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Sovietand

Bast BuropeanDrama Theatre

and

Film

Volume 8 No . 1May 1988

SEEDTF is a publication of the Institute for Contemporary East Euro-pean and Soviet Drama and Theatre under the auspices of the Centerfor Advanced Study in Theatre Arts CASTA), Graduate Center CityUn i ve rsity of New York.The Institute Office i s Room 12 06A CityUniversity Graduate Center 33 West 42nd Str eet , New York NY10036. All subscription requests and submissions should be addressedto the Editors of SEEDTF Daniel Gerould and Alma Law CASTA,Theatre Program City University Graduate Center 33 West 42ndStreet, New York NY 10036.

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EDITORSDaniel GerouldAlma Law

ASSOCIATE EDITORRichard Brad Medoff

ADVISORY BOARDEdwin Wilson ChairmanMarvin CarlsonLeo HechtMartha W Coigney

PRODU TION STAFFAlan HemingwayJ . Kathleen urry

opyright 1988 CAST A

SEE TF has a very liberal reprinting policy. Journals and newsletterswhich desire to reproduce articles reviews and other materials whichhave appeared in SEE TF may do so as long as the following provi-sions are met:

a. Permission to reprint must be requested from SEE TF in writingbefore the fact .

b . redit to SEE TF must be given in the reprint .

c . Two copies of the publication in which the reprinted material hasappeared must be furnished to the Editor of SEE TF immediatelyupon publication.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editorial Policy .................................................. ............................................. 4

Upcoming Events .... ........... .... ....... ..................... .................. ........... ................ 5

,;US-USSR Commision on Theatre and DanceMeets in Princeton. Marvin Carlson ....... .. ........ ........................................... ?

1987 -88 Season: A Survey ofProductions. Alma Law ................................................................ ..... .......... 10

" hal l Never Return: A Manifesto.Tadeusz Kantor ............................................................................................. 16

Abandon All Hope?--Tadeusz Kantor's Vision of An Artist's Role inModern Society.Michal Kobialka .......................................................................................... ..22

Ion Sava, The First Promoter of Re-theatricalization in Romania.Bogdan Mischiu .......................................... ............. ............ ............ ............ .. 28

The American Film Festivalin Moscow. Leo Hecht .............. ........ .... ...... .... ............................................. 31

Reviews'Pure Form' is Pure Fun in Witkacy's Country House.

Judith Brussell ............................................................................................... 33

Theme. Jeff Bronc ....................................... .............................................. .36

Contributors ......... ................................................ ............ ................ .. .... ...... 38

Playscripts in Translation Series ...................................... .......................... . .39

Subscription Policy ................................................ ...... .... ..... ..................... ... 41

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EDITORIAL POLICY

Manuscripts in the following categories are solicited: articles ofno more than 2 500 words; book reviews; performance and film

reviews; and bibliographies. Please bear in mind that all of the abovesubmissions must concern themselves ei ther with contemporarymaterials on Soviet and East European theatre drama and film, or withnew approaches to older materials in recently published works, or newperformances of older plays. In other words we would welcome submissions reviewing innovative performances of Gogo or recently published books on Gogo , for example , but we could not use original articles discussing Gogo as a playwr ight .

Although we welcome translations of articles and reviews fromforeign publications we do require copyright release statements.

We will also gladly publish announcements of special eventsnew book releases, job opportunities and anything else which may be ofinterest to our discipline . All submissions are refereed .

All submissions must be typed double-spaced and carefullyproofread. Submit two copies of each manuscript and attach a stamped,self addressed envelope. The hicago Manual o f tyle should be followed. Transliterations should follow the Library of Congress system .Submissions will be evaluated, and authors will be notified after approximately four weeks .

All submissions inquires and subscription requests should bedirected to:

Daniel Gerould or Alma LawCAST A Theatre ProgramGraduate Center of CUNY33 West 42nd StreetNew York, NY 10036

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UP COMING EVENTS

Theatre

In San Francisco at The One-Act Theatre Company A PrivateView by Vaclav Havel and translated by Vera Blackwell will run March25-April 24.

The Jester Queen a mime piece by Czech clowns BolislavPolifka and Sharlott Povkis, will be presented at the Los AngelesTheatre Center April 10-June 5

Dramatic Risks will be presenting inzano by LuidmilaPetrushevsakya as part of their Staged Brunchtime Readings at Phebe sPlace in New York on April 2. See Alma Law s article for details on aninteresting production of this play in Moscow.

Ostrovsky s play Diary of a Scoundrel translated by Erik Brogger will be performed at the Dallas Theatre Center April 21-May 15.

The State Theatre of Lithuania from Vilnius will be visiting theUnited States in May and performing Chekhov s Uncle Vanya and theplay Pirosmani Pirosmani by V. Korastylev based on the life of Nikolay

Pirosmanashvili. May 10-22 they will appear at the Alley Theatre inHouston before moving on to the International Theatre Festival ofChicago May 25-29.

The First New York Festival of the Arts celebrating international music, dance, theatre, film, and television June 11-July 11 willinclude Tadeusz Kantor s Cricot 2 presenting the American premiere ofI Shall Never Return at the LaMaMa Annex Theatre June 14-June 26and Gardzienice will perform Avvakum directed by WlodzimierzStaniewski at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine June 14-June 25.

From April 22 to May 14 The Film Forum 2 in New York willbe showing seven films by Tarkovsky. All the following information isreprinted from their flyer for the event.

April 22-24:1. Nostalghia (1983). A Russian expatriate wanders wintry

Italian landscapes whilereturning

in memory tohis

homeland, asan

inspired madman finds the fate of the world hanging on a candle s flightacross a dry pool.

2. The Steamroller and the Violin (1960). A shy, young violinstudent, unaccepted by his peers, is befriended by a steamroller driver.

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April 25-26:1. The Mirror (1974). His real fa ther s poems studded

throughout the soundtrack and some locations the actual ones of hischildhood, this is Tarkovsky s most personal and autobiographical film,

moving back and forth between three time frames with the same actressplaying both the protagonist's mother and wife2. Ivan s Childhood (1962) His first feature film.Tarkovsky s

vision is already bursting the bonds of his genre in this portrait of a 12-year-old runner and spy whose only life has been war. The religiousimagery was noted imediately ; but the eye-popping black and whitephotography, surrealistic episodes, and juxtaposition of nature andcarnage are precursors of the uniquely personal works to come.

April 27-28:The Sacrifice (1986). Shot in Sweden, Sacrifice at first evokes

Bergman with a small group of familiar players in a tense isolated situation; but soon t expands to Tarkovsky s cosmic view, as faced withnuclear holocaust, a mystic sacrifice must be offered to restore theworld.

April 29-May :Stalker (1979). Tormented seekers venture into a forbidden

region called The Zone, guided by a licensed Stalker. Based on a storyby the Strugatsky brothers.

May 2-4:

Andrei Rub ev ( 1965) . An epic of medieval times as iconmaster Rublev observes the ambiguities and horrors of his era until anovice s attempt to cast a monstrous bell restores his faith in life andart. Shelved for seven years, then released cut, this showing will be of acomplete version.

eminders(previously listed productions)

April 29-June 5 Lucien Pintele directs The Cherry Orchard atArena Stage, Washington, D.C.

April 15 Laurence Senelick s new translation of The CherryOrchard opens at Ensemble Repertory Theatre in Los Angeles .

March 26-May 8 Growacki's Hunting Cockroaches at the AlleyTheatre, Houston.

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US- USSR COMMISSION ON THEATRE AND DANCE MEETS INPRINCETON

by Marvin Carlson

While much of the world's attention was focused during theweek of December 7, 1987, on the summit meeting in Washington, animportant if far less publicized Soviet-American meeting was being heldat Princeton with a much more immediate relevance to those interestedin scholarly exchange between the two nations. Representatives fromthe Theatre Union of the USSR and the American Council of LearnedSocieties drew up a Protocol to establish an ongoing US-USSR Commission on Theatre and Dance Studies. This Protocol, which was signedon DeC:ember 11, established a program of collaboration for 1988-1989

which included the following items:1. A) The first in a series of annual conferences in Theatre and

Dance Studies will be held in the USA in the late fall of1988 in connection with the 125th anniversary o f the birth ofK .S Stanislavsky. The subject will be Stanislavsky OurContemporary. The sides will also examine the possibility

. of holding a Soviet exhibition on Stanislavsky concurrentlywith the conference. On the American side, the coordinators are Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor o fDrama, Tufts University, and Adrian Hall, Artistic Director,Dallas Theatre Center and Trinity Repertory Company. Onthe Soviet side, the coordinator is Anatoly MironovichSmeliansky, Assistant Chief Director for Repertory andP r o r e c to r o f the Drama School o f the MoscowArt/Secretary of the Board, Theatre Union of the USSR.

B) A conference on Theatre and Dance Studies Today:Methods, Problems, and Perspectives will be held in theUSSR in the late Spring of 1989. Seven American specialists will travel to the USSR for up to 10 days . The coordinators on both sides will be determined at a later date.

2. A working meeting will be held in the USSR in the Spring of1988 to plan a joint exhibition and other activities dealingwith Diaghilev and the Contemporary Dance Theatre. Further working meetings may be scheduled if necessary. TheAmerican coordinators are Selma-Jeanne Cohen, Editor - inChief , International Encyclopedia of the Dance, and BruceMarks, Artistic Director, Boston Ballet. On the Soviet side,

the coordinator is Elizaveta Yakovlevna Surits, SeniorResearcher, All-Union Institute of Art Studies.

3. The sides will begin the exchange o f materials relevant tothe performance heritages of the USA and the USSR with a

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view to possible joint publication. Both sides look forwardto further discussion of this project during the conferenceon Stanislavsky Our Contemporary. On the Americanside, the coordinator of these first discussions is Laurence

Senelick and on the Soviet side, the coordinatoris

AnatolyMironovich Smeliansky.

4. A program of exchange of specialists in theatrical historyand dance will be initiated with the travel to the USSR oftwo American specialists for 3-4 weeks in I 988 and of twoSoviet specialists to the US for 3-4 weeks this same yearfor work in history and/or contemporary study and practice.Two further exchanges will take place the following year,coordinated by members of the Commission on both sides,and the sides will examine the possibility of expanding thisactivity in the future .

5. Both sides will seek to facilitate the participation by theatreand dance specialists in the national conferences of theother country.

This Protocol was signed by Kalman A. Burnim, President ofthe American Society for Theatre Research on behalf of the AmericanCouncil of Learned Societies, and by Aleksei Bartoshevich, the Secretary of the Board, for the Theatre Union of the USSR.

This Protocol was in turn authorized by the signing of anAgreement on Cooperation between the ACLS and the Theatre Unionof the USSR on the same date. This agreement established an on-goingjoint Commission on Theatre and Dance for the development of contacts between specialists in these fields in the USA and the USSR . TheCommission is to have as its main tasks the establishment and implementation of co-operation in the fields of theatre studies and practice,dance history, dance theory and criticism, and in particular conferences

and symposia, group and individual research projects, study of contemporary performance and training, exhibits and publications .The Soviet Delegation at these meetings was composed of

Aleksei Vladimovich Bartoshevich, a theatre critic, Head of Sector ofthe All-Union Institute of Art Studies and Secretary of the Board of theTheatre Union of the USSR; Valery Gershovich Khazanov, Chief ofInternational Department of the Theatre Union of the USSR; GeorgyDavidovich Lordkipanidze, a director and the First Secretary of theTheatre Union of the Georgian SSR; Konstantin Lazarevich Rudnitsky,a theatre critic and Senior Researcher of the All-Union Institute of ArtStudies; Mikhail Filippovich Shatrov, a playwright and Secretary ofBoard of the Theatre Union of the USSR; Anatoly MironovichSmeliansky, theatre critic, Assistant Chief Director of Repertory of theMoscow Art Theatre, Prorector of the Drama School of the MoscowArt Theatre, and Secretary of the Board of the Theatre Union of the

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USSR; Robert Robertovich Sturua Chief Director of the RustaveliTheatre and Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of Georgian SSR; andElizaveta Yakovlevna Surits, Dance critic and Senior Researcher of theAll- Union Institute of Art Studies. Students of contemporary Soviet

Theatre will be interested to see that the delegation included both theauthor (Shatrov) and the director (Sturua) of The Brest Peace , whoseproduction at the Vakhtangov Theatre in November and publication in

ovy Mir last spring, has been one of the key events in glasnot as i t hasaffected the Russian theatre . (See Alma Law s art icle in this issue forfurther comments on this production.) Mikhail F. Shatrov continues totest the boundaries of g/asnot through the portrayal of Stalin in his latestplay Onward Onward Onward

The American Delegation at the meetings was composed ofKalman A. Burnim President of the American Society for TheatreResearch and Fletcher Professor of Drama Emeritus o f TuftsUniversity; Martha W Coigney, Director of the International TheatreInstitute of the USA; Adrian Hall Artistic Director of the DallasTheatre Center and the Trinity Repertory Company; Bruce Marks,Artistic Director of the Boston Ballet; Marvin Carlson, DistinguishedProfessor of Theatre and Comparative Literature of the GraduateSchool of the City University of New York; Selma-Jeanne Cohendance historian and Editor-in-Chief of the International Encyclopediaof the Dance; Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama of TuftsUniversity; and Wesley A. Fisher, Secretary to the Commissions withthe USSR of the ACLS and International Research and ExchangeBoard .

The Princeton meetings were held in the William SeymourTheatre Collection at the Princeton University Library through thecourtesy of Mary Ann Jensen, the Curator.

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1987-88 Season: A Survey of Productionsby Alma Law

What's worth seeing in Moscow this season? There was atime when that question

could easilybe answered by

namingcertain

theatres, the Taganka, the Sovremennik, The Malaia Bronnia (forEfros s productions), in the sure knowledge that one would almostcertainly be seeing the best Moscow had to offer. Today, that's nolonger the case. Good theatre still abounds (in spite of everyone's complaints to the contrary), but it's more likely to turn up almost anywherefrom a basement to a cafe on the edge of town than on the boards atone of the thirty-five established professional theatres. Though here,too, there are notable exceptions such as Getta Yanovskaya's production of Bulgakov's A Dog s Heart at the Theatre of the Young Spectator,

which continues to be one of the hottest tickets in town.From a recent marathon of theatre going in the Soviet Union,I ve chosen ten Moscow productions as some of my favorites, andbecause they reflect what seems to me to be a new spirit of improvisa-tion and experimentation sweeping through the Soviet theatre today.

Soviet theatre is in a period of transition, not only because ofthe reforms launched by Mikhail Gorbachev, but also because of thetransfer of artistic leadership in the theatre to a new generation. Asyounger directors search for ways to return theatre to its spiritual andritualistic roots, style is replacing utilitarian propaganda and improvisa-tional freedom is shaking up the rational exposition of prescribed forms .

Actually, the artistic experimentation we re seeing now, asexemplified by many of the productions mentioned below, has little todo with current reforms other than making visible experimental workthat have been around for some time. Anatoly Vasilyev, whose directing in my view perhaps best exemplifies the new wave, has made it veryclear in interviews that he has always worked experimentally, bothorganizationally and artistically. And as director Mikhail Mokeev commented when asked what effect the reforms had had on him, Well,

before no one could talk about our work, now they can.1. ix Characters in Search o f an Author, directed by AnatolyVasilyev at his School for Dramatic Art, is the kind of production onecould watch over and over again and never tire of. In fact, I saw it threetimes.) The combination of visual effects, music and movement alone sso rich in detail that each viewing s yet another voyage of discovery. It'salso a production that defies description, at least in just a few sentences.

Vasilyev staged ix Characters with his fifteen students from theTheatre Institute, all of whom are actors and directors from theprovinces. Through improvisation, repetition, duplication of roles,

Vasilyev out-Pirandellos Pirandello in examining just what s theatre,what is art, and where is the borderline between life and art, questionsthe director considers key to all of his work. The performance takesplace in the large white-painted basement room at 20 Vorovsky Street

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where Vasilyev's School is presently located and it's tailor made fordrawing the audience into this Pirandellian world as well. Though perhaps seduction would be a better word, as I don t think I've ever seen anaudience more willing to go along with everything from finding the seating arrangement all jumbled following each intermission, to beingdrawn into active participation in Vasilyev's game. Not surprisingly,this production has excited considerable international attention; it hasbeen invited to virtually all of the major European festivals this summerand fall.

2. Italian Vermouth Without an Intermission marks RomanKozak s debut as a director at the Liudmila Roshkovan s Chelovek[Man] Theatre Studio on Skatertnyi Lane in the center of Moscow. Theplot line of Liudmila Petrushevskaya's one-act play, Cinzano, on whichthe production is based, is simple enough. Kostya and Valya turn up at

Pasha s apartment to pay back the money one of them owes him.There s vermouth on sale downstairs, and instead of repaying themoney, this trio of drinking buddies spends it on vermouth and proceedsto get roaring drunk.

In a conversation following the performance, Kozak said thathe wanted to present this play written in the early seventies from thepoint of view of today s young people. In all, he and his actors spentfour months developing the production, first through improvisation andmusical etudes around the idea of a noise concert, and only later putting in the text and selecting those improvisational segments that wouldremain in the finished production. The result is quite extraordinary, asthe world of non-verbal communication Kozak has created expressedthe camaraderie and pa in these three men share far more effectivelythan words alone.

3 . The Emigres, also at the Theatre-Studio Chelovek, introduces Polish playwright SHlwomir Mrozek to Moscow audiences. Direc-tor Mikhail Mokeev has wisely avoided the trap of staging this twocharacter play as merely a picture of emigre misery. Nor does he turn these two alienated men into caricatures of an intellectual, AA, and aworker XX. What he does offer the audience is a gripping, at timeshilarious, power struggle between polar opposites whose lives are lockedtogether by self -hatred and a desperate need to destroy each other .This game, played out on New Year s eve, fascinates as the twoexpatriates strip away each other's illusions, the duel shifting back andforth, at times reaching an impasse, a kind of musical pause, before oneof them initiates the next round. The setting is wonderfully naturalistic :ugly old beds, a table, two chairs, heating ducts and noisy plumbing.And yet this production is anything but naturalistic kitchen sink drama,rather it is poetry on the highest level.

4. Columbine s Apartment, directed by Roman Viktiuk, combines four of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya's one-act plays (Love, The StairLanding Andante and Columbine s Apartment). In spite of its flaws,Viktiuk s experiment here with trying, in his words, to unitePetrushevskaya's pictures of life in the U.S.S .R. with the aesthetics of

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Ionesco and Beckett is well worth seeing. For while it doesn't alwayswork, the production nevertheless offers a salutary antidote to treatingPetrushevskaya's dramaturgy as tape recorded life and sociological commentary. There s much in all of Lyudmila's writing that is very funny,and here for a change this certainly comes through .

The lead in all four plays is taken by a twig of an actress, LiiaAkhedzhakova, a Russian Lily Tomlin with an extraordinary gift fortiming. She s at her best in Andante, where she turns the tables on adrug-taking menage a trois home on diplomatic leave, and in Colum-bine s Apartment, in which she plays a predatory aging actress who givesacting lessons to young actors at her apartment. The farce, done ascommedia dell-arte, is broad and delicious. The high point comes whenPierrot (the young actor) emerges from the bedroom dressed in a tutujust as Columbine's director husband , Harlequin, walks in .

All four plays are acted on a t iny elevated stage, to theaccompaniment of live music. The audience is in a wonderful mood bythe end of the performance, and everyone applauds rhythmically andhappily, giving the actors countless curtain calls . Clearly this is whatMoscovites are looking for when they go to the theatre these days--someclever acting, lively music and colorful atmosphere.

5. Phaedra, at the Taganka offers another intriguing look atRoman Viktiuk s experimentation with performance . Viktiuk has spenttwo years working on this production, much of the time taken withtraining the actors, with the help of several ballet instructors, includingone from the Bejart company, to move like dancers . In fact, the production is almost more ballet than dramatic theatre, and in that respect,very reminiscent of Tairov's productions in the teens and twenties .

The poet Marina Tsvetaeva wrote Phaedra in 1928 as the second part of an unfinished trilogy of plays in verse entitled, Aphrodite sRage. In presenting this drama on the Soviet stage for the first time(perhaps for the first time anywhere), Viktiuk builds his productionaround the play's autobiographical themes of life, love and death-suicideby includ ing Demidova's voice delivering excerpts both from Tsvetaeva'sdiary and from the

actress's own writings,including an

accountof the

visit she and Vladimir Vysotsky made to Elubuga to find the housewhere Tsvetaeva lived and where she committed suicide in 1941. Theleitmotif from Tsvetaeva's diary repeated over and over is, I don twant to die, I want not to be

The production is performed in the new theatre at theTaganka, using only the brick wall and windows of the bare stage asdecor . The only props are a piece of rope, a newspaper--the identifyingsign for Tsvetaeva s husband, Sergei Efron, and four stoles: gold lame(Phaedra), natural linen, red and black. It s a brilliant lesson in how

little is required to create genuine theatre.6. The Boat and The 0 fficia Letter at the Theatre-Studioheaded by Aleksei Levinsky can currently be seen in the Brown Roomat the Ermolova Theatre where Levinsky and his actors will be workingfor the next two years. Levinsky stages these two short dramas as expe-

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riments in trying to preserve the original concept of fo lk theatre as acombination of improvisation and singing around a series of archetypical situations, very small story fragments out of which one could developan entire play i f one desired. Th e Boat about a band of brigandstravelling down the Volga, is one of tho se popular Russian folk playsthat emerged in various versions in the nineteenth century and waseventually preserved in written form. The Official Letter based on awell-known children s story from the 1930s, tells of a young Bolsheviksoldier on a mission during the Civil War to deliver an envelope containing military orders. The young soldier loses the envelope when hishorse drowns, but he continues on to deliver the message verbally.When he is caught by the Whites, he discovers to his horror that hehadn t lost the envelope after all, it had slipped down into his trousers.In desperation he decides to eat it, leaving only a blue tongue as evi

dence.' Levinsky notes that his main challenge in doing this kind ofnon-dogmatic performance (his words) is to avoid on the one hand the

stereotypical notion of what folk theatre is, and on the other the dualproblem of What's the message? and the charge of mocking the narod(the people). Levinsky works with professional actors, training them ineverything from Biomechanics to commedia dell'arte. He also has thehelp of an eminent voice coach (who also happens to be his mother) inteaching his actors the traditional forms of Russian folk singing.

7. Pushkin and Natalie is a chamber production about the Russian poet and his future wife, Natalia Goncharova . Director KamaGinkas calls it a performance of interaction between the text, thetheme of love, and the actor in which the audience, depending on itsmakeup and receptivity, also plays a greater or lesser role. t has beenperformed in all sorts of spaces , including a kitchen and there is alwaysa great deal of improvisation making use of the physical context of theparticular performing space. The evening I saw it, for example, at onepoint the actor yanked open the window of the rehearsal room wherethe performance was taking place, and stepped out on the ledge , walking along it and looking back through the glass at the audience as hecontinued speaking.

The performance opens with Viktor Gvozditsky, the actor,transforming himself into Pushkin, all the while quoting from descriptions of the poet by his contemporaries . It s all done very comically, andthe audience's laughter helps to break down the barrier between it andthe performer .

There follows an hour of segments from letters, both Pushkin'sown and ones he received, in part relating his problems with his censor,others commenting on everyday life. The central focus, though, is on his

love for Natalia Goncharova, and on the decisive period of his life from1830 to the beginning of 83 when he married her. Also present, sitting to one side, is a chorus of peasant girls who sing the traditionalsong-chants pesnopenie) that would have been appropriate among thepeasants in Pushkin's day.

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8. Ward No. 6 one of Anton Chekhov's most brilliant pro seworks, provides the basis for an extraordinary experiment in improvisational directed by Yurii Eremin at the Theatre of the Soviet Army.Clearly influenced by Grotowski and Mikhail Chekhov , Ere min and hisactors have taken the theme s of this grim story and used them as theframework for a ninety-minute improvi sation etude . According toE remin, there's not a word of Chekhov's text in the production, all thedialogue is made up, each actor-character responding to the situation asit unfolds.

The performance takes plac e in a room somewhere high up inthe huge labyrinth of the Theatre of the Soviet Army (the largest theatrein the world) . The audience, numbering about fifty , gathers in a roomoff the stage entrance, and at 7 :45 p.m . an orderly in a hospital uniformleads everyone through underground corridors, up a winding staircase,

floor after floor, through more corridors until they reach a grim chamber with a wood-slatted room , the ward, in the center of it. Around it,chairs are placed facing the ward, chalked numbers on the slats indicating where everyone is to sit. Inside the ward--more like a cage--fivepatients are sitting and lying on the floor on filthy pads. One of thepatients comes around begging kopeks from the audience memberswhich he surrenders to Nikita, the brutish orderly .

Dr . Ragin, who has been in charge of this ward for many year s,lives entirely in his alcohol-hazed world of ideas, totally blind to thesqualor around him. When he discovers that one of the patients in theasylum is educated, someone with whom he can carry on serious discourse, he begins asking, Why is he in there and I'm out here? Thedoctor's naive idealism is no match for the new young doctor, AndreiKholstov's, pragmatism. Dr . Rag in is doomed from the ir first encounter .

Although the performance may not be as improvised as Erem inclaims, its effect is no less disturbing and emotionally draining . Chekhov understood better than anyone the nature of man's capacity forbrutality, and the uselessness of blind idealism in the face of it. Ereminsucceeds admirably in translating this into vivid theatrical language.

9 . The Brest Peace directed by Rober t Sturua at theVakhtangov Theatre, is about Lenin's struggle in January 1918, to winsupport for dropp ing out of World War I The production rates as oneof the political sensations of the current season. But in the hands of theeminent Georgian director, it is more than just that. Sturua very neatlysolved the problem of how to stage Mikhail Shatrov's cut and pastehistorical docu-drama, by throwing out half of the text and using whatremained as a pretext for a brilliant spectacle , at times verging onvaudeville, punctuated by violent thrusts of music provided by composerGiya Kancheli .

Mikhail Ulianov, who is himself a man of powerful emotions,makes an extremely dynamic and non-traditional Lenin , one who doeseverything from cradling a baby and flopping down on the floor, tothrowing a chair and falling on his knees before Trotsky. It's Ulianov'sshow from beginning to end, the other actors faring less well by having

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to bring to life historical personalities, including Trotsky and Bukharin,who se names until only recently couldn t even be mentioned in thepress, much less on the stage. Vladimir Koval, as Stalin, is on surerground, and the ominous image of his brooding presence provides oneof the production's most vivid impressions .

Sturua is the first of a series of directors being invited to stageproductions at the Vakhtangov . Next in line will be Pyotr Fomenko whoat this writing should already be in the middle of rehearsing Sukhovo-Kobylin s The Case The idea is to invite directors from different directing schools to help bring back to life this theatre that has been virtuallydestroyed by internal conflict in the last few years. Clearly, Sturua isgoing to be a tough act to follow.

10. The Fruits o f nlightenment at the Mayakovsky Theatreprovides an enjoyable evening of highly professional acting in a well-

made play . In Pyotr Fomenko's witty staging of Leo Tolstoy's comedy,every role is a cameo performance, from Nemolaeva's hypochondriacalAnna Pavlovna, Leonid Fedorovich s wife, to Varganov s virtuosocaricature of the pompously dogmatic doctor.

Fomenko uses the stage revolve to give a full view of life in thiseccentric household, from the front door to the kitchen. The actors'sgestures are exaggerated and precise, the movements broad--the direc-tor even uses the auditorium to great effect when the doctor takes off onone of his theoretical pronouncements, turning the auditorium into alecture hall. The tone of Tolstoy's comedy about high society's fascina-

tion with spiritualism is light-hearted as is appropriate for that genre, areminder for us not to take ourselves too seriously. Soviet audiencescould use more such light-hearted evenings in the theatre; it s too badthat genuine comedy continues to be in such short supply .

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S H A L L NEVER RETURN A M N I F E S T O

by Tad e usz Kantor

For me the notion of truth is not only a moral one but also the

condition of a work of art.I am talking about my personal atti tude toward truth, asopposed to philosophical, social, historical truths, all of whichbelong to a sphere which does not necessarily give me a guarantee ofthe real truth. By the real truth I understand my own, individualtruth, so that I can speak about myself in a way that can be called truth.I have been preoccupied with this problem for some time, as I havedone a number of theatrical productions based on Witkiewicz's writtentext (and not my own). And Witkiewicz's truth is not my truth. I happen to live fif ty or sixty years later than he did, so I approach Witkiewicz's truth in a purely semantic sense trying all the time to conveymy own truth.

Truth as the actionMy truth is the action itself , which is independent from the text

(by Witkiewicz). I used to say that we do not play Witkiewicz, but thatwe play with Witkiewicz. Witkiewicz had his own cards (the texts) and Ihad mine--so the game was played between two truths. I was the authorof the performance and during the very process of shaping it, I tried toput in the action my convictions and discoveries and thoughts; the textof Witkiewicz's play was but one element of the performance, naturallyan element fully respected and treated with loyalty as a semantic text.

The point of transitiont took place in 1975, the year I started to stage performances

which were not based on a pre-exis t ing l i terary text. Those wereentirely my own works, so the question of truth manifested itself differently. I have come to understand that only I can tell the truth aboutmyself, i.e. about my life . My life belongs to me and no one has theright

tomeddle in it

orinterpret

it.Those

worksare not

sustainednar

ration or autobiography, as some historians might think. They are arecord of the functioning of my memory. The mechanism (apparatus) ofmemory functions in a very special way. I call it a system of frames,which have one common characteristic: they do not move, they containno action, they are still pictures , which we extract from the card file ofour memory. The images tend to p p ~ rand disappear as long as weare in the process of reconstructing our past. t is a vain process--thepast cannot be fully reconstructed . However, it is a very fa sc inatingprocess, set in motion by our nostalgia, our colossal passion and longingfor a return to the past . Ultimately, our longing must be sufficient. Thesheer impossibility of capturing the past endows a work of art with anenormous appeal. ;:he functioning o f memory, this constant flow ofappearing and disappearing pictures, this pulsating repetitious quality is

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one of th e mo st imp ortant methods in the structu ring of my performa nces, s ta rting with Th e Dead Class and culminating through IVielopole.Wielopole and Let the Artist Die.

The method of the frameThe frame mu st be a real one,it cannot be aesthetically con

trived; i t must be lodged in our memory in ord e r to be reconstructed.An example: the figure of my Father appeared in my memory as follows : hi s boots, the yellow of his trouser s, nothing more, and then hisvoice as he came home on le ave from the front. During his visit he u sedthe crudest language imaginable so as to make a proper impression onthe local bourgeoisie. I utilized that language in the production.

The replacement

Here is another aspect (shall I say a trick?) of my method: thereplacement of a given reality by another reality. An example: the hi story of my family, the members of my family Wielopo/e, Wielopole .The point o f departure is a real one (my actual family, and not anillusory narrative artificially constructed) but this given reality has be enreplaced on the stage by another one during the rehearsals, by me andmy actors, i.e. i t is represented. (The verb to represe nt has a somewhatdishonest ring to it for me. To represent mean s to show something thatexisted prior to a performance. I want to avoid the verb and the function that it implies, since I want to repre sent in the performance what

is taking place exactly at that very moment before our very eyes, regardle ss of its reference to the past and to a preexisting tex t .)So during the rehearsals of Wielopole we conducted extensive

re sea rch about the environment of the lowe s t social strata: pimps ,whores, drunks, the mentally unbalanced, h ys terical women, etc. ewere, so to speak, creating that environment, in an almost literal sense,through the use of improvisational situation s and bits of slang . At acertain moment this environment started to enact the story of my family . .The m embe rs of my family had merged, so to speak, with the types ofthe lowe st soc ial rank . In th i s way I achieved, I think, a c e rtain truth, bymean s of some m ys tific ations (which are the base of art), and avoided atheatre in which illusion battles with reality. (A total avoidance of illu -sion in the theatre is impossible--except in a happening, which we alsoknow to be impos s ibl e. At the most we ca n hint that reality is victoriou s, but we cannot exc lud e illusion totally.) So the t ruth which Ihave achieve d is a truth by mystification.

A defense of the Kantor archivesFo r some time now I ve expe ri enced a g rowing inn er need for

documentation--it can be attributed to advanced age, a period when onewis hes to sum m arize one s life and protect onese lf a ga inst any futureinterpretations by hi storia ns . Besides, it is one of the st ronge st obses-sions of my life: the need to put on file all that pertains to my work andcreativity. Documentation is an analysis of one s creative work and its

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proce ss es, enab ling us to see th e re currin g ele men ts and thu s ass istin gin our development. Besid es , I am afraid that a work of art alone hasno chance of surv iv al in my ow n countr y . am n ot bound t my worksemotiona lly. dislike, for example, to see my p a intings hangin g on thewalls. What am concern ed about is the preservation of th e discoveryof an idea and the wa ys of presenting it. Since 1975 have resolved tomake an incr ea s in g ly per sona l confess ion: i. e. preset : ting th e source ofmy interior world (paintings, forms of theatre) and salvaging it fromcertain death: forg etting.

The Dead Clas s rest s on nostalgia for my childhood, for all th eproblems t hat hav en t so lved as ye t , etc. ielopo le is th e recr ea ting ofmy c hildho od and m y f a mil y, of th e hou se, by we av ing int o its fabr ic thegreatest achievement of our c ulture--the Go spels; Let the Artist Die is acourageous delineation of my creative work a nd a return to th e asylumof night and to the world of outcasts--the world of Frans;ois Villon--theworld which is slowl y being transformed int o th e cell of death--andwhich ends on the barricade with fi ghti ng f o r the right of individualexpression .)

My latest workt begin s with a small cricotage initi a lly presented at Kas sel and

Milan 35 minutes) , and in its final form intend to open myself totallywithout any inhibitions in order to tell the truth about myself. The producer o f the work is the Centro Di Ricerca Per l Teatro in Milan(director Franco Leira), and it is entitled La machina del amor e e dellamorte The Machine o f Love and De ath)- -which was to be shown at aplanned festival (which it seems will n ot take place after all) , the topic ofwhich was to be the m achi ne in art--a topi c ve ry close to me as havecreated a lot of machin es during my creative l if e: an er o tic ma chi neThe Cuttlefish, 955); a funeral machine In a Small Country Ho use ,

1961); The Madman and th e Nun, 1963--the aneantisational machine-which was the entire stage and played the crucial role in the destructionof the performance; the torture machine for The Water H en; and thefamily machine for Th e Dead Class. Then the camera i n Wielopole ,Wi e lopol e transformed into a machine gun-- the camera, preserving agiven image--and its opposite, the gun which destroys. So am far frombeing a newcomer as far as machine s are co n ce rned . In accepting theinvitation to the festival , said that I am di sponible--after all, back in the1930s while a student at Cracow Acad e m y of Fine Arts and working ona production of Maeterlin ck The Death o f Tintagiles), constructed adeath machine I was then under the influence of the Bauhaus,primarily the pur e abstractionism of Oskar Schlemmer) which servedthe Queen-murderess in sprea ding death.

So when got an invitation fr om Ka sse l, everything clicked.th ought and look ed back t o the thirtie s and realized the time lap se exactly 50 years--since my sacri legio us t rea tme nt of a typicall y sy mboli s tpiece (Maeterlinck) and now 1987, whe n see m to be more and m oreinclined toward symbolism, a different symbolism, to be sure, from that

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of 193 7.I am still talkin g about mac hin es, but what I should b e talkin g

about is my newest piece which I intend to work o n during this year; itis tentatively entitled I Shall Ne v r Retum th a t is , to Cracow), in whi c h Iplan to reveal the truth about myself in a way I have never attemptedbefore.

On the que s tion of avant - gardeAt a press conference in Kassel , I wa s asked whether the avant

garde exi s ts anymore. I am convinced that although the avant-garde hasseen its better days, the phenomenon will a lwa ys exist and that the tri-umphant march forward will continue forever. The problem is whatcould be called avant-garde nowadays.

Characteristics of the avant-garde are as follows:

1) it is rare confined to an elite).2) it discovers and creates what is actually forbidden .Nowaday s everything is allowed; therefore , the present world of art isone huge avant-garde. At some point I maintained that it could be statesanctioned and financed--an absolutely ab surd notion. A vant-gardecannot encompass the entire world of art . Further, I was challengedduring the same conference that while teaching in Hamburg I subscribed to the precepts of Andre Breton to the effect that everyone ca nbe an artist- -and that since then I have betrayed the conviction which Iwas teaching to my students , as I seem to maintain that the condition ofbeing an artist is quite unique--independent from any social order, in aword , it is a specia l mission. t may sound metaphysical, mystical--but Ideeply believe that this is the way it is (the truth for today).

So I asked in turn what could be forbidden nowadays . Therewas no answer. During the work on the Kassel cricotage I kept askingmyself--what is still forbidden?--and I came to the conclusion that thereis such a sphere: a profoundly personal confession is still regarded as atab oo. When subsequently I tried to implement my idea literally duringth e t ry-outs o f a few scenes from my new endeavor ( Shall NeverReturn with the producers from Paris and Milan present, someoneexpressed the opinion th at what I had presented is shameful. Thatpleased me enormously- - to do something that is regarded in ar t asshameful is abso lu t ely great- - it means th at I have crossed the borders oftaboo, or convention (of the traditional, societal type of convention inart and which i f embodied in conceptual art results n mediocrity andstupidity). So I have decided to be untactful and I have no intention ofholding back anything from my life - - includ ing the most secret regions. Iwill raise the curtain s (figuratively speaking, I don t recognize ~ hcurtain in theatre at all) and I shall present myself in such a way that Ishall become the work of art.(I have been deeply influenced by and tornbetween, so to speak, the two great current s present in our culture-antiquity (Homer, etc.) since the yea rs of my cla ssica l gymnasium days,and the Bible--all the great characters cried out o penly about their mostintimate experiences, conflicts, love betrayals--the c lassic example being

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o b ~ So simila rl y l intend to cry out. I s hall speak about the inmostemotions, something that bourgeois mentalit y wouldn't ha ve dreamedabout. I fact, it will be a kind of surge ry perfo rmed on myself. Just asdrama is a n ar t form performing surgery on so ciet y, so I'll be adramatist performing surgery on myself. In order to do so, one has to

be extremely courageous; it is an act by which we jud ge whether a workof art can be termed avant-garde to not: i .e. whether i t be long s to asphe re forbidden by traditional cultural convention s.

Now I would like to read a fragment fr o m my personal diary,the systematic writing of which helps me in the courageous endeavorthat I have undertaken. This is an entry de sc ribing the de sce nt into theInferno , the most favored place in my antique imagination, my "home."The descent into the Inferno What a notion Yet I think it is the onlyplace that remains for me, it is my home. Out there . Only while beingthere am I capable of accomplishing anything. That is why I alwayscome back to that place. But being in th e Inferno means that I have toaccept the worst not those Bosch-like, horrible Satanic images that weknow from religious teachings, but much, much worse: tho se who disregard me, pass me by, shrug their sho uld ers, tap their foreheads, wavetheir hands in distaste, while the henchmen of the Grand Satansprawled behind their writing de sks rub their hand s in delight, saying:"He talks incessantly about misfortune, so now he has finally gotten it."But "they" do not know that I have been talking and am now talkingabout Death. And Death stands between the Inferno and heaven, free

and grand. Only against Death do I proudly measure the dimen sions ofmy opus, and, as one of th e actors in he Machine o f L o ve and eathputs it , "I am waiting for Her." For the Inferno is here on earth: outthere is absolute silence and the void so highly revered by me.

Recapitulati o nIn Kantor's opus, two words are crucial: love and death. In the

course of my life I have stood several times at the gate of the beautifulvirgin (in Gordon Craig 's formulation) who is death. I talked to herconstantly in all my performances. And about love . When one losesone's beloved--the only way out is death, which at that point becomestruly grand and tangible. Especially in our times when presenting a caseof tragic love is met with derogatory laughter. That is the price that Iam willing to pay for presenting my own traged y --tragic love --played outnot by the characters of a drama--as i t is p ract iced in the traditi onalgenres--but by myself. The theme of tragic love has been over-utilized,while my attempt (being the creat or of the perfo rm an ce, the author ofthe text)- - and my p erso n is known throu g hout th e world as are myautobiographical tendencie s- - i s an act whose sense escapes the preceptsof our traditional mentality, but which gu a rant ees that by daring to showmy ancient tragedy, I'll create a great work. Moreover, being a forbidden subject , outside all conventions, i t will be a truly avant-garde,authentically profound work. I dare to be "indi scree t" (just think what itmean s to be "discreet" in our fal se culture) . What cy n icism-- t o use one's

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tragic and painful situation in order to create an avant-garde piecePerhaps the word "cynicism" that I used is not the right one-- i t

is something more--perhaps it is a sacrifice, i f not of blood, then of suffering great personal suffering throughout my entire life. This work

becomes the only way out, like death. But death in a situation like thatis too banal. My endeavor actually mean s stepping be yond the boundaries of the sanctioned morality which guides any creative processes.What a radical approach At last I feel I am a member of, nay more, Iam the leader of Fran9ois Villon's band. For many months, during longnights of the most profound suffering, I've been cynically creating further scenes of my performance--"cynically" seems to be the right wordfor this feverish creative outburst which so resembles death. Yet I knewit didn't count at all as far as the performance and its reception is concerned. I knew that I had to make one more sacrifice and transform it

into my personal cry, face to face with the indifference of the spectatorand his laughter. I knew it was not for nothing that I had called mytheatre a fairground booth and circus. I knew that it is the only placewhere I can expose myself to ridicule. And that I have to become aclown, reversing my usual role: that of a silent witness who sitsmodestly and shyly at the door. Now I shall become a clown dressed inan ascetic black jacket, trousers with suspenders and scarf artisticallydraped around my neck.

Cracow, July 17, 1987

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Abandon All Hope?-- Tadeusz Kantor's Vision of An Artist 's Role inModern Society

by Michal Kobiatka

In the process of developing his own theory of a work of art,Kantor's definition of theatre has undergone considerable transformation which expresses his unrelenting desire to break tradition. Whileputting together Wielopole Wielopole in 1980, he defined theatre as anactivity that occurs when life is pushed to its final limits where allcategories and concepts lose their meaning and right to exist, wheremadne ss, fever, hysteria, and hallucinations are life's last barricadesbefore the approaching troupes of death and its grand theatre. 1 Thisdefinition of theatre, as an activity at the borderline between life anddeath as defined by time-space continuum between reality and eternity,

is Kantor's significant contribution to the theory of criticism. Moreimportantly, it is his attempt to provide a solution to today's theatrewhich according to him, has been impregnated by conformity . o perceived, modern theatre is , for Kantor, nothing more than an organization which ultimately leads to the stultification of the creative processand , as a corollary of it, turns living forms into dead props. .

Kantor's response to artistic stultification is to introduce theconcept of the autonomous theater, that is, one which is not a reproductive mechanism intended to p resent an interpretation of a piece of literature on stage, but a mechanism which has its own independent existence. The term, independent existence, stems from Kantor'sunderstanding of a work of art as the process and the manifestation of ahuman spir i tua l activi ty, rather than as an acquired occupation / commodity which is then presented on stage.

How ridiculous and obsolete seems to be the convention, inwhich the act of creativity, this unique journey of mind andspirit is merely used to produce an object. How ridiculous andobsolete seems to be the convention which hides the object

behind rigid interpretations, only to reveal it to the world , present it to the public, expose it to the ambiguous proces s ofinterpretation and finally simply sell it .2

Kantor's attack on the commercial aspects of theatre organization has surfaced in numerous manifestos. For example, in NewTheatrical Space in 1980, he notes:

Theatre is one of the most anomalous institutions. The actualauditorium made of balcon ies, loges, and stall s - -filled withseats--finds its parallel in a completely different space . This

second lurking space is the space in which everything thathappens is FICTION, illusion, artificial, and produced only tomislead or cheat a spectator . . . . What he see s are only

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mirages of landscapes, houses, and interiors. They are miragesbecause this world, when seen from backstage, is artificial,cheap, disposable, and of paper-mache . 3

Accordingly, Kantor rejects any privileges, which come with theacceptance of the official and institutional status of theatre as an organization. He creates his own theatre--the Market Square Booth, theTheatre of Emotions, which, like its medieval counterpart is notrestrained by any laws or regulations. Its sole function was and is to bea mirror of artistic inner activities, rather than to abide by any rules setup by the place itself or by its fundamental characteristics. To Kantor,the essential meaning of theatre ought to be to reveal the traces oftransition from the world of beyond into our life, rather than to imposestringent interpretations upon performances .

Such an attitude toward both the meaning of theatre andtheatre itself made Kantor perceive an artist in a new light . t is hisbelief that theatre began with acting, that is, when a man looking like' them' stood opposite those who stayed on the other side . . . . Thoughhe looked deceptively similar to them , he was eternally different, shockingly alien, as i f dead, cut off by an invisible barrier--no less horrible andinconceivable, whose real meaning and threat appears to us only indreams. Thus, acting and theatre did not originate in a ritual, but inseparate activities that were, as he calls them, illegal and in contradic

tion to ritual. This notion of illegal actions , which are directed againstreligion, politics, social order, and the establishment delineates the verynature of theatre and the actor. Since theatre is nothing else but ananomalous institution supporting legal actions, Kantor's actor cannotpossibly function within the boundaries of such an organization. Hisactor, a living participant in the performance, is a person who reveals hisclumsiness, poverty, and dignity to the spectators, a person who appearswithout safety shields in front of the audience, and is a shameless exhibitionist who simultaneously touches eternity and the garbage dump .There is no place for such an actor in the theatre which imposes rigidconventions and depends on commercial success.When asked to describe the role of the artist in contemporarysociety Kantor had recourse to a metaphor taken from Dante's Infernohe stated:

I would say that the position of a contemporary artist hasalways been illegal and suspicious, even though he may beunder the aegis of official patronage. That is why the Ministerof Culture can say let the artists croak . It happened to me inPoland in 1948 . The Polish Minister of Culture said to the artists, abandon all hope, which was printed on the first page ofall newspapers. Abandon all hope is even worse than let theartists croak. t is clear to me that if artists do not belong to orare not sponsored by museums, cultural institutions, or privatefunds, which, theoretically, are supposed to support them but,

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practically, only use them, they cease to be artists in the eyes ofsociety. These autonomous artists are relegated to outlawstatus by society and are separated from that society to croakamong their own artistic creations. Once I wrote in one of mymanifestos that when I talk about art and artists I mean artwhich is against rather then for the establishment and artistswho belong to the circle of artistes maudits rather then tho sewho enjoy official recognition .5

This statement fully encapsulates Kantor s attitude toward bothactor/artist and the organization--art which is against rather than forthe establishment and artists who belong to the circle of artistes mauditsrather than those who enjoy official recognition.

These views found their artistic expression in Kantor s latest

productionet

the Artists Die created in 1985. As was the case with TheDead Class and Wielopole Wielopole this production is a recapitulationof Kantor s theories of theatre . He makes use of already introducedconcepts of the Market Square Booth Stage, The Room of Imagination,the Theatre of Death, and the Negatives. Once again, the audience participates in a journey into the depths of time and space. However,unlike these previous pieces, et the Artists Die containes an additionalelement, an element of irony. This irony is contained both in the titleand in the concept. One of the recogni zab le characters on stage s VeitStoss, a fifteenth century sculptor born in Nurnburg who was the authorof a famous altar piece in one of Cracow's churches. As various historical records indicate, a nail was driven through Stoss's cheeks on hisreturn to Nurnburg as a punishment for his debts . Kantor uses thisstory as a metaphor in order to deal with the concept of the artist andhis situation in society . In the Little Room of his Imagination, hecreates for Stoss an asylum which gives shelter to beggars, Bohemianartists, and cutthroats at night. 6 t s a place where things are happening ( that are only possible in a dream . The only door in this place,which is said to have some great secret meaning, begins to move in ourdirection. 7 In the third act, a guest from the other side, Stoss, appearsand builds the altar that resembles his masterpiece, i.e ., Cracow's Altarto the Dormation of the Virgin Mary . However, in a world governed bylaws of reflection, reversibility, and death, the altar is transformed into aprison cell, or a torture chamber. The characters in the asylum alsochange--they become the convicts participating in the apocalyptictheatre o f death . In the fourth act , we are in a new place , the prisoncell , from which Stoss sends his message into the outside world. Silence,a portent of lack of a response, reverberates in the space. The performance ends with the artist building his last work--a barricade .

In et the Artists Die for the first time, Kantor equates a prisoncell with the condition of an artist. Both an artist and a prisoner,according to the Polish director, have something in common. They areoutlawed by society for having transgressed the accepted norms andcodes of behavior.

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Prison. It is both a concept and it i s a perfect, meti culously andthoughtfully structured realization in the history of mankind. tis undeniably a product of man and civilization. The fact thatprison is set up against man; that it is a brutal mechanism

established tocrush

man's free thoughts, happens to be oneof

the grimmest absurdities. However, similar absurdities can befound in abundance in history . . Prison a word whichsticks in the throat. There is something final about it; a feelingthat something has happened that cannot be undone or revoked. . . . The gates of prison close behind a man, as the gates of anopen grave close over the dead who walk through themThe man who is already on the other side is setting off on hisjourney. He is going to travel alone, left to himself, destitutewith nobody but himself to rely on Once again I see thisapparition, outlawed and tainted with madness, as able to convey, by means of violence and change, the most dramaticmanifestation of ART and FREEDOM . . . . Prison is an ideaseparated from life by an ALIEN impenetrable barrier . t is soseparate [from the world of the living] that if this blasphemouslikeness is permitted--it will be able to shape, somewhere in thedistance THE WORK OF ART.s

Although the concept of prison and prisoner as a metaphor forart and artist appeared in his latest production , Kantor seems to haveheld this view from the very beginning of his career. In 1942, during theGerman occupation, he organized the underground experimental Independent Theatre in Cracow at a time when such activity could have ledto a death sentence. Clandestine performance s were held in privatehomes. One of the productions, The Return o dysseus was staged in asimple room . After the war, Kantor was appointed professor at theAcademy of Fine Arts in Cracow, but when the stringent rules ofSocialist Realism were imposed, he publicly refused to participate inofficial cultural life. This act of disobedience caused his professorship

to be revoked in 1949. During the period of Socialist Realism ( 1949-1956), his visual works were exhibited only in underground galleriesand Kantor survived by working as a stage designer.

During the period of the cultural and political thaw in 1956,Kantor established his own theatre, Cricot 2 in an accidental ratherthan official place, that is, in the basement of one of the palaces inCracow. Because the government in Poland subsidizes only officialtheatre institutions, Cricot 2 could not receive any financial assistancefrom the state. From its earliest days, Kantor s theatre has alwaysexisted outside or on the periphery of official political and cultural

organizations, forcing them, in time, to recognize Cricot s artistic significance .

Kantor s philosophy of artistes maudits reveals a paradox whichmay be possible only in Socialist countries. Since all theatrical institu -

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tions in Poland depend upon support from the state, their artisticactivities are fully under the control and the censorship of thegovernment , as are directors and actors, who are supposed to be thespokesmen for the regime. Refusal to cooperate with the state usuallyleads to severe repercussions--subsidies are withdrawn, theatres may beclosed down, and theatre companies dissolved. Such a situationoccurred during the period of martial law from 1981 to 1983. Eventhough they are aware of this situation, Kantor and Cricot 2 live by theirown principles. Perhaps they realize that their international reputationallows them to function apolitically, as various critics have suggested, onthe fringe.

Qu'ils crevent les artistes, let the artists croak, was the verdic tpronounced by a Parisian woman who objected to a redevelopment project to expand a gallery space. There is no doubt that Kantor s concept

of the autonomous artist is an answer to the problem so succinctlystated by the Parisian woman and people like her . As Kantor recentlyobserved:

Today, after having fought many battles, I see clearly the journey which I have accomplished. I understand why I have stubbornly refused to accept both official and institutional status, inother words, why my theatre and I have stubbornly beenrefused any privileges that are bestowed upon us by theachievement of a certain social position. The only tangible answer to this is that my theatre has always been the MarketSquare Booth Stage-- the only true Theatre of Emotions. 1

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NOTES

lMichal Kobiatka, Let the Artists Die--An Intervi ew withTadeusz Kantor , TDR 30, 3 (Fall 1986) : 179 .

2Tadeusz Kantor, The Work of Art and the Process , TDR

30, 3(Fall 1986): 150 .3Tadeusz Kantor, New Theatrical Space, TDR 30, 3 (Fall

1986): 158-159.Tadeusz Kantor, The Theatre of Death, TDR 30, 3 (Fall

1986): 145.5Kobiatka, TDR 178.6Tadeusz Kantor, uide to the Performance (Krakow

Drukarnia Narodowa, nd.), p. 9.7 Ibid ., p. 14.8Tadeusz Kantor, Prison, TDR 30, 3 (Fall 1986): 173.9Jan Ktossowicz, Tadeusz Kantor's Journey, TDR 30, 3 (Fall

1986): 101.lOKantor, New Theatr ical Space, 161.

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ION SA VA, THE FIRST PROMOTER OF RETHEATRICALIZA TION IN ROMANIA

by Bogdan Mischiu

To the seasoned Romanian theatre-goer the term Retheatricalization conjures up daring scenes from unorthodox productions. It was under this banner that many Romanian theatre directors,including Liviu Ciulei, Lucian Pintilie, Radu Penciulescu and otherswent on a crusade thirty years ago against stale conformism and blandtaste in the theatre. In the process they not only reaped the benefits ofinternational acclaim but also the bitter fruits of a protracted exile. In examining more closely the fate of re-theatricalization in theRomanian theatre, we find that, so far, it has had not one but two peaks ,of which the first was due almost exclusively to the activities of one man,

the director, designer, and playwright Ion Sava.Born in 1900 to a petit bourgeois family, Sava grew up in the

beautiful and romantic city of Jassy, a major theatrical center o f thecountry. His interest in the theatre developed early, but under curiousand grotesque circumstances. As a child, he lived on Eternity Road,near the cemetery and from his window he often watched the odd spectacle of funeral processions . t is to this unusual experiences that laterin his life, he would trace the beginnings of his passion for caricature, apassion which, in 1926, led him to abandon a career in law and startworking as a professional caricaturist and painter .

In 1930, at the suggestion of Aurel Ion Maican, a well-knownRomanian director of the time, Sava decided a third career change andtook up the job o f director and scene-designer at the prestigiousNational Theatre of Jassy. There, three years later, he scored his firstimportant success with a monumental production of Elmer Rice s StreetScene for which he used a cast of seventy-two and an elaborate naturalistic set.

His morale boosted by rave reviews, Sava embarked upon hisfirst theatrical adventure in 1934: the establishment in a movie theatre

o f the Teatrul de vedenii (The Theatre of Specters), modeled on thenotorious Theatre du Grand Guignol in Paris. But unlike its Frenchcounterpart, Sava s company, which in addition to sheer horror also promoted the tragic and the fantastic, was notably short-lived, coming to anend in the same year. Deserving of mention, from its repertoire, isAndre de Lorde s The System o f Doctor Goudron and Professor Plume.

Following the failure of the Teatru/ de vedenii Sava continuedhis experimental work with unconventional theatrical forms, this time atthe National Theatre of Jassy, and beginning with the 1938 season at theNational Theatre in Bucharest . In 1935, he attracted considerable attention with his production of 13 Comic ittle Songs a collage of dramaticsketches by the nineteenth-century Romanian playwright Vasile Alecsandri. Inspired by traditional Romanian puppet coffers, Sava designedfor this production a large box to serve as the stage within a stage. On it,

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thirteen characters in period costum es delivered little satiric songs andmonologues in the old-fashioned dialect used by Alecsandri. In keepingwith Sava's penchant for visual contrast, the settings, which changedevery time the character changed, were anything but old-fashioned.They covered a broad range of avant-garde styles, from cubism toexpressionism and surrealism.

Less than a year later Sava carried his experiments in dramaticsatire even further when he wrote, directed, and designed Bimba Bimba,an Aristophanic satirical revue about a fantastic visit to Jassy by a number of Olympian gods. The shocking spectacle of a cubist architectbeing electrocuted, and the t r u i n modu s op erandi of an abstractrestaurant for the unemployed constituted the high points of thisremarkable work.

Thequestion

of whatmakes theatre true to

itselfpreoccupiedSava from the early years of his directorial career. But it was not until

the late 1930s that he looked for possible answers in the two theatricalforms that were to leave .the strongest mark on his theoretical work-commedi dell 'arte and the Italian Renaissance court theatre . Undertheir combined influence, he was soon to argue for the abolition of theprimacy of text, for the establishment of a science of directing, and fora new form of dramatic writing, which he called neocanovaccio orneoargumento.

In the winter of 1942-43, Sava's strong ties to Italy--his wife was

Italian--finally brought him to Rome (his only trip abroad). There, hemade the acquaintance of his contemporary theatrical practitioner,A.G. Bragaglia, with whom he discussed the need for theatrical reform .The city of Rome and the conversations with Bragaglia greatly stimulated his imagination. One night at the Colosseum, a truly revolutionaryidea occurred to him: to reverse the spatial audience-performer relationship so that the spectator, seated in the arena on a swivelling chair,might watch the actors perform all around him on huge circular platforms placed in the amphi theatre proper. Sava was never to abandonthis idea and, after the war, when Romania was in the grips of revolutionary change, he tried, although unsuccessfully, to persuade represen-

. tatives of the new regime actually to build what he called a roundtheatre. Equally unsuccessful with the Stalinist officials, was his programfor the re-theatricalization of the theatre under the aegis of themodern social mystery so that the new Romanian theatre mightencompass the vast realm of the imaginary, of modern fantasy.

Sava was at heart a theatrical iconoclast. But, given the conservative policies of the two theatres where he worked, he could seldomcarry out his innovative ideas to their fullest extent. The most notable

instance occurred in 1946, when he made theatrical history by producingMacbeth with large, grotesque masks on the stage of the Saint Sava College in Bucharest (where the National Theatre company relocated following the bombing of its theatre). Legendary figures cannot toleratebeing treated as historical figures, said Sava in the program to the performance, adding that from a spectacological point of view, legendary

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figures need to be amplified and expressed synthetically.Anyone familiar with East European history might justifiably

ponder: How did someone like Sava cope with Socialist Realism, theemerging aesthetic doctrine which was soon to stamp out all artisticexperimentation in Romania? Unfortunately we may never know, forSava died of cancer in 1947. What we do know, however, is that at thetime of his death he was working on his dramatic masterpiece, hePresident This tragic-comic social mystery about a failed utopia wascomposed of fifty-five short tableaux, involving simultaneous staging,eurhythmic dancing in the nude, and numerous theatrical effects. Theplay deemed too unconventional for Romanian postwar tastes, hasnever been performed , Despite Sava's lack of popularity with Romaniancritics, it is important to note that Liviu Ciulei--who in 1947, acted forSava in the latter's production of Clifford Octets's olden oy at Ciulei'sOdeon Theatre--called him the first truly modern Romanian director.

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The American Film Festival in Moscowby Leo Hecht

During the decade of the pre-Gorbachev era, quite a number ofAmerican .films were imported by the Soviet Union and shown in mostmajor cities on a highly limited , selective basis. Unfortunately , thesefilms were of extremely uneven quality . The Soviets explained that themo st popular, well-made contemporary American films were much toocostly and that the Soviet Union had more urgent needs for the limitedamount of hard currency available for non-technological purchases.Only on rare occasions did they purchase high quality films such asthose which are still their favorites--Kramer vs Kramer and West SideStory touted as depicting American urban life as i t really is .) More

commonly , they were restricted to purchasing films such as Orca th e Kil-ler Whale or n merican Werewolf in London This, of course, wasalso good propaganda for exposing to the Soviets the warped mind s ofAmerican film makers and film goers .

Under Gorbachev a number of modifications in culturalexchanges between the USSR and the United States have been initiated,including a major cultural agreement, which was signed in the summerof 1986 . Since then cultural exchanges in all the arts have increasedconsiderably . In this spirit, the United States agreed to send importantfilms for showing in the Soviet Union at somewhat less than the normalrenting costs , and Soviets agreed to show them to wider audiences . F orGorbachev this was also important as a propagandistic display of hisglasnost campaign. Of course , the films to be sent from the UnitedStates could not contain anything overtly political that might be considered as anti-Soviet or even anti-Socialist.

All these back-stage negotiations culminated in the secondAmerican Film Festival in the Soviet Union which opened on February19, 1988 and closed March 2, 1988 . (The first fes t ival occurred in 1959,one year after .the first Soviet American cultural exchange agreement

was signed, and it included seven films and a visit by Gary' Cooper.) T histime thirty major American films were shown in seven motion picturetheatres in Moscow and Leningrad. The grand opening was held in theRossiia the largest movie theatre in Mo scow . t was hosted by Alek

sander I Kamshalov, the Chairman of the Soviet State Committee onCinematography, the agency primarily responsible for film censorshipand approval. Besides the usu al representatives from the USSR Ministry of Culture, several American performers also participated in theopening ceremony, including actress Darryl Hannah, acto r RichardGere and muppeteer Jim Henson. Also present was the Ameri canfestival spokesman Peter F leischer who had been instrumental in theorganization of the festival and had worked with a number of Americanentertainers and private cultural groups in selecting the films to beshown .

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The list of films shown included American classics such s TheWizard o f Oz, King s Row of special interest to the Soviets because itstarred Ronald Reagan in what was probably the best role of his filmcareer), and Singin in the Rain. There were also a number of excellent

recent films includingA Chorus Line, Children

o fa Lesser God

andRoxanne which appeared to draw the largest crowds. The average costof a ticket was $2.65--approximately three times the price of the normalentrance fee.

The distribution system of tickets was a particularly heatedtopic of conversation among Soviet film devotees. They had to operate,as usual, strictly by word of mouth and by the rumor mill becauseinformation was not made available as to which American film was tobe shown at what location. This is quite in character since, although allSoviet films and performances are extremely well advertised throughoutthe city considerably ahead of time, such advertising excludes certaincategories of entertainment such as films from capitalist nations, andSoviet-Yiddish theatre and musical performances. Secondly, they knewquite well that the great majority of tickets was being withheld fromgeneral purchase to be distributed either to persons with political cloutor through black marketeers for scalping purposes. A sign in front ofthe Rossiia gave no indication as to when and where tickets would beavailable, but did note how tickets would be distributed to the public: 45percent would be sold in the many performance kiosks strewnthroughout the city (this gives the booth attendants the opportunity totake care of their friends and to make extra money by black marketeering); 50 percent were to be distributed to unnamed organizations andenterprises for further distribution among their membership; and thelast five percent were to be held for sale to war heroes and war invalidsat the theatre box offices. In front of the Rossiia , starting an hourbefore the scheduled performance, one could observe a number of per-sons clandestinely selling tickets to desperate purchasers for at leastfour times their legal cost.

The American Film Festival was extremely well received by the

Soviet viewing public who expressed their fervent hope that this eventwould constitute a harbinger of many similar festivals in the future.Lenin said that film was the most important art. Only time will tellwhether this event and others like it will be viewed as having increasedor decreased this importance.

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Pure Form is Pure Fun in Witkacy's ountry HouseA Review by Judith Brussell

The American premiere of ountr y House (A Ghost Story) by

the Polish playwright, Stani slaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, adapted and trans-lated by Daniel Gerould and directed by Paul Berman, was presented byTheatre At Barnard in the Minor Latham Playhouse from March 2 toMarch 9 of this year. The script, the adaptation, the direction, cast, set,lights and costumes combined to make an electrically charged night inthe theatre.

ountry House was written in 1921 and in it , the ghost ofAnastasia is called forth in a seance conducted by a poet and her twoyoung daughters . She confronts, untangles, and re-defines the relation-ships between her and the three men in her life: husband, lover and

poet. Who loved her? Who killed her? Whom did she love?The author takes us through combinations and permutations in

perspectives, inner thoughts and outer actions, codes and mores,moralities and amoralities. Could this be what Witkacy called pureform? --A current of energy, in perpetual motion, changing and trans-forming?

The opening music, a selection from The Golden Age Balletby Shostakovich, was the perfect choice for the tone of the play . t waswhimsical and serious in its changing tonalities. The songs in the showhad music by Zbigniew Raj (from the Polish cabaret) and his wonderfulmusic was reminiscent of Weill and Dessau. The songs were deliveredin lusty cabaret style and were both funny and energetic .

Christopher Barreca's settings were spare and evocative . Theopening scene had furniture draped in off-white sheets, setting the tonefor a ghost story. The lights were so well-placed over each piece offurniture that the stage appeared to be a still life rather than a stage set.The lighting by Stephen Strawbridge was always articulate and aestheti-cally balanced. Above stage hung sheet-banners with words in blackhandwritten scrawl: Everyone was seized by frightful grey anxiety--he

bit his nails and sobbed1

x 80.The director, Paul Berman, made consistently interestingchoices: he kept the quick pace of the play, inventively choreographedthe blocking, and riveted our attention with constant surprises. Stylizedgestures worked well and those that were repeated were put to goodcomic use: such as the lover's mustache being ripped off at three different times. For Americans, there are many strange elements in Wit-kiewicz' work but this production kept the through line of action cleardespite the eccentric and delightful sidesteps.

In the text as well as the direction, there were images that illu-minated society's bizarre treatment of women (or women's ghosts). Thereturned ghost of Anastasia insists she died of cancer of the liver but herhusband says he shot her. Even in death, a woman is not allowed to becorrect about anything.

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Comments on women were pictorially interwoven into the production by the director. There is a very funny scene with the husband,lover and poet pointing guns at one another in front of the woman theyall loved. They are still competing , blustering and threatening for awoman who's dead. In another scene , the husband and lover are pouring through Anastasia's diaries to find good things about themselves .The scullery boy picks one up and the lover yells "Give me back myproperty " Even the memories of women become men's property.

The costumes by Judith Dolan were alternately beautiful,humorous and wonderfully outrageous--from flapper to elegant lace todollied-Victorian to the jodpurs of the comic lover. The two young girlswore exaggerated high-empire style dresses and had their faces paintedlike dolls and their hair in corkscrew curls a Ia Victorian-repressedfemale childhood .

A workman, dressed in rubber boots,apron

and blood-smearedarms, repeatedly comes onstage to say, "All my thoroughbred bitchesare mongrelizing." At first, this is funny precisely because we have noidea what this has to do with the play. Then it becomes apparent thatthe humans are "mongrelizing" as well. Here , a kudo for the translator,Daniel Gerould, must be given for the text is such a lively rendering inEnglish, including characters' names such as Jibbery Penbroke for thepoet and Wendel Poundwood for the comic lover/barley businessman.

e know, i f we have been paying attention to the poet's poems,that we will see what s to come in the stage action. This heralds the

beginnings o f a new kind of dramaturgy, a kind of emotional andmetaphysical detective story in musical thematic form . Witkiewicz hasplaced points of action within the poet's poems which the director hasconcretized by having them written willy-nilly on the sheets above thestage. The audience s discoveries of foreshadowing in the play may begleaned from clues onstage. (Or as the intelligent man sitting next tome explained, "You see, it's like the handwriting on the wall thePlatonic idea of ideas in the air you borrow them and it's how youput them together and they go back into the realm of ideas.")

Act III. A new tempo. Against the cream-colored slantedwalls and tilted floor with news print in large letters (post modernGerman-post- expressionism?) the two daughters in white nighties drinkemerald green liquid. e hear chimes and/or bells and the servantwalks by with a green-lighted lantern with a knowing look to theaudience. Suddenly, I felt as though we were at the end of a civilization .This was not Medea yet this scene felt Greek, felt tragic, which was along way to have travelled from satirical, farcical, Brechtian, surreal, etc.theatre .

After the father sees the bodies, he goes offstage and we hear a

gunshot.He re-enters

in a sheet,as

a ghost. Nowthe

family is reunitedin death. The image of the four of them in white in the light was verycommanding.

We were moved to another plane, another reality. A newdetective story presents itself . What was the real reason Anastasia's

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ghost told her daughters to drink the green poison? Several answers areoffered but is it really the symbolic old order killing off the new? Thepast destroying the future? Are we to be wary of ghosts and theirreturn?

I would gladly return for another ghost story at Theatre atBarnard. Country House was one of the most arresting and mostbrilliantly directed productions I have seen for quite some time. Theacting was superb and fresh. Bravo Witkiewicz/Gerould/Berman andCompany The show should o on

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Film Review: hemeby Jeff Brone

Gleb Panfilov's 98 film heme is disarmingly simple andeffective. t is strongest in its truthfulness and lack of pretensions. Anentry at the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center last fall , it dealswith a famous contemporary Soviet playwright (named Kim Yesenin )who loses his excitement for life. He falls in love (or so he thinks) with ayounger girl who, in her sadness reflects his own waning creative spirit.Through fine use of the camera, and excellent acting, we see how he isdeluding himself, and how the other characters are also fooled by selfpity that passes as artistic suffering. Nevertheless, Panfilov's picture isnot a cynical one. t is a picture of everyday life, and the characters arevery real.

Panfilov opens the film with a long shot of a car traveling alongthe winter countryside. Inside the car is Kim, his girlfriend and hisnovelist friend Igor. The car is small, and almost part of the land aroundit . In this way, Kim's problems are in perspective. He is only a tiny portion of the world, and his depression is not a matter of huge importance.We then cut to only the reflection of Kim's eyes in the car's rear viewmirror. We are distanced from him, as he is from himself and his needs.

Beyond the symbolism, the scenes are beaut i fu l lyphotographed. There is an honesty to the shots that is consistentthroughout the film. As Kim has dinner at Igor's country house, andbecomes infatuated with Sasha, the medium angle point of view shotsenhance our involvement. Taken from the perspective of someone at thetable, close up shots of food and details of the dinner ritual aredelineated by the camera. The feeling of really being there is strong.Here, Sasha's self -involvement and strangely gloomy attitude reflectKim's feelings, and this is clearly shown at their later meeting in acemetery. He learns that she does not love him when she unfeelinglydeserts him to be with her gravedigger boyfriend. The editing and cutting accentuate his pain and realization.

If all this talk about cemeteries and depression makes the filmsound bleak, the film is just as often funny . Panfilov catches the humorof the situations throughout the film, especially when Kim hides inSasha's apartment and hears her powerful, tearful and somewhat uglygoodbye scene with her boyfriend. Panfilov's simple camera catchesKim's discomfort and fear of being discovered at the most humorousmoments, as he hides in a comer of the kitchen. This approach is common in the film, and adds to it immensely. The editing of such scenesshould not be overlooked. Cutting at just the right moments creates thestrange feeling of pity and humor, while moving the film along seam

lessly and effortlessly. I was reminded of a fine production of Chekhov,where the mix of comedy and sadness is just right.The acting is involving. Mikhail Yulyanov as Kim gives a per

formance that as the character grows in his understanding of himself the

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audience sees more of his true personality. His large face is full ofcharacter and his odd man out manner carries off the comic momentswell. Inna Churikova is a strong Sasha. She is both troubled (in her life)and troublesome because of her constant gloominess. Yevgeny Vesnik,

as Igor is appropriately slovenly and full of good hearted commonsense. In fact every performance is both well cast and well done.This is a simple intelligent movie full of ramif ications and

reflections o f life . Panfilov should be applauded .

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CONTRIBUTORS

JEFF BRONE is a graduate student in the Ph .D . Theatre Pr ogra m atthe Graduate Center of CUNY has performed co medy on WIND radioin Chicago and writes film reviews f