seep vol.13 no.2 summer 1993

volume 13, no. 2

summer 1993

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 Wilson, 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 1993 CAST A

SEEP bas 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 ..

2 Slavic and East European Performance, Vol. 13, No. 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editorial Policy 4 From the Editors 5 &~ 6

"Kiev Season: Autumn 1991" Vreneli Farber 10

"A Glimpse into Anatoly Vasilyev's School of Dramatic Art" John Freedman 19

"Grotowski at Fifty-Nine: The Ten-Day Conference at Irvine (August 1992) and the Six-Day Mini-Course at NYU (February 1993)" Robert Findlay 23

"An Overview of the Romanian Theatre" Tudor Petrut 31

PAGES FROM THE PAST

"Grotowski Visits Moscow''

"Mikhail Chekhov's The Castle Awakens" Mel Gordon

REVIEWS

"MroZek's Tango by the Independent Theatre Co."

35

45

Joel Bassin 48

"Cinema in Transition: Recent Films from East and Central Europe- Symposium" David A. Goldfarb 51

Contributors 55 Playscripts in Translation Series 57 Subscription Policy 59

3

EDITORIAL POLICY

Manuscripts in the following categories are solicited: articles of no more than 2,500 words, performance and ftlm reviews, and bibliographies. Please bear in mind that aU submissions must concern themselves either with contemporary materials on Soviet and East European theatre, drama and ftlm, or with new approaches to older materials in recently published works, or new performances of older plays. In other words, we welcome submissions reviewing innovative performances of 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. AU submissions are refereed.

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

4 Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol. 13, No. 2

FROM THE EDITORS

In addition to reports on the 1991 season in Kiev by Vreneli

Farber, Anatoly Vasilyev's latest Moscow production as witnessed by John

Freedman, and an overview of Romanian theatre by Tudor Petrut, the

current issue has several special features that focus on two of the

twentieth century's most innovative theatre theoreticians: Mikhail Cbek

hov and Jerzy Grotowski. Mel Gordon reconstructs a 1931 "mystical

pantomime" production that sheds light on Mikhail Chekhov's work in

France. Robert Findlay's article tells us of Grotowski's most recent ap

pearance in New York as part of a six-day mini-course at New York

University, and the album of pictures of Grotowski's 1976 visit to Moscow

(from the Alma Law Archives) gives a striking portrait of one of the

greatest modern teachers of theatre.

- Alma Law and Daniel Gerould

5

EVENTS

STAGE PRODUCfiONS

La Mama E .T.C. presented the American premiere of the Yara Arts Group's Blind Sight, April15 through May 2. The production was directed by Virlana Tkacz and written by Tkacz, Wanda Phipps, and Watoku Ueno.

Pittsburgh's City Theatre produced Marie Wino's translation of Vaclav Havel's Temptation, April16 through May 16.

On April 18 and May 16, storyteller /puppeteer Vit Hofej~ performed the traditional Czech folktales, Salt or Gold and Kocha and the Devil, as well as stories by Josef Capek at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York.

The Miranda Theatre Company in New York produced Valentina Fratti's production of Prostitutki, Francesca Bartellini's adaptation of Vladimir Kunin's lntergirl, May 5-16.

Ludmila Petrushevskaya's Love made its New York premiere as part of an evening of one-acts staged by Hopscotch Theatre Productions and Tribeca Lab, May 20-21. The production was directed by Mandy Mishell.

Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margarita, interpreted for the theatre by Jean-Claude van Itallie, ran from June 3 to 13 at New York's Theatre for the New City, Joyce and Seward Johnson Theatre. David Willinger directed.

David Fishelson has adapted and directed Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Idiot for the Jean Cocteau Repertory Company at the Bowery Lane Theatre, New York. The show, which was revived after the Cocteau's regular season due to audience interest, closed on June 6.

GOH Productions presented The Seagull by Anton Chekhov, constructed and performed by Hanne Tierney "(with lights, strings, satin, lace, and music)." The production took place at the Flynn Gallery in New York City from June 4 to 13.

6 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No.2

Another production of Chekhov's The Seagull ran at TheatreStudio in New York City through June 20, directed by A. M. Raychel.

Six Apparitions of Lenin Appear on the Pi011o; Vladimir Mayakovsky, a Futurist Ballad Opera, by Kenneth Berkowitz, runs from June 3 to July 3 at the Tribeca Lab in New York City. Reservation for the Thursday through Saturday performances can be ordered by calling (212) 966-9371.

As part of its upcoming season, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis will produce Too Clever by Half, by Aleksandr Ostrovsky. The production opens July 14 and runs in repertory through the summer.

FILM

New York's Film Forum presented the American premiere of Oleg Kovalov's Garden of Scorpions, March 17-30. The filin critically examines the former Soviet system through a juxtaposition of sequences from Rasumny's Corporal Kotschetkov's Case--a Soviet ftlm from the 1950s about a young soldier in love who discovers capitalist spies hiding under beds and in the samovar--with scenes from Potemkin, Storm Over Asia, The Man with the Movie Camera, The End of St. Petersburg, and thirty other Soviet films virtually unknown in the West.

"Cinema in Transition: A Festival of Recent Films from East and Central Europe" held at the New School, April17-29, was the frrst major festival of East and Central European filins in the United States since the collapse of the Iron Curtain. Feature ft.lms presented as part of the festival included: Docho Bodjakov's The Well (Bulgaria, 1990); loan Carmazan's The Woodcutters and The House from the Dream (Romania, 1984 and 1992); Kujtim Cashku's The Ballad of Kurbin (Albania, 1989); Mircea Daneliuc's The Conjugal Bed (Romania, 1993); Pawel Dejczer's 300 Miles to Heaven (Poland, 1989); Bogdan Dumitrescu's Outback (Romania, 1991); Robert Glinski's All That Really Matters (Poland, 1992); Rajko Grlic's Charnga (Croatia, 1991); Ferenc Grunwalsky's A Full Day (Hungary, 1988); Juraj Jakubisco's It's Better to be Rich 011d Healthy th011 Poor and Ill (Slovakia, 1991); Attila Janisch's Shadow on the Snow (Hungary, 1991); Srdjan Karanovic's Virgina (Serbia, 1991); Wojciech Marczewski's Escape from Cinema Liberty (Poland, 1990); Andras Mesz's Meteo (Hungary, 1990); Radu Nicoara's The South Pole (Romania, 1992); Wladislaw Pasikowski's Pigs (Poland, 1992); Ivan Rossenov's Stop for

7

Strangers (Bulgaria, 1990); Arpad Sopsits's Video Blues (Hungary, 1992); Jan Sverak's Elementary School (Czech Republic, 1991), and Istvan Szabo's Sweet Emma, Dear Bobe (Hungary, 1992).

Four documentaries were also screened, including: Maciej J. Drygas's Hear My Cry (Poland, 1991); Stere Gulea's University S([l!are (Romania, 1992); Jana Sevcikova's Piemule (Czech Republic, 1989); and Pavel Stingl's Albania (Czech Republic, 1992). Student ftlms from Croatia, Czech Republic, and Hungary were presented as well.

On April 24, a symposium of directors, scholars and critics discussed the future of East and Central European cinema. Yvette Biro, Jujtim Cashku, Mircea Daneliuc, Feliks Falk, Robert Glinski, Daniel Goulding, Rajko Grlic, Andrew Horton, Vojtech Jasny, Srdjan Karanovic, Antonin J. Liehm, Radu Nicoara, Katherine Portuguese, Jan Sverak, and Frank Turaj were among the participants. See the review in this issue for more on the symposium.

The Human Rights Watch Film Festival, held in May at the Loews Village VII in New York, featured two documentaries from Eastern Europe: Serbian Epics and A Day in the Death of Sarajevo.

VIDEO

Several East European fLlms have recently become available on videotape. Kino, who has acquired rights from the International Film Exchange for various Russian ftlms, has released Sergei Eisenstein's Que Viva Mexico, Nikita Mikhalkov's Oblomov, Sergei Paradzhanov's Red Pomegranate and The Legend of Suram Fortress, and Andrei Tarkovsky's Mirror.

Milestone has also produced a ten-cassette series of Russian silent fLlms. The fLlms include documentaries, folktales and legends, Wladislaw Starewicz's puppet animations, and Pyotr Cbardynin's adaptations of Pushkin. For information, call (212) 865-7449.

OPERA

Insect Comedy: The World We Live In, Martin Kalmanoffs and Lewis Allan:s new opera based on a play by Karel and Josef Capek, received its world premiere with the Center for Contemporary Opera's production in New York, May 20-23. Richard Marshall directed. Special


guests at the opening night included Czech Ambassador Zantovsky and ftlm producer Milos Forman.

REPORT

Valentin Kuzmenko-Delinde, whose productions include Kuprin's The Pit at the Moscow Art Theatre, visited the Department of Theatre at SUNY Stony Brook for six weeks. During March and April, he gave talks and workshops focusing on current interpretations and performance usages of Stanislavsky. Farley Richmond, chair of the theatre department, hopes to invite Kuzmenko-Delinde for a return visit in 1994. Principal plans involve staging a vaudeville adaptation of Chekhov's short stories prepared by Nicholas Rzhevsky.

-compiled by Jay Plum and Patrick Hennedy

9

KIEV SEASON: AUTUMN 1991

Vreoeli Farber

Locals say that many fewer people are going to the theatre these days than ten years ago. The drama of daily life and foreign ftlms viewed on VCRs are cited as two reasons for this phenomenon. Be that as it may, I found the theatrical offerings in Kiev in the fall of 1991 to be varied and engaging. I will comment on the season as a whole but focus my attention on those productions I saw, which include some of the most interesting ones.

The productions fell into four categories: Ukrainian plays, Russian plays, East European plays, and Western plays. If one does not count productions by studio and "fringe" theatre, there were as many Ukrainian works staged as in the other three categories combined. Kievans were clearly expanding the attention given to Ukrainian culture and to the Ukrainian language! I did not manage to see any ofthe Ukrainian dramas, but I did see two Ukrainian operas, The Zaporozh Cossack Beyond the Danube (Zaporozhets za Dunaem) by Semen GulakArtemovskii and Taras Bulba by Nikolai Lysenko (based on Nikolai Gogol's work of the same title). Both contain the themes of Ukrainian nationalism and independence and apparently the topical nature of these themes explains the popularity of the productions.

If Ukrainian nationalism constituted the appeal of the Ukrainian works performed in Kiev, then striking staging, social satire, and topical political allusions were what drew audiences to the Russian, East European, and Western plays.

With the exception of Alexei Pisemsky's The Predators (Khishchniki) and The Murderer (Ubijtsa) based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment/ all the Russian plays staged were from the Soviet period, most of them dating from the seventies and eighties. Of the three pre-1970 works, Nikolai Erdman's The Suicide (Samoubijtsa, 1928), Vladimir Nabokov's The Event (Sobytie, 1938), and Andrei Amalrik's East-West: A Dialogue in Suzda/ (Vostok-Zapad: dialog vedushchijsia v Suzda/i, 1963), produced in Kiev under the title Captivated by You (Plennenyi toboiu ), I saw only the first.

The production of The Suicide at the Lesia Ukrainka Russian Dramatic Theatre directed by G. V. Tsarev brought out the farcical humor and the absurdist atmosphere of the play without losing ' the undertone of despair. But the despair was conveyed with poignancy rather than bitterness. A particularly effective moment in the production was the scene in which Podsekalnikov, having signed for the delivery of


his own funeral wreaths and cofftn, sets about trying to commit suicide. The broad humor of his efforts shift to pathos when, shortly afterwards, he wonders aloud what is life and what is man, only to discover that his listener is a deaf-mute. The deaf-mute, a minor character adding a comical note to the original play, performed a more serious and symbolic function in this staging. No one really hears Podsekalnikov's plea and dearly nobody has a solution to offer him.

Podsekalnikov's situation and the theme of dealing with hard times, together with the issue of no clear solutions, had much contemporary relevance. In fact, the topicality of the play, with allusions referring simultaneously to the NEP period and to the present, and with lines about the Revolution that had a double meaning in light of current events, contributed significantly to the forcefulness of the production. Similarly, the interesting staging contributed to the success of the show. Along the backstage wall were cupboards, shelves, and two doors. On a slightly raised platform occupying the entire center stage was a large rectangular box, open on both the backstage and downstage sides. The floor of the box was set with the furniture of the Podsekalnikovs's bedroom (downstage represented the living room), and from the ceiling bung the table and chairs used in the banquet scene in Act II. When the time came to change scenes, the whole box revolved 180 degrees on a horizontal axis, resulting in the chairs and table standing upright and the bed, vanity table, mirror, and rubber plant hanging from the ceiling. This staging made for an effective fmale: the crowd that bad assembled for Podsekalnikov's funeral rushed offstage at the news of an actual suicide and Podsekalnikov was left alone downstage in a spotlight, while his life (the bedroom) and "death" (the banquet) revolved several times before his stunned gaze.

The post-1970 Russian plays produced in Kiev included Ludmila Petrushevskaya's Cinzano and Smimova's Birthday (Den' rozhdeniia Smimovoi, 1978), Edvard Radzinsky's Let's Kill the Man (Ub'em muzhchinu, 1986), Aleksandr Galin's Stars in the Morning Sky (Zvezdy na utrennem nebe, 1987), Venedikt Erofeev's Moscow-Petushki (MoskvaPetushki, 1989), and Arkadii and Boris Strugatsky's "Jews of the City of Peter . .. "or Sad Conversations by Candlelight ("Zhidi goroda Pitera ... " iii neveselye besedy pri svechakh, 1991),3 three of which I saw.

Petrushevskaya's plays were staged in a small cafe on Andrew's Descent (Andreevsky spusk), the picturesque street leading from St. Andrew's Church down to the Podol section of Kiev. Dotted with a number of small theatres, this street appears to be the center of Kiev's "fringe" theatre! Cinzano, which offers a glimpse of the personal lives of a group of men at a drinking party, was performed in a semi-circular

11

area of the cafe where chairs and tables had been moved away from the wall. During intermission the audience walked up a narrow staircase to the second floor where a small room accommodating about ftfty people and a tiny, slightly raised stage was situated. This is where Smimova's Birthday, the companion to Cinzano, was played. The intimacy of the staging suited the subject matter of the play, which concerns the personal lives of three women. Although the acting was sometimes forced and amateurish, the production nevertheless was moving. The two Russian women with me felt that it spoke to the reality of their lives, and one of them said she found it bard to imagine families that were unlike those portrayed in the play where the men don't drink and members respect one another.

Erofeev's Moscow-Petushki, like Petrushevskaia's plays, was put on in a small theatre with an unusual ambiance. The "Constellation" (Suzir'ia) is housed in a building constructed during the first decade of this century by Mikhail Rodzianko, president of the Duma. Before the play began, a guide assembled the audience in one of the two secondfloor rooms that served as a lobby and recounted the history of the building. She led the way into the second room and asked us to imagine ourselves in the Kursk train station in Moscow. Her narrations gradually gave way to a conversation among the actors who had appeared unnoticed in our midst. After this prologue, the doors to the theatre, really just a third large room with a miniature stage at one end, opened and we took our unassigned seats.

The play involves a number of themes successfully woven together into an interesting drama. The dominant theme is alcoholism.5

Everyone in the play drinks: the hero, the men who gratuitously stab him to death in the train station, the angels who greet him in the afterlife, even a young boy who recites Blok but drinks because his grandfather does (and one wonders therefore what good Blok is to him). The play makes clear that the drinking stems from work and lives that are not satisfying, the ultimate cause of which is the Soviet regime. The waste that results from alcoholism is represented by the hero's failing to attain any of his goals, not least of which is meeting the woman he loves, a prostitute waiting for him at Petushki. In the end, she spurns him because be is an alcoholic. Parallel to the theme of alcoholism is that of the hero's search for himself, a search that ends in failure.

A third theme is nineteenth-century Russian literature and music. A distorted picture of this culture emerges from the mouths of the drunks, not only because of their intoxication, but also because of the way it has traditionally been taught in the schools under Communism: some areas revealed, others withheld. In one quite humorous scene the drunlcs


give an account of how all the great writers of the nineteenth century drank. For example, they claim that before his death, Chekhov said, "Ich sterbe," and then asked for champagne.

The play contains a satire of Soviet history from Lenin's "April Theses" to the coup of 1991 and the cant that has accompanied that history. It contains many allusions to everyday reality, such as "cocktails" made from eau de toilette, shampoo, and other products containing alcohol, and a number of absurdist sequences. All in all, MoscowPetushki presents a grim picture of contemporary society in Russia.

The four man, one woman cast performed with minimal props, costumes, and furniture (including a painter's ladder), using both the miniature stage that had a painted backdrop and the floor area in front of it. The lighting was simple and there was no music. Nevertheless the intimate setting and the intensity of the acting made for a successful performance.

Equally successful, but produced with all the trappings of conventional theatre (a proscenium stage, music and sound effects, complex lighting, realistic sets, props, and costumes) was the Strugatskys' "Jews of the City of Peter . . . ", which Kievans described as having "predicted" the August coup.

The cast of characters consists of a well-off professional, his wife, their two sons, the younger son's co-worker, two old family friends (a KGB informer and a Jew), a janitor, and a mystery man. The play revolves around the characters' receiving orders to gather at specific places in St. Petersburg at specific times on January 12. The orders vary according to the characters who receive them. The first one, delivered by the mystery man during a temporary electrical blackout, is addressed to "All rich men of the city of Peter" and instructs the recipient to bring all his documents to the meeting place and to leave his valuables and foreign currency at home. The Jew's order reads "Yids of the city of Peter." The older son, who has been married and divorced several times, receives an order addressed to "Profligates of the city of Peter." When the father calls a friend on the Central Committee for clarification and help in dealing with this bizarre incident, he learns that his friend has also received an order. Even the KGB informer is not immune. His order is directed to "Informers of the city of Peter," and his boss's remark not to worry because everything is under control does not reassure him. The janitor's order reads "All bribe-takers of the city of Peter." In other words, all layers of society are affected by this event, which in its ominousness and lack of information recalled for audiences of late 1991 the August putsch. But these are associations that the play evokes in spite of itself. Associations that are deliberate are those that occur

13

between the present and WWII. The Jew recalls what happened in Kiev during the war: orders issued for certain persons to convene at specified places at designated times, and then Babi Yar. When the father turns on the radio and hears only the sound of a metronome, he is reminded of the news blackout during the blockade of Leningrad.

The play presents the conflict of generations in an interesting fashion. Initially the younger son and his friend fit the stereotypical image of the younger generation- fondness for rock music and carefree behavior beyond the comprehension of adults-but the conflict takes on a more serious character when they condemn the older generation for its compliance with the strange orders. Such obedience is explained as the result of the adults having lived through the Stalin era. But the fmal verdict on the older generation is that they all made their choices, namely compromises with the system,6 long before these mysterious orders appeared. The father responds that the orders are not really a call-up to his generation, which is already shaped by the past, but rather to the younger generation. How will they respond to this crisis? They have been shown to be gratuitously harsh and violent, schooling themselves to eschew pity. The play ends with the KGB informer brandishing slips canceling the orders and rejoicing, "I knew this couldn't happen!" But questions remain hanging in the air: "Can we be sure?" and "What are we to expect from the younger generation, given the way they are?"

These Russian plays aimed at provoking thought and engaged in social criticism. Audiences were drawn to them for these reasons. Their staging was creative and made for interesting theatre.

The strongest aspect of the East European and Western plays was their staging and the performances by some of the actors. I am generalizing on the basis of three productions: Branislav D. Nmi~'s UJEt (an acronym for Association of Yugoslav Emancipated Women, in Russian, OBEZH, 1935); Jean Cocteau's The Holy Tenvrs (Les Monstres sacrees, 1940); and Leonard Bernstein's Candide (1974V

Nu~i~'s comedy is a spoof on women's organizations that supposedly engage in welfare activities yet accomplish nothing. The members are really more interested in one another's private lives. Their involvement in the organization causes them to neglect their families. Although this neglect is presented humorously, and husbands too are satirized, there is nevertheless a dark note in the play. Parents' lack of involvement in the lives of their children has serious consequences: out -ofwedlock pregnancy and criminal activity. This is what happens to.the children of the OBEZH president. However, even when she realizes the damage her neglect has caused, she refuses to abandon OBEZH. One sympathizes with her desire to be liberated from the demands of the


home, but not with her pointless activities and the effect they have on her family. The production itself was full of energy and made use of comic exaggeration both in acting and costuming, as well as including some cabaret devices.

The same elements of energy and exaggeration were to be found in the staging of Bernstein's Candide, directed by V. Petrov. Theatrically, there was much to recommend the production. For example, Nikolai Epov designed a single set, Voltaire's study, that was used very effectively to create numerous settings. Bookcases opening to permit actors to enter and exit, a twelve foot high balcony running the length of the bookshelves and reached by a wide staircase, an interesting lighting plan involving the use of spotlights, colored lights, and other effects (sound, dry ice, etc.) combined to make this variety possible. Similarly, the exaggerated eighteenth-century costumes were generally successful, as were several carefully choreographed sequences. But the show had no depth. The entire emphasis was on comic effect; sometimes it was successful, sometimes it was simply slapstick sexual humor that was not genuinely funny. Perhaps the remark of one theatre specialist best sums up the appeal of the production: "Of course for you (Americans] this kind of show is nothing new, but for us it's still a novelty."

By far the most theatrically interesting production I saw was Cocteau's Les Monstres sacrees which reproduced Moscow director Roman Viktuik's staging of the work. The story line concerns the love relationship between a middle-aged actor and actress, but the overall theme is the nature of the theatrical experience. The staging suited this theme beautifully. The stage remained dark except for shifting pools of bright light where action took place and for the subdued illumination of a large Art Nouveau panel, slightly left of center stage. Part of the panel was transparent so that shadows were visible behind it. In the middle was a tall, revolving door designed in the Art Nouveau style. The characters made entries through the door as well as from the darkness on both sides of the panel. The action shifted sharply and so too did the pools of light. The only pieces of furniture were a metal bent-wood style rocker and two rectangular benches. The black and white costumes against the background of the silver furniture and the panel created a Beardsley look that was very striking. The music combined Russian romances and selections from the soundtrack of the fllm, A Man and a Woman.

The stylized acting of the opening scenes was static, but perhaps this was deliberate in order to provide a contrast with the mime added to the play by Viktiuk. The mime frequently flitted from one part of the stage to another and occasionally stood behind actors to "frame" them with his sleeves that swept the floor. The sleeves formed part of a

15

garment that covered his shoulders but revealed his torso. He wore black tights and a black Pierrot -style head covering and was barefoot. In Cocteau's text there is no "angel Ertebiz," who appears to be an embodiment of the spirit of theatre, but he was a theatrically effective addition to the cast.

The coo~ distancing effect of Viktiuk's staging formed a successful counterpoint to the human warmth between the couple and the emotional gamut they travel in the course of the play.

To recapitulate: in the fall of 1991, Ukrainian works received much attention and their appeal was grounded in nationalism. Striking staging, social satire, and topical political allusions constituted the attraction of the Russian, East European and Western plays produced. The Russian dramas, most dating from the past two decades, allowed for comment on social problems such as alcoholism, broken families, and moral issues such as compromise and spiritual bankruptcy. The East European and Western plays dealt also with social questions, but what was most successful in these shows was their staging.


NOTES

1Ukrainian authors represented at the Franko Ukrainian Dramatic Theatre were Iurii Ribchinskii and Georgii Tatarchenko, OJga Kobilianska, Vasilii Simonenko, Ivan Franko, Iurii Mikhajlik, and Ivan Kotliarevskii. Foreigners translated into Ukrainian were Claude Magnier, Tirso de Molina, Friedrich Diirrenmatt, Giulio Scarnicci, and Renzo Tarabusi. Likewise, Grigorii Gorin's Tevye-Tevel (based on stories by Sholom Aleichem) and Mikhail Roshchin's Master and Margarita (based on Mikhail Bulgakov's novel of the same title) were produced in Ukrainian.

2Using the staging of Moscow director Mark Rozovsky, Valerij Patsunov, the director-producer at the "Golden Gates" Theatre (Teatr "Zolotye vorota'~, created his own interpretation of the dramatization.

1'his play was published in Zavtra (Tomorrow), No. 2 (1991), 226-240.

4It was also on Andreevsky spusk that I watched a rehearsal of Alexander Pushkin's MoUllt and Salieri by the Kiev Theatre on Podol (Kievskii teatr na Podole) . Mozart wore plaid bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt; Salieri was dressed in a black trenchcoat. My reaction was that this production might work if given many more hours of rehearsal. Yet the troupe was on its way to London within two days in order to perform the play!

51t is interesting to note that Moscow-Petushki was first published in the journal Sobriety and Culture (Trezvost' i kul'tura), No. 12 (1988), Nos. 1-3 (1989).

~he mother did not receive an order because she consistently refused to compromise herself by cooperating with the KGB.

7Bernstein's original Candide, produced in 1965 with the book by Lillian Hellman, did not receive acclaim, but the revised version in 1974, with the book by Hugh Callingham Wheeler, enjoyed success. It is this latter version that was used in Kiev.

Other foreign works performed in Kiev in the fall of 1991 were The Insect Play (Ze fivota hmyzll, 1921) by Karel Capek; Hot and Cold or the Idea of Mister Dom (Chaud et froid ou L 'idee de Monsieur Dom, 1934) by Fernand Crommelynck; The Tale About the Soldier and the Snake (Skazka pro so/data i zmeiu, 1958) by Tamara Grigorevna Gabbe; Memoir

17

(Smekh langusty in Kiev) (1978) by Canadian John Murrell; Variation on a Theme (Dama bez kamelii in Kiev) (1958) by Terence Rattigan; and Desire Under the Elms (1924) by Eugene O'Neill. Although I did not see tapek's play, I cannot help think that as with the Strugatskys' play, the audience, with the August coup fresh in their minds, found contemporary relevance in tapek's warning that a terrible end awaits a populace that fails to rise against its oppressors.


A GLIMPSE INTO ANATOLY VASILYEV'S SCHOOL OF DRAMATIC ART

John Freedman

After getting mixed reviews for his production of Mikhail Lermontov's The Masquerade at the Comedie-Fran~ in June 1992, Anatoly Vasilyev moved back to his School of Dramatic Art in Moscow to continue work on a long-term project: his adaptation of Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers. In December, Vasilyev gave five semipublic showings, gaining admission to which proved as dramatic as the performances themselves. For days in advance, administrators at the School either denied knowledge of the upcoming showings, claimed the caller bad reached a wrong number, or merely bung up the phone. At the door, attempts were made to weed out journalists and critics. Those who belonged to Vasilyev's inner circle, or who were especially stubborn, had the opportunity to see six random scenes from Joseph as well as the new theatre Vasilyev is constructing in the old Uranus movie house on Sretenka Street.• Except for a penciled announcement on the exterior that a theatre-studio was looking for a doorman, nothing gave any indication that this location was anything but another of Moscow's countless abandoned buildings.

After passing through the future theatre's run-down entryway and foyers, spectators enter what begs to be called a clean, well-lighted place. The floor consists of well-lacquered white pine planks, and the walls are covered in canvas painted off-white. A narrow three-story, U-shaped structure forms the "auditorium" and appears to be something of a lighthearted parody of traditional large theatres. It is essentially a construction of scaffolding consisting of bright red pipes with facings covered in the same off-white canvas that adorns the walls. The top level is reserved for technicians, while the slightly-elevated floor and seepnd levels each have room only for one row of seats. It appears that maximum seating is about sixty. Spectators on the floor level are separated from the acting space by a low, stately, white-columned fence. The second level hangs over the first and there is a narrow slit in the floor that allows spectators to peer straight down to glimpse what is going on below. The acting space, at least for Joseph, was the floor area encompassed by the scaffolding. A medium-sized, elevated stage extends from the open end of the scaffolding to the back wall. Financing for the theatre comes exclusively from money Vasilyev has earned while working in the West.

19

The showing began with an extended prelude. Eleven men and twelve women walked out and formed a circle. They beautifully sang six hymns, after each of which they made the sign of the cross and bowed. V asilyev himself stood in an aperture in the center of the floor level where he too crossed himself repeatedly and occasionally wept. Carefully, even demonstratively, he removed a handkerchief from his pocket, unfolded it, and dried his eyes. Following the singing of the final hymn, the actors took seats positioned in single ftle in front of the audience. V asilyev also seated himself in the aperture before a small table on which the only object was a Bible. A spotlight positioned behind him cast his long shadow across the acting space. (It was turned off only after the intermission.) An actress then stepped up to one of the three podiums and began reading from Genesis in a chanting voice, the other actors following the text in their own copies of the Bible. As the "cantor" intoned the lines, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image,' " the actors began singing another hymn. Upon the completion of the reading, all made the sign of the cross and the actress took her seat. A second actress stepped up to another podium and began reading further. Only then did the two actors portraying Joseph and Jacob fmally take positions in front of the stage and begin performing the first scene, "By the Well."

The readings from Genesis continued uninterrupted throughout all six scenes and frequently a third layer of voices was added as hymns were sung. As each actor fmished his or her reading, or as the singing came to an end, all but those performing crossed themselves and bowed.

Besides "By the Well," the other segments performed were "The Unclean Beast," "The Pursuit," "To the Master," "Husband and Wife,'' and "Potiphar." All involved two characters except "The Pursuit,'' which involved three. The actors did little more than assume positions in front of the stage and deliver their lines. From time to time they sat on one of two chairs, but more often they stood motionlessly or walked around slowly. Their "gestures" were limited to facial expressions, emotional speech, and a few repetitive, stylized motions of the fingers, hands, and arms. The text was merely delivered in the form of engaged Socratic dialogues. Some of the actors seemed nervous or unsure of themselves; their hands occasionally trembled and they frequently stumbled over the text. There was no action or interaction to speak of. Only once during the scene "Husband and Wife" did the actor and actress embrace. There were no props aside from the two chairs and some lights depicting stars that hung in a net beneath the ceiling during the performance of "By the Well."

Upon the conclusion of the sixth scene, an actor stepped up to the one podium that was located on the elevated stage. There, as the

20 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 13, No. 2

seated actors sang a hymn, he continued the Bible reading. After he fmished, all made the sign of the cross, stood, and left silently.

While it would be improper to draw any broad conclusions based on these exercises that were clearly intended for a select audience, it is possible to make a few general observations. The most obvious is that V asilyev continues to grow increasingly uncomfortable with the notion of "traditional theatre." By having his actors perform exclusively on a space in front of an empty stage-reserving that stage only for the reading of the Bible- he seems to have signaled either that they have already abandoned the traditional stage or, on the contrary, that they are not yet ready to mount it. Moreover, the meticulous conducting of what amounts to a staged religious service throughout the performance implies the director's doubt that theatrical devices alone are capable of expressing satisfactorily what he wishes to say. On the other hand, Vasilyev himself has not yet rejected theatre altogether. The careful positioning of a spotlight that casts his shadow over his actors and the methodical handling of the handkerchief as be dries his teary eyes while standing at the rim of the acting space are clear signs of that. The clever configuration of his new performing space also implies a healthy dose of "playing at theatre."

Perhaps V asilyev's rancorous break with the masterful actors who helped make his reputation left him more alone than be knows. The new students he is trying to form outside the traditional educational theatre system are better at imitating their teacher's "terrible, swift" aura than creating convincing performances. Most of the men sport the same long, black hair, the same flowing beards, and the same scowling looks that have made Vasilyev's image famous. Even the women seem to have adopted the "Vasilyev look." What appears to be lacking are strong creative personalities who might enter into a fruitful dialogue with a man of vision and talent. At any rate, Vasilyev's "school" presently resembles a hermetic spiritual sect as much as an environment for developing the dramatic art.

Vasilyev has long been at least one step ahead of his contemporaries. Perhaps he is still out in the lead. Whether that is true or not may become more evident when Joseph and His Brothers is completed?

21

NOTES

1 I attended the first showing on December 24, 1992. The final two were held at the old location on Vorovsky Street.

2For more information about Vasilyev, see Lurana Donnels O'Malley, "Anatoly Vasilyev and PirandeUo's Six Characters: Mixing It Up," SEEP 9 (Fall 1989): 67-69.


GROTOWSKI AT FIFIY-NINE: THE TEN-DAY CONFERENCE AT IRVINE (AUGUST 1992)

AND THE SIX-DAY MINI-COURSE AT NYU (FEBRUARY 1993)

Robert Findlay

The mlDl-course entitled "Jerzy Grotowski: The Theatrical Period," which I arranged with the help of many others at New York University, '12-27 February 1993, first began to take form last summer in Irvine, California. I had been invited by Grotowski through Stephen Barker, chair of the theatre program at the University of California, Irvine, to attend a very small ten-day conference, 10-19 August. There were demonstrations and discussions of student work, long evening sessions of videotapes of Grotowski's work, and discussions with him in a guest room at the Raddison Hotel near the Orange County (John Wayne) Airport.

I say "a very small . .. conference" because there were only a few of us: Jerzy Grotowski, James Slowiak (University of Akron, who had worked extensively with Grotowski as a student at Irvine in the mid-1980s and later with him at the Centro di Lavoro di Jerzy Grotowski in Pontedera, Italy), Lisa Wolford (doctoral student in performance studies at Northwestern University, who had worked with Slowiak at both Irvine and Akron- and also with Grotowski at Irvine-and had written about it1

), Masoud Saidpour (graduate student at both Irvine and Akron from Iran who had worked with Grotowski, Slowiak, and Wolford over a number of years), Yi-song Fan (specialist and performer in Beijing Opera, who had never met Grotowski but who had translated into Chinese parts of an article by Halina Filipowicz and me on the closing of the Teatr Laboratorium2

), occasional visitor Stephen Barker (who had procured the necessary funds from UC-Irvine to bring about this whole conference), and myself.

What follows here is a personal account, open to correction and perhaps even to a multiplicity of interpretations. Grotowski's and my conversations over many dinners, walking in the streets of New York, Irvine, and Long Beach, or talking in Andre and Chiquita Gregory>s apartment in New York (when they weren't there) have always been direct and face-to-face. I've never taken notes in his presence or used a recording device, since it would break the spell of conversation if I seemed to be "interviewing'' him. But always, in every encounter either with him or members of the Teatr Laboratorium, I've gone swiftly hQme to wherever I was staying (in Wroclaw, Poland; Milan, Italy; New York; Irvine; and even my own home in Lawrence, Kansas) and taken many

23

notes. Grotowski has always believed that if one takes notes at the moment, one is not really listening or participating.

In all our "meetings" over the years, I've always observed how supremely quick and agile his mind is. Despite his recent illness, Grotowski continues to be very charismatic, energetic, and animated in his conversation. He is always precisely clear, though he frequently speaks in metaphors and symbols, and he is always ironic: "Bob, you must understand that everything I say is ironic," he said to me in a restaurant last summer. At the time he was questioning me about what I had written about him in 1986--reporting what he had said to me in New York on the day that the Teatr Laboratorium officially d.isbanded -(31 August 1984). "'The example of Christ, as a living human being only, is very important to me.' And then, jokingly, not wistful or self-indulgent, but ironic, smiling, laughing almost, self-deprecatory, telling a funny story: 'Jesus Christ had only three years; I had twenty-three with the Laboratorium.' "3

Eight years ago in Long Beach at an all-night restaurant, where he and I drank diet Cokes until 4:00 a.m. and talked about, among many other things, visionary experiences and my brother Bill's "calling" to become a Presbyterian minister, Grotowski made a distinction between "the priests" (the followers) and "the visionaries" (those who really make a difference). That night he had alluded many times to St. John of the Cross, the Spanish sixteenth-century mystic poet usually associated with St. Teresa and the reform of the Carmelite order. In paintings, John is usually pictured surrounded by the books be has written. Thus, just as Grotowski's theatrical work metaphorically and often blasphemously borrowed from Christian imagery (in Faustus, The Constant Prince, and Apocalypsis cum figuris), so too does his conversation constantly allude to such images. Interestingly, Grotowski said last summer that his mother (Emilia Grotowska, 1897-1978) had been a Muslim.

Although Grotowski sometimes has requested to see articles that are written about him before they are published in order to check the facts, he has never asked to see beforehand what I've written about !Pm. I am constantly reminded of the request he once made to Polish critic J6zef Kelera to never quote him, but only to speak about his (Kelera's) perception of what he (Grotowski) had said.• In a sense, that's what I've always tried to do.

At our last supper together (18 August 1992; the anniversary of Zbigniew Cynkutis's [1938-87] birthday, which we both acknowledged), I gave him a copy of the memorial article on Cynkutis I'd written for the Spring 1987 issue of the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism.$ We then walked through the woods from the restaurant to the bote~ and he

24 Slavic and Ealt European Performance Vol. 13, No.2

called out to me, "Bob, you must understand that I am much older than you, because I am very ill." (Last summer, Grotowski and I celebrated his fifty-ninth and my sixtieth birthdays together in Irvine; his on 11 August 1933 and mine on 16 August 1932, making me exactly 360 days older than he.) Though persistently aware of his own mortality, he does not seem particularly morose. Nonetheless he mourns the loss of so many of his former colleagues so early in their lives: Antoni Jaholkowski in 1981, Jacek Zmyslowski in 1982, Stanislaw Scierski in 1983, Zhigniew Cynkutis in 1987, and Ryszard Cie~lak in 1990-but also his long-time friend Chiquita Gregory in 1991. When I told him that statistically the deaths of so many relatively young people seemed improbable, he spoke ironically of the "myth" among some Poles that the members of the Laboratorium were "cursed" for their blasphemy.

In the lobby of the Raddison Hotel in Irvine, Grotowski and I stood looking at a map of the United States. The chair of my department at Kansas, John Gronbeck-Tedesco, had asked if I could get Grotowski to come for a time from Italy to Kansas, maybe for a week. Grotowski liked the idea. He asked, "Where is Kansas?" I showed him Kansas City on the map, then Lawrence, which is right in the center of the country. I said, "Some people ask me why I stay at Kansas." But then I said, pointing to the map, "Look, I can get to New York faster than people in lA can get to New York; and I can also get to lA faster than anyone in New York can." Grotowski wanted to come to Kansas in February 1993 partly because years before in spring 1982, I'd brought Cynkutis to Kansas for a semester, and he'd been a great success with students and faculty in two acting and directing courses.

Although Grotowski had requested only enough funds to cover his business-class airfare from Italy and housing expenses (he asked for no honorarium), it turned out that we at Kansas were unable to raise sufficient money. The Ko~ciuszko Foundation in New York seemed willing to help fmance the trip if Grotowski would make an appearance there, but he said no, that it would be too much. But then another plan began to evolve among a number of people. Two of my former doctoral students at Kansas, James Larson and Rob Taylor, now co-directors of the Educational Theatre Program at NYU, set about to get funds for me to coordinate and teach a mini-course for six days (thirty hours) for approximately thirty graduate students from the NYU Educational Theatre Program, NYU Performance Studies, and three of my own graduate students from Kansas. Grotowski agreed to come to New York in late February.

Originally I'd planned to model the mini-course after my Seminar on Grotowski which I teach every other spring at Kansas. On Tuesday


afternoons, we discuss the various phases of Grotowski's career: the period of the political activist, the theatrical period, the forays into paratheatrical work and "active culture," and eventually the work in Theatre of Sources, Objective Drama, and, more recently in Pontedera, Italy, Art as Vehicle or Ritual Arts.6 On Thursday afternoons we do paratheatrical work. I bring my clarinet and improvise rhythms and melodies (sometimes jazz riffs, sometimes folk melodies), and the students dress comfortably and move and vocalize nonverbally in the space. We seek to fmd form in much the same way Grotowski once precisely described this process in 1981 at a benefit at Hunter College to pay the enormous hospital expenses for Jacek Zmyslowski at SloanKettering.7

Although Grotowski has long since moved far beyond paratheatrical work- which he now considers his "amateur period"-1 nonetheless still find value in this kind of work particularly to give a company of actors in rehearsals a sense of ensemble and individual creativity. Grotowski's more recent work since Theatre of Sources has progressed toward greater discipline and more precision. (A videotape I saw at Irvine last summer of the work of Thomas Richards and the socalled "downstairs group" in Pontedera, shot by Chiquita Gregory shortly before her death in 1991, reveals the work now taking place as perhaps even more precise and disciplined than that of the Teatr Laboratorium during the 1960s, when the group became internationally famous.)

Ultimately, through Carla Pollastrelli, Grotowski's chief administrator in Pontedera, and Lisa Wolford, who went to Pontedera in the interim between Irvine and New York, I was told that Grotowski wanted no paratheatrical work done in New York. He wanted me to organize the mini-course around only the theatrical work of the 1960s. I was stunned. I felt hobbled. I argued with Carla over the phone and by fax several times, asking, "How is it possible to talk only about Grotowski's theatrical work without somehow recognizing what has come after?"

However, after much reflection in trying to work out the details of the mini-course, I came to see the wisdom of Grotowski's choice. Unlike most of the younger people now most closely associated with Grotowski, I had personally known all the members of the theatrical company- Mirecka, Cieslak, Scierski, Jaholkowski, Molik, Albahaca, and particularly Cynkutis- and had seen at least some of the theatrical work, particularly Apocalypsis cum figuris (six times in Milan and Wroclaw). I gradually came to see that Grotowski had chosen the best focus for me.

Carla told me that J erzy wanted both Andre Gregory and Margaret Croyden to participate in the mini-course. I thought this was

27

a very good idea and set about with Lisa Wolford arranging their appearances. For years Andre has been very close to Jerzy (witness the ftlrn, My Dinner with Andre). Margaret was the frrst one to place Grotowski in the context of his times in her book, Lunatics, Lovers, and Poets: The Contemporary Experimental Theatre (1974).

I told Carla by phone of some of the other people I wanted to bring for appearances at the mini-course. Critic Gerald Rabkin (formerly of the University of Kansas, since 1970 at Rutgers University) had gone from Kansas to see Akropolis and The Constant Prince in New York in 1969 and eventually had seen Apoca/ypsis in 1973 in Philadelphia. Stacey MacFarlane (presently a graduate student at Kansas) had worked with Cynkutis in Kansas in 1982 and in Wrodaw in 1986 before his death. There were also two other graduate students from Kansas, Steve Grossman and Kung-yu Chin. Kevin Kuhlke (NYU Experimental Theatre Wing) grew up in Lawrence, Kansas and had worked in Poland with Grotowski in 1980 on Theatre of Sources. Richard Schechner (Distinguished Professor at NYU Performance Studies) is the editor of TDR, the journal which since 1965 has devoted more pages to Grotowski than any other journal. Carla approved most of my choices.

Grotowski had said from the beginning that the group must be very small. Ultimately, there were approximately sixty people when Grotowski himself appeared at the Black Box performance space at 32 Washington Place to show and discuss the videotape of The Constant Prince.• The invited guest list of outside scholars and friends of Grotowski was quite short. Students in the mini-course had been told they could not bring friends. Grotowski, as usual, was charismatic, articulate, and precise, but also metaphoric. He talked about his theatrical work as seeking to extend from where Stanislavsky had left off, i.e. with the method of physical actions. This was a topic he had discussed extensively with student actors in Irvine the previous summer. If the actor has to play boredom, as in Chekhov's The Seagull, Grotowski said, the actor cannot simply "play'' boredom; the actor must show boredom. "The actor perhaps paces back and forth, looks out the window, seeking to fmd something interesting." This distinguishes physical actions from simply physical activity; in other words, the actor finds objectives.

The day after Grotowski appeared, James Slowiak flew in from Akron to show and discuss the videotapes of R yszard Cieslak and Rena Mirecka separately demonstrating Grotowskian plastiques and other exercises. Many in the group of graduate students and professors were particularly stunned by this work, especially that of Mirecka. Gerald Rabkin commented about the androgyny of Grotowskian techniques. He

28 Slavic and East European Perfonnancc Vol. 13, No.2

talked about the distinctly "masculine" work of Cie~ak but also about the distinctly "feminine" work of Mirecka.

After the course closed at 6:00 p.m. Saturday, 27. February, Grotowski asked me to come to where he'd secretly been staying all week under the care of Lisa Wolford. He'd already summoned Kansas graduate student Stacey MacFarlane to discuss her work with Cynkutis in the year before his death. When I came into the room, Jerzy and Stacey were talking intently. I sat down quietly and listened. Then, after a few minutes, I said, "I believe we are talking about our old friend Zbyszek Cynkutis." Then they both noticed me, and we all talked together. After a short time Grotowski asked Stacey to leave, and he and I talked for about forty minutes concerning the mini-course. We were both exhausted but pleased at what had occurred. When we finished, Grotowski summoned Lisa and asked her to pour a glass of cognac both for herself and for me. Then he smiled almost like a sly child and looked at Lisa and me saying, "Now you're both ftred!" We all laughed.

When I left shortly after, he and I embraced. Despite his fragility, he held me very tight, almost making me fall off balance. He kissed me on the right cheek, European style, and I kissed him back. He smiled. I said, "Take care of yourself." That was it. Then I got Stacey from Lisa's room, where she, Lisa, and Jim Slowiak had been talking while I had been conversing with Jerzy, and we took a taxi to our hotel. There we met our other Kansas colleagues, Steve Grossman and Kung-yu Chin, and went out for dinner. The Kansas group left for home the next day. Grotowski stayed in New York for a few more days, then flew to Paris where he saw a doctor, then on to Pisa, and from there home by car to Pontedera and the Centro di Lavoro di Jerzy Grotowski, where his work "beyond theatre" continues.

29

NOTES

1See Lisa Wolford, "Subjective Reflections on Objective Work: Grotowski in Irvine," 1M Drama Review T129 (1991): 165-180.

lRobert Findlay and Halina Filipowicz, "Grotowski's Laboratory Theatre: Dissolution and Diaspora," 1M Drama Review Tl11 ( 1986): ~ 225. (Yi-song Fan's Chinese translation is in IMatre Arts, Shanghai Drama Institute, no. 2, 1988.)

4J6zef Kelera, "Grotowski w mowie pozornie zale:inej," Odra 14 (1974): 35-44.

5Robert Findlay, "Practicerrheory /Practiceffheory: Excerpts from an Extended Interview/Dialogue with Zbigniew Cynkutis (1938-1987); 26 May 1982, Lawrence, Kansas,'' Journal of Dramatic IMory and Criticism 1 (1987): 145-150.

6For a clarification of the latest work, see Peter Brook, "Grotowski, Art as a Vehicle," 1M Drama Review Tl29 (1991): 92-94; and Zbigniew Osi6ski, "Grotowski Blazes the Trails: From Objective Drama to Ritual Arts," Trans. Ann Herron and Halina Filipowicz, Ed. Halina Filipowicz, The Drama Review Tl29 (1991): 95-112.

7See Robert Findlay, "Grotowski's l'homme pur: Towards Demystification," Contemporary Russian and Polish Theatre and Drama (Theatre Perspectives No. 2, 1982): 47-53.

8See Ferdinando Taviani, "In Memory of Ryszard Cie§lak," NTQ 8, no. 31 (1992): 249-261 for details about this videotape.

30 Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol. 13, No.2

AN OVERVIEW OF THE ROMANIAN THEATRE

Tudor Petrut

One might ask how and why Romanian theatre was one of the few means of subterranean anti-communism in a country with harsh censorship and dictatorial pressure on mass media and the arts. Some might consider that theatre, with its established reach of intellectuals, an elite of theatregoers, hadn't the strong popular audience, even in a country where stage performances were the only alternative to the kind of entertainment banned from the movie theatres and television. But Romanian theatre in the capital city of Bucharest and in its regional companies did attract almost all sold out performances. Others can argue that stage artists, including actors, directors, and crews, were just a minority, sometimes regarded with suspicion even by the ordinary peeple who were fed by rumors from the ideologists that wanted to hurt the theatrical movement. Some 1000 actors and less than 100 directors were working in the 45 theatres across Romania. Most of the actors were involved in film projects, and all the stars of the Romanian movie screen were established stage actors. Even with the strong censorship imposed on plays and theatrical concepts, theatre was not on the main agenda of the Communist Party ideologists and not even often criticized by the late President Ceallijescu, who had a lot to say about Romanian filin, maybe because of its larger mass exposure.

Theatre, very traditional and respected, has a long history for the Romanians. During some of the most important social and political movements of the 19th century, theatre was a rhetorical tool for the exposure of progressive ideas that benefited society. And nothing captured the spirit of the Romanian nation, its moral ups and downs on the verge of the changing centuries, like the works of the most important Romanian playwright, Ion Luca Caragiale.

Few remember that in 19U, when cinema was still struggling for recognition as the seventh art, a group of Romanian stage stars, using their connections for fmancing it and talent for completing it, filmed a feature silent ftlm about one of the most important events in the country's history, the war for independence from the Turks.

Theatre artists were part of the elite of Romanian s<>Qety between the two World Wars, and theatre itself was well regarded by the people. An evening at the theatre was a family event, and the opening nights were an extravaganza of social exposure in Bucharest, a city then named "the little Paris." Great stage masters were seen in memorable performances, and Shakespeare, a favorite, was constantly staged.

31

Some Romanian dramatists established themselves as strong literary voices. Their art gained a new dimension, a deeper, philosophical meaning with the works of later internationally renowned Lucian Blaga and Victor Eftimiu, long time artistic director of the National Theatre. Directing was beginning to be considered a separate but inseparable craft from stage performance. With the theoretical works of director, dramatist, and novelist Camil Petrescu, directing became a new creative dimension in theatre, and directors generated many interesting theatrical visions that were fulfilled by the craft of great actors. The director in theatre became important and sought after.

After World War n and the rise of communist propaganda, theatre had to resp<?nd for almost a decade, sometimes violently pressured, to the commandments of the new ideology. A new generation of actors and directors tried to oppose this censorship. It was the courage of directors like Horea Popescu, followed by a group of young actors from the National Theatre in Bucharest, that helped break the ideological chains and remake theatre as an intellectual institution of cultural prestige.

Having escaped here and there from the vigilant eye of censorship for reasons historians will surely disclose, theatre boomed in the seventies, backed by a breeze of liberalism in the Communist Party and maintained by a deeper break from the Soviets and an apparent turn to the West by leader Nicolae Cea~scu. Theatre makers didn't waste their time in creating some critically acclaimed performances with very liberal, anti-communist and anti-dictatorial overtones. But the popular appeal and the tone of certain performances and plays was not disregarded by the hardliners of the regime. Because of the social impact of theatre and because Romania was strongly encouraged by the Western democracies, the leaders in Bucharest couldn't respond in the ways of the Bolshevik ftfties when the undesirables were thrown into hard labor camps. Instead, they issued passports and visas, a luxury for ordinary Romanians, and many, especially the directors, were flown out of the country.

Liviu Ciule~ who once teamed with Edward Albee and Woody Allen at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, became famous in the United States as a master director and set designer with intelligent creativeness. Lucian Pintilie stormed Paris with his powerful imagination, directing opera and theatre and later winning international acclaim with two Romanian films that were praised at the Cannes Film Festival, 'Why Do the Bells Tol~ Mitica and The Balance. Both directors Lucian Giurchescu and Radu Penciulescu made the news in Northern Europe while also pursuing academic careers. Two younger directors with some


great Romanian performances on their resumes, Adrian Tocilescu in Germany and Florin Fatulescu in Los Angeles, are now scoring success after success. After working with Peter Brook and enjoying a brilliant career on the East Coast, director Andrei Serban went back to Bucharest as artistic director of the National Theatre following the 1989 revolution, and the results of his efforts have been weD received at prestigious European drama festivals.

But Serban was not the only director to return home after the overthrow of Ceau§escu and his communist regime. Liviu Ciulei and Lucian Pintilie were, and are, working in Romanian theatres in friendly competition with some of the great directors of the Romanian stage. Also of note are the excellent adaptations of literary works and interpretations of PirandeUo by Catalina Buzoianu; the display of creativeness and imagination of Silviu Purcarete; the visual madness of Aureliu Manea and Mihai Manutiu; the soft, exact mises-en-scene of Tudor Marascu and Alexa Visarion; the explosion of fantasy in the work of young directors like Alexandru Darie, Dominic Dembinski, Stefan Iordanescu, and Andrei Mihalache; and the enthusiasm of newcomers Ion Manzatu, Cornel Mihalache, Felix Alexa, and Laur Oniga.

Romanian playwrights have usually been published through the editorial efforts of a few theatre-loving publishers. Distributed in smaU numbers, the plays reach only a few connoisseurs, while the drama studied in school covers only the classic period. Some dramatists, convinced one way or another of the values of communism or forced by the cultural leaders, have written the plays that are better forgotten today. And actors and directors (most of them unwillingly) had to produce and perform them on stage. But many of the endeavors of Romanian dramatists are strong literary statements, with ascertainable anticommunist overtones or poetic and philosophical values about man and mankind. The works of Dumitru Solomon, Romulus Guga, Adrian Dohotaru, AI. Mirodan, the unpublished Matei Visniec, and even some of the plays by the politicaUy controversial Dumitru Popescu and Paul Everac, the chairman of Romanian television, can now be meaningfuUy produced in the new political and social setting opened up by the 1989 Romanian revolution.

Even with the normal fmancial problems of culture in a transitional society, Romanian theatre still finds support from the state budget. Some groups have become independent and have recently been able to stage a number of successful productions. But the mainstream of Romanian theatre remains in the established Bulandra, Nattara, and National Theatres of Bucharest and the Arad, Piatra Neamt, and Craiova regional theatres. The efforts of Romanian theatre practitioners now seem to incorporate a new consideration: international exposure. Even

33

with the well-established reputations of excellent directors, Romanian theatre still lacks a package of translations in foreign languages that would create interest not only in a traditional theatre movement, but in a country with centuries of history and valuable cultural, folkloric, and national experiences. The newly formed Theatre Union of Romania (UNITER) is trying to increase the representation of Romanian theatre abroad, and with the support of the Los Angeles based Society of Romanian-Americans (SORA), hopes for a larger exposure to American specialists and audiences. It will take time, but since Romanian theatre has succeeded in surviving history and a communist regime, it will surely take the challenge.

34 Slavic and East European Perfonnancc Vol. 13, No. 2

PAGES FROM THE PAST

GROTOWSKI VISITS MOSCOW

In May 1976, J erzy Grotowski visited Moscow where he lectured at the All-Russian Theatre Society (VfO) and met with Oleg Yefremov and the actors at the Moscow Art Theatre. It was his first visit to the Soviet capital since his year there in 1955-56 studying directing under Yuri Zavadsky at the State Theatre Institute (GffiS).

The photographs that follow were taken during his lecture at VfO and in Stanislavsky's dressing room at the Moscow Art Theatre.

A. L.

35

38 Slavic and East European Pcrfonnance Vol. 13, No.2

40 Slavic and East European Perfonnance Vol. 13, 1'\lo. 2

PAGES FROM THE PAST

MIKHAIL CHEKHOV'S THE CAS1LE AWAKENS

Mel Gordon

Today in theatrical circles in Moscow, no historical figure from Russia's past is more in vogue than Mikhail Chekhov, the nephew of Anton Chekhov and celebrated innovator-rebel from Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theatre. After leaving the Soviet Union in 1928, Chekhov's acting and directing career spanned six European capitals and New York before settling in Hollywood in 1943. During his difficult life outside Russia, Chekhov pursued a quixotic journey to form his own international troupe and specialized school of actor training. But in every adopted country where his stage and ftlm acting was highly praised, Chekhov's grandiose plans for a theatre studio stalled, backfired, or disintegrated. The traditional curse that plagued other Russian artists-in-exile- that no nation outside of Mother Russia would fully embrace and understand them- doggedly pursued Chekhov wherever he went.

In October 1930, following a ten-month period of fmancial intrigue and failed promises in Berlin and Prague, Chekhov and his Russian troupe (which now included Stanislavsky's son, Igor K. Alekseev) came to Paris, the home of the largest Russian-speaking community outside the Soviet Union. There, both pro- and anti-Bolshevik factions of the Russian emigre world joined forces to thwart Chekhov's theatre plans. Russian and French supporters of the Soviet Union viewed Chekhov as one more renegade bourgeois actor, seeking material riches in the West. In addition, indignant that Chekhov refused to speak .out against Communism or sign their petitions, the powerful Russian antiBolshevik factions accused the apolitical actor of being an agent of GPU (State Political Administration).

The old repertoire from Chekhov's First Studio and Moscow Art Theatre days-Strindberg's Eric W, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Henning Berger's The Deluge, and Anton Chekltov Sketches- reappeared at the Theatre Montmartre I' Atelier. The Theatre Tschekhov productions found support in the politically moderate French press. But few French spectators weathered the linguistic challenge of these Russian-language performances. And once again, technical imbroglios and budgetary mismanagement complicated each premiere.

In May 1931, Georgette Boner, a young Swiss pupil of Max Reinhardt and director of the Deutschen Biihne Paris, met Chekhov at the home of the Vysotskys, a wealthy emigre family. Immediately, the

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Chekhov-Boner Company, an amalgamation of their two troupes, was established. Although Chekhov wanted to stage an elaborate dramatization of Don Quixote, a simpler repertoire was fmally agreed upon. Throughout the summer and autumn months of 1931, the Chekhov and Boner performers underwent a disciplined regimen of Mikhail Chekhov Technique.

On November 9, 1931 at the Theatre de !'Avenue, the ChekhovBoner Company opened with a mystical pantomime, The Castle Awakens, created by the starring Chekhov. Concentrating on Symbolist-like decor and musical effects (by Vladimir Butzov) as well as Eurhythmic movement, Chekhov hoped the production would attract a large international audience, Dozens of special exercises and etudes were created to train his young actors. Not wishing to perform solely before the Russian emigre community or play in badly accented French, Chekhov invented a "universal language" for The Castle Awakens, using the occult ideas of Rudolf Steiner, the German founder of Anthroposophy, a "scientific religion." In fact, the sparse text based on traditional Russian folk tales consisted of only fifty lines of fragmented dialogue (conceived in German but performed in French).

Promoted as a mystery parable of modern life, The Castle Awakens, if anything, revealed Chekhov's hidden fantasies in 1931 and their symbolic transformation. Although Boner later analyzed Castle's characters and themes in a purely universal and Jungian context in her book on Chekhov's acting techniques, Werkgeheimnisse der Schauspielkunst (Zurich: Werner Klassen Verlang, 1979), another interpretation points to the play's parallels with Chekhov's personal life:

In the ancient Castle (Russia), a faithless Servant (Bolshevism/ materialism) lulls both the King and his Courtiers (the Russian people) asleep with his song. Outside the Castle, Prince Ivan (Chekhov) discovers Beauty (Anthroposophy/Second MAT), which he delivers to his father, the King. Immediately, the evil Bone Spirit and his Daughter (Soviet government/cultural commissars) come to steal Beauty away. The frightened King wants to give up Beauty but Ivan hides her. The puny Ivan is then defeated in a lopsided battle with the Bone Spirit and his Daughter, and the Servant leads the evil forces to Beauty who kidnap her. Prince Ivan decides to leave the safety of the Castle in order to rescue her.

In the forest of Poets (Europe), Ivan fights with the Forest Spirit (Max Reinhardt/Boner) but then saves his life when the Forest Spirit becomes entangled in a Witches' web (European commercialism). Later the Witches deprive Ivan of his powers to hear, see, and speak, but the


Forest Spirit returns to rescue his senseless friend. Using his special contracts with the elements, the Forest Spirit revives all of Ivan's faculties, especially his power of speech, which now has a greater force (a universal, Anthroposophicallanguage). Together, the Forest Spirit and Ivan seek out the captured Beauty, who is weighted down with stones in the Bone Spirit's fortress. The two heroes defeat the Bone Spirit and his singing Daughter and go back to the Castle. Once again the Servant steals Beauty away but, through trickery, Ivan kills the Servant. The Castle awakens to the wedding of Ivan and Beauty.

Although acclaimed by much of the international press, opening night difficulties with the six disgruntled musicians and the play's occult theme damaged the reception of The Castle Awakens with the theatregoing public. Parisian critics were mainly condescending, praising the "Slavic" setting and the simple, primitive charm of the piece. The Russian-language newspapers characteristically berated Chekhov's Anthroposophical interpretation of Russian fairytales as "nightmarish" and "gloomy." Attendance fell markedly and The Castle Awakens closed after one week. Once more, Chekhov's dream was failing.

Highly sensitive to criticism, Mikhail Chekhov never again experimented with the creation of texts for his "future theatre." And after this experience, Anthroposophy became a largely private concern in his life and work. Viktor Gromov and Boner, his co-creators in this project, made plans for still another Chekhov studio in independent Latvia and Lithuania while the Chekhov-Boner Company successfully completed their 1931-1932 season with their old productions of Berger, Strindberg, Shakespeare, and Anton Chekhov.

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MROZEK'S TANGO BY THE INDEPENDENT THEATRE CO.

Joel Bassin

The Polish playwright Slawomir Mrorek's Tango, originally produced in Belgrade in 1965, was given a New York production during February and March of 1993 by the non-equity Independent Theatre Company. According to their program, the I.T.C. is "dedicated to producing outstanding theatre of a difficult, abstract, and presentational nature" by "pushing beyond conventional theatrical representation." I.T.C.'s stated mission and approach were minimally realized in this production of Tango, p~rhaps because of the unique qualities of MroZek's dramatic text.

Tango is "difficult" to the extent that the paradoxical ideas demand the audience's active intellectual involvement, but there is nothing "presentational" or "abstract" about it. In fact, Mrorek utilizes "conventional theatrical representation" to illustrate the revolutionary dynamic. His characters represent opposing philosophical points of view, and this conflict of applied logic becomes the basis of the dramatic conflict.

Arthur, a too-earnest medical student, tries to impose order on his eccentric avant-garde artist family. Arthur is full of the revolutionary zeal of the young. He resents the older generation for successtully abolishing order and tradition. In this void, where his father, Stomil, must accept his wife's infidelity because a world of freedom must logically include sexual freedom, Arthur can only direct his energies to restoring the conventions of the past. In a moment of inspiration Arthur proposes marriage to his cousin, Ala, convinced that a wedding will catch his family off guard. By turning them into a bridal procession Arthur reasons that they will be engaged by the wedding ritual and he will finally impose order on the chaos.

The fanal act opens with the expectant and uncomfortable family, all dressed up, sitting in ordered rows of chairs and posing for photographs as they wait for the groom. The tradition of taking photographs is more important than Uncle Eugene's admission that the ancient camera has not worked for years. When Arthur arrives, late and drunk, he announces that the old ideas have no relevance. Grandmother Eugenia dies while the others debate the meaning of existence. Arthur realizes in Eugenia's death an instinctual and unifying fear of death that gives meaning to life. He enlists the aid of the primitive Eddie to act as strongman for his new regime of order through terror and physical power. It is at this moment that Ala confesses she slept with Eddie. Arthur


attacks Eddie in a conventional jealous rage, but is killed by his physically superior rival. The play ends as Eddie and Uncle Eugene dance the tango.

For its production of Tango, the I.T.C.'s home, House of Candles Theatre, was configured with seating platforms about six feet high on opposite ends of a small room that left a meager playing space on the floor. The scenic design was low-budget to the point of being almost non-existent. There is no designer credited in the program. Mroiek's text requires a room that can accommodate a card table surrounded by chaotic household rubble illustrative of the family's lack of concern for order. The setting should convey the paradox of revolution by representing a solid, traditional, old-fashioned bourgeois shell which has become a kind of squatter's storage space for all the useless antique trappings of a family who, since the revolution, is only interested in immediate needs. While I.T.C. was able to create a sense of chaos by stacking about twenty chairs on top of each other in groupings around the space, they were not able to establish the historical layers of continuous revolutionary cycles that a detailed box set would have expressed. Instead, director Rasa Allan Kazlas chose to emphasize the temporary and absurd nature of existence with a large cardboard box representing a catafalque, a smaller box serving as the card table, and crookedly nailed curtains and window frames on the walls.

A slow-motion, presentational style was imposed on two moments in Tango. At the beginning of the production Uncle Eugene, Eddie, Grandmother Eugenia, and Arthur's mother, Eleanor, play cards. The lights dim, jungle drumming is heard on the theatre's speakers, and the card players cheat in slow-motion by looking at discards, taking cards, and stealing chips from others. Later, when Arthur is fmally able to goad his father into catching Eleanor in the act of infidelity with Eddie, Stomil exits offstage with a revolver. The lights dim, jungle music plays, and Stomil, Eleanor, Eddie, and Grandmother Eugenia enter in slow motion, take up places at the card table/box, and begin playing cards.

The second use of this slow-motion style was probably Kazlas's attempt to solve Mroiek's requirement that Arthur, after impatiently waiting for the anticipated gunshot from Stomil's revolver, enters the bedroom and fmds his father playing cards with the others. Since there are no doors for Arthur to open in this production, and no other room where this discovery scene can be played, the director needed a transition to bring the action back into the playing space after Stomil exits. Kazlas's choice weakens the theatrical value and humor of the discovery.

If the fust moment of the slow-motion style is meant to signify primitive impulses toward violence and social anarchy resulting from

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individual desire, then the second is inconsistent. It occurs when violence and anarchy are diffused, and Stomil's individual project is replaced by a collective game of bridge. And, if the first slow-motion moment is there only to establish the later utilitarian use, a less ethically loaded mime should have been found. Finally, these two moments seem out of place and opposed to Mroi:ek's firmly constructed "reality."

The I.T.C. production is more successful in realizing the central conflict and its resultant humor between Arthur's rebellious passion and the aU-embracing logic of acceptance by which it is met. This is achieved through broad strokes of performance. Arthur's frustration is emphasized over intellectual precision and detail in the progress of the dialectic that is at the heart of Mroi:ek's text. The production's focus on the broader implications of chaos replaced by order was supported by the change in costume, setting, and music as the family waits for the wedding. The piles of chairs are arranged in neat, symmetrical rows; the miscellany of useless objects are cleared out; the family changes from their pajamas, shorts, and colorfully eccentric outfits to traditional formal dress; and the big band swing music that opens the production is replaced by eerily upbeat polka tunes. The formerly-free spirits of the performers chafe uncomfortably as a result of these physical changes.

Despite the unevenness and lack of detail in performance and direction in I.T.C.'s Tango, the final dance between Eddie and Uncle Eugene is a compelling and frightening image that testifies to the power of Mroi:ek's text. The physical movement is simultaneously a wrestling match and a dance. Eugene, who represents the old aristocracy and has voluntarily joined Arthur's crusade, wears a long coat with bright gold buttons, suggesting a military uniform in disrepair. Eddie, in his sleeveless tee shirt and spiked black leather gloves, is the picture of a violent street hood. Earlier, Eddie had struck Hitler and Mussolini poses. As Eddie gains control of the dance, Mroi:ek's historical context of revolutionary cycles becomes apparent. Instead of bringing the play to a resolution, the image lingers and implies the revolution that will inevitably be waged against the tyrannical monster who has killed his maker.


CINEMA IN TRANSITION: RECENT FILMS FROM EAST AND CENTRAL EUROPE--sYMPOSIUM

David A. Goldfarb

Pencil and paper are all a poet needs to transform an artistic vision into its practically finished form. Publication can be someone else's job. Almost by definition we presume that the lyric verse is the product of one voice acting alone.

Filmmaking is industry. Wheels turn, lights burn, knives cut and hundreds of hands contribute their labor with generally little knowledge of the eventual shape of the fmal project. Filmmakers like all industrialists in the former Communist world are experiencing a fundamental change in the way they do business. The interdependence between business and the creative process was the most salient topic of a recent symposium at the New School for Social Research in New York, as part of "Cinema in Transition: Recent Films from East and Central Europe."

The festival, organized by Katherine Cornell and Elzbieta Matynia, ran from April17 to April 28, screening over thirty feature films, documentaries, shorts and student productions, and producing an East European supplement to v. XIX, no. 4 of Cineaste. Most interesting was the opportunity for the directors of most of the films shown to answer questions after the screenings and to meet for an aU-day Symposium with critics, actors and writers on Saturday, April 28. In spite of a desire to bracket the "economic" questions to the earliest panel and move on to "artistic" concerns, the conference revealed that the two cannot be separated. The three panels were entitled "From Subsidy and Censorship to Free Speech and the Box Office," "The New Cinema: Themes, Heroes, Climate," and "The New Cinema and the Politics of Identity;" but attempts to contain topics were happily unsuccessful, with all speakers overlapping and joining in on other panels.

Polish director Feliks Falk (Top Dog) set the tone when he observed that complaining is the current fashion among East European directors. While all sixteen of the directors who spoke said "yes, but not me," it was apparent that the nature of filmmaking in all its details- technique, themes, audience, and even the idea of a "national cinema"- was changing rapidly after a long period of relative stability, which was the positive effect of heavy state regulation and subsidy. Not only were these filmmakers transforming their industry to become "more like it is in Western Europe," but in the process were realizing that they were stepping into a moving river which was never before like it is

51

now--even for Westerners. Indeed, what artistic ftl.mmaker in the world does not have something to complain about?

Antonin Liehm (The Most Important Art: East European Film after 1945, with Mira Liehm), Czech critic, compared the current situation to Germany in the 1920's. As former East Bloc currencies, wages, products, etc. have not caught up to the world market, it is possible to make large feature ftlms for relatively little money and still a substantial government subsidy. This situation invites speculation. A wildly successful film may cover only half its production costs, Liehm claimed, because East European markets are simply too small. Romanian Mircea Danieluc, for instance, claimed that he made The Conjugal Bed for about $60,000, and that in his country the price of a ticket is about half the price of a beer. Everyone knows, however, that a massive adjustment in the economy must come over the next five years, and that 1993 ftlm budgets will seem like peanuts in 1998. It is likely, therefore, that a ftlm produced now can be rereleased or exported later and return many times its investment, even if it is not particularly successful.

It has long been the case that many more American than European films are screened in East European cinemas, as in all European cinemas, but several directors noted that box office sales for American ftlms have declined as videocassette recorders and (frequently bootlegged) tapes have become more widely available. Hungarian director, and now director of the Hungarian Film school, Gyula Gazdag (Hungarian Fairy Tale) noted that while the increased use of VCRs was cutting into the box office on all sides, they were necessary for the elimination of censorship. Theaters are large and easy to close down. VCRs and the distribution of tapes are impossible to regulate, as is well known in the U.S.

Rather than fighting the trend, ftlmmakers are considering ways of utilizing "competing" media for their own ends. Montenegran director Dusan Makavejev (WR: Mysteries of the Organism) commented that many directors are paying for their projects by producing films in 35mm for television in a four-times-fifty minute miniseries format then recutting for the theater. This "compromise" with television, Makavejev astutely observed, is not a particularly East European phenomenon but the effect of new ways of seeing film throughout the world. Everywhere, the single screen theater is being replaced by the multiplex, video, laser disc, cable television, pay-per-view, and in short order, the possibility of downloading all media products from computer networks. Even in Hollywood--especially in Hollywood- films are not produced without a thorough consideration of all marketing possibilities.


Falk stated that his goals would not really change with the political changes in Poland, but that he ~till felt the need to document social life and to produce politically engaged filins. Filmmakers are not only now feeling the effects of market pressure on their creative endeavors, but in Poland, recent "Preservation of Christian Values" legislation is replacing older forms of censorship. Falk, Robert Gli.Dski (All That Really Matters) who faxed his comments to the symposium, and Polish actor Daniel Olbrychski (Wajda, The Promised Land) all concurred that this new law and the growth of right -wing nationalism were the greatest political dangers to culture in the new republics.

The prolific young Polish ftlmmaker Magdalena Lazarkiewicz (The Last Bell) expressed a desire for a new realism in East European film . She noted that upon arrival to New York, the airport, the subway, and the city all seemed somehow familiar, and that she seemed to have met these forms of everyday life already in American filin. American cinema "is everywhere," she said, but "our cinema is in the head." Lazarkiewicz felt that East Europeans need to work at "translating reality" for others, as Americans have done, and pointed to a Steven Spielberg production employing a half Polish cast as one effort toward that goal.

Rumanian director Radu Nicoara (The South Pole) and the young Hungarian, Arpad Sopsits (Video Blues), on the other hand, envisioned a new moral indeterminacy in filmmaking. Nicoara, perhaps reacting to the requirement of the positive hero under Socialist Realism and the personality cult of Ceau§escu, wants to make films without clear heroes or enemies, depicting the "absence of personality." His current project, he told the audience, is a filin about the last Volkswagen, in which his hero will be Europe. Sopsits saw much opportunity, with the opening of Soviet and East European archives, for the exploration of the tragic hero but imagined the possibility of "unfmished" tragedies, leaving the freedom of the conclusion to the minds of the audience.

In former Yugoslavia everything is much more indeterminate. Propaganda fUms, apparently, are being made, but Rajko Grlic (ChQIUga) and American scholar Daniel Goulding (Post New Wave Cinema in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe) imagined that the infrastructure of the country and the physical means of producing films would be so severely damaged by the war that film could have little impact on cultural life in the region. Makavejev, however, noted that American filin had already played a role in forming the self-conception of the combatants in the war. One need only look at CNN, Makavejev claimed, to see that the street fighters were not dressing like the familiar chetniks but like Rambo, karate fighters and Vietnam-era soldiers. Grlic divided his life into his

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day job and his night job. By day he teaches at New York U Diversity and is working on a big-budget production for the BBC about the ftrst giraffe in Europe. By night he is on the phone to friends and family at home, and is working on an underground film in 8mm video about a Croatian child from a Serbian village and a Serbian child from a Croatian village who are caught in the war.

Grlic's comments and an encouraging note from screenwriter and scholar Andrew Horton of Loyola University, suggested that in spite of the difficulties of developing a new industry, if not because of those difficulties, important ftlms must be made. Horton idealistically pointed to the example of his own struggling student filmmakers who wiD get their works on screen and into the festivals even if they can only muster the resources for an 8mm video camera and the benevolence of a few close associates. Ultimately, no economic system supports artistic ftlm because such films chaUenge prevailing systems. Dusan Makavejev, producer of the most outrageous ftlms, maintained, however, that the whole filinmaking process entails the exercise of constraints on artistic judgement, stating, "we do nothing but censorship from the frrst cut to the end. Every cut is a choice."


CONTRIBUTORS

JOEL BASSIN is General Manager of the Triplex Performing Arts Center at the Borough of Manhattan Community College in New York City. He is also a consultant with the New York State Council on the Arts Theatre Program and a second year student in the Ph.D. theatre program at the CUNY Graduate Center.

VRENELI FARBER is an Assistant Professor of Russian in the Department of Foreign Languages at Oregon State University. She is currently engaged in a long-range research project on the life and works of Aleksandr V ampilov. She is also an actress.

ROBERT FINDLAY is Professor of Theatre and Film at the University of Kansas. His numerous articles on Grotowski's work have appeared in journals such as TDR, Modem Drama, and Theatre Journal. He is coauthor with Oscar Brockett of Century of Innovation: A History of European and American Theatre and Drama Since the Late 19th Century (2nd ed., 1991).

JOHN FREEDMAN is the author of Silence's Roar: The Life and Drama of Nikolai Erdman (Mosaic Press) and the editor/translator of The Major Plays of Nikolai Erdman (forthcoming from Gordon and Breach Science Publishers). He lives in Moscow where he is the theatre critic for the Moscow Times.

DAVID A. GOLDFARB is a Ph.D. candidate in comparative literature at the City University of New York. He will chair a panel on Ceqtral European cinema at he 1993 AATSEEL conference in Toronto.

MEL GORDON is Professor of Dramatic Art at the University of California, Berkeley. With Alma Law he is co-author of the forthcoming Mayerhold, Eisenstein, and Biomechanics: Actor· Training and Revolutionary Russia.

TUDOR PETRUT is the American representative of the Theatre Union of Romania (UNITER). A graduate of the Theatre and Film Academy in Bucharest, he has written, directed, and acted for theatre and ftlm in both America and Romania. He also writes articles and critiques for Romanian cultural magazines and newspapers.

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Photo Credits

"Jerzy Grotowski, 1993" Tony D'Urso

"Grotowski Visits Moscow'' Alma Law Archives

56 Slavic jllld East European Performance Vol. 13, No.1

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