volume 16, no.

3
Fal11996
SEEP (ISSN # 1047-0018) is a publication of the Institute for Contemporary
East European Drama and Theatre under the auspices of the Center for
Advanced Study in Theatre Arts (CAST A), Graduate Center, City
University of New York. The Institute 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 Slavic and
East European Performance: CAST A, Theatre Program, City University
Graduate Center, 33 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.
EDITOR
Daniel Gerould
MANAGING EDITOR
Jennifer Starbuck
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Susan Tenneriello
EDITORIAL COORDINATOR
and
CIRCULATION MANAGER
Beth Ouradnik
ASSISTANT CIRCULATION MANAGER
Denise Hurd
ADVISORY BOARD
Edwin Wilson, Chair
Marvin Carlson Alma Law
Martha W. Coigney Stuart Liebman
Leo Hecht Laurence Senelick
CAST A Publications are supported by generous grants from the Lucille
Lortel Chair in Theatre and the Sidney E. Cohn Chair in Theatre in the
Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the City University of New York.
Copyright 1996 CAST A
SEEP has a very liberal reprinting policy. Journals and newsletters that
desire to reproduce articles, reviews, and other materials that have appeared
in SEEP may do so, as long as the following provisions are met:
a. Permission to reprint the article must be requested from SEEP in
writing before the fact;
b. Credit to SEEP must be given in the reprint;
c. Two copies of the publication in which the reprinted material has
appeared must be furnished to the Editors of SEEP immediately upon
publication.
2 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No. 3
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Editorial Policy 5
From the Editors 6
Events 7
Books Received 16
"Big Names Keep Moscow Moving: The 1995-1996 Season" 19
John Freedman
"The Overcoat in Dramatic Pantomime: Reflections on My 31
Life and Art"
Rajmund Klechot
"Otrabanda Company & The Fairground Booth" 41
Roger Babb
"The Second Anton Chekhov International Theatre Festival" 45
John Freedman
PAGES FROM THE PAST
"WandaJakubowska's The Last Stop [Ostatni Etap]"
Stuart Liebman
"Bela Balazs on Wanda J akubowska's The Last Stop:
Three Texts"
REVIEWS
56
64
"Eastern European Puppet Theatre at the 1996 UNIMA 71
Festival"
Jane McMahan
"Teatr 3/ 4" 81
Barbara A. Niemczyk
3
"Otrabanda Company Stages Alexander Blok's 85
The Fairground Booth at La Mama E.T.C."
James Leverett
"Soviet and Polish A vant-Garde Art and Performance 91
at New York Galleries 1996"
Daniel Gerould
"Ant igone in New York at the Vineyard Theatre" 94
Jennifer Starbuck
"Peter Karpati's Everyman/Woman: Budapest 1996" 99
Julie Gochman
Contributors 103
Playscripts in Translation Series 107
4 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No.3
EDITORIAL POLICY
Manuscripts in the following categories are solicited: articles of no
more than 2,500 words, performance and film reviews, and bibliographies.
Please bear in mind that all submissions must concern themselves either with
contemporary materials on Slavic and East European theatre, drama and
film, or with new approaches to older materials in recently published works,
or new performances of older plays. In other words, we welcome
submissions reviewing innovative performances of Gogo! but we cannot use
original articles discussing Gogo! as a playwright.
Although we welcome translations of articles and reviews from
foreign publications, we do require copyright release statements. We will
also gladly publish announcements of special events and anything else which
may be of interest to our discipline. All submissions are refereed.
All submissions must be typed double-spaced and carefully
proofread. 7he Chicago Manual of Style should be followed. Trans-
literations should follow the Library of Congress system. Articles should
be submitted on computer disk as either Wordperfect 5.1 for DOS or
Wordperfect 6.0 for Windows documents (ASCII or Text Files will be
accepted as well) and a hard copy of the article should be included.
Photographs are recommended for all reviews. All articles should be sent
to the attention of Slavic and East European Performance, cl o CAST A,
CUNY Graduate School, 33 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.
Submissions will be evaluated, and authors will be notified after
approximately four weeks.
5
FROM THE EDITOR
The Fall 1996 issue contains two features on Russian theatre by
John Freedman, who for the past five years has been our regular and highly
regarded correspondent from Moscow. His diverse commitments as critic,
translator, and editor will not permit him to contribute as frequently to
SEEP in the immediate future. I am grateful to John for providing our
journal with so many outstanding articles and look forward to more of his
reviews whenever he has the time.
The current issue highlights the work of two exceptional theatre
artists whose medium is movement; the Polish pantomimist Rajmund
Klechot reflects upon the origins of his art and discusses his production of
Gogol's "Overcoat," and the American director Roger Babb explores the
theatrical traditions that shaped his staging of Blok's "Fairground Booth."
Our historical rubric, PAGES FROM THE PAST, is devoted to
WandaJakubowska's seminal film about the Holocaust, The Last Stop, and
consists of two parts: first, Stuart Liebman's analysis of the work, and,
second, his presentation of unpublished and untranslated letters and
documents about the film by the Hungarian theorist Bela Balazs. Following
directly upon Petr Kral's essay on Tarkovsky {translated by Kevin Windle)
in the last three issues, the feature on The Last Stop indicates our continuing
commitment to cinema.
My intention is for SEEP to publish more articles and reviews
about Russian and Eastern European cinema, and I urge readers who have
the opportunity to see new films abroad or at festivals in the U.S. to write
about them for us. An article by Linda Lee in the New York Times of
September 30, 1996, entitled, "Films That Win Acclaim But Not U.S.
Distributors," describes the extreme crisis facing Eastern European film
makers, who can no longer assume that the excellence of their work will
ever enable them to find a distributor or public in the West. At a time of
waning interest in the world at large, we must endeavor to spread the word
about the merits of these films and try to make them better known.
Finally the Fall issue for 1996 contains reviews by Jim Leverett,
Jane McMahan, Barbara Niemczyk, Julie Gochman, and Jennifer Starbuck,
as well as fully detailed sections on EVENTS and BOOKS RECEIVED.
-Daniel Gerould
6 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No. 3
STAGE PRODUCTIONS
New York 1996
EVENTS
Pamela Billig and Eugene Brogyanyi, artistic directors of the
Threshold Theatre Company in New York, produced their annual Festival
of International One-Act Plays at the Here Theatre from May 16 to June 2.
Plays by Slavic and East European writers presented during the festival
included Vladmir Nabokov's The Grand-dad (1923), Valerii Briusov's The
Wayfarer (1910), Geza Paskandi's Outside Noises or Don't Be Afraid of Mr.
Kopa (1964), and Carl Laszlo's Let's Eat Hair (1956). In addition, sketches
from the Polish writer Konstanty ildefons Gakzyilski's Little Theatre of The
Green Goose (1946-1947) were interspersed throughout the program, serving
as comic punctuation to the one-acts.
Antoni Libera directed Samuel Beckett's Endgame at the John Jay
Theatre from August 9 to 11 as part of the summer Beckett Festival at
Lincoln Center Festival 96. Libera is a Polish stage director and writer who
has translated all of Beckett's plays into Polish. Libera's productions of
Beckett have been presented throughout Europe as well as in Poland.
The International Festival of Puppet Theater presented by the Jim
Henson Foundation was held in New York from September 10 to 22. From
the Czech Republic, the Forman Brothers performed The Baroque Opera, an
eighteenth-century folk opera with music composed by Vltezslav Janda, at
the Public Theater from September 11 to 15. Also from the Czech Republic,
the husband and wife team of Frantisek Vitek and Vera Ricarova presented
Piskanderdula at La Mama E.T.C. from September 11 to 22.
Aleksandr Galin's Sorry, directed by Gleb Panfilov and featuring
Inna Churikova, was presented by the Moscow Lenkom Theater at Town
Hall in New York on October 11.
Chekov's Uncle Vanya was produced at the Westside Repertory
Theatre in New York from September 25 to October 20.
7
Karen Sunde's To Moscow, concerning the life and loves of Anton
Chekhov during his last years at the Moscow Art Theatre, was performed
by the Chain Lightning Theatre Company at the One Dream Theatre from
October 3 to 27.
The Polish Theatre Institute in the USA in association with La
Mama E.T.C. presented a Festival of Polish Theatre from October 17 to 27.
Nina Polan appeared as the Polish-American actress Helena Modjeska
(Modrzejewska) in Kazimierz Braun's Helena the Immigrant Queen, directed
by Joseph Kutrzeba. The performance was presented in both Polish and
English on alternate evenings. The Festival also included Leon Schiller's
Kram z Pwsenkamz, a musical revue with English narrative comprised of
songs from the sixteenth-century to the 1920s, and Jan Stefani's An Assumed
Miracle.
Miriam Hoffman's musical The Maid of Ludmir, directed by Robert
Kalfin and based on the life story of a nineteenth-century Hassidic girl who
became a distinguished rabbi in the Ukraine, was presented in Yiddish with
simultaneous English and Russian translation at Center Synagogue's
Folksbiene Theatre beginning October 27 and running until January 15
1997. The production features music by John Clifton and performances by
Zypora Spaisman, Mina Bern, and Bernard Mendelovitch.
Players Forum presented three productions by the Eastern
European Theatre Company at the Salon in New York on November 6, 13,
and December 4. The first was Games for Faust, a staged reading based on
Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, directed by Jeffrey Guyton and
featuring Don Leslie, Chuck McMahon, Gwinne Rivers, and Greg Webster.
The second was Diary of a Madman, directed and performed by Alexander
Denisov, in Russian with English synopsis. The third was a staged reading
of Here There by Boguslaw Schaeffer, translated by Maria Hagadus.
Moscow Theatre Sovremennik presented Chekhov's Three Sisters
and Evgenia Ginzburg's Into the Whirlwind, both directed by Galina
Volchek, at Broadway's Lunt-Fontanne Theatre from November 7 to 16.
The performances were in Russian with simulanteous translation provided
for the audience.
The New Forms Theatre Shtrich of Sophia, Bulgaria presented
Alice Point Love, a dance-theatre piece, at La Mama E.T.C. from November
8 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No. 3
14 to 17. The performance was the experimental theatre company's
American debut. Founded in 1992 by students of the National Academy of
Theatre and Film Arts in Sophia, t he troupe has toured throughout
Bulgaria, Slovenia, Morocco, and France under the artistic director and
manager, Peter Todorov.
The Belgrade International Theatre Festival presented Medea,
directed by Ivana Vujic, at La Mama E.T.C. from November 21 to
December 1.
The Trojan Women, directed by Andrei Serban and Elizabeth
Swados, featuring the original members of the Great Jones Repertory Co.,
was presented at La Mama E.T.C. on December 12 in celebration of t he
theatre's thirty-fifth anniversary.
New York 1997
Elizabeth Egloff's adaptation of Dostoyevsky's The Devils, directed
by Garland Wright, will be performed at the New York Theatre Workshop,
opening March 11, 1997 with previews beginning February 21, 1997.
STAGE PRODUCTIONS
Europe 1996
Romanian director Silviu Pucarete with the National Theatre of
Craiova presented Les Danaides, based on Aeschylus' Suppliant Women,
during Vienna's Wiener Festwochen in June.
Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, directed by Peter Stein, concluded the
Edinburgh International Festival in August. The performance was in Italian
with English supertitles. The international cast included Meddalena Crippa
as Yelena, Elizabetta Pozzi as Sonya, and Roberto Herlizka as Vanya.
Helen Edmundson's four-hour adaptation of Tolstoy's War and
Peace was performed by the Shared Experience Company in repertory at the
National Cottesloe Theatre, London, in the Fall.
The Polish Cultural Institute, Harwood Academic Publishers, and
the Spiro Institute presented a staged reading of Hanna Krall's To Steal a
March on God, translated by Jadwiga Kosicka and directed and produced by
9
Jasper Holmes and Andrew Herskovits, at the Polish Embassy in London
on October 17.
Chekhov's 7he Cheny Orchard was presented at the Swan Theatre
in Stratford-upon-Avon from October 24 to November 2.
Stanislaw Wyspianski's 7he Wedding, directed by Stanislas Nordey,
was presented at the Theatre Nanterre-Amandiers, Paris, from November
6 to December 8.
DANCE 1996
Montazstroj, a Croatian dance company from Zagreb, performed
everybody goes to disco from moscow to san francisco at Performance Space 122
in New York from September 26 to 28. The performers were Srecko Borse,
Bernarda Pesa, and Damir Klemenic.
Croatian choreographer Maja Lorkovic presented Price with music
by Lewis Flinn and Radsolav Lorkovic at the Judson Church in New York
on October 21. The piece was developed in collaboration with the
performers who included Ariane Anthony, Michele DiCola Bacheller,
Marianne Forti, Janine Gutheil, Cristina Ottolini, Utafami Takemura, and
Katrina van Zee.
The American Hungarian Folklore Centrum presented a
performance by the Tamburitzans at the Fashion Insitute of Technology in
New York on October 26. The Tamburitzans are celebrating their 60th
anniversary of performing music and dance from Central and Eastern
Europe. The "Tammies" are an ensemble group whose members are students
of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
DANCE 1997
The Polish dance and folk ensemble Mazowsze will perform in the
Brooklyn Center for Performing Arts at Brooklyn College on January 26.
10
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No. 3
FILM 1996
Srdjan Dragojevic's antiwar film, Pretty Villages, Pretty Flames,
opened in Belgrade on June 1, generating much controversy over its graphic
depiction of the war.
Hungarian director Ildiko Enyedi's Magic Hunter was shown
commercially in New York in June.
Lithuanian director Sharunas Banas's film Few of Us, a wordless
tOO-minute study of a girl in a snowbound village, was shown in Paris in
September.
Anthology Film Archives presented a retrospective of Soviet
filmmaker Dziga Vertov from September 27 to October 3. Four films were
screened: Kinoglaz (1925), Shagia Soviet (1926), A Sixth of the World (1926),
and The Eleventh Hour (1928).
Soviet filmmaker Aleksei Balabanov's Trofim, a twenty-five minute
section of a longer film, Arrival of a Train, was shown as part of the thirty-
fourth New York Film Festival at Alice Tully Hall on October 8. The film
was co-written with Sergei Selyanin and featured Sergei Makowezki, Sonya
Buryak, and Aleksei German.
Emir Kusturica's Underground was screened as part of the Lincoln
Center Film Festival at the Walter Reade Theater on October 12. The film
was the 1995 winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
Sisters: Films by Russian Women, a series of screenings highlighting
the work of Soviet filmmakers, was held at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade
Theater in October. The directors represented in the series were Larisa
Shepitko, Wings (1966) and The Ascent (1976), Kira Muratova, Brief
Encounters (1967) and The Asthenic Syndrome (1989), Niyole Adomenaite,
The House Built on Sand (1991), Svetlana Proskurina, Reflections in a Mirror
(1992), and Irina Evteeva, Elixir (1995).
The series also ran in Washington D. C., as Films by Russian
Women: The Best of Three Decades, at the National Gallery of Art from
October 27 to November 9, In addition to screenings of Elixir, Wings, The
Ascent, The House Built on Sand, and The Asthenic Syndrome, Dinara
11
Asanova's Teenagers (1983) was featured as well as shorts by Elem Klimov,
Larisa (1980), and Alexandra Sviridova, One Doll's Story (1985). The
National Gallery also featured a selection of films by Hungarian director
Miklos Jancs6, Master of Form, from October 5 t o 13, in celebration of the
filmmaker's seventy-fifth birthday. Included in the series were Cantata
(1962), My Way Home (1964), Love Each Other (1995), The Red and the W'hite
(1967), 7he Blue Danube Waltz (1992), and Message of Stones, a series of hour-
long videos (1993-1994).
Slovak director Dusan Hanak was given a feature-film retrospective
at the Museum of Modern Art from October 19 to November 1. The
screenings included 322 (1969), Pictures of the Old World (1972), Rosy
Dreams (1976), I Love, You Love (1980), Quiet joy (1985), Private Lives (1990),
and the U.S. Premiere of Hanak's latest film, Paper Heads (1995).
Nikita Mikhalkov's documentary Anna, which features the
Russian filmmaker's daughter, Anna Mikhalkov, was shown at the Film
Forum in New York in November.
Anna Karen ina is being filmed by English director Bernard Rose on
location in St. Petersburg to be released in January 1997. The production is
the joint project of Mel Gibson and Russian filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov,
with an international cast including Sophie Marceau as Anna, Sean Bean as
Vronsky, and Alfred Molina as Levin.
ARTS, CULTURE, NEWS 1996
A seminar for young theatre critics was held in Sibiu, Romania
from March 26 to April 2 as part of the International Festival of Young
Professional Theatre. The seminar involved twenty participants in
discussion and lecture sessions about the performances visited during the
festival whose theme was "Violence."
Polish Posters: Combat on Paper 1960-1990, an exhibition exploring
the art of poster design through the work of individual artists, was held at
the Katonah Museum of Art in upstate New York from May 12 to July 21.
For the seventeenth year, Budapest hosted the World Festival of
Puppet Players from June 23 to 30. [See Jane McMahan's review in this
issue of SEEP. )
12 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No. 3
The Association for Theatre in Higher Education (A THE) held its
national conference in New York City from August 7 to 10. Among the
panels devoted to Slavic and Eastern European performance was "Defining
Freedom: Slavic and East European Theatre, 1985 to the Present," chaired
by Robert Gardner who presented "Surviving Perestroika: Repertory
Management, and the Marketplace at the Theatre Laboratory." Other
participants included Dennis Beck, "Czech Theatre Today: Battling and
Acquiescing to the Isms Again," Kinga Nijinsky Gaspers, "Freedom, A
Double Edged Sword: the Political and Economic Realities of Hungarian
Theatre After the Fall of Communism," Dana Smith, "Defining Freedom:
Moscow Drama and Theatre, 1985-1995," and Biliana Stoytcheva- Horissian,
"Performing Freedom: Bulgarian Theatre After the Fall." A session featuring
the work of Tadeusz Kantor screened two videos, Wielopole Wielopole (1980)
and Today is My Birthday (1991), filmed at La Mama E.T.C. in New York
shortly after Kantor's death . The screening was followed by a symposium,
"Tadeusz Kantor: Postmodern Theory, Postmodern Practice," chaired by
Jeffrey Eric Jenkins who presented "Who Knows Kantor?" Other panelists
included Jeffrey Lawson, "Kantor: Texts into Performance," Allen J.
Kuharski, "Kantor and Poland's Impossible Avant-Garde," and Michal
Kobialka, as respondent, who spoke on "Theatrical Convergence: Kantor's
Theory, Kantor's Practice."
In an article in the New York Times, 12 August 1996, "Struggling to
Raise the Curtain Once More On a Russian Legacy," Alessandra Stanley
reports from Penze, Russia, on the efforts of Natalya Kugel, director of the
Meyerhold Museum Theatre, to maintain the legacy of the great Russian
theatre artist. Because of severe cuts in government subsidies, Kugel
explained that the Meyerhold Theatre must attract audiences by performing
P. G. W ode house and The Nutcracker. "We are trying to revive and recreate
his method. But everything we do has to have a happy ending. Life is so
hard now; we try to give people something so they come out of the theatre
purified and optimistic." Alma Law, interviewed by phone, :old Stanley,
"The irony is that earlier they were subsidized, but on a tight leash. Now
they are free, and helpless. I cannot imagine that there are many sponsors in
Penza."
"A Thousand Years of Czech Culture," the inaugural exhibition of
the Gallery at Old Salem in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, began on
September 24 and will run until March 16, 1997. Over 200 historic artifacts
and works of art from the National Museum in Prague trace the history and
13
culture of the Czechoslovak Republic. The show examines politics, religion,
folk customs, decorative and fine art, as well as music and theater. Jarka
Burian gave a talk on Czech Theatre on October 7.
Shostakovich's first opera, The Nose, directed by David Pountney,
was performed at De Nederlandse Opera, Amsterdam, on October 24 and
27.
In an article by Jane Perlez in the New York Times, 30 August 1996,
about young Polish business executives, "It's Yuppie Heaven in Poland,"
one of the success stories cited is that of Piotr Gruszczynski, 30, who earns
$2,200 a month and supervises 60 people at the Young & Rubicam
advertising agency. At the same time Gruszczynski conti nues his career as
a theatre critic, scholar, and essayist, writing regularly for Dialog, Poland
highly respected theatre journal .
Spencer Golub's The Recurrence of Fate was awarded New York
University's Joe A. Callaway Prize for Best Book on Drama & Theater. [See
BOOKS RECEIVED, SEEP vol. 14, no. 2 (Summer 1994).] Golub lectured
on the topic of his next book, The Flies and the Wings, at New York
University on October 28.
-Compiled by Susan Tenneriello
PUPPET THEATRE CONFERENCE IN ST. PETERSBURG
An international conference and exhibition, "Marionette Theater
of the Symbolist Era," was held at the Anna Akhmatova Museum in St.
Petersburg from June 4 to 7. The conference was organized by Keith
Tribble (Oklahoma State University) and curated by Nina Popova and
Vladimir Shubin. Irina Muraviova and Galina Savel'eva were the exhibition
curators. Presentations included the following papers: Keith Tribble, "The
Rod Puppet in the Symbolist Era;" Stanislav Savitskii, "Alfred Jarry and the
Marionette Theatre;" Harold Segel, "Shadow Theatre in the Symbolist Era;"
Anna Ivanovna, "Traditional Marionette Theatre;" Irina
Bagration-Mukhraneli, "The Ubermarionette: Between Idol and Movie
Actor;" Barbara Niemczyk, "Marionette Theatre in Wyspianski's Works;"
Henryk Jurkowski, "The Marionette in Wyspianski;" Irina Solomonik,
"Symbolism in the Theory and Practice of the Puppet Stage at the Beginning
14 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No. 3
of the Twentieth Century;" Sharon Carnicke, "Evreinov as Puppeter;" Irina
Miller, "The Actor as Marionette in Sologub's 'The Theatre of One Will;'"
Irina Korneenko, "The Puppet, Blok, and Petr Potemkin;" Oleg Fel'dman,
"Meyerhold and the Marionette;" Irina Uvarova, "Meyerhold and the
Concept of the Puppet;" Mikhail Khusid, "On the Practical and Stylistic
Principles of Modern Production of Symbolist Marionette Theatre;" Penny
Francis, "Garcia Lorca and the Puppet Theatre;" Daniel Gerould, "The
Marionette in Andreev's 'Requiem;"' Konstantin Azadovskii, "Rilke and the
Parisian Marionette Theatre of Sazanova-Slonimskaia;" David Zolotnitskii,
"Nikolai Gumilev and the Marionette Theatre;" Magda Lukashevich, "From
the Collection of the State Museum of Children's Theatre;" Mariia
Staborovskaia, "The Toys of Alksei Remizov;" Aleksandr Timofeev,
"Mikhail Kuzmin-dramatist and Censorship: New Materials;" George
Cheron, "Mikhail Kuzmin and the Puppet Theatre: the Chronicle of One
Interest;" Leonid Katsis, "Puppets of the Symbolist Era in the Prose of the
1920s, or Who is Buratino;" Elena Tolstaia, '"The Golden Key' of Aleksei
Tolstoi;" Galina Savel'eva, "The Puppet Motifs in the work of Vladimir
Nabokov;" Elizabeth Heresch, "From Schnitzler to Meyerhold: the Russian
Reception of the Austrian Writer's Play with Masks."
-Daniel Gerould
15
BOOKS RECEIVED
Krall, Hanna. To Steal a March on God. Translated and edited by Jadwiga
Kosicka. The Netherlands: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996.
40 pages. Volume 1 of The Polish Theatre Archive, edited by
Daniel Gerould. A documentary drama in five pictures about the
1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, adapted by Krall from her book of
the same title, resulting from a series of interviews with Marek
Edelman, former deputy commander of the Uprising and now a
ditinguished cardiologist. Contains biographical notes, selected
bibliography, 10 plates, and an appendix (Lieutenant General
J iirgen Stroop's account of the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto).
Miciri.ski, Tadeusz. Utwory dramatyczne (Dramatic Works), Volume I.
Edited and with notes and commentary by Teresa Wr6blewska.
Cracow: Wydawoictwo Literackie, 1996. 582 pages. Volume l of
Miciri.ski's complete plays is the fourth and last volume in the series
to appear. It contains Noc (Night), Noc Rabinowa (Night of the
Rabbi), Kijomora (Kijomora), KniaiPatiomkin (Prince Potemkin),
Wrogowie Duchow (Enemies of the Spirit), and Romans Siedmiu
Braci SpiEJCYch w Chinach (Ballad of the Seven Sleeping Brothers in
China). Pages 269-577 are devoted to notes and commentary.
There are fifteen pages of illustrations.
Sugiera, Malgorzata. Dramaturgia Slawomira Mroika (The Dramaturgy of
Slawomi r Mrozek). Cracow: Univer sitas, 1996. 295 pages. An
analytical study of different approaches to Mrozek's principal
plays, featuring comparisons with dramas by Adarnov and Arrabal,
Orkeny and Havel , Diirrenmatt and Frisch, Chekhov and
Gombrowicz. Includes a chronology of Mrozek's plays, a summary
in English, and an index.
The Theatre in Poland, 1 (1996). Contains a special section, "Heritage of
Kantor," consisting of four articles: Krzysztof Ple5niarowicz,
"Kantor's Living Museum;" Marek Rostworowski, "They Danced
on the Bridge a Whole Century Through: Title and Idea of the
Exhibition;" Lech Stangret, "Wandering with Kantor;" and Jan
Klossowicz, "Changing of the Guard." Other features include
Katarzyna Krzyian, "Witkacy in Andrzej Dziuk's Theatre."
16
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No.3
Theatre Insight. Theatre in Europe: Eastern and Central. Issue #15, Volume
7, No.1, Spring 1996. Special section on Eastern Europe contains
the following articles: James Harbeck, "Okhlopkov and t he
Nascence of the Postmodern;" Nancy Bishop, "Puppets of a
Totalitarian System: An Exploration of the Drak Theatre;" Toni
Hull, "'Eternal questions for which there are no answers': A
Contextual Analysis of Lev Dodin's Devils at the Maly Theatre;"
John Harper Taylor, "From Catfish Row to Red Square: Porgy and
Bess and the Politics of the Cold War;" Ellen W. Kaplan, "IN
PRODUCTION: Crossing Boundaries: Raising Issues of Identity
Across Cultural Borders;" Dennis Christilles and Mark Landis, "IN
PRODUCTION: Production Notes on Temptation: Images of
Dancing and Damnation."
Titova, G.V. Tvorcheskii Teatr i Teatral'nyi Konstruktivizm (Creative
Theatre and Theatrical Constructivism). St. Petersburg: St.
Petersburg Academy of Theatrical Art, 1995. 255 pages. Part One:
The Creative Theatre (The theatrical and aesthetic conception of
the Proletkult and the theatre of war "communism"). I. A.A.
Bogadanov's triad and the philosophic and aesthetic platform of the
Proletkult. II. The creative theatre of P.M. Kerzhentsev. III. The
creative theatre and the professional stage. Part Two: Theatrical
Constructivism: Ideas and Method. I. Images of the future:
prehistory and the social and aesthetic aspects of constructivism. II.
Constructivism and the Theatre. The Moscow Art Theatre,
Tairov, Meyerhold, constructivism, biomechanics, expressionism.
Witkacy: Zycie i tw6rczo.SC. Articles from the Witkiewicz Conference at the
Slupsk Museum, September 16-18, 1994 [See SEEP vol. 14, no.3
(Fall 1994).] Edited by Janusz Degler. Wrodaw: Wiedza o
Kulturze, 1996. 335 pages. Contains articles by the following:
Wojciech Sztaba, Irena Jakimowicz, Anna Zakicwicz, Maria
Lewariska, Stefan Wojcik, Urszula Czartoryska, Janusz Degler,
Marta and Marek Skwar, Anna Krajewska, Wlodzimierz Bolecki,
J6zef Tarnowski, Daniel Gerould, Natalia Jakubowa, Slawomir
Smoczyriski, and Anna Micillska as well as a preface by Mieczyslaw
Jaroszewicz, director of the museum. Includes an index of names
and tides, an index of Witkiewicz's works, and 60 illustrations.
17
Witkiewicz, Stanislaw Ignacy. My!ii o Polsce, Sztuce, Filozofii (Thoughts on
Poland, Art, Philosophy). Edited with an introduction by Jan W.
Sarna. Kielce: STON-2, 1996. 176 pages. A varied selection of
quotations fromWitkiewicz's works. Includes eleven photographs
of the playwright and a bibliography of t he sources of the citations.
Zolotnitsky, David. Sergei Radlov: The Shakespearian Fate of a Soviet
Dzrector. The Netherlands: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995.
316 pages. Volume 4 of the Russian Theatre Archive, edited by
John Freedman, Leon Gitelman, and Anatoly Smeliansky. Includes
notes, indexes of names and titles, a list of Radlov's productions, a
Radlov bibliography, major works on Radlov, and 23 plates.
18 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No. 3
BIG NAMES KEEP MOSCOW MOVING: THE 1995-1996 SEASON
John Freedman
The biggest news of the 1995-96 season in Moscow was made by
out- of-towners. Five festivals and about a dozen independent tours brought
to town over ninety touring productions from all over the world. With that
kind of competition for publicity, funding, stage time and theatre-goers'
endurance, Moscow theatres had perhaps the slowest season I have seen since
I began covering the scene regularly in 1991. Nevertheless, there were
several local productions of note, all of them connected in one way or
another with well-established names.
Kama Ginkas, squeezing another Moscow show into his busy
schedule which has him working now most oft en in Helsinki, turned out a
powerful, typically unorthodox production at the Young Spectator Theatre
called The Execution of the Decembrists. The script was Ginkas's own, based
on archival documents, memoirs and letters of the people who were
involved in that pivotal historical event where three of the five rebels
condemned to die slipped through their nooses bloodied and broken but still
alive. In a gmesome epilogue, they were stmng up and hung again. Ginkas
collected a vast array of materials which shows just how ineptly the entire
affair was handled, from the young Tsar Nikolai I who really preferred to
avoid the execution, to the policemen and workmen who could do nothing
about lost, broken and deficient materials which played their own role in
the grim outcome.
The production is a viscerally moving combination of archival
dryness, gallows humor and piercing moments of unsentimental emotion.
Twelve of the fourteen actors speak the language of interrogations, reports
or letters from which the text has been cut and pasted, while a figure called
the Author interrupts the flow of events, "directing" the action and
encouraging the spectators to remain skeptical about the characters' claims
and confessions. In the end, a "contemporary"-a slightly haywire woman-
makes a farcical entrance and seems to give her approval to the grisly affair.
Ginkas's own design is sparse and theat rically effective. The
audience sits on a grandstand on the stage facing bare, red brick walls. Some
sandbags hang from a beam at stage right, suggesting hung bodies, while a
few transparent plastic cubicles displaying noose knots, shackles and a
soldier's uniform are comic reminders of this show's origins in museum
materials. Each of the participants, like a museum exhibit, wears a
hand-scribbled name tag around his neck, while the dead rebels are
19
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The Execution of the Decembrists, directed by Kama Ginkas at the Young
Spectator Theatre, with Yvgeny Sarmont, Arkady Levin, and Dimitry Suponin
represented by white nightshirts on hangers with name tags slung across
their chests. These crudely simplistic touches create an undercurrent of
"inadequate" and unexpected humor which slice away any hints at
sentimentality.
At the Satirikon Theatre, Konstantin Raikin is fast emerging as one
of Moscow's most talented and influential theatre personalities. Long one
of Russia's top actors, he has also become at age forty-six perhaps Moscow's
best theatre manager. He has done it the smart and simple way, getting as
many talented people as possible to work with him. In a town where the
vast majority of artistic directors are terrified of competition from outsiders,
Raikin has an open door policy that has the best and the brightest coming
through and keeping his theatre's reputation on a steep climb. But this year,
it was Raikin himself who stepped down from the stage and took a place in
the director's chair to produce one of the season's best shows, a sparkling
Romeo and Juliet.
Raikin caught the fervor, the delightful silliness and the deadly
seriousness of adolescents crossing the line into adulthood. Their
burgeoning sexuality is reflected in the bawdy phallic images of unsheathed
swords, stiff legs and the protruding shaft of a cart; their mindless,
instinctive fury is portrayed in elaborate, spectacular fight scenes; their
purity is echoed in the deep blue costumes and penetrating blue and orange
light of the ethereal ball scene at the Capulet home where Romeo falls in
love with Juliet. Boris Valuev's set echoes the characters' pristine states. A
two-story structure of square, open cells stands at mid-stage. When the
central cells move away and a black curtain rises, we find ourselves on a
strangely iridescent piazza in the center of Verona.
Natalia Vdovina, who has emerged as Raikin's number one actress
in the last three years and has been a major contributor to his theatre's
success, is brilliant as the volcanic Juliet. Filled with boundless, expendable
energy, she is less a young teenager than a spoiled, frivolous baby-child. But
as she makes the transformation from lovestruck young girl-whose electric
kisses leave Romeo speechless-to a profound and fiercely independent
young woman, she opens the production up and carries it to the tragic
ending.
After three years of struggling to make the transition from student
group to professional theatre, the Fomenko Studio finally created a show
that lived up to the expectations people have had for it. There was more
than a little backstage drama attached to it, since the Studio had opened the
season with a dismal dramatization of Sasha Sokolov's novel, A School for
Fools, and rumors were flying that its next effort, Tanya- Tanya, was having
21
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Romeo and Juliet, directed by Konstantin Raikin at the Satirikon Theatre,
with Marina Ivanova, Natalia Vdovina, and Angelina Varganova
probl ems in rehearsals. In fact, Pyotr Fomenko, arguably Moscow's top
director of the '90s, did step in and take over the last stages of rehearsals
from the young Andrei Prikhodko. The result was a beautiful, atmospheric
show that showed off the young cast to best advantage, and marked the
debut of a highly-touted young playwright, Olga Mukhina. Shortly
thereafter, Fomenko also brought out his production of Pushkin's The
Queen of Spades at the Vakhtangov Theatre, but this underachieving show
was eclipsed by Tanya- Tanya.
Cut into 14 episodes, Tanya- Tanya draws back the curtain on the
affections, desires and despairs of three men and three women gathered in
the hospitable home of the still young, but already aging romantic, Vasya
Okhlobystin. Mukhina's fateful situations, buried in deceptively superficial
chit-chat, create a dramatic world of razor-sharp clarity. Her lightly
interchanging lovers soar in a heady atmosphere of heightened passions,
although that hardly means their skies are cloudless: Hearts are broken
inexorably and irreversibly as people dance and kiss, and champagne flows.
Although the program lists no director at all, Fomenko's touch-
the proliferation of subtle detail even in sounds and smells- is unmistakable.
Meanwhile, several talented actors who previously have been left to fend for
themselves with lesser directors, turn in some languorous, sensual and
comical performances. Especially good are the eccentric, self-sufficient
Galina Tyunina, and the movingly transparent Polina Kutepova as women
aced out by the cool, doll-like beauty of the title character. But it may be
the blissfully grinning performance of Kirill Pirogov as an innocent,
impressionable teenager which gives things focus. His radiance and freshness
are mirrored in the sparse, summery decoration, the baggy, Dowing
costumes, and the ethereal music ranging from jazz to the romantic ballads
of Alexander Vertinsky and Pyotr Leshchenko.
Yury Pogrebnichko, one of Moscow's most iconoclastic directors,
had almost disappeared from sight over the last three years. That made his
new production, or deconstruction, of Hamlet at the Krasnaya Presnya
Theatre a welcome addition to the season. Pogrebnichko is an unrepentant
punster who loves to "illustrate" texr, and he immediately signaled Hamlet's
refusal to be played on as if he were a pipe: the performance begins with the
entire cast momentarily taking places at music stands placed around the tiny
stage. Thereafter, dispassionate, deadpan actors stalk the stage, speaki ng
with such a ponderous air that the humor of it all crackles in the air. Many
key monologues were altered or cut.
Pogrebnichko serves up multiple Hamlets, Ophelias and others, and
each is capable of assuming one or another of the prince's attributes: the
23
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ranting intellectual (Andrei Kochetkov), the cool contemporary (Yury
Pavlov) or the indifferent killer (Afanasy Trishkin). Theirs is a world of lies
and liars, conspiracies and spies, where informing and backstabbing are a
way of life. Like all of the director's works, this Hamlet transpires in a
recognizably "Soviet" world characterized by the atmosphere of labor camps
and the people who have inhabited or might yet inhabit them. The
minimalist set by Yury Kononenko (who died in December 1995) is
dominated by an open trap-door-like grave at center stage.
The second act occasionally suffers from Pogrebnichko's
fascination, even obsession, with intertextual play, as long excerpts from
Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and Chekhov's Three Sisters (including
an interpolated quote of Lermontov's poetry) muddy the picture somewhat.
But, more often, the reshufflings and unusual shadings give the play a sharp,
new focus.
Valery Fokin, like Pyotr Fomenko, had an up-and-down season.
His first outing, a production of Dostoevsky called The Karamazovs and Hell
at the Sovremennik, was sunk primarily by Nikolai Klimontovich's
superficial dramatization. But Fokin came back later in the season with an
interesting collation of two works called Anecdotes at the Tabakov Theatre.
The "anecdotes" were Dostoevsky's story, "Bobok" about a tipsy, two-bit
writer who hears the voices of the dead, and Alexander Vampilov's
one-acter, Twenty Minutes With an Angel, a despairing burlesque in which
two drunks in a hotel persecute a stranger because they think his good
intentions are a screen for subterfuge. Written 100 years apart, they fitted
like pieces of a puzzle. Dostoevsky's not-quite disembodied personalities
defined by their puffed-up pride and petty concerns, though also marked by
a sympathetic humanity, are reincarnated in Vampilov's modern hotel
dwellers. That link is also emphasized in Waldemar Zawodzinski's design.
His three-tiered, see-through crypt filled with bodies "living" and dead in
Act I becomes a hollow basement beneath the floor in Act II.
While the Vampilov half of the production, marked by glib, self-
satisfied overacting, went for show rather than substance, Fok!n's handling
of the cavalcade of cadavers in "Bobok" was much tighter and more
effective. The actors' stiff, synchronic movements and the rhythmic ebbs
and flows of their characters' not-yet-forgotten human desires, tangibly
evoked the atmosphere of the kingdom of the dead, and brilliantly brought
Dostoevsky's wicked satire to life.
Moscow's most famous big name, Yury Lyubimov, kicked off the
season at the Taganka Theatre with an excellent version of Euripides's Medea
(the world premiere took place in Greece in May 1995) and ended it with a
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Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No. 3
warm, but unspectacular dramatization of Dostoevsky's A Raw Youth. The
latter show was essentially a reconstruction of a production Lyubimov did
in Helsinki in 1991 (SEEE 13 [Spring 1993]), the biggest difference being that
the Moscow version features two actors sharing the lead of the "raw youth"
Arkady. The point appears to have been to create the optimistic impression
that a whole generation capable of avoiding its ancestors' sins may be on the
rise. The success of Medea was due primarily to Lyubov Selyutina's searing
performance in the title role. More than any Lyubimov production I have
seen, this was a production with a human (as opposed to social or political)
story to tell. Sure the connections were there between Euripides's tale of
passion, plotting and treachery, and the internecine strife which has
humbled and humiliated the Taganka, breaking it into warring factions. But
what made this show click was a woman's gripping journey through
betrayal, fury and tragedy.
Sergei Artsibashev and Vladimir Mirzoyev, two of the most
respected names in the middle generation of directors, turned out modern
interpretations of plays by Nikolai Gogol.
Artsibashev, with The Marriage at his Theatre na Pokrovke, erased
the play's usual source of comedy-the cat and dog conflicts among the
characters-finding humor in tender, thoughtful human portraits. That
radical shift was readily evident in the relationship between the matchmaker
Fyokla Ivanovna and Kochkaryov, the busybody friend who tries forcing
Podkolesin into marriage. Kochkaryov, of course, is homing in on Fyokla's
territory, and the sparks from their conflict usually fly fast and furious.
Here, the pair is all smiles and kisses, echoing t he production's predominant
tone: Everyone would like to be happy and no one begrudges their neighbor
the same-the problem is that life obeys crueler laws.
Mirzoyev's staging of The Inspector General under the title of
Khlestakov at the Stanislavsky Theatre, follows his staging of The Marriage
at that venue in 1994. It continued the same kind of wild innovations, with
Khlestakov becoming something of a marauding, oversexed whirling
dervish, his servant Osip a cool, Magus-like figure and some
minor characters changing sex. In principle the Orientalization of the play
was interesting, while in deed it was less so. One often felt the heavy,
nagging press of an undeniably imaginative director bereft of a sense of
measure. The finale was clever, with the performance ending as Khlestakov
makes his getaway "flying" out on a "magic carpet" pulled by Osip, and the
dumb scene was successfully moved to the curtain calls.
For the first time in recent memory, an Anatoly Vasilyev
production, The Lamentations of Jeremiah (based on the Bible), was
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Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No. 3
performed publicly at t he School of Dramatic Art more than just a handful
of times. This was not another of the director' s experiments with his acting
students, but a choral work staged with a professional religious vocal
ensemble called Glas (the ecclesiastical term for "tune" and the Church
Orthodox word for "voice"). As a minimally theatrical religious work, the
theme of Lamentations perhaps fitted Vasilyev's purpose and intent better
than any other work he has done in the '90s. Igor Popov's design was
spectacular, perhaps doing more for the work even than Vasilyev's direction
which had the 15 singers constantly moving in changing formations about
the stage. Two enormous white TV "monastery" walls-each having about
60 arched "windows" cut in them-tilted top-wise from stage right over
center stage. In each window burned a candle. Throughout the
performance about 15 white pigeons freely cooed, sat, walked and flew
about the premises. (None of them singed their wings on the open candle
flames, although a few came close.)
Probably the season's two biggest failures came from Roman
Viktyuk and the Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre. Viktyuk, whose once
liberating homoerotic stagings have been getting flimsier wi th each
successive year, hit bottom with his own dramatization of Philosophy of the
Boudoir by the Marquis de Sade. In it a parade of androgynous figures
strapped with erect phalluses "taught" a virgin the joys of sex through rape
and then, apparently, the killing of her mother. This silly, poorly acted
exercise had no shock value, no erotic charge and nothing to do with
philosophy. The Chekhov Art Theatre, already gearing up for its l OOth
anniversary in 1998, featured a repertory mixing the classics (Lermontov's
The Masquerade and a "modernization" of Ostrovsky's The Storm by
Vladimir Gurkin), new plays (Viktor Rozov's Hoffmann, based on the life
of E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Ivan Okhlobystin's The Evil Woman, or the Cry
of the Dolphin, about two drunks falling in love with a call girl), and foreign
plays or adaptations (Ionesco's Frenzy for Two and Mark Rozovsky's
potpourri, Brechtiana, or Schweik in World War If). Not a one of them
could rise higher than mediocrity (The Masquerade and The Storm), while
several were downright embarrassing. Instead of spending so much time
preparing to celebrate the last 100 years, one suspects the theatre would be
better advised to come up with a new direction for at least the next decade.
At the turn of the calendar year, it appeared that t he season would
end up being the best for contemporary plays in a long time. But after an
unusually high number of new works had opened through February, only
a handful more came out by June. Among the early encouraging signs were
the Moscow debuts of Y elena Popova (Favorites of Fortune at the Push kin
29
Theatre), Stepan Lobozyorov (Portrait with a Stranger played as Birthday
with Crutches at the Mossoviet) and Alexei Slapovsky (In the Bermuda
Expanses at the Pushkin Theatre), and the reappearance of Maria Arbatova
(A Trial Interview on the Theme of Freedom at the Theatre na Pokrovke).
Sergei Kokovkin (Mrs. Lev at the Contemporary Play School) and
Alexander Galin (Czech Photography at the Lenkom) continued their recent
record of one new play a year. However, aside from Olga Mukhina's
Tanya Tanya, none of these plays, nor the productions of them, was
especially noteworthy.
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Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No.3
THE OVERCOAT IN DRAMATIC PANTOMIME:
REFLECTIONS ON MY LIFE AND ART
Rajmund Klechot
"Ars longa, vita breva ... "
("Art is long, life is short...")
"Va, chante selon ton coeur, tu sais ton art ... "
("Go, sing according to your heart, you know your art ... ")
Polish pantomime follows the great classical tradition of
pantomime handed down to us from the Greeks. Through the ages the
distinction between the word "mime" and "pantomimist" has become
blurred, but in the ancient Greeks' description the "pantomimists" were the
t ruly great actors who could move the audience to tears as well as to
laughter. The "mimes" were merely the vulgar comedians who performed
comedy pieces in the entr'actes of the great tragedies. Pantomime was
respected as the highest of all the theatrical art forms . Indeed, the Roman
writer Lucian said of the pantomimist:
He must know all the history of the world from Chaos to the
present ... He must have the strength of Hercules but the softness
of Venus . . . He must be so expert that each spectator of his
performance sees himself in the pantomime as if in a mirror.
For example, my solo pantomime performance, "The Wanderer," enacts
the journey of Everyman and Everywoman. The Wanderer is an archetype
and abstract concept, but this dramatic creation also represents you and me,
and the reality of all experience.
Indeed, "The Wanderer" comprises my life work. Born in Poland
just one day before the Second World War started, I undoubtedly
contributed to the anxiety of my parents' life and existence. After this
horrible chapter in human history finally ended in 1945, my entire family
moved from west to Wrodaw. (My father was a civil engineer
and was chosen as part of a team entrusted with the rebuilding of the city.)
When I disembarked from the train in Wrodaw some time in
September 1945 as a six-year-old child, I was in total shock. Instead of a city,
I saw a moon-like landscape with craters and smoking ruins-not one house
or building was habitable. Our family was one of few Polish families living
31
Rajmund Klechot
32
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16. No. 3
in Wrodaw at that time. We were surrounded by German civilians and
Russian soldiers. This image of Wrodaw immediately after the War has
always remained with me. Often now when I have to create scenes in my
performances that express feelings of agony, despair, and hopelessness, I
automatically return to that vision which remains in my memory and
before my mind's eye.
A year later, I accompanied my father on a business trip from
Wrodaw to Warsaw. Warsaw looked the same as Wrodaw-a city in total
ruins. By now, I was somewhat numbed by these scenes of terrible
devastation and so it did not seem unusual to me. However, in the evening
we were invited to the theatre and I had another experience which I will
never forget as long as I live. I was again in shock, but this time, it was
gloriously uplifting. I felt I was in a trance and had been transported to a
world of beauty and goodness that had existed before only in my
imagination. (Many years later I found out what I had seen was the great
Sadlers Wells Ballet from London and a beautiful young Margot Fonteyn
dancing on the stage.)
This magical experience was the beginning of my interest in theatre
and at the same time these two experiences early in my life shaped my later
orientation and theatrical vision. I now had a better understanding of
human tragedy.
My belief about my Art is summed up in the Latin expression
"Sursum corda"-to uplift hearts. It reaches back to my experiences as a
child, traumatized by the devastation of a war-torn country, seeing the
beauty of the Theatre and experiencing it as a vision of Hope. I know
personally and in the depths of my spirit the power of great Art and the
importance of aesthetics in the Theatre. I have always believed that power
should be used to uplift the hearts and spirits of mankind.
The city of Wrodaw rose again like a phoenix from the ruins and
ashes and became a vibrant center of cultural life. There were two world
class theatres in Wrodaw by the mid 1960s-Tomaszewski's Pantomime
Theatre and Grotowski's Laboratory Theatre (which had recently moved
from Opole). There were seven professional theatres in the city as well as
a very active opera, philharmonic, operetta, and annual music festival, the
Wratislavia Cantans.
In my teens, I became fascinated with pantomime because of three
master artists: Oleg Popov, the Russian circus clown; Charlie Chaplin, the
silent film star; Jean-Louis Barrault, the French pantomimist.
Oleg Popov was extraordinary both as an acrobat and as an actor.
He created unusual comical images and vignettes that made it difficult for
33
me to stop laughing. From him I discovered that one can tell very comical
short stories even without words. From Charlie Chaplin I learned the
most-that pantomime is a different form of communication, with its own
means of expression and vocabulary; an entire story can be told without
words that will be understood anywhere in the world. Pantomime knows
no language barrier.
Jean-Louis Barrault with his expressive face, precise hand gestures,
and body expression added another dimension to silent acting that was more
serious. His pantomime probed the depths of feeling and communicated the
emotions and psychology of his characters.
Intrigued by these great artists, and proud of our abilit ies as young
athletes, my high school friends and I tried to reproduce their movements,
but nothing was right and we simply couldn't do it! Finally we understood
that pantomime is indeed a very difficult art form and one which requires
both specialized techniques and a significant period of training to acquire
true understanding.
While I was deeply interested in theatre and its possibilities, I was
bored by the spoken word. The alternative for me was the theatre of
movement-the theatre of pantomime. In 1959 I was invited to join the
conservatory at Tomaszewski's Pantomime Theatre. I was soon to find out
that pantomime is indeed an extraordinary art form-most demanding of
time and energy.
The Wrodaw Pantomime theatre and its Conservatory were
sponsored by the Government and supervised by the Ministry of Culture
and Art. The period of training and apprenticeship was ten years, after
which we were required to undergo a week of intensive examinations.
Upon successful completion of these examinations the title of "Professional
Artist in Pantomime" was conferred upon us. Being able to pass these
professional examinations successfully required extensive knowledge of
theatre histOry, literature, painting, sculpture, architecture, and music as
well as intensive physical training and exercises in ballet, acrobatics, fencing,
pantomime, the creation of etudes in pantomime, and learning to direct. All
the while we were preparing new programs and performances. Every day's
schedule was eight hours or more of work.
There were no individual stars; the only "star" was the ensemble.
We all were equal and worked with and for each other. Of the over thirty
premieres given by the Pantomime Theatre, some were based on literary
works: Woyzeck, Faust, Gilgamesh, Hamlet, and The Bible. Other
productions were original creations by Tomaszewski. We appeared at many
festivals in Poland and abroad and won many prizes.
34
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No.3
My fifteen years with the Polish Theatre of Pantomime gave me
unique opportunities to acquire technical knowledge, to see outstanding
productions abroad and in Poland, to meet the masters: Jean-Louis Barrault,
Charlie Chaplin, Marcel Marceau, and to work under the greatest creator of
modern pantomime, the director of the Polish Theatre of Pantomime,
Henryk Tomaszewski, and to perform on the great stages of Europe and
America such as La Scala, the Sarah Bernhardt, Covent Garden, City Center,
Wielki Teatr. After many thousands of performances, I was eager to realize
my own vision of pantomime: to create, perform, teach, and direct . With
four other artists from the Polish Theatre of Pantomime, I formed the
Warsaw Mimes' Theatre under the aegis of the Warsaw Chamber Opera.
Pantomime is a visual art. Actors in large or small pantomime
ensembles must be able to create a visible picture on the stage. The solo
pantomime performance is completely different. The actor is alone on the
stage, he has to "make the invisible visible." Thus, the actor must effectively
appeal to and stimulate the audience's imagination. He has to "sculpt the
air" with his gestures so that the audience visualizes both the setting and the
other characters with whom he comes into contact. Creating a character is
done not only by costume and make-up, but most of all by the depth of the
psychological transformation that shapes the body and later t he acting.
Solo acting in dramatic pantomime is the most difficult and
demanding art form in pantomime. It requires very high technical skill and
acting as well as complete identification with the role the artist is playing
and the imaginary environment by which he is surrounded.
I performed, lectured, and taught at many colleges and universities in
the United States. The Overcoat came about as the result of one of these
appearances. After a performance and a lecture at Sinclair Community
College in Dayton, Ohio, Dr. Robert MacClennan, the Chairman of the
Theatre and Dance Department asked if I would be interested in directing
a dramatic pantomime, and if so, what would I like to do. I had long
dreamed of creating my own vision of Gogol's tale, as had others before me.
"The Overcoat," I said, after thinking for a moment
It occurred to me that the students were limited in their time of
training for the acting profession. It was only a two-year college and I
imagined that they felt in some ways similar to the main character in "The
Overcoat." Like Akaky Akakievich they were humble, struggling in their
lives, but they too have their visions, hopes, dreams, and expectations.
I had only eight weeks to do the entire performance. I had to teach
the student actors a new form of art and its technique, direct the play,
explain the lights, the design of costumes and set, and describe the scenes to
35
_a-.
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Tbe Overcoat, directed by Rajmund Klechot, "The Party"
Bronwen Matthews, Robert-Wayne Waldron, Jeff Strange, Wesley Hill, Sharise
Parviz, Shawn Mcintosh, Joshua McCullough
the composer, Andrzej Anweiler, who created and realized a brilliant
musical score that sustained the characters and action. Born of Polish
parents in a Displaced Persons Camps in Germany after the Second World
War, Anweiler came to the United States as a child with his parents and
received his musical training as a concert pianist and composer in America,
Poland, and England.
Knowing that the students did not have the luxury of participating
in many productions and knowing the advantages of playing different roles,
I had each student perform several parts in The Overcoat.
The entire production was an extraordinary experience for
everyone. Together we created the first Polish dramatic pantomime in the
United States. Although they had started with no knowledge whatsoever
of dramatic pantomime, the student actors entered The Overcoat in the
American College Theater Festival, where they were first chosen regional
winners and finally invited to perform at the Kennedy Center in
Washington, D.C. as national winners, selected from over 900 entries from
universities around the nation.
Here is how I conceived of The Overcoat and how I wrote the
scenario and staged it. Gogol's tale, set in nineteenth century Czarist Russia,
tells the story of a struggling clerk, Akaky Akakievich who seeks to be
accepted by "Others" by purchasing a fine overcoat. I had seen and heard
productions of 'The Overcoat" many time-in the cinema, on the stage, and
for radio theatre. These productions all portrayed the story very
naturalistically, as it would happen in everyday life.
'The Overcoat" is especially appropriate for dramatic pantomime,
which can create visually the dreams, visions, and hopes, and expectations
of Akaky Akakievich. I had never had the opportunity to see Gogol's tale
as pantomime, although I knew that both Henryk Tomaszewski and Marcel
Marceau had produced versions of it.
The story of Akaky Akakievich touched me personally. I
understood this struggling clerk and identified with him many times during
my lifetime, under different situations and different circumstances, as I grew
up in Poland after the War. Like Akaky Akakievich I was poor, hungry, ill-
dressed, and many times I had to swallow the bitter pill of hearing the
slighting remarks of others. Often ignored because of my shabby clothes,
I was from time to time invited to dinner or a party, but I often felt like a
"Christmas tree;" for a moment I was treated with respect, but later
abandoned, and like a Christmas tree, disposed of on the sidewalk.
Akaky Akakievich desperately wanted to change his situation, but
he had been categorized by others, "put in a certain drawer" so that there
37
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The Overcoat, directed by Rajmund Klechot, "At the Office"
with C. Bizcuit Corwin as the Boss and Wesley Hill as Akaky Akakievich
seemed to be no possibility of social progress for him. He imagined he could
elevate his social status by investing his entire life savings, and the
unexpected money he received for his work, in the purchase of a fine
overcoat.
For a moment he won the admiration of his co-workers and was
even invited to a wonderful party given by "the boss." This was the
highpoint of his entire life and proved to him that he was right to buy the
overcoat. He even thought that with the purchase of the overcoat he had
gained the respect of his colleagues, but his dream ended on the street where
he was robbed by thieves and severely beaten.
Upon awaking after being in a coma from the beating, Akaky
Akakievich discovered that his dream of an overcoat had been stolen, and
he lapsed into madness and sickness until death finally ended his misery
forever.
I decided to have the stage design for The Overcoat simple and
symbolic. On the horizon above the actors there hung a large picture
showing the cupolas typical of the Russian Orthodox church; they
established the geography of the place where the story occurs.
In the office there was only a coat rack that instantly revealed the
intimidating hierarchy of the establishment. The highest peg was reserved
for the boss's hat, but for Akaky Akakievich there was only the lowest spot,
on the floor under the rack. Stage space was entirely the domain of the
actors. They created the collective body of office workers who stood
opposed to the lonely Akaky Akakievich. Through their group actions they
revealed the corruption, mediocrity, laziness, and futility in their work in
the office, whereas Akaky Akakievich by his movements and gestures
disclosed his diligence, as well as his pleasure in doing good work and
simply in having a job.
Akaky Akakievich was always the first in the office and the last
to close the door before going home. He was bitterly aware the jokes at his
expense, but always polite. To give him a human dimension, I devised
dream sequences in which he obtained his overcoat and became the boss
himself, behaving in a very "bossy" fashion! He pushed all the bureaucrats
to their knees to force them to work hard. Then, knowing their attitude
and values, he fired them all-in his dream.
The scenes of The Overcoat were built on the basis of contrast.
Reality was juxtaposed to dreams and visions; the safe environment, warmth
and fun of the party were opposed to the coldness, darkness, and brutality
of the street with its thugs. The beginning of the play took place in an
atmosphere of hope and expectation, while the denouement betokened
39
destruction and hopelessness.
Gogo! ends his story on a sad note with the inglorious demise of
Akaky Akakievich, who disappeared forever as though he had never
existed.
In my version the characters, stricken with grief and unalterably
changed by his death, come together for his funeral full of sorrow and
remorse. By their movements and gestures, reinforced by the musical score,
we experience their resolve to be different than they were before. The
audience too, I hope, has become more aware of the far-reaching chain of
actions and re-actions initiated by our every word and deed. I had lived this
experience both as an individual and as a part of a nation; now my goal was
to show us ourselves and reveal our human image. May our art have the
ability ro break open our hearts and lift our spirits to a higher plane of
thought, word, and action.
40 Slavic and East European Pe1jormance Vol. 16, No. 3
OTRABANDA COMPANY & THE FAIRGROUND BOOTH
Roger Babb
Otrabanda Company's 1996 production of Alexander Blok's The
Fairground Booth at La Mama was inspired by Meyerhold's revolutionary
production in 1906, ninety years ago, but its aims and intentions were, of
course, vastly dissimilar.
I remember first seeing Meyerhold's name in Grotowski's Towards
a Poor Theatre in the late sixties. Otrabanda started out as a Grotowski
oriented company under the direction of the Belgian playwright Tone
Brulin in Curas;ao. Tone was amazed that we didn't know who Meyerhold
was. He continued to be amazed at our lack of knowledge but was pleased
enough with our youthful and dogged appetite for discipline and technique.
Over the years I collected books about Meyerhold and came to
recognize his influence on my own work. This influence was filtered
through Grotowski and Barba and Brulin and through Brecht and the
Living Theatre and Joseph Chaikin.
Otrabanda spent ten years touring the Mississippi River from St.
Louis to New Orleans. We traveled by raft and performed in a large circus
tent. Our Grotowski influenced pieces became more popularly oriented and
we taught ourselves the skills of the cabotin and street performer. Juggling,
fire eating, magic, and tumbling were incorporated into our approach to
performance as well as skills in holding an unsophisticated rural audience's
attention.
For the last ten years we have been assembling actors, dancers,
musicians and visual artists for projects that require close collaboration and
an interchange of technique and perspective. We like to have the set
dancing, the dancers singing, and the musicians acting.
When I first read The Fairground Booth several years ago, I
immediately felt that it would be an ideal project for Otrabanda. With its
mixture of puppets and commedia figures and its amazingly precise stage
directions indicating highly choreographed ensemble movement, The
Fairground Booth seemed to have been written for us. Blok's play was
already in our blood.
During its twenty-five year history, Otrabanda has developed a
unique blend of theatre and dance that seeks to blur the distinctions between
the two forms. Violent and energized movement sections, or "dances," are
treated as opportunities for heightened kinetic acting in which visceral and
sensuous elements are emphasized. Otrabanda's multifaceted approach
41
Otrabanda's The Fairground Booth, directed by Roger Babb at La Mama
with (from left to right) Dan Hurlin, Tim Cummings, Nancy Alfaro, Jennifer
Miller, and Mary Shultz
allows spectators to shift perspective continually.
Otrabanda felt drawn to The Fairground Booth because of its
technique of disrupting stable points of view and its constant undermining
of fixed interpretations. Columbine as the dualistic Betrothed/Death figure,
the shattering of the golden window, the set's flying apart and the "author's"
constant interruptions all contribute to a sense of fragmentation.
In Otrabanda's production, this effect was underlined by a mixture
of acting styles and intensities. The lovers' scenes were performed in a
subdued, naturalistic manner, while the ball scenes were frenzied and
passionate. Pierret's opening speech was doubled by one of the female
mystics, who provided a tremulous and melodic counterpoint to his more
natural delivery. Two of the longer poems were sung in Brechtian fashion
directly to the audience. The lovers' scenes were played across gender; the
first couple consisted of two men, the second a man and a woman, and the
last two women. Otrabanda wished to deconstruct the sexuality of these
scenes, recognizing that confusions of gender were already present in the
text of Blok's play and within the symbolist movement in St. Petersburg in
1906.
The commedia characters required a stylized form of movement
that would place them in a recognizable context. To arrive at a heightened
mode of stylization, Otrabanda employed Delsarte's tripartite system of
movement and Decroux's triple design technique as well as some of
Meyerhold's biomechanic exercises. Delsarte's system, developed in the
nineteenth century in Paris, is best known in this country as the foundation
for Ted Shawn's and Ruth St. Denis's modern dance pieces. It is often used
as a basic teaching technique in mime training. Decroux is the founder of
modern mime. His most memorable disciple was Jean-Louis Barrault,
whose Pierrot in Carne's film, Les En/ants du Paradis (1945), is legendary.
Otrabanda wished to utilize elevated movement in a display of
technique and at the same time call attention to such movement as a
theatrical device. In the "dance" section that preceded Pierrot's first speech,
"Where are you, faithl ess one?" the actor playing Pierrot began with small
movements of supplication that expanded into grand gestures of adoration.
In the midst of these movements, the actor noticed his body and the line
that it made and carefully readjusted it. Taking his own hand, he placed it
over his heart as a more complete image of adoration. The actor stood apart
from his instrument, distancing himself from it and defamiliarizing it so that
the spectator could see not only what he was doing, but also how.
The language of Blok's play is difficult for contemporary actors.
43
The lyrical and elevated style must not appear to be stilted. Otrabanda's
composer, Neal Kirkwood, set some of the text to music in order to allow
the audience to savor the words in a heightened context. Other scenes
(especially those between the lovers) required a naturalistic reading so that
an intimacy could be established between the actors. At other times,
histrionic declamation was the spring-board for the humorous projection
that commedia seems to require. Harlequin's final speech, before he leaps
through the window of gold, was given at the front of the stage and
addressed to the audience directly. It was crucial to Otrabanda's
interpretation that this speech be given in an as unaffected and straight
forward manner as possi ble without the "lugubrious intonation" that
Meyerhold warned against.
Otrabanda's intention in staging The Fairground Booth was to
experiment with different acting styles and movement strategies. The
audience was offered diverse modes of performance: from highly stylized
and formal commedia conventions through furious and exuberant
choreography to minimal acting (in which the performer attempts to "drop
the mask" and simply exist on the stage). Dialog was interspersed with
highly choreographed movement sections. The Fairground Booth provided
Otrabanda with an opportunity to explore many of the theatrical elements
that Meyerhold and Blok had rediscovered in their harlequinade ninety
years ago. Meyerhold is regarded as the patron saint of experimental theatre
artists. Otrabanda's production of The Fairground Booth was our way of
both demystifying and honoring his memory. Throughout the extended
rehearsal period and the run at La Mama, cast members continued to be
amazed and challenged by the compelling theatricality unleashed by Blok's
play and Meyerhold's staging.
44 Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 16, No.3
THE SECOND ANTON CHEKHOV INTERNATIONAL
THEATRE FESTIVAL
John Freedman
To say that the Second Anton Chekhov International Theatre
Festival running from the end of March to the beginning of July 1996,
outstripped the first fest ival in 1992 is to say little indeed. The number of
productions leaped from eleven in three weeks to thirty-five in three
months. While only two shows in the inaugural venture came from outside
the former Soviet bloc, this time there was an impressive parade of
Europeans. Peter Stein, Declan Donnellan, Peter Brook, Theodoros
T erzopoulos, Nigel Charnock and Giorgio Strehler joined Anatoly
Vasilyev, Eimuntas Nekrosius and Robert Sturua to provide a broad display
of styles. Eighteen countries were involved, including France, Italy,
Germany, England, Switzerland, Greece, the Czech Republic and Argentina,
some in joint productions.
1
The countries of the former Soviet Union and
the Russian provinces were generously represented.
This embarrassment of riches had its negative side since it was
impossible to catch every theatre coming through. Many gave only one
performance and, with the Berlin in Moscow cultural festival also running
in May, theatre-goers had some tough decisions to make. Following are
accounts of the most noteworthy productions which I saw and which had
some connection to Slavic and East European drama or theatre.
March 30-April 1. The Diary of Vas/av Nijinsky, adapted by
Jamilia Salah, directed by Isabelle Nanty. Compagnie Champ-Libre,
Paris, France. The actor Redjep Mitrovica sat motionless at a desk when
the spectators entered and he was still there, never having taken the
traditional curtain calls, when they left. What transpired in between those
two moments was an intense performance of texts the dancer wrote as he
went insane in 1919. Mitrovica's bare feet suggested he might get up at any
moment to dance, but he only once even lifted them off the floor.
Occasionally his hands made "dancing" movements, but always in a
distorted way. This left the actor with his face, head and voice as his only
tools of expression. He used them masterfully to evoke the dignity, honesty
and wisdom of Nijinsky's genius, as well as the terror of his breakdown.
April 2-4. Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, directed by Peter Stein.
Teatro di Parma and Teatro di Roma, Italy. The world premiere of Peter
Stein's Uncle Vanya with Italian actors left many, myself included, in a
quandary. It was deeply felt and impeccably "lifelike," but it never lit the
45
46
Uncle Vanya, clirected by Peter Stein, Teatro di Parma and Teatro
di Roma, Italy, with Elizabetta Pozzi and Roberto Herlizka
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No.3
fire of Chekhov's drama. One felt that Stein tempered his actors'
emotionality to make them more Russian, instead clipping their wings. The
result was neither Italian nor Russian. Once again Stein employed a brilliant
designer, in this case Ferdinand Wogerbauer whose birch woods, sunlit guest
room and seemingly endless skies were often the only atmosphere makers.
Roberto Herlizka's Vanya was a physically small man trapped in a vast sea
of despair, and the only one of the cast who avoided merely replicating
conceived notions about all these familiar characters. For a theatrical
"archaeologist" like Stein, it seemed odd at the least to have Astrov leap onto
the table in his boots in Act II. Whether he is drunk or not, that is a big
cultural no-no (the more so 100 years ago). If it was poetic license on Stein's
part, it was neither clear, nor enough to enliven the calm.
April 9-10. Chekhov's Three Sisters, directed by Eimuntas
Nekrosius. Lithuanian "Life" Festival, Vilnius, Lithuania. Proving that
some things never change, the great Lithuanian director once again fired
emotions in Moscow, with most observers vehemently rejecting what they
called his "disrespectful, anti-Russian" interpretation of Chekhov, and a
vocal minority (count me in) praising his starkly modern, visionary
production. The unusually young, spirited Prozorov sisters had a sharp
intelligence, sparkling sexuality and philosophical depth one rarely sees.
Olga (Dalia Micheleviciute) was past realistically hoping for satisfaction in
love, and she surreptitiously followed her younger sisters, hiding behind
furniture and gazing partly in jealousy, partly in fascination at their trysts
in the reflections of a hand-held mirror. As Masha, Aldone Bendoriute
suddenly broke through the fears and inhibitions imposed on her by her
surroundings, hungrily, almost (but not quite) shamelessly throwing herself
at Vershinin. Viktorija Kuodite's bright, lean and energetic Irina saw her
bubbling optimism crushed, but not her spirit. Perhaps the most "offensive"
moment (and one of those typically vivid scenes in which Nekrosius
"illustrates" meaning through visuals) came as Vershinin (Algirdas Latepas)
knelt on his head, backside to the audience, to deliver his famous,
ultra-Russian, philosophical monologue about how great life may be in "two
or three hundred years." Another moment evoking criticism from some was
the powerful scene of Tuzenbach (Vladas Bagdonas) eating his long, silent
"last supper" before the duel with a sloppy, animal's appetite. He then spun
his empty plate on the table and left as the plate continued twirling on its
own before finally rattling to a halt. The finale of the three sisters taking up
loose boards left from a deconstructed clock tower and building themselves
three new houses where one used to stand, could be perceived as a positive
or negative metaphor for what happened to the Soviet Union. Take your
47
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Three Sisters, directed by Eimuntas Nekrosius at the Lithuanian "Life" Festival,
Vilnius, Lithuania, with Dalia Micheleviciute, Viktorija Kuodite, Vladas
Bagdonas, and Aldone Bendoriute
pick.
April 29. Euripides-Heiner Muller's Medea, directed by
Theodoros Terzopoulos. Theatre A, Moscow, Russia, and Attis Theatre,
Athens, Greece. This one-woman show featured the former Taganka
Theatre actress Alia Demidova wearing t he same kind of amorphous,
stretchy costume and inching slowly down the same kind of steeply raked
stage as in Terzopoulos's production of Muller's Quartet for the Theatre A
in 1993. It employed the same intensely declarative, occasionally hissing
speech that marked the director' s version of Persians for the Attis Theatre
at the 1992 Chekhov Festival. So many repetitions couldn't help but
undermine whatever impact was intended for the brief, 60-minute
performance. One felt that a capable, professional actress was busy doing
her job, but not communicating anything of importance across the
footlights.
May 3-4. Chekhov's The Seagull, directed by Petr Lebl.
Divadlo na Zabradli, Prague, Czech Republic. With the actors in
white-face and black lipstick and eye make-up, this one had the feel early on
of an old Hollywood classic. The bleached-blonde Arkadina Q orga
Kotrbova) reminded one of Jean Harlow; the sinister Trigorin (Karel
Dobry) of a silent-era villain. Radek Holub's Treplev was a sensitive youth
not ready for life's chal lenges, while Barbara Hrzanova's Zarechnaya began
as a goofy Little Bo-Peep in Shirley Temple curls, but transformed
powerfully into a sensitive woman. It was a quirky, even weird, show with
the actors giggling, blurting out their lines, doing flips and riding in and out
on wheeled platforms. Openly needling Moscow Art Theatre realism with
actors frequently spouting "MKhA T! MKhA T!" as if they were hiccuping
or burping, it occasionally suffered from overkill, but the strong acting,
Lebl's imagination and inventiveness and the almost sudden turn to
seriousness at the later stages were impressive.
May 16. Chekhov's Forgive Me, My Snow-White Angel
(Fatherlessness), directed by Anatoly Ivanov. Koltsov Drama Theatre,
Voronezh, Russia. This version of Chekhov's unfinished, unkempt first
play, usually known in the West as Platonov, was given an atmospheric,
classical sheen by director Ivanov, one of the best known pupils of the late,
great Anatoly Efros. Two things, especially, stood out in his unflinchingly
traditional version: the strong ensemble acting, and the musical
underpinnings. This latter quality was audible in the actors' faintly sing-
song delivery of their lines and in the soft murmuring and giggling that often
served as a background to the action. When, for instance, the entire cast of
characters gathered to have a portrait taken, the audible, but
49
incomprehensible rhythms of people talking amongst themselves wafted
into the hall from the stage like distant chatterings carried on a breeze. The
set by Larisa Nagolova and Mikhail Kurchenko depicted the see-through,
complex wire frame of a house without walls. It was a dwelling which hid
no secrets, while holding its inhabitants as if in a bird cage.
May 22. Shakespeare's Macbeth, directed by Robert Sturua.
Rustaveli Theatre, Tbilisi, Georgia. Rather t han the usual picture of
bloodlust and ambition, Sturua staged a story of a young couple's love and
runaway sexual passion which are trapped in and destroyed by the churning
gears of political intrigues. Zaza Papuashvili's Macbeth was a tough,
street-smart but vaguely uncomprehending young man whose rebellious
romanticism had him headed for trouble. It sometimes seemed he was
constantly dropping or throwing away knives which stuck in the floor and
just begged to be picked up again. Like the Idea of murder, they burned him
and beckoned to him at the same time. As his Lady, the ravishing Nino
Kasradze both bewildered and incited him with her disarming directness and
her unabashed sexuality. Her physical desire for Macbeth-her use of her
body and feminine wiles - was the stuff of a true, healthy attraction, but at
some fateful, intangible instant, things began breaking up. When Macbeth
raped her against a heat pipe just before going in to assassinate the king, we
saw how love was being perverted to a sexual function while the desire for
power was transforming into wanton violence. This pair was a kind of
Georgian Bonnie and Clyde cut down by their hubris and the cruel laws of
natural justice. At an informal discussion the following day, Sturua
explained that his Macbeth and Lady might be "what Romeo and Juliet
would have become had they lived- young, loving people who wanted to do
good things; but suddenly it grows into something horrible." As one might
expect, Sturua abruptly mixed genres of play and music, imparting to the
production's infrastructure a dynamic sense of alternation and movement.
Scenes changed quickly from intimacy or conspiracy among a few on the
forestage, to elaborate mass activity that encompassed the entire open stage
surrounded by Mirian Shvelidze's wall-hugging set. The decomposing
exteriors of Caucasian homes stood at the sides while two blank panels at
the back variously reflected incandescent blue or green light.
May 23. Jean Giraudoux's Amphitryon 38, directed by Mikhail
Tumanishvili. Film Actors Theatre, Tbilisi, Georgia. Tumanishvili's
death at age seventy-five two weeks before the trip to Moscow put a pall on
the atmosphere in the hall, but did not interfere with the actors putting on
a light, spirited performance of this story about Jupiter sending a mortal off
to war in order to get at his beautiful and faithful wife. The mock classical
so Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No.3
Macbeth, directed by Robert Sturua,
Rustaveli Theatre, Tbilisi, Georgia, with Nino Kasradze
51
style of acting passing over into broad burlesque was echoed in Yury
Gegeshidze's set dominated by a draped bed at center stage and his colorful,
draped costumes. As an entertainment, it was cleverly conceived and briskly
executed.
May 24-25. Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, directed by Rafael Reyros.
Uncle Vanya Troupe, Cordova, Argentina. This was a transparent, even
ghostly interpretation of Chekhov's play reset in a Creole emigrant milieu.
As the directing debut of Reyros, a well-known designer with thirty years'
experience, it was unmistakably a designer's show that made exquisite use
of the wide- open, echoing spaces of the Manege exhibition hall next to the
Kremlin. The audience sat in an oval shape around an open "stage" where
most of the action took place. Actors stepping out of the action continued
to participate in the spaces behind the spectators. A sort of prologue
accompanied by pulsing, astral music, had the audience file past the aimlessly
wandering actors whose spectral characters were rather nervously waiting
to come to life. The floor of the "stage" as well as of the foyer outside was
covered in ripped pieces of paper, their omnipresent whiteness suggesting
what scattered autumn leaves look like on film when the negative is run.
The lower reaches of the uniformly off-white costumes seemed to be in a
state of decay, as if the fertile Argentinean earth were taking its toll. Things
began with Vanya's desperate attempt to kill the Professor in Act three
before returning to the beginning of the play (which was severely, but
coherently cut to eighty minutes of non-stop playing time). By the time t he
shooting scene recurred in its proper sequence, this ethereal fantasy, which
included the character of Vanya as a little boy, had taken on the qualities of
a dream-in- progress.
June 2-3. Alexander Adabashyan and Nikita Mikhalkov's
Pianola (based on Chekhov's Fatherlessness), directed by Elmo Niiganen.
Tallin City Theatre, Estonia. Another show that made x ~ l l n t use of
environment (designed by Vladimir Anshon). The audience sat across one
side of the small stage at the Taganka Theatre, peering through two side
doors into the backstage area decorated with wallpaper, pictures, a piano, a
guitar hanging on the wall and a stuffed seagull. For Act two the spectators
were moved to their usual position, now facing a bleak scene of scattered
chairs in front of the oversized "innards" of a player piano. Several
randomly placed, giant piano strings angled from the floor to the ceiling,
occasionally being plucked by the actors or taking on a life of their own, as
when one spins madly when Voinitseva crawls atop Platonov in Act two.
Ni.iganen, who also played a superficially flippant , internally despairing
Platonov, got compelling performances from everyone. Especially
52 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No. 3
Pianola, directed by Elmo Nuganen, at the Tallin City Theatre, Estonia,
with Elmo Nuganen and Triinu Meriste
convincing were Anu Lamp as Voinitseva, an intelligent woman of
smoldering desires who kept appearances with a proper sense of reserve,
humor and sarcasm, and Triinu Meriste as the towering Sofya who seemed
an uncrackable enigma until the moment she breaks down and urges
Platonov to run away with her.
June 9. Games for Faust (based on Dostoevsky's Crime and
Punishment), directed by Volodymyr Kuchynsky. Les Kurbas Youth
Theatre, Lviv, Ukraine. Kuchynsky turned the Raskolnikov- Svidrigailov
pair into a Faust-Mephistopheles duel, as the characters of Raskolnikov's
mother and sister occasionally drifted through or, more often, provided a
haunting choral background from backstage (usually "0, sole mio"). In
some ways it was a Svidrigailov monologue, as the actor Oleh Tsiona
masterfully cajoled, teased, berated and toyed with the excessively
introspective, sincere, likable and often silent Raskolnikov (Andrei
Vodichev). Svidrigailov, in his classically extravagant outfits (designed by
Olha Baklan), was sarcastic and ironic in a superior sort of way, although he
made no secret of a kind of underlying affection for his "victim." He
appeared, as if in Raskolnikov's dream, through a second-floor window,
occasionally moving with strange, creeping, angular gestures and frequently
addressing the spectators directly. (Raskolnikov once tried touching a
spectator but was so "frightened" that he never tried again.) Olexander
Overchuk's set scattered objects-thin bed, a stack of oversized books, a
teapot and a pile of kindling (the basis for a fabulous magic trick of
seemingly coaxing fire from water)-on an open floor. That, together with
occasional free-form, Isadora Duncan-like dance movements and the use of
penetrating yellow, blue, red, green and white light, enhanced the sensation
that everything was taking place in a dream.
June 13. Kakajan Ashir's Apat (based on the folk epic, Gorkut
Ata) directed by Ashir. Jan Theatre, Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. This
episode from a Turkoman folk legend was short, simple and straight as an
arrow. A great khan is deceived by jealous members of his retinue into
thinking that his son has committed unspeakable crimes, so he kills him
while on a hunt. The young man's mother finds him in the forest, brings
him back to life and sends him to save his father who is now a prisoner of
the same group of traitors. The black-draped stage is empty but for a
circular white cloth on the floor, around which the actors usually move in
groups. All wear essentially identical rust-red national costumes, t he women
also wearing shocks of yellow. If Kashir's dramatization seemed almost too
direct and too lacking in dramatic turns, it did have a clarity that matched
the material well. The excellent use of lighting (tending towards darkness
54 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No.3
and shadow sliced by single spots), and the softly stylized movements and
poses made the show visually effective. In all, the Second Chekhov
International Theatre Festival provided a stunning display of diversity and
talent which catapulted it into the ranks of the world's leading theatre
festivals. The next outing, slated to coincide with the 100th anniversary of
the Moscow Art Theatre in 1998, is now in the planning stages.
NOTES
1. I cannot help but point out why the United States was not represented. The government
of every country participating put up at least some money to defray the costs of their theatres'
travel. While there was keen interest on the side of the festival organizers, the International
Confederation of Theatre Associations, to host an American entry, the U.S. government did
not share that interest and declined to offer assistance.
2. Anatoly Vasilyev's production of 7he Lamentations ofjerermah, performed as a festival entry
April18 and 19, ts ruscussed tn my season overview, "Big Names Keep Moscow Moving," in this
issue of SEEP.
55
PAGES FROM THE PAST
WANDA JAKUBOWSKA'S THE LAST STOP [OSTA TN! ETAP]'
Stuart Liebman
Fictional films about the Holocaust bear ethical and artistic burdens
associated with few other subjects. How, for example, can filmmakers
adequately convey the sheer enormity and unprecedented character of the
extraordinary brutality that took place? How should the systematically
organized process of degradation, despair, and mass death be illustrated
without exploitation or sensationalizing? What sorts of characters can stand
for the millions of victims-Gypsies, Poles, Russians and Jews-men,
women, and children from every country in Europe and every walk of life?
What narratives can replace classical film plots whose contrivances would
seriously distort the astonishing elemental truths of ghetto or camp
existence? Indeed, can any dramatic structure be conceived for an extreme
situation in which its typical victims had so little chance to resist and who
are therefore almost impossible to construe as heroes in conventional terms?
Such questions loomed particularly large for the European directors
who, still numbed from the post-war revelations of the atrocities or, in
many cases, from their own first-hand experiences during the war, wished
to address the Holocaust in their work. Few such films, in fact, were made
during the years immediately after the war when, in any case, film
production in the ravaged East European countries was slow to recover. By
1948, however, the Western Allies' efforts to rehabilitate Western Germany
as a bulwark against communism and the ensuing onset of the Cold War
provided the Communist-dominated regimes in Poland, East Germany, and
Czechoslovakia with ideological inspiration to find ways of embarrassing the
Western Allies. One particularly glaring moral lapse that could be exploited
involved the Allies' lackluster denazification efforts. Films recalling and
rendering palpable the horrible epicenter of Nazi evil-especially those that
highlighted determined communist resistance to it-therefore offered a
subtle, effective means with which to wage the propaganda battle for world
opinion. The filmmakers' expressive needs and state policy converged.
The Last Stop (1948) by the Polish director Wanda Jakubowska was
one of these films . J akubowska and her German co-scriptwriter Gerda
Schneider decided to set almost all the action in the middle of "the other
planet" which was the women's concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
They had no difficulty imagining the unimaginable conditions in which
inmates had lived since both had been incarcerated for years as inmates at
56
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No. 3
Birkenau. A crucial reason for making the film seems to have been their urge
to tell, to describe the camp to those fortunate enough to have been spared
its many and manifold miseries. Their first concerns, therefore, may be
broadly described as anthropological, and in this respect their film is almost
wholly successful. They intensively record-for what is probably the first
time in a fiction film-the complete process by which innocent victims were
incorporated into the world of "Nacht und Nebel" whose sealed trains and
work brigades, barbed wire and watchtowers, smoke and mud, savagery and
darkness remained incredible to those never subjected to such indignities.
In the very first shot, Jakubowska succinctly presents a roundup.
Over the course of the next half hour she shows how stunned new arrivals
are inducted into I 'univers concentrationnaire: the arrival of the transport
train in the fog, at night; the chaos and panic of the families as they are
separated on the platform; the surrender of passports and the confiscation
of valuables; the humiliating shaving of heads; the frigid showers; the
distribution of the numbered patches; and, finally, the tattooing of each
prisoner's arm. Jakubowska evokes, subtly but tellingly, the Babel of
tongues-we hear Polish, Russian, French, German, and Romany on the
soundtrack-that made communication so difficult for the inmates.
3
These
sequences and many others to follow are extraordinary for the considerable
restraint and matter-of-fact tone with which they are presented. So
authentic in feel are the shots of the arrival of the closed transports, the
selections, and the work brigades that many later directors incorporated
these images as actual documents of the camps into their own films.
4
The authenticity of the shots was immeasurably enhanced by
Jakubowska's decision to film on location in Birkenau with thousands of
extras who only two years before had been prisoners there. When shooting
began in 1947, the camp grounds had already returned to their pre-war status
as meadows, albeit ones demarcated by the ominous Holocaust icons of
guard towers and barbed wire fences. Jakubowska "restored" the notorious
Appellplatz on which of the action is set to the muddy, rutted space it had
been when thousands of inmates had endured the Germans' endless daily
inspections and roll calls. The bunks of the hospital stacked four or five high
in which sick inmates had been jammed were also made operational again
for many impressive scenes.
5
But the simple fact of filming in a believable simulacrum of the
space where unspeakable acts had occurred could not by itself insure that the
significance of these places would be conveyed. In fact, the shots owe their
power and, indeed, their very meaning, to the way they were photographed.
Jakubowska's superb team of cameramen, Boris Monastryasky, Karol
57
58 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No. 3
Chodura, and Andrzej Ancuta, opted to shoot many of the exterior scenes
in high angle long shots that focus on the arranged masses of
prisoners-standing in rows on the Appel/platz or marching off to
work-instead of on single individuals. They thereby underscore the
unbelievably large scale and essentially dehumanizing methods of the Nazis.
Such shots also pick up the light eerily reflecting off the water in the ditches
and ruts through which the victims had to trudge, highlighting a crucial
aspect of the miserable texture of daily life in the camp. And, most
memorably in the scene of the first selection of Jewesses for the gas
chamber/ the camera's deep focus perspective down the ruler-straight roads
leads to the belching chimneys of the crematoria standing on the horizon.
All these long shots may be described as imposing, even beautiful, but their
beauty is never an end it itself. Rather, the compositions serve to articulate
essential and conceptually relevant dimensions of the camp's scale, texture
and symbolism. Aesthetic effects never distract attention from meanings but
instead serve to enhance them.
The extraordinary sweep of the Nazis' efforts to subdue whole
populations and reduce individuals to anonymous ciphers undoubtedly
stimulated Jakubowska's efforts to devise a narrative encompassing groups
of characters rather than one primarily focused on a single individual.
7
Initially., at least, Schneider and Jakubowska conceived their story as
radiating from an ensemble of characters associated with the hospital staff
who form the backbone of the resistance. Many in this group are
memorable: a plucky, young Russian nurse who weeps after she fails to give
an essential injection to a patient who subsequently dies; a Polish
Communist nurse who slyly manipulates the vain German hospital overseer
to protect patients and later bravely withstands torture to protect her
comrades in the camp's resistance cell; the heroic Russian doctor who learns
some German in a failed attempt to expose the awful truth of the camp
during the visit of a gullible international commission; a French nurse who
sings the "Marseillaise" as she is carted away to the gas chambers with a
Jewish compatriot. The diverse backgrounds of the prisoners highlight the
profound humanism behind their solidarity in the face of the terror.
Their dramatic foils, the camp administration and its collaborators,
are equally memorable, though less persuasively drawn. Jakubowska shared
an understandable tendency of the period to represent the Germans as quasi-
demonic figures. That the camp administrators were essentially bureaucratic
organizers of mass death is strikingly recognized in an early scene in which
several zealots from the SS argue for immediate extermination of all the
prisoners against representatives from the Reich' s Labor Office who merely
59
wish to exploit the captive laborers until they died. The debate is even
punctuated by technical reports of crematorium capacity and similar matters
treated as selbstversttindlich. But for the most part, the Germans are not, to
paraphrase Hannah Arendt, banal agents of evil,
8
they are presented as
outsized caricatures: a blonde SS bitch and a masculine female Kapo; the
slovenly, corpulent, dim-witted commandant; the archly malevolent SS
chief; the child-murdering physician. There is even a hunchbacked little
corporal who appears to be a cousin of Wagner's dwarf Alberich or an extra
in a Werner Herzog film more than a credible representation of the
uncultivated, often drunken sadists who policed the camps.
Their stories constitute a mosaic of episodes which features the
essential terrors of camp life. The mosaic structure functions most effectively
in the film's first two-thirds. Its multiple perspectives blunt the forward
thrust associated with a single linear narrative. Time in Jakubowska's
Birkenau is locked in a permanent, agonizing, grinding cycle, albeit one
relieved by flashes of human kindness and political solidarity. However, one
character-that of Martha, the young Jewish translator whose linguistic
skills temporarily spare her from the gas chambers-gradually assumes the
central position in a plot that evolves over the last third of the film. From
her introduction, Martha serves as our surrogate. It is primarily through her
eyes, for example, that we witness the registration process at the camp; it is
she (and through her, we) who is taught the meaning of "Musulman" and
who learns the fate of all those segregated on the rail platform and sent
directly to the gas chambers. Over the course of the film, however, Martha's
role evolves into that of a stock Socialist Realist heroine for whom the camp
barriers pose no problem as she slips out past an armed guard carrying the
German liquidation plans for the camp to the standard-issue Socialist Realist
resistance chief. And, rather casually overlaid on this unconvincing derring-
do is a romantic subplot which appears to be a concession to some producer
with an eye on the market. At best, it is an irrelevant distraction.
At the climax, the heroics get completely out of hand. As Martha
is led to the gallows, she manages to kick the oafish commandant off the
platform, slit her wrists, and deliver a ringing reminder to the Germans t hat
they will lose the war before expiring, even as Soviet airplanes fly over in
perfect formation as a harbinger of things to come.
9
Though the character
was based on a real-life figure, Jakubowska's recourse at the film's end to
such a turgidly condensed dramaturgy lends an unfortunately hysterical note
to the conclusion, supplemented as it is by Roman Palester's overwrought
orchestral score. Here, as elsewhere in the film, silence would have been
preferable to the exaggeratedly expressionistic "modern" music that is too
60 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No. 3
61
often superimposed on events all too horrible by themselves.
Despite its flaws, The Last Stop is an essential cinematic text about
the Holocaust that is still far too rarely seen and little known. Few films
since, not even Spielberg's celebrated Schindler's List, have matched its subtle
visual power. Because its representation of the unimaginable "Kingdom of
the Night" was nourished by lived experience and not second-hand
memories, its characters and depictions of conditions bear comparison with
those in some of the best Holocaust memoirs and stories.
10
The Last Stop
stands, moreover, as an illuminating document of a period when artists'
needs to render the horror were constrained by political exigencies that
made such films possible yet which concertedly, if subtly, twisted the truth.
Indeed, the film's projection of post-war political realities onto the facts of
history does compromise somewhat the magnitude of its achievement.
Nevertheless, these are minor problems compared to those afflicting later,
more famous, commercial films such as the American The Diary of Anne
Frank. And even if some will criticize the way in which Jakubowska and
Schneider occasionally script predictable, even trite sentiments for their
characters to utter, it is important to remember that perhaps the most
predictable of them all-Martha's last words, "You must not let Auschwitz
be repeated" -remains crucially and permanently true.
NOTES
1. A 110 minute version of The Last Stop was released in New York in March, 1949. It was
reviewed in the New Y ark Herald Tribune and in the New York Times (Bosley Crowther) on
March 22nd. A 121 minute version of The Last Stop was shown on February 1st and 4th 1996
at the Walter Reade Theatre as part of "Revelation & Camouflage: Polish Cinema from 1930
to the Present."
The Last Stop can be rented through the Museum of Modern Art in New York
(Address: II West 53rd Street, NYC, NY 10019; Tel.: 212-7-8-9400; Fax: 212-708-9889). Prior
approval must be obtained, however, from Film Polski in Warsaw (Tel.: 1-48-22-26-86-30; Fax:
1-48-22-26-40-51) . The fee is $150.
2. Among the more significant were the German Wolfgang Staudte's The Murderers Among Us,
produced in 1946 by the Soviet-backed DEFA company in Berlin, which addressed the issue of
war criminals who remained at liberty, untried and unrepentant, in the immediate post-war
period. Border Street (1948) by the Jewish director Aleksander Ford, who had been in exile in
the Soviet Union during the war, examined Polish-Jewish relations in Warsaw as the ghetto was
created and then destroyed in the tragic revolts of April, 1943. In Distant journey (1948), Alfred
Radok, a half-Jew who had survived the German occupation by hiding in Prague, trenchantly
presented similar events in Czechoslovakia, in particular the establishment of the infamous
concentrat ion camp at Theresienstadt.
62 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No.3
3. See Primo Levi, "Communicating," in The Drowned and the Saved (New York Summit
Books, 1986), pp. 88 ff.
4. For example, Alain Resnais used shots of the arriving transport tram in his celebrated
documentary Night and Fog (1956). George Stevens used some of Jakubowska's images for The
Diary of Anne Frank (1959). More recently, in 1995 Stephen Spielberg incorporated shotS of the
selection and the work brigades in his hour-long promot ional television program for his
"Survivors of the Holocaust" project without any acknowledgment that these were
Jakubowska's fictional reconstructions and not documentary images.
5. The journalist William Freidberg reported for the New York Times that "everything at
Auschwitz was restored with such frightening accuracy that during lunch hours the prisoners
would go to eat five by five. In groups of five was the way they were commanded to fall out by
the Nazis. The mass scenes were so realistic chat the extras hesitated to break their lines until
told co do so." Cited in Ilan Avisar, Screening the Holocati.St (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1988), p. 37.
6. To her credit,Jakubowska candidly singles out the Jews and Gypses as the first targets of
German extermination. The Poles in the ftlm-as, indeed, was the case during the war-are
subject to the Germans' and Kapos' arbitrary brutalities, but they are not rouunely sent to the
gas as the Jews were. One suspects that the murder in a later episode of one of the leaders of the
Russian POWs, who were at times treated somewhat bener than other prisoners, may have been
dictated by post-war political realities.
7. Twenty years later, the Czech director Jan Kadar would invert this perspective and insist on
the importance of the individual protagonist in his Academy Award-winning film, The Shop on
Mam Street (1965). See his article, "Not the Six Million, But the One," in the New York Herald
Tribune Qanuary 23, 1966), p. 21.
8. See Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York:
Viking Press, 1965).
9. In a letter to Jakubowska published elsewhere in this issue, the famous, pro-Communist
Hungarian critic, film theorist, and scriptwriter Bela Balazs objected to the ending because,
among other things, he feared that audiences might misread the sequence and conclude that the
Russian airforce was somehow responsible for Martha's demise.
I 0. I have in mind those by the Pole T adeusz Borowski, Thu Way for the Gas, Ladtes and
Gentlemen, and Moments ofRepneve and Survwal in Auschwitz by the Italian Jew, Primo Levi.
63
BELA BALAZS ON WANDAJAKUBOWSKA'S THE LAST STOP:
THREE TEXTS
1
The great Hungarian film theorist, scriptwriter and critic Bela Balazs
saw Wanda jakubowska 's film Th Last Stnp [OstatniEtapjfor the first
time in the early Spring of 1948 while serving as an artistic consultant
to Film Polski, the Polish government's national film agency. His
enthusiasm for the film's achievements was evidently deep and sincere.
The terms in which he criticized the film privately and praised the film
publicly, however, usefully remind us of some of the most important,
conflicting political and artistic pressures at the moment the film was
made. -Stuart Liebman
A Letter to Wanda Jakubowska
2
Warsaw, April 9, 1948
My dear, much esteemed colleague,
I am writing to you at Mr. Toeplitz's requestl, but I will use this
opportunity once again to express to you how personally touched and
inspired I have been by your wonderful film. Unfortunately, I must write
in German because my French and Russian spelling is so awful.
The official reason for this letter, however, is this:
You will remember, Mrs. Jakubowska, that on the occasion of our
last conversation I said that your understandably tragic film had to be
provided with a more optimistic, brighter ending since, in reality, history
ended with the liberation [of the camps] and a new, hopeful life. This ending
seems to be absolutely essential for the foreign versions, for artistic, for political
and, last but not least, also for commercial reasons.
You agreed in principle, Mrs. Jakubowska, although you said that
changing the ending was now technically impossible. At the time, I could
not respond because no useful solution occurred to me. But I was so taken
with your film that the question left me no peace, and that night, I believe
I conceived a possible solution consistent with your artistic style and
humanitarian outlook, that is also inexpensive to make.
I shared my idea with the leading figures of Film Polski and they
all agreed to it-provided the director would also agree. Mr. Toeplitz asked
me to write to you about my idea. In what follows, I have already organized
it into shots.
1. The iron gate that we have seen so often open tragically when a
64
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No. 3
new transport arrived.
2. This time it will be thrown open from inside and the women
prisoners will rush out. 30 to 40 women-shot against the sky-can
completely convey the illusion of a crowd.
3. Detail shots in closeup. Closeups
4. of the ecstatic joy and the anxious
5. doubts. One who up till now had held up
6. now breaks down. Friends who had been
7. together for years must part now that they are free, and so on
and so forth.
The most important image is that of the orchestra, which now plays
one last time. The conductress who had so often sadly conducted the tragic
labor march-and never cried!-now directs the song of freedom in
rapturous ecstasy, and the tears flow down her beaming face.
Another very important image must be made for the export
version: Jor_the translator should not die in the final moments. Especially since
one has the impression-I myself did-that she was shot down by the
Russian airplanes.
As the women must stream out into freedom, the translator must
also be brought out on a stretcher with a smiling, hopeful face.
The optimistic, victorious feeling that reality itself brought as a
conclusion to this tragedy can not be absent from the film, and certainly not
from the export version.
Dear colleague, if my opinion carries any weight with you, you will
make this or a similar variant for the conclusion. It would be a shame if, in
the event you could not shoot it yourself, that you could not perhaps assign
someone else the task of shooting these 20 meters-it doesn't have to be
more than this.
I greet you cordially one more time. After my discussions with
Film Polski I share the hope that we can perhaps work together. I would be
happy to be able to collaborate with you on one of your future scenarios.
With my friendliest collegial greetings,
Bela Balazs
My permanent address is:
Budapest, 12th District
Tamas t ~ a 40.
65
The Last Stop
4
We must first speak about the genre of this wonderful Polish film.
Its uniqueness is demonstrated by the fact that not only is it a new work of
art, it also creates a new artistic genre. Within a genre, outstanding works of
art are often created, but how often has history witnessed the creation of a
new genre? The innovations of even truly original tragedies and comedies,
novels and short stories fit into the old system of their respective genre's
rules and regulations. A theatre piece may change, but it is stilt a play. The
novel has changed a great deal, but novels stilt remain novels. Perhaps the
potential of the ancient, thousand year old art forms to create new genres
has dried up. Film, on the other hand, is a very young art. It is not even fifty
years old. The overwhelmingly terrible experiences in the death camp at
Auschwitz turn all human emotions upside down and shatter all previous
film forms. The sizzlingly hot, vivid memories of the Auschwitz women's
death camp and gas chamber did not fit into the well-rounded, well-formed
shapes of previously known cinematic genres. That is why the pulsating
energy contained in the new experiences exploded and carved a new route
towards a new genre.
Some of the critics in Budapest, whose good intentions made them
willing to forgive, thought it a mistake that the film did not focus on one
hero's fate which would have tied the whole film together. What they
missed happened to be the very essence of the film, its greatest creative
innovation: a new genre was born. It was no mistake, but an actual stylistic
law, that the images of more than one protagonist's fate were combined in
a composition affording an extraordinary grasp of the period.
A well known aspect of a classic literary genre is the setting of the
story. Dante's Inferno is no different in this respect . The story of the stern
Tuscan titan who proceeds through the circles of horror on the arm of his
master Virgil's ghost does not have a protagonist and a single focus, but
includes everything that existed as sin, radiating blood and horror, in the
moral consciousness of his epoch. It is set in hell. In a similar way, the death
camp at Auschwitz also functions as a set. In it, the author Jakubowska
presents a series of miniature dramas. Dante's hell, however, is not simply
an ad hoc excuse for introducing many different stories that do not belong
together; it is rather the hundred different tunes of a gigantic orchestra
66
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No.3
playing in counterpoint in which all the stories tell the same tale. While in
Dante's era, the story is about hell, the small dramas of The Last Stop
emerged from the same circumstances and conditions. They form the
organically connected scenes of a horrible historical drama called the
Auschwitz women's death camp. It is not only a set but the very image [of
hell] itself! No individual fate, even if were it imagined with Shakespearean
power, reaches the historic significance of the fate of the masses, whose
essence belongs not to any individual but to an entire generation.
The Last Stop wishes to be considered a documentary film.
J akubowska suffered through the horrors of the Auschwitz camps herself
and she wanted her film to be nothing less than a reminder. Naturally, she
could only create a realistic film about human experiences by reconstructing,
directing and replaying that reality. Though the hybrid genre of artistic
reportage is not regarded highly for good reason, Jakubowska's passionate
artistry not only succeeded in creating a new genre, that of the dramatized
documentary, she also saved the dignity of a discredited genre.
The artistic power of this Polish film is rooted in its great moral
pathos. If written above the gate in Dante's Inferno is "Abandon hope, all ye
who enter here," then written above this panoramic view of Auschwitz
should be "Y e who enter here will learn how to hope and trust." Because
recorded in it you can not only see the fascists' evil depicted realistically in
ruthless photographs, not only can you see the unimaginable magnitude of
the spiritual and physical torture, you can also witness the radiance of an
even greater moral resistance. Each scene simultaneously shows the other
side of the coin. Never has this much humiliating suffering been shown, but
also never such dignified endurance of the suffering. Never have such
betrayals and cowardly corruption been seen, but also never so much
solidarity, such good and heroic loyalty unto death. We see people being
shattered and slowly burned to death, but they can never be broken.
The film is not only the most terrible indictment in mankind's
history, it is also the most inspiring testament to mankind's moral stature.
"Concerning the Great Polish Auschwitz Film"
5
Written above the gate in Dante's Inferno is the following:
"Abandon hope, all ye who enter here." The inscription for the great,
horrible film about the inferno which was the women's death camp at
Auschwitz should read: "Y e who enter here will learn how to hope." There
is no less suffering and terror in the Polish film than in the stern Tuscan
titan's unrelenting terza rima, colored with fire and blood. The film's
67
director, Wanda Jakubowska, shows us something much more horrible
because it is precisely the fire and blood that she shows! We see with our
eyes and hear with our ears the terror and dread, the screaming and rattling
and the even more blood-curdling black silence. It is not a poem neatly
incised in brass. The most horrible reality in mankind's history crashes over
our brains and hearts as a landslide of photographed documents. Beyond all
the physical terror, beyond the horror of facts and things, it shows the most
terrible hell of spiritual suffering. And despite this-precisely for this very
reason!-if we had lost our faith and belief in humanity, it would reawaken.
Because along with the most terrible human evil the film documents the
most heroic, self-sacrificing devotion. Never before have we witnessed such
human wickedness and never, too, such human greatness. Never before have
we seen so much suffering. But how they endured and withstood it! An
unrelenting, infernal vision, though the triumphant attitudes of unbreakable
spirits shines through all the darkness. You can learn to hate when you
watch the film. But you can learn to love even more easily. Because in the
end this horrible film is beautiful, heartbreakingly beautiful! That is its
greatest revolutionary significance.
An Indictment and a Heroic Epic
The original Polish title, Ostatni Etap, could be improperly
translated into Hungarian as "The Last Chapter" or "The Final Hours." For
financial reasons, they probably wanted to promise some dramatic action
with some exciting suspense in the title. However, this very exciting and
interesting film does not have an artificially fabricated and tangled plot. It
constitutes one of the most terrible indictments of humanity simply through
its straightforward portrayal of the most typical cases. At the same time, it
is an uplifting heroic poem to the greatness of the human spirit. Because the
executioner is always faced by the victim, whom he can only tear to pieces
but can never actually break. This is not one, but twenty or thirty dramas
always replete with explosive tension. It is a film of authentic documents.
Its realism is complete because it also depicts the reality of the inner life.
That can only be put in front of the camera if the author and director
reconstruct, recreate, and direct reality.
"An Injection Can Not Help Her Any More"
These miniature dramas, atomic explosions of spiritual life, are
more heartbreaking than sweeping sagas. A child is born in the barracks.
68 Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 16, No.3
How they protect the child! The other women cover the baby with their
bodies so that the Nazi beast, who in the end does kill the baby, would not
find it and take it. The mother staggers around the barbed-wire fence. She
has set out to die. She returns to devote her life to revolutionary work for
the Party.
There is only one camphor injection left in the whole hospital
barracks. A patient whose heart beat is very slow needs it over there. The
young assistant volunteer nurse finds her in a motionless, unconscious state.
Another seriously ill patient next to her says, "The injection will not help
her anyway. It could help me. I have two children. They will be lost
without me. Think of your own mother." And the young nurse gives the
injection to her. At that very moment the other patient lying beside her
opens her eyes. She looks at her silently with eyes wide open. Then she dies.
The sister of the dead woman is also there; she hugs the little nurse who
cries in despair.
Why Does the Russian Nurse Study German?
I have seen so many evening-length tragedies in which no
comparable depths opened. What about the women's orchestra that has to
play peppy marching songs while whips hound hordes of women to work?
And what about the French conductor
6
who sees Jewish women about to
be transported to the gas chamber and unrepentantly starts to sing the
"Marseillaise" when she is thrown on the truck for expressing solidarity?
And the Russian nurse who studied German words for weeks so that she
could tell foreign visitors who arrive for an inspection that they are being
misled? And then she lets herself be tortured to death by being torn to
pieces. Unrepentantly and with dignity.
The certification of humanity's moral stature can not yet be
completed. Never before has a more substantial drama been portrayed in a
film. The frequently cowardly betrayals of some of the deportees is shown
here with no attempt to cover them up. All things considered, however, this
film about the Auschwitz women's death camp is the greatest testimonial to
women's dignity. They were no mere martyrs who only wept. They were
heroic, fighting comrades. This historical document is not only an
indictment, it is also one of the most inspiring testimonials to humanity's
moral stature. We thank the Poles! We thank Wanda Jakubowska who did
not suffer through Auschwitz in vain.
69
NOTES
I. These translations of texts by Bela BaLizs were made possible, in part, by research gram #6-
66120 from the PSC-CUNY Research Foundation.
2. The original of this letter is deposited in the BaLizs Archives of the Magyar Tudomanyos
Akademia Konyvrara, Budapest, Hungary. Its catalogue number isMS 5021/102. Translation
by Stuart Liebman.
3. Jerzy Toeplitz, Polish film historian and critic, was from 1945 to 1948 the artistic director
of Film Polski, and from 1948 the Dean of the theater and film school at L6di. He left Poland
after the anti-Semitic purges of the late 1960s and emigrated to Australia. He is best known as
the author of a history of cinema, Historia Fi/mu, which has been translated into many
languages, and as an Editor of several volumes entitled Historia Filmu Polskiego.
4. The manuscript of this unpublished essay, presumably written in 1948, is deposited in the
Balazs Archives of the Magyar Tudomanyos Akademia Konyvtara in Budapest, Hungary. Its
catalogue number isMS 5014/198. Translation by Zsuzsa Berger and Stuart Liebman.
5. This article was published in Szinhaz es Mozi [Theater and Movie], No. 5 (1948).
Translation by Zsuzsa Berger and Stuart Liebman.
6. Balazs is mistaken here; it is a French nurse.--SL
70 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No.3
EASTERN EUROPEAN PUPPET THEATRE AT THE 1996
UNIMA FESTIVAL
Jane McMahan
Puppet troupes from around the world gathered in Budapest this
past June for the International Puppet Theatre Festival, sponsored by the
Union Internationale des Marionnettes. Of these, some fifty were from
Eastern Europe alone. In addition to many performances every day, there
were exhibits, panel discussions, and symposia.
The Budapest BabszinMz (founded in the late 1940s as the State
Puppet Theatre and called by this new name since 1992) presented a Puppet
Concert of three solid works that have been a part of their repertory for
thirty-one years: Bela Bartok's The Wooden Prince; Gyorgy Ligeti's
A ventures; and Igor Stravinsky's Petrushka. Although they were mocked by
the festival press for not managing to bring out anything new for such an
important occasion, their production was a feast for the eyes of this first-
time observer.
In the Bartok selection, whirling colorful light projections with
marionettes and shapes of varied textures create a figurative ballet. In
metamorphosizing dream sequences, a star blends into a moon that turns
into flying objects inside of clouds, then becomes the hands of a hovering
god-like magician. A prince, just eyes and a sword, wages war upon
entrapping trees, transparent blue waves and a sea monster. A disdainful
princess dances a comic, sexual pas de deux with a grotesque, jerky wooden
puppet that disassembles. Alone on a rock, a heroic prince is ennobled by
a misty magician, given a golden rainbow robe, and crowned by green
hands. Matisse-like cut-outs encircle the royal pair as they become one in
his flowing cloak. Sets and puppets were designed by Vera Brody with
script by Bela Balazs [See PAGES FROM THE PAST for Balazs as a film
theorist). It was adapted for the puppet stage by Dezso Szilagyi and directed
by Kato Szonyi.
The puppets for the Ligeti chamberwork are stage props and objects
moved to suggest a grotesque amorous triangle. A hanging coat begins to
move and put on a hat. The manipulation of the the coat and hat as well as
the subsequent use of umbrella, newspaper, and gun establish this character
as a commanding male. He is intended, I think, to suggest the character of
a desired male object but, as the action continues, is portrayed in such an
exaggerated manner that he suggests a pimp. The scarves, wigs, and bras on
the tables become women, possibly whores. One strokes a phallic umbrella,
71
72
Waiting/or ... Beckett, directed by Wojciech Pisarek,
Carouselle Puppet Theatre, designer Tim Maddock
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No.3
another stretches out pantyhose. While he occupies himself with his
newspaper, they are involved with comb and makeup. The hat exchanges
kisses with each. Short clipped motions accompany jagged music, held
tones, and vocalizations on syllables such as "oh, oh, ah" or "ah, ah, beh."
He reads a girly magazine. Letters are sent. The women try to pull him
apart, and one is killed by the gun and then covered by the coat. The action
progresses from sounds of surprise to horror and mourning, implicit in the
musical score. For the rather cute finale a little mouse crawls over the hat
in the stillness. From my description, this piece may sound like incisive
social commentary, but it is actually rather light and witty; the exaggerated
stereotypes were presented as recognizable cliches to be chuckled over. The
script is by Dezso Szihigi, directed by Kat6 Szonyi, and designed by Ivan
Ko6s.
The Stravinsky Petrushka is a burlesque pantomime evoking a St.
Petersburg fairground. It begins with a ferris wheel of flat, cartoon-like
images. The marionettes emerge and come downstage. They are acrobats,
musicians, sequined ladies, nested Russian dolls, dancing bear on string, folk
dancers, wooden horse and driver. The episodes are linked by the story of
Petrushka, the Ballerina, and the Moor, three marionettes that belong to a
magician. Liberated from their strings, they begin to live their own lives,
and a love triangle ensues. Shadow theatre techniques are used evocatively
to explore supernatural and nonhuman elements. After he is stabbed by the
Moor, Petrushka lies vanquished, sadly twitching. Townsfolk come to pay
their respects. The puppeteer arrives and shakes out his sawdust to show
that he is just a puppet, legs hanging lifeless. At this point, a shadow version
of Petrushka thumbs his nose at the man, begins to grow, takes over the
stage and begins conducting with enormous hands. The piece ends with his
comic gesture of victory. The script was written by Igor Stravinsky and
Alexandre Benois, adapted by Dezso Szilagyi, puppets and sets designed by
Ivan Ko6s, directed by Kat6 Szonyi.
The Polish Teatr Lalek Arlekin based in L6di, a prominent group
that dates to 1948, presented Carmen, based on Merimee's novella, not
Bizet's operatic version.' A harmonious use of varied artforms involving
actors, puppets, masks, a soundtrack of original music for sizeable chorus
and orchestra, a complex choreography of flamenco inspired dances, and a
massive stage set all combined to portray the very fabric of a national
culture. The intention was to express the power of love between man and
woman and to highlight the obsessional and erotic nature of the relationship
between Carmen and Don Jose. A mood of high tension and impending
73
Adventures, directed by Kat6 Szonyi, Budapest Babszinhaz,
music by Gyorgy Ligeti, design by Ivan Ko6s
doom was established from the start and maintained to the very end. The
puppets themselves convey much of the characterization. The Carmen
puppet is about three and one half feet high, voluptuous with shocking
black t resses in disarray and a deep red dress with a tight bodice that reveals
prominent lifted breasts. The plastic body and face simulate living skin.
The wide-open dark eyes and overblown features project a strong
temperament. The large hands hang loosely from long arms and make fast
erratic gestures when manipulated from behind the elbows; t he upper body
is thrust forward by a rod attached between the shoulder blades; the head
tilts or tosses as rotated in a socket at the base of the head; and the full skirt
flounces when swung. Carmen is brilliantly played by Joanna Stasiewicz
who speaks in a rapid-fire delivery, alternating intense thrilling tones, high
pealing laughter, intimate carressing tones, with sharp percussive curses
while manipulating the puppet.
The skintight trousers of Don Jose emphasize large, muscular
thighs. The chest beneath a military jacket is large and held high and black
hair falls in the way of dark fiery eyes. Stance, tilt of head, and abrupt
nervous gestures of hand against face and chest express Basque pride and
machismo. Don Jose is played by Marek Chronowski who effectively tells
much of the story away from the puppet in a direct confession to the
audience voiced in undertones or strained and choked with obsession and
conflict, while he strums flamenco improvisations on the guitar. The
character's sexual desire is expressed solely through the puppets and not in
the interaction between the two actors even though they frequently address
each other face to face.
A commenting chorus of older women appears frequently,
representing society and ancestors. They are large, crudely constructed
puppets of black cloth draped around thick crossed wooden sticks, evoking
images of trees and roughly hewn crosses, and suggesting that the religious
fanaticism of the countryside is at the root of their characters. Lined up in
rows with heads tilting censoriously, they chant a chorus to the words
"Sevilla, Sevilla," dancing in the streets to the accompaniment of the
puppeteers' stamping feet. The heavily orchestrated choral music by
Bogdan Dowlasz is late romantic in style with prominent chimes and
trumpets and repetitious descending flamenco bass. It adds to a pervading
atmosphere of impending doom that is overwhelming, at times oppressive.
The set by Maria Balcerek of thick stone walls and stairways was, like the
music, heavy and invasive, adding to a feeling of claustrophobia. The text,
was spoken in accented English in a natural and dramatic delivery. It was
never simply an awkward translation.
75
While seeming to confine itself to a classic love story, this ambitious
and wonderful piece exposed issues such as nationalistic pride, military
subjugation, ancestral culture, brutality, fanatacism and machismo. I must
add that this was not the stated intention of the director Waldemar
Wolanski who told me that the piece is primarily a love story about human
passions. The publicity material stressed the "presence of the naked body
on stage" and the "whole range of erotic dances used to emphasize the
passion which determines human life, the power between man and woman."
In fact, the dances were hardly erotic when compared to the sexual intensity
of the voices of the lead actors, but at one moment, a distant Carmen is
framed in a window naked from the waist up, miming a dreamy, subtly
erotic dance sequence.
Josef Krofta, long-time director of Divadlo Drak of the Czech
Republic, gave two different productions of Don Quixote, one a
collaborative effort with the Carouselle Theatre from Stepney, Australia,
that is directed by Wojciech Pisarek, originally of Poland; and the other,
from Drak's repertory. According to Henryk Jurkowski, noted puppet
theatre scholar and theorist, Krofta had always felt corsetted under the
Communists and had always wanted to express himself more freely. In the
Australian version, the wandering puppeteer is sentenced by the inquisition
for performing a politically incorrect play. He is chained to a bed in a
mental hospital where he performs the story of Don Quixote and together
with the examining psychiatrist and health service staff, supports the
verification of his madness. In a metaphor for the struggle between realism
and idealism he chooses to be the victim. Supported by the people, he
insists that he really is Don Quixote.
The Drak version, which was the one I saw, takes place in prison
where the puppeteer is tied to a wheel. With the help of the other prisoners,
he enacts the adventures of Don Quixote. Given the choice of burning the
puppet or himself, he decides to be the victim and to speak up for potential
justice. The highly physical acting required strength and stamina. The set
was imaginatively designed with ladders and wooden structures moved into
different positions serving different functions. Highly contrasted lighting,
loud drumming, fast-moving stage action, and forceful harrowing speeches,
made for an emotionally powerful, almost exhausting performance. There
were lighter, humorous moments and warmly performed medieval-sounding
folk songs.
A Hungarian group, Ciroka Babszinhaz, directed by Kovacs
Ildik6, also attempted a Don Quixote. This was an adaptation of a
traditional performance of travelling players in a village square, employing
76 Slavic and East Et;ropean Performance Vol. 16, No.3
77
farce and commedia techniques, shadow theatre, and storytelling. The set
was composed of two trestle stages and a big shadow screen in the center.
According to photojournalist Kany6 Ferenc, references to the present day
political climate were made through advertising slogans and the speeches of
the general and party leader, each using the same slogans promising
everything. Although a far less polished version than the Drak Don
Quixote, the musical accompaniment of winding flute improvisations was
a welcome change from the highly produced soundtracks of the other
groups. The actor playing Don Quixote had an unusually pleasant voice
and earnest delivery and the storyteller had a spellbinding style. One
shadow sequence of a silhouetted woman in flowing material holding a rose,
was pure and beautiful.
Among the traditional groups, I appreciated the Czech Republic's
Naivni Divadlo Liberec for their faultless production of Ali Baba and the
Forty Thieves, noteworthy for an exquisite stage set of glittering treasure,
sensuous textiles, and carved wooden puppets in an oriental style. A
humorous thieves' chorus of carved and painted rectangular heads lined in
rows on a swinging wooden triptych, appeared at regular intervals with
mouths clattering open and shut in rhythm. Anton Anderle, the last living
member of a famous Slovak puppeteering family, presented a traditional
Slovakian Puppet Circus to traditional acccordian music played by Juraj
Hamar. A succession of acts, including a weightlifter in black and white
striped shorts issuing grunts of "ay ay ay, yo yoy, oh yo you," a juggler on
unicycle, a chair balancer, a dancer with a devil under her skirt, a dancing
skeleton,-all century-old restored wooden puppets-delighted and amused.
Massimo Schuster and Eric Poirier of Theatre de !'Arc-en-Terre
from France presented several humorous plays, including Alexandre Dumas
pere's The Corsican Brothers, performed in the style of the nineteenth-
century English paper-theatre tradition. Then, like a slap of cold water, the
thoroughly relaxed audience found itself viewing Sarajevo, a poignant story
written with the help of Aida Begic, giving a young woman's impressions
of the war. The crude rectangular cardboard puppets of heads of state
caught repeatedly doing nothing were understated yet telling.
The new Polish group T eatr 3/4 - Zusno, directed by Krzysztof
Rau, performed Gianni, jan, johan, john, juan, Ivan, jean ... , a cheerful,
fastmoving, performance of review-style songs and dances and puppet
characters formed almost entirely out of bare hands. [See Barbara
Niemczyk's review in this issue of SEEP.]
I was struck by a performance that was not generally well received,
Waiting for . .. Beckett, presented by Australia's Carouselle Theatre, and
78 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No.3
79
directed by Wojciech Pisarek, a Polish director now living permanently in
Australia. Whereas the script is constructed completely from Beckett's
memoirs and plays, the scenario is set in Communist Poland. A theatre
director, returning to his theatre that was closed by censorship twenty years
ago, finds all the sets, props, and puppets untouched and in place. The play
that follows is a personal, bitter reflection of the director's artistic and
political life.
The puppets are fairly small and delicate, bony survivors
manipulated by strings or stiff wires. In one scene, three old-women
puppets exchange comments about their past lives, at once withdrawn,
gossipy, and mysterious. In another, human actors are caught up in a
revolving pattern of informing on each other, and each one who informs
gets tortured in turn. The puppet sequence that follows best expresses their
tortured minds and memories. In another scene, human actors, moving like
wound-up puppets, enact rituals of dressing and brushing of teeth at a rising
hysterical pitch that physically expresses their terror of everyday life.
This play explored previously forbidden territory in a new and
challenging way. After all, this is what many of the directors of Puppet
theatre, who are now able to operate more freely, are trying to do.
In the context of world puppet theatre, these groups have always
been in the forefront in their use of experimental techniques. On the
evidence of this festival, this expertise, which persists, is beginning to be
wedded to a freer range of interests and subjects. While the emphasis among
these groups is to enjoy their new freedom, their explorations are naturally
still being shaped in reaction to earlier repression.
NOTES
1. See SEEP Summer 1990 for my review of a quite different production by Teatr Lalek
Arlekin, Growing up with Baby, directed by Wojciech Wieczorkiewicz.
80
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No.3
TEATR 3/4
Barbara A. Niemczyk
The Polish theatre "3/ 4," under the directorship of Krzysztof Rau,
and comprised of Rau and five other "innocent charlatans," as they refer to
themselves, has been attracting a great deal of attention in East European
theatre circles since the formation of the company in October, 1992. This
past June they brought their most recent work, Gianni, jan, j ohan, john,
juan, Ivan, j ean ... , to St. Petersburg, the first stop on a tour of the former
Soviet Union. Part-puppet, part-pantomime, part-cabaret, Gianni,jan,johan
... is an account of the life of Everyman created entirely by the clever
manipulation of body parts and gestures. Since its premiere on May 18,
1994, it has been performed throughout Europe and in the United States.
The troupe has its roots in puppet theatre. Indeed, their particular
genre grew out of a seminar conducted by Rau with students in the puppet
division of the State Theatre School in Bialystok. It is puppet theatre
without the puppets, however. In Gianni, jan, johan . .. , bare hands, feet
(and, in one case, a stomach), embellished only by a shirt, a cloth, a garter,
are used to tell the life story of the hero from childhood to old age. The face
of the main character, Gianni, is formed by the fingers and thumbs of one
actor's hands, while the hands and arms of another actor inserted into shirt
sleeves provide the hands for Gianni. Other characters are created by a
similar technique of using individual parts of actors' bodies draped in pieces
of cloth to create a seductress, a priest, a patient on an operating table. Rau
refers to his creations as "puppetoids . .. not yet a puppet, but already its
substantive beginning, its source of energy, which allows any form to appear
on the stage of events."
Scenes from different stages of Gianni's li fe are viewed t hrough
doors in a large black box, which is reminiscent of a traditional puppet-show
stage. The audience first glimpses the happy, carefree baby, celebrating his
birthday surrounded by family and fri ends. This scene is followed by the
young man Gianni serving in the army and being seduced by a femme fatale,
created by a shapely arm/ leg in a fishnet stocking. The adult Gianni pursues
various careers. The first is as a "famous man of letters," who spouts familiar
quotes in various languages: "Cogito, ergo sum"; "To be or not to be, that is
t he question"; "L'etat, c'est moi." Next comes the surgeon Gianni,
performing a questionable operation that results in turning an attractive
female patient into a bearded male. In his final career as a diplomat, Gianni
proposes an ingenious solution for ensuring world peace: a rearrangement
81
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Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No. 3
of the globe so that inhabited territories do not come in contact with one
another. The last stage of Gianni's life, his old age, presents the most
touching scene, with the elderly Everyman once again celebrating his
birthday, but this time he is all alone. The quickly-paced skits combine
humorous elements, ranging from the subtly ironic to the farcical, with
unexpectedly poignant ones.
Interspersed with the various episodes in Gianni's life are cabaret-
style songs performed in Polish, English, French, German, Russian, Italian
and Czech by the multi-lingual cast, who also play Gianni and the other
characters. The songs, written by J erzy Derfel and Darek J akubaszek, with
music by Bogdan Szczepanski, provide a humorous, often satirical
commentary on Gianni's life and offer a key to the meaning of the play.
Song 4, which follows the scene of the diplomat's life, explores the
connections among success, money, fame and power: "Success ... and
money produce fame/Money and fame-that's power!"
Once the music grows silent, however, Gianni remains alone,
completely alone. At the end of his life, money, success, fame, and power
have brought him only solitude and loneliness, reflected in the sad little face
which meticulously sets the table, lights a candle, and then softly sings
"Happy Birthday" to himself.
Although a general commentary on the state of modern man, the
performance seems particularly directed at the conspicuous consumerism
characteristic of the post-Communist era, which has spread to and engulfed
the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Gianni's quest for fame,
money and power have not brought him happiness, only increasing
cynicism and alienation.
Krzysztof Rau and his company-Monika Filipowicz, Marta Rau,
Darek Jakubaszek, Bohdan Rau and Roman Wolosik-are based in the
village of Zusno, in Suwalki province, one of the most remote areas of
northeastern Poland. In the informational brochure distributed at the
performance, Rau explains why the members of "Teatr 3/ 4" choose to work
in such an isolated place: "It seems to me that creativity demands the truth,
sincerity from us ... It is necessary to remove the mask behind which we
frequently hide in our everyday lives. And here [Zusno] there is a
distinctive mental ecology, thanks to which we can create genuinely, as does
the nature surrounding us."
One can only hope that nature will continue to provide sources of
inspiration and creativity for this extraordinary group of young actors.
83
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Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No.3
OTRABANDA COMPANY STAGES ALEXANDER BLOK'S THE
FAIRGROUND BOOTH AT La Mama E.T.C.
James Leverett
To bring Alexander Blok's The Fairground Booth to an American
stage, even one as hospitable to avant-garde experiment as La Mama, is a
daring act of translation. The best reaction a critic might expect is scholarly
gratitude: "a worthy effort" or "an enlightening historical exercise." What
a pleasure-and what a surprise-to report an event satisfying at every level.
The award-winning Otrabanda Company, now in its twenty-fifth year, not
only leaves intact this extremely elusive poem for the theatre, it reveals it to
be still completely viable, full of mystery, and as alive with humor as it is
with pathos.
Along with the premieres of Ubu Roi and The Rite of Spring, the
first performance of this play on December 30, 1906 at Vera
Komissarzhevskaya's Theatre on Ofitserkaya Street in St. Petersburg
provides modernism with one of those legendary birth-scandals on which
the movement seems to thrive-in our imaginations, at least, if not always
in the annals of accurate historical scholarship. J. Douglas Clayton calls it,
"Perhaps the most crucial production in twentieth-century Russian theater
... " and quotes the eminent authority Konstantin Rudnitsky who reported
that Vsevolod Meyerhold, that key figure in theatrical modernism,
considered it the "real beginning of his directorial biography."
1
It was most certainly a scandal, as amply documented from
contemporary accounts by Clayton, Edward Braun, and others.
2
Its political
roots dug into the disillusionment and "dislocation" experienced by the
intelligentsia after the failed revolution of 1905.
3
And the tumultuous
beginnings of a new anti-romantic, anti-idealistic, countercu!tural Russian
theatre can almost be dated from the resounding crash at the play's climax
when Harlequin dove through the painted window of the set to reveal the
teeming backstage reality of ropes and pullies that operated the artifice.
The shattered st age reality sent repercussions in every direction, and
both Blok and Meyerhold contrived it so by constructing a series of systems
that then collapsed into one another. First, there was a simple, even simple-
minded, commedia deil'arte love triangle-Pierrot pines for Columbine but
Harlequin comes between-of the sort romanticism had been exploiting
since the beginning of the previous century. That was inflated into a
ludicrous "symbolist drama" in the manner of Maeterlinck and Verhaeren
through the introduction of a bevy of "Mystics" who insisted the pale
85
Columbine was really Death (her peasant pigtail, the Reaper's scythe).
Symbolism, with all of its static, doom-laden mythification, was then the
property of the cultural elite, who had come to the theatre on that winter
night also to see Maeterlinck's Miracle a/Saint Anthony, which shared the
bill with Blok's play. To see their favored aesthetic lampooned, in fact
travestied, in the manner of a peasant farce and performed in a replica of a
balagan or provincial fairground booth was, in every sense, obscene. Then,
after Harlequin's leap, the scene itself exploded as the booth-the stage
within the stage-came apart and soared into the flies . The first salvo of
revolutionary theatricalism had been fired; the first great stage image of what
later so clearly revealed itself to be the new Einsteinian universe had been
created. Anti-illusion equaled anti-establishment politically and aesthetically.
Relativity-physical, artistic, and moral-became theatrical.
But can the radical nature of what appears at first reading to be a
whimsical, rather confusing little commedia scenario ever be recaptured?
-especially, if what we have left of it, the text by an acknowledged major
poet, must be glimpsed through the filter of translation.
Otrabanda, under the perceptive direction of Roger Babb and
Rocky Bornstein, does not attempt the revolution; it, along with the
tremendous energy and upheaval that brought it about, is lost in time.
Instead, the company makes manifest its faith in the work's poetry, not
merely in what is evident through Michael Green's translation, nor in what
is left of Meyerhold's directorial map, but in what these elements inspire in
some contemporary artists. Those artists are impressive, many with long
histories in defining the American avant-garde: Ralph Lee (set), Gabriel
Berry (costumes), Pat Dignan Oighting), Neal Kirkwood (music), and Nancy
Alfaro, Tim Cummings, Dan Hurlin, Jennifer Miller, Lenard Petit, Mary
Shultz, along with Babb (acting company).
Much has been made (starting, probably, with Rudnitsky) of the
original production's appearance only months before Picasso's completion
of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. On that crucial canvas, African "primitivism"
joined with cubist fragmentation to produce, arguably, the first modernist
painting. Otrabanda's production actively reminds us that The Fairground
Booth might share many of the same impulses of the famous painting, but
its origins li e much closer to its northern home. By 1908, Russian painters
such as Goncharova, Kandinsky and Larionov were finding inspiration for
their experiments by vaulting backwards over the current outworn systems
of realism and romanticism to explore disused and derided popular and
folkloric forms. There is something of Chagall's village life in Babb and
Bornstein's airborne choreography; Kirkwood's mournful accordion solos
86 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No.3
The Fairground Booth, directed by Roger Babb and Rocky Bornstein,
La Mama E.T.C., with Mary Shultz as Columbine
come right out of that world; Berry has costumed Columbine as a much
more hearty peasant lass than even Blok and Meyerhold perhaps imagined.
(In 1906, we are only five years away from the Stravinsky/Fokine/Benois
Petrushka.)
Of course, we are not talking about an exercise in homely nostalgia
here, but a work in which influences, forms and traditions collide to
produce irony, alienation and incongruity: Meyerhold's word was the
grotesque! Actors such as Shultz (Columbine) and Petit (Pierrot), along
with the rest of Otrabanda, heirs as they are to nearly a century of avant-
garde performance, can convey this mercurial, droll yet affecting style
perhaps even better than Meyerhold's pioneer company (though surely not
better than the magnetic, eerily deep Meyerhold himself, who originated the
role of Pierrot). One asset they definitely lacked in 1906 was Jennifer Miller,
a woman-with-a-beard both on and off stage. Her anarchic energy perfectly
suits Harlequin and gender-busts the whole proceeding.
Blok's text calls for three pairs of lovers in addition to the central
Pierrot/Columbine/ Harlequin triangle, and Meyerhold's company could
provide nine actors for the nine roles. Otrabanda has only six performers in
all (plus Babb who, in the role of the Author, is only there to intrude in
protest against what is being done to his "realistic" love story), but a virtue
is made of that limitation. The pairings provided Blok with the opportunity
to look at love from multiple perspectives, even while ironizing everyone
of them (a technique analogous to what the cubists were doing). As the roles
float among the Otrabanda members, male and female, the ideas of
existential insubstantiality and relativism that so shocked the first audiences,
surprise us, ninety years later, no longer. But the outrage has been replaced
with a bittersweet sense of transience-fluid, supple, poetic.
There are other virtuous limitations as well. The original set
designer, Nikolai Sapunov, could literally build a fairground booth on the
stage of the Theatre on Ofitserkaya Street, expose its inner workings, and
send the whole thing dizzyingly aloft. The narrow brick room at La Mama
allows no such coup, nor is one necessary any longer. Instead, Lee provides
us with what we need in terms of doors and a fake window. The Balaganchik
of the Russian title is now precisely a little stage, suspended, doll-house-size,
in a corner, a Columbine figurine whirling inside. The emphasis has shifted
away from a single director's heroic, revolutionary vision and focussed on
a band of performers, like a troupe at a fair, close to its audience in a modest
space.
Perhaps, at the end of the century which is in some important ways
began with this playlet, we all now find ourselves inside of Blok's fairground
88
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No.3
Tim Cummings, Dan Hurlin, Nancy Alfaro, Mary Shultz, and Jennifer Miller
in The Fairground Booth
booth, having inhabited for a long time his unstable, relativistic, irrat ional
reality. With Otrabanda's guidance, avant-garde theatre now reveals itself to
be this era's true poetic theatre.
NOTES
Otrabanda Company will present a revised version of this production under the title of
Balaganchik: A Dance/Music Adaptation of Alexander Blok's "The Fairground Booth" at La
Mama's Annex Theatre January 212, 1997.
For a discussion of the first American production of the play, see SEEP Volume 10, no 3,
Winter 1990: "Meyerhold, Blok, and Uraneff: The Show Booth (1923)" by James F. Fisher.
1. J. Douglas Clayton, Pierrot in Petrograd (Montreal: MeGill-Queen's University
Press, 1993), 76 and 80.
2. See Edward Braun, The Theatre of Meyerhold: Re'Volution on the Modern Stage
(New York: Drama Book Specialists, 1979), 65-75, passim.
3. Ibid, 73.
4. Meyerhold on Theatre, trans. and ed. Edward Braun (New York: Hill and Wang, 1969),
137-42, passim.
90 Slavi c and East European Performance Vol. 16, No.3
SOVIET AND POLISH AVANT-GARDE ART AND
PERFORMANCE AT NEW YORK GALLERIES 1996
Daniel Gerould
The exhibition, "U.S.S.R. in Construction, 1930-1940," at Howard
Schickler Fine Art (52 East 76th St., New York 10021) from March 7 to
April 27, presented thirty photographs from or about the Soviet
photographic magazine that celebrated the technological accomplishments
of the revolution. Some issues of the periodical were also on display. A
vehicle for propaganda addressed to the West, U.S.S.R. in Construction
appeared in Russian, French, English, German, and eventually Spanish.
Among its photographers and designers were El Lissitzky and Aleksandr
Rodchenko, both of whom are featured in the exhibit. Two photographs
of Vladimir Mayakovsky were shown, Boris Ignatovich's unfamiliar
"Mayakovsky on Red Square" of 1928 (on sale for $1,500), and Rodchenko's
well-known, "Mayakovsky with Scotty" of 1924 (on sale for $16,000). An
illustrated catalogue was available.
The exhibition, "Stefan Themerson, The Urge to Create Visions:
Experimental Photographs, Photograms and Collages 1928-1937," at the
Ubu Gallery (16 East 78th St., New York 10021) from March 16 to April
27, presented work in different media by the Polish artist and his wife
Franciszka. The Themersons were writers, editors, publishers, and
experimental filmmakers. Stefan was a poet and the author of children's
books as well as a film critic and theorist and avant-garde photographer.
Franciszka was a painter, graphic artist, book illustrator and designer, and
stage designer.
The Themersons founded S.A.F. ("Film Authors Cooperative") in
Warsaw in 1935 and its journal f.a. ("The Artistic Film") in 1937. Between
1930 and 1937 they made experimental films, including Pharmacy (1930);
Europa (1932, based on Anatol Stern's poem); Moment Musical (1934); Short
Circuit (1935); and The Adventures of a Good Citizen-there won't be a hole in
heaven if you go backwards (1937). Although many of these are lost, stills
survive. In 1938 the Themersons moved to Paris and eventually to London,
where in 1948 they founded the Gaberbocchus Press which produced among
other elegant books the first English edition of Alfred Jarry's Ubu plays,
illustrated by Franciszka. The exhibition included her illustrations and
designs for Ubu.
The Ubu Gallery presented fifty of Themerson's combinations of film
and photography dating from 1928 to 1937; these include collages made
91
"'
N
Ubu Roi, directed by Michael Meschke, stage design and puppets by Franciszka
Themerson, Marionetteatern, Stockholm, Sweden, 1964
from printed film frames, photomontages used in films, and photograms
made with moving lights. Stefan invented an animation stand for making
these "moving light" photograms. By placing objects on translucent paper
on a glass shelf illuminated from above and using a movie camera
underneath, he was able to create an illusion of movement and abstraction.
An illustrated catalogue and several books by the Themersons were
available.
The exhibition, "Puppets and Performing Objects in the 20th Century,"
at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at the Lincoln
Center from June 12 to September 28, included the work of several artists
from Eastern Europe and Russia. The Swedish Marionetteatern's 1964 Ubu
Roi, directed by Michael Meschke, was inspired by the book illustrations for
the play by Franciszka Themerson, who created the costumes, cut-out
puppets, and stage design for the production.
Also featured was an example of Eduard Bersudsky's kinetic Sharmanka
(barrel-organ) Theatre, "Time of Rats," created in St. Petersburg in 1991.
Standing over six feet high and more than a yard in length at its base, this
kinetic sculpture periodically came to life: its ship-like body swung from
side to side, its lights flashed, and its animal cast of characters sprang into
action. The construction shows a mole surrounded by rats performing
mechanical tasks. "The mole," Bersudsky explains, "is like Russia: a very
strong but blind animal controlled by rats who enjoy their power. The
mole has no idea who is on top, it has no sense of direction."
A sculptor who spent the first fifty years of his life as a metal worker,
electrician, night watchman, and barge skipper, Bersudsky has since 1968
created animated constructions or "kinemats," all made from junk. In the
early 1970s, he began to exhibit his work illegally in his friends' apartments.
After Bersudsky met theatre director and critic Tatiana Jakovskaia in 1988,
the two began to collaborate on performances with sculptures and live
actors and eventually founded the Sharmanka Theatre. They subsequently
moved to Scotland where they are now based in Glasgow.
Shown on video was the stop-action puppet animated film, The
Grasshopper and the Ant, made in St. Petersburg in 1912 by the Polish
pioneer filmmaker Wladyslaw Starewicz (1892-1965, known in Russia and
after 1919 in France as Ladislav Starevitch). Based on La Fontaine's fable,
the film uses tiny sculpted insects to tell the tale of a carefree grasshopper
who plays his violin throughout the summer while the industrious ant
chops down trees and plans for the winter. A special program of Starewicz
films was shown at the Walter Reade Theater last June.
93
ANTIGONE IN NEW YORK AT THE VINEYARD THEATRE
Jennifer Starbuck
Janusz Glowacki's, Antigone in New York was recently given its
New York premiere at the Vineyard theatre, after its debut at Arena stage
in Washington D.C. in 1993. This is the most recent play written by
Glowacki, a native of Poland, and it speaks critically and honestly about a
particular type of immigrant experience. Glowacki's characters are not
moneyed emigres who have been eased into assimilation by the city's many
agencies; instead these three find themselves homeless and abandoned, living
in a city park and depending upon each other for survival.
The play takes place in what could be the East Village's Tompkins
Square Park before New York's Operation Clean Sweep tried to rid the
park of the homeless and drug dealers some years ago. Glowacki tells three
poignant tales of the immigrant experience-one of a Puerto Rican woman,
two of Eastern European men-within the frame of the Antigone myth. As
a structural device the Antigone story serves to provide a central action to
which the three characters montages can be attached. Through allusions to
the myth Glowacki can point to thematic issues of belonging and of the
individual versus authority.
The action centers around the experiences of the three homeless
characters: Anita from Puerto Rico, Sasha from Russia, and Flea from
Poland. Anita is determined to give a proper burial to her friend Pauli, a
"WASP" whose body had been carted off to Potter's field earlier in the day.
She enlists the help of Sasha and Flea to bring Pauli's body back to the park,
where she intends to bury him. A fourth character, the Policeman,
functions as a combination of Creon and the chorus. He embodies the
hostility of the "new world" to the immigrants, even as he talks of civil
rights, democracy, and freedom. The authority of a democratic state is
represented by the police. This seems particularly ironic to citizens of
formerly socialist states, which in paradoxical ways offered its captive
members a sense of belonging. Instead of finding a place to belong in their
new world, Glowacki's characters are now faced with a sense of isolation
and loneliness, causing Flea to give an extended commentary about his
belonging with his girlfriend back home. In reality, Flea and the others have
lost all sense of belonging; they are adrift and alienated. Glowacki draws on
his own personal experience to evoke a sense of the loss of homeland. As
he rehearsed a play in London in 1981, martial law was declared in his native
Poland, and the playwright decided to settle in New York.
94 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No.3
Janusz Glowacki's Antigone in New York, Vineyard Theatre, directed by
Michael Mayer, with Steven Sky bell, Ned Eisenberg, and Priscilla Lopez
By choosing to emphasize the forward-moving action and humor
of the text, the Vineyard Theatre's production of Antigone m New York
muted the dense texture of Glowacki's script and the pointed references to
power seen through the play's mythological frame. Glowacki, writing as an
outsider to the American experience, makes a biting satirical comment by
having the untended body deserving burial that of Pauli, an American. As
in Antigone, the burial's importance is linked to the need to affirm a sense
of homeland. However, Anita, and the other immigrants, will never achieve
a sense of belonging. But if Anita herself cannot find her place in this new
world, she will see to it that her friend Pauli gets the proper burial on his
home turf that he deserves.
The satirical edge of Glowacki's writing was somewhat underplayed
in this stylized production. The play was written from the point of view of
an outsider looking in, but the Vinyard production, directed by Michael
Mayer, had the feeling of being on the inside looking out-an approach
made apparent by heavy reliance on attractive scenic stylization at the
expense of the richly-written and poignantly humorous characterizations.
The set, designed by William Barclay, depicted an actual park, complete
with real dirt and leaves strewn on the ground, which contrasted with a
polished and symmet rical surrounding space. Christopher Akerlind's
lighting added to the sense of stylization, moving dramatically from stark
white, to indicate daylight, to a riveting spotlight on the policeman. Sudden
shifts in lighting and sound marked key moments and actions. Anita pushed
her cart on and off abruptly as Sasha heard strains of "Strangers in the
Night"; during a powerful rape scene lights flashed red and blue, and a police
siren wailed futilely as Anita's screams were punctuated by piercing and
eerie sounds.
The cast was successful in conveying Glowacki's satirical humor.
The naturalistic acting style of the trio of immigrants was effictively
juxtaposed to the direct-address style of the policeman. The nimble Flea,
memorably played by Ned Eisenberg, interacted beautifully with his co-
horts: Steven Skybell's lumbering Sasha, and Priscilla Lopez's tormented
Anita. All three collaborated as a disciplined ensemble, pulling off the body-
snatching caper with ease and humor, aided by an amusing portrayal of the
corpse by Michael Ringler, who added just the right amount of life to the
dead man. Finally, Monti Sharp's psychotic policeman created such sinister
fear that the audience began to understand the pain many outsiders
experience. He barked commands at the audience, and even made me jump
with terror when he yelled, "NO NOTES," as I endeavored to jot down
96 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No.3
Steven Sky bell and Ned Eisenberg in Antigone in New York
97
discretely my impressions of the production! As an "insider" I am indebted
to Glowacki, for allowing us to glimpse his humorous and poignant
portrayal of an experience that I am lucky enough not to know.
98 Slavic and East European Vol. 16, No. 3
PETER KARPATI'S EVERYMAN/WOMAN: BUDAPEST 1996
Julie Gochman
At thirty-four, Peter Karpati is one of Hungary's most promising
younger-generation playwrights. Two of his plays are running in repertory
in Budapest presently. Orszaga/ma, or 7he Royal Orb, is playing at the Pesti
Szlnhaz, which is the chamber theatre of the Vig, the largest and most fully
subsidized theatre in the city, and Akdrki, translated as Everyman/ Woman,
is running at the Katona Jozsef Kamra, the chamber theatre of what is
known as the most artistically accomplished theatre in Budapest.
Akdrki is a modern-day allegory based on the medieval morality
play, Everyman. The principal character, Emma, discovering that she is
about to die, begins to attend to the loose threads in her life. In so doing,
she exposes a range of conundrums that characterize contemporary
Hungarian life.
As staged by one of Hungary's foremost directors, Gabor
Zsambeki, the production emphasizes both the play's free-floating form and
its static quality, capturing certain particularities of Hungarian society.
Questions of whether life has actually changed, become "better," in a society
that claims to have evolved and yet retains many power brokers in their
positions within a bureaucracy which appears to function in much the same
way as before, are theatricalized within an allegorical dramatic structure
from the past: things change and yet they stay the same.
Everyman/Woman occurs in a series of locations. As astutely
designed by Csorsz Khell, the images created seem to suggest that this
"world" is not bound, t hat it lies somewhere between a fairy tale and a drab
post-Communist reality.
The opening scene takes place in a state housing office, where the
protagonist's job is to locate living situations for people. The bureaucratic
process is in full swing. The dull brown walls and lonely wooden desk with
two chairs center stage create a thread-bare, depressing environ!Tient. Emma,
as played by one of Hungary's best actresses, Eszter Csakanyi, enters from
the center audience aisle, frenzied and disheveled. She addresses the audience
as the people waiting for her assistance in finding housing. The apparent
chaos involved in something so basic as having a place to live is utterly
commonplace and familiar to these spectators. Actors sitting amongst the
audience respond to her queries and take their turns in approaching her
from all sides of the house.
The audience is included in this scene; in fact, spatially, it is "in"
99
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8
Peter Karpati's Everyman/Woman, directed by Gabor Zsambeki,
with Eszter Csak:inyi and Erika Bodnar
the scene. The production not only addresses, but implicates the audience.
This theatrical technique engages them in the grim reality of their common
predicaments.
Overwrought and desperate, the people waiting in this drab, poorly
functioning office attempt by whatever means possible to get what they
need. At the end of the scene, Emma falls ill, not having made any progress
in accomplishing anything for anyone. "Death," (Miklos Benedek) as a man
in a gray suit, trench-coat, and hat, informs her that she has not long to live.
Emma collapses, and one of the people on stage, a doctor (Andor Luk{lt5),
tends to her as the stage goes black.
The next scene finds Emma in an examining room in which the
doctor tries convincing her to use a relic of an x-ray machine, a remnant of
the Communist state. The dusty, dingy atmosphere contribute to Emma's
feelings of a sense of desperation. Another patient, T6th Gyula 06zsef
T6th), who is also terminally ill, sits waiting center-stage, a silhouette, in his
underwear. The x-ray machine, which "sees through," becomes a metaphor
for Emma's indignation at the doctor's arrogance and claims to omnipotence
based on his use of a run-down apparatus. The harrowing starkness of this
scene alludes to social conditions all too familiar to the audience.
Bureaucracy and its dilapidated forms are penetratingly examined
by Karpati in the closely allied areas of health and housing: areas of basic
human needs. Because apartments are scarce and the bureaucracy arduous,
people often enter into various "arrangements" in order to facilitate the
process. Emma attempts to settle one concern of hers by making an
arrangement between the doctor and her mother, Aranka, played with
perky aplomb by Erzsi Mathe. Having him move in with her mother
would reassure Emma that Aranka would be taken care of after her death.
This arrangement is typical of current Hungarian living situations. Ill or
elderly people with large apartments take in "lodgers" to manage their affairs
for them. In the end, the lodger benefits by retaining the apartment when
the person dies. Once again, the audience is reminded of their own tenuous
condition.
When Emma and the doctor arrive at the apartment, nursery
rhymes in English are playing. They wait in a dull yellow hallway until a
door opens and Aranka emerges from her "Learn and Lounge Language
School: a six-week intensive course in English as well as in relaxation
technique." This attempt on the mother's part both to make money and
learn English is ironic. The use of English nursery rhymes conveys the idea
of the newest invasion into the region and the mania to learn the language
in order to take advantage of the entrepreneurial opportunities now
101
available. But the irony goes deeper: putting nursery rhymes to commercial
use and merging that with "relaxation" as commodity. We discover that
Emma's old room has been rented out to a small firm (which cleans out
blocked drains), and there is no space for the doctor.
Later, when Emma finally arrives home, T6th Gyula is attempting
to unblock the drain in the bathtub. Emma's seventeen-year-old virgin
daughter, Vera (Kata Huszarik), is trying both to help him and seduce him.
After they actually do have sex in the bathroom once Emma has gone, he
begins to retch. Vera's concern is only that he not throw up into the bath,
as he'll clog the drain again. The most basic human relationships appear
meaningless in t he face of people's contortions as social beings in this
political state.
Kirpati exposes anxieties of present-day Hungarian life in this
drama of a woman's struggle with everyday problems as she attempts to
prepare herself for death. The play poignantly explores the cultural and
human realities of a post-Communist state from the bureaucratic process of
finding an apartment to the utter banality of cleaning out a blocked drain,
and from sexuality to death. Although not overtly political, the play is
imbued with politics nonetheless. As deliberated upon by both the
characters and then the audience, the politicized nature of everyday life in
Hungary is demonstrated while it is removed from the context of a specific
political setting.
Karpati described to me how he came to write Everyman/ Woman,
his blue-green eyes wide with the memory and his shock of kinky dirty-
blond hair ever ready to respond with each emphatic gesture. Before leaving
for a summer writer's retreat, he had tried to rent an apartment for his wife
and family. At t he last minute, because of some bureaucratic irregularity,
they weren' t able to acquire the apartment they had negotiated for. He
went off to his retreat in a state of desperation. The first scene emerged
within his first three days there.
Karpati's personal chaos is brilliantly translated in this production
into a political of contemporary Hungarian life. Everyman/Woman
exemplifies the regeneration of Hungarian theatre.
102
Slavic and East Eumpean Performance Vol. 16, No. 3
CONTRIBUTORS
ROGER BABB is the artistic director of Otrabanda Company. He teaches
acting and directing at Princeton University and is a doctoral student in the
Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the Graduate School of the City University of
New York.
JOHN FREEDMAN is the theatre critic for the Moscow Times and writes
monthly reports on Moscow theatre for Plays International (London). He
is also the co-editor for the Russian Theatre Archive and the
newly-established Russian Film Series, both published by Harwood
Academic Publishers.
JULIE GOCHMAN is a doctoral student in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre
at the Graduate School of the City University of New York.
RAJMUND KLECHOT joined the Polish National Mime Theatre,
Wrodaw, in 1959 and remained with the company for fifteen years,
appearing in more than thirty productions. In 1974 he co-founded the
Warsaw Mimes Theatre, which performed both in Poland and abroad. Since
1981 he has lived in the United States where he has continued his career as
artist and master teacher. His production of The Overcoat at Sinclair
Community College of Dayton, Ohio, was a national winner at the
Kennedy Center's American College Theatre Festival in 1995 and has been
performed in New York at the Library for the Performing Arts at the
Lincoln Center and in Washington at the Kennedy Center.
JAMES LEVERETT is on the dramaturgy faculty of the Yale School of the
Drama and the theatre department of Columbia University. He works
professionally as a dramaturg, and his writings on the theatre have appeared
in many publications, including The Village Voice, and yale/theater.
STUART LIEBMAN is a professor and coordinator of the Film Studies
Program at the Graduate School of the City University of New York. He
has recently edited a special issue of The Persistence of Vision devoted to Jean
Renoir.
JANE McMAHAN teaches voice at Barnard College and is a doctoral
student in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the Graduate School of the City
103
University of New York where she is writing her dissertation on puppet
theatre.
BARBARA NIEMCZYK teaches Russian language and literature at
Dickinson College, Pennsylvania. She writes about twentieth-century
Russian and Polish theatre.
JENNIFER STARBUCK is a doctoral student in the Ph.D. Program in
Theatre at the Graduate School of the City University of New York.
hoto Cr.edits
The Execution of the Decembrists, Young Spectator Theatre
Victor Buzhenov
Romeo and juliet, Satirikon Theatre
Mikhail Guterman
Tanya-Tanya, Fomenko Studio
Mikhail Guterman
Hamlet, Theatre na Krasnoi
Mikhail Guterman
Medea, Taganka Theatre
Mikhail Guterman
Rajmund Klechot
Tracy Kelly
The Overcoat
Jim Witmer, Dayton Daily News
The Overcoat
Harry Spear
The Fairground Booth, Otrabanda Company at La Mama E.T.C.
Tom Brazil
104 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No. 3
Uncle Vanya, T eatro di Parma
Mikhail Guterman
Three Sisters, Lithuania "Life" Festival
Mikhail Guterman
Macbeth, Rustaveli Theatre
Alexander lvanishin
Pianola, Tall in City Theatre
Mikhail Guterman
The Last Stop
Museum of Modern Art
The Last Stop
Museum of Modern Art
Waiting for 0 0 0 Beckett, Carouselle Puppet Theatre
A ventures, Budapest Babsiinhaz
Don Quixote, Ciroka Babsiinhaz
Kany6 Ferenc
Waiting for 0 0 0 Beckett, Carouselle Puppet Theatre
Gianni,]an,Johan,]ohn,Juan, Ivan, jean 0 0 0 ,Teatr 3/ 4
Piotr Zientara
Gianni,Jan,]ohan,john,Juan, Ivan, jean 0 0 0 ,Teatr 3/4
Piotr Zientara
The Fairground Booth, Otrabanda
Tom Brazil
The Fairground Booth, Otrabanda
Tom Brazil
105
Ubu Roi, Marionetteatern
James S. Chlopek
Antigone in New York, Vineyard Theatre
Carol Rosegg
Antigone in New York, Vineyard Theatre
Carol Rosegg
Everyman/Woman, Katona J 6zsef Kamra
106 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 16, No. 3
PLA YSCRIPTS 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 Iredyriski. Translated by Michal
Kobialka. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign).
No. 4 Conversatzon with the Executioner, by Kazimierz Moczarski. Stage
Adaptation by Zygmunt Hubner; English verstion by Earl Ostroff
and Daniel C. Gerould. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign).
No. 5 The Outsider, by Ignatii Dvoretsky. Translated by C. Peter
Goslett. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign).
No.6 The Ambassador, by Slawomir Mrozek. Translated by Slawomir
Mroiek and Ralph Mannheim. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign) .
No. 7 Four by Liudmila Petrushevslutya (Love, Come into the Kitchen, Nets
and Traps, and The Violin). Translated by Alma H. Law. $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 Toborski, 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).
Polish and Soviet Theatre Posters Volume Two. Introduction and Catalog
by Daniel C. Gerould and Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign).
Eastern European Drama and The American Stage. A symposium with
Janusz Glowacki, Vasily Aksyonov, and moderated by Daniel C.
Gerould (April 30, 1984). $3.00 ($4.00 foreign).
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Now in its 15th year, this journal, edited by Daniel Gerould,
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