SEEP_vol.12_nos.2&3_Fall 1992

volume twelve, nos. 2 & 3

tall1992

SEEP (ISSN II 1047-0018) is a publication of the Institute for Contemporary Eastern European Drama and Theatre under the auspices of the Center for Advanced Study In Theatre Arts (CASTA), Graduate Center, City University of New York. The Institute Office is Room 1206A, City University Graduate Center, 33 West 42nd Street, New York. NY 10036. All subscription requests and submissions should be addressed to the Editors of SEEP: Daniel Gerould and Alma Law. CASTA, Theatre Program. City University Graduate Center, 33 West 42nd Street. New York, NY 10036.

EDITORS Daniel Gerould Alma Law

ASSOCIATE EDITORS Patrick Hennedy Jay Plum

ADVISORY BOARD Edwin WUson, Chair Marvin Carlson Leo Hecht Martha W. Coigney

CAST A Publications are supported by generous grants from the Lucille Lortel Chair in Theatre and the Sidney E. Cohn Chair in Theatre Studies in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the City University of New York.

Copyright 1991 CASTA

SEEP has a very liberal reprinting policy. Journals and newsletters which desire to reproduce articles, reviews, and other materials which have appeared in SEEP may do so, as long as the following provisions are met:

a. Permission to reprint must be requested from SEEP in writing before the fact.

b. Credit to SEEP must be given in the reprint.

c. Two copies of the publication in which the reprinted material has appeared must be furnished to the Editor of SEEP Immediately upon publication.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editorial Polley ....................................................................................... 4

From the Editors ................................. ....................... ............................ 5

Events ................................................................... ................................. 6

·some Moscow Premieres: The 1991-1992 Season• John Freedman ................................................................................... 10

"The European Cultural Month and the Witkacy Week: Cracow 1992" Daniel Gerould ..................................................................................... 20

"The Yara Arts Group Works in Kiev" Virlana Tkacz ....................................................................................... 30

"Meeting a Dream ... Meeting Yourselr Dmytro Kotelenets ............................................................................... 34

"Theatre's Velvet Revolution· Melinda Jo Guttman ............................................................................ 37

"Ghelderode Colloquium at the University of Cluj, Romania" David Willinger ................................... .................................................. 40

REVIEWS

"Metro" Edwin Wilson .......................................................................... 42

"The Suicide Comes 'Full Circle' In Cleveland" Scott T. Cummings ................................................................ 44

"Edvard Radzinsky'sAn Old Actress in the Role of Dostoevsky's Wife at the Jean Cocteau Repertory" Patrick Hennedy .................................................... ................ 49

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"Audience Discussion with Eve Adamson and Alma Law Following a Performance of "An Old Actress In the Role of Dostoevsky's Wife" ............................ 53

"Havel's Vanek Plays at the Jean Cocteau Repertory" Christine A. Pinkowicz ........................................................... 58

Contributors ......................................................................................... 63

Playscripts in Translation Series .......... ............................................... 65

Subscription Polley ............................................................................. 67

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 of submissions must concern themselves either with contemporary materials on Soviet and East European theatre, drama and film, or with new approaches to older materials in recently published works, or new performances of older plays. In other words, we welcome submissions reviewing Innovative perform· ances of Gogol but we cannot use original articles discussing Gogol as a playwright.

Although we welcome translations of articles and reviews from foreign publications, we do require copyright release statements.

We will also gladly publish announcements of special events and anything else which may be of Interest to our discipline. All submissions are refereed.

All submissions must be typed double-spaced and carefully proofread. The Chicago Manual of Stvle should be followed. Transliterations should follow the Library of Congress system. Submissions will be evaluated, and authors will be notified after approximately four weeks.

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FROM THE EDITORS

In our last "From the Editors: we stressed that 1992 would

be a year of crisis for the theatres In the countries served by our

journal as subsidies are cut and companies must seek out other

sources of financial support in order to survive. The plight of culture

and the arts in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union has

recently become a subject of general interest and even of some

urgency. As evidence of the growing attention paid to our area of

study, three feature articles appeared in the New York Times

(November 9-11) by John Rockwell from Moscow, Irkutsk, and Perm:

"Arts in Russia: A Loss of Glory--A Culture Strives to Root in Free

dom;• "Getting Along without Moscow--In Provinces, Artists Learn

Self-Suff iciency in the Price of Freedom;" and "Up from the

Underground--Russia's New Culture Begins to Emerge from Soviet

Rubble.• And the New York University Humanities Council and the

Department of Performance Studies is sponsoring an ongoing Inter

cultural Performance Colloquium, "Where is Performance Going in

Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States?"

(See Events)

We are delighted that the importance of performance In the

cultural life of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union is receiv

ing such wide recognition. In the present double Issue, we continue

our explorations of the changes In the theatrical life of these

countries. With the help of our readers and their reports we shall be

able to follow the development of new theatrical institutions and per

formance styles in what was once the Communist wor1d.

Daniel Gerould and Alma Law

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EVENTS

UPCOMING PRODUCTIONS

The Water Hen, by Stanisl'aw lgnacy Witkiewlcz, wUI be presented by the Nevermore Theatre Project, January 7-10, 14-17, 21-24, 1993. The production will be directed by Anne de Mare, choreographed by Marljeanne Uederbach, and designed by Alfred Preisser. The Nevermore Project was founded as an effort to devote substantial rehearsal time to a single production In hopes of creating a fully integrated theatrical piece. The Water Hen, translated by Daniel Gerould and C. S. Durer, has been In rehearsals for more than six months, during which the acting ensemble has worked with choreographers, composers, clowns, and visual artists In order to realize the unique vision of Witkiewicz's theatre. For more Information, call (212) 475-3569.

Jean Cocteau Repertory Theatre Is offering a new stage adaptation of Dostoevsky's The Idiot. The production runs In repertory with Harold Pinter's The Caretaker through February 12, 1993. can (212) 677-0060 for tickets.

The Neighbors, Nikolia Chichkine's examination of the Importance of living together on Planet Earth, will make its world premiere at The Triplex Performing Arts Center, Borough of Manhattan Community College, December 5, 1992. For tickets, call (212) 346-8510.

The Yara Arts Group announces the tentative production of Blind Sight, December 4-5, 1992, at La Mama ETC First Street workshop space. For more information about the Yara Arts Group, see the articles by and about Virlana Tkacz in this issue. For details about the production of Blind Sight, call (212) 475-6474.

INTERCULTURAL PERFORMANCE COLLOQUIUM

"Performance in Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States Since 1989, • a colloquium sponsored by the Department of Performance Studies at New York University, will examine the status of contemporary performance and its future potential in the former Soviet Union and Eastern block. The colloquium opened on November 11, 1992 with a panel discussion that asked the question, "Where Is Performance Going in Eastern Europe and The Commonwealth of Independent States?" Speakers included Grigori Gorin, Russian playwright and director; Daniel Gerouid,

6 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 12, Nos. 2 & 3

Professor of theatre and comparative literature, CUNY Graduate Center; Damon Popchrlstov, President, New Theatre Committee of the International Theatre Institute; Larissa M. I. Zaleska, director and consulting editor of the Princeton Research Forum; and Andrei Serban, director of the Hammerstein Center Arts Program, Columbia University. The session was moderated by Richard Schachner.

As part of the colloquium, on December 9, 1992, the Yara Arts Group will present excerpts from their work-In-progress, Blind Sight, and In the Light in the seventh floor "loft" of the Department of Performance Studies, Tisch School of the Arts.

A panel devoted to the topic of contemporary performance In Russia will conclude the series, January 27, 1993. Professor Anatoly Smeliansky, literary manager for the Moscow Art Theatre Studio School, will speak about "The Russian Theatre After Yurl Lublmov." Mikhail Shvydkol, an editor with the Kultura Publishing House, Moscow, will examine the "Changing Economic Circumstances of Russian Theatre." Susan Larsen, a member of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale University, will discuss "Women in Russian Theatre Since Perestroika."

For more Information about the colloquium, contact the Department of Performance Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, at (212) 998-1620.

RECENT STAGE PRODUCTIONS

The Threshold Theater Company presented the Englishlanguage premiere of Geza Pasklmdi's comedy, No Conductor, October 25 through November 8, 1992. The production was directed by Pamela Billig and starred Robert Katlms.

The Players Forum, "Home of the Slavic Theatre, • offered a series of staged readings as part of its fall season, Including productions of Agathamania, by Arnost Goldflam and Twenty Minutes With an Angel, by Alexander Vampilov (September 30); Night of the Gods, by Miro Gavran and To Steal a March on God, by Hanna Krall (October 16); and A Warsaw Melody, by Leonid Zorin (November 13) . Through such readings, the Players Forum hopes to demonstrate "the marvelous heritage of classical Slavic theatre and the vitality and genius of contemporary Slavic Theatre audiences."

An Old Actress In the Role of Dostoevsky's Wife, written by Edvard Radzinsky and translated by Alma Law, was presented by the Jean Cocteau Repertory Theatre, October 22-23 and November 7

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and 13, 1992. See the review and excerpts from a post-show discussion In this Issue.

A stage adaptation of Dostoevsky's The Grand Inquisitor, performed by Brad Greenqulst and directed by Roger Mrazek, was produced by Primary Stages In association with Rundfunk, October 17-20, 1992.

The Ubu Repertory Theatre presented Yalta, by Vladimir Volkoff, October 5, 1992. The production was directed by Shirley Kaplan.

FILM

FUm Forum presented a two-week retrospective of the career of Polish director Andrzej Wajda, October 2-15, 1992. Seventeen films were presented, including Ashes and Diamonds, The Birch Wood, Danton, Everything For Sale, A Generation, Kana/, Korczak, Landscape Alter Battle, Man of Iron, Man of Marble, The Promised Land, Samson, The Shadow Line, Siberian Lady Macbeth, The Wedding, Without Anesthesia, and The Young Girls of Wilko.

Ukranlan director Mikhail Belikov's exploration of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyt, Rapsad, opened April 29, 1992 for a limited run at the Eighth Street Playhouse in New York. The film uses Chernobyt as a metaphor for the collapse of moral values In the former Soviet Union ("rapsad" means "collapse" or "deterioration" In Russian).

Two Russian-language films entered in the main competition of the Cannes Film Festival were warmly received by audiences: Vltaly Kanevsky's Independent Life and Pavel Lungln's Luna Park. According to Janet Masslin, "each of these films attest[ed] to its director's talent and vision, but neither [was] coherent enough to have taken the festival by storm. •

Hear Me Cry, a forty-five minute documentary by Maclej J. Drygas about Ryszard Siwlec's suicidal protest of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, received the 1991 Felix Prize for European documentary film. Only recently has the film been shown In Polish theatres.

EXHIBITIONS

The exhibition, "The Great Utopia: the Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932," features the scenic designs of several con-


structlvlst artists. The exhibit Is showing through December 15, 1992 at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum In New York.

"Marc Chagall and the Jewish Theatre, • an exhibit at The Guggenheim Museum Soho, is showing through January 17, 1993.

The IBM Gallery of Science and Art hosted the exhibit, "Theatre In Revolution: Russian Avant-Garde Stage Design 1913-1935" during the spring and summer months. Hailed as "the most compelling show of the spring season" by the New York Times, the exhibition featured the works of such arts as leon Bakst, Alexandra Exter, Kazlmlr Malevich, liubov Popova, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova, Aleksandr Vesnin, and Georgi and Vladimir Stenberg, among others.

prepared by Jay Plum

9

SOME MOSCOW PREMIERES: THE 1991-1992 SEASON

John Freedman

In recent years. one often heard that theatre In Moscow had ceased to be an "event. • True or not, It would be hard to say that about the 1991-1992 season. Even with three months left to go, there were so many interesting new productions (and ticket demand was so great) that keeping up with them was not always easy. Following Is a survey (through March) of some of the season's most talked-about productions.

Since Its Inception In 1990, Alia Slgalova's Independent Company has stirred controversy for Its sensual productions that mix dance and drama. The November premiere of Salome added a new twist. Billed as Oscar Wilde's Salome, It Is, In fact, a fantasy that owes as much to Nabokov's Lolita. Following the biblical legend, the title role Is performed by a young girl (ten-year-old Anna Polltkovskaya) whose primary antagonist Is a sort of gentle Humbert In white. The erotic focus of the work shifts to Herod and his wife who battle between themselves for sexual and familial supremacy.

Vladimir Makslmov's spare black and white set consists primarily of a modernist sculpture standing upstage left. This stylized jungle-gym ties together the themes of Salome and Lolita. A small aluminum structure echoing the sculpture stands downstage right next to a white chair. The performance begins as four actors emerge to the accompaniment of rhythmic music, humping across the floor like worms and portending the performance's sexual theme.

Wilde's and Nabokov's texts are usually replaced by Slgalova's highly expressive choreography. The dancers' bold sweeping movements, In which the hands often cluster around key body parts (the head, the crotch, the breast), form a vision of people desperately attempting to seize control of the world they Inhabit. They stand In stark contrast to the young Salom~·s natural mannerisms. The dancers seldom perform In unison, usually doing solo numbers or differently choreographed scenes simultaneously.

The performance's turning point Is the powerful confrontation between Herod (Andrei Sergievsky) and his wife (Anna Terekhova) when Herodlas ultimately consents to Salom~·s doing the dance of the seven veils. Slowly, the two roll across the stage In a love-making scene while delivering Wilde's text in clipped rhythmic phrases. The dance of the seven veils Is performed by everyone but Salam~. and John's head is served up as a chUd's ball that bounces gaily across the stage.

The striking choreography, the set, lighting, music, and sparse use of text gives Salome a sense of inner space and freedom

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that leaves much to the Imagination. Indeed, one cannot help but feel that the hour-and-a-half performance Is not quite complete. That, however, Is but a minor drawback In this otherwise haunting and liberating work.

Another November premiere was the graduation production of May 32/City of Mice at the Shchukln Theatre Institute. The play consists of two one-acts unHied only In that they appear to be the product of someone's dreams, and they both scorn the spoken word. The success It enjoyed (City of Mice has been performed In Spain and Germany) prompted the Shchukln Institute to allow the students to remain on for an additional fifth year, while they organized Into a professional theatre.

May 32 Is a collection of scenes about a man visited by nighttime visions based on the class's movement exercises. Most of them are run-of-the-mill vaudeville or circus fare, but the students' execution of them Is not. Included are a "mirror" scene, an eastern candle dance and a circus act in which an actor cavorts on champagne bottles. Especially Impressive is an Inspired slow-motion Ping-Pong game in which shadow characters lift and spin the two players In the air. They fly over the first row of the audience. diving and tumbling in their mad pursuit of an illusive ball held on the end of a stick by an actor who is determined to make each return more dHficult than the last. Transitions among the segments are often made by rather tedious slow-motion war or fight scenes.

City of Mice was created by the students themselves under the direction of their classmate Eduard Radzlukevlch. It is primarily a musical phantasmagoria performed on an array of unorthodox instruments ranging from bottles and pipes to match boxes. It begins as an actor walks out on his hands and the lights come up to reveal a stage littered with bodies covered by black blankets. These are the "mice" who will come to life and act out various scenes. Among them are a fencing match among three men that slides gracefully into a flamenco dance performed by three women, a story of violent passion, and a music-box scene replete with dancing figurines. City of Mice Is a kind of visual concert In which the action develops as H It were music, flowing from one theme to the next, transforming and being reprised.

May 32/City of Mice is unmistakably a student production. However, the potential shown by the young actors fully justifies the attention It has brought them.

The year's finest production, perhaps, was The Bald Brunette, which opened at the Stanislavsky Theatre In December. Written by the 22-year-old Daniil Gink (the son of Kama Ginkas and Henrietta Yanovskaya) and staged by the 25-year-old David Babltsky, It was a major sign that a new generation Is ready to make

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Itself heard. Both author and director, Incidentally, are 1992 graduates of the directing faculty at the Moscow Art Theatre School.

The play begins as three half-lit figures, the Bald Man, the Brunette, and the Woman, stand motionlessly or move mechanically across Mark Polyakov's sparsely-decorated stage. Upstage right Is a large battered closet that occasionally serves as a stage entrance and exit. A green chair stands at center stage with a small television set. Downstage left there is an enclosed transparent construction that vaguely resembles a store window in which characters can isolate themselves from the others. The white backdrop splashed with red, yellow, and green is illuminated in a kind of neon glow. Later, it is revealed to be semi-transparent and allows for shadow scenes to be performed backstage.

The not-so-young Bald Man and the youthful Brunette engage in small talk, the significance of which lies primarily in what their intonation and mannerisms reveal about their relationship. At constant odds with one another, the two are so closely Intertwined that, In fact, they may be elements of a single psyche. Twice, the Bald Man Is joined by the enigmatic Woman (Lydumila Lushina) who may be his mother or a potential lover. Conversations develop almost randomly Into philosophical discussions, nonsensical aphorisms, or occasionally break down entirely. When this happens, the Bald Man and the Brunette stand on the proscenium and communicate through exquisite and hilarious mimetic gestures. Whatever the medium of expression, the themes tend to center around childhood, loneliness, complexes, and a frantic search for liberation.

The Bald Man Is performed by Pyotr Mamonov, formerly of the avant-garde rock group Zvuki Mu, and he brings to his role all of the quirks and flights of fantasy that made him a youth idol In the 1980s. Blessed with amazing stage instincts and extraordinary body control, Mamonov Is a whirlwind of motions, contortions, and skewed facial expressions. Denis Burgazliev as the cool, prodding Brunette is his perfect straight man.

The Bald Brunette brought a strikingly fresh feel to the Moscow stage and gave signs that the long-suffering Stanislavsky Theatre, which was taken over by Roman Kozak in 1991, may be poised for a renaissance. (However, later premieres of Bulgakov's Don Quixote, staged by Kozak, and Janusz Growacki's Fortinbras is Drunk, staged by Dmitry Brusnikin, were not as strong.)1 The Bald Brunette is entirely lacking In cliched stage mannerisms and "social commentary." The very rare social references are Invariably Intended to explore the Bald Brunette's inner reality, not to reflect the external world. It is no wonder that young people are flocking to this play, and not only because the lead role is played by one of its heroes.

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February saw the debut not only of an entertaining new play, The Gamblers-21st Century, but also of a new production company as well, Sergei Yursky's ACTors ARTel. This enterprise Is the most recent in a trend which has seen theatres begin experimenting with a western style of organization. To one degree or another, other companies plying their trade in rented halls with actors contracted for a specific show are the Anton Chekhov Theatre, the Oleg Borisov Enterprise, and Roman Viktyuk's Fora Theatre.

The Gamblers-21st Century is Yursky's own adaptation of Gogel's play set in a modern Black Sea resort hotel. In addition to creating one new character, changing some names, and significantly altering characterization (the tavern servant Aleksei becomes the hotel maid Adelaida lvanovna), Yursky reshaped Gogel's text, filling it out with excerpts from Dead Souls and other works. However, the essence of the plot is left intact. It is still a story of a cheater being cheated by cheats. The simple, masterfully illuminated set was designed by David Borovsky.

The cast includes some of Moscow's best-known actors, prompting one critic to quip that the play was "doomed to success." He need not have been so snide, for indeed, it Is a sparkling actors showcase. The "local" group of shysters Is especially effective. Aleksandr Kalyagln as Uteshitelny, Vyacheslav Nevinny as Krugel (a massive, modern cop) and Evgeny Evstigneev as Glov (a dissembling professor in town to auction off some paintings) simply put on an actor's workshop. Following Eustigneev's sudden death a week after the premiere, Yursky himself took over as Glov. Those who don't already know the play's outcome would never guess that this odd lot of sincere, nervous, and bumbling card sharks have a real surprise in store for the sleazy city slicker, lkharev (Leonid Filatov). When the famous stand-up comic Gennady Khazanov appears late in the play as the well-brushed Dergunov (changed from Gogel's Zamukhryshkin), he makes the lot of them look like amateurs. At least for a short while.

The production does have its share of flat moments although one senses that the culprit is the very reason for Its success. The simultaneous presence on stage of so many top-notch actors creates a kind of tug-of-war for the play's center. Even in Gogel's text there is a good deal of sitting around and, perhaps, not enough care was taken to fill those scenes with an inner dynamic. Ultimately, however, the staging's minor flaws are far outweighed by its successes.

The Gamblers-21st Century is both a bold example of how to go about modernizing a classic play as It is a throwback to another era when good actors carried the burden of a theatrical performance.

Undoubtedly by coincidence, the March appearance of What Are You Doing in a Tux? at the Modern Play Theatre faintly echoed

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The Gamblers. It, too, Is an adaptation of a classic (Chekhov's The Proposal) and It, too, sports a cast of bonafide stars. On that note, however, the comparison ends.

Director losif Raikhelgauz staged a whimsical mock opera/ mock ballet that both pokes fun at tradition and ever pays it its due. The witty libretto and perky music (by Dmitry Sukharev and Sergei Nikltln, respectively) is played out against an Ingenious cartoon-like set by Boris Lysikov consisting of several "drops" that slide from side to side and reveal a seemingly endless number of scenes. At one point, onstage motion Is simulated by the actors walking in place as a long canvas is rolled from right to left behind them. Chekhov's three stock vaudevillian characters are distributed perfectly among actors who obey to the letter the laws of the genre while filling their roles with very individual personalities.

The performance begins as Albert Fllozov's sincere and slightly nervous Lomov stands in front of the stage quietly explaining his desire to get married: "I need propriety and regularity In my .. . life. • The casual pause, shifted from the position noted In Chekhov's second scene, immediately signals the teasing quality that forms the basis of the performance. This is one of only a few scenes that are not sung but spoken. Filozov's positioning and his intimate manner of speech set up a direct line of communication between actor and audience. At the premiere, when Lomov observed that he was cold, one spectator responded naturally, "it's hot in here!" Filozov kindly acknowledged the response with a twinkle in his eye and went on as though It all were planned.

Lomov's main antagonists, Chubukov and his daughter, are performed by the imposing Aleksei Petrenko and the sultry Lyubov Polishchuk. The hefty, unkempt Petrenko, doing butterfly steps and "flying" from the stage, increases the humor by doing everything in dead seriousness. Polishchuk, like a provincial prima donna, is both irascible and ironically condescending. When she joins Petrenko or Filozov for an aria or pas de deux, the clash of stage personalities and the total harmony of actors' talent is a combination that can't help but produce boldly comic results.

What Are You Doing in a Tux? ends as Petrenko aims his cane at a cardboard cutout of the Art Theatre seagull that hangs over the stage and then shoots It down. Uke the performance itself, the gesture implies the healthy mix of reverence and irreverence which the director feels for his rich theatrical heritage.

The five productions discussed here are the cream of last season's crop in Moscow, but they hardly exhaust the Jist of noteworthy stagings. Ekaterina Vasilyeva's return to the stage at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre in two plays (From the Life of Rain Worms, staged by Mikhail Kochetkov, and Women's Games, staged by Krzysztof Zanussi) showed that the Art Theatre still has life in It


even if it is experiencing difficult times. Grigory Gurvich's I Tap About Moscow at the Bat cabaret continues this theatre's attractive mix of dry-eyed sentimentalism and theatrical parody. Mark Rozovsky's staging of Triumphal Square at the Theatre-Studio "At Nikitsky Gates• is a memorial to Vsevolod Meyerhold that struggles through a sluggish first half before hitting Its stride in the Gogolian scenes of Meyerhold's interrogation by the NKVD. Finally, the young Sergei Zhenovach's production of King Lear at the Malaya Bronnaya seats the audience on the stage and seeks to personalize the grand scope of Shakespeare's tragedy. In this case, the results were mixed, but, the effort was indicative of Moscow's 1991-1992 season as a whole. New names combined with old in a season of risk-taking and innovation. In several cases, the results were genuine theatrical "events."

1Kozak's attempt to revive the Stanislavsky Theatre fizzled quickly. He resigned as artistic director at the end of the season.

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THE EUROPEAN CULTURAL MONTH AND THE WITKACY WEEK: CRACOW 1992

Daniel Gerould

Uke the other theatres of Eastern Europe, the Polish theatre faces the problem of how to survive without the previous high levels of state support--in some cases without any subsidy whatsoever. Perhaps because Poland began to convert to a market economy immediately after the demise of Communism In 1989, Its artists and impresarios have had to learn quickly to become capitalist entrepreneurs. Foundations, festivals, patrons, and sponsors are the essential Ingredients for success. I should like to discuss this quest for funding in relation to specific instances of theatre-going and festival-attending that I experienced during several trips to Poland in 1992.

An attractive site is a powerful asset. The ancient capital of Poland, unscathed by the destruction of World War II, Cracow is one of the most beautiful medieval cities of Central Europe and a cultural center of many resources, proud of its Jagellonlan University, splendid market place, and Saint Mary's Church with the Wit Stwosz altarpiece celebrated by Kantor in Let the Artists Die. Following the success of the mammoth two-week Mroiek Festival in June 1990 (SEEP vol. 10, no. 3, Winter 1990), Cracow, confident of its rich potential and proven abilities, hosted a much more ambitious international event, the European Cultural Month held in June 1992 at the Initiative of the European Community. The Cultural Month brought together thousands of artists from Europe, America, and the Middle East in hundreds of events devoted to music, film, theatre, and the visual arts. Once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Cracow Is well positioned as a cross-roads for highlighting the artistic ties between East and West and displaying the variety of European cultures.

The artistic director of the project, J6zef Opalski, who had organized the Mroiek Festival, deserves much credit for the high quality and broad scope of the performances and exhibitions. Financial support came from the Commission of the European Communities in Brussels, the Ministry of Culture and the Fine Arts of the Republic of Poland, the City of Cracow, and the Government of the Republic of Italy, as well as private and national culture foundations and councils, airlines, and businesses.

Within the total program of art, music, and film, there were two special events: the Third Festival of Jewish Culture and the Witkacy Week, which I attended in its entirety and wish to describe in some detail after first giving a general idea of the whole enterprise. Theatre occupied a central position during the entire month--not sur-


prising given the pre-eminence of Cracow's Stary Theatre and, of course, Kantor's Cricot II. Many of the theatrical events were several years old, but had not yet been seen outside their place of origin. The European Cultural Month had as one of its principal functions to bring together the best productions and make them accessible to a broad public both Polish and international. I shall mention In passing some of these to give an idea of the scope. The Third Festival of Jewish Culture featured a symposium on Bruno Schulz and anumber of performances based on his works, including Rudimentaries by the Mandala Theatre of Cracow with the Julia Pascal Theatre of Great Britain, Dead Season at Drohobycz by the Insomnia Theatre ASBL of Brussels, Cinnamon Shops by the Kreatur Theatre of Berlin, and Loneliness by the State Puppet Theatre Banialuka of Bielsko-Biafa and the Compagne Fran~,tois Lazaro of Paris.

In the context of the general program, the Stary Theatre was represented by four of Its outstanding directors. Jerzy Jarockl's austere and elegant production of Gombrowlcz's Marriage--his seventh staging of this play--was acclaimed as the best Polish theatrical performance of 1991. The Marriage was already on the festival circuit; I saw it as part of the Odeon Festival of Eastern European Theatre in France in January, and it then appeared at the Warsaw Theatrical Meetings In February. Andrzej Wajda's offering for the Cracow Cultural Month was his fourth version of Hamlet from 1989 (seen In New York at the Pepsico Festival at Purchase).

Wajda and his wife, the designer Krystyna Zachwatowlcz. now have a foundation established in their name, The Kyoto-Cracow Foundation for the Propagation of Japanese Art in Poland. Wajda took his Stary Theatre production of Wyspianskl's Wedding to Japan in 1991 and exhibited his Japanese drawings In Poland. Former Senator Wajda, who has now abandoned politics and returned to a full-time artistic career. made the following explanation of his commitment to Polish classics in an interview with Le Figaro when The Wedding was shown at the Odeon Festival : "I had hoped that liberty regained would permit me to stay in the realm of art without thinking of politics. It was a naive idea. Liberty has not solved the problems, and I think that artists in Poland will always have political duties. But they will not be tied to immediate action; they are rather duties with regard to the tradition of the past. In the disintegration of society it is necessary to maintain Polish culture confronted by the Influx of a new culture, which Is very Americanized."

Rudolf Zlol'o's Midsummer Night's Dream, premiered In March, is a thoroughly theatricalist and knockout treatment of the text, stressing gags and acrobatics, much in the manner of his Princess Turandot of the previous year. Krystian Lupa's Malte, or A Prodigal Son's Triptych (1991), based on Rainer Maria Alike's prose, Is the latest In the director's experiments with Viennese life and cui-

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ture for which he does the adaptation and stage design as well as the directing, following his version of Musil's Man Without Qualities. Famous for his long rehearsal periods and long performances, Lupa has become one of the most Influential of the post-Grotowskl directors; an extensive exhibit tracing his career Is on display In the lobby of the Stary Theatre.

Despite all these signs of vitality, there Is a certain malaise present at the Stary. Even though it has been designated one of fifteen national theatres dedicated to the preservation of national culture and will therefore continue to be financed by the state, It Is a gigantic empire that must cut its personnel. At present It has two hundred and seventy people on the payroll, of whom eighty-six are actors. During the 1990-1991 season, the Stary presented twelve new creations and thirty-three revivals for a total of seven hundred and twenty-one performances In its four different theatres. The actors have already organized a foundation In order to protect their Interests.

Other events at the Cultural Month included a performance of Janusz Wi~nlewski's Life Is a Miracle, an appearance by Henryk Tomaszewski's Wroctaw Pantomime Theatre, a showing of the film version of Mahabharata and a lecture by Peter Brook to celebrate a Peter Brook Day, and a Festival of Historical Mounds, culminating in a celebration of the seventh-century Krakus Mound with a procession, carnival and wake, and oak rite. Gardzlenice presented Carmina Burana and The Life of Archpriest Awakum, there was a retrospective of all twenty-two of Pasolini's films, a Klimt exhibition, and a showing of El Greco's Laocoon on loan from Washington, as well as dozens of magnificent jazz and classical concerts.

The Cultural Month, which strove for class and style, issued an attractive book-size program in Polish and English on quality paper with different colored edges and lettering according to the kinds of events: music, theatre, fine arts, or film. Throughout the month a news bulletin, To the East From the West, appeared daily. Ranging from four to eight pages, the journal contained articles, interviews, reviews, information about events, photographs, paintings and drawings. In no sense a throwaway publication, these issuesunpretentious and often witty and amusing--provide valuable background documentation on the performances.

Now to the Witkiewicz Week, which in Its variety and plenty demonstrated to what extent the playwright-painter-philosopher has entered into the cultural life of contemporary Poland. The program consisted of productions, exhibits, symposia, and a visit to Zakopane. Although he had been relegated to the margins by the literary establishment during his lifetime and treated as a danger to be contained by the communist regime, Witkacy and his friend Bruno Schulz were the dominating artistic personalities of the European


Cultural Month. The range of Witkacy's accomplishments In the different arts was effectively revealed; his work In various media appeared throughout the city. There was an exhibit of Witkacy In the world at the theatre section of the History Museum of the City of Cracow and another of Polish postwar productions at the 9fowackl Theatre. Several dozen pastel portraits done by Wltkacy as part of his mock business enterprise, "The Portrait Painting Film, • were on loan from the Sfupsk collection and on display at the Museum of Archaeology.

The Rules of the Portrait Painting Firm, which the artist drew up to keep his customers in line, served as the basic material for an inventive one-woman cabaret show created and performed by Beata Fudalej, a young actress from the Stary Theatre. In the Intimate surroundings of a small Cracow art gallery, Fudalej recited the texts, using a blackboard for diagrams, and sang poems by Wltkacy set to music by Zbigniew Raj and Stanisfaw Radwan. Cracow Television organized an entire evening of music and song from productions of Wltkiewicz's plays, Involving such well known singers and composers as Marek Grechuta, Micharurbaniak, and Zbigniew Raj.

Of the many stage versions of Witkacy's plays presented at the Cultural Month, the most unexpected and hilarious was the simultaneous performance of The Madman and the Nun by three theatres under the direction of Krzysztof Jasinski of Theatre STU. Started in 1965 as a student theatre and turning professional in the mid-1970s, STU has survived all the vicissitudes of recent Polish history and emerged as an independent private enterprise supported by the STU Foundation which Jasit\ski established in 1989. Many of Poland's most talented actors, directors, poets, critics, composers, designers, and artists have worked with STU at one time or another.

Now STU has become a complex theatrical organization, taking over the functions that were previously performed for it by the state. It has its own theatre school at the STU Center for Theatrical Explorations on a sprawling estate outside Cracow with stables and an eighteenth-century mansion, where guests can be accommodated and receptions held (such as the banquet for the new Witkiewicz Foundation given during the Cultural Month). But that's not all. The STU Foundation has its own Theatrical Agency that produces on an impresario basis. It runs a recording studio; publishes programs, books, and posters; organizes concerts, festivals, and outdoor spectacles; offers legal services; and collects paintings.

If STU's plunge into the world of commerce seems formidable, I am happy to say that Jasinski's Madman retains the freedom of spirit that has always been the trademark of the best Polish theatre. Here Is how it evolved into a triple play. Jasi~ski Initially directed The Madman in Cracow at STU in 1986; he next repeated the same production in Minsk at the Gorky Theatre with a Russian

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Katarzyna Utwin and Dariusz Gnatowski in Witkiewicz's The Madman and the Nun, Theatre STU, Cracow

Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 12, Noa. 2 & 3

cast In 1989 (the first Russian staging of Wltklewicz); and he finally recreated the production at the Contemporary Theatre In Wrootaw In 1991 . For the Wltklewlcz Week of the European Cultural Month, Jasirl'ski first presented the Minsk Russian version, acted by Aleksander Tkaczonok as Walpurg and Anna Malanklna as Sister Anna with a Stanlslavsklan psychological Intensity. Then, after a short intermission Jasinski presented the entire play again combining all three casts, first replacing actors from one production by those from another individually in shifts, and finally bringing them all on stage together. What ensued was precisely controlled mayhem of a purely theatrical nature, true to the spirit of Wltkacy's Madman In the postcommunist era. In 1992 the Theatre STU Foundation published conference papers, Wltkacy in the Theatre at the End of the Century (In Polish and English, edited by the theatre's literary manager, Edward Chudzltlski), exploring the future of the playwright In Poland now that a politicized Witkacy is no longer needed as an ally In the struggle against totalitarianism.

Although Wltklewicz appears to have a secure place In Polish culture, exactly what that position should be still remains a subject of controversy. Members of the younger generation argue that the rebellious Witkiewicz, despite his being pre-empted by the official custodians of high culture, really belongs to the counterculture of rock and jazz musicians who find inspiration In his work. The Cultural Month provided evidence of Witkacy's ability to appeal to both worlds In the ballet lnsatiabiliw with a jazz score by the trumpeter and composer Tomasz Stailko. Choreographed by Zofla Rudnicka for the Wielki Theatre of Warsaw In 1987, the first part of the ballet tells the story of the novel, the second presents a series of peyote visions based on Witkiewicz's drug studies.

The younger generation's enthusiasm for Witkacy could also be seen in the many student productions from the Polish theatre schools. The Water Hen, for example, was a diploma production by the last-year students at the State Academy of Theatre In Warsaw, directed by the well -known actor and rector of the school , Jan Englert. Full of light-hearted verve and comic invention, the performance incorporated some dialogue from They to comment on the plight of the theatre In postcommunlst Poland. The production immediately moved on to Amsterdam as one of two Witkiewicz entries at the Third Annual International Theatreschool Festival, the other being a Spanish Madman and the Nun from the Real Escuela de Arte Dramatlco In Madrid directed by Jarostaw Bielski.

The significant role played by Italy In the European Cultural Month was reflected in several Italian and joint Polish-Italian productions. Students from the Centro Universltarlo Teatrale of Perugla staged an Italian version of The Mother under the direction of Jerzy Stuhr of the Stary Theatre, who years before had played Leon in

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Jerzy Jarecki's celebrated production In 1972. The Teatro de L.aboratori of the Centro T eatro Ateneo at the Universit8 dl Roma "La Sapienza• presented In the English their conflatlon of The Water Hen and Macbeth, called Metamorphosis, or The Chain of Dreams, which was directed by Wiesna Mend. Giovanni Pamplgllone, an Italian director known for his Witkacy productions and translations, staged La PI/lola Verde (The Green Pill) , his compilation of scenes from Dainty Shapes and Hairy Apes, The Mother, The Water Hen, They, The Cuttlefish, and The Shoemakers. Stylishly costumed and acted, it was the joint creation of the Accademia Nazionale d'Arte Dramatica "Silvio d'Amico" dl Roma and L'Atelier di Sessa Aurunca, and cosponsored by the lstituto Italiano di Cultura in Cracow.

Along with Innovative forms of sponsorship, Imaginative collations of texts and theatre companies were much in vogue during the Cultural Month. Zofia Kalil1ska, an actress former1y with Kantor's Cricot II, brought together her own Akne Theatre (named after the heroine of Witkacy's novel, Bungo) and the Meeting Ground Company of Nottingham for The Sale of Demonic Women, a performance piece that viewed Witkiewicz's famous demonic women from a feminist perspective as embodiments of strength and the power of the will. Using acting styles based on psychodrama and trance, the international cast of four women and one man appeared in striking mirrored frames and articulated their wildest desires in a mixture of English, German, and Polish.

The ultimate composite theatre piece based on Witkacy's life and work was Jerzy Grzegorzewski's So-Called Humanity Gone Mad, the title of the author's last, lost play from 1938. Weaving together texts from thirteen plays (chiefly They) and the novel, Farewell to Autumn, Grzegorzewskl created a dream-like picture of Witkacy's fate that reflects the position of the artist in society in a period of violent transition. The director's second version of the work (the first was given at the Warsaw Studio in 1987) , So-Called Humanity Gone Mad premiered at the Stary Theatre in 1992 with Jerzy Stuhr in the central role, music by Stani9hlw Radwan, and design and costumes by Barbara Hanicka.

A much-anticipated production, the Warsaw Theatre School's Metaphysics of a Two-Headed Calf, did not take place because of a great loss suffered by the Polish theatre. Tadeusz.tomnicki, regarded by many as Poland's finest actor, who was to direct a group of his students in Metaphysics, died on February 22, 1992. He suffered a fatal heart attack on stage while he was rehearsing King Lear at the Nowy Theatre in Poznan. Here I must pause for a moment to say a word about this controversial figure whose death comments ironically on the new Poland that in revulsion has tried to wash its hands of its communist past. No one questions the actor's greatness, but many regret his politics.

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..tomnlckl was a long-time communist and a member of the Party's Central Committee, positions that earned him the mistrust of Solidarity. In the 1970s, -tomnlckl benefited from his support of the Party leader Edward Glerek; In 1976 he was rewarded with a specially created theatre of his own (Teatr na Woll) . The famous actor quit the Party only at the eleventh hour, in 1981 after the imposition of martial law. In his death, the atheist..t.omnlckl proved an embarrassment to the pious, overwhelmingly Catholic government and cultural establishment. in his will,..t.omnicki insisted on a civU funeral without a priest officiating and the singing of a Leonard Cohen ballad Instead of a mass. In covering the funeral, state-run Polish television passed over the actor's antireligious specifications in silence.

Among-t:..omnlcki's many oustanding roles were Brecht's Arturo Ui In 1962, Glumov in Ostrovsky's Diary of a Scoundrel In 1965 (directed by Tovstonogov), Bond's Lear in 1974, Goya in Buero's Sleep of Reason in 1976 (directed by Wajda), Sallerl in Schaffer's Amadeus In 1981 (directed by Polanski) at his own Teatr na Woli, and Beckett's Krapp in 1985. He was an adventurous manager and director. In 1979 he directed the first production of Tadeusz R6zewicz's controversial play, Dead and Buried, which outraged Polish patriots and occasioned protests because of its riveting picture of an inarticulate, animal-like member of a World War II partisan unit who is tried and executed for raping a woman. At the time of his death,.....(omnicki was appearing on Polish television in a six-hour drama, Stalin, by the Chilean author Gason Salvatore, which dramatizes a series of meetings between the aging Stalin and a fictional Jewish actor named Sager who, like the historical Mikhoels, starred as King Lear. The two discuss the nature of theatre and the playing of roles, Stalin sometimes taking the part of Lear while Sager is assigned that of the Fool. With Jerzy Trela of the Stary Theatre as Stalin,..t.omnicki gave one of the most powerful performances of his career in a production directed by Kazimierz Kutz (who the year before won a prize for his television version of the still explosive Dead and Buried) . The European Cultural Month dedicated June 4 to celebrating the accomplishments of .t:omnicki, the Lear who died on stage.

The Witkacy Week reached its climax with a trip to Zakopane, the picturesque town in the Tatras Mountains near the Czech border where Witkacy spent most of his life. There the featured event was a production of The Madman and the Nun, directed by Jan Paszek, one of Poland's outstanding actors who has recently resigned from the Stary Theatre. He now heads the Cracow Foundation of Theatre Artists, established in 1991 "to realize various theatrical and stage events of high artistic quality, to find sources of funding for these events, to organize promotion and advertising, to popularize the newest methods of management and marketing in culture. •


The Foundation Is an attempt to deal with the difficulties facing Polish culture, which Paszek defines In the following terms: "There are no Institutions for promoting and advertising young actors, directors, and stage managers. There is no system of fair competition. There is no employment for an increasing number of young promising theatre people. This has been caused not only by the decay of communist state funding, but also by the fact that Polish culture Is not prepared for unsubsldlzed existence In free market conditions. •

For his production of The Madman, Paszek, who plays the role of Walpurg himself, has chosen only young actors In their twenties from among his former students at the Cracow Theatre School. The kinetic set is the creation of Jerzy Kalina, a well-known visual artist who works in the theatre. A co-production of the Cracow Foundation and a Japanese sponsor, Misako Ueda, Paszek's Madman has gone to Tokyo for a Japanese Witklewicz Festival at the X Theatre, which will also feature both a Japanese and Norwegian Water Hen as well as exhibitions of portraits and photographs.

Unfortunately missing from the Cultural Month program was a performance of Andrzej Dziuk's Witklewlcz Theatre of Zakopane, one of the pioneering private theatres in Poland, and an Important cultural center In the T atras, supported by its own Witkiewicz Theatre Foundation and by municipal funds. In the winter I had been able to see Dziuk's version of Witkacy's The Mother, called Katzenjammer (1990), and Wedekind {1991), a collation of the Lulu plays, but during the summer the Witklewlcz Theatre was on a foreign tour.

The Witkiewicz Week ended in Cracow with productions of Gyubal Wahazar as a puppet drama and The Beelzebub Sonata as an opera. Wie~w Hejna's Wrooraw's Puppet Theatre (founded in 1946) gave a truculent and grainy reading of Witkiewicz's play about the demented dictator of a sixth-dimensional realm, conceived as the second part of a trilogy called The Phenomenon of Power (the other parts being Kafka's Trial and Goethe's Faust) . The puppet Wahazar and his senile court were shown as grotesque zombies, while the precocious child Piggyklns who exposes their hollowness was played by a young actress. The final event was a gala production at the srowacki Theatre by the Cracow Opera. Edward Bogusf'awskl's 1977 operatic version of The Beelzebub Sonata--Witkacy's play about a Hungarian musician who sells his soul to the devil in order to compose a diabolical sonata--was given a new staging by J6zef Opalski, the artistic director of the European Cultural Month.

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THE YARA ARTS GROUP WORKS IN KIEV

Virlana Tkacz

On Monday August 19, 1991 I was in Kiev. A ringing phone woke me at 7:00 that morning. It was Dorian Yurchuk, our stage manager.

said.

"Why are you calling so ear1y?" "Vir1ana, I have two pieces of news you must hear now," he

"Tell me the good news first.· "The news is bad and worse, • he answered. "Then tell me the bad news first. • "Peter is very sick.· I knew that Peter McCabe, one of the actors I had brought

from New York, was not well. He had stomach problems, and the food in Kiev was irritating his condition.

"We should get him to a doctor tomorrow, • I said. "No," Dorian answered, "we should get him to New York

tomorrow." "What can be worse?" I wondered out loud. "There's been a coup. • There was a long pause. I was busy trying to imagine how

we were going to get Peter out of the country and how I could replace him in our show, In the Light, which was to open in Kiev that Friday. Dorian's final bit of news never penetrated my thoughts.

"There's been a coup," Dorian repeated, "in Moscow, and it doesn't look good. •

After a month in the Soviet Union I felt pretty hardened to any bad news. I had come to Ukraine to create a theatre piece with actors from the Yara Arts Group in New York and local Ukrainian actors. We had already completed three week-long theatre workshops in Kiev, Kharkiv and Lviv. We had found seven young Ukrainian actors to complement the five Yara actors who came from New York. And now we were just finishing our first week of rehearsals on the newly created bilingual text with a cast that had no common language. I was one of the few bilinguals which meant that I had to both direct and then immediately translate my own directions. The insurmountable problems that our project generated on a daily basis and the difficulties of everyday existence in the USSR no longer shocked me. I would brace myself by expecting the worst and usually I wasn't far off the mark. But I never expected political events in Moscow would threaten our project. I listened to my heart beat for a moment.

I remembered that just Saturday Peter had noticed that the New York Times headline which was part of our script was from

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August 17, 1921, exactly seventy years ago. How Incredible the seventy-year-old news about the ravages of clvU strife In Kiev seemed to us that day. August 17, 1991 was a glorious sunny Saturday In Kiev. There were crowds on every corner downtown, enjoying their dose of Glasnost. How far away a civil war seemed on Saturday, but how real the possibility loomed on Monday.

"Dorian, call the American Consulate and ask them to help us get Peter out. I want to talk to everyone before we start rehearsals. I'll call mama."

The "mama" I called that morning was Ellen Stewart of La Mama Experimental Theatre in New York, the mother of the international avant-garde, who had come to Kiev a few days eartier to see what her "babies· were up to. The Yara Arts Group was born at La Mama the previous year. Yara creates theatre that focuses on the ideas and cultures of the East. We came together while creating A Light From the East, a play about Les Kurbas, an avant-garde theatre director from Kiev from the 1920s (SEEP vc:A. 11, no. 1, Spring 1991 ). We called the piece a docudream and interwove documentary material on Kurbas with the poetry of Pavlo Tychyna and our own dreams. Now we were in Kiev, where together with the Ukranian actors, we were creating a bilingual ver:;lon of our show we now called In the Light.

When I spoke to Ellen that morning, she advised me to change the placement of a song in the show, urged me to give the Ukranian actors a more active part, and as always, told me to cut some of the talking. In New York we had always wondered how Kurbas managed to concentrate on theatre in 1920-21 during the civil war In Ukraine. Talking to Ellen that morning I understood that we had stumbled on the answer when we wrote, "You do what you have to do."

That afternoon Ellen opened the press conference on our show by saying that La Mama existed today because thirty years ago a Ukrainian landlord In New York was willing to rent her, an African American, the space where she started her theatre. She was therefore very happy that Yara, a company from her theatre had initiated the first Ukrainian-American joint theatre project In Kiev. She was especially pleased that we were doing a piece about an experimental theatre director from Kiev, whose work had been banned here for so long, and that we were doing it with local actors. She then Introduced me, and the directors of the three theatres In Ukraine who were taking part In the project, as well as all the participants In our show. There was a lot of press, which surprised us. And on such a momentous day, the day of the coup, the Kiev TV broadcast interviews with us.

In the Light opened August 23, 1991 at the Franko Theatre In Kiev, the home of the National Theatre Company. We played on the


main stage, but changed the shape of the auditorium. We shut the fire curtain and had the audience on stage with us sitting against the back wall. This allowed us to use all the lighting equipment of the theatre and stUI maintain the chamber atmosphere of our La Mama production. The show played to sold out houses every night and the audience reaction was overwhelming. Una Kostenko, Ukraine's most prominent poet, called it "drama for the twenty-first century. • There was tremendous local support for the project, including members of Par1iament, officials In the cultural institutions, the Society of Ukrainian Scholars, the Student Brotherhood and numerous artists.

In Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine with a population of almost two million, In the Light performed at the Shevchenko National Theatre, formerly the Berezii--Les Kurbas's theatre from 1926-1933. Among the very special guests was Julia Fomina, a close friend of Valentyna Chystiakova, one of the characters In our play. After the performance there was a very emotional moment as she met Yara's Amy Grappell, who played Chystiakova in the production.

In Lviv, In the Light played at the beautiful Kurbas Theatre. The Lviv newspaper, Ratusha, wrote, "How fortunate that this multicultural collective is engaged in such interesting and beneficial work. The presentation of In the Light has impact on many people here precisely because in it young Americans of East and West European, Asian, and African heritages are seen to be interested in Ukrainian art and engaged by it. • Larysa Kadyrova, an actress at Zankovetska Theatre in Lviv, was quoted as saying, "How wonderful it was to see young people understand Kurbas's work and respect him. To respect the past and to understand it on your own terms, to recreate it in your own voice, in your movement, in your rhythms and dynamics--perhaps in this lies the rebirth about which there's been so much talk these days." The Rivne paper wrote: "Kurbas's life was cut short, but his theatrical dreams are being tested on the stage before our eyes ... The past and the future find closure here. And they find this closure within us, the audience ... ."

The project has created the basis for future exchanges. Yara has been invited to come to Kharkiv with its new production, Explosions, for the Berezillnternational Theatre Festival. We also hope to create our next piece, Blind Sight, together with actors from Ukraine.

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MEETING A DREAM ... MEETING YOURSELF

Dmytro Kotelenets

I first met New York director Vlrlana Tkacz by chance. She was being Interviewed at an official meeting with young Ukranlan artists at the Kiev Actor's Building. (I walked in with some friends.) The Interview was laden with generalities until one of the young artists asked: "What do you really do in New York, Vlrlana?" The Ice broke as she started on her favorite topic--theatre. She told us about her new troupe, about her last show, about La Mama Experimental Theatre where she works. This was a woman obsessed. Her stories, words and gestures, and the photographs she showed-enchanted us. I remember thinking: how fascinating It would be to work with her someday!

A half year later, my utopian winter dream came true. Thanks to supporters In America and Ukraine, the Yara Arts Groupdirected by Virlana Tkacz--came to Ukraine. In July and August of 1991, members of Yara worked with local actors to create a bilingual version of their New York show, A Light From the East (SEEP vol. 11, no. 1, Spring 1991 ), about an avant-garde Ukranian director, Les Kurbas. (I was one of the students from the Kiev Theatre Institute permitted to observe rehearsals.)

The first work session revealed Virlana's principles and convictions. Casting the show, she sought out people interested in the project and then demanded their total dedication. The project became everyone's primary responsibility. This Is how she works and this attitude is reflected In the production. In the Light, as the Ukranlan version of the show was called, was created by the director and was the reflection of the director's inner world, her personality, her emotions, her flaws; a reflection of the complex labyrinth of her soul. She strives toward the eternal--to unite the past, present, and future. Many epochs, cultures and people come together in the sophisticated polyphonic structure of the show.

Virlana's Inspiration has been Les Kurbas, a unique figure In Ukranian theatre. In the Light organically weaves contemporary historical events into the stories of the life and creative explorations of Kurbas . . . Also included are fragments from the works of the great Ukranian philosophers and poets Hryhori Skovoroda and Taras Shevchenko, as well as the poetry of Pavlo Tychyna. In Tychyna's poems we find the portrayal of various inner states and experiences. Historical periods range from the times of the ancient Bacchae to the events of the French Revolution; from the reign of Queen Semiramis of Babylon to bloody contemporary events. Here we also find a bridge between Kurbas's time and ours: losyp Hirniak, an actor in Kurbas's Berezil Theatre in the 1920s who kept the memory of


Kurbas alive In far-away America, preserving It for us In his "Memoirs." He also shared his memories with children as tales about a mythical homeland that resembles summers on the Delaware. One of those children was Vir1ana. We, ourselves, are also present In the play, searching for our history in a New York coffee shop, and In places dear to every Ukranian. In the show we also hear the taped voice of Roman Cherkashyn, another actor from the Berezll Theatre, one more link to Hirniak, Kurbas, and history. We reflect on the past, give life to the dream, and project the dream Into the future.

All these layers of In the Light embody Vir1ana Tkacz's Image of Kurbas, her experiences of theatre, history, time, and space. The show Is a penetrating look at the essence of Kurbas's Ideas and hopes. Director Virlana Tkacz has also captured the spirit and the atmosphere of the times in which this prominent innovator and his collaborators worked. All the audience members Interviewed after the show confirmed that this was a major artistic achievement of the production.

Another achievement Is the powerful result of Vlr1ana's collaboration with composer Roman Hurko from Canada. The emotional and spiritual spectrum of the music enriches the show. The musical imagery Is based on Kurbas's thoughts about poetry, as well as Virlana's experimentations with poetry in performance. Poetry and music, so essential to Les Kurbas, are infused Into the story of his life and assume a crucial place In the show. The most emotional and powerful moments of the show are the scenes In which historical facts are Interwoven with poetic Images, and visuals are accompanied by music.

The conceptual high points of the piece are the songs that are essential to the action of the show. These Include the "didactic" poetry of the philosopher Hryhori Skovoroda from the eighteenth century and the imagistic poetry of Pavlo Tychyna from the early twentieth century. Roman Hurko's musical Interpretation provides these poems with universal significance. He uses a variety of musical styles. "In the Orchestra of the Cosmos• Is sung In English by Shona Tucker, an African American actress, as a spiritual. Skovoroda's "Twenty-Eighth Song• Is performed by all the actors in two languages, Ukranian and English, as Is most of the show. Polyphonic singing In the original high style is blended with a "recitative" In the colloquial. Lyrics both sung and recited echo each other, and seem to pour Into the souls of the audience as If from the heavens . ..

The variety of genre, style, and the Intonations of the music testifies to Roman Hurko's skill and his poetic spirit. The complex texture of the theatre piece created by Vlrlana Tkacz stimulated the composer's creativity in a collaborative display of artistic talent.

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One other feature of the Ukranian production should be mentioned. Virlana had conducted theatre workshops to select participants for the "Ukrainian half" of the show. One of the actors cast from these workshops was Maryanna Sadovska of the Lviv Young Theatre. In the show this young woman became the embodiment of the director's lyrical "self." She absorbed Vir1ana's thoughts, experiencing them as her own. As a result she was able to "recreate" Vir1ana's first childhood memory of meeting a wonderful gray-haired old man, who asked: "Have you ever heard a cuckoo bird, child?" It was this meeting with losyp Himlak which influenced Vir1ana's future. It became the reason why she, in her life, and Maryanna, in this show, "glanced into time's telescope .. ."

"Time, measure, space and number .. ." that's how Virlana ends her poem. Her spirit is inseparably tied to her work, her theatre play-poem. The final words of the show are: "I had this dream. I saw us in the future." The past is inseparably bound to the future.

Special thanks to Cathy Zadoretzky for assistance with translation.


THEATRE'S VELVET REVOLUTION

Melinda Jo Guttman

In August 1992, I met with Ladlslava Petlskova, the director of the International Theatre Institute In Prague, Czechoslovakia. The ITIIn Prague has offices which border on the Old Town Square, the most magical array of buildings in one of the most beautiful cities In Europe. The eighteenth-century National Theatre, the oldest theatre building in Prague, has re-opened and was perfonning Mozart's The Magic Flute. Nearby, In a small theatre, movingly near the Jewish Ghetto, a group of students produced a play about Kafka, a short walk from his family home. In response to the freedom brought about by the Velvet Revolution, theatres have been re-opened, new plays are being produced, and foreign writers like Durrenmatt, Stoppard, and lonesco, whose work had been banned, have returned to the Czech stages. The ITI now publishes an Impressive quarterly journal, Theatre, about both Czech and Slovak theatre in Czech, French, and English. The following are excerpts from an Interview with Ladislava Petlskova, a theatre historian specializing In mime and nonverbal theatre, who previously worked as a theatrical researcher In the Theatre Institute of the Academy of Science.

Guttman: What was the function of nonverbal and mime theatre during the years of Soviet domination?

Petiskova: Nonverbal theatre has a continuous history from the 1920s. It became particularly Important In the last twenty years when two hundred writers were banned. It was a dissident theatre which dared to theatricalize universal problems which were forbidden subjects for playwrights. Not only was political protest censored , but even topics like madness, solitude, and emigration. Among the important nonverbal artists were Boleslav Polfvka, Ctibor Turba, and Boris Hubnyr.

Guttman: Why were Czech artists and writers banned, Imprisoned, sent to the provinces, and forbidden to travel, while famous Polish artists remained free?

Petlskova: There was a big difference. The Polish politicians had better relations with Polish culture than here. In Poland, artists could travel and meet with foreigners. Here, it was Impossible.

Guttman: Did any of the artists die In prison?

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Petiskova: No. However, during the time of Stalinism, people were executed for their Ideology, and several very lrl)portant theatre artists committed suicide. The choreographer, Sac§ha Machov, In 1951, and the director of the National Theatre, Frejka, In 1951 , both committed suicide. The Soviet occupation was very cruel.

Guttman: What has happened In the theatre since the Velvet Revolution?

Petlskova: Progressive directors who had been exiled from the major cities to the provinces have returned. Many artists who had been living abroad have come back. There Is a reconstruction of a network of artists.

Guttman: The art of dissent, political theatre seemed to be the primary source of keeping hope alive. What Is Its function now?

Petlskova: There Is a crisis of audience. Historically, the role of the theatre was strong and important. The fringe theatres were particularly Important. Now, however, people have so many troubles, they have turned their attention to the political and economic problems. People who have lived almost half a century under the Communists are concerned with their own mental and psychological problems of adjusting to the new freedom. There was a similar crisis of audience support shortly after World War II for a short time. In the present situation, many groups have financial troubles. Some theatres have won new audiences, many have not.

Guttman: Among the younger artists are their plays about the Velvet Revolution?

Petlskova: We don't believe in having plays about the revolution. it was something too fascinating, something so deep, something so magical to be free, that the theatre could not mirror those feelings.

Guttman: Then life experience now has primacy over art, rather than the reverse which was historically true?

Petiskova: Exactly. The plays by Havel in the recent past are still very much alive and being produced. The younger dramatists are angry and poetic. Some of the younger artists are Karl Steigerwald, Egon Tobias, and Daniella Si~erova. They are trying to create on a high professional level theatre pieces which synthesize progressive and traditional acting methods.

Guttman: Was the theatre previously dominated by Soviet Realism?


Petlskov~: Yes. In the past twelve years, the level of acting dropped on the official stages because the best people were Imprisoned or banished from the large stages. Now, there Is a change In training. We have new Influences coming from Peter Brook and Grotowskl. The Important Idea Is to educate human creativity, not only the technical quality. This work was on the fringes before, but not It Is In the academy. Some of the teachers are coming from the fringes. The father of Czech small groups, Ivan Vysko~l. Is Head of the Department of Acting at the Academy of Performing Arts In Prague. He Is a very famous writer educated In both acting and psychology.

Guttman: Now that the Czech states will be separated from Slovakia, wHI the theatre artists be separated as well?

Petlskov~: This Is a very difficult problem. The theatre Is one. We know each other very well, and the relationship between Czech and Slovak artists will not be Interrupted. In the past, we helped each other, sometimes very cleverly. When, for example, a director was banned In Prague, the Slovaks would Invite him to work. We typed copies of banned texts and circulated them. The Czech Culture Society helped Slovak writers. We have had a federation since 1968, and It was possible to help someone from another republic.

39

GHELDERODE COllOQUIUM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CLUJ, ROMANIA

David Willinger

Between October 22 and 24th, the Faculty of Letters, Department of Romance Languages of the University of Cluj-Napoca In Romania sponsored a colloquium on the twentieth century Belgian playwright, Michel de Ghelderode. Under the auspices of the newly inaugurated Center for French-Language Belgian Studies, and organized by Professor Rodlca Pop, the conference attracted participants from Italy, Israel, the U.S., as well as a number of prominent Ghelderode scholars from Belgium. Only one other such conference has been organized, and that was over then years ago In Genoa.

The conference was significant In that It was high time It was undertaken, and that it was Romanian scholars who seized the opportunity to do so. Western academicians recognized the Importance of the event and made the necessary sacrifices to travel to a relatively remote location In mid-semester. Further, the Romanian hosts made great sacrifices to stage the colloquium. Granted that a large part of the expense was shouldered by the Belgian Government and the Belgian Academy of Letters, still the amount of energy and money necessary to provide a respectable forum strained every resource of this struggling community. But Professor Pop and her colleagues came through with flying colors. The participants at the colloquium were received extremely graciously with regard to accommodations, elaborate repasts, and warm contacts with the faculty and students of the university, who took us very much under their solicitous wings.

This is a crucial point in history for the Romanians and contacts with the world-at-large are extremely important symbolically, as they represent a new openness and possibility for exchanges of all sorts. The intellectual freeze that prevailed under the deposed dictator did not mean that the Romanian intelligentsia came to a standstill in the quantity or quality of information they received about upto-date scholarship from the West. But their new-found ability to invite westerners to participate in an open dialogue, such as this one, represents a decided step forward. The conference was attended from beginning to end by Valeriu Stancu, head of Cluj radio and television stations. An afficianado of Belgian culture himself, his presence was symptomatic of the degree to which the life of the community is enriched and taken seriously by an event of this nature. Compare, for example, the press coverage an analogous academic colloquium would normally receive if it were held in New York. It would never have as much as a sentence or image in the local press

40 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 12, Noa. 2 & 3

or media. By contrast, Stancu was conducting extensive radio Interviews with many of the participants throughout, and a final round table is to be broadcast over the local television station.

One had the sense that Ghelderode, who Is a relatively marginal author, was merely an excuse, and that whatever might have been offered in terms of actual research and theory was secondary to the fact that there was a dialogue of any kind and that scholars from abroad were present to share in it.

In addition to such initiatives as the Belgian Center, the University Is sponsoring a monthly theatre journal, Thalia, under the editorship of Tudor Runcanu and Maria Voda Capusan. Now In its second year, the journal's most recent Issue Is on "Theatre and Therapy," and Includes theoretical articles as well as reviews of recent productions in Cluj.

Participation In the colloquium precluded very much outside activity, but even a casual look at the life of Cluj (capitol of the province of Transylvania) reveals that there Is a flourishing state theatre boasting a large, permanent repertory company. It has an extensive and varied season featuring both Romanian and foreign authors, and offers tickets at prices that are hard to imagine from our own context: the most expensive ticket runs to 30 cents! However, when one considers that the average Romanian professional earns about $100 a month, perhaps these prices are not so low after all. There is also an active Hungarian theatre and opera company, which plays to the largest minority of the region.

Once I was back in Bucharest (extremely briefly), I was able to glean a fleeting impression of the theatre life in the capital. Apart from the National Theatre, whose Artistic Director, though often absent, is at least nominally Andrej Serban, the city is peppered with smaller theatres, all of which offer a continuous and varied selection of plays. One has the sense that Romania Is trying to catch up with trends that have long since passed by In the West (David Storey's Home Is an example of the more adventurous of selections) , but nevertheless the Romanians are making a concerted effort to fill In the gaps.

Without question, Romanian theatres are struggling, as are those of most other nations of Eastern Europe, to compensate for the reduced government funding which has accompanied the political transition. But people are evidently still flocking to the theatres; and the theatres are still open and producing.

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METRO

EDWIN WILSON

The spring of 1992 saw more openings in the Broadway theatre than had occurred in a comparable period of time for many years. Offerings ranged from revivals of classic plays and musicalsA Streetcar Named Desire and Guys and Dolls, for example-to new plays, musicals, and revues. It was a time marked also by the appearance on the New York stage of numerous film stars. By far the most unusual event of the spring season, however, was Metro, the musical originated In Warsaw, Poland.

The production that opened at the Mlnskoff Theatre on April 16, 1992, began its odyssey to Broadway nearly two years ago. That's when Wiktor Kubiak, enthusiastic about the work of actor /choreographer Janusz Jozefowicz, decided to back Mr. Jozefowicz In an undertaking he envisioned: a Polish musical based on American models but featuring native talent. Mr. Jozefowicz recruited young performers from various parts of Poland and trained them for months in singing and dancing.

The Polish version of Metro opened a year ago in Warsaw and has been a huge hit there ever since. Meantime, the original cast spent months more learning English so that the show, which features a cast of forty-six, could be brought to Broadway while a replacement cast took over at home. To produce the work In New York cost Mr. Kubiak $5 million.

The show itself was one of the oddest mixtures to appear in New York theatre for some time, combining as it did the most sophisticated, advanced lighting effects with a naive, outdated story. The spectacular lighting was the result of laser beams of light that sparkled and gleamed not only over the entire stage area but In the audience. At times they were breathtaking In their sweep and coruscation: a huge wheel of laser beams encircled a woman on a platform singing a solo; ribbons of light played over a stage filled with performers in motion.

The story Itself was another matter. Briefly, it concerned a group of young people who want to be In the theatre, and when they are turned down by an establishment organization, they decide to mount a show in the subway (even though Warsaw has no subway). When they are a success, they must decide whether to perform in the establishment theatre or not. The story and the music exhibit strong echoes of Hair and A Chorus Line, both shows that Broadway now looks on as musicals from the past.

The young performers were incredibly energetic and many of them quite talented; they danced and sang their hearts out. But neither their enthusiasm nor the novelty of the lighting effects could


overcome the all-too-familiar story. As a result, Metro was forced to close on April 26, 1992 after a run of thirteen performances and twenty-four previews.

43

THE SUICIDE COMES "FULL CIRCLE" IN CLEVELAND

Scott T. Cummings

This past June while Boris Yeltsin was wooing Congress, Otar Djangisherashvill and twenty-nine members of the New Experimental Theatre (NET) of Volgograd were wowing Oeveland with their production of Nikolai Erdman's The Suicide. The company's monthlong Ohio residency was part of a continuing International theatre exchange between NET and the Cleveland Play House. In addition to The Suicide, NET presented A Streetcar Named Desire as directed In Volgograd In 1991 by Oeveland Play House Artistic Director Josephine R. Abady. That production marked the f irst ever representation In the United States of a major Russian production directed by an American, hence the exchange program's title: Full Circle.

The title might just as well refer to the all-Russian Erdman production and the pattern of recent history. According to Djanglsherashvill, the NET production marked the first professional staging of the play in Russia since competing productions by Stanislavsky and Meyerhold were banned by Stalin's Central Licensing Board in 1932. The sweet Irony of re-appropriating and mounting the Soviet satire In the city known as Stallngrad from 1925 to 1961 could not have been lost on the enterprising Djangisherashvili. He founded NET In 1988 and took over the former home of the Volgograd Drama Theatre, which was closed by the Ministry of Culture that same year. A product of perestroika and a pioneer In the privatization of Russian theatre, NET receives only partial state-subsidy and depends on packed houses for its survival.

Fast-paced and boisterous, the NET production of The Suicide has the grit and gloss of Threepenny Opera or Guys and Dolls and falls somewhere between the deep and cynical Ironies of the former and the sentimentality and pizzazz of the latter. Djanglsherashvili is true to the text, but he dresses up Erdman's satire with accessories pulled from the wardrobe of musical theatre. Touches of Broadway, cabaret, variety show, and even the circus give the play a decidedly upbeat and, at moments, American feel.

Incongruity is at the heart of Erdman's comic conceit. Semyon Semyonovich Podsekalnikov (Senya), an unemployed man, wakes up hungry in the middle of the night and asks his wife, whose employment supports them, for a liverwurst sandwich. A domestic spat develops and Senya storms off without his pants. His wife, fearIng that he will kill himself out of shameful despair at his unemployment, rouses the neighbors to rescue him. As rumor spreads of Senya's allegedly suicidal intentions, various disenchanted members of society step forward to lend their own particular motives and

45

grievances to explain an act which Senya blames on no one. The Ineffectual intellectual, the spurned lover, the starving artist, the struggling businessman, the clergy, and the homeless all compete so presumptuously for Senya's endorsement that he finds himself backed Into an ambivalent martyrdom. This triggers, In tum, a genuIne existential crisis. In the end, Podsekalnlkov chooses life, stepping out of his own coffin at his own funeral to the chagrin of his selfrighteous sponsors. "Our achievements, our success, our reconstructed society, our desire to set the wortd ablaze, you can keep it," he says. "I want a quiet life and a living wage. •

The simple and direct plea from an ordinary everyman to be excused from the Revolution so that he can tend his own garden must have had a multivalent effect on Russian audiences In the earty 1990s. Is Djanglsherashvill aiming Erdman's 1932 Soviet satire at post-Soviet Russia, whose citizens face prolonged hardship and sacrifice during a difficult period of economic reform or at the Soviet Union before and during Gorbachev? If it Is the latter case, the production becomes something of a wry celebration of the collapse of state socialism. Out of context at Cleveland, It Is difficult for most American viewers to be sure, but the burden of the production values suggests a cautiously benign view toward the current situation. The NET production--presented In Russian with simultaneous translation via wireless headset--Is first, last, and always, a good show.

Djangisherashvlli, who doubles as director and designer, places The Suicide on a slightly raked open stage which stretches all the way to a blank rear wall and is flanked by two tall brick sidewalls which do little more than frame the stage space. A dozen or so wooden chairs are scattered about the large playing area and through portions of the play the cast lounges there and watches the action, almost all of which is presented vaudeville style, right down on the apron of the stage. At the beginning of the play, Podsekalnikov and his wife kneel side by side, holding a sheet up to their chins, and this (along with the lighting effects) Is sufficient to convey that they are In bed together. There are no doors or walls, and even when two characters are locked in heated conversation, their focus is straight out front to the audience, heightening the comic effects.

Throughout the play, a bright red circle of light is projected on the rear wall. This big red sun shining over all below is both so obviously and so obscurely symbolic that it loses meaning and becomes little more than an abstract visual element. Harder to ignore is a tall narrow scaffolding unit upstage center which looms monolithically over the stage like a guard tower or a circus diving platform (or the remaining piece of a long-abandoned constructivist set). There are carpets or blankets piled and draped at the bottom of the scaffold and a ladder leads to the top. Through much of the play a shadowy and unidentified figure in black lurks there gazing down at


the action with little comment or Involvement. At first he seems to be In a position of command-over a microphone he reads "the latest decree• from on high--but as the play proceeds he becomes peripheral and forgettable, and his eventual disappearance goes unnoticed. Perhaps the audience Is to Infer that a central and ultimate authority which dominates or controls events is fast becoming a chimera. an unnecessary Nlusion or fleeting memory.

The red sun and the man in the tower are not the only directorial parentheses Djangisherashvili places around Erdman's comic action. He interpolates songs and dances-contemporary sounding Russian rock ballads--by way of prologue, intertude, and epUogue. The first one is sung by the actors as they wander out onstage at the beginning of the show and finish putting on their costumes. With a menacing lilt, Its refrain tells us: "Without music death's not pretty I Without music no one wants to die. • As if to honor this sentiment at seemingly random moments during the performance, a burst of gunshots Interrupts the action. Ughts and music bump up bright and full and colorful. and the ensemble dances frenetically about the stage until another gunshot signals an equally abrupt return to the action. These brief theatrical explosions accelerate what is already a helter skelter rhythm as character after character besieges Podsekalnikov In an effort first to win his endorsement and second to hurry him down the path to self-destruction.

Podsekalnikov's hesitations along the way are what make The Suicide full-bodied comedy, and Valery Guriev as Podsekalnikov rises to the occasion masterfully. The irony of Podsekalnikov's surrogate martyrdom is enriched by a more profound comic Inversion. If Podsekalnikov, out of work and down on his luck, starts the play as a living dead man, in the run-up to the big bang (which never comes) he discovers an invigorating life-in-death. This renewed sense of self peaks at the drunken banquet held in his honor when Podsekalnikov picks up the phone and defiantly calls the Kremlin to say, "I have read Marx and Marx sucks." At moments when the prescribed task is at hand, Podsekalnikov grows less courageous and more contemplative.

Aptly and ably, Guriev portrays Podsekalnikov as a clown with a soul. The funniest moments in the play come early when Senya seeks economic salvation by trying to master the tuba with the help of a do-it-yourself manual. As he sits in a chair and fumbles to turn the pages, Senya is dwarfed by the brass leviathan on his lap, which seems to play him more than he plays it. When he does manage to coax a halfway musical sound from it, he jumps up on the chair and exults In his artistry. By the end of the act, Guriev shifts from athletic buffoonery to a comic (but no less sincere) version of Hamlet's most famous soliloquy. Gun In hand, Podsekalnikov ponders the afterlife ("Me, without myself?") and the split second

47

between life and death ("Tick tock. But between the tick and the tock there's a wall . . .. Tick Is everything. But tock Is nothing.") Locked In a tight spotlight, Gurlev movingly expresses Senya's blend of curiosity and fear, the sting of mortality he feels, and the sense of the thin tissue of life which holds back the unknown.

This conclusion to the second act of Erdman's flvEHct play might well have lead to the Intermission. But before releasing the audience to the lobby and lavatories, DjanglsherashvUIInte~ects an anachronistic song promoting the purification from Industrial waste of ,he great Russian river, the Volga," which runs through and lends Its name to the New Experimental Theatre's home town. The entire cast of twenty-one spreads out along the apron to sing the hymn of praise and protest, which In Cleveland was easily applied by the locals to the nearby Cuyahoga, Infamous for pollution so rank that It once caught fire.

The moment Is stirring enough In Its own right; It gives the play a topical twist, and no one can argue with the environmental message. But the song, as a rousing and In-your-face collective action, overshadows the Impression of Podsekalnikov as a regular Joe In the midst of discovering and Insisting on his Individuality. It exemplifies how Djanglsherashvlli's theatrical handling of the play threatens both the sharpness of Erdman's satire and the polgnanc'l of his comedy. Just as the play, In its comic mode, pits the needs ot society (to protest without sacrifice) against those of the Individual (to cling to life), the New Experimental Theatre of Volgograd production juggles the needs of the box office (to entertain) with those of the art form (to tell the truth) . Like Podsekalnikov, The Suicide survives and Its truth Is told; Djangisherashvili simply provides a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.


EOVARO RAOZJNSKY'S Nl OLD ACTRESS IN THE ROLE OF DOS10EVSIO"'S WIFE

AT THE JEAN COCTEAU REPERTORY

Patrick Hennedy

If Edvard Radzinsky is the second most-staged Russian playwright after Chekhov, with nine plays currently running in Moscow and one In rehearsal, then why is he virtually unknown In the United States? Although his plays have been performed In many European countries, New York's Jean Cocteau Repertory Is the only theatre in America producing Radzinsky's work. He has gained much more American attention for his best-selling book on the Romanoffs, The Last Tsar, than for any of his plays. Certainly this question does not discourage the members of the Cocteau Rep., who have succeeded in presenting an entertaining and thoughtprovoking production of An Old Actress In the Role of Dostoevsky's Wife.

The play Is not about Dostoevsky's life, but rather the different realities that two people assume in their heads and in their acting roles. The Old Actress claims to be a former star of the stage who has now checked into an institution for the aged. She claims her stay is temporary in order to allow her children to go on vacation, but It is obvious from the beginning that she is not there on a visiting basis. Fedya, on the other hand, is not in the Institution because of old age. He lives under a couch, the central item on stage, and believes he is actually Fyodor Dostoevsky. When the Old Actress discovers and confronts Fedya under the couch, Fedya soon convinces himself that the Old Actress must be Dostoevsky's/his wife.

The action of the play consists of the switching back and forth of identities between Fedya and Dostoevsky, and the Old Actress and Anya, Dostoevsky's wife. Fedya's obsession has inspired him to learn everything about Dostoevsky. The Old Actress reads from Anya's diaries and letters in order to assume her role. At first the Old Actress believes she is passing the time by acting out a part for Fedya, but as they work together they alternate between episodes in Anya's life and explorations of their own identities. As a result, reality blurs and Fedya tries to persuade the Old Actress Into believing that she really is Anya, just as he really is Dostoevsky.

A twist enters Into this exchange when the Old Actress reveals that she, like Fedya, has been·assuming someone else's identity all along. She Is actually the faithful costumer for the real "Old Actress. • The has-been star to whom she devoted her life had recently died, so she has taken over that identity. The interplay of the d ifferent realities of the two characters becomes all the more

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Art Old Actress in the Role of Dostoevsky's Wife,

Jean Cocteau Repertory, New York

Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 12, Nos. 2 & 3

complex once It Is revealed that the Old Actress Is much more like Fedya than was previously shown.

Fedya believes that destiny has provided him with his Anya and Is Intent on marrying the Old Actress. Because of the Old Actress' refusal and her revelation about her true Identity, the realities of the characters go through yet another transformation. Fedya claims that he has been a director all along, and that he has been tricking the Old Actress Into making a film about the life of Dostoevsky. He relates to the Old Actress as If she really were the once-famous and accomplished star and claims that he was getting a great performance out of her.

This last transformation seems a bit desperate, though, since Fedya must soon leave the Old Actress for some unexplained reason. The Old Actress plays along with Fedya even though she has admitted who she really is. In addition, Fedya has to reconcile his new Identity to the circumstances by claiming that he Is making a new kind of movie, one without cameras or film. This final arrangement of realities seems to be the only one that will allow them to deal with their separation.

Certain elements of the staging add to the confusion over identity In a way that neatly connects the psychological and theatrical role-playing aspects of the play. The first lines of the play are spoken by the Old Actress In the dark and refers to a time when she was backstage as a child, being transformed by theatre make-up. At this point, the audience cannot connect the voice with anything. For the entire first scene, Fedya is only a voice from under the couch, raising the question of whether he Is real at all or just a part of the Old Actress' Imagination. Before Fedya transforms into the director, he exits through the audience to the back of the auditorium and, after a moment of silence, begins to applaud. This false ending serves to put the audience In somewhat the same situation as the Old Actress, having to decide what is the reality of the situation and what is the fiCtion.

A very Interesting point about the structure of this play Is that Radzlnsky Is said to purposely write far more than he Intends to see staged. He expects that a good production of his work will be cut appropriately. Accordingly, the production at the Cocteau Rep. Is about half of the original written text. Director Eve Adamson, In coordination with translator Alma Law, has left the revelation that the Old Actress Is actually the seamstress until late in the play. More emphasis is given to the relationship that develops between the two characters through their acting out the roles of Dostoevsky and Anya. Consequently the play, which already emphasizes character study over action, has a very different pace at the end than it did during most of the performance.

A final note needs to be made about the quality of the acting.

51

Adamson has obviously worked hard with the two performers to explore every facet of the relationships involved. Jere Jacob as the Old Actress grows more and more compelling as she reveals more layers of her character's personality. Acting to a disembodied voice for the entire first scene Is a very difficult task In which Ms. Jacob succeeds. Craig Smith plays Fedya with the confidence and energy required of his character. Fedya really propels the action, and the presence and unforced power of Smith's acting serve the part extremely well.


AUDIENCE DISCUSSION WITH EVE ADAMSON AND ALMA LAW FOLLOWING A PERFORMANCE OF

AN OLD ACTRESS IN THE ROLE OF IJOSTOEVSJ<Y"S WIFE

Edited by Patrick Hennedy

Q: Is the material all accurate? Are what we're getting in the play the actual w ritings of Dostoevsky?

Law: Yes, Radzinsky used the actual letters. We made cuts, but we haven't rearranged them at all or the other facts In the play--with some artistic license.

Q: Do you see any similarity between No Exit, which you did several years ago, and this play?

Adamson: Interesting question. There is no exit from this situation. There's a sense of the characters being in a hermetically sealed environment, Interacting with and on each other. That's an InterestIng parallel.

Q: But they do escape Into Dostoevsky's translations. They jump out of that character for a while and go in another d irection and then rejoin that first character again. The audience gets a terrific mental exercise.

Adamson: Yes. That's what's fun about it for me. I think for the actors too.

Q: It resembles Pirandello in that way.

Adamson: A lot of people have said that.

law: When it was done in Paris, in fact, some of the critics hailed Radzinsky as a "new Pirandello," specifically because of this play.

Q: The basic concept in this play is fairly clear, but I had t rouble understanding the basic thrust of what the author was saying. I could picture, of course, the era in which he was writing it. The political background is obvious against which this was written. But what would you say was the basic thrust of the play?

Law: Well, let me answer your question indirectly . This is one of the plays that Radzinsky calls "theatre within theatre. • I think his fascination was with creating this independent world on the stage in which you play a kind of game. So I don't think he was trying to make a

53

political commentary on what was occurring in Russia at the time. Radzinsky has a series of plays he calls "theatre within theatre,• and it's a conundrum in the end. There is no answer: who are these people? He says he doesn't know himself.

0: Yet there Is the feeling that there's no escape from our environment; the feeling that all of our actions are so limited. I find It hard to accept that it had no influence on the writing of this play. You get a powerful feeling of being enclosed.

Law: Yes, but don't we all feel that way, aside from the political context?

0: The confusion as to the age of the person talking was Interesting. She seems to be a cross between a very young and a hopelessly old woman.

Adamson: Of course, Anya Dostoevsky was a very young girt In the play. I like to think that the Old Actress was able to get in touch with that part of herself and bring that out to play Anya.

0; I'd like to see more of Radzinsky's plays. Is there any thought that you might tackle some of the others that have been as successful?

Adamson: Well, this is the fourth Radzinsky play that Jean Cocteau Repertory has done. We did the historical-philosophical trilogy, all in Alma's translations, over the last decade. Now that Radzinsky has a book on the bestseller list people know who he is a little better than they did when we did the first play.

0: Is the Pirandello approach typical of the playwright? Does he use this aspect of characters changing identities in his other plays?

Law: To a greater or lesser degree, yes. He does it in many of his plays. But I think he does it more in this one than in the others. You get a little of that In Lunin.

0: I have a couple of questions to you as a director. I'm wondering if the very spare, almost presentational staging is the way is was staged in Moscow. And the other part of the question is that one has the feeling of watching these people as if you were watching through a two-way mirror, that you're looking in on these people. As a director, did you play the game of watching from without, or did you find that you were Inside that room with them and working with the problems and choices that way?


Adamson: The director always has to be on the outside. Because as much fun as we might have Inside the room, the play is for the spectators. But with this play, In particular, there Is a kind of truth that has to be there, or the play won't work. I'm used to doing more presentational work where you don't have to have that inner truth that these characters must have.

As for the first part of your question, the script, of course, calls for a much more realistic setting. It describes a room, with a stage and various things. We are using the kind of set I always like, which Is a single, hopefully bold image that makes a statement, rather than a lot of realistic stuff which you can see on television.

Law: My guess Is that In Moscow it was done In a similar way. Not very many theatres are using old fashioned, realistic settings any more.

Q: Why haven't we heard of this play before? Why hasn't It been around untH now?

Law: I was always telling Radzinsky that he had no name recognition in this country at all. It's only now that his book on the last Russian Tsar has been published that people have begun to realize that there Is somebody named Radzinsky, and that he's also a playwright. So there's suddenly a great deal of interest In his work.

Q: The ending of the play is very ambiguous about both of these characters, and whether the Fedya character actually exists. Does the playwright have a definite idea one way or another?

Law: He said in an Interview I did with him right after he wrote the play that he doesn't know himself.

0: As a director, did you have to make a decision, or did you encourage the actors to decide for themselves one way or another?

Adamson: Well, when the actors read this Interview with Radzlnsky that Alma had translated and saw in one of his opening statements that he doesn't have a clue as to what this play is about, that rather sent them into a state of despair. I absolutely adore ambiguity in the theatre. And I would not make a statement or lead the audience to say, "This is what It's really about. • Because, to me, the audience should be going out asking questions rather than having easy answers.

Now that's all very nice and good, but actors can't play ambiguity too well. I don't think we ever came to an absolute solid decision about who either of them really is, but In getting there we had to

55

explore all of the possibilities of what each of them might be and then put those together. In the process of getting there, they were getting more and more secure in what they were doing. I don't think any of us would say exactly what the play is about or who these people are. It's just a matter of getting there, which Is not as easy In this play as It might be In some other plays.

0 : In the program It says that the playwright Is a professionally trained historian. Does the translator see any sort of Interrelationship between the two hats that he wears as an artist-dramatist and as a professional historian?

Law: I think he does wear more than one hat. His historical trilogy is very much tied In with his being a professional historian. But I think In this play he really does have a very strong feeling for theatre and for actresses.

Adamson: He's married several of them.

Law: In fact, he's written a series of plays which he calls "benefits,• which are for various actresses. This one was written with a certain actress in mind, a very famous Russian actress, Marla Babanova. Unfortunately, she died before the play was completed. But some of the details the character tells about herself as an actress In the play, when she speaks about the twenties and thirties, are taken from Babanova's life. One of the reasons Radzinsky has been so popular In Russia Is because he provides such juicy roles for actresses In particular.

0: I know it's ambiguous at the end, but I really see the end as true tragedy. She seems to be caving in with disappointment. What has happened? Has she suddenly found that reality has conquered everything? Why Is she so upset at the end?

0 : Imagination does not let us escape. There is no exit. Imagination keeps drawing us back to what reality is. That's why she caves ln.

Adamson: Fedya really jerks her around a lot, you know. Who is he? And then he does that whole director act.

0 : I think that the ambiguity is the fun and the frustration of this play. One Is left with all sorts of questions, non-resolutions. And it leads one on to more and more thoughts about the meaning.

Adamson: We're all looking for happily-ever-after In theatre and In life, and I truly believe it doesn't exist.


0 : The fact that the heroine is an actress gives a clue to some of the questions that have been raised In the play. It's true that one doesn't have limitless opportunity to assume many roles. And while a person may not succeed in one or another role, there Is always another. There is always hope; there's always the possibility that she will succeed in one of the roles. That's in the spirit of the play. It's also, I think, a lesson for life.

Adamson: That was just beautifully said. I wish I'd had you at all my rehearsals.

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HAVEL'S VANEK PLAYS AT THE JEAN COCTEAU REPERTORY

Christine A. Pinkowicz

Despite their simple dramatic form, The Vanek Plays have surprising resonance for a Western audience. The late Joseph Papp produced the three together in 1983 under the title A Private View, but last season's production at the Jean Cocteau Repertory, directed by David Fishelson, is the first in New York in nearly ten years and the first worldwide since Havel was named President of Czechoslovakia in 1989. There's a fresh sense of fascination in watching these plays in the wake of democracy's victory world-wide, a sobering view of dally battles faced In winning a torturous war. That these plays are comic in tone and utilize the three-dimensionality of theatre makes them, if not profound, at least quite entertaining and Ulumlnating. As Tom Stoppard said in 1980: • ... here one relishes the joyous freedom of Havel's Imagination."

Wtclav Havel began his Vanek trilogy in 1975 with the short piece Audience, which he wrote to entertain a group of dissident writers visiting his summer cottage. This comic piece, a dialogue between a Havel-iike figure named Vanek and his supervisor in a new brewery job, was immediately outlawed by the Czech Communist government but became immensely popular after being widely disseminated In photocopied form. The popularity of its portrait of repression prompted Havel to write two more seldom-produced Vanek plays--Unveiling, also in 1975, and Protest, in 1979. While Audience has received productions both abroad and in New York City, the most recent in By and For Havel in 1990 (SEEP vol. 10, no. 1, Spring 1990), both its political power and the self-portrait of its author /protagonist are served more fully by the juxtaposition of all three.

Havel's alter ego, Vanek, is a quiet cornerstone for the three plays. He is the invisible glue holding the more loquacious and conspicuous characters together--in much the same way the real-life dissidents held their countries together as they fervently pushed for an end to totalitarian rule. We see the toll this takes on Vanek himself-before being relegated to working in a brewery and being sent to prison. But Havel's focus is directed more toward the four other characters in these works--those citizens who symbolize the pressures and problems of the system. The result is a double portrait: HaveljVanek (and other dissidents who remain true to their beliefs) and those in Czech society who vainly try to "buy into" the system. In 1975, Havel asked, "Why are people behaving the way they do? Why do all these things, taken together, form the impressive Image of a totally united society giving total support to Its government? They are driven to it by fear."

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The beer-guzzling Brewmaster In Audience embodies many aspects of this statement: As a supervisor, the only tasks he engages in are sleeping, drinking, and relieving himself, thus highlighting waste and corruption in the workplace. But Havel makes him eminently likeable. He knows of Vanek's writings and seems to feel more distress at Vanek's demotion to day laborer than Vanek himself feels. He's perplexed by the system and unsure how to cope with the news that government spies have come around seeking reports on Vanek's activities. He can't afford to make enemies In the government, yet he genuinely likes his new employee; after what seems like considerable mental wrangling, he offers Vanek a promotion to an easier, more comfortable position If Vanek himself will write the reports. As the beer bottles accumulate on the table and the Brewmaster gradually reveals his envy and vents his anger at Vanek's ability to follow his "self-serving principles," we see a troubled human being caught between a moral rock and hard place. Unlike Vanek, his job Is all the Brewmaster has--and we can see just how grimly unsatisfying it Is. By the time the Brewmaster has exhausted himself from this outpouring, he is sobbing In Vanek's arms. But before we can be too moved, the Brewmaster's sobs segue Into snores--and we realize that he Is right back where he was when Vanek entered the scene. Vanek returns seconds after going out the door; this time, though, he grabs a beer and emphatically echoes the Brewmaster's proclamation that "everything's all tucked up."

The second work focuses on a fashionable couple intent on reaping all the extrinsic reward the system promises. Unveiling (originally called A Private View) finds Michael and Vera proudly ushering Vanek into their newly-decorated apartment. They are dressed perfectly, have a perfect baby, and have designed their own perfect abode. Vanek and the audience gaze at the statue of Elvis Presley, the leopard rug complete with gaping head, an Orthodox shrine, and various zebra prints--and silently gag. It's all so "perfectly" frightful that within two minutes we have concluded that Michael and Vera are snotty Yuppies with absolute confidence in what the government accomplishes. They repeat 'We like you a lot" and "You're our best friend," but they scorn Vanek's demotion to the brewery, deride Vanek's marriage, and even Initiate lovemaking to instruct their friend "how far you can take these things!" In fact, the couple gets so wrapped up In this exercise that Vanek watches them rubbing noses in amazement and prepares to leave; when they see him with coat and scarf, they're crushed and outraged, whining like children. So Vanek remains.

Protest depicts Vanek's meeting with a successful television writer named Stanek who was once a dissident friend of Vanek's. The writer has summoned his old friend upon hearing that he has


been released from prison. Stanek asks Vanek's help In writing a petition to have his pop-singer son-in-law released from jail. In the course of the play, we learn that the singer has been freed through the efforts of others, but not before Stanek vents his frustration (In splendid rhetoric) at giving up the cause and defending his need to be successful, if not "right. • We see Stanek's hatred of anyone who can't understand how important his place in society has become to him, as well as his intense guilt over abandoning the dissident movement. As Havel wrote, "(Even] if they never speak of It, people have a very acute appreciation of the price they have paid for outward peace and quiet--the permanent humiliation of their human dignity." Havel achieves with Stanek a portrait of the Intense confl ict between self-glorification and remorse.

Such fascinating inner personal conflict goes a long way toward compensating for the lack of dramatic tension in all three plays. So do Absurdist elements in the first two: Unveiling mirrors lonesco's The Bald Soprano with Its hostjvisitor relationship, seemingly Incongruous visual and verbal moments, and most obviously, the sporadic and uncontrollable explosions of an irritating cuckoo clock. Audience presents an Inhospitable work environment In which even the Brewmaster's Office is spartan and uncomfortable; Vanek himself is said to work strenuously in the cold. The Brewmaster in his Inebriated state repeats questions again and again, just as his sleeping, drinking, and urinating all re-occur. Ultimately too the entire play concludes in the same way it began--with the Brewmaster asleep at his table when Vanek knocks at the door-suggesting the circularity and lack of progress in this State. Havel's use of elements, however, is different from the Absurdist playwrights of two decades ear1ier; here, we see only the touches of the Absurd amidst what is clearly meant to be realistic depictions of typical Czech scenes.

Although the plays are easily accessible and user-friendly, the challenge Is to stage them together as a powerful whole, rather than as three funny, unrelated playlets. Director David Fishelson achieves varying degrees of success with the Individual plays and special impact with Protest, the most realistic of them. Craig Smith, who throughout gives a steady, impressive portrayal of a quiet, accommodating Intellectual, shows us a Vanek who grows stronger in standing up to the demands of friends. In Audience, Vanek returns immediately to the sleeping supervisor's office, almost as if to reassure the Brewmaster that he can sympathize and agree that the world Is lacking and that he will toss down a beer with him out of sheer appreciation of him as a human being. I especially liked this, for It suggests an introverted intellectual who learns something about the importance of relating to his fellow human beings. When, in Unveiling, Vanek remains at Michael's and Vera's after ail, he's still

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feeling his way with people--this time erring In the opposite direction, being kind when he should perhaps be less tolerant. In Protest, Smith's Vanek seems calmer, more sure of himself, and more aware of the balance between the theory In which he believes so strongly and the people whom It affects so greatly. Robert Ierardi complements Smith here with a subdued, yet powerful portrayal of Stanek; the extremes of guilt and self-righteousness would be less moving If Ierardi were not so subtle. He crafts his character around the tiniest details in movement and voice at the beginning, then builds carefully, mining the angst that lies within a man a good deal older than the actor himself.

Fishelson, however, seems less comfortable with the stylistic differences of the first two plays-and In the dynamic of the trio as a whole. The director seems to interpret Audience in a most understated manner. William Charles Mitchell brings compassion and humanity to the Brewmaster, a role that could easily-and I think mistakenly-take on a jaded and flippant edge; unfortunately, Mitchell simply doesn't have the vibrancy needed for the role, or the range of emotion required for the character's gentle but drunken moods. In Unveiling, Fishelson errs In the direction of overstatement, despite having excellent actors in Grant Neale and Elise Stone. Stone has a well-enunciated contralto voice that often veers toward the strident, but she offers a consistent Interpretation of the submissive, "perfect" little wife. It Is Neale, though, who gives this play Its most effective sense of movement. As Michael, he starts modestly, building ever so slowly to an arrogant braggart--a progression necessary to explain how Havel could have liked the couple in the first place and yet yearn to leave them by the end. While the play does Invite schtick and a degree of farce, Fishelson pushes beyond that until Stone and Neale resemble cartoon characters in their exaggerated emotional pitch. Flshelson's idea to conclude the evening with a tableau of Vanek leaving the stage to the accompaniment of a volceover announcing Havel's election as President of Czechoslovakia is amateurish, both In its stating of the obvious and for the lack of a similar framing device at the beginning.

Fortunately, however, both actor Smith and author Havel bring the focus back to Vanek, the true backbone of the evening. These plays are eminently worth producing together, and I appreciate the opportunity to see them together at the Jean Cocteau Repertory. Vaclav Havel is an important dramatist and statesman whose plays enable us to understand what his country went through In it years of totalitarian regime. In 1986, Pavel Kohout said of Havel, "To [the masses] he is an inconvenience [because) he proves them guilty of a life-sized lie--guilty in front of the world, their families, and even ourselves. [Vaclav] Havel is a very real danger--because the future threatens to prove him right." As, of course, It has.


CONTRIBUTORS

SCOTT T. CUMMINGS lives in Pittsburgh, PA, where he is currently at work on a study of the theatre work of Maria Irene Fornes.

JOHN FREEDMAN is the author of Silence's Roar: The Life and Drama of Nikolai Erdman (Mosaic Press). He writes about theatre for the Moscow Times and is the co-editor of Gordon and Breach Science Publisher's new series, TwentiethCentury Russian Avant-garde Drama.

MEUNDA JO GUTTMAN is professor of theatre at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She is an actress as well as a critic and writer on theatre. She has edited L 'imaginaire du nucleaire for Les Cahiers du Grit (1989).

PATRICK HENNEDY Is associate editor of SEEP and a theatre doctoral candidate at the Graduate School of the City University of New York.

DMYTRO KOTELENETS is a student of theatre history and criticism at the Karpenko-Kary Theatre Institute in Kiev. During the summer of 1991 he observed the rehearsals for the Yara Arts Group's production of In the Light In Kiev and traveled with the show to Kharkiv and Lviv.

CHRISTINE A. PINKOWICZ is an adjunct in the Hunter College Theatre Department and the Brooklyn College Continuing Education Program. She is a doctoral candidate in the City University of New York. She is author of Real Estate Crisis in the New York City Not-For-Profit Theatre.

VIRLANA TKACZ heads the Yara Arts Group which is a resident company at La Mama ETC. With Yara she has created A Light from the East and Explosions. She is currently working on Blind Sight about Vasyt Yeroshenko, a blind poet who traveled throughout Asia at the beginning of the century. Her articles on theatre director Les Kurbas have been published in Theatre History Studies and in several Slavic journals.

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DAVID WIWNGER has edited An Anthology of Contemporary Belgian Plays, 1970-1982 and Theatrical Gestures from the Belgian Avant-Garde, has published widely on the Belgian theatre and has translated six plays by Hugo Claus. He Is Associate Professor of Theatre at The City College and The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York.

EDWIN WILSON Is the director of CASTA (Center for the Advanced Study of Theatre Arts) at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. A member of the faculty at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate School, he Is also theatre critic for The Wall Street Journal.

Photo Credits

Salome, The Alia Sigalova Independent Company Sergei Petrukhin

May 32/City of Mice, The Shchukin Theatre Institute Matvei Chernov

The Bald Brunette, The Stanislavsky Theatre N. Zvyagintsev

The Gamblers-21st Century, The Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre Anna Berdichevskaya

King Lear, The New Theatre Mariusz Stachowak

In the Light, Franko Theatre Viktor Marustschenko

The Suicide, The Cleveland Play House The New Experimental Theatre of Volgograd, Russia

An Old Actress . .. and The Vanek Plays, Jean Cocteau Repertory Jonathan Slaff


PLAYSCRIPTS IN TRANSLATION SERIES

The following Is a list of publications available through the Center for Advanced Study In Theatre Arts (CASTA):

No. 1 Never Part From Your Loved Ones, by Alexander Volodln. Translated by Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)

No. 2 I, Mikhail Sergeevich Lunin, by Edvard Radzlnsky. Translated by Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)

No. 3 An Altar to Himself, by lreneusz lredynskl. Translated by Mlchaf Kobiaf1<a. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)

No. 4 Conversation with the Executioner, by Kazlmlerz Moczarski. Stage adaptation by Zygmunt HObner; English version by Ear1 Ostroff and Daniel Gerould. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)

No. 5 The Outsider, by lgnatii Dvoretsky. Translated by C. Peter Goslett. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)

No. 6 The Ambassador, by srawomir Mrozek. Translated by srawomlr Mroiek and Ralph Manheim. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)

No. 7 Four by Liudmila Petrushevskaya (Love, Come into the Kitchen, Nets and Traps, and The Violin). Translated by Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)

No. 8 The Trap, by Tadeusz R6zewicz. Translated by Adam Czernlawski. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)

Soviet Plays in Translation. An annotated Bibliography. Compiled and edited by Alma H. Law and C. Peter Goslett. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)

Polish Plays in Translation. An annotated Bibliography. Compiled and edited by Daniel C. Gerould, Bofesiaw Taborskl, Mlchaf Kobiaf1<a, and Steven Hart. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)

Polish and Soviet Theatre Posters. Introduction and Catalog by Daniel C. Gerould and Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign)

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SEEP_vol.12_nos.2&3_Fall 1992

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Transcript of SEEP_vol.12_nos.2&3_Fall 1992