually led the group to become a unique
experimental theatre .... We decided ... to include the dreams of our own cast
members who shared many beliefs with Kurbas's actors. So our play took place
in 1919 in Kyiv and 1990 in New York. Each of our actors played themselves
and one of Kurbas's actors .... We became a theatre group while rehearsing a
play about the formation of a theatre group."
The first poem staged by Yara was "The Sky's Unwashed" by the
nineteenth-century Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861), which had
also been staged by Les Kurbas in 1919, linking the two troupes. In addition
to Les Kurbas and Shevchenko, this first theatre piece performed by Yara also
introduced the modern Ukrainian poet Pavlo Tychyna.
The window that was closed to Tkacz by Hirniak's death was opened
again on her 1990 trip to Ukraine. Tkacz comments "We were in a yard in
Kharkiv with an eighty-year-old actor. There were ruins and garbage around
us, but he pointed to a window and said, 'There Tychyna is writing his poems,'
and he pointed to another window and said, 'There Kurbas is rehearsing his
plays.' It was magical. I felt the cosmic connection that inspired me to bring
the show to places where Kurbas performed in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Lviv next
summer Ouly-August 1991). I also realized I would have to work with both my
company and the local Ukrainian actors."
When Tkacz was first exposed to Tychyna at Harvard Summer
School, she didn't understand the impact that his poems would have on her.
Tychyna was the first poet that she translated together with Phipps when
Tkacz couldn't express the beauty of Tychyna's work to Phipps because the
existing translations were inadequate, focusing on rhyme and language when
the images should have been the focal point of the poems. Phipps comments
on the process of translation in the anthology, " I find it difficult to describe
the way Virlana and I work together on translations and how we created A
Light from the East. To me the way we work is a very organic process. Things
constantly evolve, the idea of structure and form is held free-floating almost
until the moment before performance, and even after opening night the pieces
continue to grow as the actors constantly discover new meanings, shadings,
new moments of transformation and enlightenment, within the framework of
the previously established structure."
35
36
'X'hen Tkacz chooses a piece to translate, she does so with an actor in
mind. If she can hear the actor speaking in her head, she knows the piece will
work. It is not her intention to create a canon of Ukrainian literature in English
but to translate only the pieces that are needed for the stage, and thus her
translations are meant to be heard. As part of the translating process, Tkacz
and Phipps read the poems aloud. Then, they give the poems to their actors.
If the actors stumble over any of the words, they know that something needs
to be changed.
The translations are essential even beyond the context of her
performance. Ukrainian literature isn't a part of world literature because there
aren't enough translations that convey the true essence of the poem. The
translations serve to bring some of the poems into the spotlight.
Ukrainian language has become central to many of Yara's theatre
pieces. This did not happen intentionally. It was Tychyna who inspired the use
of the Ukrainian language. During rehearsal, Virlana would read the poem in
Ukrainian and the actors would read the poem in English, creating a dialogue
that was similar to a mother and daughter talking to each other.
This winter, Yara worked with the winter song singers from a village
in the Carpathians K.ryvorivnia. Tkacz has always been interested in folk music
and oral tradition. She is looking for pieces that have survived over the ages.
The winter song singers carry on the tradition of going house to house in the
village to sing songs that impart good wishes for the New Year. They
participated in a number of events with the Yara Arts Group that culminated
in a performance at La MaMa called Still the River Flows.
Almost ten years after my summer at Harvard, I had another
experience with Yara that began with a performance by the winter song
singers. The event took place at the Ukrainian Museum in New York City
against the backdrop of an exhibition of photographs by Alexander Khantaev
of winter rituals in Kryvorivnia. I was in charge of the lights. I watched as
audience members were mesmerized by the traditional beaded, colorful
costuming and the performance of the singers. As the singers implored, "Is
the Master Home?" I was taken with the purity of the ancient songs.
Throughout their stay in New York, I was comforted by the textured rhythms
of their voices ringing out from silence.
Tkacz's interest in the ancient also led her to the epics of Kyrgyzstan.
Her work with the epic about a woman warrior Janyl Myrza was inspired in
37
much the same way as her piece about Kurbas and Tychyna. The Yara artists
traveled through the mountains of Kyrgyzstan and saw the places where Janyl
had used her skills in archery to kill the neighboring tribesman who invaded her
land. In this way,Janyl came alive for the Yara artists. This led to a collaboration
between Yara artists and Biskek artists who performed ]af!JI .N[yrza together
both at the City of Artists in Bishkek and at La MaMa in New York.
Tkacz feels she is lucky to work with artists such as Kyrgyz actor and
director Kenjegul Saltibaldieva. Other artists that Tkacz has worked with
include Shona Tucker, Jessica Hecht, Jeff Ricketts, Andrew Colteaux, Yun Jin
Kim, Katy Selverstone, Karen Angela Bishop, Cecilia Arana, Tom Lee, Zabryna
Guevara, and Meredith Wright. Many of these artists travel with Tkacz to
places like Ukraine, Siberia, and Kyrgyzstan before finding their own niche in
the theatre world. Often times they return as Yara guest artists for multimedia
events. Tkacz feels especially blessed to work in a city like New York where this
is possible.
My most recent experience with Yara was with the performance of
]af!JI A{)rza at La MatVfa for which I served as the stage manager. Again, I was
exposed to Yara's unique approach to creating a show. Though Tkacz and
Phipps had translated the epic, there was much work to be done to bring it to
the stage. Through intense rehearsal during which the actors playfully
experimented with scenes and Kyrgyz and American actors communicated
with each other through action rather than words, the story of Janyl was
brought to life. While the epic was presented mostly in Kyrgyz, the American
actor Susan Hyon who playedJanyl conveyed some of the events in English to
the audience.
In recent years, Tkacz has received notable awards for her work. In
2007 she was named Honored Artist of Ukraine (Zasluzhenyi artist Ukrainy).
She has received Fulbrights both to Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan and an NEA
translation fellowship for her work with contemporary Ukrainian poet Serhiy
Zhadan.
The story of Tkacz's relationship with theatre is inseparable from the
story of Yara's formation. From her first experiences with Serban to her own
experimentation in La MaMa's space, Tkacz has created her own style. The
publication of her translations In a Different Light is the perfect occasion for
celebrating a fruitful career, which I am sure will be full of more exciting
cultural collaborations to come.
38 Slavic and East European Peifor!Jlance Vol. 29, No. 1
Cover of In a Different Light, designed by Rostylav Luzhetsky,
with Sean Eden and Rebecca Moore
39
THE THEATRE OF MICHAL ZADARAl
Allen J. Kuharski
Polish director Michal Zadara (b. 1976) has enjoyed a meteoric career
as a director in Poland since his professional debut in 2004 as co-director with
Jan Peszek of Witkacy's The Crazy Locomotive (Szalona fokomo(Ywa; 1923) at Teatr
Nowy in Slupsk. His solo professional debut took place later that year with a
contemporary adaptation of Stanislaw Wyspiari.ski's symbolist classic The
Wedding (Wesele; 1901) at Teatr Stu in Cracow. Zadara had first presented a
studio production of his version of Wyspiaii.ski's play with student actors at
the Cracow State Drama School (Pari.stwowa Wyzsza Szkola Teatralna w
Krakowie) early in 2004, many of whom continued in the professional version
later that year. Zadara subsequently directed a similar contemporary
adaptation of Juliusz Slowacki's rarely staged romantic history play Father
Marek (Ksiq_dz Marek; 1843) at the Stary Teatr in 2005, the first of a series of
major productions there. At the center of Zadara's work at the Stary Teatr to
date has been a pacifist neo-classical trilogy consisting of Jean Racine's Phedre
(Fedra; 2006), Jan Kochanowski's sixteenth-century drama Dismissing the Greek
Envoys (Odprawa posl6w greckich; 2007), and his collaboration with playwright
Pawel Demirski on a contemporary adaptation of Racine's lphigenie (lfigenia:
Nowa tragedia wedlug wers;i Racine'a; 2008).
In January, 2008, Zadara received the prestigious "Passport" Award
for theatre, given by the editors of the magazine Poli(Yka, and in April of that
year he was the featured artist of the Twenty-Eighth Warsaw Theatre Meetings
Festival (Warszawskie Spotkanie Teatralne), the program of which included six
of his productions from various theatres around Poland, including the second
stage of Warsaw's National Theatre (Teatr Maly). By the end of 2008, Zadara
had directed over two-dozen professional productions, including invitations to
direct at Berlin's Gorky Theatre and the Habima National Theatre of Israel in
Tel Aviv. Zadara's production credits include a remarkable breadth of the
Polish classical and modern repertory, alongside plays by major contemporary
playwrights both Polish and foreign, original works, and adaptations of various
novels, films, and even writings by Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher and
chronicler of Chassidism. In 2010, Zadara will make his operatic debut
The poster for the Twenty-Eighth Annual Warsaw Theatre Meetings Festival
in 2008, for which Zadara (pictured) was the featured director
41
Jan Peszek (Agamemnon) and Barbara Wysocka (lphigenie) in the world premiere of Michal Zadara and
Pawel Demirski's adaptation of Racine's Iphiginie at Stary Teatr, Cracow, 2006
d
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directing Iannis Xenakis's rarely staged Oresteia at Warsaw' s ational Opera
(Opera arodowa).
Zadara is slated ro make his American professional debut at the 2009
Philadelphia Live Arts Festival with his 2007 production of Witold
Gombrowicz's Operetta (Operetka; 1966/1969) from Wrodaw's Teatr Muzyczny
Capitol, with a score by the renowned Polish jazz musician Leszek Mozdi:er. A
symposium on his work and on the production is planned at Swarthmore
College in conjunction with the Philadelphia performances of Operetta in
September 2009.
The United States
When I first met Michal Zadara, he was eighteen years old, just arrived
in the U.S., sporting a head of long dark blond hair, and taking his first theatre
class at Swarthmore College. He was slim, serious, quiet, and planned to srudy
political science and philosophy. My first impression was of little common
ground between my theatrical work in Poland and this polite and well-spoken
young man. When I mentioned the names of Witkacy, Witold Gombrowicz, or
Jerzy Grotowski, Zadara had heard of some of them, but knew nothing of their
work. He was a highly educated and well-traveled young Pole who was completely
ignorant of the Polish theatrical and literary canon. Perhaps more precisely, he
was a child of the European Union of the mid-1990s, carrying a Polish passport.
Zadara's European and American formations are unusual. He was
educated in American schools in Frankfurt-am-Main and Vienna while his
parents worked abroad in the 1980s and 1990s. Zadara grew up fluent in Polish,
French, German, and English. While Polish was his first language, before
returning to Poland in 2000 his formal education had been primarily American
in content, and quite elite in character. This education, however, did not include
any travel to the United States before the start of his university srudies at
Swarthmore. His informal cultural education before university was German and
Austrian. Polish was the language of his family life and of summer holidays
spent in Poland.
\X'hen we first met, Zadara had not yet considered the possibility of
an artistic career. We eventually discussed the political role of theatre,
particularly in Poland, and about the connections between philosophy and the
work of playwrights such as Witkacy or Gombrowicz. I talked with him about
43
my own background in scenography and directing, why the Polish theatre was
important to me as an American, and about how the liberal arts education
Swarthmore offered could be useful to an artist. Zadara went on to complete
degrees in both theatre and political science. His work as a directing and design
student culminated with a remarkable 1999 production of Witkacy's The Water
Hen (Kurka wodna; 1921).
The paradox of Zadara's introduction to Polish theatre, and Polish
culture in general, was that it began in the United States. His first contact with
figures such as J6zef Szajna, Jerzy Grotowski, Tadeusz Kantor, Leszek
Ma.dzik, Wlodzimierz Staniewski, Jan Kott, and Andrzej Wajda took place
alongside American students in my classes in performance theory and theatre
history. In individual tutorials and as a research assistant with me, he became
familiar with the plays of the Polish romantics, Witkacy, Gombrowicz, and
Tadeusz R6zewicz. Zadara returned to Poland for a year's leave from
Swarthmore in 1996-1997, and began taking classes in the directing program
at the Warsaw Theatre Academy (Akademia Teatralna w Warszawie). I
assumed I had lost a student. To my surprise, Zadara returned to Swarthmore
to continue his directorial studies with me after his time in 'X'arsaw and a stint
studying oceanography on a sailing ship on the Atlantic Ocean (which also
proved highly formative on his later work in theatre). In part, he realized it was
too soon to narrow the focus of his studies to that of conservatory training.
He missed the breadth and variety of an American liberal arts university. But
he also felt estranged from the emphasis of the teaching in Warsaw, in
particular the school's lack of engagement with those aspects of Polish theatre
that had attracted him in the first place.
Nevertheless, he returned to Philadelphia clearly fascinated by
Warsaw and his immersion in Polish cultural life. He had seen Krystian Lupa's
production of Thomas Bernhard's Ritter, Dene, Voss (Rodzenstwo) at Cracow's
Stary Teatr, and later smartly directed an excerpt from the same play in my
directing workshop. Lupa's production clearly struck several nerves in Zadara:
here was an Austrian play produced through the lens of a Polish director, as
well as a director who was also his own scenographer. The character of
Ludwig, inspired by Wittgenstein, also appealed to Zadara's philosophical
bent. For Zadara at this point, Swarthmore provided a theatrical asylum and a
crucible. His studies in the United States also allowed a critical distance from
Poland. He first confronted the question of making his work comprehensible
to collaborators and audiences that were not Polish. As a result, he began
developing a set of critical and practical skills that were not specific to Polish
material, but that would later inform his work in Poland. These extended to
the study of political philosophy and Jewish studies beyond his practical and
academic work in theatre.
Zadara's theatrical studies at Swarthmore were largely the same as his
fellow American students. He was introduced to the American avant-garde
through the work of Robert Wilson, Joseph Chaikin, the Living Theatre,
Mabou Mines, Anne Bogart, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Among his
professors at Swarthmore was Roger Babb, an actor in Chaikin's second
company, The Winter Project. Zadara's studies were also broadly comparative.
His preparation for the Cracow production of Racine's Phedre included
revisiting his original study of the play with me at Swarthmore. He completed
my seminar on Ariane Mnouchkine and the Theatre du Solei! and participated
in acting workshops lead by the Burkinabe actor Sotigui Kouyate, a long-time
member of the Peter Brook Company in Paris. Jacek Luminski and Silesian
Dance Theatre S l ~ s k i Teatr Tanca) made their Swarthmore debut in Zadara's
last year of studies in 1999. Zadara today works regularly with choreographer
Tomasz Wygoda, whom he first encountered as a member of Lumiriski's
company at Swarthmore.
Alongside his formal studies of theatre, Zadara was one of the
leaders of a popular student cabaret that featured mixed programs of original
poetry, music, film, dance, and theatre. The cabaret provided a testing ground
for his goal of creating a popular theatre, with an open, playful, and
unpredictable approach to its audience. The echoes of these student cabarets
can be found throughout Zadara's work in Poland, in productions as varied as
his stage adaptation at Teatr Wsp6lczesny in Szczecin of Billy Wilder's film
Some Like It Hot (Na Gorqco; 2006), Dismissing the Greek Envq)'s, or the Polish
premiere of Russian playwright Ivan Vyrypaev's recent play Genesis 2
(Wrodaw, Teatr Wsp6tczesny; 2007). The youthful contemporary party
atmosphere of Zadara's The Wedding or the environmental staging of his 2006
Wrodaw production of R6zewicz's The Card Index (.!Vzrtoteka; 1961) are large-
scale, repeatable versions of these small-scale, ephemeral cabaret events at
Swarthmore.
Zadara stayed in the United States for a year after receiving his
diploma, and was invited by Anne Bogart to attend the conservatory directing
45
program she leads at Columbia University in New York City. He decided
against attending Columbia and instead returned to Poland, where he
eventually began studies in the directing program at PWST in Cracow, with
Krystian Lupa and .Mikolaj Grabowski among his professors. Zadara's studies
of scenography at Swarthmore lead to his first professional work in Poland at
TR-Warszawa as Malgorzata design assistant for Krzysztof
Warlikowski's production of Euripides' The Bacchae (Bachantk1) in 2001.
We will never know what Zadara's work would look like today if he
had accepted Bogart's invitation and pursued an American training and
directing career. His taste in American playwriting is eclectic, ranging from
Eugene O'Neill and T. S. Elliot to Eric Bogosian. Zadara's life, however, made
him no more obvious a fit into the American theatre than into the Polish. In
each context, he began with one foot in and one foot out of the culture.
Poland
In just a few years, Michal Zadara has created an unusual body of
work that encompasses the full breadth of the Polish theatrical canon, from
Jan Kochanowski to first productions of contemporary plays. He has spoken
of "the Polish question" that hovers over his work, motivating both his choice
and his interpretation of the plays he has directed. At times, a Polish
dimension is added where least expected (Some Like It Hot, his adaptation of
Ferenc Molnar's novel The Paul Street Bqys). Zadara nevertheless rigorously
rejects any notion of Polish cultural exceptionalism or hermeticism. He
approaches a work by Kochanowski, Slowacki, or Wyspianski as he would a
play by Racine, Bi.ichner, or Yeats, and sees these plays first as specific
dramaturgical constructs in ways not limited to the Polish context or tradition.
Zadara considers his production of Dismissing the Creek Envqys, for example,
primarily as a sequel to his earlier production of Racine's Phedre. Most
importantly, Zadara searches as well for the most appropriate ways to make
these plays relevant to a contemporary audience.
Zadara is a theatrical cosmopolitan, a disciple of contemporary
Austrian and German theatre no less than the product of his American
education or his training in Cracow. His directorial lens is a self-consciously
German one: post-Brechtian and post-dramatic, with the Volksbi.ihne director
Frank Castor as his patron saint. Zadara's attraction to German designers
such as Magdalena Musial and Thomas Harzem is an expression of this
46 Slattic and East European Performance Vol. 29, No.1
.;:..
-.J
Anna Magnat as the title character in Racine' s Phedre,
directed by l'vfichal Zadara at Stary Teatr, Cracow, 2006
orientation. Yet this all remains the means to the end of reanimating Polish
works suffering no less from over-familiarity (The Wedding, The Card Index) than
theatrical neglect (Dismissing the Greek Envoys, Father Marek).
Zadara's theatre marks a conscious break from the Polish alternative
theatre of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. In spite of his original attraction to the
work of Polish auteur directors with independent companies such as
Grotowski, Kantor, or ~ d z i k he has pursued a career in the state repertory
theatre system where Lupa, Warlikowski, and Jarzyna have also based their
work.
The theatre of Michal Zadara marks the third stage in a new self-
deftrution in Polish theatre that began in the 1980s. The foundation of this
movement is the work of Krystian Lupa, who moved away from both Polish
drama and the historic innovations of earlier Polish directorial auteurs. Lupa
nevertheless demonstrated the significance of a contemporary Polish
theatrical lens in his treatment of Austrian writers such as Musil, Bloch, and
Bernhard, as well others such as Bulgakov or Nietzsche. The subsequent work
of directors such as Jarzyna and Warlikowski in a different way began to look
to the West, not only moving away from Polish playwrights but also developing
a contemporary theatrical style that was akin to new work in Paris, Brussels, or
Berlin. Zadara has spoken of the emergence of a new cultural zone
characterized by the increasing hybridization of Polish and German/ Austrian
influences. The ongoing work of Lupa or Warlikowski can be seen as part of
this process.
Zadara today raises his version of "the Polish question": how to stage
and understand anew the Polish repertory as part of a larger European
theatrical culture, liberated from the history of foreign oppression, the
defensive postures of nationalism, as well as the temptations of assimilation
into a larger globalized cultural landscape. His revisionist productions of the
Romantic and nco-Romantic repertory are perhaps best understood as a
continuation of the earlier work of Konrad Swinarski (a child of a Polish-
German family in Polish Silesia and Brecht's most significant Polish protege),
but still as removed from Swinarski as Castorf is from Brecht or Heiner
Muller. If there is a common denominator in the work of Lupa, Warlikowski,
and Zadara, it is their shared interest in philosophy. Zadara's "Polish question"
is ultimately ontological or phenomenological in nature, not a revival of
Mickiewicz's Romantic nationalism. In this, he also echoes Gombrowicz.
48 Slavic and E ast European Performance Vol. 29, No. 1
Zadara's work seeks to answer the question of how and why to stage
plays such as Dismissing the Greek Envqys or Father Marek today-plays that
occupy a place in the dramatic/literary canon and yet come without any
coherent theatrical provenance. On the other hand, from Wyspiaiiski to
Kantor, there is no shortage of examples of Polish theatre feeling haunted and
burdened by its own past. A remarkable thing about Zadara's handling of the
Polish classics, much less of contemporary work, is how clearly it is haunted
by Poland's history, but at the same time not by the country's theatrical history.
Zadara has no scores to settle with past Polish theatre. His deceptively simple
mission is first and foremost to make meaningful work for the Polish audience
of the twenty-first century, to present Kochanowski's Dismissing the Greek
E nvqys in contemporary dialogue with Pawel Demirski's contemporary history
play f'tll{sa (2005).
Zadara is a visually and spatially minded director. He is an
unapologetic theatrical formalist, though in a manner distinct from the bravura
imagistic work of Szajna, Kantor, or M ~ d z i k Like these older Polish auteurs,
however, he poses fundamental questions of theatrical representation, moving
away from psychology and conventional dramatic narrative. Like Witkacy
before him, he is on a philosophical as well as an aesthetic/formal quest, and
each production is a laboratory experiment in search of a new theatrical
possibility for director, actor, and audience alike.
Musical logic in theatrical performance has become as great a formal
imperative for Zadara as narrative or image, as reflected in his work with
composers such as Dominik Strycharski or Leszek Mozdzer. His
understanding of Kochanowski is at once musical and theatrical, rather than
as an Aristotelian neo-classical drama. This approach reveals a dramaturgical
line in Polish drama from Kochanowski's Dismissing the Greek Envqys through
Mickiewicz and Slowacki to Wyspiaiiski and eventually to R6zewicz's The Card
Index-it also suggests the possibility of reading back through these works
from the perspective of the contemporary post-dramatic theatre that
R6zewicz anticipated in his play. This series of texts reveals a recurring pattern
of rhythmically and thematically driven dramaturgy, with an emphasis on
poetic exuberance that explores the boundaries between soliloquy and aria,
rhetoric and ritual incantation, white noise and ambience, chorus and soloist,
cacophony and silence. This is a dramaturgy structured around harmonies and
dissonances, around the juxtaposition of the exalted, the cruel, and the banal.
49
This inner logic is the true legacy of Kochanowski's Dismissing the Greek Envqys,
not the play's neo-classical surface.
As notable as Zadara's productions have proven in Poland, their
potential appeal and impact are certainly not limited to the Polish audience.
His work provides an important opening to share and test the work of
Kochanowski, Slowacki, or Wyspianski abroad. No previous director has
come better prepared to speak on behalf of these playwrights to foreign
audiences-particularly English-speaking audiences in London, New York,
and Los Angeles-whether the production is Dismissing the Creek Emqys or
Gombrowicz's Operetta.
NOTES
I This is an expanded and updated version of the article "Nowe Wyzwolenie Michala
Zadary" originally published as the keynote essay for the program of the Warsaw
Theatre Meetings Festival in April 2008.
THE VARPAKHOVSKY THEATRE DYNASTY:
FROM MEYERHOLD'S TROUPE THROUGH STALIN'S CAMP
TO MOSCOW AND MONTREAL
Mayia Pramatarova
On his desk there always were: a rulerj a compass, color pencils and an eraserj and also his
jaz
1
orite timer. Here, space and time were calculated
David Borovsky
The one-hundred-year anniversary of the Russian director Leonid
Varpakhovsky (1908-1976) is an appropriate moment to celebrate an
indomitable artist who survived the repressive years of the Stalin regime. No
matter what tragedy befell him, he would never stop his work in theatre.
Following Meyerhold's theatrical theory and practice, Varpakhovsky created
his own distinct stage aesthetics. He developed a theory that he used to
produce marvelous performances, and he left a body of important work in the
art of directing and the metaphysics of theatre.
The Method
Varpakhovsky worked on developing what later became The Method at
the Meyerhold Theatre (GosTIM). He served as a scientific secretary to
Meyerhold for three years at the Scientific Research Laboratory (NIL),
studying Meyerhold's performances and developing methods for their
graphical recording. These methods included sound, stage movement, and
timing recordings. Varpakhovsky's point of view was that "until we learn how
to record the performance graphically on paper, we will never be able to study
and recreate the performance itself. Theatre will be more scientific and less
amateur once we know how to record it."l
Varpakhovsky based his work on a descriptive method developed
by Vasily Vasilievich Glebov at the Moscow Art Theatre in the 1930s, a
"chess technique," and N. Ivanov's graphing system, among other
methods.2 His first practical work in this field entailed recording the pauses
and syncopation of the highs and lows in the stage speech. For example, all
the pauses in the speech of the actors in the performance of The Lac!J of the
51
Camellias on April10, 1934 were written down as an oscilogram. "The result
was no longer the plain Dumas text, but the Dumas text as performed by
the actress Zinaida Raikh, staged by Meyerhold."3 The stage movement was
registered dynamically and subseguently synchronized with the recording of
sound. On February 22, 1936, with the assistance of VTO Research
Laboratory, and using the methods developed at NIL, he recorded
Vakhtangov's Princess Turandot.
4
His research resulted in a method that looked at the spectacle as a
condensed whole. The performance consisted of different elements, which
were to be recorded separately by specific means. However, according to
Varpakhovsky, the graphic version of the whole performance could be as
simple as musical notation. Analysis of such a recording could then lead to a
generative aesthetic system.
The Life
In the 1920s, Varpakhovsky studied at the Moscow Conservatory and
worked as a silent film accompanist. In the beginning of the 1930s, he studied
at Moscow State University and worked on three productions as a stage
designer at local theatres. In the summer of 1933, he started collaborating with
Vsevolod Meyerhold at his Meyerhold Theatre, and in 1935 he left it. On the
night of his first recording of the performance at Vakhtangov's Theatre
Studio in 1936, Leonid Varpakhovsky was arrested on a pretext of ties to
Trotskyism and was exiled to Kazakhstan. There, in the city of Alma-Ata, he
started working at a local theatre. However, he was arrested again during the
rehearsals period of A Servant of Two Masters in 1937. This time Varpakhovsky
was sentenced to ten years in a labor camp for "counterrevolutionary activity."
In September 1940, he was transferred to a camp in Kolyma, where he was
used in general works and later in so-called prisoners' cultural brigades. His
first production with the cultural brigades was The Imaginary Invalid by Moliere.s
In Kolyma, Varpakhovsky created many productions, including plays
by Maxim Gorky, Jerome K. Jerome, Alexander Ostrovsky, and Carlo
Goldoni. One of his most important works during this period was Verdi's La
Traviata in 1945, the first opera in Kolyma, which was acclaimed as a "joyful
event."6 It was staged at the venue built by prisoners, some of whom later were
52 Slavic and East European Petjom1ance Vol. 29, No. 1
Leonid Varpakhovsky
incorporated into a production staff. Among the staff were the famous painter
and stage designer Leonid Vegener; the artist associated with the "World of
Art" group, Vasily Shuhaev; and the Parisian fashion designer Vera Shuhaeva.7
The singer Ida S. Ziskin, who performed Violetta, became
Varpakhovsky's second wife. They had both lost their first spouses in prison.
Their camp love is described in one of the Kofyflla Tales. 8
Varpakhovsky's term of exile ended in 1948; however, fearing further
repressions, he stayed in Kolyma until Stalin's death in 1953. After his exile, he
was not allowed to enter thirty-nine sites in the Soviet Union, including his
native Moscow. Nevertheless, he broke this order and seeded in Tbilisi, Georgia,
53
where he was able to stage Chekhov's The Seagull (1953) and Bulgakov's The
Dt!J'S of the Turbins (1954) at the Griboedov Theatre.
After Tiblisi, Varpakhovsky worked successfully in theatres of Kiev,
Kharkov, and Leningrad, until eventually he was allowed to return to Moscow
in 1956. In 1957, he was exonerated and became an artistic director at the
Ermolova Theatre. According to contemporaries, his staging of the play Gleb
Kosmachev (1960) by Mikhail Shatrov exhibited a strong anti-Stalinist spirit. It
was a production exquisite both as an overall form and as the work of an actor,
and predictably caused a theatrical and political scandal.
After 1957, Varpakhovsky distanced himself from any officially
sanctioned governmental posts in the theatre.9 During the last years of his life,
he suffered from severe depression. According to his son Fyodor,
Varpakhovsky feared imprisonment until the end of his life.
Over the course of his life, in Moscow alone, Varpakhovsky staged
more than twenty performances at the Maly, Ermolova, Moscow Art, and
Stanislavsky theatres. In 1968, with David Borovsky (1934-2006) as designer,
Varpakhovsky staged The Lower Depths by Gorky at the Army Theatre in Sofia,
Bulgaria. The stage design for this play created an abstract image of a shelter
with bunk beds. In the first act, the stage environment was structured around a
low horizontal line, reminiscent of the interior of a gulag barrack. In the second
act, it became a narrow symbolic structure stretched in a vertical direction,
depicting a space outside. "Deep analysis of the characters and their life" was
the main rhroughline of the play.10
This was his only work outside of the Soviet Union, and yet it was
nevertheless behind the Iron Curtain. David Borovsky, who was mainly
connected with the Moscow Taganka Theatre, worked with Varpakhovsky for
many years after the 1960s. Together, they developed a theatre aesthetic that
was at the same time ascetic and metaphorical. Their works continued the
tradition of the Russian avant-garde and Meyerhold. Leonid Varpakhovsky
considered himself a true follower of Meyerhold's method, combining extreme
theatricality and stylization. However, he did not feel free to extend himself far
beyond the limits of psychological realism, which was the dominant aesthetic
form in the Soviet Union at the time.
Varpakhovsky generalized his experience in the fundamental book,
Observations, Ana!Jsis, Experience. The defining principle of Varpakhovsky's
method was the dynamic visual structure of the whole performance, which was
54
to evolve along with the development of the plot and characters. Varpakhovsky
always insisted that rehearsals should start only after the performance's visual
structure had been established.
The second most important element of his method was music.
Following Meyerhold's tradition, Varpakhovsky perceived music as one of the
key components of a performance. The general score itself was built according
to musical laws. In Lermontov's Masquerade, staged at the Moscow Maly Theatre
(1962), Varpakhovsky used Prokofiev's Pushkin Waltzes, which he discovered in
the state archives. The great twentieth- century composer Igor Stravinsky, who
saw Masquerade, noted its "great musicaliry."11
Varapkhovky's Theatre in Montreal
Varpakhovsky's daughter Anna was born in Kolyma's city of
Magadan. She studied acting at the Schukin School of the Vakhtangov Theatre
in Moscow. In 1971, she started performing at the Stanislavsky Theatre,12 and
during the twenry-three years that followed, she built a rich repertory of both
classical and modern roles.
In 1994, in a wave of Eastern European emigration to North America,
she moved to Canada. The following year in Montreal, with her brother
Gregory Ziskin, she founded a Russian theatre named after her father.
Rehearsals were, and are still today, held at Anna's house, which has a
small stage. Actors still come from as far away as New York and Moscow and
live on the premises during rehearsals. Costumes are made at a special workshop
in Montreal, and the scenery is made in Canada from drawings and models
produced in Moscow. The preparation of a performance regularly takes four to
six months, with an extra month devoted to rehearsals. After that, the play is
performed at venues in Canada, the U.S., Russia, and Europe. To a certain extent,
the Varpakhovsky Theatre is similar to a traveling theatre with a level of quality
that would be available for a modern theatre, such as the best stage design, access
to great theatre venues, and high-grade equipment. On other occasions, the
Canadian troupe travels to countries once part of the Soviet Union, where they
reinforce themselves with local actors and designers at the theatres connected
with the name of Leonid Varpakhovsky. In 2006, Anna directed at the Magadan
Theatre, where her father had worked as a prisoner. As of 2008, the
Varpakhovsky Theatre has opened two productions in Kiev with notable
55
success. The first production was an adaptation of Ivan Menchell ' s The Cemetery
Club. The second was Uncle's Dream by Dostoevsky that builds upon the
production of the same play that had opened the Montreal Theatre (director
Gregory Ziskin, stage designer David Borovsky) in 1995.13
The author wishes to express deep gratitude to Andrey Varpakhovsky for
helpful discussion and corrections.
NOTES
1 Leonid Varpakhovsky, Nabliudenia, Anali-;v Opyt [Observations, Analysis, Experience)
(Moscow: VTO Publishing, 1978), 160.
2 Vasily Vasilievich Glebov (1891-1943) was an assistant stage manager. Starting in
1933, he worked at the Moscow Art Theatre. In addition to his assistant stage manager
duties, he took notes on how some of the productions were staged, such as The Storm,
Moliere, and The Three Sisters among others.
3 Leonid Varpakhovsky, 173.
4 Ibid., 167.
5 Ida Varpakhovsky, "Iz Vospominanyi Kolymskoi Traviaty" (From Memoirs of
Kolyma's Traviata], in Teatr GULACa: T/ospominaniia i Ocherki, ed. M. M. Korallov
(Moscow: Memorial Publishing, 1995), 69.
6 Boris Melnikov, "Opera v Magadane" (Opera in Magadan], Sovetskaya Ko!Jma
(Magadan), March 31, 1945.
7
BezAntrakia [No Intermission), directed by Gabna Dolmatovskaya (Moscow: Institut
Kinoiskussrva, 2007).
8 Varlam Shalamov, "Ivan Fyoderovich" in Ko!Jn1Skie Rasskazy [Kolyma Tales] (Moscow:
U-Factoria, 2004), 1:
9 David Borovsky, Ubegayushchee Prostranstvo [Escaping Space] (Moscow: EKSMO, 2006),
48.
10 Lilia Ivancheva, "Zavesite se vdigat" [Lifting the Curtain), Srednoshkolsko Zname
(Sofia), Oct. 1, 1968.
11 Dolmatovskaya, BezAntrakta.
12 According to his daughter Anna Varpakhovsky the last time Leonid Varpakhovsky
appeared on stage at the Stanislavsky Theatre was during opening night of The
Rainmaktr by N. Richard Nash in 1972.
13 Olga Donee, Aktrissa Anna "Ne Zhizn, a Sploshnoi Samolet" (Actress
Anna Varpakhovsky: "Not a life, but perpetual flight'1, lif!estia (Kiev), Nov. 20, 2008.
56
Slavic and East Europea/1 Perjorma11ce Vol. 29, No. 1
MADE IN POLAND AT 59E59
Thomas E dmund Starky
One of the emerging young talents of contemporary Polish theatre
and ftlm, director and screenwriter Przemyslaw Wojcieszek, had his American
theatrical debut with the U.S. production by The Play Company of his play
Made in Poland, which ran from October 29 to November 30 2008 at 59E59 in
New York City. Directed by Jackson Gay and based on a translation by Alissa
Valles, the American interpretation of Wojcieszek's play added a further twist
to the thematics of post-Communist Poland's entry into "globalization" and
its effects on a provincial ground zero. The play was first performed under the
English title in Poland at the end of 2004, the year of its accession to the
European Union. The EU expansion was ratified in a national referendum by
the Polish people, who otherwise were largely left out of deliberations over
concrete policy reforms membership would entail.l The performance by
American actOrs of Made in Poland allowed one to reconsider and re-imagine a
figure to come of the "people" that could serve as an alternative to the
contemporary form of globalization in which often the "people" seem to be
missing.2 This renewed international figure of the people would have to be
sought outside of the globalized commercialization evoked by the "Made in .
. . " label, in which people's production is erased in the large scale sale and
circulation of fetishized commodities, or as Marx famously noted in the first
volume of Capital, relationships among people were being replaced in t he
capitalist marketplace by relationships among things.
Wojcieszek's play takes place in a generic public housing project
where rows of rectangular apartment towers erected by the former system
grow increasingly dilapidated. These monotonous postwar working class
districts-which were designed within many Eastern bloc countries as cheap
mass-produced copies of the utopian modernist International Style associated
with ClAM (International Congress of Modern Architecture)-today conjure
drab images of stasis when coupled with the poverty and lack of upward
mobility of those living within their concrete walls. The play opens with the
teenage revolutionary Bogus (played by Kit Williamson) smashing up parked
cars and phone booths with a crowbar in a parking lot while shouting an
impromptu manifesto. Ola Maslik is resourceful with the set design for an
indoor performance, depending in large part on the audience's imagination to
recreate the various locations where the original Polish production took place
57
58
partially outdoors amid real apartment blocks with the actor playing Bogus
smashing up a car in a local parking lot.3 The corrugated tin set provides a
frame for the proceedings with a replica of the tail end of a vehicle built in
along with cramped living quarters, so many black holes that neo-liberal capital
only enters to extract surplus value through low wages.
More implicitly however, Bogus is attacking symbols of unequal
class-determined mobility. While smashing up a Lincoln Town Car (which it
turns out belongs to local gangsters who later return to shake down Bogus for
twenty thousand zlotys for the damage) and the infrastructure of
telecommunications, he declares war on "everything", by which one could
perhaps infer the diffuse networked powers of globalized capitalism that seem
to be everywhere and nowhere at once. The parking lot attendant Emil
Qonathan Clem), whom Bogus will befriend and whose sister Monika (Natalia
Zvereva) he becomes interested in, is a cripple bound to a wheelchair, paid
subsistence wages to watch over the paraphernalia of a mobility he himself
may never attain. In Wojcieszek's original script and in Valles's earlier
translation,
4
the object of Bogus's fury is a Lexus, and by extension perhaps,
the Friedmanesque flat world whose inhabitants are torn between traditional
olive trees and their desire for Lexuses. The gangsters who have "obtained
their Lexus" are an especially witty critique of the desires instilled by
globalization.s The change to a Lincoln Town Car plays up the protagonist's
anti-American mind-set but may lose some of the edge implied by
Wojcieszek's critique, considering that this is a Ford vehicle, a somewhat
unlikely object of rage for a working class protagonist who might rather take
issue with the recent shift in Poland toward the de-industrialized post-Fordist
paradigm of flexible labor.6 Bogus could be seen as attacking both provincial
stasis and the dynamism of the financial and communication flows of late
capitalism that pervade postmodern city centers possessing access to the
necessary infrastructure while intensifying poverty in outlaying unconnected
zones such as his own. The fusion enacted by Maslik's set- in which the
symbol of speed, an automobile, is melded with the set frame meant to evoke
an apartment tower block, the whole bearing the crowbar attack-supports
Bogus's double-edged critique.
Having rejected the "Lexus" and the fast track to "prosperity" and
"growth"- two fetishized terms in the discourse surrounding globalization
which mask the degree to which increases in average income often mean that
the rich have gotten richer while the wages of the poor have stagnated or
fallen- Wojcieszek's protagonist is left to sort through Poland's traditions.
59
Made in Poland, by Przemyslaw Wojcieszek, clirected by Jackson Gay, The Play Company, 59E59
c5
z
a-
N

R:
"'

l

:-Sl
'-')
0
"'
Made in Poland, by Przemyslaw Wojcieszek,
directed by Jackson Gay, The Play Company, 59E59
61
Two ghosts emerge, the ghost of Catholicism and the ghost of Marx. In
seeking out a partner for his revolutionary struggle, Bogus visits his
alcoholic former schoolteacher Viktor (played by Rob Campbell), an ex-
Communist casualty of the transition. A symbol of the exhaustion of
utopian energies which his young counterpart possesses in abundance,
Viktor responds to Bogus's entreaties by offering the inexperienced rebel
tea and advising him, to the latter's disappointment, to find a job. Religion
has also become largely irrelevant as evidenced by Bogus's interactions with
Father Edmund (Ed Vassallo), the local priest who is regularly mocked by
the inhabitants of the apartment blocks. Bogus quits the church in an early
scene, having tattooed "FUCK OFF" on his forehead in a sign of defiance.
The only relevant authority figure turns out to be the singer and pop culture
icon Krzysztof Krawczyk- a favorite of Bogus's mother Irena (played with
dignity and humor by Karen Young)-posters of whom decorate the stage
and whose spectral image is beamed against a back wall as the play's
surrealist ending builds to a crescendo evoking a sort of Plato's cave for
Poland's new media society. In the period of globalization in which peoples
of the world form cognitive maps of surrounding reality through popular
images, neither Communist nor Catholic ideology can speak to the masses
as authentically as the cultural hybridization evoked by Krawczyk, whose
deeply Polish musical style, to which could be added many other more
exotic-including far Eastern-influences figures at several moments in
Bart Fasbender's sound design. One such moment that celebrates the hybrid
character of the singer's work occurs when Irena comes across an old album
Krawczyk made in Bulgaria and concludes, "I've never heard Krawczyk in
Bulgarian. It must be ... Beautiful!" The solution to the aporia between
Marx and the Church also turns out to be a hybrid, as Bogus surmounts his
crisis of identity by finally declaring, "I know who I am now ... a young
Catholic from the working class!"
Following this hybrid Marxian ghost in keeping with the utopian
energies in play in the performance, perhaps cultural hybridization can
symbolize a new Internationalism to come in which the fetishized difference
captured in the "Made in ... " label attached to commodities can lose its fetish
character revealing the people (the producers) underneath. This defetishized
people could then enter the global stage not just as commodity producers, but
as historical protagonists in the constitution of a more legitimate form of
globalization that does not simply call upon them as national peoples to ratify
its expansions. This would be a form that avoids the reified national difference
0.
\.).)
Made in Poland, by Przemyslaw Wojcieszek, directed by Jackson Gay, The Play Company, 59E59
which derailed earlier utopian attempts at Internationalism. The Play
Company and its American actors engaging in a performance of
contemporary Poland's realities have evoked the possibility of such a
defetishization and succeeded in putting on an engaging introduction for the
American audience of a promising talent of Polish stage and cinema.
NOTES
1 Beate Sissenich has recently argued that the 2004 EU enlargement process was driven
by bureaucratic and political elites and that "society has been strangely absent from EU
social policy transfer in Poland and Hungary" (181). Beate Sissenich, Building States
without Sociery: European Union Enlargement and the Transfer of EU Social Policy to Poland and
Hungary (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2007).
2 The economist Dani Rodrik has outlined the structural reasons for the disappearance
of the people in processes of globalization by articulating what he calls "The Political
Trilemma of the Global Economy" in which the "nation-state system, deep economic
integration, and democracy" are shown to be " mutually incompatible." "Feasible
Globalizations" in Globalization, What's New? (New York: Columbia, 2005), 196--213.
3 Roman Pawlowski in his introduction to Wojcieszek's play in his anthology of
contemporary Polish drama describes the Legnica performance, where one night in
December 2004 the actor Eryk Lubos began demolishing a vehicle, causing some
inhabitants of the nearby apartment blocks to phone the police. "Made in Legnica" in
Made in Poland (Cracow: Korporacja Ha!Art & Horyzont, 2006), 400.
4 I thank Linda Chapman of New York Theatre Workshop for the text of Alissa Valles'
translation, portions of which were read at an evening with the author at the Martin E.
Segal Theatre on June 7, 2007.
5 Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the olive tree (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux,
1999). Wojcieszek likely would have been aware before writing his play of Friedman's
book which was translated into Polish in 2001 or at least had the general outline of the
argument from reviews in the press following the publication of the Polish translation.
Thomas L. Friedman, LeX11s i drzewo oliwne. Zro'{!'miei globalizaq{ (Poznan: Dom
Wydawniczy Rebis, 2001).
6 For recent changes in labor in Poland from an anthropologist's perspective see
Elizabeth C. Dunn, Privatizing Poland baf?y food, big business, and the remaking of labor
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004).
CHEKHOVIAN TANGO, KOREAN-STYLE:
A STAGING OF 7HE SEAGULL IN SEOUL, KOREA
Olga Muratova
The 2008 production of The Seagull performed in Korean at the
Sundol Theatre, Seoul, South Korea, was a visual presentation of an action-
packed Asian interpretation of what some might say is an actionjree Russian
drama. Out of many possible approaches to The Seagull, Sang-Sik Nam, a
professor at the Department of Theatre at Kyonggi University and the
production's director, seemed to focus on two: paying tribute to Treplev, an
unappreciated and unsung poet, and showing the destructive force of
uncontrolled passions and desires.
During the pre-show, all eleven actors were already on stage and in
character while a recording of an accordion being played in a minor key
looped over the sound system. (This later became the leading instrument in the
tango leitmotif of the first three acts.) The accordion underscoring the
European origin of the text was juxtaposed to the white make-up worn by all
the actors, which suggested an Asian tradition. The bridge between these two
traditions was the hospital setting-specifically, a mental institution, which was
indicated by a number of primitive yet troubling drawings that hung from two
strings across the left side of the stage. The mental hospital shifted the focus
of the performance to the world of emotions. However, if the troubling
emotions at play in The Seagull are mainly depicted in the text linguistically, this
Korean production materialized them through intense onstage action. The
white pajamas worn by every actor, except for Masha (Hyo Jin Kim), spoke of
the tragedy of individuals who are under the pressure to conform to
established rules. Specific accessories were added to the characters' costumes
to individualize them. They provided the audience with insight into the
characters' inner worlds, using signs to universalize the drama tis personae.
The artificial world of the play was established through the use of a
two dimensional, sterile-white outline of a cardboard house with the black
holes for a door and a window. Sorin (Tae Gong Gang) sat in solitude, stage
left, resting on his walking cane. Opposite Sorin, nine actors sat in a line. One
mysterious character, the Observer Qoo Hee Kim), who never uttered a word
during the performance, watched over the proceedings while leaning against a
65
66
column. Appearing vulnerable and marginalized from society, all eleven actors
were barefooted.
A prologue, presented as a dumb show, followed the pre-show.
Chekhov's text was first translated into the language of gestures, masks, and
dance. In the prologue, Kostya (Byung-Joo Park) was led to the front of the
stage where he sat cross-legged on a chair. Next to the chair stood a small desk
upon which a writer's notebook was laid. Kostya, absorbed by the notebook's
yellow pages, leafed through them, reading them attentively. Meanwhile, a
mini-parade of all the characters appeared on stage to a catchy tango
(composed by Serom Kim specifically for the production). The heartbreaking
chords of the tango, as well as the deliberate contrast between Kostya's stasis
and the other characters' bubbling action established the frame of a memory
play. With Kostya already dead, the performance, initiated by the Observer,
was going to be given in his honor.
The tango pageant presented the characters through Kostya's eyes.
Nina (Hee Yong Shin) held a naked, rubber baby doll that she pressed tightly
to her bosom until the start of Act IV It was a metaphor for what ultimately
destroyed Kostya's hope of ever winning her love. Masha wore a black dress
adhering to Chekhov's stage directions, but also to place her in sharp contrast
to the crowd in hospital whites. Polina (Nam Hwa Kim) wore a pink cotton
kerchief around her head and a small Korean drum on a string around her
neck. Invoking the traditions of p'ansori, a theatricalized, often satirical, musical
story of love performed to a drum rhythm, she beat her drum while moving
rhythmically around the stage-a somewhat comical take on a love story.
Shamrayev (Tae Yong Choi) wore a gardener's vest over his pajamas and a pair
of white stylish gloves. His vest and his wife's proletarian kerchief pointed to
their status as house help, but Shamrayev's gloves also suggested his refined
taste as a theatre and opera connoisseur. Dorn (Kyung Soo Park), with his long
hair styled in slick ponytail, wore a black bowtie around his neck and a glued-
on smile on his face.
Nam not only made every character wear a specific ornament or
article of clothing, but also gave them individual mO\'ements, or gestures, that
they presented to the audience during the prologue and repeated mechanically
when not directly involved in downstage action. This perpetual, out-of-
spotlight, complicated ballet served as an allegory of the life that existed
67
around Kostya, but which he never managed to incorporate into his own
existence.
At the end of the pageant, Arkaclina (Young Hee Do) tangoed in,
wearing scandalously red pumps with stiletto heels and a loud-colored shawl
with tassels that clashed with her hospital clothes. As a final touch, her hair was
extravagandy styled and her face made up with heavy eye and lip make-up. Her
costume, like camouflage, attempted to hide her age, as did her taking on a
younger lover and paying no attention to her own son.
The "tango parade" was finished by Trigorin (Sung Woo J ung), who
sported dark sunglasses and a black jacket over his pajamas. As soon as every
character was introduced, they all engaged in an intense dance of passion and
uncontrolled sensuality.
After the spectacular tango, Chekhov's Act I began. Kostya's
decadent play was performed by Nina in the set's window, while all other
characters, except for the Observer and Kostya, who nervously lip-synched
the lines she was delivering, sat at a long table with their backs to Nina, using
knives and forks in rhythmically synchronized, dance-like movements. Eating
was clearly much more important to them than anything Kostya had written or
Nina had rehearsed. Basic necessities easily won over artistic creativity, and
egotistical self-absorption quickly extinguished any altruistic intent. The
person most absorbed in herself and paying the least amount of attention to
Kostya's decadent play was Arkadina, whose shameless flirting with Trigorin
during Nina's performance led Kostya to interrupt Nina's monologue mid-
sentence.
Chekhov's dialogue between Kostya and Nina from Act I reveals the
distance between them: Kostya is madly in love with Nina while she simply
enjoys his company as a friend. Nam emphasized this emotional gap by placing
the two at opposite ends of the stage most of the time and almost never
having them face each other while they converse. The Kostya-Nina exchange
of Act I was brutally interrupted by a very physical scene in which Trigorin
chases Arkadina across the stage as a prelude to an unleashing of their animal
fervor. Playing with a long piece of bright-red cloth to symbolize their raw
passions and untamed desires, the actors took turns wrapping each other in the
cloth, pulling at its ends in a tug-of-war of sexual power, and turning it into a
twisted lasso used to draw each other close in a tight embrace.
Kostya could not stand the sight of his mother acting so
68
69
70
The Seagull, directed by Sang-Sik Nam, Sundol Theatre, Seoul, South Korea
..._]
promiscuously and left, while Nina remained glued to her spot, watching the
love games. As Arkadina was seething from Nina's unwelcome presence,
Trigorin used his red-cloth to seduce the girl. Resolute, however, Arkadina
foiled his attempt. The tango resumed and Polina and Dorn appeared on stage,
as the spotlight shifted to their version of the love dance that absorbed their
dialogue in Act I.
Following the tango scene, the spotlight caught Kostya's silhouette
out of the darkness. The yellow light hugged the young poet lying on the floor
center-stage, smoking a cigarette. The actors not involved in the scene imitated
seagull cries from their chairs. Meanwhile, Trigorin mimicked a seagull hunting
for its prey. He circled the stage until ftnally noticing Kostya. Swooping over
the much smaller Kostya, he pirtned him to the floor. Then he grabbed his
victim by the hair and violently dragged him across the stage to a bucket of
water. Kostya never resisted as Trigorin plunged his head in the bucket,
holding it there to demonstrate his absolute superiority as a writer, lover, and
object of Arkadina's attention. Trigorin's smile never left his face, not even
when he pulled Kostya's head from the water and, making sure that his
opponent was destroyed, emptied another bucket full of scraps and pieces of
paper onto his listless body, burying him almost completely under words,
words, words. The symbolic duel was won: Kostya was crushed while Trigorin
celebrated his unconditional victory.
As the lights went down, the seagull cries continued in the darkness.
When the lights came up, Trigorin and Dorn, two playboys with predatory
natures and malicious smiles, were fishing. Their rods were aimed at the center
of the stage, where Nina, Polina, and Arkadina were gathered, while Masha
wandered close by carrying a bottle of wine. The three women in the center
were easy catch for the Trigorins and Dorns of this world, the women
preferring the men's raptorial personality to the more humble and timid one of
the Kostyas and Shamrayevs. Masha, who never joined the group of lusting
females, remained the only woman who found Kostya appealing. The tango
started anew, and Dorn engaged Polina, his catch of the day, in a dance of love
and desire. He whirled her around until she was dizzy and collapsed. Never
noticing her fall, Dorn grabbed Trigorin and continued his narcissistic and
egotistical tango until an ear-splitting gunshot tore the melody in half.
Everybody froze, forming a tableau. There were four shots, and after
each the actors re-arranged themselves slightly. After the last shot, the light
73
turned blue and Kosrya appeared from the cardboard house, carrying a gun
and a sack. He threw the sack to Nina's feet, aimed his gun at it, and fired,
killing the seagull concealed inside. His actions frightened Nina, making her
clutch the baby doll and press it even closer to her bosom. Dissatisfied with
Nina's reaction and her rejection of his offering of love, he then aimed the gun
at his own throat. More seagull cries were heard, while Trigorin grabbed Nina
and propelled her to the front of the stage, away from Kostya. Alas, the
playboy writer found the idea for a future story: a girl, who lives on the lake,
like a seagull, is destroyed by a passerby for no reason whatsoever. In a gesture
of cheap eroticism, wetting his fingers with saliva, Trigorin wrote this idea for
his story in the air, while Nina watched in fascination.
Act III started with Nina rolling on the floor, suffering from the pain
of her unfortunate loYe for Trigorin. Another shot was heard, and Kosrya
came downstage to have his bandages changed-not by his mother, who never
seemed willing to even approach her son, but by Dorn, who, in lieu of
compassion, displayed every sentiment of a researcher dissecting a frog.
Instead of the bandages, rolls of coarse white toilet paper were used,
functioning later as parry streamers that everybody threw at Nina while she
was writhing in pain on the floor. Enjoying other people's suffering, it seems,
is yet another characteristic of a cruel world that has no place for sensitive
poets.
The tango started again, and Trigorin, imitating a bullfighter in a
bloody corrida, used the red cloth from Act I to lure Nina center-stage and
ignite strong passions in her. The Nina-Trigorin dance, however, was
interrupted by Arkadina, who threw her lover on the floor in a fit of rage, first
whipping and then choking him with the cloth until he crawled back to her
feet.
In Act IV, the comic components disappeared without a trace, and
tragedy proper started its rule and reign. The music in the last act was replaced
by the sound of wind. At the start of the act, ina's rubber doll was hanging
from its neck in the center of the stage. The macabre spectacle hinted at r ina's
dead baby, conceived by Trigorin, and at Masha's neglected and abandoned
child for whom she readily sacrificed her love for Kostya. Nina sang a rune
while standing in the window frame of the cardboard house. This time, her
audience faced her and clapped its hands rhythmically to follow her song. She
was singing not in the theatre, but in a brothel (known in Korea as "a house of
enterntainment.") Nina's personal tragedy was too big and her talent was not
big enough for Melpomene, but she managed to fit the parr of a hetaera
perfectly. Nina finished her song, and Medvedenko (Young Chan Park) and
Dorn threw a bunch of banknotes at her. Trigorin did not throw money, but
ominously swung the hanged baby instead.
Nina, now visibly pregnant and with a cut lip, slowly walked to the left
of the stage. By that time, Kostya had taken the Observer's place near the
column and was watching the proceedings with interest. Polina arranged the
things on Kostya's writing desk, and he took his place behind it, sitting again
cross-legged on his chair. Pouring a glass of vodka for Kostya, Polina tried to
coax him into paying attention to her daughter. Masha, who had quietly
materialized behind Kostya's back, was standing very close but never touched
him. Kostya focused on his glass of vodka, ignoring Masha. The young
woman's gestures were starred but never finished, her hands left to hang
lifelessly in mid air. Never noticing Masha's agony, Kostya finished reading the
yellow pages of his notebook and tore them into little pieces.
Arkadina and Trigorin arrived and, after the commotion of greetings,
e,erybody moved behind the cardboard house and started a game of cards in
the rosy light of the window frame. Kostya was left alone downstage, where
he remained engrossed in his writing. Once Trigorin won the game and the
noises of approval reached Kostya, he slowly poured a glass of vodka over his
head, unable to endure yet another victory of his arch-nemesis.
Nina rose from her chair and wrapped her shawl around her
shoulders. When she faced the audience a moment later, she was no longer
pregnant, but her lip was still bloody and swollen. When she walked into
Kostya's study, he was pleasantly surprised and started fussing around her,
offering his help with the shawl and pouring her a glass of ,odka. ~ h e n Nina,
wearing a frozen mask of anguish, told him about her un-extinguished love for
Trigorin, Kostya spilled her drink and his joy faded. As the rosy light changed
into blue almost imperceptibly, Kost:ya choked on his own cry of desperation;
ina ran out through the doorway. Kostya's eyes followed ina as she left
accompanied only by the sound of the wind.
The light shifted to the now drunk crowd of card players in the
window. There was another ear-splitting gunshot, and Dorn ventured to
investigate. But before he could reach the door, Sorin wheeled in Kostya's
limp, shirtless, body. The yellow light of the projector enveloped the actor's
75
torso-a glow reflecting off his skin, creating an almost religious effect. Sorin
poured a bucketful of red paint over Kostya's lifeless form. The last sound
heard in the dimming lights was that of drunken laughter coming from the
window:
Chekhov has been widely staged in Korea since 1922 when his
dramas first appeared in translation from Japanese. Without changing the
substance of Chekhov's drama, Nam took certain liberties with the play's
form; however, those liberties were so organically and effortlessly intertwined
with the original architecture of the play that they seemed indigenous. As
unorthodox as Nam's production of The Seagull was, it captured the
Chekhovian spirit that constitutes the essence of the play.
76
WAJDA'S KA TYN
Leonard Quart
Poland has produced a host of world-class directors-Krzysztof
Kieslowski, Krzysztof Zanussi, Agnieszka Holland, Roman Polanski, and
arguably, its greatest-Andrzej Wajda, the director of such politically and
historically charged masterworks as Kana/, Ashes and Diamonds, Man of
Marble. In the last decade and a half, Wajda, has continued into his eighties
making films, but few of them have been distributed commercially in the
United States. The best of them was Pan Tadeusz (1999), an artistic and box-
office success in Poland, based on Adam Mickiewicz's (the Polish Romantic
poet and playwright) nineteenth-century epic poem.
Hi s most recent fil m, Katyn, the first in five years, depicted the
Katyn massacre, what Wajda calls the "unhealed wound" in his country's
history. It was a huge hit in Poland, received a screening at the Tribeca Film
Festival in the spring of 2008, and was nominated for an Oscar for Best
Foreign Language film for 2007. The 1940 Katyn massacre was a result of
the 1939 secret non-aggression pact signed by Hitler and Stalin, and just
one of WWII's countless atrocities. After the pact was signed, the Red
Army took nearly 18,000 Polish officers as prisoners and occupied all of the
Polish eastern provinces. Among the POWs there were a dozen generals,
and a majority of the POWs were officers of the reserve, most of whom
came from the intelligentsia.
The systematic murder by the N.K.V.D. of 15,000 members of the
Polish officers corps under Stalin's orders (Wajda's own father, Jakub, being
one of them) had stood for decades as the Poles' secret cross to bear. The
Katyn graves were discovered in April 1943 only when t he German army
moved east. The Soviet authorities then denied the German charges,
claiming the Nazis executed the Polish POWs. During t he years when the
Communists governed Poland, the subject of the massacre was off limits,
silence on Katyn was expected, and the advocates of publicizing the real
truth were persecuted and severely punished. It wasn't until 1989 when the
Communists lost control of Poland that the truth of Katyn was revealed. In
1990 the U.S.S.R. authorities, after years of treating the charges as a
defamation of the heroic anti-fascist struggle, finally admitted for the first
time that the Soviet N.K.V.D. had committed the crime.
77
Andrzej Wajda
78
It rook a director of Wajda's moral courage and his commitment ro
portraying Polish history and mythology to make a fum of this nature. Karyn
is an unsentimental work, more interested in carefully detailing the
execution of the officers, and its ramifications on the families that they left
behind, than with entering the consciousness of its many characters. As
shown in the fllm, the event was a national trauma that affected families all
across the country waiting anxiously to learn who had died. Several scenes
center on Polish crowds gathering in the city's streets to listen as the names
of the victims are read.
For the predominantly Polish-American audience I saw it with (an
invitational screening sponsored by the Polish Cultural Institute), the film
provided a powerful shock of recognition and clearly spoke to them in a
profoundly personal way. So when the film concluded, and the theatre lights
went on, I saw tears streaming down many of the audience members' faces.
Karyn is based on the Andrzej Mularczyk novel Post Mortem, which
utilizes the letters and diaries of real-life victims-unearthed when the
Nazis first came across the mass graves. It contains a number of
crisscrossing story lines that shift from the mortal plight of the Polish
officers held by the Russians to their families back in Nazi-occupied
Cracow. Few of the characters are given much individuation. What t he
characters almost all share is facing the moral dilemma of either keeping
silent or asserting the truth of what happened to their loved ones in Katyn,
which in turn would mean confronting imprisonment or worse. And not
one of them can escape the anguish of inhabiting a nation that suppresses
the horrific truth and continues perpetuating a life lie.
One of the few developed characters is the sharply observant Lt.
Jerzy (Andrzej Chyra), who is one of the few officers that survived Katyn,
but at the cost of his own soul. He falsely testifies that Katyn was a Nazi
atrocity and discovers he can't live with his guilt-ultimately committing
suicide.
There are two characters that tend to behave without fear or
constraint, and boldly and self-destructively challenge the Soviet's version
of Katyn. They are awkwardly introduced into the narrative, with bare back
stories to explain their appearance, and both are then destroyed by the
Polish Communists. One of them, the blond, fiercely self-righteous
Agnieszka (Magdalena Cielecka), is a veteran of the Warsaw Uprising, and
uncompromising in her hatred of the Soviets and their Polish surrogates-
choosing the side of "the murdered not the murderers." She is also
79
alienated from her art school director sister, who though without illusions
about the Communists has joined the Party-utterly pessimistic about the
future of a free Poland. The other, a young handsome partisan, Tadeusz
(Antoni Pawlicki), who spent the war in the forests, acts with such foolhardy
courage that he is quickly destroyed without even getting to experience fully
his chance at first love. Wajda admires their courage, but implicitly we sense
there is something quixotic and self-destructive in their behavior- that they
are indulging in a Polish specialty-grand and noble gestures without much
practical grasp of consequence.
The imprisoned Polish officers and their waiting wives behave in an
exemplary manner. The wives display undivided loyalty and commitment to
their husbands, and the men are stoical and brave. A key strand of the film
follows Anna (Maja Ostaszewska), whose story parallels that of Wajda's
mother. It is 1939 when Anna arrives at the eastern border of Poland in
search of her husband Andrzej (Artur Zmijewski), a Polish officer who
resists her pleas to run away with her, choosing to adhere to his military
pledge and stay with his cavalry regiment.
One of the film's flaws is that almost all the Polish characters are
given little dimension beyond heroic idealism and forbearance. And Wajda's
portrait of Polish daily life during the occupation and right after the war is
oddly sanitized-the women are all handsome and well-dressed, as if
squalor and hunger were not the lot of Poles during that period. And if
Wajda barely explores the Polish characters here, his Nazi and Soviet
oppressors are almost indistinguishable cardboard cutouts of pure villainy,
except for one Russian army officer who saves Anna and her daughter from
deportation.
Ka!Jn is less an artistic triumph than a powerful recreation of a
historical event that skillfully (fluid editing and a dark, poignant score by
Krzysztof Penderecki which avoids overwhelming the action) brings to
light an indelible, harrowing, and murderous moment in Poland's history.
Since Wajda allows us little emotional identification with the film's
characters, it's the massacre that takes central stage and grants Ka!Jn its
tragic stature.
In fact, the most memorable and striking part of the ftlm are its last
fifteen minutes where the Polish officers are transported to be methodically
murdered by stone-faced Russian troops. They are all shot in the back of
the head- leaving the floors and walls stained with blood. Archival footage
from German and Soviet propaganda ftlms and newsreels are also intercut
81
to convey the immensity and viciousness of the massacre. The camera in
that sequence pans over rows upon rows of corpses that stretch across the
enormous pit where they have been buried and now exhumed. And we see
forensic investigators examine the dried out bodies of the officers still
clutching rosaries when they died.
\X'ajda wanted the film to show "the lie" of Katyn for the first time
on the screen, and to provide a catharsis for Poles, because in his words,
"we have finally shown the truth." If nothing else, the film clearly
succeeded in doing just that.
82 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 29, o. 1
CONTRIBUTORS
KERMIT DUNKELBERG received his Ph.D. 1n Performance Studies
from New York University in 2008. This article draws on research for his
doctoral dissertation, "Grotowski and North American Theatre:
Translation, Transmission, Dissemination." He has published articles and
rev1ews in The Drama Revie111, American Theatre, Theatre Forum, and Theatre
Journal.
OLENA JENNINGS completed her M.F.A. at Columbia University and
her M.A. at the University of Alberta. Her feature articles and book reviews
can be found on KGB Bar Lit. Her translations from the Ukrainian have
been published in Poetry International, Poetry International Web, and Chelsea. She
recently completed her novel, Temporary Shelter, and is at work on a new
novel, The Scent of Skin.
ALLEN J. KUHARSKI is chair of the Department of Theatre at
Swarthmore College. His articles, reviews, and translations have been widely
published in the U.S., Great Britain, Poland, France, and the Netherlands.
He is a co-editor of the sixteen-volume collected works of Polish
playwright Witold Gombrowicz being published by Wydawnictwo
Literackie in Cracow.
OLGA MURATOVA teaches Russian Studies at John Jay College of
Criminal Justice, City University of New York. She is currently working on
her doctorate dissertation in the Department of Comparative Literature,
Graduate Center, CUNY She is a regular contributor to SEEP.
MAYIA PRAMATAROVA holds a Ph.D. from the Russian Academy of
Theatre Arts (GITIS), writes as an American Correspondent for L!K (Sofia,
Bulgaria) and The Stage (Moscow), is an observer for post.scriptum.ru and an
associate at the Davis Center, Harvard University. She teaches at the
National Theatre Academy (Sofia). She has been advisor at the Bulgarian
Cultural Insti tute (Moscow) and dramaturg at the National Theatre (Sofia).
83
LEONARD QUART is Professor Emeritus of Cinema Studies at the
College of Staten Island and at the CUNY Graduate Center, a Contributing
Editor of Cineaste, and author of innumerable reviews and essays on film.
Major publications include the third edition of American Film and Socie!J Since
1945 (Praeger, 2001) and How the War was Remembered Hol!Jwood and Vietnam
(Praeger, 1988), both co-authored with Albert Auster, and The Films of Mike
Leigh for Cambridge University Press (2000), co-authored with Raymond
Carney.
TH01f.AS EDMUND ST ARKY teaches Polish in the Department of Slavic
Languages and Literatures at Columbia University, where he is a Ph.D.
candidate at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society (ICLS). His
doctoral dissertation considers critical responses to globalization in post-1989
Polish literature, theatre, visual art, and fum.
Photo Credits
Virlana Tkacz
Vitaliy Horbonos
Cover of In a Dffftrent Light
Watoku Ueno
Still the River Flows
Alexander Khantaev
Warsaw Theatre Meetings FestivalPoster
Design by Studio TEMEPROWKA
!phi genie
Ryszard Kornecki
Phedra
Ryszard Kornecki
Leonid Varpakhovsky
Mayia Primatarova
Made in Po/amd
Carol Rosegg
The Seagull
Courtesy of the Sundol Theatre
85
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
Witkiewicz: Seven Plavs
Translated and Edited by Daniel Gerould
Witkiewicz
SEVEN PLAYS
This volume contains seven of
Witkiewicz's most important
plays: The Pragmatists, Tumor
Brainiowicz, Gyubal Wahazar,
The Anonymous Work, The Cut-
tlefish, Dainty Shapes and Hairy
Apes, and The Beelzebub
Sonata, as well as two of his the-
oretical essays, "Theoretical
Introduction" and "A Few Words
About the Role of the Actor in the
Theatre of Pure Form."
Witkiewicz ... takes up and continues the vein of dream and
grotesque fantasy exemplified by the late Strindberg or by
Wedekind; his ideas are closely paralleled by those of the surre-
alists and Anton in Artaud which culminated in the masterpieces
of the dramatists of the Absurd . ... It is high time that this major
playwright should become better known in the Eng/ish-speaking
world. Martin Esslin
Price US$2o.oo plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
Please make payments in US dollars payable to : Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.
Mail Checks or money orders to: The Circulation Manager, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, The CUNY
Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY100164309 ___ 1
Visit our website at: http://web.gc.cuny.edu/mestc/ Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 2 1 2 8 1 7 1 ~
roMANIA After 2000
Edited by Saviana Stanescu and Daniel Gerould.
Translation editors: Saviana Stanescu and Ruth Margraff.
This volume represents the first
anthology of new Romanian
Drama published in the United
States and introduces American
readers to compelling play-
wrights and plays that address
resonant issues of a post-totali -
tarian society on its way toward
democracy and a new European
identity. includes the plays:
Stop The Tempo by Gianina
Carbunariu, Romania. Kiss Me!
by Bogdan Georgescu, Vitamins
by Vera I on, Romania 21 by
~ t e f n Peca and Waxing West by Saviana Stanescu.
This publication produced in collaboration with the Romanian
Cultural Institute in New York and Bucharest.
Please make payments in US dollars payable to : Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.
Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY100164309
Visit our website at: http://web.gc.cuny.edu/mestc/ Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 2128171868
Buenos Aires in Translation
Translated and Edited by jean Graham-Jones
BAiT epitomizes true international theatrical collabora-
tion, bringing together four of the most important con-
temporary playwrights from Buenos Aires and pairing
them with four cutting-edge US-based directors and
their ensembles.
Plays include: Women Dreamt Horses by Daniel
Veronese; A Kingdom, A Country or a Wasteland, In the
Snow by Lola Arias; Ex-Antwone by Federi co Leon; Panic
by Rafael Spregelburd. BAiT is a Performance Space 122
Production, an initiative of Salon Volcan, with the sup-
port of Institute Cervantes and the Consulate General of
Argentina in NewYork.
Four Works for the Theatre by Hugo Claus
Translated and Edited by David Willinger
Hugo Claus is the foremost contemporary writer of Dutch
language theatre, poetry, and prose. Flemish by birth and
upbringing, Claus is the author of some ninety plays, nov-
els, and collections of poetry. He is renowned as an enfant
terribl e of the arts throughout Europe. From the time he
was affiliated with the international art group, COBRA, to
his liaison with pornographic film star Silvia Kristel, to the
celebration of his novel, The Sorrow of Belgium, Claus has
careened through a career that is both scandal-ridden
and formidable. Claus takes on all the taboos of his times.
Price USSts.oo plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
Please make payment s in US dollars payable to: Marti n E. Segal Theatre Center.
Mail Checks or money orders to: The Circulat ion Manager, Mart in E. Segal Theatre Center, The CUNY
Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NYtoo16-4309
Visit our website at: http://web.gc.cuny.edu/ mestc/ Contact: mest c@gc.cuny.edu or 212-817-1868
The Heirs of Moliere
Translated and Edited by Marvin Carlson
I'" I I IU''CI'I ( OMf(Hh ()t ltll
li .4'10 lo$
.fu.c.,....iQ....._ ... .....,,_
....
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ffi
This volume contains four representative French comedies of
the period from the death of Moliere to the French Revolution:
The Absent-Minded Lover by Jean-Fran<:ois Regnard, The Con-
ceited Count by Philippe Nericault Destouches, The Fashion-
able Prejudice by Pierre Nivelle de Ia Chaussee, and The Friend
of the Laws by Jean-Louis Laya.
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 charac-
ter through the highly popular sentimental comedy of the
mid-eighteenth century, to comedy that employs the Moliere tradition for more con-
temporary political ends.
Pixerecourt: Four Melodramas
Translated and Edited by Daniel Gerould & Marvin Carlson
This volume contains four of Pixerecourt's most important
melodramas: The Ruins of Babylon or ]afar and Zaida, The
Dog of Montargis or The Forest of Bondy, Christopher Colum-
bus or The Discovery of the New World, and Alice or The Scot-
tish Gravediggers, as well as Charles Nodier's
"Introduction" to the 1843 Collected Edition of Pixerecourt's
plays and the two theoretical essays by t he playwright,
"Melodrama," and "Final Refl ections on Melodrama. "
Pixerecourt furnished the Theatre of Marvels with its most
stunning effects, and brought the classic situations of fair-
ground comedy up-to-date. He determined the structure of
a popular theatre which was to last through the 19th centu-
ry. Hannah Winter, The Theatre of Marvels
Price US$2o.oo each plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
Please make payments in US doll ars payable to: Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.
Mail Checks or money orders to: The Circul ation Manager, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, The CUNY
Graduate Cent er, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY100164309
Visit our website at: htt p: / f web.gc.cuny. edu/mestc/ Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 212817-1868
Four Plays From North Africa
Translated and edited by Marvin Carlson
This volume contains four modern plays from the
Maghreb: Abdelkader Alloula's The Veil and Fatima
Gallaire's House of Wives, both Algerian, julila Baccar's
Araberlin from Tunisia, and Tayeb Saddiki's The Folies Ber-
bers from Morocco.
A
As the rich tradition of modern Arabic theatre has recently
begun to be recognized by the Western theatre community,
an important area within that tradition is still under-repre-
sented in existing anthologies and scholarship. That is the
drama from the Northwest of Africa, the region known in
Arabic as the Maghreb.
The Arab Oedipus
Edited by Marvin Carlson
This volume contains four plays based on the Oedipus leg-
end by four leading dramatists of the Arab world. Tawfiq
Al-Hakim's King Oedipus, Ali Ahmed Bakathir's The
Tragedy of Oedipus, Ali Salim's The Comedy of Oedipus
and Walid lkhlasi's Oedipus as well as Al-Hakim's preface
to his Oedipus on the subject of Arabic tragedy, a preface
on translating Bakathir by Dalia Basiouny, and a general
introduction by the editor.
An awareness of the rich tradition of modern Arabic the-
atre has only recently begun to be felt by the Western the-
atre community, and we hope that this collection will con-
tribute to that growing awareness.
THE ARAB OEDIPUS
fOUII P'LAYI
Price US$2o.oo each plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
Please make payments in US dollars payable to: Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.
Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY100164309
Visit our website at: http://web.gc.cuny.edu/mestc/ Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 2128171868

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