NEWSNOTES on SoviET ond EAsT EuROPEAN DRAMA ~nd THEATRE

Volume 5, Number 1 February, 1985

IMPORT ANT t.SSA< FROM TI-E EDITOR

With this issue we commence our fifth year of publication. Please continue sending your announcements, reviews and short articles to us. Inevitably, there have been a few mailing errors. Therefore, if for any reason you have not received the previous issue (Volume 4, Number 3), please do let me know.

If you have not already done so, please remember to send in your contribution towards mailing and handling costs for academic year 1984-85. We would like to keep you on the list of subscribers. As you know, this nominal fee does not cover word processing and publication costs.

I am still searching for someone who would be interested in becoming the editor of the I'EWSNOTES and transfering it to another institution. Please do let me know if you are at all interested.

Please be sure to read the IMPORT ANT NOTICE on the last page.

f\EWSNOTES 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, Graduate Center, City University of New York with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Graduate School and the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures of George Mason University. The Institute Office is Room 801, City University Graduate Center, 33 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036. All subscription requests and submissions should be addressed to the Editor of f'EWSNOTES: Leo Hecht, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030. (Proofreading Editor: Prof. Rhonda Blait, Hampshire College Theatre, Amherst, MA 01002.)

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BIBUOGRAPHY

Stanislaw I. Witkiewicz, Beelzebub Sonata: Plays, Essays Document, edited and translated by Daniel Gerould and Jadwiga Kosicka, has been published by Performing Arts Journal Publications, 325 Spring St., New York 10013. Cloth $14.95; paper $6.95.

The Performing Arts Journal often published items of great interest to our readership, including translated plays and articles. For example, here are some items contained in back issues: Vol. II, No. 1 contains an article by Daniel Gerould on "Vasilii Aksyonov, Contemporary Russian Playwright," and Aksionov's play Your Murderer. Vol. 3, No. 3 contains Valerii Briusov's play The Wayfarer. Vol. VI, No. 1 contains Leonid Andreyev's play Requiem. Vol. VI, No. 2 contains Janusz Glowacki's play Journey to Gdansk. A recent issue of the journal No. 22 (March, 1984), contains an article, "Nikolay Evreinov's Inspector General" and a translation of that play, both by Laurence Senelick.

Laurence Senelick, Dramatization of Gogol's Dead Souls, has been issued by Broadway Play Publishers, 249 W. 29th St., New York, NY 10001.

Published in the USSR: Iusif Iuzovskii. About the Theatre and Drama. 2 volumes. Moscow:

Iskusst vo, 1982-83. Zinovii Papernyi. In Violation of All Rules: Chekhov's Plays and Vaudevilles.

Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1982. Soviet One-Act Plays. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1982. I. V. Sepman (ed.). Moral Problems of Cinematography of the 70s.

Leningrad: Ministry of Culture of the RSFSR, 1983. L. Pogozheva. From the Diary of a Film Critic. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1978. V. Nemirovich-Danchenko. 0 tvorchestve aktera. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1982. Igor Vasilkov. Iskusstvo kino-populiarizatsii. Moskva: Iskusstvo, 1982. I. Lisakovskii. Realizm kak sistema - Problemy tvorcheskogo metoda v

kinoiskusstve. Moscow: lskusstvo, 1982. V. Murman. Khudozhestvennyi mir filma. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1984.

The following is the text of an advertisement from VAAP publication:

Galina Schcheglova LEONID LEONOV THE DRAMATIST Moscow, Soversky Pisatel, 1984, 192 pp.

Merits:

The book:

A well-researched textological and ideological analysis into the works and aesthetic views of Leonov and into his artistic world as a whole. Galina Shcheglova studies the plays of Leonid Leonov, an outstanding Soviet writer and Lenin Prize winner, who has been writing for more than 50 years. Looking at Leonov's plays from the point of view of their genre characteristics, the author succeeds in identifying the specific

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The author:

features of the writer's style and world outlook and also in establishing some general trends in Soviet dramatic art. Leonov's literary career is analysed in the light of the evolution of genres. The 1920's was a time when he turned to satire, with its extensive use of ironic implications, artistic exaggeration and hyperbole, the grotesque, and symbolic forms of typification. Shcheglova compares the plays Untilovsk, A Provincial Story and especially The Taming of Badadoshkin with Mayakovsky's satirical comedies The Bedbug and The Bathhouse. In the 1930's the writer's insight into psychological and social contradictions deepened and the internal and external conflicts in his plays became sharper (The Wolf, The Polovchansk Gardens, The Ordinary Man). --The Second World War made the writer turn to tragedy as the form capable of conveying the global conflicts and the drama of the age (The Invasion). The comparison of Leonov and Dostoyevsky is interesting and fruitful. According to Shcheglova, neither of the writers gives a step-by-step account of the drama of their hero, but both depict the climatic points of his life, exploring his mind at moments of the most intense emotion. Lenonov's plays, in Shcheglova's opinion, are similar to the plays of Maxim Gorky in the attention given to the moral and psychological conflicts within people's minds during the revolutionary formation of a new world and in the problems they raise. Galina Shcheglova (b. 1931), critic and Doctor of Philology, is also the author of The Sources of Leonov's Dramatic Works published in 1977.

Recently published Soviet plays in the USSR include: Aleksandr Khmelik. A vse-taki ana vertitsia i1i umanoid v nebe mchitsia. A

farce in two acts. Published in No. 1, 1984, of Sovietskii Teatr, in Russian Aleksandr Galin. Retro. 2 acts. Published in Soviet Theatre '83/4, (in English

translation). The same issue also contains an interview with Edvard Radzinskii about his play Theatre of the Time of Nero and Seneca; and short discussions of three one-act plays: Love, by Liudmilla Ptrushevskaia, Two Poodles by Semion Zlotnikov, and A Cat on the Radiator, by Anna Rodionova. The cover of this issue depicts Radzinskii in front of Lunin posters.

Russian/Soviet Studies by Steven A. Grant, revised by Bradford P. Johnson and Mark H. Teeter, has just been published by the Smithsonian Institution Press, P .0. Box 1579, Washington, D.C. 20013. It has 432 pages and cost $29.95-cloth or $15.00 paper. In this revised guide entries on U.S. Government agencies have been entirely rewritten to reflect administrative and legislative changes. In addition, coverage of the National Archives and Library of Congress Manuscript Division has been restructured and lengthened. Also, sections on data banks and collections of Films, maps, and music and other sound recordings have been substantially augmented.

SPECIAL REPORT

During the past several weeks I have been recetvmg extremely disturbing reports on Kazimierz Braun. Apparently he is not permitted to work in Poland and desparately wants to go abroad to direct. If there is anyone among the

I'EWSNOTES readership who could help him and at the same time increase the prestige of an American university or stage by having him, please do contact the Polish authorities or write him a letter of invitation which he might use to come to the West. This would truly be a worthwhile cause.

L.H.

SOME RECENT CONFERENCES

Southern Conference on Slavic Studies, Richmond, VA, October 11-13, 1984. Panel: East European Drama and Theatre; Chair: Leo Hecht, George Mason University

Papers: "The Concept of Freedom in Mrozek's Dramas," Alan Kreizenbeck, University of Denver;

"Innokenty Annenskii's Famira Kifared," Anne Netick, The College of William and Mary;

"Rozewicz and Apocalyptic Drama in the West," Addison Bross, Lehigh University;

"The Russian Penchant for Theatricality in Iunona i Avos," Joseph Troncale, University of Richmond.

National Convention, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, New York, NY, November 1-4, 1984.

Panel: Soviet Culture After Brezhnev: Music, Film and Theatre Chair: Alma H. Law, Center for Advanced Study of Theatre Arts

Papers: "Music in the Post-Brezhnev Period" Harlow Robinson, SUNY, Albany;

"Soviet Films of the 1980s" Leo Hecht, George Mason University;

"Soviet Theatre after Brezhnev" Alma H. Law, City University of New York Graduate Center.

Discussant: Colette Shulman, School of International Affairs, Columbia University.

National Conference of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages, Washington, DC, December 27-29, 1984.

Panel: Soviet and East European Cinema Chair: Vance Kepley, Jr., University of Wisconsin-Madison

Papers: "Myth and Demystification in Soviet Cinema" Anna Lawton, Purdue University;

"Motion and Emotion in Eisenstein's Strike" Herb Eagle, University of Michigan;

"Images of Women in Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears" Dodona Kiziria, Indiana University;

"Eldar Riazanov's Garage" Ludmila Pruner, Vanderbilt University.

Discussant: Valerie Z. Nollan, Oberlin College.

Panel: Stanislavskii and the Moscow Art Theatre Chair: Leo Hecht, George Mason University

Papers: "Stanislavskii and His Method - A Program on Slides" Directors of the Stanislavskii Seminars;

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"Stanislavskii as a Theorist of Theatre Performance" Burnet M. Hobgood, University of Illinois-Urbana;

"The Meeting of Stanislavskii and Meyerhold in 1938 and Its Importance for the Russian Stage" Alexander Gershkovich, Harvard University;

"The Moscow Art Theatre Today" Alma H. Law, City University of New York Graduate Center.

RUSSIAN LANGUAGE PERFORMANCES

Alexey Kovalev and Jo-Anna Vladimirskaya have recently established residence in the Washington, D.C. area. Working collaboratively, they have combined their talents to develop a series of performancces in the Russian language which they are interested in presenting at American colleges and universities. Alexey Kovalev directs and provides the musical accompaniment on guitar and keyboard.

The following programs are currently available for presentation:

1. MY SACRED CALLING A Poetic Biography of Marina Tsvetaeva

2. ANNA - MUSE OF ALL RUSSIA A Poetic Biography of Anna Akhmatova

3. An Evening of Russian Music Program A. LOVE SONGS OF OLD RUSSIA Program B. CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN BALLADS

Interested parties may contact Alexey Kovalev at 336 North George Mason Drive, Arlington, Virginia, 22203. Telephone: (703) 243-1376.

ALEXEY KOVALEV graduated with honors from the Moscow Stanislavsky Theatre School. He has played roles in both the classical and modern repertoire, from Hamlet to comedy. Mr. Kovalev played the lead in the acclaimed Soviet production "My Poor Marat", and received a special award for his role in "An Accident from the Work of an Investigation." He opened the first "Pocket Theatre" in Moscow where he presented plays on modern subjects in contemporary absurdist forms. He received the Best Director Award for his production of "The Television Interferences." A gifted musician, Mr. Kovalev has written the words and music for many productions.

Mr. Kovalev came to the United States in 1981 and made his English-language acting debut in New York City as Salieri in Pushkin's "Mozart and Salieri". In 1983 he directed the New York City Actors Corner production of "My Poor Marat".

Together with his wife, Jo-anna Vladimirskaya, he is currently working on an English-language version of "Letters to an Unknown Lady" and a new production of "The Possessed".

JO-ANNA VLADIMIRSKAYA graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Theatre, Drama, Music and Cinematography. She was invited to perform at the Moscow Stanislavsky Theatre making her debut as Medea, for which she received a special award at the Moscow Theatre Festival. Miss Vladimirskaya has performed more than thirty leading roles on the stage including both contemporary and

classical repertoire. She appeared in the films "Madcaps" and "One More Time About Love" and her musical talents have been featured in several performances. Jo-Anna was a master of ceremonies for television specials on Central TV in the Soviet Union where she also had her own poetry-reading show. She has appeared in leading roles in four television films.

Miss Vladimirskaya came to the United States with her husband, Alexey Kovalev in 1981. Her English language acting debut was in the role of Mozart for the 150th Anniversary Production of Pushkin"s "Mozart and Salieri" in New York City.

(Note: I had the priviledge of seeing them perform. It was an extremely enjoyable learning experience).

REVIEW

The following is a review of the original production of The Nest of the Wood Grouse, written by Peter Wynne who is the drama critic of The Record. We thank both the author and The Record, where this review first appeared, for permission to reprint.

THE NEST OF THE WOOD GROUSE: Comedy by Victor Rozov, translated from the Russian by Susan Layton. With Dennis Boutsikaris, Phoebe Cates, Julie Cohen, Ricky Paull Goldin, Mary Beth Hurt, Anne Jackson, Eli Wallach, and others. Directed by Joseph Papp, Scenery by Loren Sherman. Costumes by Theoni Aldredge. Lighting by Arden Fingerhut. At the New York Shakespeare Festival's Public/Newman Theater, 425 Lafayeete St. (212) 598-7150.

If the current heat wave has led to a case of premature summer blahs, then a visit to the Public Theater and Victor Rozov's "The Nest of the Wood Grouse" just might be the cure.

The Soviet dramatist's family comedy, which opened last night, is a delightfully old-fashioned piece that's currently in repertory at Moscow's Satire Theater. And its American premiere, staged by New York Shakespeare Festival artistic director Joseph Papp, is one of the most lavish productions seen at the Public Theatre in years--lavishness that ranges from a stunning two-room set and handsome costumes to casting that includes Anne Jackson, Eli Wallach, and Mary Beth Hurt.

A plot synopsis of the play would probably be more lengthy than revealing. There are nearly as many plots and themes as there are characters in the play, and that number runs to 14.

Conflicts between the generations and between husband and wife, censorship that applies to the masses but not privileged apparatchiks, the caviar, cognac, and coffee that only a few can enjoy--all these things are Rozov's targets, but basically, the play centers on the chaos caused by a bureaucrat, Stephen Sudakov (Wallach), who is so wrapped up in his work and the wheeling and dealing that makes up everyday Soviet life that he has no time for his family.

The title, "The Nest of the Wood Grouse," refers to the fact that during mating season, the males of that species get so wrapped up in courtship that they're easy prey. They're oblivious to their surroundings.

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The wheeling-dealing Sudakov, married to the long-suffering Natalya Gavrilovna (Jackson), is the perfect wood gourse: He has, for e xample, made a protege and son-in- law of the cynical, ambitious Georgy Yasyunin (Dennis Boutsikaris). Georgy, or Yegor, as he's usually called, has married Sudakov's daughter, Iskra (Hurt), as the first big step up the apparatchik ladder. But now Yegor has eyes for pretty young Ariadna Koromyslova (Phoebe Cates), the daughter of a higher-ranking functionary at the Fore ign Ministry than his father-in-law.

Barbs in callous bureaucrats are central to this quintessentially Soviet comedy. Sudakov is a basically decent sort, but he'll do favors for anyone who can do favors for him. He fawns over foreign visitors--it's part of his job, he says--and coldly discusses with Yegor the ruin of a colleague whose son has committed suicide. The real issue, of course, is whether he or Yegor will succeed their disgraced comrade, whose inability to "manage" a son casts supposedly permanent doubt on his ability to manage a ministry department.

Some of the humor is lost on Americans unfamiliar with Soviet life, but the important thing to remember is that the play, though sometimes sad, is laced with humor. Rozov casts devilishly satiric light on class privilege in a purportedly classless society.

The playwright had been invited to last night's premiere, but was denied permission to come to the United States by American officials. At intermission last night, Papp said that he had spoken to Rozov by phone earlier in the day and that the playwright's main concern was whether American audiences were getting the comedy. There were laughs last night, to be sure, but as word gets around that "The Nest of the Wood Grouse" is a comedy, there should be plenty more.

MINI-REVIEW We were again indebted to The Record for permtss10n to reprint a short

review, also written by Peter Wynne, which appeared in that newspaper in late September, 1984, on the first off-Broadway production of Radzinsky's play.

Edvard Radzi nsky's "Theatre in the Time of Nero and Seneca" at the Jean Cocteau Repertory, is a stinging indictment of intellectuals who have tolerated terror tactics by regimes whose goals were ideologically "correct."

Of course, when a Soviet author writes a play like this he must be less than candid. Radzinsky has set the action in the time of the Roman emperor Nero and made it chiefly a dialogue between Nero (Craig Smith) and the Stoic philosopher Seneca (Harris Berlinsky).

It's a matter of history that when Nero was 12 or 13, Seneca became his tutor and that a few years later, when the youth became emperor, he showered gifts on the philosopher. But the favor Seneca enjoyed was not sufficient to save his life when he was implicated in a comspiracy against Nero, who then was 27.

In the play, the flamboyant Nero, who now claims godly powers, confronts the softspoken Seneca with the evidence against him. He orders the death of the friend and teacher who had helped him avoid censure for crimes committed early in his reign, such as murdering his stepbrother, Britannicus, whom he feared as a rival to imperial throne.

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The play is fascinating and well performed, and the production, directed by Eve Adamson with costumes by Christopher Martin and a single setting by him and Giles Hogya, is one of the best the 13-year-old company has mounted.

The Cocteau Rep works at the Bouwerie Lane Theatre, 330 Bowery, at Second Street. For further information, call (212) 677-0060.

A LETTER FROM CAUFORNIA We are always happy to receive letters and comments from the readers which

share experiences and insights. This letter which was written to N::WSNOTES by Professor Robert Cohen who chairs the Drama Department at the University of California, Irvine, is one of the very best and most informative which we have received. I am grateful to Or. Cohen for it:

We have been active at UC Irvine in developing some Eastern European theatre ties, most notably, I suppose, by our having recently (1983) engaged Jerzy Grotowski as a member of our faculty; Professor Grotowski heads our Focused Research Program in Objective Drama, for which we have created an entire facility on the UCI campus. The Program explores the morphemes of ancient ritual performance which are still practiced in various parts of the world. The program is funded by several grants, both internal and external to the University (the Ford Foundation is a major dono~), and has already enrolled, in addition to the UCI students, participants from Yale and New York Universities. The program is now planned to continue at least through 1990, and we expect it to make a major contribution to the understanding and pedagogy of performance.

Also, we are hosting, this spring, a two week residency by the fine Hungarian actor, Andras Marton, and his Finnish-Hungarian wife, Maija-Liisa Marton. The Martens will present the Ferenc Karinthy play, Steinway Grand, in both Hungarian and English, on the UCI campus. The Martens will also lead a series of public workshops on Eastern European theatre and film.

In conjunction with the Program in Russian, the UCI Drama department has also co-sponsored lecture-discussions with several leading Soviet playwrights, including Victor Rozov and Mikail Shatrov, and will soon be inviting Shatrov for a longer stay at the UCI Russi an Institute. And many of the UCI faculty in Drama have recently engaged in exchanges or research in Eastern Europe, including David McDonald (the USSR), Keith Fowler (Poland~, Olga Maynard (Bulgaria, the GDR) and myself (Hungary, the USSR).

I saw the Kantor production of Wielepole, Wielepole, in Los Angeles, but as I have no Polist1, I cannot review it for you. It certainly seemechimpressive, and got an immediate standing ovation from the filled auditorium, however, despite the fact that Kantor was - so I was told - very displeased at the performance that night.

I am doubly sorry not to be able to provide you with reviews of the remarkable productions of Hamlet and the Bulgakov Master and Margarita, directed by Tamas Asher, and produced by the outstanding Cskiky Gergely Szinhas of Kaposvar, Hungary, which I saw in Budapest this past summer. The Kaposvar theatre is widely regarded as the most brilliant avant-garde company in Hungary, and I found both productions quite wonderful. The Bulgakov play featured extensive nudity, a first for the Hungarian stage I was told, and the acting was very powerful. The Hamlet was a controversial production, in part owing to a new translation, and it was simply staged; I found it electrifying, particularly in the relationship between a

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suave, calculating Claudius and an empty-headed, whorish Gertrude. But lacking Hungarian, I am regrettably unable to give your readers anything but a glimpse of what these productions had to offer; perhaps you might solicit a review from a qualified observer.

In a similar vein, I would be interested if any of your readers had seen, and would be able to review (or even share comments with me abou~) the Leningrad Lensovet Theatre production of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof which I saw in the Fall of 1983. I would most like to know how the production was received by the Russian audience. It seemed to me very faithfully presented, although not at all in the standard American fashion (the Mississippi delta had apparently become a range in the Caucasus - snowy peaks dominated the backdrop!). Big Daddy - Bolshoi-Pa -was dressed in worker's levis, and both Brick and Maggie were about as unheroic as could be imagined. Surprising, the acting seemed quite bombastic; all center stage, full front, with magnificent voices and diction but little in the way of interaction or "living the life of the characters." Stanislavski, thou shouldst be living at this hour! Also, I was told by my very charming young intourist guide, who just "happened" to be sitting next to me (I had not even told her I was getting tickets to that production), that the Russians had no idea that Williams - whom they claimed to know well - was a homosexual, or had written revealing memoires, or could have intended any drift of a homosexual implication in the relationship between Brick and Skipper. I would greatly appreciate being directed to any elucidation of these matters by someone who knows the Russian theatre better than I do.

POP MUSIC IN Tf-E USSR

The following was taken from news reports in the Washington Post:

Soviet pop groups should sing about morality adn communist ideals, not the decadent "dirt" that is the main theme of Western pop music, readers of a youth newspaper say. New pop groups in the Soviet Union are "the epitome of tastelessness," failing to provide examples of morality and ideological correctness, a letter to Komsomolskaya Pravda said in its weekend edition published Saturday. The letters were written in response to an earlier article in the newspaper complaining about the bad taste of contemporary groups and their inability to perform well on stage.

Worse still are groups that emulate Western trends in singing and behavior, some of the writers said. One letter described Western pop music as "wild wailing."

"This in fact is nothing but the forceful propaganda of an ideology which is alien to us, to a way of life which is alien to us," a reader from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk said.

Some young Soviets spend huge sums buying U.S. albums on the black market. The letters followed an attack on American teen idol Michael Jackson last month in the official Sovyetskaya Kultura newspaper. The article said Jackson mesmerized Americans, preventing them from thinking about problems like serious racial violence in the United States, and said he had sold out his race by allowing the white establishment to profit from his singing.

One mother from the Ukrainian city of Khabarovsk wrote to say she was shocked that her 16-year-old son was being corrupted by songs like "Sweet

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Life" by a group called Primus. In the song, a young man goes out on the town and ends up the next morning in bed with a woman he does not know. "I want to know who is in charge of the activities of these groups, how they make their recordings and what right they have to dish up this dirt in the guise of musical works," the mother said.

One reader submitted the lyrics of a song he recently heard performed in a local park as an example of the silliness of the new pop groups:

A hippo doesn't have a waist. It can't dance either A giraffe has a long neck. Too long to kiss. The walrus has prickly whiskers. And he often goes about barefoot.

The letter warned that such songs are played to easily influenced young audiences and could affect the general Soviet culture and morals.

RESEAROi ON SOVIET FJLM

Val Golovskoy, Queens College, has completed his work on a very important decade of Soviet film. It will be published by Ardis in May, 1985. What follows is a synopsis of the book, and also a sample segment of it - a report of Ryazanov's speech (translated by Steven Hill):

Motion Picture in the USSR, 1972-1982, by Val S. Golovskoy, as told to John E. Rimberg, with the assistance of Steven P. Hill. 251 pages.

Who runs the Soviet film industry, and how? What happens to a film at various stages of its development--at the studio, in the government front office (Goskino), in the Communist Party's Central Committee? How does film censorship operate? What are the film distribution channels used in the USSR?

These and many other questions are answered in a new book by a former Soviet film critic and graduate of the Moscow Film Institute, written together with an American sociologist and an American film-theatre historian.

The principal author is Val S. Golovskoy, who until 1981 was a writer-editor on two leading Soviet film magazines, Sovetski Ekran and Iskusstvo Kino, and who wrote or translated numerous articles and books on Russian, Polish, and world cinema. Golovskoy left the USSR two and a half years ago and is now doing research here for the Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. Also contributing to the book are Prof. Johr E. Rimberg, sociologist from Pembroke State University (N.C.), author of two previous books, The Soviet Film Industry (Praeger, 1955) and Motion Picture in the Soviet Union, 1918-1952 (Arno, 1973), and Prof. Steven P. Hill, Slavic linguist from the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana), author of many articles and reviews on film and theatre history in Russia and Eastern Europe.

Motion Picture in the USSR, 1972-1982 is less a "scholarly book" than it is an eye-opening inside story taken directly from Golovskoy's fifteen years of work in the heart of the Soviet film Industry and in the film press. It is a previously untold story about many new developments that have appeared in Soviet motion pictures over the last decade, including a strong element of "commercialism" influenced by Hollywood itself.

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The book is diverse in its presentation of material. Together with a detailed. account of audience research conducted in the USSR, it also includes Prof. Rimberg's question-and-answer interview with Golovskoy. There is rich material of sociological interest, and from everyday life, in the chapter entitled "A Week in the Life of a Movie-Magazine Editor." One hundred brief descriptions ("portraits") of Soviet film critics, journalists, and editors constitute a very valuable reference section of the book, and provide a collective sociological portrait of the people who implement Commmnist Party policy and who decide whether a film gets a good or a bad rating in the USSR. The reference section of the book also includes English translations of a number of rare documents that were brought out of the USSR by Golovskoy. These are previously unpublished stenographic reports of some backstage meetings, conveying the words of some acrimonious debates between film-makers and government/party officials, the sort of dispute that is rarely, if ever, made public. The book also includes a foreword, an afterword, a concluding theoretical chapter, and indices of names and titles mentioned in the text.

Film for a long time has been considered one of the most important forms of propaganda for Communist Party ideology in the USSR. And an analysis of the techniques of this propaganda machine, with the results that they achieve (or fail to achieve), is offered to the Western reader by this new book, Motion Picture in the USSR, 1972-1982.

STENOGRAPHIC REPORT OF DIRECTOR ELDAR RYAZANOV'S SPEECH AT THE PLENARY SESSION OF THE FILM-MAKERS UNION OF THE USSR,

MOSCOW, DECEMBER 2, 1980

I do not like to speak in public. I do it extremely seldom because every speech usually brings unpleasant consequences and increases the number of enemies. Today I prepared my speech carefully. My main concern is not to hurt anybody.

On my way here, I did not think about what to say but rather about what should not be said. We are all like icebergs - which, as you know, are nine-tenths under water

We say that there are all sorts of films. But it is wortbwhile to speak a bit about the creators of films. Because of television, as you know, and because of the wide availability of shows, the criterion of quality and high art in creative production has dropped sharply. In nineteenth-century Russia, democratic literature was always the conscience of the nation. When I think about the course of events which I read and watch, I understand that we are still a long way from a conscience here. I would like to remind you that the people see all, know all, remember all. Conscience and concern for the people must be the main criterion. That has not been said here, but it needs to be!

The deaths of Vladimir Vysotski and Vasili Shukshin have shown very clearly who had power over men's minds in our country. Vysotski received no awards--as an actor he wasn't the best; there are more significant actors-but in his songs (some have been released but others have not, through no fault of his!), he never lied. He was honest. He lived without sparing himself. He worked himself to death

The criterion for an artist is the impact on other people; an artistic life is dedicated to the people. Not in words, but in deeds

And here is one more thing: it's impossible to live from one official campaign to the next. There is only one concern--the state of the people's soul, their health, their stomach, their garb. And if all this does not inspire an artist, what kind of

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artist is he, anyway? He is simply making a living! Not everyone can be a genuine artist, who ignores the transitory to focus on the basic interests of the people. The transitory and the permanent seldom coincide. Interests of the moment change frequently but an artist should not be a weathervane. He should not keep up with every fad. The basic interests of the people change slowly; these constitute the genuine life of the nation. A real artist senses the difference between fads and basics.

To me it seems very important that somebody working in art be a complete person. Unfortunately, not many of us can boast of that. It is very difficult. The criterion of a master, an artist, a man of art has been substantially lowered and diluted by a great number of hacks and opportunists.

Speaking of opportunists, we are accustomed to think that an opportunist always desires to please the big bosses, to do a picture or a book which appeals to the leadership. That is an oversimplified conception. There are, for example, foreign travel opportunists, who make films which appeal to the international festival audiences. Sometimes there is also a dissident sort of opportunism, when Aesopian language is used for conveying strange hints; this is done not out of conviction but merely because by doing so they can rake in the money. Sometimes there -is also a pseudo-people's opportunism; they counterfeit themselves to resemble "democrats" but in fact they don't care about people.

Strange things happen here when opportunism becomes an everyday occurrence--when a person becomes so accustomed to lying that falsehood becomes the essence. I am not indulging in an expose; rather, I am trying to analyze certain aspects of our spiritual life. This analysis is sometimes overlooked by professional critics who are not interested in certain aspects of our spiritual life but this is basic to our art.

Also, we have very many pseudo-patriotic films. They cause enormous harm because such films frighten the audience. People no longer understand the difference between mere phrases and actual deeds, between pride and arrogance, between true patriotism and pretense. There is nothing more destructive to the human psyche than the poison poured into consciousness by pseudo-patriotic films, art, literature. We deceive the audience frequently. We pour into them the poison of falsehood instead of saying what may be bitter but is still the truth.

In his book, Peter Brook divided the theatre into living and dead; the same is also true for cinema. So it was, and will be, eternally--in Pushkin's time, in our days, and a hundred years from now. Unquestionably among artists there will be those who are alive and those who are dead. And it's strange; sometimes, in our country,.it is the dead artists who receive rewards and travel to foreign festivals, while in actual fact their pictures do not interest anyone

I want to say a few words about corrections. I could write an entire book about the corrections which I have had occasion to make in my films. I fear that in our country no publishing-house would distribute such a book, and I wouldn't care to send the manuscript to a foreign country, so I will not write this book. With the passage of time, however, I understood that corrections are not a bad thing. When experience, know-how, and mastery develop, corrections can be turned to benefit the picture.

In my picture "Look Out for Cars!" (1963) Papanov and Mironov play a scene at the country house. Papanov originally addressed his son-in-law, acted by Mironov, as follows:

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Who are you, anyway? An ordinary swindler! But Pm a retired lieutenant-colonel!

Later, we made a correction.* Now Papanov spoke as follows: You're an ordinary swindler, but you know who I am ?

Because he gives commands all the time, like "Silence!" and" Tenshun!", and his daughter has one line--"Dad, your barracks jokes are out of place"--the audience guesses that he's some sort of general or even a marshal. Those who insist on corrections need to do some heavy thinking beforehand!

In connection with that film, I was also advised that it would be better for the hero not to steal the car from the swindler but rather for the hero to inform the auto-theft squad so that the police would confiscate the car. Everything would end more or less the same, and it would be even more amusing that way

I shall not speak again today about the aims of satire, since I've written and spoken in public about it frequently; we all know that satire is necessary. From words I moved to deeds, and together with writer Emil Braginski I wrote the script and directed the film "Garage." What happened then is an incredibly interesting story: If it hadn't been for Yevgeny Gabrilovich elder statesman among writers, who defended "Garage" such a picture would not exist today.

By the way, I have received 3,000 letters, of which five were negative. I understand that the majority of people who write an author send praise, but there have been 3,000 letters! Let's be outspoken about this: who among our film directors has ever received such a number of letters about his picture, especially when the picture is not showing in 50 percent of the country? I get letters with requests:

Do something so that "Garage" will be shown in our area From Kharkov they write:

We traveled to Belgorod, which is in Russia, and the picture plays there but here in the Ukraine it is not playing.

I have no complaints about the labs printing too few copies of "Garage" since there is plenty of money in our country; but the copies just lie there, and the film is not distributed. The local authorities evidently don't want it, and are afraid to distribute it. What's happening, anyway? Are we Russians more spiritually healthy, while the Ukrainians are less so and will be ruined by this picture's influence?... I do not know why some are permitted to see it, while others are not. I believed we have a unified society--a socialist system everywhere. But it's not only "Garage"! In the Ukraine, plays by Rozov, by Roshchin, and by me are not performed. Once I deigned to jest, saying that in the Ukraine our plays are staged only in Odessa and Sevastopol because those are officially called the "hero-cities"! Immediately, the Central Committee received a batch of denunciations!

Insofar as I am a satirist, I say things that are unpleasant, but somebody has to do that. I know that we have very much that is good, and thank heavens for it. And

*When I was urged to correct this dialog, the warning was: You'll have to take out the part about the lieutenant-colonel, since the Main Political Administration of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR won't let it through anyway. The Army, you know, is a sacred matter. Don't do it! (Val Golovskoy).

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I do believe that! That is wonderful! But now I want to talk of something else, about which no one speaks.

Half the lab run of prints of "Garage" is dormant and brings in no profit, although it could. Not only financial profit, I think, but also ideological profit. I've been to a film theater, and observed that the audience applauds ten or twelve times during the picture. I am not singing my own praises. I attribute that audience reaction to the fact that the people are perpetually longing for honesty, for truth, for real communication. We smooth over a lot of things. We make pictures that resemble truth but are not truthful

MROZEK AND FREEDOM: EVOLUTION TO A HIGJ--IER AWAREI'55 Americans, as a society and as individuals, constantly examine, question, and

re-define their interpersonal relationships, their interactions with the legal system, and their interpretations of moral and spiritual dictates. Many of the dilemas which are caused by or are answered through this process center on defining the proper limits of personal choice. Answers that are reached have often played an important part in shaping our country's history and policy; they certainly have been paramount in determining our social milieu. Can I decide not to pay taxes on tea; can I decide to own slaves; can I decide not to fight; can I decide to have an abortion are examples of personal choices which have had an impact on the movement and fabric of American life.

What is assumed before the examination-resolution process even begins is that the individual has the ability, but more important, the right to choose. It is a given tenet in American society that the decisions reached through personal or public debate over the possibilities inherent in any situation will result in the evolution of society and mankind, that through the selection of the action which seems most fitting and proper, we will be able to rid ourselves of meaningless restrictions and outmoded concepts of behavior. Wihout the right of choice, the mind becomes mired in lethargy, with trivialities to occupy its potential and little to capture its interest. Americans believe that dictated solutions are substitutes for a natural process; that they not only restrict the body, but ensnare the human spirit as well.

Having said this, we must now look at freedom of choice from a different perspective, through the eyes of someone who has only rarely had the opportunity to experience it. Doing so will allow us to examine more closely the activity which we consider so basic that we no longer consider it at all. The results of such a biopsy will clarify our situation as members of a "free" society, and provide insights into the commonality that we share with members of other societies less "free" than our own.

The works of Polish playwright Slawomir Mrozek provide this fresh perspective. Although he has experimented with various theatrical genres throughout his over thirty years as a dramatist, the thematic thrust of his work has remined constant. From political parable, to absurdist comedy, to realistic melodrama, to a mixture of all three, Mrozek has continually explored the definition, and the consequences of what we mean when we use the word "freedom".

He was a political cartoonist before becoming a playwright, a background that is apparent in his useof caricature and in the manner in which the physical-visual context of his plays supports their ideational content. Mrozek's earliest dramas were written for Bim Bam, a collection of artists founded in 1953. Association with Bim Bam strengthened Mrozek's visual sense, as they as a group had a fascination with poetic image and little interest in words, but also sharpened his political

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sensibility, as many of their works were conceived as thinly veiled social criticism. Most of Mrozek's Bim Bam plays can be labeled as absurdist for a variety of

reasons. They combine vaudeville humor with simple but evocative imagery, contain illogical situations carried to logical ends, and employ convoluted language spoken by characters who lack psychological dimension. The plays are most often political fables, mixing social analysis with malicious slapstick, indebted to Ionesco (The Martyrdom of Peter Ohey has a tiger instead of a rhinocerus) and Beckett (in The Party three men arrive at a supposed celebration, only to discover no one else has shown up). But while Mrozek's technique may have been modern and essentially foreign, his content continued in the Polish tradition established by earlier writers such as Mickiewicz, Krasinki, and Witkacy who, although they are nationalistic and mystic, established freedom as the primary topic of Polish dramatic literature.

There is a progression in Mrozek's thoughts on freedom, a developing sophistication and subtlety. His early works are closely aligned with his predecessor's passion for linking personal and national liberation. This is best exhibited in The Police, in which the fanatically loyal undercover Sergeant allows himself to be jailed as an insurgent so that the government can keep its police force occupied. But he undergoes a transformation while incarcerated and becomes an actual revolutionary. His playending cry of "Long Live Freedom" resonates through centuries of Polish drama. In The Police, freedom clearly means freedom from something-namely political and social repression. In. Out at Sea, however, the definition of freedom is not so easy to discover. The character "Thin" speaks:

Freedom--means nothing at all. It is only true freedom that means anything. Why? Because it is true, and therefore, better. In which case, where are we to search for true freedom? Let us think logically. If true freedom is not the same thing as ordinary freedom, where are we to find this freedom? The answer is simple: true freedom exists only in the place where there is no ordinary freedom.

It appears that Mrozek is playing verbal games in this speech, but the game, in fact, accurately describes not only reality for the play's characters, but for the play's Polish audience as well. Thin, trapped on a liferaft with Fat and Medium, is being forced to choose between dying of starvation or offering himself up as a food source, so that the other two may cannibalize him and live. Thin does have free choice, but either choice will result in his death. Mrozek is carefully pointing out, perhaps reminding his audience, that freedom is not an absolute, but a relative term, its meaning dependent on the context in which it is used. This idea would not be lost on an audience in a country where one may walk the streets to certain destinations during certain hours of the day, where one has the freedom to vote for one slate of candidates, where one has the freedom to speak . of certain things. True freedom exists where ordinary - Soviet - freedom does not, but true freedom also exists where the choices are true alternatives, not arbitrary illusions designed to keep the powerful powerful regardless of the choice that is made.

In Tango, written in 1968, Mrozek more fully explores the relationship between freedom and power. In the earlier parable Strip-Tease he had shown that complaince or resistance to force resulted in the same posture-submission-with no more honor or glory to the resister than to the complier. In Tango, power is the decisive factor and perhaps the only solution to the ideological battle between traditional values and so-called "free" thought; and so while power does restore order, both the old guard and the revolutionaries have to sacrifice freedom to remain free. Power is depicted as an obvious but unsatisfying solution, a false deus ex machina, neatly symbolized by the dance that ends the play, a "revolutionary"

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tango performed by the partners power and old guard over and around the dead body of the most radical of the traditionalists. Power, it seems, will allow free expression as long as it enjoys what is being expressed. Everyone remains "free" but from now on, their choices will be arbitrarily, if not whimsically limited. In both Strip-Tease and Tango, power has no content; it simply is. Free of intellectual or emotional connotations, the control it exerts over the characters in the two plays is all the more frightening for its impenetrability. Power is personified in Tango (in Strip-Tease it is two large disembodied hands that push the human characters around the set) but the character lacks human qualities simply because he always acts out of his own best interest. He is audience in a country where one may walk the streets to certain destinations during certain hours of the day, where one has the freedom to vote for one slate of candidates, where one has the freedom to speak of certain things. True freedom exists where ordinary -Soviet freedom does not, but true freedom also exists where the choices are true alternatives, not arbitrary illusions designed to keep the powerful powerful regardless of the choice that is made.

In Tango, written in 1968, Mrozek more fully explores the relationship between freedom and power. In the earlier parable Strip-Tease he had shown that complaince or resistance to force resulted in the same posture-submissionwith no more honor or glory to the resister than to the complier. In Tango, power is the decisive factor and perhaps the only solution to the ideological battle between traditional values and so-called "free" thought; and so while power does restore order, both the old guard and the revolutionaries have to sacrifice freedom to remain free. Power is depicted as an obvious but unsatisfying solution, a false deus ex machina, neatly symbolized by the dance that ends the play, a "revolutionary" tango performed by the partners power and old guard over and around the dead body of the most radical of the traditionalists. Power, it seems, will allow free expression as long as it enjoys what is being expressed. Everyone remains "free" but from now on, their choices will be arbitrarily, if not whimsically limited. In both Strip-Tease and Tango, power has no content; it simply is. Free of intellectual or emotional connotations, the control it exerts over the characters in the two plays is all the more frightening for its impenetrability. Power is personified in Tango (in Strip-Tease it is two large disembodied hands that push the human characters around the set) but the character lacks human qualities simply because he always acts out of his own best interest. He is free, but without responsibility to his fellow human beings. The result of free power is enslavement for others, a neat analogy for certain governments and a warning to those who might too easily give over some of their own areas of choice to a higher power, no matter how benign it may appear.

By 1974 Mrozek had transcended nationalistic political concerns totally and was focused on the universal implications of his ordinary - true freedom distinction. By the time he writes Emmigres he seems to have already said all he has to say about power restricting freedom and in this work focuses on the possible realization of true freedom. The play presents two characters (AA and XX) who have escaped the "ordinary" freedom of their restrictive homeland to live in a "truely" free nation. But both characters come to realize that they are actually less free than they were previously, for they have become slaves to the very things that they thought would liberate them- money for one, artistic expression for the other. They discover that they have carried their prisons with them, that they have traded external, general oppression for its internal, individual counterpart. Mrozek goes a step further than in Out At Sea, for now freedom is not determined by an outside force or power, but by the individual's ability to recognize the guises that

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the force or power may take. By presenting an outside force that is at worst neutral Mrozek shows that freedom is an attitude as much as a condition. The characters in Emigres assumed that freedom was external, or at least that once external freedom was achieved, true freedom would be sure to follow. But now they find that they must rid themselves of what they thought would bring freedom to actually achieve that state. Mrozek provides a profoundly depressing answer as to what is left after their dreams--which were also their enslavers--are gone. XX tears up all of his hoarded money and escapes the enormity of his action by falling into a deep sleep. The more sensitive AA destroys his manuscript and also goes to bed. But instead of sleeping, he begins to cry, a sound that grows louder and louder and the final curtain descends. If they are to be truly free, XX and AA can no longer live for something--they must simply live, an existence that Mrozek does not depict, butthat his characters, at least at play's end, seem incapable of confronting. Their response--escape and fear--demonstrate Mrozek's point, that a life of true freedom is one of uncertainty, changing values and tenuous melationships with people, objects, and ideas. It is not secure, not safe, not for everyone, and certainly not the idealized existence that has fueled Polish literature and thougt for the last two hundred years. Mrozek is reminding us of the duality in existence, that a dark and a bright side exist to our most cherished concepts. It seems certain that he belives freedom to be good, just as he also believes that absolutes, "true" anything, to be destructive. The Golden Mean is operative here a clear-headed rejection of the idealistic extravagance of a people too long without one of life's basic necessities. In Emigres Mrozek presents traditional Polish dramatic topics, but is also firmly a man of the twentieth century, reminding us that all things are relative.

The physical settings and accouterments in Mrozek's plays reinforce his intellectual concepts. Most of his dramas use only one set, that of a single room. The small liferaft surrounded by a limitless empty ocean is the single room in Out At Sea, and serves as an appropriate metaphor for the entrapment and isolation that the more literal single room locale conveys in Mrozek's other works. His sets are cells, a reality which many of his characters recognize and at some point in the play's action, confront. Most of Mrozek's characters, particularly in his early plays, would like to escape; some, however, resign themselves to their environment; and a few, particularly in the later works, are glad for the room's security. But only rarely, most notably in The Police, do characters break through the walls that so literally represent their physical, mental, and spiritual confinement.

The room metaphor is a popular one with many of Mrozek's contemporaries, particularly Harold Pinter. His rooms are havens of warmth and safety, which are invaded by personified forces from "the outside" who bring peril and possible destruction to the room's inhabitants. Mrozek's action is more self-contained--no one need enter to set his plays in motion, possibly because his "outside" is not so neatly delineated, but instead represents potential. The "outside" for Mrozek is a concept which terrifies some characters and exhilarates others, but in all cases represents action which the characters must take-it is not action which is taken on them.

Mrozek's "physicalization of the trapped" extends even to his character's costumes. The playwright uses clothes to remind the audience of the rigidity inherent in societies and individuals. Tango provides the best example of Mrozek's ability to create visual metaphor. Stomil, an artist who belives in totally free expression, is clad for most of the play in a pair of pajamas whose fly is perpetually down. His son, Arthur, who wants to re-establish the old order of ules nud

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priorities, dresses in a dark suit, white shirt, and tie. When Arthur's philosophy finally prevails, he demands that his family take part in an old fashioned wedding ceremony. Stomil and the other relatives don the traditional garments--including girdles and bustles for the women. But the clothes pinch and squeeze and "don't allow one to breathe." Clearly the manner in which the clothes restrict the body is analogous to the manner in which Arthur's new order restricts the mind and spirit. Restrictive clothing also appears in Emigres when XX proudly shows off his purchase of an expensive pair of shoes, even though they are too tight and will ruin his feet. The shoes represent XX's freedom, for in this new country he can make enough money to purchase whatever he wants, even objects associated with persons of a higher social station. But the shoes bring no pleasure, they are a burden rather than an enjoyment, a tangible representation of XX's predicament in his quest for true freedom.

Clothing also symbolizes social position, as many of Mrozek's characters see garments or their trappings as concrete proof ofposition and its accompaning security. The Sergeant in The Police wants gold braid sewn on his underwear so that he can still be in uniform a little when he is working undercover. The Ambassador in the play of the same name (Mrozek's most recently translated work) frets because he has lost a cufflink and therefore will not be able to properly represent his government--in fact, he will not be a true ambassador if he is cufflinkless. Like the Sargeant, he will be out of uniform and therefore without identity.

When the ambassador is stripped of his "uniform" and its accompaning pretense--his home country is taken over by his host country, his wife leaves him and he is isolated from all contact with the outside world because he gives assylum to a potential defector--he is able to discover the man underneath all those layers. When he re-discovers his true nature, he re-discovers honor. As the turn of events frees him from the obligations of his position, he finds the courage to die for his beliefs. Part of his emergence occurs because he takes responsibility for another human being, namely the dissident he decides to protect. Mrozek's latest comment on freedom seems to be that it is attainable if it is not centered on the self, but is focused outward, toward others. Egoist freedom will possibly destoy XX and AA--selfless freedom redeems the ambassador.

Mrozek himself is an emigre, having lived outside of Poland for many years. The resultant distancing from his homeland has given him some objectivity regarding his country's passions and problems. He is able to see that political freedom, while essential, is not a magic solution to a nation's problems, for free choice brings with it its own set of predicaments. In Emigres and The Ambassador

Mro~ek has shown how true freednm can be attained and what should be done with it. Mrozek's answer to the paradox of free choice transcends both his inherited and his chosen literary tradition, placing him in the company of writers who believe that the first question that should be answered when making a choice is how will this or that solution best serve my fellow human beings. True freedom may entail giving up freedom, but it is a consciously willed surrender for a higher good. Mrozek's true freedom suggests an ideal Christian/Communist society, one which would probably not survive very long in today's world. But then the Poles, as Mrozek would be the first to point out have always fantasized perfect conditions as a means of coping with and subverting the sins and excesses that so often victimized (and victimizes) their very real world.

Alan Kreizenbeck

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University of Denver

GODOTFEST IN BELGRADE As most European countries, Yugoslavia enjoys a rich theater life that is

mainly run within a network of almost one hundred repertory theaters, with permanent ensembles and generous municipal and state subsidies that often cover up to 80% of the budget. The multiethnic character of the country and its federal system are reflected in the existence of several, equally developed theater centrs. Within the past decade two trends became noticable in the Yugoslav theater: a growing popularity of contemporary domestic plays that often deal with the most sensitive social and political issues in an open, critical and sometimes satirical manner; and the emergence of many independent theater groups that are being formed by those theater professionals who grew dissatisfied with the rep system, institutional production practices and own civil servant status. Thus, permanent employment - still a dream of the acting profession in this country - is increasingly seen in Yugoslavia as a restriction or at least as a position that lacks excitiment and curbs experimentation.

Most independent companies, however, struggle with public subsidies that are practically pre-marked for the existing institutional theaters, which themselves hardly can cope with the 60% annual inflation, even with subsidies. The completion of the rep companies and independent groups, for both public funds and audiences, has become the main conflict in the Yugoslav theater life. Both kinds of theater attempt to win the spectators by turning the stage in a forum for public debate rather than entertainment or strictly artistic pursuits. Theater dares to approach issues and present views that are often conspicuously absent from politics and the press.

One of the most daring and successful of independent groups is KPGT, a company whose name is an acronym, derived from the first letters of the word theater in four Yugoslav languages (Kazliste, Pozoriste, Gledalisce, Tea tar). Thus, the very name of the company declares its Yugoslav orientation: it brings together professionals from all parts of the country and regularly appears in all Yugoslav cities. KPGT successfully toured Australia in 1980 and the United States in 1982, bringing Dusan Jovanovic's plays The Liberation of Skopje and Karamazovs to the World Theater Festival in Denver and to the audiences in Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington and New York.

The main force behind KPGT is Ljubisa Ristic, a director of rich personal style, equally interested in staging foreign classics and the new works of his Yugoslav peers. For several years Ristic has been trying too prove that in Yugoslavia quality theater can be commercial theater - to the extent that it can attract enough viewers to pay decent professional wages, strictly from the box office income.

This past summer KPGT run in Belgrade a three-months long season under the name GODOTFEST, as an homage to S. Becket and with several productions developed around the Godot theme. Ristic himself directed Waiting for Godot, with several roles cast with women. The production played down the metaphysical aspects of the play and resulted in a moving, melancholy work that focussed on the frailty of human relationships. Nada Kokotovic, Ristic's steady collaborator, who in the 1970's worked with G. Balanchine, created a "choreodrama," using the same Becket play. A yound director, Suada Kapic, working with teenagers and some professionals, came up with a work called Who is Godot?, probing the insecurity add dilemmas of Yugoslav youth in the post-Tito period. Later on, Ristic revived

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Ljubinko i Desanka, a 1960's farce by the most popular Serbian playwright Aleksander Popovic, turning it in an ironic commentary on the current economic crisis that plagues the country.

From early July until cold October evenings, Belgrade audiences swarmed a secluded courtyard in the Knez Mihailova, the principal downtown shopping street, closed to car traffic. There, among abandoned warehouses and old apartment buildings, with bleachers set among few old tries, theater assumed a strange surrealistic-naturalistic quality. Besides new productions, guest appearances of other independent groups from Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana, jazz and classical music concerts and film screenings were presented. Some productions were simultanously presented in an old near-by brewery that is a home of the Nova osecajnost (New Sensibility) theatre group.

Godotfest was run as a joint effort of KPGT, some other groups and two independant filmmakers collectives that have their offices next to the courtyard. An unprecedented publicity, unconventional ads on the local radio stations and spots on the TV Belgrade quickly estabished the courtyard in Knez Mihailova street as the main gathering point of Belgrade, that during the summer months virtually becomes a cultural desert, since most cultural institutions, rep theaters included, close for long vacations.

The impact of the Godofest should perhaps be assessed more from a political than from an aesthetic viewpoint. Godofest pioneered a new concept of selfreliance and selfhelp at the time when all established cultural institutions in the country protest the inadequate level of public funding that cannot catch up with inflation. Instead of demanding subsidies and more subsidies, Godotfest run the entire operation on the box-office income: several new productions, some out-of-town appearances, hundreds of performances and programs, often three or four a day, in two spaces. Godotfest leased two Apple PCs from private owners and introducted computerized ticket sales in the country. Some two hundred people, established actors and some students of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, were working without guaranteed pay, with bills and wages settled at the end of each month in accordance to the box office intake. Initial scepticism of the press, theater professionals and many viewers was proven groundless.

The established repertory theaters are now scared: Godotfest's risky practices exposed their own wastefulness, excess of administrative staff and low productivity. The long-lasting policy of awarding subsidies to the built-in costs of the institution, regardless of its output and quality, has been discredited. At the time when Yugoslavia's economy struggles to assert market principles in order to overcome the present crisis, Godotfest set a strong example. Economic and political ramification of the Godotfest achievement should be clearer in the near future. At the moment, KPGT prepares three new productions in an emptied store next to the courtyard and plays host to the Source Theater Co. from Washington, ,D.C., that was its presenter in the American capital two years ago. Using the emerging network of independant groups, KPGT was able to schedule a four weeks-long tour for the Source production of the Glass Menagerie, again without subsidies. The quality of KPGT's productions set this company in the very center of the Yugoslav theater life; Ristic's business and organizational practices test the Yugoslav concept of "selfmanagement" outside of the instituionalized culture - in a cooperative venture that provides artistic freedom, relies on the audience support and takes into account the pressing economic circumstances in the country.

Dragan Klaic

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(Dragan Klaic teaches history of theater and drama at the University of Arts in Belgrade, where he also works as a drama critic. This academic year he is Visiting Associate Professor at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.)

CALL FOR PAPERS I shall be chairing a panel entitled "Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre"

at the annual National Convention of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic aoo East European Languages (AATSEEL) which will take place in Chicago, December 27-30, 1985. I would gratefully welcome proposals for papers to be read on this panel. Papers may concern themselves with Stanislavsky as a director, writer or actor, his theories, and his biography. There may also be papers not concerned with Stanislavsky, but with the Moscow Art Theatre, its history, productions, and persons connected with it. In other words, the topic is quite flexible. Please let me know as soon as you can in case you are interested in submitting a short proposal for a paper.

Leo Hecht

IMPORT ANT NOTICE This summer we shall be writing a proposal for funding I'EWSNOTES. It will

be of extreme importance to submit, along with this proposal, letters of support for the continuation of this periodical. I therefore request that, if you feel that the publication serves a unique and useful J:Urpose, you take a few minutes and write a letter of support which we may use to back up the proposal. Many thanks.

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