SEEP Vol. 13 No.1 Spring 1993

volt.me 13, no.
1
spring 1993
SEEP (ISSN II 1047-0018) is a publication of the Institute for Con-
temporary Eastern European Drama and Theatre under the auspices
of the Center for Advanced Study in Theatre Arts (CASTA), Graduate
Center, City University of New York. The Institute Office Is Room
1206A, City University Graduate Center, 33 West 42nd Street, New
York, NY 10036. All subscription requests and submissions should
be addressed to the Editors of SEEP: Daniel Gerould and Alma law,
CAST A, Theatre Program, City University Graduate Center, 33 West
42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.
EDITORS
Daniel Gerould
Alma Law
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
Patrick Hennedy
Jay Plum
ADVISORY BOARD
Edwin Wilson, Chair
Marvin Carlson
Leo Hecht
Martha W. Coigney
CAST A Publications are supported by generous grants from the Lucille
Lortel Chair in Theatre and the Sidney E. Cohn Chair in Theatre Studies
in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the City University of New York.
Copyright 1993 CASTA
SEEP has a very liberal reprinting policy. Journals and newsletters which
desire to reproduce articles, reviews, and other materials which have
appeared in SEEP may do so, as long as the following provisions are met:
a. Permission to reprint must be requested from SEEP in writing before
the fact.
b. Credit to SEEP must be given in the reprint.
c. Two copies of the publication in which the reprinted material has
appeared must be furnished to the Editor of SEEP immediately upon
publication.
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Slavic and East European Performance, Vol. 13, No.1
Editorial Policy
From the Editors
Events
TABLE OF CONTENTS
"Yuri Lyubimov Directs in Helsinki"
Alma Law
"The First Anton Chekhov International Theatre Festival"
John Freedman
"Theatre-On-Podol: Kiev, Ukraine Repertoire
and Performance Style"
Suzanne Trauth
"Antigone Hangs Herself in Tompkins Square Park"
Jan Kott
PAGES FROM THE PAST
"Zygmunt Hubner's Letter to Vaclav Havel"
REVIEWS
"No Conductor and In Shadow"
Jane House
"Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz's The Water Hen
Performed at the Playground Theatre"
David Callaghan
"lztok K o v a ~ s Slovenian Performance Art"
Patrick Hennedy
Contributors
Playscripts in Translation Series
Subscription Policy
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EDD'ORIAL POLICY
Manuscripts in the following categories are solicited: articles of
no more than 2,500 words, performance and film reviews, and
bibliographies. Please bear in mind that all submissions must concern
themselves either with contemporary materials on Soviet and East
European theatre, drama and film, or with new approaches to older
materials in recently published works, or new performances of older plays.
In other words, we welcome submissions reviewing innovative
performances of Gogol but we cannot use original articles discussing
Gogol as a playwright.
Although we welcome translations of articles and reviews from
foreign publications, we do require copyright release statements.
We will also gladly publish announcements of special events and
anything else which may be of interest to our discipline. All submissions
are refereed.
All submissions must be typed double-spaced and carefully
proofread. The Chicago Manual of Style should be followed.
Transliterations should follow the Library of Congress system.
Submissions will be evaluated, and authors will be notified after
approximately four weeks.
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Slavic and East European Pcrfonnance Vol. 13, No. 1
ntOM THE EDITORS
As we begin our thirteenth year of publication, we celebrate in
this issue the theatre's capacity to encompass all forms of performance
from those offering nothing more than sheer entertainment, as in Yuri
Lyubimov's exuberant Ostrovsky production, The Comedians, at the
Helsinki National Theatre, to Janusz Glowacki's Antigone in New York,
which speaks with such immediacy of the homeless in New York City.
We also celebrate the dedication and determination of theatre
artists in continuing to create theatre under the most extreme
circumstances. John Freedman's report in this issue about the First
Anton Chekhov International Theatre Festival in Moscow gives striking
testimony to such dedication as when the circumstances of civil war in
Tajikistan could not prevent the Akhoruo Experimental Youth Theatre
from coming to the Festival to show their most recent work.
In this issue we are pleased to welcome a new contributor,
Suzanne Trauth, whose report on her institution's exchange project with
the Theatre-on-Podol offers another insight into the world of post-coup
theatre in Ukraine. We are always pleased to include these reports and
we look forward to receiving more of them for future issues.
For our Pages from the Past we include a moving account of the
late Zygmunt Hubner's efforts to stage three of Vaclav Havel's plays in
Warsaw (another example of working against extreme odds), and of his
success on the very eve of his death a month before opening night.
We are introducing in this issue a new section on Publications.
We welcome information on newly published books directly related to the
field of Slavic and East European performance. We request that
submissions include specific information on publisher and price as well as
a one sentence description of the book's content.
-Alma Law and Daniel Gerould
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EVENTS
STAGE PRODUCfiONS
The American premiere of Mikhail Bulgakov's satire, Black
Snow, opened at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, MA,
November 27, 1992. Keith Dewhurst adapted the n o v e ~ and Richard
Jones directed the production. On January 11, Robert Brustein
moderated a public symposium with Alma Law (Center for Advanced
Study in Theatre Arts, CUNY), Laurence Senelick (Tufts University), and
Anatoly Smelyanski (Moscow Art Theatre).
Slovenian choreographer Iztok o v a ~ presented his performance
piece, How I Caught a Falcon, at P.S. 122 in New York, January 15-16.
See the review in this issue for more details about the performance.
The Cloud in Trousers: An Evening of Russian Poetry From
Pushkin to Pasternak, was staged as a benefit for New York's
Circle-in-the-Square Theatre, January 18.
Following her solo performance in Shakespeare's Women at the
Moscow Art Theatre, Claire Bloom joined forces with Alia Demidova,
one of Moscow's leading actresses, to present Silenced Voices, a
celebration of Anna Akhmatova's and Marina Tsvetsyeva's poetry. The
production opened at the Symphony Space in New York on January 31
and traveled to Cambridge, MA, Providence, RI, Fairfax, VA, and Miami
Beach, FL. On January 22, Bloom and Fritz Weaver read short stories
by Chekhov; and on January 23, Bloom presented an one-woman
production of Anna Karenina, which lasted nearly five hours.
Two East European comedies, Vaclav Havel's Audience and
Slawomir Mrorek's Striptease, were presented by the Pelican Studio in
New York, February 4-14. Both productions were directed by Edward
Einhorn.
New York's House of Candles Theatre produced Mroi:ek's
Tango, February 3 through March 13. The production was directed by
Rasa Allan Kazlas.
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Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No. 1
Marlene, Marlene: Queen of Androgyny, conceived and directed
by Jiri Schubert, is presented at Trocadero's Cabaret in New York, March
2 through April 1. Call (212) 240-0636 for details.
Antigone in New York, by Janusz Glowacki, plays March 10-28 at
the Arena Stage in Washington, DC. The production is directed by
Arena's Associate Artistic Director Laurence Maslon and is designed by
Kim Jennings. See Jan Kott's article in this issue for more information
about the play.
Alex Wierzbicki directs David Mamet's adaptation of The Three
Sisters at Lehman College, March 17-21. For more information, call (212)
960-8134 between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. The production is free to the
public.
A presentation of The Blind Alley of Light, a new play written by
Estonian playwright and Minister of Culture Paul-Eerik Rummo and
translated by Mardi V algemae, is planned in conjunction with the
Estonian Cultural Symposium, April 10. For information about the
production or the symposium, call (212) 799-6106.
Virlana Tkacz and the Yara Arts Group will stage Blind Sight at
New York's La Mama E.T.C., April 15 through May 2. Call (212)
475-6474 for tickets and information.
The Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre presents Josef
Capek's ''Tales of the Little Cat Kochichka and the Little Dog Pejsek" and
other folk stories at the Cooper-Hewitt National Museum in New York,
April 18 and May 16.
Lithuania hosts its first International Theatre Festival LIFE, May
10-23. Ingmar Bergman and Katona Joszef are among the artist
scheduled to appear.
INTERCULTURAL PERFORMANCE COLWQUIUM
"Performance in Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of
Independent States Since 1989," an intercultural performance colloquium
sponsored by the New York University Humanities Council and the
Department of Performance Studies, continues its exploration of
contemporary performance in the former Eastern bloc.
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On March 3, a panel comprised of Ondrej Hrab, Director of the
Archa Theatre in Prague, and Nishan Parlakian, Professor of Drama at
John Jay College, discussed performance in the Czech Republic and
Armenia.
The colloquium concludes April14 with a panel discussion about
performance in Poland, the Baltics, and the Czech Republic. Peter
Oslzly, Director of the Center for Experimental Theatre in Prague, Mark
Svede, an art historian and independent curator, and Juliusz Tyszka, a
visiting scholar from Poland in the Department of Performance Studies
at New York University, will be panelists.
For more information, contact the Performance Studies
Department, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University (212)
995..0547.
GROTOWSKI SEMINAR
New York University's Educational Theatre Program, through
the generous support of the Kosciuszko Foundation, offered a week-long
seminar, "Jerzy Grotowski: The Theatrical Period, February 22-27. New
York University Professors James Larson and Robert Taylor co-
sponsored the event. Professor Robert Fmdlay of the University of
Kansas led a group of thirty students in an intensive study of Grotowski's
experimental work in the theatre. Among the highlights of the seminar
was an appearance by Grotowski at which he presented a never-before-
seen film of The Constant Prince.
MA YAKOVSKY CENTENNIAL
Lehman College has scheduled a variety of events to celebrate
the one-hundredth anniversary of Vladimir Mayakovsky's birth.
The Centennial officially opens with a poetry reading and a
discussion about "The Poet and the Public" with Allen Ginsberg and
Y evgeny Yevtushenko scheduled for the evening of Friday, April 30.
Several other poetry readings are planned for the weekend of
April 30-May 1, including readings of Mayakovsky's poetry in English,
Russian, French, Italian, and Spanish. Margaret Barringer of the
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Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol. 13, No. 1
American Poetry Center in Philadelphia, along with several Russian poets
from the Bronx, will read from their works as well.
Also on April 30, David Bady presents "Mayakovsky and Film"
as part of Lehman's City and Humanities Program. The noon-time
program includes a lecture on Mayakovksy's interest in film as well as a
screening of vintage ftlm footage.
Other Russian films such as The Lady and the Hooligan will be
shown continuously on April 30 and May 1.
Author and Russian avant-garde art collector Paul McGinniss
leads a select group of Lehman students in a Mayakovsky Rap Workshop,
April 30 and May 1.
An academic symposium highlights the events planned for May
1. Chaired by Marlene Gottlieb and Robert Whittaker, the symposium
will explore such topics as: "A Fresh Look at Early Soviet Culture,"
"Mayakovsky's Influence in Hispanic Literature," and "Mayakovsky:
Feminist Perspectives."
Also on Saturday, the Moonlight Theatre Players of Schuyhill
County, PA will present a dramatization of a Mayakovksy poetry reading.
The company is directed by Marlene Row.
Patricia J. Thompson, daughter of Mayakovsky and Elly Jones,
offers her account of her parents' love affair, "Mayakovsky in Manhattan:
A Love Story," as part of Saturday's activities. She will sign copies of her
book of the same title at the Russian Tea Room on May 2.
Saturday's program concludes with a reception featuring the
cuisines of Russia, Armenia, and Georgia. Ginsberg and Yevtushenko are
guests of honor.
Several other events are planned in conjunction with the
centennial celebration, including an exhibition of the photography of
Aleksandr Rodchenko at the Lehman College Art Gallery, April 20
through May 13. The exhibit features photographs of Mayakovsky from
the collection of Walker, r s i t t ~ and McGinnis.
A rap production of Mayakovsky's The Bedbug, directed by B. D.
Bills, opens April 28 and runs through May 2 in the Studio Theatre.
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Lehman College plans to publish the proceedings of the
centennial celebration as well as many of the public lectures and
discussions in an upcoming volume.
BIOMECHANICS WORKSHOP
Tufts University will host an intensive four-week acting workshop
in Biomechanics, "Beyond Realism: The Tradition of V.E. Meyerhold,"
May 24 through June 30. For more information, contact Anne Marie
Russo, Office of Professional and Continuing Studies, Tufts University,
112 Packard Avenue, Medford, MA 02155, (617) 627-3562.
FILM
"Artists, Activists, and Ordinary People: Jews in Twentieth-
Century Europe," an international film festival of rarely seen films
examining Jewish history and culture, was presented in the Walter Reade
Theatre at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, January 16-24.
Now in its second year, this annual festival is a collaborative project
between The Jewish Museum and The Film Society of Lincoln Center.
Three of the eleven featured films were from Eastern Europe (Grand
Concert of the People, Get Thee Out, andFatherand His Three Sons- The
Bartos Family). Two others fdms (Stavisky and Berlin-Jerusalem)
examined the experiences of Russian emigres and expatriates.
Grand Concert of the People, a Russian documentary directed by
Semyon Aronovitch, looks at two of the most important events that
shaped the history of Soviet Jews in the twentieth century: the
extermination of the so-called "Anti-Fascist Committee" (which included
members of the Jewish intelligentsia like Solomon Mikhoels, then
Director of the State Jewish Theatre) and the so-called "Doctors Plot" to
exterminate the Jewish doctors responsible for treating Stalin and other
members of the Politburo. Theatre historians might fmd this film of
particular interest because it contains extensive footage of Mikhoel's
acclaimed production of King Lear.
Russian theatre director Dmitri Astrakhan has won critical
attention for his frrst feature-length fdm, Get Thee Out, an adaptation of
Sholem Aleichem's stories about the daily struggle of a Russian village to
preserve its heritage from oppressive outside forces.
Peter ForgAcs's Father and His Three Sons- The Bartos Family
juxtaposes footage from home movies from the 1920s through the 1940s
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with scenes of the political unrest currently sweeping Europe. Overall,
the fdm provides an "ethnography" of a vanishing element of Hungarian
society.
In one of his most enigmatic films, Stavisky, French director
Alain Resnais explores the fate of twentieth-century revolutionaries,
comparing Leon Trotsky's exile in France with the demise of Russian
emigre Sacha Stavisky.
Berlin-Jerusalem, directed by Israeli director Amos Gitai, traces
the lifelong friendship of the German expressionist poet Else
Lasker-Schiller and Russian revolutionary Mary Shotat, contrasting life in
Berlin during the 1920s with life in the Palestinian collective founded by
Shotat during the 1920s and 1930s.
Five films from the Commonwealth of Independent States,
Hungary, and Poland were screened at the Brooklyn Museum as part of
the festival, "Reemergence: Jewish Life in Eastern Europe," February 7
through March 7. The featured films included Alexander Rodnyansky's
investigation of the mysterious disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg, The
Mission of Raoul Wallenberg (February 7); Edit Koszegi's stories of Jewish
life in Budapest before and after the Nazi occupation, Photographs (To
Our Children) (February 14); Pal Sandor's drama about a daring escape
from Budapest before the 1956 Communist invasion, Daniel Takes a Train
(February 21); Alexander Zeidovitch's adaptation of Isaac Babel's tales
of Odessa's underworld, Sunset (February 28); and Rodoslaw
Piwowarski's drama about the Polish youth demonstrations in 1968, March
Caresses (March 7).
Film Forum offers a two-week retrospective on the films of
Sergei Eisenstein, March 5-18, featuring such works as: Potemkin (March
5-8); Que Viva Mexico (March 5-8); October (March 9-11); Misery and
Fortune of Women (March 9-ll);Alerander Nevsky (March 12-14); Strike
(March 12-14); General Line (March 15-16); Romance Sentimentale,
Bezhin Meadow and Glumov's Diary (March 15-16); Ivan the Terrible, Palt
One (March 17-18); and Ivan the Terrible, Palts Two and Three (March
17-18).
The New School for Social Research in New York hosts a festival
of East and Central European fllms, "Cinema in Transition," April17-29.
Eighteen feature films as well as documentaries, shorts, and student films
will be presented. A day-long symposium with Western scholars, critics,
and established as well as aspiring East European fdmmakers scheduled
for April 24 is among the highlights of the festival. Directors whose films
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are scheduled to be shown include Kujtim Cashku (Albania), Jan Sverak
(Czech Republic), Wojciech Marczewski (Poland), Radu Nicoara
(Romania), and Rijko Grlic (Croatia). Call (212) 727-2814 for details.
PUBLICATIONS
Wandering Stars: Russian Emigre Theatre, 1905-1940, edited by
Laurence Senelick, was recently published by the University of Iowa Press
($39.95). This collection of papers first delivered at a Soviet-American
conference on the subject at the Harvard Theatre Collection in 1991
(SEEP vol. 11, no. 2 Summer 1991) explores a wide range of historical,
cultural, and theatrical subjects. Contributors include Alexei
Bartoshevich, Sharon Carnicke, Deirdre Hurst Duprt, Spencer Golub,
Vladislav Ivanov, Alma Law, Sergei Ostrovsky, Elena Polyakova, Valery
Semenovsky, Laurence Senelick, Anatoly Smeliansky, Inna Soloviova, and
Mary Hunter Wolf.
prepared by Jay Plum
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Slavic and East European Pcrfonnancc Vol. 13, No. 1
YURI LYUBIMOV DIRECI'S IN HELSINKI
Alma Law
Yuri Lyubimov had good reason to smile on opening night of his
latest production, The Comedians, at the Finnish National Theatre in
November. After a series of less than successful productions at the
Taganka since his reinstallment as Chief Director in 1989, he has once
again demonstrated that it's too soon to write him off. At seventy-five
and as energetic as ever, Lyubimov seems to have found after almost a
decade of staging dramatic productions abroad a new confidence.
Lyubimov made his much-anticipated directing debut at the
National Theatre a year ago in October when he staged his own
adaptation of Dostoevsky's A Raw Youth. Lyubimov had initially planned
to direct this work at the Taganka only to be turned down by the theatre's
artistic council because it wasn't timely enough.
F'rrst published in 1875, A Raw Youth is generally regarded as the
weakest of Dostoevsky's major works. Still, this lesser-known novel
contains all of the familiar character types and themes that would occupy
Dostoevsky in his more mature works. Lyubimov has streamlined the
novel's tangle of plots and subplots to focus on a series of fast moving
episodes in the hero Arkady Dolgoruky's development in understanding
the world around him. Arkady, brilliantly interpreted by Markku Maal-
ismaa, is the illegitimate son of Versilov, an impoverished nobleman full
of liberal ideas. Ashamed of the lowly circumstances of his background,
Arkady initially seeks power through money. But this line is subverted by
an avalanche of subplots and typical Dostoevskian motifs, all united by a
mysterious letter sewn in the lining of Arkady's coat.
Andrey von Schlippe's spare setting for A Raw Youth, which takes
place in St. Petersburg, is dominated by a diaphanous curtain that turns
and floats, becoming a living presence, as well as a vehicle for facilitating
the complex bundle of plots and melodramatic turns that sweep through
Dostoevsky's novel.
The entire cast (most of whom also perform in the Ostrovsky
production), is consistently good. And they seem to move through the
very demanding score of the production with great ease as they're called
upon not only to perform with absolute precision but also to serve at
times as stagehands. The latter is something quite new for them ("We're
actors and not stagehands"), but here it becomes essential for maintaining
the pace of the production's fast-shifting scenes.
Music composed by Edison Denisov especially for A Raw Youth
also adds an important element to Lyubimov's production. Denisov, who
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A Raw Youth, Finnish National Theatre, Helsinki
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has a weD-earned reputation as one of the finest composers of scores for
films and theatrical performances- a gift not every composer shares- has
captured perfectly the complex emotions of the characters, at times
reinforcing them, and at other moments serving as a counterpoint. To
Lyubimov, it was crucial that the actors not treat the music as
background. "He was very insistent that we actually listen to the music,
Maalismaa recalled, "aUowing it to influence us in evoking a mood or
feeling."
The Finns universaUy acknowledge that the production's
extremely dense text presents a challenge. Even the translator, Nina
Korimo, comments that it's impossible to absorb so much in one sitting.
I suppose it's the Finnish love for the text in performance that elicits the
deep concentration of those sitting in the auditorium during the
three-hour performance. But perhaps it's an even greater testimony to
Lyubimov's intuitive capturing of Dostoevsky's polyphonic style in
directing the production, that one is able, without understanding a word
of the language, to be fuUy engaged in watching it. Lyubimov's
inventiveness seems limitless; it far transcends even the best of his
Taganka productions. It also, as Markku Maalismaa noted, "goes a long
way to break the preconceived ideas of how Dostoevsky should be
staged- with people standing around, clad in black overcoats and wearing
a morose expression.
FoUowing the success of A Raw Youth, Lyubimov was invited to
return to the National Theatre to stage a second production for the
1992-1993 season. This time he chose The Comedians based on a
melange of dramatic works by the great nineteenth-century playwright,
Aleksandr Ostrovsky: The Stonn, a drama of ill-fated love in provincial
Russia; The Holiday Dream Comes True By Noon, the first of the comic
Balzaminov trilogy about a poor civil servant who dreams of winning a
rich wife; and Even the Wrse Stumble, a satirical portrait of a young
careerist, aU presented as a tribute to the playwright. Lyubimov caUs it
"a bit of hooliganism," and indeed, it is just that: three hours of energetic
playfulness dedicated to nothing more than an impressive display of agile
performance and perfect timing based on variations on the themes of love
and money. For anyone accustomed to the politicized subtext of his
Moscow productions, this is quite a change. But as he himself
acknowledges, "The times are so brutal that we need funny things."
While Yuri Lyubimov denies that this is a repeat of his 1974
Benefit Perfonnance at the Taganka, the basic text and conceptual
framework are still there. Only the fmale has been changed so that the
new production ends not with tragic tonality of Katerina's suicide but with
the more ironic conclusion of Even the Wise Stumble in which Glumov,
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the young cynic, turns the tables on everyone in exposing their hypocrisy.
The opening, with all of the actors gathering for a group portrait with the
playwright, is just as it had been in his Taganka production. And
Lyubimov still makes use of the same highlights from the three Ostrovsky
plays. He also uses the two itinerant actors from The F ~ s t the
tragedian Neschastlivtsev (Unhappy) and Schastlivtsev (Happy) as the
masters of ceremony for this free-wheeling buffonade, along with the
Author himself who sits in a box at the side and from time to time makes
comments to the actors.
Perhaps this is what Lyubimov could have achieved even back in
1974, given the time and the resources. But as he explained in an
interview, he was already under fire for what he'd done the year before
to Pushkin in Comrade, Believe ... where he had offered up five different
Pushkins. Lyubimov says he knew he was in danger once again of having
Benefit Performance closed down. And so, he adds, "I hurried as quickly
as possible to get it out.
But if even that relatively tame, albeit iconoclastic, treatment of
Russia's greatest playwright brought down an avalanche of criticism, what
would the reaction have been to Lyubimov's new and much bolder
treatment of this venerated icon of Russian dramaturgy?
More than anything it's the set that most distinguishes this
production from the original one with its set created by Enar Stenberg.
Designed by Andrey von Schlippe, it consists entirely of movable pine
panels. This extremely mobile construction that fills the stage plays as
active a part in the production as do any of the performers. Nothing is
stationary, beginning with the stage floor which gradually rises in the
opening scene to form the sloping ravine that plays such an important
part in the plot of The Stonn as the meeting place for the young lovers.
Walls move, windows fly open, panels at the front shift to allow the
characters from the farcical antics of Holiday Dream to emerge in their
outrageous pink and rose outfits. The columned rooms of the mansion
for Even the WISe Stumble are formed by back-lighted vertical openings
in the wall panels. In fact, the ingenuity with which the single set is used
is only exceeded by the endlessly inventive play by the actors.
It is easy to understand why Lyubimov has abandoned his
long-time collaborator, David Borovsky, for von Schlippe, a brilliant
thirty-two-year-old graduating student of the theatre school in Munich
who takes for granted all the technological inventiveness of the video
generation. Von Schlippe also brings to his work a sophisticated
understanding of lighting and color. When combined with Lyubimov's
directing experience and esthetics it offers a world of possibilities far
beyond anything available to him and Borovsky in the Taganka's heyday.
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But unlike the younger generation of directors and artists working with
today's stage technology, for Lyubimov it's not an end in itself. Nor in
this case does he use the setting as a metaphor. Rather, it works to give
freer reign to his imagination as he explores with the designer and the
actors the endless possibilities it affords.
The collaboration with von Schlippe actually began in 1985 when
Andrey, who grew up in an emigre family and was already steeped in
Russian literature and culture, started working as Lyubimov's translator
and assistant. Thus over the years even before his formal debut as
Lyubimov's scenic designer they had established a very productive and
mutually rewarding working relationship.
In The Comedians Lyubimov has also succeeded in achieving
what he's been working toward at least since his productions at the
Taganka of Boris Godunov and Vladimir Vysotsky in the early 1980s, and
this is a new form of musicalized dramatic theatre. As inA Raw Youth,
Edison Denisov's score for The Comedians serves not merely as
background, or to reinforce the mood at any given moment, but it also
helps define the characters and to facilitate the swift transitions from one
emotional tonality (the tragedy of The Stonn, the satire of Even the Wise,
the farce of Holiday Dream) to another.
The Comedians is by far Lyubimov's best dramatic production in
a very long time. As one observes the genuine pleasure the actors seem
to take from their performances, it brings to mind the early years at the
Taganka when one felt the same thrill at watching Lyubimov's audacious
young actors give their all in productions such as The Good Person of
Sezuan,Anti-Worlds, and Listen! Lyubimov is, unfortunately, quite right
when he observes during intermission that, "No doubt my actors at the
Taganka wouldn' t be able to do as well with this production." It's a sad
fact that after years of drinking and poor diet, there are virtually no artists
at the Taganka today who have at their command the mix of acting talent
and well-trained physical apparatus that make the Helsinki performances
so exciting.
Lyubimov is very generous in his praise of the troupe at the
National Theatre, citing as an example how well they reacted when, after
two weeks of rehearsal of A Raw Youth, he had to replace two of the
actors. Comparing this reaction to what a scandal there would have been
at the Taganka (denunciations, letters to the cultural organs, etc.), he says
that here the actors he removed even helped their replacements to catch
up with the rest of the actors in the production.
The actors clearly weren't used to Lyubimov's way of working on
a production and there were some difficult moments during rehearsals.
For one thing, Lyubimov is accustomed to having everything in place on
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stage, and everyone on hand right from the first rehearsal. This imposed
quite a strain on the company, especially the actors, who weren't
accustomed to having to be present every day from eleven until three for
the entire two months whether they were in the scenes being rehearsed
or not. "It's very tiring," one of the actresses commented, just sitting
there waiting, especially for the older actors." But Lyubimov didn't spare
anyone because of age. When some of the actors complained to
Lyubimov about his having one of the older actresses climbing up on the
set, his answer was, "Nonsense, she can do it. I suppose because
Lyubimov at seventy-five is himself so vigorous, constantly running up on
the stage, he assumes that everyone else, whatever their age, commands
the same energy.
Another actor related how they kept waiting for Lyubimov to sit
down with them to discuss the text. They were accustomed to directors
who would take them through the play, reading and analyzing each scene.
But with Lyubimov it never happened. In rehearsing A Row Youth in par-
ticular, it was a problem at first that Lyubimov knew the text and
characters so weD that he felt no need to explain them. Many of the
actors recall that those first three weeks were "very confusing.
"Do you trust me?" Ismo Kallio (Gorodulin in Even the WISe)
recalls Lyubimov asking one day when they were rehearsing The
Comedians. This had to do with Lyubimov wanting the actors to be more
inventive in their improvisations. "He kept wanting us to produce more,"
Kallio recalls. "He said to me, 'You're satisfied with too little.' I asked,
'How much must I do with all this text? I think it's too much.'" He adds
that Lyubimov told him, "Trust me, I'll take out what's wrong, but if you
are constantly doing a little under, not over, it's impossible for me to put
in more."
After being trained in the Stanislavsky system to ignore the
audience, it was also something of an adjustment for the actors, at
Lyubimov's insistence, to always have contact with the auditorium.
It undoubtedly helped the actors that Lyubimov and his Taganka
Theatre were no strangers to the Finnish National Theatre's artistic
company headed by Kai Savoia. The Taganka first visited Helsinki in
1982 when they brought three of their productions to the National
Theatre. They returned to the National Theatre in 1988 with Boris
Godunov and again in 1990 when they performed Vladimir J-ysotsky and
The House on the Embankment. During those tours, the National
Theatre's troupe had ample opportunity to observe Lyubimov's style and
to get an idea from the actors as to how Lyubimov worked with them.
They had also had previous experience working with Russian directors,
including Anatoly Efros, Georgii Tovstonogov, and Lev Dodin.
24
"1M Comedians, Finnish National Theatre, Helsinki
25
The actors had heard about Lyubimov's flashlights &om the
Taganka actors and they were somewhat relieved that Lyubimov didn't
resort to this device in Helsinki. But perhaps because there's music
throughout these two productions, he didn't need his notorious flashlights
to maintain the tempo of the performance. The music did it for him.
FoUowing the opening of The Comedians, Lyubimov left for
Jerusalem to spend several weeks with his wife and his twelve-year old
son, Petya. Mid-December Lyubimov was back in Moscow to begin
rehearsals of his next major production, a musical version of Dr. Zhivago
in collaboration with composer Alfred Schnitke and designer Andrey von
Schlippe. Starring Valery Zolotukhin as Zhivago, it will open in mid-May
at the Vienna Festival before going on to tour in other European
countries. He also expects to complete work on a repeat of his Helsinki
production of A Raw Youth that the students in his directing course at the
Shchukin Institute have been working on in his absence. March will find
Lyubimov taking his Taganka troupe on tour to Tokyo. And in April
Lyubimov is scheduled to stage a revival of his highly successful
production of Janarek's opera, Jenufa, at London's Covent Garden.
26
The Comedians, Finnish National Theatre, Helsinki
27
THE FIRST ANTON CHEKHOV INTERNATIONAL
THEATRE IESI'IVAL
John Freedman
Most remarkable about the Frrst Anton Chekhov International
Theatre Festival, held in Moscow October 4-27, 1992, was that it took
place at all. The politics, strife, and hardships lashing the former Soviet
Union saw to it that the number of productions, announced at fourteen,
was trimmed to eleven, and that attendance was often poor. The only
entries from outside the former Soviet bloc were Peter Stein's staging of
The Cherry Orchard and Theodoros Terzopoulos's staging of The Persians.
The inevitable financial problems were solved with relative ease.
When a sponsor who had promised 15 million rubles was revealed to be
insolvent a few days into the festival, two others quickly came to the
rescue. And when the Czechoslovakian government could not cover the
expenses for Otomar Krejca and his Gate Theatre, the festival and two
Czech companies scraped up the necessary sum for them.
A serious blow occurred October 11, however, when the
Georgian Theatre Union announced that the Mardjhanishvili Drama
Theatre and the Rustaveli Theatre, both of had backed out of the
festival to protest alleged Russian involvement in the armed conflict
between Georgia and Abkhazia. Efforts by the festival organizers to get
them to reconsider were fruitless. It was rumored that Robert Sturua,
whose Rustaveli Theatre was to have performed Calder6n's Life is a
Dream October 21-22, was inclined to ignore the boycott. True or not,
any chances of that happening faded when he was hospitalized with a
bleeding ulcer. The Mardjhanishvili Drama Theatre was to have
performed David Anguladze's staging of The &epers of the Grail, an
adaptation of the novel by Grigol Robakidze, October 18-19.
Eimuntas and his Lithuanian Youth Theatre, who were
to have performed Prosper Merimee's Cannen, October 26-27, also
backed out at the last minute. faxed the festival organizers
that, "for technical reasons," his production would be ready for a Vilnius
premiere only on October 31.
Two other theatres just barely arrived. Unable to depart
Yerevan for three days, the troupe of the Sundukyan Drama Theatre
arrived in Moscow only on the morning they were to open. The ordeal,
which deprived them of rehearsals and the chances to set up the lighting
properly, clearly affected their performance. Similarly, the Akhorun
Experimental Youth Theatre failed to show for its October 17
performance, "due to an absence of flights from Dushanbe," according to
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Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol. 13, No.1
an official announcement. The following day, however, it was learned that
"a change of governments" in Tajikistan had been the culprit. The new
government provided a military transport plane to bring the troupe to
Moscow, while a Franco-Tajik-Iranian cultural organization provided
resources to support the troupe in Moscow and their return home.
Akhorun eventually performed October 22.
Even before the frrst performance, a group of critics and
directors, upset that the Chekhov Festival included only two Russian
theatres and only one Chekhov play (three different versions of The
Cherry Orchard), hastily organized a parallel festival entitled "We Play
Chekhov." Running October 5-26, "We Play Chekhov" featured eleven
productions from Moscow, two from St. Petersburg, two from Voronezh,
and one each from Vladivostok, Taganrog, Lipetsk, and Tashkent. All
involved works by Chekhov in one way or another. This caused confusion
about which Chekhov festival was which, and guaranteed that the supply
of Moscow performances outstripped demand.
But, despite the daunting odds, the F'rrst Anton Chekhov
International Theatre Festival did provide an opportunity to sample an
array of theatrical styles. One hopes that the plan to repeat it every four
years will have every chance to succeed, and that the lessons of the
inaugural festival will allow future efforts to go more smoothly.
October 4-5. Friedrich Schiller's Love and llllligue, staged by
Temur Chkheidze. The Tovstonogov Bolshoi Dramatic Theatre, St.
Petersburg, Russia. Visually attractive, this performance ultimately
seemed a cold and empty exercise in playing at the classics. Georgy
Aleksi-Meskhshvili's sparsely spacious set, which made the most of lilting
white gossamer curtains, several tables and chairs, and a construction
upstage that resembled a spinning wheel, was quite effective. Also of
interest was Shota Skhirtladze's work with the actors on stage movement.
Their quietly mannered gestures, turns, and falls suggested the influence
of ballet. But the attempt to create a "high tragedy of human passions
out of a well-worn story of young lovers falling victim to political intrigue
never got off the ground. Kirill Lavrov played a nondescript President
whose hint at repentance when he fmds his son dead seemed at the least
confusing, if not unjustified. The pair of young lovers (Mikhail Morozov
as Ferdinand and Yelena Popova as Luisa), perhaps because of their
classic good looks and impeccable behavior, were too sweet and too
sterile to evoke references to tragedy and passion. The best moments
were provided by Alisa Freindlikh and Valery lvchenko. Freindlikh's
Lady Milford was filled with appealing sarcasm and intrigue, especially in
her second act confrontation with Luisa, while Ivchenko's Miller spanned
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30 Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol. 13, No. 1
the spectrum of human emotions, giving at least a hint of what Chkheidze
hoped to accomplish in this production.
October 5-6. Antoa Cbekhov's The Clteny Orr:lu1nl, directed by
Peter Stein. The Scbaubiihne, Berlin, Germany. Thanks to his acclaimed
tour of Moscow in 1990 with The Three Sisters, Stein enjoys a reputation
in Moscow second to none. That accounted for the extraordinary crush
by hundreds of unticketed spectators trying to sneak in on opening night.
Heated arguments among ushers and wandering spectators drowned out
the frrst ten minutes of the performance. Expectations ran so high that
many later carped about Stein's slavishness to Stanislavskian principles.
But the meticulous detail of the production was a deceptive cover for a
new and powerful interpretation of Chekhov's play. Carried by characters
usually considered secondary, the stylistics of the performance ranged
from straight realism to bold farce. Branco Zamarovsky's exquisitely
realistic Firs emerged as the production's central character, a man of
dignity, honor, and responsibility who for the others has receded into
uselessness and invisibility. W ermer Rem as as the bumbling,
good-natured Simeonov-Pishchik straddled the line between realism and
farce without trying to reconcile that paradox in his own behavior. As
played by Elke Petry, the governess Charlotta exceeded the boundaries of
eccentricity, becoming almost comically surreal as she stalked the stage
looking like Mayakovsky's Phosphorescent Woman, muttering riddles and
performing imaginative magic tricks. Christophe Schubiger's sets
developed the skewed stylistics brilliantly. Acts One and Four took place
in a detailed, dirty-white nursery, while the second act presented a
surrealistic countryside where it appeared that the characters risked falling
off the edge of the world. Act Three inverted the nursery set, but, instead
of looking out windows to the cherry orchard, we looked through doors
into a flaming red ballroom where a mad party was under way. Stein
himself said at a press conference October 3 that the "anti-Chekhovian"
Act Three was inspired by Meyerhold. This was not the "comedy"
Chekhov claimed to have written, nor was it the wistful plaint most thea-
tres make of it. It was a riveting performance that warned that
experience, like theatre, often conceals its real meaning.
October 6-7. Grigory Gorin's Tevye-Tewd, an adaptation of
stories by Sbolom Alelcbem, staged by Serhiy Dancbenko. The Franko
Drama Theatre, Kiev, Ukraine. This slavic Fiddler on the Roof was
essentially a showcase for the Franko Theatre's leading actor, Bohdan
Stupko. His charming, rumpled and harried Tevye simply overwhelmed
every other aspect of this mundane staging. Daniil Lider's set consisted
primarily of a starry sky projected on the back wall, a pot that hung from
the ceiling at center stage, and a triangular "flying" wood construction that
31
occasionally functioned as the roof of Tevye's house, the house itself, or
a table. From time to time, the stage revolved in a circle from left to
right, delivering or removing actors. Transitions between scenes were
accomplished by adequate Jewish folk dances. The pogrom scene at the
end of Act One was characteristic: three Russian intruders in the
wedding scene knocked over three plastic cups before the "flying" table
rose into the air, tipping over four more plastic cups and dumping the
table cloth on the ground. Two red spots illuminated the stage,
presumably suggesting bloodshed. (For another view of this production,
see SEEP vol. 11, no. 1, Spring 1991.)
October 11-U. Vladimir Vlnnichenko's Tlte Lie, staged by Alia
Babenko. The Zankovetska Drama Theatre, Lviv, Ukra1oe. Vin-
nichenko's nationalistic views made him one of Ukraine's most influential
writers and politicians in the early twentieth century. However,
disillusionment with the revolution caused him to emigrate to Europe in
1920. His plays, stories, and novels were condemned to oblivion in his
homeland shortly thereafter. This staging would seem to be the first on
the territory of the former Soviet Union since 1916. Echoing the
overwrought stylistics developed by Leonid Andreev, it tells the story of
Natalya who is torn between her husband and two lovers. Unable to
reconcile her lies, she commits suicide by poisoning. A. Boyarskaya has
created a pretty interior of a dining room upstage right, a living room
downstage left, and what appeared to be a garden behind a lattice fence
upstage left. But the set's turn-of-the-century feel only reinforced the
suspicion that this is an outdated period piece which even a fme
performance by the breathy Larisa Kadyrova as Natalya could not dispel.
October 13-14. Henrik Ibsen's Doctor Stoclcnuln (An Enemy of
the People), staged by Khoren Abramyan. The Sunduk1an Drama
Theatre, Yerevan, Armenia. Set in a dank, underground space sporting
a mesh of leaky pipes designed by Y evgeny Sofronov, this free adaptation
of Ibsen's political broadside sought to comment directly on the current
chaos in Armenia. Unfortunately, because of malfunctioning headphones,
most of the spectators, this one included, did not hear the Russian trans-
lation. Combined with the problems associated with the troupe's belated
arrival in Moscow, the performance was nearly impenetrable. My
admittedly inadequate response was that the striking set, which provided
an unusual opportunity to reinterpret Ibsen's text, was not matched by the
performance itself. Most often, the characters merely stepped to the
front of the stage where they conversed or gave speeches. A minor
sensation followed the performance when Tatyana Doronina took the
stage to congratulate the actors. The actress and artistic director of the
Gorky Moscow Art Theatre, who recently has been associated with
32
33
right-wing Russian political organizations, attacked "immoral" theatre, the
"frenzied majority" and others, calling Doctor Stockman a "civic act" that
recovered the value of the Ten Commandments from the "chaff of words."
An exhausted and clearly troubled Abramyan graciously responded by
wishing health to his friends in "benevolent and venerable Moscow.
October 16. Deli Donuul, Kakadzhan Ashir's adaptation or the
Turkoman folk epic "Gorkut Ata," staged by Ashir. The Dzhan Drama
Theatre, Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. Byashim Gardzhaev's dark-red, faintly
lit set depicted a Turkmenian hut whose walls, made of thousands of thin
ropes, rose, shrank, or parted to allow actors to exit or enter. A musician
sat downstage left, accompanying the performance on a gidzhalc, an
elongated Central Asian string instrument. As befitting the adaptation of
a folk legend (banned as "reactionary" during the Soviet years), both the
setting and staging were simple and unadorned. The imposing Tore
Annaberdiev played Domrul as a braggart and something of a petty
shyster who makes his living by charging tolls from those who cross "his"
bridge. But when he is visited by an angel of death, he is forced to
ponder the eternal questions of life and death. Making deals with both
the angel and Allah, he postpones his death by visiting his father, mother,
and wife. But all his attempts to avoid the inevitable are in vain. It was
an unaffected performance, graced with humor, irreverence, and wisdom.
October 20-21. Aeschylus's Persilms, staged by Theodoros
Terzopoulos. The Attis Theatre, Athens, Greece. Running without a
translation, this searing modern adaptation of one of the world's first
"anti-war" literary works had no trouble communicating through its vivid
use of stage language. Seeming to borrow its atmosphere and images
from Edvard Munch's "The Scream," it was a breathtaking vision of
desolate horror. The stark set by Giorgos Patsas formed a white circle
splashed on the right with red. Four actors assumed places at the rim of
the circle, a fifth stood in the center. Employing slow, spasmodic
gestures, a minimum of movement about the stage and rejecting the
notion of interaction, as such, they delivered harshly-whispered
monologues in a state of shock and terror. The impact was especially
strong, since they were not lamenting past horrors, but predicting those
to come. Yiannis Christou's low-key but disturbing score dovetailed with
the gasping and groaning of the actors before transforming unexpectedly
at the end into the warm tones of a saxophone which provided the
performances sole moments of reassurance.
October 22. Faroukh Kosim's Joseph the Lost Will Return to
Cmuuln, staged by Koslm. The Akhorun Experimental Youth Theatre,
Dushanbe, Tajikistan. This powerful performance, which mixed elements
of Christian and Muslim legends in a traditional Tajik context, eschewed
34
Joseph the Lost WiU Return to Canaan, Ak.horun Experimental Youth Theatre
Anton Chekhov International Theatre Festival, Moscow

most of the details of the Joseph story (here called "Yusuf"), focusing on
jealousy and revenge, and culminating in fratricide. It was performed
without translation in a lilting verse text culled from the works of four
classic Tajik poets. Abdurakhmanov's simple set presented a wooden
wheel lying on something resembling a grave downstage right, and a large
wooden construction at center stage resembling a three-sided lean-to hung
with animal skins and backed with a crudely cut twelve-foot ladder.
Everything in this mesmerizing staging moved in circles, apparently taking
its inspiration from the Muslim tradition of whirling dervishes. The actors
seldom "walked, usually spinning gracefully with arms outstretched
heavenward. Yusufs brothers often spoke as one, moving in slow,
circular processions around Yusuf. They strapped him to the wheel and
he rolled about the stage as he tried to stand. In an echo of the Christian
symbol of the cross, Yusuf was eventually strapped, with wheel around
neck, to the top of the ladder where he perished. The sparse crowd
awarded the actors a well-deserved standing ovation.
October 24-25. Chekhov's 'I'he 0.0, Orr:lulrd, staged by
Otomar Krejca. The Gate Theatre II, Prague, Czechoslovakia. Krejca's
staging, Guy-Claude set, and the actors' performances all
seemed intent on achieving supreme subtlety by driving head-on into the
cliches of "traditional Chekhov": realistic behavior, chattiness, restraint.
But lacking imagination or color of any kind, the result was a
performance that drowned in faceless tedium. The monotonous light-
brown set consisted of five panels (transparent "walls" that showed
shadows of stylized, leafy tree branches when lit from behind), several
chairs, a table, a bench, a cupboard with a stuffed doll on top, and two
chandeliers. The objects were slightly rearranged in each act, and in the
second act, a canvas was drawn over the furniture to give the impression
of a hilly countryside setting. Jan Hartl's impatient, repressed Lopakhin
emerged as the only character capable of sustaining a sense of personality,
although in the context of this lifeless, literary performance, he irritated
as often as not.
October 25-26. Chekhov's 'I'he 0.0, Orr:lulrd, staged by Andrei
The National Theatre, Bucharest, Romania. With this revival
of his 1977 New York staging, assumed the directorship of his
homeland's leading theatre. The shot of energy that his return home pro-
vided was tangible in this raucous whirlwind of a production that did not
play like a revival at all. One might demur that the pratfalls, belly
laughter, and breakneck speed of the performance did violence to the
fabric of the play, especially in the second half of Act Three when,
excepting a few short moments, the tragedy of Ranevskaya's loss was
36
shoved aside rudely. But Serban's almost insolent attempt to find the
comedy in the material was grounded so well, and captured with such
confidence by the actors, that the performance easily recovered from the
handful of awkward moments. By occasionally bringing on stage the
"ghost" of young Ranevskaya, a silent woman in white who walks the
cherry orchard with her little son, Serban freed Leopoldina Balanuta of
having to perform the matriarch as a wistful, defeated woman. Instead,
she was a strong survivor, sustained by her love of life. Cecilia Byrbora's
fleet-footed Dunyasha, Ovidiu Iuliu Moldovan's blustery (at times
excessively so) Lopakhin and Claudiu Bleont's lisping, wide-eyed, and
comic Petya Trofimov all defied expectations while fitting well into the
director's bold plan. In the light of this performance, the eternal polemics
over what is and what is not Chekhovian strike me as inane. Chekhov is
a world-class author and this boisterous Romanian staging proves he has
as much to say to a culture of southern temperament as to any other.
Judging by Stanley Kauffmann's description of the 1CJn production in his
Theater Criticisms, Mihai Madescu's impressive set duplicated the original
by Santo Loquasto.
October 2.7. Aleksandr Griboedov's Woe from Wit, staged by
Oleg Yefremov. The Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre, Moscow, Russia.
Listed in the festival program as the official closing performance, Woe
from Wit turned out to be something of a poor relation. Organizers did
not make tickets available even for invited guests, directing them instead
to MXAT. Yefremov sought to expand the scope of Griboedov's play
about the idealistic young Chatsky who is appalled by the pettiness of
Russian socialites and society. Leaving the essential theme intact, he
altered the ending, more than hinting at a rapprochement between
Chatsky and the object of his affections, Sofiya. It is highly doubtful that
Griboedov's play suggests anywhere that love can conquer all, but, even
if such a reading were possible, neither the director nor his actors gave
any reason to believe it here. Appallingly flat performances by all of the
principles not only made the change absurd, they degraded Griboedov's
taut, satirical wisdom to the level of a silly drawing room comedy.
The Chekhov Festival filled out its program with discussion
sessions following each performance, two seminars ("The Cherry Orchard:
Play, Theatre, and Life" and "The Possibilities of Theatre's Survival in the
Countries of Eastern Europe in the New Economic and Cultural
Situation"), two exhibitions (drawings by Revaz Gabriadze and a photo
exhibit of Mikhail Bulgakov and Anton Chekhov), and video shows of
various productions of works by Chekhov. Not included on the main bill
was the German Gottingen Theatre's performances October 10-11 of
Frank and Stein, a cabaret parody of the 1937 Hollywood movie,
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Woe .from Wit, Chekhov M06COW Art Theatre,
Anton Chekhov International Theatre Festival, M06COW
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No.1
Frankenstein. Also included was a so-called "Moscow bill," whereby the
majority of regularly-scheduled performances of Moscow theatres were
raised to the status of festival participants.
39
THEATRE-ON-PODOL:
KIEV, UKRAINE REPER.TOIRE AND PF.RI'ORMANCE
Suzanne Trauth
In August 1991, I spent ten days in Kiev as part of a global
exchange project established between my academic institution and the
Theatre-on-Podol. Under the leadership of artistic director Vitaly
Malakhov, this theatre tucked away in a comer of the oldest section of
Kiev has become the heart of the Podol District and the center of its
artistic rejuvenation. It divides its performances between a tiny black box
with a minuscule stage and a larger proscenium theatre seating
approximately two hundred patrons.
The exchange project encompassed several phases. Following the
fust meeting between members of our School of Fine and Performing
Arts and the Podol staff, a colleague and I visited Kiev to introduce an
American playwright to them. Though their repertoire is varied,
extensive, and international, and includes both classical and contemporary
works, they do not produce American plays. Hence their interest in our
visit. We decided to use Arthur Miller's The Crucible as a point of
departure for our joint exploration of American theatre. Miller's
international status as a playwright placed him on equal footing with other
writers in their repertoire.
Though we spent the better part of six days discussing,
improvising, and eventually staging a small segment of the play, our
sharing of Miller's work was only a part of the global exchange. Every
evening, following the day's rehearsal, the Podol company presented a
selection from its repertoire, sometimes a complete play, sometimes a
fragment of a play. Both types of viewing experiences provided an
excellent vantage point from which to evaluate the breadth and depth of
their work. For an audience of only five to ten people (a few staff
members and actors in addition to the two of us) the theatre presented
a "complete" event- sets, lights, and costumes. Their willingness to share
their work, regardless of the time and effort involved, served to
demonstrate the truth in their statement that, "theatre is not the most
important event in our lives; it is our life."
During our visit, we saw the work of Shakespeare, Pinter,
Beckett, Strindberg, Lorca, Diirrenmatt, fragments of Sophocles and
Brecht, a production based on the writings of a contemporary Russian
poet, and an avant-garde piece based on Dumas's Camille. In addition,
during their tour of the United States two months later in October 1991,
we were able to view full-length performances of A Midsummer Night's
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Slavic and East European Perlormance Vol. 13, No.1
Dream and Vertep (the title refers to a traditional Ukrainian folk theatre
that is part morality play and part puppet theatre). We agreed on our
appraisal of their material. All of their work is vivid, expressive, and
contains strong personal statements of life, philosophy, and human
relationships, colored by a darker point of view than often is intended by
the playwright. There are political and social threads woven throughout
the fabric of all their productions.
In A Midsummer Night's Dream (translated to Night of Wondet:r
in Russian), the lovers, often the focus of light horseplay in American
productions, are far more serious in their pursuit and rejection of each
other in the woods. Helena is not an object of complete ridicule, but
rather a reasonably intelligent woman scorned by the man she loves.
Demetrius, though apparently still the object of Egeus' s love, if not
Hermia's, is almost gentle with Helena in the woods as he attempts to
free himself from her grasp. They are careful young people, pursuing
their desires but not exaggerating their obsessiveness.
The mechanicals, on the other hand, are rough tradesmen whose
attempt to provide entertainment for the aristocratic nuptials practically
steals the show. The Podol actors improvised, we were told, much of the
action in their scenes, using English occasionally to great comic effect.
When on tour in the United States, in deference to their capitalist hosts,
"time is money" frequently was inserted into the dialogue. The audience
loved it! Their rehearsal of Pyramus and 1hisby is great koockabout farce
spiced with traditional Ukrainian folk dances that bracket the intermission
and leave the audience literally cheering for more. The only serious note
is struck when, during their performance at the conclusion of the
production, Theseus, angry at the mechanicals for mocking the behavior
of the aristocrats, exchanges the fake sword for a real one, and both
Bottom and Flute lose their lives. This midsummer night's event is more
a nightmare than a dream.
The liberties taken with A Midsummer Night's Dream are
standard fare for Theatre-on-Podol. Their interpretation of many classic
playwrights alters conventional points of view and adds layers of rich
innuendo that keep their audiences riveted. In a studio production of
Pinter's The Dumbwaiter performed in the black box theatre, Ben and
Gus are truly eccentrics, and though Ben often maintains the traditional
upper hand, most of the time he is as bewildered as Gus regarding the
strange culinary requests made of them. Most striking is the fmal
moment when the ending is turned upside down. Ben and Gus are both
victims of the boss, their bullet -ridden bodies and terrified faces flattened
against the upper windows of the outside door in a grotesquely frozen
conclusion. A young blonde woman in a black cocktail dress, after
41
apparently committing the murders, enters the room and begins to
dismantle the "dumbwaiter. Earlier in the play, the audience saw her
leave the matches in the envelope later discovered by Gus. As far as the
firm is concerned, Ben and Gus are comrades of equal importance.
The Podol actors inhabit their roles with an acting style that is
physically and emotionally involving and extraordinarily sensual. Risks
abound; there are few safe moments. The tension established between
text and subtext is electric as these artists work as hard between the lines
as on them. For example, their performance of Miss Julie, directed by V.
Shaidze, is one of the most startling pieces of theatre I have ever
experienced. One understands immediately Jean's attraction, and more
importantly, witnesses Miss Julie's seething sexual passion beneath the
surface of her haughty exterior. The tension between her inner needs and
exterior display of status has never been more clear.
As part of their acting studies, these performers absorb the
rhythms of jazz and the effects of this musical instruction result in "their
ability to play their bodies and voices," to use themselves as instruments
that produce a wide and interesting variety of melodies. It is no wonder
that they love to improvise and do so very freely.
The actors are aided in their efforts to make the stage come alive
by the scenery and costumes designed for them. Though often
deceptively simple, these designs are extraordinarily imaginative
metaphors for the central issues of the plays. A Midsummers Night
Dream plays its forest sequences in the midst of creatively interwoven
strips of dangling fabric that form a physical context for the entangling
affairs of the lovers and fairies who inhabit it. As a central set device,
Vertep uses a rotating crane pushed by a number of characters in a
circular fashion throughout the play to signal, despite the changes in
tempo, the inevitability of death. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, the
costumes worn by Hermia and Helena before their escape to the woods
are literally cages. Their skirts are fabric-covered cages that restrict their
movement; when they are removed, they remain in place on the set to
reinforce the image of small cages that have released their prisoners. The
costumes serve to underscore the contrast between the repression of the
court and the freedom and confusion of the forest.
Our visit to Kiev and the Theatre-on-Podol was a theatrical
adventure of the highest magnitude. Not only were we privileged to share
an American viewpoint on modem drama and observe truly exciting
performances that denied the limitations of the supposed language
barrier, we also witnessed an historical event of theatrical
proportions-the August coup. The dark mood, air of uncertainty, and
ubiquitous fatalism of those disjointed days were reminiscent of the
42
theatre we had seen the previous week. For a brief moment, life in
Ukraine imitated art.
43
ANTIGONE HANGS IIERSEI.J' IN TOMPKINS SQUARE PARK.
Jan Kott
Tompkins Square Park is located on the Lower East Side of
Manhattan. A couple of years ago I occasionally took my small
granddaughter there for a walk. Her parents lived on Seventh Street near
First Avenue. Tompkins Square Park is just three blocks further to the
east. It's within easy walking distance for a grandparent pushing a stroller
with a baby in it. Sometimes Janusz would join me on those outings.
Not many people now call Janusz "Glowa" ("Head"), only his old friends
from Warsaw. At that time Glowacki lived in the same building on
Seventh Street.
Tompkins Square has a separate children's playground with
slides, seesaws, and a sand box. But the sand box is dirty. Tompkins
Square is not a nice park. It can hardly be called a park. There's more
bare ground than grass. The trees have broken branches and are almost
leafless; they look like scarecrows. But the crows rarely drop by, because
there aren't even any crumbs to be had. The park is littered with tom
newspapers and old rags. Empty bottles and tin cans are collected every
morning by scavengers who can earn a few pennies by selling them to be
recycled. The homeless sleep on the benches if there's even a hint of
sunshine. For Poles who know Zeromski's n o v ~ Homeless People
(1900), there is something almost symbolic about the word. In American
English the homeless simply stink and have no place to go. In that park
where the greenery has been mercilessly trampled, they've taken over
more than just the benches. A tribe of the homeless consisting of men
and young women, children and old folks, have installed themselves on a
wooden platform. Perhaps it was once a stage from which the walls fell
down. They sleep, cook, eat, change the babies' diapers, get sick and die
in that most public of all theatres. But no Levi-Strauss will ever describe
that tribal settlement. A year ago the homeless were driven out of the
park by the police.
For many decades the area just above and below Seventh Street
has been one of the cheapest neighborhoods in Manhattan. It is
populated by emigrants mainly from Eastern Europe: Ukrainians and
Poles with some admixture of poor Asians. Even today there are
restaurants with Slavic sounding names: "Zosia," ''Teresa," "Danuta"
where wonderful Russian pirogi can be had at bargain prices. The stores
with vegetables and flowers are run by Koreans. A year or so ago the
whole neighborhood started to undergo the process of gentrification.
"Gentrification" is a strange word; it means more or less what cosmetic
44
surgery does: a face lift, straightening one's nose or taking out wrinkles.
It led to painting over a few facades, propping up some collapsing
buildings, opening two new boutiques and one porno-shop. Two ill-lit
dives where one could get drunk for a song have been upgraded to "pubs.
The price of real estate climbed and rent skyrocketed. The homeless are
pushed out of "chic" neighborhoods. As a result of gentrification, one day
the police chased the homeless out at dawn. Tompkins Square Park was
enclosed with a barbed wire fence ten feet high. Antigone, the heroine
of Glowacki's play, hanged herself from the main gate of the park.
Antigone, of course, comes from Sophocles. Like her ancient
ancestor, Glowacki's Antigone wants to bury a corpse--to give him a
proper burial complete with two candles and a funeral banquet consisting
of a hunk of cheese dipped in honey. But the corpse was stolen, or rather
taken by ambulance to the morgue like all unidentified corpses in New
York City. Then it is thrown in an unmarked grave near the jail But
this new thirty-five-year-old Antigone from Puerto Rico is determined to
"steal back" the corpse and bury it under a bench in Tompkins Square
Park.
Besides the Puerto Rican Antigone and the corpse, there are two
other characters in Glowacki's play, both homeless F1ea, a jack-
of-all-trades from Warsaw, and Sasha, a Russian Jew from
Leningrad-"former people" straight out of Gorky's Lower Depths. But
the setting is not a cellar resembling a cave as in Gorky but a bench by
a leafless tree among the bushes in Tompkins Square Park. What kind
of theatre is this? This bench is their only address; the only place in New
York they have left. F1ea and Sasha have been in New York for five
years, or perhaps even longer; they can't remember any more themselves.
They are together: F1ea clings desperately to Sasha. They loathe each
other as one loathes one's own skin infested with vermin. But how can
one walk out on one's own skin? They try, but cannot do it. Where is
there to go?
As I write these words, a tiny ant is running back and forth
across my typewriter, unable to figure out how it got there. It has lost its
way. So have the tiny F1ea from Warsaw and Sasha, who once was
somebody, but it no longer matters who, because now his hands shake
badly. They are waiting. For a certain Yola, who is supposed to be
coming, or for a visa. And what keeps them going is their endless
pondering over and mocking of their own Godots.
These two homeless bums wouldn't have eJcisted without Beckett.
But what is more important is that Glowacki found them on that bench
in Tompkins Square Park in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It is not
important from where the kernel came, but what the bread is like.
45
Without Shakespeare's Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream there
would have been no Slowacki's Balladyna either. The comparison leaves
room for future developments, but that's exactly what is needed.
Waiting is eternal. Nowhere and everywhere. Beckett's
theatrical genius lies precisely in showing universal human situations
beneath a leafless tree or in a sand dune. In Waiting for Godot, Estragon
and Vladimir have feet that stink; they discuss which of the two thieves
was redeemed, the one on the right or the one on the left of the Crucified
Christ. They wait and they urinate. The protagonists of Glowacki's play
discuss the thirty pieces of sliver paid to Judas and they too urinate.
Let me repeat once again: the bread is what counts, not the
leaven. Without Waiting for Godot, Mroiek's Emigres would never have
been created. The two characters in Mroiek's play are also inseparable,
because they have no place to return to. Mroiek found them in a
rundown tenement behind one of Berlin's train stations. Glowacki found
them on a bench in Tompkins Square Park. A dramatic discovery is
sometimes only a new address, in this case, that bench and a new
connection: Gorky's Lower Depths on a bench. But let me repeat once
again: none of it would have been possible without Beckett.
I never cease to be amazed that the dramatic road to a new
realism comes directly from what has perhaps too recklessly been labeled
the theatre of the absurd. And yet it seems that only absurdist techniques
can adequately describe the crumbling world around us. And besides the
poetics of the absurd has received strong support from history, not only
in Poland but on both sides of what was once the ideological divide.
Beckett called his Waiting for Godot a tragicomedy. We have experienced
it on our own skins.
Antigone from the Lower East Side gives Sasha and f1ea $19.50
for bringing the body of her friend Paulie back from the pier in the Bronx
where unidentified corpses from all over New York are put into coffins
and numbered before transport to a pauper's grave. We see ten coffins
on stage. Sasha and flea pry open the lids until they find a corpse that
looks like the one for which they are looking. But Sasha's glasses get
broken, and f1ea has an epileptic fit. As a result, they bring back the
wrong corpse. This one has a beard (as did Paulie), and Antigone doesn't
recognize that they are burying a stranger under the bench. But the police
discover that one of the corpses has disappeared from the morgue. They
start a search and fmd not one but seven missing corpses in Manhattan
alone. Nothing out of the ordinary in New York City. Glowacki is simply
unbeatable in piling up absurdist inventions. But New York easily
outstrips the most absurd absurdities. La rea/ite depasse Ia fiction.
Tragicomedy never ceases to be cruel. Often more cruel than
46
Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol. 13, No.1
tragedy. Before she hangs herself on the gate of the barbed-wire
enclosed park, Antigone from Manhattan is raped. Right on stage behind
the bushes. We can hear her screams until they gag her. At the end only
the two, Flea and Sasha, are left sitting on the same bench, as they have
for years, from the very beginning.
Vladimir: Well? Shall we go?
Estragon: Yes, let's go. (They do not move.)
But the two in Glowacki's play won't stay. The police will close the park
to keep the homeless out. In Glowacki's play there is a fourth
character- a police officer. He gives commentary and delivers the
prologue and epilogue. Like the Chorus in a Greek tragedy, he is the
City. The voice of the City.
In the epilogue the Policeman addresses the audience directly:
"Just one more thing I thought you might be interested in. Current
statistics of homeless in New York City are growing. By the end of this
year, for every three hundred New Yorkers there will be one homeless
person, which means that in this theatre tonight there is at least one
prospective homeless person and they know who they are. Have a nice
evening.
In the last moments of the action, just before its bitter
denouement, Sasha and Antigone talk about starting a new life together.
About getting visas and going to Russia, because here, as Sasha puts it,
"They would throw us out in one week." Us? For the first time in many
years this perpetually abused Puerto Rican Antigone has heard the word
"us." She suddenly throws her arms around Sasha's neck.
An eminent American sociology professor asked me about the
heroes of Glowacki's play. What are they like? Whenever the Polish
writer Julian Stryjkowski was asked how old he was, he used to say: "I
am as old as everybody else." What are Glowacki's heroes like? Like
everybody else. Like all of us. Thus unexpectedly I saw into Glowacki's
heart.
I am getting old, I write less and less, and soon I too have to go
to the common "morgue." Time is running out, I can't wait to pass
judgment. The three most important Polish plays of recent years are
Mro:Zek's Emigres, R6:Zewicz's Dead OJid Buried, and Glowacki's Antigone
in New York.
Translated by Jadwiga Kosicka
47
PAGES FROM THE PAST
zyGMUNT HO'BNER'S LETIER TO V ACLA V HAVEL
Until November 21,1981 when Zygmunt HUbner succeeded in
staging the three one-acters, Audience, Gallery Opening, and Protest on
the small stage of his Powszechny Theatre in Warsaw, the works of
V aclav Havel had been totally suppressed in Poland for thirteen years.
The one and only prior Polish production of Havel had been The
Increased Difficulty of ConcenJlrllion at the Kameralny Theatre in Cracow
in 1968. Then came the long years of persecution and imprisonment.
While Havel's fame as a courageous dissident grew in the West, every
effort was made in "the fraternal socialist countries" to turn the Czech
author into a non-person, as Hubner has explained. "One of the
repressive measures directed against Havel was a 'name entry' ban carried
out not only by the Czech authorities in his own country but also in every
other country in the 'communist bloc.' In a case like that it does not
matter in the least whether the text in question by a given author contains
politically objectionable material, or is simply the description of a pair of
lovers on a spring stroll through the park."
1
Even in the tumultuous days of Solidarity's apparent triumphs,
getting Audience, Gallery Opening, and Protest publicly performed in
Warsaw was a major accomplishment for Hubner. In 1981 Havel was
again in prison, serving a four and a half year sentence for anti-state
activity. The three one-acters at the Powszechny Theatre were directed
by the well-known filmmaker Feliks Falk and featured several of the
theatre's leading performers, with Mariusz Benoit as Vanek, Wladyslaw
Kowalski as Stanek, and Kazimierz Kaczor as the Brewer. The simple
but effective program, which could not contain any information about the
author, was an envelope that unfolded, containing cards (designed to look
handwritten) giving the names, titles, and casts. The interior of the
envelope had a fragmentary sketch of a wall that might be a prison and
inside there were nineteen slightly varied silhouettes of a figure confined
but with outstretched hands. In one case he holds up two fingers in the
"V" for victory sign. Three red birds fly overhead and the figure has
darker, blood-red marks on different parts of his body. Vertical lettering
in red on the right says "Fold here." Diagonal lettering in the lower left
box (without a figure) says "Freed."
Few Polish spectators had the opportunity to see the three Havel
plays. The small stage at the Powszechny seats only one hundred and
fifty, and there were only eleven performances. On December 13 martial
law was declared and all theatres were closed. When they were allowed
to reopen early in 1982, the Havel plays were forbidden.
48
It was not until the late 1980s with perestroika and the
accelerating collapse of communism that Havel could again be performed
in Poland, although the author himself was still in and out of jail in
Czechoslovakia. The Powszechny brought back Audience and Protest in
February 1989, with the same staging and cast as eight years earlier.
Zygmunt Hubner, fatally ill with lung cancer, wrote Havel the following
letter of invitation on January 11, 1989. The next day HUbner died.
Havel was arrested again on January 16 for attempting to place flowers
on the spot where Jan' Palach committed suicide. Havel did receive
Hubner's letter, but the onrush of events leading to the velvet revolution
prevented Havel from ever attending the Polish production.
D.G.
Dear Mr. a v e ~
I am extremely pleased to tell you that after eight years
your plays are again in rehearsal at our theatre. We have always
admired your work and we continue to do so. I know that here
in Poland your plays will find an enthusiastic response among
your fans- that is the right audience for them.
I should like to invite you and Mrs. Havel to attend the
opening night, February Tl, 1989. My colleagues, Benoit,
Kowalski, Kaczor, Falk, and I shall be honored to see you at our
theatre. In any case, please let us know.
Yours very truly,
Written January 11, 1989 at 10 p.m.; Zygmunt Hubner died the following
day at noon.
Our thanks to Miroslawa Dubrawska (Hubner) for providing us with the
letter and programs.
1
Zygmunt Hubner, Theatre & Politics, tr. Jadwiga Kosicka
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1992), 28.
49
NO CONDUCIDR AND IN SHADOW
Jane House
These two plays in the Threshold Theatre Company's
enlightening presentation, directed by Pamela Billig, offer a finely-tuned,
tragicomic vision of how humans behave when their lives are ruled by
fear. The tragedy is that humans create the very situations that drive
them to utterly absurd behavior and often to murder. Both plays were
written by Geza ~ U n d i (b. 1933) during what he called his "absurdoid"
phase in the 1960s. That they have strong political and religious themes
is quite understandable since P6skandi, a Hungarian living in Romania,
was a member of an oppressed minority living in a country dominated by
terror. He spent six years in prison for political reasons, and his works
were banned for some years. When he emigrated to Hungary in 1974 his
literary reputation as novelist, playwright, poet, and critic, was already
well-established there.
In Shadow, a powerful one-act play full of contemporary
references to the social condition in so many parts of the world, portrays
two strangers, a red-faced Mr. Refmed and a timid Gentleman drawn to
the gallows to see a spectacle that never happens. As they talk about the
hanging they are awaiting, it becomes clear that the noose is both a real
and metaphorical one. An atmosphere of fear pervades the town.
Executions are rampant and blame for them is placed on the
executioner's white gloves, never on the executioner. The strangers fear
each other, and each fears that he may be the doomed one.
Any spirit of rebellion they had once possessed has been reduced
to fantasies about their last words. Here Paskandi makes wonderfully
effective use of satire and irony. Mr. Refmed dreams at first of shouting
"Long live freedom!", "Believe in one another!", but later ameliorates it to:
"There are no philosophies under the gallows!" The Gentleman wants to
say "Get yourselves brainwashed at least once; after all, you brush your
teeth every day!" which he later suggests shortening to "The press has
disappointed me."
When the two men understand that a gypsy is the doomed one,
they start enjoying the prospect of the execution: the procession, the
hangman, the last words, the white gloves, the father-confessor- a whole
execution industry. When the good show, with its last words is denied
them, they set about writing a petition to demand the hanging of the
gypsy. Thus man is caught in his own trap.
Evan Thompson (Mr. Refmed) and Colin Garrey (Gentleman)
made a good duo, the one robust, red-faced and garrulous, the other
50
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No.1
\ ~ \ - ~ . : .. - ~
, 'v ''!
\' . '
).._
I.
- ~ ;..
In Shiulow, Threshold Theatre Company, New York
51
mousey, angular, and nervous. Anita D. Ellis selected colors for the
costumes that seemed to suit the characters: red and orange for Mr.
Refined and gray for the Gentleman. Eugene Brogyanyi designed a
simple set: a hanging noose and a city outlined in black on a
cream-colored backdrop.
No Conductor tells an old story in a new way, and it makes a
strong partner to the first play. The setting is 1910 in a train carriage,
which serves as a metaphor for the compact carriage humankind attempts
to build for life's journey. Four strangers, two men and two women, meet
there. In a dream sequence, a Booted Man convinces them to adopt
three absurdities: "The table barks, "The chair neighs, and "The
tablecloth meows. He then disappears. When the four people meet
again three years later, they have all profited economically from these
dogmas and the Booted Man has been deified. However, when their god
suddenly appears again in their midst he is just a simple old man living
peacefully in the woods. He knows nothing of the past. The train stops.
Unable to live without their idea of a god, they kill the old man. The
train begins to move again. The allusion to the story of the Grand
Inquisitor is obvious and timely. Humans create heroes and myths and
are disappointed when faced with human reality.
Robert Katims was marvelous as the Booted Man who turns into
the old man. He led a fine cast that included Colin Garrey, Evan
Thompson, Cornelia Mills, Eleanor Ruth, and Joseph Culliton. The set
was very ably designed by Eugene Brogyanyi and the costumes were
attractive turn-of-the-century suits and dresses selected by Anita D. Ellis.
Director Pamela Billig is to be congratulated for bringing such a
provocative and satirical writer to the attention of American audiences.
The production will move to an Off-Broadway house in 1993.
For more information, call Pamela Billing at Threshold Theatre, {212)
724-9129.
52
ST ANISI..A W IGNACY WITKIEWICZ'S 71lE WA1ER HEN
PERFORMED AT THE PLAYGROUND THEATRE
David ('_allagban
The New York-based Nevermore Theatre Project recently
launched its new company with an ambitious production of Stanislaw
Ignacy Witkiewicz's The Water Hen. Although his works are infrequently
produced in the United States, Witkiewicz has posthumously emerged as
a major artistic figure of the twentieth-century avant-garde movement.
Witkiewicz viewed The Water Hen as the best illustration of his Theory of
Pure Form in the Theatre, which aimed to create a dream-like,
metaphysical theatre rejecting the notion of realism as art.
The Water Hen explores Edgar Valpor's increasingly desperate
search for order and meaning in the midst of a seemingly mad world.
Witkiewicz's "spherical tragedy" distorts linear time, space, and action as
Edgar vainly attempts to find self-fulfillment as an artist. At the outset
of Act One, Edgar kills Elizabeth (the Water Hen), who returns in Act
Three to seduce his adopted son Tadzio, prompting Edgar to once again
murder her as the action of the play comes full circle. As the play
progresses, Edgar is ravaged by an unhappy marriage, personal artistic
failure, familial betrayal, and self-inflicted torture. Much of the dialogue
anticipates the absurdist work of the 1950s as various characters and
settings abruptly change and later reappear, underscoring the lack of any
apparent truth in this illogical universe.
Ultimately, Edgar kills himself as his aristocratic world is about
to collapse in a fiery revolution, ironically anticipating Witkiewicz's own
suicide in 1939 at the start of World War II.
As the revolution advances, Edgar's father, Albert, blithely
indulges in a game of cards. When asked how he can "play cards at such
a critical time, Albert responds: At our age it's the only way of whiling
away the time during a social upheaval." Such dialogue works on many
levels, reflecting both Witkiewicz's refusal to take life and art too
seriously, as well as his frustration over the loss of human individuality in
the post-World War I era. The breadth of Witkiewicz's vision of life's
metaphysical predicament is highly apparent in The Water Hen's richly
layered text. Director Anne de Mere wisely emphasized the dark humor
and irreverent tone of the piece, perhaps mirroring Witkiewicz's own
vision of life as an ongoing game.
The performances of the Nevermore Theatre Project ensemble
ranged from understated to over-the-top acting, with Andrew Greenaway's
portrayal of Albert Valpor strongly reflecting Witkiewicz's direction to
53
"speak without affectation and not from the guts, even at the worst
moments." His characterization also came closest in capturing the
mystical nuances of Witkiewicz's bizarre dialogue.
One unique feature of this production was Marijeanne
Liederbach's choreography for the Four Footmen. The mechanized
movements of these odd footmen were most successful in symbolizing the
automaton-like nature of people in the Industrial Age.
Technically, the production was enhanced by Ari Frankel's
original score, which added wonderfully to the anarchic mood of the play.
Witkiewicz, a prominent visual artist himself, created complex and
challenging physical environments for his Theatre of Pure Form. This
production of The Water Hen utilized a simple unit set consisting of cubes
and a series of painted drops. While serving the production in a
utilitarian manner, the lack of quickly shifting settings diminished the
notion of multiple realities essential to Witkiewicz's Theory of Pure Form.
When Edgar decides to kill the Water Hen again in Act Three, it is
especially important that the action return to the original setting of the
murder in order to emphasize the "spherical" nature of time and events
in the play. Unfortunately, the rotating panels of the otherwise fu:ed set
did not adequately present the sense of fractured space and reality called
for in Witkiewicz's visually innovative theatre.
Nonetheless, the lack of technical resources did not cripple the
production. Although erratically successful in capturing the dream-like
essence of Witkiewicz's Theatre of Pure Form, this production of The
Water Hen marks a strong and daring beginning for The Nevermore
Theatre Project. And in the context of the violence of recent events in
Eastern Europe and elsewhere, the final lines of The Water Hen resonate
with a disturbing contemporary relevance: "Two Hearts. The World is
collapsing . . . Pass."
54
IZTOK KOVAC'S SWVENIAN PERFORMANCE ART
Patrick Hennedy
Although primarily a dance solo, lztok K o v a ~ s How I Caught a
Falcon is like much of t<xlay's performance art in that it blurs the
distinctions between dance, music, monologue, drama, and "happening.
As presented at downtown Manhattan's P.S. 122 on January 15, the work
is as much a personal statement about the artist's life and a commentary
on his own performance as it is an engaging and entertaining expression
of dance. K o v a ~ never speaks but he does openly acknowledge and
communicate with the audience, conveying a beginning, middle, and end
to his story. This progression, found in the music, movement, costume,
and gesture, along with some carefully selected autobiographical facts,
allows the audience to follow K o v a ~ with constant interest and wonder.
Even before the performance starts, the printed program initiates
the process of interpretation. What stands out is K o v a ~ s version of the
recent cultural developments in his homeland, the former Yugoslavia.
How I Caught a Falcon is, in fact, K o v a ~ s expression of his experiences
under the conditions described in the program.
Iztok K o v a ~ s home is the Slovene capital of Ljubljana, a city of
political importance with a flourishing sub-culture. The present
generation of young artists has grown up in an atmosphere of
Tito idolatry- which came down to a repression of everything
"alternative." With social realism as the only permitted art form,
contemporary art has for a long time only been able to develop
in the margins of society. The punk wave in the 1980s was a frrst
explosion of non-official culture.
This information appears at the beginning of o v a ~ s "bio" section and no
attempt is made to connect it with the more immediately relevant and
usual facts that follow: past affiliations, past productions, etc.
The performance space is bare except for two areas on either
side where the lighting and sound operators are stationed with their
equipment. Throughout the performance, K o v a ~ appears to be surprised
by lights and music that operate independently of the dance, as if
randomly manipulated by the technicians. The dancer's expressive glances
towards both men dramatize the peculiar circumstances of this production
as well as the repressive conditions of pre-punk Ljubljana described in the
program.
55
The first part of the performance is accompanied, sporadically,
by Shubert's "Symphony in 8-minor." Instead of graceful, seeming-
ly-effortless movement to this music, however, K a v a ~ emphasizes the
physical strain he is putting into his activity. His first move creates the
image of the falcon by swinging his arms in circles so fast under a dim
overhead light that the arms blur into wings. He then throws himself into
short bursts of energetic activity, working himself into a sweat as he goes
through repeated steps that take him around the entire performance
space. The effort is unsustained, however, as a v a ~ abandons one activity
to try another, or the music simply stops in the middle of a routine.
At one point, one of the technicians throws a cape out on the
floor, interrupting the dancer in the middle his movement. K a v a ~ stops,
gives him an annoyed look, and picks up the cape. In a proud, haughty
attitude, K a v a ~ has the technician drape the cape over him. He then
positions himself directly in front of the audience and mimes a routine of
magic tricks. At a later point he actually performs the tricks he had
earlier mimed, getting the audience to participate by holding the little
items that appear and disappear. K a v a ~ is obviously not happy to be
doing these tricks and being so close to the audience, but he seems to be
compelled by the presence of the cape and the men controlling the light
and sound. Perhaps this is a representation of the "permitted art form"
allowed in the "atmosphere of Tito idolatry."
In contrast to the farst half of the performance, accompanied by
Shubert's classical music, the second half explodes with synthesizer drums
and contemporary music styles from hardcore punk through disco dance
rhythms to the latest music trends of house and industrial. K a v a ~ has
transformed himself as well, having shed his more traditional outfit of
black pants, white button-down shirt, and black vest for an entirely black
outfit accented with a green knapsack and leather straps that crisscross his
chest. The transformation comes out of a gradual process of K o v a ~ s
frustration and exertion leading to the removal of his cape, vest, and shirt,
one by one. Having stripped down to his undershirt, o v a ~ continues his
exertions until the music makes its dramatic shift.
K o v a ~ s initial response to the new music is elation, as the energy
of his movements are finally matched by the energy of the
accompaniment. The sub-culture described in the program can at last
find open expression. His renewed commitment to the movement does
not last. K o v a ~ s strained steps and gestures drag on without leading up
to anything, and the music and lights continue to affect him just as before.
He sets himself up at the back of the floor as if to run across and leap
into an impressive dance step, but he never makes the leap. The dance
to the new music is just as long and involved as the dance to the old,
56
except that this time o v a ~ does not seem so much frustrated as bored
and exhausted.
During this portion of the performance, one of the men on the
side throws out a yellow hard hat, which parallels the earlier magician's
cape. The hard hat, however, does not affect o v a ~ in the same way. He
picks it up and incorporates it into his dance, indicating with his
movement that it is completely foreign to him and that he has no idea
how to use it. Instead of putting it on his head, he stands on it and
earnestly tries to jump around with it. When he was forced to deal with
the magician's cape, he knew exactly what was required but didn't want
to comply; now that he has the hard hat, he wants to try it, perhaps as a
means to break out of his newly-found rut, but cannot comprehend the
activity it is supposed to trigger.
Finally, o v a ~ fmds closure in a second round of stripping-down.
He rejects the hard hat and removes his knapsack and black shirt. This
time he also removes the undershirt, suggesting that he is going further
this time in stripping away the layers. The performance ends as it began,
with o v a ~ at the back of the space, dimly lit from above, making wings
of his arms. This time his arms are bare, as opposed to the beginning
when he was wearing the white shirt. The falcon of the title is evoked
once again, but it is unclear if the falcon is ever caught. The real
achievement of Iztok o v a ~ in How I Caught a Falcon is his intellectually
and viscerally stimulating presentation of dance, music, and theatrical
expression.
57
CONTRIBUI'ORS
DAVID CALLAGHAN is a free lance director and a doctoral student in
the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center.
JOHN FREEDMAN is the author of Silence's Roar: The Life and Drama
of Nikolai Erdman (Mosaic Press) and the editor/translator of The Major
Plays of Nikolai Erdman (forthcoming from Gordon and Breach Science
Publishers). He lives in Moscow where he is the theatre critic for the
Moscow Tunes.
PATRICK HENNEDY is associate editor of SEEP and a doctoral student
in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center.
JANE HOUSE is preparing an anthology of Italian drama for Columbia
University Press. She edited Political Theatre Today and Sacred Theatre
(with Daniel Gerould and Bettina Knapp). She is a professional actress
and teaches part-time at New York University and Lehman College.
JAN KOTI is a theatre critic and theorist, best known for his Shakespetue
Our Contemporary. His other books include The Eating of the Gods, The
Bottom of Translation, and The Theatre of Essence.
SUZANNE TRAUTH is an associate professor in the Department of
Broadcasting, Dance, Speech Communication, and Theatre at Montclair
State College in Upper Montclair, New Jersey.
Photo Cn;dlts
A Raw Youth, F"mnish National Theatre
Leena Klemela
The Comedians, F"mnish National Theatre
Leena Klemela
Love and Intrigue, Tovstonogov Bolshoi Dramatic Theatre
Mikhail Guterman
Woe from Wit, Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre
Mikhail Guterman
In Shadow, Threshold Theatre Company
Carol Rosegg, Martha Swope Associates
58
fLA YSCRIPrS IN TRANSLATION SERIES
The following is a list of publications available through the Center for
Advanced Study in Theatre Arts (CASTA):
No.1 Never Part From Your Loved Ones, by Alexander Volodin.
Translated by Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No.2 I, Mikhail Sergeevich Lunin, by Edvard Radzinsky. Translated by
Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No. 3 An Altar to Himself, by Ireneusz Iredyllski. Translated by Michal
Kobialka. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No. 4 Conversation with the Executioner, by Kazimierz Moczarski. Stage
adaptation by Zygmunt HUbner; English version by Earl Ostroff
and Daniel C. Gerould. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No.5 The Outsider, by lgnatii Dvoretsky. Translated by C. Peter
Goslett. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No.6 The Ambassador, by Slawomir Mro:iek. Translated by Slawomir
Mro:iek and Ralph Mannheim. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No.7 Four by Liudmila Petrushevskaya (Love, Come into the ./(jtchen,
Nets and Traps, and The Violin). Translated by Alma H. Law.
$5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
No. 8 The Trap, by Tadeusz R6:lewicz. Translated by Adam
Czerniawski. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
Soviet Plays in Translation. An Annotated Bibliography. Compiled and
edited by Alma H. Law and C. Peter Goslett. $5.00 ($6.00
foreign)
Polish Plays in Translation. An Annotated Bibliography. Compiled and
edited by Daniel C. Gerould, Boleslaw Taborski, Michal
Kobialka, and Steven Hart. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
Polish and Soviet Theatre Posters. Introduction and Catalog by Daniel C.
Gerould and Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
59
Polish and Soviet Thealre Posters Volume Two. Introduction and Catalog
by Daniel C. Gerould and Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)
Eastern European Drama and The American Stage. A Symposium with
Janusz Glowacki, Vasily Aksyonov, and moderated by Daniel C.
Gerould (April 30, 1984). $3.00 ($4.00 foreign)
These publications can be ordered by sending a U.S. dollar check or
money order payable to:
60
CASTA- THEATRE PROGRAM
CUNY GRADUATE CENTER
33 WEST 42nd STREET
NEW YORK, NY 10036
SVBSCRIPI'ION POLICY
SEEP is partially supported by CAST A and The Institute for
Contemporary Eastern European Drama and Theatre at The Graduate
Center of the City University of New York. Because of increased printing
and mailing costs, it is necessary to raise the annual subscription rate to
$10.00 a year ($15.00 foreign). Individual issues may be purchased for
$4.00.
The subscription year is the calendar year and thus a $10.00 fee is now
due for 1993. We hope that departments of theatre and film and
departments of Slavic languages and literatures will subscribe as well as
individual professors and scholars. Subscriptions can be ordered by
sending a U.S. dollar check or money order made payable to "CASTA,
CUNY Graduate Center" to:
CASTA-Theatre Program
CUNY Graduate Center
33 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036

Subscription to SEEP, 1993.
NAME:
ADDRESS:
AFFILIATION:
(if not included in address above)
61

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