SEEP Vol.18 No.2 Summer 1998

volume 18, no.
2
Summer 1998
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 (CASTA), 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: CASTA, Theatre Program, City University
Graduate Center, 33 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.
EDITOR
Daniel Gerould
MANAGING EDITOR
Jennifer Parker Starbuck
ASSOCIATE EDITOR AND CIRCULATION MANAGER
Susan T enneriello
EDITORIAL ASSIST ANTS
Hillary Arlen
Samuel T. Shanks
ASSIST ANT CIRCULATION MANAGERS
Patricia Herrera
Ramon Rivera-Servera
ADVISORY BOARD
Edwin Wilson, Chair
Marvin Carlson Alma Law
Martha W. Coigney Stuart Liebman
Leo Hecht Laurence Senelick
Allen J. Kuharski
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 1998 CASTA
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. 18, No.2
Editorial Policy
From the Editor
Events
Books Received
ARTICLES
TABLE OF CONTENTS
5
6
7
12
"Theatre in Central and Eastern Europe in Transition" 13
Dragan Klaic
"Between Two Worlds: Ansky's The Dybbuk 20
and Kushner's A Dybbuk"
James Fisher
"The Stage of Mysteries: The Black Light Theatre of Prague" 33
Nina Hein
"Darko Lukic's Plastic Camellias or Dumas fils as Soap Opera" 39
Sanja Nikcevic
"The Idea of Art Theatre: Past, Present, and Future 45
Anatoly Smeliansky at Hunter College"
Michael Bolus
"You Will Never Get to Moscow: an Interview with 47
Anatoly Smeliansky"
Michael Bolus
PAGES FROM THE PAST
"The Fourth Annual Theatre Festival in Moscow
and Leningrad 1936"
Alma H. Law
52
3
REVIEWS
"The Moscow Art Theatre's Three Sisters at the
Brooklyn Academy of Music: February 10, 1998"
Helena M. White
"Kushner and the Kabbalah: A Dybbuk"
Jeffrey Eric Jenkins
"Meyerhold's Revizor at Yale"
Susan Tenneriello
Contributors
Publications
56
62
66
69
71
4
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 18, No.2
EDITORIAL POLICY
Manuscripts in the following categories are solicited: articles of no
more than 2,500 words, performance and film reviews, and bibliographies.
Please bear in mind that all submissions must concern themselves either with
contemporary materials on Slavic and East European theatre, drama and
film, or with new approaches to older materials in recently published works,
or new performances of older plays. In other words, we welcome
submissions reviewing innovative performances of Gogo! but we cannot use
original articles discussing Gogo! as a playwright.
Although we welcome translations of articles and reviews from
foreign publications, we do require copyright release statements. We will
also gladly publish announcements of special events and anything else which
may be of interest to our discipline. All submissions are refereed.
All submissions must be typed double-spaced and carefully
proofread. The Chicago Manual 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 Spring Issue following close on the heels of our Winter nunr-:._ber
deals with a number of the problems facing Eastern European theatre 1:he
postcommunist period. Dragan Klaic addresses these issues a
comprehensive survey of many of these countries which he has vis; i l:ed
recently and whose theatre artists he knows. James Fisher looks at
famous Dybbuk as revised by Tony Kushner. Nina Hein discusses the Black
Light Theatre of Prague as an on-going manifestation of Czech technological
theatre with strong appeal to theatre tourists. Sanja Nikcevic shows
the borders between high and low culture are finally starting to blur in
contemporary Croatian drama in an analysis of Darko Lukic's Plczstic
Camellias. Michael Bolus reports on Anatoly Smeliansky's lecture at
Hunter College and also conducts an interview in which Smelian.sk
discusses the specific problems facing Russia's best known theatre,
Moscow Art Theatre. In PAGES FROM THE PAST, Alma Law presents
a rare and unknown Hirschfield's theatre drawing of Meyerhold's Woe to
Wit and offers a fascinating glimpse into the ways visiting American thea tre
tourists in the 1930s unwittingly contributed to Meyerhold's demise b
voicing ill-advised criticism that could be used by the authorities in the!r
vilification campaign. The issue is rounded out with reviews by Helen
White, Jeffrey Jenkins, and Susan Tenneriello. a
SEEP now has an E-mail address, seepjour@email.gc.cuny.edu and
we urge readers to contact us in this fashion.
-Daniel Gerould
6
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 18, No.
2
STAGE PRODUCTIONS
New York and Regional
EVENTS
The Los Kabayitos Puppet Theatre presented The Symptom, loosely
based on Chekhov's Three Sisters, at CSV Culture Centre, New York, in
March.
Jennifer Bloomfield's Escaping Warsaw, concerning two Americans
and two Poles set in Warsaw and Croatia in the early 90s, was performed at
the Abingdon Theatre, New York, from April 1 to 4.
White Nights, an adaptation of Dostoyevsky's short story, was
presented at La Mama, New York, from April9 to 19.
Charlatan: A Memoir of Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes, a solo
performance by Tony Tanner, was presented at the Jan Hus Theatre, New
York, from March 26 to April19.
The Ukrainian experimental company Yara Arts Group, directed
by Virlana Tkacz, joined artists from the Buryat National Theatre of Siberia
to present a new song piece Flight, based on the music and legends of the
Buryat people, at La Mama, New York, from April26 to May 3. The music
for this multi-disciplinary work was developed collaboratively between
Genji Ito and Buryat composer Erzhena Zhambalov.
Petersburg, C.B.Coleman's adaptation of Andrei Bely's 1913 novel,
was performed at Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut,
from April 30 to 23.
Director-choreographer Stephan Kaplowitz & Company presented
a theatre/dance piece based on Karel Capek's 1936 novel War with the Newts
as part of Dance Theater Workshop's program "Public Imaginations" at the
Bessie Schonberg Theater, New York, from May 7 to 17.
7
Chekhov's The Seagull, directed by Austin Pendleton and translated
by Tom Stoppard, was presented by the Blue Light Theatre Company, New
York, at Theater Four from May 27 to June 14.
England's Theatre de Complicite will present their production of
The Street of Crocodiles by Polish writer Bruno Schulz at John Jay College
in New York from July 16 to 26 as part of Lincoln Center's Festival '98.
STAGE PRODUCTIONS
Europe
Tolstoy's The Power of Darkness was presented at the Theatre
Artistic Athevains, Paris, in April.
Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, directed by Katie Mitchell and translated
by David Lan, was presented at the Young Vic, London, from April 15 to
22.
Bernard Slade's romantic comedy Same Time Next Year, directed by
Barbara Sas, was presented in Polish by Warsaw's Teatr na Woli at the
POSK Theatre, London, from April 23 to 25.
An adaptation of Chekhov's story The Black Monk, directed by
Rupert Kingfisher, was presented by the Bristol Travelling Theatre at the
Union Theatre in London from April21 to 26.
An adaptation of Gogol's The Overcoat was presented by the Clod
Ensemble at the Battersea Arts Centre Theatre, London, from April21 to
May3.
Alexander Pushkin's The Feast During the Plague, directed by Victor
Sobchak and translated by Anthony Wood, was performed by the Art-Vic
Company at the Camden People's Theatre in London from April22 to May
3.
Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths, adapted and directed by Adrian
Jackson, was presented by Cardboard Citizens in association with the
London Bubble Theatre Company at The Section in London May 12 to
May 30.
8 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 18, No. 2
Nikolai Erdman's The Suicide, adapted by Maarten Laurens and
directed by Sharon Crisp, was presented by the Elephant Theatre at the
King's Head Theatre, London, from May 12 to May 24.
OPERA
St. Petersburg's Kirov Opera with artistic director Valery Gergiev
conducting performed at Lincoln Center's Metropolitan Opera House in
New York from May 2 to 9. The program included Betrothal in a Monastery
(Prokofiev), Ruslan and Lyudmila (Glinka), Mazeppa (Tchaikovsky), and
Prince Igor (Borodin).
DANCE
The Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg performed for the first time in
the United States at City Center in New York from April15 to 19. The
forty-five member ensemble performed Red Giselle, a dance piece based on
the life of expressionist ballerina Olga Spessivtseva, and Tchaikovsky.
"East of Eden," a festival of new work from East and Central
European sponsored by the Dance Theater Workshop (DTW) and the
Danspace Project, was presented at the Bessie Schonberg Theatre in New
York from May 27 to 30 and June 3 to 6. The festival included Yvette
Bozsik's The Countess (Hungary), Iztok Kovac-En Knap Dance Co.'s Codes
of Cobra (Slovenia), and showcased the work of choreographers Istvan Juhos
and Panja Fladerer of Putto and Panja with Perarch (Hungary), Akos
Hargitai of Cie 2 In 1 with Garlic Kiss (Hungary), Sasha Peplyaev's Kinetic
Theatre with Alexander Pepelyaev's The View of Russian Grave from
Germany (Russia) and Olga Zitluhina's Spitting Whistling in the Ceiling
(Latvia).
Virsky, the Ukrainian National Dance Company, performed at
City Center in New York from June 23 to 27. The company also appeared
in Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania during their U.S. tour.
FILM
Russian film editor Esther Shub's The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty
(1927), a compilation of World War I newsreel footage and the Tsar's home
9
movies, was shown as part of the series "Women Film Pioneers" at the
American Museum of the Moving Image in New York in April.
Russian filmmaker Alexandr Sokurov's Mother and Son (1997) was
screened at the Renoir Theatre in London in April.
Andrei Konchalovsky's Siberiade (1978) and Uncle Vanya (1970)
were screened at the Anthology Film Archives in New York in April.
Our God's Brother, a film directed by Krzysztof Zanussi, and based
on a play written by Pope John Paul II in the 1940s about the life of a
nineteenth-century painter turned monk, Adam Chmielewski, was screened
for the first time at the Vatican in April.
Michael Haneke's adaptation of Kafka's last novel, The Castle, was
screened at the Anthology Film Archives in April.
Russian filmmaker Vladimir Michalek's A Forgotten Light (1996)
was shown at the Anthology Film Archives in April.
Viktor Kossakovsky's Wednesday, a documentary about life in St.
Petersburg, was shown as part of the twenty-seventh New Directors/New
Films series of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of
Modern Art at the Museum's Titus Theater in New York in April.
Emir Kusterica's Underground was shown at the Anthology Film
Archives in May.
Ukrainian director Vyacheslav Krishtofovich's A Friend of the
Deceased, a look at the transitional disorder of present-day Kiev, was
screened at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema in New York in May.
Krzysztof Kie5lowski's trilogy Three Colors inspired by the ideals
of the French revolution: Red, W11ite, Blue, was shown at the National Film
Theatre in London, during May.
ARTS, CULTURE, NEWS
Wlodzimierz Staniewski, artistic director of the Gardzienice Center
of Theatre Practices in Poland, was in residency at the Double Edge
10
Theatre's Center of Living Culture: the Farm, in Ashfield, Massachusetts,
in March. Staniewski's and the Gardzienice Center will tour the United
States for the first time in ten years this fall.
On May 1, Richard Nash-Siedlecki's Liquid Theater presented
"Alien Hands are Writing: Readings from Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz," at
the Robert Miller Gallery, New York. The event took place in connection
with the exhibition of Witkiewicz's photography.
The Polish Cultural Institute in London held a book launch and
dramatic reading for the newest release of Harwood Academic Publishers
Polish plays in translation series on May 19 for Tadeusz R6zewicz's The
Trap (Pulapka), translated by Adam Czerniawski.
The Threshold Theatre. Company's annual festival of modern
international one-act plays "Caught in the Act," which features works by
Slavic and East European writers, received the 1997-1998 VOICE OBIE
presented by New York's weekly newspaper The Village Voice. [For more
on the Threshold Theatre's festivals, see EVENTS in SEEP Vo.16, No.3
for 1996, and Vol. 17, No 3 for 1997.] The next "Caught in the Act" Festival
takes place September 10 to October 4 at the HERE Theater, 145 6th
Avenue, New York.
An exhibition of photographs, drawings and designs by Alexander
Rodchenko will be held at the Howard Schickler Fine Art Gallery in New
York from July 9 to August 14.
-Compiled by Susan Tenneriello
11
BOOKS RECEIVED
Witkiewicz, Stanislaw Ignacy. Metaphysical Portraits: Photographs 19101939.
Ed. T. 0. Immisch, Klaus E. Goltz, and Ulrich Pohlmann. Leipzig:
Connewitzer Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1997. 151 pages. Catalogue from an
Exhibition of Witkiewicz's photographs shown at the following galleries:
Fotomuseum im Miinchner Stadtmuseum; Saatliche Galerie Moritzburg
Halle Landeskunstmuseum Sachsen-Anhalt; Robert Miller Gallery, New
York; Chicago Cultural Center. Includes Urszula Czartoryska, "Witkiewicz
in the Labyrinth of Selfconfidence;" Stefan Okolowicz, "Metaphysical
Portraits;" 64 plates; biography; and list of plates.
Kwartalnik filmowy No. 17 (Spring 1997) and No. 18 (Summer 1997).
Instytut Sztuki PAN. 231 pages and 248 pages. Two issues devoted to the
history of Polish cinema from Andrzej Wajda's Kana/, 1956, to Krzysztof
Kieslowski' s Decalogue, 1991.
Theater Vol. 28, No. 2 (1998) Yale School of Drama/Yale Repertory
Theatre, Erika Munch, editor. Special issue on Meyerhold, pp.10-90.
Includes rehearsal sketches and notes from Meyerhold's 1926 Revizor;
Meyerhold's Petition from Prison (reprinted from SEEP Vol. 9, No. 1,
Summer 1989, pgs 19-22); essays by Joseph Roach, Katerina Clark, Nikolai
Pesochinsky, and David Chambers; interviews with Peter Sellars, Paul
Schmidt, and Mel Gordon; and an excerpt from Harold Clurman's
unpublished diary. Many Photographs and drawings.
THEATRE IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE IN
TRANSITION
Dragan Klaic
(Edited version of a talk given at the Graduate School, City University of
New York on March 2, 1998)
Everywhere you go in Eastern Europe, you see the completely
changed face of the cities, now full of advertising and expensive cars, not to
mention total and successful McDonaldization. A few months ago, for
example, I was amazed to see in Tallinn how the traces of the Soviet rule
have been totally erased; you have to go to the outskirts of the city to
recognize what would have been the typical features of a Soviet city. Have
a look at the windows of the bookstores anywhere in Eastern Europe and
you'll see not only a completely changed style of display but also a
completely changed list of favored titles. Now you'll find how-to books,
books on management, cookbooks and very expensive books for children,
as well as computer books in the local languages. Everywhere there are the
banks, the luxurious restaurants, and the beggars on the streets; and
everywhere there are the people with the mobile phones and the people
going through the garbage cans. Some very essential aspects of the economy
have been changed-banking, services, retail trade, communication
systems-they have all been modernized, privatized, and developed, but
theatre has not been. On the contrary, the theatre has shown a tremendous
resistance to change.
There has been no significant market-driven imperative to engineer
change in theatre, there have been no Western companies eager to invest
their millions to find new customers and therefore there has been no foreign
pressure to force change. For the most part, the theatres in Eastern Europe
remain locked in an institutional matrix that has been inherited from the
past. In many large repertory theatre companies, the creative processes are
blocked, or they function with tremendous difficulty and limited impact.
Quite apart from the inherited theatrical establishment, there is a panoply
of new initiatives in the private sector: -small, fragile groups, agencies,
festivals, workshops, training places, publishers, and even documentation
centers. Unfortunately there is very little communication between these two
tracks, but quite a bit of rivalry and irritation.
There has been, of course, one very essential change in all of
Eastern Europe: the end of fear. The fear, once such an abundant
13
commodity, is now gone, and no one should underestimate the importance
of that change. People work and live without fear of the political repression
that had been so much a part of their lives. Censorship has everywhere
come to the end. There are sometimes efforts on the part of the new
political elites to send a threatening message and control the arts-this may
happen in Zagreb, in Minsk or in Bratislava-and it is annoying and
troublesome, but it can no longer create fear. That is a major difference.
There is also the ideological pressure of nationalism. In many
countries of the region, nationalism, old or new, is a considerable force,
both within the regime and also in the opposition-and often
simultaneously within the regime and in the opposition, as is the case in
Belgrade, for instance. Nationalist ideology creates expectations that the
nationalist elites and aparatchiks can use in making demands of the
performing arts community. Nationalist cultural policies are populist,
traditionalist, and conservative, uncritical of the past and with a preference
for institutional structures. Many of the large repertory theatre companies
have rather strong nationalist orientation. Political manipulation of
performing arts professionals, who are dependent on politicians, is all too
frequent.
In general, artists in Eastern Europe are cooling off to politics. The
frenzy of jumping on the political bandwagon and being very directly
involved in politics is ending, as artists lose their illusions about the political
process in a multi-party democracy and see the corrupting nature of politics.
The point is that the theatre system has not changed. The
dominant institutional matrix relies on a long tradition of repertory theatre
that is much older than socialism. Yet knowing all that, I was still
flabbergasted to discover-on the basis of the research undertaken by the
Theater Instituut Nederland project in twenty countries-that today there
are twelve hundred functioning repertory theatre companies in Eastern
Europe-four hundred and sixty in Russia alone. A very simple and
conservative estimate would lead to the conclusion that 150,000 people are
on a permanent payroll in this huge system. You should not assume that all
these people get their salaries. Some are paid months or even years late,
others get coupons or receive potatoes and onions instead of salaries. Of
course, their creative work has been affected accordingly. Many of these
repertory theatre companies have not had a premiere for a very long time.
Some of them do not even present their own old productions, but they
manage to survive somehow-if only nominally, on the books. Other
companies are completely paralyzed. When I was in Albania, there were
nine repertory theatre companies in different cities in a state of clinical
14
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 18, No. 2
death. The National Theatre in Tirana, housed in a former movie house, is
in an absolutely dreadful conditions, without heating and with only three
or four lighting instruments. The first production after two or three years
of disuse was a very depressing and painful experience. In the Ukraine, there
is still a Hungarian language theatre company, but there are no Hungarian
actors because they all left and went either to Romania or to Hungary. The
theatre continues to exist with a core administration that receives a little bit
of money to keep the pretense alive.
In search of anything that will attract an audience, repertory
companies are ready to make dreadful compromises in the choice of the
plays and how they are staged. Another form of commercialization is the
subletting of space. Space did not have any value in a non-market economy,
but with the marketization of the economy space suddenly became valuable.
Everywhere in Eastern Europe you can see huge theatre lobbies turned into
shopping malls with little booths . . At first they sold books or compact discs,
but later expanded to include knick-knacks, shoes, and almost anything.
The income goes to the company for salaries. In Romania there is so much
penury that the theatre hairdressers offer their services to the public in the
afternoon before fixing the actors' wigs in the evening, and stage carpenters
make coffins for funeral parlors to earn extra money.
There is a shocking lack of skill and know-how, especially in
matters like marketing, publicity, budgeting, and sponsoring. These have
become survival issues. There is a deadly passivity, a waiting for saviors
from the outside. Theatre people do not understand what has happened. A
highly respectable and respected theatre company that had an enthusiastic
public and regular subsidies (yes, and censorship, but that was collateral of
its pampered status) suddenly finds itself on the skids; no one gives a damn,
no one cares, and poor theatre artists don't know what hit them. The
buildings are collapsing; they weren't properly maintained even in
communist times and now ten additional years have passed. The stage
technology is outdated and the whole infrastructure is falling apart. The best
people leave these institutional theatre companies, some to go abroad, others
seek new careers because they see that there is no hope, no future in the
theatre.
It is strange to think that the politicians who have closed hundreds
of thousands of companies and factories and laid off hundreds of thousands
of workers without really batting an eyelash don't dare to close any of the
theatres. Among twelve hundred repertory companies, there are perhaps
only ten that went out of business or were really closed in all those
countries.
15
Why does the theatre have the status of a sacred cow in Eastern
Europe? In the second half of the nineteenth century the theatre in Eastern
Europe had the central role of a public cultural institution. In most of these
countries theatre was the cornerstone in the struggle for national liberation,
the public institution that shaped the national self-consciousness, made
possible the public use of the national language, and brought the great
national literature to the broader public.
This kind of respect for the theatre make politicians very uneasy.
They don't want to close a single theatre because such a move can get them
in trouble. They are not attacked as barbarians if they lay off a hundred
thousand workers. But if they close a single theatre they are attacked as
traitors to the nation and to the national cultural traditions. Every theatre
company has actors who have become popular in film and television; these
stars can make a fuss and make politicians look ridiculous.
Cultural policy and cultural legislation have not been in the
forefront of change. There is a complete state of limbo as to property rights
to theatre buildings, studios, and workshops. Who owns what is absolutely
unclear, as is the status of tax exemptions. What is the position of theatre
people on free-lance contracts? Contracts, social benefits, pensions,
unemployment benefits-all of these things that were not issues before are
now fraught with problems. Previously a theatre artist was employed by
the state, had a salary, eventually retired, drew a pension, and of course had
full health coverage. But now, who knows? There is no safety net.
Who runs the theatres is now a source of political and legal games
that are played about boards of directors: who appoints the board, how is
the board composed, what rights does the board have. No one wishes to
take responsibility, and the national, regional, and local government agencies
try to dump the burden on one another.
There are two major illusions, as I see it. One is that the problems
of the theatre can be resolved by a single piece of legislation. But a theatre
law by itself can do nothing without all the other needed legislation about
labor relations, employment, pension, health insurance, taxes for profit and
non-profit institutions. These are very complex legislative projects that are
only in the rudimentary stages in Eastern Europe.
The other fallacy is that the market can supply all the support for
theatre that has been lost with the radical decrease in government subsidy.
Private sponsorship is still in a very primitive state, and the wild and erratic
market economies of Eastern Europe can hardly offer the stability of the old
system. But sponsors are sometimes found. It is amazing that people who
did not have any experience with sponsorship, who did not know how to
16
approach a potential sponsor, how you make a deal, or how you live up to
it, have learned quickly and developed the ability to recruit sponsors for
repertory companies. I see this in Riga as well as in Belgrade. New
businesses often seek visibility; because theatre is traditionally respected, the
new class of patrons-whether they are in mobile telephones, cars,
computers, mutual funds, insurance, or banking-are happy to be associated
with the theatre. Many newly rich try to get status as patrons of the art. As
yet, very few countries in Eastern Europe have enlightened sponsorship
laws, and tax exemption for sponsorship is something still in development.
What has happened to audiences? The audiences dwindled initially
because suddenly there were so many other things to do, and reality was
much more spectacular than any theatre could be. The whole family budget
went through tremendous restructuring at the same time that leisure
opportunities and especially travel became possible. The result was that at
first people abandoned the theatre, but now they have started to come back.
Spending patterns have certainly changed, but once again in the theatres you
can see a broad public, even an inter-generational public consisting of four
different generations. The prestige of theatre remains strong in Budapest or
Cracow, but both socially and aesthetically the notion of what an evening
at the theatre means remains rather conservative. Unlike the situation in
most Western European countries, theatre in Eastern Europe still enjoys
automatic status and respect.
Tickets are in most places still ridiculously low. Theatre managers
are reluctant to raise ticket prices for fear of losing their most dedicated and
discriminating audience consisting of intellectuals, teachers, and students
who now earn so little that going to the theatre-even with low priced
ticket-is a sacrifice. Raising the prices will mean playing exclusively to a
nouveau riche audience with disastrous consequences for the repertory and
style of the theatre.
Opera is usually more expensive and tries to cater to the tourist
trade in those cities that have become tourist meccas. Prague became at
some point the major tourist destination in Europe. In Budapest and Prague
opera tickets are priced accordingly. Touring in the provinces is now
reduced or non-existent because it is prohibitively expensive, with the result
that people who live in small cities are deprived of something important that
was accessible to them on a regular basis in the past. Theatre for children is
in a state of total collapse because the subsidized theatres are now trying to
operate on a commercial basis. As society becomes increasingly stratified,
audiences grow compartmentalized. The homogeneity of taste and cultural
values that could be taken for granted in the past cannot be assumed any
17
longer.
Besides these attempts at commercialization within the state theatre
structure, there is the non-institutional sector with its new initiatives where
artists who are trying to establish themselves independently are more
capable of forging international ties. These small groups in small adapted
venues often perform work they themselves have created rather than a
traditional repertory. In Russia these experimental groups frequently
present revamped classics, in small spaces seating up to a hundred; it is
miraculous how they manage to finance a premiere since they get only
crumbs from the government. Not only is there less money for culture in
general, but whatever there is goes automatically to the large repertory
theatre companies; the financing of theatre in the independent sector is
minuscule.
Those who combine artistic talent with entrepreneurial ingenuity
have some chance of survival. Some earn a little money, others only lose.
In Tallinn, a theatre director runs a cafe and the best restaurant in town with
pool tables. All that he earns through these activities he reinvests in small
productions. He even brings in companies from the Ukraine, Latvia, and
Russia, and once a year he does a big festival where he can get sponsors
because it a large public event. The young generation is acquiring this sort
of entrepreneurial spirit that is now essential for making the transition to a
theatre without subsidies. The older generation finds this transition almost
impossible.
Theatre academies were previously a state monopoly, but now with
a market economy anyone can open a theatre school, and some are of very
dubious quality and without certification. Besides rather good, often solid
but very conservative theatre academies, there are alternative training places,
some of them working internationally. Young artists can now go abroad for
short-term intensive training, and some even come back.
What is most disturbing is the continued lack of horizontal
communications. There is a great need to share information instead of
monopolizing it. There is still a deeply internalized sense of suspicion that
results in keeping information for oneself rather than exchanging it with
one's colleagues and peers. There is a great proliferation of international
festivals, without much thought as to how to have a festival. Festivals
attract foreign groups, new work, media attention, and young people
interested in establishing a personal network of an international nature. The
large repertory theatre companies are self-centered and incapable of
collaborating internationally. In the fluid and fragile independent sector
such collaboration is possible, although what is still lacking is an awareness
of the way the local and the international are connected, of the way theatre
always needs a very local grounding, and of the way it needs to re-establish
this local grounding when it has achieved international acclaim. Alliances
are too infrequent, competition for very limited means of support is too
intense, and generational conflict is too widespread. The problem of the
independent sector establishing itself and working on an international scale
is typical of the dilemma for all enterprise in Eastern Europe.
The most precarious position is occupied by Eastern European
playwriting. It is extremely difficult to be a playwright in Eastern Europe
today; reality is moving too fast for the dramatist to keep up with it and
respond to the often traumatic changes. Even where, as in Hungary, there
is a significant body of contemporary playwriting that gets produced, the
problem is where are these plays staged and by whom are they seen. For the
most part, interesting new plays are relegated to the small stages of large
companies-so that the large stage .can be reserved for prestigious traditional
works, like Shakespeare, or commercially successful musicals.
19
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS:
ANSKY'S THE DYBBUK AND KUSHNER'S A DYBBUK
James Fisher
As their singing spreads across the world, the world, in threads of fire,
Shining threads connecting living hearts, the hearts feel deep desire.
Every living creature has a heart, and every heart a thread.
And He of Holy Wisdom draws all the threads together.
From the fiery threads is woven time, and thus new days are made;
Unto the heart is given, unto the spring is given.
As the spring pours waters through the days,
the heart of the world looks on.
And so the world continues, until the world is gone.
1
-Fradde, A Dybbuk
Among Eastern European dramas of the twentieth century,
Solomon Ansky's The Dybbuk (1912-1914) is singular. It may be the only
pre-World War II Jewish play that has managed to transcend its cultural
niche as folk art to be recognized as an international classic of early
modern theatre. In 1993, England's Royal Shakespeare Company staged a
successful production, and within a year after, Tony Kushner, author of
the Pulitzer Prize-winning Angels in America, adapted it for a production
first staged at the Hartford Repertory Theatre in February 1995. The
Dybbuk is, in practical and aesthetic terms, a difficult play that requires a
large cast and the sort of imaginative stylization rare in an increasingly
realistic twentieth-century theatre. These considerations may explain, in
part, why the play is not more frequently produced, but at the same time,
The Dybbuk remains one of the most influential plays of early twentieth-
century Eastern Europe. What is it about this unique play of obscure
shtetl life in the nineteenth century that intrigues artists and moves
audiences? And, more to the point, why has it attracted one of America's
most promising contemporary dramatists?
Born Shloyme Zanul Rappoport to a well-to-do Jewish family in
Vitebsk, White Russia (now Belarus) on November 8, 1863, Ansky
received an Hasidic education, although his family was essentially non-
religious. Hasidism, which was founded in the late eighteenth century in
southern Poland by Israel Baal Shem Tov, gets its name from the Hebrew
word hasidut, meaning piety, saintliness, and an extraordinary devotion
to Jewish life; the Hasid must have God constantly in his mind even
20
when going about the minutiae of daily life. The Hasidic movement
grew rapidly throughout Eastern Europe and beyond, but by the end of
the nineteenth century some Jews of Ansky's generation found its
isolationism stifling. In his youth, Ansky became enamored of the
Haskalah (Enlightenment) movement, which was inclined toward greater
interaction with Western culture and burgeoning modernity. Ansky
became a part of the intelligentsia, learned to speak and write in Russian,
worked at various menial jobs and, occasionally, as a tutor. His blue-
collar experiences influenced his increasingly socialist bent, leading to a
move to St. Petersburg as a writer for the Narodniki group's socialist
periodical. When the St. Petersburg authorities cracked down on the
group, Ansky was forced to leave Russia in 1892. He travelled to
Germany and Switzerland and settled in Paris where he lived in exile
from 1894 to 1904.
After returning to Russia in 1905 to participate in the Populist
and Socialist Revolutionary movements, Ansky wrote the anthem of the
Jewish Labor Bund. In 1911, he founded and led the Jewish
Ethnographic Expedition (financed by Baron Horace Ginzburg) which
endeavored to recover stories, myths, music, jokes, and folklore of the
Jewish oral tradition throughout Russia and Eastern Europe. Curiously,
despite his personal rejection of Hasidism, Ansky created evocative
depictions of that world in most of his writings, undoubtedly as a result
of his involvement with the Expedition. His works particularly
emphasize the turbulent transitions and challenges facing orthodox Jews
in the first two decades of the twentieth century, something he had
witnessed first-hand as he traveled about small villages in Eastern Europe.
Although Ansky had previously experimented with drama and written
two one-acts in 1906, Foter und Zon (Father and Son), set in a small Jewish
village during Passover in 1905, and Der Zeideh (The Grandfather), he was
not otherwise much disposed toward playwriting. The catalytic event
came during the Ethnographic Expedition when he uncovered a rare
document that provided the seed for The Dybbuk: an eyewitness account
of a 1755 (pre-Hasidic) exorcism in the small Ukrainian town of
Khmelnik.
In Jewish lore, a dybbuk is a malevolent spirit, "troubled and
dark, without a home or resting place, and these attempt to enter the
body of another p e r ~ o n and even these are trying to ascend,"
2
as Ansky
explains in the play. Ansky invented two overlapping plots. One focuses
on Chonen, a young rabbinical student from Brinnitz who dies for the
love of Leah, his destined bride. Many years before their birth, the
21
fathers of Chonen and Leah had made a pact that their unborn children
would one day marry. Because Chonen's father has been dead for many
years, Leah's avaricious father, Reb Sender, feels free to break the old
agreement and arrange a more lucrative match for Leah. "She is the light
and I am the flame,"
3
cries the heartbroken Chonen when he learns of
this betrayal. Embittered, he starves himself to death- an unclean death,
for he has sought forbidden knowledge in the Kabbalah and blasphemed
by calling on God's fallen angels to assist him in his spiritual possession of
Leah.
The other plot of The Dybbuk deals with the formidable Rabbi
Azriel of Miropol who is called upon to rescue Leah from the dybbuk
while struggling with his own religious doubts. Demonic possession,
although the stock-in-trade of modern day horror films, is uniquely
applied here as Chonen's spirit stubbornly refuses to leave the body of
Leah, requiring Azriel to literally wrest the dybbuk from her body. Leah
dies as she is freed from the dybbuk, but in death she joins Chonen in the
other world. In a faraway voice she is heard proclaiming that Chonen "is
light and I am flame and we join into Holy fire and rise, and rise, and
rise. "
4
Ansky composed The Dybbuk between 1912 and 1914, and he
ultimately managed to interest Konstantin Stanislavsky in producing it at
the prestigious Moscow Art Theatre. The play had been written in
Yiddish, was translated into Russian, and a draft in that form came to the
attention of Stanislavsky in 1914.
5
Impressed, Stanislavsky made some
suggestions for changes to Ansky, the most substantial of which was the
addition of The Messenger, one of the play's key characters in
illuminating its philosophical and religious context. However,
Stanislavsky became ill shortly thereafter, and his planned production,
which would have undoubtedly been a triumph for Ansky, was
postponed indefinitely. To make matters worse, Ansky had to flee
Russia's Bolsheviks at the rise of Lenin in January 1918. He made it to
Warsaw in severely ill health, disguised as a priest. This was a devastating
time for him, not only the shattering political changes in Russia but
because the Bolsheviks had captured many of the Judaic artifacts Ansky
had carefully gathered and preserved for the Jewish Ethnographic
Museum, the outcome of his Expedition. Ansky had to leave behind
much of his written work-not only early drafts of The Dybbuk, but also
his four-volume history, The Destruction of the Jews of Poland, Galicia, and
Bukovina.
6
He died in Warsaw on November 8, 1920 from diabetes and
heart disease without living to see The Dybbuk produced and unaware that
22
Slavic and East EuYOpean Performance Vol. 18, No.2
23
he would be remembered as one of the seminal figures of modern Jewish
literature.
Following thirty days of mourning after Ansky's death,
Warsaw's Vilna Troupe staged The Dybbuk under its original title,
Tzvishen Tzvei Velter, or Between Two Worlds: A Dramatic Legend, on
December 9, 1920. The production was acclaimed and inspired poet
Chiam Bialik to translate it into Hebrew, which, in turn, led to a
legendary production at the Moscow Art Theatre's Habimah Studio.
The Habimah, which subsequently became Israel's National Theatre, was
founded in 1918 with several guiding precepts. It declared itself a strictly
Hebrew-speaking theatre, a biblical-historical theatre, a moral voice for its
community, and a high-art theatre with the ultimate goal of becoming the
national theatre of Palestine. The Dybbuk, along with David Pinsky's
drama The Eternal Jew, provided the Habimah with the first worthy plays
in support its doctrines.
The Habimah's production of The Dybbuk opened on January
31, 1922 under the direction of Evgenii Vakhtangov. It seemed to
audiences and critics so authentic a picture of Jewish shtetllife that many
assumed (incorrectly) that Vakhtangov himself was a Jew. Marc Chagall
had been asked to design scenery, but declined fearing that the Moscow
Art Theatre's connection to the Habimah would mean a strictly realistic
production. He need not have worried. Vakhtangov aimed for, and by
all accounts achieved, a vividly stylized production. Designed by
expressionist painter Nathan Altman, the production, not surprisingly,
featured distinctly expressionistic qualities.
Actors wore bizarrely-stylized Cubist makeup and made use of
distorted expressions, gestures, and movement to underscore the
phantasmagoria of the settings. The result was a disturbing, mystical
environment populated by other-worldly characters with both human
and grotesque aspects. Most effective were a group of beggars who
danced like distorted marionettes. Following Vakhtangov's death in 1922,
The Dybbuk toured around the world, attracting international audiences
to the Habimah. The tour led to productions of The Dybbuk in numerous
cultures. An English-language version was staged at New York's
Neighborhood Playhouse on December 15, 1925, with advertisements
claiming it was directed in Vakhtangov's "style."
7
Critics aware of the
Habimah's work were not impressed. When the Habimah, which by
1928 had given in excess of six-hundred performances of The Dybbuk,
presented their version at New York's Mansfield Theatre in 1926, they
scored a triumph. Both the play and the production impressed a wide
24
The Dybbuk, final scene. Directed by Evgenii Vak.htangov
at the Habimah Theatre, January 31, 1922
IJ)
N
range of America's most important artists. George Gershwin considered
adapting it into the operatic form and Harold Clurman, one of the
founders of The Group Theatre, remembered it as a "brilliant entity the
like of which may be seen in a theatre only once or twice in a
generation."
8
Stark Young, who also saw it, stressed that The Dybbuk was
"the only instance of extreme stylization that I have encountered in
which the whole of it seemed inevitable. Here in it we get both the
extreme stylization that ritual can go to and at the same time the truth
that worshipers bring to ritual."
9
The Vakhtangov production returned
to New York when the Habimah visited again in 1948, and critical
response was similarly enthusiastic.
10
The Dybbuk is perhaps best-known as a memorable 1938 Polish-
made, Yiddish-language film (directed by Michal Waszynski, well-known
for his Polish language cinematic comedies) that is suffused with haunting
and beautiful imagery as it plausibly, and occasionally stereotypically,
recreates Ansky's depiction of shtetllife. Although the movie maintains
many elements from the original play, it is uniquely its own creation.
Slow-paced and with acting that may seem overdone for contemporary
tastes, it remains a moving historical document of pre-World War II
Eastern European Jewish life. Tragically, many of the actors and crew
members involved in the film perished in Nazi concentration camps
within a few years of completing it.
11
Tony Kushner's adaptation, recently published by the Theatre
Communications Group, is The Dybbuk's most recent incarnation. The
parallels between the lives of author and adaptor are important to
understanding why Kushner was drawn to this problematic and
fascinating play-and essential to appreciating why his treatment is so
effective. Ambivalent about his own Jewish heritage, Kushner recognizes
in Ansky a kindred spirit. Both writers are driven to a great extent by
deep religious doubts, but both express the power of and the need for the
spiritual. Their skepticism seems to fuel their political socialism and
activism. For Kushner, The Dybbuk
26
is definitely a product of that struggle. So the play drew me,
because it's not this little fairy tale. It's actually more
complicated than that. I think very much about a very insular,
premodern shtetl world, but one that's already being impacted
upon by modernity and the arrival of the nineteenth century,
and everything that would come after that. So, I was very drawn
to it for that reason.
12
Ansky's internal struggle with his religious skepticism and political
activism are, for Kushner, central to the play's strengths. Kushner senses
that Ansky "went toward Judaism by his political convictions," and that
his "sense of himself as a political revolutionary was very much at odds
with this sort of emotional tie that he had with Judaism,"
13
which Ansky
himself described as the sole motif of The Dybbuk: a "spiritual struggle."
14
Kushner makes use of various literary and philosophical
traditions as a foundation for his plays. One important point is that he is
both unmistakably American and, at the same time, bound to his Eastern
European roots. Coming of age in the wake of the 1960s revolutionary
counter-culture, Kushner is a product of Cold War unease, the 1960s
hopes for social change, and the cynicism and moral deterioration of post-
Nixonian America. Kushner believes that the past teaches lessons, but at
the same time he proposes that we not simply recommit to or rebuild
upon old values which may too often have been used to stifle change. He
sees contemporary American society in an age of intellectual stagnation
and profound political and social crisis, but the greatest threats to him are
more internal-a moral emptiness that stems from a fundamental
abandonment of commitment to justice, compassion, and mercy which
are requirements for moral survival in his world.
Kushner's adaptation of The Dybbuk, retitled A Dybbuk or
Between Two Worlds, was produced at New York's Public Theatre for
three months beginning in October 1997, following a critically applauded
earlier version staged by Mark Lamos at the Hartford Stage Company in
1995. Working from a literal translation of the play by Joachim
Neugroschel, Kushner substantially restructures Ansky's text and makes
use of the cinematic, episodic style demonstrated in his major plays,
Angels, A Bright Room Called Day, and Slavs! His adaptation of The
Dybbuk maintains much of Ansky's emphasis on the central characters of
the play, especially Leah, Chonen, and, once he arrives on the scene
midway through the play, Rabbi Azriel. Kushner's adaptation places
significantl y greater emphasis on theological skepticism than Ansky does
in the original, with Kushner's addition of speeches that permit Azriel to
express his doubts more pointedly. Kushner also foreshadows the horrors
of the coming Holocaust, most obviously in the on stage arrival of Azriel
in a railroad car, which visually reminds the audience of the
transportation of Jews and other "undesirables" to concentration camps
before and during World War II. Kushner makes this connection
frequently in a variety of ways, adding, for example, the telling line: "In a
world of electric light, even Jews can ride the trains."
15
As evidenced here,
27
Kushner's trademark poetic language is found throughout his adaptation
of The Dybbuk, as when he describes the Torah scrolls as "dark men
engulfed in shadows, draped in velvet shawls, bent over mysteries. "
16
The play's Old World Judaism also attracts Kushner, who
believes that "Jews do badly when they try to pretend to not be Jews,"
17
as is the case of Leah's father, Sender, who breaks his bond with his
deceased friend to attempt to better himself financially by seeking
acceptance in the non-Jewish community. Kushner stresses that Ansky's
play is
about interiority and about the Jew's relationship to him- or
herself, and Jews' relationship to one another within the confines
of the shtetl, that anti-Semitism and Cossacks exist, but never on
stage, and they're sort of bad memories, and always [a]
threatening possibility. But they're not the big problem. The
big problem is a Jewish problem. It's a problem about
somebody making an oath and breaking it. And a rabbinical
cord. The outside world is threatening, but only as a kind of
scent that drifts through the playY
Kushner's orthodox Jewish world is predominantly and authoritatively
male in its structure, but one that is challenged by a breaking down of
expe.cted norms and, in fact, a decidedly feminist point of view. This can
be seen in the comedy he produces from the first act's layabout Talmudic
scholars who debate women's exclusion from the synagogue floor and by
having Leah's comically awkward unwanted groom declare "when we
thank God in the morning he didn't make us women, no one's more
grateful than I am.'n
9
Sender's avaricious use of his daughter to better
himself financially allows Kushner to emphasize the treatment of
"women as chattel" in the world of the play.
10
Other traditional views of
this world are challenged, in part, by a mixture of spiritual longing and
earthly passion that takes on a highly erotic quality. Kushner stretches
the play's stylistic boundaries, maintaining its qualities as a supernatural
folktale of crossed worlds, hearts, and historical ages, while also
reckoning with its religious ritual and, most importantly, its depiction of
the sensuality of unformed and unutterable longings that may be beyond
human governance. The claims of the dead on the living, the merging of
the worlds of both (demonic possession is, in fact, a passion carried
beyond life into the realm of death), and the relationship of Jews to each
other and to God shatter narrow definitions of gender and history.
Fear of the future, moral uncertainty, and a stmse of inexplicable
loss drive Kushner's tormented and confused characters in all of his plays,
and The Dybbuk is certainly no exception. Such an environment of
unease is always present for Kushner as he raises questions that cannot be
answered either easily or simply. What lies before us as old values die?
How will we find our way without the familiar social, moral, and
religious signposts of the immediate past? Can we embrace the
inevitability of change before it is too late?
In Kushner's A Dybbuk, the dybbuk himself demands the
Kaddish be chanted for him as he is being exorcized by Azriel. Sinning
can and must be forgiven, Kushner insists, and faith in a brighter future is
essential, despite the harrowing specters of fear and doubt.
It is of central significance that Kushner identifies himself as a
gay dramatist. In attempting to deal with his conflicted feelings about his
J ewishness, Kushner finds "a deep ambivalence, because there is a
fantastically powerful homophobic tradition within Judaism."
21
This
undercurrent supplies the play with considerable sensuality. For example,
rabbinical students indulge in an orgiastic dance in the synagogue and
Chonen delivers a passionate recitation of the "Song of Songs" for his
beloved Leah. More potently, as the dybbuk, Chonen penetrates Leah's
body in ways that are simultaneously both spiritual and sexual.
Kushner also points out the connection of Judaism and
homosexuality, for both groups have a shared history of "oppression and
persecution" that offers
a sort of false possibility of a kind of an assimilation that
demanded as one of its prerequisites that you abandon your
identity as a Jew. The possibility of passing which is not, let's
say, available to people whose oppression stems from racial
difference or gender difference. For me, as I think is true of
most Jewish homosexuals, the business of claiming an identity,
the business of coming out of the closet, the business of learning
one of the central lessons of the Holocaust, which is that, as
Hannah Arendt says, it's better to be a pariah than a parvenu. If
you're hated by a social order, don't try and make friends with
it. Identify yourself as other, and identify your determining
characteristics as those characteristics which make you other and
unliked and despised. o ~ it was central to me.
22
As a Jew, Kushner is part of an ethnic heritage that has experienced
harrowing losses-and has survived. As a gay man in the latter part of the
twentieth century, he is confronted by the terrifying toll of lost lives
resulting from the AIDS pandemic. In The Dybbuk, Chonen cannot
survive the loss of Leah in this world, but he wins her in the next. Hope
29
can emerge from loss, Kushner stresses, wrongs can be righted, t he
universe can be put in order. The significance of the play's subtitle,
Between Two Worlds, is, in part, that the play works on dual levels in all
of its aspects: "death resides in life, male in female, the spiritual in t he
carnal, religious doubt in devotion, evil in goodness, social well-being in
private acts, Hasidism in modernity, the holy in the profane. And, in
each instance, vice versa. "
23
Kushner uses this duality to explore his
fascination with Judaic traditions-both religious and secular-and to
reflect on the impact of the spiritual and the natural worlds on the
individual. Above all, he is fascinated with the play's suggestion of the
possibility of communing with the dead, of on-going relationships past
the grave, and of the ultimate righting of wrongs. He freely adapts,
adding and eliminating dialogue and abandoning antiquated theatrical and
literary devices, but only after a deep and highly personal exploration of
the drama's themes with the goal of drawing out its universal
significances, its aesthetic power, and its emotional force.
Kushner's interest in East European Judaic traditions continues.
Having completed A Dybbuk, he is now grappling with another great
Jewish myth that he sees as a counterpoint project: the tale of the Golem.
In preparation, he is studying Yiddish, "a moral imperative" he believes,
stressing that it took a thousand years to make the language and "It'd be a
shame to let it d i e .
2
~ The Golem (Kushner's working title) deals with the
old myth that the Golem was created as a "protector of the Jews," and it
is a distinctly urban play, as opposed to The Dybbuk's rural setting.
Kushner intends to stress the historical oppression of the Jews in his
approach to the story of the Golem, and that his version will stress how
to "confront anti-Semitism? How do you confront the genocidal intent
of the world without yourself becoming a murderer, and without
usurping certain things which are proscribed by God."
25
And, like A
Dybbuk and much of Kushner's other work, The Golem deals centrally
with issues of faith versus skepticism, and the search for understanding
the human heart. Both Ansky's (The) and Kushner's (A) Dybbuk begins
and ends with the same mystic lyric that sums up this search:
30
Why did the soul,
Oh tell me this,
Tumble from Heaven
To the Great Abyss?
The most profound descents contain
Ascensions to the heights again ...
26
NOTES
1. S. Ansky, A Dybbuk, adapted by Tony Kushner, trans Joachim Neugroschel,
afterward by Harold Bloom. Also The Dybbuk Melody And Other Themes and
Variations, trans Joachim Neugroschel (New York: Theatre Communications
Group, Inc., 1998), 41.
2. Ibid., 54.
3. Ibid., 37.
4. Ibid., 105.
5. Until1904, Ansky wrote exclusively in Russian, but switched to Yiddish as his
interest in preserving Jewish traditions and folklore in both fictional and non
fictional writings grew. Some accounts claim he wrote the first version in Russian.
6. Ansky left one unfinished play at the time of his death, Tog und Nacht (Day and
Night) . It was later completed by Alter Katzine and staged in Warsaw in 1921,
following the success of The Dybbuk.
7. The 1925 New York production was directed by David Vardi and Henry G.
Alsberg.
8. Harold Clurman, "Creation: Old and New," Tomorrow, August 1948. Clurman
also saw a 1978 production of The Dybbuk directed by Mira Rafalowicz under Joseph
Chaikin's guidance, but found the production, as a result of Chaikin's "fragmented"
approach to the play, less than effective.
9. Stark Young, Immortal Shadows (New York: Hill and Wang, 1948), 62.
10. In 1954, a production was staged by David Ross at New York's Fourth Street
Theatre with a well-known American cast including Theodore Bikel, Jack Gilford,
Carol Lawrence, and Ludwig Donath, but it was only a modest success.
11. Other widely seen versions include a 1960 American television treatment and a
1970 Israeli film. The Dybbuk has also inspired at least three operatic adaptations and
a number of ballet and modern dance scores, including one by Leonard Bernstein.
12. Rabbi Norman J. Cohen, "Wrestling with Angels" in Tony Kushner in
Conversation, ed. Robert Vorlicky (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1998), 224.
31
13. Cohen, "Wrestling with Angels," 224.
14. S. Ansky, "The Jewish Folk Spirit and Its Creations," Collected Works, vol. 15,
Vilna, Warsaw (New York: Ansk Publishers, 1925), 24.
15. S. Ansky. A Dybbuk, 66.
16. Ibid., 21.
18. Ibid., 225-226.
19. S. Ansky, A Dybbuk, 59.
20. Alisa Solomon, Re-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theater and Gender (London
and New York: Routledge, 1997), 121-122.
23. Solomon, Re-Dressing the Canon, 121-122.
24. Jennifer Senior, "Betwixt and Between," New York, 10 November 1997, 83.
25. Cohen, "Wrestling with Angels," 225-226.
26. S. Ansky, A Dybbuk, 9, 106-107.
32
THE STAGE OF MYSTERIES:
THE BLACK LIGHT THEATRE OF PRAGUE
Nina Hein
The theatre culture of Prague depends in large part on the
numerous tourists visiting the "golden town." The current recipe for a
successful program is a mixture of Mozart, Kafka, Schweik, a bit of magic,
history, and the Velvet Revolution. Tourists coming to Prague are also
looking for evening entertainment offered by night clubs and theatres, for
which Prague is famous. The opera productions of the three opera theatres
are very popular with tourists. Czech theatres are famous too because of
well-known writers and directors like Vaclav Havel, Pavel Kohout, or
Alfred Radok, who are associated with them. However, few tourists go to
these theatres because they do not to want to see a performance in a
language they cannot understand. Language is of no importance for opera
productions, for the Laterna Magika, or for one of the many Black Light
Theatres.
The Black Light Theatre was developed by the director Jirf Srnec.
For more than thirty-five years he has been the head of the Cerne divadlo
jifiho Srnce, a magic puppet theatre. Before giving a detailed analysis of
Ahasver, Srnec's latest production, I wish to describe its relation to other
twentieth-century arts, to its theatrical precursors, and to its creator.
Puppet theatre has always been enormously popular in the Czech
Republic. During the late eighteenth and the entire nineteenth century,
dozens of puppet players wandered through the Bohemian countryside and
helped to preserve the Czech language (Bohemia was then part of the
Austria-Hungarian Empire). The puppet theatre also played a very
important role in bringing a new sense of Czech nationhood to the
predominantly German environment. It is in this historical and political
context that the significance of Czech puppet theatre must be understood.
However, in modern Czech puppetry the most characteristic trend is
perhaps the simultaneous use of both puppets and live actors on stage. The
Black Light Theatre exists on the border between pantomime and puppetry
with objects moving in a kind of fantastic free-play. Objects and actors are
artists of equal importance. The Black Light Theatre is a synthesis of
puppetry and mime, and it is based on the interconnection and interplay of
the two semiotic systems.
In the Black Light Theatre, inanimate objects move through stage
space like live objects. Objects appear and disappear suddenly, while live
33
actors, suspended in mid-air, become as tall as giraffes or shrink to the size
of dwarves. A cowboy washes some beer mugs which become the hoofs of
a horse miraculously formed out of a table cloth. Like all the best magic
tricks, this one is basically simple and known for centuries. The technique
is based on the quality of black, i.e. the puppet players who are totally
dressed in black velvet are invisible in a black box. One of the most famous
directors of the twentieth century, Konstantin Stanislavsky, discovered by
chance that a black velvet piece cannot be distinguished from the bigger
black velvet cloth on which it lays. He did not use the Camera obscura for
tricks, but he often made use of a black backdrop to create a two-
dimensional background.
1
At the turn of the century, the trick of the black
box was also used by the French film pioneer and magician Georges MeJies
for animating objects in his fantasy movies. In the Black Light Theatre, the
live actors are dressed in bright colors and the objects are made visible with
luminous paint. To refine this even further, narrow beams of light reveal as
much or little as necessary. Srnec usually works with only two spot-lights
placed on each side of the stage, although sometimes ultra-violet light is also
used.
The Black Light Theatre of Prague was founded in 1958 by the
puppet player, painter, and musician Jitl Srnec.
2
Since then more than
seventeen evening-long performances have been created and directed by him.
The first pieces were short sketches full of stand-up comedy which
demonstrated all the possibilities offered by the black box trick. Since its
great success at the Theatre Festival in Edinburgh in 1960, the company has
become internationally famous because it has mainly performed outside the
Czech Republic. They have traveled to almost every country in the world
and participated in more than fifty theatre festivals. Even though Srnec's
productions were in striking contrast to the socialist realism that was
promoted by the Communist regime and his company was independent
even before the Revolution, they were tolerated and even partly financed by
the Czech government and considered ambassadors of Czech culture. Until
the Velvet Revolution, Srnec's theatre was the only black light theatre group
for many years, but recently many new companies have been founded. Since
1994 Srnec's theatre organization is completely independent of the Czech
Ministry of Culture. It consists of two companies now, one going on tour
and the other one playing in his theatre in Zbraslav, outside Prague, and in
different theatres in Prague. Srnec's later productions made use of
internationally known fantasy stories like Peter Pan and Alice in
Wonderland. The Black Light Theatre attempts to take spectators back to
childhood, although the productions are intended for adults, not children.
34
In essence, the Black Light Theatre relates to other twentieth-
century movements in art, with its roots in the avant-garde of the twenties
and thirties. Czech avant-garde was influenced by the avant-garde
movements in other European countries, above all by Russian avant-garde.
One important aspect of the avant-garde was the new attitude toward
puppetry and mime, which when applied to drama changed the whole
aesthetics of the theatre. At the same time, music-halls were also very
popular and became important for the development of the Black Light
Theatre. This can be seen in the elements of stand-up comedy and music that
plays a predominant part in the performances. Music takes the place of
speech which is never used in any of Srnec's productions.
3
Music controls
the timing of the stage actions and its rhythm, and it expresses emotions,
feelings, and the atmosphere of the play.
The latest production of Srnec's theatre is Ahasver, Legends of Magic
Prague, which also makes use of film. Thus the staging of Ahasver is similar
to the productions of t he Laterna Magika, a theatre in Prague that became
famous for its ingenious mix of live and filmed action. The use of film on
stage is a development that can be traced to the avant-garde, as well. One of
the first directors who used film in the theatre was Sergei Eisenstein; while
another major director of political theatre, Erwin Piscator, refined the use
of film on stage and gave it a new significance. Since then, film has been used
as documentary, as background scenery, or even as substitute for the stage
actions. However, the notable difference between Ahasver and the
productions of the Laterna Magika is the combination of film, puppets, and
live actors with the techniques of the black light theatres.
Constructed like a medieval mystery play, Ahasver is a series of five
legends, preceded by a Prologue and concluded by an Epilogue. The five
legends are: The House of Doctor Faustus, The Mysterious Fiancee, The Picture
of Emperor Rudolf II, Rabbi jehuda Low Ben Bezalel, and Horologium.
4
They
have nothing in common except being set in Prague. From one scene to the
next we switch from one group of characters to another, from one historical
period to another, and from one story to another. The poetic unity is
achieved by the protagonist, Ahasverus, who is condemned to eternal life.
Since the founding of Prague, which is shown in the Prologue, Ahasverus
has been wandering through the city and the difficult periods of historical
time. In the Epilogue he reaches the present time. He participates in the
stories in different guises. During his wanderings, Ahasverus is accompanied
by the Fool, his antagonist and alter ego. Like Ahasverus, the fool plays
different roles in the stories. In some scenes, he is the dominant actor; in
others, he is conspicuous only because of his red mask and costume and his
35
cap with little bells. His lively dancing and quick movements are in contrast
to Ahasverus's tranquility.
There are many different stories about Ahasverus, the wandering
Jew; every single country has its own Ahasverus. Since the early seventeenth
century, the character has appeared in many stories. Prague has its own
legend about Ahasverus, in this case a corrupt measurer of cloth who was
condemned to immortality. This Ahasverus, walking through the town,
reminds us of another famous legend of Prague, the Golem, created by
Rabbi Low.
As in all productions of the Black Light Theatre, the stage is a black
box, but its usually spartan appearance seems to be very rich and almost
excessively decorated. This impression results from the film that is projected
on the various screens. The screens are of different sizes and shapes; some
hang from the ceiling, the smaller ones are carried on stage by the
puppeteers when they are needed for a specific scene. For example, the
second episode takes place in the old Jewish Ghetto, and the screens take on
the form of the old tombstones of the Jewish cemetery (a very popular
tourist site). Thus, the stage changes continuously its composition and
becomes part of the stage action. Part of the story is told through film
projections, but most of the action takes place on the stage.
The interaction of film and stage is a startling juxtaposition. In
some scenes, the characters on the stage and in the film interact, or a story
starts on film and then switches to the stage. For example, the last episode,
Horologium, tells the story of the watchmaker Hanus who made the
astrological town hall clock. Hanus was blinded by town councillors because
they wanted to prevent him from making another clock as great as the one
in Prague. The blinding is shown in an interactive way: the film shows one
big eye into which the town councillors stab their lances. After this short
scene, the audience sees the blind Ahasverus, in the role of Hanus, crossing
the stage. However, such a direct interplay of the two media is used only in
a few scenes of the play. The stage actions are tightly controlled by the
film's timing and rhythms. Both film and stage play are regulated by
recorded music and sound. In earlier productions, Srnec composed the music
himself, but in Ahasver he went back to "classical" music, such as
Renaissance dance music or Baroque trumpet concerts. The music helps to
create the historical setting; at the same time it creates a specific atmosphere.
There are also black and white photographs of Prague showing different
places of the city.
Unlike the other plays by Srnec, few objects or puppets are used in
Ahasver. All the leading parts are played by live actors, not by puppets.
36
Horologium. Ahasver playing the part of Hanus stands in front of a projection
of a statue of the town hall clock in Prague
37
However, the technique of the black box is used throughout the
production.
So far, Ahasver is the only production of the Black Light Theatre
of Prague that uses both media: film and theatre. Film production is very
expensive) too expensive for an independent group. Ahasver can be seen as
a rare excursion into multimedia theatre, but for the history of the Black
Light Theatre it is a major step toward new forms of theatre, paving the way
for innovative puppet theatre. After four years, the play is still in the
program of the company, revealing to the many tourists the mysterious side
of Prague and of this form of theatre.
NOTES
1. Konstantin S. Stanislavsky, "The Life of Man" in My Life in Art (New York:
Meritan, 1956), 494.
2. In the same year, two other innovative Czech theatres were founded, the Laterna
Magika and the Balustrade Theatre.
3. Other Black Light Theatres, especially outside the Czech Republic, stage dramas
and use speech.
4. All of the legends are pretty well-known to Prague's tourists because they are
printed in every tourist guide.
38
DARKO LUKIC'S PLASTIC CAMELLIAS,
OR DUMAS FILS AS SOAP OPERA
Sanja Nikcevic
When Plastic Camellias was staged at the Croatian National
Theatre in Rijeka, Croatia in 1997, the author, Darko Lukic, and its
director, Nenni Delmestre, subtitled it a soap opera. To label a play
staged by a leading theatre by a term used for a TV genre despised in
intellectual circles is, at the very least, bold and provocative. All the
more so because Darko Lukic's play is not a soap opera. The author
himself was well aware of that fact because in the published text he gave
the play the subtitle, Homage to the Theatre in Three Acts. Why then was
the play called a soap opera?
Lukic wrote a love story that unfolds in the theatre. Two
actors, Nina and Toni (played by Doris Saric-Kukuljica and Alen
Liveric), fall in love while acting the roles of Marguerite and Armand in
Dumas fils's La Dame aux Camelias.. Nina is a mature woman, around
thirty, prone to drug abuse, alcohol, and to lovers who can help her
career. Toni is around twenty-five, the actor-son of rich and influential
parents, who is said to have a great career ahead of him. Before meeting
Nina, he was involved with Klara, an older operatic prima donna played
by Andrea Blagojevic Mangano. The true love Nina and Toni experience
begins with a night spent together, followed by their first serious
misunderstanding, a week of happiness in Opatija (a holiday resort on the
northern Adriatic coast), an attempt at living together, plans for the
future, the second serious misunderstanding, and finally, an unhappy end.
Heroine Nina is surrounded by people who help her and by
people who hinder her. Helpers include Edi, the play's director, and
Renato, a gay costume designer. They comfort her when she is unhappy,
warn her about possible pitfalls facing her, and try to comply with her
wishes. By definition, the helpers do not interfere in the heroine's life.
However, those who hinder her meddle in her life and are
responsible for the misunderstandings between the lovers. Klara, Toni's
former mistress, is to blame for the first misunderstanding which results
from her lies. Toni's mother is to blame for the second, brought about by
her half-lies. Nina's lover Marko also falls into the category of hinderers,
39
40
Darko Lukic's Plastic Camellias, The Croatian National Theatre, Rijeka,
Croatia, 1997. With Doris Saric-Kukuljica as Nina
and Alen Liveric as Toni
representing the temptations of materialism (giving her gifts and
advancing her career in return for sexual favors).
In moments between life and death, Nina's narcotic dreams are
visited by great actors who have played Marguerite (Greta Garbo and
Sarah Bernhardt), by Marie Duplessis, who was the real-life model for
Marguerite and by Dumas fils himself. The phantoms appear as parts of
Nina's disintegrating personality. Garbo gives advice which the herione
cannot heed, Bernhardt fortells the end, and Duplessis eases Nina's
departure.
Although the story literally follows Dumas fils's tale of a "loose"
woman and her true love for a younger man that comes to a tragic
ending, the model is only a matrix, supplied here with different
motivation and psychology. The story of Plastic Camellias is told from
an ironical distance. Dumas fils's Marguerite died of tuberculosis, an
incurable disease at the time regarded as "the will of the gods." Lukic's
Nina destroys herself with drugs, eliminating the tragic suffering and aura
of a doomed character. The poor girl who was forced to become a
courtesan in order to survive in the heartless society of The Lady of the
Camellias now becomes a woman who freely chooses an acting career.
In The Lady of the Camellias, Armand's father visits Marguerite
and begs her to leave his son so that his daughter can make a respectable
marriage. He admits to Marguerite that he came despising her, but is
leaving with the deepest respect, enabling Marguerite to emerge the moral
victor. Toni's mother's intentions are not as honorable. Moral appeals
are only one o"f her weapons, and she is the one who gains the victory
from her encounter with Nina, because she manages to sow seeds of
contention and doubts about their love.
Unlike Dumas fils, Lukic does not moralize. While Marguerite
was allowed to be a prostitute with a heart of gold, Nina is a casual
vtctlm. Such victims are neither condemned nor forgiven. They are
selected purely by chance. The entire world is equally besmirched, both
those who are good and those who are evil.
Even death in Plastic Cammellias is shown with a touch of irony.
Dumas fils's Marguerite dies of an incurable illness in the arms of her
beloved Armand who only then learns of her sacrifice, and the lovers'
hearts are joined in a tragic apotheosis. In contrast, Nina's suicide
attempt is anti-climactic. The doctor explains that the pills she has taken
are not fatal, even though she has swallowed a tremendous number of
them.
41

N
1::?.

"

" .g

;:!
:;p

;s

<

- .oo
z
c::>
N
Darko Lukic's Plastic Camellias, The Croatian National Theatre,
Rijeka, Croatia, 1997. With Denis Briiic as Marko and Alen Liveric as Toni
Whereas Marguerite's death in The Lady of the Camellias allows
her to redeem her soul, in Lukic's version sin does not exist, and for that
reason, Nina's death is finally ironic and unreal. Chimera, the theatre
ghost, comes for her and leads her off to the theatre, a place of lies and
illusions.
Nina's motivation for renouncing love is also ironical. Dumas
fils's Marguerite makes a noble sacrifice to save Armand and his entire
family from the shame of marriage with a disreputable woman. Nina
renounces love because of her own sense of insecurity. Her distrust of
Toni is really distrust of herself. Nina does not believe that she is worthy
of love. For that reason, at the first sign of doubt even before she
discovers the truth, Nina breaks with Toni in a harsh, theatrical manner.
Fear of true love seems to have taken hold of all the characters,
not only of Nina, but also of Toni's mother. The real reason for her
objections to Nina is not, as she says, the age of her son's lover-Klara is
even older-but her belief that they really are in love and her feeling that
true love is inherently dangerous.
Nina expresses this viewpoint when she says that, "The Lady of
the Camellias is kitsch and a senseless profusion of false emotions which
audiences today simply cannot swallow." The plastic camellias the actress
wears on her dress become a metaphor for the impossibility of true love.
Real camellias will be left on Nina's hospital pillow by one of the
phantoms she communicates with-Marie Duplessis, the real "lady of the
camellias."
Nina has no right to real camellias in her life because Western
European culture over the last seventy years has lived through a period of
irony that has shown nothing but scorn for all forms of art that express
strong emotions or invoke strong emotions in audiences. Fear of the
kitsch label has kept emotions off the stage of the highbrow art theatre.
In Croatian intellectual and philosophical circles direct
expression of strong emotion is regarded as being in the very worst taste
and as proof of intellectual inferiority. But since emotions do exist as an
important part of our lives, they demand artistic expression. This
expression is permitted only within certain genres in the popular media,
such as romances, detective and crime stories, and TV soap operas. Until
ten years ago, these genres, designed for primitive people of low
intelligence, were not even mentioned in intellectual circles.
Nonetheless, strong emotions are allowed to penetrate into the
art theatre on the condition that a certain distance is maintained. The
43
distance can be in time (classic works are permitted their emotional
charge) or in place (exotic, far-away places as backdrops). Lukic dared to
speak out about love within the art medium of serious drama only after
having provided a number of layers of distance.
Distance in time is achieved because Lukic cites The Lady of the
Camellias, a work sufficiently old to be considered a classic. The scenes
from The Lady of the Camellias rehearsed by the actors echo the
experiences of their own lives. In this way, the play from the past seems
to confirm the legitimacy of the play from the present, something that
the characters in Plastic Camellias are aware of. They constantly compare
their lives either with the theatre or with the past. It is as though their
own lives have no value for them without some confirmation from the
past or from literature.
The second level of distance in Plastic Camellias is spatial and
exotic-theatre is the place where today's love story takes place. For the
average person, the backstage world of the theatre is known only from
hearsay. Anything exotic always carries a hint of possible deceit, a certain
fairy-tale quality.
The third distance is that of irony. The ironic tone is
underscored in performance by the soap-opera subtitle, explicitly
categorizing the play as kitsch, which it is not. Plastic Camellias is not
kitsch according to the definition of kitsch as false goods, but it is kitsch
in that it displays strong emotions.
The deliberate placing of the work in a "debased" genre and
aesthetic category shows that the playwright is aware of the ironic
distance from which he must approach the play's emotional content. In
the same way, the creators of the production are conscious of the fact that
it is this very distance that makes possible the introduction of the
emotions into serious theatre. Consequently, the answer to the question
about the subtitle is that soap opera and kitsch are an excuse, an alibi for
returning emotions to the stage of the art theatre.
44
"THE IDEA OF ART TIIEATRE: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUfURE"
ANATOLY SMELIANSKY AT HUNTER COLLEGE
Michael Bolus
In 1898, while directing the Moscow Art Theatre's seminal
production of Chekhov's Three Sisters, a frustrated Konstantin Stanislavsky
found himself at an impasse. A crippling stagnancy had settled over the
rehearsal process. His cast had atrophied. He found himself unable to
cultivate fresh ideas. His interpretive skills seemed to have abandoned him.
Then one night, while contemplating his dilemma in the empty, darkened
theatre, Stanislavsky experienced a moment of stark realization.
Underneath the floorboards, he heard the desperate cries of a screeching,
scurrying mouse, frantically searching for an escape from his black, tomblike
crevice. Suddenly, Stanislavsky understood the play. Three Sisters was not
about drudgery, boredom, or dissatisfaction, but, rather, "the desire to get
life."
On February 11, 1998, Anatoly Smeliansky, Associate Artistic
Director of the Moscow Art Theatre, spoke before a capacity crowd at the
Lang Recital Hall at Hunter College, City University of New York. He
recounted the above-quoted story as a part of his lecture, "The Idea of Art
Theatre: Past, Present, and Future." Citing the Moscow Art Theatre as an
exemplary model, Smeliansky traced its origins, investigated its history, and
elucidated the sweeping changes which have marked its one hundred year
reign as one of the world's most influential theatre companies. While
attempting to define the essence of" Art Theatre" as a concept, Smeliansky
wrestled with the larger, philosophical implications of a theatrical
institution's ability to survive its own success.
Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko
established the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898. According to Smeliansky,
their idea of an "Art Theatre" was one that would last, perhaps, two
seasons-a living theatre that, like all living things, is born and then dies.
This sense of mortality injected a certain vitality into the company; an
urgency, a palpable energy which permeated the early productions. Only
later would the company feel the pressure, not to achieve greatness, but to
sustain it.
Smeliansky argues that "Art Theatre" lives under the sign of death,
while "National Theatre" lives under the sign of immortalty. Like the
mouse, the "Art Theatre" struggles to survive, energetically searching for
new ways to exist and prosper. A "National Theatre," on the other hand,
45
has, by necessity, become staid, because its continuing survival is assured.
It need only meet pre-established expectations, which, according to
Smeliansky, feeds its lethargy, predictability, and, in many cases, mediocrity.
For the first twenty-one years of its existence, The Moscow Art
Theatre was a commercial venture, complete with investors and dividends.
This enabled the company to maintain its financial and creative
independence. In 1919, just after the Revolution, The Moscow Art Theatre
received substantial government subsidies. "That was the death of the Art
Theatre," says Smeliansky. It became, in essence, a National Theatre-an
"Art Theatre" in name only. To insure its survival, it had to subordinate its
own artistic ideals to the political ideals of its sponsoring government. This
oppressive yoke was only recently removed.
For Smeliansky, the question becomes, "How do we inject new
blood into our institution? It is a matter of necessity if we are to survive.
To this day, the Moscow Art Theatre's biggest battle is fighting the cliches
associated with our company. If we fail, we die. But how to die? An 'Art
Theatre' knows how to begin-it does not know how to die." Smeliansky
believes that the sign of death has reemerged over the Moscow Art Theatre,
bringing with it, ironically, a new hope. For now its struggle to survive
might possibly revitalize, with a new urgency and focus, the still formidable,
but staid institution.
Not long before his death, a group of students paid Stanislavsky a
visit at his home. They entered his bedroom, but the grand old man was
nowhere to be found. After several moments, a sick, dying, pajama-clad
Stanislavsky emerged from under his bed. When one of the students boldly
asked, "What were you doing under the bed," Stanislavsky promptly
replied, "I wanted to see what it felt like to be a mouse."
"YOU WILL NEVER GET TO MOSCOW"
AN INTERVIEW WITH ANATOLY SMELIANSKY
Michael Bolus
The following is an edited and shortened transcript of an interview
with Moscow Art Theatre Associate Artistic Director Anatoly Smeliansky
conducted shortly after his lecture at Hunter College.
MB: What are the biggest misconceptions about Stanislavsky's teachings in
both the U.S. and Russia?
AS: There are several misconceptions, many of which remain very powerful
today. Stanislavsky had a premonition about what would happen to his
ideas. In 1906, just about the time he started teaching his system or
"method," if you want to use that word, he had a nightmare which he
recorded in his diary. A nightmare about a group of students who approach
their clean-shaven teacher and ask him if he can explain to them the
elements of his system. The teacher begins hemming and hawing, and, in
the nightmare, Stanislavsky begins screaming, "Stop! Stop! I've committed
a crime! And I've been punished enough! Don't allow mediocre teachers
to take advantage of my mistakes!"
What are the mistakes to which Stanislavsky refers? First of all,
we've dogmatized many of Stanislavsky's ideas. This is a real, living system.
He did not finish it, and he would not have finished it if he had lived
another hundred years. Because this is a system about searching; searching
for the creative nature. It is temporary, ever-changing. And Stanislavsky
would change his mind. He changed his mind a hundred times. It is like
searching for the truth of life. Some people will say, "I got it!" But you
can't get it. The same thing is true in Art. The important thing is the
search. Just like you will never get to Moscow in Three Sisters. It is the
same metaphor. You are trying, you are wandering, you are looking, you
are searching for Moscow but you will never get there. It is the same thing
in art.
When you try to dogmatize Stanislavsky like Lee Strasberg did in
many ways-look, "affective memory" is great but it was a very temporary
experiment for Stanislavsky. He spent the last ten years of his life
completely occupied with the so-called "method of physical action" which
is the exact opposite of "affective memory." The whole point was to find
a concious way into the subconcious. "Affective memory" works well in
47
some places, with some actors. But in other places it does not work well,
it is even dangerous, it causes damage. It can be horrible for an actor. Just
like if you only accented the "method of physical action." In the last few
years of his life Stanislavsky was absolutely sure that this was a great
discovery, but believe me, if he had lived another few years he would have
changed his mind.
All his life he was preoccupied with finding a stable way to activate
the unstable world of the subconcious. This is why I say that the search is
everything and the result is nothing. In America, you have the dogma of
"affective memory," but in Russia, even today, the most dangerous dogma
we have to overcome is the idea of so-called "lifelike theatre." This is exactly
the opposite of what Stanislavsky was searching for. Lifelike theatre, it's a
nightmare, a nightmare. It's just a beginning. The strides he made with
Chekhov were just a beginning. When he started to formulate his method
after 1906, which he continued to develop all his life, he did not base his
techniques on any realistic plays, not on Chekhov, but on the plays of the
symbolists, Maeterlinck, Shakespeare. So that misconception of his affinity
for lifelike theatre is still very powerful. Lifelike theatre, I would say is his
enemy, his enemy. He started with naturalism, but you must remember
that at the time naturalism was very political-but then it became a cliche.
But his reputation as an artist who championed naturalism haunted him
until his death. We dogmatized many of his achievments, and then we killed
him. When we canonized him in the Soviet Union, we killed him. It was
his second death. And it was done conciously, I would say. Stalin did it
conciously. It was his way of killing the great artist . By canonization.
They killed so many great artists that way. Including Gorky.
MB: How have Gorky's political positions affected the reception of his
plays in Eastern Europe in general, and Russia in particular?
AS: Gorky's personality was very complicated, and it is a childish desire
now to ruin his reputation, just because he wrote something positive about
Stalin. Everybody makes mistakes in life, it's human nature. Sometimes we
do horrible things, but we should all have redemption, and Gorky has to
have a redemption. Up until the last few years of his life he was one of the
great Russian writers and one of the great Russian men. Chekhov once said,
all of Gorky's works might one day be forgotten, but never the man. And
his personal investment in Russian spiritual life in the twentieth century is
absolutely incredible. Why did he choose at one point to glorify the Soviet
regime? It's a difficult story. The answers are very complicated. In the case
48
of Stanislavsky we can also ask, "What kind of choice did they have in the
thirties?" We should be historians and not liberal journalists. And as
historians, we should understand that in the thirties, the choice for many
intellectuals in Europe and Russia was the choice between Hitler and Stalin.
We should understand. It was the choice between two bandits. Not a good
choice, by the way. Also remeber that Stalin was promising a new world,
a new art, a new civilization, a Utopia-a new, liberal constitution. The
Soviet Constitution of 1936 is probably the greatest in human civilzation.
And both Stanislavsky and Gorky, like millions of people all over the
world, were attracted, seduced by this ideal. They were attracted by the idea
of creating a new world. But unlike Gorky, Stanislavsky did not participate.
He had a lifelong hatred of politics and politicians, unlike Gorky who was
a politician, who was a member of the Communist Party-Stanislavsky,
never. They both received, from the government, eighteenth-century
mansions in downtown Moscow . . But they were both isolated. I would say
they were both in comfortable prisons. You cannot kill an artist because he
made a mistake.
MB: Robert Brustein, your host at the American Repertory Theatre, has
been actively involved in the creative and academic debate over the role and
status of ideology in the arts. Are there similar debates ocurring in Russia?
AS: Nobody can deny the incredible role of ideology in Art. It has affected
art everywhere, in every country, especially in the Soviet Union. All of the
arts were under a great pressure from ideology. I would say that the history
of Russian theatre is rooted in a great inner struggle against the pressure of
ideology. And Stanislavsky was perhaps the first victim. And that is
probably why, now that Russia is free and Russian artists are free, political
theatre has no more credentials. Russian audiences and Russian artists are
fed up with politics and politicians. That is why Brecht is so unpopular in
Russia now. It is very rare that you see Brecht staged. But Dostoyevsky,
like Chekhov who is still number one, is completely removed from
ideology. He is a human writer writing about human lives. He is a doctor
more than a teacher. We're fed up with teachers, with teaching, with
preaching.
MB: In your lecture, you stressed the fact that prior to 1919 the Moscow
Art Theatre was not subsidized by the government, enabling it to maintain
both its creative and financial freedom. Could a comparable theatre
company be established today, and if so, under what circumstances?
49
AS: I cannot imagine the Moscow Art Theatre being founded today. How
to find a space? How to rent a space? How to pay for it? There are many
new theatrical institutions in Russia, but they are all commercial ventures,
because they have exorbitant rents to pay. And they are paying rents to
state-subsidized theatres. Do you see the paradox? The only way to operate
in Russia today is through a state subsidy. A theatre building is associated
with a theatre company. And new theatre companies cannot get subsidies
because they have neither buildings nor reputations. So the subsidies are
given only to the established institutions.
MB: Do critical and popular responses to current Moscow Art Theatre
productions vary markedly from country to country?
AS: I would say that the attitude of the critics, especially young critics, is
similar to their view of the Comedic Old theatres, with old
traditions, established institutions. The critics laugh sometimes, as if we
were Grandma and Grandpa, saying, "They're okay, but a little old-
fashioned. They can't dance to Rock and Roll. They are still doing
Chekhov, what's the point in that?" But sometimes even the young critics
appreciate what we do. Because we do keep our eye on all the best directors
in Russia and often invite them to work for us. So the response is very
mixed. Oleg Efremov, Artistic Director of the Moscow Art Theatre, in a
panel discussion with Robert Brustein at BAM, said that the three greatest
changes in the Moscow Art Theatre coincided with its visits to the United
States. Its first tour in 1923 marked the end of the pre-Revolutionary
Moscow Art Theatre. Soon after their 1965 tour, Oleg, founder of the
Sovremennik Theatre Company, the most free, liberal and democratic
company in post-Stalinist Russia, was invited to become its Artistic
Director. And Oleg said, half-jokingly, that after this year's tour of the
U.S., another drastic change should occur-the Moscow Art Theatre should
probably be closed. Unless, of course, it can find a way to inject new
lifeblood into itself. If it can't, it should be closed. Because he probably
feels that his period, his thirty-year reign, is over. And he is looking, with
great courage, into the future.
MB: With regard to both Chekhov and the Moscow Art Theatre, which
expectations will be fulfilled and which will be violated by your current
production of Three Sisters?
AS: Well, New York has a very big Russian population-hundreds of
50
SLavic and East European Performance Vol. 18, No. 2
;!; I
thousands of Russians. And they all know Oleg Efremov and the Company
and the actors. And to play to Russians, the expectations are very specific
because we know them and they know us. But, ninety-percent of our
audience were Americans. So, because of the headset simulcast, their
responses were delayed by a few seconds. I should really ask the actors what
they felt about the audiences' reaction. But for Oleg, I would say that he
has never exaggertated the influence of foreign culture and foreign response
on the Moscow Art Theatre. Oleg did not expect any decisive changes to
come about as the result of the response from either the American audiences
or the Americam critics. He attaches little importance to critical reactions.
The popular reaction is much more valuable to Oleg. Because there are very
few critics in the world who can really help you or contribute to your
creative understanding. And, by the way, you should know that the
Russian standard of criticism is very high. Because the greatest Russian
critics are the greatest Russian scholars and theoriticians. And believe me,
the reviews found in American papers do not meet the standards of Russian
criticism. A real critic must not simply be a good reviewer, but a real
writer-a Man of Letters. And his response is the response of another
art-literature, to your art. If the critic can philosophize, if the critic can
accumulate and articulate ideas, and bring them to the table so that we might
discuss them, this is a real encounter. The theatre's first encounter is with
the audience, but then there follows the encounter with the critics. And it
should be a real encounter, not "I liked it" or "I didn't like it." What's the
point in that?
MB: What do you predict the future holds for the Moscow Art Theatre?
AS: I don't know. All the exciting young directors in Russia have their
own companies. I regard the future with fear and trembling. But we don't
know what the future holds. Probably some young genius will come along
and say, "I can lead the Moscow Art Theatre!"
MB: You said in your lecture that sometimes it's healthy to exist under the
sign of death.
AS: Yes. And this is probably the most fruitful situation now because
everybody understands that Oleg feels that the Moscow Art Theatre is on
the edge of death.
51
PAGES FROM THE PAST
THE FOURTH ANNUAL THEATRE FESTIVAL IN MOSCOW
AND LENINGRAD 1936
Alma H. Law
The Fourth Annual Theatre Festival was held in Moscow and
Leningrad from September 1 to 10, 1936. To quote from the lntourist
advertisement in the March 1936 issue of New Theatre, "after opening with
a series of prize winning performances by worker's club and collective farm
groups ... other Moscow days would be spent in the New Meyerhold
Theatre, the Theatre of the Revolution, the Vakhtangov, the Maly, the
Bolshoi, the Moscow Art and the Children's theatres."
This would be followed by three days in Leningrad where the
visitors to the festival would see performances at Leningrad's famous Ballet
at the Marinsky, the Maly Theatre, the Youth Theatre, and the Ukrainian
National Theatre.
Of the six hundred visitors from all over t he world who converged
on Moscow for the 1936 festival, 150 of them were American theatre
practitioners, among them Brooks Atkinson, critic for The New York Times
and artist-caricaturist, AI Hirshfeld. For Hirshfeld this would not be his
first trip to the Soviet Union. He had also spent several months in Moscow
in 1927-1928, writing articles and drawing cartoons of theatre performances
for the New York Herald.
As was the practice with these festivals, guests were urged to
cont ribute their reactions to the Soviet press. According to Al Hirshfeld
(interview, 6 March 1998), when Atkinson was asked to contribute a piece
to Izvestia, he initially refused, saying that he felt that after the wonderful
reception the delegates had received it would be bad manners to criticize.
But the organizers said that they wanted criticism, and so Atkinson went
ahead and wrote his article. And to accompany the article, Hirshfeld did a
drawing of the characters from Meyerhold's Woe to Wit.
On September 5, Hirshfeld's drawing did appear in Izvestia. And
what happened to Atkinson's article? It was also published, but in Pravda
on September 11, after the Festival had already ended.
Brooks Atkinson, Three Productions, Pravda. September 11, 1936
Of the productions I saw, I want in particular to single out
two-the opera, Eugene Onegin in a production at the Bolshoi
52
~
r
FROM THE AUDITORIUM. A drawing by a participant of the Fourth
Theatre Festival, the American artist-caricaturist Albert Hirshfeld. From left
to right: the characters in Woe to Wit at the Meyerhold Theatre-Skalozub
(Bogolyubov), Farnusov (Starkovsky), the Countess-Grandmother
(Govorkova) and Chatsky (Tsarev)
53
Theatre and the production of the play, The Aristocrats at the
Vakhtangov Theatre. I consider Meyerhold's production of Woe to
Wit to be boring and pedantic.
I don't understand Russian, and so I'm not in a position to
judge the literary worth of Griboedov's classic. But I did not like
what I saw at Meyerhold's theatre. With the exception of the Ball
Scene and the initial impression of the scene at the banquet table, I
continually felt some sort of heaviness.
Most of the stage decor for the production of Woe to Wit
didn't have even the slightest suggestion of beauty. But in the final
analysis, the decor was only a background. The acting is what was
of decisive significance. And above all, I cannot forgive Meyerhold
for the mediocrity of the acting. After so many years of work, by
now Meyerhold should have created a magnificent collective of
actors, if he were really seriously interested in the development of the
actor.
Perhaps as a guest, I am being too nasty. But I detest
antiquated forms of theatre in any country. I prefer the director
[Leonid] Baratov and the artist [Isaak] Rabinovich, who staged
Eugene Onegin as genuine masters of theatrical art.
Aristocrats [about the re-education of the prisioners building
the Baltic-White Sea Canal] at the Vakhtangov Theatre is another
brilliant example of acting and staging. Here, the director [Boris
Zakhava] knew how to fully reveal the characters, and the actors
conveyed them completely and full of life. The play itself seems to
me to be somewhat sentimental, but it conveys an unforgettable
expression of life. One must give credit to the director and the actors
for knowing how to so profoundly master the characters portrayed
on the stage.
One wonders whether Atkinson would have written such a nasty
critique of Meyer hold's production, rather than remaining silent, if he had
known that he was playing right into the hands of the All-Union
Committee for Arts Affairs headed by Pavel Kerzhentsev. The Committee
must have been gleeful that this distinguished American theatre critic had so
harshly criticized Meyerhold and his theatre. Earlier that year, the
Committee had already attacked Dmitry Shostakovich, calling his opera,
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District, "Muddle Instead of Music." They had also
closed down the Second Moscow Art Theatre, declaring that "the so-called
54
Second Moscow Art Theatre does not warrant the name MXA T, and in fact,
it is a mediocre theatre whose preservation in Moscow is not essential."
Now it would be Meyerhold's turn. Already, Meyerhold and his
theatre were under serious attack for not staging any contemporary Soviet
plays. And according to a letter by Sergei Radamsky dated Nov. 24 (The
New York Times, Dec. 6, 1936), ~ u m o r s are current that the theatre now
being built on Mayakovsky Square and called, the 'Meyerhold,' will not be
given to this great master."
Indeed, following another year of unsuccessful attempts to stage a
Soviet play in an effort to appease the Committee for Arts Affairs, on
December 17, 1937, an article appeared in Pravda entitled "An Alien
Theatre." And on January 7, 1938, the Committee for Arts Affairs passed
a resolution liquidating Mcyerhold's Theatre as "alien to Soviet art." On
June 20, 1939, Meyerhold was arrested, and on February 2, 1940 he was
executed in the cellars of the Military Collegium in Moscow.
55
THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE'S THREE SISTERS AT THE
BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC:
FEBRUARY 10, 1998
Helena M. White
The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) opened its 1998 Spring
season with Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters performed in Russian by the
legendary Moscow Art Theatre company which this year celebrates its
centennial. The seven performances of Three Sisters, offered in February at
BAM, mark the company's third visit to this country.
Any theatre's illustrious history can be both an inspiration to and
a constraint for a director who wants to breathe fresh life into productions
of established masters and prevent them from becoming museum pieces.
When, in 1958, the Moscow Art Theatre came to Warsaw with the
performance of Three Sisters, the program listed Vladimir Nemirovich-
Danchenko as the play's director, although that master died in 1943. Very
little in the performance of Three Sisters at BAM reminded me of the one I
enjoyed seeing forty years ago in Warsaw, save for the birches and the richly
warm cadences of Chekhov's native tongue.
Oleg Efremov, the Moscow Art Theatre's artistic director,
considers the play the "first in which Chekhov's characters are dependent
on the changing cycle of nature. Spring, summer, fall, winter-everything
is based on this foundation." Nature plays a significant role in all Chekhov's
plays, but Efremov envisions that role on a much grander than traditional
scale. The opening music by Aleksandr Scriabin, whose neo-romantic
compositions are used throughout the performance, sounds ominous, and
its deep rumble suggests natural upheavals fit for a film epic. Missing is the
quaint wooden country house surrounded by few birch trees I remember
from the 1958 production. The Prozorov's family residence, designed by
Valery Leventhal, looks more like a palatial dacha with birch forest behind,
over which loom an enormous back drop with projected semi-realistic
images of an impenetrable thicket of tree branches, appropriately lit during
the course of action to suggest the seasons' changes. The enormous top area,
although beautiful in itself, seems to dwarf the actors. The inside of the
house, revealed by rotation of the entire structure, remains far upstage and
looks like a railroad car divided into compartments or like a set consisting
of medieval mansions where the multiple action can take place
simultaneously. Fortunately, a number of scenes are staged in a downstage
area with various pieces of furniture shifted forward from their respective
56
7he Three Sisters at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, 1998
57
compartment locations.
The overall effect that Efremov and his designer seek to create is an
impression of movement and change related to the cycles of nature. That
mobility, however, rather than guiding the characters' actions, serves
effectively as a contrast to the static condition of the Prozorov family, who
are forced to accept the fate of being stuck in a small provincial town. The
material comfort and beauty of nature have no power to create a satisfying
life for them. The three sisters, Olga (Olga Barnet), Masha (Vera Sotnikova.)
and Irina (Po !ina Medvedeva), are each in her own way unfulfilled, as is their
brother, Andrei (Dmitri Busnikin) who, during the year which passes
between Act I and Act II, marries Natalya Ivanovna (Natalia Egorova) and
fathers their first child. The sisters place all their hopes for a happier life in
their anticipated return to Moscow from where the family moved eleven
years ago, and where everything was better, even, as Olga remembers, the
Spring.
There is much exuberance in Act I. It is Irina's twentieth birthday,
which Chekhov uses as an occasion to introduce the members of the
household as well as the guests from the military regiment that has been
stationed in town for some time. Efremov's first act is almost frantic at
times. Childish games spring up spontaneously among the gathered group;
Chebutykin, the sixty-year-old army doctor, blows soap bubbles, Irina flits
like a teenager, a group forms behind the Masha's respectable husband and,
unbeknownst to him jokingly follows him around the room. The goings on
are accompanied by the sounds of Andrei's violin. Efremov's decision to
move Andrei's off-stage room to one of the upstage "compartments" and to
make him visible to the audience, sawing away at his violin, is distracting
and excessive. On the other hand, Andrei's playing intensifies his despair
and desire to escape his indolent existence. The sisters have practically to
drag him away from his playing in order to make him join the guests. In a
burst of emotion, ignited by the whirlwind of the party, he proposes to
Natalya, which is to be his doom. Natalia Egorova's plump and highly sexed
Natalya, seems stupid but harmless at first; however, her appetite for life's
comforts and pleasures quickly grows, and she smothers the helpless Andrei.
She does so almost literally, in the opening scene of Act ll, by handling him
like a sex toy for her own masturbatory gratification with his passive
approval. Efremov's attempt to bring us into the arcana of the couple's sex
life proves to be incongruous with Chekhov's intention and, indeed, with
the rest of the production.
The high point of Act I is the arrival of the new battery
commander, Vershinin, with whom Masha falls in love. Stanislav Lubshin
59
is a gallant but somewhat pale Vershinin who spins his visions of happiness
for future generations in speeches-underscored with music-that emphasize
the sound rat her than content and dramatize the impact that Vershinin's
appearance has on the dark and romance-starved Masha. Her initial
fascination with Vershinin is poignantly expressed by her spontaneous
playing of the piano. Efremov infuses the entire production with music,
underscoring action and creating highly expressive musical scenes in addition
to those indicated by Chekhov. Many of the principal characters play the
piano at one time or another; even Andrei, at the end of Act I, elated by his
proposal to Natalya, accompanies her song on the piano.
The Spring is long forgotten in Act II. Efremov evokes the
interminable Russian winter by making the characters huddle together in
couples or small groups around some source of light or fire, leaving the rest
of the stage in semi-darkness. The atmosphere of intimate conversations is
enhanced by the mournful singing of the peasants seeking warmth in the
vestibule and the arrival of the samovar brought in by the old nanny, Anfisa
(Iya Savvina) . The rhythm of that slightly eerie winter evening is, however,
frequently disrupted by the sudden bursts of energy and music in
anticipation of the invited carnival people. Chekhov has them dismissed off-
stage by Natalya, but Efremov, in a further effort to discover new solutions
for his production, creates an additional scene in which the carnival group
sweeps onto the stage and surrounds the dejected Irina-the only one left on
stage at the end of Act II.
A fire in the neighborhood rather than season's change dominates
the atmosphere of the next act. The different pieces of furniture, including
the dining room chairs, scattered around the stage, mirror the chaos outside.
The red glow, the references to the fire, and the various actions undertaken
on stage, such as the matronly Olga's donating clothing and bedding for the
victims, are just a background that brings the characters' inner drama to a
boil. Efremov steps up the emotional intensity by having Andrei's violin
playing punctuate the action with furious virtuosi passages that risk
becoming a parody. Some of the staging seemed forced; the group scenes are
arranged pictorially rather than developed organically. The actor, although
sometimes undercut by directorial choices, ride their emotional roller-
coasters with utmost conviction. Andrei's unexpected outburst, in defense
of his pathetic position as head of the household, leads him to take refuge
under the pillow on Olga's bed. Irina becomes hysterical reviewing her
unsuccessful life and regains balance only after Olga's slap on the face
followed by a hug. There are many other moving and unforgettable
moments created by the actors throughout the play. Masha, in her final
60
parting with Vershinin, gives him a quick trivial peck on the cheek, and
then, suddenly collapses in a paroxysm of pain. Her devoted but unloved
husband, Kulygin (Andrei Miagkov), endeavors to cheer her up by putting
on a false beard and mustache, bringing to mind the professor from 7he Blue
Angel in a scene that catches the quintessence of comedy in the midst of
tragedy.
The characters' emotional ordeals cannot be ascribed to the
changing seasons, as Efremov wishes to demonstrate in his production. The
characters are dependent on forces of nature lying deep within themselves
to which they must submit. Masha cannot resist her love for Vershinin,
Irina is not able to love Baron Tuzenbach, Andrei gives in to his indolence
and gambling, and Chebutykin is powerless to resist his drinking. What is
unique about Chekhov's characters is the awareness of their situation and
their spiritual life force, always strong, even after everything seems lost.
For the ending of the play, Efremov creates a choreographed scene.
The house disappears upstage, and the three sisters perform a kind of half-
dance on a completely empty stage, while the back drop, with the projected
forest, descends to the floor and envelops the space. The three are circling
the stage, groping for one another's hands, coming together and parting
again; they deliver their last lines directly to the audience and finally assume
a pose, familiar from the photograph used in all the publicity and also
included with this review. Each sister is turned, gazing in a different
direction, and yet they are together, touching one another, dependent on
each other. And despite their awareness of the bleak prospects for the future,
the sisters have not lost their sense of wonder and beauty. Just as we, after
seeing this production, continue to be grateful for the wonder and beauty
of Chekhov.
61
KUSHNER AND THE KABBALAH: "A DYBBUK'
Jeffrey Eric Jenkins
Every beginning dramaturgy student knows that an author's choice
of title is an important key to the heart of a dramatic work. In Tony
Kushner's recent adaptation of A Dybbuk Or, Between Two Worlds, at the
Joseph Papp Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival, one vital key
lies in the titular use of the indefinite article "a" instead of the more definite
"the."
Whereas most-if not all-other adaptations are titled The Dybbuk,
Kushner (working from a translation by Joachim Neugroschel) wisely
signals that this is not the definitive take on Ansky's classic Jewish drama.
Indeed, there are times when Kushner's signature brand of coruscating
humor mixes with his very personal vision of Jewish ethnography to make
us feel we are enjoying Angels in America: The Prequel.
To find the links between the two socially committed playwrights,
we need only think back on Kushner's imagery in Angels: an ancient rabbi
laments the loss of Jewish identity in a funny and moving prologue, a
heavenly messenger appears at crucial moments, a great book records and
deciphers life's deep meanings.
In A Dybbuk an orphaned and impoverished young student has
turned away from the Torah toward the mysterious teachings of the
Kabbalah and its emphasis on numerological meanings of letters and words.
The student, Khonen, employs dark arts to achieve the desire of his heart
and soul: the hand of his beloved Leah.
For her part, Leah is deeply attracted to the waifish Chonen. But
her father, Reb Sender, tries to wed her to a wealthy man. The desperate
Chonen attempts incantations and ritual ablutions to stave off a shidech
(match) . When Sender comes to the synagogue to celebrate a match for his
daughter, Chonen collapses and dies.
Woven between Chonen's raptures about Leah are scenes that
describe and reflect life in the ancient shtet!. The batlonim (educated idlers)
comically muse about their next meals and wistfully discuss the wealth of
others. Always hovering nearby is a messenger who pricks the lucre-filled
fantasies of the lazy scholars.
After his death, Chonen's soul is trapped "between two worlds"
and it awaits the beloved Leah at the bridal canopy. There the two souls are
"wed" and the dybbuk attaches to Leah. As the rebbe (community leader)
and the rabbi (spiritual leader) get involved in this crisis of the spirit, we
62
A Dybbuk, by S. Ansky, adapted by Tony Kushner and directed by Brian
Kulick, the Joseph Papp Public Theatre, 1997
63
learn how Chonen and his family have been wronged by Sender's family and
why tragedy has come to this shtetf. At the same time we witness a crisis of
faith as the rebbe struggles to cast the dybbuk Chonen from Leah's body.
In Kushner's rendering, as directed by the Public's inventive Brian
Kulick, the amusing batlonim provide welcome relief in the early scenes. But
as things turn more serious with the death of Chonen and the appearance of
the dybbuk, the dramatic moments begin to take on a plodding weight. We
begin to feel as though we are watching a diorama of Jewish ethnography.
It looks alive, but it doesn't quite breathe-possibly because the creators
were so intent on authenticity.
The diaphanous Michael Stuhlbarg as Chonen doesn't help matters
much. An interestingly wispy Richard II at the Public several years ago, here
Stuhlbarg lacks the necessary emotional heft to carry us along on his
passion. Marin Hinkle makes a lovely Leah, but we need more than her
stolen glances to feel the preternatural bonds between her and Chonen.
Joshua Mostel is a pleasure as the synagogue caretaker, Mayer, and Ron
Leibman hits his accustomed histrionic highs as the exorcising rebbe, Azriel.
Kulick and his longtime scenic collaborator, the remarkable
designer Mark Wendland, have created a visual palette comprised of natural
elements-earth, wood, sky-that is visually arresting and dramatically
effective. The director also carefully weaves the haunting strains of klezmer
music, performed by the Klezmatics, into the visual and dialogic narrative.
While Kushner's adaptation agrees with Ansky's Hasidic-based
ruminations on faith and finance, the contemporary playwright infuses the
work with a hard-bitten irony. In an added scene, Kushner has the traveling
Jews disembark from a train, marveling at this modern "miracle." That
"they let Jews ride in it" is a sure sign the Messiah will "arrive by train with
a first-class ticket." When one man exclaims "from such a thing only good
will come," we immediately think of millions lost in the Holocaust who
might beg to differ.
Although Ansky foresaw a weakening of Jewish culture with the
onslaught of the modern, he could never have imagined so terrible a loss as
the Holocaust. Kushner's potent, Brechtian image unfortunately brings the
play to a halt for a ponderous, if poignant, moment. Message received, we
return to the story at hand.
In deviating from the essence of this folk tale of love and faith,
Kushner finally signals that he doesn't trust its mythic power. Although the
production is not without its charms, it ultimately touches us as might a
thoughtful soul without much heart. Or is that the point of A Dybbuk?
64
A Dybbuk, by S. Ansky, adapted by Tony Kushner and directed by Brian
Kulick, the Joseph Papp Public Theatre, 1997
65
MEYERHOLD'S REVIZOR AT YALE
Susan Tenneriello
The Meyerhold Project, part of a day-long symposium devoted to
the Russian director's artistic legacy, took place at the Yale Repertory
Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, on October 4, 1997. This two-year
collaboration between the Yale School of Drama and the St. Petersburg
Academy of Theatre Arts on the Meyerhold Project brought together
students, scholars, and practitioners from Russia and the United States to
discuss the director's work in the cultural context of Russia in the 1920s and
to assess his influence on contemporary theatre. Among the participants
were Peter Sellars (director), Paul Schmidt (critic), co-sponsor Cheryl Faver
(co-director of the Gertrude Stein Repertory Theatre), co-producer Nikolai
Pesochinsky (Meyerhold scholar), Daria Krizhanskaya (translator and
dramaturg), and Alexei Levinsky (director), who conducted an afternoon
Biomechanics workshop. The central focus of the event was an evening
performance demonstration of Meyerhold's 1926 iconoclastic production of
Nikolai Gogol's The Inspector General.
The collaborative Revizor was directed by co-producer David
Chambers of Yale and Gennady Trostianetsky of the St. Petersburg
Academy. Work on the project was a massive binational effort assisted by
researchers and technicians using digital technology that allowed the two
schools to interactively explore and re-stage the now legendary 1926
production of The Inspector General. Meyerhold's version, which lasted four
hours, has not been staged since 1938. The fifteen episodes of Meyer hold's
revisionist script of Gogol's play were reconstructed from various
productions (most notably the 1930 version) along with newly uncovered
archival material. The abridged demonstration presented many episodes in
full and some in montage. The joint investigation into Meyerhold's
innovative theatricality involved acting students from Yale and directing
students from the St. Petersburg Academy, who achieved an exceptional
blend of historical re-construction and contemporary nuance in a cross-
cultural, bilingual performance.
The two casts merged easily in the style of plastic physical
expression that Meyerhold called "musical realism" in his experiments
during the 1920s. Performing simultaneously in Russian and English, the
actors created a linguistic "exchange" that was vibrant and multi-textured
and complimented the rhythmic spatial forms of the ensembles' gestural
action. While two screens mounted on either side of the stage projected the
The Meyer hold Project: a performance demonstration of Revizor;
co-directed by Gennady Trostianetsky and David Chambers
at the Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven, Connecticut, 1998
"
-.o
Now in its I 5th year, this joumal, edited by Daniel Ge
1
ou[u
hrings readers lively, authoritative accoums of drama, . d
111m in Russia and Eastern Eurone. Includes features on ' an
'' tmportant
new pl ays in performance, archival documems. innovative
productions. significant revivals, emerging arti sts, the latest in
l"i !m. Outstanding interviews and overviews. Puh!ishcd three
times per year -$ I() per annum ($15 00 foreign).
Pll':J'\c me I he following
C.\STA publicatoun:
-.,/al'lc nnd f:'tH/<'111 huropl'llll
c . l''' ')I o 00 fl\'r) t'. lr
__ (n' '\I) .IKI

Send order " ith enclosed h
, . , c cck to:
CASTA. L U ) Graduate Center
11 Wcsl I 2nd Succi
New Y111k . NY lOUie.
II <1 1 :1. o ; ,! ) :-' ' "' J1 , ' 1: I ' I ' , 1-' : , ~ , I ' ! : $..,,.,: '<!
1'" : : ~ .. tt: 1 , ,., 'I "- \ I I > . . . : . ~ ... ' t;;.vt CI\
An indispensable resource in keeping abreast of the latest theatre
developments in Western Europe. Issued three times a year - Spring,
Winter, and Fall -and edited by Marvin Carlson, each issue contains
a wealth of information about recent European festivals and
productions, including reviews, interviews, and reports. Winter
issues focus on the theatre in individual countries or on special
themes. News of forthcoming events: the latest in changes in artistic
directorships, new plays and playwrights, outstanding performances,
and directorial interpretations.- $15 per annum ($20.00 foreign).
,
Please send me the following CASTA publlcatlnn:
Wt'SI<'m Europ..an Stagt's
_ @ $ 15.00 per year
(Foreign) _ @ $20.00 per year
Total
Send order with enclosed check to:
CASTA. CUNY Graduate Center
~ ~ West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036
The widely acclaimed journal devoted solely to drama and theatre
in the USA- past and present. Provocative, thoughtful articles by
the leading scholars of our time providing invaluable insight and
information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its
continuing contribution to world literature and the performing
arts. Edited by Vera Mowry Roberts and Jane Bowers. Published
three times per year - $12 per annum ($18.00 foreign).
Please send me the following
CASTA publication:
Journal of American Drama
and Theatre _ @ $12.00 per year
(Foreign) _ @ $18.00
Total
Send order with enclosed check to:
CASTA, CUNY Graduate Center
33 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036

SEEP Vol.18 No.2 Summer 1998

Enviado por

Dados do documento

Descrição original:

Direitos autorais

Formatos disponíveis

Compartilhar este documento

Compartilhar ou incorporar documento

Opções de compartilhamento

Você considera este documento útil?

Este conteúdo é inapropriado?

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

SEEP Vol.18 No.2 Summer 1998

Enviado por

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

volume 18, no.

Você também pode gostar