SEEP Vol.21 No.2 Summer2001

8/12/2019 SEEP Vol.21 No.2 Summer2001

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volume 21, no. 2

Sum m er 200 1

S P (ISSN 1047-0019) is a public ation of the Institute for Co n tempo raryEast E urop ean Drama and Theatre under the auspic es of the Martin E. Sega lTheatr e Center. The Institute is at The City University of Ne w Yor k G raduat eCe nt er, 365 5th Ave nue, New York, NY 10016-4309. A ll sub sc ription r equest sand submi ssion s s hould be addressed to S lavif and ast u pea n e r f o r m a m ~Martin E Sega l Theatre Center, Theatre Program, The City U niversity of NewYork Gra duat e Cen ter , 365 5t h Ave nu e New York, NY 100 16-4309.


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EDITOR

Daniel Gerould

:MANAG ING EDITORKurtTaroff

CIRCULAT IO N MANAGERSLara Shal so n

ASS ISTANT CIRCULATIO N MANAGERS

Hillary Arle n Celia Braxton

ADVISO RY BOARDEdwin Wilson Chair

Marvin Carlson A lma LawMartha W Coigney Stuar t LiebmanLeo Hecht Laurence Se nelick

A llen J Kuhar ski

Ma rtin E Sega l Th ea t re Cente r Publications are supporte d by ge n erous grantsfrom the Lucille Lortel Chair in Th eatre and the Sidney E Cohn Chair inTheatre in the Ph D . Program in Theatre at the City Univers ity of New York .Copyrig ht 2001 Martin E. Segal Theatre Center

S P ha s a very libe ral reprintin g policy . Journa ls and new sletter s that desireto repro duce articl es reviews and other mat eria ls that have appeared in S Pmay do so as long as the following provi sions are met:

a Permiss ion to reprint the article mu st be reque sted fromS P

in writingbefo re the fact;b. Credi t to S P mu st be given in the rep rin t;c Two copies of the publication in which th e reprinted ma terial has

appeared mu st be furni shed to the Editor s of S P imm ediately uponpublication.

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Edltorial PolicyFrom the EdltorEventsBooks Received

RTICLES

T BLE OF ONTENTS

567

An Interview With Sergei Nikulin, Russian Publisher 12Maria Ignatieva

Post -Traumatic Theatre Syndrome: Croatian Theatre at the Crossroads 17Dubravka V rgoc

Directing in Two Cultures: The Oeuvre o f vIilo s Lazin 29A llan Graubard and Ca rolin e McGee

P GES FROM THE P ST

Meyer ho ld 's 1936 Vis it to PragueJarka Burian

l\Iodjeska: So me Basic TruthsKazimierz Braun

REVIEWS

Slovak Performance at La 1fa ma:rmageddon on th GRB H i l l

The End o f the World as She Knew It Ku rt Taroff

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49

68

A n Intervi ew W ith Wlodzimierz Sta ni ewski of Gardzienice 75RogerBabb

The Czec ho slovak -A merican Marionette Theatre: 84Fa u st and the Foo lLars Myers


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Orbit Milktooth Festival: Children's Theatre in CroatiaDeborah Stein

ContributorsPublications

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EDITORI L POLICY

Manu script s in the following categorie s are so licited: arti cle s of no

more than 2,500 words, performance and film reviews, and bibliographie s.Plea se bear in mind th at all submissions mu s t concern th e mse lves either withcontemporary mat erials on Slavic and Ea st E ur opean theatre , drama and film,or with new approach es to older material s in recently publi shed work s or newperformance s of old er plays. In other words , we welcome submissionsreviewing inn ovative performances of Gogol but we cannot use origina larticle s discu ssing Gogo as a playwright.

A lth ough we w elcome tran slations of articles and reviews fromforeign publication s we do require copyright relea se statements . We w ll alsogladl y publi sh announcements o f special events and anything else which maybe of intere st to our discipline. All submission s are refereed .

A ll submis sio n s mu st be typed doubl e-spaced and care full yproofread. The Chicago Manual o Sryle should be followed . Trans-lite ration sshould follow the Library of Congress sys tem . A rticl es should be submittedon computer disk, as Word 97 Document s for Windows and a hard copy ofth e article should b e included. Photograph s are reco mm end ed for a ll reviews .,\ l l articl es should be se nt to the attention of Slavic and ast EuropeanPeiformame c/o M artin E. Segal Theatr e Ce nter The City U niversity o f NewYo rk Graduate Ce nt er, 36 5 5th Avenue , New York , NY 10 0 16-4309.Submi ss ion s w ll be eval uate d , and authors w ll be notified after approximatelyfour week s.

You may obtain more information about Slav ic and ast E ropeanPeiformance by visiting out website at http / / web.gc .cuny .edu / mestc. Emailinquiri es m ay be addressed to SEEP@gc. cuny.edu.

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FROM TH E ITOR

The Summer I ssue 2001 contains a wide range of articles and reviewsexploring how Slavic and East Europ ean th eatre are faring in the early twentyfirst cennu-y, with some emphasis on efforts to preserve the past. Ma riaIgn atieva interviews the director and founder of a publishing house of Russiantheatre books. Dubravka Vrgoc looks at Croatian drama in transition at th enew turn of the century, while Deborah Stein considers the participation of aCroatian children s theatre at an international festival. Caroline McGee andAllan Graubard talk with Milos Lazin , a director from former Yugoslavia, ash e fashions a new career in France . In two article s comprising our fea turePAGES FROM THE PAST, Jarka Burian investigates Vsevolod Meyerhold svisit to Prague in 1936, and Kazimierz Braun, author and director of a p layabou t Modjeska, considers the chall enging task of writing about the famousP olish -American actress, abou t whom so many legends have grown up . RogerBabb , Kurt Taroff, and Lars Myers write reviews of recent performances inNew York: of Polis h and S lovakian guest appearances at La Mama and of theCzechoslovak -A merican Mario nette Theatre resident in New Yo rk . Finally, inBOOKS RECEIVED for the first time we include a CD in the future we shallinclude both videos and COs, as well as in tern et website s

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STAGE PRODUCTIONSNew York City

V NTS

On Your Gravu by Jan Durovcik, a collaborative production by theJ.A.N. Agef\cy, a dance company, and the Nova Scena from Slovakia, waspre sented at the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center on February 28.

Scenes from Tumor r a i n i o w i c ~by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz,directed by Brooke O'Harra with music by Brendan Connelly, was presentedas part of The Stage '01 Festival by Singularity on April 10 and 13.

Silence Silence Silence directed b y Vito Taufer, was pre sented byTheatre I\11adinsko from Ljubljana, S lovenia, at La Mama, E.T.C., from March15 to 25.

Diary of One Who Vanished, poems by Ozef Kalda set to musicby Leo Janacek and translated into English by Seamus Heaney, sung and actedby Ian Bostridge and Ruby Philogene, accompanied by Julius Drake on piano,was pre sented at the John Jay College Theatre, from May 31 to June 2.

Just s f Life and Cabaret From Paradise Ghetto Th eresienstad t ashow composed by Shelly Berc and i\ndrei Belgrader based on the diaries ofinmates of Theresien stadt, with original music and music direction by SergeiDrezhnin was pre sented at the 8


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STAGE PRODUCTIONSIn ern a tional

The Card Index by Tadeusz Rozewicz , directed by Peter Czajkows ki,was performed at The White Bear Theatre Club in London from May 29 toJune 17.

The Third International Theatre Olympics, showca sing nearly 150productions from thirty -five countries, was held in Moscow from April 2 1 toJune 29. Featured performances included The Po Jphotry o he World, crea ted byAleksandr Bakshi and Kama Ginkas and performed by celebrated violinist

Gidon Kremer, and Apoca Jpse, by Vladimir Martynov and Yuri Lyubimov, awork for boy s and men s choirs.

Kitchen by Maxim Kurochkin, directed by and sta rrin g OlegMenshikov, was recently presented by Me nshikov s production compa ny the814 Theatrical Association, at the Mossoviet Theatre in Moscow. JohnFreedman, in a June 10 New York Times article, cites the success of theproduction as evidence of a resur gence of contemporary drama on Russianstages.

Witold Gombrowicz s Ferdydurke, in an E nglis h version by AllanKuharski w ll be performed in a collaboration between the ProvisoriumTheatre and the Kompania Theatre of Poland at the Edinburgh InternationalFestiva l, from August 2 to 3.

William Shakespea re s Coriolanus, direct e d by Krzysztof Kopka, w llbe performed by Teatr Stary from Cracow at the Edinburgh InternationalFestival from August 11 -21.

i\G PROD UCTIONS.Asia

Vladimir Mayakovsky s The Bedbug, directed b y Meng Jinghu.i, wasrecently pre se nted at the Beijing C hildr en s Art Theatre. Thi s highl y s uc cess fulproduction was the play s Chinese premiere.

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Collection of the New York Performing Arts Public Library). [See Page 49 forKazimierz Braun's article on Modjeska.]

l\lel Gordon lectured on the GOSET, the Moscow Yiddish StateTheatre, on l\'fay 14 at the Jewish Museum as one of the programs for theExhibit, Marc Chagall: Early Works From Russian Collections, which runsthrough October 14.

The International Michael Chekhov Workshop and Festival, featuringclasses and performances utilizing the Michael Chekhov Technique, was heldin Wallingford, Connecticut from June 9 to 20.

Janusz Opryri.ski, Witold Mazurkiewicz, directors of the ProvisoriumTheatre and the Kompania Theatre, and Allen Kuharski, t r a n s l ~ t o rwerenominated for the 2000 PasrPorl Poli yki Award. The nomination praised AllenKuharski's translation of Witold Gombrowicz's Ferdydurke, noting: TheEnglish captured unusual and surprising meanings in Gombrowicz's text,illuminating with its interpretation many of the novel's canonical scenes. Inaddition, Gombrowicz heard in a foreign language is paradoxically evenfunnier. [See SEEP, Volume 20, no. 2, Summer 2000, for a feature on

Ferdydurke.]

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AN INTERVIEW WITH SERGEI NIKULIN RUSSIAN PUBLISHER

Maria Ignatieva

ART (the Russian acronym for "-\ctor. Director. Theatre) is a smallpublishing house, which has not only stoically survived the ups and downs ofthe Russian economy, but also managed to publish fifty - five books in the tenyears of its independent life. Most of the books are about theatre. And suchbooks About contemporary theatre and theatre history, ballet and musicaltheatre--every book is a little discovery, or a long expected gift.

For example, after the decades of gossip and unbelievable storiesabout the feud between Stanislavsky and Nemirovich -Danchenko over theMoscow Art 1beatre ART published three priceless volumes by OlgaRadi shcheva about forty years of theatre relation s between the founders . Thethree volumes are the indispensable desk -co pies of every scholar of theRu ssian theatre not only because they offer insightful explanations of the leastknown moments of Stanislavsky and Nernirovich-Danchenko's mutual

devotion and misunderstandings, but also because they read like thrillersOn the shelves of the small bookstore, one can find another

invalu able source for scholars, Mryerhold in Russian Criticism, containingeverything written about his productions in newspapers and magazines fromthe beginning of the twentieth century. Here too are Nizhinski s Diaries, andMryerhold Rehearses as well as Ilia GiWov's latest revelations about WilliamShakespeare (which the author tried in vain to introduce to Shakespearescholars in the United Sta te s but which no University Press would accept),

.-\natoly Smeliansky's survey of the Russian Theatre in the second half of thetwentieth century, theatre anecdotes and recipes from plays, andautobiographies of contemporary Russian actors and directors.

ART not only pub lishes books, it pre serves the monuments ofRussian theatrical cuJture from being covered by the dust of the past. Ru ssia ntheatre hi s tory is not profitable these days, and making books about it is evenle ss so.

ART is really a team of six . They are enthusiastic, intelligent , live onmode st salaries , and spend six days ou t of seven in their cozy little bookstore .The bookstore and office are situa ted in the heart of Moscow, on StrastnoiBoulevard, at the same place where a small bookstore, Knizhnaia Lavka, once

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stood in the first half o f the nineteenth century; Alexander Pushkin used to

dropby

to browse while in Moscow.What follows is a conversation I had with Sergei Nikulin S.N. fromnow on), the director o f ART, at the book sto re in December 2000.

MJ.: So, please tell me a few words about yourself.

S.N.: I graduated from GITIS the State Theatre Institute) in the sixties, andbecame an editor right away: first at the journal Theatre (Ieatr) during the bestyea rs o f the Thaw; then I edited books at the publishing house I skusstvo, thenat the publishing house of the VTO Russian Theatre Society), later theTheatre Union. In 1990, I sugges ted the publishing house becomeindependent Now we celebrate ten years o f our independence . I never wantedto write books myself, but from my early years I ha ve always known how tomake books and how they shoul d be written.

M.L: Sergei, pardon my curiosity, but in your cozy place I don t see any

modem equipment . Where are your compu te r s? Your fa x? Your mobiletelephone?

S.N.: We don t have any o f tho se We live without e-mails, computers, wemake books in an old-fashioned manner . You know, it seems to me that i f webecome just like the rest o f the world, something would change our bookbusiness for the worse. Well, I take it back: my lady friend gave me a faxmachine as a gift. We may even use it one day

M.L: How did the dollar crisis affect you in 19 98?

S.N : It did not.

M .L: Forgive me , I don t believe it. Everyone was hit by it, every businessventure was harmedNikulin l u hs

S.N .: Well , there is a secret to it: we don t operate n dollars and don t have ouraccount n hard currency.

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Sergei Nikulin Founder and Director of . \RT

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M.I.: Well, that 's our story. I ste pped in with a book propo sa l, we talked, and

the next thing you said, Tha t's a deal, bring yo ur book , I'll publish it.

ART is o ne of the mo st popular places in Moscow among the theatrein telligentsia: the se days , you wouldn't think you' d m ee t old - fashioned,intelligent and smiling people who work for ruble s who are infatuated withtheatre and do all they can to preserve it. For many of the ART's readers andauthors, this small publishing house is not only a paradox: ART is a hope for aRenai ssance in Russian ways of doing things with dignity, culture and sp irit.

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POST TRAUMATIC THEATRE SYNDROME:

CROATION THE TRE AT THE CROSSROADS

Dubravka Vrgoc

In his earliest play Brick (Cig a), fir st performed in 19 98 in thedevastated Hotel -\mbasador in Split, which before the war had belonged tothe Yugoslav National -\rmy , the young Croatian playwright and actor, Filip

Sovagovic , dealt with the destiny o f young people who were facing personaland historical tragedies, whose prospects had been blighted and whose lifesolutions had been devastat ed by the war in Croatia. The Split production ofBrick had some very successful guest appearances at theatre festivals in Nice,Bonn Fribourg, Liege and Brussels, and the play was translated into GermanFrench and Italian.

However, if in Bn tk Filip Sovagovic presents the Croatian war realityawash with anxiety and its pernicious influence on the lives of the generationborn in the 60s, in his most recent play, Birdies (Pti'ice), the playwright asks

himself what has happened to the heroes of Brick in the period o f tran sition, atthe misty crossroads of a precarious future. Birdies is set in a prison. From theperspective of prison, it is easy to detect social traumas. A prison is a suitableframework for bringing out obsessions and impotence. As a metaphor for theworld, prison becomes an ideal backdrop for SovagoviC's post -traumaticdramatic syndromes. In the case o f B irdies, this background is a meeting-placefor characters who have lost their own and other people's games in advance,and are condemned to face their failed past, grim present, and impossiblefuture .

Th e characters include a gentle brute from the Sibenik -Knin County(a very poor area, destroyed in the war); an intellectual who has always wantedto become a tram driver , but, due to family pressure, has to become a critic; aGypsy who , n search o f a nomadic life, ends up as a victim of urbanization;and a Serb who is in prison for some petty tax evasion-all convict s. Thesemen all become members o f the prison band Birdie s , and dream o fperforming at weddings following a quite imaginary escape. For them, as theauthor says, it is always too late .

The director, Paolo Magelli, selected a neglected courtyard behind the

Croatian National Theatre in Split as th e place to perform Birdies as part of theSplitsko Ljeto (Split's Summer) Theatre Fes tival in July 2000. This open spacesuited the scattered images o f reality contained in the play. Magelli, who alsodirected Bri ck n Sp lit, recognised the playwright's directness o f speech and

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situation, the need to deftne reality from the bord ers of realism and reveal the

comic-poetic - tragic prospects o f the cha racters. This is why in SovagoviC splays the scenes are documentaries; just like ftlm s, they show what happens tous or near us, in our bedrooms, in our kitchens, on empty staircases, across theroad in the st reet, behind prison bars.

Croatia s reality toda y is burdened with its past heritage, neuroticmemories, daily political fru st ration s, social stress, and the sheer hopelessnessof existence. For this reason, Sovagovic does not want to cove r it in symbo ls,lyrical emphasis, parodic relief or cynical comments. In stea d, he lists fragmentsof chaotic events, whil e Magelli, as th e director of the play, in an effort to

present the daily chaos in which we incessantly participate, erases the bordersbetween the serious and the trivia l, the supreme and the cynical, the dramaticand the pathetic, the tragic and the comic, the impressively theatrical and thelightly ente rt aining. His direction jtL


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The scattered fragments o f reality in SovagoviC s play correspond tothe fragments of the Croatian theatre today. Nothing in it can any longer beanchored to an idea, or to common interests, similar obsessions, clearguidelines or even common delusions. Since the time when it lost its strongpolitical reference points-which coincided with the historical changes thataccompanied the Eastern European euphoria and disappointments at the endo f the 80s , and the Croa tian war reality at the beginning o f the 90s - theCroatian theatre forfeited its continuity , that is, the recognizable th r ead of acoherent view, and became dispersed in different styles and poetics. Thisscenic openness, resembling a schizophrenic disintegration of reality, can beread as a post-traumatic theatre syndrome in an environment that seeks newsocia l and cultural models, while at the same time continuing to bear painfulwar memories . When does this scenic pluralism turn into chaos, which, unliketheatrical dynamism, resembles the uninspiring freedom o f a mere successiono f different theatrical adventures that exhaust the spectators? Such a questionremain S open.

In recent Croatian drama, Sovagovic does not have any followers. Atthe beginning of the 90s , the young playwrights Asja Srnec Todorovic, IvanVidic, Pavo Marinkovic, Lada Kastelan, and i vfilica Luksic just like their often

absent -minded characters, faithfully witnessed in their texts the disarray o f theideological system and the disintegration of great declarations, bravel y steppingback from the long tradition of political rebellion in post-war Croatian drama.By the end o f the 90s Croatian drama showed a tendency towards many verydifferent genres, styles and poetics. This open concept of dramatic art, whichis exclusively dominated by the principle of being different, has becomeinfluential in shaping present -day Croatian theatre and is still a dominant force.~ ecan detect its impact in a wide range of projects, including those of authorswho attempt to copy reality directly on the stage, inviting th e audience into

kitchens and living rooms, while the actors call one another by their real name sand present impressive fragments of their own biographies. Th ere are alsoextreme deviations from reality that move into artificial theatre language andoften forced experimentation with the possibilities and boundaries of theatricalexperiences, including the staging o f classical dramatic works which transposethe authentic period o f the dramatic event into our own contemporary realityin orde r to emphasize and compare the common obsessions o f the twoperiods

\n example o f the latter was the striking staging o f jrano de Bergerac,

Edmond Rostand s hero ic comedy, in autumn 2000 at the Croatian NationalTheatre in Split. The young Slovenian dir ector, Toni nezic, with the Spli tcompany , evoked on the bare space of an empty stag e, with only a few chairs

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Nikolai Gogol s he Wedding dire cted y Dario Lorenziat the Creation National Theatre in Rijelu


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stage filled with props o f exaggerated dim en sion s, and characte rs whose

caric atural features made th e audience laugh . The opening sce ne o fthe

Rijekaprodu ctio n struck a deliberately reali stic tone , like a meticulou s ga me withhumorous details and a slowe d-down rhythm , which so ught to evoke theboring routin e o f provincial Russian life. However , th e director soonabandon ed this realistic comic literalness and increasingly ent ere d the rea lm o fthe fanta stic where th e chara c ters assume distor ted feature s and where thelanguage o f the theatrical grotesque can be recognised . Following postmodernprinciple s, Lorenzi attempts to establish miraculous relation s through thede st ruction o f the logical sequence o f scenes; he introduc es the actors and the

audi ence to a game o f dise mpowered conventions, dominated by theincon sis tencie s of the genre and an ironical replication o f scenes.

In the fir st part o f The Marriage element s o f slap stick , omi st rip,Monty Pyt h on humour, and absurd gags are used in order to hig hlight thegrote squ e ima ge of an alienated bureaucratic soci ety repre se nted by a hys terica lmarriageable woman and her two resigned suitor s. The bride-to -be welcomesthe potential grooms by dancing on an enormous table, which stretc h es fromone side o f th e stage to the other, or rides a scooter among the men during th escene in which she fir s t m ee ts them . The seco nd part o f th e production

a tt emp t s to mute the se neu ro tic sign s of a tattered re ality and to a pproach anintimate dram a whose protagonists are the future brid e and groom-them erchant s dau ghter , .\gafya, and the court advisor, Podkolyolsin. R ed , theco lor of love, framed in bla ck border s announcin g the future traged ydomin ates th e s tage where the two try in vain to conduct a co nver satio n, or toestablish any kind of co mmunication in order to draw clo ser tog et h er. Th i sattempt at closeness is further impeded by the huge red armchairs placed ateither end o f th e stage. The characters appear lo st when seate d and seemprisoners o f th e armc hairs , because they cannot pull them selves ou t o f them .When fUlally, af ter a grea t deal o f effort, they mana ge to slide o ut o f thearm chair s, they co m e into direct conflict in a swor d - fight sce ne whichhumo ro usly warns us th at harmon y between th e se xes is impossible.

The co medy e nd s with the mute pre se nce o f th e bri de d resse d in alon g white wedding gown) on the bare stage , trying to reach the weddingbouqu et, an ominous d ramati c symbol that, as it has mov ed toward the veryfront edge o f the stage since the middl e of the pla y, has directed the stageevents and tantalized us with an ima ginary happy ending. In the end , th e brideleaves the stage as sn ow star ts to fall, and an upside down birch han gs in theair, both poetic comments and sym bol s o f purificati o n after tragedy.

Branko Hojni k s imagin ative st age des ign , consisting o f lo n g tables ,oversized chairs, empty door frames and oth er enlarged and unreal ob ject s o f

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everyday use, succe eds in surprising the audience in eac h sce ne . Bjanka

U rsulov s costumes, also parodicall y detached from the clothes worn inGogol s period, suit the atmosphere of the grotesquely humorous eve nt s onstage .

The image of absurd reality was strikingly portrayed by the actressNina Violic in the role of Gogol s marriageabl e girl. By highlighting theunreality of the humorous situatio n in which she found her self, s he actuallyexpressed it s tragedy and emphasized tha t there was no way out, not only for1\gafya, the merchant s daughter, but also for all the characters involved.Podkolyolsin, the court advisor and potential groom, standing on th e far sideof the stage, was portrayed by Gora n Navojec as a re signed bureaucrat forwhom marriage was as important as any one of his num erous flies. Thedirector, Dario Lorenz i, seems to have placed a distorting mirror in front ofGogol s drama, so that all its ac tors acquired a grotesque appearance, and thespectators were invited to laugh at these funny apparition s, on ly to questionthemselves-when the mirror is removed and they lea ve the theatre-aboutthe tragic directions of th e characters live s, and their own destinies.

The yo ung director, Mario Kovac, a stude nt director at the Aca demyof Dramatic Arts in Zagreb, who is also the leader of a very provocativeal ternative theatre group called Smrtz, pre sented the grotesque aspects of ourworld in the play Excellent ap Time Sjqjno prolazno vrijeme), first p erforme d thiswinter on the stage of the Mammoth Dramatic T heatre Gavella in Zagreb.Kovac did not select a cla ssic dramatic text, but in s tead chose three offourteen one -act pla ys by the -\.merican playwright David Ive s published in thebook l l in the Timing. Kovac admitted that he wa s ca ptivated by Ives sabsurdly grotesque text, whic h deals with trivialities while at the same timeplaying with language and literary conventions.

In the f1rst sce ne of Extellent Lap Time, Ivo and Ana m ee t accidentallyin a cafe. They attempt to come closer to one another by using words, butin stead they distance themselves, lose themselve s in languag e, an d then f1ndthem selves again. y uttering a multitude of worn -out phases, they succee dneither in ex pr ess in g their feelings nor in articulating their yearnings. In thesecond part of the play, Leon Trotsky , with a mountain climber s pick stuck inhis head, tries to plan the last twenty-four hours of his life . He think s aboutwhether to complete his life s masterpiece, eat his favorite dish, enjoy the sce ntof forget -me -n o ts, or spen d the time waiting for his own death with his loving

wife. The third part of the performance proceeds in a probing mood: Can amonkey, left alone with a typewriter and given ind ef1nite time, write Hamlet?The protagonists of this sce ne are three chimpanzees called Kafka, i\:Wton, andSwif t.

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Exa llelll ap Time directed by Mario Kovacat the 11ammoth Dramatic Theatre Gavella in Zagreb

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The first par t - the first one -ac t play called There's no blues( Nema beda ) i s conceptualized as a success ion o f improvi satio ns on atheme, realized a s a co llage o f verbal fragm en ts loaded with trivialities in thewords exchanged by two you ng people sitting opposite one another at a table.The seco nd scene called Variati on s on th e Death o f Trotsky ( Varij acije nasmrt Trockoga ) closes on a pronouncedl y absurd to ne , with obvious surrealistfeatures that recall the linguistic games o f the Ru ss ian wri ter, Daniil Kharms.The (im)possibiliti es of lite rary creation and a world that perman en tly rejectsinterpretation are the themes of the third one-act play, \'\lords, Words,Words ( Rijeci, rijeci, rijeci ) in which the actors take possession of the stagewith fascinating energy, while the y imi tate monkeys pecking at th e typewriterin a futile attempt to record the famous To be, or not to be.

The dire c tor, i\fario Kovac, who, after his rebelliou s ex ploration ofalternative theatr e, found him sel f working in a theatrical in sti tution for the firsttime, se ts up the miracu lous atmosphere o f Iv e s's unusual situations which donot stem from p syc ho logical portraits o f charact er s, nor from t edio usex planations o f their actions.

The neutral stage design, with severa l essentia l props on a gray

background,doe

snot

di stur b the dynamic so f

the scenes,

while the attractivecos tumes by Marita Copo imaginativel y emp ha si se the bizarre situation s andthe topsy-turvy ima ge o f a world in which David Ives's famous andanonymous heroe s feel eq uall y ll at ease. The cha rac ters were portrayed withexceptio na l concentration and energy b y the actors who followed thein exo rable logic o f absurdity in departin g from realism, abandoning thes te reoty pe in favor of the grotesque. Becau se o f its unpretentiou sness, itsp syc hic surpassing o f reality, and its striking a ctin g, Excellent Lap Time revealedhow seduc tive theatr e ephemera can be in a per formance at a theatre like the

Dramatic Theatre Gavella, which pr evious ly in th e last few yea r s obsessivelydealt with great and important themes.Another exa mpl e of a theatrical ephemeron was presented this

se aso n at the alternative Theatre ITD in Zagreb. A Man A Chair (Coi Ji:k.Sto/ica by Damir Bartol Indos is a reminder o f the famous performan ce fromthe end o f the 70s bearin g the same title . I f I broke all the chairs, I wouldhave to invent a n ew body, another form, or perhaps wander like a nomadwithout res idence. If in an undefined future , m y c hair was to becom e anarchicand without a function, I would know that I ceased to be a man. Therefore, I

m ove and stop according to the arrangemen t o f chairs in the world, theauthor notes in the program to the pla y In snatches, Indos attempt s toreconstruct not just parts o f the fir st perform ance, but also fragments of hi sown memory of it. The director, Goran Se rgej Pris tas and the dramaturg,

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Ivana Sajko, are interested in the relationships between bodies an d space,

unprot ected s ubj ec ts in their clash with the environme n t, searchi ng for innerand outer landscapes, which are, in this case, framed by chairs. T h e chairsdetermine th e co ntacts between the actors, and thanks to them, theperspectives and relations betwee n the characters seem broken. Thefragmented movements are caug ht in a game of changeab le outcomes, in aweb of un certain meanings where everything is aboli shed as soo n as it isestablished, and the very implied relationships, whi ch shou ld co nn ec t twosubjects on th e s ta ge, actually divide them. Bes ides Damir Bartol Indo s, theperform ers Nikolina Bujas and Pravdan Devlahovic attempt to evok e theconnections that ha ve been worn out in the futile at t empt to collect thescatter ed mat erial. With brok en movements during the one -hour p er fo rmanceof Man. Chair they show the vulnerable natur e of the body that alwaysse arch es for an object to confir m it s pre sence , not onl y inside th e th eatre, bu talso in th e wo rld .

These examples of th e modern Croatian thea tre rep rese n t scenicstudies which attempt to rep roduce at least the outlines of the period, andrai se, in sna tches, qu estio n s to which, even after so ma n y historicalmi sun derst andi ngs a nd tr agedies, we still cannot find answers. This is the kindof theatre which, in the shad ow of th e recent great theatrical events of th e 80s

now alr eady part of the previous century , is in sea rch of new forms and newdirections. T he most interesting task of the Croatian theatre at the moment isthe sea rch it sel f, the impo ssibility of finding security and a clear point oforientation , the expec tation of something that has no nam e and is utterlyund etermin ed , the di sper sio n of energy in different dir ec tion s the s tandin g atthe cro ss roa ds and being absolute ly incapabl e of dec iding wh ere t o go.

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DIRECTING IN TWO CULTURES

TH OEUVRE OF MILOS LAZIN

Allan Graubard and Caroline McGee

' Yo u are from Yugoslavia?Yes.But where .?Yugoslavia.

t does not exist You must be Croatian or Serbian."(from a private conversation with Milos Lazin)

Wos Lazin is a theatre director from the former Yugoslavia who haseen living in Paris since 1989, now as a French citizen. He is the founder and

director of Mappa Mundi Company, ba se d in Paris, which carne to noticeduring the second half of the 1990s via two theater creations concerning the

Balkan wars: Hotel Europe and Ines Denise Taking as his point of departurethe condition of the emigre artist, issues of cross -cultural encounter and theplace of the Balkans within E urop ean hi story, Lazin maneu vers throug hcontexts of conflict that spea k as much to indi vidual as to cultural -politicalvalues that we continue to strugg le with.

Prior to his emigratio n to France, Lazin gained recognition as a majortheater director, also working in radio and television while holding aprofessorship at the Schoo l of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade and Novi Sad. He

cur rently supports himself as a journalist for Radio France International.Afte r a recent period of se l f-imposed silence, Lazin has re -eme rgedwith Mappa Mundi Company in response to the new democ racy" in Belgradeand the ongoing rebuilding of Sarajevo . In October 2000, he organized a majorconference on contemporary theater in the Balkans at the Center AndreMalraux in Sarajevo, and is now developing a new th ea ter work as a possibleco -production between Mappa Mundi and th e Center for Cultura lDecontamination in Belgrade.

Lazin prefers to create original works based on a sense of persona lurgency. His major ?\.lappa Mundi creation, Ines Denise a French -Bosnianco -production), for instance, derived from an intimate problem that he facedin daily life, which he then developed in collaboration with a writer and actors

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into a dramatic performance that received critical praise for its human andhistorical resonance both in France and in Sarajevo.'

As Lazin put it: Here in Pari s I speak French, which I never studiedin school. I'm not quite sure how to write it correctly. I 'm not French, but I'mspeaking French. I speak French but I think in Serbo -Croatian, my nativelanguage. I wanted to escape that kind of double situation. What is it that Itranslate in my head automatically? What does it signify ? That's what I wantedto explore dramatically. So I engaged a writer, and took a Bosnian actress and aFrench actress. They would explain it to me. I had to know what I was livingby staging it. 2

Thus, in the spring of 1996, Lazin began to create a performance intwo languag es to explore the possibilities and limits of communicationbetween two cultures .

He engaged his friend, the playwright from Zagreb (Croatia),Slobodan Snajder, and two ac tre sses: Denise Bonal (French) and Ines Fancovic(Serbo -Croatian). He then secured a space in Avignon, La Chartreuse, for thewriting to begin via intensive discussion between writer and director .

For his part, Snajder contributed an intriguing plot line concerning a

story he overheard during a train ride, which the teller claimed was trueGerman woman went to Bosnia in search of her son's grave; the

fellow died there in 1943 as a Wehrmacht soldier. She met a Bosnian womanwhose son died in about the same place but as a Tito partisan, the enemy ofthe German woman's so n . In order to make peace with \X \V and their grief,which had never left them , the mothers of the two ex-enemies decided to livetogether.

\Vith a cast and story now in hand, and with the first scene se t (thearrival of the German woman in Bosnia), Lazin invited his two actresses to a

hartreuJe to begin the work on stage. As Lazin describes it: Their actualconfrontation was indispensable for us to continue to create. Neither spoke th eother's language. Each actress agreed to receive only her own part o f the textto identify only with her character's situation.

He continues: During the work in .\vignon and in Saraj evo, wespoke little or nothing about charac ter. I observed Ines Fancovic's and Deni seBonal's attitudes in particular situations, looking for their understanding ofhow the st o ry was developing. They were invited to react from their own point

of view with no knowledge o f the other's point of view but all within acommon context. Their blind spots and their openness to this blind contact

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became th e content o f o ur production and the way for future spectator s to

ftnd their way through i t We wagered that the public in B os nia -Herzegovinawould id entify with In es a nd the public in France with Denise. Each actresshad to serve as a guide over th e bridge to an unknown language and meanin g

.Among other things, the work brought us up against differen ces inthe theat er cu lture s tha t the two actresses came from. Denise depended on thetext, on the m ea ning o f what she said ; Ines o n what was happ enin g. The fustacted with her head , the second with her bod y .As I didn ' t want eitherapproach to dominate, we had to take advantage o f thi s difference within thecontext of a functioning duet. Eac h actress h ad to contribute to the creation o fa common space . Thi s up set the actre sses' hab it s and reflexes. Each had toinvent h er ow n role but also the other's role by evaluating h er (foreign ) tex tand (present) ges ture s

Ultim ately , it was a liberating proce ss . The se tting also milit a tedagainst falling back on cliches , either lingui stic ally or behaviorall y

I n th e two countries where we performed th e audience attentionwas compl ete. The story is told throu g h words, yes, but its real weight i stransmitted via body language, emotion, ges tu r es, and the pre sence o f a

stranger who, by giving us a loo k at ourselves, be come s understandable, closeand indi spe nsable .

\ ~ emu st also re m emb er when Ines enise fir st pla yed to audi encesin Franc e an d Sa rajevo. The Balkan war had ju s t e nd ed; he r e was aperform ance in two languages with the ull poss ibili ty of comp le temi sun d ers tandin g , but b ase d o n a common gro und of share d grief and a desirefor recon ciliation within a world just torn apart by ethnic hatr ed and genocidalattack. Th e political re so nance was imm ediat e, the link from th e previous to

the pr esent war transparent.A Sa rajev o critic, Vo jislav V ujanovic, added : t.'fos t fasc in ating is theway that th e two wo m en come to und e rstand e ach other speaking, as they do,two diff erent language s . As eac h speak s in monologue , th e other replie s in h erlangua ge. The m ys terio us flow of their interaction allows them tocommunicate and arrive at perfect under stan ding. What grows inside th em istheir so rr o w, and it m atters little in what langua ge th ey express it .

Vuja n ovic conti nu ed: The sce nery, wit h it s exceptiona l sty lization, isbalanced between two woode n se ts: on the one side a p oetic image of a villa geho u se, on th e o ther a sty lized ritual : when the heroin es lie down, the y face amirror tilted above th em allowing th e audience to see th eir exp re ss ionsN othin g se parat es the two wo men any longe r . Th ey a re only mother s, two

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NOT S

Premiered October 1997 in Sara jevo for an extended run at the International Festivalof Theater, MESS. Pr ese nt ed from winter 199 7 to sprin g 1999 in Le Mans, Rennes, andtour s to the Festival o f European Theater in Grenoble, then to Tours, Strasbourg,Avignon, Nimes and Montp ellier .

2 Interview with Milos Lazin, Spring 2000, Paris .

3 Oslobotmjt November 2 , 199 7

4 Adapted by Lazin from the Vidosav Stevanovic's nove l, L llt des Balkans with DeniseBona , Renaud Danner , Jacqu es Giraud, and Nathalie Villeneuve. Music by StevanKovas Tickmayer. Set design by Franc;ois Bouchdaudy . A coproduction with LcsFederes, Montluc;on, and le Theatre de 'Union, Limoge s

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MEYERHOLD S 1936 VISIT TO PRAGUE

Jarka Burian

Four major European theatre art ists-one Russian and threeCzech-met against a backdrop of increasing international tensions in the fallof 1936 in Prague. The great Russian director V sevolod Meyerhold was

traveling back to Moscow from Paris, whereas Czech director E. F. Burian andthe distinctive team of iii Voskovec and Jan Werich were fully eng aged intheir respective Prague theatres. Although the visits of Meyerhold to Burian sD 3 7 Theatre and to \ oskovec and Werich s Liberated Theatre were not ofextraordinary s ignificanc e to theatre in global terms, they were charged with aspecial importance in th e lives of these highly creative theatre people whosepaths intersected at a cr itical time in their respective live s, on the broader stageof world events.

Depending on our age and inclinations, we may have variousassociations with 1936. In the Uni ted States, the second presidential electionvictory of FDR was concurrent with the midpoint of the great Depression.Spo rt fanciers ma y recall the fourth subway World Series that fall betweenNew York s two te ams, the G iants and Yankees, wo n by the latter, four gamesto two. Others may remember that 1936 was probably the last year when anIvy League football team had two players chosen as All .c\mericans, lint Frankand Larry Kelley of Yale. Broadway theatre wa s having one of its brighterseasons, as marked by productions of Wi erset, DearJ End, Idiots Delight, OnYou r Toes, and the John Gielgu d Hamiel, while the Fede ral Theatre had notablehits in Orson Welles Ma.-beth and the Living Newspaper s Triple A PlowedUnder.

In Europe, the exp loits of Je sse Owens at the 1936 su mm erOlympics in Berlin were unsettling to Adolf Hitler and his notion s of Aryansuperiority. But other things, far from sport or theatre, were doubtless moreimportant to Hitler and other E u ropean leaders. Openly defying the Treaty ofLocarno, Germany had militarized the Rhin ela nd in March. In May theoccupatio n of :\ddis Ababa victoriously concluded Mussolini s seve n-monthwar of aggression against Ethiopia. A nd on July 18th began the Spanish CivilWar, a mihtary and political action that would dominate Europe s attention formore than two years and serve as prologue to \Vorld Wa r II.

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I n the Soviet Union, other special tensions were impacting society

and art in 1936. A symptom of Stalin s increasing harshness in achievingmonolithic power, the process of cleansing the Party of all potential diversityhad already begun in 1935, but a most significant escalation occurred inAugust of t 936: the first of the great public show trials began, involving Partyveterans Zinoviev, Kamenev, and others, all of whom were found guilty andexecuted. Th e arts, too, were inevitably affected: Shostakovich had comeunder critical attack earlier in the year for his opera L Jtfy Macbeth o Mtsrnsk andthe ballet Bright Stream. Meyerhold himself, despite his enormous reputation ,had already been criticized for Meyerholditis -i.e., paying more attention to

subj ective, individual matters of form than to the criteria o f socialist realism,which prescribed ideologically approved subjects readily intelligible to themasses. In March of 1936 he was still able to resist such attacks, i f not openlydefy them. In two speeches he defended Shostakovich as well as his ownpractices, reminding his critics of the debt owed by others to his work - -such asOkhlopkov and even the Moscow Art Theatre . His last major successes hadbeen The L Jtfy o the Camelias in 1934, and The uee n o Spades in 1935 .Thereafter he was primarily working on plans for staging Boris Godunov aproduction which never materialized. 1

In the late summer and early fall of 19 36 Meyerhold was also still freeto travel. Accompanied by his wife, the actress Zinaida Raikh, he visited Paris,where Meyerhold met wi th Pablo Picasso to discuss prospects o f a productionof Hamlet which Picasso might design. During their return to Moscow inOctober, Meyerhold and Raikh visited Prague, and a number of meetings,casual as well as planned, occurred between Meyerhold and the mostimportant o f the Czech avant -garde theatre artists, E F Burian and theenormously popular duo of Voskovec and Werich, known together as V+W.In a week s time, Meyerhold attended three of the Czechs productions, paidbackstage visits, gave a public lecture, and met for several hours with thecollective of E. F . Burian s D 37. A closer look at these events provides aninteresting footnote to modem theatre history, as Meyerhold, an aging,renowned artist under fire in his own state, mingled with young artists whowere fortunate to practice in a land as yet free of coercive pressures.

All three of the Czechs had been colleagues and came to prominencein the late 1920s. V + W's Liberated Theatre was established after the duo'sgreat success in comic reviews with music beginning in 1927 under the aegis ofthe original Liberated Theatre. V+W's appeal was so pronounced, how ever,that they took over the theatre under their own names . Sole authors andproducers as well as the leading performers, they worked with e xcellentcomposers, directors, choreographers, designers, and actors in a permanent

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ensemble. By the mid 1930s, reacting to increasingly difficult times affecting all

of Europe, their revues had shifted from an emphasis on sheer entertainmentto increasingly sophisticated political satire, though without any political partyalignment. 2

Emil Frantisek Burian , a multi-talented artist and Communist Partymember since youth, was formally educated in music and was a colleague ofVoskovec and Werich in studio productions of the late 1920s. Subsequendy, inaddition to his purely musical work, he worked with a variety of theatrecompanies in and beyond Prague before opening his own Prague theatre in thefall of 1933. Naming it D 34 for the year to come3, he dedicated it to explicidy

Marxist, Communist ideals, although he chronically experienced significantinner struggles between his instinctive need for artistic freedom and his strongcommitment to the political Left. His productions were also marked by hisinnate musicality, his fondness for folk themes, and surprisingly sophisticatedtechniques o f staging , especially a projection system (Theatergraph) combininglive performers and projected images. 4 Producing in much smaller, lessadequate facilities than those ofV+Ws Liberated Theatre, his work by 1936had attracted as much international attention as theirs. Mounting moreproductions, for shorter runs, than Voskovec and Werich (who normally didonly two productions a year), he also developed a cultural center o f sociallyconscious, politically dedicated, mainly young people to support the work onhis own theatre collective. S

As distinct from V+W, Burian had long been an avid admirer ofMeyerhold and his theatre. They had in fact met in Prague during an earliervisit by Meyerhold in 1934, although it is not clear whether Meyerhold saw anyproductions in D 34 at that time; moreover, Burian had seen some ofMeyerhold's productions in Moscow in 1934. By 1936, Burian had alreadyheard of the pressures on the arts in the USSR, and it seems dear thatMeyerhold informed im more fully of his problems during the October visitto Prague .

In 1936, V+W ran two productions: in the spring, The Rag Ballad,based on the figure of Fran


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Kresli l A H offmeist r

A 1936 caricature of Meyerhold and Burian by Alfred Hoffmeister, withthe caption : In Spain there is revolution , women and children are

dying-and where are the plays?

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Burian nd Meyerhold, perhaps during Meyerhold s afternoon visitwith the D 3 7 collective on October 30, 1936 .


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they also form an interesting supplement to his artistic credo as expressed

elsewhere in other sources:

4

Between the actor and the playwright lies the director'sessential preparatory work. I f I get the text of a play in my hands , Imust transform it into a director's score, and only then may I presentit to the actor. It is up to the director to take the individual elementsof the play, the individual figures, each drawn distinctively, andcompose them into an organic entity according to his unified sense ofthe play as a whole . . . . As a director, it takes me many years to

recompose an author's text n order that I might begin working withan actor on the stage. I reflected on Gogol's vizor for ten years. OnPush.kin's Boris Godunov which I shall stage in the very near future,for fifteen year s.

The director must not read an author's text many times. Hedoesn t have to know all the details of his next production. Hedoe sn ' t have to fall n love with one scene at the expense of a clearsense of the whole The director must have an absolutely clearidea o f hi s next production, an iron skeleton, thought through in its

implications, in its fundamental forms . But not only that : like acomposer , like one who hears how this or that instrument reproducesindividual pa ssage s of the composition, so too must the director --inthe very process of shaping the entire conception of the play --have asense o f how each actor will be the interpreter of thi s or thatcomponent of that conception . [and} which instrument in thedirector's score each actor will be.

Onl y after such initial work does the director approach theactors , and now begins the second phase of the director's work,which can proceed onl y together with the actor. Only in this waydoe s the initial skeleton become clothed with flesh, muscle, and skin,and its blood begin to circulate

f I come to the stage with a plan precisely compo sed inadvance , I am able to orchestrate the score only in tandem with theactor s, the liv e in struments of my composition . The pages of mydirector 's thoughts look like musical notes , and verbal comments areaccompanied b y mu sical notations . .

Director s who operate as I do are often c riticized foroverpowering their actor s. Those are fairy tales and empty phra ses

A m o dem actor i s well aware of the legitimacy of the director -

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compose r s function and knows that it is the only right path for the

modem theatre. The actor 's abilities are not restricted; on thecontrary he is constandy prompted toward his own fertile initiatives.

Rehearsals for the director actually begin on the day of theopening performance, the day the audience first appears in thetheatre. Until then irs merely been a mutual becoming acquaintedand arriving at the best instrumentation for the director's creativecomposition -production. On ly the thirty -fifth performance might beconsidered the opening night

The entire work of the director and actors is dependent on

the presence of the public, and the production can resound fully onlyif it has experienced the mutual effect of stage and audience on eachothe r Theatre has the great advantage of being a live form, itscreators able to test their efforts and perfect them in constant contactwith those for whom they work.

I can see from the way you react to my comments that mythoughts are familiar to you, which is understandable--if you workwith E. F. Burian, with a director -musician who composes hisproductions. I saw this in The arber of Seville in every step eventhough I don t understand your langu age. Just for the record: I comefrom a musical family. From childhood I learned to play the pianoand then for many years studied the violin. Originally, I was todedicate myself to music, but then I left it and came to theatre . Iregard my musical training as the foundation of my wo rk as adirector. 8

On the evening of that same Friday, October 30th, Meyerholdattended a performance of V +W s Heaven on arth and visited backstage. Healso left a poignant note composed for the theatre's guestbook. I t pays aspecial tribute to Voskovec and Werich and their theatre, but also indirecdyreveals again Meyerhold's na/111?/ that which placed him in irreconcilableopposition to the ideological forces governing theatre in his native land:

In 1913, my friend, the late poet Apo llinaire, took me to theCirque Medrano. After what we'd seen that night, Apollinaireexclaimed: These performers- -using the means of the commedia

dell'arte--are saving theatre for artists, actors,and

directors. Sincethen, from time to time, I would return to the Medrano, hoping tointoxicate myself again with the hashish of improvised comedy. ButApollinaire was gone. Without him I could no longer find the artists

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he had shown me. I looked for them with a longing heart but the

Italian "lazzi" were no more. Only tonight, October 30, 1936, I sawthe zanni again in the persons of the unforgettable duo o fVoskovec and Werich, and was once more bewitched by performersrooted in the Italian commedia ex improviso. Long live commediadell' arte Long live V oskovec and W erich 9

Meyerhold's final theatre visit in Prague was again to V+WsLiberated Theatre. As the following newspaper account indicates, it was anexuberant event:

On Monday [the 2nd of November] occurred a specialperformance o f alada zhadrii [The Rag allad} for Soviet theatricaldirector V sevolod Meyerhold, who came to the theatre accompaniedby his wife, the celebrated Soviet actress Zinaida Raikh, Mrs.Tretiakov, and Minister Alexandrovski and his wife. The theatre wassold out to the last seat, and the performance took place in a veryfestive and friendly atmosphere. During intermission the Sovietguests visited the greenroom, and after the performance ended withan ovation by ll those present, the public still insisted on a reprise o f

pochod proti vetru ["The March Against the Wind, the agitationalsong hit of the play] which ll joined in to sing. Then, with chantedcries, the audience urged director Meyerhold onto the forestage. Hesho ok hands heartily with the performers and then embracedVoskovec and Werich , which the audience welcomed with morestormy applause and outcries. Upon leaving the stage, Voskovec,Werich, and Meyerhold were besieged by autograph hunters. 10

I t may have been one o f the last occasions when Meyerhold receivedsuch open, unreserved acclaim from an audience.

A few subsequent details are necessary to complete the story. Clearlyagitated by what he now had heard about the persecution o f Meye rh old,Burian launched a number of public and private projects protesting restrictionso f artistic freedom in the Soviet Union, an action that led to numerous directconflicts with the Communist press in Prague. On stage, one of Burian's nextproductions, Hamlet III (March 1937), became an open attack on any form ofartistic repression. It took more than a year before tensions eased and Burianbecame mollified (or resigned). By that time, world events also provideddistraction: the Munich capitulation in September 1938, the ull occupation of

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the Czech land s by the Germans in March 1939, the Berlin -Moscow pact that

August, and the start of World War II that September . Burian s theatreremained open until1941 when it was closed by the gestapo and Burian wasplaced in concentration camps, where he spent the war.

Voskovec and Werich s theatre was closed shortly after the Munichcapitulation, and within a few months its two leaders emigrated to the USA,where they spent the war years. Their Liberated Theatre was effectivelyflnished, despite their attempt to revive it after the war.

Meyerhold s story after the 1936 visit to Prague is the best known. Inbrief, his own theatre was liquidated in January 1938. He was temporarilysaved by his old mentor, Stanislavsky, who offered him work as teacher andassociate in the latter s Opera -Drama Studio, and, in May 1938 a position as aDirector of Stanislavsky s Opera Theatre. Stanislavsky died in August 1938,but Meyerhold succeeded in completing Stanislavsky s production o f Verdi s

igoletto in March 1939. By then Meyerhold was Chief Director of the OperaTheatre, but although he also became involved in other theatre projectsMeyerhold s days were numbered. At the fust All -Union Conference ofTheatre Directors in Moscow in June 1939, Meyerhold made his last speech onJune 18 . I t has been reported in various ways, from an idealistic account o f hisdefying the forces ranged against him, to other accounts that speak of hiscomplete recantation of his own work and principles. The consensus today isthat the latter version is closer to reality . In any event, he was arrested a fewdays later in Leningrad and returned to Moscow. Less than a month after that,on July 14th, his wife, Zinaida aikh was brutally murdered in their Moscowapartment. On February 2nd 1940, one day after being sentenced, Meyerholdwas shot to death.

A flnal echo of these events lies in E. F Burian s own recantations inthe early 1950s, by which time Burian held the army rank of Major as head ofhis reconstituted theatre, the Army Art Theatre. I t had been established in1951, a few year s after- the Communist putsch o f February 1948 had seizedpower from the short -lived Czechoslovak (Third) Republic, which had lastedless than three years after the war. By this time Burian had committed himselfcompletely to Communist ideology and practice in the arts, although he alsointermittently exhibited many signs of uncertainty and inner stress. 12

Nevertheless, in remarks made to his new collective, he renounced his formerfolly in supporting Meyerhold, attributing it to his own naivete and to

Meyerhold s misleading him about political and ideological realities in theSoviet Union of the 1930s.An especially pungent irony lay in Burian s claim that the Meyerhold

productions he saw n the 1930s were essentially inferior to Burian s own. As

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one statement encapsulates it, I never adopted a thing from Meyerhold s

theory or practice. Documents exist that attest to his own learning fromperformances at my Theatre D, [for example] how to operate within a smallstage space, with lights, with music and choreography. t isn't true that Ipersisted in Meyerhold s path after learning o f the true state o f affairs; ratherthe truth is that once I learned the reasons for the criticisms o f Meyerhold Iturned my back on him as an enemy of the beloved Soviet land . 13

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NOTES

I Two books are very use ful in providing an overview of Meyerhold's activities in the1930s: Edward Braun's The Thtatre of Mrytrhold (London: Eyre Methuen, 1979); andAlma Law's edition o f Mryt rhold Speaks Mryerhold Rthearses by Aleksandr Gladkov.(Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997). Law's introduction is particularlyvaluable.

For a full de scription of V+W's theatre activity before World War l see JarkaBurian, The Liberated Theatre of Voskovec and Wench, Educati011al Theatrejouma/292 (May 1977), pp. 153 -175.

The D in D 34 and sub sequent years stands for the Czech word divadlo, i.e.,theatre.''

Theatergraph was a prototype of what later appeared as Laterna Magika. In the late1950s, Alfred Radok, a former assistant of Burian, along with scenographer JosefSvoboda, developed a more sophisticated, hi-tech version of Burian' s pioneeringprojection technique for the Czec hoslova k exhibit at Brussels Expo 58. Latema Magikais s till a successful producing organization in Prague today.

s For a fulle r account of Burian's pre -war theatre ee Jacka Burian, E. F. Burian: D34-D41 , The Drama Review 20:4 (December 1976), pp . 95-116.

6 The Beaumont and Fletcher play w as The Spanish Curate into which Vo skovec andWerich introduced Jupiter and other cl assic myth elements.

Uryve k z piedn:isky V. Meyercholda o modernim divadle, piednesene 29. iijna vUranii v Praze (A selection from a lecture by V. Meyerhol d on mo d ern theatrepresented on October 29 in the Urania in Prague], Program D 37 no. 5 (19 December1936): 72 -73.

M. Bergmannova , Kolektivni interv iew s V. Meyercholdem v D 37 (A collectiveinterview with V. Meyer ho ld in D 37), Program D 37 no. 5 (19 December 1936): 74-77.

Quoted in Desetlet Osvoboze11iho divadla [Ten Years of the Liberated Theatre) (Praha:Fr. Borovy, 1937), p. 105 .

IO Meyerchold v O$vobozenem divadle (Meyerhold in the Liberated Theatre), RudiProvo 4 November 1936, p. 4.]

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Sec Mryerhold Speaks, above, pp. 42-49, for a mo r e detailed account of Mcyerhold 's

last years.

2 Burian's postwa r career is de scribed n Jar ka Burian, Th e Dark Era in ModemCzec h Theatre: 1948 -1950, Th eatre H istory Studi es XV (1995), 41-66.

13 E . F. Burian a Meye rch old, Kro11ika Armtid11iho Umi/eckiho Divadla (P rah a: a ~ eVojsko , 1955 ), 277 280. r use ful summary of the r epor ting of the eve nts o f th eMeyerhold visit may be found in Art ur Zavodsky, Me jercholdova a v ~ c v av PrahcOeami Dobov ej Ilace [Meyerhold' s Visit in Prague Through the Eyes of theContemporary Pr essj, S lovwsk divadlo 25, 4 (1977), 529 -542 .

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MOD JESKA SOME BASIC TRUTHS

Kazimierz raun

Theatre is mortal, as humans are. Productions vanish. Actors passaway. Theatre, the most humane of ll arts, shares the human condition n llits aspects and dimensions . We can read a book again, all we need to do isreach for it on th shelf at home, or at the library; we can return to the Louvreand sit on that small red sofa in front of Mona Lisa; we can listen to Bach,played by an orchestra, either live or on disc. But we are not able to returnagain to a theatre full of spectators, and experience with them th thrill at therise of the curtain and hold our breath stunned by actors.

There are, of course, records of productions of the past known tohistorians: drawings and paintings of scenes and portraits of stars, reviews andprivate letters, memoirs and diaries. From the second half of the nineteenthcentury we have photographs, first taken in studios, then on stage. From thesecond half o f the twentieth century we have films and videos. e can studydramas and imagine what th scenery looked like and how the actors played .

e can visit ruins of old theatres: we can sit in th orchestra of the Theatre ofDionysos in Athens (326 B.C.) or buy a ticket to the La Scala in Milan (1778A.D.). We can envision shows which were played there. These resourcesprovide certain clues about what the theatre of the past was, but at the sametime, we are so overwhelmed by so much blank space. No wonder that actorsof past performances are difficult to imagine, and their lives even moredifficult to reconstruct.

And because acting has had always two dimensions - first, the humanand private, and second, the artistic and public writing about performers is

especially risky and perilous. We know theoretically from Stanislav sky,Grotow ski, and others, and practically from constant media attempts tointrude on the private lives of stars that the two dimensions of actingintertwine, mingle, and mutually condition and w ll continue to do so. nactor s personality is the raw material on which the role is built, and thu s therole is built out of a living person s biology, physicality, emotions, sensitivity,intelligence , creativity, and soul.

We are also aware that, in a natural way, we treat actors as we treatother people : we like them or hate them, we frequently try to manipulate and

control them. I f th y are performing, we support or oppose them bypurcha sing tickets for their shows or movies or by staying home. I f th y are nolonger alive , we also tend to use them for our own purposes : to explain, justify,or support our own ideologie s, view s, or life styles, using them as intellectual

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constructs o f our own design. \'\ hen writing on actors, we may be guilty o f

various sins, such as excess o f love or excess of criticism, lack of empathy orhumility; laziness in doing research, asking experts, and study ing somces, oreagerness to present them as we fancy them, not as they were. \'\fho is this

we I am talking about? All o f us writing on and about actors: first o f all,theatre historians, secondly critics and reviewers, but also novelists, screenwriters, and playwrights, such as Cyprian Norwid, author of the play, The ctor(ca. 1864), or Jean -Paul Sartre, author of Kea11 (1953) .

As author of migre Queen, a play on Helena l'vfodjeska (1989), I amaware that I may be culpable of the same offenses. So, when I run across a

new study, article , play, or novel on Modjeska and I see or suspect errors,misinterpretations , or distortions, I try to understand how and why theyoccurred - not to judge, evaluate, or criticize. Recently there have been severaloccasions to think again about Modjeska, thanks to new writings about her. Idecided not to argue or agree with those works , but rather to try , once more,to draw a true picture of that great woman and great artist, recalling andreevaluating what I know about her.

I said a true picture" for two reasons . First, I believe that truthexists, that it differs from a lie . Even if the complete truth (especially n

historical or biographical matters) can be elusive, honest efforts should bemade to search for it, and approach it as closely as possible . Second, althoug hthe truth about a person belonging to the past is always conditioned by theculture of both the object (the person written about) and the subject (theperson who writes), there are objective facts referring to the object which aretrue or not: the person's deeds and words, others' accounts, statements,testimonies, as well as various records, statistics, data, etc.

A note should be inserted here: There is a perennial questionhaunting theatre historians as to whether reviews of theatre productions,including descriptions of actors' performances, can be treated as truthfulsomces. The answer is not simple, because, on one hand, reviews are alwaysculturally and personally conditioned; they express the reviewer's own feelingsand tastes. They may be politically or financially manipulated by directivesfrom the authorities or monetary bribes. O n the other hand, reviews usuallycontain some objective descriptions and, even i f obviously biased, may providesome factual information on a show.

A fter all these necessary preliminaries, let us establish some essentialtruths about Helena Modjeska . By themselves, these truths w ll demystify themyths and legends about her, rectify injustices done her, correctmisinformation, set the record straight, or simply repeat known facts.

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Portrait o Helena Modr"{ jewska,Tadeusz Ajdukiewicz 1880

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EmigriQueen y Kazimiea raunStary Teatr Cracow Poland World Premiere May 1989Directed y Jan Maciejowski Anna Polony as Modjeska

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Helena Modjeska's life (1840 -1909) can be divided into three unequalperiods of time . In each of these three periods she found herself in a situationin which she could either fail and give up , or overcome the difficulties, betterher character, enlarge her acting range, and eventUally transform her whole lifeand career. She always moved on. I should mention that Modjeska was herAmerican stage name; in Poland she used the stage name Modrzejewska; hermother s name was Misel; her father was unknown. Her precise date of birth isnot certain.

The first period ofModjeska s life lasted more than twenty-five years,from approximately 1840 to 1868. She spent about ten years of childhood asthe neglected daughter of a single mother in a typical , lower middle-classenvironment in Cracow . She went to work very young as a waitress in hermother s cafe. Also quite early, she had her first relationships with men andbore a son out of wedlock. At the age of about twenty, she made . her firstappearance on stage, and for five years she was an actress in small amateur andsemi -professional traveling companies playing in provincial towns. She alsohad a relatively successful, although short (about three months), professionalengagement in the City Theatre in Lw6w, one of the biggest Polish culturalcenters at the time. Still unmarried, she had another child (a daughter), whodied at the age of three .

As a young, beautiful, and talented actress, she rose above the caliberof the provincial companies in which she performed . Living with a much olderlover-impresario, she, it is said, did not spurn other men. She could havefrittered away her talent and exploited her body, she could have become lazyand abandoned her aspirations. O r she could plunge in to the unknown and the .uncertain, and strive for more and better . She chose to break away fromfourth-rate theatre, and from the morally dubious situation in her personal life .She left her lover forever and went to Cracow , where she managed to beengaged by the famous City Theatre in 1865. Her tale n t, will persistence,ambition, and hard work on each role resulted in the rapid furthering of hercareer. She soon became one .of the two ''leading ladies in Cracow . Shestarted to appear in Shakespeare and many other class ical plays. Modjeska alsotransformed her personal impulsive lavishness and charm into a carefullycalculated feminine strategy. She gave her self to her ne.xt suitor withoutscruples or a promise of marriage, because he was an aristocrat. Nevertheless,on ce having ascertained the generosity of his soul and his usefulness for hercareer, she led him to the altar and remained strictly faithful to him. till death .Charles Chlapowski (in Polish : Karol Chlapowski) paid her back with devotionand ab solute subordination of his own life to her theatre life . Thus, withinthree year s in Cra co w, sh e attained noted success on s tage and through

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marriage she entered upper class circles. 1bis allowed her to successfully apply

to the leading Polish theatre in Warsaw, Teatr Rozmaitosci, which was in factthe Polish National Theatre (the name National Theatre Teatr Narodowywas prohibited y the Russian occupation authorities ruling at that time nWarsaw). Modjeska was emp lo yed as a permanent member of the company ofthe Nation al Theatre in 1868.

The second period of Modjeska s life and career extended from 1868to 1876: the seven years of her reign in Warsaw. There Modjeska obtained theunquestionable position of a star, she had the right to choose her roles, andshe received a generous salary. She added many new roles to her stock

repertoire, both contemporary and classical. She mastered and refined heracting, which became a convincing and cohesive blend of her personalcharacteristics (beauty, sensitivity, delicacy, intelligence, wit, elegance) withstage means of expression (inte rnal motivation of actions, voice control, senseof tempo, measured movement, expressive gesture). In a very short time sh eaccomplished everything there was to be accomplished theatricall y, socially,and financially. And because there was so much of everything and it all cameso quickly she started to be threatened by a spiritual emptiness.

Suc h an internal feeling of bareness often arises when one no longersets for oneself harder goals and, also, does not receive from the surroundingsnew challe nges, stimuli, and inspiration. At the same time, the combination ofModjeska s high earnings and sudden theatrical and social successes earned herthe dislike and even the hatred that the mediocre always bestow upon thegreat; she focused upon her self the jealousy of the theatrical community andthe enmity of some journalists. She started to suffoca te in Warsaw. For tworeasons, indivisibly interconnected, she decided to leave the country. First, s hedesired to advance her caree r, to conquer stages in other countries, to follow inthe footsteps of other actors and actresses who, with great success, performedon foreign stages and in foreign tongues. As we know, at that time there werequite a few such actors, as well as singers, and among the latter were severalPoles as well. Mod jeska would see them from time to time performing inWarsaw and hea rd about them quite often. She eve n played with some ofthem. Second, her personal life in Poland had become unbearable. She was theobjec t of the love of the public, as well as of the passion of many individualadmirers, but, at the same time, she was surrounded by envy and was thesubject of spoken and printed insults. At every possible opportunity she wasreminded of every one of her sins, both present and past, actual andfabricate d .

The third period of Modjeska s epic story is her thirty - three years asan emigre (1876 -1909), including thirty years on stage (1877 -1907).


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Overcoming enormous difficulties thro1 1gh hard work, laboriously learning theEnglish language, mercilessly overtaxing her strength, Modjeska made herAmerican debut on August 20, 1877, n San Francisco, roughly a year after herarrival in America. She quickly attained the status of a star in the Americantheatre, and later on, in the international theatrical world. She enriched heracting with new means of expression indispensable for communication with anew public: without losing her inner power and delicate acting shades, shedeveloped more appealing and penetrating external expression. Abroad shemade gains not only . theatrically but socially as well, establishing newacquaintances in the highest American, British, and French social and artistic

spheres. Henry Longfellow , the prince of American poets, and AlfredTennyson , the prince of British poets, became her dear friends. She wasreceived in Buckingham Palace.

She advanced financially as well. Her earnings, measured according totoday s pay scales, would be comparable to b o u ~three million dollars for onetour (at a rough calculation) . Such an income permitted quite an opulent lifestyle. Her husband, however, squandered much of it on poorly plannedinve stments . Their residence in Arden in California (built in 1888) absorbedmas sive sums of money . She frequently toured America, and also performed

successfully in Britain, Ireland, as well as n Prague (then, under Austrian rule)where she played in Polish. As a star of world renown, she made guestappearances in Poland , where she was always welcomed with enthusiasm andpride, and was bid farewell to with regret, though-by some-with relie

This brief look at Modjeska s life and career reveals that it is a saga ofconstant growth, change, and transformation-always for the better, alwaysfor something higher, brighter, more refined. I t is fascinating to see how thiswoman and thi s actress labored on her own character and did not cease towork on the new roles while bettering the old ones.

At the beginning of her career she was not required to work too hard.When she first went on s tage, Modjeska had to learn a new role, some of themrather small, every two weeks. Today this may seem a lot, but it was norma:l insmall nineteenth -century traveling companies. But when she was engaged inCracow, the number of new roles jumped to average of one per week,including many leads. In a season of about forty weeks from September toJune) , she played about forty roles. I t was an enormous challenge, andModjeska ro se to the occasion. The number of the parts dimini shed inWar saw, but included revisions of those already played , in which she was

improving nuance s and developing new interpretation s; in all her parts shestrove for perfection .

Already in Poland, hard work became a characteristic of herper so nality. But she was to be really tested in America. Her struggle with the

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although always subdy modulated, and both authenticity and an idealization o f

the characters presented. She was one o f the first great stage masters whopromoted truth as a new model o f acting. She used psychological processes ,emotions, voice, and body with naturalness and ease, as well as discipline andcontrol. She combined and/ or intertwined maiden weakness and tendernesswith queenly strength and domination. Famous were her lowered tones o fvoice and her seldom used abrupt raising o f her voice to a scream. Alsopraised were her unexpected collapses, her faintings, her scenes of madness(Lady Macbeth), o f poisoning (Adrienne Lecouvreur), of preparation for death(Mary Stuart), and o f death itself Ouliet).

In her youth she probably did not take care of others much, but onceshe began to be paid well and, very soon, to earn exorbitandy, she generouslysupported her mother, many members of her extended family, and very oftenstrangers who wrote to her asking for help. She gave significant sums todifferent charities, including the founding o f a school of folk art for girls inZakopane, Poland. Her own education ended on a level comparable to acontemporary American middle school. In later years she read extensively andbecame very knowledgeable, especially in the dramatic literature o f the world,both classical and contemporary. Probably because o f her lack o f moreextensive and profound studies, she deliberately surrounded herself with highlyeducated people, writers, intellectuals, painters, musicians from whom shecould learn through conversation.

In her school, run by Roman Catholic nuns, she acquired the basictenets of a religious and moral education, but it seems that as a young womanshe did not follow these instructions. Her interest in faith and religiouspractices was, most probably, instigated by unusual and dramatic development.One o f her Warsaw's admirers, a talented painter, Adam Chrnielowski, whowas even supposed to go with Modjeska and her party to America, informedher in a letter that he had renounced the world and entered a monastery; hetook the name o f brother Albert . He devoted himself entirely to servinghomeless people, created a special order specializing in this ministry, andattracted many followers . The austerity and sanctity o f his life were widelyknown and after his death was confirmed by his elevation to sainthood in1980s. [See SEEP , volume 20, no. 3, Fall 2000, for a review o f Wojtyla's OurGod's Brother.] Brother Albert wrote letters to Modjeska containing spiritualguidance. On a visit to Poland in 1884, she met im and listened to histeachings and advice. Her later life indicates that she took much o f it seriously.

An additional thread, not existing in early years, began to appear inModjeska's life in the 1880s: her patriotism and devotion to the cause o f heroppressed nation . For years she had lived in the world o f art, enclosed by thewalls of the theatre. She was not a political woman. Gradually, she started to

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learn that in Poland no one could escape from politics, and that an artist could

not be politically indifferent, even an actor, because just one step off the stage,just beyond the foot -light s, there was th e real world of the oppressed country,the everyday life of the nation subjected to a hated foreign rule.

Modjeska's patriotic and later clearly political involv eme nt wasprobably triggered b y a tragic event during h er guest appearance in Warsaw in1880 . At the end of one of h er performanc es , during the endless curtain calls, agroup of high school studen t s approached the stage, throwing flower s Amids tthe applause and acclamations a wreath with two sashes--one white, one red(the Polish national colors)--fell at the actress's feet. She picked it up from thebed of flowers covering the stage and pressed it to her bosom. The audiencerose. The clapping was d ea fening. The group of students near the stage loudlychanted her name. Ther e was no end to the ovations. The following day all ofthe se stu dents were expelled from their high school by the Russian authorities,with an additional punishment, a "black ticket," prohibiting them from everattending any other school. The next day one of them shot himself. Modjeskaparticipated in his funeral, amid the innumerable crowd, carrying the samewreath with national colors she had received on the stage. We may only guesswhat she thought and felt.

In 1885, Modjeska played for a week in Dublin , receivedenthusiastically by the audiences. his was especially the case when she playedMary Stuart, the depos ed Scottis h monarch. Her every word, directed againstQueen Elizabeth and the English government, evoked tremendousacclamation and frantic applause. After her last appearance Modjeska gave aspeec h from the stage, stating that the predicaments o f Poland and Irelandwere similar in both nation s' misfortunes and oppression, and likewise in theirhopes and constant prayer s for freedom. The public responded with a patrioticmanifestation. To calm down the excited Irish, the British police kidnappedthe actress and removed her from Dublin for several hours. When shereturned, she gave another speech from the balcony of her hotel, purportedlysaying: I love Ireland I pra y for your freedom I be seec h you to pray for thefreedom of Poland " That in stiga ted the crowd's ovation and riot brutallysuppressed by the police and soon denounced by the London press, whichfiercely attacked the actress.

In 1891, reciting poetry at a concert in Warsaw raising funds forstudents, Modjeska delivered a patriotic poem of the playwright and poet

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migri Queen at The Project Arts Center TheatreMedea Productions Dublin Ireland 1990

Directed by Kazimierz Braun Teresa Sawicka as Modjeska

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migri uem at he Polonia Theatre Toronto Ca nada 1992Directed by Jan Kopczewski Maria Nowotarska as Mo djeska

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E migriQ m at Teatr im. Slowackiego C racow Poland 1993 .Directed y Jan Kopczewski. Maria Nowotarska s Modjeska .


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very funny to see Beshaw's head app e ar from b elow the s tage, but her ow nface, pouting and grimacing, is also better equipped to express Mefys tofl 'sconsiderable consternation at the impossible ta sks Fa ust asks o f im than th epermanen tly grinning marionette .

Beshaw' s head is not the fir s t to appear on the stage. In the firstsce ne , w e ftnd Faust sitting in his study, recounting hi s inter es t in the dark arts .As he continues to explain his desire to go beyond all ea rthl y b oundarie s ofpropriety, h e stan d s up to reveal that he has been sittin g on Hoi:ejS's head .Hoiej s, whose h ead rese mble s Faust's without modificati o n, co ntinues tospeak his line s as Faust paces back and forth, either indicating that Faust is oftwo mind s in hi s s truggle to decide which path to take or that he ha s lo st his

head altogether .A sce ne titl ed In the Depths of the Sea shows Fau st's und erwater

travels to Wittenburg from the land of the Portugalien s, where he hadsununon ed Helen o f Tro y and Alexander the Great at th e bidding of thelustful King and Queen. Although this scene is comp letely superfluou s to theplot , it contains a very m emorable, humorous, and rath er repul siv e image . Areal chicken ca rcass, fully rigged with marionette s tring s, flie s by the otherdenize n s of the dee p, flapping its featherle ss wings . t is, o f co urse, thechicken of the sea.

Faust is eventually whisked away to hell after the agreed lap se oftime , even though h e attempts to prevent the devil from gaining

SEEP Vol.21 No.2 Summer2001

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Transcript of SEEP Vol.21 No.2 Summer2001